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Mothers and daughters

Love her but leave her wild. ~Atticus

Most of us were tamed as children.

We weren’t allowed to run wild. Or if we were, only in certain circumstances.

I remember longing to be a tomboy in some ways, although I was very much a girlie-girl. The tomboys always looked like they were having so much fun climbing trees and getting muddy and having snarled up hair. I watched them, intently, with my brushed neat hair and pressed dresses, sitting as lady-like as possible on the porch steps or the sidewalk.

I think my mom longed to be a tomboy too. She wore jeans and it seemed like such an act of defiance. Her jeans and t-shirts were her own special fuck-you to my grandmother I think.

I know she, my mom, was raised to be lady-like too, to be girlie, to wear dresses and always have her hair neat, to speak properly and only when spoken to. And so, as an adult, she wore jeans and tied her hair back in messy pony-tails and swore like a sailor.

But not around my grandmother, her mother. Never then.

And of course, we were never allowed to be anything but proper around our grandmother too.

And so the lessons were learned early on to hide parts of myself. To hustle for love and acceptance. To bend and mold myself to another’s liking, no matter what.

This all came to a somewhat abrupt stop when I was pregnant with my own daughter. And the vows I made so many years before that all the abuse and shame and neglect would end with me came crashing forward and I claimed those vows again.

I wanted different for my own daughter. Hell, I wanted different for me.

I saw the pain in both my mother’s and grandmother’s eyes when they tried to connect, to interact with each other. My mother always on guard for the next criticism, my grandmother having the best intentions but always picking and pointing out all my mother’s “faults”.

I saw the pain in my own mother’s eyes when she tried to connect with me and I knew my own reluctance and resistance to letting her in for all the reasons I had.

I knew their heartache and I knew my own.

I didn’t want that for me and my girl. I still don’t.

Some days are better than others and some days my grandmother’s harsh voice comes out of my throat and some days my daughter watches me with weary eyes and some days we connect in ways that I never knew possible for a mother and daughter and my heart swells and I know that cycles are breaking.

These cycles that go back beyond my own grandmother. Back generations and generations. Back to the times when patriarchy took root and women began to be disregarded and de-humanized. Back to a time when women first learned the lessons of what they must do to survive, what they must do for their girl-children to survive.

The cycles, the trauma; the looks, the tones; the violence, the neglect; the complicity, the compliance. Passed on and down, over and over.

All leading to isolation and loneliness; anxiety and depression; disconnection from the women who came before and the women who came after. Passed on and down, over and over.

I was very young when I made the vow that it all stopped with me. Maybe five or six. And for a time I thought that meant never having children, as it was the only way I knew to guarantee none of it would be passed on and down again.

And then biology and wanting and the meeting the right man and well, here I am today.

Ten years ago I renewed my vows that it all stops with me. And every day since I renew them again and again.

Part of the renewal is continually finding ways to connect to the women who came before, to continually re-examine my own relationships with my mother and grandmothers and their relationships with each other. To step outside myself and see what is still being passed on and down and doing as much of my own course correction as I can.

This is one of the ways we burn it down. This is one of the ways we change our culture and world for future generations. By doing our own work of unearthing and unraveling and dismantling and dislodging and embracing and being.

On April 1, an intimate group of women will begin to gather for my next six month online women’s circle. (CIS, Transgender, and AFAB non-binary all welcome). We will explore our relationships with other women, with our mothers and grandmothers, their relationships with each other and connect to our female ancestors to heal wounds and trauma and embrace their strength and power. If this sounds like part of your own journey of self actualization, of social liberation, of becoming unleashed, then I invite you to learn more and request an application here: http://gwynnraimondi.com/unleashingourself

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Self Care and Community

I’ve spent most the last few days offline. And while there is a part of me that has the pull to check in and see if we have launched nukes yet, I also know that there is a long game here and I need to be able to play it.

Which means, I need to take time to do the work to take care of myself. To calm my nervous system the fuck down. To see my therapist. To spend time cuddling with my little guy while watching Peppa Pig. To spend time with my becoming-a-young-woman learning about the women of American history and reading fairy tales from different cultures and talking about the archetypes and running themes within the stories. To do the laundry and pick up the toys. To read. And to write. To connect with friends, new and not new, for conversation.

Because the horrible shit will still be happening tomorrow. And today (and yesterday and Saturday) I needed time to breathe.

And we need to remember that while the short game is vital, and truly lives are depending on us being in the arena for the short game, the long game is also vital. And sometimes we can only be in one arena at a time and sometimes we can be in both and sometimes we truly have to tap out and sit on the sidelines for a moment.

And THAT there is the beauty of the collective and of community. It means that not a one of us has to Do It All. It means that we each have a role, a place and sometimes that looks like being a supporting character and sometimes that looks like being in the lead and sometimes it looks like being the understudy sitting off stage. And sometimes maybe, it looks like being the director or producer or the one who’s bankrolling the show. And maybe sometimes it means we are in the audience, giving witness to all that is happening. And maybe sometimes we are the ones sewing the costumes or building the sets or even writing the play itself.

My point is it takes a whole community of people for change to happen, for there to be true revolution. And because it take so many people, it also means that each of us can take the time to care for ourselves. Because if we are the lead, the understudy can step in for a night, to continue that analogy.

We can’t burn ourselves out one week in.

Pace yourself.

When and if you can be in the arena for the short game, do it. Call your congress people. Go to the marches and rallies. Go to the town hall meetings. Go to the community organized events that teach you how to be a revolutionary, how to be an ally, how to be an asset in this fight. Volunteer. Donate. Offer support in whatever ways, to those who are in the trenches, and have been – offer child care or take them a meal or pay for them to get a massage. Do what you can.

And we all need to be in the arena for the long game. Doing the things we each do to bring our consciousness shifts as well as working towards that 2018 election.

We will win. We have to.

And the only way we are going to is if we get in community, take our role, and remember to pace ourselves, set boundaries, and give ourselves breaks as needed.

We’ve got this. We do.

In rebellious solidarity, always.
xoox

I’m offering two workshops where we will learn and practice how to soothe our nervous systems, come into our bodies, and process and sit in uncomfortable emotions & sensations.  One is in-person here in the Seattle area, is six weeks long, and begins this Friday, March 3. To learn more about it and register click here.   The other is an online six month circle that begins March 15.  To learn more about it and register click here.

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Short Game and Long Game

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of having many conversations with several different wonderful women. We talked about everything from being therapists to the having the privilege to say we are going to burn it all down to intergenerational trauma to mean-girl alpha-ing behaviors in feminist spaces. These conversations have been fortifying and replenishing and nourishing and I have been deeply grateful for them.

All of these conversations, except one, were via this lovely box I am currently typing on (mostly through Skype, but some textual exchanges too). And while I thank the gods and goddesses above and below for this here modern technology and the ability to have these conversations and see the other person’s face, there is also nothing quite like being in the same room with someone and the intimacy and focus that comes with that.

The one conversation I had in person was with one of my bffs who happens to also be a professional photographer. And while and between taking new photos of me for my website, we caught up on All The Things, which seriously filled me up in all the Good Ways and I need to remember to make in-person time with my besties more of a priority.

Anyhow.

At one point in the shoot we put on the song 99 Red Balloons by Nena on repeat. I don’t know why this song is so… something… for me. It both gives me life and gives me angst and I had fun dancing furiously to it and flipping off and punching at the camera in the process.

I have loved this song since it was first released in 1984. Since I was in 7th grade. So you know, a lot of years.

The year I was in 7th grade was also the year the movie The Day After was released and aired on TV. My dad didn’t allow me to watch it, because he felt it was anti-communist propaganda and figured it would give me nightmares. He was probably right. (He also refused to let me see the movie Red Dawn in the theaters, even though it had all my crushes in it, for the same reason. Again, my father was probably right in this decision.)

My point maybe being that I grew up in a time when nuclear annihilation was a given. I pretty much assumed that I would not live to see my 18th birthday because there would be a full scale global nuclear war. In 9th grade, maybe because the middle school I attended was close to the air force base, we did air raid drills in the event of a nuclear attack.

I grew up assuming we, humans, were fucked.

Then in 1987 the Berlin wall fell. And eventually the Soviet Union also collapsed. And in all this the fear of a nuclear holocaust also disappeared. At least from my own psyche. Yes some of our world leaders seemed to be war mongers, but it also seemed even in their need to conquer they had a deep respect for that red button. (At least it’s always red in the movies, I have no idea if it’s really a red button or even an actual button at all). And so, while we as humans are flawed, I came to a place of assuming we would all survive and live into relatively old age (barring disease and car accidents and being murdered and the like).

Over the last month plus, every time I read a headline I am back to believing that we are so fucked.

And maybe that’s why I needed to talk with my bestie and dance furiously to this song while flipping off and punching at a camera.

But in this We Are So Fucked-ness, I also am getting to see such gorgeous humanity. While the current leaders of our country seem hell bent on killing us all, I am witnessing revolutionaries I never thought would be the ones to save us pop up. The park rangers, the scientists, the lawyers.

And the every day people like you and me.

I don’t have a moral or some neat little message to wrap all these words up with a bow.

Except maybe to remind us all that what we do matters. How we spend our time and energy matters. And while we have the short game right in front of us of disrupting and resisting the fuck out of the current regime, we also have the long game of building something new and different and tearing down the existing infrastructure that got us to this place today.

So let’s remember that. Let’s remember that there is a short game AND a long game. And people are needed in both arenas. And maybe you are able to play in both arenas right now and that is amazing and thank you so fucking much and maybe all you have time and energy for is the long game right now and that is also amazing and thank you so fucking much.

And please, can we also remember we are in this together? And we don’t need to destroy each other in order for a single one of us to rise? That too would be amazing and awesome.

xoox

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Commitment, Consent, & Boundaries

A thing about personal change or growth or transformation is that it typically takes time. It takes time to do all the unearthing and unraveling and dismantling and dislodging. It takes time to see all the different ways not only we ourselves have been harmed but also to see the many ways we have actually (unintentionally, unconsciously) participated in harming others.

We don’t just wake up one day and suddenly no longer have any implicit biases or internalized isms. We may wake up one day and suddenly be aware of a lot of these biases and ~isms. And being aware of them and removing them from our being are two very different things.

This is why I now only have online groups or circles that are six months or longer. And it is why all my in-person work is for a minimum of three months.

Because this work takes time. And we need the space. We need space for the stops and starts. We need space to allow some work to settle before moving on to the next. We need space to experiment and try different things to see what fits us and what doesn’t.

Connecting to our consent and boundaries, and learning how to respect and honor the consent and boundaries of others takes time. In a “good enough” family dynamic, it takes about 20 years (the span from infancy to young adulthood). And so, if we are only beginning to dive into this work, we have however many years we’ve been alive worth of training and conditioning to unravel on top of actually learning what boundaries actually feel like in our bodies and how to honor them.

This is not to say we can’t learn some things quickly. We can. Absolutely. And “quickly” is a relative term. Six months is quickly in my book. And a LOT can be unlearned and relearned in that amount of time.

This is why Isabel Faith Abbott and I decided to have our collaboration, Body of Consent, have a six month duration. Because we want to take the time to truly get into this work, to allow space for the mess and exploring and experimenting. To give time for the retreating and coming back to it. To truly practice and get into our skin and being what boundaries and consent feel like and know when our own is being crossed and when we are crossing that of another.

And it is a commitment. A commitment to this work. A commitment to learning and unlearning. A commitment to understanding and feeling and knowing that we are all in this work for the long haul.

If this sounds like your next steps, if this sounds like a way for you to commit to the work of healing and shifting and unlearning and relearning, we’d be honored to have you join us.

You can learn more and register at http://gwynnraimondi.com/bodyofconsent

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Speaking up and out

We are not jackass whisperers. This is perhaps one of my most favorite sayings ever (I heard the original quote through Brene Brown who was quoting Scott Stratten ). What this means to me is: knowing when to just walk away from a discussion.

This used to look like, for me, smiling and nodding and giving the impression that I agree with whatever bullshit a person is spewing. As I have grown older I smile and nod less and less and since November 8th the smiling and nodding is pretty much non-existent.

And I do still walk away. And part of this is because I also have a tendency to do a total mean girl smack down, especially when it’s a topic I’m actually an expert about. And I haven’t found a way to be very clear about what I know and stating the facts without doing a lot of undertone of “you are total idiot for not knowing this.”

I’m learning. I’ll get there. So, in the name of not being a bully I just walk away.

But.

Really, what I’m realizing as I’m writing this, is that this doesn’t really serve anyone either. That people making statements like “Sure there are facts, but we can disagree with the facts” is something we really need to be very clear about calling bullshit on.

And perhaps, what I’m more worried about is coming off like a bitch or a know it all or as rude or as impolite. Maybe it’s not about being a bully at all. Maybe it’s about being a Good Girl.

So many fucking layers to this cultural training we receive. So much for all of us to unravel. Me included.

There are so many ways we silence ourselves. There are so many ways that we each remain complicit in and compliant in the status quo. There are so many ways we each allow oppression, of ourselves and of others. And there are layers and layers and layers for each of us to unearth and unravel and dismantle and dislodge.

So, here’s to the messy and uncomfortable and not really fun at all work of unearthing and unraveling and dismantling and dislodging. Because it is the only way we’re ever going to tear all this shit down.

In rebellious solidarity and love. Always.
xoox