TRIBES TUNNEL
Yep. Be scared.
As a very young woman I read Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean Auel. A phrase hit me that never left me. It was the way the main character introduced herself to other clans and tribes –upon learning that others existed at all.
“I am Ayla of No People.”
There it was.
Up until that moment, I like other emancipated orphans, had no efficient, unapologetic, thriving survivor phrases to self-describe. Certainly, the systems that are, mythologically, in place to protect and help women and children either did not exist, failed miserably, or cheered-on religious/cultural/patriarchal constructs. Those constructs hold that daily infanticide attempts, including concussions, kidney bleeds, and bruised ribs to list a few, are a “parent’s” right. But, let us speak the truth: cults and kkkults, run on the evil of narcissists and sociopaths, terms often easily interchangeable with the word parent.
School was my safe and sacred place. Despite regular head injuries, and various forms of medical neglect, I was an A+ student. My teachers loved me. Functional parents of other kids loved me. Somehow, my still-forming baby mind knew that if I just made it out of that house alive, maybe, just maybe there were good people I could know.
Upon arriving at adulthood, miraculously alive, my skills and work ethic got me to the professional arts industry which included a sea of gay and lesbian people. At that time, much of the gay and lesbian community was rejected by biological relatives. This I understood. The abuse victim who tells the truth is the designated black sheep. The black sheep is the kicking post for a cluster of biologically related abusers and their enablers: families.
I fired them. All of them. I was truly “Me of No People.” Though I did not have the word “cycle-breaker” at the time, I was a cycle-breaker.
The gay and lesbian community took pity on a young, token heterosexual woman. I learned to make Tribal Family. A “married” gay couple absorbed me. It was from them that I learned “mother love.” -Then I understood why people like mother love so much. (I had no idea.)
Over the years, I have lived the benefit of immersion into many Tribal Families of every stripe, LGBTQIA+, new American, PIBOC, women who believe that women are people… every kind of Tribe. “Me of No People” finds others like me everywhere now. Allys, survivors, cross-over Tribal Family who now have the vocabulary to tell; the power to be cycle breakers, and the community support to go “no contact” from evil-doers.
And, though I have the honor and privilege to love and be loved, by a vast Tribal Family, I have never forgotten my first “gay ad hoc moms.” I am ever grateful.
Currently, the NAZIGOP has attempted to make “TRIBALISM” a pejorative. Sure. THEY ARE SCARED as fuk and they should be. We, like the rest of the sane planet, hate NAZIs. Amongst the perhaps the five NAZIGOP who can read, someone got a history book and discovered that tribes are natural clusters, self-selecting and highly self-sustaining. -NOT at all susceptible to the big over-arching evil empire permutations and kkkultization attempts they use to dominate, control, and abuse an entire population. We have been there. WE WILL NOT GO BACK.
They also read that tribes have a natural way of finding commonality with other tribes to topple evil-empires. FACTS.
Here’s to tribes that embrace “WE OF NO PEOPLE.”
WE ARE MANY. WE ARE IN PLACE.
TOGETHER, WE TOPPLE SAUSAGE MOUNTAIN
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Beautifully said.