“Brady, I think it’s safe to say if you kill 18 innocent kids, you’re pure evil, totally sick, deserve to be vilified!” … When the Columbine High School shooting occurred, I was a junior in high school, studying journalism. I was told to no longer wear my long coat by my school administrators, because they wanted to prevent something like that from occurring in Porterville, California. My trenchcoat kept me warm on those frosty mornings, but I was informed that it would be better if I, “didn’t look like that.” I didn’t want to challenge the administration, so I left …
On forgiving yourself
“Brady, … I also find it hard to forgive myself for missed opportunities, fear, mistakes, etc. That’s hard to live with at times. … As a response to my previous post, I want to thank you for sharing this sentiment, and I’d like to spend some time with it. Forgiving others and being forgiven by others has a different shape and texture than forgiving yourself. It feels different too, because you must acknowledge what you have done and also how it has impacted others, as well as yourself. I like to think that most of us want to be seen …
On being forgiven
“Brady, … Forgiveness: its meaning, its application. What we can gleam from it? How to distinguish within ourselves when it is genuine? What happens next? What does it mean to forgive? How does it relate to the idea of moving on? Can there truly be forgiveness without forgetting? … This is a great topic, and such a necessary one to spend time on. As I tend to do, I like to sit a little longer with thoughts and feelings and find a way to describe what it is to sit with those thoughts, feelings, ideas, and questions. That stylistic preface …
In dismissing gratitude
Offering thanks and appreciation to a person, either for what they have done for us or simply for being in our lives, is an act of gratitude. Underneath that act is the feeling itself: an earnest acknowledgement of the importance of another and a desired response to reach back to them, with kindness, with warmth, with love. However, there are many ways that we can dismiss gratitude and many reasons that we make for not wanting others to reach back to us. We might have been the recipient of having our gratitude dismissed, and the messages that we have received …
On anger: swallowed
When angry feelings come up, they can seem overwhelming, cataclysmic, and downright petrifying. It isn’t only the angered, saddened, or painful emotions that are swallowed, because the happier ones can be swallowed as easily: “try not to get your hopes up,” “don’t just sit around smiling,” “don’t get too excited.” However, what I would like to spend some time expressing, is that when anger isn’t acknowledged and allowed to breathe, fearful consequences are compounded. As a preface to this article, I’m not advocating that we all should go around and intentionally be angry all the time, or that we should …
On anger: justified
How I see it is anger isn’t an emotion in the same way that happiness or sadness are emotions. Happiness and sadness arise from deep inner experiences of trust, while anger, at least from my perspective, is attached to the belief of rightness; trust and belief are distinctive, and their exploration is something that we will explore at another time. What I mean by, the belief of rightness, is that anger is more of a reaction anchored in the thought “(blank) is wrong!” That “blank” can be another person, a group of people, a country, a politician, or even one’s …
On sexual assault: one’s voice
When a person is sexually assaulted, their ability to say, “no,” is taken away. Their words, and the weight of their words, are emptied out and left hollow, and all to frequently, unheard. One aspect of sexual assault, this aspect of taking away the, “no,” of silencing, is an insidious part of assault because it doesn’t happen once. In the act of assault itself, a person receives the unwanted actions of another, and the assault roots itself throughout their body and being. The body, the mind, the heart, the spirit, and the voice, are all assaulted and each needs healing …
On feeling our feelings
In my practice, I see many people that have a difficult time understanding their feelings. Those persons often know their feelings as only “good” or “bad” and it is painfully difficult undergoing emotional exploration, or discovering particular shadings of each emotion. In most cases, those persons that have a hard time understanding their feelings also come from a personal history in which they were not allowed to feel their feelings. What do I mean when I say that a person, “isn’t allowed to feel his or her feelings?” Feelings can be silenced, strangled, or disallowed in many interactions. As children, …
On hope remaining
The myth, Hesiod’s telling of it and Bruce MacLennan’s translation, goes that Pandora was the first woman on Earth. She was given gifts by all of the gods, including a jar that contained all the evils in the world, which had one, “‘evil thing that all shall cherish in their hearts, embracing their own scourge.’” As we know, she opened the jar and let loose all the evils and vices upon the world except for one, Elpis, known as Hope. Hope wasn’t let loose in the world. Hope was kept inside. Hope remained. For many people, hope, in the lower case, is …
On being wrong
We like to think of ourselves as holding correct ideas, the correct political ideology, the truest religious beliefs, or generally knowing the right way to do things. However, when we come to that visceral realization that, no, in fact, we are wrong, we can experience a multitude of feelings and reactions, most of which we would prefer not to feel. I am not talking about the being wrong in an external sense, where another person or a panel of so-called experts labels you as somehow wrong. That is another topic (on public shaming) for another time. This experience of being …