This impinging energy is intense atm. Our skies have been saturated with trails. I’ve been doing detox protocols this week. I simply don’t know how to keep up with such things. I’m thankful for the block buttons, too. The more I share about PTSD, trauma, healing, and the Nervous system, which clearly the Trump Administration knows little to nothing about, given what was put forth today, the more ugly I receive, including an image of a shotgun pointed my way in the way of a meme. That was a first and was reported.
We can do better. Right now, it seems we’re all so isolated – so exhausted from the hustle of this ridiculous reality/game – and with the convid job came additional programming to fear one another along with the political divide – both of which remain locked in place – STILL – we forgot how to truly connect. To hold space. I used to be quite good at this – it came naturally to me. But today? Today, I admit it is I who needs that space to be held.
This first share – I’m in the thick of this. I’m reacting in ways I never would have done in the past – not unless pushed in an over-the-top manner – which was when I look back me reacting to being abused. I recall the first time I really “lost it” – I was around 20. My father was showing slides of previous family road trips to my boyfriend at the time. Up came a slide – and again this was being displayed on a big screen, so the image was huge. It was me – 15 years old – close up – scowling as the sun was in my eyes – pimples on my face. It was not attractive. Anyway, my father left it up and began laughing and pointing. He wouldn’t stop. I asked him to stop and move on to the next slide. Only he wouldn’t. He kept it up and watched me slowly melt down to tears until, suddenly, I lost control and began screaming to stop. STOP STOP STOP. My boyfriend was in the room. My mother was in the room. Both were watching this play out, looking very uncomfortable, saying nothing to my father. Neither of them protected me nor showed up for me. So I had to do it for myself – as was always the case and still is to this day. And when I did, I got told to “calm down” by my mother, my boyfriend, while my dad remained in the room laughing at the whole thing, including my reaction.
I know how to hold space for myself. I know how to have my own back. And yet – I’m quite done with that loneliness. It sucks. I hold deep appreciation for the words below and the truth they hold for my heart and Soul.
đ
Victoria
The comments in this one are enlightening – most from women who are applauding – and some insightful words from the men as well.
David Bedrick
¡When âNot All Menâ Becomes the Problem
Women are posting about the CNN reporting of the rape cite. Some women are saying, men are violent, men slam doors and want to slam women. Men are misogynistic.
And the responses come.
Here is a sampling â from men and women both:
- âIt hurts when women wonât say ânot all menâ â because itâs true, and it can coexist with âmost men,ââ said one man.
- âI slam doors to discharge energy, not to threaten. I was dysregulated, nervous system fried. Iâm not proud of it but it was never a threat,â said another man.
- âUnderneath menâs violence toward women is how hard they want to hit themselves â itâs self-directed shame displaced outward,â said one woman.|
- âSome men were raised being hit and are trying to move that energy somewhere other than another person,â said another woman.
Each response, in its own way, moves the conversation away from the woman â and toward the man or men.
Some of these came from men. Many came from women. Both groups so practiced at cushioning, contextualizing, and protecting that it happens without thinking.
It feels like fairness. It feels like sophistication. It feels like the reasonable thing to do.
That feeling IS the training.
When a woman says men â when she speaks from the accumulated weight of years, decades, centuries of experience â she is not making a statistical claim requiring a fact-checker.
She is speaking an experiential truth. A psychic truth. A truth that HAS NOT BEEN HEARD.
The kind of truth that doesnât arrive with footnotes because it arrived through the body, through fear, through anger’s clarity, through a lifetime of reading rooms and reading men and knowing what a slammed door means even when the man insists it means nothing.
To respond with âbut not all menâ is to insist that her experiential truth be corrected into a more accurate statistical claim before it can be heard.
And here is what I want to say clearly: the correcting, the contextualizing, the âactually itâs more nuanced than thatâ â that IS the power dynamic. Not a comment about the dynamic.
The person who gets to slow a conversation down, shift its focus, require consideration, demand precision IS exercising power in a way that is complicit in the violence being discussed.
The person who has to stop and justify why she spoke her truth in her way has already been moved off her ground.
Ps- check first comment for longer piece on Substack.
It’s still a dangerous world out there to speak such thoughts. I’m sure it will be more respected coming from a man. When it comes from women, we are not taken as seriously – certainly, we are told to stop being so emotional or sensitive. And I will say this with absolute certainty: When I am in the presence of safety and when I know I am being seen and heard – I soften. I shift. My nervous system relaxes. And I am open to receiving new input. That said – anyone want to go into biz with me and open up a rage room for women? It’s collective and we need a safe place in which to release because sitting alone at the park in a car just ain’t cutting it.
Not yet verified. But could be true. BTW – that “verse” he is going to read from is about the temple of Solomon, king of israel at the time, showing his devotion to moloch, using the temple for sacrifice. Sick sick sick.
Not much of a fan but she’s right:
Today – earlier – from another Oregonian. The skies are horrid here now. I’m exhausted from intending a different sky.
Sounds good:
More proof we do not need hallucinogens. We need REAL cures – not band-aid pills. The only way I can think this could be useful is for someone so drugged out on things like fentanyl that they need SOMETHING to bring them down to a space where they can be truly engaged in healing.
Life review sounds very reincarnation/meet with the “angels/guides” matrix program. If this is going to be how it is, let’s put the controllers on this substance – let them see how their actions created most of our struggles and suffering.
And with all that said:
