Maybe its a Catholic thing, but the guilt of feeling happy whilst so many other are suffering has been weighing me down. Trust a Catholic to turn to a nun for help.
I have found DBT (dialectical behaviour therapy) training to be immensely helpful for managing this stuff.
I try to give no energy to things I cannot change. Why should I? If I thought a protest would help, I'd do it, otherwise, I spend my bandwidth elsewhere.
I am focussing on what I can change:
My thoughts and actions, including the love I try to share.
I used to work as a DBT reinforcement worker in a community mental health setting. I wish people knew more about DBT and I should probably tap into it more to help me cope with the overwhelm. Focusing on what you can change, tuning into thoughts and actions and valuing the love we give are great ways to use up my bandwidth - thanks for the reminder Jaye.
Is it a Catholic thing or a product of our parents’ generation? I was christened but not raised Catholic. I have the overactive guilt complex, though!
I wanted to thank you for the reminder that providing love and safety to our families is an act of rebellion in a world that wants us to tear each other apart. I haven't participated in protests and can't read the news daily because my anxiety is sky high. My teen is also anxious; I cannot bring the world’s problems into my home.
My guilt has calmed a bit. Just hearing my teen giggle reminds me that life continues and that these moments are treasures to be sought and to being to mind when we aren't feeling free or joyful.
Great to hear from you and I really appreciate your comments and your thanks. When I started to feel better about enjoying my family and my little bit of peace, I wanted to share the good feeling. I suppose that’s another act of rebellion in a world that wants us to hoard good things for ourselves. Your thanks is rebellious too… we are nailing this, creating the kind of world that values caring, sharing and giving. We will get there, it’s just how women work.
Hi Rebecca, I started writing an article yesterday before reading yours. After reading yours, which is brilliant, touched me deeply, and resonated with the article I had begun, I went back and finished my article referencing yours and quoting you. Thank you so much for sharing your heart; it matched what I feel daily.
Oh Brenda, that’s such a lovely comment, thank you so much. I think so many of us are feeling the same and I wanted to connect us, to harness the amazing work we are doing raising compassionate and caring families and spreading love, not hate. Your thanks are part of that love. We are the resistance, the nurturing kind and we are allowed to find comfort and joy in that. Thank you for being part of this beautiful community ❤️
I think those who have experienced great suffering have a kind of ‘guilt’ when they are not. I needed to write this, to share this, it’s helped given me permission to acknowledge (if only furtively) the good things in my life, without so much guilt and fear.
I fully support the spirit & the importance of what you’ve written, Rebecca: love for our families (blood & assembled) must be primary, and is critical to our individual and collective efforts to fight the evil & depravity which are rampant at this time.
As a fully-recovered Catholic, though, I have to ask:
Thanks for this DC. A few points stood out for me.
“But the group as a whole, it just makes me really, really, really sad to see how far they’ve strayed from Mother Teresa’s initial impulse.”
The article sites practices that are harmful (re-using needles, abstinence of physical touch etc) as part of direct orders from MT but then goes on to lament the fact that the group has ‘moved away’ from MT’s approach. This is contradictory, surely the damaging practises reported would be something to move away from?
Some of MT’s practices could best understood in the context of the conditions she practiced under. In extreme poverty she may have felt it necessary to re-use needles/provide toilet facilities without privacy as this would save money and allow her order to care for more people and not turn desperate people away. Desperate times often call for desperate measures… I have worked clinically as a midwife and sometimes you have to adapt, I would imagine thete was a great deal of adaptation needed in the slums of Calcutta.
As for the claim she advocated for limited physical contact with children, I did a quick Google search and there are no end of photos of MT cuddling children (this is the thing i remembered most about her). I’m quite a good judge of character and I don’t think she was playing up to the camera.
Is religion a cult? In many ways yes. It ticks many of the boxes. Are nuns always saintly? Good God no… have you seen what’s happening in Ireland right now? But do I still have faith in MT? Yes. I do. Do I think you can ever ‘fully recover’ from being a Catholic? Nah. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic… and there is good and bad in that for me (I’m very lapsed, would take a lifetime of confessions for me to earn my stripes again!).
Thanks for continuing the conversation DC. I appreciate it. 👍🏻
As always, I appreciate your work & your considered responses, Rebecca.
I’m in no way suggesting that the Missionaries of Charity did no good work; on the contrary, they provided significant amounts of care (at some level) where no other was available.
But religion poisons everything, as the late Christopher Hitchens was wont to say: by tethering the care inexorably to her fundamentalist Catholic belief system, especially the idea that suffering is godly, MT most certainly strayed from her “care & compassion” role and instead focused on the deliverance of (thus far unevidenced) souls.
‘In response to all the criticism, Mother Teresa allegedly said, “There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering.”
However, when it came to her own suffering, Mother Teresa apparently took a different stance. When she began experiencing severe heart problems, she received care in a modern American hospital.’
Perhaps the world would have gained even more from her own suffering, but I suppose its relative absence was god’s will — either for her to continue her work, or for another ineffable reason.
I find this all rather difficult to accept, as I am sure you glean from my responses.
Just yesterday Pope Leo, the presumptive future patron saint of baseball, stated that there should be no tolerance of abuse in the Church — a laudable statement which one can only presume is forward looking, given even his own documented tolerance of such depravity. But all sins can be forgiven, provided enough Ave Marias are recited. (Perhaps a return to hairshirts & self-flagellation would be appropriate additional penance 🤷♂️)
Finally, I appreciate the amusement of your Mormon-like tenacity in claiming me as a Catholic still 🙏
While the Church — along with my father’s “godly” family, including nuns, priests, deacons, and others — was condemning my mother, my sister, and I to another 3 years of horrific abuse at his hands, rather than offering her a modicum of neither support nor charity to end that abuse, as a pre-tween I was also reading Lemâitre’s seminal work on the expansion of the Universe, as well as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s pseudoscientific works about the noosphere. Lemâitre showed that honest scientists could be found among the priesthood; PTdC provided a thoroughly bonkers demonstration of 20th century apologetics that was lapped up by a Church experiencing significant transformational pressure amidst the realities of early 20th C. war. The theodicy was once again strong, underscoring my view that “theodicy” is simply a contraction of “the idiocy” — specifically, of trying to justify Nature red in tooth and claw with the (again, unevidenced) idea of an OOO deity. The self-imposed shackles of ineffability appeared (and still appear) to me to be a thought-ending mechanism whose origins date back to primitive — perhaps even pre-human — attempts to ascribe both agency & understanding of natural forces in the absence of science.
The day of my Confirmation was the last time I attended a Church service. And I’ve been a better person, a committed and active secular humanist, and a better-informed by the day scientific rationalist ever since.
TL;DR: I’ve been “over it” for 4+ decades now, and fully recovered for ~5 months since finally shaking off the self-destructive sense of inescapable & deserved guilt & shame associated with my Catholic upbringing and the abuse (particularly of my sister & mother) that I was unable to stop (a boy, against a man, a self-processed man “of god” no less).
You do you of course — faith in another power certainly has salutary individual benefits, as expressed by a great many of its proponents — but I’ll close with this pithy observation from Steven Weinberg:
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”
Be well, truly, as our world appears substantially closer today to an Armageddon that is desired by too many religionists 🙏
Thank you so much DC for this brilliant reply. I am so sorry for the abuse you and your family suffered and the indifference, nay complicity shown by the church. Like you, confirmation marked the end of my church going days. I refused to be confirmed and my poor dad tried everything to persuade me, offering me new clothes and cash, terrified that my soul would not be saved if I didn’t commit. I held out and I think my soul has remained in tact.
I’m not a big fan of religion, faith yes, believing and advocating for better, yes, but that doesn’t seem to be a huge part of most religions.
I wish you well as ever and congratulate you on your recovery from such a brutal past. Thank you for your candour and bravery, I’m really touched. ♥️
Thank you for your kindness & your efforts to make the world better one post, one reply, one action at a time.
And from someone who’s pretty sure that soul or not & faith or not, I’d still win Pascal’s Wager either way:
You’ve got the kind of soul/character that either gets into Heaven, or joins the party in Hell (actual evil folks not invited; part of their punishment is watching the rest of us carouse eternally) ❤️
For me it's important to have one small local thing I can do, in the face of all the horror: packing good parcels, knitting blankets, whatever. Like loving ones family, it's a gesture of defiance to a callous world.
I really enjoyed reading your reflections Rebecca and I think this is an important topic which many grapple with. Essentially I think what you are describing…finding pleasure in the good things which are present in your life…is a form of gratitude. And that is not self-serving, it is an honouring of the abundance you have, and (the important bit) that you DO NOT TAKE IT FOR GRANTED. Recognising that we are blessed cultivates an awareness that so many have it so bad…and the wrongness of this. It is a world away from the smug contentment that I find so unappealing in some social media postings. Like you, I believe that we should be assuming responsibility for the mindset of the next generation…our children are the custodians of the future. I think that we should guide them towards recognising their privilege and the role they can play in making the spread of it more equitable in the arenas where they will have influence and that this is key to a better world.
Such a beautiful and insightful response Esther. So well put… gratitude, that’s what I am feeling because my life has not always been like this and I’m so grateful just to be loved and to be able to love. Priceless. Never to be taken for granted. It spurs me to work towards everyone having the same so there is real value in my gratitude and it’s getting a bit easier not to feel so guilty. Thank you for helping me process these feelings further. I spend most of my life helping and supporting people but this community here helps hold and support me too. And I am so grateful for that.
I’m so glad the piece helped Emma. It helped me to write it and yes resistance does come in so many forms. Sharing and supporting each other in a community such as this is resistance too.. my favourite kind!
I needed this. I'm a mom of two 20-somethings who often finds herself relishing a happy life — then checks herself because it may all disappear and hey, I probably don't deserve it when so many others (possibly better than me) don't have it. Great post. Wise words from Mother Theresa.
Thanks Edana, I can relate so much. We do deserve it though, and it doesn’t take anything away from anyone else when we allow ourselves to appreciate it. Thanks for your lovely comment, spreading kindness and appreciation, that’s the way to combat this spread of hate and fear. Rebecca
Thank you for this! The struggle to know what is ours to do to help lift the weight of tragedy in the world while remaining present to the mundane but necessary tasks of daily life is real. I appreciate this reminder from such a wise soul 💓
The very fact you understand how tough life is in other places is enough. I live in Israel and life is truly hellish and beyond description right now. It really doesnt matter what your political views are, the fact that you acknowledge that there is suffering is more than enough.
I have been on substack almost from the start. I have subscribed (financially) to Polly Vernon, India Knight, Sophie Money Coutts, and many others. I have posted and encouraged and been so happy that they have had such success.
It feels so incongruous that when all this is happening, (and I put politics aside, my own views are probably not a million miles from theirs) and I put up a short post on this reality, that noone is home. At least, you care.
Thank you so much for your comments Adrienne. I can believe that life is truly hellish in your part of the world. How quickly and brutally it has come to this.
I think it is so important to acknowledge the suffering of others, but it’s a fine balance between holding those kinds of feelings and holding space for the wonderful parts of life too. I hope that people have found comfort in my post, I’ve found a lot of comfort in writing it.
I want so much for life to improve for everyone over there, that the suffering stops, the fear and anxiety abates and normal life, a wonderfully normal life, is afforded to everyone . Great to hear from you, hope to hear from you again soon. Rebecca
This has been so interesting to read, and the comments as I have not heard of DBT (only of CBT). As always Rebecca, your words uplift me, and my takeaway from this article is to Keep Perspective and to keep loving my family and nurturing them.
Thanks for your lovely comment. My takeaway from writing this is that we are not alone. So many readers feeling the same way, torn between the horror of the lives of others and the beautiful ordinary of our everyday lives. But, like you say nurturing and loving our families IS important work. That’s what this beautiful community is all about… women’s work, it so empowering to have company on our journeys.
DBT is kind of a more detailed CBT, exploring thoughts, feelings and actions and the relationships between the three. It’s hard to manage a feeling if you can’t identify it, you have never been taught or ‘allowed’. It’s hard to catch your thoughts when you are physiologically aroused and the thoughts are rapid and chaotic. Feelings are always valid but not all thoughts are fact. Behaviour can be modified but thoughts and feelings need to be explored on a deep level to gain congruence between the three. DBT teaches skills such as communication to understand ourselves better, manage behaviour and enhance relationship growth. I’ve gone off on a tangent here! Thanks for your reply Maria, always appreciated.
Rebecca, I am in agreement with you on the guilt of having loving family and relative financial security while others suffer. The majority of the world only want what is best for themselves and their love ones. The news is like a fire hose not a trickle we can easily consume. I have tried to limit my consumption of cable news and only keep up with the relevant subjects. I do this for my mental health. I am atheist, but I recognize the spiritual aid people like Mother Theresa has given the world. I find myself being more kind the people in these troubled times. A kind word cost one nothing. Fight the righteous fight but take care of yourself and your love ones.
Thanks Wayne. So hard to get the balance but you are right, I can fight the righteous fight and take care of myself and my family. The two are not mutually exclusive. Thanks for your continued support on the path for better for everyone. 🙏
I have found DBT (dialectical behaviour therapy) training to be immensely helpful for managing this stuff.
I try to give no energy to things I cannot change. Why should I? If I thought a protest would help, I'd do it, otherwise, I spend my bandwidth elsewhere.
I am focussing on what I can change:
My thoughts and actions, including the love I try to share.
I used to work as a DBT reinforcement worker in a community mental health setting. I wish people knew more about DBT and I should probably tap into it more to help me cope with the overwhelm. Focusing on what you can change, tuning into thoughts and actions and valuing the love we give are great ways to use up my bandwidth - thanks for the reminder Jaye.
Is it a Catholic thing or a product of our parents’ generation? I was christened but not raised Catholic. I have the overactive guilt complex, though!
I wanted to thank you for the reminder that providing love and safety to our families is an act of rebellion in a world that wants us to tear each other apart. I haven't participated in protests and can't read the news daily because my anxiety is sky high. My teen is also anxious; I cannot bring the world’s problems into my home.
My guilt has calmed a bit. Just hearing my teen giggle reminds me that life continues and that these moments are treasures to be sought and to being to mind when we aren't feeling free or joyful.
Great to hear from you and I really appreciate your comments and your thanks. When I started to feel better about enjoying my family and my little bit of peace, I wanted to share the good feeling. I suppose that’s another act of rebellion in a world that wants us to hoard good things for ourselves. Your thanks is rebellious too… we are nailing this, creating the kind of world that values caring, sharing and giving. We will get there, it’s just how women work.
Hi Rebecca, I started writing an article yesterday before reading yours. After reading yours, which is brilliant, touched me deeply, and resonated with the article I had begun, I went back and finished my article referencing yours and quoting you. Thank you so much for sharing your heart; it matched what I feel daily.
Oh Brenda, that’s such a lovely comment, thank you so much. I think so many of us are feeling the same and I wanted to connect us, to harness the amazing work we are doing raising compassionate and caring families and spreading love, not hate. Your thanks are part of that love. We are the resistance, the nurturing kind and we are allowed to find comfort and joy in that. Thank you for being part of this beautiful community ❤️
Yes . My thoughts too. So glad you wrote this
Thanks Graham.
I think those who have experienced great suffering have a kind of ‘guilt’ when they are not. I needed to write this, to share this, it’s helped given me permission to acknowledge (if only furtively) the good things in my life, without so much guilt and fear.
I fully support the spirit & the importance of what you’ve written, Rebecca: love for our families (blood & assembled) must be primary, and is critical to our individual and collective efforts to fight the evil & depravity which are rampant at this time.
As a fully-recovered Catholic, though, I have to ask:
*This* Mother Teresa?
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/children-tied-to-beds-nuns-who-flogged-themselves-filthy-homes-was-mother-teresa-a-cult-leader-1.4573449
Thanks for this DC. A few points stood out for me.
“But the group as a whole, it just makes me really, really, really sad to see how far they’ve strayed from Mother Teresa’s initial impulse.”
The article sites practices that are harmful (re-using needles, abstinence of physical touch etc) as part of direct orders from MT but then goes on to lament the fact that the group has ‘moved away’ from MT’s approach. This is contradictory, surely the damaging practises reported would be something to move away from?
Some of MT’s practices could best understood in the context of the conditions she practiced under. In extreme poverty she may have felt it necessary to re-use needles/provide toilet facilities without privacy as this would save money and allow her order to care for more people and not turn desperate people away. Desperate times often call for desperate measures… I have worked clinically as a midwife and sometimes you have to adapt, I would imagine thete was a great deal of adaptation needed in the slums of Calcutta.
As for the claim she advocated for limited physical contact with children, I did a quick Google search and there are no end of photos of MT cuddling children (this is the thing i remembered most about her). I’m quite a good judge of character and I don’t think she was playing up to the camera.
Is religion a cult? In many ways yes. It ticks many of the boxes. Are nuns always saintly? Good God no… have you seen what’s happening in Ireland right now? But do I still have faith in MT? Yes. I do. Do I think you can ever ‘fully recover’ from being a Catholic? Nah. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic… and there is good and bad in that for me (I’m very lapsed, would take a lifetime of confessions for me to earn my stripes again!).
Thanks for continuing the conversation DC. I appreciate it. 👍🏻
As always, I appreciate your work & your considered responses, Rebecca.
I’m in no way suggesting that the Missionaries of Charity did no good work; on the contrary, they provided significant amounts of care (at some level) where no other was available.
But religion poisons everything, as the late Christopher Hitchens was wont to say: by tethering the care inexorably to her fundamentalist Catholic belief system, especially the idea that suffering is godly, MT most certainly strayed from her “care & compassion” role and instead focused on the deliverance of (thus far unevidenced) souls.
‘In response to all the criticism, Mother Teresa allegedly said, “There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering.”
However, when it came to her own suffering, Mother Teresa apparently took a different stance. When she began experiencing severe heart problems, she received care in a modern American hospital.’
(https://allthatsinteresting.com/mother-teresa-saint)
Perhaps the world would have gained even more from her own suffering, but I suppose its relative absence was god’s will — either for her to continue her work, or for another ineffable reason.
I find this all rather difficult to accept, as I am sure you glean from my responses.
Just yesterday Pope Leo, the presumptive future patron saint of baseball, stated that there should be no tolerance of abuse in the Church — a laudable statement which one can only presume is forward looking, given even his own documented tolerance of such depravity. But all sins can be forgiven, provided enough Ave Marias are recited. (Perhaps a return to hairshirts & self-flagellation would be appropriate additional penance 🤷♂️)
Finally, I appreciate the amusement of your Mormon-like tenacity in claiming me as a Catholic still 🙏
While the Church — along with my father’s “godly” family, including nuns, priests, deacons, and others — was condemning my mother, my sister, and I to another 3 years of horrific abuse at his hands, rather than offering her a modicum of neither support nor charity to end that abuse, as a pre-tween I was also reading Lemâitre’s seminal work on the expansion of the Universe, as well as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s pseudoscientific works about the noosphere. Lemâitre showed that honest scientists could be found among the priesthood; PTdC provided a thoroughly bonkers demonstration of 20th century apologetics that was lapped up by a Church experiencing significant transformational pressure amidst the realities of early 20th C. war. The theodicy was once again strong, underscoring my view that “theodicy” is simply a contraction of “the idiocy” — specifically, of trying to justify Nature red in tooth and claw with the (again, unevidenced) idea of an OOO deity. The self-imposed shackles of ineffability appeared (and still appear) to me to be a thought-ending mechanism whose origins date back to primitive — perhaps even pre-human — attempts to ascribe both agency & understanding of natural forces in the absence of science.
The day of my Confirmation was the last time I attended a Church service. And I’ve been a better person, a committed and active secular humanist, and a better-informed by the day scientific rationalist ever since.
TL;DR: I’ve been “over it” for 4+ decades now, and fully recovered for ~5 months since finally shaking off the self-destructive sense of inescapable & deserved guilt & shame associated with my Catholic upbringing and the abuse (particularly of my sister & mother) that I was unable to stop (a boy, against a man, a self-processed man “of god” no less).
You do you of course — faith in another power certainly has salutary individual benefits, as expressed by a great many of its proponents — but I’ll close with this pithy observation from Steven Weinberg:
“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”
Be well, truly, as our world appears substantially closer today to an Armageddon that is desired by too many religionists 🙏
DC
DC
Thank you so much DC for this brilliant reply. I am so sorry for the abuse you and your family suffered and the indifference, nay complicity shown by the church. Like you, confirmation marked the end of my church going days. I refused to be confirmed and my poor dad tried everything to persuade me, offering me new clothes and cash, terrified that my soul would not be saved if I didn’t commit. I held out and I think my soul has remained in tact.
I’m not a big fan of religion, faith yes, believing and advocating for better, yes, but that doesn’t seem to be a huge part of most religions.
I wish you well as ever and congratulate you on your recovery from such a brutal past. Thank you for your candour and bravery, I’m really touched. ♥️
Thank you for your kindness & your efforts to make the world better one post, one reply, one action at a time.
And from someone who’s pretty sure that soul or not & faith or not, I’d still win Pascal’s Wager either way:
You’ve got the kind of soul/character that either gets into Heaven, or joins the party in Hell (actual evil folks not invited; part of their punishment is watching the rest of us carouse eternally) ❤️
I hope you enjoy this as much as I do, as @joelplaskett knows what’s up, and has shared his wisdom with music for 3 decades now:
“Non-Believer”
https://youtu.be/odY9smnPyAA
[verse 3]
My dad said, "Son, there's nothing else
Before you love someone you gotta learn to love yourself
Know when they're gone they will be truly be gone
So don't you waste your time"
https://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/joel_plaskett/nonbeliever-lyrics-1228567.html
Thank you for this, I’ve read the link. I had no idea. Rebecca, what say you? xx
For me it's important to have one small local thing I can do, in the face of all the horror: packing good parcels, knitting blankets, whatever. Like loving ones family, it's a gesture of defiance to a callous world.
Lovely gestures Ruth. A great way to challenge the pervasive narrative of greed and self service.
Great reminder
Thank you so much.
I really enjoyed reading your reflections Rebecca and I think this is an important topic which many grapple with. Essentially I think what you are describing…finding pleasure in the good things which are present in your life…is a form of gratitude. And that is not self-serving, it is an honouring of the abundance you have, and (the important bit) that you DO NOT TAKE IT FOR GRANTED. Recognising that we are blessed cultivates an awareness that so many have it so bad…and the wrongness of this. It is a world away from the smug contentment that I find so unappealing in some social media postings. Like you, I believe that we should be assuming responsibility for the mindset of the next generation…our children are the custodians of the future. I think that we should guide them towards recognising their privilege and the role they can play in making the spread of it more equitable in the arenas where they will have influence and that this is key to a better world.
And we need that now more than ever Esther ❤️
Such a beautiful and insightful response Esther. So well put… gratitude, that’s what I am feeling because my life has not always been like this and I’m so grateful just to be loved and to be able to love. Priceless. Never to be taken for granted. It spurs me to work towards everyone having the same so there is real value in my gratitude and it’s getting a bit easier not to feel so guilty. Thank you for helping me process these feelings further. I spend most of my life helping and supporting people but this community here helps hold and support me too. And I am so grateful for that.
You’re welcome Rebecca…like you I really value this community too. It feels like a place where humanity can thrive ♥️
Thank you Rebecca, this was exactly my struggle and you have helped me adjust my mindset too. Resistance comes in many forms, THANK YOU
I’m so glad the piece helped Emma. It helped me to write it and yes resistance does come in so many forms. Sharing and supporting each other in a community such as this is resistance too.. my favourite kind!
I needed this. I'm a mom of two 20-somethings who often finds herself relishing a happy life — then checks herself because it may all disappear and hey, I probably don't deserve it when so many others (possibly better than me) don't have it. Great post. Wise words from Mother Theresa.
Thanks Edana, I can relate so much. We do deserve it though, and it doesn’t take anything away from anyone else when we allow ourselves to appreciate it. Thanks for your lovely comment, spreading kindness and appreciation, that’s the way to combat this spread of hate and fear. Rebecca
Thank you for this! The struggle to know what is ours to do to help lift the weight of tragedy in the world while remaining present to the mundane but necessary tasks of daily life is real. I appreciate this reminder from such a wise soul 💓
Thank you so much Nadine. 💕
Really great piece, Rebecca.
I like the Voltaire quote about not being able to change the world so focus on cultivating your own garden (something like that anyway?!)
Hope you’re all having a good weekend 👍
Ooh I love that quote Andy, sums it up perfectly.
Trying to have the best weekend I can, enjoying with being the family as ever. Enjoy your weekend with your lovely lot too. ❤️
Rebecca,
The very fact you understand how tough life is in other places is enough. I live in Israel and life is truly hellish and beyond description right now. It really doesnt matter what your political views are, the fact that you acknowledge that there is suffering is more than enough.
I have been on substack almost from the start. I have subscribed (financially) to Polly Vernon, India Knight, Sophie Money Coutts, and many others. I have posted and encouraged and been so happy that they have had such success.
It feels so incongruous that when all this is happening, (and I put politics aside, my own views are probably not a million miles from theirs) and I put up a short post on this reality, that noone is home. At least, you care.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for your comments Adrienne. I can believe that life is truly hellish in your part of the world. How quickly and brutally it has come to this.
I think it is so important to acknowledge the suffering of others, but it’s a fine balance between holding those kinds of feelings and holding space for the wonderful parts of life too. I hope that people have found comfort in my post, I’ve found a lot of comfort in writing it.
I want so much for life to improve for everyone over there, that the suffering stops, the fear and anxiety abates and normal life, a wonderfully normal life, is afforded to everyone . Great to hear from you, hope to hear from you again soon. Rebecca
Hi Rebecca,
I agree. I actually did a post last week when it started- Oh What A Night- and I listed on it all the reasons to be cheerful.
Its so important to note that they do exist
This has been so interesting to read, and the comments as I have not heard of DBT (only of CBT). As always Rebecca, your words uplift me, and my takeaway from this article is to Keep Perspective and to keep loving my family and nurturing them.
Thanks for your lovely comment. My takeaway from writing this is that we are not alone. So many readers feeling the same way, torn between the horror of the lives of others and the beautiful ordinary of our everyday lives. But, like you say nurturing and loving our families IS important work. That’s what this beautiful community is all about… women’s work, it so empowering to have company on our journeys.
DBT is kind of a more detailed CBT, exploring thoughts, feelings and actions and the relationships between the three. It’s hard to manage a feeling if you can’t identify it, you have never been taught or ‘allowed’. It’s hard to catch your thoughts when you are physiologically aroused and the thoughts are rapid and chaotic. Feelings are always valid but not all thoughts are fact. Behaviour can be modified but thoughts and feelings need to be explored on a deep level to gain congruence between the three. DBT teaches skills such as communication to understand ourselves better, manage behaviour and enhance relationship growth. I’ve gone off on a tangent here! Thanks for your reply Maria, always appreciated.
Rebecca, I am in agreement with you on the guilt of having loving family and relative financial security while others suffer. The majority of the world only want what is best for themselves and their love ones. The news is like a fire hose not a trickle we can easily consume. I have tried to limit my consumption of cable news and only keep up with the relevant subjects. I do this for my mental health. I am atheist, but I recognize the spiritual aid people like Mother Theresa has given the world. I find myself being more kind the people in these troubled times. A kind word cost one nothing. Fight the righteous fight but take care of yourself and your love ones.
Thanks Wayne. So hard to get the balance but you are right, I can fight the righteous fight and take care of myself and my family. The two are not mutually exclusive. Thanks for your continued support on the path for better for everyone. 🙏