Tag Archives: religion

I want to talk about Akhilandeshwari for a minute

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So. I was raped again. I wrote this post as part of a series in a different location. I am not, at this moment, prepared to share the more graphic version of what I have been writing. However I liked this essay very much and I want to make sure I keep it even if I never make that writing part of this journal. I am choosing a restorative justice process, not one of retribution and punishment. It is not up for debate. Folks are struggling to understand why and this my response.

Recently I had a good conversation with a dear lady I like a lot. She was utterly aghast at how I am processing what happened and she cannot understand how I am expecting to move forward sharing community spaces with the person who harmed me. I want to talk about how being broken, assault, and healing work in my mind.

Akhilandeshwari is a Hindu Goddess. She is the Goddess of Never Not Broken. I will be lazy and steal some quotes from a website.

The intensity of emotions, the pain we do not want to feel, all the broken pieces in ourselves that we tend to neglect and try to push away and ignore, this is the very territory of Akhilandeshwari -She says:

‘Look at it. Deal with it. Look at your part in this.

Look at what is broken in you and you will understand what is broken in the world. Look at how you may be contributing to these conflicts in your ignorance, in your destructive tendencies, your addictions and denial, in your fear of anyone different than you.’

One of Her many gifts is to remind us of the power to be found in our brokenness, in the loss, the fear, and the anguish.

How do we contribute to the things that happen to us? Why did my first piece of writing about this rape sound almost like it was a mutual encounter? Because I went hard into the fawn response. Because I have spent decades looking into how I contribute to my own difficult situations. I spent years delving into how I did or did not contribute to the incest I experienced. I am truly unrelenting in my quest to perceive my effect on my life.

I have spoke to the man since. He is not acting like the serial predators from my past. “I don’t remember it that way.” “You are over-reacting.” “Oh so you are going to lie about what happened?”

He is freaking the fuck out and full of overwhelming self doubt. He is apologetic in the extreme and willing to jump over every hoop I put in front of him. He’s on board. He has said that he is stunned by my graciousness and compassion. (Which is not particularly flattering. Yeah. I fucking am. That’s exactly how I’m fucking acting. You fucking noticed. Well I’m glad you aren’t stupid enough to miss that. I dislike compliments.)

It is because I have been you. It is because I have erred as extremely and I have had to do repair work at this level. I have had to tear down my self beliefs and understanding of the world to the smallest shards of glass and reconstruct a mosaic that I can live with. It’s why I am so fucking scared of people not being allowed to atone.

If other people do not deserve to be allowed to atone then I do not either.

I told him that what he is going to do for me is learn how to do better. He is going to embrace every opportunity to study consent and negotiation and he is going to become a fucking community leader in talking to other men about this. He is going to work ceaselessly for the rest of his life to help ensure that his friends and his community do not have to go through more of this. He is going to do that standing in a room with me and the people who know what he has done. If people respect my wishes that circle will stay small.

Of course, as Noah reminds me, three can keep a secret if two are dead. Right now 12 people know who he is. That includes my family, four people from the vanilla queer community, and five from the kink community. No, I’m not listing their names. Perhaps at some point that will be public but not right now.

Right now I am five days out from being raped and I am processing at blistering speed. I am assembling community support and creating structure from scratch for managing an assault. No, I don’t have a pre-created plan in writing. This has always been theoretical and I wasn’t high enough in any formal organisations to feel the need to document this process in my head. I know what I need. I am doing it.

I went to a class on transformational justice in the kink community and it was great for me. I can understand why some people, including a lot of folks who run events in Scotland, are very dubious about how appropriate this is as a way of managing assault.

I am specifically choosing people for this oversight who are not all close friends of mine. These are not people who are deeply invested in me alone as a person. (A couple are close friends, not many.) These are people who have demonstrated through their actions over years that they are deeply invested in creating community. That’s what I need.

The crocodile [one of her guises] also invites us to consider the many illusions in this life – all the appearances of things, people, and places and all of our assumptions. She shows us that things are not what they seem to be. For Akhilandeshwari and her crocodile all the false pretenses and roles we play to appear ‘perfect’ and ‘whole’ are actually bait for Her to come shake things up so we can come back to our essence. She destroys all illusions and delusions. She reminds us of the cyclical nature of Reality that we are experiencing in every given moment. The potential of what we are becoming is ultimately limitless. Within that brokenness there is freedom. Everything is not so neatly ordered, controlled and contained nor does it have to be. She is not stuck in one form nor does She want us to be. She demands that we consciously face our fears and losses, without dismissing them, running away or sugarcoating them. She invites us to cultivate the patience of the crocodile. She invites us to see the limitless potential of being and becoming that brokenness holds. Akhilandeshwari’s intense teachings are not to harm us, but to disorient our egos so that we can drop our attachments and come into our authentic nature.

I am someone who believes that most of us have deep brokenness inside of us. I believe that this process of breaking over and over gives us a chance to grow back stronger. If you do much hanging out in survivor communities you learn a lot about the range of ways people respond to sexual assault. Some people become deeply fragile and unable to withstand life. Some people brush it off as barely a thing. Some people lie to themselves about it happening at all. Some people become demanding and clingy and expect everyone to “make them feel better”.

That is not a power that anyone has. We heal ourselves or we don’t. There is no fair in this. We need support as we heal ourselves, yes. The very best therapists, counselors, and faith leaders understand this.

“There is no such thing as a personal problem. Every problem is a problem for the community.” – Sobonfu Somé

Yes, Sobonfu, I believe you and I agree with you. The part I am struggling with is the methodology of that. I deeply value the grief rituals from your country (Burkina Faso) and I wish that such rites were common practice in the West. They aren’t though. I have to start from where I am and go forward within the limitations of community I have here.

I live in a Western carceral culture. There are nuances to my new one (Scotland) compared to my old one (the United States) but they are incredibly similar. I do not live in an indigenous community where people are committed to staying together to preserve their existence. I live in the world of “Don’t overshare.”

A long time ago I came up with a metaphor. I may not tell it as well this time. When a person is born there is a fairly predictable path their life will probably take. It is etched in glass and it shapes their journey. Sometimes folks lose a few chips here and there, because life is difficult, but the picture remains more or less complete.

My glass picture was shattered. Whatever might have been for me on the day of my birth was utterly ravaged and destroyed before I ever went to school. I have spent the rest of my life crawling through the glass shards trying to glue them back together.

I am always, in some part of me, dragging my bloody knees across shards of glass. This is why I don’t want Noah to wait on processing his feelings when I am hurt. If he waits every time I have something bad happen (like being suicidal, or being raped, or having dear friends die, or having a medical crisis, or… it’s a ridiculously long list) he will never have a life. He will spend all of it waiting.

I don’t want that for him. Honestly part of what I hope for him is that maybe I have helped him heal a lot of his broken bits such that whoever he dates in the future will be less obnoxiously fragile than me. I hope he won’t need that in a partner in order to feel wanted. I hate that he feels he cannot have feelings if I was already doing so. That’s fucked up. I am always fucking having feelings. The world can’t stop.

Not even when I’m raped. I mean, I am taking a break to process a lot of feelings for more hours a day than usual. I am a cat hiding while I heal. In here I can suddenly scream and start crying and freaking out and no one else will be hurt. I won’t make anyone else have to hurt too.

That was not what Sobonfu wanted for me. It is what I am capable of right now.

I will never not be broken. It is not an option for me in this life. I will always be broken then broken again then broken again. Through every shattering and recreation of self I perform I get closer and closer to being the me that lives through and beyond every shard. This is a core of me that is present in every part of me. This is something I have understood for a long time. In the broken 3 year old sobbing and rocking on the floor desperately missing her mother to the 18 year old who was told “We won’t ruin a nice boy’s life for a girl like you” to the 25 year old who chose to double down and commit to the person I hoped would be my last rapist to the 42 year old who will not be told how to handle my assault and every rape and molestation and beating in between.

I am here. I know how to see the part of me that is not damaged by any of these things. The part of me that has been broken and rebuilt so many times that one has no inkling of what the origin was but it is more pure with every transformation.

No one gets to tell me what I will do with my trauma. I will use it to make the community better. I don’t fucking care if you wish I would fall in line with the status quo and get mad and seek revenge.

HOW IS THAT FUCKING WORKING OUT FOR YOU?

I don’t know that I could write down an official policy for an organisation. I don’t think that other people who suffer harm are going to want to go through what I am doing. I never claim that my path is the The Way to absolution for anyone.

I simply describe it as it is. Fine, in a Deterministic Way. Only sorta, not really.

I think through my actions and choices. I research before I decide how to act. I don’t think everything is predetermined. I think I could have chosen different paths. What is happening is not inevitable. The only constant is change.

The problem comes when the way I believe I must act is of such a high cost that I cannot pay it. When are my knees too damaged to keep moving forward on the journey? There are many examples of this. I am not going to list them here. They really aren’t the point.

“Given that there is so much more to be done in life and time is so precious I can’t fathom having been through what you have and still to care enough about someone who could treat you that way.” (A friend who consented to this being shared.)

You haven’t depended on as many terrible people for support. This was nothing close to the worst thing I have experienced in terms of treatment and gone on to be friends with them later. It’s going to be kind of funny. Folks will try to figure out who he is by watching me interact with people.

Good luck with that.

I was handed an opportunity to slam down an assertion on the universe that no matter how many times it breaks me I will always repair back into a shape that is ever more myself and true. This time I spend with him is not really about him.

It is about Vicki. It is about my father. It is about my mother. It is about my family and helping to create the community they will grow up in. It is about ensuring that this man is now a helper in the process of ensuring less harm will happen going forward. It is about being able to look myself in the mirror and say, “I am proud of you.”

I need everyone. I have been saying this exact thing here on Fetlife for a while now. This is genuinely what I believe. I am consistent no matter how you challenge me. Sometimes I may not want to be friends with someone, and that is my right, but I don’t want people kicked out.

Even the people who harm me. Provided they are good for other people.

Akhilandeshwari dwells in the space between who we were and who we are becoming. She breaks our rigidity, our calcified habits and thought patterns. She is a Goddess of Transitions. Sadness, despair, and grief are some of Her fiercest medicines. Her teachings can feel brutal to our egos, but She truly has our best interest at heart. No matter the loss or sense of devastation we feel, Akhilandeshwari presents us with an opportunity to look at the wild kaleidoscopic nature of our Being. She shows us that in the splintered aftermath of any heartbreak, these disowned, disdained, feared, bereft pieces of our self reflect back an essential aspect of who we are. Our experiences shape us.

I shudder to think of the shitty fucking white woman I could have become if I had spent more of my life in my father’s house. If he hadn’t been a pedophile, merely a physically and emotionally abusive alcoholic and drug addict. If I had one abuser and one narrative for why I was broken I would have twisted myself around that wound and I would have stunted. Instead I have harmed and been harmed by many many many many people.

Truly. One more will not cause a full shattering. It will merely remove a small chip. Look, Ma. I’m practically a normal person. I don’t shatter when tiny leaves drift by on the stream.

Am I minimising my rape? Yes and no. It wasn’t fucking ok. It was a literal crime. I didn’t want it and I am very angry it happened. I also know that for my body, this is not going to be something that upends everything I am. When I talk to him he sounds like one of my students. He sounds like a fucking kid who can’t understand how they have gotten themself into a situation they did not intend and now they are trapped.

I remember the day that one of my students came into my class tossing desks to the side and looking for a fist fight. He was 16 and big. It made all of the other boys in class want to get up and fight back. This was a whole class full of those boys. That was a fun class. I yelled “OUTSIDE.”

I told him that he came in angry so it wasn’t about us. I asked him what happened. His cousin was in a gang and had been shot. He was being pressured by all the higher ups in that organisation to get jumped in and be the one who did the return hit.

I called all his other teachers. His work was sent to my room. He stayed with me all day for days. I didn’t give them a justification. Nobody else liked him and they were happy to be rid of him. As of the time I last saw him, several years later, he said he was still not in the gang. I think I did at most 35 hours of extra babysitting him in that time. I am not responsible for his future. He made that. I gave him a safe place to sit and write through what he wanted for himself. I am not his savior. Fuck saviors. He saved himself. For a short time I got to hold his hand on his path. Sometimes we all need someone to hold our hands as we figure out who we are going to be in this life. It is not a smooth path for everyone.

This is a dragon I can ride. This is an opportunity I can use to help make my city better. This is a message from myself that I can’t forget my duty to help strangers be safer ever.

My life was passed hand over hand for many years. Many of those hands tried to break me.

They only made me more myself.

Praying and sleep

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Tonight I managed to get some time with my fingers in dirt. It was after I probably should have been in bed, resting. I am told resting is important. But I have been rather a nasty bitch for a few days and I needed to get a serotonin boost somehow.

I am working on a stone spiral for herbs; I won’t really be able to plant in it this year because the growing season is short here in Inverness. As I was grunting and laughing as I dragged up rocks that I probably should not have been lifting I thought about what it means when I say that I will pray for you.

If I say that I will pray for you I mean that I will think of you when I shove my hands into the soil. As I pile rock on top of rock and I shove sticks and compost into gaps I will think your name and I will hope that this universe grants you the nutrients you need to grow. I think of the people in your life who build you up and whom you in turn support. I think of how I want the universe to build a safe and stable place for you to rest. I want you to have the right amount of support so you can present exactly the angle of yourself into life you want to project.

I think of how I want you to have space around you to spread your roots into new directions. I think of how I wish water would flow around you to bring growth and moisture and sustenance as you go through your life. I think of how I want you to have seeds of new life, whatever that means for you, come to you with the wind and the birds and the flow of the seasons. I want you to thrive.

And around then I noticed that it was just about pitch black and I should probably stop. Given when in the year we are I guessed it to be close to midnight. Cell phone said it was 11:40. I’m pretty good at time. Then I laughed and thought of something that my son said to me recently. He said, “I’m kind of embarrassed to admit this but I didn’t really think you slept until after you had our little sister. That pregnancy was the first time I really saw you sleep.”

I tried to protest that it was ridiculous. Of course I sleep. He stopped and looked at me all deadpan. Then he raised his hands to melodramatically indicate the walls and the ceilings of the room we were in that I had in fact painted in the middle of the night while everyone else slept. He said, “Really mom. You do?”

As I softly shift dirt back and forth and move rocks to create the form I want even when there is no longer light I have to admit…. no. I don’t. Not really. Maybe if I did my body would hate me less. But would I really live longer or would it just feel longer?

I know the garden I want to stand in on my 50th birthday. It is going to be fucking amazing. I am going to be able to push my toes down deep into the soil and harvest fruits and vegetables that I made flourish. There will be flowers and wee beasties and a whole damn ecosystem. It might already be cold or there might be a last gasping heat wave. Either way I am going to sit in a rocking chair and hold Noah’s hand. Maybe I will already be wrapped up in a blanket or maybe I’ll be wearing barely anything at all–global warming is even coming for the north. I’ll have some whisky.

And if I am very very lucky I will even have a smile before I fall asleep for a well deserved nap.

I’m allowed to be frustrated but I’m not allowed to be angry

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I wanted to get started on the bathroom stuff in June. I specifically had the thought that if there were delays: hey at least no one minds spending a lot of time outside and avoiding the house when it is a disaster. The contractor wasn’t available to start until November. He started on the 24th. He thought he would be done by the week before Christmas.

Then it turned into outsourcing a bunch of pieces because he hates doing those bits. Their schedule needs became a conflict. Getting accurate lists of everything that should be ordered… is literally impossible. And now things weren’t ordered when they should be and stuff could’t come in until January. I am so very very very frustrated.

Oh, now the contractor is very sick. Deep breaths. Can’t be angry. This is just life.

My bedroom and bathroom tile is done. Yay! That’s worth a celebration. The painting in there is far from done. Roughly half the walls in the room still need a plaster compound skim coat due to the removal of icki wallpaper. The plaster guy is just flat not returning my calls. So I ordered a handful of tools. I’ll be teaching the kids how to do the work. We aren’t supposed to walk on the floor today because grout is setting. I probably *should* stick a heater in there because that will help.

That means I can walk on grout Thursday/Friday/Saturday. On Thursday and Friday and Saturday I can also work on painting the walls that have to be painted first (specifically: the walls where shelves will be attached to the wall and the wall with the glass door, oh and I guess finishing the ceiling would be wise.) Technically I’m allowed to move furniture back in as of Friday but I think it is smart to wait till the plaster sanding is done on Saturday. Deep sigh. I am going to move a lot of the furniture back in pretty immediately. Well, I can do primer on the unfinished walls on Saturday after sanding–there doesn’t have to be a big time gap between those activities.

Then the return of furniture! Of course first is the bed. My lovely bed. My wonderful bed. My bed that means that maybe I’ll get to have sex again. le sigh I do like me a closed door. I will put as much of everything else in there as I can while leaving access to painting wall space. It will be nice to have the furniture in near where it will go because it will help me remember where I don’t need to be intense. I’m stealing one of the white boards from the kitchen so that I can have a visual reminder spot that I can’t put down/lose in my room too. White boards are awesome. But I don’t need to do a lot of fancy painting behind it.

For the bathroom I’m thinking the wall that faces the shower will have a pretty serious tree with holes for various kinds of birds and fairies to live in. I think that a branch will come over the mirrors and have a nest on it with pretty speckled eggs. There will be birds flying in the sky up on the ceiling. Maybe even fairies dancing if I can figure out the perspective. Low grass and flowers down at the bottom and in the doorway.

I’ve already painted a fair bit on the ceiling. A couple of them are highly abstract in a way that will lead to many many guesses and possibilities over the years. One is (pretty fucking clearly to me) a vulva because vulvas are AWESOME. My kid says, “Hunh… I have no idea what that is,” hahahahahahahaha. I added a heart with the word forgive dotted inside it but it’s heavily obscured and I think it will only be visible at some times in some lighting (totally my goal). There is a flower because I love flowers. There is a symbol for finding gratitude that I didn’t quite finish because my neck was very angry with me. Over the bed I intend to put a sigil for encouraging peaceful sleep and banishing nightmares. I have room for a couple of other cloud symbols but I’m not sure what yet. Hm.

The office nook will have very little available space for painting. Above the computer monitor area I am going to put the pagan three moon symbol. I might do some vines or other things growing up in the space between furniture but mostly I will just paint the walls solid green behind the furniture and call it good. And by “solid green” I mean dappled greens so that it doesn’t look like some wacko who believes in one color for each wall took over my room.

In the narrow corner above my bed next to the window I want to do a wheel of the seasons. A reminder that change is always always always coming.

I’m still not sure what I want above my bed. That space feels very important and I can’t visualize what it ought to be. The side of the room with the dressing area and the exercise equipment storage will be all Mother Goddess and Greenman energy. Lots of bright colors even though it’s supposed to be midnight in a fairy glen.

I’m having fun.

I do like to do things in contrary fashion.

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In the fall I painted spring. Now that it is spring I am painting autumn. I like to buck trends and all that. I have started on the upstairs hall. The upstairs will be sunset and the downstairs will be early dawn–I want to keep a lot of the soft pink that is currently downstairs.

Recently I was doing a video chat with an old friend and he said, “Why do you have a besom on your wall?” Because I am a witch, naturally. I think of my art as being part of how I try to change the world. It is how I try to change people’s perceptions and emotions. I am drawn to witchcraft because I believe that people have power and they should use it. Power manifests in different people in various ways and you need to figure out what your way is. I am blessed with having many ways that I influence people and I take that seriously.

For now: it’s in a hallway. I am going to do this mural with more limits for the sake of my body. I’m trying to respect the fact that I’m growing old. I got in two hours to start with so far. This one is going to take months because I am getting ollllld. I can’t upload pictures without wordpress being bitchy so I guess I won’t post the pictures here.

When did that bit change?

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I used to be absolutely frothingly nasty about people giving me unsolicited advice. At some point after being married I softened. I started giving people the benefit of the doubt. I started trying to soften my reaction so I wasn’t so “mean”. I think I took a wrong turn.

Recently the kids and I were at a store doing a bit of shopping and a lady heard us talking. She asked us where we were from because she couldn’t place the accent. We had a charming conversation for a while. Then she started proselytising to us. The kids were fairly confused why she kept trying to talk to us about going to church. I was evasive and soft as I tried to say that I was not interested in monotheism and I don’t really care that she thinks Jesus is waiting for me with open arms.

I need to start saying I’m a witch and when someone tells me that I can always turn to Jesus with my troubles I should tell them that the Gods and Goddesses of their ancestors are really hoping they will say hi sometime.

Fuck being polite. It is not polite to shove your world view down my throat so why do I need to be polite to you? I have this weird thing about not wanting to step on people’s toes about religion. But they don’t extend me the same courtesy so I need to get over it.

I need to get over a whole lot of thinking about other people’s feelings. It is not serving me. My anxiety is high and it is partially related to me not wanting to be rude about telling people I don’t want to hear their opinion about what I’m doing.

Unless I say something like, “Hey what do you think about me doing _____” or “May I ask you for advice about _______” it’s pretty safe to assume I am not interested in your opinion on my behavior, life choices, or plans.

I learned a while ago that it was not good for me to give other people my unsolicited opinion about their life choices. I’m not sure why people think I deserve less courtesy. But they really really really do.

It is to the point where I am deliberately censoring a bunch of topics I might otherwise write about because then someone will feel free to tell me their opinion about me doing it. That’s bothering me. I don’t have pot as a crutch for emotional management. I don’t think I will go on other psych meds. Starting tomorrow I’m on a pretty strict budget and I can’t keep drinking.

That means I need to get a lot more free with “Stop telling me your opinion of my actions” and I need to go back to writing more. I have lost friendships (partially) because I was free with putting in writing why I was upset with people. I need to start seeing those friendship endings as a necessary cost of me being healthy. I mean, I shouldn’t rant about how I think other people are stupid or making bad decisions… but I need to be able to talk about myself and my feelings. Not all of my judgments… but my feelings about my life.

Because let me tell you, whether I share them or not I have judgments about how you are living. Notice how I don’t just show up to share them with you? That’s called being polite.

I did not have children because I wanted a convenient, easy life. I am not looking for more time to watch Netflix or sit around being idle. That is not appealing to me in any way shape or form. But I’m also not real driven to just “find a job” to fill my time.

My kids will go back to school when/if they choose to. It’s ok with me that they are done for the foreseeable future. I asked EC what made her decide that she was done and she said, “Mom the most important thing I am going to have in my life is my time. School wastes a lot of my time and I won’t be able to get it back.”

How can I argue with that?

I have decided I am not publicising a financial review because someone will feel the need to make comments and I might blow up a friendship over it right now.

I’m really over advice.

I want to spend 2020 making art, reading books about witchcraft, cooking, learning about the local ecosystem, and meeting people who can teach us about Scottish culture. I want to live as frugally as I possibly can. I want to spend time alone and time with my kids. I want to work on setting up outdoor play spaces for my children and I want to start shaping my garden even though I’m not spending money on plants yet.

I want to spend a lot less time worrying about other people’s feelings. If people don’t like me snapping at them to not share their opinions… maybe they should not share their unsolicited opinions.

I have survived the loss of many important people. I can survive the loss of other relationships. Life hurts. I will cope.

Random thought

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I sing songs that I learned in church pretty often. Pretty much only when I’m alone though. I wonder if my kids will want to learn them/sing them with me and I wonder what message they will actually get from them. I wonder if my kids will turn into devout atheists like Noah or if they will have a weird, hard to quantify but definite belief in the Divine the way I do. Or… weirder still… will my kids become actual Honest-to-Gawd Christians?