I am the patriarchy

My heart’s musing….these words are my attempt to wade through the craziness in our world…..I have to look at my part…..

I am the patriarchy

You are the patriarchy

We are the patriarchy

We cannot escape it

It lives in every interaction, in every cell of our evolution …whether we are willing to look and see it or not.

This is the world…..it’s me and you and us.

None of it fits

The paradigm sits on stilts and the water is rising

The structure sways and settles

The tide recedes

Again

This is the universal female bodied person crying to the universal male bodied person. …. And vice versa.

I most want to be heard

You still want to explain

You still want to be heard

I still want understanding

I just want your listening

You still want to fix it

So it will go away

But, no, I need you to cry with me… to feel in your gut the pain in my gut.

To get that your compassion outweighs your solutions.

By tons.

Every time you say yes when you mean no you are the patriarchy.

Every time you hear no and you still go forward you are the patriarchy.

Every time you command rather than ask

You are the patriarchy

Every time I silence myself I re- enforce the patriarchy

Every time I rage in your face I continue the patriarchy.

Every time you override feeling in order to explain away what is uncomfortable you have created a conversation stopper. The patriarchy.

Every time you think I need an explanation you are not listening to a completely different way of comprehending with openness.

There are no solutions or quick fixes to pain, to being silenced, to having been over looked, to being told to play small, to being wanted only for my body as a receptacle for your body…..

There are no solutions for my knowing to be less needed than yours, for my need to love you completely being overlooked so you could look bigger, better and stronger to the world.

There are no solutions to the past.

There is only now. ….

New seeing, new slowness….

New caring

Let the water rise

Let the stilts be toppled

Let us swim side by side in the inquiry of what it might be —— to be in inquiry with each other.

What if it’s true that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

Me for you

You for me

All of us for each other.

We are the patriarchy

Only we can dismantle the patriarchy.

Together.