Growing up: your place isn't inside someone else

Right.
Hello.

I was so excited to tell you guys about the Internal Family Systems Model (IFS), also known as the psychology thingo I bring up in conversation a least 12 times a day.

It has the least sexy name ever so you're maybe not that intrigued about it so that's why I have to say it has the potential to CHANGE THE WAY YOU SEE YOURSELF AND OTHER PEOPLE (incl Putin). FOREVER.

However. It's 10pm, and I want to stick to my midnight deadline hence I will save that for next week and instead share two poems with you today.

The second one you may have heard before. I most recently heard it recited, line by line, with passion and intensity by Chris Eubank (British former professional boxer) at a Cambridge Union event. This was after he asked us to each remove our masks and proceeded to stare deeply into our souls one by one. It was fkn intense. Interesting cat. Should def get him on the podcast...

The first poem - I heard on TikTok earlier today. Damn I thought I'd discovered some unknown poet but looking at her bio now apparently she's a big deal in the poetry world (I know nothing about poetry if that's not already obvious):

Sarah Kay, born 1988 in New York City, has been writing and performing Spoken Word poems since she was just 13. She came to fame in 2006 when she was a guest on HBO‘s “Russell Simmons presents Def Poetry Jam” and was also the youngest poet in the National Poetry Slam. Since then Kay has been presenting her work on stages and in classrooms all over the world. Her 2011 TED Talk has been watched online more than 7 million times. Sarah Kay has a master’s degree in The Art of Teaching from Brown University and an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Grinnell College. Her first book, B, reached No. 1 in Amazon’s “Poetry Book” category.

Okay here's the poem (it's called the Type, you can listen to it here as I think that's the idea with the Spoken Word vibe?)

Everyone needs a place. It shouldn’t be inside of someone else. —Richard Siken

If you grow up the type of woman men want to look at,
you can let them look at you.

Do not mistake eyes for hands.
Or windows. Or mirrors.

Let them see what a woman looks like.
They may not have ever seen one before.

If you grow up the type of woman men want to touch,
you can let them touch you.

Sometimes it is not you they are reaching for.
Sometimes it is a bottle. A door. A sandwich.

A Pulitzer. Another woman.
But their hands found you first.

Do not mistake yourself for a guardian.
Or a muse. Or a promise. Or a victim. Or a snack.

You are a woman. Skin and bones. Veins and nerves. Hair and sweat.
You are not made of metaphors. Not apologies. Not excuses.

If you grow up the type of woman men want to hold,
you can let them hold you.

All day they practice keeping their bodies upright—
even after all this evolving, it still feels unnatural,

still pulls tight the muscles, strains the arms and spine.
Only some men want to learn what it feels like to wrap themselves

into a question mark around you, admit they do not have the answers
they thought they would have by now;

some men will want to hold you like The Answer.
You are not the answer.

You are not the problem. You are not the poem
or the punchline or the riddle or the joke.

Woman. If you grow up the type men want to love,
you can let them love you.

Being loved is not the same thing as loving.
When you fall in love, it is discovering the ocean

after years of puddle jumping. It is realizing you have hands.
It is reaching for the tightrope when the crowds have all gone home.

Do not spend time wondering if you are the type of woman
men will hurt. If he leaves you with a car-alarm heart,

you may learn to sing along. It is hard to stop loving the ocean.
Even after it has left you gasping, salty.

Forgive yourself for the decisions you have made,
the ones you still call mistakes when you tuck them in at night.

And know this.

Know you are the type of woman
who is looking for a place to call yours.

Let the statues crumble.
You have always been the place.

You are a woman who can build it yourself.
You were born to build.

Right. Poem #2. Thinking about that first poem made me think about the only other poem that registers in my awareness (apart from those Irish / Catholic type ones my nanna used to have up in the loo... for another time)

If, Rudyard Kipling

(from ‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies)

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

I clicked on Rudyard Kipling's bio after re-reading this today as I thought I should know something about the person whose work I'm reproducing. He was an anti-Semite and a racist. Classic. I feel like this stuff is following me now. This is what Bryan and I discussed in the Growing Up podcast last week (Ep 6) ... i.e. what to do with the work of say, French novelist Céline who advocated a military alliance with Nazi Germany and wrote a series of antisemitic works but was also, supposedly one of the greatest French writers of the 20th century. I was scared about even publishing that episode (I'm scared about publishing every episode tbh, but mostly I just worry people will think I'm an idiot and cringe at how cringeworthy I can be sometimes. That's easy enough to get over). With this one I worried that even speaking about these things publicly would somehow have me implicated as a Nazi myself (irrational I know, but the world can seem a scary place... e.g. remember when Winston Marshall quit Mumford & Sons because of the backlash he got from tweeting that he'd read a book about Antifa. He talked about how it felt being labelled a fascist when he himself lost family members in Nazi concentration camps).

So now this has come up again, the second week in a row, I guess it's my invitation to ask people older and wiser than me (you guys... for the most part), how do you get your head around this stuff? Do we separate the art from the artist or how should we think about the work of writers, artists, philosophers, and their "toxic" (see below) views.

FYI here is the "More on this poet" bit from the Poetry Foundation (first google result) I read which alerted me to Kipling's apparently problematic views...

Rudyard Kipling is one of the best-known of the late Victorian poets and story-tellers. Although he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1907, his political views, which grew more toxic as he aged, have long made him critically unpopular. In the New Yorker, Charles McGrath remarked “Kipling has been variously labelled a colonialist, a jingoist, a racist, an anti-Semite, a misogynist, a right-wing imperialist warmonger; and—though some scholars have argued that his views were more complicated than he is given credit for—to some degree he really was all those things. That he was also a prodigiously gifted writer who created works of inarguable greatness hardly matters anymore, at least not in many classrooms, where Kipling remains politically toxic.” However, Kipling’s works for children, above all his novel The Jungle Book, first published in 1894, remain part of popular culture through the many movie versions made and remade since the 1960s.

Kipling was born in Bombay, India, in 1865.... read more here (he was friends with Theodore Roosevelt - that guy I quoted the other week! Small world hey.)

Growing Up pod - two new eps out:

You can exhale. No mention of Nazis these two episodes. Ep 8 is the first podcast I recorded in person from my flat, with Pietro, the Imperial College London fellow I told you about last week.

On Ep 9, I guess this relates to the above in a way... Patrick is telling me about how intense the political division has become in the US (apparently to the point of physical violence, should one openly show support for one party or the other.) Friendly reminder that you can disagree with someone's views without threatening violence, or acting on it. The world becoming seemingly more divided is something I am interested in learning more about, and something I am actively taking a stand against by platforming guests with a diverse range of views on the Growing Up podcast (hopefully it goes without saying... those whose views involve spreading hatred / encouraging violence excluded...more to say on that another time.)

Alright it's 12:18am. Time to press send.

xx Delia

P.S. Apparently you guys continue to like reading these emails (or at least opening them, but clearly if you got to this point you are in fact reading them) therefore, please feel free to share with a friend, they can subscribe here.

P.P.S. Previous editions here.

Hi! I'm Delia Burgess

Growing up: your place isn't inside someone else

Growing Up: people have opinions & drag queens

Growing Up: asking for it & eudaimonia

Growing Up: speak so people will listen & HI!!!!!!!