I spent tea time last Sunday writing a few spontaneous love notes. The effect was immediate (even though the notes still would not be received for many days after). I felt LOVE just at the moment that I desperately needed to feel loved. I noticed how depersonalized (in a good way!) it felt. Each note I began, "Here is something I love about you…" and I very quickly noticed that it wasn't about me. It was liberatingly universal rather than self-referential. It "filled my cup" better than any champagne could have - and thank goodness for that because I had no idea the struggles that I would face in this week that has followed:
This past week it seems that my son has (temporarily) succumbed to a slow and steady poisoning from patriarchy. Much of the week my son has been lost to me. As if lost to a fever dream, he is fitfully angry, violent, confused, and sad.
For his first four years of life I sheltered him. I protected him. I believed we could live differently even in the city and that I could keep him safe. Then I wore down. I gave up in little bits. I let in the common advice, "You can't shelter him forever." I started to expose him to the over-culture and to children who hadn't been protected from it. I convinced myself that it would be like an inoculation.
It has been more like a toxic shock syndrome.
I feel devastated by the outcome. I feel panicked and scared about our present and his future. I feel horrified by what my culture and my society have deemed as acceptable messages for my son about his masculinity and its gifts. I thought I was angry for the decade that I worked with women cutting, starving, and killing their bodies in the name of patriarchy. As it turns out, that was just preparation for the rage I would have to be able to endure and eventually channel upon experiencing the poisons that patriarchy offers to our sons.
I feel rage.
And with it, a tremendous responsibility: I have an opportunity to teach my son about a life beyond violence and a world that will cherish his gifts of passion, boldness and action.
I feel rage.
And with it, a tremendous responsibility: I have an opportunity to teach my son about a life beyond violence and a world that will cherish his gifts of passion, boldness and action.
Today is not only Valentine's Day, it is also V-day's annual "One Billion Rising" event. www.onebillionrising.org It is a day that, worldwide, individuals are rising up against violence. Its founder, Eve Ensler, has been a long long time heroine of mine. I wrote a piece in 2012 that highlights just what she has helped me to brave in my own life and work: http://www.redtentrising.com/The_Red_Tent/Heroines__ckeating.html). I re-read the piece today and I melted like chocolate. Just re-reading about the days that we all used to gather under The Red Tent on Rose Avenue made the oxytocin begin to rise in my blood… I remembered what I so fervently believe in: in women not just surviving but thriving by going beyond violence to align with and protect our innate "affinity for life."
For the past few years the red tent has been folded up and collecting dust. Once "the mistress of all things menstrual" lately I've been busy drowning in the mystery of the masculine. And, although I tried once last fall to ressucitate our community (and fell flat on my face) - I am now distanced and desperate enough to try again…
So, I am officially putting out the call to coagulate, because once again the wound that I'm bleeding from isn't mine alone. It is cultural. Everything in my life is telling me that it is time for a tending tent. Time for communal oxytocin surges to quash some of this off-the-charts cortisol. It is time to mourn. Time to sing. Time to move. Time to act. Time to rise.
Today.
I am rising.
For my son.
For all children.
For the planet.
For all our destinies intertwined and hanging perilously close to a future of either extinction or sustainability.
I am refusing to let my son be swallowed up by our culture of violence and our horrifically limiting definition about his divine masculinity.
Today.
I will be heading to the beach at sunset with both my children. We will be offering to the ocean whatever we cannot hold and dancing to a simple song to claim our new beginning. A future for them - free of violence. We will be at the ocean just by the Venice Beach sand dune if you want to join us.
We will be singing:
We are rising up
Like a phoenix from the fire
Sisters and brothers
spread your wings and fly higher
We are rising up, We are rising up, We are rising up!, We are rising up…
Maybe you will light a candle, make a declaration, or mark in your own way this day of rising… If you do, will you tell me, please? I want to share the experience together because today, I am trading in solitude for solidarity.
I will be following through with my own personal need for a weekly tending tent. Maybe you feel the need too? Would you join me? Virtual. Physical. Whatever we can muster, let's make it happen again.
It is time.
Yours always, in the blood,
Caroline
