Liberation has always been my personal goal.
The idea of liberation used to feel very scary to me.
Considering my name means peace and it was heavily laid on me in my childhood to be peaceful...liberation felt like betrayal.
You can have peace without being liberated.
It took me YEARS of uneducating myself from the conditioning that peace is the ultimate goal of being a human/humanity.
'Keep the peace.'
'Don't rock the boat/stir the pot.'
'Mind your own business.'
'Be nice.' 'Be good.' 'Be quiet.' Etc.
It took doing a whole lot of inner work to be able to see that 'keeping the peace' can be violence itself.
Peace can exist without liberation.
Full. Stop.
I lived in a household that from the OUTSIDE perception would be called peaceful.
While inside there was turmoil, oppression and abuse.
There was no liberation, no actual safety, nothing healthy or life affirming.
And yet peace was touted as THE thing to be and have and most certainly the thing to PRETEND to have.
While inside there was massive harm being done...in the name of peace.
As I made steps towards my own liberation I was called many things. I was shunned while also being told I was hurting everyone by seeking my own freedom. That my seeking freedom was harmful and horrible and mean.
I was spoken about behind my back as if I was crazy, unstable, and ungrateful.
Not once were the conditions under which I was living considered in my struggle for my liberation.
I should be grateful for the peace that was being projected.
While inside that house was utter chaos, neglect, abuse, and the covering up of what was really going on.
In my work for my own internal liberation from the dysfunctional conditioning I inherited not only from my family of origin but from society itself, I was told I was naive AND dangerous, I was told I had 'no right' to point out the harm being done, I was told I didn't know enough about 'why it is like this'. I was also told 'this is just the way it is so tow the line'.
And every time I said no to all of this. I was the made the villian and accused of thinking I was better than everyone else, of hurting people's feelings, of harming their status quo.
I was simply walking out of and no longer participating in their dynamic of peace which was violent and harmful to me.
That peace said I had to endure abuse in order to 'be peaceful'.
That peace said that I had no right to my own thoughts or choices about my own life.
That peace said that I had to consider my abusers always and never myself.
And over time of deconstructing the beliefs poured into me and the biases that hold 'peace' as the objective even when that peace is built on lies and abuse and oppression, I began to not give a rats ass about peace that did not have liberation at its core.
The struggle for my own personal liberation was not peaceful by any stretch of the imagination.
It has been messy, painful, destructive, and often terrifying.
It has had the people pressing me to 'be peaceful' feel as if...simply by walking away from that belief and construct...I was attacking and harming them.
Not once did I attack anyone. I said no. I refused to participate in the dysfunction of peace. And I became enemy number one.
There is no peace without liberation.
Anything else is a lie.
Anything else is manipulation and control with a smile on its face.
It has taken me until today to be able to articulate what I just have.