well. here ya go.

a gentle reminder . . .

Everything seems new if you are ignorant of history. - Rick Warren

pressure cooker

it is a tricky thing sometimes to know what to post and what not to post; which struggles should be dealt with alone and which should be dealt with in community.

i think i may need help on this one.

i want to talk about my greatest fears, my greatest hurts, my greatest embarrassments, my greatest joys. i want to live an unabashed open life and to be unapologetically myself, with both pride and humility in my character's strengths and flaws. i want to be able to lay my fears out and pretend that i don't struggle with them alone, that i don't try to hide them anymore but find strength in unmasking them within my daily actions and reactions. i want to be able to actually love my quirkiness as much as i pretend that i do. i want to embrace myself in a way which honours and adores the beauty within my soul and my struggles and my shortfallings.

i want to not sound crazy when thinking of you all reading this.

i miss the mark in so many things, in so many ways. i want so badly to stop feeling that i need to be perfect, to not feel that daily pressure to do everything in the exact right way. i want to know that the world won't crash if i make a mistake. i want to know that i am loveable just as i am.

i want the freedom to act thoughtlessly just for one moment without feeling guilty or fearful.

Breaking bad habits, bad thoughts. Slowly methodically painfully. one step at a time...

spreading my angst around the province

so i was a guest on CBC Manitoba's weekend morning show last sunday - listen to part 3 here!

Topic was "church shopping." Though i sort of cringe at that term, I think it turned out pretty well.

Be well, dear readers/listeners!
Bre

cherished

i want a purple picket fence and a sense of stability. i want to throw caution to the wind. i want. i want to live this life as much as i can and to live myself as much as i know how. i want to draw lines around myself when appropriate. i want to let those lines down when appropriate. i want to know the difference. i want to be cherished. i want to be held gently, to not question who i know myself to be. i want to give myself grace. i want to know truth and speak it and live it. i want to be known. i want to be known. i want to grow where i am planted. i want to control things which i cannot; i want to be in these children's lives unconditionally. i want to stop living under this cloud. i want a hamster. i want to fly. i want to be less selfish and less confused. i want to live joy. i want you to see me, and know that i am enough.

emptyish

i've got nothing today that i have the freedom to blog publicly. sort of a horrendous week. ugh.

here's a cartoon to lighten the mood; copyright info included.

why do i do this to myself

so i posted this on FB this week, and have felt pretty naked and uncomfortable ever since. so here it is (slightly edited for mass cosumption), for the world to see. it was in response to some questions by a friend.


so i have this button that says Trust God but Question Religion. if i had a mantra right now in my life it would be that. that's where i am at, completely.

the bible was written by people at the top of the cultural hierarchy, for people in top of the hierarchy, mostly to support their ideologies. so it makes me mad. but there is some truth mustard-seeded within, here and there, so everything needs to be taken with a grain of salt i think and we can't discount the truths that may lie within just because some oppressive dude said it.

i beleve in the person and work of Jesus - i hold onto that. and i find meaning in that, though it is excrutiating and time taking and takes a lot of faith to sift through the cultural patriarchy and other things to really get to the real person of Jesus and what she stood for. but i still hold onto that person with my life - maybe an emotional need. but my life has been saved more than once within this belief and in this trust with this person-God who i don't actually understand or comprehend but hold onto dearly for meaning. and i find meaning within communities which struggle with these things too - SCM type communities - who wrestle with the inherent oppression found within Jesus, the bible, christianity and who struggle and cry together in this pursuit of some meaning in this upside-down life. they are hard to find, but they are out there. and give me hope and reasons to continue on with it.

this faith gives me hope. there is something inside of me which does not accept that what we see is everything that is going on. i want to pursue the erotic joy which audre lorde writes about in all that i do and all that i am (please read the article so that you understand my non-creepy use of the word erotic here). i have experienced and believe something very very very good and loving exists which we can't see, but we can FEEL. that is what i pursue. it is both my strength and my weakness, my tool and my crutch. it sustains me and kills me at the same moment. and what is more erotic than that? carpe diem. especially when the future is so uncertain.

up and down and up #2

so this is inevitably how every blog posting and academic paper i write go;

i sit and struggle and try to push myself as hard and as far as i can go
i write it down
i normally think it brilliant and super perceptive
i post it/hand it in
a day later i read it and freak out because i think it sounds the stupidest thing in the world and feel embarrassed about ever saying those things and surprised that i still have friends/teachers who respect me at all.

it is a cycle which has become sort of funny to me. is all part of the process i guess. self-doubt self-doubt self-doubt

anyway, i promised you a sequel. here it is.

last post was a long rant about my last year - challenges i faced, things i overcame, learnings i've learned, things i am still struggling with.

i didn't mention much about God, and that surprised me a lot. But that has been its own journey the last little while. so this is what's been going on.

somewhere in 2008 i felt i had somewhat of an awakening; a real understanding and picture of what the world could be and was intended to be - a place of justice and of true LIBERATION (that word still excites me, so i will yell it). There was a moment where all that i have been struggling with reconciling with each other - things which i believed in thoroughly but seemed to counteract each other - made perfect sense together - Christianity, spirituality, religion, justice, feminism, oppression. i felt reawakened, alive, excited about this new vision/understanding. I was once frightened of God and his violence; his unattainable demands; the biblical words and stories where justice seems to be perpetuated within its very traditions and words.

i felt an aha moment where God became ever-bigger and where everything i cared about made sense to me. A God of no gender, who demands and creates justice, a God of ever-love to all no matter what race, religion, gender, a God who truly reaches out to us in so many ways, who hates patriarchy, injustice, oppression, and all that dehumanizes people.

everything made sense, and i was passionate to work towards a world where the words Christian and feminism and justice are commonly understood to work hand in hand together.

this went super well, for about a year (but what a year!)

somewhere along the way i started to lose hope. to lose hope in real change, to lose faith in the church that i held so dear that it would ever break its own chains and patterns of oppression. i felt so estranged and marginalized from the community that was such a part of my self-identity. i couldn't stomach walking into a church anymore, hearing and feeling its inherent oppression - its hierarchical patriarchal structures which perpetuate injustices and are full of power struggles. i jumped around from church to church hoping for a place where i could really feel like i belonged, but gave up to find this, in Winnipeg at least.

i felt tired of being othered from both the Christian community for being a feminist, and felt othered from the feminist community for being a Christian. It is a battle that I am tired of, and needed to take some time off.

this is getting long. anyway.

somewhere i lost hope in God, in the church. the two seem so intertwined. how can i work towards such a hurtful, injustice-perpetuating place? how can i actually be feminist in Christian places, or vice-versa? I was tired of being beat up from every side. see last post re: bitch quote.

so i wandered my own desert. found great comfort in SCM. felt really disconnected from God and her church.

and, like always, my wandering has seemed to take me full-circle back to where i started. i do trust God. i don't trust the church, or any religious structure really, to not be a tool of oppression and colonization. and after about a year of not being able to pray, play, find comfort in, dialogue or dance with God without feeling so pained about everything, i have been back to exploring this relationship that her and i have. this perpetual dance we have with each other throughout life of discovering each other a bit more, gaining distance, getting closer, back and forth.

i have been praying again, journalling again, pondering her ways and seeking a connection with her, also feeling comfort and some fulfillment in her presence again. so am experimenting with this again, intentionally inviting her presence into my life, consciously trying to open myself up to what she has to say to me. its been fun - familiar but strange and frightening in many ways. trust is so difficult.

i recognize, even today, how crazy this might sound. i really believe in a divine being who cares about our daily lives, who walk alongside me and who i can interact with in fun and significant and wild wild wild ways. who i am trying to remember loves me no matter what, and how important it is for me to have that sort of daily presence in my life. i am excited about this, and humbled.

still estranged from the church, and largely happily so. but we'll see where that leads as well. likely the full circle will come again where i will once again feel welcome within its reach and feel that i can believe in what it stands for again.

we'll see.
thanks.

up and down and up up up

hello readership

so here is the you - knew-it-was-coming annual birthday retrospective. buckle up.

i have been 30 years old for about 1 day now. most everything feels the same. i even got carded again, which is sort of amusing but also sort of embarrassing.

i was thinking back to my birthday last year and am really taken aback at how different life is now than it was then. last year i decided on a theme for my birthday day, as well as for the year ahead, to revolve around courage, movement, and self-love. K R and C, my good friends, put up with my wackiness on that day. and still ask me how my theme is going. Well, here's the yearly report.

absolutely stellar.

It is so weird to think about the place that i was in a year ago. so . . . stuck. in so many ways. mentally, emotionally, even physically in many aspects of my life. i felt like i was in a huge hole that i couldn't possibly climb out of. i wallowed in hurts and was licking my wounds, scared to interact with the world and to trust again.

Courage was really important because all i wanted to do was cocoon myself and protect myself from the world. so much hurt and pain from everywhere. when i was younger i used to feel almost no emotion about anything - it was a way to protect myself from so much confusion and hurt. in college, in community, i learned to turn the switch on and feel . . . . which was exciting for awhile but once things turned sour i felt i had no skills to deal with it. That sort of kicked my ass with a vengeance during this time. i am a sensitive soul - perhaps too sensitive - in shocking contrast to who i was in my youth. I could probably have a better balance for this now, and am working on that. this quote resonated with me this week, being the feminist Bitch that i am;

Not all Bitches make it. Instead of calluses, they develop open sores. Instead of confidence, they develop an unhealthy sensitivity to rejection. Seemingly tough on the outside, on the inside they are a bloody pulp, raw from the lifelong verbal whipping they have had to endure - the BITCH manifesto


so after this year of whipping from all sides, i wanted to lock myself in a vault and forget about everything. Courage was important for me to not give up and to keep moving forward with life. And somewhere I found it. Thailand was a symbolically significant time for this. And I couldn't have found this courage without my community.

Movement - related. My psyche was so stuck in this place that i couldn't see which way was up anymore. dark dark dark. so much happened that year, all at once - the details of which i can't put on this page because it involves too many people i love. i felt that no matter how i tried, i couldn't get over this damned barrier. but somewhere along the way i have. clearly. i am no longer stuck in that mindset or thought pattern. i feel victorious and i also feel exhausted. and happy. and bigger and stronger.

self-love - if there is anything i still need to work on, it is this. i just don't know how to. it is difficult to unlearn everything you have been taught since a child. feminism has saved my life in this way and has allowed me to realize and believe that my voice is important, that i am important, that i am worth being listened to, that i will not be treated like i am not important anymore. victory on that! less victory on translating those into feeling that i am worth love, commitment, loyalty, time, gifts. less victory over my overwhelming reflex of self-blame for everything that goes wrong.

so... this year has brought much change, and many blessings. courage and movement - check. self-love - mini-check; still working on this one.

upcoming 2 posts: how God fits into all of this, and my focus for this coming year. stay tuned . . .
b

love

my brother Chaitanya posted this on his FB:

An adult may come to love another because of the other's characteristics; but it is the other person, and not the characteristics, that is loved. The love is not transferrable to someone else with the same characteristics, even to one who "scores" higher for these characteristics. And the love endures through changes of the characteristics that gave rise to it. One loves the particular person one actually encountered. Why love is historical, attaching to persons in this way and not to characteristics, is an interesting and puzzling question. - Robert Nozick

Which created a mild flurry of discussion. well, not flurry really, but i posted questions a few time.

i've been pondering the nature of love lately. what the hell is it? commitment? chemistry? where does it come from? why to one person and not another?

Nozick's quote both comforts and frightens me.

i have no answers. do you?

a rumbly in my tummy

so.
monday morning. it is 7:51 and i just finished writing a paper.

also just finished reading over the last month's blog posts, and am somewhat mortified at how they all basically say the same thing over and over and over again, and also somewhat mortified at how mentally unstable i sound. it made me laugh out loud.

i do feel like i am going a little bit crazy and do feel like my life is somewhat out of control and do feel at the end of my capacity for tasks. at the same time, i do feel like i am making some headway into figuring how who i am and how this life works and how i work within it. loneliness and exhaustion allows me to explore a certain side of myself which I don't often have the will or ability to acknowledge. a scary place but also really liberating, in a crazy way. it is liberating to see parts of myself which i need to acknowledge and accept. also frightening to feel like i am sort of close to cracking.

i started this blog years ago as a discipline for self-growth, a true journal of things which are going on in my heart and mind. i try to push myself to always post something which makes me uncomfortable to reveal to others; something frightening and vulnerable. At the same time, i have recognized within the last 2 years there are areas that i just can't write about which i am dieing to write about, because they involve people in my life or secrets that i hold from certain people (wow, that sounded dramatic, but it doesn't feel that way - really, there are some things in life that you just don't want your boss to know about you, y'know?) but now it seems so confusing as to what the point of this blog is if i censor myself so much.

i want to be honest and i want to be safe at the same time. also i want to respect other people and not air relationship problems to everybody. i posted once about my mom and regretted it - though it wasn't even a big deal.

so now i feel torn between this desire for self-expression (something i have really grown to value the last few years, strangely, and am sort of addicted to it and feel i need it on a daily basis) and this desire to be truly honest. these two do not work together at all.

so it seems under ever post now there is the stream of what I WANT to say and what i want to express, and what i hold back. or try to express in a really roundabout vague way which i know is maddening for people. and for myself.

all part of the journey.

thanks for all your emails, friends. comments on my post, either on the wall or in my inbox are welcome and allow me to really flush out and figure out my thoughts and feelings. i need more people in my life that i can interact with about these things which are so damned important to me. and chances are i can be more honest to you off this wall than on it. :-)

love and puppies,
b

brain puke

so. anyway.

this is what is rumbling around in my head today:

thanksgiving. christopher columbus - asshole. marxist feminism. Nellie McClung. CED Gathering (x 1000). the infestation of ladybugs in my bathroom. my desperate need to be in bed right now vs. my desperate need to be at work. platform for action. Rendezvous. my lack of interest in church lately. women's worlds. money money money. mexico. bell hooks. how can i smash the patriarchy today? fear. loneliness. exhaustion. turning 30. my sore foot. i really need to go dancing sometime. the chocolate cookie i am about to eat. my fear of never being good enough. my desire to be loved and accepted and cherished as i am right now. closely related, the thanksgiving meal i will go to today with my family. masks. terror at the idea of being unloved; my overwhelming embarrassment to admit this publicly. i should be stronger than that. my desire to be grounded combined with the feeling that i've lost myself somewhere these few months. or maybe i am growing into something new. either way i seem unrecognizable to myself. oscar romero.

incoherent. i blame the grapes

perhaps i am too self-indulgent.
perhaps i am more messed up than i think i am.
then again, perhaps i have simply had too much wine.






i just wrote and deleted this entire post. it was far too naked, far too honest, and i sounded far too crazy. too much bre for one sitting, i fear. too safe.
someday i hope to trust the world enough to actually post something like this.

scattered like leaves in a beesnest

hello dear friends

it is a bleary-eyed monday morning.

i am going mental a bit. this schedule is ridiculous. every spare minute i have i run to one of my offices because i am consistently behind. i feel exhausted and lonely. i whimper a lot and am in need of lots of love.

but enough of me trying to get you to pity me. let's dig a bit deeper.

so i am turning 30 soon! crazy. a milestone i am looking forward to, except i was watching a tv show yesterday that promised me the second i turned 30 that both my eyes and breasts would immediately sag. we'll see i guess. perhaps some great before and after pictures are in order.

30 - is it a big deal or not? i find age to be is such an unhelpful measurement, in many ways. as a woman, it is mostly held against me - every minute longer i live i lose more social power. i was reading Gloria Steinem and she mentioned that woman often become feminists later in their lives because as they grow older they realize how sexist and unfair the world is to women, but they didn't notice the full effects because as young women they had the most social power they would ever have. They are desired physically, sexually, and are very desired as consumers. Steinem says that young women's worlds feel very equal to men, in the classroom and in the general world. it is not until we hold jobs, get traditional marriages, get older that we realize how patriarchal the world actually is, and every year lost some sort of our social power.

i think she's right.

but screw that. i want to embrace 30. i want to embrace wisdom; a new form of life. i want to embrace my life for what it is and how i have made it my own while i continually fight off this haunting feeling that i have failed because i am unmarried, still a student, and don't own a house. what is success? when i am healthy and clear headed i feel successful - i am following my understanding of who I am and who God is and try to honour those everyday in the ways i live. when i am unhealthy and exhausted (like . . . today) i feel a failure - in debt, unstable, and maybe making silly choices which won't help my future. how do you fight these haunting feelings? why is it that at every family gathering people are more concerned about whether i have a husband or a home, rather than what i am doing to make my life more meaningful? that pisses me off.

this has turned into a rant, when really it was meant to be a "hey, i am embracing life" sort of post. but such is my brain.

anyway, what i am saying is this;
damn, i'm glad to be who i am
damn, i'm tired of these social pressures
damn, i really need to work on that paper.

love to y'all
b

found?

hey y'all

happy monday morning
i feel so busy, so harried, that i am hardly in touch with myself or my feelings or who i am. yesterday i forced myself to sit and feel and process for about a half hour and it was frustrating because it seemed to barely scratch the surface of all that is irking me. some days i feel i don't even know who i am anymore; others i have a very precise picture and walk with that confidence. i guess this is normal in many ways, and part of the process of constantly growing and changing and walking anew.

i read my bible yesterday for the first time in eons. this hasn't been an intentional decision to not read it - more of a shift to only come at scripture when i have an open heart to hear what the words are saying, and not going through the motions. but i wonder if this lack of discipline, this lack of regular engagement, has to do with my feeling of not being grounded lately. not just with christian scripture, but with christianity in general; my feelings of estrangement and as if i have no place to actually belong. i feel i have lost a lot of grace with churches and denominations and instead of seeing good people and good intentions i see only hurtful structures and hurting people. neither of these views are exclusively true, and they need to both be held in the same hand to see a true picture. but i feel burned out, frustrated, hopeless that this large beast which i care so much about will one day be a truly inclusive and liberatory space for all to engage the divine.

i feel like a broken record, as i feel like my life is a broken record, keep around and around and back to the same problem and the same blog post.

i feel unsettled, unengaged, unprophetic, and uncalled. i feel a bit lost today.
b

truly ramblings

hello friends. enemies. comrades.

quick life update: I AM GOING MENTAL.

3 jobs - 2 classes - my plethora of volunteer commitments. not sure if i will last until december.

don't tell my bosses . . .

things are holding steady for now. the frustrating part today is that i seem to stress out because I KNOW that I will be stressed out in October. I am pre-stressing in anticipation of coming stress. isn't that stupid? right now i am holding steady and doing pretty well.

old patterns creeping in. not particularly healthy ones.

the process of growing and learning and changing seems so ridiculous to me sometimes. never-ending! always struggling in some form or another, wrestling with my angels or demons or myself. finding the right balance of self-love and motivation for self-betterment is sometimes tricky, especially when life seems so necessarily busy.

once i had thought i figured out the point of life. now i can't even REMEMBER what I thought it was - it was either so ridiculous or so elusive that I can't really recall it.

but i am sure it has something to do with the internet.

labour day

and nothing makes sense
life seems hazy and confused
every path impossible except for the one that i don't want
and where do we end? and where do we begin
and if i am growing and changing and not static
then how can i say with any certainty who i am at any given moment
what sort of butterfly am i
and why is this all so difficult

and fear lurks beyond every happy corner
risks in family dinnertimes and prolonged hugging
i don't know how tightly to hold onto these hopes

i don't know how tightly to hold onto these hopes.

heh heh

puke

hey all
happy monday

i have nothing substantial to say today, really. this is one of those hard days where feelings have no words and i have a hard time expressing myself. emotionally constipated. in need of an outlet but not sure how to do that. especially when i need to pretend that i am a professional and need to go to work and lead workshops and the like.

it is only 6:38 am and i am wondering why i always get up so early to do activist work and whether it really matters in the end, whether change is happening. i know change happens in my own life, and maybe that's enough, but i also wonder whether it is worth the pain and sweat and tears and pathetic income. i wonder at the value of formal organizations, religious and otherwise, outside of perpetuating the hurtful status quo. i wonder how long i will be able to perpetuate this feeling of hope for a better world when everyday there is something new and heinous to struggle against.

william blake said that the struggle is the blessing. maybe. but if so, where does wisdom lie? does it lie in working and raging or in sitting back and drinking beer and accepting the face that it is human nature to be violent to one another and knowing truly that i can't do anything about that.

anyway

it is dark outside, and i don't know if its becuase it is cloudy or because the sun quite isn't up yet or because i just can't see the sunshine or its effects today.

should i walk away from the church?

wisdom.

Freedom can come only from contemplating death, not from pretending it doesn't exist.  Not from running from loss but from entering grief, surrendering to sorrow. - Eve Ensler, Insecure At Last