I fucking love therapy. I’ve been in & out of therapy my entire life as the black child of a single white parent raised in a small white Catholic community. Current favorite lesson: You have value outside of what you do for others or produce. Others below...
Sometimes feeling “crazy” is just your brain processing really difficult shit at a slower pace than capitalism demands that we snap back to “normal” productivity rather than address our health.
You do not need to repeat the trauma patterns your parents inflicted on you (based on their trauma & their parents trauma) for your entire life. Trauma patterns can end with you & your generation.
Sometimes loving someone means stepping away from them, giving you both space to breathe, think & choose how to be together again. No relationship should ever be stagnant or taken for granted.
You can love someone & still choose to not be in a close relationship with them. Love does not mean having no boundaries.
Systems of oppression benefit from marginalized folks blaming or hating ourselves. Whenever you have a negative thought consider: who benefits from this thought? Where does it come from? How does it serve me to hold on to it? How might it serve me to let it go?
You’re allowed to be a full, complicated human. Being a scholar/teacher/doctor/activist does not negate your capacity to twerk, fuck, sing, flirt, dress up, be silly/weird & love the things you love. You’re allowed to have joy & pleasure.
Further, being an accomplished talented person in one area who embraces joy & pleasure in other areas doesn’t make you less dedicated or impressive, it makes you more human, more capable of accessing your fullest, best self for the long term.
Being in therapy doesn’t mean you’re broken. Therapy can be emergency/crisis based but ideally it’s also maintenance, preventative care. Good therapy gives us tools to face a difficult, complicated world as our full selves, w/ attention to how oppression & trauma impact us.
