Tag Archives: Feminism

Archetypes

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There are two modern-day archetypes for a 
woman (at least this one)

The one who loves and understands, 
makes concessions

Then there's the one that says 
no 
to all of that 

I strive for the first and then feel 
robbed
I move to the second and feel 
mean and cold, you know not very "lady-like" 

When I was taking care of my dad, 
insulin shots, glucose checks and constant meal prep
I also had to work. 
I'm a therapist and a school social worker. 
I love my work 
But this was hard: managing dad and maintaining the life I had built
Where all day long I hold space and no space is held for me

I resented him
How he'd come up the stairs, sit at the kitchen counter and smile
He loves watching the women work 

One morning as I struggled to get myself out of bed for another round 
Him, at the counter, me forlorn scrambling his eggs
He said, you would feel better if you helped people and smiled. 

There's a saying, often on mugs, pillows and inside pretty frames:
A wise woman once said, "Fuck this shit" and she lived happily ever after.

~

I did say “fuck this shit,” once I found a nurse to come in every weekday morning so I could move him back to his house.

I go to his house on weekends, give the insulin, drop off the groceries and prep the food. This morning, I stayed, ate breakfast with him and had one of our old father/daughter talks I once enjoyed. Sometimes his mind is so clear he becomes the dad I’ve always known.

What I learned from this time of taking care of my dad, and as I still learn because this isn’t over, is although this has been really difficult, I see where I was causing my own suffering. I see how I kept bouncing back from one archetype to the other. As a woman, in the patriarchy, with a dad who is accustomed to the “women’s work,” I felt pressured to do my work with a smile—you know so I could be loved and approved of. But I felt burdened and pissed and abandoned my own needs. And then really pissed being judged by those who have not helped in the ways that I have. My dad didn’t have to take care of his parents, except for one summer taking care of his mom who had Alzheimers. My dad is not a therapist or a social worker. My dad is also not a woman.

So I’d swing to the other archetype and say, “fuck this shit.” It brought relief. It feels good not to give a shit for a bit.

It took my own mental health crisis about a month ago to realize I matter, and I don’t have to be a victim or a martyr to matter. I experienced the weight of caring for others. I began to understand how I was not shielding my emotional, physical, and mental boundaries and no one was going to save me from doing this to myself. Only I was. So I got help.

The days now seem to move a bit more fluidly, sometimes even joyfully. Mentally, I protect my boundaries by doing what is needed without the incessant inner dialogue about what I am missing out on in my own life. Emotionally, I protect my boundaries by creating my own support structures and physically, I protect my boundaries by giving my home and work back to myself. I notice when I am with my dad, like this morning, I do not feel burdened. I am with him. I do not know how much longer I will be able to.

Thanks for listening,

Nikki, The Soul Reporter

The Moon Turned to Snowflakes

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The moon turned to snowflakes

The night a woman’s rights were taken. ~ a dream I had

That was the dream the night before RvW was overturned. The sun, to my left, and the moon, to my right shared the same panel of sky. I stood in a boat, on the ocean, near the shore. I was mesmerized by the moon, for the sun was just a faint, dull circle shrouded in gray haze. The moon, also shrouded but not in haze, but within a shiny half black and silver cavern. I could not take my eyes off it. And then the moon crystallized, transforming into giant, majestic snowflakes. A mist began to overtake land and sea, and the tide turned; chaos ensued and I had to get to shore. But the point was the snowflakes.

~

At the request of a therapist, I’m again, picking up the book, Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. I reread the introduction. In it she lists symptoms of a woman who has lost her Wild. I have the majority of them, but this one captured me: “…or intertia because that is the safest place for one who has lost her instincts.” I opened my journal and wrote: I have lost my fucking instincts! Last time I truly had those was in my early 20’s. I was with a child, but without a man, and not tainted, domesticated or yet fully reactive to my childhood trauma.

Not only have I lost my instincts, I’ve lost my creativity. It reminds me of season 4 of Stranger Things. Eleven has lost her “superpowers” (of course given and rediscovered to her by “man.”) Like a miner I am digging, seeking in the dark where I lost my superpowers. Was it one event or the slices and cuts of many….? I am also asking, is it too late? In Stranger Things, they keep seeking, digging and fighting and face the darkest spaces and entities just to understand, restore balance and help the people.

The reading of “Wolves” is naming the longing, the awakening of my Wild and also the resistance and push back to what oppresses it. I’m seeing how deeply I have blamed myself for the inertia that caused the weight gain, the depression, the silence, the relationships I am still in and the books I’ve still not written. I’ve been domesticated, altered and suppressed by the patriarchal culture— maybe not specifically and overtly, but generally, collectively and covertly. Inertia, then, was and often still is my safe place.

But I am awakening, beginning little by little to open my eyes, seeing the oppressor for what it is and seeing the impact it has had on me, on everything and everyone. Yesterday on my walk, I took the “short cut”, over a wooded bridge across a marshy area. I stopped and noticed the red-winged blackbirds in the reeds, the cattails bowing like patrons at a queen’s parade and the water, murky with green algae film. On the surface it looks stagnant and toxic— inert. But, who or what but Life itself knows what is present below, what organisms are a vital part to all of Life.

I have become swamped. Heavy, murky, seemingly lost my way and can barely move. Within my own inertia a self has been formed, a self safe and hidden in the murky waters, afraid to move too far from the swamp. Stay too long, naturally toxins, disease and self-defeating behaviors flourish. But open my eyes and really see where I am and start to smell the stink of unmoving water and start wiggling my fingers and toes, and becoming mesmerized, not by something more in some other place beyond myself as I did in my youth, but mesmerized by what I know is already present, and becoming the snowflake inside the moon. 🌙

~Nikki, The Soul Reporter

Declarations, toxic masculinity & protecting our feminine borders

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This Father’s Day I declared that I no longer hold, accept or take responsibility for the insecurity of men, or the ignorance about their sense of superiority and dominance over women.

Whether that insecurity and ignorance takes the form of verbal, sexual, emotional, or physical abuse or is just a mindset, I am now one less woman to create a safe and generous space for it. This occurred to me on my daily walk yesterday. I wore a romper. As I walked across the street, a man in a truck waited at the stop sign and (in my head) watched me walk. Instantly, my head dropped down in shame- hoping he was not noticing my menopausal belly and find me unworthy. The next instant my mind flooded with all the times I do this on my walks. And then it flooded with all the major and minor abuses women and girls, including myself, have received by men.

As a young girl, my father made a pig sound when I ate. He also did not talk to me much when I was young and that made me feel ignored and unseen. I have watched male family members treat my two daughters differently— where once they were adored as children and then abandoned once they grew breasts and hips. I have heard stories of fathers laughing at their daughter’s “mosquito bites.”

Girls gain their sense of self-worth from their fathers so what do we think is the message a girl receives from a father who makes fun of her developing body? A father who oinks when she eats? A father who doesn’t say, “Hello, how are you” after a school day? A father who works all day and then is angry at the dinner table? A father that only disciplines but does not love? A father who is absent?

These girls become women and some of them marry men. They marry men who cheat. Men who ignore. Men who abuse. Men who laugh at them. Men who drink too much and do drugs. Men who try and find ways to make them wrong. Men who dismiss their experiences and do not think they can come up with ideas of their own. Men who call them crazy. Men who are silent about other men who abuse or worse, defend them.

As anger, regret and sorrow filled me, I further declared that my sense of worth no longer comes from a man be he a stranger or someone I sleep next to every evening. My sense of worth comes from me. And further, my body, mind and surrounding energetic field will not support, sustain or allow the projections of man’s insecurities.

Men have a lot of work to do. A lot of inner, introspective work. I dare anyone to show me one man who does not have ANY toxic masculinity running through him.

If we women continue to protect men, which is more about how we protect ourselves from possible abuse or abandonment, then I have little hope men will awaken to their ignorance and insecurity on their own. I say this because I believe it is an unspoken expectation that women are here to either accept or enable a man’s toxicity or it is her duty (a false belief we might have) to love or teach him out of it.

None of this is our job as women. It is up to men to love and teach themselves out of it. The only thing keeping toxic masculinity going is fear and ignorance- fear of the truth that men actually are not better, smarter, stronger than women. Fear of the truth of their own pain of having to be better, stronger, better. Fear of being equal and what that mean for them as far as sacrificing their unearned privileges. Fear of all their insecurities being exposed once women stop protecting them.

Donald Trump is the poster child of toxic masculinity. Only those men that are like him, and the women who protect them, believe in his bravado. The rest of us see what an insecure, wounded and sad little man he is. We see that what he does is all a cover for how insecure he is, how shitty he feels about himself and how full of fear he is. The role of Melania and his children is to protect him. They create a facade that this man deserves a wife and children by his side. They shoulder the burden of his shame because he cannot face it. I wonder how many men use their wife and children for these same things….

Let us take take pity on that, and yet know there is no excuse!

Men, put your burden down of upholding the lie that you are better, stronger, smarter. You’re not. You’re human, just like we women. We are more than capable and do not need you to be anything but equal, to be humans. We need you to reflect upon your unearned privileges, to take inventory of all the subtle and not so subtle ways you have hurt women and to show up having experienced and atoned for all of that.

Women, set your boundaries, protect your sacred borders and no longer allow the insecurities, the wounds of men, to infiltrate you. You need to mend, to heal, to love yourself, to know you are worthy because you declare it to be so.

~The Soul Reporter