The Beginning

Once upon a time....

Wait a minute. Doesn't every fairy tale begin with "once upon a time"?  So do some of the best lessons (1). While there are many things we have no control over, there are plenty of things we can control.

We can control every choice we make.

We can control every decision we make.

We can control whether we are going to react or we are going to wait so we can choose a specific action... including our ability to choose not to act at all. Of course, choices get easier the more we practice making choices, sooooo....

Once upon a time, I didn't know how to choose. I was paralyzed by fear of making the wrong choice... doing the wrong thing or making a decision that hurt other people. I didn't consciously understand why I froze when I needed to make a decision, that took decades of therapy to unravel. Along that journey of healing, I learned that a lot of history has been intentionally misrepresented, a very important fact to take into consideration when evaluating information to make a decision.

When I was a child, I spent summers with my aunt and uncle on Ocracoke Island. I had enjoyed shorter visits with them in Durham before they took jobs on Ocracoke as the first doctor/nurse team since WWII. I had gone to synagogue with them, to discover that their rabbi told the same stories (albeit out of a different book) as the minister at the church my parents took me to on Sundays and Wednesdays. The rabbi was very patient with me, and answered all the questions an 8 (and then 9) year old autistic child could ask about why the books had the same stories, but the books themselves were different. Why was my church's book big, rectangular, and heavy while the rabbi read from a single long piece of paper and the kids at the synagogue read out of smaller books with English on one side and Hebrew on the other. Why didn't the story about Adam and Eve told in the synagogue cover the "suffering and pain of childbirth" as punishment like my church?

This very kind and patient man explained that the Torah of the synagogue had the original stories that were later copied into the Old Testament. He explained halacha, and how every Torah written today was counted and had the exact same number of characters as the Torah had when it was first set in the first scroll of the Torah. That archeologists had recovered stone tablets and papyrus that were older than the US, and they had the exact same number of Hebrew characters as Jewish current copies of the same ancient texts published now.

That's what I call dedication to accuracy!

That adherence to accuracy is not a trait cherished by very many people... and that is reflected in the ways we share history.

In the US, there has evolved a lot of hypocrisy around knowledge, science, and education. This hypocrisy preserves and enshrines classism, racism, ableism, sexism, genderism and ageism. It is exploited and manipulated to make it easier to "control the masses". As an autistic child, I could see hypocrisy existed, but I didn't understand the whys and the hows. As a young adult, I adopted a guiding principle of "don't be a hypocrite". I would ask myself if a decision I was making would make me a hypocrite now, or in five years, or in ten years, to help me determine if it was a good decision or a potentially poor decision.

As I got older, I realized that the choices I had mad out of fear of a potential outcome brought about the exact outcome I was trying to avoid (much like the stories of Oedipus and Elektra). So I added another item to my decision making checklist:

"Choices made out of fear harm everyone involved. Choices made out of love do the least harm."

 

 When my mom died, I learned that people were fallible. They didn't walk on water, they weren't perfect, and they didn't always live up to their promises or ideals. As an autistic teen, I didn't have the maturity or skills to process my loss plus the disappointment of being either outright betrayed by the adults I had thought were trustworthy. The church I had grown up in was a source of betrayal, disappointment, and abandonment after my mom died. Where my mom had been a member of the congregation that had made and delivered meals to multiple families whenever a family member or loved one had become ill or passed away, and she had frequently taken me along to deliver these meals... it quickly became apparent to me that my sisters and I were not receiving the same support from the church that my mom had delivered to others.

To learn that this difference in treatment was because my mom had been born and raised a Methodist, and therefore never fully accepted at my dad's Southern Baptist Church (as we were planning her funeral services) turned me against not just Baptists, but Christians in general and God in particular. How could he let my mom die, and set rules in place that allowed people who praised and worshipped Him be discriminated against? Thus began what my family would call my "rebellious stage" and what I call my awakening.

I had probably been started on this path by a middle school teacher who taught world, national and finally local history, via a comparative religion lens. Not that any of us students recognized that viewing ancient Middle Eastern/Mesopotamian history, and learning to identify climate and food availability by reading various religious texts was comparative religion. We merely learned that social mores and rules are developed to ensure the society that developed those rules and mores would do more than just survive: Mores, morals, social agreements, and laws were supposed to evolve so the society could thrive. Religious texts, like the Torah, the Q'ran and the Bible, myths about ancient civilizations' various gods, were merely a tool our teacher used to help us learn about and understand these cultures.

That foundational knowledge, as well as the learned skill of evaluation of observations, led to my teen self leaving the hypocrisy of the church and the adults who let me down. I set out in pursuit of knowledge, and I hoped that knowledge would help me understand how people could say one thing and then do the exact opposite, and how those same people would then call me "the problem child" when I questioned the discrepancies between their claimed values and their chosen actions.

The almost 40 year journey between then and now taught me I don't want to be a leader. I struggle enough with the responsibility of taking care of myself, living in alignment with my own morals and values, and doing no harm. I don't want the responsibility of anyone else's choices, decisions or actions. I definitely don't want to be policing anyone's thoughts. I don't want to tell anyone what to do, how to do it, or when to do it (contrary to popular belief). I don't even tell my kids what to do. I believe children are simply smaller, less experienced, younger human beings who deserve to have their autonomy fully respected and need plenty of opportunities to learn how to successfully fail and then try again.

I was a teacher of second graders for a year, and I wonder what those kids (adults with children of their own) remember about me now. The principal of the small Christian school where I was offered a 2 week job as a substitute, which turned into a full time job for the remainder of the school year, was initially delighted with how I used civics lessons to teach the kids to take responsibility for their own behavior. In the initial 2 weeks as a substitute, the class and I worked together to establish trust, so the students could turn themselves around from being "the problem class" into being "the model class" simply by my listening to their needs. Unfortunately,   the school was in the South, and my promotion of equality and equity in the classroom to form a cohesive bond between all the classmates came to a screeching halt on Monday morning, the 4th of March, 1991, when a young girl in my class told her best friend "my daddy said we can't be friends anymore because....."

I changed my week's lesson to include current events that had led to that statement, which angered half the parents of the class to the point they requested my resignation. The offer for me to return the following year to teach again was rescinded, as parents who had loved my approach with their children the week before collaborated to find an excuse the school board would approve of for my removal. I learned that the status quo values the comfort of oppressors and bullies over the safety of the most vulnerable... even in churches that claim to follow Jesus' doctrine on loving all of  "the little children". While "red and yellow, Black and white" may all be "precious in His Sight" those parents taught me (and their children) that some children are more precious than others... 

I started making plans to leave the country shortly after... and I realized I don't want to be a teacher.

In other countries, I learned that missionaries and ministers are the first wave of invasion. They are the people who come in, carrying and planting seeds of oppression. What they see as salvation is received and implemented as discrimination. Because who argues against the Gods? Apparently a monotheistic entity who declares that it doesn't share well with others, and doesn't want to share space with any God called by any other name. Or more accurately, the followers of the said monotheistic entity, who selectively quote to justify their murder and exploitation of people, to plunder resources and send said resources back to their home countries (2,3,4). While each individual heart may have been in the right place (5), the results (loss of autonomy, loss of culture, loss of traditional knowledge and spirituality, generational trauma, loss of resources, etc) contradict the claimed "good intentions" (6,7,8,9,10).

This educational experience has shaped me into becoming a better person... a better human being... than the one who left the US. It clarified that I have a responsibility to listen to the people who belong in any given area/to any given land, because they have the generational knowledge of how to best care for that land. I can learn how to do no harm, by respectfully observing (instead of offering opinions based on my experiences elsewhere). That once trust is established, human nature enjoys sharing and contrasting experiences, but sharing that information before I have done the work to earn trust is viewed as saviorism... and received in the same vein.

There is so much information on how to heal the damage our ancestors have done to the planet, their is so much knowledge at risk of being lost due to power imbalances and the isms that protect the Abrahamic status quo around the globe, that I have made choices out of fear of contributing to the problem. I have frequently withdrawn, rather than risk doing harm. In other words, like the very adults I grew so angry with as a teen, I have not always followed my own advice. Sometimes, I have let fear of an outcome make my decisions to not speak, to not write, to not share.

To not ask for help.

To not fully commit to a given path.

The goal, this time, is to have no goal. This "once upon a time" will be a constant work in progress, because every single day is a new beginning. Every choice we make is a new opportunity. And as the song says, even when we choose not to decide, we still have made a choice (11).

My happily ever after is up to me, I don't want the responsibility of shaping anyone else's... but I am willing to share my stories.

And I am willing to share the stories of those who wish to share, who share similar values of leaving the world a better place than we found it. People willing to make decisions based on what is in the best interests of our grandchildren's grandchildren's children. Together, we can make a difference that repairs past harms.

If we are willing.

My Guiding Principles as an Adult

1. Do No Harm

2. Don't Be a Hypocrite

3. Leave a Room (or the World) a Better Place Than I Found It

4. Make Choices out of Love, Not Fear

5. Find the Hidden Opportunity

6. Be Kind

 

1.  See our friends at traumahealingprevention.blogspot.com for information on how fairy tales preserve information in a memorable and shareable format.
2. Christianity, Invasion and Conquest
   
3. The Jews and the Muslim Conquest of Spain
   
4. Religious Conflicts in the Conquest of Mexico
   
5. Christianity and the World of Cultures
   
6. Indigenous Religions and Globalization’s Effects on the Earth and Ecology
   
7. Understanding the Impact of Historical Trauma Due to Colonization on the Health and Well-Being of Indigenous Young Peoples: A Systematic Scoping Review
   
8. Canada’s Colonial Genocide of Indigenous Peoples: A Review of the Psychosocial and Neurobiological Processes Linking Trauma and Intergenerational Outcomes
   
9. The Impacts of English Colonial Terrorism and Genocide on Indigenous/Black Australians
   
10. Residential schools and the effects on Indigenous health and well-being in Canada—a scoping review
    
11. "Rush (the band), "Freewill" Quotes." Quotes.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2023. Web. 11 Oct. 2023. <https://www.quotes.net/quote/34381>.

Potential Resources:

1. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Genesis-3-16/
2. http://www.jewishanswers.org/ask-the-rabbi-2028/genesis-316-he-will-rule-over-you/
3. https://ancienthebrewgrammar.wordpress.com/tag/genesis-316/
4. https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-torah-scroll-how-the-copying-process-became-sacred
5. https://www.koltorah.org/halachah/halacha-and-copyright-laws-by-rabbi-howard-jachter
6. https://hiddencompass.net/story/the-lost-midwives-of-ocracoke/
7. https://www.villagecraftsmen.com/my-first-island-patient-by-dr-warren-silverman/

by TBM

2023.03.01

Step One: Learning to Listen

 Step One

We all have to start somewhere.... so why not start with listening? Most of us have been indoctrinated into how to listen:

1. Look the speaker in the eye
2. Listen to what they say
3. Rephrase and restate what was heard
4. Listen to the speaker clarify what they meant, versus what was heard
5.  Repeat step 3 to confirm that what was heard is what was meant
6. Repeat steps 3 through 5 until both people agree the listener heard what the speaker intended

There's a few problems with this. 

    First, it assumes both the speaker and the listener speak the same language. 

    Second, it assumes that all the words being used carry the same definitions for both the speaker and the listener. 

    Third, it is incredibly Euro-centric and ableist, as many cultures and many neuro-divergent people will not retain the information as desired because eye contact is a physio-language about dominance.

Want a dog or wild animal to attack you? 

    Look it straight in the eyes (direct eye contact). 

Want to accelerate the attack? 

    Smile. 

Eye contact plus baring of teeth is a show of dominance and subconsciously triggers a fight or flight response in most people and animals, even if we have been conditioned to not act on that response.

So, now that we know why we don't get the desired results we want, are we ready to learn how to listen?

Some are, and some aren't. For those who are, keep reading, please.

           

Sandia Mountains, 2021. Photo by Torrey Brooks-Mauga

 [Above image: white sandy path between desert plants of cholla, mesquite, manzanita and other native plants. Path leads off into the distance, where it continues up foothills of the Sandia Mountains. The sandy path is barely visible in the distance, winding between dark green, lime green, and brown desert plants.]

The first step to being able to really listen, is learning to be comfortable alone. It's learning how to listen to silence. It is learning how to listen to nature. It is learning how to listen and identify new sounds... changes in sounds... changes in patterns.

Some of us have access to wild outdoor spaces right outside our backdoor. 

Others are lucky to live in a city that recognizes the necessity of green spaces for the citizens to be healthy. 

Most live in urban sprawl, with little or no access to safe outdoor spaces. 

Some of us are unable to get out of our bed due to health issues.

If you are lucky enough to live somewhere that values access to nature, and you are physically able to "get your toes in the dirt", the first step is fairly easy. 

Find a place to comfortably sit outside (on the ground, in a camp chair, in a wheelchair) and take 5 minutes to put your feet in contact with the ground to just listen. 

Check your watch or phone for what time it is, then cover it up and allow your eyes to close or unfocus. 

    If you are focusing only with your ears on listening to the sounds of the wind, sounds of one plant rubbing against another plant, sounds of birds and insects, the likelihood of thoughts "wandering" is pretty low, even for us neurodivergent folks who struggle to pay attention for a long time.

If you notice your thoughts are wandering, don't worry! 

    Check your timepiece, and make a note of how long you were able to listen before thoughts intruded. You paid attention for exactly the right amount of time, for you! 

Make a note of it, celebrate your accomplishment no matter how short you think it is. This is a new skill, and every new skill takes practice. 

    In our fear of failure culture, the only way to overcome that fear of failure, is to celebrate even tiny successes (so yes! Celebrate that 7 seconds of being able to sit still and listen to the wind <before the first thought intruded on your listening practice> by doing something fun after writing down that 7 seconds & what thought intruded.)

Once it becomes fairly easy to sit and listen for 5 minutes (or if you notice you keep falling asleep when you practice listening) start setting a timer or alarm for when you need listening practice to end. 

    Write down the thought that intrudes and interrupts listening practice, and see if a pattern emerges. 

Value the time to practice this skill as a gift to yourself. 

Whether you are only able to spend 5 minutes in your backyard (or a park every other day), or are able to greet the sun in the  morning away from neighbors, barking dogs and the sounds of cars, this time is Sacred. 

    It is the beginning of building your Sacred Practice, it is learning to listen to discern your needs so you can learn how to take care of yourself. It is the first step toward integration, the first step on a new Path.

Summary:

1. Carve out time, at least 5 minutes each day, to just sit still and practice listening (ideally in nature with toes in the dirt, at minimum somewhere safe and able to stare at a plant)
2. Take note of what time you start, and then turn over the time piece until a thought (or timer) signals the end of the session
3. Write down how long the session lasted and what thought ended the session
4. If it feels good/ brings joy, write a summary of sounds heard, or how the sounds felt/what feelings they invoked
5. At the end of the month, look for any patterns
1. Did any one thought pop up more often than others?
2. Is there a theme to the thoughts?
3. Are you falling asleep during practice?
4. Do you feel better or worse on days you miss practice?
5. Any other changes or impacts?
6. Remember to conclude each session with a reward, to encourage more practice, and indulge in a larger reward at the end of each week, and the end of each month 

One through five are merely examples, don't let my suggestions limit how you evaluate your practice/ how you look for patterns, or the practice itself. Repetition makes it easier, builds comfort, and strengthens the muscles necessary to improve the skill.

May you have a wonderful Equinox, and enjoy this first step in learning to listen! Thank you for allowing me to share.

This Equinox edition written by Torrey Brooks-Mauga: Doula, dancer, peer2peer, and practicing solitaire

Witchling Introductions

Welcome Witchlings

 To those who haven't engaged with the original Witchlings Blog, Hi! This is a compilation of information being shared so none of us need to feel alone. When possible, sources will be cited, but most of this is "result in progress" of the distilled experiences from five decades of screwing up... research... mistakes... adjustments... and just plain surviving.

For everyone who moved over from the old blog, Welcome Back!

This will be a similar format, but with more accountability. There will be a bi-monthly email for those who sign up (don't want to clutter up anyone's inbox), this blog, and the opportunity to join Zoom Meetings and talk with others. The only way to join the email is to send an email to

WitchlingsNewsletter@gmail.com 

and request to be added to the newsletter recipients. If, at any time you wish to be removed from the list, simply send an email to

witchlingsnewsletter@gmail.com

and ask to be removed. That's it. No fees, no requests for donations, no hoops to jump through. You decide you want the email/newsletter?

Then write a request to WitchlingsNewsletter@gmail.com and request the newsletter.

You decide you changed your mind?

Send an email to WitchlingsNewsletter@gmail.com and let us know you don't want the newsletter anymore, you will be removed from the mailing list.

Accountability and consent at their finest.

Witchlings Newsletter will cover the responsibilities of walking this particular path, resources and reading materials, and easy introductions into how to evaluate information to determine if "this is for me" or "this is not for me". This is a shame free, blame free space that still incorporates accountability and responsibility.

Why?

Because shame, blame and guilt are counterproductive to learning, and because learning skills without learning about the responsibility of carrying the knowledge is irresponsible and frequently harmful. Bypassing responsibility creates new generations of trauma, and preventable lateral trauma is unacceptable collateral damage.

So look for upcoming blogs, videos, and if you sign up, The Witchlings Newsletter! The blog is available to anyone who takes the time to read it, the newsletter will be the only way to access videos, sign up for Zoom meetings/workshops, and find out about future potential meet & greets.

Looking forward to getting to know you,