Tuesday, July 2

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

Decent weather. Warm without being hot.

I wasn't TERRIBLY organized, but I managed to get everyone out into their pastures, do a small, simple watercolor painting outside while they were out, and get myself ready to go to the thing at the barn.

I did talk with Sister E, but it was a weird feeling call, just sort of forced cheerfulness on her end. She just got back from visiting with our brother M, at his place. He has a family gathering at his place on Canada Day, and has done so for the last several years.

It's a different one for him, because he and his wife separated this year, not likely to reconcile, and this place was their many years of working together to make it a lovely property. It's hard to say if he'll stay there, or what he's going to do.

I am glad for him that he still went ahead with having his gathering, and that people went.

Trainwreck was supposed to go, but ended up being too sick. Sister E was saying "Trainwreck says she ate some bad chicken", and I stopped her right there and said "let's not pretend that it was bad chicken. It's because she's drinking herself to death."

Maybe that seems harsh, but I believe in honesty, and maybe if people quit trying to sugar coat some of the horrible things that go on in our family we wouldn't have this weird, skewed idea that somehow "being sick all the time" is normal. There are a few people in my family who are "sick all the time" and it's time we just call it like it is. Their addictions are killing them, so they can't make it to family events.

I grew up with my family normalizing things like my 17 year old sister dating and later marrying a man in his 30's, a different sister living with a man who had statutorily raped her when she was 14 and he was 30 (she was babysitting for his wife). When she was older and divorced with three kids, she sought him out and has been with him ever since. Lots of other abuse, alcoholism, one guy a sister dated I am pretty sure now was actually smuggling drugs into Canada with his "import business" (he liked to come out to the farm and try to shoot cats with an automatic assault rifle, and believe it or not, NO ONE IN MY FAMILY SAW ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT).

My family likes to do this thing of pretending that HORRORS are "okay". They're doing their best. Nope. They are NOT DOING THEIR BEST. Let's stop pretending that Trainwreck is just endlessly down with the flu or food poisoning. She's dying from her addictions, and it's not "okay".

I managed to get to the barn at a good time to work with River in the tiny window after everyone's lessons and the "meet Patrick" supper.

Patrick Sullivan is a horse person who is deeply invested in Liberty work. He used to work with the International Liberty Horse Association, and then started his own organization; Youth Equestrian Liberty Organization.

Everyone who signed up for lessons/clinic or were with the rescue group (Patrick is donating a day of educating the people who train for them, wow) was at this supper. It was in the upstairs above the barn (this is a lovely space R has, and it's come in handy for all kinds of gatherings).

Patrick made a passionate presentation about his relationship with horses, his path with learning Liberty and working with many rescue horses, and how it has helped him cope with childhood trauma.

A few years ago he rode 2500 miles across the U.S. from California to Lexington, Kentucky to raise awareness for his organization (Gamilah Unbridled) which supports underprivileged kids and horses.

https://youtu.be/KGLPyMLHfZQ?si=Lg1VyxGKrcx7bxrM

While he certainly does make money from his work, he also really wants to teach Liberty in an open way (a lot of trainers are stingy with their knowledge, and don't really want you to ever know that much, and make you pay for every crumb).

Anyhow, I really enjoyed his presentation, he's very personable, and I genuinely feel that he's making a difference with his work. I'm really excited to see more of what he's doing, and to work with him on Saturday.

It's quite an opportunity to have someone with his talent come to work with us, as Liberty isn't that common and there aren't many skilled people willing to pass their knowledge on to others.

It was also nice to see people that I pretty much only see at these barn functions, even though many of them also take lessons from R. I ended up talking a fair amount with a woman who does some training with the rescue R is affiliated with.

I came home and caught up with my Sweetie about his day. He got his passport photo today (for the upcoming trip to Sweden) and FINALLY bought himself a new laptop bag. The zippers were wrecked on his old one, and he kept saying it didn't matter much, but I said that if he's going to have a trip to Sweden, he's going to need a bag that closes properly, same for if he ends up working in Quebec.

Zambia is a land-locked country, in what used to be known as Rhodesia.

"Originally inhabited by Khoisan peoples, the region was affected by the Bantu expansion of the thirteenth century. Following European explorers in the 18th century, the British colonised the region into the British protectorates of Barotziland–North-Western Rhodesia and North-Eastern Rhodesia towards the end of the 19th century. These were merged in 1911 to form Northern Rhodesia. For most of the colonial period, Zambia was governed by an administration appointed from London with the advice of the British South Africa Company.[9]

On 24 October 1964, Zambia became independent of the United Kingdom and prime minister Kenneth Kaunda became the inaugural president. Kaunda's socialist United National Independence Party (UNIP) maintained power from 1964 until 1991. Kaunda played a key role in regional diplomacy, cooperating closely with the United States in search of solutions to conflicts in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Angola, and Namibia.[10] From 1972 to 1991, Zambia was a one-party state with UNIP as the sole legal political party under the motto "One Zambia, One Nation" coined by Kaunda. Kaunda was succeeded by Frederick Chiluba of the social-democratic Movement for Multi-Party Democracy in 1991, beginning a period of socio-economic development and government decentralisation. Zambia has since become a multi-party state and has experienced several peaceful transitions of power."

Once again, though there are abundant resources in Zambia, somehow the average person remains quite poor.

Not sure about human rights in general, but same sex relations are still illegal with prison sentances.

Geographically speaking, there is everything from mountains and plateaus to grassland, forest, and numerous large rivers. There is good land for agriculture.

Zambia is fairly urbanized, meaning a lot of the population lives in cities, with everything outside of the cities being sparsely populated.

Zambia was deeply affected by a huge drop in the price of copper in the 1970's. Copper being their biggest export, it sunk Zambia into a deep debt that it has never quite overcome.

Now they are working to diversify the economy "The Zambian government is pursuing an economic diversification program to reduce the economy's reliance on the copper industry. This initiative seeks to exploit other components of Zambia's rich resource base by promoting agriculture, tourism, gemstone mining, and hydro-power. In July 2018, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Zambia's President Edgar Lungu signed 12 agreements in capital Lusaka on areas ranging from trade and investment to tourism and diplomacy.[143][144]"

The growing and exporting of marijuana for medicinal use only has been made legal since 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zambia

Comments

[ratunderpaper]

It is a fortuitous thing that you either escaped or transcended the unfortunate family legacy.

[gottawonder]

Perhaps by the skin of my teeth. In part, not having children helped, and I don't know if it ever would have been a good idea for me. I don't think I was ever parent material.

You know by my posts, though, that it's not like it doesn't affect me still to this day, all of the things that happened in the past, or are still happening now. I didn't directly experience some of the trauma and circumstances that my older siblings did, but I feel like I have "shadow trauma" from having lived among it.

I still got beat up a lot by my older brother, and was always afraid of him hurting me, or maybe one of my animals, or things I loved (dolls, books, whatever). No, not broken bones hurt, but verbally abused all day long (called names, told I was stupid, that he hated me) and I did get held down by him and sometimes choked until I nearly blacked out. Mom half heartedly intervened, sometimes, if she was around. Mostly he got sent to his room for a while if did something really bad, the rest of it was just ignored. I don't even know if she COULD have had him see someone to stop him from being so awful to me.

I pretty much felt alone and rejected all through school too, so I was bullied at school, and at home. A lot. Even when no one was actively doing anything to me, the best you could hope for was just to be left alone, but it sucks to know that pretty much everyone at school thinks you are "gross" and would never want to be seen being nice to you, or invite you to anything, or ever date you. It's not easy to feel so unwanted. (I will say that my first year of being away from home/that town was revelatory, in that I had no problem finding friends, or people who wanted to date me, and I wasn't being bullied anymore. Yet, there is always this undercurrent of being insecure about whether or not people REALLY like me or not).

I still deal with the feelings of not really being a wanted child, as my Mom probably did not want a child as her husband was dying. I was actually given to a couple we were related to by marriage for a while, and I know that it was a possibility for them to adopt me. Mom took me back after a few months (I think?), but at that point, who was I attached to, my Mom, or those people? I didn't breast feed.

All I know, is that Mom was very distant and not very affectionate, and there were so many things I could have used help with growing up that I just didn't get.

I don't know that I really escaped anything, other than I had a steely determination not to drink, smoke, do drugs, or get pregnant. I also was determined to be honest, not "fabricate stories" like some of my sisters did, to try to be responsible, I guess. Not break the law. Stick to the straight and narrow.

Marrying my husband pretty much was what brought stability to my life, even if the moving around and stress from his job has been the trade off. He's been this solid fixture for me, someone to talk to that is fairly sane, supportive of my endeavors, does things to help me where pretty much no one else has really ever done that for me, and has provided us a good living.

I don't always feel like I dealt with everything from my childhood and ongoing family stuff head on, but I try to be honest about what happened/is happening, and I try to work on my own behavior. None of this is perfect.

[ratunderpaper]

Perhaps by attitude, choice and certainly determination, you have fared rather well in transcending early circumstances.

[gottawonder]

Yes. This feels right. I haven't always been perfect in my life choices, but mostly I knew there were certain decisions for sure NOT to make.

If I hadn't met my husband, I might not have had certain opportunities like going back to college or having as much money (or maybe I would, who knows), but if all I did was not drink/do drugs/have a child on my own I would have been a thousand times better off.

Simply being determined to be responsible about my life is a biggie.

[ratunderpaper]

Sometimes I don't like to consider the other possibilities, because this path is kind of a done deal. I have worked hard to get to the point where I can slack off and jeer at those who point out my rising at noon.

[ratunderpaper]

And when I didn't work hard, I figure things were meant to be the way they turned out, anyway.

[gottawonder]

Yes, except that "work hard" really isn't all it takes.

I used to work hard at my dead end jobs, and I generally got treated like garbage by my employers anyhow.

I worked hard at college, and got good grades, but not having a vehicle meant there were pretty much zero job options for me, as it turns out. I took "rural development", and that meant living in small towns and lots of driving back and forth to larger centers.

Also, I lack confidence, and have always had this crippling lack of whatever it takes to learn a job well and work through problems on my own. I'm not great with computers, not great with customer service (lord knows I tried), and I've never found my place in this world where I could get a job and feel confident doing it.

I am a strange being. I've been told over and over again how intelligent I am by teachers, people who know me all say they think I am intelligent, but I have never been able to translate that into money.

Go figure.

I don't know that I enjoy feeling like that was how things were meant to turn out for me.

[ratunderpaper]

Working hard doesn't necessarily mean earning a living.

Making money is not always linked to working at all.

I once said that someone told me, rather tartly, that "Power belongs to the person who makes the money." His statement was meant to describe a household.

As far as I am concerned, making the money gives a person choices and responsibility. But the bloke who said the thing about power was complaining about himself, his situation. For him, the lack of power was tied to his inability to boss someone around, allocate funds as he saw fit - probably to go buy comic books.

[gottawonder]

My husband has always agreed that the money is mine just as much as it is his, precisely because the work I do is to keep things running. He says that he may go to work, but the work I do gives him something to come home to (wow, that's pretty sappy).

It all began when we went to Wyoming together, because when I realized that I wouldn't be able to work there, I knew it meant really giving a lot of power to him. It established our dynamic, in that he knew that if he acted like a jerk over the money I wouldn't stay, because I only went to be with him.

There are still times though, when I think it might be nice to have my own career. Yet, I don't miss the regular work life thing. I hated working for other people.

[gottawonder]

I am at times, acutely aware of how my life outcome really dangled by a thread. There was that critical couple of years in my 20's that really felt like my life options were at a dead end. They really were.

No one was willing to teach me how to drive, and that was increasingly making me stand out in any group, and combined with not ever going to be able to own a car at my current pay, I felt incredibly poor and without options.

Combine that with not enough money to dress well, not enough money to go out often, etc. Well, weirdly enough men these days want a woman for the most part, who can carry their half of the mortgage.

Trying to date, well, the older I got the less likely I was going to be able to date anyone with real prospects, and the more likely I was going to end up with someone in a similar dead end life, and I would be lucky if they were decent in terms of how they treated me.

I will not mince words. Most of my life improvements have come about because of my husband, and that's pretty sobering for me.

Without him, I fear what my life would have become. Clean living would have only gotten me so far.

[ratunderpaper]

Well, you may have found other avenues for a rich and fulfilling life, but your spouse is lucky to have someone who clearly values him.

I don't think it can be overstated that holding a job does not lead a person to fulfillment, or to happiness, or even to being an interesting person at all.

I wonder what life is like for women who choose to be led by a spouse, the Titus 2 brides who breed early and prolifically, and are happy in service to their families.

[gottawonder]

I feel that people in cult like groups either leave, or they commit HARD.

Like Scientology. It's insane, but look how many people are right up in it. I think it's the paying thing, because people hate paying money and then back out, the whole "but if it's crap, then I wasted my money...I can't admit that, so it must be amazing". Then it's the power you get as you go up in levels.

With the Titus women, you know it's got to be like that. Trying to outdo each other in how insanely perfect their homes are, how many kids they have, their kid's achievements, how HARD their husband works, how much they LOVE EACH OTHER IN JESUS, the crazy elaborate food they bring to get togethers, even whether or not they have the perfect family dog.

They can't just look around and go "oh my god, this is bullshit! What am I doing?" What would their lives mean outside of that? It would be enormously difficult to get out of, and to find other meaning.

Not to say that probably lots of them are closet alcoholics/antidepressant addicts and can't get out of bed half the time. As long as no one finds out.

It's funny, but though I care about things a bit, I really don't care THAT MUCH about stuff like having perfect home or yard. I mean, I want it to look nice, but I'm not killing myself trying to be perfect.

I don't like competition, kind of feel like rolling my eyes when people talk about achievement (because I always think "successful cult indoctrination"). Which isn't to say that I don't appreciate things that are done well or are beautiful, but it's different when it comes from joy than when it comes from competition.

Hard to explain. If someone has a beautiful, well-behaved dog, it's a joy to see. If they come up to me and tell me what the dog has won, and what it's bloodlines are, I could care less.

[ratunderpaper]

The Titus women I've met do not appear to have any say in anything that happens. Everything is a blessing, everything is given as a divine gift, and everything is for the glory of God. There's nothing to say to that, really. If they say they're blessed and happy, I have no business poking holes in that.

But... I don't hang around, either!

[gottawonder]

...but I bet they're committed to the whole schtick. It would take a lot of grit and determination to overcome likely conditioning from a young age, and if your family doesn't educate you well or encourage independence, then dependence is a mindset and a habit. They are likely kind of isolated from having friends who aren't like them, and maybe their own family would disown them if they got a divorce.

You can be fake in how "meek" you are. I've known people like that.

Where on Earth are you meeting these people?

For a time when I was younger, I hung out with some "christian" kids, mainly because I liked this one guy (but right away ended up liking a different guy in that group who was NO ANGEL). Some of them were kinda holier than thou, and super annoying. Most of the kids were fairly normal, other than having been raised by fairly religious parents, and they probably went on to be a lot less religious when they were older.

It was a whole spectrum, but I kind of liked that it was often a fun gathering at someone's house for a potluck or pizza supper, and just safer people to be friends with.

I didn't relate or really like the ones that were more serious about sticking to the religious schtick, as you could tell it was all about trying to control others with their righteousness. Yawn.

I did get really tired of everything being "for God" or "God's will" and on and on. I mean, do we have to bless the pizza? Do we have to pray that everyone makes it home safely after every gathering? Were those social gatherings REALLY for Jesus? I never was religious, and I was pretty open about that in the group, so it's a bit surprising that they were fine with me hanging out with them. I behaved myself and didn't make a point of arguing with them about religion or anything, just tried to be a fairly neutral version of myself.

Some of them were a lot more brainwashed than others, but I think it gives people a sense of safety to not have to make decisions based on their own critical thinking skills.

[ratunderpaper]

"Where do you find these people?" or "Where did you pick up these people?" were things Lois used to say, har har. Now I do it, too, along with "What - was he raised in a barn?"

This is extended family from out of town, from the religion-based homeschooling anti-vax towns of Ontario. The younger ones are even more fervently Christian Reformed than the older ones, but not by much. They refer to themselves as good, Bible-believing people. This is code for evangelicals.

Have you ever read Miriam Toews?

Holier-than-thou disrespect and controlling others via rightiousness are the two reasons to steer clear of them, particularly the men, who like to lead but don't understand when the line is crossed and bull-headed control or bully behaviour ensues.
I like to say I am neo-calvinist, but I learned there really is a neo-calvinism, so I'll have to invent something else.

[gottawonder]

I did read something of hers a long time ago.

I get the religion as a form of control by men. Very familiar with that, as it sounds like what our Dad was doing right before he died, and my friend in high school was adopted by a very religious couple, where the man was a jerk and the woman had to be submissive because she had no other way to survive but be married to him.

As a younger woman I dated a guy (through that church group) whose father was a real asshole who pretended to be the "genial patriarch", but somehow used the whole "man is head of the household and women obey" while also pretty much doing whatever he wanted on his own time, if you know the type.

All of these things have made me really not want any religion in my life. It's always SOMEONE wanting you to do something or behave a certain way, or give them money.

If I want spirituality, I can go for a walk and appreciate the wonder of the natural world.

[ratunderpaper]

A long time ago, I didn't even know that sort of people existed. I'd only vaguely heard about "religious nuts" from parents and friends. But exist they do.

[gottawonder]

I have come across all kinds of people I didn't know were "real".

Religious nuts, the tree huggers (hello there), real trans people, actual LGBTQ folks, the conspiracy theory people, the back to the land folks, gun freaks and weekend preppers/militants (significant overlap with conspiracy theorists and religious zealots), people from all walks of life that are recovering addicts, people that I'm pretty sure are part of a local sex partner swapping thing for couples, people who think they are witches, the crystal and chakra folks, bikers, people who love snakes (they are certainly a tribe),there are many sub-groups of horse people, acreage people (different from farmers like you wouldn't believe), the D&D folks which flows into the larpers and renfair people, as well as people who spend every summer pretending they are fur trappers and go from one "fort" event to another, and on and on.

I haven't met any Furries or Bronies that I am aware of, and for some reason those groups worry me a lot. They're unsettling.

None of those groups seemed real until I had some personal experience with them, until then they were tropes for sitcoms and novels, and in some cases I had just never realized that people did those things, much less had communities.

[cf2princessawnw]

I agree with what Ratty said below, and I'm very grateful that you did.

How wonderful that you got to here and meet that Liberty expert! And how exciting that you'll get to work with him on Saturday!!

[gottawonder]

I really resonate with this trainer. His childhood sucked too, in a different way than mine did (his father was very violent, and he often couldn't sleep for fear that his father might kill him in his sleep), but I am moved by his determination to make the world a better place.

He supports kids who are disadvantaged, and horses, and spoke about "giving them a voice, because he knows what it's like to not have any power over his own life".

It's pretty deep stuff, where he's coming from.

I am glad I got to meet him, and so far I got to watch him teach other people in our barn today (you can audit his lessons), and he is a very calming, positive coach, while still being very effective.

I'm looking forward to working with him too.

[cf2princessawnw]

I truly lovely a post. I'm glad this is happening in your life in world over there and you're getting to meet him and experience his story for that time. He sounds like an amazing human being who is just being his best self and not even trying to be as amazing as he clearly is.