The Panda Won't Stop Screaming

Roy Lichtenstein

For one, a kid is not equipped to handle a parent’s problems. I’m not saying to never express your feelings or say that you’re having a problem to a child. That can be healthy. But to use them to just dump on is too much. Children just aren’t equipped to deal with the heaviness of adult problems, especially if they’re already going through things themselves.

Two, the inherent power imbalance makes it really uncomfortable. Your child isn’t your friend, they’re your child. Even if they can offer advice, this sort of thing can become like a role reversal. They also would have a hard time separating themselves from it when it becomes too much. A lot of parents feel entitled to their childrens’ time and space, so the children can become overburdened with no reprieve and no way to express that this isn’t their job. 

In a similar vein my mother blames me all the time for not leaving my father when she wanted to. She would vent to me about how awful a man he was, how much she hated him and wanted to leave him. And then tell me it was my fault she didn’t because of what I had said. I was twelve. The fuck did I know about life other than it was awful and I was having to hide shit from social work and feeling like it was my fault. 

I’m 30 now and they still do this to me. They still try to find ways to other themselves from their failure to protect me and my brother from themselves and make it my responsibility, then try to sugar coat it with “but you were such a good child” or “you’re such a great listener” or “you were so much older than your years”, like yea, cause someone fucking had to be.

Emotional childhood parentification and mental disorders in adults

Parentification, Stress, and Problem Behavior of Adolescents who have a Parent with Mental Health Problems

Child sexual abuse, early family risk, and childhood parentification: pathways to current psychosocial adjustment

Marital conflict and support seeking by parents in adolescence: empirical support for the parentification construct

your comment means so much to the author!! don’t be shy about letting your favorite authors know you love their works.

But you are responsible for your own safe spaces. You can block tags, block words, block people.

“But i thought fandom was supposed to be a safe space” —yeah you have to curate it.

Unfortunately one persons’s safe space may be another persons’ trigger. That’s ok. Simply block them, block the tag, block the word etc. They can do the same for you.

I don’t know who said it first, but “I need to be able to express my anger without shame” and “I need to be away from yelling and loud noises” are both valid needs people can have for a safe space that really aren’t compatible with each other.

So are “I need to process my trauma” and “I need to not meet any trauma.”

Or “I want a safe space to tell/read the stories that speak to me” and “those stories are distressing to me.”

Insisting that your needs are the only needs anyone should have is not a safe space, it’s its own act of violence.

Today’s gender: gay pirate🏳️‍🌈🏴‍☠️

✊🏾Black men deserve respect.

✊🏿Black men deserve to feel safe.

✊🏽Black men deserve to grow.

✊🏾Black men deserve to thrive.

✊🏿Black men deserve to love.

✊🏽Black men deserve to be themselves.

On this day in 1948, songwriter Stan Jones released Ghost Riders in the Sky, which tells a version of the Wild Hunt legend.

As the riders loped on by him

He heard one call his name

‘If you wanna save your soul

From hell a-riding on our range

Then, cowboy, change your ways today

Or with us you will ride

Trying to catch the devil’s herd

Across these endless skies

A mighty hunter and a pack of dogs, horses, or other beasts racing across the horizon, making a terrible noise as they rush above you! What could it mean? Well, that depends on who you are.

First, let’s say you might be—well, someone who’d end up on Santa’s naughty list. For you, the Wild Hunt can be more than a vision. It’s interactive! We’re talking Ghost Riders in the Sky here, aka Jacob Marley as a cowboy. This type of Wild Hunt is a warning from beyond. 

Check out my Weird Wednesday blog post on the Wild Hunt for the whole story and some writing prompts, such as:

Doomed riders. You could focus on the sadder figures— the poor souls (literally) who are already in the hunt for eternity. Sometimes these people committed the usual infractions: murder, theft, or just too much drinking. But other times, these folks have done a Very Specific Thing they may have be warned not to do, like hunting on the sabbath, or some other odd thing like don’t get off your horse until your dog jumps down. Fairies (and the devil) love this sort of warning! You can make it as absurd as you want, that’s the point. And if your character fails in this one strange thing, they can be doomed to the hunt forever.