“I still love America. I just don’t know how to get there anymore.” – John Prine, The Great Compromise
TW: Childhood sexual abuse
When we think of the term “grooming,” our first impression is of an adult or adults teaching children that atrocities are acceptable, or at least inescapable. Abusive adults teach the child in systematic ways that they should love their assailant, that this is what love is. They teach them that this is how everyone acts, it’s just not polite to talk about it. They teach them that bad things will happen if they try to assert boundaries regarding their bodies.
The most important and final objective of the groomer is to teach the child that the way of the adult’s control is the only way, and that no help is coming. In this manner the child adopts the abuser’s reality as their own, and they stop contemplating that there might be other realities, better ones, if they can break away from the original criminally installed beliefs and enlist the help of others to re-learn their relationship to their own bodies and to other people’s bodies.
I used to work a lot with adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, so I have studied the way of grooming. Lately I have been thinking about all the other ways we are groomed by our society as we grow:
- Our parents teach us if we are acceptable of unacceptable: handsome or ugly, clever or dull, athletic or uncoordinated, worthwhile or not worth the effort. We learn to abhor ourselves, or love and accept ourselves, from the way our parents and other significant adults treat us.
- Early formal schooling teaches us whether other adults see us as worthy or not of their time and effort, and whether peers find us laudatory or worthy of being ignored or bullied.
- The way we are fed grooms us to accept our place in the human pecking order of resource distribution, and how to feel about our responsibility to our own body.
- If our parents take us to religious observances we are groomed to love and embrace our religion as the Only True Way of Good People, Who Will Be Rewarded.
- In an act of voluntary tribalism, in high school we choose athletic and social teams that brand our thinking about ourselves and the world for life – often this grooming comes at a younger age, from family, as well.
- Depending on the level of privilege in our family and our town, we learn whether the economic system is working for us or against us, and how to feel about it, including how to treat other people based upon that belief.
- Overall, the politics of our family and our family’s tribe teach us how to feel about all the systems of government and society under which we are held accountable in our daily lives. Are we part of the Masters and Commanders Tribe (a small slice of the population) or the Toilers and Submitters Tribe?
It goes on, and one could extend this parlor game to a global perspective, but I’ll stop there for now. My point is, what you think and feel about yourself and the social fabric into which you as a spirit-in-a-body is woven, is a direct result of subtle and overt grooming that you are subject to from the moment you are born. Your brain lays down tracks about the messages received during this grooming, which has infinite possibilities according to the circumstances of your birth and life.
Until you see it.
Until you see it.
Once seen, the effect of grooming on our minds, choices and thoughts cannot be unseen, and if we are lucky and have thoughtful people in our lives who will give us permission to examine our own life (perhaps for many, for the first time) we can begin to look at how we came to believe all the things we think we believe, and what we might like to change about our early spoon feeding on every issue, personal and global.
I believe this is the fundamental and most important work each of us can do as responsible adults.
As a rape survivor at 13, this breakthrough happened for me at age 40 when I found a brilliant and compassionate therapist who helped me rage, grieve, and re-write that chapter of my grooming for myself. This work allowed me to eventually question every other aspect of my grooming. Now, at age 66, I can report the following, if fledgling, results of my own life examination (a curated list):
As a survivor of my indoctrination into the public school system, I was taught that my grades mattered, and I must always make highest marks and never disappoint. No mistake was acceptable. At age 66 and with an ample supply of scar tissue on board, I now find that notion cute and quaint. Bless my heart.
As the mother of a queer child, I learned to eradicate the homophobia instilled in me by my xenophobic Midwest suburban culture.
As a person addicted to paychecks, I learned to unhook from big box economics and tune into local shared resources and community, when possible. (Through these small efforts we have been saved and have helped to save others).
As a person learning to listen to Indigenous stories, I stopped feasting and began fasting on Thanksgiving, donating the money I would have spent on the dinner.
As a recovering Christian I learned to give myself permission to love God, which I now think of as Spirit, while eschewing any form of organized religion or even any codified philosophy or practice over whose fine points humanity is prone to bicker (hey, just my opinion but it’s a trap and a copout, people, and has little to do with love or Spirit).
As a person involved in regenerative agriculture, I learned to stop subduing the land for my shortsighted purpose and listen to what it needs from us, so we can all survive.
As a person only 3 generations removed from the culture that incubated and birthed the Nazi Party, I learned to take some small responsibility for reparation to cultures who have been subdued and traumatized by the great white arrogance that did not just birth the Nazis, but continues and exacerbates the spread of colonialism and genocide wherever it goes to bring more gold to the coffers of the Masters and Commanders.
I have made these changes slowly and very imperfectly over time because a compassionate mind touched mine and gave me permission to question my grooming and examine every aspect of my life and the thoughts/beliefs that created my life as I was living it. It is a quest that truly makes my life meaningful, at least to myself. That’s an important responsibility, because people living meaningful lives cannot help but want the same for everyone else. I’d like to think that with all my bitterness and stage-persona posturing, I am, actually, a kinder person than I was previously for having learned I should do this work, which will never be complete.
That brings me to today, and the political portion of this essay. This is the last day of my personal incarnation cycle. I was born on the 5th of July, a day when nothing happens. Sunburned and hungover tourists are trying to get their Winnebagos back home. The fireworks stands are empty and the beaches are littered with the detritus of the portion of humanity with access to water. Moms rinse out coolers while wondering what to do with the kids all week. You get it. The typical day after the auspicious day.
Except my family treated it differently. The day of my birth was attached to the 4th. My mother’s birth story for me involved watching the fireworks from the balcony of her hospital room. I had sparklers on every childhood birthday cake, and until I was 8 I believed every fireworks show was for me. They called me their Yankee Doodle Dandy. I responded by becoming a Patriot. I sang the Star-Spangled Banner with all my heart and a hitch in my voice. My heart beat true under red, white and blue, as George M. Cohan wrote.
Today I look at a country devastated by groomed tribalism, too distracted to hear the scraping of the last shreds of flesh from the bones of the planet by the Masters and Commanders team and their squads of Toilers and Submitters. While the world burns, we watch in dismay as the house of cards topples, realizing too late that we were groomed not to understand the flawed foundation of that house for what it was. True to our grooming, we have turned on each other. Spirit loves true communion and community. Whatever we want to call Spirit’s opposite loves separation. Right now there is no argument as to which force is more dominant.
We each must examine our grooming on every front if we wish to restore community and heal separation. We must do this quickly, as the hour is late.
Please don’t get me wrong. This is not a call for comity or polite acceptance of views that are compelled by rage or hate. I have a fervent opinion to which I am deeply attached, and I know right from wrong. There is a time to rise up and raise your voice. The people in the red hats have taken the red pill. Beware, because if your spirit has attached itself to love and unity, they think you are the enemy, and they would rejoice in your death. I truly believe this, because you cannot correct the deadly opinion of an irrational person by using a rational argument. They do not know that they have been groomed to help destroy themselves. You will have to love them from a distance. Sometimes curing separation means to release them back to the greater, swirling Is that sooner or later receives us all. Symbolically. Don’t hurt anyone.
Most of all, this is a call from this Yankee Doodle Dandy to stop and examine what is driving whatever beliefs and feelings you have in this moment of time, as we stand on the precipice of the unknown together. You owe it to whatever amount of authentic self that you have access to. It’s hard and terrifying work because, to paraphrase Marianne Williamson, we are far more afraid of our unimaginable power than we are of our helplessness. I give you permission (yes, I have the self-appointed power to do that for you and I anoint you with the power to do that for others). Start now. Stick a feather in your cap and ask yourself: What will I call this?
Ellen Buechner July 4, 2024