I’m not feeling very verbal right now, so blog writing is hard. I’m tempted to post a cat video.
In Arizona, I found a cat collar made of very good leather with brass letters that said MEOW. When I am feeling punk I wear it as a bracelet. Bet nobody guessed I sometime feel punk!
I read an article that said that in the 1800’s cats were either feral or barn cats. Then some woman got the idea to bring one in the house and treat it as a pet. It became a fad around the turn of the century – went viral!. It also became grounds for divorce. One man stated that his wife had 37 cats and the house smelled. Divorce granted.
I have two cats and there are times the house smells.
Mosquitoes don’t like the smell of lavender or fabric softeners. So if you rub lavender all over you and stuff your pockets with Bounce they will not bother you. And they are scared of wind.
I didn’t envision free association being suitable for this blog. It is supposed to contain Serious Meaningful essays about healing from ritual abuse. But I suppose dying one’s hair blue and wearing cat collars and remembering articles found when I was careening around the Web instead of being productive are suitable subjects for “Healing from Ritual Abuse.”
In the initial phases of dealing with ritual abuse, there was no room for silliness for me. The flashbacks, the terror, the feeling that I would die from remembering consumed me 24/7. (Being afraid that remembering would kill me was a flashback, too, but I didn’t know that back then.) Now, in a later phase, there is room for other things. I never even imagined that could be true, but it turned out that it is.
I can’t remember when I first became open to other things, but I do remember that the change came slowly. My attention turned to something non-RA for a moment and then I was once again immersed in the horror. Over time, my attention could stray from RA for longer and longer periods.
Now I can read newspapers. I can get upset about other kinds of evil and all the ways people hurt each other and abandon each other. Wars, famines, prisons, destructive greed, stupidity; all these things have little to do with RA. Neither do most domestic violence and most child abuse. Apparently there is room for plenty of different kinds of evil in this troubled world of ours.
But I’m also aware that there is kindness and generosity and beauty in the world. Want to see something beautiful I found yesterday? Check out http://www.cameraflora.com/index#
Backstory: Bert Shankman was a retired systems analyst and quickly became bored with all the leisure. He joined several clubs, including a camera club. He shot landscapes but got bored with that, too. He turned to flowers and became entranced. The members of the camera club were appalled because he photoshopped his work, so he told them to think of them as paintings. I think they are gorgeous!
Moral of Bert’s story: when bored, try something different. And if you are met with criticism, don’t take it too seriously – follow your heart.
Moral of this post: I dunno. Maybe if you are in crisis, hold on, don’t kill yourself, and just wait. I promise things will change. Maybe, eventually, you are allowed to be silly even if you are a ritual abuse survivor.
Ritual Abuse 