toxic – Soul Reflection

Toxic Silence

‘Send them to Coventry’ is a phrase that found gravitas within military circles but swiftly moved into the echelons of military families and typically boarding school’s bizarre peer on peer punishment regime.

Just reading any old Enid Blyton reflects how, not only accepted, but rated and applauded such exiles were. Someone does something you judge to be wrong and you stop speaking to them for a period of time (days, weeks or even months) and be sure to actively ignore them too if they try to approach you. This is a celebrated technique with certain sections of society and it was only the other day that I connected the dots between my family’s boarding school history and this form of punishment that is so frequently and unkindly used.

I have lost count of the number of times I have been exiled. I now no longer attempt repatriation in the way I used to. I know someday there will be contact and no mention of the exile, or the reasons for it, will take place. This is the acceptance I have had to reach if I want both to stay sane and also to remain at least distantly connected to certain family members.

It is no wonder that I ‘over talk’, I wish to resolve things even if that is uncomfortable and messy and sometimes difficult. I will stay up all night with you or have the conversation on repeat for endless days or, even if it is too hard, I will at least tell you that I need space or time or a break until we broach the issue again. What I won’t do is ignore you and when we finally speak again pretend it’s never happened. I have ghosted people in the past, habits were trained into me, but fundamentally if I love you, I will fight for us.

Silence of this kind is toxic.

When my father died nearly a decade ago, my kids were both under five. They heard me say I was going to view my father’s body and asked to come too. I didn’t know the best thing to do, would this be healthy or traumatic? So I phone the undertaker and asked their advice. They told me that as the children had asked, the should come. They sagely said, children will make up far worse things in their head, if they are told they can’t, than the actual reality.

Such great wisdom that I have carried across many life moments with my kids and is so pertinent here too. The silences I have endured from childhood on, have meant that I have imagined the worst of feelings being thought about me. The reality of a tough confrontation always ends with a deeper understanding of each other, often more compassion and a broader perspective. Toxic silence just leaves a chasm of darkness and imaginings that linger and swirl.

I think the patterns are too hard to break in my family but I’m grateful to recognise their origins and my reactions. I am sensitive to even brief withdrawals of friendship and affection, easily triggered from this conditioning, but awareness is everything and now I can talk myself through it more sanely.

And as with all of these dynamic challenges

I am grateful for the gifts they bring, everything I have suffered through brings me greater soul wisdom and deeper expansion of my understanding and compassion for other’s stories. I am a better human because if it all.

First published on social media on 9th August 2022

Radiant Glory

I am struggling with the continued dialogue around the toxic masculine predator. Whilst I agree that consent needs to be clear (though hopefully without killing every last vestige of romance and spontaneity), I believe there is a place for female accountability too.

I have stood as a disempowered woman who has said ‘No’, provided the body language of discomfort and rigidity and not been heard or respected. I have had a man’s hand at my throat for not fulfilling his needs; I have said ‘no more’ to the boyfriend I was leaving but he still took more; I have walked away from too many situations feeling unclean, unhappy and abused. And I have had a part to play in that dynamic occurring.

Yes there are the rare but horrifying psychopaths whose terror we would have no control over, but so many of the ‘me too’ stories are women asking for men to define the scenario, to be respectful, healthy, wholesome no matter what they are confronted with. We are again giving away our power by asking them to be solely responsible for holding women safely.

We are asking for men to be brought up to respect women, to do things differently, but why aren’t we asking for women to make this change too? In every relationship dynamic, we can never expect our opposite to make the change, we have to create the change for ourselves and perhaps they might follow our shining example!

Why have we been meeting film directors in their hotel rooms, instead of insisting on a space we are comfortable with? Why do we choose to drink away our inhibitions at frat parties? Why did I stay in the room when I ended a relationship, after I had said ‘no’ to one more time? Why did I not get up at leave, why did I not set my boundaries clearly, why did I not honour and respect myself enough to do what I needed to keep me safe?

We are asking men to respect us, but do we respect ourselves? When do we say ‘No’ with clarity, strength and follow through. I’m not talking about the ‘life in danger’ scenarios, I’m talking about the every day abuses that I hear women happy to rage about but refuse to take accountability for. Yes men have their work to do, but so do women. Should a man take advantage of a inebriated woman, absolutely not. Should a women be inebriated in a circle of people she is not safe with? Are we treating ourselves with respect as we stumble and slur? Are we treating ourselves with respect when we stay with a misogynist boss for the sake of our career? I can hear the thousands of excuses being hurled at me as I write this, the shunning of blame straight back to the men, the justifications for staying when your body was screaming to leave, the fears. I hear them all, I acknowledge them all, I honour them all AND still there is space to take back our power for ourselves, not from men but from the ether where we left it. We don’t need to lord over the masculine, we simply need to claim back the feminine in all its powerful and radiant glory.

Robert Moore lectured to the effect that the uninitiated man becomes an unwise aggressor and the uninitiated woman a victim.

Initiation (the supported process of shifting the psyche from child to adult) helped me find my strength, my clarity, my respect and my ‘No’. Not since my initiation have I encountered these myriad dynamics of abuse that I previously encountered daily, because my energy and perspective has shifted so significantly. It is in my power to deign to let myself become victim or instead to hold compassion for those who act out their wounds and place my boundaries firmly between us.

I will endeavour to raise my son to be a man of self respect and my daughter to be a woman of self respect. I know that if I achieve these aims, they will mirror that respect out into the world through their actions, words and deeds. That is also the choice I make for myself.

I stand in my power and say and act ‘No’ when I need. That is enough.

Weinstein et al

I have encountered many ‘Weinstein’s’ in my time, from my own father to bosses, strangers, even those I thought were friends. From the ‘playful’ pinches all the way through to rape. I have experienced the gamut of ‘toxic masculinity’.

But I will not stand and make them my enemy. I will not make men an evil entity that need to be punished for their heinous behaviour. What I see are deeply wounded and damaged individuals who have had their innocent child hearts hurt and broken in unimaginable ways. They have become adults desperate for validation, for control and emotional ‘safety’ and this comes out in toxic, wounding and terrible actions.

I am not condoning a single thing that they have done as accountable, responsible adults. Do they need to be brought up and held to account? Do they need the awareness of their behaviour brought to light, do they need support, therapy, counselling? Yes to all this. And in the very worst cases, prison is probably the first port of call before any rehabilitation can be implemented. I am not, for a moment, suggesting allowing or permitting this type of behaviour but what I am saying is that by making these men into inhuman animals worthy only of our hatred and scorn we are only perpetuating this dynamic in our society.

As a global society we are failing our children. We have forgotten, disassociated ourselves from, the crucial attachment needs that create respectful, kind, thoughtful humans. These are the roots of the problems that we are witnessing today in our men and women. If our sons and daughters were raised with loving consciousness and presence, is it even possible for them to become the monsters that we vilify in the press? No, it’s like a law of science, we cannot provide wholesome parenting and create evil.

But just loving our children is not enough, I adore my children but that doesn’t stop me passing on my insecurities, my wounding. What will break my ancestral cycles is bringing my awareness to the psychological needs of my children and my own childhood, becoming conscious of what created my wounds and my anger and working hard to provide what I lacked, owning my mistakes and attempting to do it differently next time. Only by taking full responsibility for my own actions will I model that possibility to my children and my descendants.

So when I read the powerful hatred towards Weinstein et al, all I really hear is hatred towards ourselves. What I would love is to embrace the possibility that Weinstein’s willingness to enter rehabilitation might just birth a shift in his perspective that could create healing. What I would love to hear is how these moments of unveiling could push us to reflect on why men exist in this way. How can we create the changes in our world to bring forth the necessary shifts to our humanness? Can we learn from our mistakes or will we just continue to punish them?