(no subject)

[lunabee34]

1. Once AO3 comes back up, go read the amazing story corvidology wrote me for Christmas:

Never Get Drunk with a Baltian Trader
Star Trek AOS
Kirk & Bones & Spock gen
Hijinks and shenanigans

2. Turns out I'm more fucked up about my parents yelling us at us that we're all going to hell and that's my fault specifically for damning my children than I thought. When I first got back from Christmas, I was just so relieved to be here, and I felt very even-keeled. Now I wonder if I just felt numb for awhile because I am currently struggling with figuring out how I'm going to interact with them in the future and going over all the old existential questions their upbringing gave me and reading a truly unhealthy amount of Stranger Things fanfic in a way that is indicative I'm trying to bury/ignore my feelings. :(

3. Today I participated in the first day of a Symposium about Death and Dying with the junior and senior Respiratory Therapy cohort. Later in the semester I'll lead a writing workshop with these students that I've designed in collaboration with the RT faculty. It's an incredibly cool and necessary project because coping with death is almost always left out of the curriculum in other programs (discussing it isn't even an accreditation criterion OMG!), but it is so so heavy. I am sad and overwhelmed at listening to my colleagues talk about their experiences with losing patients over the course of their careers, so impressed with their courage, and grateful that we have people who are willing to do their jobs.

4. Hi hi!

Comments

[wendelah1]

Wow. I am horrified to hear about your parents' outburst. My mother's parents were devout Southern Methodists. (While she was growing up, my mother went to church several times a week and attended a Methodist women's college. My grandfather in particular was so involved in his church that there was an enormous photo of him hanging in his church's lobby (vestibule?) for years after his death.) I never remember feeling anything other than love and acceptance from my grandparents, despite the fact that my mother was an avowed atheist and my father was Jewish. (On the other hand, my mother's brothers never invited us into their homes. They were polite. Uncle John even took us all out for barbecue once or twice. Her sister, my beloved aunt Barbara, who died of breast cancer in her early seventies, was like my grandparents: warm and loving. We had sleepovers at her house every time we went to North Carolina. You just never know.) It does feel as though contemporary Evangelical Christianity is particularly vile in its attitudes toward unbelievers. But spoken aloud by your own parents? I have to say I am amazed that you're still on speaking terms with them.

It is good to see that death and dying is part of the curriculum for health care workers.

[lunabee34]

I'm so glad you had those wonderful and inclusive experiences with religion and family. That's worth so much. I feel so tainted by my experiences growing up that I feel spiritually bereft; I would like spiritual beliefs and practices, but I am kneejerk afraid of/against all of them. It's a trauma response.

I just don't know what to do about my parents. I want to have nothing to do with them anymore, but I also feel guilty and sad for hurting their feelings. It's also twisted up with every kind thing they've done for us, like I can put all the ways they've hurt me in one bowl of the scales and all the ways they've been good in the other--but I can't figure out which is heavier. It's been eating me up.

[wendelah1]

You are not responsible for their "hurt feelings." You haven't done anything wrong. They're trying to make you feel guilty for what? Believing in universal salvation and loving thy neighbor (or whatever your doctrinal/spiritual/moral beliefs are that are in opposition to theirs). Frankly
speaking, your parents are entirely in the wrong. You are the injured party. They said cruel things to you. That was a bad choice and bad choices? They can have consequences.

And having done something good in the past doesn't absolve someone for their bad actions in the present.

[lunabee34]

*hugs*

Thank you so much for saying that. I know all these things intellectually. I just have trouble making my heart believe them. :/