Are we all feeling as if toxic positivity has taken yet another unhealthy turn where not only are you meant to zen love smile radiate embrace remain present in order to achieve all of the lovely things, but also condemn those who do not/cannot?

You must not yoga enough with the right people at the right time in the correct vegan yoga things, so you’ve built your own quagmire of shit as a result.

You did not radiate the holiest beauty of rainbow sunshine, so you must not be doing your job correctly which is probably why you will fail at it.

You are requiring something of me and no one ever requires anything of me in ways I do not want. I am the one who should be requiring things of you. You are oppressing me because I feel very unhappy about what you are saying.

Maybe it’s just me.

It’s bizarro world again, still – or whatever

It is understandable that most people want the same things: love, health, belonging, meaning, recognition.

What I struggle with is embracing the culture of toxic positivity to work towards those things. You must love yourself before anyone can love you! Fake it until you make it! Everything happens for a reason! You deserve a break!

This all sounds pretty freaking toxic to me.

No one loves you if you don’t love you. If you cannot pretend to be happy, then you will never be happy. There are reasons why these awful things happen, so your feelings about them are not appropriate. There are times when you do not deserve a break.

I toss some pox on that. Culturally we toss pox on that.

You don’t look like you love yourself enough, so I have decided you are unworthy of love and consideration. You do not look happy to me so I have decided your happiness is unworthy of consideration. You are not worthy of consideration for a break because I have decided you do not deserve one.

Our culture has full on embraced toxic positivity with a constant stream of shaming/blaming/fear-based living, and lately have one-upped that with the poxic tossitivity.

We have been deliberately systematically brainwashed and gaslighted to accept this as our culture, and I am exhausted by it all.

Stop telling me that I am building resilience in myself and in SonHerisme while you strip away mine, my sister’s, my nieces’, my friends’, my neighbors’, my menstruating community and future menstruating communities’ access to medical care.

Stop telling me that we are building resilience by shoving kids and teachers into COVID superspreader overcrowded schools by pretending that we are doing this to save our economy when we could have all been vaccinated and masked (except for young kids) or made entirely out-of-the-box different plans.

Stop telling me that universal healthcare will make us a communist country, and that socialism programs are bad for our country. Roads, fire departments, police departments, the schools you were desperate to prematurely reopen, roads, libraries, bridges, military, parks, museums, your freaking sportsing stadiums, public transportation are ALL socialist structures…

Stop telling me that we are building resilience by sending 6-week-old babies into institutionalized crap-waged/crap-benefited care facilities for 50+ hours each week so that the mothers can “work,” as if birthing, feeding, and raising babies is “not real work.” But, some people have to work, Ms. Herisme… NEWSFLASH… if they are caretaking (babies, elderly etc) they are FUCKING WORKING, they just aren’t getting paid in a pretty pretty direct-deposit paycheck. What the hell are we doing multiple-layer-middle-managing this shit when people have been birthing the babies and raising the families, and caring for infirm, for thousands of years and the BEST we can come up with is to force more people into more institutionalized care facilities? I do not get it.

We throw answers at problems without even asking the root questions, then blame the people we claim to want to help when the inevitable shitstorm lands.

We subsidize the institutions, because their operational costs are too expensive to exist on tuition/rent. Then we subsidize the staff because they do not earn a livable wage or have health care. They we subsidize the family who cannot earn enough money to pay for the institutions. Then we punish the worker by terminating them when they have to stay home too often with their usually institutionalized family member, due to illness or a freaking pandemic.

gah – enough on this topic

I am tired of being asked to build resilience

I am tired of toxic positivity

I am tired of it turning into poxic tossitivity

TOSS the POX

Maybe there’s a vaccine for that… it might be more tea, a meditation, and a list of to-do’s with brief dancey-dances as each is checked-off as complete

Or maybe it is to embrace the grace to recognize that there are fairly shitty things happening due to no one’s inability to love themselves enough, vegan up enough, recognize the beauty of a blade of grass well enough, shiny happy people face enough, work hard enough/long enough – the shitty things are just life and shit. Perhaps we can find a moment of joy, or witness someone else’s moment of joy, or see that the ‘O’ in joy is a reminder of the cyclical nature of the everythings and feel that heaviness as hope or despair or recognize the feeling of anything real, genuine, pretend for even half a second (even predictable boredom in slogging through this shitty writing/listening, or just a breath in and out) – that is enough, you are enough. If you cannot do any of that, I will at least breathe once in and once out just for you. (7 counts all around and into my lower diaphragm natch, if you must know)

Love, Ms. Herisme xoxo

side note: MotherHerisme presented a bottle of artichoke oil in pill form to take with my dinner just in case I have any interest in losing weight, but no pressure. She read about it on her computer and is only trying to help. She just wants me to find a husband and be happy. *eye roll to tomorrow-ville and internal screaming pleas to NOT ENGAGE* I have discreetly disposed the pills. Weirdo times. TOSS this POX

if you’re vaccinated and asymptomatic, join me for some tea on the back deck later – much later, time-to-light-a-fire later. Screw the tea, actually. Bring something deeply colored, very strong, and sublimely lovely. later gator