Oppression. What do we do with it? Do we decide to accept it as insurmountable? Do we acknowledge it, and work our way out of its valley?

Many of us find ourselves in this space. When we are oppressed, silenced, corrected, overridden, made invisible many of us find it is so much easier to let our subconscious mind accept oppression. It is easy to let our mind believe the external message we receive telling us we deserve to be oppressed. It’s easy to start believing that the problem is really us, because we can fix us, and if we can fix us, then we can fix the problem. We decide to appease, to embrace the silencing of our voice, and to vigilantly anticipate so we can preempt further attack against our very selves. For a while this works, and we go on this way.

Then when we think we’ve paid oppression’s price, it asks for more. It asks us to keep giving, giving up, and relinquishing self. There comes a point at which there is nothing left to give, really not much left to lose.

It is at this juncture where we may have an ‘aha’ moment. An ‘aha’ moment that turns our thinking upside down. This is when we come to know, while we thought the safe choice was to appease impending oppression, the truth is, it is safer to say no than to appease!

It is at this moment that the work out of the valley of oppression becomes less of a task, and more of a path towards liberation. We find with each step out and upward there is relief, relinquishment of the heavy burden we have been shouldering. We begin to breath, and we use our breath for voice. We stop walking in fear, embrace our courage, and walk with hope out of the valley of oppression, toward the summit of liberation.

Ara O’Hayre, MA MFTC
Our Spoken Tapestry, LLC

Email: ara@ourspokentapestry.com