7 weekly readings: on finding and embracing ourselves

a need to love and embrace myself through writing is what brought me to substack. i'm so grateful to have also been able to achieve that through reading.

last week’s recommendations: discourse on our culture and girls

i started this blog when i was overwhelmed with a need to freely express myself: the real me, that is, the me who is not forced to adapt themself to arbitrary expectations. after months of deep reflection and emotional struggle, i was ready to fully come out as bisexual and non-binary. i was confident that most of the people in my life would accept me for who i was. and most of them did, but many did not.

messages and phone calls poured not only into my phone but the phones of many who knew me. several suggestions: mood stabilizers, new therapist, more “honesty” with my “care team”, compromise, a request to “stop being a fucking fake.” after i posted about how happy my butterfly bracelets made me felt, someone asked me over text, “you know those came from a sweatshop in china right? i’m not sure if you’ve considered that.” my butterfly bracelets, which i wore because they made me feel good, were irrefutable evidence to some that i had completely lost my mind, so much so that i felt compelled to write a whole post defending my girly expressions (yes, i share all this writing with everyone in my life on social media). but then i was told that i must curtail my gender expression if it was going to cause so much upheaval. even friends who had shared girly interests with me — tarot, witchcraft, olivia rodrigo — declared their inability to associate with me if i was unwilling to compromise my gender expression in order to alleviate the discomfort felt by those close to me.

photo my own

“you look like a 12-year-old girl. i’m not sure that’s how you want to be perceived.”

starting this blog made things better for me but worse for others. accusations of mental insanity escalated. my sister took to facebook to call my behavior “insulting to women” (she did not elaborate and i did not ask for an explanation because - wtf?). overall, the genre of this new wave of criticism centered around a clear theme: “i’m fine with your identity, but are the butterflies really necessary?”

people who had not spoken to me in 14 years sent me messages telling me i “don’t need to post so much” because i “don’t owe an explanation to anyone,” and then they asked me to explain myself. friends and acquaintances and family members said they were totally cool with me being non-binary but they had “thought it was just a philosophical thing” and i should reconsider the “speed” with which i am simply being myself. when i said i am just being myself, they said they did not believe me. people who were either actively pushing me out of their lives, insulting my dress and style, or refusing to believe the things i told them cautioned me “not to burn bridges.”

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writing tips: 10 tactics for avoiding writer’s block

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suddenly i realized: these people truly believe in the made up crap that controls their lives, so much so that they think i am insane if i deviate from their rubrics. the revelation struck me with sadness, but what can i do?

all i can do is focus on those relationships with the people who have shown that they love and support me even when i am merely existing. that is why i came out: a need to be loved for my mere existence, a need to stop wondering where i would stand with people if they really saw the real me.

most of all, i wanted to stop hating myself. and what i discovered once i truly embraced myself is that i never did hate myself. i hated a false self, a self that others told me was me but never was me.

writing has helped, but there’s something else i can do: read.

so many women here have been sharing experiences and insights which have profoundly helped me think about my own life. i noticed a common theme throughout many of these writings: there is a commitment to finding, embracing, expressing, and celebrating the true self, and i mean the true self divorced from all the made up concepts and pressures acting upon us.

there are so many concepts and identities which work upon us beyond gender. there is race and sexuality, and there are also concepts about beauty, adulthood, womanhood, purpose, and morality which twist us into something we are not.

Valerie

, whose breathtaking piece is the first listed below, expresses this feeling so compellingly when it comes to the social construct of “womanhood.”

“My first instinct is to punish myself for misbehaving, back to the recluse state we go, what are you doing. Haunted and bombarded from all sides by the three M’s of womanhood—modesty, maturity, mindfulness—the thought of digressing or deviating in any way is terrifying. Sandra Lee Bartky explored the concept of false shame in Femininity and Domination (chapter "Shame and Gender"): “False shame is felt when a person evaluates her behavior in line with commitments which are not really her own, commitments which disturb a moral equilibrium to which she will shortly return.” Indeed—in my mind, with every year added to a woman’s lifespan come new responsibilities, drowning out the partying, the lipstick stains, the promiscuity, the wilderness of it all, one day at a time, taking everything away until there’s only chronic fatigue and a full counter of anti-aging serums.”

i have selected these readings because they both connect to the weekly theme on finding and embracing ourselves while simultaneously connecting this theme with many other interesting and well-developed topics. we cannot stop at gender when we think about how we are forced to perform and how performance undermines us.

photo my own

overview of this week’s selections

a few of these readings exam how the false self which others are performing can end up affecting us. some also explore our attempts to construct authentic selves which are not actually authentic: and how in the midst of these attempts, really we are performing. among the most fascinating reads on this front is

Emma Carmichael

’s writing on “shifters” who, unable to embrace their real reality, actively create fantasy worlds to live inside, complete with superheroes and harry potter characters.

there is also a piece by

rachel moss

on how internet “red pill” culture has fostered new made up identities for men; an article by

peyton

on how jealousy can inhibit us from writing with our true authentic selves; a thoughtful reflection by

Madeline Mills

on how she wants to spend her life based on what she truly values; and an important reflection on body image and beauty culture from

Sophie Thomas

.

finally i have included an essay in spanish by

Michelle💌

, who writes beautifully about being intentional in creating and connecting with our physical spaces.

please enjoy these readings and consider subscribing to the publications!

“you’re not demure, you’re a mess” by

Valerie

my favorite extract:

“There is no guidebook for your twenties, or thirties, or forties: we’re all running on assumptions, cross-hearted intuition, and pushing our luck. I suspect that those of us who never learned how to let loose and have fun get particularly scared when fun inevitably finds us. It’s not about the partying itself, nor the amount of alcohol, or the beautiful men. I feel like, for many years if not forever, I’d been frozen in a permanent tiptoeing state—always self-checking, scanning how people feel, how I’m acting, if my hair is frizzy and my words are right, acutely aware of everything in my periphery. Too attentive in all the wrong ways. Too controlling to be myself. Rigidity verbatim. I might’ve simply run out of fuel, and to hell with it, I no longer want to be a walking thermometer of my surroundings.”

you're not demure, you're a mess

“you don’t know him, he lives in a different reality” by

Emma Carmichael

Many of the big shifting social media accounts amass thousands of followers through their tips, and storytimes. Some share cute moments between themselves and their partners in another reality or post images to help “motivate” people to shift. Practically every video could easily be something pulled from the pages of a fanfiction. Through seeking attention, and wish fulfillment people make these videos proving to others that shifting is real and subsequently building a following who they profit off the engagement of.

I am increasingly frustrated by young adults on the internet who refuse to acknowledge other possibilities for why they genuinely believe they are dating a Marvel character. Additionally, I am sad that people with good hearts are not receiving the help they need because they truly believe that they are bending quantum reality to go to another world. An argument I will make, is that many of these shifters are not taking the time to create something new, they are rather borrowing other’s imagination to supplement their own life’s deficits.

you don't know him, he lives in a different reality

“the internet is our bedroom” by

rachel moss

my favorite extract:

“What I am trying to say is that, while these men tell themselves a story, (I took the red pill that was offered me), there is actually a different version of the story that they do not acknowledge. When the women in Valley of the Dolls start to take dolls, it also begins as a choice. But soon, they find that they need the pills. That they can’t function without the pills. That the pills are slowly but surely undoing them, but they can’t sleep without them or they can’t perform without them or they just feel too alone without them.

Addiction is like this. You choose to take the red pill one morning and then, some mornings later, you find that you can’t live without it. To me, the men creating and consuming Red Pill content have less in common with Neo and his choice than they do the girls in Valley of the Dolls. They don’t see past a fake world and into another realer, more authentic world. Instead, they have become addicted to something that provides them a little relief from the misery of performing, of waking, of living another day. And in their addiction, they are losing control.”

the internet is our bedroom

“how do i want to spend my time on earth?” by

Madeline Mills

“It doesn’t matter what I do as a career. It doesn’t matter what I choose to do to support my family. Just as long as I’m supporting them makes me happy — but I’ve decided that it doesn’t have to become something my whole existence hinges on. Because how I spend my time on earth isn’t what I do for work, it’s my life as a whole.”

how do i want to spend my time on earth?

“perfection is a disease” by

Sophie Thomas

my favorite extract:

“I worked and worked and worked for that. I wanted to be en vouge and beyond that I wanted to not be skinny any more. I wanted to not be considered ‘underweight’ (BMI is bullshit, but for some reason, still the metric). I wanted, I wanted, I wanted.

I had to spend so much time justifying why I wanted this thing, this thing being gaining weight. And not just gaining weight, gaining muscle. I was already ‘perfect’ (I wasn’t). I already had the body that people wanted (most of it came from height). So many people said ‘don’t gain too much weight’, or ‘don’t get too muscly, you won’t be as attractive’ and I pretended that I was ignoring them.”

Perfection is a Disease

“on jealousy” by

peyton

“each writer has their own readers- if you write an essay on Plath, your readers will not all have also read that other writer’s essay on Plath, they’ll have read yours. there are just too many things to read for a reader to have read it all.

if you are itching to write something, write it. if you’re thinking it’s just going to look like i’m copying this other person’s idea, know that this work screams you and you can make it your own. if you’re reading a book, or listening to a record, or looking at a great piece of art and your brain starts buzzing, don’t let that voice whisper jealousy. let it declare, “inspiration!””

On jealousy

“lo que esconde una mesa de noche” by

Michelle💌

my favorite extract:

“No estoy segura de si es algo que viene con la edad o con las diferentes necesidades que adoptas al jugar a ser adulto, pero también he desarrollado una necesidad de crear espacios, de ir poco a poco conformando aquellas esquinas donde ocurren milagros. En la casa que me vio crecer, mi papá tiene un despacho. Todavía no comprendía por qué, pero entrar a esa habitación en la planta baja de mi casa me resultaba intimidante. Algo dentro de mí intuía que ahí sucedía algo grande. Recuerdo sentir que estaba entrando en la burbuja de alguien más, algo que me hacía tocar la puerta antes de entrar, como una muestra de respeto a lo que ahí sucedía. El despacho de mi papá tiene un escritorio de madera enorme, unos anaqueles llenos de enciclopedias que sostienen los libros de todos los integrantes de mi familia. Gracias a uno de esos libros aprendí que existen flores que devoran.”

Lo que esconde una mesa de noche

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