Weeping Clouds

Only weeping clouds create rainbows and they share them with us all.

The first half of this revelation came to me a month or so ago. As I pondered those I loved who experienced depression. You cannot open yourself up to loving this world deeply without opening yourself up to great sorrow and yet we pathologise, blame and marginalise those who's emotions are in align with the reality of the pain of life.

The last few days I've been thinking about those weeping clouds sharing those rainbows. 

For the majority of my life I have deeply cared about people who were blue. I have learnt and benefited so much from them. What you gain from living closely to people who live in colder emotional climates is hard to pin down. But recently I have started to realize how deep my debt is to them. Like any diversity issue we all stand to gain by a more inclusive culture.

I am humbled by their courage to get up each day and face the world. It teaches me about the strength of human character resolve and will. I have never done anything close to approaching that much overcoming. I give up at the first hurdle and take one of the many other options available to the privileged emotionally typical.

I am grounded by their different energies. The slowness of movement, thought and communication forces me to slow down to consider more deeply what I'm saying to reach out further and therefore to reach deeper into myself, my motives, it causes me to pause, to reflect.

The turmoil of anxiety sharpens me stops me running away from things I've thrown aside as unimportant, skiped over neglected.

The fear of social engagement checks the frivolous interactions I have with people without the care and thought due in the sacred moment of engaging with another human being.

So from a constantly energetic, self-assured, extrovert to those who have been told their emotions are invalid.

Thank you. 

I have no desire for your suffering but don't for a moment think you don't contribute huge amounts to those around you. You do.

Dear World

Dear World,

I am writing to you because you are a very dear friend and I am under the impression you are not 100% at ease and really quiet worried about us. We are very grateful for your concern but feel it is quiet misplaced. 

When I was going on maternity leave with my first child with no job to return too due to lack of funding, I didn't get the overwhelming impression that you were concerned about 'what I would do'. It seemed it was a for-gone conclusion. I was now a 'mother' that was work enough.

My best friend was concerned, but we quickly learned not to discus it around you world, lest we be chastised for not considering devoting yourself to your children as important. (Something we never said or thought)

Now that same best friend is going on paternity leave which I am gathering world is making you extremely anxious. It would seem that you are deeply concerned about him 'not working' and taking time to devote to his children possibly a 'waste' of his talents and skills.

Do you see the contradiction?

It would seem to us dear world that you are defining us in a way we do not wish to be defined. You are defining me by my relational status and aforementioned best friend by what he does. Neither of us wish to be defined by either of these things. It will be messier and less simple but we think you will be richly rewarded if you get to know us as we are with all our contradictions and frailties. 

And instead of becoming anxious by the choices we are making why not use them to catalyse your own imagination of what might be possible.

In deepest love

Me :)

The Wonderful Co-op.

Co-op are not going to be stocking a number of exploitative magazines aimed at a manipulative and patronising construct of masculinity (my rather long winded avoidance of saying 'lad's mag's!). 

Wahooo!!!!

This is because those companies have refused to provide said magazines in sealed bags which would prevent people being able to see the content unless they actively wanted to and bought them. (Unfortunate that these have been referred to as 'modesty wraps')

The wonderful wonderful thing about this is that no one can call this censorship - it is not. The Co-op is, well a co-operative, and has a membership, a membership today I am very proud to be part of. This decision is a response to listing to that membership. Democracy at work. 

The publishers where given a choice and they made a decision, a decision I would imagine might bring the co-op many more customers and members. 

What I love about what's happened at the Co-op is that it demonstrates how alternative business structures bypass the debates other organisations will inevitably get tangled up in: Freedom of speech (aka I want to wank to whatever I like) vs. the right to live free of oppression and intimidation, everyone needs to be free to chose and we can't possibly do anything to effect our profit margins, etc, etc.

Members of the co-op said um actually no we don't like it so it's going - simple.

I suspect though that the co-op will be miss-understood and accused of censorship. Just as David Cameron fundamentally misunderstood the point of the 'No More Page 3 Campaign' . There seems to be a disconnect between campaigners using collective voicing of issues to challenge and change attitudes and practices and those who should understand democracy and the democratic process seeing calls for censorship everywhere.

There is a co-operative alternative to capitalism.