My Words Ghosted Me

My AHA! journey from wordlessness to this blog

GHOSTING: the practice of suddenly ending all communication and avoiding contact with another person without any apparent warning or explanation and ignoring any subsequent attempts to communicate. Fear and conflict avoidance are two reasons people get ghosted.

---

This post is my first time processing in writing how I got to this place.
It will be a more lengthy post than usual.

The nerve of them!

Over the last two years, suddenly and without warning, my words broke up with me. I was completely blindsided! It was an unexpected parting that felt really strange. I wasn’t quite sure why they left, where to find them, or how to coax them back so I simply sat simmering in the uncomfortable feeling of it all.

---

A brief understanding of me for context

Balance and neutrality are two of my favorite things. I’m an optimistic, empathetic unifier that seeks out healing and understanding. When I disagree, I check myself before projecting onto others.

I’ve always been a soapbox kind of girl. Feelings rise up in me with a deep, sometimes uncomfortable, need to be expressed, not to necessarily change minds or seek agreement, although if they influence in a positive way, that’s cool. I do try to rant in a balanced way (most of the time).

I’m also a landscape girl. I like offering a landscape of perspectives for others to consider, hoping my words lighten loads and ease paths. My hope is to help others feel less alone or spark a mindshift to make things easier.

---

They just up and left…

Sometime in the summer of 2022, my words just up and abandoned me. I went to access them and they were gone. It caught me by surprise and made me feel really uncomfortable inside. It made me ask the question, “Who am I without my words?”

Once they were gone, I had to sit in the discomfort and start self-excavating to figure out why they vanished.

It’s interesting. Sometimes you just can’t know the fullness of something until you experience the contrast of it no longer being there. My words had always been there and until they were gone, I never really considered where they came from and why they were there. As I simmered in my newly silent reality, I began to better understand what happened.

---

The journey begins…

Around 2015, I started noticing a transition within myself separating from long-standing family rituals and traditions around watching television. I started getting irritated at that box that blared so much divisiveness and separation.

For decades, we watched the evening news, followed by PBS or late-night comedians, as well as Sunday morning news shows over coffee. As time passed, I watched the media literally seeding the us vs. them narratives before my very eyes.

I had been also watching The View since it’s inception. I know, it’s the program that people love to hate, but I enjoyed it much of the time over the years because of the original intention that Barbara Walters set for it: "a talk show featuring four or five women 'of different backgrounds, different generations, and different opinions,' who would discuss the topics of the day, mixing humor with intelligent debate."

However, the show’s tone started to mirror and mimic the divisiveness of the evening news, making it much less enjoyable for me to watch because there were rarely any different viewpoints and when there were, they were often attacked.

What changed: them, me, or BOTH?

I couldn’t take the myopic, one-sided manipulation and agendas of these shows any more. Every topic suddenly became either black or white red or blue. I’d find myself shouting at the t.v., “…But what about (something in between)?” They were filled mostly with opinion and rhetoric, and rarely presented a full spectrum of nuances for better understanding of both sides. What ever happened to staying with “the facts”?

One thing about me is that I like to challenge my echo chamber. I check into what people across the spectrum are reporting on so I can better understand the fullness of what’s happening. “You’re either with us or you’re ignorant” was often the underlying message, regardless of the corporate mainstream channel from CNN, Fox, MSNBC etc. So I quit watching them. This sparked an even stronger intent for me in finding news sources that were more balanced and fair.

Yes, for decades I had been well aware of how the media operates, but with Trump now in office, media battle lines were firmly drawn lacking nuance and completely going off the rails.

(And let me make it clear that I am not a Trump fan. I’m also not a hater because that’s not my way.)

I can easily hold two seemingly opposing thoughts at the same time, rarely getting irritated by what I don’t agree with. I’m never in lock step with any party, although I have traits that favor the center-left. I used to be one of the most liberal people I knew, but the legacy media circus since 2015, especially since covid, has shifted me more to the center because I just can’t get on board for the evolution of some of the more progressive ideals of the left. In my opinion, the left evolved out even further which makes me seem more centrist now.

And the answer to what changed is, BOTH.

---

But I digress…

The late night comedians suddenly turned ALL political in a one-sided way that was mean, so I quit watching them.

The View hardened into a liberal roundtable as token conservatives temporarily sat at the table for a short period of time, but eventually left suffering from the slings and arrows from their more liberal co-hosts under the embattled pressure to answer to ALL of the sins of their party and their faith.

I couldn’t stomach it any longer because it no longer represented my personal interest of hearing people with differing views discuss their opinions which helps me understand myself and world around me. This, of all times, was when I desperately wanted needed to hear a landscape of differing viewpoints. So I quit watching them.

---

And then covid hit

For me, covid brought everything into clearer focus. Navigating the Trump presidency and the media’s antics rolling over into the Biden presidency was difficult enough, but the pandemic even further separated us.

Once covid hit, all bets were off. I have so much to say about the covid era, but I’ll stick to the point of this post about my words leaving. You can be absolutely sure though that I’ll be writing many times about the covid shitshow all that we went on through with covid, including censorship and the dissolution of freedom of speech.

I will say that covid politicized the pandemic in ways that deeply harmed us all that will be difficult, but hopefully not impossible, to recover from.

Did I mention that I’m an optimist?

Us vs. Them-ism

As the cloud of covid descended upon the world, media fear-mongering intensified without balance. As the fear grew, the chasms grew. The tribes, fueled by their screens, became even more divided, belligerent, and angry…as they thought knew, often without a doubt, that they were RIGHT.

Relationships started to unravel quickly. I watched lifetime friends and family members end relationships over differing opinions. I felt threads of my own family fray.

People hurled horrible insults towards others about being ignorant, sheeple, and knee-jerk name-calling all the -ists and -isms ad nauseam. I saw my people lambasting others. Bearing witness to man’s inhumanity to man during such a crucial time in history literally.broke.my.heart.

I agree with the spirit of this but I’d personally change the word most to much

Despair descends

In the summer of 2022, the strife and division took a toll on me, a generally optimistic and compassionate unifier who walks in balance fairly easily.

It was such a confusing time (and still is) to try to discern what was fact, fiction, manipulation, and spin between two culturally opposing streams moving rapidly in opposite directions politically, as well as with their views on covid and the vaccines.

Longtime like-minded friends completely changed direction which perplexed me and made me question myself. Was I right and they wrong or vice versa? These about faces were deeply baffling. It was a complete mind-fuck such a deeply confusing time.

This is when I noticed that my words were d-i-s-a-p-p-e-a-r-i-n-g, as well as my passion to speak them. I felt so alone and I fell flat into despair. I guess there’s a first time for everything.

Realizations on the way

Now that I was alone in despair with no words, I began my usual ritual of self-excavating to understand my dilemma and to restore my personal balance.

This was a very long process which is still ongoing so I’m just going to touch on some highlights that provided me some clues as to where my words might have gone and why.

My broken heart shut me down

As I began realizing that my heart was broken, numb, and crusted over, I began to understand that my words clearly come from my heart. I realized that I couldn’t feel anymore and that when my heart is numb, it doesn't generate the feelings or passion for words.

Aha! That gave me a clue that I needed to work on opening my heart back up. That’s a whole healing journey with a very long story unto itself, but suffice it to say, I was finding ways to thaw it out and re-engage it to bring it back to life.

Once my heart got a bit warmed up, I realized the next layer needed to be addressed which I’ll refer to as “the obstacle behind the obstacle”.

My confusions and fears held me prisoner

Now that I had 2/3 of my heart back, I realized that my words still weren’t there. What the heck was that about?

After intending to excavate that question, I had another AHA! moment. I realized that my words not only went away when my heart was broken and wasn’t feeling, but they were smothered because confusions and fears had taken root and were holding them back.

What is “the obstacle behind the obstacle”?

It was not a fun realization realizing that fear was holding me back, but here I was. I thought that I had fully decoded my issue by realizing that my heart had closed, but once I addressed that, there was a smaller obstacle hidden behind that larger more obvious one.

I often talk about obstacles behind obstacles in terms of large looming boulders. It’s as if we address the most obvious issue then feeling free to move ahead, not realizing that there is actually another smaller obstacle (boulder) hiding behind the larger one that we couldn’t see that now needs to be addressed. Sheesh! Enough already!

Nevertheless, typically clear and balanced, I found myself realizing that I was being held prisoner by these fears and emotions.

What were some of the fears and confusions?

1. The risk of losing friends and family that were unable or unwilling to engage in nuanced discourse about much of anything.

2. Others' seemingly unwavering certainty. So many seemed so confident and certain that their beliefs and opinions were the only way with no nuance or questions allowed while I was curiously questioning absolutely e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g.
   
   3. Insecurity and doubts about my own beliefs and what might be true in the midst of revelations and discoveries that things aren’t necessarily what we thought they were.
   
   4. Blind angry tribal responses that were triggered by me posing neutral, curious questions to better help me understand things. Pick a team was the vibe.
   
   AHA! I wasn’t ghosted. I was shut down!
   
   All of these things stifled my words and pushed them away. I had to sit within myself for a very long time tugging at the loose threads to see what else they connected to so I could heal and trace my way back to have a desire to write and express once again.
   
   

This blog is my attempt to “do it anyway”

This is a first for me

This is the first time that I’ve actually sat down to write about this process so that I can see what my journey has been in writing. There’s soooo much more than what I’ve said here about the process, realizations, fear, confusion, division, insecurity, unity, and these very interesting, yet tumultuous, times that we live in, but those can be revealed at later dates in other sharings.

A blog is born

This is the very long story of how this blog was born. I don’t know what shifted energetically, but after a 10 day walk-about with my dad to Texas to see the eclipse in totality while visiting many of my good friends, I could feel my words bubbling back up again. I returned with a renewed desire to write and share. I was shocked at this sudden development…and still am!

Thanks for hanging in there with me this long

I know it was a lot. I share for my own processing, but also to see if anyone else can relate to what I’ve shared. If so, please comment below so we can process and understand that we’re not alone even if your issues are completely different.

What I am clear about now is that personal expression and editorializing serves as my response to the world and is my form of creativity. I look forward to sharing that with you here in the weeks and months ahead.

My main encouragement during these uncertain, turbulent times is to stay open, curious, and question what you think you know because none of us have it 100% right.

What about you?

So my questions to you are:
How have these times shaped you?
What changes have you noticed in yourself in these last many years?
Are any of them similar to mine?
What are you still struggling with?

Let’s chat!