11/11/2016
Grey light is coming in through the window.
Two days after Trumpageddon we have Veteran's Day, a time to remember the sacrifices of the warriors, a time to pray for peace and safety for our loved ones who are shattered and frightened.
11/11
How many of us believe in synchronicities, numerology, the alchemical traces of the fingers of God caressing our everyday? 2;22 3:33 things lining up a glitch in the Matrix.
How many of us had a crisis of faith while our spiritual bypass derailed and our Divine Feminine failed to manifest in the 3rd dimension with the election of Hillary Clinton.
How many of us, mostly women, have been triggered into flashbacks of rape, assault, domestic abuse and horrifying reality of sexism and rape culture displayed in the alpha male bravado of Donald Trump.
How many of us, who defended Bernie against accusations of sexism by the Hillary camp, and refused to "vote our vaginas" were galvanized by our own secondary trauma by what we witnessed in the mansplaining, bull-baiting, woman-hating arena of the general election debates? Some of us who were reluctant supporters at best showed up in their sisterhood of travelling pantsuits and waited for the Demopublican Borg Queen who had seduced "rational" Republicans into voting from her watched woke women recall every creepy boss every grabby encounter every unsolicited dick pick and vowed to smash the patriarchy and shatter the glass ceiling at the voting booth?
I for one was grabbed by the pussy. My entire first three chakras were in fact psychically enflamed with indignation ever since this slugfest began.
The best man for the job was a woman, the most experienced, the most qualified woman was about to lose it to a blowhard and the old boy network. I had to watch the debates.I saw her tactics with Trump, the way she let him blunder her carefully set traps, the way she smirked like the cat who had just shat in Donald's shoes.
My rational, practical, businesslike, methodical side really loved her for it. Not in a Bernie way but I had to say she was grace under pressure, the way she shook him off her shoulders with disdain. Wanting the best for all my friends who would suffer from Trump and Pence's anti-gay and anti-woman policies, overturning Roe-V-Wade and ushering in the "Handmaid's Tale" return to woman-as-chattel or pussy-up-for-grabs, I conceded that she may be "establishment" she may be "inauthentic" but when the opposite was inexperienced and unstable I could deal with that. Get her in and hold her feet to the fire, go local Berniecrats.
I came late to Pantsuit Nation. But when I heard the heart-warming stories of multiple generations of women waiting for the opportunity to elect the first female president, when I read how she had sent inspiring notes to little girls about what they can become when I read about her listening sessions and her owning her mistakes and her work to learn about other nation's health care systems, when I watched the heart-breaking and strangely uplifting Michael Moore documentary "Trumpland" he put out at the eleventh hour for cheap money in a desperate attempt to reach out to the feel the pain of the economically devastated Trump supporters and tell the story of the human being beyond the demonized Hillbot, I started opening my heart to her and understanding her story. Michael Moores turn of heart came too late to inspire millennial fervor or prevent the Rust Belt Brexit he foresaw, the Electoral Blitzkrieg but it did make me understand what pressures had created her,, and the the human under that plastic Grandma smile.
She had to be better than any man to be believable, to be creditable, to succeed. She tried to transform her long-haired bespectacled legal dweeb authentic self into a Southern political wife. She made the cookies, and served the lemonade with poison on the side. She was the hero of my mother's generation, but she was so.... uncool. The adaptations she had made the dichotomous roles she had created did not compute. And thus she was "unlikeable", "inauthentic" despite the sleazy charm of her husband that had served him into making himself such an aw-shucks guy that we forgave him for his sexual peccadillos (not having a real narrative of sexual harassment),,,, We just wanted the Republican witch hunters off his back. After all, we rationalized, it was a '"political marriage" and between consenting adults.
The thing that made Obama stir the hearts of America and stand out starkly against Hillary Clinton's brittleness was his dignity, charm and inspiring rhetoric. He was the dream date to the political prom, looking so cool and dignified next to John McCain's angry old man who you thought might pop a vein in his heart on the podium. Gays are OK, and everybody gets health care. And how can you not get excited over "Yes We Can" or get that earworm out of your head? His symbol was Hope with a great American sunray. Of course we voted for Obama- all the cool kids were doing it. My friend said the best party of her life was the night he won the election, where an all black club opened its doors to whites and they celebrated together. It seemed like the battle was won, but the racist attacks on of "birtherism" continued as the resentments simmered underneath and the Republican obstructionism began.
He was adaptive too. He was the suave, funny black entertainer. He was a genteel Eddie Murphy leaving out the F-bombs relieving the pressure of racism with his clever diplomatic banter. We would never have elected an angry black man, so his cool made him a caramel-colored Kennedy. Hillary didn't have the same options. She had to transform from resentful scorned wife to cool steel Athena. A woman had to prove she was tough enough, had the stamina, a black man had to prove he was not angry. And they have both been equally rejected and embraced by the public for their personas.
Hillary's perceived lack of compassion which I believe comes from her social awkwardness and impossible task of defining a woman in power for an American audience, did not appeal to an audience of young voters looking for inspiration, though her tough acumen inspired my Mom's generation to vote for her. The same generation of working women who were still working into their retirement years, some of them lucky enough to have formed their own businesses, like my Mom, She found the passion in vocation that romance had left for dead. Having raised their kids and paid their dues, they were women with their own space, women with immaculate homes and empty beds. Or at least that is how I thought of it at the time. Voting for Hillary was voting for a woman who was good in her career but doomed in love. At the time my feminism was edging into third-wave sex positive feminism -- I already knew I was going to have a career, or at least a "job" had chosen a child-free life without domestic servitude thanks to modern birth control, but I wanted the possibility of romance too. Our moms didn't swear and had stopped dating. I don't know when I thought of her as the president of a society of spinsters, but I suppose my heart and my pussy had closed up at the thought of her winning.
The point is elections are not won with rationality. They are won by fueling the fires of compassion and inspiration or revolution They are won by the manipulation of hopes and fears. They are won through pain and collective trauma. That is what it is to live in a democracy. Bernie lit the flame, Hillary tried to squelch it, Trump threw gasoline and danced around the pyre, So I suppose some part of me, my gut, my pussy, my witchy pricking fingers of dread, knew she was doomed. But I refused to believe it was possible.
I tried to cover up my queasy revolting guts with a meditation flash mob on my phone. We were supposed to Elevate the Vote, holding all the candidates including the orange menace in sacred intentional space. I visualized. I prayed my hardest. My hands were burning. My arms were heavy as if I was holding up the world with 30,000 meditators in an astral football stadium. The snake in my gut kept twisting as the guests were arriving and the television grudge match between the Nasty Woman and Bad Hombre was about to begin.
So I wore my pantsuit and the necklace of my Sovereignty goddess and got the victory cupcakes ready and gathered in an estrogen den with my oh so tolerant husband who was happily awaiting Amazon rule certain in his diplomatic logic-loving heart that no one could vote for a maniac buffoon. Then the screen started changing to blood red as the electoral votes were counted and my stomach seized up and my head started spinning feminist rhetoric with my friend that I will call Dr. Porpoise.She deserves that Dr. she earned it even though she's not using it now.
I had met her early October, toasting the Goddess at the Halloween parade in Salem, but she was not a witch just a highly intuitive intellectual powerhouse who just struck up a conversation with a stranger in a blood red velvet gown. She said she was looking for her tribe. Shes a porpoise, she said, she dives deep and likes to play. The combination of ebullience and creative and intellectual power was exhilarating. I said, ah you mean like Anais Nin, a mermaid. I am not afraid of the depths but terrified of shadow places. A feminist scholar, who wrote a dissertation on trauma in the media, a study of domestic abuse and incest survivors and their reactions to movies about rape and stalking, how they use the stories to articulate and recover their own histories in a type of soul retrieval, herself an abuse survivor with PTSD who had been harassed out of her position as a harassment advisor for the courts and forced to take a medical early retirement. Her narrative written ten years ago was spot-on what was happening today, with Bannon, with Brock Turner, with nice guy rage and "righteous male victim discourse."
So there we were watching the narrative of trauma unfold. Thousands of raging women and people of color and gays and transgenders blacklashing against the backlash unprepared for anything but victory but still sick at heart with foreboding. As the hours ticked by and the numbers piled up on the screen I knew it was over when my husband slowly got up and started mechanically putting the dishes away, completely shut down, One of my friends went home, exhausted, The good Doctor and I were left paralysed, shaking, talking fast and frantic, spiralling into a PTSD tornado seeking refuge from our bodies in heady language. At last she had to go running home in a sheer panic. Back to the nest she seldom leaves.
At 130am we went to bed, my husband and I, stunned, shocked, unsleeping. He said we have to deal with the reality of a Trump presidency.He was calm, but deflated. The bullies were not supposed to win. It just was not logical except in an upside-down world. Bereft of logic and magic we just coexisted, inert, taking comfort in each others stillness where we could. He had to get up in 2 hours for work.
I woke up the next morning, broken, sobbing, shaking, I teetered on the edge of panic, fearing a relapse after nearly 2 years out of the hospital, then I had a moment of clarity.
I looked at myself in the mirror, red faced, ragged. I heard a calm voice say you are not crazy, this is secondary trauma.
You have just witnessed the obliteration of your Sovereignty goddess and the loss of your high ideals of sisterhood and solidarity. You have just seen your mother, her blood vessels worn thin by the ingestion of 30 aspirin a week endure the gaslighting and belittling and years of emotional abuse, with an uncontrollable nose bleed pleading to your father to take her to the hospital while he barks quit whining, just bleed in the sink. The sight of her blood is a stab in your heart. You have just seen her rush you out of the house with some hasty story of teenagers vandalizing her car spraypainting "cunt" and "whore". Only after you return does she tell you it was her boyfriend who did it--she wanted you out of the house until she could get a restraining order. Before that you witnessed him yelling at her in an alcoholic rage and wished you could tear him limb from limb. You have a fierce warrior mother bear inside you, a harpy yowling for blood but that monster is housed inside your powerless form and it can only devour you from the inside out.
I realized I could not go to work. It was not an ordinary day. I could not stay there alone either, not and still feel safe in my skin. I called my girlfriend I had met in my Dialectical Behavioral Therapy class who had become a soul sister survivor and witness. We went for a walk in the woods with another friend, a genderpunk den mother priestess who tended to our flocks of beloved freaks. They painted while I curled up on a yoga mat hoping to sleep. I didn't sleep but I gave myself reiki. I talked a little, cried a little, watched them make badass feminist art out of their raw rage. Harpy pussycats with snatching claws and demonic dangling hag breasts. I knew if i tried to practice my art I would fly off into maniacal ranting. I kept breathing. Wanting to run but knowing if I was alone the panic would carry me off like a violent wind. They stayed with me. My friend drove me to see my therapist, who is a reiki master. I told her I had missed work, I had a PTSD relapse that almost became mania. I told her of my chills driving by the crisis center where I had once been admitted into the hospital. I told her I prevented the misogynistic bully in my head wielding the club of shame and stigma from forcing me to go to work as if it was an ordinary day. I called out, told my boss I had stomach cramps. I wish I didn't have to lie. But I'm not out about my disability. I've always been so high-functioning. Until the last few weeks of energetic assault and the seizure of my gut in a psychic chastity belt I had had an impeccable attendance record.
I asked my wise mentor, the therapist who takes Mass Health, who helps the downtrodden and refuses to pathologize her unique charges, who has "clairvoyant" on her profile in Psychology Today. Who uses mental health diagnoses as just one layer of information, combined with bodily cues, intuitive impressions and the sharing of her survivor narrative after being crushed by the machine of corporate America while going through a painful divorce.. I asked her what happened to the rise of the Sacred Feminine? What happened to the vision of the light workers?
She said we were mislead by our own hope for a savior. The Divine Feminine is here, but it was not manifest in Hillary Clinton. And this battle is not going to be won with a rout, or without the acknowledgment of pain on all sides.
Yes all. All abusers come from abusive homes. My own ex husband witnessed his father beating his mother. It continued until his brother until they got big enough to drive him physically out of the house. I was an empath. I saw his scars. I became embroiled in his pain. He wielded it like a club out of the desperation of his own trauma. No one is all black or all white. We have all had trauma. The trauma of rape culture. The trauma of corporate culture, poverty, police state, freeze fight or flee. Some of us get stuck in one of these at our detriment. Cower in a corner or come out swinging. But some of us fly off out of our bodies.We become writers, magicians, poets, musicians, transmuting our trauma through art and through performance. External manifestation of the story under our skins. Eckart Tolle or Leo Tolstoy, dark ego-destroying nights of the soul. Sylvia Platz equisate swan song. I know what that feels like, to be seized by that fire, the fire in the head. Warriors, Magicians, Lovers, Sovereigns. Out of the shadow shines our gold, or rises our demons
Yes to the loving left Trump was a hate shadow, but Hillary was a shadow too to some. All heroes are demons from the other side. To the downtrodden residents of the depressed manufacturing states who worshipped their outlaw hero Trump, Hillary Clinton did not win the debates. Her composure was read as contempt. She was a monster their hero was slaying with his plain words and refusal to relent the attack against the establishment. Hillary was not a woman, she was just the biggest boss in the great infotainment video game that Trump had to beat to win, after he had crushed the Republicans, They cheered on his gladiatorial victory, his rout of the corrupt "establishment". It was not about two people on stage arguing policy. It was about two archetypal monsters in a heated death match. He shouted the most, so in the eyes of his supporters, he won.It was about two shadows, two archetypes that had to fall like Bernie fell to wake us up out of this madness.
The truth is we don't really need heroes or monsters any more. We are not served by our cleverness, our derision. Sarcasm is the weapon of the ego. Its the work of the predator, who is another aspect of the Magician. The wound out of which the narcissist, the sociopath, the demagogue springs from. The Pandora's Box of Deporable Judgments that we all come out of with our survival minds. ,All of us need to awaken the true divine feminine and the true divine masculine within us. Open up to our wounds and discover our gifts. The shadow can be a teacher. All our demons come from our own stories.
We need new stories. We need to be the face of the future. The feminine rise into masculine power left the male behind trapped emotionally bereft and divided from themselves. We need to heal our men, work towards emotional and economic freedom and racial justice for all. Heal our abusers as well as our abused
Right now President Obama is talking to Presidential-Elect Trump. Can he charm the monster into something like a presentable leader? Can we all work together, to co-create an America that works for everyone, that has a place for everyone, that practices tolerance and rationality. It seems too surreal to be believed but it is happening now. Not quite the lion and the lamb, but damn close.
We can't be grabbed by our nads, our pussies, our rage our fear or our wallets any more. We have a world to save together.
We have to be minds and hearts, rational and passionate. We have to be bodies and souls, heal our wounds and find our center. We have to get real. Only then can the healing, the witnessing, the listening, the leading, the rebuilding, the reparations begin
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