Babe, You're a Haunted House Part One

Basements are often creepy places. Dark, damp, full of spiders. They are usually where heating, electrical, plumbing and other systems that houses need to function are located. We have our own spiritual basements. These are the places the societal systems are placed. At our foundation. Your core.

Systems like patriarchy and white supremacy. You might think I’m not racist or I’m not sexist. But everyone of us has been born into these systems and been conditioned to them. You might not be raging racist or misogynist, but all of us have some biases created by these systems we live in. Ones we all have to actively work at unlearning. This doesn’t mean you are a bad person, just a person born into a bad system. (This doesn’t mean you aren’t responsible for your behavior. good and bad)

These systems are like Energy Vampires. They feed off us. They can’t ‘live’ without us. We feed them by following the rules, not questioning traditions, staying silent about abuse. These systems condition us to believe that our oppression isn’t oppression at all —it’s the natural order of things.

These Energy Vampires aren’t like Colin from What We Do In The Shadows waiting to bore you to death. The are huge beasts with blood sucking tentacles everywhere. Cut one off and find ten more you didn’t notice before. It feels impossible to defeat. That is the point. It wants you to give up without even trying. It’s one of those creatures that takes the whole village, the community, to slay.

This beast has to be starved. Family by family. House by house. Neighborhood by neighborhood.

We cut those cords that steal away our energy. We chose to unlearn and no longer participate in our own abuse or the abuse of others. We build new foundations for future generations.

When you take your energy back, reclaim yourself, you can put that energy into things you want to thrive. You can create a center, a foundation, that is brimming with love. One that fuels joy.

I know this makes a huge daunting task sound easy peasy, but if we all are doing what we can, when we can, with what we have, it adds up to something powerful.

The first step is realizing everything in your life, all the norms, rules, traditions, are most likely rooted in oppression of someone or something. Then decide how you are going to choose to no longer participate in that oppression.

What is normal in your life that is part of these oppressive systems? If you can’t think of any, that is your signal that you’re deep in the system and have a lot of work to do. That’s ok. We all start somewhere. You don’t have to do it all at once or all on your own.