what is safe

Hello, I’ve been thinking about what is safe.  Do you feel safe?  What percentage of the time?  In your home, outside your home?  In your own body?

Do you think you deserve to feel safe?  How about other people–do we?  Do you accept that what you need to feel safe might be different from what other people need?  Or you do try to force your round peg into a square hole, and suffer because you’re different?

Do you judge your own needs harshly?  Others’ needs?

Do you think needs are supposed to make sense?  Do you have a lot of requirements, around needs?  Have you ever bargained with yourself, trading one safety for another?  I think that’s really common.  I’ve done that for sure.

violence

I see women I love ally themselves with men who are violent and border on dangerous.  Some of my women friends think they have to, to feel safe in a brutal world.  They think the man has committed and will be there for them, protecting them with his violence, from outside violence.

But it’s not possible to throw enough meat to the monster.  If he’s violent, one day he will probably violent on you.  Sad but true.

Some people who’ve spent time in domestic violence situations aren’t comfortable feeling safe.  They got re-calibrated so safe became wrong, so it’s important to ruin safety or run.

Or safe is boring, and they only know how to do close relationship in a domestic violence cycle.  The highs and lows become an addiction.  I’m so sorry for those people.  My heart breaks for them, and for myself when I used to be partly there.

trust

Do you feel safe around cops?  How about standing at the edge of a cliff?  Do you trust yourself?  That can be a challenge for me.

Do you feel safe in a workplace or school?  I feel very unsafe in workplaces, which is part of why I don’t work for money.  Only a small part of me is welcome there.  When I can’t show up as all of me, that makes me anxious.

radical honesty

These past few years I’ve learned so much about being honest, that I’m unconditionally valid, I can trust myself, and I’m here to feel my feelings.  But learning all that doesn’t necessarily make me better at connecting with others.  When others have very different mentalities and ways of being in the world, my honesty and vulnerability can be considered a problem.  I can be perceived as too much, when I’m living in a world where others are tamping themselves down or have vastly different values.

I thought knowing myself deeply and being more real would help me more through the world skillfully.  But I’ve made myself more illegible and more of an outlier.  Oops.

Does the world want brilliant, creative people who know our own worth, what we’re here on earth to do, and how to be direct and honest about all that?  It depends on the situation.  But mostly I think easy, flexible, non-demanding people who don’t ask for much are considered ideal.  I’m more valuable for doing what’s expected of me than for my liberation.

It reminds me of men who go for younger and younger women.  They might be enjoying the perky breasts and youthful energy, but also younger women are less likely to know what they need, what they’re worth, and that they have more options than standard abuse.

fam

This is Ming with one of his kids.  They are so cute!

Ming is what is safe.  Bunny, my own body’s truth, resting in a clean bed, resting on Mother Earth, writing, dancing.  What is safe for you?