Survival Tools for Forgotten Women - 4: Flashlight to Search Your Soul

- How wonderful to be wise, to be able to analyze and interpret things. (Ecclesiastes 8:1)
- Learn to be wise and develop good judgment. (Proverbs 4:5)

Part 4 of 16: Flashlight to Search Your Soul

For starters you can hit the floor and pray for wisdom and guidance. This needs to be approached with an attitude of humility and the acknowledgement that it is possible that you have certain shortcomings when it comes to self-analysis. You may not want to face the truth about yourself, your upbringing, your ethnic culture, your religious beliefs. You have, instead, developed a pattern of avoiding or ending relationships with people who tell you unpleasant truths about yourself, and gravitating towards those who only flatter you even if it should be to your detriment. The answer to your prayer for wisdom will come, but will you be willing to face the truth?

If you do face it, however, you will be liberated from the flaw of cloudy judgment, and pave the way to the establishment of truth in various aspects of your life. Then when you hear messages about yourself, you will know the difference between the truth and a lie, friend and foe.

Be still and listen… What is the predominant message that you get from within your self? That will be the maker or breaker of your sense of worth. It will drown out all other voices from any other sources, and as unfortunate as it would be to internalize others’ false definitions of you, the real tragedy would be for you yourself to be the source of that distortion.

A good starting place in trying to know yourself would be to make a self assessment list and ponder over it. This is not a joke. On one side, list all your shortcomings or negatives as communicated to you over the years, and your assets or pluses on the other. Remember, we are discussing character traits, so for now leave out things like “nice hair”, “bust size”, “acne”. And don’t just stick to the ones you’re not sure about either. For good measure, maybe you should jot beside each trait or issue, some of the sources or reasons supporting that conclusion: family or cultural heritage, religious teachings, society, popular culture, a particular individual, your own mind.  And then differentiate the ones that you agree with from the ones you disagree with or are not sure about, and say why.

Go find an unbiased, disinterested listener to see you through the process of defining yourself, moles, warts and all. A stranger has no stake in the effects of their opinion about you, and therefore has no motivation in lying to you.

If you were raised in a culture that has served to place barriers between you and paying a professional for that kind of therapeutic unburdening, then look for free therapy. Church is usually a good place, not always, but usually a good place to start. If necessary, exercise courage and pay for therapy, just try not to end up with a quack. When you’re going for your unburdening, take your list along but leave your heart behind; it will only get in the way. Take along your ears for listening, the part of your tongue that you will need to ask for the help you need, and your head for sorting through the opinions expressed and any advice given. Oh, and bring along the pillow from last time, you might need it.

Regardless of whatever method you choose to use to pursue this wisdom, sit on any new information for a little while, digesting and pondering what you have heard. Use your pillow often. Pray yourself through to a season of enlightenment. Some days, you will simply need to nurse a bruised ego on the pillow as certain truths hit you. If you are receptive to the truth, you will emerge tender and sore from the heat of that fire, yet glowing from the light of the wisdom that you would have found through this process.

But don’t get comfortable, it’s not over yet, this is only the beginning of the solution process. While your fire is still hot, grab the scalpel and plunge it into the flames! We’re going to excise some stuff.

- To be continued...

Related Articles:

• Part 1- Survival Tools for Forgotten Women
• Part 2 - Mirror-Mirror
• Part 3 - Pillow for Protection
• Part 4 - Flashlight to Search Your Soul

Survival Tools for Forgotten Women - 3: Pillow for Protection

Part 3 of 16

“As a girl thinks in her heart, so she is…”

You’ve heard some variation of this, I’m quit sure: “garbage in garbage out.” It all starts with a healthy sense of self. You must seek out messages that feed your spirit and soul, instead of those that rob you and leave you lower on the shelf of self-esteem than when you started out.

The reality of it is, you don’t have to go far to find these messages, they aren’t exactly in code; all you need is a relationship with three human beings, and boom: you’re bound to hear at some point or other a message whose sole purpose is to dampen your enthusiasm for life, stall your pace in striving for your goals, and plunder your storehouse of dreams.

Depending on what part of the world you were raised in, or what worldview you were immersed into from day one, these messages could even have formed the core, the very essence of your identity as a person, a woman, you. There is no other definition of yourself that you are aware of. This predetermined identity formula permeates all that you are and all the decisions you make, thus driving your very destiny in a direction that nothing seems able to alter.

Now, I’m not advocating an ostrich mentality, which refuses to hear necessary, sometimes-painful truths from well-meaning, healthy people in your life who care about you.

At this age (yah, at this age, if you’re old enough to be reading this), you should have devised some kind of screening process by which to sort out “friend” from “I’m-not-really-sure-if-this-person-means-me-well.” Within the boundaries of that definition, you should then be able to sort out what is advice, helpful hints, loving criticism, the truth, all intended for your progress at the end of the day, and what, from the other camp, is a campaign of messages being planted in your mind to start a process rolling, whereby you would develop a pattern of self-deprecation and the eventual establishment of a sense of failure rather than a sense of purpose in your life.

Don’t know how to sort friend from foe?

For starters, you’re going to have to learn how to use your head and your knees.

You can’t stop the garbage from flowing. The only thing you can control is what you have jurisdiction over, and your mind is indisputably at the top of that list. Only you can block the crap from getting into it.

You’re probably agreeing with me by now, thinking: “Oh yeah, sure. Don’t listen to, or look at anything that would contaminate that sacred space… blah-blah-blaarh - who hasn’t heard that before?” But there is another perspective to this crap-control, which we often don’t see because we are so focused on self-gratification that everything else becomes mere fodder to feed that bottomless pit.

Here’s that nugget: get the focus off yourself - how your feelings can be placated, your needs met, how your people were oppressed, why you are entitled, why your kid should have this and that even though you can’t afford it.

Stop holding your friends hostage every midnight when you can’t sleep for thinking over all your issues, every holiday when you feel lonely, every December 31 when you haven’t met a goal that you didn’t work to achieve – because guess what? When you place yourself at the center of every decision that you and everybody else make, you are only searching for garbage.

After a while, your friends will learn to give you the right answers to get you to hang up the phone, straight men will master the art of flattering you so that you can get that mushy feeling that makes you feel like hugging them, and cooking for them, and sleeping with them with no other commitment from them. And then one day it will happen: you will be find the perfect guy who is sensitive and always says the right things – but then cannot deliver on the other stuff that every woman needs because… he’s gay. Never pretended he wasn’t, all the signs were there, but you were so focused on how you felt that you missed the signs! You might even have ended up marrying him before discovering this, if he had an agenda. Ouch.

Before you hit that low point, bend your knees and hit the floor.

You should learn to pray, meditate, or whatever you call it in the culture in which you were raised. If you don’t believe in any power or authority outside yourself or some human being that you know - if you don’t know how to shut off the clamor in your head for a few minutes, stay still without thinking of how you can fulfill yet another of your emotional needs, and hope to receive enlightenment – then I can only hope that there are people in your life who would be willing to invest the emotional energy into doing so on your behalf.

Now, did you bring the flashlight?   - To be continued.

Related Articles:

• Part 1- Survival Tools for Forgotten Women
• Part 2 - Mirror-Mirror
• Part 3 - Pillow for Protection

Survival Tools for Forgotten Women - 2: Mirror-Mirror

Part 2: Mirror-Mirror

Look closely now, don’t blink or you’ll miss her… A quick swish, swish. Pretty fabric… What a lovely outfit, a little out of place here, though, but still pretty… Oh, those braids, really intricate, I wonder how long it took to plant? sew? glue on… But wait, here comes another woman, obviously from some exotic, far-away place too, although dressed in jeans. You can always tell. It’s something about the gait, the carriage. No accent, though. Hmm, not so sure…

Anyway, looking at her, you can just see images of her world flashing through your mind - so distant, so far-removed from yours, perhaps a different worldview, another belief system that surely has some effect on the fashion statement, the hairstyle, the demeanor emanating from the gait…

Perhaps where she was raised, people don’t stress over their next birthday, they’re thankful to be alive right now. Obviously, not too many people live on a budget over there: they get what they need from wherever, as and when it’s available to them. And the doctor’s? Please, get real. That’s a luxury reserved for the rich and powerful and connected; let alone insurance, what is that?

So where’s the similarity between you and her? None. Case closed. Useless ride.

For starters, okay, so you are considered a “minority” (whatever that means) where you now live, although you feel you have assimilated well into the surrounding foliage. People can’t tell from looking at you and listening to you that you were born in one of those exotic places. It seems so far-removed from who you are today. It’s not as if you deliberately try to “pass” or anything like that, it just never comes up anymore as the years go by.

The most important of all the differences between you and her, this other woman with a subservient attitude to everything out there, is most definitely that attitude which you don’t have, nor intend to adopt anytime soon. And back there, those who aren’t subservient are radical, political icons craving martyrdom (again, The News). This, you most definitely aren’t. Yours is a different breed. And so you still don’t see yourself in her.

Welcome to the club of The Forgotten. Kick off those heels, grab a glass of something from the fridge, and get ready to read on. And while you’re at it, grab these tools on your way to the couch, you’re going to need them: pillow, flashlight/torch, scalpel, broom, wheelbarrow, trashcan, scale, bulldozer, boot, key, remote control, goblet, tape measure, rope.

- To be continued

Related Articles:

• Part 1 - Survival Tools for Forgotten Women
• Part 2 - Mirror-Mirror
• Part 3 - Pillow for Protection