Who will we be after the people we've become to survive?
My first lessons in hate came from my parents. They fought dirty. When angry, they'd use your worst secrets & fears against you. Once you realize that an adult sees anger as an excuse to be cruel, you know their love is always conditional.
Ever since, I've always watched how people manage their anger.
But these days, there's so much trauma tied up in our cruelty. So it's an open question:
Will we stay this cruel, after we've survived?
@MLClark My entire life I’ve felt a calling to help and to serve, but there’s that old saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.
Perception does so much, when I was an evangelical christian, it was ingrained in me that all were going to burn, unless I did something about it, and here’s me with that call to help… so there was only one thing I could do… Tell them the brutal truth. It was hateful and ugly, and was one of the things that eventually got me to wake up.
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@MLClark But there was so much trauma and damage in my life by that time. I was so angry when I left the church, hurt and wounded. I was terribly abused in school, bullied relentlessly, hated and spit on.
There was an inner rage in me that manifested as self hatred, I binge ate, and there were moments where moments where it would all come bubbling out of me with hateful words. To say I was unskillful was an understatement. I didn’t know how to be, I was wounded, and I made so many mistakes.
@MLClark I’m older now, and much of my twenties was me coming to terms, finding my peace. The world is still a painful place for me often, but I’m a survivor on the other side of being taught that hate is how you show love, that some people are just damned from the get out, that I am a worthless thing and have no value
I always wanted to love other people, I always wanted to serve other people, and I still do, but I had to learn how to love myself, and I had to learn to look beyond the toxic.
@MLClark I was so desperate for answers when I was young, trying so hard to understand what I was and why the world didn’t fit, trying to understand concepts that I felt inside of me that I didn’t have words for, and the toxic elements of my culture took that and twisted it like a weapon.
It grants me so much compassion for those that I see twisted up in hatred, that can’t escape the Iron Maiden’s that their minds have become around their soul.
@MLClark For all that i have survived, I am incredibly lucky because my soul survived. I do still have a heart that loves, and that’s because I encountered others that were outside my paradigm, that refused to hate me, even though I was hateful. They talked to me, they gave me the chance to be more than what I was made, and who I was choosing to be
I attribute it also, to the widening of the world, exposure to ideas I never thought possible, which led, in a rambling way, to answers I had sought
@MLClark
When we meet someone. We know them in that moment, but no moment is fixed. The most vile hate filled person, is just that way for that moment. There is always hope in the next.
I learned something from aikido philosophy though I’ve never studied the art. “When we respond to fire with fire, there is only more fire. When we respond to fire with water, it is extinguished”
May we always find the wisdom to show compassion.
"To say I was unskillful was an understatement. I didn’t know how to be, I was wounded, and I made so many mistakes."
This line, and the next message about one's 20s, resonated so deeply. William H. Macy in Magnolia chills me to the bone, because his character has the ache I've lived with my whole life: so much love, & *such* difficulty finding a place to put it, while trying to detangle myself from a situation of hurt people hurting people that just felt impossible to escape.
Lately, I've been working on memoir - or better said, "anti-memoir" - because any time I look back at my childhood, adolescence, and 20s, there's just so much anger to sift through, at how much time was wasted trying to figure out how to reframe and rebuild properly.
The problem with the "drowning person" metaphor we often use is that we're rarely drowning alone. Trying pluck oneself from a mess of traumatized people is no easy task. How does one get "out" without uplift for all?
Suffice it to say: You have done such amazing work. Not alone! With help!
But also, with the courage to *lean in* to help.
And that's something most don't realize is HARD, when you come from such a difficult start.
I've often believed I'm a burden on others, so I know how easy it is, in that mental space, to lean into people who want you to believe the worst about yourself, too.
Believing those who see better in you isn't easy.
The healing you've allowed yourself is gift. ❤️
@MLClark I understand from my own experience how easy it is to feel like a burden.
I know I have helped people, and done good work in the world, but that does not translate to the green rectangles that the humans require for survival stuff.
My dream would be to have a larger network of folks, and I’d wander from place to place just helping people through hard times, writing my books, kind of a wandering ministry. I don’t know how to realize that fully yet, but I want to help more.
Me too, Rebecca. Me too. 🫂
We'll get there, one day - and even if we don't, even if our time on this pale blue dot winds down before the work is done...
We'll do our best to leave a good trail for others to continue on, in our stead.
🤗💛
Thank you for your daily light in a difficult world. It's a gift to know that one isn't alone with the ache of hope.
After all, if we're moving through this mess of a landscape together... maybe we're already exactly where we need to be. 🌎
@NiveusLepus you are an amazing and generous person. Hugs.
@joycereynoldsward You are kind to an old beast and I thank you. Everyone has the seeds of the sacred within them. I just want to tend the garden that the Gods have placed before me. I’m looking for a path to realize this in greater fullness.
I’ve done such work among friends and family for years, but I keep thinking there has to be a way to expand.
@MLClark I’m deeply grateful for your courage in the sharing of your journey, the skill by which you write about the world and your own experiences. You give so much, and I cannot help but feel humbled when you praise the work I’ve done, when I look at you and see the strong and empowered soul you are.
Thank you for being a shining star in my sky, may I always shine in yours as well.
@MLClark It’s been a long road to who I am now. I feel like I’m finally getting started at 42 years of age, it took me this long to get myself still together. I laugh sometimes at how horrified I’m going to be at 62 that I thought I had so much together currently.
I no doubt still have a ways to go but I’m on the road, I think.