April Blog Post by Avery
The ego says: If it hurts, cover it up, run away from it, numb it with addictions (substances, relationships, work, TV), avoid it at all costs.
Soul says: If it hurts, be present with it with love and compassion. For you cannot cut off a part of yourself and feel whole.
Can we create a safe and brave space free of judgment? Can we build a bridge to heal our divide between genders and the racial divide, thr political division and actually BE the UNITED states? BE sovereign. Be the liberty upon which we were founded.
A nation divided can not stand.
We can heal. And if we can, we must. We owe children better than what we have inherited.
Our future, our children, our fractured nation hangs in the balance. Be brave!
If not NOW, when?
My favorite poet is Maya Angelou, hands down. Personally, I regard her as a spiritual warrior, a civil rights leader, a heroine who fought for social and racial justice.
What a tragedy it would have been if we didn’t have her beautiful and powerful voice. The world would have been robbed if she’d not had the raging courage to heal and change the world with her words. A genius, turning the weapon used against her into a powerful tool that has left a legacy that still touches hearts, minds, spirits, and souls today. Telling one’s story doesn’t make one a victim. It makes one a guiding light.
I’m sure many women can relate to the traumatic experience of being silenced, by direct force or threat, as speaking up against injustice is a sure fire way for our cultural shadow to bare its fangs. Survivors are often bullied into silence, pressured into keeping family secrets, treated as an outcast for having integrity and bravery in the face of inequality and bigotry and outright atrocity.
Maya was actually MUTE for 5 years following being raped at the age of 8 by her mothers boyfriend. She blamed herself. You can imagine the judgment, or perhaps not, that befalls survivors coping with unspeakable trauma in ways that are literally, physiologically, outside one’s control. Whether you speak up or don’t, very negative consequences follow. Our culture is very Truth avoidant, very aversive to the shadow cast by itself, then blames those living in those shadows for how they survived what was meant to break them. To silence them. To invalidate them. To humiliate them. Children. Everyday, this happens. And we ask “why didn’t they say anything? Why bring this up 20 yrs later? Never, what in the actual fuck is wrong with people who would do this.
And so survivors learn to silence themselves, to keep the chains on long after the life threatening event or time period has happened. You learn to shrink and disappear as if you didn’t exist or matter at all, as that is what the world reflects and is what both keeps you safe and gets you attacked. A lose-lose situation that doubly punishes the innocent.
If you’ve ever “lost your voice”, felt unable to speak your truth, you understand the profound sense of powerless and choicelessness one feels.
If it is your calling, refuse to be silenced. Be brave enough to hear and see the Truth. As ugly as it is, it’s unimaginably uglier for the person who experienced it.
Choose LOVE.