I once had a guy tell me that no one would ever love me as much as he did, that I wasn’t allowed to get nipple piercings because he liked me better innocent, that he would fix me, and that when I lost my virginity, he needed it to be to him. He told me that if I loved him, I would run away with him, and that despite the fact that we were not dating, nor had we ever, I was not allowed to have a girlfriend- but he was. He was my best friend— the operative word being “was.”
Three years ago I made a video on Overcoming Childhood Emotional Neglect (see link below). Since I released that video, it has received over 6,600 comments! With all of these comments and questions, I decided to make a follow-up video to further talk about some of these themes. Want another video like this?
yo not to post cringe on the main but getting out of years long toxic relationships, valuing my authenticity by enforcing boundaries and nurturing the parts of me that were desperate for care has led me to be happier than I ever imagined was possible
Hey y’all did you know that just because you had a shitty childhood doesn’t mean you have to guilt trip and project your trauma and insecurities on other people? So when someone posts a funny video with their dad or talks about a nice gift their mother gave to them maybe instead of saying “wow imagine having parents that love you” or “haha my mom gave me nothing for Christmas after I turned 8” you can scroll past the video without being bitter and miserable.
People shouldn’t be your enemy for just having nice things. If they’re being spoiled, ungrateful brats that’s far different but someone being happy about something nice that happened within their family or a gift/experience they got? Yea, no one needs to know that you weren’t fortunate enough for that. Read the room. It’s not always about you and your trauma. And before you come at me, my life of far from perfect. I’m one of you.
Three years ago I made a video on Overcoming Childhood Emotional Neglect (see link below). Since I released that video, it has received over 6,600 comments! With all of these comments and questions, I decided to make a follow-up video to further talk about some of these themes. Want another video like this?
(You can visit my instagram page @jungleflowerenergy to view the closed captioned version of this poem)
TOXIC MASCULINITY - Please repost!
I was NOT expecting this to happen. Please tag someone who would appreciate this I’d written Firefly, my first poem, only because someone had asked me to. I didn’t consider myself a poet and wrote nothing again until a year later (2013) when @jeffperera invited me to perform something for a conference he created around ending toxic masculinity. I wrote this piece for it and this was the first time I performed it. I was battling stage fright the entire time. Waiting for my turn to perform, I was shaking. My friends gathered lovingly around me and prayed. Along with the stage fright I was also terrified that I would forget my words which is why you’ll see me clutching my notebook for dear life. You’ll also later see me shaking my head in disbelief because this outcome was the last thing I was expecting. My fear of public speaking dissipated after this. During a phase in my life where I spent a lot of energy dodging cameras, to have this major turning point caught on film (by Paul) was such a blessing. Grateful to see intelligent souls like @patrickcwalters@seedandcerassee@letssavematthew@rene_riiise@joanneswritingsand@mstoddart68 going off in the audience. They say fear is the opposite of love, and it seems like the more fears I face, the more I find myself surrounded by a loving community. I had major stage fright and I never claimed the title ‘poet’, but here I stand as living proof that our throat chakras are strengthened when we speak our truth. Please share Nov 16 in Toronto. Link in bio #jungleflowerdragonheart
Stage fright was the most important fear I’ve ever faced, and my greatest lifelong fear. As a child I was constantly pushed onto stages to perform at talent shows and other events despite the overwhelming anxiety I would experience, so when I gained autonomy as an adult I stayed as far away from stages as possible. I chose work like photography and being an interviewer that kept me behind the scenes and out of the spotlight. Standing in front of people to speak or perform was the last thing I desired for myself. I probably would have stayed in that comfort zone my entire life if my love for this cause and humanity didn’t give me the drive I needed to use my voice. Ironically, I would now consider public speaking and performing to be what I do best! Overcoming this fear has unexpectedly opened up a whole new world for me, connecting me with gifts I didn’t know I had and sides of myself I never knew existed. Tomorrow I will post a video of myself facing my stage fright. Is there a fear you faced that ended up being a catalyst for major growth and positive change in your life? Please share your answer in the comments. #ReclaimYourVoice
Planning the First @ReclaimYourVoice Event || For our first event, I decided to invite three speakers to share their stories. I planned to share my own story as well because I couldn’t ask anyone to do anything that I myself was unwilling to do. I approached three incredible women I knew who had each experienced some form of abuse. Although I strongly believed in this idea, my nerves began to kick in when it came time to ask if they’d be willing to share their stories publicly. I was worried that my proposition might come across as intrusive or insensitive, but all three of them caught me off guard by immediately agreeing to share their stories. @cher.bear8 was one of the women I invited to speak. I knew her through my photography work and had photographed her many times over the course of 10 years. Her excitement about speaking at this event surprised me completely. When I asked her why she seemed so eager to share something so deeply personal with a room full of people, she said that the only opportunity she’d ever had to share her story was within the cold and unfeeling confines of a courtroom while a defense attorney picked apart every detail of her disclosure and did everything he could to make her doubt herself. At our event she would have the opportunity to share her story―her truth―in a room full of supportive people without being interrupted, questioned or contested. I had a lack of knowledge and experience in this field, but Cher’s enthusiastic response to this opportunity strengthened my confidence in this idea, and started to give me a sense of how complex and multifaceted trauma and healing was. I recalled a quote from Mother Teresa that said, “I will never attend an anti-war rally; if you have a peace rally, invite me.” I’d been learning more and more about the importance of choosing words that focus on the outcome one hoped to achieve instead of on what one did not want, so I made the decision that this event was to be held not in the name of the war against abuse, but in the name of peace and healing for all.
Being able to call every play in my mother’s narcissist handbook is a very useful tool, and I’m glad I learned it.
The fact it’s taken almost a MONTH to plan a single lunch and the planning STILL ISN’T DONE is utterly enraging.
It’s a long story of my mother jerking me around at every opportunity and me refusing to bend to her attempts to control the entire interaction.
We are now in the “confirmed location, time, and added guests (a regular tactic of my mother’s that will likely lead to her getting pissy during the meal because I will have to split my attention between several people)” portion of this shit.
Current roadblock: I asked my mom if she’d told the people SHE added to the guest list that I’m non-binary and use they/them pronouns. I offered to send an email explaining it to them and told her I’d be wearing a pronoun pin as well.
She tried to call. I did not pick up. We will not be moving this conversation to a form of communication she can lie about later. And it was after 5 her time, so she was likely drunk.
I just took the question off of the one-on-one text thread she likes to use when she’s trying to control me and dropped the question in the thread with her and dad. I truly do not mind explaining my gender shit to my grandma and my aunt. I trust them to do their best to understand.
Literally none of this should have been an issue. If my mother were not a narcissist intent on controlling me completely, we could have hashed this out in a single phone call.
Imagine having a girlfriend that loves you. She is a financially independent woman, and she has her own place; she also manages and owns several properties around the city. Your lady love is also a creative mind who has been writing and developing a book SERIES and has an editor that she’s working with because she’s so bad ass.
SO, then she decides she loves you soooo much she moves in with you, and automatically offers half of all rent and bills without a single qualm; she just doubled your money. Great. She also without hesitation or resentment, takes on more household chores and cooking (an unpaid job, see the word homemaker in the dictionary) since she’s home more, yet still has multiple properties to manager and being a full time writer…
Now imagine telling her she doesn’t do enough work and fighting with her as if you have the right, and then imagine her having such a good head on her shoulders, that she decides to hold off and then explain how she feels and gives you another chance to talk after that. You then take that opportunity to tell her your jealous of all the legitimate work she does from home and her lowering your bills by half, and tell her to get a part time menial job to make yourself feel better!!!
Imagine being such A DUMB FUCK
God, Reddit is a trip. I take stuff with a grain of salt, but I think this one is true because, yeahh.. it just seems hella relatable and I’ve supported people in the past that treated me like shit.
Instead of bidding his time at work and working on a promotion or gathering references to make looking for another job easier he took his frustrations out on his gf, who paid half the bills. He didn’t know how good he had it, in terms of girlfriends and having a job when so many were laid off.
God you have no idea how glad I am to read that she dumped this fucking idiot man
My ex took his job frustrations out on me just like this. He (36M) was a career teacher with 2 kids from a previous relationship, and I was 21. I was 21 and taking 20 credit hours to finish my degree and working 29 hours per week (if I went over 29, the university would have to pay out benefits for us, so we were caped there). I tended house for him and his kids. Cooked, cleaned, paid “rent” to him, bought groceries for a family of four.
The only fights we ever had was over how much I worked. He couldn’t stand that I didn’t work 40 hours a week like him. He hated that I enjoyed my time at work and had friends there. He griped that he never saw me working on stuff for school, that if I had time to do homework on campus, I should be looking for another part time gig. I didn’t give him enough money each month for expenses, which included taking care of his child support, debts, and bills. I payed my bills, his bills, and our bills. Of course, I didn’t realize it at the time; I never saw what our expenses were, just trusted what he said.
The summer between graduation and the start of my master’s program, I worked 40-50 hours a week while he and the kids were on summer vacation. That summer, we separated because I wasn’t doing as much housework as he thought I should. All while he and the kids played video games and watched tv all day.
In short: dump him if he hounds you to work “as much” as him. He really means match him 150%
John Lennon: But I can be alone without Yoko, but I just have no wish to be. There’s no reason on earth why I should be alone without Yoko. There’s nothing more important than our relationship, nothing. And we dig being together all the time. Both of us could survive apart but what for? I’m not going to sacrifice love, real love for any whore or any friend or any business, because in the end you’re alone at night and neither of us want to be. And you can’t fill a bed with groupies. It doesn’t work. I don’t want to be a swinger. I’ve been through it all and nothing works better than to have someone you love hold you.
This is cute and all but John Lennon was a wife beater. I know he was much of an icon for peace and love, but much of it was an over statement.
I’ve been stuck in an abusive household for my whole life. I’ve been wanting to leave this hellish household since the age of nine, and I’ve fantasized about (and attempted) running away more than once throughout high school. When it came time for college, my mother forbade me from going to college out of state, saying she was “afraid I’d get a girlfriend”. I’ve tried to find work but every place that I applied to rejected me, and when I asked my mother to help me, she refused. I found a few odd jobs but nothing that ever paid me enough to support myself. I’m 25 now and I’m determined that this year is the year that I finally get a good, permanent job and move out.
I recently came across this post on reddit that showed how to successfully beat the applicant tracking software that employers use. To sum it up, you should have a resume tailored to each type of job you’re applying to, and you should send in a cover letter with each job application you fill out. I’m not gonna lie, I was extremely anxious to start writing cover letters, but I found an extremely helpful video which showed me how to write a winning cover letter that employers love. I followed the instructions and I already have two interviews scheduled for this coming week!
In addition to this, I have created a little cheat sheet which goes over different questions the interviewers may ask, my strengths and weaknesses, and my skills. My strategy is to study study STUDY this cheat sheet so that I am prepared for this interview.
This is the year I am getting out of here. I know it. And I’ll have earned this job, because no one else will teach me how to do this for myself. That’s something I can be proud of.
It just pisses me off that my parents purposely screwed me over, never teaching me any valuable life skills & abusing & neglecting me until I was scared of everything, all because they wanted a perfectly obedient live-in servant. And when I finally started to advocate for myself, they realized they’d failed and tried to kill me.
Things have been ok for the last few months in respect to mental health. My mother had been on pretty good behavior, at least for her anyway.
Though around the holidays she had a meltdown while driving and purposely tried to crash the car b/c we’d disagreed on something. Clearly that was terrifying but it’s not like it was the 1st time she’d done that. And thankfully she did not succeed.
It scares me that I can write that out with a straight face.
The last week she’s been acting like a complete gremlin. I know it’s because my birthday is coming up b/c she does this every year. She’s wicked for weeks and then enters all-out torture mode on my bday.
But I won’t give her the satisfaction. I have simply elected to no longer have a birthday. Or–at least not one I will tell anyone about.
And i don’t mean a party. I mean the actual date. It’s become a trigger for me. I have so many trauma anniversaries on or around it, that the whole month of February is something of a psychological mine field.
I get stressed out by seeing the days count down on the calendar. So I have decided that it’s just any other day and I will move my birthday, a day for celebrating being alive, elsewhere.
So much of being an abused kid is growing up to redefine your childhood.
And I’m not only talking about finally seeing your situation for what it was. I’m talking about reclaiming parts of your identity too.
So many of us had our ‘favorite things’ robbed from us. SO many of us were assigned a favorite color, favorite animal, favorite toy…We didn’t get to make that choice for ourselves. Our abusers tried to construct us into who they wanted us to be. It’s time to take back being you.
If you’re living in an abusive home & aren’t able to leave or aren’t ready yet, it’s perfectly okay & there is nothing wrong with you for staying put & waiting it out.
It is often safer to stay put, gather your resources & keep a roof over your head until you are ready to go.
It does NOT make you ‘weak’ or 'lazy’ or 'not trying hard enough.’
It’s okay to process your situation at your own pace.
It’s completely bizarre how quickly my mother cries at minor inconveniences. But yet, she went through years of physically & psychologically torturing me & I was expected the keep a straight face the whole time. It wasn’t “supposed” to effect me.
