This is Kyriarcy: a meditation on America, July 4th, 2022
Discovery is not recovery; putting the pieces back together is the recovery. Hmm. I'm not so sure anymore.
It helps my process (the one where I try making sense of things) to consider systems as they relate on a spectrum. To recognize how a single person or home/family system is a microcosm of much larger societal structures, even playing out a massive scale, of our world as a whole. Privilege and Oppression, how they intersect, exist in all on a spectrum.
I appreciate how Adrienne Maree Brown relates to this in fractals:
"in emergence, the whole is a mirror of the parts. fractal – the health of the cell is the health of the species and the planet."
This makes sense to me how "recovery" isn't actually a thing. Discovery is not only NOT recovery, but I no longer believe recovery actually exists. Not in a person, not in a community, not in a society nor the world over.
Recovery feels like there is something to return to, a "good ol' days" this work everywhere, from a person/family or a country/the world over. However, the only Truth we can ever know of life, resides in constant shift.
Life and how we relate to it, how we relate to one another is a constantly shifting affair based only upon our individual choices. These choices, which draw upon several factors (some chosen, some not) depend wholly on an individual's context, on a communities, context.
These choices depend on The Kyriarchy and how we relate to it. The current state of a person, a community and a society, the world over, defines their context. This is Kyriarchy.
Having arrived at a place of stronger awareness of my origins, there is a sensing I cannot shake. At the core of my Being, I know something that requires no validation from outside of myself. What this something I know to be true, is how people who experience Complex PTSD are a microcosm of the whole.
Folx with Complex PTSD are regularly considered "mad" once they are driven to "break." It is my sense and belief how this is directly related to relationships, to community systems. Systems, as in all of a persons relations' including those they are ignored, denied by; those who merely tolerate their presence.
A person experiencing complex PTSD, whether or not this is accept it as their truth, are not unlike every.other.human.being. We communicate as human beings, in context. While there is always personal choice available to us, in the form of who we choose to hear and to be in relationship with. Our choices boil down to whether we will listen/engage or ignore/deny. Worst case is when choose to argue or fla- out disbelieve someone, where they are coming from.
What I know is this: there is always, ALWAYS a deeper truth within every human being, beneath they way they communicate. This deeper truth longs to be acknowledged, understood, explored for answers if necessary, by theirSelf.
I no longer believe in justice on the whole. The only justice I can make sense of, comes from within. It is observed within my ability to regulate my nervous system in a world that allows such Great Harms to play out with zero accountability. Justice exists in my ability to stand my ground when people, places, things and systems work to instill fear in my mind and shatter my heart, break my Spirit.
Just as we have individual choice within our relationships to others, there is always an individual choice available to us; whether the deeper calling toward answers within are ever explored. Within an individual's relationship to Self, is where I believe the answers we need are housed and awaiting our unboxing. These answers want to be known and chosen. They want to be seen/heard and given a chance to be explored within. This offers an individual greater choice.
I think of my relationship to Self as my "inner work" my "shadow work" or my "Truth-work" as well as my "Kyriarchal self-awareness." This is how I constantly assess and reassess my personal context, my personal responsibility and accountability; both to myself and to those I am in relationship with. All of this informs how I show up in community. It is a daily practice and I typically mess up and fall flat daily. The good news is, I no longer give up. Not on myself and not on how I relate to my external work, my relational work. My transformational work.
ess up and fall flat daily. The good news is, I no longer give up. Not on myself and not on how I relate to my external work, my relational work. My transformational work.
I appreciate the Albert Camus quote in this Spirit:
"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."
As I acknowlege what is in me and how it got here, I get deeper and more into Right Relationship to myself. I am then able to determine who is for me, as well who is not for me. Then I have the option to choose well, how I will relate to them.
America is NOT, nor has it ever been FOR, far many of those who inhabit her lands. America, like all systems, is run by people. These people who continue choosing to ignore, deny and dehumanize too many of her people must be stopped. Especially those people who hold power over others. I am constantly working out within myself, how to relate to my country and the whole of her people.
Trying to stay curious and open as I wish to be more of:
•How are you choosing to relate to yourSelf in these Times of Trial, of Great Shift and Change?
•Do you want to return to or retrieve/recover something? Did that something ever prove itself to work for the whole (all of America's People.)
•Do you have the access and support to look within, to choose yourSelf?
•If yes, do you believe this inner-work can assist in a process of freeing yourself?
•What does freedom mean to you?
Free from belief systems that exist in you, but were originated by others?
•Freedom from being controlled?
•Controlled how?
•How do you use your personal freedoms?
•Do the freedoms you hold dear cause harm to others?
•How does causing harm to others free you if it steals from or oppresses another person, especially someone with fewer resources than you enjoy? What if that person is a child?
•What does change and/or a new way of being represent to you?
•Is it exciting?
•Is it scary?
•Why?
•Do you have other questions or ideas?
•What are you choosing to believe?
Today I am choosing to believe transformation and revoltion is just as much an inside job as it is an outside job.
I am choosing to believe that we cannot make people riot, they need to both want to push on oppressive forces (have the will) and the energy/resources.
•How can we share resources to support those who want to riot against these machines in efforts toward greater equity for all?
As always, thank you for reading. Thank you for being here. Shared from a place of love.
-Lace
p.s. Here's a new serenity prayer I am getting behind, in the Spirit of 'Discovery is not revolutionary. Creativity is Revolutionary.”
Wish I knew who to credit for this new prayer.
(Image description: dark purple text on light purple background states-
"God, grant me the patience to accept the systems I cannot change today,
the courage to strategically enact progress when I know I can,
and the wisdom to know that despite structural oppression I still can make a difference.")
(Image description: white text on orange background states-
"We are in a time of new suns.
We have no idea what we could be, but everything that we have been is falling apart.
So it's time to change. A
nd we can be mindful about that. That's exciting.")
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