#Humanness

[the-healing-mindset]

Source: Dr. Heidi Green

[rest-in-being]

[bowserpunk-vevo]

you know, it comforts me that life keeps moving... even when im depressed, and stressed out of my mind, or even just uncertain. scared, lonely, in pain, or even in active process of going through shit.

it comforts me, even, that life keeps going after im gone.

it's not the end of the world. literally, no matter what, it's not the end of the world. no matter what, there's people laughing somewhere, and people just going about their day. there's new lives being born, and new loves growing, and new dreams created. no matter what, there's always something happening, a lot of which are good things. and im glad that despite what im feeling, the world is still turning, and people still smiling, and humanity still growing.

the feeling of an individual getting lost in the vastness of humanity isnt scary to me, it brings me hope. that im a part of a living group, and we're all in this together. i might be sad now, but someone else can bring me back up, and vice versa. my contribution might seem small, but just how a single letter in this whole post might seem like a small contribution... i wrote it down anyways, and without it, this post wouldnt be the same. any letter... any one of us... it wouldnt be the same. we build eachother up, and as long as theres people, there will be hope.

i love knowing that someone is having a good day, because... i love that good days are still possible.

[raskolnikovs-blog]

Don't spill your blood! The man becomes a beast here. It'll lick your bones dry. No, I will not allow it! Who'll mop the floor? The beast shall lick it then. But then, don't become a human. Oh don't! A human with the taste of blood! Blasphemy! Come nearer then. I might accept my fate in you.

[marina-fini]

Everything makes sense when you realize everyone just wants to be seen, accepted and loved

Most people are fighting battles silently , which can turn into bullying others and letting their shadows take control of their external actions

All that pain that’s expressed onto others is just their inner child screaming to be heard most of the time.

It’s crazy how the first 8 years of being alive as a human really shapes the adult you are. Then it takes another 20 something years to really dissect what happened to you back then to understand why you are this way now …

[chaosnoirjpg]

Feeling Guilty about not being Grateful

In this entry I am typing about feeling guilty¹ about not being grateful “enough”. This topic is inspired by a lifelong friend of mine’s series of texts messages. This entry has been adapted from our conversations.

The last I remember feeling guilty about not being grateful enough was in a Black Woman spiritual circle I discovered on Facebook. I didn’t feel so much as guilty as I was more triggered by the whole thing. I remember growing up and being told to ‘count your blessings’ when an unfavorable situation occurred as if I was messing up and missing out on how truly worse the matter could have been. As if I had any control or responsibility over the random ill fated life-events that choose me.

As I explored my trigger, I concluded that I was disappointed and shocked that I found myself in yet another assumed safe space. I thought I had found a home within this online sisterhood. I let my guard down and misjudged. I understood that I could no longer trust to discuss other emotions outside of feeling grateful for everything in my life, including undesired situations.

Recently, my little family and I experienced a theft. One of my family member’s car was stolen out of a parking lot. The culprit was later apprehended, the car received severe damages from the pursuit and capture. While we awaited word from the police, the family was going back and forth between choosing to be grateful and feeling other emotions. 

My mother, being the God-fearing Southern Baptist she is, chose to be grateful and made sure to spread her good will to us. She was grateful that none of her children were outside to greet the thief and got harmed. She was grateful that it wasn’t an even worse event, like a home burglary. She experienced that at her first apartment as a married young woman. To this day she remembers how violating it was to return home and see it’s been decimated by unwanted criminals. She gave her perspective to help us see our circumstance in a more positive light, to ease our pain and suffering, to make us more resilient somehow. Yes, I will agree that we were lucky that we were safely elsewhere while the car was being absconded. As well-meaning as mom is, there was still an air of blindness, denial and minimalization there, albeit unaware. 

My sibling, the one with the missing car, felt differently. She felt many, many things. Being grateful was far from her repertoire of emotions. She was going through the seven stages of grief on a loop. One moment she was angry she was targeted and desired vengeance, the next she tried to cheer herself up by looking forwarding to shopping for a new car.

I caught myself feeling envy² and annoyance about how she felt so naturally open to express her anger and disaster-mindset whenever a surprise event happened because she felt safe. I usually chill in my car and take time to cry or scream away from everyone for fear that they’d give me advice on how to see the silver lining³. I don’t want to see the silver lining I desire to mourn and mourn deeply before I even think about the next move. I’d like some time to process how shitty this is right now.

If my grandma was still alive and well, I highly doubt she would worry about any of this. She understood something about life. Her mystery of her knowingness was something I always admired. She had a level of unwavering emotional security. Nothing and no one could get my grandma down.

I can hear her now, “They ain’t stopping nothin’”.

I often thought that it was because she experienced great loss with burying her two sons, a grandson and many more of her loved ones that allowed her the capacity to endure the hardships of life’s randomness. She was never bothered by people gossiping about her or plotting against her. She had an understanding that those people aren’t satisfied with life and she was busy being happy with her own. As a child, when she told me these things they didn’t make much sense. She’d tell me ‘to keep on livin’, you’ll get it one day.’

Why do we run to being grateful when life hurls lemons at us…or…let’s be real, at any minor inconvenience? I have some answers. Please keep in mind that there are many truths, contradictory truths can exist and have existed all at once. We live in a multidimensional reality, my good people. What a time to be alive.

As far as being thankful in all things, I understand the need to be grateful and feeling guilty about being ungrateful because it could always be worse. I was told to be grateful often. Hearing that didn’t break the curse of feeling cheated, like I am missing out on better and greater things. Instead, it felt like my feelings about the present situation and circumstance didn’t meaning anything. As though my feelings held no weight in making things easier, more productive and moving things along. That might be true. But would you rather be right or experience the fullness of your capacity to feel?

I remember seeing on tv family sitcoms where the family sit at dinner, the child isn’t inspired enough to clean their plate, the parent says the offensive idiom, “There are starving children in Africa Alkebulan⁴.” Well, I didn’t get that speech. I got the, “Remember who you are and Who’s you are. Remember where you come from” talk. This mindset of gratitude wasn’t reserved for the home, but this type of be-grateful reactionary thinking was based on the mental and spiritual survival of repressed peoples. I often had the talk about how my family were forced into slavery.

They want you to be sad. Don’t fall into the trap and give them your energy.

There wasn’t a lot to be grateful for if you were a slave or sharecropper or just Black and existing in the USA or anywhere. Understanding yields compassion. However, I cannot ignore other emotions for fear of being haunted by them in the foreseeable future.

With my rudimentary way of thinking as a youngin’, I conceptualized that I was fighting against this vague thing, for lack of a better term, the mindset that desired me to be sad. As an individual, experiencing my own life, I also think about how my ancestors found joy where they could. I imagine them finding community in spite of their terrible surroundings. I think about women holding hope for a better future and if they could ever imagine a distant relative like myself reading and writing freely, being able to drive my own car or having my own bank account and being educated. Then I think, I have time to slow down and honor myself by acknolwgding my emotions. I’m not in survival mode like my foremothers. I have time. I am allowed to feel ungrateful, sad, mad, abandoned, happy, and content all at once, be present with the ebbing and flowing waves of emotions. I’m allowed to feel the full spectrum of emotions. I’m allowed to process my guilt and shame⁵ about feeling guilty and shameful. Feeling is the most human thing I can do because so many may not get the chance to or even know how. I am allowed to be grateful and feel other feelings too. No emotion is better or worse than the other. I am worthy of feeling it all.

I still struggle as life is not without its difficulties. I’m allowed to be sad and grateful about being sad. I’m allowed to say there is no bright side to this and still be like,

I’mma survive this as I’ve done all my worst moments in my life.

I may not feel grateful now or ever. However, I know I will survive this and it will not last. I don’t have to be grateful just have faith that it’ll work out and I will be ready or as ready as I can be.

In conclusion, when others try to reframe your perspective by advising you to be grateful, as well-meaning as that advise is I don’t think they’ve ponder what they are actually saying. The end goal, if there must be one, is to be able to allow yourself the space and time to process the present moment at hand. When we react by searching for ways to be grateful, we rob ourselves of being present with ourselves. We silence, censor an lie to ourselves which keeps us from our own emotional journey for fear of being perceived as ungrateful and therefore worthy of even worse happenings. Forced happiness creates humans who aren’t in-touch with what they are feelings, what they truly desire, and eventually leads to feeling lost because they cannot distinguish what they like, love and dislike. When we shed the “Us v Them” mentality, the dualist way of thinking of emotions being good and/or bad then we are able to perceive the vastness of our human experience. We begin to understand ourselves, we form a deep intimacy within ourselves. Eventually, we will be able to see ourselves clearer and clearer and know that we can handle whatever life brings. It all starts with giving ourselves permission to exist just as we are, moment to moment. Release yourself from the limiting thinking of being grateful is the only solution to being enough, feeling fulfilled and contented.

You are enough, just as you are, right here, right now. There are many truths out there. Believe the truths that empower you.

--

Guilt, Guilty: i.e. I did something wrong.

2. Envy: Someone has what you desire or do not have

3. Silver Lining: seeing the good in a bad situation

4. Alkebunal: Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop: History of Afrika, ALKEBULAN | THE ORIGINAL NAME FOR AFRICA. link: https://www.awaytoafrica.com/know-african-roots/

5. Shame, Shameful: i.e. I am wrong.

[rainbowpopeworld]

Tweet here

[utsaahpsychologyclinic]

"Lighten up on yourself. No one is perfect. Gently accept your humanness"

[xys-fits]

Jesus Had Mental Health Struggles, Too

Time to get controversial. The title's not just clickbait. Read on to see what I mean.

Is this title clickbait? Yup. Am I still gonna talk about it? Also yup. If you were like me growing up, you probably heard about spirits of depression and anxiety and that they’d go away if you just prayed hard enough and read your Bible consistently. While the Bible does acknowledge spirits of both depression and anxiety (I’ll actually link another verse for this, too), they aren’t always…

[mythoughttherapy]

“A human being, every human being, is complicated - layers upon layers of ideas, feelings, perceptions, recollections, reactions, desires and dreams. By placing us into boxes they are denying us our own truth. By placing others into boxes we are denying them their own truth. And so it goes.”

—Elif Shafak, How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division

[gentlyallow]

Humanness you say. Whatever do you mean?

Perhaps it is the cycles you continue that make you feel ways of worry and misjudgment. Or maybe it's the chronic need to solve things to hopefully be loved. Maybe you feel sad and curious about yourself now. Each day we are met in the mirror with our human face and body and its apart of us, we must claim it. Everything this human body said in the daytime and how she interacts with the world.

We're given a way we think we should be, and what if we brushed that off and let it go? I feel okay and beautiful and deserving. How would it feel if I was like this all of the time? Would I chronically assume the worst and pick apart myself instead of accepting it all? Is love seeing yourself and accepting all of her. Can I coach her more and know she's deserving of so much? Is this so foreign that it scares me, and I assume it's wrong? Can I do this thing called love?

Don't assume you have to be perfect to deserve to be here, it's the fear that can keep you up and eat at you. That is trauma, to be "perfect" and to think that's what makes you deserve love. Everyone is accepted and loved. I am accepted and loved.

I give out a loving acceptance and I embody the feeling all over. You're safe now.

Ryan Gosling is a beauty :')

[the-healing-mindset]

Source: Susan Frybort via Jeff Brown

[eurychphanpelcael]

人間がより“清く正しく健やかに”あろうとすればするほどに、世界はより良い“人間らしさ”を競い争う“地獄”となる。

The more human try to be "clean, right, and healthy," the more the world becomes a "hell" of competing and quarrelling for better "humanness".

[bowserpunk-vevo]

i will never not have belief in, and hope for humanity. and if i am killed slowly and painfully by the same people i valued, i would have died for what i belived in. and in turn, i will die believing that my death will inspire at least a few to do what they can to continue the human growth towards a better life for all.

[robinpronto]

"To the extent you identify and honor your true path in this lifetime, you will know genuine satisfaction. Real peace in your own skin. You will be infused with vitality and a clarified focus. New pathways of possibility appear, where before there were obstacles. You will know a peace that will buffer you against the madness of the world. A clarity, a direction, that will carry you from one satisfaction to another. "Life will still have its challenges, but you will interface with them differently. Coded in an authenticity of purpose, that sees through the veils, to what really matters. To the extent that you avoid the quest for purpose, you will live frustrated. A half-life. "Your avoidance manifests in all manner of disease. Perpetual dissatisfaction. Emotional problems. Depression. Addictive patterns. All reflections of your own alienation from the purposeful root of your being. There is really no escape from reality. There is only postponement. You should be more afraid of avoiding your path, than walking it. You are sacred purpose ." Jeff Brown #direction #path #peace #satisfaction #authenticity #authentic #purpose #challenges #avoidance #perspective #reality #being #beinghuman #human #humanity #humanness #selfportrait #quotography https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnn--vIutgK/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=