And I blog because writing is my art and it's my attempt to find some socially acceptable means to be naked in public as a means to try to share something meaningful "my mind to your mind" while establishing some kind of professional expectations and boundaries.I've struggled for a long time with how to be "naked" in public and say something meaningful and also establish some kind of appropriate expectations and boundaries. As a recovered survivor of incest, I don't think I can say anything meaningful about that without revealing a lot more than most people reveal in a public setting and yet I want people to view it as instruction, not as an invitation to hit on me.
I've just spent a few hours looking for this comic strip:
I spent a year in therapy in my teens and I think another two-and-a-half years in therapy in my twenties and sometimes went like twice a week that second time. So I spent a LOT of time in therapy and one of the most powerful moments occurred when I made some remark to my therapist about being unable to feel okay about sex or something like that and I said something about vaginas looking like an open wound.
And he very quietly said "Some people think they look like flowers."
So I wanted to find the above comic to open this piece of writing because I spent some time yesterday (or the day before) looking for video clips of Yoko Ono's Cut Piece and I really wanted a clip of her final performance in 2003 but the only clip I found with images of that starts with the following words:
Audience members take scissors and slowly cut pieces off her clothes until she is bare. They change from voyeuristics to victimizers... It is chilling.Which contrasts so starkly with my view (snippet below) of this piece that I was like "Yeah, no, I'm not using this video. I will use the clips from Yoko Ono's first performance of it."
The subjective experience of the PARTICIPANTS who actually approached her and cut pieces off her clothes is likely a powerful experience. Watching it, at least for me, is not some big powerful thing, though the IDEA fascinates me.So this is the video and she talks about this piece as commentary on domestic violence and she then references another piece at the end of the clip in which she speaks of women's bodies and shame:
From a different blog of mine:
Recovery also involves another important lesson: There aren't just "two kinds of people in the world: victims and abusers."People who have been horrifically abused as children tend to feel there are only two types of people -- victims and abusers -- and they may choose to be professional victims as an attempt to try to take the "moral high ground" or they may choose to become abusers as a defensive maneuver a la "the best defense is a good offense." If there are only two choices -- hurt or be hurt -- they want to do the hurting because they are tired of being hurt.
And I used to feel that way and because I felt that way, I made my husband into "the bad guy" about a lot of things and he was very astute at times about quietly pointing that out, like the time that he asked me "Why are they YOUR kids when you are happy with them and MY kids when they misbehave?"
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.It took me a long time to get to a point of thinking to myself that I really needed to come up with a different mental model altogether. There was no means to have a healthy relationship with anyone sexually if my only choices were to be their victim or to become an abuser.
-- Albert Einstein
My husband wasn't perfect, certainly not, but he did have his good points and he did do some important and good things for me. Our adult sons say things about him like "He was your weasel in shining armor."
So I try to write and try to express what I went through in order to recover to try to provide a map of sorts for others in hopes of shortening their journey and improving their odds of success.