anne-maria - Tumblr blog

[anne-maria]

I think a common misconception among Christians who married young because they were blessed enough to meet the love of their life very young, is that everyone who's not married by their mid 20s is either sleeping around or dating only for fun or too focused on their career to care about starting a family. And i just don't think that's the case at all, at least for older unmarried Christians.

I know plenty of Christians in their 20s and 30s, and even older who haven't married yet because the right person hasn't come along. They simply haven't fallen in love yet. Some have never even been on a date or kissed anyone. Now that may not be the case for all older unmarried Christians, but it happens more often than people realize.

It just rubs me the wrong way that some Christians treat being unmarried past a certain age as a moral failure, whether or not they do so intentionally.

I don't know, does any of this make sense?

edit: forgot to mention that New Testament tells us that some are called to marriage and other are not

[anne-maria]

Also, shout out to Catholics with mental illnesses. 

Sorrow is not a sin. Sorrow is, actually, consistent with virtue. Don’t feel like you’re sinning because you’re not happy, don’t feel like you’re supposed to be mindless and smiling constantly in order to be a holy person. 

Holiness isn’t about being happy, it’s about doing what is right. 

I actually have a special sort of loathing for people who think that if you’re not joyful that you’re not trying your hardest to be pious. Loving God and being religious af doesn’t depend on your emotional state. If belief in God were based on emotions alone I would’ve given up and stopped believing in God many many maaaaaany years ago. 

[anne-maria]

Lemme tell you the story of the first time I really talked to an antivaccer. Been on my mind lately even though this happened years ago.

For context, I'm super pro vacc to the point that I felt proud of having basically harangued half my family into getting it. And alll the news I was exposed to was basically painting people who opposed the vaccine as ignorant and stupid.

Then I decided to take a solo trip across the country. First thing I did after getting the jab. And one night, I was camping in rural Colorado. Not the mountanous part, the plains that seem almost like a continuation of Kansas. And I got to talking to this guy who worked construction in the area, who hadn't gotten the vacc and couldn't be convinced to. And I was getting frustrated with him.

But then he called me a "rich city bitch" or something along those lines, and started telling me about why. That when he was young, how the medical industry had brought this "great" new medicine to town, opioids, and really pushed it. A lot of people found relief using them at first, most jobs around were hard manual labor and the doctors pushed them hard for chronic pain, workplace injuries, pretty much everything. People started getting addicted, got demonized by the medical industry for being "drug seeking" and turned elsewhere to get opioids. Lots of people OD'd, he had family members lost to addiction. All because of shit that the doctors said was totally safe and reccomended, and pushed hard.

And now the doctors are coming around pushing something new? Fuck that, do they think we're fuckin stupid?

And I heard the same story again and again when I talked to people who rejected the vaccine. Talked to a Black guy who mentioned how human experimentation on Black people wasn't too far in the past, shit like the Tusgegee Experiments wasn't ancient history, that's people's grandparents, community elders, etc. And they think they're gonna convince him to let them inject some shit?

It was eye opening to me, and honestly the fact that it was so eye opening just showed how sheltered I was to even have that trust in the medical system.

I went on that trip thinking antivaccers were stupid. And left it thinking the medical industry has so systemically failed and actively harmed so many people that it's pretty reasonable people ain't trusting them anymore.

Now, I'm not an antivaccer at all myself. I know the science, I studied bio and chem and all that in college, but I think my anger's shifted. The media demonizing people who won't get the vaccine absolutely fails to mention the systemic issues that'd very reasonably lead people who didn't have the privelege to take years of college classes on this shit to doubt them. And the condescending tone? Ain't helping.

It also reminds me of the book "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky, which is all about media slant, and how it serves to protect corporate and government interests. And I truly believe that if you see all antivaccers as stupid, and not people responding pretty smartly to a medical industry that has abused their families and communities for profit for generations? You've been a victim of propaganda, that only serves to divide different marganized groups, and keep us like "crabs in a bucket" fighting each other.

[anne-maria]

[anne-maria]

A list of blog posts on things (mostly trauma related) that I think should be talked about more. Please note that all links are from my personal trauma website. (There are no pop ups or anything like that and it is a safe site to use.)

Advice

Creating and Enforcing Boundaries

Grounding Techniques

How to Listen to Someone Talk About Their Trauma

How to Talk to a Loved One About Your Trauma

Making a Self-Care Box

Navigating Sex After Trauma

Navigating Traumaversaries

Tips and Questions for Finding a Therapist

Trauma Around the Holidays

DBT Skills (More coming soon)

Pros & Cons

Urge Surfing

Wise Mind

Informative

Are They Trying to Manipulate Me?

Forgiveness and Healing

Grooming in Adult Relationships

Hypersexuality and Sex Repulsion

Parentification Trauma

Trauma Bonding

Trauma Imposter Syndrome

Triggers

Self-harm

The Validity of Anger in Your Healing Journey

Victim Blaming

Was it Bad Enough?

When a Third Party Is Used to Get Around Your Boundaries

Who You Were Before Trauma

Why Childhood Abuse is Never Your Fault

Why Do I Love and/or Miss My Abuser?

Why People Stay in Abusive Relationships

Why Survivors May Delay Reporting or Don’t Report At All

PS: I am always looking for more ideas of topics that you’d like to hear about. Don’t hesitate to let me know any suggestions or things you’d like to see discussed more. 

[anne-maria]

[anne-maria]

inclusion this, diversity that… why don’t you include yourself in the one holy catholic and apostolic Church through Baptism and experience the diverse gifts of life in Christ

[anne-maria]

[anne-maria]

[anne-maria]

Me for the next three months:

🕸️🦇🕷️🎃🕯️🦇🎃🕸️🕷️🦇🕯️🕸️🎃🕷️🦇🕸️🕷️🎃🕸️🦇🎃🕷️🕯️🦇🕸️🎃🕷️🦇🕯️🕷️🕸️🎃🦇🕷️🕯️🕷️🎃🎃🕷️🕯️🕸️🎃🕷️🕯️🕸️🎃🕷️🕸️🕯️🎃🕷️🕸️🦇🕯️🎃🎃🕯️🕷️🕸️🦇🎃🕷️🕯️🕷️🦇🕸️🎃🕸️🦇🕯️🕸️🕷️🎃🕷️🕸️🕯️🎃🕷️🕯️🕷️🎃🦇🎃🕷️🕸️🎃🕷️🦇🕷️🕯️🕷️🎃🦇🕸️🕯️🎃🕯️🕷️🎃🦇🕯️🕸️🕯️🦇🕷️🕯️🎃🦇🕸️🕷️🕯️🕸️🕷️🕸️🎃🕯️🕷️🎃🕯️🎃🦇🕯️🕷️🎃🕯️🕸️🦇🕷️🕸️🎃🦇🕯️🕷️🕸️🦇🕯️🎃🕯️🕯️🎃🦇🕯️🕯️🦇🕷️🎃🕷️🦇🕯️🕯️🕯️🕷️🕷️🕸️🕷️🕯️🎃🕯️🦇🕯️🕸️🕷️🕸️🦇🕷️🎃🕸️🕯️🦇🎃🕯️🕷️🕸️🦇🕸️🕯️🕸️🦇🕯️🕯️🦇🕸️🕯️🕸️🕷️🕯️🎃🦇🕸️🎃🕷️🕸️

[anne-maria]

You have a right to say no 

You have a right to tell someone to stop touching or flirting with you 

You have a right to make it known that you are uncomfortable 

[anne-maria]

[anne-maria]

National Domestic Violence Hotline

https://www.thehotline.org/

800.799.SAFE (7233)

TTY 800.787.3224

[anne-maria]

Hey @i-am-the-broken-bride, I can’t reblog that post where the pro-abort accused you of lying about abortion procedures because they blocked me already.

But my go-to source is always AbortionProcedures.com. Former abortionists who are currently board certified OB/Gyns with decades of experience describing abortion procedures.

Btw every pro-lifer needs to memorize three websites:

StandingWithYou.org (pregnancy centers, other community resources, & info on rights for students and employees)

EHD.org (prenatal development)

AbortionProcedures.com (abortion procedures)

These three websites can answer 95% of the common arguments you run into with pro-abortion people (pro-lifers aren’t helping women, women’s lives/goals/dreams/careers are over if they have a baby, it’s not a baby, abortion is healthcare)

Every pro-lifer needs to know these websites off the top of their head and be ready to rattle them off in conversation, whether in person or online!

(Note: I typically use OptionLine.org to find pregnancy centers, but StandingWithYou.org has been improving in their site design and usability, and they have more community resources that aren’t pregnancy specific, plus the info on education and employment rights)

[anne-maria]

I got a chuckle out of this.

[anne-maria]

[anne-maria]

I’ve been thinking about making this post for a while, and I finally decided to make it.

At a certain point in my life as a pro-choicer, I discovered something: In order to be intellectually honest in my pro-choice thinking, I had to be willing to look around at all of the people I knew—my family, my friends—and be willing to say, “It would be okay if you had never been born.” And I had to be willing to say the same about myself, too.

And I actually was willing to say this. While my mother was pregnant with me, my father tried to pressure her into an abortion, and you know what I thought when I found out? I thought, “She should have gone through with it.” I was a burden; I made everyone’s lives difficult; I wasn’t worth loving or sacrificing for; I didn’t matter. I had so completely internalized this message about myself that finding out that I had almost been killed in my mother’s womb was no big deal. I mean, hey, it would have saved us all a lot of suffering. The cost-benefit analysis seemed perfectly clear: I just wasn’t worth it.

I wasn’t quite so obviously callous in my estimation of other people’s worth, but, had they asked me if I believed that they mattered in any real way—mattered in some way which did not include some reference to my thoughts or feelings about them—I would have had to say no. I would have had to say, “I am overjoyed that you were born because you have contributed so much to my life, and you make me so happy, and I think you’re wonderful, and look at all of the people who love you, but, ultimately, if you had not been born, it would have been okay. At the end of the day, there is nothing necessary about your existence. You are replaceable.” Those were the consequences of my worldview—the worldview which says that each and every child conceived in his mother’s womb is theoretically disposable; the worldview which can talk about “what you have to offer” and how “useful” you are, but can say nothing about the worth of the “useless.”

And I think our society has done a pretty decent job at living out that vision: the Vision of Replaceability. We don’t just treat the unborn this way. We treat the born this way, too. We give up on our spouses when our marriages stop being “useful” contributions to our lives. We give up on our families when the going gets too tough. We give up on our romantic partners when “the spark is gone.” We give up on our friends when we’re not getting what we “need” from them. We’re a culture of quitters. We love when it’s convenient for us. And people are often inconvenient; they demand our time and attention and care; they’re not perfectly suited to our desires the way objects are. So, we objectify them. We pay attention when it suits us and then tuck them away on a shelf somewhere where we keep the rest of our “toys.”

Is it any wonder that we don’t think that we matter? We’ve never seen it. Is it any wonder that many of us cannot even conceive of true selflessness? That the notion that someone might actually want good things for you and might actually not expect anything in return and might actually not just be doing it because “it feels good to do good things” seems so foreign and strange? Should we be surprised? It’s all we know.

And this is the root of the culture of death. This is where death starts. It doesn’t start in war zones or brothels or abusive homes or abortion clinics or execution chambers. Those are its manifestations, but that’s not where death starts. Death starts with people as things. It starts with “you are only as necessary as you are useful.” It starts with “you are not precious; you are replaceable.”

So, we leave ourselves with no resources when we are truly confronted with death. We have nothing real to offer to the suicidal, the eating disordered, the self-injuring, the depressed, the lonely, the abused. Nothing but empty words. We may say, “You are irreplaceable,” but do we mean it? Do we know what it would mean to truly mean those words? I don’t think we do. Not as long as we see each other as “choices,” as “options” in a sea of options. Not as long as we cannot honestly look one another in the eye and say, “It would not have been okay if you had never been born. You belong alive, and you matter, not because of what you do, but because you are you.” 

And for those of us who call ourselves pro-life, that has to mean something. It has to mean that we see people as people; that we treat them like people; that we love them. Maybe the reason that the pro-choice movement so often accuses us of “only caring about fetuses” isn’t all unwarranted hyperbole; maybe they’re responding to the very real lack of true, genuine, selfless love in our society, and maybe we’re all in that battle together. How on earth are any of us supposed to know that that’s possible—that we could matter in that way—unless someone shows us? That’s where the culture of life starts: the moment when we discover that we’re loved.