It may seem odd that a non-dualistic thinker like me would write a post called "right and wrong," but bear with me. I've been influenced and formed in that paradigm like everyone else...
Writing my memoir has been revelatory. Hard, but revelatory. It has reminded me (if the news doesn't, each and every morning) that I have been fortunate enough never to have experienced war, physical or sexual abuse, direct terrorist attacks, or any similar physical violence at the hands of other people.
But my life experienced has been characterized by an unusual level of psychological rejection -- abandonment, condescension, shaming, ridicule, contradiction and push back. Perhaps the worst of all is just simply being ignored. This has been as hard to write about in my book as I imagine outright violence would have been, but I am beginning to see a clear trend; I think I may have explored this in a blog a few months ago, but I'm seeing it more and more clearly.
I was made to feel "wrong," I believe, the minute I was handed into my father's arms. He simply could not register the qualities that a beautiful young first baby represents, and as I came into my own (at least to some degree a person of love, beauty, wisdom, empathy, and creativity) I was kept further and further at arm's length. Soon I fell in love with English church music -- wrong again, it seemed. Over and over, I've had regular experience with being pushed back in almost a knee-jerk kind of way, particularly when I am being most "me." It never ceases to be painful; thankfully, there have been wonderful exceptions along the way.
The gift of writing all these events down on paper, and having survived long enough to do so (because, Lordy, that alone is a miracle!) is that I am finally seeing the consistent thread through them all.
In almost every case, I verbalized (out loud, or in writing) something that was, in fact, true, a "case" that was arguable, or something that time would prove true. I was, in effect, "right," but in a situation where people did not want to hear the truth so it was easier to make me feel "wrong." Until recently, I just couldn't completely separate people's reactions to me from who I was. Somewhere in me, I carried the shame of consistently being wrong. Maybe some of you have experienced this.
Of course this phenomenon is magnified by my being a woman "of a certain age" (we're all invisible and inaudible, right?) and by my having made the choice so many times in my life to live in climates that require months of "muffling" against the elements. My truth flies away on a brutal northeast wind the minute the words leave my mouth. My breath freezes to my scarf, my glasses. I still resonate with being near Lake Superior because she is endless, roiling, Nature-speaking-her-truth. I am inspired by her refusal to be tamed or made wrong.
I am so ready -- not necessarily to be told I am "right," because truly, I am trying to leave that form of duality, but...-- to have people say, "I'd like to hear more about what you have to say." I'd like to regularly feel what it feels like to speak -- or "be" -- and not hear all the shutters pulled down around me. I'd like to know what it is like to be fully welcomed for being in my fullest integrity. And, yes, I'd like that for everyone.
