Friday, June 24

I'm not proud to be an American today and I don't know how to talk about it. I've intentionally stayed away from talking about and involving myself in politics. It feels scary to me, but the more I heal and come into my power, the more I realize it is in fact safe to express my opinions. I know one of the reasons it’s difficult for me to share is that I find my opinions are constantly evolving and expanding as l learn more and it’s hard to put a pin in it when there might be *more* just around the corner. My understanding of the world is ever developing.

I don't want to feel like a victim because I believe that is giving my power away. I’m not feeling called to repost emotionally charged social content because it feels like what I ‘should’ do to show my support. Yet, I haven't found an empowered way to view this situation, perhaps speaking my perspective is a good start. To me, the overturn of Roe vs. Wade represents more than an attack on my rights and equality, which it absolutely is. 

Overturning this has very little to do with being 'pro-life' or 'pro-choice'. If we were truly 'pro-life', we would treat our citizens with human dignity and equality after birth. A fetus has more rights than a mother, and that's really fucked up. It's really easy to advocate for the being that doesn't have any baggage yet. But as soon as they do, a byproduct of being born a human, we will discard their humanity too, especially if they have less than favorable demographics. What a sad and unfair life. 

Overturning this has everything to do with power and control. What happens when half the population feels subordinate? It creates an atmosphere of fear. We are less likely to take risks and pursue self-actualization. We are more likely to play small and stay in the system. We make decisions out of fear and anger instead of love and abundance. Unplanned children force us to stay in lousy, low paying jobs to provide. They force us to stay in unhealthy relationships. I use force loosely here, because while at some level we do still have choice, it becomes drastically harder to unbury our power. The stress compounds and it can feel like there are few outlets for the trauma to heal, if we can even recognize it at all. We pass on our trauma to our offspring, despite our best intentions and honest love. I don't have a child, so I can't speak from experience. I only know what the first few years of participating in the U.S. workforce felt like for me: a crushing depression of people pleasing out of fear because I believed that was my only option for survival and acceptance. If I had to provide for others during this time, I can only imagine the urgency would have felt more severe and I would never have been able to pursue other options. Ask yourself: who benefits in this situation? Who feels so threatened that they need to codify the rights of half of our population? I don’t believe it is the majority of men. 

It's really convenient to overturn this law at a time when we are dealing with a failing social security system that was built on a pyramid scheme. It's really convenient to overturn this law at a time when we as a society are beginning to step into our power and asking for more. It’s really convenient to overturn this when we have a big, nasty problem of climate change that we don’t know how to solve. The system that was created by and for a select group of people 250 years ago is failing because our needs and values as a society have changed, and that select group feels threatened as fuck. 

I encourage you when you are ready to look beneath the surface of your anger in this situation at the deeper implications of what is really happening: not only how more rights will likely be challenged in the future, but in how these decisions are meant to divide us and pit us against each other and distract from what is happening at the core. I believe that is exactly what THEY want, that by creating anger and resentment and chaos between us their power grows. Pro-choice is a great example of this: the majority of Americans are pro-choice when surveyed, but what they differ on is what this means to them. When we get caught up in the details of 'rightness', we lose our power and the outcomes can be apocalyptic.

I see our country becoming more divided, more polarized on a daily basis and that's scary to me - scarier than any single law because it has implications for so much more radicalization and dehumanization to come. An intolerance for others opinions, a lack of curiosity to see the other side and look beneath the surface of what's going on or the meaning behind what is said. A lack of safety in disagreement. An interest in noticing differences rather than seeking common ground. While I have a deep distaste for what the Republican party stands for in our society today, I have many friends and acquaintances who vote Republican who are genuine, loving people. In fact, I've encountered few who aren't. We need to have the courage as a society to bridge the gap between us, establish more empathy, rather than continue to increase the divide. We need to embrace the gray areas rather than sorting everything into 'black' and 'white'. We need to find the courage to have these tough conversations from a place of love and vulnerability, which is a skill I am definitely still working on. 

I believe all of this comes from deep, deep, generations of trauma. Trauma that we've never talked about as a society before. From mother wounds, father wounds, neglect, abuse, misogyny, and more that the people making these decisions experienced. That we experienced. That we have accepted as 'normal'. That we all continue to experience as our subconscious brains run the show in our daily lives until we make the intentional decision to come into awareness. Hurt people hurt people, and to me, that's exactly what is happening. From my worldview, a person who needs control over others is a traumatized one. From my worldview, a person who thinks they can decide what is best for others better than the other could for themself is a traumatized one, too. 

I’m not saying any of this to minimize the tragedy that I feel overturning Roe vs. Wade is to our country. But my feelings about it are many and complex. In addition to being angry - which is how I feel I am ‘supposed’ to feel, and instead of licking my wounds as a victim in the situation, I can only ask myself: what can I do to help my country heal to empower the creation of a brighter future?