Thank you Open .. I find your words very supportive. I guess I wonder if I have felt it enough? The changes in my life have just come from a knowing of what is right within me. It's funny the way I expressed about "strugge with feeling all this", what I mean is that I struggle TO feel all this. I never experienced an overwhelming sense of sadness or grief for what has happened here and sure feels that it would be a normal response to the reality we live in... This is why question whether I have protected myself from going too deeply into it. I have come to terms with so much as a mother... Really give them space to walk their own path and not define how it needs to look in any way...my deepest yearning for them is that they know who they are and follow that no matter what....on the other hand they may not and I constantly work with not owning that. Perhaps I have felt a lot of this and moved through it on some levels...I recall watching my children eat meat and feeling so sick to my stomach... Seeing them like little dinosaurs tearing apart another sentient being just for the pleasure of the taste. When it fully sank in that this desire, this drive to eat other beings or any other form of destruction upon Earth and all of the life here has been built in, that we have been hybridized to engage with life this way, I felt a tremendous amount of compassion and understanding of the difficulty one experiences when the soul is pulling one way and yet there is this strong force going the other way. It's not easy for people to transcend this, but it is possible. I remember being on the grocery store years ago on a run to buy bread and feeling like there is no food here.. I couldn't buy any bread... There was no option that felt right. There was a period of time when I felt frozen, I couldn't bring myself to buy clothes or furniture and I felt tremendous guilt and shame when I went to Target or bought anything with packaging. I have come to terms with the fact that being here requires a level of compromise.. Driving a car, buying clothes, using electricity etc.. We can just find within ourselves our alignment within it all.

thank you Catherine for sharing your experience. Your realizations as a mother are so powerful and it is a gift to share life wih a partner that can hear and feel the realities of our existence here. My husband feels I am extreme but also I know that part of him knows the truth as well. I don't talk to him about it in a super direct way but I show him things like this and leave him to be with it... Sometimes he talks to me about it and sometimes not. Either way I will follow what I feel whether he agrees with me or not.

Thanks all for the space to share.

Love,
Jen