Continued from previous post….
Plus, two resources related to journaling and writing
An article on the power of writing to heal by Linda Joy Myers PhD at https://memoriesandmemoirs.com/the-power-of-writing-to-heal-excerpt-from
A video by Dr Kim D’ Eramo about a journaling process at: https://drkimderamo.com/release-grief/
This post today is in some way the continuation of one of the threads from the previous post. Privacy violations and other similar interferences have been part of my journey. I have made reference to this in many posts, journal pages and artwork that I have posted over the span of these last five years. These types of violations are often insidious and happen across time and contexts. The damage these practices do on people’s lives is what makes them a sort of power tool in others’ hands. My response has been varied depending on circumstances. Initially, I dealt with this from a place of emergency and sometimes the focus was on individuals in various contexts and sometimes on agencies and authorities. I often lost sight of the interconnectedness of individuals and settings. It was probably all I could do in order to decrease the business around me, which was my priority goal initially. My efforts also served the purpose of making it visible; however, gradually, one realizes that perhaps a more empowering way to view and go about surviving these practices is through a systems lens for often oppression and injustices and microaggressions are systemic, I do not mean to say that the individuals that participate in these power games are not accountable or responsible for causing harm, but they are embedded in a system that propagates and encourages the shoving and pushing, the bullying, the violation of freedoms, the interfering, the breach of confidentiality, the running over and so on. Additionally, a systems lens prevents losing sight of the bigger picture and allows for responding rather than reacting.
Privacy violations interfere with rights of freedom and expression and they destroy people’s credibility, reputation and health, and ultimately, they are an assault on the dignity of both the victim and the perpetrators. They create inhumane and unsafe societies that lack pro-life values and holding environments for those in need. Instead they foster a culture of separateness, cynicism, apathy, competition and a mechanistic view of life. Those in power have always used these practices to erode and encroach upon people’s lives and to fragment and divide. One extreme example that springs to my mind are the tactics used in Nazi Germany, to mention one historical context only, where even young family members were encouraged to spy on their families and friends, supposedly to exterminate the enemy, often sending them to their death. In George Orwell’s dystopia, 1984, which describes a totalitarian world where an all knowing figure, Big Brother, gazes into the lives of all the citizens of Oceania with the goal to crush all cognitive and emotional expression and freedom, also becomes salient as I write this.
Despite the damage that rights violations and these type of practices have caused me, the creation of this site and my slowly cracking the shell and finding my voice has also come about because of the suffering and all that has taken place. There comes a point where you finally react or respond and you wake up and you collect courage and act from the place and the resources available to you in that particular moment without any certainty. Posting journal pages and ‘shitty first drafts’ (borrowing the term from Anne Lamott) has not been easy, actually it has been scary and riddled with uncertainty, but I felt that my response had to make this particular aspect of my journey powerfully understood. When we victimize and hurt others we can never be certain of their response, no matter how long or how much they may have put up with. Sometimes the victim is silenced for good and sometimes something happens and he or she decides to become the canvas that contains and makes the pain and the shit visible. And sometimes I think that even if I were hit by a truck today, I feel that at least I have managed to use words and images to become visible and speak my truth and values.
Through discussing journaling in posts I think I have also created a small crack in the culture of ignorance around the value of journaling, doing art, creative expression and why people in power have always feared creativity, even though creativity in its many forms and shapes is a vital part of our life force. In her collection of poems, Blue Horses, Mary Oliver writes “Maybe the desire to make something beautiful is the piece of God that is inside each of us”. We are all born with creative capacities to some extent or other and with the potential to use speech and the written word to express our deeper truths and longings. Martha Graham wrote that ‘There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open’. Why would God or the Universe endow us with these capacities or qualities in the first place? Would the Source of life not have created homogenous robot like creatures with no capacity for agency instead? To pick up another thread from the previous post, in her book, Black Beauty, Anne Sewell writes that “There is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham.”
In relation to the value of journaling and writing, I have mentioned elsewhere about the benefits derived from engaging with these practices and the research findings that are suggesting that journaling can not only impact our psychological well being and bring clarity, but can also bring about positive changes in our physiology. Personally, I have engaged with a variety of journaling techniques over time. In my earlier diaries I used free-writing and writing with my less dominant hand more often as a way to allow unconscious material, which is often symbolic and also may represent the level of understanding or processing of younger aspects of the self, as well as, layered narratives to surface. It is very hurtful to come to realise that what has poured out of a place of vulnerability would become available to others without our consent. It feels a bit like trespassing on our psyche, mind and heart and if this is too difficult for some people to grasp they could simply consider what trespassing in their homes or properties would feel like.
More recently, however, I have journaled and meditated on intentions and questions and have used much more structured practices. For instance, to mention the ones that spring to my mind right now, I have been journaling on questions like:
What would my Soul like me to know today? / What is not my life purpose and what has been culturally imposed on me? / What else do I need to face before I find my soul purpose? / What does it mean to live with an unruined heart? / Why am I on this earth? / What would it take me to live my purpose? /What’s my current duty? / What does love ask of me to do today? / What’s it all for? /Imagine you’re 90… what do you wish you had spent the last 20, 30, 40 years doing?