Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: Hops on October 05, 2006, 10:05:16 AM
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I've been mulling about denial. I often find I am muttering something true (for me) when I make wry remarks to friends. Lately I've found myself saying with great cheer: "I love denial!"
I think it's true. I do. Thinking some more, I realize: I do not love the kind of denial that makes me avoid psychological truths about myself that I must face to be a grownup. Sometimes it's hard, but I do feel good about owning my own behavior and graduating out of blame school. And, accepting psychological/personality truths about people I care for most is important to me too (though denial will kick in, especially about my daughter, when it's too hard).
But where denial is truly my friend is when I contemplate the horrors of the current world, from global warming to war and battered civil rights and hatred and genocide and starvation. I can only absorb so much of it, and then I literally grasp at denial as though I'm drowning. I have to actually pretend for a while that the world is peaceful and good, that nature is my friend, that human beings can pull out of the lemming race, etc.
So that's the thought for now...sometimes I intentionally deny what is real, lest it overwhelm me. I feel as though sometimes I don't have the survival "filters" others seem to, and that I feel anguish so deeply when I allow too much reality to enter me, that I absolutely must use denial.
Hops
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Denial works : that's why we do it. It serves a purpose very well - stops us going barmy <barmy icon>
Depressive realism (real term) is a bummer. Some kind of denial is necessary because we cannot alter what we cannot alter.
However :D.....we can alter quite a bit if we put our minds to it! and if we get together with other people who have similar aims.
In Praise of Denial!!
Hey.....if you know what you're denying...is it really denial? or is it concerted ignoring? Realistic adjustment to practical living?
Doesn't matter - denial is still praise-worthy because it is a fantastic non-coping coping mechanism.
Nice one Hops. You bring joy. 8)
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Hops, I only reacted to the objective and the truth in your post. Then I went away and felt the feelings (as I do, eh, practising ignoring the painful feelings and thinking, I’ll go away and feel them separately…) so….
I have to actually pretend for a while that the world is peaceful and good, that nature is my friend, that human beings can pull out of the lemming race, etc.
Oh Hops. The world isn’t good or bad: the world is neutral. It’s all neutral. Nature is neither your friend or foe, black or white. It’s all grey I think. It all just IS. Will it matter if humans are here or not? No. The universe will do what it will do. We are tiny! Thank goodness! Why do we matter to us? I don’t know. Because it’s important for us, being conscious of life and death, to think that we’re important, somehow. What’s important (if anything is, and nothing is) is to live. Just live. Now. Talk, be friends, love, enjoy, feel sad, feel. And think! It is joyous!
So that's the thought for now...sometimes I intentionally deny what is real, lest it overwhelm me.
Yes and sometimes I still feel a fraud for doing it. Is that residual childhood responsibility and guilt? Possibly. I’m responsible for what happens thousands of miles away?
I feel as though sometimes I don't have the survival "filters" others seem to,
You don’t! But those filters filter out the good stuff, as well as the painful. Would you rather be numb or alive? Alive please!
and that I feel anguish so deeply when I allow too much reality to enter me, that I absolutely must use denial.
It’s not your problem. The whole human race is not our problem. If we can make tiny changes for what we think is the better, we can do it. We can only do what we can do, no more. Acceptance of the joy and the pain and when we feel the need to act, act. It’s all we can do!
(((((((((((((((((((((((Hops)))))))))))))))))))))
PS An old thread came to mind Hops. This reminds me of (Irvin Yalom) therapy based on existential basics: that you may treat someone’s fear of four basic truths:
1. Death: I’m going to die
2. Isolation: I’m utterly alone in my head
3. Meaningless: Life is meaningless
4. Freedom: I have the freedom to do whatever I am able to do
Original thread: http://www.voicelessness.com/disc3/index.php?topic=472.0
I still have loads of trouble with freedom!!! :roll: You?
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What a generous response, P!
Forgive me if mine's less so...I is knackered. (LOVE that Brit word.)
I do have trouble with freedom.
It's dizzying, I can't choose, I go fetal.
If everything is possible and I can be anyone then OMG what if I pick WRONG?
Makes it hard to commit to a path and walk it.
(((((((P)))))))))
gratefully,
Hops
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Hey P and Hops ,
Denial is addictive .Gosh darn you two have me thinkin again I was trying to give that up :idea:
I get myself out of one major denial head trip .
How many others are out there OR in here ? :shock:
I am pooped already
I can only give up one major denial head trip at a time. :roll:
Peeling that onion again. 8)
Hugs,
MoonLight
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p.s.
Maybe Universial trickster says you can not pick wrong.
m
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Hi Hops,
I am going to be very honest here. I think you are in denial about some aspects of yuor personal life, when it comes to recognising that people close you to are not all good, not good at all, and can actually be little shits through and through. (Like your boss??????)
And, maybe what you said was key - you feel that unless you think that the world is good, evidenced by the facts you notice around you, you feel as if you are drowning.
Dorwning in evil? In powerlessness? Losing that battle against the bad side, Superhoppy? What if the world is neutral as P said? Does that give you permission to stop running saving things and just be you?
Plucky
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Plucky.
Wow. That is one of the most profound things I've ever been asked.
And most penetrating.
Thank you for paying such close attention to who I am, or might be.
What a gift to have someone perceive so much...
I have to think about this.
Top of my head, yes. You're very perceptive.
It is excruciating for me to hold the thought, "People are not good."
I turn it around. La la la...it may be more denial.
And sometimes I think I DO need to stop.
It's probably fear-based.
I don't need to flip and run around calling everybody bad to fix it, I think...
but you sure nailed my assignment when you say stop running saving things and just be you
I LIKE saving things. But it sure is tiring. :)
love to you Plucky,
Hops
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:) Moon...
I get myself out of one major denial head trip .
How many others are out there OR in here ?
...just enough to keep you interested. And you've done the hard one.
A nice onion is shaped just like a moon.
Do you know in Appalachian Kentucky (I worked at an orphanage there once...remote "hollers") there are folk who call onions, ingrens? Some fascinating remnants of a dialogue they brought over from the British Isles...
Wow. I love language.
Hops
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Moon! :D
Maybe Universial trickster says you can not pick wrong.
Yes 8) 8) 8)
Hops
Who said? :
"People are not good."
It’s not true! No. It's not! :D
People are people are people are people are people……..
Not good. Not bad. Human. Good acts, bad acts sometimes but people are not wholly good or bad....skippety skip skippy....tum-te-tum...
..ingrens??? <total nonplussed icon>
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Hi Jac,
Thanks a lot for the Wheelis quotes...very inspiring and perceptive.
Tell you the truth, they ring more clearly for me without the bracketed additions of denial...because I think he was doing his root work specifically about his internalization of his father's voice. I think he was in a grand battle with something very personal, a shadowy imprinted self that was not his, but his father's.
But yes I do fear my own anger. I fear everyone's. I look within and look without and with occasional exceptions (like me writing the truth in my own work evaluation, "speaking truth to power", or like what I did in reading deeply personal poetry or semons in public...
Other than those sorts of outlets, for which I use my main/only gift...I don't find enormous healing value in expressing anger. I've always felt this way, for as long as I can remember.
It takes a mighty wisdom to know the difference between anger used to defend voice, and anger used to swell the self (which so often hurts others). To me, it's such a slippery edge. Being on the receiving end of so much anger, learning about things like the Holocaust...kind of took care of my inner questions about anger 50 years ago.
I know what it feels like to be yelled at, mocked, scorned, exploded at. Why would I want to do that?
I can understand why someone saying, denial is my friend (did you see that I distinguished between unhelpful denial that I don't embrace, and denial that feels like protection?) -- would inflame you Jac.
It's partly personality. I just don't do rage very often, and when I have, I've been sorry. It doesn't feel cleansing, it feels sickening. So yes, I would much rather transform it into something else.
All that (defensively) said, I know I read your post with one eye shut. It was challenging. So I need time to re-read, absorb it some more. I'll do that.
Thanks for reaching out, Jac.
Hops
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I'm angry about this:
(though in truth it's such a discouraging wall of words...the language oblivion of the media, which is really our only hope of raising the awareness of huge populations...that my feeling's closer to despair):
Don’t Say Tragedy, Call Selfish, Cowardly Hate Crimes What They Are
The news readers keep saying that the murders of Naomi Rose Eversole, Marian Fisher, Lina Miller, Mary Liz Miller, and Anna Mae Stoltzfus, and the attempted murder of other, still endangered girls is a tragedy. It isn’t a tragedy. Tragedies are not planned in detail, they are not planned with everything including toilet paper for the comfort of the murderer taken into an Amish school from which adults and males are released before the murderer begins to carry out his plans. This was a hate crime planned and committed by a man who felt he was entitled to murder little girls he didn’t know. He felt that his gender entitled him to terrorize, humiliate and murder them.
This wasn’t a tragedy, this wasn’t a story set into motion for the entertainment or revenge of the gods, this was one man who believed his being born with a penis gave him the power of life and death over these girls. Maybe over all girls. He could have chosen any girls to murder. This man choosing to murder girls from what he would certainly have known was a pacifist sect is everything anyone needs to know about his sense of entitlement and his cowardice. His name and identity are useless except as a study in that particular type of cowardly, selfish man. After what there is to know about him has been collected and studied he deserves to be erased from the collective memory of the world.
Lynchings are not tragedies, they are crimes, sordid murders by self-centered cowards who believe that their gender, race, religion, ethnicity or class entitles them to murder other people. Knowing the murderers for what they are is all anyone needs to know about them. Using that knowledge of their taste in entertainment, their hobbies, their upbringing and their other pathologies in order to avoid producing more of these defective human beings is all that they are good for. None of this should be anything but a scientific study in pathology.
Dwelling on the names and lives of these cowards risks turning them into something they aren’t. While studying their psychological flaws the fact that they were selfish and cowardly should never be forgotten. People with mental illness can sometimes be selfish slime too. Normal people might see them memorialized on TV as examples of evil, potential killers will see them as heros to be emulated or topped. Ignoring that possibility even as the programs talk about the “copy-cat” nature of a lot of these crimes is a crime in itself. It is the same crime the neighbors of Kitty Genovese committed when they ignored her as she was being murdered. It is cynical indifference. It is time to put an end to sensation murder used as profit driven entertainment and entertainment posing as news. It is part of the problem in the age of TV and video.
Call these crimes what they are. Don’t memorialize the criminals. Don’t instruct their admirers and fellow degenerates.
from: http://awomanwaslynchedtoday.blogspot.com/
(Also just watched Anderson Cooper's heartbreaking documentary of what's going on in Congo and Sudan for several hours. He gets it, bless his brave obsessed heart. He zeroed in on the rape of women and girls and near-infants as a war crime...) Why does this not receive constant outrage? Why does our media preoccupy itself with the murders of "pretty" young women and not concern itself with the UBIQUITY of femicide?
I am not in denial about the pain of the world, that's for sure, Jac.
Maybe I deny the pain of some things in my own life because it just seems sort of irrelevant.
(Somebody, I forget...asked if I feel responsible for the suffering of the world. I didn't want to answer but it's yes. I feel I was raised, religiously, to feel I AM my sister's and brother's keeper. And I don't do enough to help. I just yak.)
love,
Hops
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(Somebody, I forget...asked if I feel responsible for the suffering of the world. I didn't want to answer but it's yes. I feel I was raised, religiously, to feel I AM my sister's and brother's keeper. And I don't do enough to help. I just yak.)
Hi Hoppy,
Somewhere I read that children in dysfunctional households learn that they are responsible for way too much. Or have no control over anything, and therefore seek control as adults so as not to relive this chaotic, unpleasant powerlessness again. Maybe your FOO is once again fooling with you.
Also, some think that God cannot possibly exist if such evil exists in the world. In fact, the idea that evil does exist and thrive is a concept most religious people have to struggle with accepting.
Plucky
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Hi ,
This is a planet of freewill the "evil" we perceive is done by mankind.
God is not to blame for the choices of man.Freewill llets there be a choice to choose God or not.
moon
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Hi Jac,
Wheelis did speak to me, he did...it's just so intense that I listened with one ear.
I really appreciate all your efforts to be sure I'm fully awake, Jac.
I don't mean to "throw back" your concern or let it bounce off. I do self-examination too.
I just have a sense of what will overload me, or not. Just now, I'm kind of in survival mode, and periods of various degrees of denial may be part of that. I do think it's okay to use a coping mechanism when you can't handle more.
(I'm not in denial about the pain of the world, but what I mean is I can't contemplate it 24/7 and must sometimes retreat into fantasy. That's okay. Fantasy is necessary to me too...)
I don't necessarily think it's a permanent worldview, but I was musing about it.
thanks for your thinking,
Hops
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What the Amish are Teaching America
by Sally Kohn
On October 2, Charles Carl Roberts entered a one-room schoolhouse in the Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. He lined up eleven young girls from the class and shot them each at point blank range. The gruesome depths of this crime are hard for any community to grasp, but certainly for the Amish — who live such a secluded and peaceful life, removed even from the everyday depictions of violence on TV. When the Amish were suddenly pierced by violence, how did they respond?
The evening of the shooting, Amish neighbors from the Nickel Mines community gathered to process their grief with each other and mental health counselors. As of that evening, three little girls were dead. Eight were hospitalized in critical condition. (One more girl has died since.) According to reports by counselors who attended the grief session, the Amish family members grappled with a number of questions: Do we send our kids to school tomorrow? What if they want to sleep in our beds tonight, is that okay? But one question they asked might surprise us outsiders. What, they wondered, can we do to help the family of the shooter? Plans were already underway for a horse-and-buggy caravan to visit Charles Carl Roberts’ family with offers of food and condolences. The Amish, it seems, don’t automatically translate their grieving into revenge. Rather, they believe in redemption. ...
from here: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1006-33.htm
[Interestingly enough, they don't seem to be in denial about any part of it, either.]
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Hops, I have a serious question for you. It could be discomfiting, so I'm going to PM you if that's OK. Let me know? Because it's really nobody's business but yours. And... if you are interested, you can tell me when, too, because I don't want to lean on you when you are overloaded. Fair enough?
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Jac, I liked that Wheelis quote about the anger of the doer who will not let [her] work be swept aside. Liked it so much that I've printed it out in sepia Apple Chancery font, and will be posting it on my wall at work.
thank you!
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Hi Storm.
Please feel free to ask me whatever you like, on the board is fine.
I know your intent is good!
Hops
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Thanks Hops :-)
My intent is definitely good, but I don't know what the impact will be. So I'll send you a PM, with the proviso that we will talk about it on the board if you're comfortable with that once you've seen the question. I'll try to get this to you within the next 24 hours - it may take a draft or two before I get the right clarity and compassion.
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Hi Storm,
I squinted my way through your PM and honestly, please forgive me, but I don't want to read it right now...I saw enough to get your drift and I do not want to go there.
I'm needing to maintain a smooth calm course right now.
Thanks,
Hops
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Understand completely, Hops. Delete it if it bugs you. I'll delete these posts, too, if you like.
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Hi Hoppy and everyone,
I don't think that refraining from being constantly outraged is to be in denial. There are many wonderful things about the world which deserve to be seen and appreciated. If we stay in a state of struggle against the bad, we remove our ability to value the good and visualise the world we want to live in. And what we see/hear and think are what we become. The good, the gentle, the beautiful, will vanish from the world if there is no one to nurture it with attention.
I think the idea of being my brother's keeper is this. Anyone on earth could be my brother. In theory, everyone on earth is. But with my limited capabilities, my sphere is not the whole world. I may want to be informed about the whole world, but I cannot expect to impact the entire planet by any of my actions or inactions. I learnt a song in Sunday School which I sing to myself whenever I feel overwhelmed by not doing enough to 'fix' the world. "Brighten the corner where you are" went the song, and in these cases, I try to define my corner and cut down my expectations of my own duties to a size I can manage and then do something. My brothers are then the people I have contact with or can have contact with, or an impact on.
a sentence structure impaired
Plucky
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PLUCKY :D PLUCKY :D DEAR PLUCKY :D :D :D,
WOWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE ZOWIE YES AMEN WOWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE ZOWIE
Your post here is exactly how I feel .You have written your beautiful thoughts with such kind loveliness.
WOW AND WOW :D 8) :D 8) 8) 8)
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((PLUCKY))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
LOVE TO YOU,
MoonLight
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Thank you Moon,
I was thinking about you when I thought about valuing beauty. I think of you as one of the board artists - someone bringing beauty and an alternative way of thinking to the board. I can't remember which side of the brain is which, but you seem to be using the opposite side from me. If the board were physical, I would picture you as angel food cake or blue sparkles or a nice frankincense fragrance.
Plucky
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No worries, (((((Stormy))))). thanks for understanding, and I do appreciate the effort. xxoo
Thanks, Plucky. That's sensible and compassionate and I agree with you! I'm just sort of vocalizing whatever's wandering through my brain. Anderson Cooper's Congo/Darfur documentary has had a big impact on me. So...I wrote my minister with a program that helps congregations mobilize to do something right now for Darfur and said I'd like to help.
That's doing something in my corner that could join with all those others who want the genocide stopped now. I am grateful to Cooper for shocking me into action. It is the worst genocide in human history, and we've (the Western world's) just let it roll...
And ditto, Plucky, I see Moon as a creative dancing amazing sprite at the heart of the board!
((((((((((Plucky, Moon)))))))))
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Hi Hops,
I agree with you about Sudan. I used to wonder how people stood by and let things happen, as in Nazi Germany, but now I realise that we are standing by right now. I think history is not going to be kind to us.
Plucky
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Maybe there is so much understanding of ourselves and the world that is hidden from us on this side of the veil.
We are connected to our higher selves and an ever upward spiral of learning evolving sometimes sideways thats OK.
Thoughts are things and very important like what tt said once about what we say is so important these things shape our futures .
(((((((((((((((((Hops and Plucky))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
I have been seeing those blue sparky thingys ever since I fell off the teeter totter as a real little kid :lol:
(like the teeter totter = bipolar) tee hee I crack myself up. :D
SO MUCH LOVE AND THEN SOME MORE
MOON
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(((((((((((Plucky, Jac)))))))))))))
I BELIEVE THAT WE ALL CAN DO SOMETHING ACTIVE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN DARFUR. We can:
Go to www.savedarfur.org
Make a contribution if we have $10 to spare
Write letters to government and UN leaders; sign online petitions
Participate in rallies or civil demonstrations of support for intervention
I agree it's important to live our own good lives and that mostly these form the boundaries of our effectiveness in making a difference in the world. But I don't think it's pointless to take actual action to change something in the world, rather than wait for the judgement of history.
Last night on Africa's Misery, the World's Shame, a Marine photographer who was haunted by a dying 1-year-old girl who'd been shot in the back simply for being the tribe that she was... said, it's never too late. As long as there are people in Sudan and Congo who are still being killed, it's never too late for us to make a difference. I believe him.
We have learned about our own voices, in our FOOs and our relationships or ex-relationships with Ns. Let's raise them, in whatever way we choose but perhaps a foot beyond our comfort zones, for her.
Hops
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Thanks Hops ,
It is good to have this website and know there is something that a person can do to help.
I believe in understanding the suffering of the world which I do .
I see no reason to contribute to the fear.
hugs ,
m
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I think so too, Moon.
I think I can take some small action to help Africa.
It does the opposite for me, really. When I do nothing to help the situation I feel more afraid (I think because I'm consciously turning my back on my own humanity.)
I'm not doing anything complicated. Just joining a church effort, sending a tiny contribution, writing a couple letters and signing email petitions to the UN. It's a few hours out of my life, that's all.
It's not about fear, for me. It's about love.
Hops
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Hey Hopsy ,
Some are so afraid.
Also your article on Dr G's thread .Very interesting .
For those that feel they have all the answers maybe there will be a few surprises in the future.
Will there be serenity for one that may think they are Holier than God ?
This man's religion leads him to believe God is on his side.
I believe mankind is responsible for what happens on Earth, the freewill thing.
He is a political person not spiritual In my opinion.
love,
moon
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Dear Plucky,
Just wanted to say that I think this is brilliant and so true:
I don't think that refraining from being constantly outraged is to be in denial. There are many wonderful things about the world which deserve to be seen and appreciated. If we stay in a state of struggle against the bad, we remove our ability to value the good and visualise the world we want to live in. And what we see/hear and think are what we become. The good, the gentle, the beautiful, will vanish from the world if there is no one to nurture it with attention.
Thank you for putting words to what's been on my heart so much lately.
Hugs,
Hope
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Thank you Hope.
Hoppy and everyone, I don't feel afraid about Darfur, I mean I don't feel personally afraid. I am very afraid of the consequences, but my main reaction is shame. I am ashamed of the human race. I am horrified.
I don't think for one minute I can stop it. Short of setting myself on fire in front of the Capitol, I do not have the means to change anything on my own. If everyone wanted to change it, and did the little bit that I can do, it would change. All I can do is to decide what I am capable of and to faithfully do that. So I send money to the Oxfams and the like, faxes to those sheep in congress, talk it up, and buy t-shirts. And I educate my children not to grow up to be someone who can turn away and shut up. It is not enough. It is such a tiny thing. And I am such a tiny part of the world. I'm not in charge. But I can do my part. I must. But it mainly benefits me to do this.
The fact that there are the Darfurs in this world means that I have an opportunity to determine what I think is right and what is wrong. What I need to focus on and know and what I can safely ignore. Who is a person, or brother to me in this world, and do I think of anyone as outside of that definition. What I really need and what I am greedy about. That is the good in this colossal evil. I am not going to give up, just because I don't have great power. I am still going to be against it in my own little way.
Plucky
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Bravo, Plucky. I think your voice does make a difference...because there are a lot of people who share your frustration and decide to make their small statements too.
And I add my gratitude for this perceptive remark:
I don't think that refraining from being constantly outraged is to be in denial.
A true and merciful thing to read.
Thanks, (((((Plucky))))
Hops
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Hi Plucky
It's not just in Darfur. What worries me is when people focus all their attention on issues that are a nice, safe distance away, and neglect the issues in their own towns, in their own back yards, in their own families.
Not to say we should not give money and time where we can. I give to Doctors Without Borders and to Oxfam, and to a no-kill cat sanctuary, and to the peace churches, as much as I can.
But I don't think that excuses me from the responsibility to clean up my own act, to make an effort to address my own unjust actions - people I may have been tempted to ignore and shunt aside in pursuit of professional success, because 'office cliques' don't like them; people whose needs I may have slighted because I was more interested in relationships with Ns [that failed anyway, no matter how many friends I sacrificed, surprise surprise]; people I may not have stood up for when they needed someone, and I was the only someone they had; people I claim to love, yet I won't make even the slightest effort to examine my own actions towards them... actions that may have hurt them, repeatedly, for years.
My mother was a great one for charities. Oh, how she displayed her largesse to the neighbors. Oh, how she boasted about her generosity.
And oh, how she abused and slandered and betrayed her own firstborn child, almost every single day of that child's life.
I've just realized this morning that today is the exact anniversary of her death; she died October 9, 2000, and it was the Columbus Day holiday then as well. I've been fighting off a vicious respiratory infection all weekend, and it came on suddenly on Friday night. Anniversary reaction, I'm almost certain, because I was ill the weekend she died, and she died of a respiratory infection.
So a lot of old memories have risen to the surface. But I think it's important to share them, lest we forget - it's nice to be good to the people out there; it's easy, convenient, and just costs money and the time it takes to write a check. But it is also important to be good to the people 'right here'. And that is usually neither convenient nor easy.
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I'm so glad that so many people do act to help people in terrible situations, both on their own doorstep and far away.
I don't give to charity. i give food and drink to people on the street sometimes. If i was different, I'd join various organisations and fund their work (if I had the cash and didn't object to their advertising and fund-raising methods).
If I was different again, someone driven by a 'cause' perhaps, I might be out in Africa working as an aid-worker.
Or if I'd been a bit more brutalised at home, I might be a foreign correspondent.
Or if one of my parents had died before I was aged about 14, i might be someone very 'successful' who could afford to make huge charitable donations and have some fund or thing named after me.
But I'm not any of those things. I like to look in people's eyes and help them how I can; it might just be with a conversation, to help them feel less alone or afraid. Little tiny things. I yam what I yam.
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No underestimating the impact this can have....
I like to look in people's eyes and help them how I can
Y'know, I feel as though you've treated me the same way, here.
((((P))) you make the world better.
Hops
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CONSCIOUS HEALING LEADS TO WORLD COMPASSION.
I recycle negative emotions and step sideways."I thought I was done with that", judgments ,shame,doubts, abuse,misperceptions about dark/light and free will/control .
These memories from childhood and FOO must be resolved and then leave space for stages of grieving.It is like removing old wounds of denial ,anger,blame,regret hurt all this healing brings acceptance.
I wish to let go of emotional addictions.I do not wish to re create negative emotional respones or sabotage self.Working on it.
Helping anyone feel less afraid is a big thing really.
(((((((((((((((portia))))))))))))))))))
Hugs
moon
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Stormy et al,
I agree totally. I heard a quote from a spouse of an activist years ago. I guess the man was known and respected in the community for his acts but had neglected his own children. She said, "It's much easier to be out there than right here."
Plucky
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I agree, too, don't confuse The Starving Chinese with your own neglected children, of course.
But it's not either-or. Just a need for balance.
I do fear that we will let Darfur continue with that as justification (I've got to be good locally and in my own family, nothing left for them). I think one of these: writing a few letters, sending a few dollars, standing outside for a few hours, is not unreasonable.
Anyway, people's level of activity on social justice/religious action things is a personal choice. I do understand. Sometimes I haven't budged on a very obvious cause and others have been bewildered. So I don't mean to preach. Just exhort, maybe. But with respect for every individual's right to choose.
Maybe if the only person I inspire to act is me, that's just what I needed to accomplish! :)
Hops