When I was young, I loved the fourth of July. I definitely associated it with freedom. For me, summer itself comes with the feeling of freedom, the way that the national holiday is supposed to.
As a teenager, I began pondering the concept of freedom, the way most of us hippies do. By that time, all I knew was that the United States was a hell of a lot freer than a lot of other nations, and I was thankful for that. Growing up in the tiny little town of Ware, Massachusetts, and never having been out of New England, the sum of my education was a narrow public-school curriculum and, dare I say it, the media. This was my truth at the time. Our truth is always based on perspective, and my perspective was limited.
When I began college in my twenties, both my perspective and my truth shifted. As I was introduced to the world, one class at a time, I began to see freedom through new lenses. Sure, it was true that we in the U.S. weren’t subjected to the terrors that people in some nations did, but it was becoming clearer to me just how we were controlled. My majors were psychology and Women’s Studies, so not only did I dive into learning about the mind, but I chose electives that made the true nature of our country more apparent. History courses taught me the many ways that the Native American, the Africans, and other people of color had been subjugated, how and why our immigration laws were created, and about the powerful people throughout history who fought for true equality. Literature courses beautifully and painfully connected those eras through stories and poems. But, perhaps most profound, were some of the women’s studies electives I took. My independent study in women’s spirituality helped me to see how the concept of America as a Christian nation had harmed so many. Through the dogma of one religion, the experiences of millions were not merely ignored, but demonized. The Native Americans and Africans? Savages. So-called witches, wise women, and healers? Evil. In Sociology, I focused my studies on media images and messages – just another layer of making fat, poor, colored, and otherwise “minority” people think of themselves as less than and making the “other half” hate us. In my course on diversity, I learned about redlining, the racist practice in which governments outline areas in which minorities live, deem them unsafe, and do everything in their power to see that “those people” stay where they are. In this class, I also learned how BMI charts were created by insurance companies as a means to determine who was too risky to insure. It didn’t always equate to who was healthy or ill, but it did create a hate of fat folks. My realizations of our subjugation went on and on. I learned how people with disabilities were put in institutions, how gay people were put on medications, and how western medicine has created a body-mind split.
It wasn’t only my classes that gave me my new perspective of freedom, but my life experiences. I wanted to help change the problems I saw with our country. I thought I wanted to be a therapist. That didn’t work out. A few years later, I took a few more classes and got my teaching license. That wasn’t a fit. The experiences I had working in nursing homes, mental health programs, domestic violence programs, and schools showed me firsthand how oppressed we really are. I understand now that these careers didn’t work for me because mental health care and education are too much a part of the system that got us where we are. Don’t get me wrong, I know people in those fields who are essential to building a more compassionate and inclusive system; those fields just weren’t a fit for me. There is a different sense of freedom in being an artist; essentially, you don’t have to learn how to shut your mouth and play by the rules the way that professionals do.
The recent overturn of Roe V. Wade has not only given us the opportunity to reexamine freedom, but has fueled many of us to work for it. Here’s the thing; when we want to fight for something that affects all of us, we need to do it collectively and we need to learn to listen to one another. So, hear me out—is the overturn of Roe V. Wade really much different than the force we saw over the vaccine? Before you get outraged, think about it. How can you argue that a woman should have total control over her body, yet argue that the government can force that same woman to take a vaccine?
Most recently, my understanding of freedom has grown deeper through my spiritual work. Simply put, force opposes free will; free will is not something that we need to earn or be given, it is something we are born with. When we are controlled and cannot practice free will, we don’t have the opportunity to find our own unique path and live our life purpose. If we make a choice under force, it is not truly a choice, and that changes our destiny. No one has a right to take away our innate power, for there is a wisdom that only we can have about ourselves. These notions bring me full circle, back to the time when I was a twenty-something in college and learned the feminist concept that power over others is a patriarchal practice; this is how feminism and spirituality intersect.
So, how can we create a society that offers true freedom? First, I suppose, we must define what that looks like. We want a society in which everyone can afford to meet their basic needs without giving up their passion and joy by working jobs that don’t align with their souls. One that allows everyone to be validated and supported. A society that functions on cooperation, not competition. How can we build a society that doesn’t result in so many of us being disenfranchised and living in fear? Obviously, there is not one simple answer here. But I do know that we need to start to reclaim our own power.
When we consciously take on spiritual work, a commitment to our own growth, we begin to find out just how powerful we are. We take back the divine wisdom we have about ourselves and begin to live from a place of free will again. Once we learn how to do this individually, becoming the best versions of ourselves, and we connect with others who have found their power again, we will manifest freedom. The days of freedom being taken from us are coming to an end, but we have work to do; we need to learn to listen to that inner voice, which I call spirit, and be brave enough to share our truth.
Attention fellow word nerds: The Old English derivation of the word free means to act of one’s own will.
~ Peace and Love, Tracey
©Tracey Love, 2022. All rights reserved.
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