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Social Justice, Awareness and Change

October 13, 2016 By gwynn

the-in-betweens-5

 

 

When I was in high school in the mid-late eighties, I was pretty socially aware. Well, I thought I was at least. I mean, I knew about the “secret” wars in Central America and about homelessness. I knew that racism existed, though as a white girl who lived in a white community it was all theoretical and not something I thought I ever witnessed or experienced. I was a little punk rocker with my black hair and black clothes and leather jacket and I would argue about how horrible Reagan was and how he and Bush Sr. would destroy the world. I was in high school when the Berlin Wall was torn down. This means in middle school that horrifying scare-tactic show The Day After was aired on prime time (my dad wouldn’t let me watch it, or the movie Red Dawn when it came to the theaters) and my freshman year of high school we had “air raid” and “The Bomb” drills where we would all congregate and sit against the walls of our middle school, and in the words of my poetic English teacher, kiss our young asses good-bye. There was a lot of anti-communism propaganda and a lot of looking out to the outer world and all the evils there.

The evils were never at home. They weren’t in my home town. They weren’t in my family. My family wasn’t racist. The women in my family weren’t oppressed or silenced. Feminism was something that happened in the 1960s and 70s and wasn’t a thing of a modern 80s girl like me.

I assumed the  history I was taught in school was true and accurate and complete. I assumed the world was safe and that thanks to my mother’s generation I could do and be anyone or anything I wanted. I didn’t have a clue what a glass ceiling was. Women’s “power suits” with the huge shoulders were ugly, but I simply saw them as part of that whole being an adult and working thing that people do, not as a costume women had to wear to try to “fit in” and be taken seriously in the corporate world.

My first week of college was an eye opener. Hell, it was mind blowing and boggling for me. And it shut me down from the enormity of the evils in this world, because if I continued to think about it all, it may have quite literally killed me.

There was an exhibit in one of the galleries on campus of the atrocities committed by Christopher Columbus and his crews. I remember looking at the images and reading the descriptions and the history and being in total disbelief. I honestly could not believe that these things were true or had happened. I had chosen the college I attended (big shout out to the Evergreen State College) because it was a liberal arts college. But that first week, as I was standing there staring at horrifying images and reading even more horrifying descriptions I started to wonder if perhaps I had chosen too liberal of a school to attend.

At 18 I had never heard of the atrocities Europeans had committed against the Native Americans. I didn’t know about Columbus or the pilgrims. I didn’t know about missionaries stealing children in the name of God. I was in a state of shock that first week and month and probably year.

In high school I wanted to be as socially aware as possible – I wanted to change the world and right all the wrongs. After that first week of college I stopped watching and reading any news and buried myself in partying and socializing and doing the bare minimum I had to do in my performing arts program. The enormity of the lie I grew up with was too huge. “Privilege” wasn’t a thing that was discussed in the early 90s and it certainly wasn’t a thing I was ready to examine or admit to. I had to run and hide from the horror of it all—my young and clearly innocent mind couldn’t grasp it at that time. I needed space to breathe and changing the world would be put off for others to worry about. My world was just fine as it was, thank you very much, no need for me to stir the pot so to speak.

For the next twenty years I would not be terribly socially aware. I knew things happened and I heard the news, but it didn’t affect me and it happened in far enough away places that I could hold my view that it was either rare or something special to that particular location on a map.  It didn’t affect me or the people I knew or loved.

I’m not sure what has happened in the last five or six years to help bring my head out of the sand. Graduate school helped. Having friends who had a social justice bend to them helped. No longer being a lonely female in a male dominated profession just trying to survive and climb that corporate ladder helped. I have gained perspective and can look at the system I had been entrenched in and start to see some of the double standards and the glass ceilings and mixed messages.

Something has changed and shifted in me in the last handful of years.. I feel like I can see things clearly for the first time in my life. It may be age and perspective which contributes to a willingness to learn and to want different for my own kids and for all children that is feeding this awareness.  It could be the simple practice of being aware of my Self has the side-effect of becoming more aware of the experiences of others.

Regardless of the whys, here I am. Forty-four and a half years old and being willing to claim feminism as mine for the first time. There’s a long list of whys to this, and what is most important to me right now, is the work I had done for myself, and for others, in becoming self-aware and understanding all the shame and guilt and stories of too much and not enough and how they eat at us and tear us down and realizing, having that a-fucking-ha moment of where all these damn stories come from.

These stories of how we are too much or not enough didn’t start with our mothers. It didn’t start with how they raised us or didn’t raise us. It didn’t start with how they shamed us for being too loud or too quiet or not dressing “appropriately” (whatever that means). These stories have been being passed down for millennia.

These stories are how we survived. These stories have, in some ways, kept some of us safe. We bought into the stories as a sort of bargaining chip so we could actually go out into the world. The long list of shoulds (how we should act, dress, talk; how our homes, children, and lives should look) we internalized because if we did then we’d be okay; we’d be accepted; we’d be lovable; we’d be allowed to live.

Our mothers bought the stories (and their mothers, and their mothers) and they passed them down. How “good girls” dress and act. How if we only did x, y, or z then we wouldn’t be raped or murdered. How we need to be silent so as not to anger a man into beating us. How if we act just so and do just right, we’ll get to live to a ripe old age.

We were taught, they were taught, all of us were taught, to close our throats and stuff our rage and bit our tongues. We were told over and over how we aren’t worthy or deserving. How we don’t matter. How we need to try harder and be different. How shameful our very being is. How we cause sin and depravity in men. How we can’t play the same game as men without being called a bitch or a slut. How if we don’t play the same game we will be trampled and ignored and dismissed.

Closing our throats, stuffing our rage and biting our tongues is one way to survive. It is one way to get by in a world that is truly stacked against us. Yes, it will eat away at us and we will be miserable in so many ways, but we will live and have babies and pass down the same lessons to our children and the system will continue to feed off our terror and tears.

Or.

We can connect to that rage, open our throats and let out of roars. We can allow the anger and frustration and sadness to be our fuel to make change in this culture instead of doing what we have to in order to get by.

We can connect to our body. To feel her. To hear her. To know her wisdom. We can become aware of what is bubbling and brewing and boiling inside us. What was passed down and what is ours. What is history and what is our own lived experience.

We can speak out. We can tell our experience and listen to the experience of others. We can walk and march and stumble alongside others who are also oppressed, held back, tied down. We can fight with them and create change, slowly and quickly, tearing down this culture that feeds off our shame, brick by brick.

We can honor the truth that not everyone is in a place to stand up and open her throat yet. We can hold space for the very real fear and terror that courses through her blood and bones. We can let her know she is not alone, she is okay just as she is, and we will be here to help when she wants it :: we will not add to her torment by forcing her into the world she is unprepared to be a part of.

We can stop feeding the stories of too much and not enough by stopping our own judging and condemning of other women and our self. We can learn empathy. We can STOP FEEDING THE SHAME BEAST. As we stop feeding these stories, this deep shame, they will die. Slowly, and sometimes quickly, in fits and starts as we each find our way to allowing our Self to be.

And the walls will come tumbling down. They will shake and begin to crumble with our roars. And as we each, one by one, add our roars to the chorus, more will find their own ways of awareness and will join us.

And we will be the change we want to see in the world.

Did you enjoy this? It’s from a love letter I sent out in April 2016.  If you’d like to receive future love letters from me, you can subscribe right over here.

Filed Under: Becoming Unleashed, Fuck the patrirachy, Leashed Woman, Seeing the leash, Unleashed Woman

Leashed Woman and Unleashed Woman

October 6, 2016 By gwynn

leashed-womanI’ve been exploring and examining the wounding we receive from growing up as a female in our (misogynist) patriarchal culture.  I’ve been tying together several of pieces I have been exploring with you and within myself over the last couple years, seeing connections and patterns.  I had a whispering, a knowing, that there is not just a pattern, but also something that is universal, something that deeply speaks to our experience as women and girls in this culture and how it expects us to act, and how we comply to all the rules given to us about what it means to be a woman.

I’ve uncovered five common threads, and of course each thread has a few of its own sub-threads to it. Together these threads describe an aspect of all of us, of our experience and our psyche, a female archetype, if you will.

What’s been interesting to observe as I tie all these threads together, as I connect the dots, is how this archetype, and each of its components, has shown itself in my own psyche and body and being.  I am sure I will write more about this, but today I wanted to share what I have uncovered with you.

The five prominent pieces of this female archetype are:

• She allows others to have authority over her

• She doesn’t claim her space in the world, physically, emotionally, psychologically or spiritually

• Shame is her greatest motivator

• She is isolated and has a deep sense of loneliness, of not fitting in

• She is disconnected from most aspects of her Self (feminine/masculine; shadow/light; body, mind, spirit, soul)

I call her, the Leashed Woman.

Leashed Woman doesn’t speak up or out.  She won’t acknowledge, let alone claim, her voice.  She lets others speak for her.

Leashed Woman is a nice girl and rule follower.  She may go to church, but because that is what she should do, not because she is spiritually called.  She stuffs her emotions, especially anger and grief, in part because she doesn’t want to “hurt someone else’s feelings” and  in part because these emotions scare her.

Leashed Woman is constantly striving.  She feels she are not enough or too much, or both.  She sees herself as broken and in desperate need of fixing. She is ashamed of her body, her laugh, her intelligence.  She feels she can do nothing right in this world. She seeks others approval and validation.

Leashed Woman has few, if any, deep relationships.  She keeps everything at surface level out of fear of anyone truly knowing her and then not liking or loving her. She chases after conditional love. She sees other women as competition and threats.

Leashed Woman doesn’t feel comfortable in her own skin.  She lives outside her body.  She rejects the feminine and womanly parts of herself as either “gross” or “sinful” or as a pain or hassle. She hides from her Shadow, and because of this is unable to step into her Light.  She doesn’t understand or feel what it is to be deeply spiritual and connected to other living beings and the ebb and flow of the universe.

And the truth is, we are all Leashed Woman in one way or another or in all the ways or some of the ways.

But we don’t have to be.

We have been trained by our culture.  We received this training from our families, our teachers, our mentors, our bosses, our friends, and strangers on the street.  We have been told over and over and over again how we are not enough as we are, how we take up too much space no matter how small we are, how we are unworthy and undeserving.

We live in fear. Fear of being raped, beaten, murdered.

We carry within our very DNA the pain and trauma of our ancestors. Their rapes. Their torture. Their feelings of being less than and the dissonance and rage and grief they each had.

We are anxious and depressed. We experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

And even with all of this being true, we have the power, and frankly the responsibility, to turn this all around.

For ourselves.

For our daughters and nieces and granddaughters and grand-nieces.

For our mothers and grandmothers and great-great-great-great-grandmothers.

For our sisters, in blood and in community.

For our world.

Because if there is a Leashed Woman, there is most definitely an Unleashed Woman.

The Unleashed Woman:

• Claims authority over her own life and claims and shares confidently her knowledge, education, and experience.

• Claims space: physically by not trying to shrink her body; emotionally by allowing her emotions to be felt and processed; psychologically by speaking up when something doesn’t work for her; spiritually by having practices that feel right for her in connecting to the greater world, to nature, to the cosmic energy of the universe.

• Embraces and loves her Whole Self, unconditionally.

• Connects deeply with others, especially other women.

• Is self-aware, trusts her intuition, feels good in her own skin, and acknowledges and accepts the ebb and flow of life.

Unleashed Woman makes and breaks the rules.  She lives life on her own terms and doesn’t compromise who she is to make others feel safe or comfortable.

Unleashed Woman takes up space in her home, her work space, her entire world. She uses her voice, dares to be heard and seen.  She stands in her light and power without apology.

Unleashed Woman accepts her flaws and imperfections.  She doesn’t pretend to “know it all” or “have it all together.” She makes mistakes, but she doesn’t beat herself up for it; instead she apologizes and make amends when necessary and learns and then does differently in the future.

Unleashed Woman sees other women as comrades, as sisters.

Unleashed Woman knows who she is. She analyzes herself, her emotions, her actions and looks for deeper meaning for her reactions to things.  She trusts her intuition and listens to her body. She allows herself to feel the bad times as well as the good, knowing that in time, regardless, this too shall pass.

We all, each and every one of us, have our own Unleashed Woman within us, just waiting to be seen, heard and let out.

The question is, How do we unearth her, connect with her, embrace her?

I firmly and wholly believe our first steps towards becoming unleashed are connecting to our body: her physicality, her boundaries, her wisdom, her Truth.  Through body-centered mindfulness, we come back down into our being, into our core; we become grounded, centered.

As we become more mindful, more connected, more grounded we also become more aware: aware of our body, our emotions, the stories that run through our minds and live in our bones and muscles and blood and soul. We start to examine our stories of being too much and not enough and to see exactly where all this shame we carry is really coming from.

We begin to see the double binds and double standards that are part of daily life as a woman in our culture. We start to question the rules and the rule makers.

We begin to see the lies for what they are.

And then…

We begin the deep work of unraveling and dismantling all the lies and stories and un-truths that we have been told and taught and believed to be true and internalized.

We learn to see and then dance with our Shadows.

We start to use our voice. To find and connect to our sisterhoods and female lineage, both biological and cultural.

We begin to step in our power, in small ways at first, and then more and more and more.

We honor and respect our boundaries and expect others to do the same. And when they don’t, we defend our boundaries as sacred and holy. Because frankly, they are.

We see how we are all connected. How all oppression intersects. How all beings are interdependent. How nature nourishes and heals us. How, whether we believe in a god or goddess (or multiple gods and goddesses) or not, we know the power the collective and the importance of spirituality and ritual to healing ourselves and the world.

It is a process, shifting from leashed to unleashed. It doesn’t happen over night. Or in a month. Or really even in a year.  We peel the layers and in time begin to notice little and big changes within us and outside of us.

And always, as we do our inner work, we also do the work in the world to bring about greater change and freedom for all.

This work that we are doing, this unraveling and dismantling, this shifting from being Leashed Women to becoming Unleashed Women, will be the work of the rest of our lives.  It is work that has piled up on us for millennium. It won’t all shift and change in a moment.

We will become frustrated and discouraged. With ourselves and with the world. And we will learn compassion and patience and to have faith and trust.  And we will find each other and be there to witness and support each other through the rough times and cheer each other on when we get in our stride.

In time, perhaps our daughters and nieces generation or our granddaughters and grandnieces, we will all be Unleashed Women and the idea of the Leashed Woman will be one of history and myth and fairy tales.

Until then, we all have our work to do.

(Did you enjoy this? Then sign up for my weekly love letter to get more of it. xoxo)

Want to unearth and embrace your own Unleashed Woman in community?  Then I invite you to join us in Exploring our Light::Reconnecting to our strength, power and daring, a six month online circle where we will unearth, examine and embrace our power and strength, our deep inner knowing and our daring to show the world who we truly are. To learn more and register, click right here.

Filed Under: Becoming Unleashed, Fuck the patrirachy, Leashed Woman, Unleashed Woman

The concept of “choice”

June 11, 2016 By gwynn

I’ve been feeling out the ideas of consent, of being leashed and unleashed, of deceptive marketing practices. How these ideas are all connected.

As I’m exploring them, in blog posts by others and in conversations, both online and in-person, the idea of “choice” always comes up.

And I really hate it.

The conversations usually go something like this:

Person 1:  XYZ thing is bad and it stomps on other’s consent or feeds their insecurities or makes them powerless or manipulates or tricks and robs them in some way.

Person 2: True.  Remember though those other people always have the choice not to buy into the thing, to not be so insecure, to not feel powerless, to not be robbed or tricked.

The reason this conversation bothers me so damn much, is because when we revert to the concept that they have a choice, we absolve ourselves of any responsibility in practicing or preventing unethical behaviors.

Yes, we do have choices in this world.

Except when we don’t.

Like when we hit a brick wall of systemic racism and/or sexism and/or misogyny and/or bigotry.

Like when we live in poverty.

Like when the “choice” is between living or being killed. (No, actually I’m not being dramatic.)

Like when the other “option” simply is out of our reach due to finances or time or life or the laws of physics.

So, sure, we have choices. Except when we don’t.

When people say, often flippantly or condescendingly, “You have a choice,” what is being implied is that if you just tried harder, things would be different; that you aren’t doing a good enough job; that clearly there is something wrong with you because all you have to do is choose differently.

It also alleviates people of their own responsibilities in contributing to factors that make it so others don’t actually have a choice. It erases their responsibility to be empathic to another’s experience. It allows people to stay stuck in the their privilege and not become aware that life and the world is very, very different for other people.

The idea of choice is often thrown at victims as an explanation for why they found themselves in a traumatic situation. Well, you chose to go to that party and wear that dress. Well you chose to live in a hurricane/tornado/earthquake zone. Well, you chose to take that job or go to that school or marry that person or have those children.

It’s all your own fault you ended up where you did.

This is what our culture would have us believe.

I’m calling bullshit.

This is not to say there aren’t times that we do have choice. Most of us can decide what to have for dinner, who we spend our time with and often how we spend our time, be it at home or at work, all within a specific set of options. Because the sky is not the limit for most of us. Most of us don’t have the option of “choosing” steak and caviar every night (or maybe even any night) for dinner; who we spend our time with is generally limited by location and the people who are actually available; how we spend our time is also limited by time, place, space, responsibilities, deadlines, resources, and often the laws of physics.

Another piece of this puzzle is how the idea of choice is thrown around about how we feel about our life. As in, we have the choice to be happy or sad, grateful or miserable, angry or accepting. And sure, in many ways, we do choose how we respond and feel about any given situation or experience.

However.

When someone starts to tell us that all we have to do is choose to be happy, the implied messages are 1. it’s easy to simply choose happiness over being miserable and 2. any emotion other than happiness is unacceptable.

Again, I am calling bullshit.

Most people are fully conscious of the fact that being happy is much more complex than simply choosing happiness. I’m going to leave that at that, because I believe anyone reading this understands that work is involved in having a mostly happy and fulfilling life and that it doesn’t happen with simply making a choice (though that is part of it perhaps, for some).

The dangerous message is this: any emotion other than happiness is unacceptable.

This message tells us to stuff any feeling that isn’t “happy.” It tells us we are wrong for feeling any other emotion. That our feelings of rage, sadness, frustration, resentment, disappointment, fear, irritation, and loneliness are invalid.

And since they are wrong and invalid, we need to dismiss them, stuff them down, ignore them, pretend they don’t exist.

This stuffing down can work for a while. We can pretend we only ever feel happiness and bliss for a certain period of time.  Eventually though, these other emotions will bubble back up, and this time bring with them feelings of shame and the stories of how we are too much (too emotional) or not enough (because we can’t just choose to be happy). And then comes more stuffing (because it’s a choice we feel like shit, right?) and so the cycle continues and the snowball gets bigger and bigger.

(This doesn’t even begin to take into account the realities of brain chemistry, physical health, the effects of trauma, or life stress factors that contribute to our mental and emotional health. These are all realities too and something to be considered and acknowledged for ourselves and others.)

These messages, these stories, of choice that are fed to us by our culture don’t hold up when we start to look at them. They are, in fact, lies that are meant to hold us down, keep us small, and make sure we are obedient to the rules patriarchal society deems appropriate. They are meant to keep us leashed and disconnected from our body, our mind, our spirit, our Self.

So.

Let’s stop throwing around this idea that we all have a “choice” when it comes to what life doles out to us and how we experience our life. Because while, certainly, yes, we each have choices we can and do make, there are any number of factors that influence those choices and/or give us limited options.

Let’s start to give each other and ourselves the benefit of the doubt, that given our personal options, we are doing the best we can.

Let’s stop shirking our responsibility and roles in spreading these stories that contribute to our collective shame and ideas of being too much and not enough.

Let’s start showing and feeling compassion for each other and our selves.

Let’s say fuck you to a culture that continues to try to keep us tied down.

Let’s rebel against these stories.

Let’s take off the leash.

xoxo

(Like what you read? Interested in reading more? Then I invite you to sign up for my weekly love letter. It come out every Saturday night and contains an essay, a guided meditation, links to my latest blog posts and more. You can subscribe right here and remember to check your inbox/spam folder/promotions folder and confirm your subscription.)

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Becoming Unleashed, Consent, Leashed Woman, Seeing the leash, Unleashed Woman

The process of becoming unleashed

June 7, 2016 By gwynn

This word, unleashed, has truly sunk itself into me. I’ve been allowing it to swirl around within me as I feel it out and explore what it means, to me and to the rest of the world.

When I started searching out in the world wide web about the concept of women and becoming unleashed, I found a lot about the importance of becoming unleashed. How we need to do it. How we need to break free, live our life for ourselves, live by our own rules.

I agree with this sentiment whole-heartedly.

However, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot out there to actually help with processing those early feelings of what it is to become unleashed. You know, the fear, the shame, all those stories about how you are too much and not enough.

There seems to be this sentiment that once you decide you want to be “unleashed” (as in, once you see the error of your ways), then, just like that, you can do different. You can choose different.

(The word choice is thrown out there a lot. I have a lot of issues with this word and what it means and the reality of living in a white supremacist patriarchal rape culture and how some people do actually have “choice” but others most certainly do not, at least not if they want to survive. That is a post for another day however).

Here’s a thing though: These stories of our culture, the stories of how we are too much, how we are not enough, how we don’t matter, how we are broken and need to “fixed,” they run deep. And becoming aware of them is only the first step in being able to do and be different.  An important step, yes, and yet only the first of many.

Becoming self aware is a process. Shifting into different ways of being and doing takes time and mindful and intentional effort.

As we become more aware of the stories that run through us, how we have bought into them and how we have perpetuated them, a lot of reactions get stirred up.

Anger.

Grief.

Frustration.

Sadness.

Some more anger.

And while we now know different, now we see the stories and how they impact us; while we want to choose and live differently; there is a lot of unraveling and processing that needs to happen.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of space given to this processing.

It seems the idea is once you know a thing, you immediately can do a different thing.

And while this may be true in some ways, there are layers and layers and layers to these stories and things.

We need to make space for all the emotions that start to bubble up and boil over.

We need to be allowed to feel them, to look at them, to sort through them.

To process them.

To understand them. Their impact.

How the stuffing and not feeling has truly harmed us.

To heal those wounds too.

These stories run deep. They can’t be healed in the snap of a finger or because we just made the decision to do so.

It takes time.

Sometimes years. Decades. The whole rest of your life.

I don’t promise “results” in any of my work. For one, I’m not “results” oriented as I believe if we focus on the “results” of connecting to our body and spirit and mind in the here and now, it in many ways defeats the purpose and actually increases our anxiety and feelings of shame, not being enough and being too much. Because “results” are in the future and “results” indicate that you aren’t just fine as you are right now.

I do promise a safe space to process these stories. To unearth them and unpack them. To talk about them. To explore all the ways they impact you. A space to feel and sort through all the rage and grief that gets stirred up as you unpack it all. A space to move at your pace, forward and back and sideways and diagonally and up and down, as you need, for your process. A space for you to be accepted, just as you are, with no expectations or plans for you to be “better” or to “fix” you. A space for you to be, to process, to connect to you, your body, your own innate knowing.

This work is not a straight line where you start here and if you x, y and z you will end over here.

It is a windy, twisty path. It is not prescribed and the steps each person takes are unique.  And often it feels and looks and is a lot like one step forward, ten steps back.

I’m here to tell you, this is okay.

becoming unleashed isn'tBecoming “unleashed” isn’t a simple thing of “Now you know different, you can now do different.”  It is about seeing different and knowing there are other possibilities and ways of being. It is about seeing our cultural lies for what they are. It is about learning, slowly and quickly, how to trust our Self again.

And about exploring and allowing and processing all the rage and grief and every other emotion that comes along with all the learning and unlearning.

I am here to guide you and support you in your unleashing, if you like. In your own path back to your embodied knowing. Or if you need other resources, I will do my best to find those for you too.

Because your path to becoming and being unleashed is yours. To be taken in your time. At your pace. With the people you want beside you. And all of this can change, as you need and want it to.

This is your life, your journey.

And I am here to support you, when and if you like.

xoxo

I am offering a free 7-day intensive circle in mid-July. We’ll be tapping into this idea of becoming unleashed, what it means to be leashed, the stories that tie us down. It won’t heal you. It won’t make all your stories of being too much or not enough magically disappear. It is an opportunity to meet other women who want to explore their own stories of being leashed and becoming unleashed. It is an opportunity to get a taste of what it can be like to work with me. It is an opportunity to explore different ways of connecting to you and your stories.  If you’d like to learn more and register, you can click right here. xoxo

 

Filed Under: Becoming Unleashed, being & becoming, Fuck the patrirachy, Leashed Woman, Unleashed Woman

Fluffy Positive Thinking

February 28, 2016 By gwynn

I’ve been feeling annoyed lately. Like really annoyed. Hell, let’s just name it: I’m angry. Pissed off even. And yes frustrated, disgusted and annoyed too.

Mostly I’m angry though.

I’ve been doing my thing, my work, guiding people to connect to their own embodied wisdom; to shedding their shoulds; to connecting deeply to their whole Self, the Light and the Shadow. I talk about the ebb and flow of this work and how sometimes we are deep in it and sometimes we aren’t. I discuss the importance of rest and replenishing and nourishing and allowing our Self to be.

I talk a lot. I do my best to model this way of being by doing my best to live it myself. Which means sometimes I’m deep in the work and sometimes I’m not, and sometimes I’m deep in my practices and sometimes I’m not and regardless of where I am in my journey or what I am or am not doing, I try to be gentle with me and to allow the space for me to be right where I am.

I’m not perfect. I fail all the time. Well, maybe not all the time, and enough to remember why I have my practices and so I pick them up again and they drop off and so it goes.

I’ve become acutely aware lately of pithy quotes and fluffy positive thinking and this idea that our thoughts create our world and if we only think the right thoughts then all the things will perfect and great.

And it’s pissing me off. And it’s time I publicly call bullshit.

First of all let’s break (ha! I first typed “breathe”!) down this idea of thinking the right thoughts. What the hell are the “right” thoughts? If I have the “right” thoughts that does mean I can magically prevent a loved one from dying? Myself from having cancer? A hurricane from devasting the lives and homes of people I know and love (and even the ones I don’t)? If I think the right thoughts does that mean that life stops and nothing bad will ever happen to me? Will I never trip and break a bone or get in a car accident or catch the flu?

Because if thinking the “right thoughts” means all that, then please, will someone tell me what the Right Thoughts are? What are the exact words I need to be thinking? What is the exact mantra I need to have on repeat on my mp3 player and posted on post-its all over my house?

I’m sure there are plenty who will jump in and tell me what some of my “Right Thoughts” could be. And I also bet they won’t own that and allow themselves to be held accountable for what happens when I do every thing that lets me think the “right thoughts” and then still something bad happens.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for gratitude. I’m all for appreciating all that we have. I’m all for seeking and seeing beauty in the world. As long as we don’t shut our eyes to the Shadow, the darkness, to the really shitty parts of being human and living life.

As long as we don’t blame people (and not thinking the right thoughts) for things like cancer and accidents and layoffs and hurricanes, then yes, let’s all do look to the light – BUT let’s not forget for one moment that there is Shadow right behind us and sometimes we need to turn around and have a dance or three with it.

As long as we allow ourselves and others to grieve, to sink into despair, to speak out about how hard life/parenting/partnering/living/being can be.

Also long as we don’t offer “at leasts” and “look on the bright sides” and “silver linings” and the one I hate the most “well if this shitty thing didn’t happen then you wouldn’t have the fabulous life you have today!”

As long as we don’t try to fucking constantly fix it. And by it I mean the dark, the Shadow, the shitty parts of our Self and life.

As long as we can allow ourselves and others to be right where we are, whether that’s in our deepest Shadows or our brightest lights.

Then yes, I’m all for practicing gratitude, seeking beauty, appreciating what we have and who we are.

…

 

Something has shifted in me. Perhaps it’s connecting to the women who came before me and all their (righteous) anger that lives in my bones and muscles and womb. Maybe it’s that I’m going out into the world more, expanding my circles and seeing more and more of this Positive Fluffy Thinking because of it. Perhaps it’s because three different people have mentioned the Law of Attraction to me in the last 48 hours and now my head just wants to explode.

Bad things happen to good people.

Your thoughts do not control reality.

Focusing only on the positive and ignoring and stuffing down the negative only causes imbalance and dis-ease within. It’s makes us ill, physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.

I invite you to step into your anger. To open your throat to your roars.

I invite you to sink into your grief. To open your self to body-wracking wails.

I invite you to stumble into your sadness. To open your being to your most guttural moans and howls.

I invite you to dance with your Shadow. To wrestle with her. To play with her. To fight with her.

I invite you to acknowledge and accept your darkest self. To allow this part of you to be. She is not all of you. And she is part of you. I invite you to open your arms to her, and to weep together for all that could have been, all that was lost and all that will never be.

I invite you to be fully and imperfectly human. To connect with all your parts and pieces. To love them all: your Light and Shadow. To allow your Self to be exactly where you are, right now.

 

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Filed Under: Becoming Unleashed, boundaries, chronic stress, Complex Trauma, Connection, Consent, cPTSD, discomfort, gas lighting, grief and loss, inter-generational trauma, Personal growth, personal trauma, Self Awareness, self regulation, trauma, trauma informed care, Trauma Informed Embodiment

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