What Does It Matter?

to live from a place of survival, or from a state of agency—what difference does it make

So much has been stirring in this crusty heart upon return from the Mary Magdalene piligrimage that I find I have become quiet again. This question of what it all matters has been shouting so loudly from within over the past few weeks, I felt I would share the musings with you and find out what y’all thought.

It’s the age-old philosophical question(or one of them, at least), so I am not expecting an answer. But, we persist in the asking. In the scheme of things, what difference does it make that humans live in fear, poverty, and pain; or if we live lives of love, support, sovereignty, and joy?

Of course, at some level, it doesn’t matter. The answer is so subjective, so personal, because it relies on your own unique set of values and principles. I simply share why it seems to matter to me, and the motivations to keep going.

Speaking of which, I am challenging myself to a 30-day voice note thing in the month of August—for my birthday. I’m thinking of calling it my morning constitutional ;)

If you are into that sort of thing, subscribe! If not, you know what to do.

TTYL

This article was originally published on Substack. You can read the original here.

Audio Transcription:

I've been sitting with the question of what difference does it make? What does it matter since coming home? A lot since coming home from that Mary Magdalene pilgrimage at the end of May. So much has been moving and transforming in my personal intimate spiritual space. And for many years now I've really been struggling with my business. I had a very thriving, rakey practice going into the pandemic and since then I struggled with the transition from in-person work to moving online. It's just been a lift. I've really struggled with the whole practice of this capitalism thing, of doing the work that I really want to do in this world of healing, and teaching shamanic journeying and just all of it, and charging for it. It's just been a whole thing.

And I remember being with a friend of mine after his mother had passed and he was really moving through a lot. He didn't really have a fantastic relationship with his mother. She was objectively abusive and as he was dealing with the grief of his mother passing and all of the big complicated emotions that emerged from all of that, his wife was cheating on him and that had come to light and there were a bunch of other factors in the relationship. And as I was sitting with him that night he talked about, oh he had read all the books and he had gone to therapy and what difference does it make? Here he was still sitting in the muck of things and maybe he should just accept that this is life and it's painful and fuck it. Do the drugs, drink the booze, smoke the cigarettes, engage in the abusive behavior because none of it really matters anyway.

That statement, that, I mean even now, right now I'm so moved by that sentiment because in part that is true. What difference does it make? We're all just aspects of God experiencing themselves, right? So we're just here to live in the flesh, to experience individuality and all that comes with that. What difference does it make if we choose to live a life of peace and joy and love? Or one of pain and sadness and grief and isolation and who cares? At the end of the day I don't know, I don't know that I have an answer for that. I have thought about it and thought about it and felt it and felt it and felt it.

I know for myself to think about where I was at in my years of destitution and alcoholism and abuse, right? Abuse with lovers. I think that my biggest addiction was a love addiction, seeking out men because as it turns out, pretty fucking heteronormative. Oh, despite it all, I mean, I'm sorry I got myself off track there. I would seek out men who would be, I mean, just addicts themselves usually to some other kind of substance. Maybe it was porn addiction, maybe it was alcohol addiction, maybe it was methamphetamine addiction or all of the above. They were always emotionally unavailable and that's part of the love addiction. But I think about those moments of my life, that period of my adult life and then I think about the life that I get to live now, about not being trapped in the cycles of not just the highs and lows of actual chemical addiction, but the highs and lows of the emotional cycles of addiction, right? Because to go through those anger cycles, those abuse cycles, those are chemical addictions of their own, just chemical addictions that our body creates for itself. And they're cycles that are addictive.

Let's see if I can kind of form a cohesive thought around this. Because what difference does it make? I mean, I think each of us is going to have to answer that question. This is the age old question, a philosophical question. And for some of us, we're never going to ask that question of ourselves. We will forever be at the mercy of, at the effect of our lives. And for me to think about, you know, in the context of that question, of that conversation with my friend, well, I mean, I took a very long road, I think, and to some, and maybe to some, to others, it would be very fast road. But to think about all of those years that I spent, you know, living in pain and misery and being at the effect of life and feeling just very impotent about my circumstances.

And then like I said, reflecting on where I'm at right now, I'm in a deeply loving, equitable relationship. I'm in a true partnership with the father of my child, with the man I chose to marry. And we put in concerted effort into having our relationship continue to be that way. Because guess what? Life continues to change. That's the only constant that we can really ever count on is that life is ever changing, particularly in this organic form that we have incarnated in. This body is ever changing. Circumstances are ever changing. But to choose our love every day, that really does take effort. And God damn it, I'm so, so, so grateful for it.

I was just sharing with my therapist that really I've struggled with motherhood and anyone who's close to me knows that. I don't think that motherhood is the path for every woman. I just really think that all of humanity should get off women's butts about that because it's better for everybody if we get to really actively choose and then be supported in whatever choice that is. So I was saying for the first probably seven years of my daughter's life, I very, very, very seriously question whether or not I should have been a mom because I really didn't think I was a very good mother.

And then something shifted when she hit about, I can't say that it was like on her seventh birthday I woke up and went, oh my God, I love this now, but I really noticed, I think maybe it was because as I was sitting in the doctor's office filling out those postpartum surveys, there was a new report that came out that said, oh, doctors now are considering that postpartum depression can last up to seven years and so I think that figure kind of stuck in my head. But there was something I noticed that shifted too. My daughter gained the capacity, a stronger capacity for self-reflection. She had a bigger grasp of language. She was more of an autonomous being. So I no longer had to do like the guess and check of, is it this? Is it this? Is it this? And I also was gaining capacity with my own nervous system and going, oh, I'm understanding more that when she gets upset, my nervous system goes into a state of freak out. Like I need to solve for this problem and save her life. And at seven, well, it's no longer really life and death like it was when she was an infant.

Anyway, there's this confluence occurring of like, oh, I'm just enjoying motherhood right now a whole lot more. And part of it is also this state of self-acceptance that I'm just accepting that part of being a mother in the world that we have as a human is to accept that you're going to mess up, at least in the eyes of your child. That's just part of growing up and being human is blaming your parents for all kinds of shit that they did or didn't do. And a lot of that's very real and, you know, it's growth. But part of my own healing journey has been to let myself off the hook and to hold myself accountable. It's not like, you know, oh, it's okay that I beat the crap out of her last night. By the way, I don't do that. You know, that kind of stuff is like, okay, well, that's behavior that definitely needs to be taken into account and shifted.

And why? Why does it need to, why does it matter if I beat my child? I mean, some of you were probably aghast at even considering that question, but some of us do do that. So what does it matter? It sits in the same vein of what does it matter about if I'm, if I am at the effect of life or if I choose to be a little bit more at the cause of life? What does it matter if I, Genevieve, do the work that my heart feels called to do? In this life, which is this healing work that's teaching shamanic journeying, it's espousing the virtues of animism in this world for the intelligentsia, by the way. What does it matter if I do ceremony and I offer tobacco and I put spirit plates out and I bang the drum and I sing the songs and I do the things?

Well, I asked the same question when my father died. I was in a group class with my mentor and I went up in front of the class. He offered me the opportunity to share publicly about what was coming up for me. Oh, and I asked him that question. What does it matter? And his answer was, well, it just does. And so I know for myself, the, it just does is because I choose love. I choose free will. I choose healing and this May when I went on that pilgrimage and I sat in that church in St. Maurice de La Mer and I had that deeply moving experience next to the water. What I kept crying about was that I just wish that the world could stop hurting women.

I'm just so tired. So tired of women being hurt. Trans women, cis women, young women, old women, human women, non-human women. It doesn't really matter. I'm just so tired of it. For our species, we are the ones who give birth, by the way. If you didn't know, every human that exists currently was birthed by a woman.

So what difference does it matter that we do this work, that we offer healing to the world, that we focus on love and autonomy and free will and support? What difference does it matter if women are supported on their journey to self-actualization? To true sisterhood? To embodying the feminine in all its myriad forms? What difference does it matter if the women's mysteries are discovered again, are remembered, are disseminated?

Well, I think maybe if you can zoom out enough, perhaps in some ways it doesn't matter, because for 12,000 years, patriarchy has reigned. And humans have continued to grow and grow and grow and grow like a cancer on this planet. Now, don't get me wrong, we, I believe, are an integral part to the ecosystem of this planet, to the body of this planet, just like our human body has a liver and we have kidneys and we have all of the parts that are needed for our entire system to work. I believe that we are an organ that belongs on this planet, however, right now, we see prosperity as unhindered growth forever.

Now what happens when women get to choose? Well, it doesn't continue to grow like that. We have to embrace a different perspective of what prosperity is. All sorts of things begin to change, but I was thinking specifically of, well, for 12,000 years, humanity has repopulated itself through abuse and pain and rape and enforced pregnancies, old brides, etc. What is the potential for our species when that shifts? 51 to 52 percent of the human species is female. What is the potential for our species when procreation gets to exist, at least for the most part, in a state of joy and love and choice? What happens when children are born into societies that show them that they are wanted? When women get to be aunties? Or not? I guess I think that that does matter. I think it matters a lot.

Just like what does it matter if we as individuals are perpetually stuck in a state of trauma and acting out of a state of survival? What does it matter if we get to ascend the ladder of Maslow's hierarchy and we get to self-actualize? We're not just operating from a state of survival now. We are operating from a place of self-actualization. We really know ourselves. We know what our wheelhouse is. We know what our lane is. We know what our area of expertise and joy is. We know what our part of this human puzzle is and what we are here to provide to the whole because we are pack animals. We are not individuals. It really gets to be a both and as a human. That's pretty cool. It's pretty cool.

Anyway, what does it matter? Well, maybe that's a both hand also. Maybe on some level it doesn't matter. And yet there's something deep, deeply inside of me in the very cells of my being that cries out that it really does matter to be in a state of, hmm, I don't know exactly what the word is that I'm looking for, of efficiency, of, I'm not efficiency in the Virgo sense of the word, but like, what's the real word that I'm looking for here? I don't know. All the new age, all the kids are using it these days. You probably know what I mean. Oh, it's going to drive me crazy. Anyway, agency, agency over ourselves.

I think it really does matter. I think that the more of us who can operate from a place of agency in our individual lives, in a place of truly being rooted in our hearts, our minds, our bodies, our souls, I think that that really does have a ripple effect on the world at large and it helps to ease the inflammation that the larger body is experiencing right now. And I think it will help to heal a lot of what hails us as an organism. And on that note, I'm going to wrap it up for your sake.

I'm going to wrap it up at that currently, but guess what? For the month of August, at least for 30 days of it, I'm going to be doing a voice note a day because what I've experienced is that coming home from the Mary Magdalene retreat, oh boy, I was on fire. I wanted to share something with you every single day. And since then, there's been a lot coming up internally. The integration process has been big and, you know, it's been chaotic as well. I'm back to my shit, and there's so much pressure about, oh, I want to be, I don't know, I want to say the thing. I want it to be important. I want to, I don't know, whatever. I want to do it right. And ultimately, really, I just need to be doing it.

So I have created a 30 day challenge for myself. It'll be in the lead up to my birthday, to my 49th birthday. I got to tell you, between you and me, I never thought I'd make it past 35, and I lived hard in the attempt to not make it past 35. So each year I live beyond that moment is a gift. And I'm surprised and I'm happy and I'm grateful for it.

So I'm going to do a voice note challenge, and I'm thinking, I don't know, tell me what you think. I'm thinking of calling it my morning constitutional. Is that too gross? Maybe it's just right. Maybe it's just right. So in August, you can look forward to more musings and pontifications like this one, and also probably just crap. Oh, you're welcome.

So I hope you join me. That would be so fun. And I'll talk to you soon.