resolutions...

Resolutions...mine is to try gluten-free eating at least for a few months.  I'm gonna let go of one of the more addictive substances in my life and see what happens.  I made it through the first day - so far, so good!  I am also going back to vegetarian.  I have been veggie for very long periods of time throughout my life, and eating vegetarian, or even vegan, is not that hard for me.  The hard part is that I get cold after a long while with no meat.  And eating meat changes my metabolism and I am warmer.

Every year I take down the decorations on your birthday - or at least that is my intention.  Last year, time dragged and I ended up taking off the decorations on letting the kids cover it with hearts.  It became our Valentine's tree.

I don't know, but there seems to be a disconnect between suffering and experience and perception.  In my mind, when I think about being raped, I come to a lot of logical conclusions.  I understand some of the influences and the ways I have been changed.  But the deep-down ongoing awareness of what happened is not quite something I can leave behind or even really access, yet it influences the way I feel, and the way I react all the time.  It is different than, or a different type of, suffering. 

I can't wrap my mind around it.  But I think there are things we are supposed to suffer.  And there are things that we are not ever supposed to go through.  They are not part of the suffering humanity is supposed to endure.

I am sure you read the story about the young woman who was gang raped in India.  And then there are all the public debates.  What I come back to is that men are expected to be weak and bestial, and are given permission to be weak.  Then culture can blame the woman.  The noble, gentle men I know get no press, and they are the ones who should be held up as examples for the way men can and should behave.

This is a difficult subject for me, and the media response leaves me bewildered, angry, frustrated...


Back to work for me tomorrow...but it will be a very light day, and very light rest of the week.

Smiles and hugs and luck and laughter...

Clare