The essential thing to remember is this: the birds still sing.
I am sitting here listening to them right this minute.
Things here have been complicated on a lot of fronts. Much has been happening that I am not likely to share, but I wanted to stop in and say the thing about the birds. Whatever else happens, for now, the earth still moves forward. They can't stop time, and really - although they are trying really hard - ultimately they can't stop progress. They can take their chicken shit bully boy crap out on everyone for a while, and this will not be enjoyable. But in the end they do not win. They never do.
Much of my experience lately has been directed at healing and working on myself. It recently came to light that I have no real understanding of how I receive love. Give is different. I give unhealthfully because I was reared in a situation where enough was not a thing. There was never enough love for my mother. It simply could not ever be accomplished. And we were unhealthy enmeshed in ways I thought I understood, but truly never did. I never developed fully, although aspects of my true self have always remained and have gifted me the resilience to survive, I have never really given myself the space to thrive, and I have certainly never had boundaries. The reasons are not relevant and anyone who knows The Whole Story knows why this is the case. I wandered off into life trying to endlessly meet the needs of others, instead of encouraging them to meet their own.
Anyway. I was tasked with working on finding my love language recently, specifically after a situation in which I needed a lot of love and was not likely to get it in the way I needed in that moment and space. My initial reaction to this was "I am not falling for this bullshit xtian crap again, ever in my life, that shit was invented by that (insert name here) asshole and isn't even really psychology it's just some craopla he thought up." Nothing like chucking babies out with their little tubs of water.
I dove a bit further and discovered a concept I have only heard about..."self-love", a hysterically amusing idea that I am sure applies to someone somewhere but most definitely not me. SELF LOVE??? WTF?? All the LOLS. But I dove onwards.
I found an excellent peer to peer resource which I am leaving here in case you could benefit or know someone who can. I am not sure what aspects of this human's work is most intriguing to me. There is this bit on Living your Amends, which really resonated with me. Even if I am or have been a "good person", it isn't relevant if I do not know I am or have been a good person. And if I am not or have not been a good person, that needs to change in order for me to move forward as a loving, giving, self-actualized adult with good boundaries.
I am most intrigued by Dominee's candidness about her mental health journey and the "uglier" sides of who she was, and who she is now. I wish my mother had been able to access this level of self-awareness. I wish she had been able to look at who she was, or had been, and exit shame spirals to find healing and self-love. I am determined to do this for myself. Permission to be human, permission to change, permission to grow and expand and mature has to come from ME. And I give it, unreservedly. I got the Beginner's Guide to Self-Care free download, which was needed to shepherd myself through a really bad moment. And I am looking at this love language crap as objectively as I can even though it came from that (insert name here) asshole.
In other news, although I am not a satanist (I am not really an anything, maybe a humanist, but they're all so join-y and stuff, ew, gross) I am reading Speak of the Devil: How The Satanic Temple is Changing the Way We Talk About Religion. I am early on, but appreciating the conversation. The Real Me, not the fake one I carried around for decades, wishes we did not need religion, most specifically the kind that relies on ancient myths to dictate our behaviors and thoughts and lives. It gets us into trouble, it leaves too much space for "othering", it disavows science and facts where they contradict ancient texts written by a superstitious people who did not even know the planet was a marble, or that germs cause disease. Is that a run on? Yes. Do I care? I do not.
My experience of religion is that nearly all rely on some sort of shame cycle, or a moral code that lacks the kind of acceptance I think we need in order to progress as a species. Many begin harmlessly, or appear to. Most proselytize aggressively if not initially then later on, after they have love bombed you into stupidity. They exploit our human need for belonging and membership and community. Satanism and Humanism appear to be the closest to truly secular religions that can meet the needs of people for greater meaning and connection and shared values and experience, while simultaneously allowing for difference, and encouraging real tolerance and discouraging superstition and fear-based reactionary attitudes. I am about a third of the way in and #recommend. I have no intention of converting to anything, but I am very grateful for my son asking me to take/accompany him to SatanCon in Boston a couple of years ago. Best day ever. And I gave him a big gift certificate for xmas and now he is indeed a card-carrying member, and has a cute mug, and I have a lovely mug and a nice t-shirt.
Am I a disruptor? Absolutely. Always have been, always will be. When I think back on the ways xtians have treated me...they really feared me, very arm's length, never felt embraced, never accepted as one of their own, never made me feel truly welcome, always on the periphery. I thought I smelled bad, was bad, did bad.
This was, it turns out, not the case. What I did was question, argue, push, query, ask, cross examine, quiz etc. My natural skepticism and innate sense of justice and rightness and fairness always popped to the fore. "But?" was and remains my favorite word. It is not a word well tolerated by a system that seeks to subjugate your instinct and your deeper, inner humanity. So Eve took the fruit...why not? Is it really ok to ask a man to murder his son as a display of loyalty? And if a serpent says "Hey, dude, maybe you shouldn't do this" is that temptation? Or is it a perfectly well intentioned snake just trying to help you free yourself from the bondage to an abusive imaginary sky wizard? The systems put in place by (particularly xtian) religions do not serve all humankind. They serve a very specific segment of mankind. They only need a devil if what they are trying to accomplish is evil. There has to be a "worse" bad so the bad they reveal isn't "as bad". Get it?
Meg once said I was a feminist and I think I denied that, seeing feminists through the vangie glasses. Dude. I am so feminist. Also humanist. Super humanist.
Well. I need to return to discovering what my "love language" is (gag) while working on self love (I really enjoy skin care products it turns out, mostly ones that cost a lot and make my crinkles look smaller, and shoes, and sketching lazily in cafes while people don't know I am doing it while sipping GOOD coffee).
Toodles!