Paula Houseman's Blog, page 2
February 2, 2018
Are You a Kick-Arse Woman in Your Own Life Story?
Meet Ms Perfect …
What woman doesn’t love the quintessential female protagonist?
Who doesn’t aspire to emulate a wonder woman—a fit ’n’ healthy, perfectly-sculpted chick with an hour-glass figure (but leaning towards lean), lustrous locks, flawless skin, a sense of her own self, assertive in the boardroom, a tiger in the bedroom? A gal who goes after what she wants and gets it, one who is loved by men and admired by women?
Not me. I don’t love that kind of protagonist.
Have you ever attended a workshop led by a self-professed guru of whatever, the kind that plies you with bumper-sticker affirmations so that you go home all fired up from the razzmatazz and wake up the next morning on a high? But then a couple of days or hours or minutes later, you nosedive?
Welcome to real-world existence. Aspiring to the fictional fantasy woman with an impossibly small waist, toned booty, and a big bust is a bust.
You Go, Girl!
I want my book heroines to be appealing, sure, but in my book(s), she needs to be human: A protagonist who flubs. Fearless and fearful, she has thoughts and impulses that seem way too shameful to share. She sometimes overeats and struggles with willpower—she can’t resist ice cream. She burps and she farts. She has imperfect fat distribution and will go up a size in pants to avoid a muffin top rather than give up her muffins.
The earth doesn’t always move in the bedroom (except for when she’s romancing herself). And she doesn’t always think positive. She sometimes wails, ‘Why meeeee?’ But she’s no Suzy Creamcheese.
She doesn’t wait for a someday-my-prince-will-come to save her. No. She pulls herself up by the bootstraps and says to no one in particular, ‘Go ahead, make my day!’ Dirty Harry style. Still, she’s the kind of chick who turns to her friends for support when she feels trampled by the voices in her head.
In my book, a kick-arse chick is relatable.
What woman doesn’t love the quintessential female protagonist?
Who doesn’t aspire to emulate a wonder woman—a fit ’n’ healthy, perfectly-sculpted chick with an hour-glass figure (but leaning towards lean), lustrous locks, flawless skin, a sense of her own self, assertive in the boardroom, a tiger in the bedroom? A gal who goes after what she wants and gets it, one who is loved by men and admired by women?
Not me. I don’t love that kind of protagonist.
Oh, I love a woman who can kick arse.
But I prefer the kind who also kicks her own,
and sometimes ends up flat on it.
Have you ever attended a workshop led by a self-professed guru of whatever, the kind that plies you with bumper-sticker affirmations so that you go home all fired up from the razzmatazz and wake up the next morning on a high? But then a couple of days or hours or minutes later, you nosedive?
Welcome to real-world existence. Aspiring to the fictional fantasy woman with an impossibly small waist, toned booty, and a big bust is a bust.
You Go, Girl!
I want my book heroines to be appealing, sure, but in my book(s), she needs to be human: A protagonist who flubs. Fearless and fearful, she has thoughts and impulses that seem way too shameful to share. She sometimes overeats and struggles with willpower—she can’t resist ice cream. She burps and she farts. She has imperfect fat distribution and will go up a size in pants to avoid a muffin top rather than give up her muffins.
The earth doesn’t always move in the bedroom (except for when she’s romancing herself). And she doesn’t always think positive. She sometimes wails, ‘Why meeeee?’ But she’s no Suzy Creamcheese.
She doesn’t wait for a someday-my-prince-will-come to save her. No. She pulls herself up by the bootstraps and says to no one in particular, ‘Go ahead, make my day!’ Dirty Harry style. Still, she’s the kind of chick who turns to her friends for support when she feels trampled by the voices in her head.
In my book, a kick-arse chick is relatable.
October 14, 2017
Dear Writers (& Everyone), Size Matters …
And How—The Bigger the Better!
In the modern I‑♥‑quantity mindset, size matters.
Yessiree, Bob!
Gimme an L!
Gimme an O!
Gimme a T!
Gimme an S!
Gimme LOTS LOTS LOTS!
In the Digital Age, the implication is that I must be okay if I have lots of whatever; the subliminal message—my worth depends on it.
Social Net Worth
Lots of Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, Twitter followers (even if you have to buy them), lots of tweets and likes and shares. And then there’s Klout.
Klout is about your clout. It’s a site that helps you ‘measure your online impact’. The bigger your Klout score, the more influential you are. According to Klout, anyway. Note: It takes little for a Klout score to slip, but it takes lots to boost it. This entails a lot of hard work to keep up with the Joneses … and Trumps and Biebers and Gagas.
Social media algorithms are voracious, and surpassing others is the next big thing (although, where weight is concerned, big is not really phat. So say the image-makers).
All of this points to going to great lengths to become widespread. But there’s not much depth there. There’s nothing said about depth. And yet …
In the depths is where you’ll find your real worth. From there, you’ll come back up and do your best work in progress. The kind that reflects the measure of the person you’re becoming, and makes you bigger and better—not necessarily bigger and better than others, but than the self you were. Naturally. It’s this kind of work that needs to become widespread to help others find their own best WIP-self.
Sharing is Caring
We learned it when we were little, but it’s a tad uglified in this information age. Sharing has become inorganic.
I myself am guilty of some opportunistic sharing, and I do like to see my follower numbers growing! It’s okay, I’m unashamedly human. And realistic. As an author, I need to grow my brand, and growth and exposure lead to book sales. As a human, I will occasionally lapse into the numbers game. But my brand growth will never be at the expense of quality writing. Ever.
Once you’ve started living and writing the deep life, there’s no going back to a largely quantitative existence with its shallow stories and soulless characters.
So, yeah, size does matter: Depth matters.
*Check out my blogs at https://www.paulahouseman.com/blog/
In the modern I‑♥‑quantity mindset, size matters.
Yessiree, Bob!
Gimme an L!
Gimme an O!
Gimme a T!
Gimme an S!
Gimme LOTS LOTS LOTS!
In the Digital Age, the implication is that I must be okay if I have lots of whatever; the subliminal message—my worth depends on it.
Social Net Worth
Lots of Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, Twitter followers (even if you have to buy them), lots of tweets and likes and shares. And then there’s Klout.
Klout is about your clout. It’s a site that helps you ‘measure your online impact’. The bigger your Klout score, the more influential you are. According to Klout, anyway. Note: It takes little for a Klout score to slip, but it takes lots to boost it. This entails a lot of hard work to keep up with the Joneses … and Trumps and Biebers and Gagas.
Social media algorithms are voracious, and surpassing others is the next big thing (although, where weight is concerned, big is not really phat. So say the image-makers).
All of this points to going to great lengths to become widespread. But there’s not much depth there. There’s nothing said about depth. And yet …
Depth is where you’ll find your best work in progress: You.
In the depths is where you’ll find your real worth. From there, you’ll come back up and do your best work in progress. The kind that reflects the measure of the person you’re becoming, and makes you bigger and better—not necessarily bigger and better than others, but than the self you were. Naturally. It’s this kind of work that needs to become widespread to help others find their own best WIP-self.
Sharing is Caring
We learned it when we were little, but it’s a tad uglified in this information age. Sharing has become inorganic.
I myself am guilty of some opportunistic sharing, and I do like to see my follower numbers growing! It’s okay, I’m unashamedly human. And realistic. As an author, I need to grow my brand, and growth and exposure lead to book sales. As a human, I will occasionally lapse into the numbers game. But my brand growth will never be at the expense of quality writing. Ever.
Once you’ve started living and writing the deep life, there’s no going back to a largely quantitative existence with its shallow stories and soulless characters.
So, yeah, size does matter: Depth matters.
*Check out my blogs at https://www.paulahouseman.com/blog/
August 30, 2017
The Anatomy of My Weird Characters
Both my parents were immigrants. It was pretty much all they had in common—they lived together, but were poles apart. She was a staid walking cliché who struggled to live the Australian way; he thought he was living it because he could fart the national anthem. Dad, the patriot.
She didn’t swear; he didn’t stop. She sweated over what the ‘neighbours’ would think; he didn’t give a crap. And the list went on …
On the side of nurture in the nurture vs nature debate, an environment of extremes was the standard for me. On the side of nature was the weird lens through which I unconsciously saw life. My imagination micromanaged me—it parodied perceptions. Life was like an animated cartoon. Life was like South Park on an endless loop.
Seeing situations and people through a distorted lens helped me find the comedy in the tragedy. It was a survival mechanism. Not so much where school lunches were concerned, though. There was no comedy to be found in my packed lunch.
While my fellow students ate their Vegemite or soggy tomato sandwiches or tuck shop sausage rolls and cream buns at lunchtime, eating my lunch became a covert op. My immigrant lunchbox was spring-loaded with an embarrassing assortment: leftover lamb koftas, dolmades, cevapcici sausage, falafel, pita, and baklava.
So much for fitting into the Aussie way of life. Worse: try hiding something on campus, and everyone notices.
My peers mocked me because ethnic fare was uncool in the days before Australia became a multicultural nation, and because adolescents need someone to make fun of. Being that someone was no fun.
Ergo, I worked hard at unweirding myself until, come early adulthood, a Vegemite-sandwich mode of existence had become my norm. But being not-me was also no fun. It was exhausting and it was boring.
Then, fate intervened.
A Taste for the Twisted
My latent twisty filters drew me to people and situations I didn’t even have to imagine.
Amongst them was a woman who, mid-business negotiations, announced she had two ‘vageenas’. And a sixty-something PR guy whose letterhead logo was a pic of himself in the naked, reclining pose of Michelangelo’s Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling (modified to have his hand cupping his wiener and nuts—universal ‘fare’).
Freeeeeeaks! you think? But says who? Our judgy and too-ready-to-moralise mindsets that want to cut off any deviances—which, hello, we all have—and turn us into clichés?
A clichéd existence is not good for the soul, nor is a sanctimonious one.
The Right, Rite, Write of Weird Characters
The refracted lens that put a strange spin on how I viewed things is now my lifeblood. My internal landscape is Monty Pythonesque and my book characters are testament to that.
Having a satirical POV, though, is not about standing on the sidelines like an adolescent and taking the piss out of others because their differences seem threatening.
For me, it’s about highlighting the insanity of aspiring to be quirk-free and to be ‘normal’—the ridiculousness of thinking inside the box (and marginalising those who have more than one).
Well, I say, here’s to that woman who celebrated her two twats! It might have been too much information to share with a stranger, but she was proud of her ‘abnormality’. It was normal for her. And cheers to the brazen PR guy! Although, if you’d Photoshopped the droopy little moobs and cherry-red nipples, mate, it could have been better for business. Or maybe not …
What quirks do you have that you might be ashamed of, but that could make you interesting?
April 30, 2017
Why It’s Time for a New Women’s Anthem!
I ♥ My Dirty-Girl Mouth
I have a potty-mouth. It’s not a bad thing.
For a long time, though, I was ashamed of what came out of my bazoo. Why couldn’t I be demure—ladylike, like the fairy-tale damsel?
It’s not as if I didn’t try to make nice. We bobby-socked baby-boomers were groomed to. Still, I just couldn’t ‘do’ pink and meek and froufrou. The cardboard cut-out ingénue from fairy tales pissed me off. As a child, I may not have known the meaning of ‘grow some balls’, but I had ’em; she didn’t!
My propensity for obscenity became clear a few years back when I joined a writers’ website. Members submitted poems or short stories and reviewed each other’s work. One priggish reviewer took me to task for my use of ‘fuck’, sans asterisk, in a poem:
‘Your poem would work just as well without the swear word. It doesn’t need to be there, you know!’
This sent me into a horrible shame spiral. (We writers are sensitive like that.) But it’s where I became better acquainted with my muse: Baubo, the ancient Goddess of Obscenity. Her habitat? The deepest reaches of psyche. Psyche’s gutter level, if you will.
Goddess Almighty!
Baubo and I had a tête-à-tête. Our monologic dialogue (or dialogic monologue) helped me understand why my books are liberally sprinkled with swear words (and double entendres). I got that my colourful language is not contrived, and it’s not there for shock value. It comes naturally. As a reader myself, I find an orchestrated use of foul language off-putting. Cerebral sludge. But when it’s natural—when the word feels like it should be there, the sentence would be poorer for its omission.
I became more accepting of my locker-room lingo—even started to love my muse. Beats being driven by a harpy, the archetypal mythical bird-woman that swoops and poops on others’ stuff.
With all this in mind, I responded to the sanctimonious critic:
‘Oh, yes it does. The word needs to be there. My muse gave it to me … and I respect that.’
Holy Shit
And I’ve learned a lot about this goddess, who is a personified aspect of the human psyche—that of sacred sexuality; passion. She has the whip hand in mine, but she’s in all of us.
Baubo embodies a holy kind of dirty. She’s not housebroken, nor should she be. You just know when she’s escaped the moral straightjacket. It’s in those moments when you’re doubled up with laughter of the raucous kind: when you’re screeching, hooting, holding your splitting sides, and damning your pelvic floor that’s been undermined by dry rot!
The dirty goddess represents a vital power, a heat, medicine that helps us loosen up and lighten up. Gut-busting laughter can bring us out of a funk, and give us some relief through life’s big or little tragedies. And what’s tragic, or at least, a crying shame, is a woman shaming another woman’s innate, earthy expression.
Women’s Writes
Raw obscenity shakes off the shackles that have bound women’s expression (and their sexuality) for eons. And writing is a powerful tool to help us, and others, achieve that. Give depth, I say, to the stereotypical female protagonist of newfangled ‘fairy tales’: she, whose romanticised quest for perfection first pumps us up as she fights her darkness and rises above it—Yeah, baby!—then deflates us—FFrrrrrrrrrrrrrr—as we drown in ours, war-weary and cursing our fate. But … it’s that little bit of cursing that both comes from Baubo and summons her.
We need to uncover this buried immortal, and immortalise her in writing. It’s very grounding to lose the ***s in your eyes and the ***s in your words. You might be regarded as less of a lady, but with an important aspect of psyche fleshed out and given its due, you’ll feel like more of a woman.
I Am Woman
In 1972, Helen Reddy released the song ‘I Am Woman’. The first line, I am woman, hear me roar, became an enduring anthem for women’s lib. Now, 45 years on, perhaps it’s time for a new anthem, or, a revised one. Not just to reflect cultural shifts, but also to celebrate the obscene, life-giving goddess at the core of our womanhood.
Here’s a suggestion:
I am woman, I swear, and I don’t fucking care!
*This was an article written for Women Writers, Women(‘s) Books Online Magazine
http://booksbywomen.org/on-swearing-i...
I have a potty-mouth. It’s not a bad thing.
For a long time, though, I was ashamed of what came out of my bazoo. Why couldn’t I be demure—ladylike, like the fairy-tale damsel?
It’s not as if I didn’t try to make nice. We bobby-socked baby-boomers were groomed to. Still, I just couldn’t ‘do’ pink and meek and froufrou. The cardboard cut-out ingénue from fairy tales pissed me off. As a child, I may not have known the meaning of ‘grow some balls’, but I had ’em; she didn’t!
My propensity for obscenity became clear a few years back when I joined a writers’ website. Members submitted poems or short stories and reviewed each other’s work. One priggish reviewer took me to task for my use of ‘fuck’, sans asterisk, in a poem:
‘Your poem would work just as well without the swear word. It doesn’t need to be there, you know!’
This sent me into a horrible shame spiral. (We writers are sensitive like that.) But it’s where I became better acquainted with my muse: Baubo, the ancient Goddess of Obscenity. Her habitat? The deepest reaches of psyche. Psyche’s gutter level, if you will.
Goddess Almighty!
Baubo and I had a tête-à-tête. Our monologic dialogue (or dialogic monologue) helped me understand why my books are liberally sprinkled with swear words (and double entendres). I got that my colourful language is not contrived, and it’s not there for shock value. It comes naturally. As a reader myself, I find an orchestrated use of foul language off-putting. Cerebral sludge. But when it’s natural—when the word feels like it should be there, the sentence would be poorer for its omission.
I became more accepting of my locker-room lingo—even started to love my muse. Beats being driven by a harpy, the archetypal mythical bird-woman that swoops and poops on others’ stuff.
With all this in mind, I responded to the sanctimonious critic:
‘Oh, yes it does. The word needs to be there. My muse gave it to me … and I respect that.’
Holy Shit
As writers, who are we to censure and censor our muses? They speak from the core of our being.
And I’ve learned a lot about this goddess, who is a personified aspect of the human psyche—that of sacred sexuality; passion. She has the whip hand in mine, but she’s in all of us.
Baubo embodies a holy kind of dirty. She’s not housebroken, nor should she be. You just know when she’s escaped the moral straightjacket. It’s in those moments when you’re doubled up with laughter of the raucous kind: when you’re screeching, hooting, holding your splitting sides, and damning your pelvic floor that’s been undermined by dry rot!
The dirty goddess represents a vital power, a heat, medicine that helps us loosen up and lighten up. Gut-busting laughter can bring us out of a funk, and give us some relief through life’s big or little tragedies. And what’s tragic, or at least, a crying shame, is a woman shaming another woman’s innate, earthy expression.
The thing is, when you deny one aspect of soul, the whole of you suffers. And the female collective suffers—sisterhood and daughterhood.
Women’s Writes
Raw obscenity shakes off the shackles that have bound women’s expression (and their sexuality) for eons. And writing is a powerful tool to help us, and others, achieve that. Give depth, I say, to the stereotypical female protagonist of newfangled ‘fairy tales’: she, whose romanticised quest for perfection first pumps us up as she fights her darkness and rises above it—Yeah, baby!—then deflates us—FFrrrrrrrrrrrrrr—as we drown in ours, war-weary and cursing our fate. But … it’s that little bit of cursing that both comes from Baubo and summons her.
We need to uncover this buried immortal, and immortalise her in writing. It’s very grounding to lose the ***s in your eyes and the ***s in your words. You might be regarded as less of a lady, but with an important aspect of psyche fleshed out and given its due, you’ll feel like more of a woman.
I Am Woman
In 1972, Helen Reddy released the song ‘I Am Woman’. The first line, I am woman, hear me roar, became an enduring anthem for women’s lib. Now, 45 years on, perhaps it’s time for a new anthem, or, a revised one. Not just to reflect cultural shifts, but also to celebrate the obscene, life-giving goddess at the core of our womanhood.
Here’s a suggestion:
I am woman, I swear, and I don’t fucking care!
*This was an article written for Women Writers, Women(‘s) Books Online Magazine
http://booksbywomen.org/on-swearing-i...
April 4, 2017
Why the Lure of Horror Is a Good Thing
A Nightmare on Overwhelm Street
The man’s bloodied forearm dangled limply outside the door of his horribly smashed-up car.
I slowed down to get a better look at this accident on the other side of the road. The drivers in front of me had also reduced speed, but the stretch ahead of them was clear. No congestion; no need to brake. And yet, an unstoppable need to gawp at this disturbing scene.
Like a clip from a slasher film, it would rewind and replay on a time loop, and creep me out when I was alone. Usually, in the dark.
Still, here and now, I didn’t feel alone. My fellow motorists and I were connected through compassion. My tribe. But there was more to it.
We rubberneckers had also connected through ghoul. Sick much? Not so much. Why?
Gene Pool; Ghoul Pool
When you dig through the layers of theories about morbid fascination, I dare say the bottom line is the archetypal POV.
Archetypes are the earliest universal patterns of all our thoughts, feelings and activities. Ancient myth is home to the archetypes. And our primitive brain is the habitat for ancient myths.
Oh. Dear. God.
That’s scary, especially when you consider the crazy, perverse, macabre stuff that went down in ancient myths. Deliberate—no accident. In today’s civilised world, you’d classify it as ‘criminal pathology, moral monstrosity’.*
Out, Damned Spot! … Or Not
It’s why myths were overlaid with stories scrubbed clean of the filth, and in the case of fairy tales, populated with cardboard cut-out characters. A moral of the fairy tale reinforcing the sanitising process: Kill that wicked witch!
A few little problems, though, with such stories that are amongst the first you hear:
1. The she-devil we’re hell-bent on nixing in the interest of self-improvement represents what’s considered ‘undesirable’ aspects: negative thoughts and feelings and impulses. But these negatives are all eternal, innate parts of our humanness.
2. You can’t eliminate what’s natural. Can’t. At best, you’ll squash it. Or so it seems …
3. You don’t just hear, read or tell stories. You live them.
Growth Mythconceptions
For me, life had felt more like a Greek tragicomedy, and I needed to know why.
It’s in my nature to ask lots of questions. Curiosity is in everyone’s nature. (Much of our kiddie-speak ends with a question mark, right?) But I’d lost myself when I stopped asking important questions.
‘Does my bum look big in this?’ is not a searching question. The important ones question reality. ‘What makes me care so much that my bum might look big in this?’
Self-inquiry seeks the kind of answers that can’t be found in the processed, straitjacketed fairy-tale’s fabric. Or in an agony aunt’s column. Questioning can rock the boat; self-inquiry can capsize it and send you plunging into the deeps.
Village of the Dammed Up
These dives used to leave me feeling like I was drowning in a cesspool of black, sludgy emotions. But I learned to stop fighting them. And one day, I remembered to keep questioning my way through:
Where am I? Who am I?
And then …
I got it!
With each fall, I’d landed in the messy archetypal terrain of my psyche where patterning had started. This time, though, I made like the ancients. Yet … I didn’t need to know a single myth, or the names of mythical characters.
That’s what ancient storytellers did. They gave human form to thoughts, emotions, actions, and conditions. Made them multidimensional characters—divine and profane; made them relatable.
Personifying animates. It thaws painful frozen feelings, bursts dams, and dredges up shot-down and shutdown responses to past injustices; it gives momentum to the once-smouldering, mutant resentments, hatreds, jealousies and such.
Why Poke the Bear?
Look at it this way: As a small child, you were curious about and fascinated by your own poop (literally). Childhood curiosity becomes overlaid with civility and morality. Too much moralism can make for constipated psychic poop, which may be stinking up the unplumbed depths.
But once there’s movement in the bowels of the innermost self, the direction of the story starts to shift. Life starts to shift. And little personal shifts make little ripples through the collective. They need to …
The World Has Gone Mad!
Our stories are almost a study in ancient mythologies. Foul stories that used to be occasional, sensational front-page headlines are now becoming evergreen content.
The crap is imploding or exploding. Consider the proliferation of cancer stories, of terrorism stories, of sexual abuse stories. It’s as if the disowned forces are becoming increasingly bent out of shape about having been bent out of shape.
So, could it be that the urge to look at the horror out there is really a call to look at the horror within?
Something to think about. Or should that be … someone?
*Hillman, James (1992) Re-Visioning Psychology, New York: Harper Perennial (p 150).
The man’s bloodied forearm dangled limply outside the door of his horribly smashed-up car.
I slowed down to get a better look at this accident on the other side of the road. The drivers in front of me had also reduced speed, but the stretch ahead of them was clear. No congestion; no need to brake. And yet, an unstoppable need to gawp at this disturbing scene.
Like a clip from a slasher film, it would rewind and replay on a time loop, and creep me out when I was alone. Usually, in the dark.
Still, here and now, I didn’t feel alone. My fellow motorists and I were connected through compassion. My tribe. But there was more to it.
We rubberneckers had also connected through ghoul. Sick much? Not so much. Why?
Gene Pool; Ghoul Pool
When you dig through the layers of theories about morbid fascination, I dare say the bottom line is the archetypal POV.
Archetypes are the earliest universal patterns of all our thoughts, feelings and activities. Ancient myth is home to the archetypes. And our primitive brain is the habitat for ancient myths.
Oh. Dear. God.
That’s scary, especially when you consider the crazy, perverse, macabre stuff that went down in ancient myths. Deliberate—no accident. In today’s civilised world, you’d classify it as ‘criminal pathology, moral monstrosity’.*
Out, Damned Spot! … Or Not
It’s why myths were overlaid with stories scrubbed clean of the filth, and in the case of fairy tales, populated with cardboard cut-out characters. A moral of the fairy tale reinforcing the sanitising process: Kill that wicked witch!
A few little problems, though, with such stories that are amongst the first you hear:
1. The she-devil we’re hell-bent on nixing in the interest of self-improvement represents what’s considered ‘undesirable’ aspects: negative thoughts and feelings and impulses. But these negatives are all eternal, innate parts of our humanness.
2. You can’t eliminate what’s natural. Can’t. At best, you’ll squash it. Or so it seems …
3. You don’t just hear, read or tell stories. You live them.
And just who is living the (airy-)fairy tale?
Nobody.
Except on Facebook. Heaps of people are happily-ever-aftering on Facebook.
Growth Mythconceptions
For me, life had felt more like a Greek tragicomedy, and I needed to know why.
It’s in my nature to ask lots of questions. Curiosity is in everyone’s nature. (Much of our kiddie-speak ends with a question mark, right?) But I’d lost myself when I stopped asking important questions.
‘Does my bum look big in this?’ is not a searching question. The important ones question reality. ‘What makes me care so much that my bum might look big in this?’
Self-inquiry seeks the kind of answers that can’t be found in the processed, straitjacketed fairy-tale’s fabric. Or in an agony aunt’s column. Questioning can rock the boat; self-inquiry can capsize it and send you plunging into the deeps.
Village of the Dammed Up
These dives used to leave me feeling like I was drowning in a cesspool of black, sludgy emotions. But I learned to stop fighting them. And one day, I remembered to keep questioning my way through:
Where am I? Who am I?
And then …
I got it!
With each fall, I’d landed in the messy archetypal terrain of my psyche where patterning had started. This time, though, I made like the ancients. Yet … I didn’t need to know a single myth, or the names of mythical characters.
It came down to personifying. A word—a label—is like a sword. It can cut you. You can’t engage with it, though. Make it the swordsman, it’s a different story.
That’s what ancient storytellers did. They gave human form to thoughts, emotions, actions, and conditions. Made them multidimensional characters—divine and profane; made them relatable.
Personifying animates. It thaws painful frozen feelings, bursts dams, and dredges up shot-down and shutdown responses to past injustices; it gives momentum to the once-smouldering, mutant resentments, hatreds, jealousies and such.
Why Poke the Bear?
Look at it this way: As a small child, you were curious about and fascinated by your own poop (literally). Childhood curiosity becomes overlaid with civility and morality. Too much moralism can make for constipated psychic poop, which may be stinking up the unplumbed depths.
That psychic poop is the subtext of the story of your life. Just because you don’t (want to) hear it, doesn’t mean you’re not living it.
But once there’s movement in the bowels of the innermost self, the direction of the story starts to shift. Life starts to shift. And little personal shifts make little ripples through the collective. They need to …
The World Has Gone Mad!
Our stories are almost a study in ancient mythologies. Foul stories that used to be occasional, sensational front-page headlines are now becoming evergreen content.
The crap is imploding or exploding. Consider the proliferation of cancer stories, of terrorism stories, of sexual abuse stories. It’s as if the disowned forces are becoming increasingly bent out of shape about having been bent out of shape.
So, could it be that the urge to look at the horror out there is really a call to look at the horror within?
Something to think about. Or should that be … someone?
*Hillman, James (1992) Re-Visioning Psychology, New York: Harper Perennial (p 150).
February 13, 2017
Does Cupid Aim to Please? Or Is He One Sharp Cookie?
Love Is Blind, Deaf and Dumbed-Down
Chubs draws back his bow, shoots his ♥-tipped arrow, and pierces the heart of our love interest. Aww. Happy Valentine’s Day.
This picture, this Hallmark moment, is the stuff of fairy tales.
Rewind some centuries, though—before these fluffy stories made us go all gooey; before February 14 was known as Valentine’s Day—and a different picture emerges.
Cupid didn’t have a weight problem. And he was no angel!
Cupid Blindsides
He is a god. Is. Not was. An immortal, his MO has not changed over time to suit shifting ideologies, pop culture, Internet dating. Cupid—Eros to the Greeks—is Love personified: Good and bad. And everything else in between (the ears).
The whole story has it that this mischievous Bastard—with a capital B in deference to his divine status—launched blunt, lead-tipped arrows as well as his sharp, gold-tipped ones. The gold kindled love and passion; the lead instilled the opposite. Gold, lead—whatev. Cupid shoots us through the heart.
And then ...
He shoots us in the arse!
Cupid is a Crack Shot
This penetrative god—who calls the shots—has 20/20 vision; mortals have hindsight.
Like seismic activity, Cupid’s shot in the gluteus maximus ripples upwards and causes cracks. Most notably, in our rose-coloured glasses.
The Apoca[hot]lips Has Come!
Ruth (Roth) Gold, smart-mouth protagonist in the romantic comedy Apoca[hot]lips, does not wear rose-coloured glasses. She sees life through an unfiltered lens—schmutz ’n’ all. She doesn’t ‘do’ the modern-day incarnation of Cupid. Ruth thinks fairy tales are bollocks.
She could never identify with the stereotypical maiden, the milquetoast ingénue who evolved from her baby-boomer girlhood, and was fashioned as pink and meek and froufrou. Ruth does not have a Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty complex.
Independent and aware, she’s more aligned with the ballsy characters of the original Cupid’s habitat—the ancient no-holds-barred stories.
Still, she’s not immune to Cupid’s ways and she’s not prepared for them.
When she ends up in a romance that’s branded taboo within a fairy-tale culture (but would be meh in an ancient one), with slings and arrows directed at her by those around her, she’s assailed front and rear. Ruth is torn between here and there.
What to do?
Stories Hold Answers, but ...
Life and love are a mystery. Fairy tales and fairy-tale love are not a mystery. They’re linear and formulaic:
The Whole Ruth and Nothing but the Ruth
Ruth knows the prince—this godlike fabrication—can’t save her from the evil character in her head. Being asleep won’t make it go away, and waiting for the other shoe to drop is counter-productive.
No. Ruth (Roth) Gold knows the key to change lies beneath the fairy tale—in the twists and turns of the deep, dark corners. She dives and plumbs until the answer finds her. And it is ...?
Ah. It’s a mystery!
To unravel it, click here: http://bit.ly/Apocahotlips
Chubs draws back his bow, shoots his ♥-tipped arrow, and pierces the heart of our love interest. Aww. Happy Valentine’s Day.
This picture, this Hallmark moment, is the stuff of fairy tales.
Rewind some centuries, though—before these fluffy stories made us go all gooey; before February 14 was known as Valentine’s Day—and a different picture emerges.
Cupid didn’t have a weight problem. And he was no angel!
Cupid Blindsides
He is a god. Is. Not was. An immortal, his MO has not changed over time to suit shifting ideologies, pop culture, Internet dating. Cupid—Eros to the Greeks—is Love personified: Good and bad. And everything else in between (the ears).
The whole story has it that this mischievous Bastard—with a capital B in deference to his divine status—launched blunt, lead-tipped arrows as well as his sharp, gold-tipped ones. The gold kindled love and passion; the lead instilled the opposite. Gold, lead—whatev. Cupid shoots us through the heart.
And then ...
He shoots us in the arse!
Cupid is a Crack Shot
This penetrative god—who calls the shots—has 20/20 vision; mortals have hindsight.
Like seismic activity, Cupid’s shot in the gluteus maximus ripples upwards and causes cracks. Most notably, in our rose-coloured glasses.
The Apoca[hot]lips Has Come!
Ruth (Roth) Gold, smart-mouth protagonist in the romantic comedy Apoca[hot]lips, does not wear rose-coloured glasses. She sees life through an unfiltered lens—schmutz ’n’ all. She doesn’t ‘do’ the modern-day incarnation of Cupid. Ruth thinks fairy tales are bollocks.
She could never identify with the stereotypical maiden, the milquetoast ingénue who evolved from her baby-boomer girlhood, and was fashioned as pink and meek and froufrou. Ruth does not have a Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty complex.
Independent and aware, she’s more aligned with the ballsy characters of the original Cupid’s habitat—the ancient no-holds-barred stories.
Still, she’s not immune to Cupid’s ways and she’s not prepared for them.
When she ends up in a romance that’s branded taboo within a fairy-tale culture (but would be meh in an ancient one), with slings and arrows directed at her by those around her, she’s assailed front and rear. Ruth is torn between here and there.
What to do?
Stories Hold Answers, but ...
Life and love are a mystery. Fairy tales and fairy-tale love are not a mystery. They’re linear and formulaic:
Hapless, narrow-waisted maiden (victim of evil character) + Studly hero prince (slayer of evil character and saviour of hapless, narrow-waisted maiden) = Happily ever after.
Truth: The prince lives in a castle in the air and the fairy tale is scaffolding. It’s not a foundation.
The Whole Ruth and Nothing but the Ruth
Ruth knows the prince—this godlike fabrication—can’t save her from the evil character in her head. Being asleep won’t make it go away, and waiting for the other shoe to drop is counter-productive.
No. Ruth (Roth) Gold knows the key to change lies beneath the fairy tale—in the twists and turns of the deep, dark corners. She dives and plumbs until the answer finds her. And it is ...?
Ah. It’s a mystery!
To unravel it, click here: http://bit.ly/Apocahotlips
July 19, 2016
Why Obscenity Is Good for Your Health
Truth or Dare
Dare. I dare say we all crave obscenity.
Ooh ... I sense prudes mounting their high horses, shouting a spotless synonym for 'bullshit!'. But that would indicate that they’ve opened up this post, which could indicate that they were unable to resist sneaking a peek at something that might be grubby. Why? Because the human psyche is both squeaky-clean and downright dirty. Naturally.
Truth. The meaning of ‘obscenity’ has been corrupted. Moral purity passed down from earlier centuries (and imprinted on our psyches) has relegated the word to the gutter.
‘Obscenity’ has been fouled by goody-goodies, shat on in the same way the harpies, those mythical fuglies with a human face and bird-like body, crapped on everything.
But this from the Dictionary of Early English:
Ob. From old Hebrew obh, a wizard, sorceress.
Scaena. Stage.
Obscene is from ob + scaena.
Talking Dirty
Ob + scaena evolved—or devolved—to mean, ‘not to be put on the stage; indecent’. (It went downhill from there.)
Actions reflect ideologies. Lexicographers shaped unsoiled dictionaries and showed ‘obscene’ as having sixteenth century French and Latin origins: ob meaning ‘onto’ (not wizard) and caenum meaning ‘filth’ (not stage).
Science trending in the seventeenth century pooh-poohed the spiritual. Sorcery was woo-woo, a mystical force beyond scientific understanding. It was considered dangerous. So, the dictionary extinguished the real meaning of obscenity—pfft—and sorceresses were burned at the stake. But their demise was staged. Witch burning attracted one hell of an audience.
Look Away, Look Away! Or Not ...
Even in our civilised world, there’s that pull to look at gut-churning stuff: we still rubberneck on the highway to scope out a horrible accident. Or read about it—where curiosity sells newspapers, morbid curiosity* (in the bastardised sense of the word) rakes in an obscene amount of money. So ...
Dare. I daresay tragedy is being normalised and we’re drowning in it.
Truth. We need to know what’s going on in the world, the news needs to communicate reality. But reality in its entirety is tragicomedy, like in the ancient raw stories that form the archetypes of our modern-day existence. Although tragedy is no laughing matter and comedy is no money-spinner for tabloids, jokes start flying not long after an incident.
Why Not Just Good Clean Comedy? Why Obscenity?
The kinds of tragedies filling our airwaves these days hark back to the gruesomeness of an uncivilised, barbaric society. So, the clean ‘why-did-the-chicken-cross-the-road’ humour that used to put a smile on our faces doesn’t go deep enough to give us hope. The soul needs a sacred kind of healing. It needs things that provoke good belly laughs—make us double up, split our sides, roll in the aisles, bust a gut, screech and howl with mirth.
As Jungian psychologist Clarissa Pinkola Estés says, ‘The mischief and humor of the obscene ... can cause a vital form of medicine to spread through the endocrine and neurological systems of the body.’
The People Are Revolting
It’s telling that Billy Connolly’s obscene brand of comedy has a huge following; that Louis C.K is considered ‘America's Undisputed King of Comedy’; and that Josh Ostrovsky, aka thefatjewish on Instagram, has 8.7 million followers of his obscenity, with every one of his posts attracting six-figure ‘likes’.
With all of this in mind ...
Truth and Dare
Obscenity is a must-have.
*More on morbid curiosity in the next blog
Dare. I dare say we all crave obscenity.
Ooh ... I sense prudes mounting their high horses, shouting a spotless synonym for 'bullshit!'. But that would indicate that they’ve opened up this post, which could indicate that they were unable to resist sneaking a peek at something that might be grubby. Why? Because the human psyche is both squeaky-clean and downright dirty. Naturally.
Truth. The meaning of ‘obscenity’ has been corrupted. Moral purity passed down from earlier centuries (and imprinted on our psyches) has relegated the word to the gutter.
‘Obscenity’ has been fouled by goody-goodies, shat on in the same way the harpies, those mythical fuglies with a human face and bird-like body, crapped on everything.
But this from the Dictionary of Early English:
Ob. From old Hebrew obh, a wizard, sorceress.
Scaena. Stage.
Obscene is from ob + scaena.
Talking Dirty
Ob + scaena evolved—or devolved—to mean, ‘not to be put on the stage; indecent’. (It went downhill from there.)
Actions reflect ideologies. Lexicographers shaped unsoiled dictionaries and showed ‘obscene’ as having sixteenth century French and Latin origins: ob meaning ‘onto’ (not wizard) and caenum meaning ‘filth’ (not stage).
Science trending in the seventeenth century pooh-poohed the spiritual. Sorcery was woo-woo, a mystical force beyond scientific understanding. It was considered dangerous. So, the dictionary extinguished the real meaning of obscenity—pfft—and sorceresses were burned at the stake. But their demise was staged. Witch burning attracted one hell of an audience.
Look Away, Look Away! Or Not ...
Even in our civilised world, there’s that pull to look at gut-churning stuff: we still rubberneck on the highway to scope out a horrible accident. Or read about it—where curiosity sells newspapers, morbid curiosity* (in the bastardised sense of the word) rakes in an obscene amount of money. So ...
Dare. I daresay tragedy is being normalised and we’re drowning in it.
Truth. We need to know what’s going on in the world, the news needs to communicate reality. But reality in its entirety is tragicomedy, like in the ancient raw stories that form the archetypes of our modern-day existence. Although tragedy is no laughing matter and comedy is no money-spinner for tabloids, jokes start flying not long after an incident.
Why Not Just Good Clean Comedy? Why Obscenity?
The kinds of tragedies filling our airwaves these days hark back to the gruesomeness of an uncivilised, barbaric society. So, the clean ‘why-did-the-chicken-cross-the-road’ humour that used to put a smile on our faces doesn’t go deep enough to give us hope. The soul needs a sacred kind of healing. It needs things that provoke good belly laughs—make us double up, split our sides, roll in the aisles, bust a gut, screech and howl with mirth.
As Jungian psychologist Clarissa Pinkola Estés says, ‘The mischief and humor of the obscene ... can cause a vital form of medicine to spread through the endocrine and neurological systems of the body.’
The People Are Revolting
It’s telling that Billy Connolly’s obscene brand of comedy has a huge following; that Louis C.K is considered ‘America's Undisputed King of Comedy’; and that Josh Ostrovsky, aka thefatjewish on Instagram, has 8.7 million followers of his obscenity, with every one of his posts attracting six-figure ‘likes’.
With all of this in mind ...
Truth and Dare
Obscenity is a must-have.
*More on morbid curiosity in the next blog
June 7, 2016
Why a Square Peg in a Round Hole Is the Ideal Fit
Here’s to the Crazy Ones!
It was a small poster that came in the mail almost twenty years ago. Apple sent it to me because I was a true-blue Mac user.
‘Here’s to the Crazy Ones,’ it said.
Woo-hoo!
I felt buoyed, not because I liked being considered crazy—the poster wasn’t personal, although, it was kind of personal—but because the two words that followed the toast-like salute grabbed me: ‘The Misfits.’
Here’s to the Crazy Ones. The Misfits.
Apple, you had me at hello. And sealed the deal at goodbye ...
‘Think Different.’
These last two words of the poster ensured I would never defect from a company that didn’t see different thinking as a defect.
Square peg in a round hole that I was, I now felt a little more confident staring at an empty page (like the ad suggested) and filling it with my different style of thinking.
It was suddenly cool to be the uncool kid. Apple said so. Right? It was suddenly cool to see the world through a skewed lens. Skewed, mind you, according to and in relation to social norms.
A Good Fit or a Natural Fit?
Who or what determines ‘normal’, though? Psychologists, sociologists, educationalists, marketers, the media and/or social media ... ?
For the modern ‘ists’ and ‘isms’ that promote a departure from traditional whatevers, fitting in means following what’s trending at the mo; not following means being a proverbial dinosaur (but you can still fit with other dinosaurs); deviating from both old and new norms means not fitting.
Archaic—not dinosaur—thinking is not what you think, though.
For the ancients, everything was normal: divinity, deviances et al. In ancient stories, no one—nothing—was a misfit. Gorgons fit as much as gods did. Crazy was normal. Back then, crazy was not stigmatised. It’s one reason why I have an affinity with the back-then stories.
Then there’s this. These stories are the roots of human life (thoughts, impulses, behaviours). Their characters represent the human psyche in its entirety: black and white and everything in between. Oh, and there are much more than fifty shades of grey—all are different, all are of equal value.
The Heart of the Matter
I think outside the boxes of all the social categories I was assigned to when I was born. It can be tough. But it’s comforting just knowing that the raw uncut stories—the real ones at the core of our existence—collapse man-made differences and respect natural ones.
And it’s in this place, which comes down to essential humanness, well, that’s where I fit—hundred percent. So do you.
As writer, Carlo Levi, said: ‘The future has an ancient heart.’ It’s simpler and safer to think like everyone else, but how can you unlock that ancient but brand new heart you entered the world with—that can be obscured by a blind adherence to isms—if you don’t dare to ... think different?
It was a small poster that came in the mail almost twenty years ago. Apple sent it to me because I was a true-blue Mac user.
‘Here’s to the Crazy Ones,’ it said.
Woo-hoo!
I felt buoyed, not because I liked being considered crazy—the poster wasn’t personal, although, it was kind of personal—but because the two words that followed the toast-like salute grabbed me: ‘The Misfits.’
Here’s to the Crazy Ones. The Misfits.
Apple, you had me at hello. And sealed the deal at goodbye ...
‘Think Different.’
These last two words of the poster ensured I would never defect from a company that didn’t see different thinking as a defect.
Square peg in a round hole that I was, I now felt a little more confident staring at an empty page (like the ad suggested) and filling it with my different style of thinking.
It was suddenly cool to be the uncool kid. Apple said so. Right? It was suddenly cool to see the world through a skewed lens. Skewed, mind you, according to and in relation to social norms.
A Good Fit or a Natural Fit?
Who or what determines ‘normal’, though? Psychologists, sociologists, educationalists, marketers, the media and/or social media ... ?
For the modern ‘ists’ and ‘isms’ that promote a departure from traditional whatevers, fitting in means following what’s trending at the mo; not following means being a proverbial dinosaur (but you can still fit with other dinosaurs); deviating from both old and new norms means not fitting.
Archaic—not dinosaur—thinking is not what you think, though.
For the ancients, everything was normal: divinity, deviances et al. In ancient stories, no one—nothing—was a misfit. Gorgons fit as much as gods did. Crazy was normal. Back then, crazy was not stigmatised. It’s one reason why I have an affinity with the back-then stories.
Then there’s this. These stories are the roots of human life (thoughts, impulses, behaviours). Their characters represent the human psyche in its entirety: black and white and everything in between. Oh, and there are much more than fifty shades of grey—all are different, all are of equal value.
The Heart of the Matter
I think outside the boxes of all the social categories I was assigned to when I was born. It can be tough. But it’s comforting just knowing that the raw uncut stories—the real ones at the core of our existence—collapse man-made differences and respect natural ones.
And it’s in this place, which comes down to essential humanness, well, that’s where I fit—hundred percent. So do you.
As writer, Carlo Levi, said: ‘The future has an ancient heart.’ It’s simpler and safer to think like everyone else, but how can you unlock that ancient but brand new heart you entered the world with—that can be obscured by a blind adherence to isms—if you don’t dare to ... think different?
April 9, 2016
Psst! How to Curb Your Inner Critic’s Rubbishing
SHUUUT UUUUUUUP!
And that, my friend, silences the inner critic!
As if …
Crit does not take directions well, not even with a ‘Please, I am begging you’ tacked on the end.
Hiding under the doona doesn’t work either. It’s wormed its way into your head and, ergo, into your bed.
Blocking your ears? Nooo … that godawful noise isn’t out there. Stressing: INNER critic.
All writers have to contend with one, but writers don’t have the monopoly.
For me, reasoning with it, ignoring it, overlaying its blah-blahs with positivity did rien, ništa, niets, semmi, gornisht, nada, which mean ‘nothing’ in French, Croatian, Dutch, Hungarian, Yiddish, and Spanish, respectively. The inner critic is fluent in every single language.
So. Grasping at straws, I turned to the advice du jour—the gurus’ ‘how-to’s’.
‘Don’t wait for it to blindside you,’ they said. ‘Face it. Give it a name.’
Tried that, but it didn’t warm to ‘Hey, Arsehole’. What can one say? Years of being bedevilled leaves one resentful, no? Anyway, consulting the self-appointed experts provoked the critic. Of course, it did: ‘See, you can’t even figure it out for yourself!’
Then, one fine-but-tearful day I heard the wise part of me. It whispered, ‘Let the critic have its say.’
You’re kidding, right?
‘Letting it have its say is not the same as letting it get its own way,’ said Ms Inner Wise.
Why the Critic Will Never Shut Up. Ever.
I took my sage’s advice because I got that this critic is an innate aspect of the psyche (as much as the sage is).
I got that the same social forces that feed it also promote ways to obliterate it. But I’ve learned that by giving the critic a voice, it no longer needs to have authority over my psyche and life.
Speak up … then SHUUUT UUUUUUUP!
A goddamn challenging approach, with the crit no less snarky! Through giving it permission to speak, though, I discovered it serves a purpose:
And so, because this beast is ingrown (albeit much like an ingrown toenail), and because I’m working at accepting all of me (and ‘no one’ likes to be left out), I have formed an unholy alliance with it.
Where it used to be at its very best–worst when I was being creative, when I was being me, letting it slag off intermittently means it no longer needs to block the flow to get my attention, and it doesn’t need to attack anywhere near as often.
How do you manage yours?
And that, my friend, silences the inner critic!
As if …
Crit does not take directions well, not even with a ‘Please, I am begging you’ tacked on the end.
Hiding under the doona doesn’t work either. It’s wormed its way into your head and, ergo, into your bed.
Blocking your ears? Nooo … that godawful noise isn’t out there. Stressing: INNER critic.
All writers have to contend with one, but writers don’t have the monopoly.
This bitchy, nit-picking predator of the psyche isn’t picky and choosy. It beats up on everyone.
For me, reasoning with it, ignoring it, overlaying its blah-blahs with positivity did rien, ništa, niets, semmi, gornisht, nada, which mean ‘nothing’ in French, Croatian, Dutch, Hungarian, Yiddish, and Spanish, respectively. The inner critic is fluent in every single language.
So. Grasping at straws, I turned to the advice du jour—the gurus’ ‘how-to’s’.
‘Don’t wait for it to blindside you,’ they said. ‘Face it. Give it a name.’
Tried that, but it didn’t warm to ‘Hey, Arsehole’. What can one say? Years of being bedevilled leaves one resentful, no? Anyway, consulting the self-appointed experts provoked the critic. Of course, it did: ‘See, you can’t even figure it out for yourself!’
Then, one fine-but-tearful day I heard the wise part of me. It whispered, ‘Let the critic have its say.’
You’re kidding, right?
‘Letting it have its say is not the same as letting it get its own way,’ said Ms Inner Wise.
Why the Critic Will Never Shut Up. Ever.
I took my sage’s advice because I got that this critic is an innate aspect of the psyche (as much as the sage is).
The critic was not constructed by disapproving parents, or by a society that promotes unrealistic standards of perfection. It was, and is, only fed by said parents and society.
I got that the same social forces that feed it also promote ways to obliterate it. But I’ve learned that by giving the critic a voice, it no longer needs to have authority over my psyche and life.
Speak up … then SHUUUT UUUUUUUP!
A goddamn challenging approach, with the crit no less snarky! Through giving it permission to speak, though, I discovered it serves a purpose:
When it assumes the guise of the charmer (one of its many) and tells me how fab, fantastic, phenomenal I am, it cuts me down the second I soak up the pseudo praise. Not a bad thing. Keeps me humble.
Its jibes can be demoralising. Not a bad thing. Lapsing into moralism stops me from seeing that some of what I’ve claimed as my straitjacketed values and attitudes aren’t mine at all.
Its relentless trash talk can drive me to frozen despair. Not a bad thing. At the darkest point, I uncover hope in the hopelessness, which inspires me to continue free-falling through the bullshit and towards realness.
And so, because this beast is ingrown (albeit much like an ingrown toenail), and because I’m working at accepting all of me (and ‘no one’ likes to be left out), I have formed an unholy alliance with it.
Where it used to be at its very best–worst when I was being creative, when I was being me, letting it slag off intermittently means it no longer needs to block the flow to get my attention, and it doesn’t need to attack anywhere near as often.
How do you manage yours?
February 21, 2016
Are You Sleeping with the Enemy? (Why It’s Worth It.)
Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed?
I’m sleeping with the enemy. And there’s more than one.
Oh, I don’t know them in the biblical sense, and I haven’t seen them, as such. Then who are they?
My personal demons, that’s who.
Yes. I am in bed with my demons.
Boomer Rumour
For a very long time, I ran from them. It’s what we Baby Boomer kids were conditioned to do. And for us females, traditionally, ANGER has been the most demonised demon.
Then Helen Reddy came along and sang, ‘I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar’.
‘Roar’? Like, really?
Geez … I got slapped down for expressing righteous indignation, so hello! Roaring seemed beyond the realm of reason. Roaring would invite more of the shame attached to mouthing off, which had already uglified anger.
But we’ve been fed furphies about both anger and demons.
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!
The POV of anger that I grew up with: ‘An angry man is assertive; an angry woman is a bitch.’
And our modern-day definition of demon is: 1. an evil spirit; fiend. 2. an evil passion or influence. 3. a wicked or cruel person. Persistently tormenting.
Misappropriation
We’ve been sold a big fat lie and it’s cost us dearly.
Let’s first look at the definition of demon.
Somewhere along the line it became bastardised: monotheistic religion was hell-bent on purifying us, encouraging us to expunge our dark natural impulses.
But check out the etymological meaning of demon: ‘from Latin daemon ‘spirit’, from Greek daimon ‘deity, divine power; lesser god; guiding spirit, tutelary deity’.
The darkness-denying ideologists became society’s self-appointed guiding spirits, making us believe that female anger was … ‘demonic’ (in our contaminated understanding of demon).
Unvarnished Truth
But …
When I discovered the value of anger, I first raged on paper against its taboo-ness in my psyche. A personal journal is an intimate space where no one can shame your fury. It’s where I learnt that rage = healthy anger + shame. It’s where I can systematically unplug from the shame that bound my childhood expression of this misperceived feeling.
I dare say that for many women of my generation (and previous and subsequent ones), seeing this much-maligned warrior-emotion as a friend rather than an enemy is a work in progress. It’s safe to say, though, it’s an important bedfellow. ROAR!
I’m sleeping with the enemy. And there’s more than one.
Oh, I don’t know them in the biblical sense, and I haven’t seen them, as such. Then who are they?
My personal demons, that’s who.
Yes. I am in bed with my demons.
Boomer Rumour
For a very long time, I ran from them. It’s what we Baby Boomer kids were conditioned to do. And for us females, traditionally, ANGER has been the most demonised demon.
Then Helen Reddy came along and sang, ‘I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar’.
‘Roar’? Like, really?
Geez … I got slapped down for expressing righteous indignation, so hello! Roaring seemed beyond the realm of reason. Roaring would invite more of the shame attached to mouthing off, which had already uglified anger.
But we’ve been fed furphies about both anger and demons.
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!
The POV of anger that I grew up with: ‘An angry man is assertive; an angry woman is a bitch.’
And our modern-day definition of demon is: 1. an evil spirit; fiend. 2. an evil passion or influence. 3. a wicked or cruel person. Persistently tormenting.
Misappropriation
We’ve been sold a big fat lie and it’s cost us dearly.
Let’s first look at the definition of demon.
Somewhere along the line it became bastardised: monotheistic religion was hell-bent on purifying us, encouraging us to expunge our dark natural impulses.
But check out the etymological meaning of demon: ‘from Latin daemon ‘spirit’, from Greek daimon ‘deity, divine power; lesser god; guiding spirit, tutelary deity’.
The darkness-denying ideologists became society’s self-appointed guiding spirits, making us believe that female anger was … ‘demonic’ (in our contaminated understanding of demon).
Unvarnished Truth
But …
The raw, hot emotion of anger is pretty cool. A natural and appropriate response to an injustice, it stimulates, strengthens and motivates.
When I discovered the value of anger, I first raged on paper against its taboo-ness in my psyche. A personal journal is an intimate space where no one can shame your fury. It’s where I learnt that rage = healthy anger + shame. It’s where I can systematically unplug from the shame that bound my childhood expression of this misperceived feeling.
I dare say that for many women of my generation (and previous and subsequent ones), seeing this much-maligned warrior-emotion as a friend rather than an enemy is a work in progress. It’s safe to say, though, it’s an important bedfellow. ROAR!
