Courage vs. no fear

DANGER: Shockingness ahead.

What's so important, mousey?  Just wonderin'...

Were more true words ever spoken?  Maybe, maybe not.

To live a courageous life is indeed a wonderful and inspiring thing.  To pass through fear and come out victorious on the other side is the stuff of legends.

If courage is, then, the stuff of legends, is it pretentious to say that I want to live without fear?  I want to live, someday, without a fear through which to step.  This means I must either pluck up my courage now and experience what that fear is and overcome it... or give myself permission to let the fear go entirely.

What prompted this?  A lot of things.  For one, I'm getting a tattoo in a week.  That's right, I'm going to permanently spray paint on the temple!  I'll write about that later, though, only the fact of it is what matters here, and the sheer amount of trepidation I've experienced as I've come to this decision and have been working through my fears.  I fear the stigma, reproach, disapproval, but I'm going to do it anyway.  I'm going to admit that tattoos can be gorgeous artwork, and I envy people that sport gorgeous artwork.  I'm going to admit that my trepidation is wise, given its permanence, and admit that at the same time, a lot of that trepidation, that fear, was conditioned into me because I desire approval and love and this will not earn either from the majority of people that matter to me the most.

Secondly, I've been reading a fabulous, amazing book with a shocking, offensive title; arguably, its title is the most shocking and offensive word in the English language, so consider yourself warned of that before you click this link... or get over it.  I have.  This book is changing my life and the way I view my womanness.

Thirdly, I have carried a LOT of fear around with me throughout my entire life, and that shit's gotta stop.  It's gotta stop, and I am going to make it stop.  I want to live a life of no fear and I have a lot more control over that happening than I've been led to believe, either by my culture, my family, or my own damn self.

Fourthly, pursuant to the third item, I was reading the book in the second item, and thinking "I claim to be Like Unto Eve, whose archetype is all about the pursuit of knowledge and progression in spite of reprimand or fear.  I should blog more about this journey.  I'll need a new tag.  Hmm... 'fearless pursuit of knowledge'? 'Courageous pursuit of...'  What's the difference?  Courage is not the absence of fear, but... I want the absence of fear.  ... I should blog about this."

And so it comes full circle.  Welcome to my brain!  I'm back!

My first day back

Oh, where to start.  Last week, I guess I'll start with last week.  No, March.  Back in March, just after we found out that the cancer had returned, I told my Bishop that I'd be basically ducking out of my Ward, that I wasn't ready to move back to my family Ward, that I needed the ties to my peer group.  So, with the exception of the Sunday just after Mom died, I really hadn't been to church in about two and a half months.  Last week, during the third hour, Ward members teamed up and went out to visit people who had been designated inactive or less active.

Guess who got visited!  I almost went to church that day, too.  I was awake in time to get up and go, but I decided to sleep instead.  I'd been working my doula magic at a birth Saturday morning, 90 miles away, and over Friday and Saturday I was awake close to 40 hours.  I got in enough dozing to make it safe to drive home, but not enough to count as rest.  Sleep and food took priority that day over Fast and Testimony meetings, and so I got a visit from two dear friends and a guy I recognized but to whom I had never said more than three words.  And a plate of cookies.

For those not familiar with the nature of a YSA Ward in a college town, turn over is super high.  Around here, there's a core of people who grew up in the area, but the membership generally changes every 3-5 months, so not having seen someone in that time is decent reason to consider them "inactive".  Coupling that with my notification to the Bishop, I don't blame them for coming to see me.  Plus, making sure people are doing okay is kind of important.

After all of that, I felt I should probably make the effort and go to church.  I got up, got myself there just in time to catch the sacramental bread out in the foyer, went in and sat down in all readiness to hear a good message... and the first speaker opened his talk with a recounting of his recent diagnosis of and surgery for malignant melanoma.

Welcome back!  Let's trigger a panic attack!

I ran out of the room, hyperventilating and found myself sobbing on the foyer couch, covering my face and unable to stop.  I don't blame the investigator standing out there for not approaching me, but I was a little dismayed by the (presumably) seasoned married couple whose feet I saw through my fingers, strolling past me in silence.  Thanks for checking on the clearly distraught sister sobbing right in front of you, folks!  Have a great Sabbath!  The Sister missionaries came and checked on me, as did the EQP and one of the other girls in the Ward, so I wasn't alone, and I did calm down enough after a few minutes to go to the restroom and clean myself up... only to find myself sobbing uncontrollably and taking refuge in the Mother's Room so my wailing wouldn't echo throughout the whole building.  I was in there for the remainder of the hour, finally feeling all right to emerge for Sunday School.

I sort of wished I hadn't.  We were studying the end of Mosiah and the start of Alma in the Book of Mormon, which is the section where the Nephites are setting up their representative-democratic-theocracy.  This is an understandably popular form of government for a lot of American Mormons, especially of a right-leaning philosophy, because it's similar enough to our own government, plus the piety of being based on God's laws.  Huzzah!  Therefore, political comments were ripe for the plucking and the soap boxes were occupied.  Not Huzzah.  At one point, I couldn't shut up any longer and I steered the rhetoric straight to, "we need to love, serve, and see people the way Jesus would."  I can't stand political commentary in church anymore.  It makes me want to tear out my hair.  By the way, has anyone noticed that we always study the Book of Mormon during Presidential election years?

Relief Society was fairly innocuous, just a lesson on studying the scriptures.  I did feel that I should make a better effort with my lately-lax scripture study, but I tuned out most of the lesson while I tried to download the manual from Amazon to my Kindle.  (Don't do it.  Wrong book.  $10.41 wasted.  Yay for refunds.)   Afterward, I stayed to practice a choir song I won't be in church on the 24th to perform.  However, it was fun and it felt good.

All in all.... a difficult day.  Welcome back, Jena.  Things have changed!

Eternal perspectives

I have two things to talk about: My Mom, and men.

Mom

The way I miss her isn't the way I thought I'd miss her.  I went to visit her grave tonight for the first time since her memorial............. has it only been three weeks?  Damn.  It feels... longer.  Much longer.  And that's the thing.  It's like I've entered a new life since her death.  Rather than living a singular life in which there is now this gaping, unfilled hole left left behind in the mortal absence of my mother, another lifetime began in which she simply isn't physically present.

It's a little like moving away from home.  The memories of home are still with you when you move away, you still love it, it's still the root of everything you do and everything you are and ever will be; but you are in another place now, and in effect, another time.  You have another purpose, and while you will always and forever love your home, this new space you're in is the right space to be.  There's a feeling of being homesick, of thinking back on the life that was, but being present in the life that is.

I think that's why I haven't been feeling as devastated as I had anticipated.  As a family, we released Mom, because it was the right thing to do and the right time for her to go.  We told her it was okay.  There's no sense of unfinished business: nothing left unsaid, nothing left undone, no injustice in her passing.  She completed her purpose on this Earth, and it was okay.

Granted, I am loudly sobbing and crying my eyes out as I'm typing this, but I'm also laughing at myself a little because I am typing while I'm wailing loud enough to make me glad my nearest neighbors are a few hundred yards away.  It's just release.  I'm super practical when it comes to letting it out, and even though I likely sound to the world like I'm an emotional mess, it's mostly physical.  Inside, I'm pretty peaceful.  And now I'm done crying.  It just needed to get out.

(Tangent: Mom's buried next to a guy that was in my class in high school who died in a car accident between our Junior and Senior years.  Always wear your seat belts.  Just saying.)

Men


A large part of my reason for being a feminist is a strong belief and hope for equality.  When I find this running up against the strong cultural dogma of male superiority in Mormonism  (however benevolent its stewardship may supposed to be) it puts me in some dismay about the eternal order of things as we're presented with them.

I have a really big, freaking problem thinking that two equally worthy, covenant-making-and-keeping people, bound together for eternity would be bound to being anything but equivalent to each other for eternity.  If it's not so, I have to look forward to eternity as Second in Command, instead of Co-Captain.  Eternity.  Forever.  Without end.  Never, ever, ever ending second citizenship.


How is that just?  How is that good?  How can that be acceptable and justifiable based upon the relative femininity or masculinity of an individual if all are alike unto God and God is no respecter of persons?  How can being (a beloved and cherished) Second for the rest of all out-of-time be okay?  It cannot.  It cannot be okay.  A man wouldn't stand for that being his lot, yet it's an implied expectation from the women.  Such a concept deeply, deeply disturbs me, to think that I could bust my butt through this super critical mortal probation we're all in, perhaps even out-righteous my Hypothetical Husband, and still end up as the Silent Partner, the Heavenly Mother that never talks to Her children and whom Her children are discouraged from addressing.  I find that idea incredibly unappealing, and it puts me in a position to wonder whether the effort is worthwhile if I have no guarantee of autonomy and personal worth outside the man I'm married to, forever.  This a big scary question for a woman who has been pretty dang invested in aiming for goddesshood her entire life.  So I have to think that we really just don't have the whole picture yet, that there's more, that the equality of the sexes will be seen as a central point of eternal doctrine at some time in the future, may Heaven make it soon.

But what if... what if I'm wrong.  What if God moves in (to me) truly mind-boggling and seemingly hypocritical, unjust, mysterious ways and eternity is sexist?  What if being more feminine than masculine lands you a spot just behind the shoulder of your more masculine eternal companion, to be protected and shielded and effectively silenced because you're somehow more sacred than anything else?  It's an idea that sickens me to my stomach, and the only way I can conceive of it being a tolerable system is if I could find a man who would not treat me as anything but an equal.  Where any "head"ship would be in token only, and irrelevant in practice.  If he must have the title, he can have the title, but that's all I could tolerate.  If I had to. If that's really the eternal order of things.

I don't think it is, though.  It just doesn't make sense.

Waxing poetic.

Just a couple apples falling from the brain tree this evening...

Chivalry is dead--so let it lie.

And let male feminists arise.

~ ~ ~

Goddess give me the strength not to socialize my daughters to be "nice".  Strong, kind, fair-minded, responsible, compassionate, and just, yes; but never "nice".  Nice makes you a doormat, even when you're being wronged.  Nice doesn't make a fuss when a fuss needs to be made.  Nice makes you doubt your better judgment and squash your intuition because others might be inconvenienced by your truth.  Nice does not a heroine make.

Mother's Day

sigh

Well, I did say I wanted to get it all done with at once.  Everything.  Death, memorial, Mother's Day...  That should make next year easier.  It also makes this year really, really hard.  Finally, it's beginning to sink in that she's beyond the veil, that life is different, that it's just Dad and I at home and that while she might be around in spirit.... she's not there in body.  At least it's really starting to hurt.  Today is really going to suck.

So I have two Mothers beyond the veil whose presence I can know no more of than to feel, if I'm lucky.  I might have three, if my birth mother hasn't survived this long, but I don't know much of anything about her, so I can't really feel attached, there.  How do I honor these women this day?

Well, for one, today I am only saying my prayers to Heavenly Mother.  Father can listen in, but I'm talking to my Mom.  I will take any opportunity to speak about Her.  I would be wearing goddess earrings and my tree and/or labyrinth pendants if I had them with me, but Dad and I are with my sister's family out of town.  I will cuddle my niece and hug my sister.  I will listen to and hum or sing women's songs.  I will treat my father kindly and sit beside him and scratch his back the way Mom used to do.  I will honor my sisters who are mothers and console, commiserate, or celebrate with my sisters who are not.  I will hold space with those also missing their mothers today, and mothers missing their babies.

And I will mourn honestly and openly and in whatever way I damn well please, be it weeping or donuts or seclusion or walking out of Sacrament meeting if I hear the phrase "We/You are all mothers" and it upsets me because I'm sick of that platitude and it's insulting and patronizing.  I will be grumpy if I feel like it because I miss my Mom.  And I'll be happy if I feel like it because I had my Mom.  I'll be and do whatever gets me through this day.

Peaceful Mother's Day to you all.

I'm coming back, I promise

It's been a rough few weeks, all told.  I'm floating in this very surreal soup of "life is normal" and "life will never be the same again" and "I feel okay" and "My Mom's gone...... what?"  It takes a lot of mental energy and even though I want to record every event and the chronology of everything from her last mortal week up to now before it fades, I just can't seem to find the time or energy to write it.  Maybe I'll voice record it instead so it's at least somewhere.

Anyway.  I expect I'll soon be back to blogging about Feminism and Mormonism and MoFemism and Morganism and Eve and whatever else crosses my mind.  Until then, peace.

She is in her glory now.

That's about all I can say right now.  I'll edit later.