Tag Archives: woo woo

NPFP Guest Post: Even Wild Women Get the Blues

Welcome to RMB’s Naked Pictures of Faceless People, a series of guest posts from diverse anonymous bloggers. (Read more about NPFP’s origins.) These are the posts that are jumping to get out of us, but for whatever reason — safety, embarrassment, conflict of interest, protection of loved ones’ reputations or feelings, or so on — we don’t or won’t or can’t post at our own blogs. Anyone, whether blogger or reader only, is welcome to submit or discuss a potential post by emailing me at arwyn at raisingmyboychick dot com.

Even Wild Women Get the Blues

Tonight I am sitting in front of the computer with tears leaking down my cheeks. I cannot let the sobs reach my voice. Any minute, the phone might ring, and I must sound not only happy but sensual, sexual, inviting. No hint of non-lust-inspired huskiness can taint my tone. You see, I am a professional Domme, a phone sex worker, and a well-known leader in my kink¹. It’s a small community, the one I inhabit, and I am proud of the contributions I have made. Nevertheless, I am new to pro-ness, and what seemed to make so much sense when I first contemplated it is becoming harder and harder to do.

Why is it so hard? Did I fail to realize that this would be work, more than a 9-5 job? No, I knew that going in. I was aware of the number of hours I’d have to be available. I was aware of the work I would have to do in self-promotion. I was aware that I’d have to maintain a certain image to a certain extent, that there is a romance to what I do and that the consumers of that fantasy do not want it disrupted.

What I failed to take into account was the depression rearing its head again. It had been more than five years since I had emerged into the light again, and I honestly thought it might stay gone. Silly me. It never stays gone.

What I failed to take into account was family crisis after economical crisis after personal crisis, coming one after another for weeks and months.

What I failed to take into account was my mother fully embracing The Secret and alternative healing, and with them all the subtle and not-so-subtle shaming they bring. “You know very well that if you think negative, more negative will come! This last thing proves it! Now you need to ask the help of the Archangel Michael to burn away this awful negativity. What do you mean, you don’t believe in angels? Well, if you won’t even try, things will just keep getting worse. I’m sorry, but I have to divorce myself from your negativity before it affects me. I hope you don’t mind that I’m doing a ritual to cut the ties between us.”

What I failed to take into account was my desire to spend time with my daughter, a teenager who lives with her other parents states away, during the too-brief duration of her visit.

What I failed to take into account is the extent to which the image I maintain for my business would come to control my life. Professional Dommes, after all, are free of any entanglements (except for their adoring worshipers) and are always in control. Never mind that everyone sane knows that’s horsepucky. Pierce the veil of the fantasy in any way, and my paying customers stay away in droves.

This became even more accented in light of my status in the community. I am expected to Have My Shit Together all the time. Even community events which were to be fun and vacations for me ended up being all work and no play. Even non-kink vacation events with people who are aware of my profession became exercises in dealing with Other People’s Baggage because of my work. Even when I said up front “There is an off-duty sign over my head, here,” in advance.

Even writing this much feels like whining. I can’t honestly tell if it’s the depression talking or not. I could enumerate all the depression symptoms, but I am sure everyone actually reading this post is familiar with them. Even if I did, it wouldn’t help. I have become very good at fencing the depression off for a time, maybe even as long as a day. But then the nightmares become even worse. I won’t specify what the nightmares are. They are very triggery for almost all of the few who know about them. But sometimes the nightmares continue right into the waking world, and I have to physically check my body to make sure that it is the way it was the day before. Not just on waking, but for hours after.

The phone is ringing. A customer is on the line.

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Lucypaw (unaffiliated with the author) defines kink thusly: “Kink involves expressing sexuality in socially-transgressive ways, often dealing with power.” ↩

11 Comments | Posted on 29 August 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Naked Pictures of Faceless People | Tags: depression, kink, Mental Health, Sexuality, woo woo, work

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A good grumpy day

I was really grumpy today.

The Man is in his fourth week of mandatory overtime, and I’m very very tired of him being very very tired and us having no time together, but that wasn’t why I was grumpy.

The kid has entered the most aggravating contrarian phase, where he automatically disagrees with whatever we say, even if it’s “Hey, let’s go get some ice cream now!” But that wasn’t why I was grumpy.

The house is a wreck (in large part because of the two above points), and I can’t cook simple fried eggs without having to stop and clean a pan, but that wasn’t why I was grumpy.

I’m menstruating and cramping and exhausted and brain drained, but that wasn’t why I was grumpy.

I was grumpy simply because I was grumpy.

The things I listed above don’t exactly lend themselves to an effortlessly joyful mood, and they might be enough to challenge even the most calm, zen-like person, but they didn’t make me grumpy, because they can’t make me anything.

I just went with it. I was grumpy, nothing was going to make me less grumpy (because nothing was making me grumpy to begin with), and that was that.

No, this is not the story where I submitted to the suckitude and suddenly everything became rainbows and kisses — but it is the story of a day I survived, and it didn’t even feel like a big deal. I took the kid to the park, and didn’t yell at him once. We went grocery shopping, and I didn’t abandon him in the cart. He punched me, and I didn’t punch him back. I didn’t even really consider it. Because I was grumpy, and that’s just how it was, and it wasn’t his fault, and that was OK.

And that? That I simply didn’t care, and wasn’t attached to any particular outcome (such as happiness, or lack of grumpiness)? That meant that today was a pretty good day. Challenging, sure. Not the most fun I’ve ever had — but there was fun. There were kisses. I didn’t see any rainbows, but we baked sweet potato fries together, and that was pretty darn cool.

We have this belief in the culture I live in that our moods are always to blame on something. Either something external (we need x and y and z to be happy — so why are people with x and y and z still not happy?) or internal (we just have to think our way to happiness, and have only ourselves to blame if we “fail” — how can anyone be happy with all that pressure?). While I am all for choosing joy, as much as we are able, I also think that we are setting ourselves up for misery if we think it is possible, much less if we expect, to be 100% happy 100% of the time.

It’s just not gonna happen. Take it from someone with a mood disorder¹: moods, sometimes, just happen. Yeah, if your lifemate dies, you’re going to grieve, and it might look a lot like depression (or it might trigger full-on depression), but being depressed doesn’t “require” some catastrophic event. Sometimes it just happens.

Conversely, sometimes happiness just happens. Happiness is a lot easier when we’re not lacking basic rights — societal recognition of our humanity and freedom from marginalization and oppression; enough food and shelter and health care and free time to not worry about surviving the day, or the week, or the year; a network of family and friends, people who care for us and who we can care for in turn; a vocation that gives us satisfaction and a feeling of contributing to something greater (such as our family, our cause, or our culture) — but happiness is possible even without great good things happening to us, and even, sometimes, without those basics. Sometimes it just happens.

If we spend all our time trying to hold on to our happiness, or resenting our unhappiness, we never get to simply experience the good possible in each moment. Even when we’re grumpy. Even when things aren’t going “right”. Even when we have a child who disagrees with simply everything.

We don’t have an obligation to be happy in each moment — we don’t have any obligations or shoulds around our moods at all. Today, I was not particularly happy, ever. But because I was ok with being grumpy, I didn’t suffer my grumpiness.

So now I can look back and say: it was a good grumpy day.

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I am convinced that almost all “pathologies” are, basically, exaggerations or extreme bell-curve ends of “normal” human ways of being. We all experience mood swings; people with bipolar, like me, just do it a lot more. So my perspective on moods isn’t tainted by my “disorder”, but enhanced: what happens in everyone else on a low level, I get to experience in all its full-fledged glory. ↩

7 Comments | Posted on 13 July 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Parenting | Tags: bipolar, falling short, Mental Health, woo woo

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Quick menstrual hit: be kind to yourself, self

Living room, 11:45pm, Friday night

I’m sitting up, bleeding, supposedly trying to work but really just letting myself be distracted by the sundry wonders of the internet, yawning and unfocused and unmotivated, wondering why when my brain was so bubbly and productive just a few days ago it now feels blanker than [insert witty metaphor here]¹, thinking I’ll go to sleep as soon as I get a post up, I missed last month’s, really need to get one up now or I never will, damn I wish I’d prepared sooner, when –

– oh. Right. I’m menstruating. It’s the end of a hard week, the end of a menstrual cycle: of course I’m tired. Rather than pushing myself, ignoring my body, pretending that this cycle doesn’t affect me so I can write a post about my cycle and how it affects me (hah!), I could… Stop. Let it go. Go to bed. Before midnight, for once this week.

Kindness, to myself. What a strange idea.

I think I’ll try it.

See wut I did there? ↩

5 Comments | Posted on 10 July 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body | Tags: Menstruation, sleep, woo woo

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Forgive yourself

If you aren’t acting with compassion where you wish you were — with yourself, your child, your spouse, your family — forgive yourself.

If you can’t forgive yourself for not acting with compassion, forgive yourself for not forgiving yourself.

If you can’t forgive yourself for not forgiving yourself, forgive yourself for that.

Start somewhere. Start now. Wherever you are, whatever you’re thinking, if it’s “not ideal”, if it’s other than what you want, if it quite possibly is damaging someone you love (as not being able to forgive yourself does): forgive. Let go. Offer love. Start somewhere, because it gets easier with practice.

This is radical acceptance. If you cannot accept what is, accept your unacceptance.

When you forgive yourself for not forgiving yourself, soon you may forgive yourself for not acting with compassion.

When you forgive yourself for not acting with compassion, soon you may be able to forgive the other person, and act as you wish to in the first place.

And if not, letting go of that little bit additional resentment, letting yourself feel just that little bit better, is worth it for itself.

Start somewhere. Start now. And if you can’t or don’t or won’t, that’s ok too: forgive yourself.

11 Comments | Posted on 8 June 2010 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Parenting | Tags: Mental Health, woo woo

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NPFP Guest Post: No Jabs, Please

Welcome to RMB’s Naked Pictures of Faceless People, a series of guest posts from diverse anonymous bloggers. (Read more about NPFP’s origins.) These are the posts that are jumping to get out of us, but for whatever reason — safety, embarrassment, conflict of interest, protection of loved ones’ reputations or feelings, or so on — we don’t or won’t or can’t post at our own blogs. Anyone is welcome to submit or discuss a potential post by emailing me at arwyn at raisingmyboychick dot com.

No Jabs, Please

Neither of my children have received any vaccinations. I am making this blog post anonymously because I am wary of the backlash I might receive just for saying I don’t vaccinate my kids.

My husband and I did not make this decision based on a belief that vaccines cause autism. I believe, and always have done, that the evidence for that is flimsy at best. We made the decision out of a distrust of the additives in vaccines, of large pharmaceutical companies and their ethics (rather, lack there of), of one size fits all healthcare and many other reasons.

We are just parents who care about our children and are trying to make the best decisions we can. We looked at the information we could find and made our own informed decision. Which is, ultimately, what most people do when deciding things for themselves and/or their children. We understand that some vaccines may be worth the risks depending on the situation and are open to the idea of selectively vaccinating the children in the future. At the same time, we don’t believe that every vaccine on the schedule is worth the risk. We believe in tailoring our healthcare decisions to our particular situation and lifestyle.

We (non-vaxxers in general) often get treated like we’re wearing tinfoil hats, worse even. Granted, some of us are alarmist and extreme. But then, so are some of the vehemently pro-vaccination camp. I have friends who once meant very much to me spouting the most vile vitriol against anyone and everyone who chooses not to vaccinate. They post things on Facebook accompanied by paragraphs long rants about how evil, stupid and not worth the air they breathe non-vaxxers are. They claim they have science behind them … well, last I checked, science was impartial and not so overtly hateful or hurtful. These things hurt. They hurt a lot.

My husband and I are both intelligent and educated. We can make our own informed decisions, and to attack our intelligence and/or our right to exist as human beings just because we make a different healthcare decision from you is both exceedingly arrogant and downright wrong. Not everyone who chooses not to vaccinate their children are extremists as not everyone who chooses to vaccinate are extremists.

My husband and I acknowledge that we may not have the right answer and that there likely isn’t one right answer. We only do what we feel is best for our children, ourselves and our family based on the circumstances and the information we have at the time. We have friends who fully vaccinate their children. We have friends who don’t vaccinate at all. We even have friends who partially vaccinate to a delayed schedule. Some of those friends (in all three groups) are even from a healthcare or medical background. We don’t judge any of them because we know that they all are doing the same as us: gathering information and trying to make the best decision they can for their situation. So, why do so many in the pro-vaccination camp feel they have the right to denigrate, ridicule and generally treat as dirt on their shoe those of us who simply made a different choice?

People need to step back, take a deep breath and do what is right for them without expecting everyone to come to the same conclusion. Alarmist propaganda is never ok and neither is demonizing an entire group of people for a personal decision. We trust parents to drive their children around in cars, to make other healthcare decisions, to guide their children’s dietary choices. This is no different.

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NOTE: This is not a place to debate, defend, or attack vaccines, and this is definitely not a place to attack this naked and faceless poster for hir choices. Vaccines, and the decision to vaccinate fully or selectively or not at all, have public health consequences; this is not an excuse for incivility. PLEASE keep the focus on the subjective experience of making an unpopular decision.