Over the last four and a half years, I’ve written here about the beauty of the broken heart, some painful, enraging truths about the patriarchy and its toxic effect on the 51%, lots of self-reflection, and different stages of my own journey through the tangled woods. Sometimes the tree branches seem to come alive and grab at me, darkly, as if I were none other than silly Snow White looking to be saved by tiny, ineffective fictional creatures. At other times sun dapples the forest floor and shows me the way through, so I can make my own story.
Looking back, most of what I remember about my life is having a hopeful, joyful heart. The bubbling gratitude that returns to me again and again. Not despite the bad stuff of life, but because of the deliciousness that fills in all the spaces around it.
But I still trip and stumble on my way. Identifying my own internal roadblocks remains part of why I’m here.
This year on the day of giving thanks, I am most profoundly grateful for a recent shift inside me.
On a recent Sunday afternoon, my daughter and I lit a small fire in a micro-pit (loaf pan) by lighting baking soda and rubbing alcohol. (Life hack if you need a ceremonial fire and don’t have a fireplace or outdoor firepit.) As the fire flickered on the coffee table, we quietly released into it things that we could identify that were clearly not serving us, and invited into our lives the opportunities, attitudes, beliefs, and people we wished to see manifest. Releasing fears, sorrow, limiting beliefs, and welcoming in joy, transformation, and most of all, love.
As we did this familiar ritual, in companionable silence, I had a serious epiphany. You know how epiphanies can be. A sudden “woke” moment when what you have “known” all along is suddenly clear. For me, it usually means that words appear, elucidating the truth so I can look straight at it. What was an unidentified feeling or belief becomes a statement. The words give the belief visibility and shape. If it does not serve me, the words cause it to lose some of its power so I can deal with whatever it is. If it is an epiphany of empowerment, I can own it and consciously, affirmatively accept it into myself.
On this particular day, these words formed in my mind: “Men always disappoint me.”
Harsh. I might have winced (literally) as the thought formed words and opened up inside me.
Though these words were never spoken by me or even in my head before that moment, I realized that my body lived them. The belief, like a miasma, filled the little innocent spaces in me so that as I opened myself to love, experience, and the men in my life, I was sabotaged by it.
“Limiting belief” is an understatement. This belief was a threat to my happiness and well-being.
Lucky for me, I have a toolbox I can whip out at a time like this to begin the uprooting process. But I knew instinctively that I might need to bring in the big guns this time. I called upon a fellow traveler and dear friend, shaman and healer, to guide me through the discovery, the releasing, and the healing.
Knowing where this belief originated was not technically necessary to expunge it, but I’m a curious sort. I like to know, and, for me, knowing with my head is usually (though not always) a key to a door that allows healing through to my heart and the rest of my being.
My experience, in any particular lifetime (choose one), of being silenced or abandoned or assaulted by a man or men in power, is hardly unique. It is the story of women. We all take these lessons into ourselves in our own ways. But they are just stories and can be rewritten.
The individual men that I love or have loved, from my father, to my son, to my brothers-in-law, cousins, friends, lovers, are inside me. Some have brought me nothing but warmth and love, others have done their worst. But what I realized is that society as a whole, going back to almost the beginning, is so infused with the unbridled, unbalanced energy of the yang, so dominated by the male of the species, that attempts to silence or squelch, deny, ignore, oppress, force, or disempower the yin are all around us. They are the overwhelming, overarching reality for all of us. In some countries and cultures, this energy is more intense and unavoidable than in others, but let’s be honest. It is unavoidable until things change for good.
Those sweet, gutsy, humble, strong men who see the forest for the trees, who understand the toll our world’s way of doing things takes on half the population, they are the ones we fall in love with, right? The ones we want to surround ourselves with. The ones we want to raise, marry, hire, elect, along with the women we also raise, marry, hire, and elect, obviously.
So what the hell does any of this have to do with Thanksgiving? Gratitude, of course.
This year I am grateful that I have transmuted my belief about men to an understanding of my own journey through the eons, and an understanding of something even deeper than that. That though it is difficult to trust, trust is possible. And it is still and always has been, for me, easy to love. Love can heal the harshest ache, and I am grateful for love.
Indeed. I think trust might be imperative to the human condition. I think of my mother who trusts not a soul, of her boundless anger and misery (a victim of the patriarchy, as surely as any), and despite the blatant unfairness of it, I believe it is her absolute refusal to trust in anything, believe in anything that prevents her from finding any contentment or satisfaction in life. I don’t think it’s necessary to forgive the people who done-you-wrong to find peace. I certainly haven’t forgiven mine (and I think that’s the first time a sentence has forced me to own them…there’s a shift in perception for you. They have suddenly become baggage. I’ll have to think about this later.) The mystics believe that knowing its proper name gives you power over a thing. While not magical, I think it’s true with regards to self-empowerment. A correct diagnosis is key. I think it’s necessary to see things clearly, to speak truth especially to yourself, in order to learn anything, by which I mean improve anything. I think my mother has settled for generalizations that feel good to a wounded psyche (e.g. “men always disappoint me”) but are not entirely accurate, and so she doesn’t get past it. She learned the wrong lesson, and that misinterpretation is harmful to her. She is the most unhappy person I’ve ever known. I am exceedingly grateful that her don’t-be example has mitigated (but not eliminated- no complacency here!) my risk of succumbing to that fallacy.
Nothing is more thrilling to me than to have my writing spark thought and insight in another. It is not common that the “don’t-be” example works — so often people simply follow what they know. But you are strong and have an inner knowing that guides you to better paths than that of your mother, it seems. I am lucky that way too. Grateful.