Catty ones, what do you fear?

"The Victorians switched witches for old-maid stereotypes – for single women without children: 'Old maids and cats have long been proverbially associated together, and, rightly or wrongly, these creatures have been looked upon with a certain degree of suspicion and aversion by a large proportion of the human race,' wrote a journalist in the Dundee Courier in 1880. The Old Maid card game was often illustrated with a dour woman and her cat, the 'friend of the friendless', as it was described at the time. In the 1900s, anti-suffragette propaganda used images of cats to portray women as silly, useless, catty and ridiculous in their attempt to enter political life."

~ Lucy Jones 

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/apr/16/claws-pop-culture-crazy-cat-lady-lonely-sexless-eccentric-stereotype-millennial-ailurophiles

Oh wow! It's Caturday already.

I feel like saying something that's not about cats though... It's about people and their Uncaring Patriarchal Society. 

It can be painful to realize that some people want to act like they are so fine with the current societal norms that they have taken great pains to feel very cozy with them, to the extent that they will automatically shut down and contribute to the dehumanization of anyone else who has a different reality, because it's too threatening to them, and it's like they are repeating those old patterns now, when in the past, you thought they were capable of being much better than that.

Like, when people discriminate against people who don't have kids or who weren't able to have kids, or for a variety of reasons it just wasn't what was possible for either their body or their economic situation or something...It's actually, not just insensitive...it feels like a form of dehumanization and almost like persecution and an attempt to kill off a real aspect of the human experience. 

There are people who just don't want to know how much they were trained to discriminate against others, and so they will shut down any evidence of other people having a different reality, and shut down their own humanity in order to preserve their egos.

It is sad that they would even do that to their own descendants, too; that they would shut down their own descendants' humanity, just because their descendants do not have their same genes.

You don't know how your descendants lives are going to turn out. 

They're not going to be able to choose to have a life that's like your life was.

So what does all this have to do with it being Caturday?

Well, this type of socially-induced insensitivity to others is why cats might seem like they are better and more honest company than some people are, sometimes.

This woman's story would be an interesting movie.

"My biological brother was leaning off the faux leather couch dangling a smoke in his hand. My cousin (my paternal uncle’s daughter) wore a chic pixie haircut and designer clothing. She looked at my brother for a moment, then gazed at me, and said to him, 'Isn’t it funny? You’ve changed someone’s entire fate.' He shifted his eyes away, laughing awkwardly.

In that moment, I did somehow see my life intertwined with his. We were both born with the hope of being a son. It was just that one of us was, and one of us wasn’t. And in the circumstances we found ourselves, that made all of the difference."

~ Charlotte Cotter

"Commentary: I was the daughter my parents didn’t keep"

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/china-end-international-adoption-charlotte-cotter-family-4660811#tblciGiAwW8WrAF1zdSn8oJknGqDI6SbU_ie9w30p7PbCiQa-UyDsklIorLPV57fLlZYsMPexPw

Just saying...

The universe has been really firm with the fact that people in society need to pay a lot more attention to domestic violence issues lately.

Actually, got the idea of some young people having a conversation in the future about the grandpas who were veterans of armed forces who also recognized fellow veterans in the domestic violence survivors in their society. 

"He did that! In the 2020s! What an advanced mind."

This one looks like fun. You could play with this. You could make art.

"Do you ever think about how the grandchildren will want to abandon their own descendants much less than what was considered acceptable in previous eras?"

Yeah, apparently so.

You got pushed off of a straight path and yours was more winding because you had to be more empirical about some things?

Multifaceted mind...

This is still a thrilling sentence to me.

"The rediscovery of de Pizan through the 1982 English translation of 'The Book of the City of Ladies' (1405) by Earl Jeffrey Richards, during his time as a Princeton Ph.D. student, changed the field of medieval and feminist studies in the U.S."

"FPUL Small Talk with Renate Kosinski: 'Christine de Pizan from Venice to Paris to Princeton: The Trajectory of a Medieval Writer and Entrepreneur'"

https://www.princeton.edu/events/2024/fpul-small-talk-renate-kosinski-christine-de-pizan-venice-paris-princeton-trajectory

I guess that's why I went back to school?

The dusk is duskening.

The toe is making contact with the soft black paw, and there is purring.

It's dusk!

Sometimes this is just absolutely my favorite time of day. 

A great time of day to empty your mind. 

Just be in the moment. 

Appreciate your bedspread. 

Appreciate the apple you ate. 

Appreciates the little bit of natural light that's left. 

It's so soothing!

Zen

I also wonder if there's something in the brain that says yes, now it is time to go to bed.

This woman could teach some people a lot of things.

"Northern Michigan woman survives kidnapping, shares her story of survival"

https://upnorthlive.com/news/local/northern-michigan-woman-survives-kidnapping-shares-her-story-of-survival

Gratefulness...

Yesterday, I was beyond grateful to reconnect with a healing space. There were people who really helped me there in the past, but I did not see any of them because we all went separate ways. Even if I don't talk to them anymore, I felt intense love and appreciation for that time, beyond what I expected. 

It's true that sometimes you think when you're around certain people, you'll see them for more than a season because maybe it used to be that way when people grew up in the same village, but there is also power in appreciating what was and tapping into the presence of healing and universal love again. I hope they have as much healing on their journeys as they can enjoy. 

There are no words to describe it. I have tried to describe it with words but the experience is much better. 

The second thing was, after I left that special place, I was just really happy to be alive on Earth. I was grateful that I came here to experience lots of different kinds of feelings. I really felt that even moments of conflict or unease or confusion are here to teach us more about how we can live a better life and they can help us.

I realized that part of what I like about having lived in a lot of different places is, it's so much fun to go back and visit even just your old grocery store or whatever. That's what I did and who knew it would be great and so much fun!

The last thing is, I was able to visit a friend and share my experiences and she was truly open to hearing about them. 

I told her some more details about how I had had such a good evening. I talked to her about feeling more aligned with my life's purpose again. I felt I could see a lot of the old troubles in a new light. I could feel more tapped into a joyful feeling, like what I experienced as a child, and how that is with me for a lifetime.

She said she could feel a change, too, and that being able to hear about my experiences was a good experience and bringing a healing to her as well. She also shared some similar experiences she'd had.

Bright blessings!

Ah...language arts.

"Remembering the care free days of eating breakfast"

@TastingHistory

https://youtube.com/shorts/R4F7OuFsaMY?si=W9LeGG05XIFF-rw8

She is one of many.

Vanessa Carlton says she could have died of an ectopic pregnancy without proper medical (abortion) care.

"A Thousand Miles for Care with Vanessa Carlton"

https://youtube.com/watch?v=MqqLOGHBq1Y&si=eq5ZfWoK_sVuOm6S

"A Thousand Miles for Care"

~ Center for Reproductive Rights

https://youtube.com/watch?v=IZ-AaizMOh8&si=YJjTc0jE50TWI56N

Water! Such a precious resource.

It's really wonderful to feel more hydrated now and not have all that stressful anxiety that this body felt upon waking.

Looking forward to more water and maybe some herbal tea.

Adulthood can be good.

It is kind of fun to be an adult. It's fun to enjoy a more sophisticated mixture of music and media and literature and sometimes the other things, too. Sometimes it's fun to go to a party, or go out. 

I think I only want to do it on occasion. Not like, go out every night. Definitely, no, not like that.

People who are in the middle of the process of healing nervous systems do not need tons of stimulation. Let's put it that way.

The thing that's cool is...

It is possible to have some control over how you perceive things. Like if you went somewhere, and you had a not very good time for the hour that you were there, but for 5 seconds of it you had some humor or enjoyment or something good, you could choose to focus on those 5 seconds when you remember it.

And and and... Remember, if you have your vitamins and everything and all of your bodily functions and processes working, it's probably easier to access that positive way of thinking. 

Sometimes I wonder if bad moods and hormone imbalances are also partially due to vitamin deficiencies or something like weak stomach acid due to stress, and then you don't get your vitamins, and I don't know, all that sort of thing. 

Nutrition. 

That's what I need to look at, or part of it. 

Also fun things. What were all the fun things I wanted to do once upon a time, and still a part of me wants to do them, and they can be really simple like making something with clay or digging in the sand with a shovel. Doesn't even have to be a fancy vacation, like, that's what they teach adults they need, so they'll spend money. 

Silly!

It's time to get better now.

I'm still processing stuff. I'm still trying to get better. It takes a lot of time? Or just some time, to change and get better.

I had multiple realities to deal with.

Unique circumstances. 

Perhaps I'm not a genius, and perhaps I don't want to be. 

Just a simple soul. Had to deal with some stuff. Didn't learn how to do it all right away. Wasn't such a quick learner at times. But what about the concept of slow as a good thing.

I have to be nice now because of health reasons.

I ate a small bowl of rice and meat and salad and broccoli at midnight. Maybe I needed that instead of the vegetarian healthy food I ate, to make up for my less than healthy caffeinated drink choice earlier.

I feel hypersensitive, and even little fun argumentative things that would be fine to look at earlier...they're not for now.

I just have to go with it. This is what my body gets like sometimes. It needs me to feed it the proper food and needs me to not get distracted. It's like a baby.

Maybe I should say "she." She is like a creature I must take care of very good care of, like the kind of care people need to use with babies. Yes, it's a bit like that, honestly.

People who were born or currently live with systems that are sensitive need to take care of them.

I know what it is. Stress affects me physically,  probably or possibly more than it affects the average person. It really does. It probably actually depletes me of vitamins and stuff. Wow. Aren't genetics and environmental factors interesting?

Oh, wait...B?

I have a B-12 vitamin and took it.

I have felt really weird this evening, like, as if a small 8 oz drink with espresso in the a.m. is still  affecting me.  Now I am just, ugh, not getting that again. I don't know why I got it. It was kind of for nostalgic reasons or something. I don't know if my body's just tricking me? It seems that maybe I can deal with just regular coffee in the morning sometimes.

I read something about when people have certain kinds of B vitamin deficiencies, they don't process caffeine as well. And also you get pins and needles feelings when you have a deficiency. And I got pins and needles in my hands yesterday and feet today. It was a really icky feeling. 

Have to focus on health.