Intimacy, Life Partnership, & Community Vitality
Fostering healthy connections, rebuilding relational attunement, & resourcing survivors after the deep impact of relational violence and trauma.
This is an especially important introduction to a powerful subject intersection. I wrote the original unpublished draft for this peace during days 38-45; 21-28 November 2023. Today I’ve tuned it to the present frequency.
Thank you for sharing your reflections and feedback in the comments or privately with me.
I don't have to reach far for profound subjects.
And as I’ve mentioned previously… I don't have to reach far for deep wells of feeling, either.
Somewhere around day 37, I brought forth several different 1-2 sentence statements to describe the Intuitive Network.
There's a flow toward a need for a succinct statement that's been most especially on my mind. I'm going to start warming up my verbal neurology to keep it more centered.
It's harder for me to talk about than the others.
But it's one of the very most important places for me to put my energy; for my own fundamental well-being, for that of my family, and for so many of my colleagues.
When our community members survive relational violence, including intimate abuse or sex trafficking, the ways that this devastates community vitality and relational integrity cannot be overstated.
When survivors of traumas like these search for ways to rebuild stabilized relationships in their communities... with a desire to recover from intimate abuse and sexual trauma... they typically do not find resources to aid them.
Intuitive Network has become a locus for severely disabled survivors all over the world who want to restore their own sense of how to be in healthy, long-term intimate relationships; how to repair their families when this is possible, and how to build their families (often "from scratch") toward abundant, thriving futures.
For many — often because of the forms of violence they've experienced — it's important to them not only to recover their full physical health, but also their ability to bear and raise strong, healthy children… and tend vibrant family and community well-being… in a biologically generative context of love, respect, and care.
This is seen by many as vital for rebuilding communities after human trafficking influences have destroyed so much.
It is one of the most powerful ways to prevent human trafficking influences from taking hold of our community spaces.
Especially so, considering that this work — from the perspective of the most severely disabled survivors of invisible violence — is not being done anywhere else that we've found.
Survivors of these forms of violence know keenly that the violence must not be allowed to continue occurring; and often, they're the ones most equipped to recognize and prevent it.
Many times, they're the only ones who have noticed it.
This positions them to be the most powerful and vigilant guardians of family and community spaces.
Prowess Theurgy dialogues particularly highlight a necessary anchoring of our special intersections of martial arts mindsets. This set of subjects is particularly important to the post I’m writing now, especially from my vantage in the network. The reason may not be clear to you yet; but please keep it in your awareness as we continue the conversation in this post and beyond.
Prowess Theurgy also distinctly reveals how important it is for us to realize that when we're talking about platonic relationships of any kind — collaborative relationships, economic relationships, community relationships — for survivors of intimate violence, we're also simultaneously talking about the necessity of a steady compass for considering potential intimate relationships… how boundaries between different kinds of relationships are drawn… and how one may safely and mindfully discover the potential for a long-term intimate partnership in the midst of other kinds of relationships — without being played by a perpetrator.
Think of how many people meet the love of their life and future spouse in the context of community activities or workplace interactions... and how important it is to be able to distinguish intentions, identify needs, and establish healthy parameters for interactions on such a basis.
For another instance, think of how many people experience sexual violence in their workplaces. (It's not a little number of people. It's a lot.)
Considering all of this... where are solutions located?
How do we even begin to find (and co-create) them?
When it comes to the repair of a survivor's sense of honorable intimate and family-building relationships (as well as friendships and other platonic relationships) in this particular context… the landscape has turned out to be pretty bleak.
Usually, there are some resources to be found if someone is not too traumatized... not too disabled... has consistent contact with caring others... and has some form of stabilized economic participation (money to participate in support resources, for instance, or to help them connect with caring communities).
For most of these survivors, though, most or all of this is inaccessible.
The result is that there are very large pools of severely disabled survivors of intimate trauma who are continuously re-commoditized as they try over and over to build healthy relationships with others and continue to be taken advantage of by opportunists and perpetrator networks pretending to care for them.
It is a massive burden on all communities that this is going on, often in ways that most others in the community have not at all recognized.
These pools of unrecognized severely disabled people who are targeted for repeated predation... literally draw more predatory interests into the community.
The easily-commoditized people are there, usually being ignored; ripe for harvest by those who know how to monetize them.
(In the network we sometimes say: Don't leave cookie crumbles in the kitchen if you don't want ants.)
Question…
What stops the opportunists and perpetrator networks?
Here's one brief and powerful answer…
Accessible, well-supported, continuing dialogues about...
1) ...how all can show up as consistently respectful, caring community members, attuning in our relationship-building, and mindful of our responsibility to one another (especially in hard times).
2) ...what healthy, honorable relationship is; including relational integrity in family and community bodies as well as in workplaces and project collaborations.
3) ...what healthy, honorable intimate relationship and family-building partnership is; including subjects of romance, sexual vitality, pro-creation, and raising strong, healthy, happy children.
That's not a complete list, but as three items of particular importance, it goes a long way.
These help us start to make crucial discernments about what it looks and feels like when someone is trying to take advantage of us by pretending to be in a loving or respectful relationship with us.
What a healthy respectful relationship is; and what it is not.
It also gives us rewarding and revitalizing work we can do in every community to decrease and eliminate the influences of perpetrator networks who would otherwise take advantage of our most vulnerable friends and loved-ones.
So.
1-2 sentences.
Well, I'm working on it.
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