Pleasure

Racism, Fierce Women And Pleasure: 2020 Summertime Reads

August 10, 2020 by Juanita Lepage Leave a Comment

So, Racism. Let’s start there because it’s the most important in today’s blog. The world paid attention after the death of George Floyd, and so did I. As a white woman I’ve been spending some time reading, connecting to others, reflecting on what I need to change and starting to make some changes. This large cultural change that needs to happen starts with each of us making a change and it feels very much like a marathon goal and not a sprint.

I’ve included a few books that I’ve read in regards to racism and one of my goals has been to continue this process, so as I continue to find ones I like, I’ll recommend them in my blog on occasion.

As I’ve started to explore my own racism and support of systemic racism more deeply, it has felt heavy and overwhelming at times. I’m a person who can go deeply into heavy topics, but I need to balance it with doing things that bring me joy, pleasure, and peace. It can feel wrong to do these things when so many horrible things are happening around us, but it is very important. For me if I spend time in joy, pleasure, & peace, this allows me to continue exploring this topic of racism and spending energy on making changes. So I’ve included 2 other books today, and while neither of these books are what I would call beach reads, I wanted to include them. But please read those beach reads! I’ve been reading them too, they just didn’t make the list today.

Today’s Books

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
The Skin We’re In by Desmond Cole
White Fragility by Robin Diangelo
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
Find Your Pleasure by Cynthia Loyst

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

This was my favourite read. This book is a gift for us all in that Trevor is able to talk about his experiences with racism and oppression in South Africa with candor and humour. He talks about the complexities of racism within the black community and the racist and sexist systems built by white South Africans. Racism is not hidden in South Africa. In Canada, we like to spend time looking at other countries racism and ignoring our own. This book helped me reflect on what lies beneath the surface of our systems here in Canada. I had mixtures of laughter and tears while reading this book. You will end this book loving his mother and in awe of Trevor Noah.

The Skin We’re In by Desmond Cole

The Skin We're In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power: Cole, Desmond: 9780385686341: Books - Amazon.ca

If you’re a white Canadian (and especially Ontarian), if you read any book about racism, I’d recommend this one. Desmond is a black activist and writer based in Toronto, Ontario. He names how the the Canadian media consistently omits the racism happening in our own cities and country and focuses on what is happening in the USA. He details a month by month account of 2017 and racism and systemic racism he challenges in the school board, with the police, in major newspapers and provincial & federal agencies.

As a white woman I realize that I’ve had the privilege of choosing not to read the news when I don’t want to and also the privilege of feeling safe with the police and other agencies. This book was such a gift in that it wasn’t some random facebook article and you’d never find it in the big media outlets because of who owns the big Canadian Newspapers and Media. Read it! And then reflect on which systems in your life you need to hold accountable for change.

White Fragility by Robin Diangelo

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism: DiAngelo, Robin, Dyson, Michael Eric ...

This is THE book that I’ve seen as recommended reading on anti-racism. Full disclosure, I haven’t read it all. It’s very helpful, but it’s written by an academic and you can tell. She has lots of videos online. I recommend this Youtube video as a start and then take this book chapter by chapter as she explains what white fragility is and how it shows up in our lives. My understanding is that white fragility shows up as a feeling of defensiveness that white people have when black people name that white people are acting racist. There are feelings of denial and shame. Robin shares how most white people aren’t racist in the conventional sense of hating black people, but that white people are complicit in keeping systemic racism in place by our silence about oppressive behaviours.

Robin asks us to notice our reaction when white or black people get angry in a large group. How do we perceive when men or women get angry in a group? Who’s the loudest? Who’s silent? Who ultimately gets heard?

I read a great facebook post that was shared through the myriad of threads that encouraged us all to reflect on the many forms of fragility in our lives – male fragility that arises with the request for equal pay among genders and the #MeToo movement, or the extensive heterosexual fragility when homosexuals were asking for the right to marry too and not be persecuted for their sexuality. The list goes on and on. What kind of fragility do you have in your life?

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

This book is raw, honest, heart-open writing. A friend had listened to the audiobook and recommended it to me (Thank you!). Glennon describes her pattern of writing books and then realizing afterwards that she no longer has the same reflections about her life. It seems that after this book (and me now following her now on Instagram) things have shifted for the better for her. She was/is? a Christian woman who was committed to her faith and her husband. She then worked through a period of his infidelity and after committing to stay, she met Abby Wombach (famous soccer player) at a Book Event and realized that she was attracted to her. She writes about this experience and ultimately her decision to divorce her husband and marry Abby.

She also talks about the realization that if she listens to herself, she is always guided about what to do that meets both her and society’s higher needs. This is what psychotherapy often does too. Our society has been built on telling people they need to go outside themselves to find the answers to their questions. This starts in parenting and our school systems and culture. What if you really could trust your own instincts? Or as Glennon infers, “What if you are really a wild cheetah but you’ve just been tamed? What if you started the practice of untaming yourself?” The focus of the book is on women, but it could be applied to any gender. She is also ahead of the curve of most white people (including me) in regards to racism and reflects on her own journey.

Find Your Pleasure by Cynthia Loyst

Find Your Pleasure | Book by Cynthia Loyst | Official Publisher Page | Simon & Schuster Canada

I happened up on this book at my local library and was introduced to Cynthia Loyst, who created a beautiful coffee-table book about simple ways to mindfully choose pleasure in your life. This book isn’t a must read, but a gentle reminder and inspiration to nourish ourselves and experience joy. When we do this we create greater space for growth within ourselves and compassion for others.

Phew! That’s a lot of books. I hope that I offered you a little inspiration as you either start or continue your conversations about racism with friends and family, and to also give yourself permission to have some pleasure & nourishment too along the way and within the greater context of the pandemic and all the extra stresses that it brings too.

Summertime Reading: Books For Pleasure & Reflection

August 16, 2018 by Juanita Lepage Leave a Comment

This summer I’ve been reading like I’ve never read before. I pick up a book and I devour it. Next. My kids are at the age where they like to read too, which gives me more opportunities to read as well.

I have generally been a reader in my life, althought certainly the amount and style has ebbed and flowed over time. When I lived in France, the library and the English book store were two of my favourite places. When you’re immersed in a foreign language, being surrounded by books in your native language is a pleasure. I loved going to the library in town and perusing the compact English section. Now I often get my books from my local library in Canada. I like to own non-fiction and hold onto some fiction if I think i’ll read it again. I prefer the physical presence of a book in my hands versus a digital copy if I can get the actual book.

Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, challenges readers to spend a week without reading anything. She writes that most people find this one of the most challenging weeks of her 12 week course and greatly resist it. One of the points of the exercise is to notice how we are using reading in our lives and see if it’s for growth and pleasure or procrastination. If our jobs are creative, we can use reading as a distraction from focusing on what we need to. Notice I haven’t been blogging for over a month? I’ve been reading. Last summer I tried a week without reading or using screens, and I completed a lot of projects.

Reading can be an escape for me from doing things I “should” be doing, and it can also be a pleasure in my free-time to spend time with a good book. I like that time goes more slowly when I’m reading than when I’m watching television.

For the most part I’ve been reading Fiction this summer. Sarah J. Maas’ Throne of Glass series, Karen Marie Moning’s Fever series, and Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series have occupied much of my summertime reading. Intermittently I have added some non-fiction which I’ve included in the mix of 4 books to share with you.

The Books

Karen Marie Moning’s Feversong (Book 8 in the series)

Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

Maria Shriver’s I’ve Been Thinking… Reflections, Prayers, and Meditations for a Meaningful Life

Alice Miller’s The Drama of the Gifted Child

1. The Guilty Pleasure

I recently had a conversation with a friend about books you read but you don’t really talk about it with everyone. You know what I’m talking about – that harlequin romance, that young adult series, or Fifty Shades of Grey. But then in passing you mention said series, and you realize that many people are reading these books too.

A friend of mine introduced me to the Fever series by Karen Marie Moning. This is one of those series that you are likely to both love and hate. I have rolled my eyes, I have judged the characters (and myself for reading the series), and the pages of rehashing past events, yet I have kept reading the series. The chemistry between the main characters is certainly a draw and the fantasy element of Fae and humans interacting and trying to save their respective worlds. These books are easy reading. Perfect for summer-time.

2. Up and Coming – Psychedelics & Psychotherapy

Michael Pollan is the perfect author to write about this heated topic. A skeptical New Yorker-style writer explores the history of psychedelics and it’s resurgence with clarity, groundedness, and evidence. His vocabulary is much broader than my own.

There is a resurgence happening in the world of psychotherapy of integrating the use of psychedelics in treating addiction, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, terminal illnesses, and more. LSD, psilocybin, MDMA (ecstasy), and ayahuasa are the main ones that I’ve heard and read about. I’ve noticed more and more credible researchers starting to speak about this topic in 2018. In fact Michael Pollan writes that there has been more research on psychedelics in the past 15 years than there was in the 60s. Wow. He is so intrigued by his own research that he decides to experiment with psychedelics himself in a guided environment.

If you’re curious to learn more but don’t feel like reading, I recommend two podcasts.

Consider:

Tim Ferriss – Michael Pollan: Exploring The New Science Of Psychedelics

Tim Ferriss – Gabor Maté: New Paradigms, Ayahuasca, & Redefining Addiction

3. Spirituality – Maria Shriver

I was listening to Krista Tippett interview Maria Shriver and was impressed with Maria’s combination of fire and compassion. She talks about finding her authentic voice in her 60s after decades of supporting those around her. Her book of Prayers, Meditations, and Reflections are a great way to start or end your day. Each reflection includes a story, a quote, and a small prayer. They are each a few pages. You can start at the beginning or randomly choose one. She is a Catholic woman who is reconnecting with her faith. This book isn’t specifically Catholic and can be read by anyone with spiritual interests.

4. Healing Old Wounds

Sometimes you find a book that is like a therapy session. Alice Miller’s book The Drama of the Gifted Child is exactly that. The original title of this book was “Prisoner’s of Childhood” which is a better fit than the current title. This book matches my psychotherapeutic approach as it relates current problems to patterns developed in childhood. Patterns often develop innocently in a way that serves our larger needs. Over time this pattern becomes problematic in areas of our lives, and we’re often oblivious as to why we’re facing the same problem over and over in our life.

This book is especially humbling if you’re a psychotherapist yourself. The author talks about the similarities in childhoods of psychotherapists (gulp). The importance of choosing a psychotherapist who is doing her own work cannot be minimized.

What has made it onto your booklist this summer?

Creating Calm And Beauty In The Home

May 31, 2018 by Juanita Lepage Leave a Comment

(Above: “The limits to pleasure are neither known nor fixed”. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin)

Like many people, I have read Marie Kondo’s, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. One of the themes of this book is that as we tidy and create beauty around us, this will also increase the calm and beauty in our inner world. I was curious, I found Marie Kondo’s neurosis about tidying to be quite charming, and I love a motivational reason to clean my home. So I enlisted my family and we started the process.

You Start With Clothing

Last August, my husband, kids and I began the process by going through all off our clothes. We held each item of clothing to see if it “sparked joy” and donated the pieces that didn’t spark joy.

You can learn a lot about your process of buying and wearing clothes doing this process. As a parent, sometimes clothes are bought out of convenience in the isles of Costco. As a person who generally doesn’t enjoy shopping for clothes, sometimes I’ve bought them because I dedicated a couple of hours to shopping for certain pieces, so I chose something whether I loved it or not because I didn’t want to shop for clothes again for a while (cough, cough, until next year).

My husband and I could both identify clothes that didn’t really look good on us, but we wore them because it was easy to not change our pattern of clothes shopping. Marie Kondo’s paradigm helped us shift our process of buying and wearing clothes.

To be fair, another factor that helped us change this process was that we were living in a city at the time where it’s easy to go and shop for an hour. Cities have great stores beyond the box-stores with more stylish choices. Now living in the suburbs, it takes more effort to go to the mall or box stores. The ambience of a city is very conducive to making shopping more enjoyable for me.

If you’re a parent of boys, you may wonder if your kids would be interested in selecting their own clothes. They might not be. I didn’t think my kids would be, but I was surprised when I took them to a store and they enjoyed having a say in the clothes they were going to wear. Afterwards the clothes they had chosen became their favourites.

The Rest of My Home

As we were living abroad, we put the rest of the book on hold until we moved back to Canada. Marie Kondo’s process is layered, starting with clothing, and continuing with everything else in your home. In January we moved back into our house which has a lot more “stuff”. It became a little overwhelming to even know where to start. Mainly it resulted in “half-assing” each room, to the point where I gradually acclimated to living with more stuff around me in a messy way. (That is until we had people over whom we weren’t close enough to feel comfortable to leave it as it was; it’s always good to have a motivational reason to clean)

Inspiration

Recently I visited a friend who had fully embraced the art of tidying up. Each room in her home was decorated with care. Her personality was easy to see in the rooms, and I could tell she took pleasure in choosing and placing the items with care. She also didn’t have kids, so that negative part of me rationalized the beauty in her home to that factor. Yet I felt inspired once again to attempt this in my home.

Combining Tidying With Focus

The other book that helped me with this project was Gary Keller & Jay Papasan’s, One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results. The book is written for entrepreneurs, but the message is clear – choose ONE THING and focus on doing that really well. I applied this message along with Marie Kondo’s paradigm to create beauty in my home.

The Yard

This past weekend I started with my yard and worked hard not to think about the mess in my home. Here’s a photo of my garden a week later – yes there are weeds. But the vegetables and herbs are mostly bigger than them – I consider that a win.

The Shed

I then moved to my shed and repeated this process. While cleaning the shed, I said to my husband, in one hour we’re having a break and drinking a beer. This was a way for me to shift my pattern of seeking enjoyment after a task has been finished. It was delightful to take a break in 1 hour instead of 4 hours, and I was quite proud of myself for going back to work afterwards. (Reality: It looked like it might rain, so I had to put everything back in the shed and not leave it until later.)

My Home Office

This week I’ve been working on my office. Here is a photo of a small piece of my home office. I actually hung things on the wall – I was proud of myself after my degrees and artwork had been sitting in stacks on the floor for 5 months. And yes, I did unabashedly sneak a photo of my cat into this mix. No apologies there.

This practice of tidying up and creating beauty in one space at a time has been a way for me to create calm and pleasure amidst the noise of life. If I look at my never-ending to-do list or look at the calendar, I start to distract myself with activities or try to do bits and pieces of everything and then feel tired and fairly dissatisfied at the end. The discipline of focusing on doing one thing really well and with pleasure was a gratifying one.

When life gets chaotic, it can be difficult to know where to focus your attention. Try choosing one thing today, even if it’s a tiny space and see how it goes.

P.S. I won’t show you a photo of my bathtub or my kitchen floor and leave them to your imagination. They both desperately need some attention. All in time.