Relationships, and Recovery from Trauma

Wow, I can so identify with all of this.

Don't Lose Hope

1. World wide studies of disaster response have confirmed that social support provides the greatest protection against being severely impacted by a trauma.

2. Social support doesn’t simply mean having people around you – even highly responsive and compassionate people.

To feel supported, we need to feel we have truly been seen, heard and understood by somebody who genuinely cares.

We also need to feel completely safe with that person. This is absolutely crucial for healing to occur.

3. Feeling safe is not a cognitive decision. It’s not something we can convince ourselves of, or can talk ourselves into believing. We don’t feel safe because we’re told someone is safe.

Instead, safety is something we experience intuitively, and at a gut level.

We need to feel – deep down inside – that we matter to this person, and the fact that we are suffering truly matters to them, too.

View original post 201 more words

Thanh Tâm Tuyền | THE SADNESS IN PIECES (30)

The best poem I’ve read this week.

SONGNGUTAITRAM

By Thanh Tâm Tuyền, translation by Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm

 

THE SADNESS IN PIECES

 

1

 

Late into the night love is as absent as the curtain of night

(Em)my love, weave for me the delusions 

From what is left of your innocence

 

The crazy wind of rejection upon a day yet to rise

The loneliness discarded in broken friendships

Alone I carry the burden

 

The familiar tearless path

The bitterness, leaves on the pavement

The black sea around me rising

 

A precarious throbbing isle adrift through the night

In the unforeseen confusion floating further away 

Tied it back with your hair like your unfathomable spirit

The trees are too engrossed to answer or to hold onto any kind of nostalgia

Don’t be too quick to throw the string of laughter down the cold pit

On my lips view the traces of sorrow

 

2

View original post 2,909 more words

Poetry Form: Zéjel

This sounds like an interesting & fun form of poetry.

dVerse

Zéjel is a Spanish form with Arabic influence related to the Qasida and adopted by the Spanish troubadours of 15th century.   It may have appeared even earlier,  around the tenth century in Moorish Spain as part of a movement looking for freedom from the classical forms of the day. The zéjel tended to be a lighter form, like the English limerick.

The Zéjel is distinguished by linking rhyme established in the opening mudanza (strophe in which the theme is established in a mono-rhymed triplet). There have been many variations of the form, in Arabic a variation of the form is called the Zahal.

The elements of the simplest and most common form of the Zéjel are:

1. syllabic, most often written in 8 syllable lines.
2. stanzaic, opening with a mono-rhymed triplet followed by any number of quatrains.  
3. rhymed, the rhyme of the opening mudanza establishes a linking rhyme with the end line of the succeeding quatrains. Rhyme scheme, aaa bbba…

View original post 325 more words

Excerpt from Gender Transition by Ellyn Kaschak, Ph.D

Do not miss: “Proponents of the transgender movement actually hijacked this diagnosis, along with the 50 years of feminist theory, practice and discoveries about the social construction and contextual nature of gender and spun them into a human rights movement, but not one for women. In fact, this movement actually infringes on many of the hard-won rights of women, including not only the right to assemble as a sex-based group but the right to call ourselves women, mothers and daughters. It even attempts to destroy the very concept of sex by conflating sex and gender, but make no mistake, lifetimes of research support unequivocally the difference between sex and gender. They may influence each other, but they are not the same thing. And sex can not be changed. It is a biological reality.”

Dead Wild Roses

Ellyn Kaschak, Ph.D. is Professor Emerita of Psychology, San Jose State University

Watch out for Dr.Kaschak as she’s violated the first rule of Trans Club – You don’t talk about Trans Club…

“The diagnostic of “gender dysphoria” actually came into existence as “gender identity disorder” and replaced the pathologizing of homosexuality (eliminated in 1973) in the DSM, the psychiatric bible. These diagnoses are adopted by popular vote of the American Psychiatric Association members, democratic rather than scientific. They have the strongest investment in construing psychology in terms of health and pathology. The association members had been convinced by lobbying groups and research, to vote to “normalize” homosexuality. In doing so, they wanted to leave a diagnostic possibility for those who remained conflicted about their sexual orientation. Diagnosis permits treatment via the official approval of the insurance companies, who today control the professions to a frightening extent. Thus was born “gender…

View original post 314 more words

The Wrong Kind of Unity

Some common sense here.

Benjamin Studebaker

On the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, the American media reflected on the war on terror. It was just a month after our withdrawal from Afghanistan, and you might think that the American press would be introspective about its own role in promoting our expensive blunders in the Middle East. But instead, the press expressed nostalgia for the “unity” the country experienced in the years immediately following the attacks.

Post-9/11 “unity” enabled our government to start a series of expensive, destructive wars. More than 200,000 people died in Afghanistan. More than 200,000 people died in Iraq. All told, the war on terror cost $8 trillion and killed an estimated 900,000 people. Both parties were culpable. Democrats voted to authorize these wars, and President Obama’s disastrous intervention in Libya cut that country’s per capita GDP in half:

Unity has value, but this is not the right kind of…

View original post 1,235 more words

Tummyrub Tuesday

I found a picture of Jack rolling on the rug the other day. I really miss him!

photograph © polly macdavid

Once again, I am ashamed to be an American

Aunt Polly has some things to say about the situation on our southern border.

aunt polly's rants

Joe Biden continues Trump’s anti-humanistic border policies.

I have to ask … how much of his devout Catholicism is a show? Because this is definitely not the act of a Christian … or any spiritual person.

US Border Patrol agents herding Haitian refugees like cattle. AP Photo by Felix Marquez.

Instead of doing the right thing & allowing everyone who wants to come to the United States & become citizens of our country, like so many others were allowed to do, Biden is allowing the Republicans to scare him into keeping the borders closed so he doesn’t appear to be “soft” on immigration, whatever the fuck that means. Well, it means nobody is allowed into the United States who isn’t white, that’s what it means. Look at the men on the horses. Look at the men on the ground.

Do the right thing already! Let these poor people in! &…

View original post 26 more words

An Open Letter to Liberty University Freshman Landon Nesbitt (On Rights, Responsibilities and Contempt for your Neighbor)

A Must-Read

Wondering Eagle

Landon Nesbitt organized a petition at Liberty University calling for in person classes, and rejection of all COVID-19 safety measures. This is an open letter to Landon on his efforts to challenge COVID-19 safety protocols. This letter while blunt is necessary given the threat that COVID-19 poses to Lynchburg and greater Virginia. 

View original post 905 more words

Diane Shaw on Trans “faith”

Aunt Polly with today’s Sunday Sermon.

aunt polly's rants

Back in June, I read an blog post by Diana Shaw on the “Women are Human” blog that interested me but at the time, I was too busy to write a blog about it myself. I simply copied & pasted it into a Word document & saved it.

Going through my Word files, I found it & thought that it would be appropriate to post it today … being a Sunday & all, when so many people are listening to one kind of sermon or another.

Diana Shaw writes: “Transactivists say what they say for religious reasons. The idea that there is a female within a male body requires faith to believe, as there is no evidence of this phenomenon. The belief that a person’s soul can transcend their body by faith, mantras (“trans women are women, trans men are men”) or works (hormones and/or surgery) is a faith. We…

View original post 260 more words

How stupid is THIS?

Aunt Polly reacts to an op-ed piece in the Washington Post

aunt polly's rants

A law professor … he doesn’t say where he teaches … is now going to use “they” for the singular “you”.

Never mind that “they” is plural & therefore is grammatically incorrect usage for less than two people.

A SINGLE PERSON CANNOT BE “THEY”.

You’d think that a law professor would KNOW BETTER.

I have a paralegal degree & one of the things that was drilled into me was CORRECT WORD USAGE, since using the wrong word the wrong way could lead to losing your case in court.

Maybe things are different now in these new times of woke-ness & being polite to TRA’s.

Personally, I refuse to use plural pronouns for a singular person. So sue me.

Link here ~~~~~> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/15/until-im-told-otherwise-i-prefer-call-you-they/?utm_campaign=wp_week_in_ideas&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_ideas

View original post