Your “friends” are gaslighting you.
And your children are watching.
Every choice we make sends a message to our children about what is and isn’t acceptable in relationships. So know this one thing: they’re watching, and they understand more than we tend to realize.
When you make that passive aggressive jab at your husband because he didn’t do the simple thing you did the all emotional labour to plan (yes, annoying), your children absorb a lesson.
When you ruthlessly cut that friend out of your life because you’re too scared of conflict to even try communicating, your children absorb a lesson.
When you complain loudly about your Mother in Law in private but then put on a “happy face” at every family gathering, your children absorb a lesson.
When you decide to stay silent about important things, everything from how you feel in a given relationship to global atrocities, because you don’t want to “rub anyone the wrong way,” your children learn something about how they should navigate the world.
As someone who grew up in an emotionally abusive family system, one lesson I will be damn sure not to pass on to my children is the idea that the comfort of others is their problem.
Today I can spot gaslighting and manipulation a mile away. I bristle, inherently, at the slightest coercive tactic – even if we’re just having “small talk.” But it wasn’t always this way. In fact, I spent most of my life asleep, in relationships that never really felt safe.
I thought it was normal to be treated in a way that I now understand meets the textbook definition of being the scapegoat in a family system. I was friends with people who would disrespect me in blatant ways that left me feeling so small. I worked for people who wanted me to put the whims of their selfish, idiotic egos above my mental health and dignity. And inside, I was bitter as fuck.
I think many of us can relate to this. This is late stage capitalism, after all. Many of our relationships carry a transactional component and when we hit bumps we don’t know how to properly perform “repair.” We’re lacking in community and don’t have a lot of choices when it comes to how we, you know, make money to stay alive.
But we do get to choose what kind of people we’re going to be.
Right now, if you’re not currently experiencing a mental episode or otherwise morally incapacitated, you’re watching what’s happening in the world and you know that nearly 9,000 children being massacred is a fucking travesty.
So what will we choose to be? Will we be moral? Will we be ethical? Can we be honest?
Or are you scared to speak up because you don’t want to “hurt anyone’s feelings” or “ruffle any feathers”?
Because guess what! Your “friends” are gaslighting you into “respecting” their “feelings.” They’re bullying you into prioritizing their comfort over your humanity.
Because if you know in your heart that targeting and bombing hospitals; targeting and killing more journalists in three months than in WW2 and the 20-year Vietnam war combined; murdering, disfiguring and orphaning children; indiscriminately bombing innocent civilians; using white phosphorus to bomb Lebanon; and doing it all while continuing to kill children in the West Bank where there is no “Hamas,” is WRONG…
Then you don’t actually respect your friends. You fear their temper tantrum.
And you disrespect yourself.
Your children, they will absorb that lesson too.
Look, not everyone needs to be an activist
By the way, not everyone needs to be an activist. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m talking about here is being intellectually honest with yourself and by extension, your children.
I’m talking about:
Not bowing down and abandoning “right and wrong” in moments of pressure
Empathy, like putting yourself in the shoes of the oppressed and really imagining what it would be like to not be able to just take it off when the going gets tough
Getting brave about losing social capital when the stakes are as high as our humanity
Cultivating an understanding that all of our liberation is connected
We’re not free when the majority of us want the violence to stop but we cannot implore our elected officials to even be honest about the context of what is happening. We are not free, and in 30 years our children, and maybe theirs too, won’t be either.
So let’s do something. If you’re not a “speak out” type of person, and especially if you are a white woman like me, here are some things you can do right now to help:
Keep doing the research. Look at the history. Dive into media sources you may not have previously read: Al Jazeera, Haaretz, and every on-the-ground first hand account journalist bravely showing us exactly what is happening. Open your mind to the fact that social media journalism has shown us more credible primary sources than legacy media has. Expand your information sources; fact check everything.
Read the book White Women. Read it even if you feel defensive. If you feel defensive, sit with that – quietly. Or yell at me in the DM’s, I don’t care. For god sake do not yell at the authors in the DM’s, though they’ve see it all. But give yourself time. Wait. And one day, if you are truly committed to anti-racism, every single nugget of truth in the book will land.
Engage with Palestinian content and amplify Palestinian voices. The censorship from social media platforms has been shameless. Liking, commenting, watching a whole video through… These actions are helping in major ways.
Keep emailing your reps. Email your municipal reps. Your provincial reps. Your MP’s. Whatever the equivalent is wherever you’re from. Email your police forces, because they are part of the problem. Email your health care practitioners, because they cannot be operating under any extremist colonial or racist mindsets and be “doing no harm.” Send the email. I made it easy enough to do, here, with pre-written scripts.
Move your money. We need our banks to divest from the war machine. Move your money from any big bank and into a credit union, instead. Tell them why you are leaving. If you have a mortgage that cannot be moved, that’s fine. Move everything else.
Keep boycotting. This is one of the most powerful actions we have. Simply refuse to spend your money where it supports genocide. Check out BDS for information but some main brands to avoid are: Disney+, Starbucks, Sabra Hummus (learn about the Sabra and Shatila massacre it’s cutely named after and you’ll never want to eat their shit again), McDonalds.
None of these actions require you to put your job – or very much to be honest – on the line. But they are impactful. Do them. Don’t wait.
Thank you
If you made it here, thank you. May your next courageous act be to send this to the person in your life who needs to hear it. The person who needs to WAKE UP.
And seriously. If you liked this newsletter, please share it with your friends. All of them. Okay?