I'll look after you.

no DNIs we just post content specifically catered to ourselves that will coincidentally alienate anyone with whom we would not want to interact

settlers are always so enthusiastic about ''foraging'' and then you'll start talking to them about indigenous horticulture & sustainable harvesting practices and they quickly reveal that they're more interested in the aesthetic of being a Crunchy Woodland Creature than like reducing their reliance on exploitative industrial agriculture or rebuilding their local foodshed

this trend of shitting on peer-reviewed academic studies in favor of tweeting “we already knew this was happening” is so soul-crushing. not to be an elitist cunt, but we have got to open the schools again. people genuinely seem to have forgotten that their personal lived experience isn’t indicative of the larger population, AND IF IT IS…… then you need researchers to support these assertions from a relevant data pool instead of a blog post from 2013 💀

A “red flag”, to me, is when someone refuses to confront what’s unresolved, when they let things drift, unspoken, in the fog. It’s not the imperfection itself that’s the problem; we all have flaws. It’s the unwillingness to look directly at them, to name them, and to take responsibility for what needs to be set right.

It's nuts how common it is to not allow children to be angry, even (especially) in households where adults are angry all the time. As a child I knew my own anger was unacceptable--not just expressing it outwardly but feeling it at all. So now as an adult my immediate reaction to my own anger is often to feel guilt instead of like. Noticing when someone is being rude or unfair or my boundaries are being violated or whatever. fucked up.

to this day "who is allowed to be angry" has been an incredible benchmark for teasing out who, in abusive situations with mutual accusations and DARVO happening, is being abusive and who is being abused. one of my favorite resources about this, the Creative Interventions Toolkit, phrases the question "who sets the weather?" in the relationship and I think about it so so often when I think about my own childhood. I was parentified in a way that set me up for future abusive relationships, because I had to soothe my parents' anger while not being allowed to feel angry myself. I am extremely grateful to everyone outside myself - friends, therapists, partners - who's gotten angry on my behalf about how I'm treated or let me know something I'd been excusing or blaming myself for was actually Not Okay. I guess the good news here is that it's possible to learn how to access anger again in a healthy way, it just takes support, like doing physical therapy for a muscle that didn't develop quite right.