My Big Rethink
I am Hannah Charlton [Lewis]*, an older white woman with a very long, varied career as journalist, editor, writer, digital content producer and branding consultant.
A visit in 2020 to Bryan Stevenson’s National Memorial to Peace and Justice [a memorial to the victims of lynching] and his Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, US, triggered a complete reversal of my previous perspective on my life as well as a profound, and transformative change in my beliefs, values and outlook. I have worked to examine my whiteness through reading, discussions, courses and everyday awareness of the inequality and racism in our world.
In 2023 I became ill and in 2024 was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. This has meant a lot of time - as my body increasingly declines - contemplating my future and the meaning of death, in a period of excessive and intensifying turbulence, fear and violence in the world.
I am grateful to all the activists, writers and visionaries who have helped me reconsider my past, my present and our future as humans in the bigger picture of the universal consciousness.
* Hannah Charlton working name, Hannah Lewis married name
The illiterate of the 21st Century are not those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn. The future always comes too fast and in the wrong order. Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to drop back.”
Alvin Toffler