I know I told this story before but last year I was having complications with a surgery and I just broke down in a public place and I was trying to gather myself, sitting and leaning on a wall when this girl in cowboy boots approached me and sat down and she asked what was wrong and I told her it was medical issues and she said “I understand, I have to have my foot amputated next week” and it shocked me out of crying and I was like “wow that sucks!” And she said “yeah.” And then she just touched my arm so tenderly and told me “I promise you that this problem will have its place, and everything is going to work out.” And the way she said it just made me really believe her. She said. “We’re just gonna have to cowgirl up.” And then she stood up and walked away and I’d call that a genuine encounter with an angel but the truth is there is a lot of goodness right here on earth in humanity and it’s shining and pure.
Okay but “this problem will have its place” is genuinely inspiring
THAT REALLY STRUCK ME because I’ve always hated the tired rhetoric of “this happened for a reason” and this feels like a more genuine, comforting take on that. Not “it happened for a reason,” but “this will find its spot in your life and your future that it fits into in a way that will eventually work out even though it sucks that it happened.” Love that.
“[Artemisia] Gentileschi, however, brings out an element of the biblical story no male artist had ever dwelt on. In most paintings, including Caravaggio’s hallucinatory rendering, Judith has a servant who waits to collect the severed head. But Gentileschi makes the servant a strong young woman who actively participates in the killing. This does two things. It adds a savage realism that even Caravaggio never thought of – it would take two women to kill this brute. But it also gives the scene a revolutionary implication. “What,” wonders Gentileschi, “if women got together? Could we fight back against a world ruled by men?””
people understand that Spanish speakers speak different dialects of the Spanish language but don’t understand that black people speak a dialect of the English language
saw a variation of this conversation on twitter earlier
I just want to state for the record that this is completely uncontroversial among linguists. It’s the first day of sociolinguistics class.
I majored in Communication Disorders to become an Speech Language Pathologist and am currently and Assisstant. When we were in class we were taught about this as well as other dialect. Under no circumstances do you treat a client for what is considered a dialect. So as a speech therapist when I hear AAVE I move on. It is a real language with real rules.
Thats why it was outrage in the speech community post Katrina when teachers began to recommend students for speech, when it was simply the New Orleans dialect.
treasure that friend who’ll yell nonsense sounds at you until you’re both gibbering back and forth like ancient humanity at the tower of babel. love the friend u can make eye contact with before saying some absolute jackshit inside joke you share at the same time and collapsing in entirely unnecessary fits of laughter. acknowledge how lucky you are to have someone you can text at 3am in the morning when you’re on a tangent of a tangent on your bullshit and NEED to blabber incoherently about it to someone or you’ll explode. don’t take for granted the people you know you can talk to about literally anything without fear of judgement or disinterest. because people like that? they’re few and far between.
If I were a billionaire I would absolutely tell my secretary to send wedding gifts to anyone who sent me an invite regardless of if I knew them, because- A. I know how expensive that nonsense is. B. I would be a billionaire and when else am I gonna do with that much money? Honestly… and C. I would totally make showing up at random weddings with crazy awesome gifts my new stress relief hobby. “Congratulations random strangers! I admire your daring and stratigic planning. Here’s that 700$ tea set you wanted but assumed no one would ever buy.”
It’s not that you have issues…… it’s that you have a tendency to continue using instincts you picked up in childhood that are no longer useful to you on your journey towards achieving openness and intimacy and reliability in your personal relationships w others. It’s not that you’re defective or difficult or incapable it’s just that what you learned to do to save yourself from the experience of abandonment or rejection or ridicule or failure is not helpful here anymore and you need to start thinking creatively and collaborating on better ways to cope with that instrinsic fear that you are not correct, that you are faking, that you will be found out and left, whatever it is
It’s not that you have issues…… it’s that you have a tendency to continue using instincts you picked up in childhood that are no longer useful to you on your journey towards achieving openness and intimacy and reliability in your personal relationships w others. It’s not that you’re defective or difficult or incapable it’s just that what you learned to do to save yourself from the experience of abandonment or rejection or ridicule or failure is not helpful here anymore and you need to start thinking creatively and collaborating on better ways to cope with that instrinsic fear that you are not correct, that you are faking, that you will be found out and left, whatever it is
Honestly I think one of the most empowering things you can do for yourself is to separate your negative qualities from your identity.
Instead of saying “I’m lazy,” saying “I’ve made a habit of not doing work unless it’s absolutely necessary.” Instead of saying “I’m a bad friend,” saying “I haven’t communicated as much as I should with the people I care about.”
By being specific about your problems, and by framing it as an action that you are consciously either working on or ignoring rather than an unchangeable part of who you are, you allow yourself to accept your mistakes and work constructively on them instead of pretending they didn’t happen or wallowing in blaming yourself.
