Day 16: Welcome to Pinterest

April 16, 2012

Today's mission is to create a board on Pinterest for my blog with at least three pictures and share. This was fun and I must be an overachiever, because I have forty-one pins to my Hope is Real! board. It's filled with inspirational quotes and pictures and videos that were originally posted on this blog. It also has some really cool feminist pictures that are more political than I usually cover in my posts. This is a feminist blog, after all. I suggest you follow my board if you need some inspiration either for recovery or feminism. It actually helped me yesterday, as I was feeling rather sad and perusing all of the pictures helped distract me from my self-destructive thoughts. (Distraction is a Dialectical Behavioral Therapy skill, by the way...)

It was hard to choose the three pins to share. I decided not to show any that have been on this blog before and surprise, surprise, they're all quotes!

The first one is a gold medallion that says, "my recovery comes first."

Source: healthyplace.com via Corey on Pinterest       This is a true statement if there ever was one-my recovery must come first, for anything that I place before my recovery, I will surely lose.  Recovery means different things for different people. For some, it means staying sober or clean and attending 12-step meetings. For others, it means taking one's medications, going to therapy, and not isolating. It may mean making sure that one eats balanced meals and exercises regularly. Recovery means all of these things to me and more. I suppose recovery can be boiled down to living life on life's terms, which for me, means I will not purposely self-harm myself to take me away from my emotions, but will deal with them head on.

The next pin is a quote from the book I recommended a few weeks ago, Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl.

 
Source: google.com via Corey on Pinterest
"The one thing you can't take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.  The last of one's freedoms is the ability to choose one's attitude in any given circumstance."  I believe this to be true, although I do believe that can be an extremely hard thing to do.  I must note however that choosing to have a positive attitude despite one's circumstances is probably much easier to do than if one has mental illness.  I often wondered when reading Frankl's book how it would have been written if was not such a well-balanced person already. 

The last is my favorite quote by feminist writer and activist Audre Lorde: "Your silence will not protect you." 
  

I think about this quote often and I believe it.  It is often tempting to be silent when others are being persecuted, but that is not what we are called to do-not as an activist, feminist, or fellow human being.  People often mistakenly believe that if they remain silent, then they will be protected from the same persecution, but life makes no such guarantees.  I think this quote also means that we must stick up for ourselves.  There have been many times when I have remained silent, so as to let the uncomfortable or dangerous moment that I was enduring pass as quickly as possible, but it did not work.  Honest, assertive communication is a very powerful thing that I am only beginning to realize.  I think back at some of my relationships and wish desperately that I had spoken up when my rights were being trampled upon, but at least I have learned better now.  Now sometimes it is better to remain silent in dangerous situations, but ultimately living a silent life will never protect someone.  And I hope you know that when I say a "silent life," I do not mean it literally.  I mean someone who never stands up for herself or for the rights of others.  There are many people who do not audibly speak, i.e. some deaf people, some autistic people, etc. who through the use of their hands, machinery, props, or an assistant are still able to "speak" up for themselves.

What do you think of the pins I picked out?  Go to my board to see others!

Here are my additional links:


Shakesville – Today In Your Feminist Backlash

So, basically, Newsweek has allowed a writer to invent the claim out of whole cloth that US women are "dominating" in public and at home—despite 16% female representation in Congress and 15% representation among corporate CEOs, and despite the fact that study after study finds male-partnered women still doing the majority of housework and childcare, even if both partners are working full-time—and pair that specious contention with the popularity of a few random pieces of pop culture—despite the fact that relying on Girls as evidence of any phenomenon is pretty wild, considering it just premiered last night, and is produced by well-known feminist Judd Apatow, lulz—in order to implicitly claim that feminism is bullshit because all women REALLY want, deep down, is to be dominated by men.


The Crunk Feminist Collective – Big Girls Need Love, Too: Dating While Fat (and Feminist)

What I’m getting at is something much more fundamental.  Because desire is socially constructed (no matter how much folks justify their limited dating choices based on ‘natural preference’),  the fact that we live in a fat-hating culture greatly affects who we’re attracted to, and what we find attractive.  The idea that we’re only attractive within a range of sizes is absurd. And narrow. And it is absolutely a function of patriarchy. And yet, I live daily with those realities.

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