Perception is not Reality

Drudgereport.com

Above is a screenshot of the headlines today for the Drudge Report.

Drudge has been around since 1997, when Matt Drudge became famous for breaking the headline about the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Wikipedia told me this. (At least I'm honest about my sources.)

Since my last job, I've made it a regular habit to check Drudge for a quick scan of the headlines. Many of the news articles that I post privately on Facebook come from scrolling through this page daily, or from clicking through the sites that had articles featured.

I love Drudge Report because I think it tries to give a smattering of the many different kinds of political and science headlines that are going on each day; granted, it is going to be biased, but it is biased from a libertarian viewpoint, one that Matt Drudge doesn't shy away from.

If you can, take a closer look at some of those headlines.

Now, scroll through your feed looking at the kinds of news stories or articles that your friends and families have posted. The things you are interested in are going to vary wildly from you to your friends and family, because Facebook uses algorithms that notes patterns in your behaviors and habits about what you click "like" on, what you watch, what links you follow, who you search up, and probably even how much time you spend on a given page scrolling through content.

Do you feel better or do you feel worse?

It isn't a secret that viewing media and excessive use of screen time impacts your mental health.
Our brains are inundated with commercials, ads, clickbait articles, friends' pictures, rants, stupid videos, and everything else you can imagine. As an unstated rule of the internet, one, if it can be thought of, there is probably porn of it (this is pretty much universally true). And two, but also more to the point and less for humor, if it's been conceived of in some form as a piece of information, you can probably find it.

Thus: there are a number of studies, psychology articles, and commentaries on how excessive use of screen time diminishes your attention span and rewires your brain in very interesting neurological ways.
That being said, I'm going to get to the point which has to do with the title of this entry:

Perception is not Reality

I repeat, in larger font (now imagine I'm saying it with greater emphasis, maybe louder):

Perception is NOT Reality

Everything we are taking in—from everything we read or see on social media, news sites, television, the radio (for us luddites), and even from the people we interact with in our families and immediate circle of friends—is impacting how we understand what is happening around us.

Currently, we live a scary damn time, that gets scarier by the day. You'd think the world was ending, especially, if like me, you read the Drudge Report headlines everyday.

Newsflash: the world has always been ending. It feels like it's ending, every moment of each day for someone. Someone who dies in a car crash, of an overdose, of old age, a heart attack, other diseases, cancer. And the world ends in a sense for the people left behind who experience the grief of that death, that absence.

But it is also beginning: as spring rolls around across the world, and especially for all of the babies who will be born today, for the ones born yesterday, last week, at the beginning of this, and even the ones from last year who aren't a year old yet. To them, the world is still big, new, scary, fascinating, and exciting.

The writing of this post was prompted by a friend who expressed their anger at those who have a cavalier attitude about quarantine right now. They were upset at the people who go out, don't wear a mask, and don't consider the danger to themselves and others.

My explanation for that is those people don't see the virus as really impacting them in some immediate way: perhaps they have an idea of themselves as invincible and incapable of getting sick; perhaps they don't see it as a big deal, by operating on the view that the whole situation is overblown and if they catch it, it's not going to be a big deal because they are young and/or strong and healthy, and they'll survive it like everyone else; perhaps they really don't understand how infection works.

I find this image hilarious. (Image by Ahmed Hassan Kharal/Pixabay)

The individual reasons for people not taking precautions is as wide and varied as there are people and experiences in the world.

But I'm going to ask you this question: is getting upset and angry going to make the virus go away?

By getting pissed off, at how someone else is behaving, is it going to lift the restrictions or make your life better, more tolerable in some way?

Is you getting angry at some unknowable other, or actually calling someone out, going to make them stop behaving in a way that you don't like or approve of?

Does it really make you feel better and vindicated to win your point?

If they did start behaving that way, in whatever moral/ethical mode of appropriate behavior that aligns with your values, would that actually improve your situation?

Will it make you feel like you have a greater sense of control where currently, you feel powerless against a government that doesn't hear you and a germ that doesn't have the intelligence to comprehend societal structures and the danger to our economy?

This is probably going to be hard to hear, but your emotional reactions have no bearing on what other people, whom you have no control over, do. None. And they also probably don't care.

What they do affects others, especially if they have the virus and infect others, knowingly (a questionable action of judgment and morality to be sure) or unknowingly.

But do you have direct contact with that person?
If you did, would saying something to them make a difference?
Would it harm or benefit your relationship in some way?
Is what they are doing having a direct bearing on your life?
Is being afraid/angry/frustrated improving your situation, or not?

The people who piss you off—whether they are the people with cavalier "so-what" attitudes or people like me who keep saying stay home, either politely or quite rudely—aren't the problem.

They aren't your problem. You choose to make them, their decisions, their actions, your responsibility and problem. And they aren't.

One of the things I've had to learn is to distance myself from others from emotional and psychological contagion; this means taking on other people's problems or emotions and making them my own, thereby getting worked up over it. I used to do this a lot more; this becomes less over time as you learn healthy emotional and psychological boundaries.

This relates to this situation because 1.) several to many people are becoming upset over the actions of others and it makes them angry because 2.) they are struggling with a sense of control in their own lives over what is happening, and 3.) taking on more of a psychological and emotional burden than is healthy.

Recognizing your responsibility over your kingdom that God has given you, a.k.a. your spouse, children, home, work, community life, is what helps you realize what you have control over.

You cannot control others to make yourself feel better. Trying to control others via nagging, nitpicking, picking fights virtually and in real life with the people around you, or venting passive aggressively, is not going to alleviate the frustration, boredom, or anger you feel about this situation.

Below is an edited version of the text I sent my friend that sums this up a bit better:

I feel very much the same. It deeply angers and frustrates me how...[people]...are out and about and calling for a full reopening; but we have to remember that what we read in the news and on social media has a psychological echo chamber effect on us. It can create this sense of the world being one way, when maybe it’s only a part of it or it isn’t true at all. Here we have to use prudence. The number of people with so-what attitudes probably scream the loudest, and they get the most attention because they are subverting the accepted social norm that everyone else has agreed to quarantine. God has given you the kingdom that you are in charge of; remember that those people don’t have a direct bearing on your life and to recognize what you do have control over

What we read and perceive in the news is not necessarily true.

We create views of reality in our heads based on how we sort the information our minds are taking in, and we react to those things based on our previous experiences. The lens we use to view the world can further slant the way we understand the world, also shaped by those experiences. An atheist will see the world very differently from a devout Christian, from a Hindu, from a Jewish man. This is even further colored by the decade we were born in and the life events we saw happening in the world during our childhood; by the friends we keep or lose; by the events that happen regionally, across the world.

What you think is true, based on a tiny, tiny, tiny smattering of news headlines you pay attention to based on your preferences and tastes, does not actually mean it is true.
Now I'm not into the idea of gaslighting or denying that what someone experiences didn't happen.

But understand that you don't know everything going on in someone's life and the reasons that set them in a particular course to decide that one snapshot of an action that you took offense at.

Your perception of reality, especially if it's fueled by your anger, stress, fear, and general unhappiness with the situation, may not be helpful to you. It may be quite harmful, and your fear and anxiety, which is probably the most likely thing coloring your decisions, may also be harmful to those around you, especially children.

You have more control of your personal situation, and the ability to feel better about your situation, when you try to reframe things, bearing in mind what you actually can affect.

In counseling, there's a common understanding among those with addictions that you can't make someone choose to stop being an addict. To stop any behavior, the person has to decide that they want to change because it becomes a recognition of either I change, or I die (in some sense). We can't make people really change; you can threaten them, but that sews fear, mistrust, and hatred, and that shit will definitely come back to bite you.

But we also don't want to use manipulation, for that means misleading and defrauding the person to choosing our will by concealing or changing information to meet our ends; generally, this is seen as rather Machiavellian. This is wrong, because it denies them true free will to choose to change. However, sometimes it isn't a cunning calculation, but because the person doing the manipulation is emotionally/psychologically unhealthy and either not willing or truly unable to see what they're doing is wrong. Be wary of those people and trust your gut.

(Image by Klaus Haausmann/Pixabay)

At the end of the day, these people who refuse to "get in line" so to speak, aren't directly hurting you. Yes their actions for not wearing a mask or gloves, or their dismissive attitudes, may have consequences. If they get sick, then unfortunately, they get sick, and they and the people around them learn that lesson the hard way. As condemning as that may sound, it is the way of life. People live and people die. We make choices, good or ill, and we live with them. Even if there is forgiveness for us having done something wrong, the nature of that relationship is forever changed, and we ourselves are shaped by the process of trial and error, of learning for ourselves or teaching others, as we come to the end of our lives, imparting what we have learned.

Some of us are prescient for our age, some not so much.

In this time, we are not in control over whether we contract Covid-19 or not. It could come on any package, any grocery bag, any piece of fruit, from some errant cough, or any other number of delivery mechanisms because we cannot be vigilant 100% of the time. We fail and err, for we are human.

We have to strive to recognize the humanity in one another, whether we agree with people or not. And sometimes, the easier thing is to realize you can't control what other people are doing, but you can control (or at least acknowledge) your feelings in the matter, and move on with your day. You control yourself and your actions. That person is in their car, or in some other part of the country, and they have little bearing on how you choose to conduct yourself and order your life. They have moved on, and perhaps, taking in all of this news and imagining how things are getting worse, is perhaps not true.

We overlook the good that has come out of this time in favor of the bad.

Take care of the things that you can and cherish what you still have, because as dark as it seems, there is still a light: your health, your job, your community. Take heart. Hang on. Keep moving forward.

Coronavirus and Christian Resilience

Not my image.

I am not a theologian, nor do I pretend to be or play one on television.

But what I do have is life experience, and can offer some practical advice about getting through this time.

When bad things happen to us, there is often a sense of anger, resentment, frustration, worry, confusion, grief, despair, sorrow.
There are many different emotions we can experience individually, or clustered together, that seem to have no rhyme or reason to our understanding of why we are feeling that particular emotion.

Myriad reasons can be used to explain why this feeling now; sometimes the why is as important as the what is. I'm an existentialist and find the value of the why and the how. That's not for everyone.

What is important, however, is how you understand yourself, how you react, and how you are going to act/react in the situation as it continues or dissipates. 

The times are unprecedented for the current set of generations living right now.
But I'll give you a hint: the times aren't unprecedented overall.

I'll attempt to be gentle without mocking, but the fact of the matter is, history and previous generations have seen disease come like a thief in the night to steal your children, your family members, your very way of life.

A pretty flower for a heavy topic

The 10th plague in the story of Moses bears some similarity, as every firstborn child was taken.
How about the numerous outbreaks of plague that cropped up every few decades or centuries in medieval Europe, wiping out thousands to millions of lives?
How about the 1918 Spanish Flu?

For many, this time is a scary time because most of us have probably never experienced death, panic, and fear of the unknown in such a visceral way.
Neither have I, but I'm weathering it a little better than others, I imagine. 

I've lived through watching my family lose their house twice, go through bankruptcy, see my parents deal with depression in monumentally debilitating ways, saw their marriage disintegrate, and ultimately, watching my dad quickly decline due to illness over a nine-month period before he died, on top of other things...well, I had a lot to be angry at God for. 

Resilience is a tough skill to develop, but it is one that we work on as we live through struggle after struggle after struggle.

I hit a point in dealing with my trauma from the numerous things that had happened when I could no longer continue to minimize and act like my pain wasn't there. An entire childhood and adulthood of having my own feelings minimized or dismissed in favor of my parents' needs didn't teach me resilience. It taught me silence and submission.
FYI: That's not healthy to do to others, especially your own child.

But once I had come through working on giving voice to and finally acknowledging my pain and frustration, I learned some valuable lessons that currently are helping me in the current crises.

Everything that we do, experience, or feel, teaches us something. At the time that we are struggling there may be no clear answers, and for me, much of that took the form of deep anger at God.

And yet there is a hesitation to engage in anger at God because God is our Father, and we are meant to love him deeply for the gifts that he gives us.
But that is assuming that all the gifts God gives us are beautiful, happy things that delight us always.

A dear friend likes to intone the saying, "All is gift".
It took me some time to really accept the idea that all is gift, for this encompasses the sorrow, the struggle, the pain, the frustration, the drama of human suffering, as well as the joys that come: the birth of a child, the excitement of a date going well, the soft tender moments with your spouse when you just wake up.

All is gift.

But how does this play into resilience?

About two-and-a-half years ago, I read the entire book of Ecclesiastes.

It is probably one of the least appreciated books on practical advice I've ever read, and far easier to digest than even some of the gospels, as much as I love the gospels. 

The advice it gives is practical, and is the place where we draw the saying, "Nothing is new under the sun." 

Reading the book, it may seem a bit cynical, but then, wisdom is. 
Wisdom can be considered a combination of intelligence, experience, and learning, or technically metis, also known as the Greek goddess of prudence, wisdom, and learning.

Resilience, as far as I understand it, comes from learning over years of experience to be tough. But that toughness doesn't mean being hard and cruel, emotionless and stoic. There are times when that is necessary. Resilience is more than that; to be that kind of resilient would make you a hardened monster incapable of love, joy, and above all, of mercy.

Reslience can be worn down over time, but it can also be renewed and replenished through prayer, meditation, and self-care, through the interpersonal interactions we have with God, our friends and families, and with ourselves. It requires wisdom by sitting silently with yourself and reflecting.

Though I am just beginning my education in counseling, one of the things I notice is how few people reflect well on themselves and their situation. They wallow in despair or anger: 

The president did this!

I'm angry at that!

It's not fair!

No.
It isn't fair.
It isn't fair that we are all cooped up.
It isn't fair that the president and his administration probably acted far too late.
Yes, we are all angry, frustrated, and sick of this situation.

Suck it the f*ck up.

Expressing your anger and the unfairness of it all is reasonable and understandable. But try to not slide into the narcissistic pity party of everything is hard, unfair, and I don't like it. 
None of us likes this. 

Resilience requires maturity to recognize that things are tough, and above all, we must keep moving forward. 

At the end of "Meet the Robinsons", there is a great quote by Walt Disney. As the quote plays on, those three words are highlighted.

Resilience as a Christian, and for the nonreligious, as a mature adult, means realizing that there is only so much we can do. We feel helpless in this situation—which will become direr and our frustration mounts in intensity as the weeks stretch on and more people become sick, or succumb and die. You will feel helpless.

And you will learn the thing that I had to as I watched my dad slowly deteriorate and eventually die. 
You keep moving forward. 

Right now, this feels intense. Right now, it feels impossible to imagine getting through one day at a time. But we have to. 

Because if we do not, the real engine of our society, us, will stop. 
Coronavirus is one of many stresses, struggles, or traumas you are going to experience. You have the unique experience of knowing millions of other people are struggling in it as well.
I didn't have that. There is no one I know or am friends with who can tell you what it is like to watch your parent, someone you deeply feared, loved, and hated at the same time, die, and crawl into a hospital bed to cradle their body and weep uncontrollably at the lifeless shell you are now holding. 

The people who I have that experience in common with? Adults in their 50s, 60s, and 70s who have already experienced burying their parents. 

Most of my hardness comes from having experienced an inordinate amount of suffering on my own, because most people my age just haven't seen it themselves: not disease, not getting fired, laid off, losing their house, struggling to pay a mortgage. Certainly not all of those things by the time they hit 25. 

Resilience is knowing when to suck it up and tough it out, and when to seek advice from those who have the experience to understand what you have lived through and comfort you through it. And you, being that reborn, renewed person, you are given the gift of being the next watchman. That means sometimes giving advice, and sometimes, more often and the more uncomfortable option, is shutting up and letting someone else cry through their pain. Resilience teaches you to be strong and stronger for others who haven't learned yet the emotional and mental toughness to get through this. Ultimately, it stops being about you.
This time will teach you that people have gone through this before.

Because you are going to be called to be Charon, the ferryman of the dead, leading others across the river Styx in darkness, not to judgement, but hope. And the toll you ask of them is that they carry on, have strength, and pay it forward to the next person by teaching them, by being loving, by helping that next individual to stay mostly calm, to accept not with reservation, but with joy and thanksgiving, the best you can, to keep breathing and take each day as it is today.

Worrying about tomorrow will not bring you peace. Christ does that. He works through us, to be that person who comforts us, or offers a smile on a rainy day, and those are the works of mercy and charity that we can give. 

Have your anger at God about the situation and speak to him. Bet you thought I forgot that point.
Anger at God is real and understandable. Like all relationships, ours with him requires communication, and he wishes you to bring even that to him. Sob, wail, lament. Find a quiet room and have that low moment and allow the catharsis of simply acknowledging your frustration in this place where you are, will help you to recognize that all is not lost. You may not have control of the situation, but you do have control of how you interact, understand, accept, and act with accord in the kingdom God has given you right now. So tell him that deep fear or worry, and just sit and breathe, seeing what comes out of it.

Read Ecclesiastes, and if you have a chance, listen to the podcast embedded below.

Adam Young is a Christian counselor whom I have found to be helpful in understanding my own trauma by learning to engage with it meaningfully in prayer. I've done my raging at God, and found it wasn't really God I was angry with, but myself, the situation, the actions (or inaction) of others.



We live in a unique time, for our generation at least, to step up and be our own champions, and even the parent to ourselves that we need to stir us and tell us to stop wallowing in our self-despair and pity.

You act like a coward when you hide in the dark thinking the world is too big, afraid and self-pitying. It is too big; you can't handle it alone. Have your cry; rage at God and sob if you need to, or write a letter and journal it. But at a point, decide that you have had enough and stand up and do something. Acknowledge that you are in pain, but know you aren't helpless or alone. Know that while this discomfort feels all-encompassing, it will pass, even if it hasn't passed yet. Reach out to someone. If they reject you, reach out to the next person. 

And again.

And pray. 

This post was updated 4-4-2020 for factual inaccuracies.

The Struggle in Hope During Coronavirus

I've been a writer—or wanted to be a writer, for almost as long as I can remember. So I'm going to tell you a very personal story, about hope.

When I was a little girl, I used to love reading, by myself and with my mother, to escape the painful reality of the life that I lived. I enveloped myself in what my dad accusingly called escapism, which is true, it was.

For me as a kid, life was hard. I was socially awkward, didn't know how to regulate my emotions, and had no idea how to fit in. I had an endless supply of toys, but no siblings, and learned how to entertain myself, which wasn't so bad. Most of the time. 

School was a nightmare, where I was bullied for being that kid who used wet wipes to constantly guard against the invisible forces of unseen germs, a concept seven-year-olds weren't necessarily familiar with. My parents shopped at Walmart and Kmart, and my clothes weren't designer. We lived in a very blue-collar town where most of the families worked low-income jobs; there were many immigrants and people on the low-end of the economic scale. The kids from another of the local elementary schools called my specific neighborhood "the ghetto", which it wasn't. 

Often my family was plagued with money issues, which I discovered later. My family went through a bankruptcy and we essentially lost our home. We sold in the summer of 2004 and I spent the first six weeks of high school homeschooling myself, between emailing and faxing my homework back to school, while my parents packed up our house and we waited for our real estate agent to close on the deal. We couldn't live in the new house until the owners agreed to a sale. I spent two days out of every week getting up at 530 in the morning, driving two hours into the town we would be living in, and staying in a hotel with my mom while I went to classes. 

High school was rough, though there was less bullying to the same level as elementary and middle school, but the discord and abuse in my household remained quite steady. Verbal and emotional, neglect, intimidation, threats, gaslighting, guilt-tripping. 

My favorite of my father's lines during a fight were either that he would leave us, or that he would kill himself, and then where would we be? 

I grew up in an atmosphere of terror: of displeasing my father, everyone being a danger, a threat, someone to take advantage of you and cast you aside once they were done using you. So you learn to outsmart the other person, to never tell, anyone, ever, anything, about the family and your life, because people wouldn't understand.

Because they don't. People who have never been abused or grew up in abuse fundamentally do not understand the toll it takes on your mind and body, especially your outward trajectory of how you view people. 

People either are intending to take advantage of you, or they already are. No one is safe to be trusted, because everyone, fundamentally at some level is the enemy.

I am close to 30 years old. I can remember the fear and panic of all the adults around me during 9/11. 
I can remember not understanding the panic and scramble of the 2008 housing bubble, and condescendingly looking down on those people who were so daft as to be that irresponsible with their money and investments. 
I barely remember the dot com bubble, which happened a few years before 2008.

But I remember the Recession that followed 2008. I remember being insulated with college, and resenting yet being grateful for having a job at a public library that allowed me to save up my money and begin to pay for my college classes and books. By my senior year, I paid the full tuition for both semesters out of my own pocket. I never took out a loan.

Through all this, I still loved books, but as I became older, I found little hope in them. The world did not resemble my books; people were not heroic and they certainly did not live the ideals their favorite heroes espoused. So I stopped reading, especially after college.

The Recession was hard though, after graduation. I had gotten onto the track to become a college professor and consider pursuing a doctorate in communications theory and publish papers. I collapsed in on myself, in resentment that I didn't really want to do that and was being pushed by my dad to become a news reporter and news anchor. The dream was to go and work for Fox News. 

I was narcissistic, selfish, had an attitude and was angry all the time—I was not allowed to be angry, compared to the violence of my parents' own antics and histrionics. I had no reason to be bitter, volatile, and nasty. But I was. And the Recession made it hard to get a job in media, as newspapers were cutting down on staff and print advertising dried up. People stopped subscribing to a physical paper when it was so much easier to get the news instantly on the computer, and now, more and more on your phone.

Eventually, I landed two jobs over the next few years at media-related places. One was a newspaper. One was a magazine. Working in the industry made me jaded. News media is a place that attracts narcissistic, manipulative, hungry people. Read Snakes in Suits for a more complete understanding on corporate psychopaths.

I didn't have a religious upbringing. Contrary to what my friends or even my family may have perceived, God was a really distant concept. I didn't have an understanding of who Jesus Christ was until I reached my early 20s, and two of the men that I worked with, who were devout Christians, began to argue and defend the faith against my agnostic and hostile attacks.

In my early 20s, I began the slow, extremely painful process of conversion, a process which will probably take me the rest of my life. 

For a long time, especially after I moved to the Washington D.C. area, I was very broken. I still am, as a Christian person, in many regards. 
I was not chaste.
I was mean-spirited and gossipy.
I was resentful, racist, hateful.
Your sins and bad behaviors come to bear when you are confronted with truly good people, and then the shame and the guilt kicks in.

I did not attend church for almost a year, until I began attending a young-adult group, where for the first time in my life, I met real Catholics who took the faith seriously. They went to adoration, confession, weekly, even daily mass. People who had stellar, unblemished lives utterly in contrast to my own, and people who had been even more horrifically broken and scarred than myself. 

These were people who had managed in some miraculous way, to overcome.
But how? How did they achieve this healing amidst their brokenness.

Hope.

Google defines hope as

 


That was something I didn't have. I didn't understand that concept. Growing up the way I did, I was expected to be tough, maintain a strong front, not cry. In some ways, I was raised a lot like a boy. My dad actually refused to let me wear dresses and treated me oftentimes like I wasn't a girl, but that's another conversation. 

There is no "expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen", not when everything is impossible and dark.

Hope is an elusive concept for the lukewarm and the broken, whatever their level. It is undefinable when you exist in a self-made prison that the world is full of selfish, evil people who will use you if you don't protect yourself.
There are boogeymen in every corner. There are monsters in every bed. Sometimes, the monsters live in the same house; they're  not under the stairs or in the boiler in the basement.

Where is the hope in tomorrow, if all these evils exist, if the monsters are the people you love, if the world is a danger and a threat at every turn?
The hope is not in man. Human beings are fallible, selfish, hypocritical, and downright manipulative and diabolical, and even at the best of times, there are always predators, in every school, church, level of government, and business. 
Hope in man is foolish.

I found my hope when I learned to stop wallowing in my own self-pity. That required facing my dragons: it meant working through my abuse, sure. But it also meant learning new, healthy behaviors. It meant taking responsibility for my actions, to myself and to others, and my situation in life. Was I going to be selfish and angry, blaming everyone for how unsatisfying and awful my life had turned out? 

It meant:

Not spreading gossip.
Learning to be charitable. 
Striving to see Jesus Christ in people, whether they were Christians or not.
Not expecting other people to fix my problems, but also learning to ask for help in situations where I was really in need of advice or guidance.
Learning to trust in something greater than myself, a.k.a., God. Jesus Christ.

I realized a long while ago, that the suicidality, the abuse, the financial struggles, the Recession, the hard times—those came during childhood because they taught me valuable lessons to be tough, resilient, to think critically, to recognize real danger versus imaginary forces. 

It gave me the patience for other people struggling, because sadly, some of us suffer more than others.  Some people have a greater capacity for empathy. Others very little.
We experience greater trauma to be guides, to provide advice, comfort, reassurance, that the times are no harder than other times. We build on those foundations of strength for all the things we have gone through before to carry on, because that is where hope comes from, that it will get better. And we help others along, too, through God's grace working in our lives, that it is going to get better.
We learn to tell the difference between someone actually using us, someone lashing out and in pain, and someone who is thoughtless and didn't notice that they're insensitive. We learn.

It may not seem like it, but our brains and bodies have the capacity for great healing for many wounds. Study anything in neuroscience, about how trauma wires the brain, but also about how trauma can be rewired, with effort over time, to spiral up, rather than down, and the doubt of an intelligent creator begins to ebb away. In time, it gives way to hope. 

Hope becomes wired into our bodies and our very brains when we begin to pause and reflect, and practice it over and over again. We reason, we consider, we review, we think. We let go of our trauma, because once we realize there is another path, we crawl slowly towards it. Some days we drag ourselves through; on others, we run full-blast, our hearts pounding a steady tattoo ready to explode from our chest with vibrance, love, and light, which we want to share. And that is joy. Joy and hope, that things have turned out, after the long darkness finally ends.

My hope comes from the example set by the amazing community of Christians that I met and made friends with in the three-and-a-half years that I've been living here. I thought the world was hard and nasty because that was what I was exposed to.

The world is still that way in many places.
But the people I met, who were patient with me in my healing journey from selfish rage to being a little hot-headed, was divine grace.
People taught me through their repeated behaviors, just their ways of living in the everyday, that while the world is rough and callous, not everyone, everywhere, is that way. They were kind. They listened, they cared when I cried or expressed that I was afraid or frustrated. And because of that patience, I learned to trust that they cared, and that it wasn't a lie or manipulation. That required hope, that my trust in them would not be betrayed or let down. It took courage.

Some did not have the capacity to walk because the flood of trauma I was pouring onto them was too great for them to bear. 
Some did have that capacity, and the patience, to wait and walk alongside me as I learned to overcome my storms, to sort my pain, to live with and manage my PTSD. But it was incremental, and the speed of my healing did take several years.

But it required the courage to keep walking, fighting, and getting up everyday to go into a job I hated. It required that I keep trying to be patient and loving with myself, with the hope that someday, I would be a little less broken, and be less mistrustful of people's kindness and intentions toward me.

There are a lot of shitty people. I contend most people are some level of clueless, insensitive, and selfish, in varying degrees, because not everyone goes through the same thing. Your story is beautiful and wildly different from mine. As it should be, because we don't come to holiness as Christians by coming through the same paths. 

My point is this:

The world isn't hopeless.
It is knowing that we live and die each day and the choices we make will determine our relationships as they ebb and flow, over years, accumulating second by second till we expire. 

As a Christian...you get every moment, of every day, till the moment of your death, to repent, make a difference, be kind, and let God's grace work in you. That is the hope. That Christ saves us and loves us, despite our failings every moment of every day, and that we get up again. To fight. To comfort, provide, struggle, sacrifice, to love and cherish the gift that we are alive, right now, in this moment, this year, to witness the incredible works that He accomplishes. 

My hope is in knowing that every day is a chance to help, in some small way, through prayer or kindness, by spreading information, or opening up to people, that yes, times are tough.

People are dying. But people are also living. Inventing and collaborating to find cures and workarounds for a very bureaucratically clogged system to get PPE items, masks, food, and donations to those most in need during this time.

My hope is in seeing the civic responsibility and sense of love well up in others because they see a need and rise to the occasion to fill it, without complaint or anger.

Hope can be fleeting, but it rises each day to show us how we can serve and sacrifice for the good of others. It is hope that people will fight, they will be cared for and loved, they will be able to make a difference, and that ultimately, they will care for us as well. 

How will you understand your situation? As a time to despair, lament, and see no way forward?
Or is today a day where you can rise to the challenge of what your life is? 
Can you find purpose in being loving to the downtrodden in your own life or community, by being that one?

If it were not for those people who were that one—the one on the phone who heard me cry, the one who hugged me, the one who told me I mattered when I didn't believe it—I would have sliced open my wrists in a tub a long time ago. 

Because being that one, in a small way, makes a difference. 
You won't know if you did or not, but the chance is always there. To not only find hope, but to give hope.

So be kind. And have courage. Even in very dark places, there is always a light.

Be that one. Be that light.

How 'Uninvited' Woke Me Up

Uninvited was a special book for me the first year that I lived out in Washington D.C.

It was a scary first year. I had never lived on my own. I didn't know how to pay bills, and yet there I was at 26 trying to find an apartment and a car, navigate a new job and all the benefits and pitfalls that come with it.
On my way out of town, a dear friend and the mother of one of the people instrumental in the shaping of my faith, gave me Lysa TerKeurst's book. I've perused her blog and it's very inspirational.
But it was this book that woke me up to how truly unusual my childhood was.
In the middle of reading this book--actually to be fair it was in the first few chapters--TerKeurst reveals that her father abandoning her had terrible, serious repercussions on her self-worth, her identity, and her relationships and expectations with men that she dated before she married her husband.
It was a resounding blow to the things I myself had experienced.
There was this tiny, shocked voice that said My father abandoned me.

At the time I had no idea where that thought came from. I was horrified. How...how was that even possible that I could feel that way about my dad? He had never hit me. He had always been there for me.

But I realized that even though my father had been there physically to care for me as a small child, that didn't mean he fulfilled his role as my parent very well as he got older.
Him being there doesn't mean he was a good role-model of what a father or man should look like.
Him being there doesn't mean he taught me how a man should treat a woman.
Him being there doesn't mean he wasn't abusive verbally, emotionally neglectful, invalidating, dismissive, selfish, guilt-tripping, or blaming.
Him being there doesn't mean he is excused for being controlling or overbearing.
Him being there doesn't mean he is excused for taking out his anger on me, for manipulating me and using reverse psychology and control tactics to conform me into doing his will.

Over the course of the next year, from August 2016 to July 2017, I slowly started to chew on what I had read in her book.

The rest of the book is beautiful by the way, and talks about how God sets us "Apart" to live fully and beautifully in Him, with Him, through Him.

But the thought that I had been abandoned, and I think more honestly, that I had been betrayed, could not leave my mind. I was sitting at work one day, struggling through our mailings when it suddenly dawned on me how much I hated my father.

I hated him.

I hated and despised him in all the senses of those two words as fully as one can feel them.
For every time he threatened to leave my mother and me if we didn't behave. He would pull out that threat like a belt and bellow at the top of his lungs that he would leave and we would never see him again. It came out in every argument. Every. Single. Time. And their arguments, legendary screaming matches that terrified me, were frequent. After enough time and experience with it, it tuned it out and became numb to the level of their voices, rolling my eyes, or in other instances, jumping in to defend my mother or provoking one or both, depending on how angry I was at them. Usually I was bellowed at to stay out of it. At earlier ages, I would cry and become upset at the fighting, only to have my father yell at me for crying--why was I crying? He wasn't yelling at me. Or he would take it out on my mom and I for her enabling my selfish behavior. The situation is too complex to fully understand and each memory is a network of pain, frustration, and anger is deeper levels than I sometimes comprehend.

It is not a wonder to me that I have a deep-seated fear of being abandoned. It is not a wonder that every guy I go out with, there is always a suspicion and fear that he will become bored with me, that he will not stay. That I cannot make him stay. That I am not good enough or interesting enough for him to love me. For him to love me enough as I am, good and bad, to want to stick around.
TerKeurst's book was only one part of a long and painful process. But it made me realize that I had been abandoned, through fear, psychological manipulation and control, and threats, by the one man in my life who should have been my protector.

That was seven months ago. Today I am ambivalent in my feelings toward him. Occasionally there is a fondness for the fun and loving things he did do, particularly when I was a very little girl. But there is no familial love. There is no affection. There is only emptiness and numbness. I have done my best in seven months to heal those wounds, by recognizing them, the root that caused them. But I will never be really healed all on my own; that's God's job. In God, I seek truth to fill the cavities left clean from the hard scraping I've done with the tools of revelation and understanding.
I am not as hollow as I used to be, but I am still not full.

The process of learning to fill your own bucket rather than waiting for others to fill it for you, or demanding they do, will never satisfy you or make you whole. The process and growth is hard; it is deeply painful. But the purpose of growth is to become. I just wish I knew what it is I am meant to be.

Reflections on A Wrinkle In Time

There is a musing in my mind today as I review and read about Ava Duvernay’s adaptation of “A Wrinkle In Time”, staring Reese Witherspoon and Oprah Winfrey as two of the large names attached to this monstrosity of a film.

I've been chewing on this for a few weeks since the film debuted and finally got around to expressing my modest concerns.

Though it largely escaped my notice as a child, “A Wrinkle In Time” is a determinedly Christian book. Not necessarily in the same sense of Catholic intellectualism as I have been presented with over the weeks and months of the past year. But from what I recall there were definitive echoes interwoven in its telling, as Allissa Wilkinson of Vox deftly explains, regardless of what philosophy you subscribe to.

Link

The film appears as a garish modernist interpretation on the basic universal theme found in every culture, that of the struggle of good triumphing over evil. However, aside from the basic elements of Meg, her little genius brother Charles-Wallace, and would-be love interest (later husband in subsequent novels), seeking the help of three supernatural beings to find her long-lost father, the film has none of the intellectual teeth about responsibility, consequences, and love that allow Meg to grow internally to reconcile her internally perceived flaws and the realities of the world and adulthood, as well as overcome the primary antagonist of the novel, IT—a giant, brain that is the representation of all evil.

I have not seen the film, and have little desire to; however a few things strike me as a common chord that often appears in the writings of Christian intellectuals across the board, and that is the call not only for universal holiness and struggle within God, but the main point is the struggle against the regimentation and totalitarianism of secularism of groupthink—as is often seen in socialist or communistic society—against upholding the individual as uniquely beautiful within the body of the Jesus Christ, as uniquely beautifully made within God’s organized world.

IT’s world was a terrifying vision of uniformity, as Meg and Calvin search through an endless array of same homes and neighborhoods to the central nervous-system of IT’s headquarters, a gray office building. Everything is the same; everything is uniform, dull, but perfect. There is no individuality, just…cookie cutter perfection to the tiniest detail and no differentiation. Even the children the two encounter essentially look the same from one to the next, playing and speaking all the same. Sameness. Uniformity.

This call to uniformity is a common evil in the current world, a theme called out in such works as “The Abolition of Man” by C.S. Lewis and warned of in Rudyard Kipplings “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”, written decades ago by intellectuals, good and bad in their own rights—everyone has flaws mind you, even you—who foresaw the pitfall of specialization leading to stagnation, to equilibrium of thought as everything started the trend towards standardization, especially in education.

My favorite edition, in large part because of the art by Leo and Diane Dillon.

Even the three beings—Mrs. Who, Mrs. Which, and Mrs. Whatsit—have direct and obvious echoes of Christian elements teaching sacrifice and love, especially through repeated quotes from Biblical Scripture. Even one of them sacrifices their form and becomes transformed to help the children on the next leg of their journey, at the cost of themselves.

As Wilkinson so adequately explains the true evil of IT that is utterly dispensed with within the adaptation “For L’Engle, the power of evil is not just to make us bad and angry and violent, but also to put us to sleep to what is going on in the world by controlling us — the way we live, the way we think, the way we desire — until we are all the same.”

This mode of thought is no more apparent than in a three-page excerpt that was cut originally from the text of the novel. In the lead up, Meg and Calvin are rescued by Meg’s father Mr. Murray once they find him through tesselation, or the folding of space-time to travel large distances. However, her little brother is left-behind, already held tightly in the telepathic grip and groupthink of IT. As L’Engle notes in the cut excerpt, the ultimate evil is conformity, sameness, and regulation.

And herein lies a disturbing trend in the current thinking of Western society: a division between head and heart.

We are told on a constant basis to exist in a state of alleged moral relativism, when in fact it is moral nonrelativism, as explained my Prof. Michael Gorman in his talk to the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C. There is no longer a universal truth, only an adherence to selfish truth that trumps all other mores and standards to allow for the personal selfish fulfillment of ones desires, as seen in the stoics and destroyed by G.K. Chesterton in his book Orthodoxy. 

And when there is no universal binding truth such as Jesus Christ and God, as evidenced in Christianity in which we are to strive for, we are given the saccharine dilution of morality in the universalist theme espoused in DuVernay's "A Wrinkle In Time", in which we rely solely on ourselves to find and utilize the strength of this world to overcome. But this is false. Humans fail.

Walter Ciszek was a Catholic priest who was destroyed in his 23 year imprisonment. He felt as though he failed when he finally signed a confession to the NKVD -- Soviet Secret Police -- stating he was a spy for the Vatican. He felt broken and ashamed in relying on himself as a holy man of God who stood above others because he was so virtuous, only to betray God, in his mind anyway. It was in giving himself over fully and submitting truly to the Father's will that he was able to overcome and survive through 23 years of captivity.

Relying on ourselves is a false sense of security, and a false message that leads to arrogance and failure, in the end. It does not allow any longer for unique beauty as individuals, meant to use our gifts individually for the glory of God, but for the continued sleepwalking of others to live in comfortable means. To not rock the boat, and to no longer act as the salt and the light. We merely become hedonists of the same self-indulgent cloth.

The Market in Marakesh

Back in January 2014, I participated in 2 Bag's Full Grow Your Blog event. The post for that had an interesting bit about my meeting Death in Marakesh. As a writer, I couldn't let that one get away from me, so here is the story of

The Market in Marakesh

While walking at night in a market in Marakesh, I met Death on the street. It was a chill night as the moon sat high on her throne, gazing down at the empty little street, sand eddies twirling together like lovers in a booth.

As I turned the corner past Adbullah's stall, I saw a cloaked figure ahead, hood drawn, a body tall and thin in a black robe. The figure shimmered as I walked down the causeway, my old bones shaking in the cold. Suddenly, like a lizard that scurried, the figure in the robe was before me, darker than they sky above.

"You are Safia, daughter of Hassan Azansi," it rasped, wind across a dry dessert.

"I am she," I said, fearful. I am old and carry little on me of value. What could this man want from me? 

"I am here to walk with you."

"To where? My home? Sir, go on your way. I must be getting onto my husband."

"What a husband to send you out here alone, with nothing to protect yourself from?" his rasp was heavier now, curious.

"He sent me for his medicine, he has run out."

"He has sentenced you to me," he said, and pulled back the hood so that I might gaze on his face. Allah, he was older than I, face drawn tightly over bones to the point that he was a skeleton. Never a handsome man, his thoughtful expression bore sad eyes that watched me unblinking. It was as though he could read my soul.

"Away, from me," I cried, stepping back and now knowing him for what he was. "I still have years left. You won't take me yet!"

"But I must," he said slowly, voice like wind blowing through a house. "Ahead a man waits to rob and murder you. Your husband has hired him to remove you so that he might marry Fatima down the road."

"A pretty but empty-headed thing. Why would he do this to me? I have born him two sons and a beautiful daughter that made a good marriage."

"Because he shudders when he touches you. Your breasts are heavy from suckling three babes and your body has become soft from the many years you have lived. You are now middle-aged, no longer the great beauty that he desired in his youth. He wishes for a supple and young body that he might touch, not that of an old woman."
"I am not old," I grumbled, pushing past the skeletal figure. The night was wearing on and I needed to be home. But I heeded his words and wondered at such a thing, that death would come to warn me of his intent to steal me to the night lands. Before reaching the corner, I spotted a stick, hefty and solid. I was not so old that I could not pick it up and use it. 
Walking on in my older bones - not so old at all - I rounded the corner and saw movement ahead. With a huff I kept going, listening as Death followed me, still curious.
The night was still and did not shift, but I could hear the slight movement of fabric against stone. And when the thief jumped out at me with dagger in hand, I hefted up my club and pounded him soundly in the stomach, and again hit him down on the back. He scrambled up and turned, pouch of gold clinking against his hip. The dagger lay forgotten on the stones.
With heavy breaths I turned to Death and watched him expectantly. He watched me back.
"Well, aren't you going to take me?" I challenged. 
"You are brave to demand that I take a soul that is still living."
"But..."
"Did you die?" he asked, head titled  as he considered me.
"No. So you won't. But I know someone that you can take," I growled. The dagger glinted in the moonlight.

My house was lit up with warm fires. It was a grand little house, with several rooms and even a bath! But tonight there would be no grand celebrations like my husband had thrown when we had married, or had babies, or when they had married in their turn.
I found him inside, stuffing his face with curried rice and pork. 

Re-edited 3-1-18 for grammar.

A New Start

I've never been much of a blogger. But I guess today is the day that I start to tell my story. It's not meant for other people to comment on, tear down, or judge.
It's for me to share what I've learned and establish that I am a person with their own identity and feelings, and that's been a damn hard process over the years. For those who have never been abused, please use this as an opportunity to understand.

For those who have been, my love and my deep empathy for your pain is real. Your voice, your feelings, and your memories are legitimate. That shit happened to you. No one has a right to take that away from you.

I am a survivor of child abuse. I understand in putting this out there, to the people that I am friends with, to the people who are in my family, that I invite your judgment. I invite your disbelief, your anger, your empathy, your disbelief. I do not care that you don't believe me.

I do care that you may be hurt. That is never my intention. That is never and has never nor will it ever be my intention to cause harm.
But I am tired of pretending to not be myself. I am tired of being whom everyone else desired me to be; how to act; how to live; what to think.

My perceptions are not always accurate. I do not always do the right thing. I fail every moment of every day of my life in not living as fully in God and Jesus Christ as I want to. And some days I don't want to. Some days I fail so fully I can't even look myself in the mirror in my bathroom without thinking You are a complete piece of shit. You don't deserve this job or this life that God gave you.

This blog is a place for me to share what I've learned, to share how I'm growing in Christ, and put out interesting little tidbits to people who are lost and confused and maybe don't know the way to where they're going.

So welcome to A Catholic Woman. Find some comfort and some rest.
God bless.

The Eponymous Ms. R.