day two

wow, so i can write about anything that pops into my curious mind? what a treat!

i guess i want to start by brainstorming how i would like to use my blog. i’ve always wanted to capture my creative journey so i think that’s exactly what i’d like to do. record observations and learnings while i’m creating and capture moments where i’m otherwise stuck, because as difficult as they are, i’m realizing these are the most important moments. i saw my psychologist yesterday and shared this wonderful news that i’m starting a blog and she challenged me to somehow include my mental health journey, too. what a lovely idea.

so, let’s start off with a bit of research. a kind soul taught me the word self-consent yesterday and now i’d like to blog about it!

self consent
the radical act of
tuning in to & showing up
for your needs, desires, limits and boundaries

loveuncommon.com

when i learn about something new, i like to make some notes first, taken right from the source:

• treating your needs, desires & limits with respect
• being curious about yourself
• making choices that express your authentic self
• embeds consensual practice in your life, self & others
  note: broaden your understanding of consent beyond the sexual context
• unhealthy external messages/obligations, re: what to do to/with our own bodies
  ie. gender roles, pleasing others
• recognizing the signals in your body that tell you that you are having an emotion is crucial to determining your wants & needs
• friendly banter v. consent violation
• when we had to override our emotional or physical response to a situation, lots of us stopped trusting our bodies and our sense of our own boundaries, limits & desires

now, i’d like to ponder these points on my own. how do these points relate to my own life, including my childhood and upbringing but also throughout life to adulthood? i could see this becoming a series of posts, much like the original author has developed a mini-series of writings to explore this. with a blog, i think i can do the same. maybe, even follow along with the posts, day by day and not all at once, in order to consume & digest this information slowly.

that’s something else i’d like to write about one day — the importance of savouring life and what that really means. it’s gustatory, yes, but it only starts there. but, let’s come back to that another time. i wonder, how i can organize a list of things that i can come back to on days when i’m blogging and haven’t the foggiest idea of what to wonder about. that’s what this really is, a wonder log, a catalogue of all the things that are capturing my thoughts & day dreams.

okay, back to self-consent. here are some personal examples to explore:

• being surrounded by emotionally unstable adults, including my parents, i look back and realize that i was a very anxious child. i didn’t know it at the time, even though as a child i had really good awareness and insight. anyway, i became a picky eater at a young age. i hated milk and most vegetables and everything had a very strong taste. i think this is where i developed my aversion to sauces, which just covered up every other flavour in a dish. within the last year, my mom told me that yes, i was a very picky eater and a smartie pants, ie. i could always tell when there was milk in something and i would absolutely refuse to eat it. i wish i could say that my parents got creative about how to hide things in my food, which is something i learned how to do myself. i look back over the years of irritable bowel syndrome and disordered eating, and i realize that is is rooted in a lack of self-consent. the more jarring example is being force fed and at other times, being physically hurt for not finishing my food or having intense stomach pains as a young child and not feeling safe to ask for help.

even just exploring this one example was incredibly labour intensive, more so emotionally and psychologically than anything else. these are thoughts that have been floating around in my mind for years and i’m finally writing them down to share with myself (and anyone else who may be curious). time to take a break and resume when i feel refreshed (hey! now that’s a good boundary)