In response

Grace is waiting in the shadows.

Part of the great spiritual myth is that you can do it alone. No one questions that as a child you need support and approval. It helps develop confidence yet somewhere there is this unwritten rule that once you hit the adult years, support and approval are no longer needed and should you go in search of them, you are attention seeking, have daddy issues etc. From dependant to solitary rock in a heart beat. At the same time people tell us humans are communal people, tribal, we need community.

As someone who doesn’t people well, I still need others in my life. Be it as sounding boards for ideas, or just to say “how you doing?” and listen as I answer or that idea isn’t great, that one is a good idea, you got this, you’re doing well. I also like to say these words and attempt to genuinely listen to the answers. Which is also part of the reason I don’t people well. My words are slow and I listen with my whole body, sometimes hearing deeper than the words said intended.

In particular writing is one of those contentious “not done for others” issues, as all art is supposed to be done for self. I can tell you that even if I have found voice in a piece written solely for me, a heart or like at the bottom of it feels good. I feel heard. I feel accepted within community. And that is a good sensation.

I do get butt hurt when people tell me not to bother them or my ideas are impossibly wrong because I’m dumb or less learned. I think anyone would. Rejection is never easy, it’s not supposed to be. Rejection is a tool designed to have one feel as less than the rejector.

You are allowed to feel hurt by rejection be it from a community, a peer or a publisher. Rejection is very personal. No amount of shadow working is going to take that initial sting of reaction away, you can reframe and feel better about the rejection over time, in deed you need to if you want to survive through adulthood. Typical advice on rejection is no good here, you know the “cut them off, don’t look back” kind of advice. As a writer, I have to go back, I have to keep on trying. As a human I have to go back, I have to keep on trying. How else is community formed, a voice heard, if not through perseverance and gentle insistence.

Epstein is a point in case as is Comet Pizza. Those often not gently insistent voices of perseverance, that such things as code words were real and a lot of very macabre people were in positions of power, were initially rejected. Those who insisted on the truth of the situation were rejected from community, had to yell louder to be heard, lost platforms, followers etc. Shock and horror, many had to Self Publish, still will, as there are very few outlets, for the truth on levels of depravity attained.

I suspect many feel as I do now. We who spoke out about our early lives and experiences, who pointed out the global reality of PDF files and were rejected by our communities, we don’t feel vindicated. We feel hurt you didn’t believe us in the first place. We trusted you with our very harsh early realities and you rejected us as it was too harsh for your reality. We were branded as liars once again. For many, a continuation of the only theme we had ever heard, shame on us for lying. In spite of efforts, we still exist, we still survive and thrive within community, for we had the patience of time that reveals all and the truth of our own experiences.

But, we are still hurting. That hurt will take some time to reframe before we feel “vindicated”. You believed a file dump over our truth, you we trusted and yeah, that hurts.

Much, much love.