Untitled @theredbloggings - Tumblr Blog

the illicit pleasure of scrolling past a “WHY IS NOBODY TALKING ABOUT THIS???” post…. i will continue not to talk about it 🫡🫡🫡

theredbloggings

"The basic tools of my life are those I learned in recovery (sure enough I didn't learn them growing up). Simple tools: be honest, talk about your problems, don't isolate, no feeling lasts forever, feelings aren't facts. I hear the voices of friends over the years: meditation, moderation, and masturbation. Be responsible for the bomb inside your own heart. There is a peaceful place within — find it.

Recovery today is simply about being given back a life. Life where shit happens, people die, violence is, and, oh yeah, love happens, people are born, and peace and serenity can be found. Recovery is a given, a part of my life.

The hard work is figuring out what to do with a life now that I have one."

--Arlene (Ari) Istar, The Largest Onion, found in The Next Steps: Lesbians in Long-Term Recovery (1994), edited by Jean Swallow, pg. 106-107

evenlesssentimentaltranslator

Here's what's interesting: if you say this about anything other than violence and abuse against women and girls, lefties lose their SHIT. For things that hurt men and boys, anything less than total structural reform is unacceptable and I'm often the lone voice explaining that that therapy that seems so useless to a poor man or a man of colour (*cough* because he thinks his wife or girlfriend is obligated to do it for free and suck his dick afterwards) can make a major difference to a woman who has been abused. But when women get hurt it's "shit happens, people die, violence is, and, oh yeah, love happens, people are born, and peace and serenity can be found. No structural changes are needed. :)"

theredbloggings

huh..? is this a serious response or a joke or..? what does any of this have to do with an essay about surviving lesbian battering in early sobriety that is in a book about lesbians in long-term recovery from alcoholism & addiction ?????? why the fuck are you bringing up men & their genitals on a post about lesbians healing from trauma & addiction?

#Youtube

grilledpeachh

i love not wearing make up and looking just like my childhood photos

#had a rlly weird grief experience today looking at my sister’s make up

"I discover an abiding sadness. It's quiet, nonintrusive, and doesn't prevent me from being present as I need to, but it's also constant, like a close cousin when you're six or seven years old. She's separate, but somehow we are also one.

My sadness. It's a longing for understanding and a longing for care. It's a silent scream to not be left behind. It's a voice that whispers for tender holding. I am lonely. I have people around me often (maybe too much) and am very, very lonely. My loneliness makes me tired. I wonder if this is about sobriety and decide it is. Years ago, I would have soothed this sadness in one of several ways—the illicit substance being the champion. It relieved me. It satiated my spiritual hunger. That's it—I'm starving to spiritual death."

--Gail Hromadko, Life on Life's Terms, found in The Next Steps: Lesbians in Long-Term Recovery (1994), edited by Jean Swallow, pg. 114

#radfem books #radfem reads #book quotes #the next steps

"Let's see if I can write today about fourteen years of sobriety. 'The mystery continues, the gratification does not.' No. The gratification changes and becomes very, very, very small, so one's eyesight has to become incredibly acute to appreciate the gifts. Oh great, more sensitivity. That is the challenge of time: to tolerate being more and more aware. No one tells you how to live, where to go, how to feel or express yourself. The only true vision comes from a still small voice... and it is still very small. The rest is faith. Gone are the days of miraculous spontaneous combustion at the pivotal moment. Now it's moment-by-moment decisions about what is needed, wanted, and desired, in that order. The benefit is that one does have additional options: 'wants and desires.' Those two aspects are forbidden in early sobriety where the "needs" take precedence. Those two aspects now are manifestations of healing. I can have anything I want or desire now, if I'm willing to pay the price. I still believe all things are possible, though I am hard pressed to care. But those wants and desires are the voice of god—whoever she is. My desires are spotlights to the path, a path I'd have no clue about without them. And even with the clue, I am uncomfortable in the trudging. So I respect them, but I also mistrust them. Therein lies a similarity to early recovery. That god stuff may be necessary, but it is still not necessarily comfortable."

--Gail Hromadko, Life on Life's Terms, found in The Next Steps: Lesbians in Long-Term Recovery (1994), edited by Jean Swallow, pg. 114

#radfem books #radfem reads #book quotes #the next steps

"It is rare for me to share my feelings about sobriety now. No one asks (I guess we all assume it should be pretty okay by now) and I rarely give that gift to myself. I get tired of listening to my own voices. If I really talked about how it feels, I might discover pain I don't want to face (still and always an addict)."

--Gail Hromadko, Life on Life's Terms, found in The Next Steps: Lesbians in Long-Term Recovery (1994), edited by Jean Swallow, pg. 113

#radfem books #radfem reads #book quotes #the next steps

"I have worked to be clean and sober. I have faced myself and others over and over. I have swum in pools of grief. I've lain in meadows of sorrow. I've done that with a vengeance and determinedly. And I stayed clean. To me, that is how to stay clean. You get into the nastiest shit and talk about it, cry about it, share about it with someone else. Maybe I could have glossed over it and not used again ...maybe. But I think I would drown myself over an inauthentic existence, over silenced truth. I practiced that program in my family for twenty-three years. I'd rather weep.

That's my story. I continue to visit my sorrow. I weep. But it all makes sense eventually and I feel some dignity in that visitation. I stand in my life instead of crawling. Pain is still a companion. But we are not one."

--Gail Hromadko, Life on Life's Terms, found in The Next Steps: Lesbians in Long-Term Recovery (1994), edited by Jean Swallow, pg. 108

#radfem books #radfem reads #book quotes #the next steps

"And there are moments of incredible pain. Deaths of my dearest ones. Illnesses — my own and those of loved ones. Clients whom I cannot reach. Dreams I have been unable to materialize. Endless bills. Friends who drift away; who change; who leave; who, I discover, never were. Hints of memories that hurt but never come clear. The shock of disappointment, lies, the slap of a hand. Bad news. Same old news. Very lonely Sundays. Infertility. Knowing that love is not always enough. Desperately wishing it was.

Recovery is the weaving of these truths. The burying of one friend and the birth of another. The incredible loneliness of my own heartbeat, and the feeling of her heart beating under my hand, feeling the Goddess in the very beat, I and thou. A telephone call: an accident, an illness, an evil eye. Or the phone doesn't ring, ever. Moments where the laughter is so very deep it shakes my round belly and tears roll down my eyes and I know that I live in a universe of bliss. Then the cough gets worse. Or the crazed young boy on drugs takes what is not his. But then it is spring, and the beans shoot up like arrows, and the child speaks her first words, and the seasons shift."

--Arlene (Ari) Istar, The Largest Onion, found in The Next Steps: Lesbians in Long-Term Recovery (1994), edited by Jean Swallow, pg. 108

#radfem books #radfem reads #book quotes #the next steps

"Another gift of sobriety was naming myself Lesbian. I had always loved women but the word "lesbian" was too overwhelming. After I named myself Addict, Lesbian was an easy title. I found myself alive and awake in an amazing lesbian-feminist world and a lesbian community that was beginning to recover with me."

--Arlene (Ari) Istar, The Largest Onion, found in The Next Steps: Lesbians in Long-Term Recovery (1994), edited by Jean Swallow, pg. 107

#radfem books #radfem reads #book quotes #the next steps

The hard work is figuring out what to do with a life now that I have one."

--Arlene (Ari) Istar, The Largest Onion, found in The Next Steps: Lesbians in Long-Term Recovery (1994), edited by Jean Swallow, pg. 106-107

#radfem books #radfem reads #book quotes #the next steps

"I don't go to many meetings anymore. Staying sober has not been a struggle for a long time. I honestly do not ever think about drinking in a serious way. I sometimes wonder what beer tastes like. I sometimes hate feeling different when others drink (still!). But I do not honestly entertain the fantasy of drinking. I do not say this complacently. It took years for the daily cravings to go away. In my work, I see the poverty of spirit caused by active alcoholism and chemical dependency; I see the re-creation of the addiction, generation to generation. I feel blessed, one day at a time, to be free of that monkey; I just know that this world is a kind of monkey jungle and that the struggle just changes name and form."

--Arlene (Ari) Istar, The Largest Onion, found in The Next Steps: Lesbians in Long-Term Recovery (1994), edited by Jean Swallow, pg. 104-105

#radfem books #radfem reads #book quotes #the next steps

"I suppose my story is an example of that: you can get through anything if you 'don't drink and go to meetings.' I know that twelve-step programs work. In the thousands of meetings I have attended, I learned the basic blueprint that underlies my life. When I arrived in those rooms from my dysfunctional family, I did not have the most rudimentary skills of daily living. My first and earliest lesson in recovery was the realization I simply couldn't cope; I didn't have the basic skills to cope with daily life. I value and honor my recovery. I am forever indebted to the recovery movement, to the lesbian counselor fifteen years ago who read me the riot act when I tried to sneak my very drunk boyfriend out of the local detox, and to the twelve-step rooms, which are the only places in this world I will always know that I am welcome no matter what.

Recovery, however, has taught me that you can work very, very hard, follow the path thoroughly, and be constitutionally capable of being honest with yourself—and things don't necessarily get better. The pain can get worse."

--Arlene (Ari) Istar, The Largest Onion, found in The Next Steps: Lesbians in Long-Term Recovery (1994), edited by Jean Swallow, pg. 105-106

#radfem books #radfem reads #book quotes #the next steps

"There was nothing I did to deserve the abuse, despite the fact that I can be, and often am, intense, eccentric, bitchy, and needy. There is nothing anyone does that justifies abusive behavior. I am not talking about having a bad day; I am not talking about a lousy relationship. I am talking about daily systematic violence, psychological manipulation, and emotional degradation. Perhaps my own unresolved self-hatred allowed me to believe I deserved to be treated abusively. I do not, however, remember ever thinking I deserved it; I just always thought I could change it.

Perhaps another woman who had better self-esteem, a healthier childhood, less of a desire to be loved, or better financial resources would've left sooner. Perhaps, like a dog with her tail between her legs, it was these 'weaknesses' that were my survival."

--Arlene (Ari) Istar, The Largest Onion, found in The Next Steps: Lesbians in Long-Term Recovery (1994), edited by Jean Swallow, pg. 104-105

#radfem books #radfem reads #book quotes #the next steps

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