Childhood, Caretaking, & Feelings

If you were a child who expressed feelings in proportion to those around you. If you contorted your emotions into the shape and size that could be held. If you disappeared and squeezed and repressed what couldn’t.

If your role as a young person was to take care of other people’s feelings, to hold them in your small hands, to weave them into the fabric of your family, to make the unokay acceptable.

You might struggle to believe your feelings are worthy of care. You might struggle to believe there is space for you. You might struggle to believe that your feelings get to exist, regardless of another’s capacity to hold them.

If this is your work, know that it is not yours alone. So many of us are untangling and re-working and weaving these old threads. We are wilting before we remember it’s safe now to bloom. We are foresaking our feelings as a precious survival strategy. We are flashbacking deep in our bones to other times our whole selves weren’t held.

And still. We are showing up in these news ways, trembling. Be gentle in your ferocity: this takes time.

I honor your survival

I honor your survival.
I believe your survival.
I am in awe of your survival.
I support your survival.
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I know that the word “survival” is past tense and sometimes you are still surviving.
I know there aren’t enough strong supports and soft places.
I know it can feel incredibly alone and too fucking hard and painfully endless.
I know it is tiring. So so tiring.
I see you keeping going.
I see you stopping to rest.
I see you itchy and struggling to pause, to receive rest.
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I honor and hold and bow to your experience. To the late nights and bitter resentment and fearful holding. To the adaptive coping mechanisms you needed and wish you didn’t need any longer. To the weariness that pulls on your heartsleeves. To feeling misunderstood and out of place, where is my place, where is my story’s place? To all it takes to survive, to keep surviving - I honor and hold and bow to all of that.

If This is Resilience, I Want No Part

IF THIS IS RESILIENCE I WANT NO PART //
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Can we stop glamorizing dandelions growing through concrete and glorifying resilience?

Yes, it’s amazing what humans can survive.

And: there should be less to survive.

Dandelions thrive in earth, not concrete. It might seem incredible when dandelions grow through concrete, but imagine how much more incredible it would be if they could grow in an environment meant for them, with the things they need to flourish?

Dandelions aren’t meant to fight their way through hard rock. It takes a lot of precious time and energy to grow through grit. They deserve soil. Warm sunshine. The right amount of water. They deserve tending, careful hands and the gentle hum of wind to spread their seeds.

They deserve all the things we know they need to survive. And so do you. And so does everyone else. Don’t forget it.

Don’t forget that when someone has survived unbearable circumstances, it’s not just a moment to applaud their triumph and resilience - it’s a moment to look at the unbearable and unjust conditions, and work to change them.

May we do it.

May we really, fucking, actually –- do it.