Ladybug's field notes

This trail of thought started with a question the other day, "Don't you get addicted if you are in therapy long term?" To which I said, "Would you say that about a gym or a walk when one does it long term?"  I felt so thankful for that question because that was exactly the question I had in my mind when  ​a few  years ago I got into therapy ​!  I wish someone  ​ p ​ointed to  me the strangeness of such a question.  Alain De Botton is one of my favourite philosophers of this time and he says it very clearly, "Why do we need therapists? Therapists are trained to be with you through your own exploration of your mind. They are following you in your journey into your own mind and giving you a little bit of assistance. ...." "It (therapy) provides a concentrated normally 50 minute session during the week when it's about you and your mind and you can cement declarations, and moves, a little bit more easily in the presence of a witness. You go, I'...

Are we? Am I? Are you? Are we even more precious because of the wounds, the cracks, the riffs we have in our hearts that we have worked on for years, much alike the ceramic pieces which have gone through Kintsugi ? Are we even more beautiful because we are broken and we did not divert ourselves away from those cracks through the most celebrated addiction of our times, "busy-ness"? Or for that matter dissociated to the extent that parts of us became unreachable along with those cracks? Can we claim higher value than a human who was never broken or for that matter never looked at their broken parts and worked on them? But even before we go there, do we, ourselves consider us exquisite pieces of higher value or are we constantly shaming ourselves about our brokenness and our healing journeys much like the pieces recreated through Kintsugi?  It is popularly believed that Kintsugi or Kinsukuroi came into existence around the 15th Century when a Shogun (hereditary military leaders...

"You are a slut! Given a chance you will sleep with every man in the whole neighbourhood!"  "When will you die? Can you tell me when will you die? I can then be at peace for some time?"  "You are so ugly..it is so difficult for me to take you anywhere!"  "You will keep losing your jobs! You don't know how to talk to your own, no wonder you would not know how to talk to the world!"  "You will never become anything in life! I at times wonder if you are our own!" These are just some of the things that children from so called "normal" families have heard and that they vividly remember as adults. Not only that they remember but some of these are repeated when they clash with the larger world and face a challenge. Their families repeat these with a "I told you so..." put in for better effect. If you think of these sentences in isolation, without knowing who said these to whom, you would have asked the receiver of these...