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Edited on September 9th, 2022

Ambiguous loss, non-violent communication, meditation and gratitude…..

“WHAT WE SAY matters. We’ve each felt the power that words have to heal, soothe, or uplift us. Even one caring remark can make the difference between giving up and finding the strength to face life’s challenges. We each also know something of the great harm that can be inflicted through speech. Sharp words laced with anger or cruelty can break a relationship and burn for years. Language can be used to manipulate and coerce on a mass scale, to fuel fear, war, and oppression, and to advance political agendas of genocide or terror. Few things so powerful are also so commonplace. Words are woven into the fabric of our lives. Your first love. Your first job. Your last goodbye to someone you love. Our beginnings and endings and the countless moments in between are punctuated by a play of words as we share our thoughts, feelings, and desires.”  Oren Jay Sofer

“Be aware that the grief we carry may be our own, or the pains of those close to us. It may also be tears for the world, the sufferings caused by climate change, human divisiveness, racism and war. These, too, are in our hearts. Yet human suffering is not the end of the story. When we touch our grief and tears honorably, they can empower us. They can lead us to care more deeply, to love more fully, to renew life through our actions.” Jack Kornfield

“It’s as if you were in a spaceship going to the moon, and you looked back at this tiny planet Earth and realized that things were vaster than any mind could conceive and you just couldn’t handle it, so you started worrying about what you were going to have for lunch. There you are in outer space with this sense of the world being so vast, and then you bring it all down into this very tiny world of worrying about what’s for lunch… We do this all the time.” Pema Chodron

“You’re just faithfully following your breath and— Wham!— you’re in Hawaii surfing. Where did it come from? And where does it go? Big drama, big drama’s happening, big, big,  drama. And it’s 9: 30 in the morning. “Oooh. Wow! This is extremely heavy.” A car horn honks, and suddenly you’re not in that drama anymore, you’re in another drama.” From Pema Chödrön’s book: Start Where You Are

Today’s post includes three more drawings and topics like ambiguous loss  and grief, and non-violent communication, as well as, a couple of quotes by Pema Chodron [Buddhist nun, teacher and writer]. In addition, I’d like to say that the underlying spirit of this post is gratitude. Even though I don’t write about it, feelings of gratitude have been salient while constructing this text.

I think Pema Chodron’s first “spaceship quote” is a metaphor of how we often lose sight of our true nature and of the vastness of the world of  which we are an intrinsic part of, of how we are oblivious to the bigger picture and how we so often reduce our experience to “the tiny world of worrying.” The second quote has to do with meditation and the nature of our thoughts. In the stillness of meditation, past and present experiences, thoughts, ideas, emotions, sensations, aches and longings, and future preoccupations arise and move through us.  I’ve intended to write a post on meditation for quite some time, but other ideas and topics become more salient and I keep putting it off.  I will say though that meditation has been a significant experience in my life, a tool and process that I am deeply grateful for. And even though meditating is not always an easy ride, it can become an empowering process. So, it needs to be trauma-informed, and at the beginning it may be wise and even necessary to have some guidance from good intentioned and informed practitioners. Anyway, I will write more when I do get round to writing about it in some future post.

In my recent posts on grief I didn’t discuss ambiguous loss and how this kind of loss complicates the grief process.  So, today I’ll very briefly refer to this aspect of loss and grief. I first became aware of this type of loss years ago while reading about the disappearance of people in Latin America under authoritarian regimes. While preparing for the posts on grief I came across material about this kind of loss as well. In one article, Ambiguous Loss in the Families of the Missing, Dr Pauline Boss [professor and clinical supervisor at the University of Minnesota, working to connect family science and family sociology with family therapy and family psychology] claims that one form of ambiguous loss is caused when loved ones suddenly vanish or when we are not certain whether they are alive or dead. She writes “For the families left behind—when soldiers are declared missing in action or relatives disappear during political unrest and civil conflict—not knowing whether a loved one is dead or alive defies emotional comprehension. Around the world, terrorists kidnap family members so often that the term “desaparecido” (disappeared) has entered the common vocabulary in Argentina, Brazil, Columbia, Chile, Panama, Peru, Mexico, and other countries.….”

In this article Boss discerns two basic types of ambiguous loss. In the first type people are physically absent, but they are psychologically present, and even though they may be presumed dead their bodies have never been found. In the second type, people are physically present, but due to addiction, deep depression or dementia, etc, they are cognitively and emotionally absent. With ambiguous loss people cannot move on. Not knowing for sure if a loved one or family member is dead or alive can lead to feeling helplessness, anxiety, depression, anger, family conflict, and somatization. It sort of has some of the effects as gaslighting. The uncertainty keeps people stuck. One cannot break down denial or let go or move through the grieving process. This happens because as Pauline Boss writes: “people cannot make cognitive sense of the situation; and not knowing whether the family member will return prevents reconstruction of family and marital roles, rules, and rituals. Ambiguity destroys the customary markers of life or death, so a person’s distress is never validated. The community loses patience with the lack of closure, and families become isolated. Ambiguity causes even the strongest of people to question their view of the world as a fair, safe, and understandable place. Finally, ambiguous loss that persists for a long time is physically and emotionally exhausting.”

Boss adds that “Bowlby’s attachment theory suggests that it might be impossible to let go of a loved one unless one can actively participate in the rituals of honour and farewell that begin the process of detachment.” As a therapist working with families she suggests that family members or individuals need guidance in order to express their anger, fear, ambivalence, hope, and also, they need to learn to tolerate ambiguity, participate in family or communal celebrations / rituals and in storytelling and reminiscing of the missing person. People need to figure out how to reconstruct their identities and roles and how to live without the certainty or else their grief will remain frozen in place.

According to Boss, ambiguous loss can also arise from declining health, eco-anxiety, divorce, loss of homeland through immigration, incarceration of a parent, and many other experiences. She, like many others more recently, also challenges the idea that we reach closure. She believes that it’s a myth we need to let go of. Instead we can learn to live the best we can with the grief and loss and make some kind of meaning of it or accept the nonsensical nature or meaninglessness of certain losses while finding meaning in something else.

Dr Pauline Boss talks about ambiguous loss and other aspects of her work at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woFXkVKbeWA   – The Myth of Closure

And a meditation on grief by Jack Kornfield at: https://jackkornfield.com/meditation-grief/

I will also refer to a podcast with the title: Stretch Your Heart and Say What You Mean, where Oren Jay Sofer and Tami Simon talk about mindfulness based non-violent communication.

They discuss how Oren Jay Sofer integrates mindfulness, somatic interventions and Dr Marshall Rosenberg method of non-violent communication, the power of intention in communication, curiosity, humility and kindness, how the focus on what matters reduces reactivity and defensiveness, the link between compassion and non-violence, and the value of shifting from projecting blame to clearly expressing our needs. In relation to our needs Sofer says: “So we can just ask ourself that question throughout the day as a way of learning how to shift the focus of our attention, from what we call in Nonviolent Communication “our strategies,” which are the specific behaviors and actions we undertake as human beings, to the underlying need. “What’s driving this? What am I really reaching for in my heart here?”

He notes however,  that this is not that easy because our early experiences and enculturation have often blocked our capacity to even be aware of our deeper needs.

He says:

“…. by the time we’re probably eight or nine years old and then from there on, we’ve all internalized a whole bunch of messages about whether or not we’re even allowed to have needs and which needs are OK for us to have based on the gender we’ve been socialized into, our class, our education background, our culture or religious background. So for me, being identified as a man, it was OK for me to feel angry and to have certain needs, but it wasn’t OK for me to feel scared or vulnerable or to want reassurance or connection. Those were things that our culture and society shamed me for as a young boy. As we learn to identify our needs, we encounter barriers that are about how we’ve been socialized, which often come with very painful emotions and past experiences that take time and energy and effort to heal, to recognize the pain and the loss and the sadness of being told that you don’t matter. “You’re not entitled to this. You’re being selfish. What about other people?……

And to actually start to reexamine and reclaim what it means to be fully human and that to have needs doesn’t mean that other people’s needs don’t matter or become invisible. In fact, the more we are able to identify and acknowledge our own needs, the more aware and sensitive we become of others’ needs. It’s when we don’t allow ourselves to have our own needs that we tend to shame and blame and guilt others for asking for things.

Because if I don’t allow myself, say for example, to ask for support, to get help when I need it, and then you come to me and ask for help, there’s a part of my heart that’s going to be like, “Well, why do you get to have it? I don’t get to have that. Suck it up.” Or we start to believe the opposite, that my sense of self-worth is determined by how much I can help others. So we internalize all these messages, and all of this comes to the surface as we start to explore what our needs actually are and can be very challenging. So that’s also a very important part of the journey.”

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Art, ostracism in the work place, the complex and problematic process of diagnosis,  coercive control and hegemonic masculinity

“Beware of the destructive effects of subtle rejection and ostracism. To truly build a diverse culture where unique knowledge and perspectives are unearthed, we must understand the perverse incentives that push people toward seeking likability instead of competence.” Todd Kashdan

“One of the points I’m making in my latest book [The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture] is that this society places stress on families, tears communities apart, and isolates individuals. This leaves us with parenting situations where children’s attachment needs are not met. They’re left empty and hungry and seeking stuff from the outside. This book is about our individual health not being an isolated biological phenomenon. It reflects our relationships from conception onward, our community, and the entire culture.”  Gabor Mate

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.”  Maya Angelou

“Ignorance is not merely a deficiency of knowledge but, in addition, it positively apprehends reality in a distinctive way. And being a distorted mode of conception, it creates a view of the world that is in opposition to, and in conflict with, the actual way the world is.” Stephen Batchelor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today I’m posting a few more ink drawings and sharing ideas and links to material on topics I’ve been engaged with recently.

1. The first article [at: https://toddkashdan.substack.com/p/the-hidden-power-of-ostracism-at] is to some degree related to stereotyping that I wrote about in the previous post, and it is written by Todd Kashdan, PhD. The title of the article is: The Hidden Devastation of Ostracism at Work, and it’s about work place dynamics and the mechanics of ostracism in the work place often on the basis of underlying biases. Kashdan begins the piece reminding us of how few of us pass through childhood unscathed by incidents of exclusion. He writes: “It is easy to recall moments when we felt excluded by peers, and even easier when friends served as persecutors. While peers may have forgotten these events, I suspect you have not. Which raises the question: what is the impact of rejection within groups we affiliate with?”

He goes on to describe dynamics at work and how what might seem like meritocracy might be nothing more than a popular contest, which as he points out means that “people on the margins are rarely chosen, people with ideas outside of the mainstream are excluded from consideration. And people who look different, think different, or are wired differently are often defeated.” Kashdan suggests that this kind of ostracism works because it is often hard to detect or prove, but if the goal of a group is to maximize human potential, construct healthier cultures and produce fair decisions then allowing ostracism is “akin to intentionally handicapping group members.”

However,  Kashdan notes that removing popularity allows for diversity and access to new voices and possibilities. One way to move beyond biases, according to economists, Bruno Frey and Lasse Steiner, is to remove applicants, for instance, who lack the requisite skills and with the remaining pool, randomly choose who gets the job, reward, promotion, invitation, and so on, Randomness safeguards against, sexism, racism, ageism, affinity toward others with ideologically similar beliefs, a preference for the physically attractive and fit. It also decreases the possibility of favoring people with certain characteristics. Kashdan writes: “We also know that some personality traits are more desirable, especially high levels of extraversion (as opposed to introversion), emotional stability (as opposed to someone with mental health difficulties)…….”

2. The second article [at: https://berkeley.us14.list-manage.com/track/click?u=a8079f1782122a9da1dec00db&id=920afed9bc&e=56fa618356] is also related to the workplace and it is titled: Four Ways to Help Your Coworkers Feel Respected, by Kristie Rogers, Beth. Schinoff and Nitya Chawla. It explores how lack of respect is driving people to quit their jobs and four ways that colleagues can help. They claim that people are quitting their jobs over disrespect because disrespect is the denial of someone else’s worth and it directly violates workplace norms of civility. Moreover,  employees have a far easier time recalling and describing instances of disrespect or injustice than respectful or just treatment. Due to our negativity bias this is true for all of our experience. We have the tendency to remember the negative more than the positive. This both helps survival and hinders recovery and growth.

They distinguish two types of respect at work—the baseline level of respect that we are all owed as valued people and members of the workforce, and the respect that we earn for meeting or exceeding work expectations. It is suggested that respect should be shown frequently and consistently and to keep in mind the following four things:

* To respect the value of what coworkers do and to feel gratitude for everyone’s contribution.

* To respect coworkers’ individual job performance and give them positive feedback when they do well.

* To respect coworkers’ autonomy and to have trust in their worth and capacity to do the work

* To respect coworkers’ struggles and emotions and create a psychologically safe environment at work

3. Moving on to another topic, I’d like to share a link to this week’s Being Well podcast at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AefzvuBGOSQ , where Forrest and Rick Hanson discuss the thorny and broad topic of diagnosis for mental issues, but many of the things touched upon here could also apply to physical illness. Recently, I heard a woman politician, actually, the Greek prime minister’s sister, talking about her cancer experience and why she went public about it in order to help eliminate stigma around illness. She mentioned how even in parliament many people keep silent about their serious health issues or struggles to avoid stigma and shame and possible career related repercussions. I think it is time that as a collective we began to compassionately accept our human condition, which involves being frail at times, grief, suffering and distress of all kinds, old age deterioration to one degree or another. By embracing our humanity and understanding our common humanity we may realize our human capacities for more empathy and compassion. Stephen Batchelor says: “To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love.”

Some of the key points explored in the podcast are: the process used to give a diagnosis and the purpose of diagnosing. Rick and Forrest Hanson also discuss diagnosis through an evolutionary lens and situate it within cultural contexts. They touch upon the origins of mental health conditions, environmental and cultural effects and privilege. They also talk about differentiating between different diagnoses and the three subtypes of ADHD. Other aspects of diagnosis discussed here are: the emotional complexity of receiving a diagnosis and the need to pay attention to emotional experience as much as solving the problem, and the importance of mental health awareness, resources, and support from others. They focus on how we can all come to understand ourselves better, and be liberated by that understanding rather than burdened by it.

I think it’s worth listening to the episode because they discuss both the usefulness of pattern recognition, and also, the many problematic areas of the process of diagnosing, especially mental health issues. When I was doing a clinical programme the emphasis was heavy on de-contextualized psychopathology with very little recognition of trauma and circumstances, and  real interest in causality or critical evaluation. On the podcast it is suggested that the structure that’s used in mental health, in the DSM, is not based on a theory as to the causes of a condition or even the ‘how’. It’s basically a symptoms description, based on just the ‘what’. However, it is also suggested that the best way to improve mental health is to get families and children out of poverty, and that people’s capacity to ease and reduce their diagnoses is very situated in frameworks of privilege and financial opportunity. So, I think the points made here could expand our view of the whole process of diagnosing to serve all parties.

Points made during this talk include the probabilistic, messy and complicated nature of diagnoses and the dysphoria that arise when people are placed into boxes. As Rick Hanson says: “…. we don’t want to quickly snap them into some little box, people hate being boxed, I certainly do, as you know, probably even though I lived out of a box on wheels (camper van) for the last month, but it was liberating, it was a liberating box.” They point out that fact that diagnosis is situated in a medical context of pathology, “which is a whole can of worms, provides a portal into healthcare, and reimbursement, and money, and doctors.” They make the point that various so-called pathologies are actually adaptive in certain circumstances, particularly for survival. Seen through an evolutionary framework, for instance, “the upper 5% of the range of temperament in terms of, let’s say, hyperactivity and stimulation-seeking…. they’re (these kids are) bright, they’re creative, they’re vital in their body, they’re looking for a stim…… In a hunter-gatherer band, they would be a wonderful asset, in most of the situations humans have lived in until the last several decades around the world, their nature would be very adapted to their situation, but sitting still in a conventional first grade classroom for long periods of time is really hard for that kid. So, then you move away from a moralizing pathology into something that’s much more objective and physical that can be really freeing to the person, and then we can focus on what could be helpful to this kid.”

They refer to the influence of culture and historical era in relation to how we view experiences, and to the fact that people’s biology might be set up a little differently and then experience might have a bigger impact. They mention the problematic nature of diagnosis basically being a box score, a symptom checklist and on the problematic nature of the word “functioning”, which will be influenced by the beliefs and experiences of the person doing the evaluation. All in all, mental health diagnosis is extremely subjective.

The so-called ADHD spectrum is also discussed. Rick Hanson says: “I think that there should be no final ‘D’. I don’t think being highly distractible, stimulation-seeking, and/or impulsive is inherently a disorder, it’s highly adaptive and it’s been highly adaptive… for millions of years.” They use this diagnosis to show some of the existing problems around diagnoses like misdiagnosing and under and over diagnosing. For instance, white children are diagnosed with ADHD more often than black children and these “lower rates of diagnoses in non-white children are more than compensated for by disproportionately high rates of a diagnosis of conduct disorder” in black children. Also, men are diagnosed more often than women and this raises the question: Is this due to biological differences or could it be that boys are being over-diagnosed and girls are being under-diagnosed because they are acculturated differently?

Gabor Mate, who’s a physician, adds an additional lens through which to view conditions. He suggests that he has found that “all mental health conditions, or so-called mental diseases, and most chronic physical health conditions, are responses to unresolved pain. They are responses to life.” One well known example is Maya Angelou’s muteness for five years after the occurrence of certain very traumatic events in her childhood and how love and support allowed her to become Maya Angelou.  Dr Mate continues: “What’s the hallmark of ADD? Tuning out, absent-mindedness. It’s a coping mechanism. Contrary to medical nonsense people put forward, it is not a genetically inherited disease, but a response to early stress. The more sensitive you are, the more difficult it can be to cope with your environment. Early coping mechanisms, however, can become sources of problems later.” In relation to the link between technology and ADD he says: “We had these problems before we had technology. Technology makes it worse because it’s addictive and it interferes with human relationships. It’s a double-edged sword because it allows a lot of information to be available to people, but it also makes available lies, disinformation, fantasy, and venom.” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-seekers-forum/202201/the-myth-normal-speaking-gabor-mat)

Finally, Rick Hanson makes reference to the Rorscharch inkblot test. The inkblots are like those some of us might have made at school during art classes. I’ve always thought of the Rorscharch as something to use in therapy or elsewhere to facilitate exploration of one’s inner world or current pre-occupations. It could also reflect the richness of one’s imagination and could be useful in stimulating interesting discussions or free-association;  however in terms of it been used as an assessment tool I have always thought that it could be highly subjective and  dependent on evaluators’ ideas, biases and inner worlds.  He provides an example of his own experience with the test as part of a licensing  exam he had to take, and his realisation that there are many people who have been given a Rorscharch to decide what their sentencing should be in a criminal system, or whether they should be continued to be locked up based on those kind of findings.  He concludes that “it’s really important to be very careful with the assessments that we use, and very respectful, and take a lot of stuff into account.”

Image of the Rorscharch inkblot test

4. I’ve just completed a short but very informative Future Learn introductory course on Coercive Control in relationships and family systems. It contains useful information in understanding the basics of coercive behaviours situated in a broader social environment that often values and reinforces such behaviours. Dissemination of this kind of information can both awaken and empower those on the receiving end of coercive control, and also, influence men resorting to this way of being in relationships, and society more broadly, to disrupt and heal dysfunctional ways of being.

In the course they make the useful distinction between legitimate power and coercive control in relationships. Legitimate power could be described as the capacity to influence, inspire, motivate, and invigorate and where the rewards are shared proportional to effort. Coercive power, on the other hand, is based on manipulation, threats, exploitation, and selfishness where the rewards and benefits are not shared regardless of effort. It is supported that this distinction is important because often controlling tactics go unnoticed and requests and demands can represent the social expectations of women. In other words, “coercive control is about exploiting gendered roles (Stark, 2007) with the primary aggressor using the collective, ‘normal’ roles of wives and mothers as leverage.” Researcher Evan Stark (2007) has used the term ‘liberty crime’ to describe the actions associated with coercive control and thereby to diminish a partner’s autonomy and space for action. In the UK coercive control is now recognised as a criminal act. Stark suggests that coercive control occurs in public settings and is not limited to “behind closed doors” behaviour that restricts the liberty and free choice of the victim, but because it goes on in the prevailing environment of gender inequality, this ‘management’ appears normal or justified.

Interestingly, studies on coercive control have developed models using words like “webs” or “cages” to conceptualise these experiences. Torna Pitman, who conducted a study in 2017 – drawing on interviews on 30 women – shed light on some common tactics, attitudes and beliefs of men who use coercive control. “Presenting a model (The Trap) in the familiar circular design, the respondents in this study placed at the core (or centre) their partner’s sense of entitlement, being superior and having an adversarial (combative) attitudinal style. All their controlling tactics and behaviours rotate around this core. According to Pitman (2017) it is from the sense of always being right and unquestionably correct, that the demands for compliance flow” (cited in course material)

One helpful conceptual model, Social Entrapment, for partner violence was originally developed by James Ptacek in 1999. The basic elements of the model are:

(a) the social isolation, fear, and coercion that the predominant aggressor’s coercive and controlling behaviour creates in the victim’s life

(b) the indifference of powerful institutions to the victim’s suffering

(c) the exacerbation of coercive control by the structural inequities associated with gender, class, race, and disability (Tolmie, et al 2018).

Another conceptual model is: Hegemonic Masculinity.  Hegemonic masculinity refers to the ideals and practices that denote the most prized ways of being a man in any given context. When engaging men using these tactics, some questions that might be helpful for professionals to gauge how controlling they may be are:

“How important is fairness to you?”     /    “How has winning become so important to you in your relationship?”

And yet another model is the Duluth model presented in the graph below. I’ve referred to this in an older post.

In addition, research suggests that on the shaping of attitudes and behaviours of men who use violence “solely focusing on individual factors in men’s lives (e.g., attitudes, beliefs and investment in gendered roles) does not properly account for all the ‘structural systemic, organisational, community, interpersonal and individual levels of society’ (Our Watch 2019) that privileges men. The term hegemonic masculinity coined by Raewyn Connell (2005) in her studies of masculinity, mentioned above, is used to describe the expectations and constraints that shape men to act or perform to meet these standards, which include: emotional control; primacy of work / career and success; control over women; aggression; stoic individualism; toughness; distain for homosexuality; competitiveness.

All these markers of masculinity are unreasonable and restrictive and they suit only very few males; however, they “are often reflected and reinforced socially, structurally, and institutionally as the expected construct of maleness. Most men fall short on scales of measurement and comparisons and must negotiate the shame of not meeting these impossible expectations, particularly if the failure is public and known/seen by their valued group….” (Our Watch, 2019).Men differ in how invested they are in belonging to and taking advantage of, the dominant masculine model and the degree which they are willing to forgo benefits such as intimacy, closeness, nurturing, connection, and emotional capacity, for example, which are all fall outside the Man ‘box’ of acceptable masculine emotions. In many contexts to be outside the man box might be a dangerous place emotionally, psychologically even physically, as the dominant (alpha) males and culture reinforce the expectations of the group. Researcher Brene Brown (2017) who emphasizes the strong relationship between shame and violence, suggests that there’s a message that runs through many men’s lives of ‘do not be perceived as weak’,

As I end this part and post today, I’d like to add that, as emphasized in the course, understanding the origins of coercive behaviour and aggression does not excuse the behaviours. Many men have been subjected to the same constraining or limiting beliefs about masculinity and have found ways to negotiate hegemonic masculinity, to heal, confront their traumas, take responsibility and to let go of the privileges that hegemonic masculinity provides. Talking about these issues and disseminating information can awaken us collectively to better ways of relating, and also, exert pressure for structural changes to take place.

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Waves, art, freedom of speech, courage and stereotypes

“Surfers, because they’re exposed to the wild, have something that most of society has lost. Most of society is completely cut off from the wild, completely cut off from the natural world they live in. Climate controlled automobiles or houses or whatever they are… In this day and age where you have such fractured societies, who is there more prepared and more globalised and more integrated into the natural world and the global community than surfers?” Drew Kampion

“Courage doesn’t mean you don’t get afraid. Courage means you don’t let fear stop you. Courage, sacrifice, determination, commitment, toughness, heart, talent, guts. That’s what little girls are made of; the heck with sugar and spice.” Bethany Hamilton

“Keep in mind that grief doesn’t just dissolve. You will notice how grief arises in waves and gradually, with growing compassion, there comes more space around it. Let it take its time. The heart opens in its own season, and little by little, gaps of new life—breaks in the rain clouds—appear. The body relaxes and freer breaths appear. This is a natural cycle you can trust: how life—and the heart—renews itself. Like the spring after winter, it always does.” Jack Kornfield

“I am a democratic person and I believe in freedom of speech. Everyone can express themselves as they want. (Multiple) Views and opinions. It’s just so sad that there is so much envy and malice. Ultimately, I find once again that everyone ‘sees’ what is inside them.” Alkistis Protopsaltis  

Today I’ll be sharing some of the drawings I’ve been making while working on a new painting. Paintings are a longer process, but usually there are more art ideas than I could ever paint. So, drawing, which is a faster process, allows me to capture more of what is in and on my mind. These drawings reflect some summer musings on the beach and in the sea, and also, my engaging with material on free speech and expression, which, if one really thinks about it, are the two fundamental rights that impact every other human right, and also, every area of our life from the cradle till the end. Furthermore, these rights safeguard and help build more open democratic societies rather than darker authoritarian regimes.

In relation to free speech and the right to free artistic expression Kenan Malik, an Observer columnist and author, writes:  “It is in a plural society that free speech becomes particularly important. In such societies, it is both inevitable and, at times, important that people offend the sensibilities of others. Inevitable, because where different beliefs are deeply held, clashes are unavoidable.” Without free speech nothing would be challenged and no progress would ever be made. Despite this truth people, who criticize or challenge any kind of status quo or talk about uncomfortable truths have throughout history been persecuted, but without their speaking up there would be no movement forward. For women, talking about uncomfortable truths or desiring freedom of expression and equal treatment has been even a more dangerous journey. In an interview I listened to recently, Nan Sloane, author, trainer and speaker with an interest in the role of women in the public space, particularly in politics in Britain, talked about her new book which focuses on the struggles and severe persecution [including imprisonment in horrific conditions with their babies] that women who fought for free speech and freedom of belief suffered in Britain in the 19th century before the suffragettes’ struggle for political rights.

I’ve also started reading a summer kind of book on women surfers with the title Women on Waves by Jim Kempton. Where I live it is often windy, but we don’t have giant menacing waves like those in Hawaii, for instance, or other parts of the planet, that bring up primal fears and awe both at the force of nature and the brave and talented people that glide and dance on water.  In Greece I encountered big surf waves in Matala, in Crete in my twenties.  Ι was scared and yet I still went into the sea. I very much doubt whether I would swim in such rough seas now. The area has many caves carved in soft white stone thousands of years ago. There are also several caves underwater. They were considered tombs of the Roman and Christian Period. Many of them have rooms, stairs, beds or windows and this suggests that the caves were used as accommodation in prehistoric times. In the 60s and 70s they provided shelter for hippies. Jack London describes these giant waves and surfers beautifully:“Where but the moment before was only the wide desolation and invincible roar, is now a man, erect, full-statured, not struggling frantically in that wild movement, not buried and crushed and buffeted by those mighty monsters, but standing above them all, calm and superb, poised on the giddy summit, his feet buried in the churning foam, the salt smoke rising to his knees, and all the rest of him in the free air and flashing sunlight, and he is flying through the air, flying forward, flying fast as the surge on which he stands. He is a Mercury — a brown Mercury. His heels are winged, and in them is the swiftness of the sea.”

Women on Waves focuses on women surfers, their great accomplishments, their struggles and their amazing fortitude. Just skimming through the book one reads of amazing feats, incredible determination and love for surfing, battles with adversity, altruism, activism, and good works to support young girl surfers and other causes. One example is  Hawaiian surf prodigy Bethany Hamilton, who after losing her arm in a 2003 shark attack, courageously rehabilitated and less than a month after her ordeal returned to top competitive surfing and riding forty-foot waves. She went on to win competitions and the 2005 National Championships. After her experience she took up motivational speaking and writing eight books. A documentary about her life has inspired even more young girls. She has continued to surf and in 2013 she married and had three children.  Bethany Hamilton is not the only surfer mentioned in the book who triumphed over tragedy. Another surfer, Carmen Lopez, a blind Austrian surfer from Spain, also set an exemplary model of succeeding in the waves and in life. At twenty-one, she became the first blind surfer to compete. Story after story we see what women and humans in general are made of and what they can achieve when they dedicate their effort to the things they love to do and be, with the support of community.

I will end this part with a short extract from the book “Cunningham continued to document the women’s big wave movement. She seemed to understand seizing challenge and immediacy— the carpe diem of life— as if she were representing womanhood in all its global splendor. “Survival is part of what I do,” she said. “To me this is like an awakening: that I only have one shot in life, and I’m going to go out there more determined than ever.”

Also, as a continuation of the topics I discussed in my previous post I’m sharing a link: https://toddkashdan.substack.com/p/is-the-self-help-industry-for-black?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share, of an article by Dr. Todd Kashdan, in which he discusses stereotypes in relation to vulnerability and courage that Brene Brown and others have studied.  Unfortunately, we all construct beliefs and form opinions on first impressions, on little information or on the available stereotypes in society. In partly we do this because our brain facilitates the process of categorization and it saves us energy and time. Sometimes stereotypes might be harmless or they may be based on some general group tendency, but often they can lead to a variety of –isms. Kashdan writes: “None of us are immune to constructing beliefs about individuals based on a thin slice of information. It starts with assumptions about groups based on a small amount of information that we then assign to individuals who are part of that group.” He says that we often make assumptions about people’s interests, style or values, instead of controversial immutable characteristics such as sex, race, and age, and we think that prejudices are harmless; a humorous trope, but when making assumption about an individual based on what is visible for a few seconds, your construction of stereotypes is like sexism, racism, or ageism. Kashdan refers to research and suggests that we should not treat any racial group as a set of interchangeable individuals and it makes sense to allow for diversity within (not just between) demographic groups. He writes: “One of my favorite maxims of cultural psychology is that there is more variability within a group than between groups, but we ignore this for our desire for simplicity.”

I will end this post by sharing a meditation on grief – the topic of another recent post at: https://jackkornfield.com/meditation-grief/  by Jack Kornfield, Ph.D, a world-renowned psychologist, author, and teacher. He is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West.

And a very short video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pktDqFy5IcE with David Attenborough [English broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author. His filmography as writer, presenter and narrator has spanned eight decades] explaining: The Tree of Life