Uff
There’s nothing quite like confronting your own humanity to humble a person.
Over the past year it’s come more and more to the forefront how I invest in my own victim stories.
Wowzer.
I just can’t ignore it anymore.
I can no longer let it go by unacknowledged.
Although I may have inherited this shit from my mom, my grandparents, my political refugee ancestors, my culture, being a woman, growing up in a not-rich home, ultimately as a grown ass woman, the responsibility of how I hold it, relate to it, and tell it, is my own.
And it has been confronting to say the least.
Sometimes even when I hear myself talk, tell stories about other people, cultures, politics, and other experiences and lenses, it all gets poured through the same lens – my own lens – of victim and perpetrator.
I’m simultaneously more aware and alarmed at the depth and breadth of narratives that it infiltrates and learning to be with it with grace and compassion.
I think I really saw it full stop wow though today in a conversation I was having with a guest I was hosting.
I meet a lot of different people here in Mexico, many of whom are my guests in my home via Airbnb. Over the last 3 years of hosting and conversing I noticed a pattern in my own sharing. My guests would exclaim how wonderful this country is – the beauty, the kind people, the way of life. They are not wrong.
However, in living in this incredible, over the years I have seen a much darker side to my beautiful home. I’ve found myself wanting to give voice to the victims, the people who go unnoticed, the social injustice happening underneath the very noses of some of the most wealthiest people in the world.
And while my social studies lectures are always received as rich and informative, I am beginning to see the cracks in where my wanting to give voice to the voiceless begins, and where my own trauma and victim stories end.
They are interwoven.
Today I realized that I have some choice in this.
I think it’s time to take my own medicine, to stop appropriating another cultures pain, poverty, and trauma, and acknowledge and own my own.
Living here has been one of the most confronting experiences of my life.
Mexico has brought me great freedom and opened me in so many beautiful ways, held me at my most difficult times, and also brought me to my knees.
It has challenged everything about who I think I am.
It has cracked the masks of the “nice girl”, of my self identity and self importance around being “good” and being “right”.
There is so much polarity and messiness and juxtaposition in one place that it simply leaves no room for my perfectionistic ego.
It has had me come face to face with my privilege and how others see it and receive me because of it.
It has made me angry. It has cracked me open wholly.
It has opened me to the opportunity to accept who I am for who I am.
It has opened me to me – for better or for worse.
It has opened up my sensuous nature – deepened my relationship with my erotic self.
It has confronted me for the privileged white princess that I am.
It has shown me where I play pretend and fantasy instead of investing real skin in this game of life.
Even the simple and oh so common question/comment of “¿porque no?” brings up all of the excuses to be aired out in the face of truth.
Why not?
Because … and then the laundry list of weak lies I tell myself to avoid the real thing – the truth.
Why not?
Because I don’t want to disappoint you, or I’m worried it I’m honest, it will hurt your feelings and you won’t like me anymore.
Because I’m scared of rejection.
Because I’m terrified I will like it.
Because it will remind me of my deepest and most intimate yearnings.
And so it is.
The most difficult, the hardest work, is not about working hard at all – it’s about having the courage to do the one thing that we want to avoid.
I see my own victim story so loud and clear.
I see it in the moment where I turn the conversation to the pros and cons.
I see it when I steer the ship towards complicated darkness.
All of this is part of the complexity of life.
I will never dishonour that.
However in light of holding both and, it’s time to take my own medicine and alchemize some of that victim energy so near and dear to my heart.
It’s time to be with her differently – tenderly witnessed.
It’s time for her to step back from the political conversations and rants.
It’s time for her to have a different kind of voice – one where she can both be safe and held.
And where she no longer holds others and myself hostage.
It’s time to change the story.
Rewrite the pattern.
Rebirthing is a constant evolution.
xx
jenn