Despite the chaos going on , we have an opportune time to use this trauma to identify the abusers.
The more I dig into myself and my perceptions of others, the more I see that this crazy state of the world is a perfect push for people to step out of their half asleep hive tribal mentality.
Thank you, CM! I suspect that temptation will grow and things continue to unwind. Even if we resist, at some point, we'll face a choice. What do we stand for? And that will create a path forward. Best to you.
Good to hear you're feeling progress. Just read Barbara Sinclair's recent post - well there is some inspiration - and she reminds the role Nature plays in helping us shed fear. Thank you.
Fantastic, Kathleen. On-point. Eloquent. Inspiring. True. I have nothing to add, just admiration and gratitude for you and your singular, needed, voice. ❤️
You women are more emotive than we men. I write about the similar disruptions in my own life in a very matter-of-fact way. When I get analytical it is about kids.
Northridge California 1994 three kids. Bingo – you should be a grandmother now. Are you? How are those grandchildren faring? How do they handle public school indoctrination – or do they home school? How did they handle the vaccine mandates? What are they gonna do with their lives?
Around the table at lunch, my wife and I talked about what will happen with our young family. Nobody wants to live under the Russians. Even Tucker concedes as much in his most recent interview. Will we be forced to leave Kyiv? The strongest thing holding us here is our 12-year-old son's fantastic school.
Parochial and old-fashioned as it is, I am more concerned about his education and career than that of my daughters. They seem to be quite smart. I consider them attractive. If I raise them to be civil, polite young ladies, promising young men should want to marry them and create families.
In previous generations harboring such hopes for one's daughters would have been considered a natural thing. Today I have some concern that I will be taken for a troglodyte. But if that's what will give me grandchildren, let it be.
In your galaxy of all-encompassing global concerns, what are your observations on grandchildren?
I don't have grandchildren. Yet. Friends with grandkids plenty and I share many of your concerns. I don't see their parents alert to the dangers of indoctrination, of transhumanism and a world increasing separate from nature.
I suspect all this will change, and we'll see a large push back against these forces. Already seeing it, but I also think this will require a reimagining rather than a falling back to frameworks we've outgrown.
I'm all for educating (not schooling) all kids, and wouldn't make a distinction because of gender, though certainly I value one parent working while one stays home with young kids - I did that - and typically that's the mother who stays home. (I went to school during their upbringing nights when their dad was home, off and on for years.)
My essay was attempting to get at the deeper aspects of identity in humans - gender aside - that we lose sight of in a world that seeks to make us small. It's always still there. The constant bit that stays in the midst of great change.
And yes identity comes with gender and geography and any number of contexts. All of these are easily fluid, picked up and let down, as needed, especially when we are rooted in the deeper self.
I can't quite imagine living and raising children in Ukraine right now. I'm sure what consumes you, the concerns you and your wife deal with daily are of an urgent and immediate nature.
I trust you have what you need to navigate and you'll make good choices for your kids.
The thing that makes Ukraine unique is its normalcy. Boys are boys and girls are girls. When I talk matter-of-factly to my six-year-old daughter about getting married and having babies, I don't have to fight propaganda that every other girl in the neighborhood has heard about the glory of careers. Maybe I have a chance.
My observation, having had three children born in the 80s and another three in the teens, is that per Judith Rich Harris they are highly influenced by their peers and the society around them. Humans are pack animals. Children do not think for themselves. We should not act as if they do.
You are familiar with the demographic catastrophe in Korea, Japan and China. It used to be that children would satisfy expectations of their parents and grandparents to marry and have children. With the isolation of big city living those pressures are gone. With the influence of television and media, family no longer seems attractive. Those societies are rapidly dying out.
Ironically, these East Asians are less happy with the new order than the old one. But they do not make their choices on the basis of their own experience or that of family. They follow the herd.
I'll add my own anecdote. In the Mohican Hills section of Bethesda there were five single woman homeowners, four families in which the wives were career women, and two stay at home moms, married to a law school professor and senior civil servant.
Two of the five single women, younger than me, are dead. The others so far as I know are living alone. I don't know what regrets they have for what might have been.
The four married career women had 12 children among them. All four are divorced, with some bitterness. None of the 12 children, now between 25 and 45, have children. Two are gay. As a statistician I will tell you that if the average person bears two children, the odds of zero children among 12 adults is astronomically low. These kids were bred not to succeed. Certainly not in family.
The stay at home moms are still married. I think they have grandchildren but I don't know.
In conclusion, I am convinced that children should not be left to make their own decisions. They need guidance. I think this is the thesis of Abigail Schreier's upcoming "Bad Therapy."
I'm less persuaded by stats I think than you Graham. Too much gets lost and they leave out important factors. That said I agree children require guidance.
I know stay at home moms now unmarried (me for one) and some who stayed married and I can't draw any generalizations about any of it. I see pros and cons in every life and we all deal with the consequences of our choices, which usually covers the spectrum.
It's not been a very human-friendly environment here on planet earth for awhile. A lot of poisoning, a lot of attacks on freedoms. Even if one doesn't have an intellectual grasp of the scope of it, they likely intuit that and it probably plays into a disengagement with 'normal' life.
I'd like to see a lot more kids being born, a lot more trust in the family unit. I think it's our best way forward.
Statisticians like to say that the singular of data is anecdote. You are right - just one neighborhood. Not convincing, but enough to get you looking for corroboration.
Having lived and traveled over quite a bit of the world, I find the US to be less human-friendly, or perhaps simply less human than poorer societies. I love Ukraine and could happily live in Vietnam, Argentina, Costa Rica or even Nicaragua. Those are places that depend on family rather than government, labor unions and corporate employers.
I have a feeling many more of us will be depending on family and small communities rather than governments and all that other noise, as our old world gives up the ghost.
Here is the link I meant to post Kathleen, but first a little explanation of my reasons would be appropriate. I had a bit oif an identity crisis of my own recently, and although it only involved mental level rather than both mental and physical trauma, and on a far lesser and more shortlived scale, in essence our experiences have a great deal in common. I am hoping that we may be able to build a greater depth of insight to be built on by others. Enough said, here's that link:
Thank you Peter. Will try to take a look today. Falling behind on my substack readings and replies. A flue or cold or something, that requires lots of sleep and allow for little ability to focus. Best.
while I do not read all of your posts, I find time is fleeting and so many posts to read, it is good to watch your perspective evolve. It is an interesting time to be alive. To find out who and what we are, the reality of our existence. Thank you for sharing and helping me to understand how others think and view things.
probably will be sending out a new substack post at the end of the week, Let people know what is going on. Time to educate. I am doing fine, still fighting the cancer, been a 20 year battle, getting old for sure.
Wow!, Kathleen, your story reveals that you've definitely had your purification by fire experiences, which must account for turning you into a woman of such great depth, as is reflected in all your writing. You are well on your way to reclaiming those "depths" from whence we all came. Thanks for lighting the way.
That is an awesome piece of writing Kathleen. I went through a similar mental process when I got my ID stolen. If of interest you can read it free here. That would help me too. Thanks.
I remember waking up to the quake, stretching out my arms reflexively to hold up the walls in the corner of my bedroom… it was surreal… here in the OC. the scoreboard at Angel Stadium collapsed… a sign?
It was a good experience for me from the perspective that it may seem in your immediate surrounding that the world is ending - e: I lived right by university where a science lab exploded, (we thought it was house and maybe we're on the same gas line?) and a dorm collapsed, and weird ash-like stuff was raining down on us...
Then it calmed and the sun came up and the world continued. I was shocked by the normalcy of the day and people going about doing what they do.
Wow, what a story, Kathleen! And thank goodness for your aunt. And Arizona skies...
These truly are remarkable times and it's so interesting. For people glued to the MSM I imagine they can seem terrifying and bleak and of course, chock full of FEAR. But, there's another timeline, another story. It's actually an amazing time to be here on planet Earth. At least I think so! XOXO
Kathleen, Sharing from also a barely an " expert in my field". TY great prose describing your personal underpinnings unraveling. You have a gift of what we know as mercy in that you have been graced with capacity to express emotional details. Next time you go into or visit a Hallmark store to read cards you will remember this and recognize it.
Re: underpinnings. We have had the grace to see many of the North American continent nations underpinnings unravel before our very own eyes.One which has been accelerating on a macro scale is that the details of the hidden back story about the history of the land and some of its original inhabitants.
Myths and pre conceived notions are melting faster then the glaciers.
One is that many of the First Nations peoples archives of history have been intentionally mis labeled and erroneously curated by the nations leading museums. It is far beyond an honest mistake that many had and knew and spoke ancient Hebrew. Which is being proven from discovering their writings in isolated museum displays so they would not know the truth about their history. This continues to unfold and as it does folks from Northridge like yourself are grasping new realities about their smallness. It is an amazing process and again thanks for sharing it in the richness you have.
I have these underpinnings on the same authority which the last of the First Nations Mohican author sings about in the clip below.
God bless you and others on the journey.
Hope, pray and wish it is one worthy of an eternity?
I can't claim to know much about the First Nations, but I have no doubt they have been intentionally mis-labeled and mis-storied - like everything else. But spoke Hebrew - wow, fascinating.
Appreciate the kind, thoughtful comment and the link - Arizona Skies! :-) Nice.
Despite the chaos going on , we have an opportune time to use this trauma to identify the abusers.
The more I dig into myself and my perceptions of others, the more I see that this crazy state of the world is a perfect push for people to step out of their half asleep hive tribal mentality.
It is a great time to be alive!
Thanks Rob, love your comment. Think that's exactly right - we got the push we need in this crazy world. It's a rare opportunity. Best.
What a beautiful invitation to embrace this confusing, rapidly evolving world! Yes, the temptation to become smaller is strong.
Thank you, CM! I suspect that temptation will grow and things continue to unwind. Even if we resist, at some point, we'll face a choice. What do we stand for? And that will create a path forward. Best to you.
I agree. At some point everyone will have to choose a side - truth/goodness or lies/evil. We had no idea we lived in the gray for so long.
I know the tension well.. fighting it daily. Working hard to kick the habits of fear and shrinking. Feeling progress. Inspiration helps! TY
Good to hear you're feeling progress. Just read Barbara Sinclair's recent post - well there is some inspiration - and she reminds the role Nature plays in helping us shed fear. Thank you.
Yes I saw it too! Sending love and light
And sending right back to you.💕
Like peeling the onion, there is always the next layer(s) to discover.
To become whole and cohesive, unfragmented and un-compartmentalized.
This is an endeavor that is worthy of incredible beings such as ourselves.
Beautifully said, Philip. And agree - we are incredible beings. Best.
Fantastic, Kathleen. On-point. Eloquent. Inspiring. True. I have nothing to add, just admiration and gratitude for you and your singular, needed, voice. ❤️
What a gracious comment, Mary. Means so much. Thank you. ❤️
You women are more emotive than we men. I write about the similar disruptions in my own life in a very matter-of-fact way. When I get analytical it is about kids.
Northridge California 1994 three kids. Bingo – you should be a grandmother now. Are you? How are those grandchildren faring? How do they handle public school indoctrination – or do they home school? How did they handle the vaccine mandates? What are they gonna do with their lives?
Around the table at lunch, my wife and I talked about what will happen with our young family. Nobody wants to live under the Russians. Even Tucker concedes as much in his most recent interview. Will we be forced to leave Kyiv? The strongest thing holding us here is our 12-year-old son's fantastic school.
Parochial and old-fashioned as it is, I am more concerned about his education and career than that of my daughters. They seem to be quite smart. I consider them attractive. If I raise them to be civil, polite young ladies, promising young men should want to marry them and create families.
In previous generations harboring such hopes for one's daughters would have been considered a natural thing. Today I have some concern that I will be taken for a troglodyte. But if that's what will give me grandchildren, let it be.
In your galaxy of all-encompassing global concerns, what are your observations on grandchildren?
I don't have grandchildren. Yet. Friends with grandkids plenty and I share many of your concerns. I don't see their parents alert to the dangers of indoctrination, of transhumanism and a world increasing separate from nature.
I suspect all this will change, and we'll see a large push back against these forces. Already seeing it, but I also think this will require a reimagining rather than a falling back to frameworks we've outgrown.
I'm all for educating (not schooling) all kids, and wouldn't make a distinction because of gender, though certainly I value one parent working while one stays home with young kids - I did that - and typically that's the mother who stays home. (I went to school during their upbringing nights when their dad was home, off and on for years.)
My essay was attempting to get at the deeper aspects of identity in humans - gender aside - that we lose sight of in a world that seeks to make us small. It's always still there. The constant bit that stays in the midst of great change.
And yes identity comes with gender and geography and any number of contexts. All of these are easily fluid, picked up and let down, as needed, especially when we are rooted in the deeper self.
I can't quite imagine living and raising children in Ukraine right now. I'm sure what consumes you, the concerns you and your wife deal with daily are of an urgent and immediate nature.
I trust you have what you need to navigate and you'll make good choices for your kids.
Best.
The thing that makes Ukraine unique is its normalcy. Boys are boys and girls are girls. When I talk matter-of-factly to my six-year-old daughter about getting married and having babies, I don't have to fight propaganda that every other girl in the neighborhood has heard about the glory of careers. Maybe I have a chance.
My observation, having had three children born in the 80s and another three in the teens, is that per Judith Rich Harris they are highly influenced by their peers and the society around them. Humans are pack animals. Children do not think for themselves. We should not act as if they do.
You are familiar with the demographic catastrophe in Korea, Japan and China. It used to be that children would satisfy expectations of their parents and grandparents to marry and have children. With the isolation of big city living those pressures are gone. With the influence of television and media, family no longer seems attractive. Those societies are rapidly dying out.
Ironically, these East Asians are less happy with the new order than the old one. But they do not make their choices on the basis of their own experience or that of family. They follow the herd.
I'll add my own anecdote. In the Mohican Hills section of Bethesda there were five single woman homeowners, four families in which the wives were career women, and two stay at home moms, married to a law school professor and senior civil servant.
Two of the five single women, younger than me, are dead. The others so far as I know are living alone. I don't know what regrets they have for what might have been.
The four married career women had 12 children among them. All four are divorced, with some bitterness. None of the 12 children, now between 25 and 45, have children. Two are gay. As a statistician I will tell you that if the average person bears two children, the odds of zero children among 12 adults is astronomically low. These kids were bred not to succeed. Certainly not in family.
The stay at home moms are still married. I think they have grandchildren but I don't know.
In conclusion, I am convinced that children should not be left to make their own decisions. They need guidance. I think this is the thesis of Abigail Schreier's upcoming "Bad Therapy."
I'm less persuaded by stats I think than you Graham. Too much gets lost and they leave out important factors. That said I agree children require guidance.
I know stay at home moms now unmarried (me for one) and some who stayed married and I can't draw any generalizations about any of it. I see pros and cons in every life and we all deal with the consequences of our choices, which usually covers the spectrum.
It's not been a very human-friendly environment here on planet earth for awhile. A lot of poisoning, a lot of attacks on freedoms. Even if one doesn't have an intellectual grasp of the scope of it, they likely intuit that and it probably plays into a disengagement with 'normal' life.
I'd like to see a lot more kids being born, a lot more trust in the family unit. I think it's our best way forward.
Statisticians like to say that the singular of data is anecdote. You are right - just one neighborhood. Not convincing, but enough to get you looking for corroboration.
Having lived and traveled over quite a bit of the world, I find the US to be less human-friendly, or perhaps simply less human than poorer societies. I love Ukraine and could happily live in Vietnam, Argentina, Costa Rica or even Nicaragua. Those are places that depend on family rather than government, labor unions and corporate employers.
I have a feeling many more of us will be depending on family and small communities rather than governments and all that other noise, as our old world gives up the ghost.
I do agree, it's a great time to be alive; a privilege to be alive now, especially as an aware person.
Thanks for comment, vw. That attitude might make all the difference. :-) Best.
Here is the link I meant to post Kathleen, but first a little explanation of my reasons would be appropriate. I had a bit oif an identity crisis of my own recently, and although it only involved mental level rather than both mental and physical trauma, and on a far lesser and more shortlived scale, in essence our experiences have a great deal in common. I am hoping that we may be able to build a greater depth of insight to be built on by others. Enough said, here's that link:
Here's the link I meant to paste earlier. Its to an ID loss mental trauma I went through recently. No where near as bad as yours but similar in many ways nevertheless. I hope we can build on the general understanding of this issue in a way that the system perhaps cannot. https://medium.com/illumination/the-forensic-mental-effects-of-my-stolen-email-address-506dd99720dd?sk=913d247dd7bd5f3a5d0809d9e7b50b12
Thank you Peter. Will try to take a look today. Falling behind on my substack readings and replies. A flue or cold or something, that requires lots of sleep and allow for little ability to focus. Best.
while I do not read all of your posts, I find time is fleeting and so many posts to read, it is good to watch your perspective evolve. It is an interesting time to be alive. To find out who and what we are, the reality of our existence. Thank you for sharing and helping me to understand how others think and view things.
Hi David. Thank you, I appreciate that. Yes, interesting is a good word. (Challenging and surreal and...)
I hope you're well.
probably will be sending out a new substack post at the end of the week, Let people know what is going on. Time to educate. I am doing fine, still fighting the cancer, been a 20 year battle, getting old for sure.
I'll keep an eye out.
Oh gee, what does getting old like? I wouldn't know anything about that. :-) Best.
I loved this piece, love we are both writing about identity too, and love the artwork, is it yours?
Thank you, Sabrina. No, found the images online but couldn't find artist names. Best.
Wow!, Kathleen, your story reveals that you've definitely had your purification by fire experiences, which must account for turning you into a woman of such great depth, as is reflected in all your writing. You are well on your way to reclaiming those "depths" from whence we all came. Thanks for lighting the way.
What a generous comment, Rocket! Thank you, sincerely. Best.💕
That is an awesome piece of writing Kathleen. I went through a similar mental process when I got my ID stolen. If of interest you can read it free here. That would help me too. Thanks.
Thank you, Peter.
Did you mean to leave a link?
I remember waking up to the quake, stretching out my arms reflexively to hold up the walls in the corner of my bedroom… it was surreal… here in the OC. the scoreboard at Angel Stadium collapsed… a sign?
Surreal is as good a word as any I think.
It was a good experience for me from the perspective that it may seem in your immediate surrounding that the world is ending - e: I lived right by university where a science lab exploded, (we thought it was house and maybe we're on the same gas line?) and a dorm collapsed, and weird ash-like stuff was raining down on us...
Then it calmed and the sun came up and the world continued. I was shocked by the normalcy of the day and people going about doing what they do.
Thanks, kitten.
That last part deserves a spot on the refrigerator. Thanks Kathleen for your consistent insights.
🙏 Thanks, Sounder! Best.
Wow, what a story, Kathleen! And thank goodness for your aunt. And Arizona skies...
These truly are remarkable times and it's so interesting. For people glued to the MSM I imagine they can seem terrifying and bleak and of course, chock full of FEAR. But, there's another timeline, another story. It's actually an amazing time to be here on planet Earth. At least I think so! XOXO
Danka, Barabara - and I'm with you on it being an amazing time on Earth.
Loved your most recent post! A true beauty and seriously remarkable what you capture of your life in Nature.😘
Meeting so many kindred spirits while the world is seemingly on fire. 🧚🧚🩷
Kathleen, Sharing from also a barely an " expert in my field". TY great prose describing your personal underpinnings unraveling. You have a gift of what we know as mercy in that you have been graced with capacity to express emotional details. Next time you go into or visit a Hallmark store to read cards you will remember this and recognize it.
Re: underpinnings. We have had the grace to see many of the North American continent nations underpinnings unravel before our very own eyes.One which has been accelerating on a macro scale is that the details of the hidden back story about the history of the land and some of its original inhabitants.
Myths and pre conceived notions are melting faster then the glaciers.
One is that many of the First Nations peoples archives of history have been intentionally mis labeled and erroneously curated by the nations leading museums. It is far beyond an honest mistake that many had and knew and spoke ancient Hebrew. Which is being proven from discovering their writings in isolated museum displays so they would not know the truth about their history. This continues to unfold and as it does folks from Northridge like yourself are grasping new realities about their smallness. It is an amazing process and again thanks for sharing it in the richness you have.
I have these underpinnings on the same authority which the last of the First Nations Mohican author sings about in the clip below.
God bless you and others on the journey.
Hope, pray and wish it is one worthy of an eternity?
https://youtu.be/Aq8GWo4HLM8?si=Zf0Nn6qHvgb0qoZd
Thank you. (Garrry and/or Norma)
I can't claim to know much about the First Nations, but I have no doubt they have been intentionally mis-labeled and mis-storied - like everything else. But spoke Hebrew - wow, fascinating.
Appreciate the kind, thoughtful comment and the link - Arizona Skies! :-) Nice.
Blessings back to you and yours.