Daily Calm. Or is it? (Patreon)

Hallo loves

A bunch of people screenshotted and sent this to me yesterday, apparently there’s a thing called #dailycalm and they used this quote from “The Art of Asking”. I’m honored.

Also, it hurts to read. It sorta does not make me feel calm. So thanks Daily Calm, you’ve fucking stressed me out.

I wrote that book in 2013. I was in such a different place. I knew less. I’d been hurt, but I felt invincible. I spilled and loosed the truth and suffered the consequences, I was less careful, I listened to people’s stories constantly, I thought truth was God, it all felt very binary and simple. I wrote this at the time and it was true. Yes.

And yet: I have ten years’ worth of new experience now, and I want to ask this young writer questions that I know she couldn’t answer.

What if the person you are with has a mouth sewn shut? What do you do? Pry it open? Beg them to change? To escape? What if you cannot speak? What if they cannot speak? At all? What then? What do you do?

I think of a story from a few months ago.

I visited a friend who is going through a divorce - painful, kids, abusive, communication is dark. A cold war. I found myself wanting so badly to fix it, to shake her free, to loan her my car, my bank account, my anything, just to see her be able to fly out of the hell-cage in which she’s trapped.

But sometimes, you just have to listen. Listen without fixing, listen without saving, listen even without sympathy.

Just listen. Yes.

This morning I got a text from a young friend in Africa whose boss just perved on her and she doesn’t know whether to rock the boat and say anything. I listened. I can give her all the advice in the world about What To Do, but mostly I needed to tell her that she is not alone. That we all deal with this shit and there are a million different moves and oh my darling, you are not alone.

With both of these women:

just give her a place to put the unsayable, the horror story, the grossness.

I have been on the other side of this listening so many times. It is golden. It is priceless. It is everything and more: to have someone hear your story, keep it safe, and look deeply into your eyes with awe, simply saying: you are alive, you are amazing…you survived that.

Come here - let me give you a hug.

You survived that.

For all of those who have listened, to me, to your loved ones, to women who have to carry the horror stories - I bow. Keep listening.

I love you all.

X

AFP

PS. If you have never read my book, it’s really good. I sometimes forget I wrote it. You can find it pretty much anywhere books exist and I also read the audiobook myself and people seem to love it. Info here. https://amandapalmer.net/theartofasking/