Navigating Heart/Hard Times

For the week of July 11

Jul 15, 2022

✨A few things✨

The Guerrilla Feminist is reader-supported! Thank you to the 30 folks who pay monthly to support my work. If you want to be added to a paid plan, go here.
Sign up for my future offerings of Digital Violence Survivor Support
Part of an org/institution? Sign up for Digital Violence Prevention Programming
Send an anonymous question to Ask Guerrilla Femme

Dear Readers,

My anxiety has been off the charts as of late. Obviously this is in part due to, well, everything happening in the world. More personally, I’m dealing with the aftermath of a breakup of a relationship I desperately wanted, but was essentially pushed out of when he should have been pulling me closer. I saw a future with this person. I thought I would spend the rest of my life with him, but alas, love isn’t always enough. The old adage, “If you love something, set it free” feels apt here. I set us both free.

I don’t think anyone has ever loved me as much as I have loved them. And that’s okay. It feels a bit sad to type, but I am a person who has always loved love—all types—immensely and in big ways. I am used to others not being able to give the heavy, weighted-blanket type of love that I give. I am used to being “too much,” “too caring.” My love has a tendency to overwhelm—especially for those who have never felt such a thing. I do not, cannot, and will not apologize for this.

I spent my 20s internalizing that my love was bad. I spent my early 30s still struggling with this. Now, in my mid-30s, I’m certain that my love was never the problem. Its bigness was never the issue. That feels revelatory.

I am a person with deep-seated abandonment/relationship trauma and ever since the one who completely shook my world apart in 2014 (you know who you are), I am always thinking of the ending of things. I live and love with feet/head ready to run. My heart stands still, though. Always.

When I love someone, whether platonically or romantically, it’s a heart-choice, not a brain-choice; not that initial feeling anyways. My starfish heart glues itself onto another’s, and that’s it. I’m there forever or until we part.

I wanted myself more in the end. And that’s a really good feeling. I’ve learned that you always need to choose yourself, but especially when someone is actively pushing you away.

I hope to someday find someone who loves me as much as I love them—and is able to let me in and build a world with me—and doesn’t want to leave.

And I will always love me most, because I’m all I’ve got, and all I will ever truly have—and for the first time in my life, that doesn’t make me sad.

xL<3

Reading List 🔖

Cruel and Unusual Nourishment - Erica X Eisen
The irony here is that prison wardens in fact understand food’s relationship to power and politics very well—and regularly clamp down on access to food as a way of indirectly eroding other rights. When Arpaio gloated in 2014 that any prisoners who “disrespected the flag” would be given only bread and water, he was restricting not merely their diets but their political speech. And when guards threaten to cut off commissary access—the only way for prisoners to supplement the insufficient fare provided at mealtimes—for those who don’t fall in line, they are using hunger to quash the ability of prisoners to dissent and organize.

Old Not Other - Kate Kirkpatrick & Sonia Kruks
Ageism is still so deeply engrained as to go undetected. Stereotypes (often especially hostile to women) are learned and internalised in childhood, from the wicked old witches and vicious aunts in children’s stories (think Hansel and Gretel; think Roald Dahl), to demeaning representations of old age seen on various media, to overhearing parents and others ridicule old relatives or call them a burden. In these ways, children learn to participate in the general social stigmatisation of the old that they will then perpetuate as adults.

“Nice White Ladies” Helped Overturn Roe - Jessie Daniels
It's dangerous to assume all women want to help one another. White women have a long history of upholding the white supremacist patriarchy.

Midwest Dispatch: Planned Parenthood Employees’ Push to Unionize Is More Urgent Than Ever - Sarah Lahm
As a result, many more patients in need of an abortion will likely be headed to Minnesota. It’s good that Minnesota will continue to be a refuge in this way, but this situation also raises some important questions. For instance, when these patients arrive, who will take care of their medical needs?

Video Games Are for Everyone—And That Should Include Disabled People - Allyssa Capri
Rather than selectively using some accessibility features, the industry should be working to raise the standard for software and hardware mechanics. To do this, there must be a consciousness shift as far as who plays games. Instead of equal, developers should be trying to make games equitable. A game should have enough accessibility options to meet people where their skills are. Putting unnecessary pressure on all consumers to play games “normally” is the same ableism that keeps disabled people across the spectrum from participating in society at their fullest potential.

Librarianship 🌻

List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding (Ukraine) - UNESCO

Nice White Librarians - Miss Julie

Books of Note 📚

Nobody Is Protected: How the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States - Reece Jones (nonfiction)

Rainbow Rainbow: Stories - Lydia Conklin (fiction)

The Kindred - Alechia Dow (young adult)

Beauty Woke - Nonieqa Ramos (children’s book)

Gaze Back: Poems - Marylyn Tan (poetry)

Overthinking about You: Navigating Romantic Relationships When You Have Anxiety, OCD, And/Or Depression - Allison Raskin (self-help)

[If you order any of the books above or any listed on my Bookshop site, a percentage goes to local bookstores and I get a small commission. Thank you for not ordering from Amazon!]

Playlist 🎵

“Rich Spirit” - Kendrick Lamar
”Right Now” - Angel Olsen
”Hush” - The Marías
”Both” - Issy Wood
”Can’t Hate Myself Into a Different Shape” - Brimheim

Mood Board 💓

Self-Care + Good Things ☕

Coffee (always). Upping my meds. Committing to doing “Morning Pages.” Treating myself so gently. Talking to friends/family. My nephew. Hope.

💖 If you have the money to spare, please donate to the following abortion funds in Wisconsin: Women’s Medical Fund, Freedom Fund, and Options Fund 💖