This work of standing in the middle is my work right now.
Along with my partner, I go to a trauma therapist every two weeks to help me feel what I feel and be with myself while I am feeling it.
Every time I go, I feel humiliated that this seemingly most basic of human functions is so hard for me…which is of course part of the process: how to not judge myself while I feel what I feel.
One of my most effective survival strategies is my tendency to live inside of my mind. It’s a steel trap up there and I don’t like to leave it. It feels safe in my head. Turns out it also lets me dissociate from what’s really going on and get away with it because I can talk a mile around the thing while I’m not actually experiencing the thing.
This is my work, and I am sharing it with you. I want to be embodied. I want to live at the intersection of my mind and my heart. I am practicing because I have a well thought out opinion that the more I can be with myself in the midst, the more I can be with anyone and anything in the midst. I can offer gentle presence, unconditional friendship, compassion; I can bear witness. I can sit with all that is unresolved and I can trust that this is the way through- not to strong arm away, explain away, figure it out, fix it….but to be with it.
“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”
“there is not a day of my life that I am not critiquing myself to see if my politics are borne out in the way that I live and the way that I talk and present myself.”
“It is necessary to remember, as we think critically about domination, that we all have the capacity to act in ways that oppress, dominate, wound (whether or not that power is institutionalized). It is necessary to remember that it is first the potential oppressor within that we must resist- the potential victim within that we must rescue-otherwise we cannot hope for an end to domination, for liberation.”