Women – QBG_Tilted Tiara

The Mirror

May 6, 2015 by valentinelogar

There are times in all our lives each of us wonder, what does the world see when they see me. When I look in the mirror, I see all of my flaws, real and perceived I count them off one by one. Staring in the eyes of my harshest critic, I see each year stamped across my face telling a story I might rather forget, or wish was never written at all. So I stare, I run fingers through hair sprinkled with silver, I count the furrows across my brow, the lines surrounding my mouth and eyes; then I wonder where the time escaped to and what others see.

Does the world see my flaws in the same way I see them? Can a stranger read my pain, my triumphs, my history as if it was a roadmap written on my face, across my skin and over the angles, plains and curves of my body, or do they only see slight imperfections where I see something altogether different, something damaged, unworthy of a second glance, unlovable in the harsh light of day.

Cool wind dances across heated skin

Leaving memory of other breath

Fingers trace the water’s edge

Sending ripples across a reflection

Unrecognized in the moonlit glow

Coalesced I come together, softer

In the silence memories pull nearer

The ethereal me beckons, closer

Remember, beauty under stars

Shredded without thought, nor care

For youth, innocence or hope

Lost in a scream for mercy

Tracing the water’s edge once more

Reflection lost to harder currents

Merged again, harder and more true

In the moonlit garden of memory

Does the world see my flaws? Does the world see the scars of my history? I don’t know, some of them are obvious, they are badges of honor I can’t help but wear them on my skin every single blessed day of my life. I wish this were not the case, but it is the skin I live in the only skin I have so it is the skin I will have to walk this world in and the skin I will leave this world in. My problem? Truly, my problem is so many people over the years have left their calling card, announced their presence and left me something to remember them by; I can’t seem to step away far enough to start over again without carrying them along with me.

So, when I look in the mirror, I see my history. Some days I see myself victorious, but other days I see myself vulnerable and hurt, stupid for all the times I have laid myself open. When I look in the mirror, what I see is someone unloved and unlovable, someone who is not worthy of honest straightforward love, who must pay for any affection with something, either straightforward with my money or something else of value, including pain, because this is how it has always been.

Every single day I work toward changing my vision and work toward demanding more. But some days like today, this is what I feel.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts Tagged With: Art of Living, Domestic Violence, human foibles, Lessons Learned, Love, Poetry, Relationships, Society, Violence, Women

Stepping into Who I Am

January 25, 2015 by valentinelogar

My dear friend over at Single Working Mom inspired me to write about how we, as women, seem to lose ourselves in our effort to ‘fit’. Visit her post, which inspired this one here.

Stepping into who I am, I think that is what I have been trying to do for more than a year maybe even more than a decade. I simply didn’t know this is what I was doing. All the small acts of rebellion, the tiny bits and pieces I kept trying to reclaim, that was me saying to the world and those who wished me to be otherwise; really, just leave me be to find me in a world I never truly fit or that never fit me perfectly.

I fail to understand why it is so difficult for women especially to claim ourselves completely, to step into the space we occupy without apology. It seems though, there are very few of us who are not in some way apologizing for who or what we are on a daily basis. We bow to the whims of those who dictate to us the terms of beauty and desirability allowing our self-worth to be undermined by how others define it and thus what we see in the mirror is far too often unacceptable, unbeautiful and unworthy of love.

Far too many of us, reshape ourselves to be what others want of us and accept harsh judgment as truth when we fail to meet standards which are either impossible, not our choice, even sometimes ridiculous. We shrink to take up less space, we speak softly or not at all so as not offend, we apologize for our opinions and our needs and do so without thinking in doing so we are apologizing for ourselves, for our very being. We accept harsh words as truth and demands to change ourselves, make ourselves different so we might fit another person’s fantasy, simply so they will touch us in the night, with the light off.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

When I read For Me and For Her it got me thinking about all the things I had done over the course of my nearly 15 year marriage that I resented and how I have slowly begun to shed them. It also got me thinking about the shell I have slowly started to crack open around me, about as I said how I am beginning to step into myself into who I am, perhaps who I was meant to be. I am certain I have a very long way to go before I am fully in the moment with myself, nevertheless it is a starting point and one I believe I should own with pride. I think it is difficult when we are in the middle of hurting to realize how much we give up, so someone will love us. Sometimes how much we lose of ourselves so the person we promised to love will continue to love us.

I am finding I don’t want to be loved if it isn’t for the me that is real; hardheaded, opinionated, pragmatic, softhearted, introverted and creative; someone who has lived life fully and been down a few dark alleys. I don’t want to be touched if it isn’t touching me with the lights on, seeing all of me; scars, dimpled flesh, imperfections, tattoos all of me. I don’t want to be made over. I don’t want to be hidden.

These words hurt me, still hurt me on some level and I am still fighting to breathe through them and find me behind them.

“You are more beautiful as a blonde that as how I met you and that is how you should stay.”

“You are too pale, I think you are more beautiful with a tan. You look too White without one.”

“I hate when you let your hair grow. You look better when it is short and I am not as attracted to you when it is long.”

“If you get a tattoo I will divorce you.”

Here is the thing about all of those, they all represented ‘things’ that were not me.

I am a natural brunette. My natural color is damned near black, though now days it has a great deal of grey.
I have pale olive toned skin. I love my complexion, though I tan easily for years I have protected my skin. Further, tanning is dangerous this didn’t seem to matter so long as I wasn’t too White. What the hell did this mean anyway?
The first time I cut my hair it was down to the middle of my back. I cut it because I couldn’t brush it, I cut it because I was recovering from gunshots and I needed to make life easier for myself. I never intended to keep it short and certainly not that short. Yes, it was funky and fun, especially the pale blonde, but it was hard to maintain. I never felt like me.
When we met I had Tattoo’s, it wasn’t a secret I didn’t hide them. I also made no secret I want more. Why did I ever allow myself to be bullied into a corner?

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Worse, yes even worse than being bullied into a corner. Why did I allow myself to feel unlovable, undesirable and without value simply because of cruel words and the lack of touch. Now, a year later I am beginning to figure some of it out, some of the hurt is falling away and letting me see what is beneath. I don’t love what I see, but I do love that I am able to reach into the hurt and find me.

It is these slow and careful steps we take, these questions we ask that allow us to walk into the world fully owning the space we inhabit, not asking for forgiveness or how we can mold ourselves to fit another person’s desires. I want to be desired, loved and wanted for me, just me. I want to be chased around the room and thrown on the bed, because I am me not someone else but me. I want my words to enflame passion, my heart to sooth, my body to excite and my soul to provide a resting place. I want all of that to be just me, without a demand for change.

So I will continue to step into who I am and tell those who think I should be otherwise to take a flying leap.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts Tagged With: Art of Living, divorce, Feminism, Lessons Learned, Love, Marriage, Relationships, Women

Thou Art Woman

November 20, 2014 by valentinelogar

I was reading something the other day; don’t ask me what, please. My mind has been shattered by a plethora of recent events and thus my memory is entirely gone. Anyway, I was reading something written by a man, it was quite profound and moved me. The gist of it was the trajectory of this man’s life, from childhood through misspent youth, through early adulthood in and out of the justice system, to redemption. I wish I had saved this article, I wish I had bookmarked and could find it again. The one thing that stood out for me though was his final thought, when asked what he wanted to achieve:

“I want to be a man”.

This stood out to me, men can say this and everyone nods their heads and understands exactly what it means. Maybe there are small differences based on culture, nationality but everyone understands and applauds. We all get the gist of this statement, we all know what it means and nod our head in agreement, this is a worthwhile goal.

“I want to be a man”.

I want to be a provider, I want to be a protector, I want to care for those who depend on me, I want to stand tall in my community, I want to be a father and husband. Certainly, I have missed things in this, I am sure there are those who are of the other gender (men) who could add to the list. The point is most of us understand the statement, ‘I want to be a man’.

Do you wonder where I am going with this? The point is women do not have a similar all-encompassing gender specific ‘thing’ that defines us. Women cannot say, ‘I want to be a woman’, with equal authority and have this statement be universally understood and applauded. Truthfully, were we to make this statement most would stare at us as if we had just lost our minds, or they would check under our clothing to determine what chromosome set we were born with.

Since I read that story I have found myself with women I know well, women of different backgrounds, generations, political persuasions and faiths and I have asked the question, ‘what is the one word to define us as women, that equals the statement I want to be a man’.

Sometimes this question has been met with stares before a list of different roles women might play in their lives, roles that do not encompass our entirety, our completeness. Other times the question engendered a lively debate with some of my more feminist friends landing on the side that women are multi-dimensional and thus cannot be put in a box.

I called bullshit on that one.

Listening to all the debates, I was struck by how we view ourselves as women and how we are viewed. There truly isn’t a single definitive word in the English language that defines us, that allows us to define ourselves. We are so many things, often we are the things that being a man means, we are protectors and providers, left on our own to fill voids. We are also other things, in the process we fight to retain our individual identity, as well as, who we are as women.

So I ask what do you want to be. Who do you want to be? What is the one word that you want to define you?

While you consider your answer, this is what I want to define me. Listen to Ruthie Foster as she puts Maya Angelou’s poem to music.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts Tagged With: Art of Living, Feminism, human foibles, Modern Age, Women

Over It

October 22, 2014 by valentinelogar

Recently I have been more than a little bit annoyed, have you noticed? Oh, I know mostly it has emerged as a bit annoyed at the body politics; certainly this has gotten my dander up. It is fair to say our nation is in a mess and we have more than enough reasons to jump up and demand changes, more than one reason, more than five reasons, more reasons in fact than can be counted on all our fingers and toes, if that is the only way you can count.

This is not the only reason I am annoyed though, not at all. Ebola rages in West Africa and sneaks into the US, the GOP uses this as a wedge and another battle-ax to swing at those willing to be afraid, very, very afraid. However, this is also not, why today I started in a pissy mood and frankly ended in one.

My mood was set off today by something far more idiotic, something stupid yet hurtful, something personal, near and un-dear to my heart and ego. Yes, I do have an ego and yes it can be bruised and it seems today it seems was one of these days it needed a good stomping, a good drubbing as it were. It all started with this piece of loveliness.

Now this in itself wouldn’t be bad, except for some reason it scrapped my very last good nerve, I only have one last good nerve and this entire issue of ‘big girls and their need for love’ well it simply danced on the red hot end of it. What does that Meme mean? Really, what does that mean? What assclown thought that was funny?

Then, if that wasn’t bad enough someone thought it was so funny, they felt the need to add this.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I was rocked back, thrown right back into nearly a year ago when I was sitting on my bed looking sideways in the mirror and thinking to myself, ‘No one will ever love me or want me again. I am old, crippled, fat with dimples on my thighs and ass; who the hell would want all this’. Yes, that is exactly what I thought. I hate Fat Jokes; they are mean spirited and ugly.

Have you noticed, for those of us who are not a size 0, or even a size 10; it is getting harder to find anything to wear. Harder to find pretty clothes, things that make you feel good. I have noticed this and it aggravates me. One of the things that make me feel ‘girly’, sexy even are thigh-high stockings, I wear them all the time. Not just for special occasions, all the time. I hate panty hose and rarely wear them, when I wear skirts or dresses, I wear thigh high stockings, sometimes with a garter belt and sometimes without. I have worn them for years, I think they are wonderfully sexy and whether anyone knows I have them on or not, I know. They are my secret.

It use to be I could buy thigh high stockings everywhere and anywhere, Target, Macy’s, Dillards, Neiman Marcus; everywhere. I could walk in the store and buy what I wanted in my size. A size that rightfully was made for women, sometimes called Queen sometimes called Women. I am not unhappy with buying stockings fit for a Queen, sized for a Queen. It does not insult me or bruise my ego to march my happy ass to the checkout counter with black, white and flesh colored lace topped thigh high stockings sized for a Queen.

I am a Queen, dammit. What yanks my chain is every single store in creation has taken my size off their shelves. Oh sure, most of them will sell those sizes on-line, but for some reason they no longer wish to see women without a thigh gap making a purchase of sexy thigh high stockings in their store.

Now if it were just stockings that I had unsuccessfully gone hunting today, last week and last month perhaps I would not be so ego bruised. Maybe if it weren’t for the truth of the matter, that finding something I feel fabulous in for my son’s wedding is damned near impossible, maybe then I would take the fat jokes with more of a grain of salt. Honestly though, everything looks like my grandmother would wear it to her own funeral and complain. Conceivably, if I didn’t look in the mirror and see every single one of my flaws I wouldn’t be so damned insulted by the random fat jokes. Unfortunately, I do see them and my ego does get bruised, the voice in my head does repeat ugly words and my heart hears them.

One of the things I always go back to is this, before Twiggy and the domination of thin women in our media; women had hourglasses figures with tits, hips, asses and yes thighs. Women came in all sorts of shapes and sizes and men enjoyed them. Men drew them, rarely if ever did they draw stick figures, they drew voluptuous women with curves, like this.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Every single time I see women touted as ‘big’ or ‘Plus Sized’ models they look almost normal. Honestly, these women are size 10-12. This is barely normal. I will grant you, one of them might wear a size 14, the average American woman. Since my divorce I have lost 237lbs, yes 200 of that was the ex the rest was all me. Even with that loss, I will never be thin again and I accept that. My problem though is the stores, whether high, medium or low end who have decided they will not carry clothing, not even stockings that fit me or other women who wear a size above the average.

Let me help you all, we not only wear clothing to cover the fat you find so distasteful, many of us dress well and have the money to spend to dress really well. Your desire to have us shop only on-line and keep us out of your brick and mortar stores, well eventually it will keep us out of your bottom line entirely. Therefore, what started out as a pissy mood, one that somewhat hurt my feelings and had me feeling low ended with me just being frankly pissed off. I may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but someone loves me, loves my curves and sharp edges. Someone thinks I am beautiful just as I am. This is what I ended up thinking and feeling.

Filed Under: Series: Dumpster Diving Tagged With: Art of Living, Bad Moods, Big Girls, fat, Fat Jokes, human foibles, Love, Relationships, shopping, Society, thigh high stockings, Women

Imprinted for Life, Attractions

October 12, 2014 by valentinelogar

The power of attraction, what attracts us to another person is personal and fundamental. There are all sorts of ‘professional’ studies about this, do a search on Google and you will find everything from pheromone studies to Plato’s original Affinity theories. In more recent times social scientist who have proposed first the ‘Law of Attraction’ where Like attracts Like based on Plato’s theory, even more recently the Opposites Attract theory and everything in-between. Of course, lest we forget there is the ‘you will like what I told you to like’ and the ‘I will like exactly what you told me not to like’ theories, generally though these apply only to teenagers. Finally, there is that oft told and all too often snickered about mother or father fixations, better known as the Oedipus Complex.

The truth is I don’t believe any of us know what heats us up, gets our blood to boil and our panties in a twist. Not a single one of us knows what causes us to follow with our eyes down the street that man or woman we find particularly appealing; none of us I think knows why return time and again to the neighborhood coffee shop to drool over the uncommonly beautiful barista. It is unlikely any of us could point to the place in time when our desires were set down for us, when we became fixated on a certain type and this became ‘our type’ forever and ever, amen.

We all have a type; don’t lie all of us have one. Even if you didn’t always date your type, hell even if you didn’t marry your ‘type’, you have one, I have one we all have one. That particular type of human we find we want to wrap ourselves around, that type of face that draws us, that type of body that excites us, that tone of voice that beckons us, yes even the personality that calls to our inner desires and needs. Put all of what we want into one single package and we are done, we are right there heart throbbing and knees weak. But first, we see with our eyes what somewhere in our mind we have defined as our ‘type’.

I have a type; I suspect I even know the genesis of my type. My type runs counter to social norms and has my entire life. My type has gotten me into trouble back in the 1970’s when following my personal choices wasn’t as accepted as it is today. In retrospect, considering my relationship history I believe it is important that we understand what it is we want, that we own our desires and our choices. I think it is vital we never settle for just who wants us but for whom we want and what we want.

Do our desires change? I think they do, change is inevitable. I think as we mature our understanding of what makes us happy and what we need from relationships changes. I also think we grow less reluctant to ask for what we need. What perhaps doesn’t change is our ability to easily verbalize our needs, desires and boundaries. We are the amalgamation of all that has come before; we are our history without pretty packaging and brilliant ribbons for the unwrapping. For some of us and I certainly fall into this category, fear is a constant companion when attempting to ask for what we need or want.

I said I had a type and that I suspected I knew how mine was imprinted; I was quite young when I met Winston. Living in Germany I attended an Army base school part of the week but was not an Army Brat, this made me different from the other students and subject to bullying. I was also younger and smaller than other children in my class, another source of great amusement for my classmates and one they took great advantage of at every opportunity. I hated that school, I hated them and I hated the teachers for not protecting me. I spent a great deal of time alone during recess, book in hand finding dark corners so none of those little bastards could hurt me. Sometimes I would climb a tree, which is where Winston found me one day.

Winston was a year older, a grade ahead tall and gangly. His father was a Sargent in the Army and Winston already was a leader in his class and on the playground, much like his father. He had a brilliant smile, tight curly hair shaved close to his head and his skin was like chocolate milk. The day I met him he climbed the tree I was in and asked why I was up there alone all the time. When I told him, he frowned and climbed back down and wandered away. From that day until we moved back to the US, Winston became my protector. I ate lunch with him and his cadre of friends, if I wanted to read I did it in full sight of others and no one bothered me, ever. I was invited to birthday parties and other childhood functions. Winston never told me what he did, I guess it was a boy thing but from that day on, he became my ‘type’.

So what is my type? Need you ask?

Tall

Milk Chocolate Skin

Strong

Take Charge

A protector

Okay, let’s just say it shall we. I like Black Men better than I like White Men. I fundamentally find Black Men more attractive. This isn’t to say I have never found a White Man attractive; it is simply that I find Black Men more attractive, physically that is my ‘Type’. Did Winston imprint me when I was eight years old? I suspect he did, I suspect his kindness in light of all the bullying had a profound effect on my psych, but it is unlikely this is the only reason.

I was raped at eleven by White Boys, they did grave harm to me. My first real boyfriend, the first person who showed me real kindness after that rape was Black at fourteen. I was a runaway, most of the horror stories from the streets during my time there was by those of my own race. By the time I got off the streets, I was imprinted with fear of men of my own race.

I say all this for a reason, I like men, I did not become Lesbian it is not something you become you either are or not Gay. On the other hand, what you find attractive, what your ‘type’ is within the context of your sexual orientation, this is an entirely different issue. Though my ‘type’ is certainly not always socially acceptable it is nonetheless mine, my choice in partners is mine alone. Were it not for the landmark 1967 anti-miscegenation case of Loving vs. State of Virginia, my choice would still be illegal. My question then, how is my ‘type’ different than sexual orientation of others and why are we still discussing their Civil / Marriage Rights. Doesn’t it make sense that all members of society should have the same rights?

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I am just curious about this mind you but your thoughts are most welcome.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts Tagged With: Art of Living, Family, Feminism, human foibles, Interracial Love, Lessons Learned, Love, Modern Age, Racism, Relationships, Women

Reciprocity

October 7, 2014 by valentinelogar

I believe strongly in the idea of nature and nurture that we are products of both but that we also ultimately choose how we will interact with the people we meet throughout our lives. We choose whom we will love and how we will love them. We choose what we will give of ourselves, of our time, of our resources, our heart and yes even our secrets in each relationship we engage, whether friendship or love.

At the end of the day, no matter what happens we choose how we will react and thus, how we will act. Each of us makes a conscious choice how we will face adversity and whether we will live our lives with joy or something else, something less, whether less is apathy, guilt or true regret. What I know, deep in my soul is we do have choices, no matter what, we have choices.

What else I know is human beings are taught to be evil through nurture and despite our nurture, we can overcome our training and choose to be better human beings. Parents have enormous influence on their children; they bring blank slates into the world and write evil onto their hearts turning them into horrifying, selfish, racist, misogynist shits. Children are sponges; they walk through their young lives watching their parents, their neighbors and other influential people, sucking it all up into their hearts and spirits.

If you are a racist shit, it is nearly a guarantee your child will carry on your terrible legacy of race-based hate. Beat your wife, some lucky girl will likely be the recipient of your son’s future fury or your daughter will lay down and accept some man’s fist as her due. These are some examples of the horror stories of what happens; the legacy children are gifted by ignorant parents. There are more, abused children are likely to abuse, children of alcoholics are likely to become alcoholics. Children are blank canvases; we paint upon them what we want the world to know about us.

Despite history, despite learning at the hard knee of a parent we still have a choice not to carry forward a legacy of hate, racism, of violence. We are all gifted with free choice, whether you are Christian or otherwise, all of us share one core value: Free Choice.

I do not believe in angels and devils as a birth ‘defect’. I believe we choose how we will interact with the world and those within it. I believe we choose how we will interact with communities or individuals, it is true whether we are talking about friends, family, lovers or a broader community. I choose how I love, where I love and whom I love, without asking for or excepting the judgment of others, I choose.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

My nature is not formed by my history, or perhaps it is but not in the way planned or expected by those who tried hard to warp it. My nurture did not corrupt me, those who would have twisted my heart into unrecognizable forms failed to change my core. Yes, there are days, even weeks when I question, when I pull into myself and build walls; those times do not last. Yes, I know my nature opens me up to the potential of being hurt more easily, even of being taken advantage of at times. I also know there are those who think I am blind to their faults, that I live in a world where there is only sunshine and rainbows without a darkside. I do not live in that world, I have seen the worst in people, I have lived on the darkest side of the world and within the shadows. I made a conscious decision not to be corrupted, not to be bent, not to be twisted, not to hate others or myself by the hurt others did to me or I did to myself. I made a conscious choice to choose joy, to choose hope.

Choosing joy doesn’t mean I don’t grow despondent at times. Choosing hope doesn’t mean I don’t feel hopeless at times. Truthfully, there are days I feel despondent and hopeless, unloved and unworthy of love. Choosing joy, choosing hope doesn’t mean I don’t see the possibility others are not kind, it simply means I don’t base my willingness to love on reciprocity. My giving doesn’t require an even return, love is not an investment rather it is simply a choice we make. For me, it is a choice I make every single day.

Filed Under: Love & Marriage, Random Thoughts, Series: Dumpster Diving Tagged With: Art of Living, Free Will, human foibles, Lessons Learned, Love, Racism, Women

Agape and All That Jazz

September 7, 2014 by valentinelogar

“You are free. You are free before the noonday sun. You’re free before the moon and you’re free before the stars, and you are free where there is no moon or sun, where there isn’t a single star in the sky.

But you are a slave, you are a slave to the one you love because you love him, and you are a slave to the one you love because he loves you back.”

I don’t know where the quote above comes from, if anyone else does please let me know I suspect it is part of a longer poem, ancient and likely Arabic. I think it is beautiful and the truth. We are all, at best, slaves to our hearts. Each of us, wanting to love and be loved in turn willingly opening ourselves to greater or lesser degrees throughout our lives to achieve acceptance and love.

We want to be loved, for ourselves, for who we are and what we bring without hiding anything. We want to open ourselves, explore and feel safe in those explorations without risking our core. We want love to blanket us and free us, all in one embrace. Love is one of the most frightening emotions of the human experience. Each of us feel it differently, our responses and reactions differ depending on our histories and how much we are willing to risk, to give away.

C.S. Lewis, in his book The Four Loves, explored love based on specific principles within his own life, including his own Christianity. His understanding of love wasn’t much different from many of our own; whatever else we might believe, including these:

Storge – the basis of affection, the most natural and most emotive. Storge is both Gift and Need Love, the least discriminating and the most diffused, this love that pays the least attention to what is ‘valuable’ or worthy, giving without question and thus is the love that can lead us to be most hurt.

Philia – the bond of friendship, the least biological and the least natural according to Lewis. Based on his observations, even during his time friendship was a lost art and because it was the one bond we did not need for reproduction or protection, Philia is also the one Love that was most fully human of all the other loves.

Eros – romantic / sexual love, in a nutshell the bond of lovers.

Agape – the final and all-encompassing of the four Loves, although Lewis never referred to Agape specifically others later used the term. Agape subordinates the other loves, whether one refers to Agape as the love of God, or a broader love of mankind, charity, kindness or some other virtue. Agape is in my mind what makes us fully human and allows us the compassion and empathy to Love fully and with our entire hearts engaged. Agape can be found within our interpersonal relationships and is often found within Eros relationships. Where this is of a reciprocal nature these relationships work well with both partners being aware of the other, forgiving of foibles, generous in time and praise, patient and understanding of differences.

If we believe the premise of C.S. Lewis, then love is fairly simple, straight forward even. We are working with a set of principles that stay consistent throughout our lives; it is only for us to understand how they apply in any given situation and with any given set of people. The only other important thing to understand, we our history and whether we like it or not, we carry with us from one place to the next, all that came before us. We are formed by how we loved and were loved before, by family, by friends and by lovers.

I believe strongly in Agape, that we must strive to be compassionate, to be loving and forgiving; that our hearts should be generous and we should be patient with those we love, even when we disagree, even when we are hurt. Without Agape, the rest doesn’t work. It is my belief this is true whether applied within the context of relationships with lovers, family, friends or our relationships with the broader world. I may rage at times, I may find the world harsh and hateful even, nevertheless I believe it is within me to search for a way to make it better, even in some small way and this is the gift I can leave behind for those I love.

I do not always react in ways people expect of me. My friends, family and those I love all too often grow impatient, even angered at my reactions. Sometimes my reactions are directly tied to my history, the very real and active pieces of my history that trigger me. Those triggers cause me to retreat, hide behind pragmatism, logic or what seems to be no response at all. This takes us to the Storge / Philia love bonds, where Need Love and Choice Love are most important. We may not always remember another’s triggers or their history, just as they may not remember ours. We may not always react in the perfect manner, just as another may not provide us the perfect comfort when it is needed. The best we can do? Apologize when we have fallen short (Storge), stand together and try do better in the future (Philia) and most important forgive (Agape).

I am not even going to try to tell you I am an expert or have an opinion on Eros, I am not and I don’t. I have far too many failures to ever claim expertise. I can only say with any level of certainty, I believe without the other three; Eros isn’t even in the cards.

Love in all its infinite and delightful permeations is waiting, is out there and is holding its breath if we are willing to open the door and lay our hearts bare, I am certain of this. Love is hard as hell and when you are human with history, it is even harder. Love burns, leaves skid marks across our spirits and our hearts, every single time we open the door, no matter what we do or who we are we can’t help but ‘want what we want’. It is our humanity seeking to be loved for ourselves, supported as we are right now not as we might be with some prodding to improve to be better than we are today. It is our humanness seeking to mold ourselves to be worthy of love, while still holding onto our uniqueness, our core.

Constrained as we are by all that has come before, we dance with our demons. Every single one of us battle demons, some of our own making and some left behind by those who said to us once upon a time, “I love you and I will always love you”. Now, we question motives, reactions and responses. Now we devalue the love of the next person as they fall short of our demands and needs, because the one that came before them lied. Now each trigger carries with it a history, no time for forgiveness only remorse if we fail to hear, “I am sorry”.

I still believe in Love, in all of its great glory. I believe we deserve love, to be loved and to love. I believe we deserve acceptance, kindness, forgiveness, generosity, trust and comfort as part of love, I believe mostly in Agape. I am forever hopeful, silly and maybe even stupid in my hopefulness; yet still I believe.

This remains the song I want sung into my soul someday, that someday someone will scratch into my heart.

Filed Under: Love & Marriage Tagged With: Agape, Art of Living, CS Lewis, Eros, interpersonal relationships, Love, Relationships, Women

Oddities and Grandma’s Wisdom

August 19, 2014 by valentinelogar

The world is burning and Nero fiddles from the balcony and we, the peasants are dancing in the streets to a song we barely know and have long since forgotten the steps to. Now and then though something occurs to us, something leaps out and bites us on the ankle, perhaps a memory of days past when things were simple and life didn’t break our hearts. For me, despite some folks in my family were crazy as hell and honestly didn’t have the sense the Good Lord gave a gnat, some of that time was time spent with one of my grandmothers in South Texas.

My Granddad’s Liquor store

I didn’t see a great deal of her, didn’t spend much time with her because my father and grandfather didn’t see eye-to-eye, this is mildly put. My grandfather was a mean son-of-a-bitch, he was a bigot and a card-carrying member of Racist-R-Us, if he didn’t have white sheets hanging in his closet I would be shocked. Because of my olive skin, dark hair and dark eyes my grandfather regularly called me a spic, papoose and even nigger; frequently asked my father why they didn’t return me where they got me since I was obviously not White and they never should have adopted me. My grandfather gave me my first drink of whiskey and my first cigarette when I was eleven years old, said he could prove I was an ‘injun’ if I got crazy with firewater. He and my father got into a fistfight on that visit, though it wasn’t just over this it was part of it.

Back to my grandmother, she was mostly a good South Texas Lady. How she ever tolerated my lying, cheating polecat of a grandfather for more than fifty years is beyond me, but she did. When I was seventeen I spent two weeks with her while she was recovering from surgery, it was the most time I had ever spent at one time. During that time she imparted her lifetime of wisdom, she made me laugh hysterically and often, she made me question her and my own sanity. All of this while we sat at the dining room table over coffee and cigarettes, my grandmother by the way smoked like a chimney until the day she died in her 80’s.

Here is the wisdom of my very Southern Grandmother and some of my thoughts about that wisdom.

1. Never go out without lipstick.
  1. I try to remember this one, sad to say though I carry at least two tubes I rarely remember to smear it on my lips.
2. Never go out without your hair done properly and don’t ever leave the house with curlers in your hair.
  1. Well, yeah now that I am growing my hair out my stylist has taught me how to wield a blow dryer and a brush, I am getting pretty good at it actually. Five days out of seven I do in fact actually somewhat successfully do something with my hair. Previously not so much, but I think my grandmother would be proud. There was a time I followed her rules much more closely and was a good Texas girl with the mantra of ‘the bigger the hair the closer to God’.
3. Always wear a hat, this protects you from the sun prevents freckles and in your case dear stops you from turning so damned dark.
  1. Yeah, well thankfully we have sunscreen for this now. I own hats and wear them now and then, but this is for show not to protect me from the sun.
4. Don’t wear pants in public, unless you are gardening they simply aren’t attractive and those jeans the girls are wearing now are terrible. Wear skirts or dresses, women should look like women.
  1. Okay, I don’t know what to say to this one, does anyone? Pants are my go to wardrobe choice most days.
5. Always wear foundations, honey you need to wear a bra.
  1. Is there anything sexy about the foundations she was talking about and still wearing when we had this conversation?
6. Wear high-heels, your legs look better in high-heels.
  1. This is the one I entirely agree with, wear them, collect them, even sometimes salivate over them.
    This slideshow requires JavaScript.
7. Wear stockings, only floozies go out bare legged.
  1. Come on, I live in Texas where it is sometimes +105 for days at a time. Suffering for beauty is one thing but this takes things just a little too far.
8. Do not ever get drunk in public, it is fine to have a drink at home but never get drunk in public.
  1. This is one we should all agree with. Nothing more to add.
9. Marry where you love. Don’t let other people stop you not even your Daddy.
  1. Great advice from a woman who married “down” and was disowned by her parents for her choice in spouse, I often wonder if she ever regretted it.
10. Be kind to others, kindness will always get you further than ugly.
  1. I have always tried to follow this.
11. Don’t move with the crowd, they will push you over the cliff when you get to the edge.
  1. Isn’t this the damned truth.
12. Honey, don’t compete with men they don’t appreciate a woman that can beat them at their own games and don’t need their noses rubbed in it all the time.
  1. Well, this is the truth and yet sometimes there is no choice is there?
13. Don’t raise your voice in anger. Speak softly, force them to listen to you.
  1. It took me years to understand this one.
14. Stop marking your body up, those tattoos are for bad girls and sailors.
  1. My grandmother hated my tattoos. I wonder if she would have changed her mind. At the time she said this too me I had two small ones on my back, now I have eighteen and many are sizable.
15. Don’t let your past hurts color your world, live. You are young and your life is ahead of you.
  1. I try to live by this one. I knew what she was telling me at the time and we had many long talks about forgiveness and letting go at that table over those two weeks. It took me a very long time to absorb this lesson. I am grateful to her for it.

Those were the truths of my grandmother. It has been a very long time since I have thought of her or those conversations. Someone who is special to me and brings me a great deal of happiness reminded me today of these conversations, of wearing skirts instead of pants, of girdles and oddly of what it means to be feminine without losing who I am as a woman. I am grateful for the reminders and for being able to step outside of the world for a minute.

I hope you enjoyed a glimpse of my grandmother and her wisdom, I surely enjoyed the memory.

Because we should all have memories that bring us back around this is dedicated to someone I love.

Filed Under: Family Tagged With: Art of Living, Blended Family, Family, human foibles, Lessons Learned, Life Wisdom, Love, Relationships, South Texas, Women

Dragging Baggage

August 8, 2014 by valentinelogar

It is all too often true we carry all our baggage with us everywhere we go, dragging it behind on wheels run down and bare from all the use they have seen. If we reach any age at all, with any experience at all we have baggage it is impossible for any of us too get through life without it. What we do with all that luggage though, how we handle it that is an entirely different issue.

Fundamentally, I am a good person. I am kind, generous and loving to my family and friends.

That is how I would like to think of myself most of the time. My life hasn’t always been simple, nor has it always been easy. It has left me a bit banged up, physically and emotionally. I have a just a few scars; some of them are very visible, left on my body so every single time I look in the mirror I see them. When I see those scars, when I look at them in the mirror, my first reaction is to close my eyes, turn away as I think others would do when first gazing on them. Other scars, they aren’t so visible left on my heart and soul, though sometimes I think when I look in the mirror I see them too.

My reality is I am frequently less than secure about both my physical appearance and how lovable or deserving of love I am.

Recently I had to confront some of my baggage. One of the problems I have is acknowledging that anyone would be interested in what is on my mind, what might be truly bothering me and why anyone would care. For so long, for most of my life, my needs and concerns have taken a backseat to everyone else’s and I have been the caretaker. I have taken care of everyone else, I have been the breadwinner, the responsible one the person who had to be ‘strong’, even when I was the one injured I had to be strong for everyone around me. I got use to never asking for help. It became ingrained in me too not show weakness, not give in to fear and not talk about my feelings or ask for what I needed.

I learned I did not matter. I think what I learned is ‘I’ did not exist except to make other people’s lives easier.

That is a terrible lesson; it is a very hard truth to drag behind you on wobbly wheels with a bent frame. This is especially true when as a human being the natural instinct is to reject that lesson, to fight the loss of ‘I’, to want to be seen and heard, even when we might not know how to raise our hand or our voice. My instinct when something is wrong? To retreat into my head, if asked give half answers or no answer at all safe in the knowledge no one is interested, instead, they are asking just to be polite. Until very recently, this has been mostly the case. Conversations, even with friends and family have tilted toward one of two types. Either competitive ‘my pain is worse than yours’ where no matter what I said it always ended up about them, their pain, their sadness, their hardships. The other style is always the fixer, the person who listens to half of what I say and tells me how to fix it, in the process blames me for the problem. In both cases of course, they don’t really hear me aren’t really listening and clearly don’t really give two tinkers damn about how I feel, thus over the years I have learned it is far easier to simply live inside my head.

When we love, we offer our whole selves even the baggage. What we hope for is we can explain why it exists and that someone will help us drag it along behind us.

What is unexpected is, someone who loves us back and enough to say drop the baggage I am not your past or your bellhop; forcing us to confront our history and examine our behaviors in new light.

Our luggage often includes insecurities, bad behaviors and false fronts. If we are forced to lay down our baggage, open it up and throw out all the old ratty stuff we have packed away it can be a painful experience, even while we are lightening our load. We are not our insecurities, though they may have made up the extra weight they are not who we are at the core, they are simply what was added over the years by others. This was one of my hard lessons recently, I don’t know that it is entirely learned I am still insecure. I am still me, my history still lives firmly in my head and the voices still whisper, ‘not worthy, not lovable’. Nevertheless, I am learning slowly those voices are my history not my present and they are liars. I am learning also it is okay to be afraid, to show some weakness and to say I am both I am learning I don’t have to always be strong, I think this one is even harder to learn for me. I have spent so many years guarded, so many years not crossing emotional lines; I am still finding my way through this one.

When I started this blog, I did so to give myself a release valve, for my thinking, my feelings, my history even. What I found was so much more, including the potential of love. Now I just have to learn to let my history go, let myself be loved and let my demons dance the way they deserve without the impediment of baggage.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts Tagged With: Art of Living, Lessons Learned, Love, personal luggage, Relationships, Women

Out of Dreams Nightmares

July 26, 2014 by valentinelogar

Many things are weighing on my mind, it is nearly impossible to turn on the television, open a newspaper or even look at social media without being bombarded by the most recent human tragedy. The problem I have is the magnitude of those tragedies; our response, as a nation and frankly as human beings saddens me. I am not a Christian, I do though subscribe to some basic tenets of the Christian system, this is my favorite:

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ 45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ 46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life”.

Matthew 25:31-46 parables of the Sheep and the Goats

I find myself in a quandary as I consider our current national and international crises and the response of our citizens to them. We are a nation full of individuals who presume to call themselves Christian, who gather together and stand on their Bibles demanding their Rights and Privileges using their Christianity as a justification for what I consider mean, ugly and nasty behavior toward those in need. It seems we are a nation that has forgotten the basics of compassion, empathy and humanity toward our fellow man, while standing on a shaky platform of Christianity.

“The land flourished because it was fed from so many sources–because it was nourished by so many cultures and traditions and peoples.”

Lyndon B. Johnson

I have been less than impressed by our response to the refugee problem at our borders, make no mistake this is nothing other than a refugee problem. Women and children, in some cases children alone, fleeing violence begging for safe haven, only to be met by screaming xenophobes telling them to turn around, die, starve no matter just go home. We helped create the problems in Central America, our money, our bankers and money laundering and our ‘War on Drugs’, we did this¹. This nation helped create the cesspools these children are escaping from, where their lives are in danger, where they live in poverty so terrible none of us could possibly imagine even in our worst nightmare. We did this and some of us have the audacity to stand before buses and on borders, demanding they be turned away. We did this, yet governors of Border States find nothing wrong with patrolling with guns drawn and calling out the National Guard to shoot them as they come toward us, hands out begging for shelter and aid.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Our President has found himself between a rock and a very hard place. Following a law signed by his predecessor, he is vilified by those who believe he is opening the borders to ‘thugs, criminals and disease ridden children’. With Congress taking Comprehensive Immigration Reform off the table for this year, everyone has something to say, it makes me wonder when some of these cretins will simply fade into the woodwork and shut the hell up. Everyone has an opinion, not a single one of them, from Hannity to West shows a bit of compassion, their snark and ugly shows only a partisan standard line of attack on the President, on those fleeing the violence and poverty we helped to create. Everyone who speaks up, attacking those in need and the President claims Christianity as their Rock, their guiding light yet fails to remember CHARITY, COMPASSION and LOVE for their fellow man as the foundation of that faith.

I have been anything but impressed; truthfully, I have been stunned by the actions of the city of Detroit’s Water Department. The city is in bankruptcy seeking any all means to pull themselves out of dire financial straits. The problem with this solution is, water is both a fundamental human requirement of life and according to the United Nations a Human Right², apparently the city manager and the head of the Water Department in Detroit didn’t get that memo. It has been suggested by some, famous and otherwise, those who do not pay their water bills can simply ‘tote’ their water from the lakes and rivers nearby. Others have suggested those private citizens who are not paying their water bills are doing so while they choose to pay other less necessary household expenses, such as cable and medicine. While the city cuts services to thousands of private residences they are remise in cutting services to businesses that owe hundreds of thousands, even the State that at last look owed $5M.³

To my mind, Detroit is a test ground for what the rest of the nation can and will become if we don’t stop this attack on basic human rights and humane treatment of our fellow man, now. This is an attack on at least two levels; one is the basic human level where those who have will continue to have (see Peter Brabeck-Letmathe⁴ and his assessment of what is a human right about access to water), the other is a continuation on the attack on women in particular. Wonder how this is an attack on women? How will women, in particular, be affected by a crisis of this nature, look at the world and ask yourself this question who will tote that water, who will be left to care for sick children affected by unsanitary conditions? Take women out of the workforce, cripple them economically and shove them backwards educationally, as a nation we are broken, we become the dreamscape of the nutjobs on the Far Right, a land of hopelessness for millions starting with women and extending to everyone else not of their liking.⁵

For those who think racism and sexism are things of the past, think again. These are simply two stark reminders we are living in a nightmare reality only brought to a screaming head in 2008 by the election of Barack Obama. Every single xenophobic fear was outed when he shot to the office of President seemingly out of nowhere and fulfilled the hopes of those of us who believed he could begin to undo what eight years of the Bush / Cheney nightmare had done to this nation. His election flung wide the closet doors of all those who previously had agreed to keep their bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia and simple lack of core morality under the covers in favor of social acceptance. Of course, since the days of Ronald Reagan the Right had been working toward this moment, when White Sheets in the form of a well-tailored suit would find acceptance on the national stage and even a man or woman of color would join in the decimation of our nation, our civil rights and our laws.

Congress does nothing day by day but spends our money on conspiracy theories, threats of impeachment and lawsuits against the President; we sit back and shake our heads but do nothing. The Senate shuts down the government, deadlocks over things both vital and trivial; we sit back and do nothing. SCOTUS is bought and paid for, stripping us of our rights one by one; we do nothing but bitch and whine.

How do we change this trajectory of the United States becoming a feudalistic state? We stand up, get up off our apathetic asses and demand change. We engage locally, we stop whining and we start doing something, including Voting. We write letters. We go to City Council meetings. We hook up with local organizations and throw our name out there to volunteer.

Dammit we engage and we VOTE.