Video Debut! Weirding What You Know with Fractal Praxis
The first-ever Wednesday Evening Weirding Session premieres at 6:30pm MT today! It starts off by asking, "What am I inviting you into?"
Since it's the first video in the series, I made an exception for a longer video—30 minutes, rather than my target 15 minutes.
To make it more digestible:
- I made it audio-only: fully listenable, podcast style! 🎧
- Title cards and table-of-content links in the description makes it easy to navigate. So you can start and stop at your leisure, or jump to the topics that interest you most.
I'd love to hear your feedback! Thanks for watching/listening.
A few words on this moment of emergence
From too young an age, I developed adaptive behaviors to cope with relational neglect and emotional and psychological abuse. My body—keeping the score—learned it's safer to stay unseen, unheard, minimized, and alienated socially.
One quirky attribute of my neurodivergence is I don't like to have to explain to people who and what I am, so I don't take any special effort to make myself interpretable to people. I really hate the idea of folks using shallow labels (like gender, like neurodivergence) to think they know me, when really they're reacting to their own ideas projected onto the world.
I crave relationship that is complex and has capacity for nuance, and I try to invite people into that. I've poured myself into fostering secure relationship with reality, making me less concerned with obtaining external validation from others.
But the cost of not defining myself actively for others' sake is significant. As a neurodivergent woman, I will regularly become the scapegoat attractor in social environments for any/all of folks' shadows—and all of their projections. The sad truth of untrained human beings is that our uninterrogated identities and cognitive biases tend to rule our perceptions. I'm met with the fear and loathing of folks' biases—rather than wonder, rather than relationship.
Although this hurts me, I admit I live in a kind of interior flight-state, a de-sensitized stagnant cynicism, in response to this predicament. I don't make myself clear to others, either before or after they misunderstand me, because I don't trust others to see me.
And, I don't trust that even if I spoke up, it would make any difference. You see, MY internal bias is reflected here: that the world is built to NOT see me. My not being seen is a given, in everything.
Yet, how will I ever overcome the co-created alienation of being unseen unless I try something different?
The thing is, people are going to project onto me anyway. Especially insecure or shallow people. And this is just reality. It's not something to be upset about, and yet, it is something to be confronted and dealt with.
After a recent harmful interaction with a colleague in which I was muted, stereotyped, and scapegoated, I couldn't escape how costly it is when people don't see me—and I had to face the partial responsibility I have for that awful situation. The incident manifested like a climactic consequence of a bad pattern—bringing with it vividly, like a cascade 🌊 my entire personal trauma load history of being unseen, neglected, suppressed, mocked, and ignored from childhood onward, as a neurodivergent woman, born into difficult family circumstances, and who has pursued achievement within largely male-dominated contexts.
It surfaced this persistent subconscious issue into shocking consciousness—like a boil "coming to a head." ❤️🩹 This was my dilemma to address, this was my pain to feel. My adaptive strategies had FAILED me professionally. And I must acknowledge that patterns of staying hidden will serve me no longer.
It's too costly now for you not to see me.
So, it's time for me to be more declarative with my truths. To possess space with what I stand for. Yes, to spell it out for you—and, sometimes, to include my reflexive irritation about that. 😉
And to let YOU filter yourself in or out. 🐋
Either way, I will be ignored and attacked. I will be maligned and judged by those who need an outlet for their crushing insecurity. My autonomy, my intelligence, my unwavering attention to the truth of matters, and especially my unrepentant strangeness can and will be interpreted as threatening—an invitation to be put in my place. 👊 (I was bullied, and a bully, in childhood. I am intimately aware of this pattern, and I hold it with compassion).
Either way, I will be found, seen, loved, and respected by those whom my devotional labor serves. For whom my vigorous labor is easily recognized, and experienced like a profound quenching of an unknown thirst, tingling deep in the recesses of our Self. ⛲ Who will gravitate towards me because my integrity makes me trustworthy, my wisdom makes me noteworthy, my resilience makes me impressive, and my courage naturally inspires leadership. ❤️
So it's time to pull my life's work, and myself, out of the shadows. You, dear reader, can filter yourselves in or out of it. Follow your own resonance, make the discernment, and accept the consequences. I won't do the thinking or the meaning-making for you. That's on you. (If you DO want to get close to me, a wonderful way to do so is to think about things in an open-minded, sensitive way and with humility. 🥵 Sooooo hot. If you're doing that, you're already my people 💕 and I thank you and bless you.)
Just know: I refuse to be complicit with any forces conditioning for my silence, anymore. I tried that strategy for 38 years, and I've decided, it doesn't serve us. Not nearly as much as my being seen and being influential will serve us. 🌎
Since I was a young activist, I've been asking myself. How do I make the world a better place? I continue asking myself this to this day, and over all that time, my analysis has only deepened.
After 20 years of full throttle community organizing, anti-oppression and environmental activism, developing and equipping community-led ventures, devotional spirit-guided servant leadership, and rigorous intellectual and transformational labor, NOT self-promoted (think countless pages written and voice recordings recorded): It's time to reveal. My privately held, yet comprehensive and mature project, Fractal Praxis.
This first WEWS episode begins to unveil what it is I'm inviting you into. It reveals the origins of this journey, the power of encountering difference, and the evolution of our perspectives. Plus a couple juicy, core ideas 💦 from the Fractal Praxis framework, meant to inspire action.
I hope you enjoy and please share with your friends! These weekly sermons will be coming out every Wednesday at 6:30 pm MT.
To know me today is to bear witness to the fruits of my labor. So, don't fear me or loathe me. Know me. And know the world.
This is liberatory praxis.
Your friend in dharma,
C.