On Speaking

One of the things that made me so crazy as a youngster was my sight.

I could see and feel the truth of reality, and when I’d point it out, I was not only gaslit, but punished for speaking.

I’ve been pondering this morning just how deep this pattern in me runs. How often the cycle repeated itself in my youth.

The corruption in society has always been evident to me.

I’d always been able to feel who the good guys and bad guys were.

I’d have a decent idea of what their psychology was, and the approximate area of their downfall.

I could see where they held their secrets in their bodies.

I could see where we held our secrets as a society.

And I refused to be a secret keeper, to tow the party line when I knew it was wrong.

I always spoke what I knew. And I stood up for myself and the truth regularly.

And I was heavily punished for it.

I was raised in a community of hypocrites and it created a huge backlash of disgust and rage that accumulated in my field. This led to literal physical manifestations of sickness.

What frustrated me most was my accuracy and rightness juxtaposed against how I was received when truth telling.

At some point, when survival literally dictated it, in becoming a very young mother who needed to fit in and stop causing problems for her child’s sake, I joined the consensus.

But I was still a child even as a young mother.

——————-

If we punish a child enough, if we crack the whip enough in an effort to train and domesticate the child, we may succeed, but we will have robbed them of an incredible power.

My daughter’s friend got grounded a month before Easter for “talking back”. I asked her when she’d be able to hang out again, and she said sometime after Easter. A month. For talking back? Sounds insane to me. Though I know my own parent’s favorite thing to shut down was my expression, so I’m not sure why I was surprised.

I sat back and thought about what the potential outcome for the child was?

In my home, kids are always allowed to speak back to us as long as it’s respectful. They are even allowed to sound emotional. They just can’t humiliate or denigrate.

But as for this girl? My daughter’s friend, I found the whole thing a curious inquiry….What is she learning? What happens if the G.overn.ment tells her to do something she believes is a violation? What if she’s accused of something she did not do? How does she back her own truth if her parents have taught her it’s wrong to speak up?

My mind went to endless places around where this kind of parenting style could lead. It felt so harsh to me, to teach a young girl this particular lssson, just as she’s hitting her teenage years. Just when she will need her voice the most.

And then I realized, oh, it led to me. I know exactly what happens.

For me, i became someone who gaslight herself so that other people wouldn’t think she was nuts. “You can’t say that out loud, people will think you are crazy”. (Why because that’s how I was met when I said the true thing that others couldn’t see. It hurt to be thought of as nuts)

It led to someone who, for the sake of survival, had to dissociate and tell herself things weren’t so bad so that her psyche didn’t break inside the gap between the truth, and the illlusion that was being portrayed as truth.

———

Now, as a parent, having been on my own journey between poles with full expression, I have a really interesting approach. A huge “traditional” rod runs straight through the spine of my liberal heart.

Its been interesting in my evolving parenting style to balance these two.

With the older boys, I mirrored my father’s parenting style. Very strict. I had very well behaved children. But I’m sure, at times, I did to them what was done to me.

As time has gone on, and I’ve begun to reconcile the truth, magic, and animism, that peppered my childhood, with the consensus good girl I became, my parenting has evolved significantly.

I’ve come to honor the children’s humanity above all else. Look at the places I can help them empower themselves based on their innate skills.

I do give consequences. They are not totally free to *Uck up their lives with no guardrails.

But I hope inside the guardrails, there is enough freedom to flourish and even rebel a bit. They have the capacity to share what they see, even if it’s wrong.

I find the encouraging of full expression the lynchpin of good parenting. It gives us a window into what our child thinks and believes about themselves and the world.

Not everything they think is real or true. And I can’t get in there and help them see things more accurately if they are afraid to speak to me.

For instance, the other day, my oldest son was having a venting session as I held space. It was an opportunity to hear his inner narrative.

So much distortion.

Afterwards I got to coach him around self deception and what happens when we aren’t honest with ourselves and what life is asking from us. It’s clear he’s being called to a higher level of excellence around responsibility, and he’s in resistance to it (totally, totally, human)

He’s already so bright, and self aware, (he’s my son ) and very coachable, that he could see what I pointed to and it shifted how he was feeling, and his orientation to the issue that was causing him pain.

I don’t think we’d have this relationship if I hadn’t spent a decent chunk of his life learning to listen to him, rather than domesticate him.

However, as his mother, one might expect a degree of intimacy. But what of him using his voice elsewhere? Part of the issue he runs into is not expressing what needs to be expressed to others. A fear of confrontation, which likely developed in his young years, when I was not receptive to feedback, but rather quite strict.

——————

As we venture into the Throat Chakra with Venus in the next two weeks, I’ve been contemplating the yin/yang of expression. How do we speak when there isn’t reception on the other end?

It takes cultivating a backbone. Being absolutely devoted to the truth above being liked. And not being attached to an identity that people can then use to manipulate us.

What do I mean by that? Well if you identify as a good girl, any time your opinion runs counter to the good girl narrative, all someone has to do is suggest you aren’t good, and you’ll find yourself inside of an identity crisis. Backtracking your truth to serve some externalized version of yourself.

And taking this inquiry further, in what arena is reception (yin) necessary in speech? If any? If so, how much? How much should we altar or dilute our message in service to reception?

There’s a lot to unpack with all of this.

Excitingly Mercury will be in retrograde for part of journey through the Throat Chakra, so we’ll likely have lots of practice material.

I’ll come back with further reflections as we move through this time.

**Artist is Tracy Algar-"Take Them Back".

#astrology #expeession #venus #throatchakra #children #speach #freespeach