Nimue Brown's Blog, page 22

Teenager season

(Nimue)

At this time of year in my part of the world, young creatures and birds start to strike out on their own. I’m particularly aware of the foxes and magpies. Some species don’t do this but remain in family groups. Either way there are a lot of teenagers out there right now – no longer babies, not experienced, not quite adults.

They have a lot in common with human teenagers – they may be loud and antisocial (magpies) cocky and overconfident (foxes). Some are swaggering about trying to make a space for themselves (seagulls) and so forth. It’s a vulnerable time for them, and a lot of young ones won’t survive to see adulthood.

In birds, the process of going from baby to adult can result in all kinds of strange and unfamiliar plumage. I tend to assume anything funny-looking at this time of year is a teenager, but figuring out the species can be hard. Teenagers often look like scruffy versions of the adults – which amuses me.

At this time of year I am likely to see more buzzards as the new ones seek their own territories. Their cries are mournful and frequent. I can’t help but think this is the melancholy sounds of young beings who do not know where the snacks are coming from.

Contemplating co-dependency

(Nimue)

Co-dependency is a term that came out of alcohol recovery groups. It’s not an official diagnosis with a clear definition, but it gets bandied about a lot. As a term it bothers me greatly, and it’s a case in point for examining how we use language, the kinds of stories we tell and how that impacts on us.

The story goes that by trying to help a partner or family member who has issues, the co-dependent person is actually making things worse. The obvious point here is that if you have a loved one with addiction issues,  or any other problems, helping is the obvious choice. The odds are that with little support or experience you’ll be making things up as you go along, and therefore probably not doing an optimal job, but getting professional support takes time. The idea is that the helpful partner becomes an enabler, facilitating the problem behaviour and as dependent on it as the addict/sufferer.

I think that’s a pretty big leap. If someone is an alcoholic, they can die if they don’t get alcohol, and as a non-professional it makes most sense to just try and keep them alive until someone more able to help can get in there. Doing the best you can with no training or resources isn’t something anyone should be given a hard time over. I see the term co-dependency used to tell unhelpful stories and to pathologise care in unhealthy ways.

I’m deeply wary of labelling someone who is genuinely trying to help, as part of the problem. It’s not like support is easy to tap into, resources are scarce. I was on one occasion in a GPs office with a young lady who had an alcohol problem. It had been a lot of work to get her there, and the doctor was dismissive and just told her she ought to drink less – no help or support was offered. I’ve seen friends trying to support offspring with drug addictions, similarly unaided. I don’t think it’s helpful to label or blame people who find themselves in this situation or to judge them for whatever they come up with as a coping mechanism – even if it is less than ideal.

There are other aspects to this, however. People who are intent on being rescuers in unhealthy ways can act to keep others in crisis so that they continue to need rescuing.  It’s not an easy thing to spot either from inside, or outside the situation. Keeping someone vulnerable and in crisis can be a way of controlling them. If a person is persuaded that they can’t cope, can’t function or take care of themselves, that makes them dependent on their abuser. Of course plenty of people with chronic illness and significant disability cannot cope without help. What’s key here is the help, not the person giving it.

As an example, I have issue with my blood pressure dropping suddenly. I would not be safe being out on my own as a consequence. I just need someone with me who knows what to do if I get into trouble – I can cope perfectly well if I have the help I need. That’s a safe and healthy kind of enabling. If it seems that someone cannot possibly do anything without the other person being there, then there are reasons for caution.

Feelings of powerlessness are a big red flag. If the ‘help’ you are getting is not empowering you, then consider that it might not be help at all. If something feels controlling and limiting, trust that feeling. The person who wants to help will do that on your terms. The person who wants to tell you what to do will not be open to your opinion on your own needs.

The hardest question to ask is ‘am I doing this?’ Do I need to feel needed in a way that’s making me act controllingly? Do I think I would be rejected if this person did not need me? Do I want them to need me more than I want them to be well and happy? How would I feel if they got over this and got on with their life and weren’t dependent on me?

It’s fine to want to be needed and valued. That doesn’t make it ok to keep people in situations of need so as to maintain dependency.

Their Heart a Hive

(Nimue, review)

A young man obliged to leave his family. A big house with strange rules. Mystery, magic, romance and bees. So many bees.

This is a rather fabulous novel. The tale is set in something like nineteenth century Cornwall. The Cornish vibes are strong, as is a keen sense of folklore rooted in the local landscape. However, this is a folkloric reality, with magical goings on – at the outset you can’t really tell what is local belief and what might be more rooted in truth – finding out how the folklore relates to the lived experiences of the characters is a delight.

The other major difference between this reality and the one we inhabit, is that queerness is totally acceptable. There are established straight, gay and lesbian couples, and a throuple, Some characters read as asexual, there’s chosen family. Everyone is fine with everyone else’s sexual choices – the only social tensions come from class. It’s lovely reading a tale in which no one takes issues with who fancies whom. We need more of that.

Structurally this is a gothic novel with a lot of the tropes – the big house, the tragic aristocrat, the upper floor where no one must go, the weird noises in the night, the local legend about a beast…  However, this is a tale set mostly in the day, full of gardens and flowers, and bees. Sometimes the atmosphere is permeated by gothic gloom, but often it isn’t, and the scope for joy is always there. It doesn’t feel tragically doomed all the time, and I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the gothic elements with these deeply hopeful aspects.

The first person narrator – Lowen, is a young lad from a fishing background, drawn into life at the big house with all its mysteries. Lowen sees that things are very wrong, thanks to an unlikely ally who seems keen to have the young man understand the troubles of this unusual household. While Lowen is a teen, this didn’t read like YA to me – not that I’m an expert in the genre. It felt more like an adult gothic novel centred on a bright and innocent youth – which is common enough as a genre feature.

The underlying story is one of deep grief and loss, and a person unable to forgive themselves. There’s a really moving redemption arc, skilfully crafted so that every loss hits hard, drawing the reader in to really emotionally invest in the tale and its complicated characters. It’s a very satisfying story shape, beautifully written. I absolutely loved it. If ‘queer and full of bees’ sounds appealing to you (and I feel it should) then go forth and acquire a copy.

Community and difficulty

(Nimue)

Here in the UK we have not descended into civil war. The racists, looters and rioters turn out to be quite a small percentage of the population, while the people willing to get out there with placards and samba bands turn out to be numerous. Neither of these things surprise me.  However, for many people this has been a point of discovering what kind of unpleasantness lurked in their community all along.

We are all inclined to think the best of our friends, and of the communities we participate in. We like to tell ourselves the comforting lie that it isn’t people like us who do the terrible things. This has the unfortunate effect of making life easier for haters, abusers and all the rest. We don’t see them in our communities because we are pretty sure they aren’t there to be seen. We ignore the little red flags, determined to think the best of them. It’s only… we tell ourselves, we minimise and look away.

No group is magically free from problem people. Most of the time they aren’t that visible – especially if you aren’t the target of their predations, sexism, racial hatred and so forth. It’s harder to see what’s not being done to you, and when someone is nice to you, it can be unpleasant imagining that they aren’t always nice. Often, we prefer not to hear it, not to be made uncomfortable about our friend choices. It is easier to believe the victim has over-reacted, or fabricated the whole thing than to believe that someone you have invested in is acting in a deliberately nasty way.

Simply being willing to accept the idea that your community *could* have shitty people in it, helps. It puts you in a position to notice and act if there is a problem, where the wilfully oblivious just won’t notice. Knowing that your people could be problematic is essential for making safe spaces.

Willingness to be uncomfortable is so important. We can’t build safe and healthy communities without being willing to be uncomfortable sometimes. If we close ranks to protect ‘our own’ to protect our own image and personal tranquillity, we become complicity. We enable harm to continue.

We have a responsibility to hold each other to account, and to demand the best of each other. The more power we have in any communities we are part of, the greater the responsibility we have not to ignore problematic behaviour. Abusive and bigoted people often believe that everyone around them agrees with them – if you give them tacit support through silence and inaction, you keep them feeling entitled to cause harm.

If you aren’t a confrontational person, one of the best tools is to politely ask for an explanation. It works really well in face of ‘edgy humour’ where just asking them to explain why the joke s funny can make them expose their own prejudices. Quiet bemusement can get a lot done. Asking why they think what they do can be effective in face of people just repeating what they’ve heard elsewhere. For the more extreme cases, the new American model of just identifying it as ‘weird’ can get a lot done. Explicit non-support can take many forms.

It’s all to easy to end up online picking fights with strangers where that changes nothing. This is not a good use of your energy. There’s a limit to what any of us can do. If you want to work to promote justice and reduce hate, then your best focus is the spaces you move through physically. Do what you can to make those spaces safe and inclusive, and to challenge any small signs you see of prejudice and bullying. People who do not think everyone similar to them agrees with their hatred are less likely to feel they can act on it.

Being a Swing Rioter

(Nimue)

The original Swing Rioters were working people in the 1800s, struggling with poverty pay and resisting mechanisation on the land. If you’re interested in radical politics and the history of protest, it’s well worth looking them up.

This lot of Swing Rioters have a similar relationship to the name that The Levellers have to The Levellers – more ancestors of radical history there for those who want them. This is an overtly socialist sort of band, with songs celebrating union membership, key workers, and making political points as we go. I’ve worked with front man Robin Burton on a number of projects – I wrote him a mumming play, we’ve worked as a duo and Robin sings with Carnival of Cryptids. I’ve sung backing vocals for Swing Rioters before, but this was the first time I’ve had the pleasure of playing electric violin for them.

I might see if I can talk them into a Levellers cover or two.

Diseased Druid

(Nimue)

 The first time I had covid, I lost a day of work to it, and was slow for a while afterwards. This time it put me in bed for the best part of a week, and I’m not sure why.  I’m otherwise in much better shape than I was two years ago, and in theory this is a milder strain.

The worst aspect for me has been the loss of concentration – making the whole process incredibly boring. It’s easier to deal with being ill when you have some scope to distract yourself, but reading, watching things, even listening to music were beyond me. It’s a huge relief to be surfacing.

I should have had an interview last week, with the Druid hat on – hopefully that will be feasible soon as there’s scope to reshuffle it. I’ve also got a talk to record for the online part of Pagan Federation Scotland’s upcoming conference. I’m behind on other projects, and still very tired. There’s nothing much to do but reshuffle, reprioritise and see what can be salvaged.

I usually try to set up my work life with some flexibility in it. Being too rigid is inefficient, and leaves a person wide open if anything goes wrong. However, I have been taking on more and being more ambitious on a number of fronts, so there were a lot of balls to drop in this last week. It makes me appreciate how far I’ve come in the last year and a bit, because being too ill to work is now an unusual situation to find myself in. I have to be careful about pacing and my blood pressure still isn’t totally reliable, but I get so much more done.

This has been an opportunity for me to think about being gentler with myself. It’s led to some conversations about priorities, and my partner, Keith being very clear that I need to focus on recovery, and not push. I’ve not enjoyed feeling useless and not being able to do much, but at the same time I’m emerging from this with a sense of self that isn’t so dependent on my utility. I would not reduce anyone else to the work they are able to do, I don’t want to keep doing that to myself, either.

Life brings a constant flow of potential teachers. This last week has been no exception.

Angels have a thousand eyes

(Nimue)

This is the latest video from Jessica Law, shot around Gloucester. I’m not playing on the track itself, but I am in the video along with the rest of the band. This is a deliciously low tech project, and I’m very glad to have been a small part of it.

Joy is the answer

(Nimue)

Choose joy. Do the things that bring you delight and enrich your life. Embrace whatever you find fun, pleasurable and happy. Be frivolous, be unproductive, be self-indulgent.

We’re used to spirituality being framed as a kind of austerity, where the joyless, dutiful life is seen as a good thing. That’s not the way for Pagans. Our ancestors of tradition embraced life and celebrated it. They asked what it means to live well, and we should do the same.

If everything is about work, who are we working for? What good is it being focused on money if we never get to enjoy it? Too many of us are currently in survival mode, and barely surviving, which is a political choice and utterly wrong. Grabbing what joy we can is essential in face of that. The more ground down you are, the greater your need for joy will be. Take any opportunity you can get for things that make you happy.

Joy is a healing thing. It’s the best antidote I’ve found to trauma. It’s how we can weather awful experiences and not end up bitter and toxic. Seeking joy where you can will keep your heart alive in trying circumstances. I’ve lived in marginal circumstances, I’ve lived with bodily pain, depression, domestic abuse. Those experiences have taught me that joy is a vital thing, and that we all need playfulness, fun and light-hearted things we can relax into and relish.

If we’re trying to help each other, bringing the joyful things is a good choice. If you don’t have much to share, then sharing laughter is still powerful. Setting out to bring each other joy is a beautifully supportive thing and is a means by which we can help each other cope, and make the best of life. Joy makes us more resilient, and in sharing it we can form the basis of community and mutual support systems.

It’s so important to give people space for what makes them happy – especially when it’s harmless. There’s no need to harass people for enjoying things. If something seems too trivial, too superficial, too pointless to you – maybe let that go. No good is achieved by crushing people because you aren’t into what makes them happy. When instead we can appreciate and enjoy each other’s happiness, we are so much better off. Being able to feel delight in response to other people’s joy is a life enhancing thing, and a gift we can easily give to ourselves.

Clearly some people do derive pleasure from knocking others down, but it’s no way to live. Embracing bitterness and derision is a choice that robs the person doing it far more than it hurts anyone else. If you knock others down, you’ll spend your time afraid that someone will do the same to you – and that’s the enemy of having fun and being content. When we enjoy what we have it’s so much easier to be relaxed about other people’s harmless pleasures. It’s bitterness that makes us want to control and limit each other, and it goes nowhere good.

Joyfulness and goodness go hand in hand. When we are happy we are able to be our best selves, we have most to offer, and the resources to make the best of whatever life brings us.

Recovering, slowly

(Nimue)

Sorry for the silence over the last few days. On Monday I came down with covid, and haven’t been well enough to write. I am slowly recovering. If I’m sporadic in the coming days, or the timing of blogs going up is odd, this will be why. My main aim at the moment is not to end up with long covid. My understanding is that my best bet is to rest a lot, and not push to get moving.

Annoyingly, I had been being careful about the spaces I was going into with these new strains around. However, on Saturday I went into a chip shop that wasn’t too full when I went in, and that then filled up with people – between the wait and the lack of ventilation, this seems like the most likely culprit.

How do you live a Druid life?

(Nimue)

Asking the question is more important than any specific answers you might come up with. Meanings that we make and choose are far more powerful for us than ones we think we should have based on other people’s assertions.

To live a Druid life is to have your Druidry be a meaningful part of your life, in short. That could well mean that your Druidry informs your principles and beliefs – we tend towards the philosophical, so it makes a lot of sense to deliberately have Druidry influence your thinking. Absorbing ideas and them embodying them can be a good way of living your Druidry.

That will then inform our actions. If we value justice and fairness, want to be sustainable, celebrate creativity and find a sense of sacredness in the living world, that will inform our words and deeds. It’s good to pause sometimes and reflect on the ways in which you are doing that. It’s an affirming process. The better a job you do of embedding your Druidry in your life, the less self announcing it becomes. Taking the time to reflect on it, and celebrate it can be helpful for not losing sight of it.

What makes you feel most Druidic? Is that a comfortable way of identifying for you? Being on the Druid path is a less dramatic claim than ‘being a Druid’ and that second approach doesn’t sit easily with everyone. When do you feel most in tune with Druidry? When do you get the most out of it? There are a lot of options within Druidry, and not all of them are for everyone. It’s good to try things, but at the same time, check in with yourself about what works for you, and what doesn’t. If you aren’t excited, inspired or comforted by a particular practice, it’s good to question it and to consider replacing it.

What makes for good Druidry today might not work tomorrow. Our circumstances change, and we grow, and sometimes grow away from things. Letting go can be good, shedding old skins to make way for change. There’s no one thing you have to do to qualify as a Druid, so there’s room to be relaxed around personal preference and need.

Sometimes it’s good to drift and not have goals or directions in mind. Sometimes it makes sense to go the other way and create structure. I’m in more of a drifty place at the moment – not least because the weather is hot. Summer invites daydreaming and inclines me to sit under trees and not do much. I’m more of a twilight creature at this time of year, and I want to commune with fresh fruit from the hedgerows.

Ask what the Druidry in your life looks like right now, but don’t judge yourself over the answer. It’s fine to be wherever you are. This is not a linear journey where we measure ourselves in distance travelled, boxes ticked or stuff done. It’s about living, being, feeling and thinking in whatever way makes most sense at the time.