October Rambles
no editing here. straight rambles. quantity not quality.
Sleep as Healing
I woke up before the sun and amongst the raindrops hitting the window pane. The house is still. The birds are still sheltering in place. I just had one of those nights where my unconscious sleep healed what needed to be mended without having to do the emotional labor. We know rest, physiologically, does so much to repair and restore, and there are some nights when it feels like the ancestors show up and do a little spiritual clearing, too.
Gaslighting is not a survival skill. It’s the master’s tool of oppression.
Because we had company, I couldn’t tell you just how fuckin crazy you sound. Like most left-leaning Americans, I am a member of an antiracist discussion group. We meet once per month to connect, discuss, and lightly tread on one of the most complicated topics of our time. We are mostly polite and you only really discuss anything for 7 minutes at a time, split amongst 3-6 people. Our meeting time is 90 minutes, if that. If we can’t make the time to talk about racism, I am not sure if we will be able to slow down anything long enough to solve the problems. I like to be efficient, but not with my antiracism talk.
Anyway.
I started my check-in talking about my recent exploration into the concept of gaslighting, having realized that I didn’t quite understand it, nor could I acknowledge when it was happening. So I read Nora Samaran’s article, which is brilliant, and started talking to friends about it. Come to find out, the brightest and best don’t get it either. I talk about all of this and the way I see it intersecting with in intellectual and academic spaces (I am still reflecting on my own educational experiences, but soon I’ll make the leap to the systemic gaslighting in public education), and reference Toni Morrison’s literary criticism that speaks of the ways Black bodies and stories are often ignored in White texts. My brain loves making connections between things that don’t seem perfectly aligned. It’s my happy brain place.
The ideas are good because people have follow up questions and thoughts. My ego is feeling damn good. Until, you know, then a white man has to talk about how he gaslights people and shares his stories about it and then says, “I was taught to do this… it’s really a survival skill…” I am not sure how he finished his thought because I stopped listening.
Moments before, I also shared that I was working on how to center the story of the victim when talking about racism, sexism, trauma, etc. How do we continue to heal ourselves of white supremacy without making it all about us? And I mean this from the perspective of someone while having a Black and African cultural experience, do not have all of the experiences of living in a physically Black body.
And it was there when he called his own gaslighting a “survival” strategy, as a place to disrupt the way those with power legitimize and rationalize their harm by removing the victim. Yes, it’s shitty to say, “I use a tool of oppression to preserve my power and status in society,” but it’s what we have to do if we want to actually transform.
“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”
Connection and Boundaries
“Can we talk about your pod life and see if we can get together?”
Our well boundaried relationships, are the key to our liberation. In the future (NOW!) we will need the truth from each other about where we have been, what and whom we have seen, our risk factors, our skills, etc.
We will only survive by making the systems connect, but first we have to learn how to connect to one another in authentic ways.
A Room of One’s Own
“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
Interesting, isn’t it? I didn’t realize just how much my home was designed to not be used, but to be looked at. Like why have I never had a chair, table and reading lamp all in a corner for me to write at? I am still learning how to find myself at the writing table and to do exactly what I am doing now, but it will become habit.
On Tuesday night, I found that part of my brain that I can go to to escape loneliness. It’s the creative side that transforms my emotions into wonderings and questions and solutions and complexities and puzzles and songs and rhythms and leaps and loops. I am just coming to recognize how much I rely on my mind to keep me safe. I asked myself today, “What would your ‘spiritual homeland ‘ look like?” I haven’t answered yet. I mean, what if I have been to that place already and I am just too afraid to go back? What if it doesn’t exist? What does it mean to be spiritual? What’s a homeland? A physical space? A place in your mind? Is it a place that exists in between two points?
