May We Learn to Hold Discernment and Nuance
This post is taken from the Pleasure Letter, the intimate correspondence I have with my email list. If you would like to receive more of this kind of content from me in future, sent straight to your inbox, I invite you to join.
Sitting with the mystery of this uncertain time since the pandemic and now waiting to see the results of the US presidential election (Please go vote if you are able.)
If you’re in the northern hemisphere like me, I hope you are getting to enjoy some of this intoxicatingly beautiful fall weather.
Here is what is recently bringing me pleasure in the most expansive definition of the word:
1. Prentis Hemphill’s podcast “Finding Our Way”, is so beautiful. All of it. But I am especially appreciating and suggesting episode 5, “Ask Me anything.”
In that episode, they dive into the meaning behind their quote,
“Boundaries are the distance in which I can love you and me simultaneously.”
Which is one of my favorite quotes to explain boundaries.
They also talk about the broadness of somatics and how the word itself shows a severing of humanity due to colonizer culture. I’m totally paraphrasing here and please listen to it.
But from what I gathered, before colonization, “somatics” were such a regular part of life.
Every earth based culture has singing, dancing, ritual that is connected to the body. However, colonizer culture severed us from the body so that we have now created a word for such an originally normal aspect of our lives, “somatics.” This feels so important.
While there is validity in really learning something in depth and safely so it doesn't get too watered down or become harmful, there is also this stealing and colonizing of a very indigenous and human concept. Some folks try to profit off of somatics and make it this exclusive thing while, in reality, we all get to have access to our bodies.
We all deserve access to healing and healing modalities that get us back in touch or keep us in touch with our bodies.
2. I’ve been recording my dreams each morning as a part of my writing practice and then picking a tarot card.
I’m actively paying attention to symbols and synchronicities and it’s inviting in a fuck ton more presence to the simple things that before would go unnoticed.
Integrating my subsconscious with my conscious. Life is slowing down.
God is everywhere. Outward events feel more serious and yet have less
weight. But also more weight and less serious. The feeling of holding nuance and seeing from a bird’s eye view. A practice I am grateful for while sitting in the unknown of this upcoming election.
I have been using the Thoth deck for this. I know Aleister Crowley was/is a problematic figure AND I deeply recognize that I hold the skill of discernment necessary to learn from someone and not want to emulate everything about them.
I think our collective unconscious has a sneaky habit of putting leaders and teachers high on pedestals and as soon as they fuck up, we rip them off.
Instead, may we learn to hold discernment and nuance.
Seeing everything in polarities of either all good or all bad is creepily similar to the catholic indoctrination I received as a child. While I am still disentangling myself from this binary type of thinking, I also recognize I have the power and skill for discernment for holding space for conflict and differing opinions. Something I deeply hope my beautiful leftist feminists community can learn to do.
The infighting makes sense because we care about so many fucking important issues and systems of oppression that are constantly trying to rid us of our humanity.
And I hope we can learn to keep choosing love and work together...which brings me to...
3. A beautiful book I have been reading, “I hope we choose love” by Kai Chang Thom.
There is a quote that speaks to me so deeply. This book has been healing to read and recognize how sometimes feminism can be like a cult and still replicate the systems we are trying to avoid.
This book is blowing my mind and making me cry. Please don’t take these quotes out of context, dive in and read it all.
“Performance of virtue: the social justice internet is rife with peer pressure to repeatedly and consistently demonstrate one’s adherence to the norms of thought and belief that are currently in fashion.”
“Shame rules community, and not only the social justice kind: in every tight knit, ideologically steeped community I have known—Chinese Canadian, Christian, queer—shame and judgement pervade. In the social justice movement, privilege is our original sin, and the doctrine is our Hail Mary. The political worship and the protest are our church, and the organizers and speakers are our priests. Shame and judgment are the twin faces of trauma, and we are trained to see ourselves and others through their eyes.”
“Unfortunately, my training also gave me the impression that validation was the only essential aspect of support, and didn’t really go into when validation is actually enabling or unhelpful. That there might be other, more complex forms of validation than active listening was also left unexplored. And this approach was politicized, as in, “If you don’t validate everything that someone says about their lived experience, then you are Fucked-up and Gaslighting, and you will hurt them for life!””
-Kai Chang Thom, I Hope We Choose Love, A Trans Girl’s Notes from the End of the World
Ahh well, here's to admitting what I like, even if the things I am enjoying don’t have a perfect moral character. I say all of this to hopefully give you, likely and hopefully a feminist (or a different identifier that feels similar), who happens to use the internet, that you have permission to be nuanced.
To like what you like. To know that you have the power of discernment and not place people on pedestals. But to take in work in its complexity and not have to be monitored by the feminsit cop in your head shouting that what you enjoy is problematic and you will be shamed and punished and punished and then shamed!!!
4. All that being said, I am here for feedback.
I am forever a learner and unlearner. And I am so grateful for you being here, reading my work and that you are allowing me to take up space in your digital mailbox. What a personal and intimate thing.
5. Finally, with so much pleasure, I am so excited to announce and tease that I will be opening the doors to Pleasure Witch Academy once again this November.
You will be hearing more from me about this soon, but if you want to be one of the first to know all about this path to pleasure I will be offering this fall? Get on the waitlist!
Until the next pleasure letter, here are some journaling prompts for you to chew on and ponder:
What does it feel like to reflect on the quote, “Boundaries are the distance in which I can love you and me simultaneously.” -Prentis Hemphill ? What does this bring up for you?
What is something that you feel embarrassed or guilty about loving? What does conflict feel like in your body? What sensations does it bring up? To offer yourself some empathy, what if you held space for the part of you that liked it, even if others thing that is “bad” or “problematic”?
Who have you been putting on a pedestal? What do you think that is doing to you? What is that doing to them?
What is bringing pleasure and/or hope to you in your life?
xx, Luna
THE PLEASURE LETTER
The most personal of newsletters: worthwhile musings from my intimate life to yours
In an era of newsletter fatigue, I understand your email is a PRECIOUS thing. It’s not something I take lightly. From ecstatic revelations in my intimate life to what I am currently moved by; like books/podcasts/music/events/toys, my goal is to make these letters of pleasure something profoundly intimate, open-worthy, and valuable.