Just… thoughts.

Posted On May 18, 2010

I can’t believe how fast this pregnancy is going by. I’m already 31 weeks… over 3/4 of the way there! I don’t have much to complain about, either, other than the blasted hip pain- but I have found ways to make it manageable. Although yesterday I felt it necessary to tell Jeff in a loud authoritative voice that heartburn could go and die… Otherwise, physically, I feel pretty great. Evening time gets me feeling a little more wobbly, but overall I’m really happy that I’m in good health and still active.

I’m scared to bring children into a dangerous and abusive world- one that may not recover, and at the very least will be hard to clean up and make right again. I so often am aware that I have to train Vera to live in this unnatural place- but even more aware that I wouldn’t know how to train her to live in a natural one. However, what comforts me is that despite the state of the world, I have never wished that my parents hadn’t had me. I always want to be here, even when it’s overwhelming. And so I have to have faith that my children will want to do the good work of their lives and fulfill their purpose too. When I meditate on that, I know it’s true. I know that it’s important for new people (however destructive our species may be) to come and work for the good of the world and help to heal these wounds.

For me, having kids so far has been an immensely healing experience. It’s inspired me to become more consistent, more honest, more spiritual, more in touch with being a woman… I recently had an ex-boyfriend contact me and want to visit. He was nice enough, and it was an early high school relationship so I don’t think much about it at all anymore. However, I see the relationship much more honestly now than I used to, and truth be told it was pretty abusive. Full of pressure and manipulation and hormones… just yuck. He also really did some crappy things that were just passed off as being normal, that were really not okay. During that time I was stuck in an awkward place- one of youthfulness and wanting to experience new things, but pressure on both the home end and the social end to be someone I wasn’t. It was incredibly stressful for me, and I found myself feeling stuck all the time. Wanting to confide in someone, but never truly being able to due to the expectations that surrounded me. Anyway, I felt awkward about rekindling any kind of relationship with this guy, however nice he is now. I also felt bad about saying no, but I did it anyway. I wrote him a message explaining why, and it felt really good to do. I’m sure it was not a fun message to receive, but I felt like it was necessary. I guess my point is, if I didn’t have a little woman to raise, I’m not sure I would have sent him the message. Here’s a little clip of what I wrote:

"… I really feel like this is a tune I hear far too often when I talk to my women friends about past relationships. Almost all of them dealt with some version of what I’ve described at some point in their lives. They’ve had to actively put energy into healing those wounds, some of which are really difficult to address. Many of the men who perpetrated this abuse fall under the category of "nice guy" and are somewhat oblivious to the damage and pain that they caused. Many women feel scared to speak up and ask that these men take responsibility. Now that I have a beautiful daughter to raise, I’m determined not to be one of those women."

Anyway, I’m experiencing healing and growth in ways that I totally didn’t anticipate. Much of it comes from finally being able to truly value myself because now I know the love of my partner and children and feel accountable to them. I’m an integral piece of this puzzle here, and I do myself no favors by ignoring the baggage that might hinder my growth in the future.

I’m sure a lot of this is coming from this book I’m reading called A Language Older Than Words, by Derrick Jensen. He really takes some time to talk about the abuse of women in our culture (so much of it unconscious and glossed over, or worse, is sometimes even praised, but truly detrimental nonetheless), and it’s been really enlightening. Anyway, the book also talks a lot about working to communicate with the natural world and learn its language, as opposed to just assuming that we’re the smartest most deserving species out there… This kind of thinking is all-pervasive in our way of life, and we don’t even know it. Even in our efforts to harness the energy of the world in a "sustainable" way, we’re still impossibly arrogant for not asking the world what it needs and giving back to it. A quote from the book:

"What if life is a web of immeasurably complex and respectful relationships? What if the purpose- even the evolutionary purpose- is for each of us to take responsibility for all those around us, to respect their own deepest needs, to esteem and be esteemed by them, to feed and feed off them, to be sustained by their bodies and eventually to sustain them with our own?" 

Lots of food for thought these days.