Being Heard

I have been giving this a lot of thought this morning. My mind has been swirling around in all kinds of directions.

My thoughts started out this morning in that angry disappointed place - that for so many years it feels like I haven't been heard. Then I started thinking about how I always had a sense that my parents didn't listen to me, some my brothers and sisters didn't listen to me or want to hear from me, my boyfriends didn't listen to me, even good friends didn't listen to me, sometimes the doctors didn't hear me especially when I needed to be heard. No wonder I have issues about being heard and trusting that I will be heard. I have remained silent all these years because I didn't think anyone would listen. I held back what I wanted to say because I didn't think I would be truely heard. Then I started thinking about how women culturally aren't listened to. Our word still doesn't carry as much weight as a man's in this and many society's. I think women have remained silent all these years and we pay a deep psychological cost to our own psyches, though in the last 75 years we have have become more vocal and more outspoken, more courageous in breaking the glass ceiling, but it isn't broken yet. This I painfully slowly learned after college as I began to question my society, but most especially the structure of the church and it was really hit home during grad school - and I became even angrier especially about misogony. It is still at work in our society. And then a very painful memory, 30+ years old reared its ugly head and I found I had to face it again and perhaps deal with the part of it's secret and to finally take it's power to hurt me away, as it has over the last 30+ year.

So it build's - not being heard and listened to over time can lead to a lot of anger and depression. This is a pattern I am trying to break. I feel like recently I have been heard in a special way and so the depression lifts. My sister has an empathic understanding of the stuggle I am going through and so does my therapist about being a single white women. Sometimes it is all I need - to know I have been heard for what I say.

And this is also a reason that I am seeking out others to make a retreat, in NYC, for women where they can be quiet, listen to themselves and then to be listened to when they speak. I think the Red Tent Temple Movement might be a way of creating that place. As Nell Morton said we "Listen others into being" and I think if we are honest with ourselves, we listen ourselves into being too - by listening to that deep quiet voice in each of us that urges us to be our true selves. I am trying to have the courage to really listen to myself and to others.