Flannel Covid Diaries: Lent Day 16

#Covidtimes Log Day: 03062021

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt

"Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 -1962) is commonly hailed as one of the most influential American women of the 20th century. In addition to serving as the First Lady of the United States from 1933-1945, she was a newspaper columnist, an author, a diplomat and a seasoned politician. She was also a formative leader of the League of Women Voters.

Deeply involved in social justice work, Eleanor Roosevelt believed strongly that women deserved a place at the table when it came to politics. Prior to her husband’s presidency, she worked with and helped lead a number of women’s groups, including the International Congress of Working Women, the Woman's Trade Union League and the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom. After the League of Women Voters was founded in 1920 – the same year that Franklin D. Roosevelt ran for Vice President – she helped establish its policy agenda." (Source: https://www.lwv.org/eleanor-roosevelt-first-lady-league-leader-pioneer)

I've listened to too many people in my life give me bad advice. I'm realizing it's not based on my ability to do things or accomplish goals, it's based off of other people's own fears and limitations. The times in my life I've been most successful is when I took my own advice and listened to what was in my heart to be right, for me.

We need to stop giving people bad advice and telling people, unsolicited, how to live their life. No one learns how to be a strong independent person when all you ever do is disapprove of the choices people make. Those poor choices are just lessons, hopefully, the person will learn from. If they don't well, they will just keep making the same mistakes over and over again, and bring other people down with them who choose to be in their lives. Only if you allow them to.

Don't let other people's poor choices bring you down. They want to ruin their lives, they want to be complete douche canoes, let them. Remove yourself from other people's self-destructive behavior. Let them deal with the consequences of their choices, cause you know what if you don't let them they will always make poor choices thinking you're going to bail them out. You're not anyone's savior and if you think you are you need to check yourself and figure out what your unhealed wounds are cause your just trying to solve other people's trauma so you can avoid your own.

My biggest advice to people, therapy works. If you're willing to heal the unhealed parts of yourself and go to the dark recesses of your mind and do the work to figure out what your hurts and harms and wounds are. You can then begin the healing process. It works. But, it's not easy it's actually really hard, frightening, and exhausting.

For the past year and a half I've been struggling emotionally and mentally, but on the outside I've tried to keep it all together. Except the times I've revealed to y'all my struggle. I do it for myself and for my friends, and family. I've dealt with the burden of knowing when people see me falling apart then shit must really be falling apart. Reality check, things are constantly falling apart around us. It's an illusion that we have any control of what is going on around us. We are just physical bodies experiencing a spiritual journey on this planet. We can go around and live this one life like complete dipshits or we can expand, grow, and be bigger than we believe we truly are. Enjoy the ride. It's taken me a year and a half to come back to myself, to feel whole and complete, to feel enough. With all the cracks, and scabs and brokenness.

I was talking with a friend and I had an epiphany that I've been trying to heal one big wound, when the heart of the matter is that I have several wounds that needed healing. When you have three significant people die in less then five years and two of them killed themselves it does something to your brain and heart. I was so broken on the inside I tried really hard to keep up the appearances because "you fake it till you make it." Keep smiling on the outside than maybe you'll start feeling good on the inside. Maybe if I work harder, do more, accomplish more, succeed at my profession, build a bigger network, get more stuff, be in a happy relationship, grow my friend circle, volunteer more, get more degrees, more, more, more…maybe I can make all that pain go away. Fill that void inside of me with things and stuff. It works for a short period of time, but eventually the weight and burden of it all begins to come crashing down on a person. It became all to real and apparent when all of the things I thought I wanted started falling away. The happy relationship and home, the good job with a public presence in the community, a strong friend network, financial stability, and my mental health. It all just fell away.

My mom died and a pandemic hit. The compound interests of grief and trauma finally came seeking a pay out. All my tricks and tips to avoid having to deal with my unhealed wounds wasn't going to work this time around. It was all too much. For any person just one of those things would break them, but as an immigrant, and survivor of poverty and abuse you just keep pushing on, you keep moving through. That's all you know. That's what we do. You don't feel the feelings you just accept tragedy and loss as part of life. It is what it is. When people talk about generational trauma this is what it looks like. This is what it looks like to finally end the cycle and heal those wounds of hundreds of years of colonization and discrimination and alienation. Non-BIPOC people will never understand what it means for BIPOC people to heal trauma. What it looks like. What it takes. The amount of introspection and breakthroughs it takes for one to finally realize, THIS ISN'T MY TRAUMA TO HEAL. Both my parents are dead and for ten years I was still trying to fix the sins of my father. It took almost losing everything for me to finally realize that's not my sin to heal. It was my mother's choice to stay in an abusive and controlling relationship. That's not mine to heal.

I needed to start parenting myself the way I needed as a child, now. You will fuck up your child when you pretend that nothing is wrong and in reality is everything is wrong. Protecting them from the world that they will eventually have to deal with on their own. Not giving them the skills they need to navigate a judgmental and cruel world will only create unprepared adults who will fuck up and feel crappy about themselves for fucking up. Children don't stop loving their parents/caregivers they start hating themselves. This is all too real. Love your children, but hold them accountable. Teach them to accept rejection and that they aren't going to be the best at everything. Don't just give them awards for showing up, but teach them why people's time is important and valuable. We want these silver bullets to fix mental health when there's still stigma around people seeking mental health support. It's going to take all of us to fix our mental health systems. Public schools and socialization isn't going to fix children's mental health when that all starts at home.

It took 46 years and breaking myself wide open that I could finally start healing wounds from my childhood. Think about that.

Be well. Take care. Stay safe.