Sonia Connolly

Paying attention to our limits helps us compassionately care for ourselves.
Cherish Your Limits

New book response at Curious, Healing. Have you read this? Comments welcome!

• "Hope in the Dark" by Rebecca Solnit

Waiting list
My schedule has been full and I have continued to receive calls from new clients, so I started a waiting list. I'm both delighted to be in demand and chagrined to turn down people reaching out for help. Based on past ebbs and flows, I expect to have more room in a month or two.

Curious, Healing is a blog, and you're welcome to comment there or here about the books. The articles don't have a comment section. You're welcome to comment here or send me email with any thoughts.

If you want the monthly newsletter in your inbox, along with news about my practice, you can subscribe here.

Apparently I haven't been posting these! Perhaps I've been a bit distracted by current events. Here, have several in a row.

Emotions are meant to move. Giving them more space allows them to flow and change, peak and ebb.
Counter the Feelings Police

New book response at Curious, Healing. Have you read this? Comments welcome!

• "EPUB Straight to the Point" by Elizabeth Castro

Presence After Trauma available as ebook!
You can now order Presence After Trauma as an ebook for $7.99 directly from me (epub, Kindle, and pdf), or Amazon (Kindle only) or Apple iBooks (epub only). The ebook includes all the illustrations.

Wellspring of Compassion ebook update
The next task is to update the Wellspring of Compassion ebook with what I learned making the new one. If you already own Wellspring of Compassion as an ebook and you want an updated copy, email me and I'll send you a new one when it's ready. I'll update broken web links and remove repeated images, so it will be a somewhat smaller file.

Curious, Healing is a blog, and you're welcome to comment there or here about the books. The articles don't have a comment section. You're welcome to comment here or send me email with any thoughts.

If you want the monthly newsletter in your inbox, along with news about my practice, you can subscribe here.

Why Does Dating Men Make Me Feel Like Shit? by Emma Lindsay

Usually instead of saying “I am turned on by that woman,” a man will say “that woman is hot.” The first phrasing places the locus of control within his own body (aka, in a way, making it “his fault” if he gets turned on), the second phrasing places the locus of control within the woman’s body (making it “her fault” if he gets turned on.)

This article explains rape culture. Men locate control of their sexual feelings in women instead of themselves because they feel ashamed. Wow. I've noticed the shame, but never understood it this clearly.

As it was introduced on twitter: Content warning for PoC. White folks, this video can be a first step for talking to our “colorblind”/ignorant/racist family members.
Blakc parents explain how to deal with police by Jason Kottke.

Made me cry. Made me think. Made me want to spread it far and wide so people understand the weight of our already existing police state.

I went to Unite Oregon's No Ban No Wall rally in downtown Portland yesterday with a couple of friends.

( I'm glad I went! )

We stood for an hour. My back hurt by the end! Rallies require able bodies (or assistive devices). I have mixed feelings about going to more rallies myself. I'm glad they're happening. I like adding to the count of people there, connecting with other folks resisting, and feeling the support of the speeches. At the same time, I'm not convinced it's the best way for me personally to resist. Still thinking about that.

I guess my objection is that I'm not sure this deserves the Tikun Olam tag. It's definitely resistance, but did I make the world a better place, even incrementally, by attending?

Erik Loomis says Keep Protesting!

As I and many others have stated, if you ever wondered what you have done when Adolf Hitler took power in Germany or Francisco Franco in Spain or Augusto Pinochet in Chile, well now you know. You would do exactly what you are doing now. If that’s going into the streets, then great. If that’s complaining about protestors or whining about liberals or whining about the left, then that’s what you would have done in 1933, 1937, and 1973. Only you can stop Trump. So do it.

I suppose in that context, yes, attending rallies does incrementally make the world a better place, or at least tries to keep it from getting worse quite so fast.

In my weekly folk dance email, which goes out to 140 people even though only four or five come to my groups, I sent out a few videos of songs and dances with Muslim backgrounds, in acknowledgement of the heart-breaking Muslim Ban enacted in the US yesterday.

Bulgarian dance Staro Pomaško is named after the Pomaks, Bulgarian Muslims. Here it is danced by Dunav in Israel, led by Yves Moreau, who originally taught the dance. He sings along a bit, too. We have sheet music for this, so we'll sing it at the next singing group meeting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPcWpM6HAGw

Nardanina is a Muslim Georgian song. Here is Aragvi Project singing it for a bit, then video abruptly cuts to other beautiful Georgian songs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQUcxQ9jcCE

Jazzy version of Nardanina, complete with trumpet solo!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmDRQ0sLmLM

Seems like the threatened white supremacist march in Montana didn't happen (yet), so I directly contributed $100 to the Montana Human Rights Network for my January financial action. I figure they'll help Jews and Muslims.

One dark December evening, I was biking through a small commercial district, using a high-powered light and reflective gear as always.

As I approached the 4-way stop intersection, a white lady in an SUV-van type vehicle ran her stop sign to turn right in front of me. Then she stopped to parallel park. I stopped behind her to wait for opposing traffic to clear so I could go around her.

She backed her big SUV-van type vehicle straight toward me! I jumped up and down and yelled. She stopped and opened the window and gestured me around her. I said, "Watch the hell out!" She said defensively, "I didn't see you!" As I biked past her, I said, "That's the problem!"

I hope she learned something. I suspect she didn't.

As icing on the cake, someone yelled from a house across the street, "... fuck ..." It might have been, "Shut the fuck up," directed at me, but since I couldn't hear it clearly, I'm going to keep hoping it was directed at the lady's poor driving and judgment. Let's pretend it was, "Wake the fuck up!"

We white lady feminists need to make sure we see the more vulnerable and less powerful women of color, disabled women, lesbian women, trans women, immigrant women around us, rather than focusing only on the oppression of Christmas shopping we experience.

Friday, 20 January 2017 I did five sessions of bodywork for trauma, cleaned the house, and hosted my weekly Balkan dance group. We had a fun time and folks thanked me for providing a distraction. I continue to strongly believe that connection, community, music, dancing, singing are important parts of resistance, surviving, and thriving. We need things that knit us together to counter the forces that strive to divide and destroy us.

Saturday, 21 January 2017 I biked up to Council Crest (one of the highest point in Portland) with a friend, shopped at the big downtown farmers market on the way home, went to a writing workshop I signed up for months ago (The Body & Writing), shopped at the coop on the way home, got a flat tire repaired (SIGH, thank goodness the nearby bike shop was still open because I did not have the energy to wrangle with it myself), and now I'm posting to Dreamwidth.

100,000 people at the Women's March in Portland!

500,000 people at the Women's March in DC! (with some good signs)

Some more good signs, especially this one. Never Again!

Pictures from Women's Marches Around the World including lots of US Cities, Canadian cities, European cities, African cities, South American cities, Bangkok, Antarctica (!) and Tblisi, Georgia. Highly recommend scrolling through these! In snow, rain (hi, Portland), sun, so many people showing up.

I am so encouraged that so many people are marching! And in the name of women! I'm a little sorry not to have been there, but also relieved. I really really don't like to be hemmed in by crowds. On the way back from the bike ride this morning, I heard singing from the rally on the South Park Blocks, then saw a few people walking across the Broadway Bridge with signs, then saw a MAX train packed to the gills headed downtown, then saw a few people walking down 7th Ave near where I live with signs. One with a pink hat.

I'm hoping to acquire me a pink hat. Great sign of solidarity, hope, and again, encouragement. We all need our hearts lifted, supported.

Tomorrow I'm (probably, if I have the energy) going to a Safety Pin training on confronting hate in public spaces. Then in the evening taking my turn running the International folk dancing group down at Reed. I'm kinda peopled out, and at the same time, I want to solidly connect with people resisting.

This training is at a synagogue, and I'm finding it especially helpful to connect with other Jews. As a rabbi said at a meeting I went to last week, we know this. We have lived this for 5,000 years. There's a shared felt recognition of how much this is like the late 1930s and how BAD that is. A grounding, comforting, validating antidote to the ongoing gaslighting out there.

Google Quietly Removes “Fake News” Language From Its Advertising Policy by Brennan Suen & Tyler Cherry
Google says no no no we're still against fake news, but continues to allow verified fake news sites to use AdSense.

We fight for Rep. John Lewis because he has fought for us by Melissa McEwan on ShareBlue, telling it like it is as always.

Critics of those who are taking up space in solidarity with Rep. John Lewis are levying charges of reflexive partisanship. But we are not fighting for him merely because we are Democrats; we are Democrats because people like him have fought for us.

I am so relieved and grateful that we have a leader like Rep. John Lewis stepping forward, and I see the irony that a Black man might work harder than anyone else to save our asses yet again.

The Music Donald Trump Can’t Hear by Adam Gopnik. Music is protest.

And so the inability, so far, of Donald Trump to get any significant musicians from any of those traditions, rock or country or blues or Broadway, to sing at his Inauguration is not a small comic detail but a significant reflection of this moment in history. It reminds us of just how aberrant Trump and Trumpism is.

ETA: Human Rights Group Portrays U.S. as Major Threat, Citing Trump by Mark Landler. Nothing we didn't know, but it's good to see a major organization saying it out loud.

Four homeless people die of exposure in Portland in first 10 days of 2017 by Lauren Dake.

Four homeless people have died of exposure on the streets of Portland, Oregon, in the first 10 days of 2017, a toll that has horrified the city and focused attention on its housing crisis.

“Any loss of life is unacceptable,” the newly inaugurated Portland mayor, Ted Wheeler, said. “This is a wealthy nation and we’re a prosperous and progressive community.”

Read recently (on Twitter I think) that before Reagan, homelessness was rare. Yeah, there are a lot more people in the world, and a lot of economic chaos under the bridge. But think about that. Within my memory. Rare.

We Americans are failing our people so hard. And it's an intentional pillaging and subjugating. For money, for power, treating people as less-than, closing any route to meet basic needs, no matter how hard they/we work.