Reflection
Despite the colonial context of this quote, which I don’t love, what I do love about it (and why I chose it despite the colonial context) is two things: first, I love how true it is taken as a metaphor for deep personal change, deep healing, deep personal growth. Second, healing the effects of colonialism won’t be forwarded as a movement by ignoring the various ways it has affected people for good and for ill.
Currently I’m working with some people who are very wedded to what mom and dad think, what their church thinks, what their friends think, so much so that they’ve never really stopped to consider what they think. They don’t know how they feel outside of the context of these other pressures. In some therapies that’s called poor differentiation - they’re not really themselves, they’re more an extension of their parents, their church, their friends. And sometimes our parents, our churches, and our friends can be incredibly positive influences on us, encouraging us to be more truly ourselves (our best, brightest, and happiest self!) and we learn all those beautiful ‘seven selfs’; self love, self trust, self fulfillment, self respect, self esteem, self compassion, and self worth. And sometimes our parents, friends, and religions are just telling us how we should think, how we should feel, how we should be and there isn’t room for disagreement.
And taking the plunge and disagreeing with mom (or dad, or friends, or pastor) can be very like losing sight of the shore but still not arriving at that beautiful new land of comfortable health and wondering if the food stores will last, if the wind will stay strong, if your map is accurate, and if there will be a mutiny.
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