Tag: understanding

Dumped On

So I was recently dumped on.

Emotionally speaking. 

This week I have had three hugely frustrating conversations with various customer service representatives from three vastly different companies. All of them were unable to satisfy my enquiry because of company policy/beliefs. And with one I got a bit arsey until I brought myself into check and reminded myself that he is simply the spokesperson or, frankly, not even that, the automaton for the company. It was not his fault. 

And then it happened to me. 

Someone had issues with the bigger cogs of a wheel I was representing and took me out in their frustration. Everything that I was doing was wrong and causing them distress. And then they got personal too and started the whole ‘other people think this too’ about me. That I’m not doing things in the best way, that I’m not diplomatic or something enough. That I am too abrupt. 

Yup. I can be. And I have spent years beating myself up on ‘not being enough’ and I spent a few days holding this energy that was hurled at me; dumped on me. 

And then I remembered that I’m ok. That I am a good person, even if I am sometimes abrupt. I am kind even if I not ALWAYS diplomatic. That I am allowed to be human and flawed and that when someone is dumping, that is their shit to deal with. 

As Tosha Silver said is her fabulous new book ‘It’s not your Money’: ‘This event may indeed have been Divinely orchestrated… I was even grateful to the curt lady who’d hurt my feelings. If I’d hated her, I would have missed the whole point.’

And this was me, I could hate the woman for dumping AND feel shit about myself or I could take the opportunity to recognise my vulnerability to this sort of judgement, take a deep breath and restore my soul. 

All of it is a gift. All of it is a lesson worth learning. 

And breathe…..  

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. 

Every Possibility

Social Media is both friend and foe; I love the connection I can maintain with International and long-ago friendships and I don’t love the constant barrage of thoughts, opinions and information that fill me up with a mixture of curiosity and confusion.

What is fascinating about it, and also a little frightening, is the window into the trends and views of society on a global scale. Despite my childhood not being that long ago… it was a different place of understanding then. My world was much smaller.

One of the gifts that this explosion of world-wide connection brings is that the doors of taboo discussions have been flung off their hinges. Everything is on the table, there is every possibility laid bare.

And with that comes a curious place that I observe, that of fundamental disempowerment.  This overwhelming irony that these global conversations ‘should’ offer a space of empowerment for everyone to speak their truth with validation (and criticism!), linking support networks for minority groups and bringing them to the front stage.

Yet what I am witnessing is the ‘never enough’ response. Seemingly no matter how big the platform or how vocal the support, the complaints of mistreatment and disrespect are only escalating on an exponential level. In this place of demand for equality (even though the world is not equal and never shall be), parity and even positive discrimination, compassion, understanding and forgiveness have been left far behind.

So what I see from this is that it is not the world, or the corporations, or the communities holding anyone back, it is ourselves.  In a place where every possibility has become acceptable, it is finally the inner shadows that can no longer hide behind the walls of unfairness or injustice, what is left are the core beliefs of the individuals who are unable to empower themselves. The constant striving for the next righteous march or debate is an internal striving for a feeling of wholeness and self belief; for when we hold ourselves with absolute knowing and integrity there is nothing that can stand in our way of simply being our very best selves. It is not the ‘troll’ on twitter that inhibits a person’s happiness or life choice; it is not the governments’ discrimination that stops anyone claiming their passionate life, it is only ourselves and our woundings that may have broken our spirit.

It is time now to pull back from externalising our shadows, from blaming everyone and everything. There is now every possibility offered in the world; to heal, to work, to explore, to expand, to become, to be. Take it. Take what you need to shine your best self, to model totality and to bring the tranquillity of self knowing. Everyone’s opinion is their own, hold yours for yourself, I will hold mine for myself and let everyone just be.

 

Trigger Me Tantrum

I have been musing over children’s tantrums and how so often the initiating triggers can be unnoticed; the act of distress being so all consuming and energetically confronting that the source becomes lost in the moment. Sadly, when the catalysts are missed the opportunity for empathy, resolution, connection and growth are usually missed too.

My reflections have led me to narrow down what I believe to be the 3 key triggers that lead to emotional meltdown: diet, sleep and anxiety/fear.

Guaranteed that my children will flip out if over tired, filled with refined sugar or too much wheat and guaranteed, if they are unable to control events that cause them concern or are faced with an emotionally threatening situation, they will act out of character and generally become obstructive, unreasonable and sometimes hysterical. But, if I spot that initiator and manage to support them through it, they feel understood, heard and loved. And they grow to understand themselves better because of the complete process.

As I considered these flashpoints, I realised that they naturally apply to adults too. Maybe we don’t tantrum quite in the style of kids (maybe we do sometimes too!) but those places where we act out, where we are less patient, less tolerant, less kind, also predominantly derive from these 3 core triggers.

Sleep and Diet, whilst often in disorder, are more simply managed and controlled. By recognising the importance of their part in our mental wellbeing they can be adjusted to the appropriate priority.

Anxiety and Fear are trickier; far less control; the numerous possibilities of spontaneous and unexpected catalysts; and generally some of life’s more challenging obstacles that can be hurled in our direction at any given moment.

But knowledge is still power and in this case often retrospectively.  At those time when I find myself presenting the less pleasant side of my nature, it is so helpful for me to investigate these 3 triggers and see how I can adjust or support them. If it is anxiety or fear that has reared up, I can take steps to learn to manage that better, to implement change in my life that can reduce that possibility, or even overcome them completely.

Empathy, resolution, connection and growth are created for me, for my children and for others when I take a breath to explore the source of the behaviour. No one tantrums because they think it’s cool or healthy, it’s a hard place to go and it deserves every effort to understand it.

Literally

I have come to the conclusion that the world has become too literal.

Dogmatic science has replaced dogmatic religion and we are no better off for it.

Dogma is bad in whatever form – irony at its finest!

What I see, as indicative of this literal attitude, is the lack of softness towards each other. The words we speak or write are to be perfectly crafted or suffer being torn to shreds by baying hounds. The nuance and subtlety of life are lost in favour of documented evidence. Science is dictating how life must look, from education, medicine, child rearing and career trajectories, everything seems to have a right or wrong way defined by statistics and data. Non-conforming becomes a label of conspiracy theorist or anarchist rather than simply a different perspective.

Recently some mothers inferred that one of my children should somehow be different and I saw this ‘literal’ thread play out in their reasoning. Firstly, they couldn’t seem to grasp that children aren’t always literal (our beautiful shining lights of sanity is this crazy world), therefore strong words or adult themes were read from the adult standpoint of shocking brevity rather than understanding how children explore and play with ideas and concepts that cross their paths in a truly innocent and harmless way. Second to that was the right or wrongness that comes with this societal indoctrination, if my child behaved differently to theirs, they must label mine wrong, so that their way would still be ‘right’. No allowance for different child personalities, developmental stages, parenting influences, beliefs and values… just simple right or wrong.

And it is utterly exhausting. One of the nails in the coffin with my mother was her determination to contradict and undermine my parenting values because they were different to hers. I saw that for her, it felt like I was somehow rejecting her by choosing a different approach and I understand how easy it is to interpret that but just far more simply, I’m my own person with my own viewpoint and that is all. I don’t have to back it up with data and science and facts and figures and I don’t want you to either.

Last week, a stranger mum apologised to me because her son was standing in my pathway and gazing dreamily up towards the sky. Shockingly, I managed to take an extra moment out of my day to walk around him rather than demand him move! But it really hit me hard how that mum felt she must apologise for her naturally day dreamy little one because we have become so desperately unforgiving as a society.

The rigidity of belief is what defines dogma and be it science or religion both lose their true beauty and power under these terms. Science can be a place of magical discovery with the full allowance to release a past belief in order to welcome a new and faith offers us the gentleness of understanding and forgiveness. All so beautiful when held lightly and playfully rather than with heavy and fearful hands.

One of my most memorable lines
from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden is ‘There’s nowt so queer as folk.’

Yes! Yes! Yes!

I am happy to be as queer and different to my neighbour as they are to theirs. It makes life so much more vibrant and gentle and interesting.