When I was little I remember noticing my mother talk to herself. I would see her lips moving while in a deep state of contemplation. It was when she was busy fulfilling one of the many mundane tasks women of her generation were expected to perform. My father didn't know how to cook an egg, and so she was responsible for all the cooking and cleaning for our household. And she worked.
When I was 8, she enrolled herself in a nursing college. Up until that point she worked as a barber.
When she graduated from her schooling, she got a job as a triage nurse and spent many days and nights immersed in life and death situations. Her name is Irena. In many cultures her name means 'healer' or 'the one gifted with story'.
My mother endured a life with my father for 14 years. He was an impossible man. He reminds me of Trump in his level of ignorance and zero emotional IQ or self-awareness, but my father's redeemable aspects are that he is an intellectual genius, a mathematician/scientist who thinks reading the Kabbalah and Physics textbooks is fun. He points out the profane in funny ways, and laughs at himself at times, so his narcissism is tempered by his ability to tell really good stories. I do love him, despite his misgivings.
Up until the point where my mother was able to earn enough money to buy herself a used car, she relied on my father and public transportation to get around town. When she brought home her first set of wheels, my father was in disbelief. He was solemn and stressed about what this new purchase meant; that she would rely on him less for support, and perhaps cease to need him altogether, which is what ended up happening. What did he bring to the table, apart from being a provider? A lot of heartache and stress.
She was done with that.
He paced around the car for hours in the driveway, mumbling to himself about the make and model, criticizing her choice, condemning her for the purchase.
It wasn't long after that she filed for divorce, and we spent one whole year trying to sell the house we lived in. I can't imagine what it must have been like for her to endure him for a whole year knowing that it was over, yet having to maintain her dignity and self-respect amidst the chaos he relentlessly brought.
My father is a miserable person. I believe he's on the spectrum due to a substantial dose of heavy metals he received while getting "treatment" for having undescended testicles in his mid-teens. These metals are found in the injections doctors give our children at various inoculation times in their early lives to "prevent" future illnesses. The cost of risk to our children's humane development is great, but big pharma being what it is, is less concerned with our children's welfare, and more concerned with raking in the dollars in the name of "healthcare".
Modern diseases are a reflection of the consciousness of our times. Whatever we are facing health-wise is a testament to the inner worlds we live in. Healthy inner-world, healthy body and mind. Toxic inner world, unhealthy body, mind, and spirit. But what of the external world? How does it affect us?
My father lacks the ability to introspect. Being in a relationship with a person who doesn't have the capacity to see their parts, the good and the bad, is dangerous for us. That's why it's important to listen to The Voice that lets us know when we are becoming sickened by our environment.
In modern psychology, the focus tends to be on how the patient spent their early years and how the affects of a their environment led to mental health problems, but it rarely addresses how we can become sick by the culture that surrounds us. Yes, most of the ailments we have are due to childhood hardships within our family systems that we lack the awareness to process in a healthy way, so we seek help from professionals. But when we realize that a culture is the external family of our personal family, then we can see how the unhealthy external family (culture) can dictate what happens within the four walls of our home life. And when we can make that connection, we can bestow our family with grace and compassion.
You can determine a culture's health by the way it treats its elderly, women, and children.
To put it plainly, the elderly, who are gifted with story from a life long lived, are relegated to nursing homes and almost forgotten, children's holistic health and education welfares are given the least priority, and well women? We have to fight to exist, naturally.
If you have a womb, you know what it's like to bleed each month. For many it is a painful process. It's uncomfortable, our moods waver, we feel exhaustion from the act of emptying our wombs with blood, we are in a state of deep connection to our bodies. It's a life/death/life cycle. And what does our culture ask us to do during this time? It asks that we maintain our productivity, to show up or get out, to ignore our bodies needs and urges. It asks that we deny what we know we need. To speak about it causes discomfort in our male counterparts, because how could they possible know what it's like to live in a body that has a lot going on? There is little to no sympathy or compassion, and worse still our bodies are up for grabs to the strongest, richest, and most powerful bidders. We have been denied our birth rights, yet many women are blind to see how their vitality is robbed by toxic external forces. And instead of uniting and taking a stand to say, enough is enough, they are too busy buying useless shit, injecting their faces with poison, and perhaps perfecting their "stay busy" skills (been there, done that).
If we are not busy doing, then we may notice that we are not being.
There is a Voice that speaks to me about the woes of our world. I know that I have to do this ridiculous tippy-toe dance around people's comfort zones, because to speak the truth openly about our sick culture means to disturb the demons that live within us derived by its toxicity, and those demons do not want you stepping out of your comfort zone, because its primary food source is your fear.
The Voice tells us that something is wrong, that we have been captured either by our own negativity, or by an external force. The Voice urges us to stop and see, to peer behind the curtain, to not turn away from what lies beyond the overt, to not shy away from staring into the arterial blood that is hemorrhaging from our souls. The Voice asks us to survey the carnage, take stock of what has been lost, and do something about it. The Voice asks us to seek solitude, so that we may introspect, so as to create a strategy that will release us from the grips of what has captured us. It's subtle, at first.
Art is the way to liberation and deep soulful connection with self. When we see what is wrong, we can use our art to communicate it. When we feel what is right we can use our art to express it.
I know many people who claim they are not artists and that they don't have knack for it, that they never received that gift, which is a bunch of boloney. The problem here can be found in the memories from our home life and within our culture. What did your school value? What did you see your parents do with their time? Did you see them create? Did they send you off to lessons to create art, or did they model the process for you?
Art can be found in anything; the garden, the meal, the poem, the act of love making, for a few examples. Knowing what art is, the expression of the divine within us, connects us further and deeper into the process of knowing who we are. The Voice within us asks us to find the flow, in whatever causes us to sink deep into our knowing. When we prioritize the wrong things, life becomes stagnant. When we are in alignment with the divine force within ourselves, life is robust. To pause and ask ourselves some important questions about the life we are living, the quality of our relationships, and the feelings we have about ourselves puts us on the path of a Hera's/Heroes journey. Courage and bravery in art for the win!
It is on this path that we find meaning, and meaning is all we need to endure the process of individuation, which naturally causes us to live the life that matters to us, and we will do anything to protect the spirit child we have worked very hard to raise up. In order to heal our culture from its toxicity, we need to find our soul-voice, and to exercise it in every possible moment, in every situation and interaction.
It is vital, smart and wise.
Gracias Madré por todo.
So make your art, be it with words, paint, or pottery.
Stop with the excuses.
Stop with the chemical addictions (mental and physical) that rob you of hearing that Voice, which speaks when you are clear enough to hear from the place of your ancient origins.
Use your yearnings to attract people who feel deeply, love wildly, and who are able to express what's in their hearts without reservation.
We exist.
As for my mother, she had one love after my father and has settled into being an old-wise-crone.
God bless her divine soul. My father lives a marginal life, but at times he can be kind. At times he has humor, and that is enough.
Sincerely,
Mother Marian
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