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Exercising sovereignty means being wise with our energy
An observation + recommendation for my pro-humanity women friends out there. 11.16.24
I do not say this to criticize any type of authentic sharing. I offer this only as someone who has learned this the hard way over many years.
Especially for women, I want to share an observation: We have been acculturated, since our birth, to petition power for its empathy.
In the rare situations where a person with power is also a healthy person (say, a genuinely loving parent), this can be okay for a time. We go to them, we express our sorrow or fear or pain, and they show care, because they are healed enough in themselves to be able to do that and to want to do that. It’s part of how we learn to distinguish functional from dysfunctional connection as we develop and mature.
But for most of us, as we grow, the power that we wind up having to petition is more and more sociopathic — systems, institutions, and spiritually-sick cultural paradigms that filter down to “regular” people — which means that we’re actually moving towards abusive energies to try and get care.
We do this so much that it seems normal; for women, it’s part of how we learn to survive inside the systems that are designed to demean and dehumanize us. It’s also part of why we witness even the most…