Categories
don't speak...don't speak!

emotions | the middle

Where to put it all.

Most days I am overwhelmed by emotions.  Before COVID I had  to learn to manage this in public.  Now, in the privacy of my own home, I can be or feel what I need to feel when I need to feel it.  Before going 100% remote, it was painful and exhausting to hold back some emotions in the office and on the bus.  Those times when, you may understand, when whatever it is there  is just nothing you can do to keep the tears inside.   

Most days I struggle with where  I am in support of causes or what I perceive as injustice.  Often I find myself in the middle and it seems there isn’t much room in the middle  anymore.  You are  either on one side or  the  other.  This is untenable for me.  Untenable  because  I believe people  should  be allowed individual freedoms.  Yet, there are strong forces that are pulling us miles apart. Some of the pulling are leaders some of us have voted or continue to vote into office.

I support Black Lives Matter.  I also support law enforcement and the rule of law.  Because I believe, I have to believe that there are good police officers.  That said, black and brown people are black and  brown 24/7, 365 days a year not 40 hours a week. Now you think I don’t really support law enforcement.  Fine. I do.  Legal, unbiased and fair law enforcement. 

I made the choice to get vaccinated.  I won’t lie or hide it, I do think others should because I see it saving lives and I also see the stress and exhaustion on the faces and in the voices of the Nurses and Doctors I support everyday.  I hear the pain of loss and feel their struggles daily.  That hits me at my core. I also believe that is a personal choice and decision to get a vaccination and it should not be forced.  What I read says it  saves  lives and can get us back to a bit or a normal  life.  Others read the opposite.  So here we are, divided.  I grew up in a time when it wasn’t questioned.  It was seen as a way to preserve life and minimize illness.  

I saw this on Instagram; @journey_to_wellness] Who says having a wide range of emotions in one day is a bad thing? 

Our emotions are there to tell us something. Maybe they’re nudging you to rest, to spend time with a friend, or whatever it is that you take away from them. The feelings we feel so profoundly are what make us human. 

So whether your wheel of emotions today looks like the one of the left or right, whatever your feeling today is entirely okay. 💕”

My chart, happy is a little smaller and most days, motivated and excited are taken over by stress, anxiety and exhaustion.  And the exhaustion comes from feeling and realizing the exhaustion of others for the most part.  What have I got to be tired about?  Well, a couple things, but not ready to actually tell that story here yet. 

I am in the middle more and more each day.  More than I care to be, yet here I  am.  Maybe an assumption?  Maybe a reality.  My reality, I am in  the middle of so much and have no avenue or platform to have any affect on that personally, locally, yet alone globally.   Which in my reality is not for me to push or try to change with others.  You have to come to your  own conclusions.  And  we have to  realize that often those will  not be the same.  

Ultimately we  all have access to the same information.  We all, for the most  part have access to every bit of information in many forms.  I think it’s our DNA that determines where we go, where we lean.

And by DNA, I don’t just mean biological.  That could be part of it,  but the DNA  that we have within us from our lived experiences of life.   The good and the bad.   The new and the old.  And by old I mean past lives.  Yes, I believe there is something to that.

Our lived experiences are as vast and diverse as we are.  Easy childhood, difficult childhood, adversity, wealth, poverty, abuse, neglect, love, disdain, adoration, abundance, lack, isolation.  What does that do with our DNA and how does that  affect of influence our relationships?  How does that affect our response or reaction to what comes to us.

I’m not physiologist, nor have I studied psychology to the extent that it gives  me any  credibility to speak to this.  I can speak from my understanding of my experience and years of observation.  

Insecurity reveals itself in many ways.  Me, saying I need to keep my words to myself and thinking I should stay quiet, it is my feeling that I wasn’t given much opportunity to speak out as a child or teenager.  Knowing and now understanding  introversion, odds were against me.  What others had to say or say to me, was more important.  Which maybe is why I easily headed down that path of religion in high school, people listened to me.

While I have  settled into it a bit, I live a secondary life to everyone I am in relationship with.  Many of us do, but there are some who have that one that is of the utmost importance, that one they think of when they wake up and when they go to sleep.  If I’ve ever had that, I didn’t know it.  And that’s okay.  That’s not what this life was  to be about for me.

What happened in your childhood do you believe affects how you interact or respond to another person?  Have you considered their experience and how that has affected their relationship with you?  Their response or reaction to you? I’ve said, at least to myself, I believe that more often than not, a response to someones words or actions are more a reflection of the person hearing or receiving not giving.  Of course if it goes deeper, then both bring to the conversation, the situation their own … let’s just call it, baggage.  And very often, I think has nothing to do with what is happening in that moment.  What happened to you when you were 8 or 9 is triggered.  And I bet 99.9% of the time neither has any idea that time is seeping into now.  It is.  Maybe we should all do a chart and put in it what happened to us as a kid so that we can have it for awareness and carry it around. If you have issues with trust and you are having a conversation with someone who has issues with trust. Guess what?

I am in the middle and have been since a child.  If only I were a actually a middle child I’d have more to work with. I know that plays into who I am today and the relationships I am in.  I would however like to shake some of that, but I’m not sure I can.  It is deep in me and as I grew up and realized that being in the middle was where I was.  As I got older I also had to come to terms with what that actually meant.  Sometimes I felt like in that middle space, I was more of a pawn in a game for some.  Something to barter with for love and affection or control of me.  Also  probably why I don’t care to control anything…exhausting.  Let it go.  

Most days I feel I have let this go.  But has it served me?  Being in the middle or letting go?  I also know that it will alway be there as reminder to me.  Yet, I can’t always control how it presents.

Again, I haven’t studied phycology a great deal, but that does tend to be where I  read when seeking out answers.  And have been in  therapy a few times.  So as I was writing this I found an old article in Psychology Today, “6 Ways that a Rough Childhood Can Affect Adult Relationships”.  Number 4 kind of hit home;

4. Avoidance of relationships: “I’m someone who is better off alone.”

Alternatively, people with negative developmental experiences involving intimate relationships may opt to avoid closeness and isolate themselves. Sometimes this starts early on and sometimes later, as an attempt to break the cycle of harmful relationships. But healthy relationships with other people are crucial for personal development, presenting opportunities for growth and change. Missing out on them in adulthood as a self-protective measure further impairs development of a fully adult identity, solidifying a self-perception of unworthiness and self-condemnation. There are many exceptions to the feeling that we are too flawed for others, who deserve better. Most of us have the capacity to offer more than we think we do, and thereby become more appreciative of ourselves. It’s too complicated for here to talk about hope, faith in oneself, and how a long process of recovery unfolds. It’s worth noting that sometimes we unconscious push people away, appearing to ourselves be a threat when we do not so intend.

In terms of harmful relationships, mine were not harmful like others.  I wasn’t physically abused.  But maybe I was manipulated or used.  Do any of us really know how  to navigate life in a clear and balanced way?  Do most of us think that someone is out to get us or is there to disrupt our life, take something away from us, to ruin our day or make us feel something? My Mom has said to me many times, ‘people don’t make you feel something, you let them make you feel it’.  

We all struggle.  Who knows how to do any of this?  Who knows anything?  I know I don’t.  I just know that I want there to be fairness.  I want people to treat each other with kindness and care.  I want the lens of fair to be so sharp  and bright that there can be no question. 

Right now I am still in the middle and while I know the side I would move to if I had to I will still fight for the other side as well.  As long as their goal is also equality, fairness and no one is harmed.  Right now, I don’t see that or feel it and I am pretty sure it has nothing to do with my childhood, but pure lack of enough concern for humanity and a lot of misinformation. We have to fight together and fight our personal bias.  We all want our rights and our freedoms, we can’t eliminate those for others because they believe or feel differently.

Categories
don't speak...don't speak! rant

I feel like I’ve written this before?

There was a debate this week in the House of Representatives about abortion. Well there probably isn’t a week that the House in is session that there isn’t a debate about abortion.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xasJpDHiwb0[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz5DZJgclKQ[/youtube]

If we are going to demand that every child be born. Then we should demand that each and every one of those children have a good life. If we pass legislation to ban abortion, we must also pass true pro-life, beyond birth legislation. If we are going to take Planned Parenthood down, are we prepared to take care of EVERY SINGLE CHILD BORN? We don’t even do that today!

The studies have been done about how many children are aborted. What is the % of that % that is because of a threat to the life of that child or the mother?

Where is the study of children born into this world today who are not taken care of? Children who go hungry? Children who are abused? Children who are neglected? Children born addicted to drugs? Children who die because of neglect, abuse and malnutrition?

I’m once again reminded of that line in the movie “sex, lies and videotape”, when Ann is at the therapist and she can’t stop worrying about the barge of garbage in the bay.

Ann: Garbage. All I’ve been thinking about all week is garbage. I mean, I just can’t stop thinking about it.

Her therapist asks, what is it that she is really worried about? Does anyone ever have a substantial, meaningful, in-depth conversation about the cause and effect of a decision?

I am pro-choice. But I’m also pro-life. So there! I am however not pro-birth. Which I think is what pro-lifer’s actually stand for. And I didn’t know really how to articulate that until I heard a Benedictine Nun talk about it on Bill Moyers PBS show NOW in 2004. She said;

“I’m opposed to abortion.

But I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking. If all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed and why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”

Sister Joan Chittister (2004)

Exactly! THANK YOU!

Are there enough homes in America to put children who are born to women not in the position to care for a child? Are there enough families ready to care for a child born to a mother who dies in child-birth because of complications that could have been avoided? Who protects the Mother? Is that not a life? Does she not somehow become defenseless if she is somehow incapacitated due to complications?

Pro-lifer’s. What choice in life that you can freely make are you willing to give up? If you do not have the choice to manage your own body, what next. Well, it’s kind of already started. You’ve had this before so we don’t have to pay for it now. You have in the past asked for help due to depression, we will not insure you. So be depressed, possibly do something to your self that puts you in a coma or persistent vegetative state and someone else can pay for you long term care.

What if we let individuals make choices about their own body, provided everyone health care. Even better, preventative health care and then the raging cost of taking care of the sick might decrease because people aren’t as sick as they used to be. We have created a society dependent on being sick and needing health care. How do we reverse that?

How do we get those we have elected to have the conversations that go beyond the surface or beyond one line of scripture and make the decisions that will take care of all of us an not just who a few think should be taken care of?

Categories
creative don't speak...don't speak!

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot | PBS

I am loving this interview!

Posted via web from jgx’s posterous

Categories
creative don't speak...don't speak!

Ever ~ After

One of my favorite movies is a recent version of Cinderella, Ever After with Drew Barrymore. I have lots of favorite movies and dislike that question, “What’s your favorite movie?” There are too many for too many reasons.

Why Ever After? Because it’s just a kick ass version of Cinderella. I do remember my first with Lesley Ann Warren. In black and white of course. Cinderella or Danielle in Ever After, no matter what happens, no matter how bad it gets, no matter who tries to beat her down, she remembers who she is and how great she is. And at a point when she could have had her stepmother and sister thrown out of the country, or worse, she takes a lighter approach. If you want to call it lighter? Cinderella ask’s that they show her stepmother the same courtesy that she had bestowed on her. Off to the work camp!  🙂

But that’s not what I’m writing about. After the Prince has fallen in love with the “Comtesse Nicole de Lancret”, Cinderella. He says to her in the ruins, “I used to think that if I cared about anything I’d have to care about everything and I’d go stark raving mad.”

I remember sitting in my little apartment in Raytown, MO. It had to be 1981 or 82? Watching Philip Glass, “Koyaanisqatsi” and weeping when the image of an older man appears on the screen. He appeared to be homeless. I couldn’t stop crying. It was as if the value of every living being was all of a sudden on my shoulders.

I was trying to wrap my head around all this emotion and level of mean today.  Maybe I was looking for a distraction?  I was thinking about the number 9. A friend was into numerology a few years back and did my numbers. I only remembered 9. It may have been because that’s all she did at the time.

I recently created my 4th Twitter account. One is for some work that I’m doing so it’s not really my account. One is @4212Olive. The address of the house that my Dad grew up in and the house that holds or held many of the stories of his youth that I heard in my youth. There also where my Uncle, Aunt and of course Grandparents. Stories that I still hear 50 plus years later. Then I realized, 4+2+1+2=9. I know!!

O.k., Google search for numerology. Get your free reading, from a guy in Beaverton, OR? Near where I used to live. Sure! Then I got about 5 follow up email asking if I wanted more. Which was fine. That’s how he makes money. I kind of wish that was something I could just throw money at for fun right now. But I don’t think it fits into the budget of my unemployed status.

My life path is 9, of course. expression is 5, soul urge is 8. Here are few random sentences from the reading.

9 – You probably feel responsible for keeping up the morality or spirit of mankind in some way, or even responsible for their very souls. You are very aware of feeling as insignificant as a grain of sand in the Universe and believe that materialism, prejudice and lust just don’t matter in the long run. Often the number 9 faces a unique challenge at some point in his or her life that seems to be a test of faith. Usually this incident takes the form of a devastating personal loss, disease or some sort of tragedy. This triggers a period of time that lasts a few years that is often called the “dark night of the soul.” It is usually during this period of your life that you find the extreme courage and strength to become what is called a wounded healer. 

Your life may seem too tough to handle at times which makes you vulnerable to finding substitutes for the family unit.

5 – As your independence is so important to you, you thrive best in creative occupations that allow you a great deal of travel. You have an eye for design and appreciate the good things in life. In fact, you may spend a lot of your time trying to figure out how to get these things without having to work too hard. You very much believe that a person is defined by what he does and not what he wants to do so any business or project that you start will be very much branded with your personal flair. You are terrified of being stuck in one place or having your free spirit suffocated by labels and possessiveness. For this reason many of you feel quite suffocated in relationships or are unable to hold down a day job for any length of time. The last thing that could ever be said of you is that you are closed-minded. However, sometimes your permissiveness leads to relationships with odd or unstable individuals.

8 – Often your devotion to keeping the free exchange of money flowing costs you dearly personally either through overwork or thanklessness from others. The highest expression of your soul urge number is when you are at the top of the food chain and dispensing goodies down to those who work for you or love you. You are blessed with the tools that come in hand with being a great leader – foresight, analytical abilities and a great understanding of human nature. Your ability to sell ice to an Eskimo comes from a truly grounded and practical understanding of the wants and needs of humans. You are very astute when it comes to choosing partners and employees. You always assign people to roles that best suit their talents and resources and so that all benefit from your grand plans.

What does this all mean? I have no idea. But it does feel familiar.

I don’t know what I think about these types of things. They often seem to have some element of truth to them. Myer’s Briggs, Now, Discover Your Strength all of these random tests have truth to them, because they do describe parts of me.

But then I also believe a bit in that concept of predestination. That for the most part your life path is carved out for you. You may do things along the way that temporarily take you down another path. But ultimately you end up where you end up. You think you know what you want or where you want to be, but some one or some other force steps in front of you.

So I’m a bit stuck, but not really…#9, #5, #8. What’s next?

Ever After also says what I have believed forEver, you just never know.  So maybe a little more care in what you say to and about others.

Categories
don't speak...don't speak!

gonna sell the house and move here

Posted via email from jgx’s posterous