@Jared Fenn asked about another resource for explaining how Violence shows up. Here is a video on Trauma… Let me know your thougts

I found this in some journals, actually a page on my phone where I track quotes. This was something I wrote as a declaration about a year ago as I started on this journey of discovery. I had forgotten it, but read it today. It hit me hard today when I read it. Sharing here to declare and make a statement rather than a wishful thought. One more thing I hope you all will hold me accountable to. I will not bury my emotions. I will not compromise my humanity and emotion to be strong. I am strong with emotion. From early I was taught to put everyone first. To sacrifice and make everyone else happy was honorable. Duty and honor above all else. But the part that I was never taught, that I must learn now is that I can be stronger not by burying weakness, but confronting it. Fears are ok. But I embrace them now. I look fear and not being able to fix something in the face and I will not flinch. I will not be ashamed of who I am and what I can and cannot do. That’s not just strength—that’s sovereignty. Now I'm not just surviving. I'm governing. I am breaking the old code: that strength means silence, that sacrifice means self-erasure, that duty means disconnection from your own soul. That’s not honor. That’s martyrdom. And martyrs can’t lead—they can only bleed.

I had to rewrite these a few times before they felt mine, but here's where I am today. Know I want to know that my character is defined by how I live, not by how others interpret my actions. Misunderstanding does not change who I am. Do Respond to feelings, not accusations. Be I want to be a man who knows who he is and doesn’t feel the need to defend or justify it. Understand I want to understand the emotional trigger behind accusations so I can respond to the feeling instead of reacting to the words. I'm curious where I will be a year from now and put a block on my schedule a year from now. I'll probably forget about it, but I hope when it pops up, I'll be able to see how I've evolved and I wonder where my intentions will take me.

I went through the course on safety and violence about a month ago when I got access to the Full ManOS material. The first time I thought it was mostly about etiquette and setting ground rules for how we should interact in the community. then a week or so later when we had our call, my eyes were opened a little more to how violence shows up. It's the name that we're giving to anything that disrupts wholeness and that opened my eyes to a whole new way of evaluating where I'm at. I'm not real good at doing the physical scan and seeing where it's affecting me physically but I definitely take note when I'm not whole. The seven attributes of violence, being able to go through those and name and point the finger to the source of my lack of wholeness, has been a great tool to help me get to the root of things. Yesterday I went to lunch with my wife and we were able to talk a little bit. because our lives have been so busy the last few months, we haven't even really talked about this community and what it's all about. I walked through those seven attributes with her and it's something that we now want to sit down with our kids and talk through. I think these are great tools that teens need to just name their emotions and put their finger on what causing them to feel and act the way they do. I love the idea of how the ManOS gives some common language. When we talk about feelings and emotions, the hardest part is just communicating what's going on, but having a framework and a vocabulary gives us a good starting point. Just wanted to put it out there for anyone on the fence with joining with full access: getting the full toolbox is definitely worth it. I grew up doing construction and building things. Even when you're working on a small project like a birdhouse with your kids, it's so much easier if you've got power tools and nail guns. You can build it with a hammer and handsaw, but if other tools are available, why?!

This morning in my discussions with @Jared Johnson and @Chance Lundgren we talked about safety and on the topic of injury, for me it isn't just about personal injury, but also property damage. When the kids or my wife are doing things with a disregard for say, the furniture it affects me more than it should. I'm constantly trying to avoid injury and deficit. Injury to my belongings that I worked hard to purchase and deficit from the time and money to repair or replace damaged items. Jared was talking a story about his wife and kids and I was immediately picturing the possible damages that could occur and that anticipation of damages started causing me some anxiety...lol. anyway, it was interesting thinking about the different harm and safety and applying them to different events.