theunitofcaring:

A lot of the advice I got about learning to enforce my boundaries was framed as an adversarial thing. Like, ‘yes, it might upset and disappoint the people around you, but you have to learn to tell them ‘no’ anyway.’ At best, ‘good people will still like you if you enforce your boundaries’.

What I wish I’d been told is that good people will think it’s awesome that you enforce your boundaries, that there are people who will respect the hell out of you for it, that there are people who will admire you not despite you telling them no, but because of it. That most people don’t want to make you do something you don’t enjoy,and so they’ll actively be happier and more relaxed around you if they know they can trust you to decline to do things you don’t enjoy and to ask them to stop things that bother you.

It helped me a lot, personally, to stop thinking of ‘enforcing my boundaries’ as something I did for me and more as something I did to empower the people I was close with, to build a situation where they and I felt sure everything that was going on was something we all wanted.

Most advice isn’t good for everyone and this advice seems maybe bad for people in abusive situations, because sometimes you do need to learn to enforce boundaries against people who will try to violate them. But if there are other brains like me out there: your partner will be really happy you can say no to them. your friend will be really happy you change the subject when you hate it. your roommate will really appreciate that you tell them to turn down the music. most people will feel safer and more comfortable around you if they know you’ll reliably express your needs, AND they’ll feel better about voicing theirs.

a-spoon-is-born:

Wild rice isn’t actually rice-it’s a grass seed that grows naturally in lakes in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and it’s been an indigenous staple food for many, many centuries. Although some corporations have taken and grown “wild rice” in paddies, it is not the same thing- it is actually a hybrid seed that is not the same quality and often sold for a higher price anyways.

Not only is the wild rice a sacred food, but is a form of Indigenous science that lets you know how healthy the water is (or isn’t), because water is life and affects the health of all people, plants, and animals that live with it. This has been belatedly acknowledged by very recent research from the University of Minnesota that the health of the wild rice can predict all health of lakes and streams.

I buy my wild rice from the Red Lake Nation and the White Earth Nation.

The cool thing about buying from the White Earth Nation is that they also have videos showing the traditional processes involved in harvesting and parching the rice, and they offer stuff like gift baskets, chokecherry preserves, maple candy, soup & pancake mix, and cookbooks which make great gifts!

What I like about buying from the Red Lake Nation is there is a massive variety and quantity of different wild rice products at many different prices! They are aware that the broken grains are not as quality, but it doesn’t go to waste-you can buy the broken grains for “Soup Bits” ($3.49) which are an inexpensive way to add flavor & nutrition to soups and stews. They also offer “Quick Cook” wild rice ($5.69), which is prepared from a lighter roast/parch process that allows the grains to cook in a shorter amount of time and has a rich, traditional flavor.

You can also buy syrups and jellies made from hand harvested hawthorn, chokecherry, and highbush cranberry there.

BUT! If you’re worried about shipping costs or like me, are disabled/have limited mobility and can’t always get to the store like you might prefer,Red Lake Nation also sells their rice through Amazon, eligible for Prime shipping. This is also good for those, Native or not, who are struggling in the community and share their wishlists for help purchasing food.(Also please know this post is only meant to share information, not to make anyone feel bad or imply they’re eating “inferior” food.)

If you’re interested in finding out what other nations cultivate and sell/trade wild rice, there’s a partial list here of where you can buy hand-harvested wild rice from native people in the Great Lakes region

mothwood:

“We have forgotten that the world is there prior to us. We have forgotten how things have preceded us, how mountains grew up before our gaze existed, we forget how plants are called before we think to call them and recognize them, we have forgotten what it is plants that call us, when we think about calling them, that comes to meet our bodies in blossom. :
In these violent and lazy times, in which we do not live what we live, we are read, we are forcibly lived, far from our essential lives, we lose the gift, we no longer hear what things still want to tell us, we translate, we translate, everything is translation and reduction, there is almost nothing left of the sea but word without water: for we have also translated the words, we have emptied them of their speech, dried, reduced, and embalmed them, and they can no longer recall to us the way they used to rise up from the things as the burst of their essential laughter, when, out of joy, they called each other, they rejoiced in their fragrance-name; and “sea,” “sea” smelled of seaweed, sounded salt, and we tasted the infinite loved one, we licked the stranger, the salt of her word on our lips.
:
To allow a thing to enter in its strangeness, light from the soul has to be put into each look, and the exterior light mixed with the interior light. An invisible aura forms around beings who are looked at well. Seeing before vision, seeing to see and see, before the eyes ‘narrative. This is not sorcery. Its the science of the other! An art in itself; and all the ways of letting all the beings with their different strangeness enter our proximity are regions that ask to be approached, each with an appropriate patience.
:
There is a patience for the egg, a patience for the rose; a patience for each particular animal, there is a patience for all kinds of patiences, to practice, to develop […] A patience pays attention […] doing nothing, not upsetting, filling, replacing, taking up the space. Leaving the space alone. Thinking delicately of. Directing the mixture of knowing looks and loving light toward. A face. Surrounding it with a discreet, confident, attentive questioning, attuning to, watching over it, for a long time, until penetrating into the essence. […]
:
We need everything. All things: all the time. Everything that has happened, everything that can happen. We need the time of presences, to approach things until they are close to us, us with them, before them, giving each to each other…”

— Hélène Cixous, from Coming to Writing and Other Essays

violent-darts:

star-anise:

emotional-karuma:

star-anise:

I’m avoiding the thing about Trump’s family separation policy as much as possible because it literally makes me want to melt down in a rage the moment I think about it almost at all, and as a Canadian there’s an incredibly limited amount I can do when I have to keep my own precarious mental health functioning

but I just want you to know that a lot of the field of Attachment Theory in psychology began after WWII, when psychologists examined the physical and psychological health of children sent away from their parents for their own “safety”

and what we found about the psychological results of broken child-caregiver attachment has led us to conclude that it is literally MORE HUMANE to leave families intact in refugee camps in warzones, than to separate the children from their parents, even if those children are sent to the best of all possible environments.

Speaking as a fucking psychologist I just want you to know that if you want to fuck someone up FOR FUCKING LIFE, the BEST possible way to do it, is to abruptly separate them from the adults who love and care for them. For maximum fuckery do it before the age of 3, 5 is pretty damn good at fucking them up for life too, but honestly any time before adulthood is pretty effective. You will fuck them up in a way we just DON’T know how to heal yet. You don’t just leave them catastrophically more at risk for mental illness, learning disorders, addictions, abuse, and future trauma, you also put them at much higher risk of things like diabetes, heart attack, and suicide.

and then I thought about what kind of environments those kids ARE being sent into and I need to throw up now

Op do you have any links to papers or anything? Preferably not paywalled?

Honestly the field is so huge and so broad that I have too many sources rather than too few. The harder thing is pointing to a concise, targeted, tailored-to-be-relevant summary. (But if child trauma experts in the US aren’t working on producing one at this very instant, I’ll eat my hat.)

The two places I recommend starting are the Child Trauma Academy Library and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network.

@emotional-karuma : 

additionally both of those have twitter accounts which are LIT UP with this issue, and responses to it – CTA has their official one and then their founder and senior fellow Bruce Perry has his own twitter which likewise is heavily dominated by this issue. From their twitter pages you can also find the NCTSN’s twitter and related ones and at that point you can basically drown people in the cites!