sapere aude

Glasgow-based author, poet and journalist. Literature; social theory; nature; art.

[exhaled-spirals]

— Nazim Hikmet, Selected Poetry

[nevver]

[nevver]

Snow patrol, Settai Komura

[luulapants]

My dad and I once had a disagreement over him using the adage "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

I said, "That's just not true. Sometimes what doesn't kill you leaves you brittle and injured or traumatized."

He stopped and thought about that for a while. He came back later, and said, "It's like wood glue."

He pointed to my bookshelf, which he helped me salvage a while ago. He said, "Do you remember how I explained that, once we used the wood glue on them, the shelves would actually be stronger than they were before they broke?"

I did.

"But before we used the wood glue, those shelves were broken. They couldn't hold up shit. If you had put books on them, they would have collapsed. And that wood glue had to set awhile. If we put anything on them too early, they would have collapsed just the same as if we'd never fixed them at all. You've got to give these things time to set."

It sounded like a pretty good metaphor to me, but one thing I did pick up on was that whatever broke those shelves, that's not the thing that made them stronger. That just broke them. It was being fixed that made them stronger. It was the glue.

So my dad and I agreed, what doesn't kill you doesn't actually make you stronger, but healing does. And if you feel like healing hasn't made you stronger than you were before, you're probably not done healing. You've got to give these things time to set.

[satellitedreams]

Jonathan Labillois. Still Dancing. 2014.

This powerful piece was created by Jonathan Labillois, member of the Listuguj Mi’gmaq First Nations in Gaspé Quebec. It was donated to the Montreal Native Women’s Shelter to help raise awareness of the 1000+ missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada. 

[wholeheartedsuggestions]

eventually you realize you don’t want to die. you just don’t want to live the life you’re living. and slowly you try to create a life you want to live. just gotta start there.

[wholeheartedsuggestions]

no one needs to add “sounds fake but ok”, “no”, “well, not me”, “impossible”, etc. to this post. and i’d rather you not.

[duckbunny]

one day you think: I want to die.

and then you think, very quietly: actually. actually. I think I want a coffee. a nap. a sandwich. a book.

and I want to die turns day by day into I want to go home, I want to walk in the woods, I want to see my friend, I want to sit in the sun

I want a cleaner kitchen

I want a better job

I want to live somewhere else

I want to live

[zenosanalytic]

The thing to understand is that Depression

Even When It Is Trying to Kill You!

Is Defensive.

Your brain exists to preserve you; it’s just Dumb, and how it goes about “preserving” is determined by evolution’s ‘Good Enough’ meat-and-chemistry mechanisms rather than a firm grasp of biology.

You know how, stuck atop a burning building, ppl will sometimes throw themselves off in a vain hope of surviving? That’s what depression-driven suicide is. You are under THAT amount of stress, often sustained for a FAR longer time. Your brain only understands “Stress”: it doesn’t know causes, it doesn’t know Events, and it only has the one set of instinctive ‘extreme measures’ to fall back on. I made things SO hard on myself for SO Long conceiving of Depression as a Fight I had to Win, rather than a chronic illness in need of my understanding and careful management.

Help your brain. Nurse it. Ask yourself where it hurts and why. Recognize that the desire to die is a symptom, an injury, and not your ‘Truth’. Try to calm it, Try to endure: It WILL Pass. As perverse as it sounds, your desire to die is an expression of how PASSIONATELY you want to get away from the pain tormenting you; of how MUCH you want to LIVE. PLEASE Live!

[healingchildhoodtrauma]

Children need their emotional needs met just as much as their physical needs.

To ask a child to not have emotional needs is to ask a child to not be a child. It’s impossible. To ask a human to not be a human.

Emotional neglect and abuse is more than just “some mean words”...

It’s a lack of guidance. A lack of nurturing. A lack of reassurance. A lack of positive reinforcement. A lack of being seen. It stunts children’s growth. It damages their self esteem. It sets them up for abusive relationships outside the home. It’s setting them up for failure. To not nurture a child then expect them to just magically be a well adjusted adult when they turn 18 is ridiculous. To expect ourselves to go from a traumatic, unsafe childhood where we were not allowed to be children to a healthy adulthood without addressing our childhood is ridiculous. It was the beginning of our lives. It was our development, our acquaintance with the world. We were vulnerable and dependent on our caretakers. We were sponges. I feel like what I have to do now is wring out the sponge of my mind of all the toxic influence of my family. The farther I get from my childhood the more clarity I have of how not okay it was. I’m healing from trauma and discovering who I am now in a safe place.

[aether-amalgam-system]

Emotional neglect is valid trauma y’all. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that. ❤️

[huariqueje]

2012 III  -  Grietje  Postma ,2012.

Dutch,b.1961-  

Woodcut ,, 59.5 x 50 cm.

[lesgardenias]

“Amethyst. Turquoise. Shell pink. Irish green. I would like to be naked and cover myself with cold crystal jewelry. Jewelry and perfume.”

— Anaïs Nin, from Henry & June; A Journal of Love: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1932–1934) 

[probablyasocialecologist]

“He who strips a man of his clothes is to be called a thief. Is not he who, when he is able, fails to clothe the naked, worthy of no other title? The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry; the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked; the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot; the money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor; the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit.”

— Basil of Caesarea, I Will Tear Down My Barns

[julienbakerfavormp3-deactivated]

ana mendieta, irene hardwicke olivieri, ana mendieta, monica rohan, ana mendieta, teresa murak, kelly louise judd

[paper-fairy]

“Wakened by the scent of flowering plum… The darkness of the spring night fills me with longing.”

— Izumi Shikibu, from The Ink Dark Moon [translated by Jane Hirshfield with Aratani Mariko]  

[ortut]

Abigail Fallis - Close to the Bone, 2014 (Sterling silver)

[velvetcloak]

paolo sebastian

[thoodleoo]

there's a parallel between the two-headed calf poem and the fact that the minotaur's real name means "starry" that i don't have words for, but i can only think of the little baby bull-man looking up at the stars for the first, and possibly last, time before being locked away forever

[psikonauti]

Newsha Tavakolian (Iranian, b. 1981)

Untitled from Listen, 2010-2011

[academic-ana]

“As early as the 1920s, researchers giving IQ tests to non-Westerners realized that any test of intelligence is strongly, if subtly, imbued with cultural biases… Samoans, when given a test requiring them to trace a route form point A to point B, often chose not the most direct route (the “correct” answer), but rather the most aesthetically pleasing one. Australian aborigines find it difficult to understand why a friend would ask them to solve a difficult puzzle and not help them with it. Indeed, the assumption that one must provide answers alone, without assistance from those who are older and wiser, is a statement about the culture-bound view of intelligence. Certainly the smartest thing to do, when face with a difficult problem, is to seek the advice of more experienced relatives and friends!”

— Jonathan Marks - Anthropology and the Bell Curve (via leofarto)

[huariqueje]

Botanical I   -   Astrid Nondal , 2009.

Norwegian, b. 1958-

Oil on canvas, 165 x 135 cm