Following is a guest post from The Freedom Story:

It’s Pride Month. America is erupting in protests over racial justice. There’s a pandemic going on and we’re witnessing how the essential workers, the ones we most rely on, are the most vulnerable with, historically, the least amount of economic & health protection. June is likely to be punishingly hot. And under lockdown, domestic violence is on the rise. While it feels like everything is all happening at once, if you look at the history of these factors as they all come to a head, what this really shows is how so many things interconnect and overlap. Poverty. Racism. Systemic inequalities. Exclusion and violence. So many of these issues are the same ones that, on a systemic level, contribute to and perpetuate trafficking. And the people who are most marginalized pay the heaviest price even if they are supporting everyone else.

Bringing Intention to an Intersectional Moment

We hope that, over the years, our blog has become a resource full of information that has helped you understand trafficking, its causes, its impact, ways that we can tackle it, and the importance of prevention. However, we hope that all these little pieces of the puzzle also help when we take a step back and look at the bigger picture. This moment right now is a huge call for all of us to take a step back and look at the big picture. Being mindful and intentional right now can be a critical resource in answering the big picture questions.

One of the biggest questions that should be on all of our minds is: What am I being called to do right now?

It is possible that our next steps right now will be among our most defining ones, where the decisions we made in a potentially pivotal moment in history are ones that will matter to how we will look at ourselves five years from now, how much our neighbors will trust us, how our children will see us, or how we will be remembered as ancestors.

Change is scary…but it is happening anyway. Collectively, we get to decide what we want that to look like and how we want to shape it – or have it shaped for us. Now is an opportunity to look real close at the options presented in front of us, as well as our habits of thinking, and to make an intentional choice about what kinds of thoughts and actions we want to inhabit. Stepping forward mindfully and with intention is a form of empowerment – it is agency and wisdom. It is exercising the power over your own mind and habits to press pause and to reflect, and then exercising the power to choose our thoughts and our actions.

But in order to do that, we also have to get real comfortable with a position of curiosity, learning to find grace in the discomfort. It requires us to be both humble and brave.

“If you want different fruit, you must plant a new seed.” – Lisa Sharon Harper