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Growing Up: asking for it & eudaimonia
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Hiiiiiii, I'm back! Okay this email is v intense but v powerful... So, remember when I sent you: Growing Up: how to be a good dom & dead birds about the book Unbound: a Woman's Guide to Power by Kasia Urbaniak. You know, the taoist nun / dominatrix lady? And this quote: "Many of us prefer to deny that power dynamics exist, outside of games played by greedy, dishonest manipulators. But, like gravity, just because you deny the existence of something doesn't mean it doesn't affect you." (the ideas shared in that newsletter and here are equally interesting and relevant to men!! So don't let the subtitle put you off @men) At the end of the Good Dom post I wrote "I'm going to leave it there and share some more in the next edition (including a powerful & deeply moving example of someone applying Kasia's teachings)" and 12 weeks later, here we are. First up, trigger warning because this powerful & deeply moving example of someone applying Kasia's teachings relates to child sexual abuse, so you may not want to read further (/ prefer to come back later etc.). Below is an extract from the the chapter "the Irresistible Invitation" and the Powerful Ask. Asking for what you want. (FYI if you want to learn how to ask for what you want, e.g. you want your husband to take you on a date. You nag him constantly about it but that doesn't seem to work. This book might help! Likewise you want to be put on a certain project at work, but your boss won't give you the opportunity etc. etc. The below is just the most extreme version of a Powerful Ask.) What happens, for instance, when the person we most want to make a Powerful Ask of is truly, profoundly unavailable? What if they, have died, or are no longer in our lives? What if you have an Ask bottled up inside, but know that the person you need resolution from will never be able to provide it? What if even communicating with that person has the potential to be physically dangerous?
Is it even worth the work — the inner excavation of your desires, the emotional alchemy, coming up with a specific Ask — when reaching the other person seems as unlikely as growing wings and flying to a holy mountain in Bhutan?
Yes.
Yes, we are here to get what we want. But the reclamation of our power does not depend on getting a yes. Fortunately, this process is deeply beneficial—and this is true even if we never get to make the Ask in real life.
I am thinking of the class where my very young, very buttoned-up student Elizabeth volunteered to do a Three-Way Ask [i.e. asking a proxy person who is role playing] with a male volunteer: "I'm applying to law school, and I want to ask my dad to contribute five thousand dollars toward my tuition," she tells me.
I tell her to ask the male volunteer, but when she turns to him, she can't get the words out. She's mumbling, meandering; it's hard to hear what she's saying, and I'm standing right next to her. I try to say with her, but she's going so far inward, I can't follow. Now she's making half-words.
Since she's so deep inside, I take the risk of having her get on her knees. "Don't worry about the money for now. Just say the words 'Please, Dad'"
She says it, and says it again, but it's clearly very difficult for her, she's crying, struggling, and the room is in agony right along with her.
I'd been thinking that five thousand dollars wasn't anywhere near enough for law school, but there's clearly something else going on here.
I kneel next to her and place my hand on her back. "Please, Dad: what?" Very clearly, she says, "Please, Dad, tell me I'm good for something other than sex."
As the story slowly starts to reveal itself, Elizabeth alternates between constrained crying and pulling herself back together. Her father would rape her when she was four and five years old, and whisper in her car that she was good for nothing except sex. It emerges that he's a convicted sex offender who ran a child pornography ring, who never went to jail, who's still married to her mother.
I ask her: "Are you angry?" She says, "I don't know. I don't want to hurt my mother, and I really want a dad." I ask her, "Are you willing to try getting angry?" She nods and stands, barely keeping her balance. After a minute or two, she puts her attention on the volunteer.
"You need help," she says, with the little strength she can summon. "You need help." She's choking over the words, so I tell her just to make sounds: "Growl, for that five-year-old." She makes a strange sound. "Stand over him, as though you have complete control." This helps. She finally says, "You will stop, you need help." She calls him a fucker, but weakly; her attention is all over the place.
While she may not have gone all the way there, it's clear her state has changed. This progress is more than enough. She sits in the chair and I ask the volunteer to leave. She doesn't have to do the final Ask, but I ask her what she wants. She can't think of anything, so I offer some thoughts: "Do you want him to go to jail?" She nods.
"Do you want him to suffer? Do you want him to write a book, confessing to your entire community what he's done?"
Yes.
She takes over, starts talking. "I want him to tell my mom, who never believed me."
"What else do you want? Be outrageous; don't settle for crumbs."
"I want him to give a million dollars to a foundation for the survivors of sexual abuse."
"Bigger."
"I want him to single-handedly rid the world of sexual offenders."
"Amazing. Do you want him to apologise?"
"No, I don't want to talk to him yet. But I want a dad. A real dad, who's healed, who loves me and protects me. I feel guilty about the qualities I love in him, knowing what he did, but I want to make a dad out of the one I have. I don't think it's possible, and I don't know how."
I tell her that she's already begun to make herself ready to receive the fatherly love she longs for whether or not she ever speaks to her father again.
"I feel that."
We stay in touch. Over the next six months, Elizabeth writes me a number of times about the impact this exercise had on her. She uses the techniques to ace all her interviews, and gets into an Ivy League law school on a scholarship; she doesn't need her father's contribution after all: She reports that she's unfazed by the toxic men she encounters at school. She's in a new relationship and enjoying her sexual power.
But it's only after six months that Elizabeth tells me what she's really been up to: while achieving all these other astonishing victories she also decided to volunteer to counsel inmates, the majority of whom are sex offenders, and many of whom have been sexually abused in jail. She chose this as her training ground, should she ever encounter her father again. "I taught myself to be calm in their presence, to listen, to understand — and to prepare for facing my dad and getting what I want: his healing and a real dad. And I don't care if I ever get there — every step in this process has brought me closer to who I want to be."
Last week on Growing Up with Delia Burgess Bryan is one of those people who is so clever and knows so many things (& also, importantly knows the things he doesn't know, and will say so.) He has these cool lapel mics, and so a few weeks ago we took a walk in Highgate (beautiful part of North London) and recorded a conversation that went like this (according to the AI summary): In this conversation, Delia Burgess and her guest explore various philosophical themes, including the historical context of Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic cultures, the evolution of Western civilisation, and the distinctions between analytic and continental philosophy. They delve into Eastern philosophies, particularly Buddhism and Daoism, and discuss concepts like eudaimonia, skepticism, and the Middle Way in relation to asceticism. The conversation emphasises the importance of understanding philosophy as a way of life rather than merely a theoretical exercise. In this conversation, Delia Burgess delves into complex philosophical themes, particularly the Middle Way in Buddhism, contrasting eternalism and annihilationism. She explores the nature of knowledge, emphasising the tension between perception and reason, and how these concepts relate to personal experience and enlightenment. The discussion also touches on the dynamics of masculine and feminine energies in learning and personal growth, ultimately questioning the nature of enlightenment and the pursuit of goals versus the experience of flow. Okay that's hilarious because I do not recall discussing Afro-Asiatic cultures or annihilationism (had to google what that was). But broadly yes we discuss these things! That summary makes me sound way smarter than I am... my knowledge of philosophy basically comes from an young adult book (Sophie's World which we discuss and I wrote about here: Growing Up: you can't be anything but you can be yourself) but Bryan is as clever (much more clever?) as / than the summary makes him sound & I get to learn a lot in this conversation (my ideal way of learning tbh.) yay! (Bryan has been on the podcast multiple times (including interviewing me on Ep. 50). His Growing Up episode is Ep. 2. Bryan Kam: homeschool to Princeton) That's all folks. Peace out from Austin, Texas yeehaw xx Delia P.S. If you dig the newsletter / podcast and want to support it, I would love for you to share it with a friend / online, or give the podcast a rating on Spotify / Apple etc. Yay! P.P.S. If you want to unsubscribe please do! Click the link at the bottom. Unwanted emails are annoying! Previous editions here. Forwarded this and want to subscribe? Click here. |
Hi! I'm Delia Burgess
Do you want to be more interesting AND attractive? That's exactly what will happen if you type your email address below.
Guys hello!!!! I have missed you. It has been weeks since I have written and not a moment has gone past where I haven't thought of you. Just kidding. But honestly I have been meaning to write every week for about the last 6 weeks. How rude of me to last time say "hey I'm going to write a lot more frequently again", and then to ghost you. That's like f**kboy behaviour no? Anyway here we are. (fboy definition for my Dad to avoid being accused of swearing for the sake of it:F**kboy: A guy who...
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