I stuck up for myself….

 

I think, in a lot of ways, I have spent a lot of my life afraid. Sometimes afraid of what people think, don’t overly care about that much, any more, but aware of it. Not sure what I’m trying to say about that.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve done some intense work on myself. One of the best lessons of the last year or more is one I didn’t want to see. Didn’t want to learn. I was at an event called “Authentic Relating Games”, which basically teaches humans how to talk to each other, because we are extremely bad at it, in general. There’s so much that’s important about being a good listener and a good talker. How does one express ideas so they are easily ingested? One of the things I found in this group was that when I feel like I am not being respected, or that my words aren’t being heard, or are ignored, it is my coping mechanism to keep talking, only louder. Man, that can be annoying, I bet. I keep raising my voice. This was pointed out to me, and I thought back about and to all the times when I felt like my voice was being silenced. When whomever I was talking to didn’t give a rat’s ass what I had to say, they just kept talking over me. More often than not, this happened, in my lived experience, with men. The dreaded “mansplaining”….and more. Someone who has become a friend pointed this out to me and asked me to think about it. Think I did, and I keep thinking about it…

Now, more often, if I notice that someone is trying to talk over me, instead of getting more loud, I get more quiet. Sometimes, the person talking over me doesn’t even realize and will then look at me with the tilt of a head and ask what’s wrong. Now, I can look them in the eye and say something like “wow, you seemed super invested in getting your point across. Or talking over me. Or not hearing or listening to what I was saying. I’d like to talk, but I don’t want to fight to be heard. Let me know if you’d like to hear what I have to say, or not. Either way, I’ll figure it out.”

I am on a leadership group that helps steward some very special land in the high desert. The “geyser” that’s there is this picture. We meet generally once a month but do all the work to steward the thing during the rest of the time when we aren’t there or planning to be there. One of the other people in the group kept talking over me a interrupting me. I was annoyed, but didn’t want to make a scene. Then I was like “F that, this isn’t right”. And the next time he interrupted, I called him out and basically said “Can you please let me finish my words before you add more words? Please stop interrupting me.” He apologized. This was huge for me both because I recognized it before getting frustrated and also because he immediately backed down, said he hadn’t realized he was doing it, and apologized.

This was huge for me.

Some days, it’s the little things in life.

~Peace