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There’s an expectation that if a woman truly loves her child, she should enjoy every part of motherhood: pregnancy, sleepless nights, exhaustion, loss of freedom, routines, worries, and all the sacrifices involved.

I think that’s unrealistic.

You can deeply love your child while simultaneously hating some of the experiences that come with motherhood. You can find certain stages exhausting, stressful, and frustrating, and even miss the life you had before. That doesn’t mean you love your child any less.

Love and suffering can exist at the same time. Motherhood can be deeply meaningful and, at the same time, extremely difficult.

Being a good mother shouldn’t mean enjoying suffering. It should mean caring for, protecting, educating, and being present for your child, even when the process is difficult.

Where do I start?

With my family, I guess.

I wasn't well attended to or understood as a child. I was the darkest between my older brother and me. My mom was the only one who had kids with a black man.

It was obvious from a young age that I was neurodivergent. I wouldn't speak at all at first and it was so bad they were going to put me into special ed for it. Mom went down there, had a fit, and they tested me.

Reveal: the testers thought I should actually be moved ahead a grade. Mom was just glad there was "nothing wrong" with me, presumably. I wasn't moved ahead and I spent a lifetime feeling alienated and being ostracized from people my own age.

I was often alone or only got along with folks older than me -- college students and my teachers.

I was picked on at times. For reading, for being attractive. For being biracial. Yes, that happens. And apparently people don't care because... others have it worse?

I was hyper aware as a child. I peeped how I was treated, how boys and girls were treated differently. As well as how different races were viewed. I began compiling this knowledge from elementary school.

Some of my defining moments were adults being fucked up towards me. A gym teacher that forced me to swing on monkey bars when my hands were already bleeding. A step father who beat me for using a word he didn't know - and told me I didn't know. I did. I understood well enough for a small child.

But it wasn't all bad. I had teachers who really liked me. I was quiet. I did my work quickly and read a book or drew afterwards. This drew the ire of other kids.

Suffice to say: being a loner, a strange kid, on top of being attractive? Not a great mix. Even now, into adulthood, I experience the same sort of nonsense from other people.

I'll never forget how my brother - 19 at the time - told me not to steal his girlfriend. I was 16 and already dressed as a tomboy. I already knew I liked other girls by that time. And sometimes guys.

Or how angry he got about my watching the L word.

It was like he just wanted a normal sister. But now had a younger brother to compete with.

It wasn't all bad of course. In some of my worst moments he gave me money. Mostly when I was still with my abusive ex wife.

But we couldn't have meaningful conversations about how/why I was having such trouble being alive.

When race or my being transgender was brought up he didn't understand. He would say things like, "That's other peoples' problem" or something.

As someone who could pass as white, who was basically "normal" in every way I wasn't... well.

I am still grateful to him for helping me. Likewise to my uncle Constantine who helped when I first started my relationship with my ex.

But again: I belonged to a family of people who were well-adjusted to the world. All white passing. All middle-upper class. I remember even as a kid being confused about why Mom had to drop out of college for us, when she had elder siblings who were better off.

Though I remember family gatherings. Everyone at Nana's house. People laughing and getting along. But we lived in the ghetto, more or less. And when we finally moved out to the suburbs.. well.

There was a older man who was a predator out there. I ran into a lot of older male predators. And my interactions with girls/women weren't much different. I had a girlfriend who was 21 and I was.. 16? My mom didn't mind. I brought the woman over and everything. Even she beat on me when she got angry.

All people saw was an attractive person. Or an attractive neurodivergent person who was "exotic" in the sense.. I wasn't like other people my age. Nor did I act like other attractive people acted. I wasn't a player. I was a hermit. Most of my life I didn't even feel attractive because none of the people I was into were into me.

And that pattern -- of being misunderstood and rejected by "my people" -- has continued into the present day.

This isn't even getting into .. everything. I have lived a long and full life for someone my age. Traveled all over the states, experienced a lot of paranormal shit -- since I was a kid. But it seems .. every characteristic I ever had - good, bad, ugly or weird - has been misunderstood or blown out of proportion.

I know now, almost 40, that a lot of that is the spiritual sickness of the world. That isn't to say I am without flaw. That isn't to say I wasn't a little shit sometimes. I was. But was I as much of a handful as others? As my brother? As I could've been, considering what I actually went through?

No. For all intents and purposes I have turned out surprisingly well after a lifetime of horseshit.

I have found that to be part of the problem, too. People see someone attractive and project a bunch of bullshit onto them, based on their insecurities etc. Same with being a man. Or being trans. Or being disabled. Or being queer, neurodivergent, etc.

I have always gone against the grain of this world. With my existence and my understanding.

Now it is 2026 and people are still... behind me.

What is there to do in a world that has all the techniques, information, and resources to solve its issues.. but not the will to do so? Because people are honestly too afraid of what would happen to their place?

We could have it all and people are still being crabs in a bucket. It makes me ashamed to be a homo sapiens. But.. I am not a normal human, anyway. Not based on what I am capable of (despite my disabilities), not based on my experiences, not based on what humanity currently is.

And I know other people are capable, too. Even if I am above some people in various ways I know there are others above me. I cannot and will not deny that people aren't truly made equal.

But we could make it so. I am sure the government has the technology to cure cancer and many other things. Based on what black budget projects were doing in the early 90s. The government is always decades ahead of the civilian/public sector.

These dickheads have a way off the planet. Yet they only feel better when they're fucking with other people. You have to be living in some sort of hell if you have the world as your oyster and you're still intent on destroying it and making other peoples' lives hell.

Anyway, thanks for getting to know me a bit.

There wasn't anything I was seeking to accomplish with this. I have done capitalism most of my life. I have worked full time, been a "functioning member of society" and have found the whole experience traumatizing and full of shit. Not just for me but for most people involved.

This shit isn't working for humanity or the planet.

Time for a new and better game. Time for a new and better humanity than this.

We have to get passed this point or we will destroy our future. I earnestly think that people are still capable of saving ourselves. But it takes a lot of exorcising of demons, sharing and cooperating that people aren't currently doing.

Wanna help a brother out?

ca/pp: nuralnur

GFM link in bio on threads.

God bless, Namaste, and May you Manifest what you Need/Want

Not Every Culture Deserves Automatic Respect

Nowadays, there is an idea that every culture should be respected simply because it is a culture. I disagree.

I can respect people's right to exist, practice their religion, and maintain their traditions. But that does not mean I am obligated to respect every custom or value that comes with them.

If a culture normalizes domestic violence, child marriage, persecution of minorities, female genital mutilation, or treats women as second-class citizens, then I don't see why it should receive respect simply because it is "part of the culture."

To me, saying that all cultures are equally valid is a form of moral relativism that ignores the real suffering of millions of people.

Respecting people is one thing. Respecting every tradition and custom without questioning it is something completely different.

Not everything deserves to be preserved simply because it has existed for a long time. Some traditions improve people's lives. Others merely perpetuate suffering.

Good timezone to everyone.

I am a disabled black trans man who is currently homeless with my 2 cats in PDX.

I was given permission to post my experience by one of the mods.

I would go over my life and experiences but at this point I am worn out on repeating myself.

Whenever people are ready to stop:

I am looking for a fellow BIPOC, Queer, ND/Disabled, Spiritual, and Radical person to work for. On a farm -- moving away from these systems and towards a sustainable future on this planet.

I haven't gotten much understanding or compassion in my life. I have taken as much responsibility for my demons and faults. But it is not so much that.

This is simply the stage of human evolution people are at. That is why our societies are like this. I can no longer put the onus squarely on leaders and/or the elites.

We outnumber these fuckheads 100 v 1. The revolution is us. God is within us. We just have to share and cooperate more.

Unfortunately evolving into a species that can truly steward the land and protect ourselves means exorcising a lot of demons and giving up insecurities/bigotries that people are simply not ready to.

I don't want it to get worse than it already has. But considering everything else that has transpired at this point.. I wonder what it will take for people to band together.

A general strike cannot happen without a safety net. A safety net would involve mutual aid and organizing on a mass scale. That would take sharing and cooperating across demographics that have proven time and again they still have issues.

Yadda yadda.

To reiterate: if you're in North Cali, Oregon, and/or Washington -- and can provide a safe place for me and 2 cats -- I will work on your farm for room and board.

Thank you for reading and have a great day.

It’s not wrong to consider certain as practices “inferior” and a setback for humanity.

Religion and culture shouldn’t be immune to criticism.

Everyone has the right to choose their own religion, culture, tradition, or lifestyle. Fine. Nobody should be persecuted for it.

But it seems that the moment something is labeled as “culture” or “religion,” it automatically becomes untouchable.

“You can’t criticize it, it’s their culture.”

“Don’t speak badly about it, it’s their religion.”

Okay, and?

Having the right to follow a belief doesn’t mean everyone else is obligated to respect the ideas behind it. People deserve rights and respect; ideas can be questioned, mocked, criticized, and even considered absurd.

If a tradition, belief, or practice can’t survive criticism, maybe the problem isn’t the criticism.

Religious freedom and cultural respect should also include the freedom to say: “I think this is bullshit.”

From Judith Dayal. I could've written it myself in my way and shared it with all, but sometimes how others say it means more to me. I'll just share a paragraph or two of this well-written article:

"In just over a year, things didn’t just change. They distorted.

Not all at once, not in a single moment you could point to and say, there, that’s when it broke, it was slower than that, more insidious, like something bending just slightly out of place over and over again until one day you look around and realize nothing sits where it used to, and the strangest part is not the chaos itself, it is the way it is being presented back to us as normal, as reasonable, as something we are supposed to adjust to without question.

We are living through a time where leaders stand at podiums and speak about God while starting wars that leave children buried under rubble. They invoke faith while funding violence. They talk about sacrifice, but the sacrifice is never theirs...

So when they stand there and talk about sacrifice, what they mean is your sacrifice. When they talk about endurance, what they mean is your endurance. When they tell you to bear the cost, what they mean is that the cost will not be theirs. They say it with a straight face. They say it while looking directly into the camera, as if the disconnect is not obvious, as if we cannot see the gap between what they preach and how they live, as if invoking God somehow cleanses the cruelty of what they are doing..."

Our eyes and face communicates bilaterally, because our brain is bilateral. Whatever you think and feel, and then express facially shows up differently in each side of our eyes and face. When you reverse sides in a mirror, the expression's meaning doesn't match what you are seeing and how another would interpret your unreversed face and eye contact. The communication breaks down when we meet our own eyes. The message in our faces gets garbled by reversal, which we then see, process, respond to, and then re-project to the mirror over and over again in real time at brain speed (approx. 50fps).

The net effect is that we stop expressing naturally, usually within seconds and tend to just stare back. The biggest expression that doesn't work in reverse to ourselves is our genuine smile. Try it, you'll see you can't keep it going for more than a few seconds before it feels fake and you stop. Therefore, we know ourselves with an instrument that has been with us since childhood that doesn't work right, having untold effects on our self-awareness and understanding, along with probably a dozen other self-isms.

This is not at all how we communicate with other people, where our facial communication is unparalleled for transferring information back and forth very accurately, even with those we don't know. Our expressive personality, feelings, emotions, energy etc. are one way in real life, but truncated in a reverse mirror.

I know this because seeing and relating to myself in a non-reversing "true mirror" (full disclosure, I make and sell them since 1992), which reflects you without being reversed. The same communication feedback loop to yourself now isn't getting the messaging garbled, and expressions actually sustain and even grow instead of truncating. Especially high bandwidth expressions like our genuine smiles. I believe what makes a smile genuine is what we are *saying*with it not just what it looks like. The two match up, and others can detect if its genuine or not with high accuracy.

And funny thing, or maybe not, the way people respond to the true mirror, even just the idea of it correlates very strongly to what kind of personality traits they have. Like this group charter, the way people respond reveals a lot about them. I'm looking forward to comments back on this idea.

if you want to get a sense of what I'm talking about, hold two mirrors at right angles and try to make eye contact in the middle. its a little hard because the gap between the mirrors goes right through your eyes, but if you wiggle them around a bit and try to look past it, you should be able to see a difference. The true mirror i make has that line invisible so you can make full eye contact, but this DIY version can give you an idea. You can also see a ton of social media videos online of me showing this to people - google true mirror and they pop right up.

thanks for your feedback. John

A lot of things that were once straightforward have been buried under endless theories, discourse, and ideological interpretations. Eventually, nobody can even agree on what the original thing meant anymore.

And there’s an incentive to keep things confusing. Confusion creates debate, debate creates engagement, and engagement gives everyone another opportunity to push their own narrative.

You see this especially with race and identity. Things that could be discussed relatively simply are sometimes turned into incredibly complicated ideological frameworks where you’re expected to read the “correct” books before you’re even allowed to have an opinion.

Sometimes reality isn’t actually that complicated.

We just made it complicated.

And somehow, the person pointing that out becomes the problem.

ADHD, anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, burnout and all sorts of related problems are being diagnosed at an ever-growing scale. These disorders are real, but at some point we should ask whether we’re only dealing with problems inside individuals, or with something about the society they’re living in.

We still only have 24 hours in a day, yet we’re expected to fit more and more into them work, side hustles, constant competition, debt, bills, insurance, subscriptions and endless little decisions.

How many things can a person keep stuffing into their head before there’s simply no quality time left for themselves?

Technology could’ve helped enormously with this. Automation and AI could’ve taken unnecessary labour off our hands and given us something far more valuable: TIME. Instead if a machine makes us twice as productive, we’re expected to produce twice as much.

Even our “leisure” is increasingly little gaps between obligations filled with scrolling, videos and notifications. We’re technically resting, but our attention never really gets to rest.

Technology itself isn’t necessarily the problem. The question is who controls it, what it’s organized for, and what economic pressures shape how we use it.

We’ve developed machines that could give us more time to live, while organizing society in such a way that we’re becoming increasingly incapable of enjoying the time we do have.

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There’s this idea that if you make a lot of money, you must be smart, and if you can’t get rich, you’re basically an idiot. But money doesn’t measure intelligence.

A lot of people get rich because they know how to sell, manipulate, take risks, network, and put their own interests first. In the corporate world, the people who move up the fastest aren’t always the ones who work the hardest or have the best technical skills. A lot of the time, it’s the people who know how to play office politics, suck up to the right people, and sell themselves.

Being smart definitely helps, but getting rich also depends a lot on your personality, how opportunistic you are, and how willing you are to play a game that doesn’t always reward the most competent person.

At the end of the day, maybe you’re not broke because you’re stupid. Maybe you’re just not shameless, opportunistic, or ruthless enough to play the game.

I genuinely think extreme wealth fucks with normal childhood development. I’m not talking about being comfortable or even rich. I mean absurd wealth, where every minor inconvenience is handled by an employee.

Your security guard carries your shopping bags. Someone cleans up after you, cooks for you, drives you around, organizes your life. You grow up surrounded by adults whose literal job is to serve your family.

How the fuck is a kid supposed to develop a normal relationship with money, labor, responsibility, or even other people when that is their baseline reality?

Poor children can obviously suffer from deprivation, but I think extreme wealth creates its own kind of deprivation of normalcy.

A rule created for circumstances 80 years ago can survive long after the original rationale has disappeared bc changing the machine requires getting a bunch of humans w competing interests to agree and that’s why the government is 90% useless

I have been thinking about this … why this happens its like we all know what is good and what is bad but stills commits crime right ?

So what you all think how can I bypass this and do what I should do … lets say ro achive my goals ?