Nurshable

01/23/2025

I've been feeling blah about not doing all the things I used to do with my kids with this littlest Skylark.

So I decided to make Playdough.

The top recipe on Google was a link to a Good Housekeeping article about the Play-Doh recipe that Parenting Experts recommend. Complete with instructions on how to make it with your toddler.

I was a little bit skeptical when I read the recipe calling for 2 cups of flour, one cup of salt and two cups of water. (And a tablespoon of cream of tartar and some oil)

But it's been a while since I made Play-Doh.

Apparently the recipe is for homemade paste. Or at least that was what it made. 🤣

I think the Internet and parenting experts are all AI at this point.

I upped the amount of flour to almost 4.5 cups and made workable Play-Doh. Which was necessary since the AI experts were adamant I involve my toddler in making this doughy abomination. 🤣 Failure was not an option.

And how are you doing?

01/01/2025

Happy New Year!

There's nothing objectively different between yesterday and today. No pressure to make any resolutions. No magic.

But. I would like for this year to be a useful thing for me. A tool. An opportunity for me to shed what has been and to look at what remains and what is new.

To say my goodbyes to the things that have been. To shed old anger while maintaining new boundaries. To commit daily to love, to curiosity and growth.

I have two feet. I feel them as I plant them on the ground, lean in to what is pushing me. I feel them as I dance, as I jump, as I crouch and they flex and fold beneath me. I feel them as I run, as I play a game of hopscotch, as I flex and bend my toes as I work and as I write. I am here. I am present, I am grounded.

This is my portion of space in this life. Squared out. Shoulders broad and feet planted. I would like to throw my arms up in the air and take account of each finger, toe, the tip of my nose and the surface area of my lungs, fully expanded.

Then I would like to gather each of you into my arms and tell you that I am very very glad that you are here sharing this space and this life with me.

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12/30/2024

A notebook, stitched-seam with black paper binding. Dark blue with a floral pattern on the cover. Just slightly larger than my hands, with a nice weight to it.

On the cover it has a little area for writing the title or name or topic of the notebook.

My handwriting, slightly stilted, reads: "Sarah is a people, too."

The notebook is empty.

I didn't know what to write inside of it.

There's a fallacy called "Heaven's Reward" which is a cognitive distortion that says if you sacrifice enough, work hard enough or struggle enough, there will be a reward at the end. I've never quite believed this.

The truth is, a person can try very very hard and do their very very best and people can look at them with contempt, view them as lazy, and view everything about them as floofish nonsense.

A perfectly ordinary human being can show up needing comfort and reassurance that all of the complicated, weirdness that we experience as people.. All the emotions, the attractions, the thoughts, feelings, overwhelm, the questions we have, the horrible mistakes we have made in the past.. All of it.. Is valid. And it all is.

And then that person can absolutely dismantle another person who is also perfectly ordinary and a squishy human being with their own insecurities and faults and things they struggle with and their preferences and the things they need in order to feel safe and human.

There is a list of people that I regret providing support to. Not because they were undeserving of support. Not because anything was an awful horrible flaw with them. But because at the end of the day there was nothing reciprocal. I was not also a people. I was a means to an end. A validation of everything in them while being a contemptible nonsense within myself.

It feels weird and recursive, like it's triggered a mental script traversing backwards and chipping away at a problem. If this thing about me is true, then I'm afraid I've misled you and all of these things that I have reassured you about are false. Not because I believe you to be invalid, but because you believe me to be invalid and if that is true then it applies to you within your world view.

I can't provide you with validation if I am invalid. I cannot reassure you that this particular thing about you is perfectly normal if it's not also normal in me. I can't accept you if I'm unacceptable to you.

I'm sorry.

It's so odd. To have questioned myself for so long, because of those people that questioned me while seeking out my reassurance. To have learned to reassure, to accept, to understand that everyone has faults and flaws and breaking points and that everyone is human... Because people I loved needed that from me.

But then that couldn't apply to me for some reason.

But it does. Within how I view people and humanity.

I don't need to write anything in that notebook because me being a people too... Is a coherent part of my world view. The only reason I needed to think about that and reassure myself is because some of the people that I was reassuring... were doing the opposite with me.

It's weird trying to explain to another human being that it's not that I view video games or alcohol or anything with contempt.

It's that if I view those things the way I view them, I can't accept that silly little things about myself and about other people are worthy of contempt.

I cannot agree with you logically that video games are a perfectly adult wonderful beautiful hobby when you have shared with me the opinion that women that like bouquets of flowers are somehow dumb. I don't even particularly like cut flowers myself. I like to cut flowers and give them to people that like them. Because other peoples likes are beautiful wonderful things. And if you think back on my interactions with you, you'll see all the ways in which I viewed you in this way, too. In the gifts I gave. You will see no contempt there. You will see amusement and love and all of those things that people deserve.

I can't agree with you that anything about you is valid when you think that other peoples preferences are objectively inferior and that you use logic and reason to approach all of your problems. It would be illogical and unreasonable for me to do so. Cut flowers are dumb because they just die. Video games are dumb because they were never alive to begin with. See? Problem sorted. Romance novels are just dumb. But action flicks are amazing entertainment as terrible actors pretend to be karate experts? You kidding me, bro? Logic is a broad application, not a "I like this, therefore it is true". People like what they like. You like what you like. And it's awesome. Your likes are valid. Unless you crap all over someone else's likes, then your likes are equally nonsensical crap. And yes, this is where you proclaim me abusive because I'm saying your likes aren't valid. Which... Is not an actual thing.

It's not that I judge you or your hobbies.

It's that I am not a reassurance provision machine and I no longer want to reassure or validate people that look at ordinary squishy humanity and human preferences with contempt. If other people deserve your road rage, your contempt, your proclamations of ridiculousness, your insistence that they are illogical and emotional and you hold the one true valid state of ultimate authority and intellect where you can look down on them for everything they are...

I'm allowed to view you with contempt. I'm not obligated to provide you with something that I view as a beautiful wonderful basic life-giving part of society while you hold these contemptuous negative views of other peoples perfectly squishy human ordinary normalness.

I can't both listen to and agree with you that other drivers are insufferable idiots while also reassuring you that you are not an insufferable idiot and that everyone makes mistakes.

And I cannot... Will not.. Never again.. Ever look at myself and try to see all the things you hold contempt for and try to fix them for you.

I don't need to write in that notebook. I'm a human. I'm a people. And I am allowed to give myself the same grace that people and humans deserve.

I don't have to give you that grace. I am allowed to take every item of judgment that you have ever shared with me and plop it down upon your head.

I cannot simultaneously accept that I am lazy and worthless while accepting that you playing video games next to a bowl full of rotting food and mouse droppings and a box full of fleas is valid. I can accept that the task is overwhelming and that you need help. I can give you all the grace in the world and accept you the way I accept other people. But not while you're projecting everything you're failing at onto me and onto other people. I can't choke down the words that I have "never grown up" and "may need therapy" while you... are who you are. What is that, even?

I don't want to. It's not who I am as a person. You know what you say about other people. Turn it inwards. Swallow your own contempt. It's harsh and you will probably choke on it. No one likes the flavor. It's like a lump of burning hot broken glass-coal and it tastes like p**p.

And yeah. No one deserves it. Even you.

Within my world-view you are a perfectly ordinary and beautiful person and I have a lot of love and appreciation and respect for you. Within my world-view you are just doing what you have learned and seen and heard and you're just doing your best and it's hard to adopt new patterns as an adult.

But you were incredibly incredibly cruel to someone who had only ever tried to be kind to you.

And that is not okay.

(This is not about a single person, unfortunately. It's about a life-long experience of the paradox of tolerance and about realizing why my notebook is empty. It's not because I'm not a people. It's because I don't need to prove that to myself because I have spent my life making sure that I understand that about everyone around me.)

Unless you are a child, I will not give you what you insist others do not deserve.

You have made a very logical and unemotional decision about who deserves contempt. It is a very logical and unemotional fact that a lot of your actions are well under that threshold. I'm not saying that I have contempt for you.

I'm asking you why you don't recognize that you should have contempt for yourself within the framework that you have established and the approach you take to judging things and people around you.

I'm not saying you "should" have contempt for yourself. I don't think it's a useful thing for people to feel for themselves or others. I believe that contempt is cruel and awful. What I'm saying that if you're internally consistent with your plotline and beliefs, you and others should feel contempt for who and what you are. Why are you coming to me for reassurance when you view me as worthy of your contempt? My opinion is already emotional, invalid, and I'm just providing you with what you need to be an awful person, no?

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12/25/2024

First Christmas (of many to come) without my kids.

One put this in my stocking.

Divorce sucks, y'all.

12/19/2024

Defensiveness and Dismissiveness are a weird maladaptive coping mechanism.

This is what I've started telling my kids.

And I've started pointing out when their siblings are being defensive and dismissive vs owning the problem.

And when things are a problem vs when they're a personal preference that a person is allowed to have.

And how everyone makes mistakes and yes, sometimes there are a LOT of reasons why someone makes mistakes.

But how sharing the reasons with people that are upset about the outcome tends to make people more upset, not less.

Hindsight is 20/20 and when we say there was ABSOLUTELY NO OTHER WAY that something could have gone down, we're saying it ABSOLUTELY WILL happen again and that the other person is wooooowza delulu for thinking it won't and they need to just suck it up and get over it because they're totally overreacting according to our Super Superior Judgy Judgement which is absolutely correct and there's no need to Ever Enlist External Ideas and if we do, we have to make sure that we describe the event in whatever way makes us sound good and makes the other person sound like a whackadoodle totally unhinged little teddy-weddy-beddy-bear of sad and illogical thoughts and feels so as to triangulate absolutely everyone into piling on to the "Have you considered that this thing that has you upset is actually tiny and insignificant?" bandwagon of let's make this person feel REALLY bad for ever mentioning that something bothers them.

QUICK, VANQUISH THE SAD PERSON WHO IS MAKING ME FEEL BAD!

Yeahhh. No. I mean, I get it. I have had defensive and dismissive reactions before and... Yeah. I learned it's an excellent way to lose lots of friendships and valuable relationships. And that my reaction did not, in fact, make me feel better. It became something that I was more ashamed of than the first crappy thing I did without thinking. And... If I had owned it maybe I wouldn't feel so crappy about it Forever and Forever and Ever and Ever.

Alas, I was dismissive and defensive and I can think back on those crappy things that I did and the way I reacted after and know that those situations will never be resolved. The time for apologies has passed and the worst thing is I made someone I cared with live with that feeling of dismissal. Ugh. I could say 'I'm sorry' a million times over in a million ways but that feeling of betrayal, hurt and dismissal and my bizarre crappy reaction is permanent.

Meaningful apology, troubleshooting, applying hindsight, understanding that the other person was hurt and that our reasons and motivations can't undo the hurt... It's a lot more effective and while I still feel shame and sadness over the things that I have responded properly to being called out on, I also have all the repair and owning-it that comes after and people in those situations probably don't think that I'm a festering defensive lump.

So why do we bother with getting defensive and dismissive? I can't speak for everyone. I'm sure that some people are just seriously cocky and full of themselves and hate being called out.

But. Probably not all of them.

So what about me?

It's a perfectly normal thing to feel like absolutely alpaca poo when someone says that they're hurt or angry. It's absolutely perfectly normal to feel embarrassed and ashamed and to have witnesses of your low moment that are telling you exactly what hurt and why. And to have them ANGRY at you. Yipes.

And it's absolutely perfectly normal to mistake this valuable relationship-saving information that they're sharing with you in an unhappy tone of voice for an attack or a guilt trip.

And it's definitely normal to try to self soothe.

And when we self soothe with something that involves embarrassing mistakes that impact absolutely no one that can confront us... Sometimes we do that by minimizing what happened or convincing ourselves that it's justified somehow because that's what makes us feel okay.

It just fell off the shelf. Yeahhhh... And it would have fallen anyway because this house is FULL of cats and it was in a bad location. So yeah, it's basically like cats pushed it over. And why did that person leave it there in the first place? They probably don't even know it existed anymore. It's fine. I'm fine. I'll go distract myself now and never think about it again.

My little sister just pushed herself into the wall. I didn't bump into her and knock her into the wall and then tell her she ALWAYS OVERREACTS and she shouldn't have been there in the first place and...

Oops. Yeah. The internal "make myself better" script just came out my mouth and now it's making the person that I hurt feel worse. So I have to dig in and MAKE MYSELF FEEL BETTER by having more of my inner self soothing thoughts come out. I should probably raise my voice and maybe declare the conversation ABSOLUTELY POINTLESS. Because they are ALwAYS LIKE THIS and then I should definitely stomp off to engage in self soothing elsewhere where no one can convince me that they weren't imagining things, that it did actually hurt. That the reason I bumped into her was because I was walking backwards after she got upset the first time I bumped into her doing exactly that.

It's a bit ridiculous. And a lot relatable. And yes, not doing it takes practice.

But really. Hindsight is 20/20. Let's brainstorm what we could have done differently instead, ok?

Otherwise we're reinforcing the wrong thing by repeating it over and over and wearing a groove in our brain to always flow through.

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11/24/2024

Most of the things I think about are things that I can't really figure out a way to talk about, and they burn a hole in my brain. And I try to think of how I can write about them sideways without making anyone sound awful or in a way that just focuses on my experience without involving anything about anyone else at all.

One of the things that I struggle with is the need to talk about "other people" as something bad or wrong or different or as something that we have to be better than.

We are in competition with ourselves and only ourselves.

Our environment does not dictate or control our character or the choices that we make. We strive for internal consistency because it is where confidence comes from.

And no one is perfectly consistent. Stress makes it difficult and as I get older I note the ways in which stress contributes to me failing at the things that are my priorities and how I would like to be. And I try to notice before I reach a failure point. And I try to communicate and delegate and shuffle and prioritize.

Graceful failure. Choosing the spot that will blow out in a way that is the most acceptable.

Pressure cookers used to explode like bombs. Now there's a safety valve. A spot to blow up in a way that isn't dangerous.

Ideally we shouldn't ever be under that much pressure. Ideally our basic needs should be things that we are able to meet for ourselves. Ideally everyone will function well as an individual part of a greater whole.

I know who I am and what I am, no matter who is in the room with me. Sometimes I am the recipient of secondhand information about myself that is interesting.

I don't know what to make of it, honestly. I'm well aware that some of the worst perpetrators of horrific abuse are often beloved members of society. I'm well aware that someone can be very very hurt by something that doesn't seem that big or important to someone else. I remember having very lengthy conversations where I tried to explain this exact concept. I even have a simple way that I explain it to small children.

Take this hand, ok? now pinch the back of this other hand. Which hand does the pinch hurt? Ok. When you pinch your friend you're the pinching hand and they're the hand being pinched. It doesn't hurt you, but it hurts them. You need to listen to people that say you're hurting them.

I tell my kids that just because everyone loves a specific person, it doesn't mean that person is perfect or that they aren't hurting another person. And that sometimes people who are absolutely horrible to other people, shroud themselves with this aura of goodness as a way to isolate their victims and make sure they never speak out.

I would like to be a good person. Not because I want to protect my fundamental goodness and feel good about myself. I don't think that's really possible. Think about it for a second. I'm the one that holds 100% of every single memory of shame, wrongdoing, poor decisions, accidental and even intentional hurt that I have caused all the way back to my earliest memories. 100%. Photographic-cinematographic technocolor hall of shame. No one else in the entire world is privy to all of that. Just me. I have regrets that are fourty years old to my fourty-four.

You can't take back painful things. You can't take back mistakes. You can't take back hurts. And sometimes you don't even have the opportunity to express regret because life is brutally second by second, minute by minute and it marches forward.

I laughingly had a conversation with one of my teenagers the other day about "If you mowed the lawn and I told you that you did such a good job that if you did it every day for two years I'd give you a million dollars and you mowed the lawn every day for two years and then expected me to follow through, and I laughed and said I wasn't serious. How would you feel?"

Just the story made him livid.

"What if you talked to me over those years about how excited you were for the future and I never said anything to let you know that I didn't actually mean it?"

Then I said "On the flip side, what if you decided that it was worth $100 to mow the lawn and you didn't tell me this? And you mowed the lawn every day whether it needed it or not and killed all the grass in the process and mowed the bare dirt and then after two years you told me that I had to pay you even though I kept asking you to stop because you were killing all the grass and I didn't like it and the entire yard collapsed into a mud puddle when it rained?"

People can be weird. People can make all kinds of promises to change the behavior of others and then not be upfront and honest about things. People can have weird un-discussed expectations of each other.

I like to understand where people are coming from.
And I like for people to understand where I am coming from.

And sometimes you run into people that are very eager to be understood. Then when it's your turn they're angry and tell you it's a waste of time and you're not allowed to speak at all ever.

And it can be a mind-messing-up experience of wtf-ery.

Especially if you follow the "I need to try and see this from at least ten different directions" approach of "Everyone has an experience".

At fourty four I'm finally learning that there are simply people that know the singular one truth about me. And it's not a truth I can share space with easily because if it's true then it's something I would like to work on. And working on it involves certain things. And eventually I'm no longer that bad thing. Right? Isn't that logical?

But that's the growth mindset.

This is a bunch of rambling nonsense processing brain salad. Which is what keeps happening when I try to process things.

When someone with a growth mindset encounters someone who believes that people are who they are. It's weird.

This isn't about any particular single person or group of people. It's a contributing factor to me having had what I have identified as a mental breakdown over the past... Long while.

It's this mish mash hodge podge of things that I feel like I need to understand in order to move forward feeling okay about life and about myself and about anything at all.

I think I'm a little black and white sometimes and get stuck on things and overthink them. I think sentience is existing in a world of impossibly contradictory information that cannot be reconciled as a whole.

But then, I... Understand that? We all hold our own experiences in our head and part of the magic of human connection is... understanding that? I don't think that I need everyone to share my exact thoughts.

I think I need for my thoughts to exist in-tandem, in parallel, to take up the space of my head, and for my body to take up the space of my body, and to have at least a Sarah-sized say in the total sum of things.

Life is weird. Like an ice rink. And I'm spinning around without training in whatever trick it is my skates have decided to do. And I don't know how to stop or slow down or do anything other than freeze up and I know just enough to know that some ways in which I freeze will make me go faster instead of winding me down.

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11/03/2024

There's a huge difference between "I don't know what the rule is, you have to ask mommy " and "I know exactly what the rule is, your mother and I discussed it many times but I want you to blame her and argue with her, so ask mommy." Or "I think the rule is dumb and I am a grandparent not a parent so let's ask mommy so she can tell you no fifteen times a day instead of me telling you no."

One is "let's learn the rule together"
The other is "let's make you view your mommy as controlling while I am super fun."

Adults should all discuss rules privately and compromise privately otherwise it's a subtle ongoing form of unintentional parental alienation.

It pairs poorly with discussions where the "ask mommy" adult complains about certain things ("the kids are always leaving their toys out ") then "ask mommy" happens when the toys are out and the ask mommy moment is "can I have this toy?" Because then mommy not only says no to the toy but is also frustrated with the mess that she has repeatedly been reminded that the kids are making.

House rules exist because adults communicate and establish house rules to help everyone function the way that the adults feel is healthy and comfortable.

The math has to add up behind the scenes, and everyone needs to agree and work together for consistency.

Otherwise we're creating a scapegoat no-saying mean bridge troll parent who is controlling.

It's alienation.

10/26/2024

Me: we have to get your costume on.
Skylar: I just want to be a NORMAL PERSON.

Don't we all, my tiny three year old? Don't we all?

10/26/2024

I hate the whole topic of manipulation.

It was used as an excuse to ignore things that I struggled with as a deaf and not entirely neurotypical child.

And as an adult it has been used as a way to try and coerce/guilt/manipulate me into interacting with my children in ways that I don't believe are helpful, necessary or beneficial.

Manipulation is definitely real. When adults manipulate, it's a consent violation and it's abusive and it is an unauthorized seizure of a person's resources under false pretenses. I hate it. It makes me rage, tbh. It's the behavior of narcissistic abusive people that never learned how to communicate. Or that understand very clearly that no sane consenting adult would agree to the thing that they want. And they're willing to mislead and torture people to get it.

Babies that want to sleep with a parent aren't manipulative. They're direct. They want to sleep with a parent. If they can't, they are sad and angry. They don't psychologically torment us into giving in. They express their upset.

And we are encouraged to ignore this. I believe THAT is manipulative.

I believe that manipulation of ideas within conversation is interesting and fascinating and necessary to gain a more complete picture of ourselves and others. It's the backing off from being smooshed up against the visor through which we view the world. The immersion in the ideas, the vulnerability, the exploration of all the different paths and the cause and effect of ideas and options.

Trying to do that inside of your head to figure out how to get your desired outcome from another person? Puke. Barf. Retch. No. Go away and work on yourself, please.

Doing this inside your head to try to figure out why someone you love is a million miles away from where you're at, and what communication issues are building a giant wall between you, and how to move yourself as well as communicating about where you're at? That's not manipulation. It's a distress signal on repeat, flashing GPS coordinates.

Kids that manipulate are un-emowered to meet their own needs or figure out their own desires and how to achieve them.

You can address that by encouraging honest conversations about what is wanted and needed and desired and why, and what is possible and how to achieve it. You can have clear boundaries about what you are and are not willing to do, and what is and is not your job.

You don't need to manipulate kids by accusing them of manipulating you. It doesn't address the issue.

"You're manipulative" has one valid reaction. Ignore them and let them figure it out.

A lot of kids try to figure it out by fixating on figuring out how to get the support they need from the adults that are supposed to be modeling things for them.

10/14/2024

10/08/2024

Last night we lay in bed. Myself and my two youngest daughters. Snuggled up with both of their heads on my arm as one did her reading homework and the other listened along to the story as it was read out loud.

Life changes continuously.

Divorce is a crack. A rupture. I think it's easier when it feels like freedom and harder when it feels like loss. Easier when it feels like the solution and harder when it feels like an acceptance of a chronic problem.

I can't talk about what led up to the point of rupture.
I can't talk about so many things.

Because it wouldn't be fair to people that I want to be fair to.

I can talk about tiny-huge humans being precious. About the different shades of brown hair on each of the heads of each of my children and how the shades vary ever so slightly right now on each head that is shorter than mine. Ever so slightly different textures. The straight, the wavy, the thinner and the thicker.

My children like to talk about their hair. How it's their dad's hair, my hair, my mom's hair. It's one of those things that my ex and I used to talk about long long ago when we were deeply in love and our oldest child was tiny.

And it's a beautiful happy thing full of love and memories for our children.

Hair is an easy thing to show and to feel love for.

Love is permanent. I've always said this. It doesn't just disappear. It's there. I can write about that. I'm all good with complicated emotions and multifaceted feelings and holding of emotions in different spaces.

And yes, their hair. It's a mix of their dad's hair and my hair and all the different hair in our families. Their beliefs about life will be a mix of all the different beliefs. I can talk about how those different beliefs fit together without negating, belittling, minimizing, or overwriting the beliefs of another.

I can use myself as negative example when I fail at those things with them, and as a positive example when I catch myself and say "I'm approaching this like you are automatically wrong, and I can see that is frustrating you. I'm sorry. Let's break this down together and let's each try and understand each other."

My kids and I are at different points in life with different experiences and different influences and different beliefs and different information.

We're not supposed to be the same people. We're not supposed to approach conflict in the same ways. We're not supposed to reach the same conclusion magically without any effort at all. We're not supposed to see the same problems. We're not supposed to have the same priorities and interests and the same developmental stages at the same times.

I can talk to them about beliefs I have held passionately in the past that I have grown out of. Problematic things that I have believed that I have had to grow out of. How when I defend things, sometimes it's because they're worthy of defending. But sometimes it's because I'm not ready to grow past them just yet. And that it's fine to not be ready to grow past everything all at once.

And how the world is full of very different people that are at all different stages of everything. And that it's fine for everyone to be at the stage that they're at.

But.

I can also say that it's not fair for a person to attempt to assert influence on me without allowing me to have a similar level of influence on them. It's controlling and patronizing and it's the point at which I slam on the brakes and am no longer interested in learning anything about the other person.

Oobleck. I can model oobleck. You're malleable, I am malleable. You're forceful, I am nope.

Politics are a good example. I have beliefs. If you attack me, I will not discuss my beliefs with you. This doesn't mean that we agree. This doesn't mean that I think you are right. This doesn't mean that I am submitting to you. This doesn't mean that I don't hear everything you say in public. This doesn't mean that you have won. This doesn't mean that I will vote for your candidate. This doesn't mean that your world view is correct. This doesn't mean anything. It means that I view you as a weird and unstable human being and that I have been a weird and unstable human being in the past. Because we turn politics and beliefs into sports teams.

I can demonstrate that just because someone doesn't talk to you about their beliefs it doesn't mean that they agree with you.

I can teach my children that beauty is in people that can talk about things that they disagree about.

I can model how to actively listen to someone that will never listen to me. I can practice it in front of them with a variety of different people. And they can notice and see how I listen without necessarily changing or modifying my own beliefs. There's never anything wrong about trying to understand another person's beliefs.

I do not need to act on their beliefs. I do not need to internalize their beliefs. I do not need to accept the treatment they direct at me as the result of their beliefs.

I can talk to them about the sharing of spaces. I can talk to them about the music I listen to when I drive alone, the music I listen to when I drive with others. How to negotiate what music and what volume there will be in a way that takes people into consideration. Not just me, not just them, not just one of them.

If it's always the driver that chooses, because that's a rule I invented.
And I'm always the driver because of the way life is structured- I have a license, they do not.
Then one of you becomes a driver but whenever we share a car, I insist that I be the driver because it's what I'm comfortable with.
And I never want to recognize that you might also want to drive. And it just makes sense that I drive because I'm the one with more experience. But then something happens and I need you to drive... And you haven't had any experience. And your lack of experience makes me angry and frustrated because WHY HAVEN'T YOU LEARNED HOW TO DRIVE.. But if I'm in the car and you're making the mistakes that I got out of the way when I first started learning how to drive, and I just can't tolerate it..

What happens?

You would probably decide that you never want to drive if I am in the car. Maybe you would decide that you can't drive. Maybe you would decide that I shouldn't be in the car with anyone at all ever again because I'm not even that good of a driver.

I can't talk about a lot of things.

But I can talk about beliefs and ideas and I can explore beliefs and ideas and I can stay open in the process and learn new things.

I can model the act of trying to re-evaluate who I am continuously. Not in a way where I doubt myself. But a way in which I re-affirm my edges and re-assess my beliefs.

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