Being Inclusive

(Nimue)

One of the easiest ways to make a group more inclusive, is not to set the bar high when it comes to attendance. When you demand high levels of commitment from people, there are groups you are very likely to end up excluding, even if that isn’t the intention.

People dealing with illness and disability can be in really unpredictable situations and often also struggle with unreliable energy. Anyone with caring responsibilities can have a hard time making commitments. Anyone with an unstable work situation will also struggle – which tends to go with being badly paid. Flexibility gets a lot done.

The Cryptids project was set up very much with this in mind. This isn’t the full group, it’s the people who could make it to Gloucester last weekend and I’ll have a somewhat different team for the next event we do. Flexibility is hard wired into the project. James and I are holding the core of it, and then we build around that with whoever feels able to show up.

Working flexibly takes a bit more organising, but it’s not a huge workload. I’ve run Pagan spaces on similar terms, it’s entirely manageable. That flexibility also comes into play when we hit unexpected challenges. I struggled with low blood pressure on the day of this gig, and the rest of the team reorganised around me to keep the whole thing viable. Most of us will be disabled at some point in our lives – sometimes as a temporary  problem, sometimes as a change we must learn to live with. It’s as well to be prepared for that.

Demanding high levels of commitment can feel like a good thing. Dedication, seriousness, discipline, and so forth are all attractive ideas. However, I don’t think it’s worth putting that ahead of people’s ability to participate. There is of course a power-over aspect to being able to demand high levels of commitment, and it’s worth being alert to that temptation.

(Photo by Alaric)

Too clever by half

(Nimue)

For many years now, I’ve been following a blog called Your Rainforest Mind. Paula Prober works with gifted young people, and also supports the adults they eventually become. I started following because it was helpful to me as a parent. Over the years I’ve seen her talk about many things that I recognise in my friends, and just occasionally, things that are familiar to me, as well.

One thing she’s come back to repeatedly is the way in which bright kids can be shamed by adults for being clever. Using ‘know it all’ and similar terms as a criticism and a put down makes clever kids anxious about their abilities. I suspect on top of that it will also shut down a lot gentle, not-so-brilliant kids who will also become afraid of saying what they know because they’re getting a clear message that it isn’t welcome or wanted.

Enthusiasm for learning is a wonderful thing, and knocking that out of a child is inexcusable. I know a lot of very clever adults who are deeply enthusiastic about things they know, and very much want to share. They don’t do that to make other people feel small or put them down, it’s just enthusiasm and joy in the subject. I can think of far too many occasions when I’ve been apologised to by people who had just enthusiastically told me a thing and I’ve had to reassure them that it was welcome.

Granted, it can be annoying if you know a lot about a topic and someone tries to lecture you in it. In my experience this often comes from people who don’t know much at all and who assume you are slightly more ignorant than they are. People who are enthusiastic about what they know tend to respond enthusiastically to finding other people who are interested in the same things. That tends not to result in anyone feeling got at.

I wonder how much of it comes down to projection. The assumption that sharing what you know is a power move, or a put down might well say more about the insecurities or inclinations of the person objecting than anything else. It might be an issue for people whose own struggles mean they feel threatened if they aren’t the best at everything or are shown up as not being perfect.

I delight in finding people who know things I don’t, and who are willing to invest time in getting me up to speed. Part of my approach to Druidry includes a commitment to learning whenever I can. I can’t imagine anyone genuinely drawn to the Druid path would want to put someone else down for sharing knowledge. 

For me what this raises are questions about how best to support exceedingly clever young humans. Also I’m thinking about how to better support some of the stunningly clever adults in my life who have clearly already been through enough of this kind of treatment to be affected by it.

Creating joy

(Nimue)

Life can be grim and challenging. Between the cost of living, the state of the environment and the horrors of war, joy does not show up automatically. However, when we work together to create joy for each other, it’s possible to do all kinds of good things.

The photo I’ve shared is of Keith and myself at a recent fairy event in Gloucester. It was good fun dressing up and there was much to enjoy in the colourful costumes other attendees had put together, and in the creative sharing that dominated the weekend. We contributed music to the event, which went really well.

Joy is necessary for life. Creating joyful spaces is vital for good mental health, and to give people the hope and the energy to tackle the serious issues. This is a significant part of my work, and what I feel I am here to do. Joyful community spaces are empowering, and lift people up and help them cope, and act. I’ve seen a lot of that in action over the weekend. Joyful space is nurturing and restorative.

The events I’m involved with are free to attend in the day, which makes them inclusive. People who are struggling don’t have to pay to be in the room. That’s really important to me. Watching kids enjoying the space, seeing parents having fun with it. Having people of all ages come along and join in, making safe space for people who otherwise out at the fringes – this all matters to me.

Being with Keith has taught me a lot about the process of co-creating joy. It’s in how we support and uplift each other, how we encourage each other and give each other permission to be daring and adventurous. We make more room for joy when we take delight in each other, and enjoy sharing time together. This is true of any human interaction. We also make more room for joy when we hold each other through the tough things and make room for dealing with life’s challenges. There was a lot of that too, over the weekend. Where there is mutual care and support there is real community.

Right now joy seems like a radical choice. It is a form of resistance. Making joy is an answer to austerity, to the hard grind that so many people face. We can meet poverty with efforts to uplift and overcome. We can support good things. These fairy events help raise money to keep The Folk of Gloucester open – it’s a wonderful building, a piece of history and heritage. Keeping it open, viable and available is important to me. Austerity threatens so much of our culture, so much of real worth is at risk right now. There are some serious consequences to doing these ‘silly’, joyous things.

Mental health and justice

(Nimue)

I want to draw your attention to this powerful piece of writing from James Nichol. It brings together issues of justice, mental health and community healing. The post looks at way in which we are responsible for each other, and the futility of approaching mental health as an individual problem in a situation of ongoing collective trauma. These are issues I’ve been poking about in for a while, but James has brought them together here with clarity, wisdom and insight. It is well worth taking the time to read his thoughts.

MENTAL HEALTH UNDER SIEGE

Working with criticism

(Nimue)

To learn and grow, we have to be able to recognise flaws and mistakes. Not all criticism is useful though, and some can be intentionally harmful. How do you decide what to take onboard and what to ignore? This has applications for any creative work we do, for studying Druidry, working in groups and for the not so druidic aspects of our lives as well.

One of the things I’ve learned from having work edited is that a good editor will leave you feeling better about your writing. A good editor gives you confidence and the knowledge that the best possible version of your work will be going out into the world. This is something to welcome.

Good feedback is helpful – and while there can be some initial embarrassment or discomfort around identifying mistakes, that is something that can be dealt with. It’s ok to feel uncomfortable. It’s good to be challenged.

When the feedback is good, it leads to better things. The red flag to watch for is feedback that won’t give you scope to improve. If someone puts you down as a person or rubbishes what you do, then you can’t learn from that and might as well ignore them. If there is no right answer, if everything you do is wrong then you dealing with a troll and owe them nothing.

It’s not your job to please everyone. It is your job to figure out whose feedback is relevant and useful. Whose input helps you improve, and who is just being critical for their own amusement?

Unsolicited critical feedback is often a form of bullying. If someone writes a bad review of your stuff, that’s fair enough. If someone seeks you out to criticise you, that’s not cool and you certainly don’t owe them a response.

There has to be room for negative feedback. It will help you figure out who your work is for, and it is not for and this will improve how you present yourself. It’s important to connect with the right people – that’s as true for what you make as it is for social spaces. If you cannot take negative feedback then you need to look at why.

Perfectionism can make it hard to hear criticism. It is fine not to be perfect, and being gentler with yourself will help with this. We are all learning, we are all flawed. Insecurity and rejection sensitivity can make it hard to hear criticism too. However, criticism is not rejection, not if it comes from someone who is trying to help you do better. Feedback can be an important form of care, when it’s done kindly.

Absolute refusal to engage with criticism of any sort is the path to narcissism. This is an awful condition that people back themselves into by refusing to accept anything suggesting they are less than perfect. It leads to massive cognitive dissonance and a damaged relationship with reality is a whole. Allowing yourself to make mistakes, allowing people to flag them and being ok with that is critically important self care.

Feeling blessed

(Nimue)

A few years ago there was a Druid I’d see fairly regularly who usually commented that he felt blessed, and that his life felt very full, and very rich. I always felt that was a powerful thing to be able to say, but at the time it also felt alien and unobtainable.

It doesn’t work just to declare it. That can be a toxic positivity move. If life feels tough, miserable and draining and you try to tell yourself that you feel blessed, that can make everything worse. It is basically trying to gaslight yourself into believing something that isn’t true. If you are struggling with real problems then re-framing won’t magically fix that and it can leave you feeling unrooted and more unhappy. I have tried this approach, more than once and it has never taken me anywhere even slightly good.

Practicing gratitude is good; Being alert to the small beauties, the wins, the little joys can make worlds of difference. If your problem stems from a lack of gratitude, this can be a healing process. If you’ve internalised capitalism so much that you can’t enjoy what you have then investing time in noticing the blessings already in your life is an empowering, life enhancing sort of daily practice. 

If you have to work hard to find the good in a day, then that may be because there isn’t enough good. If you’re dealing with constant pain, with overwhelming work stress, economic precariousness, cruelty, insufficiency, loss and so forth then you can’t gratitude your way out of that. You can’t get on top of this kind of thing by being grateful for the lessons if you truly have no way of learning those lessons to improve the situation you are in. It is a good idea not to feel grateful for a life that keeps knocking you down.

A blessed life is not a life free from struggle. There are always going to be challenges and setbacks. If you care about anything you are also going to experience loss and grief. What I’m finding is that when life is informed by love, these things seem meaningful. To struggle for a reason, can be meaningful. To struggle when it feels futile is soul destroying. Difficult, painful things work in very different ways when you feel loved, supported and understood by the people around you. Struggling as part of a group is very different to feeling alone with it.

How we take care of each other has a huge impact on how we experience life. Care and support might not solve all the problems, but entirely change the experience of dealing with them. Feeling loved, valued, held makes worlds of difference to how setbacks land. When you don’t have to haul yourself up from the blow, when instead people reach out to help you get up and get going again, those knockdowns aren’t so brutal. When life is a process of lifting and supporting each other and responding to adversity with kindness, compassion and love, then whatever comes can be faced.

This last year or so has brought me a lot of challenges. It’s also been the happiest year of my life so far, and for the first time in my life I find I feel blessed.

Learning and Growing

(Nimue)

Life delivers challenges, and we all get opportunities to try and turn difficult experiences into learning opportunities. I don’t think anyone should feel under any pressure to make something useful out of horrible things they go through. I also don’t think it’s an especially good way to learn. What we learn from trauma is often desperate and doesn’t apply well in non-traumatic situations.

Learning and growing because there’s the space to do so is a far better experience. I’ve really been seeing this in my own life in recent months. Having the space to explore my own feelings, and the support to question my assumptions is turning out to be powerful. Much of what I’m doing at the moment involves unleaning the things I learned from traumatic experiences.

Without a doubt, it is easiest to learn and grow when there’s support to do so. Guidance makes a lot of odds. Gentle encouragement to examine my beliefs and change my thinking and behaviour have been really good. As is usually the way of it, I’m struck by how much more effective this is as a shared project than as a solitary one. Working together to support and uplift each other we can create shared space for learning and growing. When we’re able to help each other that’s empowering for everyone involved. There’s nothing like seeing someone flourish in response to what you’re sharing with them.

I know from teaching work I’ve done that criticism is not an effective tool for getting people to learn. Positive feedback is far more effective most of the time. Stretching into new possibility is a good way to grow, rather than feeling pressured to find some way of protecting yourself from some new difficulty. 

The tools we develop dealing with trauma may get us through terrible times. They enable us to survive and keep going. To heal from that means not only getting away from the harmful situation, it also means unlearning the lessons we’ve learned. You need to feel safe and secure if you are going to risk taking apart the coping mechanisms that have kept you viable. It’s a vulnerable thing to do and not something anyone can do when they feel unsafe. 

It’s good to challenge each other gently. Being asked to consider whether something is still true, and what the evidence is can be really helpful. Having feedback from others about what’s fair, reasonable and appropriate can help a person rebuild the inside of their head. When we do this work collectively, it’s easier to think about. I may have unrealistic expectations of what I am supposed to be able to do, but I’ll likely treat another person in the same situation far more kindly than I would myself. I first ran into this in a self-help group for domestic abuse survivors, and it was a powerful thing. It’s easier to think about other people, and to be compassionate towards them where you haven’t felt able to be compassionate towards yourself. When we do that for each other we can build better ways of thinking for everyone involved.

‘Tough love’ can all too easily be a cover for actual abuse. Trying to make people change and grow ‘for their own good’ can easily be a cover for bullying. It’s possible to do incredibly unkind things in the name of ‘only trying to help’. Gentleness gets a lot more done. Most of us do not flourish in response to ‘brutal honesty’ but we do grow, learn and heal in response to radical kindness.

Local Druidry

(Nimue)

Prompted by a recent comment on the blog I thought it might be interesting to talk about Druidry and community and how that works for me. I was very active during my Midlands period in terms of going to moots, grove meetings and rituals, and then leading moots, meditation sessions and rituals. In the last ten years or so I’ve been involved with a few things locally, but nothing like on that scale.

There are moots I’ve been to a few times, but it’s not something I’ve reliably had the time, energy or transport for. I’ve been to mistletoe rites down by the Severn and had a few years of being involved with the local Druid Camp. There have been intermittent local rituals with various people over the years. The major issue there has been a lack of somewhere suitable – flat, accessible and not so windblown that you have to yell to be heard. Stroud has a lot of windy hills.

For some years I sat with a lovely group of contemplative Druids, meeting every month. That doesn’t happen anymore, and I miss it. Holding a space like that requires a bigger living room than I’ve had, so I wasn’t able to pick it up when the previous organiser needed to let it go. Otherwise, I probably would have done. Aside from that, my major local activity has been making temporary labyrinths for people to walk.

My nearest Druid Grove is in Bristol – which is a long enough journey that it has felt like too much to consider. I know I would be welcome there and I have friends in that Grove, but the distance is an issue.

I am tentatively exploring the possibility of starting something locally, because I’ve found myself in a conversation about it. The singing space I’m running in Gloucester isn’t overtly a Druid thing, but singing seasonally is part of what I do, and enabling people to come together and sing is certainly an expression of my Druidry. 

My local Pagan scene is rather lovely. We aren’t beset by personality clashes, big egos or witch wars. The local scene is supportive, with plenty of mutual respect. I know most of the people who are involved in making things go. I like them, but that doesn’t automatically mean that what they run is what I need. There’s a local Goddess Temple doing all sorts of things – as an example – but that’s not the right space for me. 

Sometimes being part of a community is a compromise, where you fit in as best you can because the need for like-minded people is an issue. Sometimes you get lucky and find that what’s on your doorstep is exactly what you need. Sometimes to get what you need you have to be prepared to run it yourself, which is a lot of work. Communities tend to be fluid as people come and go. Running Pagan spaces as a volunteer is labour intensive so it’s a lot to take on, and a lot to sustain and people can’t always do that for the long haul. 

Love and fear

(Nimue)

Suffering is an inevitable part of life. The more you love, the more likely you are to experience loss and grief. At the same time, love is very much the answer to not being afraid of what life does to us all.

When we’re held by love, then whatever comes is simply a challenge to face. When you can be confident in the love, comradeship and support of others, then the challenges are bearable, no matter what they are. When we are determined to make the best of things for each other’s sake, then we are best able to live.

Conversely, without insulating layers of love and support, any challenge will make you feel exposed and vulnerable. There’s more to fear when you anticipate having to face challenges alone, unsupported or without kindness to ease your pain. Individualism can be incredibly isolating, and there’s a lot about modern society that pushes us towards feeling like we have to tough everything out by ourselves.

When we reach for each other, reach for support and ask for care, we become like a grove of trees, holding each other firm. To be able to give is a good place to be. Being asked for help means being part of something, feeling your place in a community of support. 

Overcoming the fear that no one will care isn’t always easy. My experience has been that the vast majority of humans are kind, and will do what they can. Whether that’s a warm word, or rolling up their sleeves and piling in to help, most people are inclined to try and make life better for the people around them.

If you’ve experienced the other thing, it can make it harder to trust and seek help. If you’ve been humiliated for needing help, or mocked for suffering, then it is not easy to keep trusting people. There are those amongst us who feel the need to belittle other people’s struggles and to shame people who talk about their troubles. My guess is that this most likely comes from a place of pain and not feeling able to ask for help, and thus resenting the people who do dare to ask. There are also those who won’t help and who resent being asked, and they have their own issues. Most likely these are people afraid of their own mortality and vulnerability who cope with the world by not thinking about anything that makes them uncomfortable. This is not a workable response to reality and ultimately makes them more vulnerable to life’s challenges.

The people most likely to help are the ones who have been there or who are dealing with similar issues. Not the people who have the most resources to spare, but the ones who understand. In my experience, people who are struggling are incredibly generous with other people who are struggling while those who are best off are the ones most likely to say that they don’t have the time or the resources to get involved.

Pagan egos and community responses

(Nimue)

I’ve only seen this dealt with well a few times, and I’ve seen it handled badly more times than I can count. What do we do when someone’s ego runs out of control and they start acting in ways that are harmful to others? If a conflict develops, this often results in more people wanting to exert power, and the whole situation gets messier and nastier. There’s nothing like righteous anger to make people self important and unkind, if they let it.

If someone is simply vanishing up their own bottom and not hurting anyone else, the best answer is to ignore them. Inflated egos are further inflated with attention and sometimes doing nothing at all is a really effective choice.

However, if the inflated ego leads someone to bullying, excluding others or otherwise using their power inappropriately, action is needed. If you do nothing in a situation like this, then you are actively supporting the harmful behaviour. Inaction in face of harm is never a morally neutral choice. If someone is seriously acting out we have to be willing to be uncomfortable in the short term in order to fix things.

It’s best not to do this publicly. When the stakes are lower, a person has an easier time of it admitting they are out of order and changing tack. It’s vital to give them the room to get things right and support them in doing that. 

It’s good to have a team to deal with problems, and to talk to everyone who is involved. Dealing with a situation as a community can help deal with the harm caused as you also try to stop it happening again. Check in with people about how they feel – not just the people most directly impacted. Strife in a community will impact on everyone, and that needs airing as part of the healing process.

Listen to everyone, and be aware that not everyone is truthful. Watch out for balances of power. Support restoration and avoid punishment. There are people who will play victim in order to get their ‘aggressor’ punished – usually by being rejected by the community. If you can’t tell what’s really happened, then working for a restorative outcome gives you the best shot at not supporting a bully who is playing victim.

Conflicts can happen for all sorts of reasons. People acting as though from inflated egos can be doing so because they’re massively insecure. Sometimes people cause harm without realising how their behaviour impacts on others. Many situations are complicated. Sometimes you find that what you’ve got is a genuine predator or a deliberate manipulator. 

The most important thing is to take these situations seriously, especially when they are small. If you can grapple with a problem when it’s just friction, just annoyance then the odds are better that you’ll never have to deal with more serious drama. When we don’t tolerate behaviour that undermines the community as a whole, we get strong and safe communities.

Thank you to Alainafae for the prompt.