What Abortion Means: Part 2

On the Reality of Illegal Abortions in a Post-Roe America

Gloria Steinem and Ann Carroll

This is the second installment in a series on abortion and the implications of the seeming impending loss of federal abortion protections in America. Part 1 in this series can be found here.

May 11, 2022

Despite having secured the freedom of choice in 1973 (right before women were guaranteed federal protections to bank free of gender discrimination), we appear on the brink of another era in America in which a woman’s body is not entirely her own. The implications of this are vast, with the undeniable element being that the number of women receiving unsafe abortions, or those attempting to self-induce an abortion through dangerous means, will skyrocket. While it must be said, repeated, and shared that abortion pills can now safely allow women to self-administer abortion, access to pills, healthcare services, and information is uneven and those most likely to suffer are low-income women, women of color, trans people, and pregnant people experiencing abuse.

Abortion restrictions do not stop abortions, they simply prohibit safe and legal abortions. Many of the women we know and love who came of age before Roe v. Wade (or who lived in countries with abortion restrictions) had illegal abortions. It is once again time for us to discuss this reality and openly acknowledge the fact that, in order for women to be as free as men to individuate and live their truest lives, they need total control over their own bodies and healthcare decisions—the kind of control over one’s life that any adult would expect to have in a free society. Women’s psychological well-being cannot be separated from her reproductive freedoms. Discussions of younger women’s psychological lives in America must once again center her rights—or lack thereof—to choose the life she wants.

I frequently find myself thinking about the dedication page of Gloria Steinem’s memoir, My Life on the Road.

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO:

Dr. John Sharpe of London, who in 1957, a decade before physicians in England could legally perform an abortion for any reason other than the health of the woman, took the considerable risk of referring for an abortion a twenty-two-year-old American on her way to India.

Knowing only that she had broken an engagement at home to seek an unknown fate, he said, “You must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life.”

Dear Dr. Sharpe, I believe you, who knew the law was unjust, would not mind if I say this so long after your death:

I’ve done the best I could with my life.

This book is for you.

Another American woman in Europe, in her twenties, around the same time as Gloria Steinem, was also in need of an abortion. Ann Carroll, having just started the long process of a Ph.D. at the University of Munich, with only the rudiments of the German language, was not ready to be a mother.

Ann, in case you are not familiar with her story, went on to earn a Ph.D. in Philosophy, study James Joyce, create a pictorial translation of The Prajnaparamita Heart Sutra, create sculpture-filled gardens, and become the third member of our Red Book salons at The Salome Institute many decades following her abortion. In a couple of weeks, Ann will also teach a two-session seminar on key concepts of Taoism with us.

This is Ann’s story of her illegal abortion, which she has given me the following full, and eloquent permission to share. Please note for sensitive readers that some of what follows contains graphic descriptions of an illegal abortion.

“Please feel more than welcome to use my own experience of abortion. The voices that negate Roe v. Wade are the same voices that would silence women about speaking about abortion through the longstanding, unquestioned projection of shame—the shame surrounding our sexuality passed on down from generation to generation, absorbed in our mother’s milk.

I think what you are talking about by openly bringing abortion into the conversation is our no longer being willing to buy into Eve’s story. I think Eve’s supposed shame and responsibility for the vast powers and implications of ‘sexuality’ (the reproductive mystery of the ongoing creative energy of the Earth) is an enormous and central battleground in Western Civilization that has held us silent for 2,500 years.

Why in God’s name are we as women, metaphysically and physically, the ones to be existentially sentenced to shame? (Hester Prynne having to wear a scarlet “A” forever on her breast.) It really is a patriarchal outrage. Not only are we left with the fruit of the sexual encounter right there in our own bodies, not only are we the ones with the inevitable emotional and physical wounds of that immense decision to go through or not go through, but then that decision is not even in our own hands—and he (no shame on him) is free to go off in search of his own fate.

So, you ask about my abortion.

I think it must have been 1960, which was only 15 years after the end of WWII. The doctor I’d found brought me in and, without any anesthesia, tied a wire around the umbilical cord and sent me off to my student apartment to simply let the embryo die a slow, painful death. What followed for me was a night of unbelievable, excruciating pain. I was drowning in sweat and agony. At 5:00 AM, I returned to the office, where the doctor surgically severed and removed the embryo. I was screaming in pain and he forcefully told me to be quiet so I didn’t wake the neighbors. Being in Germany at the time, I couldn’t help wondering what his wartime affiliation had been. That experience, and the brutal handling of both my body and soul, would affect the entire course of my life.”

Ann went on to earn her Ph.D. in Philosophy while living in Germany. She later had two children, two stepchildren, and eight grandchildren.

Donate to support access to safe abortions for pregnant people. Even without the protections of Roe v. Wade, women and other pregnant people do not need to endure what Ann endured. Help to guarantee protections.

For more information on the implications of overturning Roe v. Wade and what to do about it, there is no one better than Jill Filipovic. Subscribe to her newsletter.

xo, Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies

What Abortion Means: Part 1

On Abortion and the Promise of Democracy, But Only for Men

This is the first installment of an upcoming series on abortion rights and access, including the illegal abortion stories of Carol Ferris and Ann Carroll. Stay tuned, and stay engaged.

May 3, 2022

If I don’t comment on a major news story in these weekly missives it may be because I’m pressed for time, because I’m reluctant to join in an unhelpful cacophony of stress, or because I’m too much in my own feelings to say a word. When it comes to the swift erasure of abortion rights in the United States, it’s the latter. This one is more personal than most. But with today’s leaked Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, my wordless shock has had to give way. It’s long past time. What follows here is the first in a forthcoming series on abortion. In this series, in addition to my writing, Carol Ferris and Ann Carroll will be sharing their stories of illegal abortions, the extreme dangers they both faced, and the result of their abortion decisions on their lives.

I’ll begin here:

I have never had an abortion. Thanks to Roe v. Wade, I grew up knowing I would have access to abortion, should I need it—something I thought about a lot. Since I was young, I have felt haunted by a society in which my right to an abortion was up for discussion. The notion that my reproductive organs in my body were not considered entirely my own was a constant, persistent reminder of my Otherness. I was the perceived, not the perceiver. I was the object being debated, not the debater. I was not the one at the table.

Jung commented frequently about the dangers of a patriarchal society in which women, and the feminine, had been diminished in favor of men and the masculine. In this piece with the sub-header “The Worship of Woman and the Worship of the Soul” (CW6), Jung commented on the extreme threat to women when the total absence of the feminine in Christianity was suddenly replaced with the worship of Mother Mary.

“Since the psychic relation to woman was expressed in the collective worship of Mary, the image of woman lost a value to which human beings had a natural right. This value could find its natural expression only through individual choice, and it sank into the unconscious when the individual form of expression was replaced by a collective one. In the unconscious the image of woman received an energy charge that activated the archaic and infantile dominants. And since all unconscious contents, when activated by dissociated libido, are projected upon external objects, the devaluation of the real woman was compensated by daemonic traits. She no longer appeared as an object of love, but as a persecutor or witch.”

When men worship “The Mother,” be it Mother Mary or Mothering as the primary work of women, they depersonalize the woman herself. She becomes a shell for projections and if she is not acting according to the expectations of the projector (welcoming Motherhood with open arms, no matter what), than she may very well be evil. She is not playing her social role.

Limits on abortion rights have nothing to do with “life.” Women’s lives (read: life) are at risk in countless ways when abortion access is limited, as are the lives of their already-born children (if they have them). Meanwhile, when pro-life couples seek fertility treatments in order to have children, we know that far more eggs are fertilized than will ever come to term. Yet their search to make the woman a Mother makes this trade-off acceptable because what is really being celebrated is white Motherhood and the continuation of a conservative, religious hierarchy in which men are in charge and women are Mothers. Women are the perceived and men are the perceivers. Women are docile and men are protectors. This is about maintaining a historical narrative with control of women at its core because, whether in the creation of codified Christianity or of American democracy, women have never been at the table. 

Unless we make detoxing from it a priority, a patriarchal mindset permeates everything. It’s a view too often perpetuated even in the Jungian world with the kind of nonsense that promotes “the archetypes of men” as versions of “The King, Warrior, Magician, and Lover” (never Father), and “the archetypes of women” as “Maiden, Mother, and Crone” (never Queen). For women, these archetypes are tied directly to her sex life or her reproductive organs: between puberty and motherhood (Maiden=dangerous), during motherhood (Mother=nurturing), and after menopause (Crone=wise or dangerous again). If you’ve studied with me, you probably know that I reject gendered archetypes, or really any fixed archetypes at all. Most overly concretized archetypes either come from patriarchal (and racist) history or an overly gendered reaction to it, a reaction which really must evolve again in favor of the core point of Jung’s psychology: we are all ultimately seeking wholeness and individuation, the ability to pursue the life that calls, however unusual it may appear to others. Once you’re living by one or a few archetypes, you’re back to being split. History, no matter how archetypal, requires revision and reconsideration.

In today’s leaked Supreme Court draft ruling, Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion:

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That provision has been held to guarantee some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ and ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.’”

The Constitution makes no reference to abortion. Rights must be deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.

If you are not smacking your head at this idiocy, you should be. Justice Alito’s lines are jaw-droppingly myopic.

If we are ever going to move forward, history cannot continue to be the f*^%ing precedent. 

Women. Were. Never. At. The. Table.

In 1776, before she was America’s (second) first lady, Abigail Adams wrote her husband, John Adams, at the Second Continental Congress.

“I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

John Adams and his fellow delegates did not remember the ladies. In fact, they teased the notion of women being part of the conversation, just as they scoffed at the idea of Black, brown, Asian, or Native peoples being citizens. Those precedents, religious, Constitutional, or archetypal cannot stand.

xo, Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies

War, Ukraine, and Marie-Louise von Franz

March 24, 2022

In a banner across the top, my computer calendar announces to me my stay this weekend at “The Best View in Independence Square” in Kyiv, Ukraine. 

I don’t know how my email, apps, and calendar link up with each other when I make reservations for things, but this particular pink announcement is an unexpected and tender reminder. At the start of the invasion of Ukraine, I joined with thousands of others in an act of solidarity by booking Airbnbs somewhere in Ukraine. In addition to getting a little bit of cash straight into a Ukrainian’s bank account, it was also a one-to-one connection to say: You’ve not been forgotten. The whole world is watching and thinking of you. I wrote a short note along with my booking. I did not express that I/we feel helpless to do much of anything but watch, maybe fly a Ukrainian flag, and send some money.

A day or two later, I received this response.

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“Hello. Thank you very much! Me with my family and cats spend every night on the subway at Kyiv. Thank you very much, I really appreciate your help. All the Ukrainians are fighting back to back, young and old. Our people are heroic and they’re never going to give in.”

Connecting with this one individual did not make me feel any less helpless. I have no idea how much the little bit of money and solidarity helped her, if at all. But there is something powerful even in tone in this small use of modern technology to be able to connect directly to someone in the middle of a war. It feels almost like reaching across time or into the multiverse: I am so sorry that you are where you are and that we cannot stop it. I could be you, but I am not. I am in my house, with my things and my loved ones, unharmed.

In last week’s newsletter, I shared a quote from Jung’s 1932 essay, “The Development of Personality” and said I’d share more this week. I spent far too long typing up more of that essay for the newsletter today until I realized that . . . well . . . it’s just not speaking to me anymore. Not at the moment.

What is speaking to me is the work with psyche that has been unfolding in my Friday morning class, Working with the Unconscious. Each week—and increasingly—we’re working to stay present with what arises from psyche and to then be in relationship with whatever that may be. It’s moving to hear people share their experiences and explore this material from such a curious and courageous place.

I’m also moved by a lecture that Marie-Louise von Franz gave in 1976, and which we read for class today. This is one of my favorite articles. It’s jam-packed with von Franz’s ideas on active imagination and psychedelics, Carlos Castaneda, and apocalypse dreams.

I thought I'd share one particular excerpt regarding psyche and World War II that resonates in this moment of history. I share it again here, without commentary. I don’t know that there are grand lessons to be drawn from this story. It is just a moment of witnessing psyche and war; the reality of the inner world and the outer.

von Franz recounts a story she heard from a German professor of art history who was in World War II:

“He was not a Nazi and therefore entered the military service very unwillingly. He was on the Russian front when the news arrived: He and the men in his troop were going to be sacrificed—all killed—as a way to hold one position when the Russians attacked so that the other troops could rearrange themselves in the back and survive. That was the strategy: Push one company forward for the Russians to attack; the men have to hold on till nobody is alive. The men all knew that it was so, and they were all lying there, waiting for the attack and their end, when suddenly in the blazing sun this man, our art history professor, saw a German soldier, but without helmet, with bare head, blond hair, saying to him, “Orders. Come quickly!” He was lying on the ground—but he got up in response to the German soldier’s word and stood there, in front of the Russians. Nobody shot at him. He following his comrade into the woods some hundred meters. In the meantime he heard how the Russians had attacked in the back, and suddenly that figure of the German soldier dissolved—it had been a hallucination. All the others in his troop were killed; he alone had survived. So I always say to myself, if the unconscious wants to save somebody, it can do the craziest, most unexpected thing. If that man had figured out that he was hallucinating, he would have never saved himself. . . . So I would say, if the unconscious wants to kill somebody, it can kill you in bed, and if it wants to save you, it can save you even in a global catastrophe. So it's not worth bothering about it too much or in the wrong way!”

XO, Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies

Jung on "The Development of Personality" from 1932

March 17, 2022

I traveled to a memorial at the end of last week and was unable to compose a newsletter. But I’ve also needed time to collect my thoughts. The global news and grief are relentless. I feel I need two weeks of silence and reading and sleeping just to catch up with recent events, let alone… you know… continue to work and live.

I’ve been grateful for the writings of others these days. Anne Helen Peterson wrote a beautiful meditation on these times entitled, “What if This is Just the Way Things Are Now?” which captured my own fears about this endless onslaught of crisis and my complicated feelings about living in safety and privilege while the world burns.

Anand Giridharadas interviewed foreign-policy scholar Stephen Werheim in a piece titled, “How To Do What’s Right Without Starting World War III” which helped me to better understand the historical context of this war and make sense of the actions that the United States and European countries are taking.

And I was moved by the quote of Jung’s included in a recent newsletter from The C.G. Jung Study Center of Southern California, which I’ll include and expand on here. Their newsletter prompted me to re-read Jung’s essay, “The Development of Personality” from 1932, and was deeply moved.

“The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. At any moment several millions of human beings may be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have another world war or devastating revolution. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche. This is the World Power that vastly exceeds all other powers on earth. The Age of Englightenment, which stripped nature and human institutions of gods, overlooked the God of Terror who dwells in the human soul. If anywhere, fear of God is justified in the face of the overwhelming supremacy of the psychic.” (CW 17, para 302)

Jung goes on to speak about the importance of the individual, just as he does in his passionate plea two decades later, The Undiscovered Self. It’s his core understanding of how to combat the tendency towards global warfare. While re-reading this piece, “The Development of Personality,” I reflected throughout on Putin and Zelensky, two great personalities who are deeply at odds both militaristically and existentially. I’ll share more on all of that next week.

Until then, please join me and Dr. Ayana Jamieson this Sunday for session 2 of her three-month seminar, or register for our upcoming seminar exploring myth and instinct with the brilliant Dr. Magda Permut, and for Carol Ferris’s exploration of the essence of these times via the new moon in Aries. We’d love to see you at one or all three!

XO, Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies

Ayana Jamieson, Ph.D. on Speculative Fiction, Archetypes, and Emergent Story Patterns

February 24, 2022

From Dr. Ayana Jamieson, depth psychologist and faculty member at The Salome Institute. Her seminar and book club, The Archetype of Change in Speculative Fiction, begins Sunday, March 6th.

An archetype is like the proverbial stone that gets tossed into a pool of water. It’s the central force that embodies all those ripples outward that go on, and on, and on. You can see the ripples but you can’t hold onto them or make them static. There is no such thing as an archetype in and of itself. We can see the patterns and costumes that are forms, manifestations of an archetypal pattern, but the stone itself has already drifted down, down and away, and joined the bedrock, flotsam, and silt of the body of water ready to nourish some future organism.

I believe that Octavia E. Butler seeded the archetype of Change into her writing so that we could try on different ways of being human, being better, and being aware of the changes, positive and negative, that would impact future generations. 

All of the books selected for our upcoming book club feature moments of upheaval and dramatic shifts from the ways things were to how things are going to be. 

In the seminar, beginning next week on Sunday, March 6th, we will start with Butler’s Wild Seed. Then in April, we’ll read N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season before exploring Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s Son of the Storm in May. All of these stories are speculative fiction—a field that is wide open and only restricted by our imaginations. 

Speculative fiction is an umbrella term for all kinds of beloved categories: Superhero fiction, alternative histories, alternative futures, fantasy, science fiction, horror, or other narratives that extrapolate beyond the known world.

We know that this is a transitional time when we need lessons about this era of rupture and how things will transition to whatever comes next. 

We need to learn to read the signs of emergent story patterns that offer lessons for survival while in community with others. The conquering hero, the single individual moving through the story cannot succeed without learning from and through those around him. I hope, in conversation with each other and with these authors, we can begin to speculate beyond the Hero’s Journey monomyth in favor of some of the other story patterns that exist in human cultures as interconnected rather than conquering.

Last year on Feb 18, 2021, the NPR podcast Throughline aired an episode, “How Octavia Butler's Sci-Fi Dystopia Became A Constant In A Man's Evolution.” It was a sweet synchronicity that my interview with them had been recorded December 17, 2020, the day of my first Salome Institute talk, “The Mythology and Depth Psychology of Octavia E. Butler.”

My evening with Satya and Kelley and our guests was a continuation of this recorded interview. NPR interspersed Butler’s own words via archival recordings with interviews between hosts, producers, and writers adrienne maree brown, Nnedi Okorafor, and me!

You can read a transcript of that talk or listen to the program here.

~Dr. Ayana Jamieson

"Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood" is Available for Pre-Sale

January 13, 2022

After many years of pondering, fretting, researching, writing, editing, and discussing, my book, Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood, is finally available for pre-order!

The official publication day isn’t until July 26th—many months away—but I couldn’t wait to tell you.

So many people in the Salome community have known that I was writing a book but… well… after years of writing, it can seem like I was just spinning tales.

But now I can say: “It’s really happening! I promise.” And I’m excited to share the news.

Quarterlife is my attempt to offer Jungian psychology to pre-midlife adults in a way that feels accessible and soulful. In the book, I define “Quarterlife” as the long-ignored stage of adulthood between adolescence and midlife, and I argue that the goal for all Quarterlifers is to find stability and meaning in their lives.

The desire of adulthood is not just to survive, make money, have children, and buy a house. Those are the social prescriptions that we all need to wade through on our own. The longing of Quarterlife is also to find a sense of individual meaning and purpose in order to help answer the question: Why am I here? And also: Why am I here in this time of crisis?

Without religions that touch our souls or cultures that vibrate with tradition and mystery, this combined search for stability and meaning is complex at best and life-threatening at worst.

Pre-order “Quarterlife”

In early December, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a rare advisory on Protecting Youth Mental Health. In it, Dr. Murthy articulated the urgency of need for people coming of age today:

“Recent national surveys of young people have shown alarming increases in the prevalence of certain mental health challenges— in 2019, one in three high school students and half of female students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, an overall increase of 40% from 2009.”

There’s no question that we’re facing an epidemic of suffering, and it’s not just in the United States. Skyrocketing rates of depression and anxiety plague young adults all over the world. I am deeply impressed with the clarity and comprehensiveness of this public health advisory and am also grateful to see that attention is finally being placed on the health and well-being of young adults, too often mocked and ridiculed in click-bait headlines rather than seen as humans in need of support.

My hope is that Quarterlife might be a part of the conversation around how to ease suffering and gain orientation in this time of life. In a time of climate crises and social collapse, we can no longer just look to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and individual diagnoses to provide the answers for the suffering of early adulthood. Something much larger is at play and we need more soulful solutions.

Jungian Analyst and author, James Hollis, has this to say about Quarterlife:

"Absent the structured rites of passage that enabled our ancestors to emerge from childhood into adulthood, how is a young person supposed to grow up today? While we all know the Sturm und Drang of mid-life, who has really addressed those who are just beginning to enter choppy waters? Satya Doyle Byock’s Quarterlife is a valuable guide to the perplexed in those seas. Filled with illustrative examples, she provides multiple tips, clues, and guidance for those who otherwise feel alone."

-James Hollis, author of Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life

Thank you for being there, as always. I’m grateful to be able to share this news with you as we continue exploring together how to make sense of living in these very strange times.

xo, Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies

Happy New Year! Here's to Renewal and Rebirth in 2022

December 31, 2021

I’m not much for staying up late to celebrate the new year, but I do love the ritual of renewal and rebirth that a new year brings. There’s something inherently refreshing to me about this new beginning. I’ve spent time in recent days reflecting on the past year and planning for the new one. I look forward to time today with my journal, throwing the I Ching, and pulling a Tarot card too—something my partner and I do together at the end of each year, in anticipation of the new one. It’s grounding for me to spend time with the inner world and the oracles and take stock of the year passed.

It was quite the year. It started off with a bang and didn’t slow down.

At Salome, amidst an ongoing global pandemic and new vaccines, we celebrated the historic wins in Georgia and grieved the insurrection and attempted coup; we mourned the targeting of Asian women in the Atlanta massacre and the police shooting of sixteen-year-old Ma'Khia Bryant; we called our representatives on behalf of the women of Afghanistan; and we raised over $3,000 for the protection of voting rights in the United States.

We also gathered over sixty-five times with all of you in our brilliant online community, across continents and timezones. We spent time studying Jung’s newly published Black Books, learned to read our horoscopes, explored Gnostic Christianity in-depth, dove deeper into the writings of Octavia E. Butler while writing ourselves, gathered in multiple men’s groups and women’s groups, explored the foundational ideas of Jung’s psychology, pondered the connections between our individual psyches and democracy, and much, much more.

We also provided over $25,000 in scholarships and discounts to anyone in financial need who made a request for our seminars. We’re committed to doing the same next year. No applications or proof of need is required—just trust.

We’re so grateful to be on this journey with all of you, and we look forward to seeing you, learning with you, and being with you more in 2022.

Many Blessings and Happy New Year!

xo, Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies

The Women of Afghanistan Need Our Help

August 17, 2021

I wrote just a few days ago about my sense of helplessness around the climate. Today, I’m writing on the heels of that note to ask you to join me in one small action where we can still make a difference.

The girls and women of Afghanistan need our help, immediately.

The window may be very small to save their lives. As the Taliban have regained control of the entire country, girls have been removed from schools, all public depictions of women have been painted over or covered, and women journalists, judges, and other professional women are being hunted and killed. Literally, their only option is for an American plane to take them out of the country with their families.

• “There’s No One to Help. They’re Stuck There.” MSNBC

• “As Taliban gain ground, Female Judges Fear for Their Safety.”, PBS

• The Taliban’s Return is Catastrophic for Women. The Atlantic

But we can still do something. Seriously.

Thousands of American troops have returned to Afghanistan to keep an airport open and actions are being taken to get people out. We need to add pressure on our government to make sure that women and girls are on those planes. It may be extra hard to find women and get them to safety because many are unable to even leave their homes. Their doors are being patrolled by armed fundamentalist men. So a particular focus must be made on getting women and girls out.

Please call your Senators and Representatives today to ask that a dedicated effort be made to get women and girls out of the country.

How to Call your Senators

How to Call your Reps

It’s easy. Ask them to ensure that American troops make a concerted effort to find women who are in danger and get women and girls of Afghanistan on those planes and out of the country.

We can debate for decades to come what we were doing there in the first place. For now, please make a call.

With love and a heavy heart,

Satya

P.S. I have not forgotten about the earthquake in Haiti and the need for foreign aid. Or the social collapse of Lebanon and the need for foreign attention of all kinds. People are hurting everywhere. This is just one small action where we, Americans, are personally implicated, our country to theirs.

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies

Feeling Climate Helpless

August 14, 2021

If you’re like me, you spent a good portion of this week with the findings of the UN Climate Report rattling around in your body and mind. It wasn’t surprising, but it was, appropriately, alarming. With the extreme drought in Oregon and yet another heatwave in Portland, extraordinary sunsets made hot pink from local fires, and a sense of pandemic exhaustion everywhere, I’m feeling constantly aware of our place in history—and the future.

More than that, I’m noticing an increasingly pervasive sense of helplessness.

I’m constantly trying to limit my personal impact on the planet and other creatures. I’m a vegetarian. I drive very little, and only in my electric car. I’ve shorted the time I’m in the shower. I’m now drying loads of clothes outside. I signed up for a new recycling service to dispose of the things I always feel guilty throwing away. But I can’t help but feel, all the while, that nothing I do is going to stop what’s happening. Sometimes it feels simply delusional, like trying to hold off a tsunami with a bucket and good intentions.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to suddenly change my behavior because I think we’re all doomed. I’m just very conscious of my own combined sense of grief and helplessness, a kind of a “freeze” trauma response that I notice deep in my being.

The problem is that while personal responsibility is critical, it’s really not up to any of us individually to fix this problem—at least not in the way we’ve been told/sold.

I recently learned, for instance, that the very idea of an individual “carbon footprint” is a highly successful diversion created by the oil industry. Seriously.

According to a Mother Jones article by Kate Yoder from last year:

“It’s a concept made popular by—get this—BP itself. More than 20 years ago, one of the company’s marketing campaigns helped cement the perception that the responsibility for reducing emissions lay with individuals, working the phrase ‘carbon footprint’ onto our tongues. The underlying message: Let’s talk about how to solve your emissions problems.”

Meanwhile, it’s major corporations that are refusing to package our food differently—selling us products wrapped in layers of (often unrecyclable) plastic, despite green alternatives. It’s corporations raising animals in ghastly conditions. And it’s just 100 corporations that are responsible for over 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

I’m not trying to shift the blame and point fingers: your fault, not mine!

I’m trying to make sense of my anguish, guilt, and helplessness and understand what to actually do about it. At the moment, I’m going to continue doing what I’m doing to curb my own personal impact. But ultimately, if climate change is a government and corporate responsibility, I know I also need to be pushing more vigorously for transformation on a corporate and policy level.

And finally, as I try to make sense of all this, there’s one more piece: Psyche.

This is not a small component. It’s the reason for The Salome Institute and what keeps me sane (relatively speaking). When I’m up against grief and fear, I try to remember to turn my attention into the freeze-state, and into my dreams, active imagination, and dialogues with the Self. This is how I know to find alternate ways through.

The universe, like the unconscious, is infinite. The future has not been written. We do not know what’s coming. But we can remember that whatever is unfolding is not known to our conscious minds alone.

With love to you and yours,

Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies

Democracy and Depth Psychology

June 21, 2021

A well-functioning democracy is like a well-functioning psyche: the multiplicity of voices is respected and power-sharing is encouraged. In a well-functioning psyche and democracy, pathologies are prevented from festering and taking over. Traumas and complexes are brought to consciousness so that they can be understood, healed, and integrated. In a well-functioning psyche and democracy, freedom is critical, like oxygen for lungs.

The work of Individuation is both personal and collective, internal and external. It makes no sense to work on self-becoming without also fighting for freedoms for ourselves and our fellow beings. Individuation is impossible if our bodies and choices are not in our own control.

In addition to our programming coming up this Friday and Sunday, I wanted to share some critical activism and journalism on these topics this week that have been on my mind and heart.

• An interview with Stacey Abrams about the importance of protecting voting rights these days, and the grassroots (that’s us!) work happening this summer to support the For the People Act (SR1). I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but the For the People Act has to pass to protect voting access nationwide and as long as people like Stacey Abrams are working on it, I’m working on it.

• A short piece by Nicholas Kristof on legal, yes legal, child marriage (rape) in America. Kristof is one of few male journalists consistently shining a light on the exploitation of girls and women. I’m grateful for his activism and exceptionalism journalism. I hope it’s work that will change laws and lives.

• An incredible piece of journalism by my friend, Jill Filipovic, for the New York Review on abortion access in conflict zones. The bodies of women and girls are policed all over the world (see above). Rape is a weapon of war and control. The freedom of women and girls to make decisions for our own lives and healthcare—in war and in peace—can not be negotiable. As abortion rights are under attack nationwide, journalists like Jill are keeping a light on the critical importance of choice with reporting like this.

In a well-functioning democracy and psyche, demands for power and efforts to actively suppress the power of others are grave warnings of danger ahead. A pathology has gained ground. The fear of the Other has taken root. The focus on balance and wholeness has been lost. These are battles for consciousness that we’ve been fighting for a long time, and that we’re fighting vigorously right now. Let’s keep on.

XO, Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies

A Failure of Imagination Around Policing in America

April 22, 2021

Without pause or time to process, we went from relief that George Floyd’s murder received the bare minimum of justice to immediately learning of the police killing of a sixteen-year-old Black girl, Ma'Khia Bryant, in Columbus, Ohio. The Columbus police released the bodycam footage of this shooting quickly in order to quell outrage and to show that she was holding a knife and trying to stab another girl. This is proof, apparently, that they were justified in shooting her four times in the chest.

This is the distortion of American militarized policing under which we live. It’s part of the intoxicating spell we hear every day: this is normal, this is the way it is, this is okay, go back to sleep.

When sixteen-year-old Ma'Khia Bryant was shot and killed by police because she was acting violently, we the public are encouraged to think: “What else were the cops supposed to do?” Same when thirteen-year-old Adam Toledo was shot with his hands up in Chicago last week, having just dropped a gun: “What else were they supposed to do?”

America is the only country among our allies that kills its citizens, no matter their age—Black, brown, white, Native, Hispanic, and Asian—literally daily with a sense of justification: What else are we supposed to do? They were acting violently, they wouldn’t stop running, they had a warrant out for their arrest, they were trying to drive away, they were resisting arrest.

But we have got to stop thinking that within the American justice system cops are the judge, jury, and executioner. They are not. They do not exist to decide who is guilty and whose deaths are justified. Violent or not, crazy or not, holding a gun or not, it is not their job to kill people. It is their job to show courage in the face of violence, compassion in the face of fear, and restraint. It is their job to show more restraint than the average person and to deescalate, not to kill.

We need to do better as a society. This can’t continue.

When it comes to what community policing can look like, we have, as author and professor, Dr. Brittney Cooper, calls it “a failure of imagination.” It is a failure of all of our imaginations if—in one week alone—we think it’s normal for children and young adults to be shot by adults in uniform “because” they had a gun (Adam Toledo) or a knife (Ma'Khia Bryant) or got back in the car (Daunte Wright).

“There are questions we can ask. But we’ve got to work from the baseline that a Black girl engaged in conflict with other teenage girls should not be dead. And that the cops are supposed to be the adults in the room, they are supposed to be the people who can assess the situation, and the reason that they are supposed to move with that level of precision is precisely because they have been endowed and invested with the power of lethality, the power to kill citizens.” — Prof. Brittney Cooper, Ph.D.

It is a failure of imagination regarding what our society should be doing with mental health crises, traffic tickets, homelessness, domestic violence, theft, and street fights. We can do better.

Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies

The Atlanta Shooter Wasn't "Saved from Slavery to Women"

March 19, 2021

There’s a provocative and potentially disastrous line in Jung’s Red Book that I’ve been thinking a lot about this week.

“Become a woman yourself, and you will be saved from slavery to women. …Through becoming a woman you attain freedom from women and their tyranny,” Jung wrote.

There’s a fire and brimstone quality to those lines when taken out of context and I think there’s meant to be. It’s the conservative, misogynistic Christian teachings (not Gnostic & not all of Christianity) flipped on their head. Women are the problem, for you, men, Jung is saying, because every woman you’re attracted to is your own anima staring back at you. Integrate her. Become her.

Women are “tyrannical,” in your experience, because when you are talking with women you are engaging with your own unconscious anima and cannot escape her. You feel chained. But the embodied woman in front of you is not your problem.

You may know where I’m going with this.

I’ve been thinking about this section of the Red Book over and over since learning of the supposed “reason” for the horrific murders of six Asian women and two others in Atlanta this week. The murderer is a 21-year-old devout Christian conservative white man who apparently targeted the massage parlors where he was a frequent customer because, essentially, he wanted them but he didn’t want to want them.

“It’s a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate,” the police captain explained. So rather than eliminate the temptation internally, he tried to eliminate the temptation externally. But, he’ll find, even murder won’t work. The dead will be dead, and their families will grieve for the rest of their lives and more. But his anima is inescapable. He’ll now be sitting in a jail cell for the rest of his life with her instead. They’ll both be miserable.

I have too much to say on this and too much grief and rage around it to properly do so here. These murders are horrifying and senseless, but they are nothing new. Entire countries across most of the planet control women’s lives and bodies because of the same inability to identify the source of the issue.

Hint: It’s the projector, not the screen.

Asian women, in particular, have been the screen for Western men’s unintegrated needs and desires for the feminine and “the Other” for hundreds of years.

Author Nancy Wang Yuen’s recent article on these shootings offers critical historical context. For instance:

In 1875, Chinese women were targeted by a federal immigration law called the Page Act. This law effectively banned the immigration of Chinese women to the United States based on a morals clause that considered all of them prostitutes at the time. There were apparently specific racist and sexist concerns that Chinese "prostitutes" would bring in "especially virulent strains of venereal diseases ... and entice young white boys to a life of sin." Sound familiar?

The particulars of racialized misogyny are critical to understand. Black women, for instance, experience a different version, leading to the adultification of Black girls—they’re consistently perceived as older than they are—and the widespread mistreatment of Black women in medicine because of the belief that they don’t feel pain. Scholar Moya Bailey named this intersection of race and gender misogynoir.

Suffice it to say, these issues are broad and overwhelming. They are also the foundation for the “Socially Relevant Psychology” of The Salome Institute. Salome, in Jung’s Red Book, was his Jewish anima figure whom he associated with Kali and initially viewed as a lascivious temptress. But he had work to do.

You can read more on this in an essay I wrote a few years back called “Salome, the Antidote.”

We’ll be talking about it plenty this coming Sunday in the Black Books seminar too. And we might even speak to it tonight, with David Naimon, on the incredibly transformative understanding of gender and androgyny in the work of Ursula K. Le Guin. Thank the gods for visionary work.

For now, in solidarity with the Asian-American community, with sex workers, and with women worldwide, love to all of you. And happy Equinox too.

xo,

Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies

Being with the Black Books in Zurich in 2010

March 5, 2021

Preparing for the Black Books Seminar has brought back a lot of memories from my visit to Zurich about a decade ago. I was working for The Philemon Foundation, the organization responsible for publishing Jung’s unpublished archives, including The Red Book and the Black Books. That red photo above shows me, the one leaning against the wall, at the opening of The Red Book exhibit at the Rietberg Museum in December 2010. It was a pretty magical time. 

Back then, the publication of the Black Books was just a twinkle in Sonu Shamdasani’s eye. They were on display at that same exhibit, inside a glass case, and plenty of discussions were happening about whether or not permissions would be given to translate and edit them for the public. One night around dinner, I got to peek at a top-secret pdf of them on someone’s phone. I was so excited to see them until I realized it was all in German. I was studying German at the time, but could only read a few words.

You can imagine the joy of being able to pore over them now in English some ten years later.

Listen, if you’ve yet to sign-up but are thinking about joining us for our eight-week journey through Jung’s Black Books starting Sunday, I’d love to nudge you one more time to do so. This is going to be a special dive into Jung’s notebooks which, as editor Sonu Shamdasani writes, are “records of a unique self-experimentation that Jung called ‘his confrontation with his soul.’” 

We’ve created a private web portal for weekly recordings and community discussion between seminar sessions, and we’ve got a good group gathered. I think it’s going to be a pretty awesome ride together. This is, after all, where it all started.

"My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me… Everything later was merely the outer classification, the scientific elaboration, the integration into life.” -C.G. Jung

xo, Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies

Georgia! I mean: An Attempted Coup!

January 7, 2020

“Georgia!”

That’s how my email to you today was supposed to begin. I drafted a newsletter yesterday around 10 am in a state of joy at the miraculous, extraordinary, stunning Senate wins of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. I was awash in gratitude for the relentless voting-rights advocacy and political tenacity of Black women like Stacey Abrams, Nsé Ufot, LaTosha Brown, Felicia Davis, Tamieka Atkins, Helen Butler, and Deborah Scott who gave a nation hope and results where most pundits thought there was a lost cause.

Remember the mantra: Listen to Black Women.

I drafted that email to you yesterday morning in shock—joyful shock—at what had occurred.

What unfolded next was emotional whiplash.

For hours yesterday, I sat speechless, rubbing my forehead in rage and disgust. I was speechless, of course, because our Capitol—my Capitol and your Capitol—was invaded by the most unconscious, entitled, and misinformed among us. It felt personal watching those people, nay, those white men, riffle through our representatives’ papers and desks, shout from the Senate chambers, and wander unchecked through the halls of our democracy.

I felt nauseous and violated. I felt furious.

I was furious at the unbelievable restraint that the police used against this white mob. Furious at the restraint because they seemed able to do just about whatever they pleased, and furious because it was in such painful contrast to the force that has been used on non-riotous Black Lives Matter protestors for months.

So yesterday, I grieved the loud, full-color display of White Supremacy and toxic masculinity running amok throughout our government—as looters, rioters, and elected officials.

If you’ve seen the images of men with their feet on Pelosi’s desk, her office vandalized, robbed, and destroyed, you know the particular loathing they feel for a woman in power.

Those men need to get their anima checked.

If you’ve seen the noose hanging outside the Capitol, the Confederate flags waving, and the shirts celebrating the Holocaust, you know the particular hatred they feel for African Americans, people of color, and Jews.

Those men need to get their shadows checked.

Let’s sing it together: Pro-jec-tion!

Every ounce of their rage is a projection of their own unbalanced and suffering psyches.

The reality of what is happening in America—and has been happening in America forever—needs to be named. White Supremacy and Patriarchal dominance are psychological viruses with profound powers of destruction. The two were at play throughout colonialism and slavery, they were at play throughout WWII, and they are at play today.

What we need instead of lopsided fealty to the ideas and lives of toxic whiteness and toxic masculinity, is wholeness. Balance. Integration. Consciousness. We need self-inquiry, not projection. We need love of Self and Other, not hatred-of -others masking hatred-of-self.

We are deep in Trickster territory here. Every individual’s capacity to discern reality is being tested.

Bit by bit, we are working to name reality and elevate reality, not the White Supremacist and sexist lies that elevate the few while oppressing the many. We have been encouraged to drink that widespread propaganda for centuries. But they are just lies we tell ourselves. They are not psychological truths.

Maybe what is happening in this moment in history, as we witness Black women’s peaceful, measured, and determined organizing in Georgia cast in immediate contrast to white men’s entitlement and violence is enantiodromia: Jung’s word for the tendency of all things to change into their opposites. Perhaps, this governing principle of psychological development is at work when what has too long toiled in the shadows is being elevated, little by little, into the light of consciousness.

May this year offer us something extraordinary.

Not another war, more violence, and more wins for White Supremacy and toxic masculinity. But a reversal of all that. Perhaps, I dare say, we could move towards greater consciousness, greater balance, greater awareness collectively about what is in the shadow, and a greater love for the wounded anima throughout society too.

xo, Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies

Happy Holidays to You, with Love

December 23, 2020

If you’re like me, the magnitude of this year feels impossible to comprehend. It’s a year that has brought ups and downs for each of us that were literally unimaginable last December.

It was just this year—not several years ago, as my instinctual memory is certain must be the case—that we listened to days of impeachment hearings, obsessed over the Democratic primaries, grieved the murders of Breonna Tayler, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Elijah McClain, joined a revolutionary reckoning with racism, saw a near-collapse of the US Postal Service, experienced a federal military occupation of downtown Portland, endured devastating fires and natural disasters, fretted over a presidential election that pitted democracy against fascism, celebrated the election of our first female Vice President, and oh, suffered through a pandemic that has shuttered countless businesses and schools, killed over 300,000 Americans, and changed almost every aspect of life as we’ve known it.

And yes, that’s still just scratching the surface.

Meanwhile, at The Salome Institute, it has been a year filled with activity, community, and gratitude. Amidst the suffering and cataclysmic events, we have loved joining with so many of you week after week in salons on everything from Jung’s Red Book and its antidotes for a lopsided patriarchal world, to Kwame Scruggs’ reckoning with Being Black in the Jungian World, to Kayleen Asbo on re-elevating the female mystics in Christian history, to Hendrika de Vries on her childhood experiences in WWII Holland, to Carol Ferris on the potential for the Age of Aquarius, to Ayana Jamieson on Octavia E. Butler’s depth psychological prescience.

But that’s also just scratching the surface.

This year, we held over 60 live salons and we released a podcast with 29 episodes. We’ve worked to bring Jungian and depth psychological ideas into social relevance and to bring some of those social issues to the forefront of the Jungian world where they belong. Along the way, we’ve met some extraordinary scholars, thinkers, and world-changers and have been able to be in relationship with all of you from Portland to New York to London, Italy, Brazil, and beyond.

I can say that I feel very lucky to have been able to socially distance this year in such remarkable virtual company. It has been a gift.

I know, however, that for some of you, this year has brought the loss of homes to the fires, and loved ones, businesses, and livelihoods to Covid. You’re in our thoughts.

May these last days of 2020 bring you feelings of festivity, however small or simple, and an abundant sense of love and peace. You’ve survived this year. We’ve survived. That alone is a great deal to celebrate.

Happy Holidays to you and yours.

With love, Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute of Jungian Studies

The World is Celebrating America's Return to Democracy

November 8, 2020

The world is celebrating. Fireworks in London and Berlin. Bells ringing in Paris. People dancing all day and all night in New York City, D.C., Philadelphia, and Atlanta. As foreign correspondent Richard Engle put it: “People were reacting like America had overthrown a dictator. That Democracy had been saved.”

This was never about Democrats versus Republicans. This was not a political match. The entire world is celebrating this weekend because this election was about democracy over fascism, sanity over insanity.

That is why we felt so scared these last four years, why we fought so hard in this election, and why we feel such elation at the win.

In preparing for our upcoming seminars with Dr. Sharon D. Johnson, I began reading a book by Barbara Hannah in which she recounts Jung’s response when asked if he thought there would be an atomic war: “I think it depends on how many people can stand the tension of the opposites in themselves,” he replied. “If enough can, I think we shall just escape the worst.”

I feel this weekend that we have, for now, escaped the worst. I feel proud of all of us. I also know that this same work to which Jung spoke remains our work today.

Can we stand the tension of the opposites within ourselves? Can we work to develop greater consciousness with all the courage that it requires, all the humility and humiliation? And can we expand our understanding of the opposites far beyond the Christian ethos of “good” and “evil” and towards a recognition of the very divisive foundation of American civilization: men over women; white over black; “civilized” over “barbaric”?

America has always had roots in fascism under the guise of democracy. Women have always lived under unequal representation and have been demanding, protesting, and screaming with rage to be heard. Black Americans have always lived in a police state, and they’ve been sounding the alarm for the rest of us for centuries. Native populations and immigrants have been speaking, since before America existed, against the notion that land can be owned, imaginary boundaries erected, and fences locked against human and animal travelers.

So this is not about simply replacing fascism with democracy in one fell swoop. Going forward, it is also about continuing to dig the whole damn thing up by its roots.

That means continuing the work of identifying white supremacy and patriarchy within our bodies, minds, and souls. It means detoxing from these psychological viruses on which we were raised, like poisoned milk. It means doing our psychological work to integrate our shadows — shadows which also contain our creativity and eros, our deepest joys and love.

This presidential ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is its own union of the opposites. It is its own union of America’s conscious self-perception and unconscious riches. We have an older white man with deep American roots and a good ol’ boy background and a younger Black woman with new American immigrant roots, and an HBCU degree.

It is a joining of the male and the female, the white and the black, the old and the young on a presidential ticket. It is a union of the opposites, and it is a beautiful union.

So let us celebrate and rejoice for the fall of fascism in America and the emergence of a new possibility for wholeness in American leadership. It is a model for greater consciousness for all of us.

Our celebrations should be many and they should be long!

And going forward, we can keep in mind that our work to understand ourselves continues: work to understand our own internal oppositions, our own valuing of hierarchy borne from white supremacy and patriarchal thinking, and our search for balance and a lack of hierarchy within ourselves. This is the task of wholeness. It was the work of Jung’s life, a white male at the top of all possible social ladders who looked around him and around a world at war and sought another way. It can be the work of our lives too, no matter our backgrounds.

We will continue to pursue these conversations at The Salome Institute, and we hope you will continue to join us.

Until next time, love to each of you — and congratulations!

xo,

Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute

Sending You Love

September 10, 2020

In Portland today, things are once again eerie. The devastating West Coast fires have reached our state and the sky is just a vast white-yellow haze. Wherever you are, whatever you’re enduring right now, we’re sending you love. It’s our hope that Salome can offer some soulful nourishment to get you/us through these times.

Here’s where my mind is at today: if things can get this bad for this many people this quickly, then radical, radical change is possible. This is the Trickster archetype at work. After the shock and the terror, after our minds have been sufficiently rattled and as a result, broadened, something extraordinary may yet emerge. We have to believe again in dreams we once gave up, believe in transformation for social equality, and the protection of our planet and all living things. We have to believe that what we know in our guts is good for life is both possible and necessary. We can transform this looming doom and present pain to transform the world in ways thought unimaginable just a few years ago. It begins somewhere deep in our own belief of what is achievable. This is us world-making, and world-make we must.

In order to stay present in the belief of what is possible in these times—alongside voting, fundraising, and anti-racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/xenophobic activism—I need mythology and regular archetypal, soulful infusions. If you do too, please join us for some of our salons and seminars these coming weeks and months. They’re guilt-free and soul-full.

Coming-up:

• A new salon announcement on The Age of Aquarius with the extraordinary Carol Ferris on October 8, 2020. Could it be that a new age is finally, truly dawning… ?!

• Part 2 of a 3 part salon with Mythologist Kwame Scruggs on using myth to find orientation in this crazy, crazy world on September 12th & 19th. If you register now you’ll automatically receive the recording from last week to catch-up!

• The much-anticipated salon on the true story of the Gnostic Salome with returning scholar Kayleen Asbo on September 24th! How has this Salome’s deep, heartfelt knowing been buried and how is it now being revealed?

As always, if you need discounts or scholarships to participate, please let us know.

With love,

Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Salome Institute Director

The Salome Institute endorses Joe Biden & Kamala Harris

We are enthusiastically behind you!

August 20, 2020

What is this feeling inside my chest? It’s been so long since I felt it that it’s hard to identify. Is that a smile across my face? Are those tears in my eyes? Is is possible that this feeling is… hope?

As I watched the Democratic National Convention last night, from Elizabeth Warren speaking about the importance of child care for women’s freedom with “BLM” spelled-out in children’s block letters behind her, to President Barack Obama’s emotional emphasis on the power of young Americans to set the agenda of their leaders, to Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech for the Vice Presidential nomination, I found myself feeling an unabashed sense of love, respect, and hope again. And damn did it feel good.

I’m not under any illusions about the propaganda machine of electoral politics. But to paraphrase the illustrious Jon Lovett to his illustrious fiancé, Ronan Farrow: “My party’s propaganda is working on me.”

I get it. This stuff is supposed to inspire me. But I am glad to be inspired again! I am glad for the determined shift away from the divisive fear and terror that makes-up so much of our daily politics and, as a result, national culture these days.

It feels good to experience some love-of-country and to feel gratitude for the leaders of the Democratic party. It feels good to be inspired amidst all the ruin that is America these days.

In the shadow of all of our fears and grief we have adults in leadership roles who share our values and whom we can elect!

We can.

I loved the celebration last night because the speakers were talking about real issues every step of the way, from civil rights to women’s economic freedom, to the bone-chilling threat against Democracy. But the celebration wasn’t tarnished by the creeping sense that the person throwing shade on the left might in fact be a Russian troll. It wasn’t tarnished by immature, fringe actors who are obsessed with our liberal leaders being perfectly, exactly aligned with every single issue versus allowing our party to be complicated and evolving and 90% on track. The celebration was a reprieve from so much liberal in-fighting and obsession with nuance that one feels they’re observing the Buddhist parable of the poisoned arrow, a man who has been wounded by an arrow but will not allow it to be removed until every single question he has about the origin of the arrow is answered. (He dies.)

So I am happy to enthusiastically and wholeheartedly endorse the nomination of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for President and Vice President of the United States of America.

I am happy to have hope in my heart and a sense of faith that we have people in leadership roles who know the stakes. These are leaders who know it is incumbent on them to continue learning and listening and evolving their values to respond to an electorate that wants change, wants a functioning democracy, wants freedom of gender expression, wants racial justice, and wants to address climate change and economic inequity at a system level.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are leaders who share my values. They are complicated values. They are not singular nor easily framed. They are not euphemistic ideas that can be placed on red hats and shouted with rage. They are ideas and ethics that require a deep level of engagement and a devotion to transformation for the longterm. They are values that can make the soul soar if we place our trust and love in the ever-evolving pursuit of democracy.

The time is now. Let’s do this, America.

In love & solidarity,

Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute

20 daily tips to release stress and heal trauma

20 daily tips to release stress and heal trauma

July 24, 2020

Satya Doyle Byock, LPC

posted originally at Quarterlife.org and on a 2016 post-election list-serve

When we are stressed or have experienced abuse or trauma, our executive functioning brains shut down. That means we aren't able to think clearly. We can feel disoriented and confused as a result. This is all a result of the “fight or flight” reaction that we, as animals, experience after trauma and stress. This is a very real physiological thing. Don't let anyone tell you differently. Some reactions may seem "dramatic" etc. They're not.

Here are 20 things to know about stress and what to do to stay healthy and resilient. We all need our health to fight back against injustice and suffering. In the face of pain, we need to take deep care of ourselves and of each other.

The common thread throughout these tips: for healing from stress, exhaustion, and trauma, your body needs to be tended to before anything else. Then your imagination needs to be nurtured. Try to take care of your animal-selves and get into play. Get out of the worrying and thinking head and the often cycling heat or shut-down cold. This kind of self-care is about developing resilience for the longterm and countering deep burnout when fighting for justice. It is part of an activist toolkit.

20 tips to release stress and heal trauma:

1) If you find yourself shaking, let your body shake. This is a natural mechanism of our animal selves to release stress. Humans are often embarrassed or scared by the shaking that may occur in stress so we shut it down. Try not to. If this process can unfold naturally, you'll feel relief when it's over and stress that might have been trapped in the body just goes away. 

2) Energy or tension in your fists/hands/arms/shoulders can be trapped from the "fight" response. Energy or tension in your legs/feet can be from the stalled "flight" response. Don't be scared by this energy. Try to let it out. Punch a pillow or run it out until you get to emotion or exhaustion. You can also squat into Horse pose or simple hatha yoga postures that help to stimulate the legs can help to release this energy. If you start crying, let it out until is stops on its own.

3) I repeat: Don’t try to stop sobbing when it comes, it’s part of your natural release system. If you start crying, try to let yourself cry and wail until it stops naturally. Remember to breathe through it. Stay out of fear. Try not to think you're being "weird" or "dramatic". The more this can come out of you, the more resilient you will be overall. If you can't cry wherever it starts, try to find a safe place and kindly, consciously "compartmentalize" until you can get back to feeling what you need to feel.

4) If you find yourself going through cycles of cold / hot fever states from emotional stress or exhaustion, again let it happen. Your body is working to release stress. Try not to worry about it or make it go away. Like a fever with infection, it will pass on its own and leave you healthier and happier. (Of course, if this cycle continues for too long, or feels related to COVID symptoms in anyway, check with a doctor.)

5) If you find yourself spacing-out and worry that something is wrong, you are probably dissociating. This can be an indication of the "freeze" state—the third common response to trauma beyond to "fight or flight." The freeze state is the animal-body’s way of mimicking death as a last resort to avoid being eaten by a predator. Humans do this too. We unconsciously go into paralysis and leave our bodies. This is natural at the moment of shock/attack/suffering but it can get "stuck." So if you find yourself in a semi-catatonic state for too long or over days, try to go on a walk, do some yoga, make sure you’re getting the food your body needs, or get proper sleep.

6) Sleep as much as much as you're able and for as long as your body wants, even if your mind thinks it’s excessive. Sleep and REM sleep naturally process stress. We typically don't get enough of it. If you start to fear that you're sleeping "too much," despite what I wrote above, then try some of the other tools and tips to get your body back to life and your spirit uplifted, and make sure your body has the food it needs.

7) Remember to eat good food. If you fear that you're not eating anything, reach out to friends, get a good protein and veggie supplement. Here's one good option that I recommend when cooking and eating in emotional stress is hard. Try to limit alcohol, sugar, coffee etc., all which can throw off the adrenal system and cause anxiety and more stress.

8) Receive touch and physical affection with safe people, and pets. I know this can be especially hard during a global pandemic. If you’re alone or not in proximity to safe relationships, weighted blankets and hot pillows are remarkably good replacements. Light pressure and heat are naturally calming for our nervous systems. If you are in relationship with folks where you can feel held and cry, remember that trust is critically important: if a person cannot hold your tears don't let them tell you you're "taking things too seriously" or "being dramatic." Most of the time, this is gaslighting. Find someone who can listen.

9) Walk, walk, walk. This is a very natural way that humans process stress. It has real, physiological and emotional benefits.

10) Any bilateral movement helps to integrate stress into the brain/body. In addition to walking, you can do things like tap your right leg with your right hand, then your left leg with your left hand and so on. You can stand firm on your feet and stomp one leg and then the other. It may seem too simple to be true, but this is basic animal stuff of bilateral stress relief that helps us relax. You may be surprised at how a active bilateral meditation like this can help to release emotions. You could also buy two stress balls and squeeze them one by one. Think of a cat kneading a blanket before settling down. 

11) Practice breathing. Take 2 minutes periodically to breathe more deeply. Just two minutes can make a remarkable difference. Lengthen your inhales and exhales. Start there. Breathe through your nostrils only, if you can, and imagine the air moving up and down your spin with inhales and exhales. After a long inhale, try to swallow before exhaling. This adds a natural pause. If fear arises while doing this, counter the fear with love and keep going. You are releasing stress. Repeat this 10 times. This simple practice can help regulate emotional stress very effectively. (If this feels like too much to start with, just watch that shape at the top of this page.) 

12) Laugh, smile, and dance. Yup, even if you have to start by forcing it, it helps. Don't be stubborn! If you need an aid, get to your TV shows, movies, or podcasts. Get the heaviness off your chest. Turn on whatever music gets you going and dance, dance, dance. Listen to whatever music that soothes you too.

13) If you’ve got more time and your nervous system is not feeling like its on fire or underwater, read fiction. Good fiction. May I suggest this book by Octavia Butler, for instance? Or this one by Madeline Miller? Excellent page turners will help your brain and heart to come back together. Also, these books written by brilliant women, about brilliant women are good for the soul.

14) Speaking of those two books, read and watch any “Hero's Journey” type stories you can find. Indulge if needed. These stories help to remind us of the ancient battles for justice, and the inner warriors, gurus, and healers needed on the journey. We are in a battle between good and evil both within our societies, and within ourselves. We need to learn to listen to our instincts and to take care of each other. We were made for these times. Soak up what our world's stories already know about how to fight and rest and listen to Nature and Soul and keep fighting.

15) Outside of the Mythic realm, but Carl Jung would call “The Spirit of the Depths,” there is “The Spirit of the Times.” Bolster yourself with the histories of justice, civil rights, and feminism. Learn from our historic leaders. Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Angela Davis, and so many more. Soak up the stimulation and the intellectual nutrients of their books and lives. Watch documentaries on them that sooth and nourish you. Immerse yourself in our collective history.

16) Create, create, create. Do not judge anything you want to do or that wants to come through you. Your creative self will help you heal and will almost certainly help to move our community forward. Make art, make music, write, get your imagination moving. When we're scared, the imagination contracts. This contraction fuels fear and paranoia. Fear and paranoia are the hellish versions of imagination. Reverse course. Be determined. Work to expand your sense of hope by giving space to your imagination. This work is critical for a healthy society. The system of white supremacy / patriarchy tells us that only "practical" things are valuable. Don't believe it! Your imagination is critical. Your soul is critical.

17) Find an object that expresses resilience, love, and justice to you and keep it with you wherever you go. It may be a small stone that you can use to help you remember to breathe. It may be a small animal figure of a bird or a wolf or a lion that you can hold in your hand and help you regain strength. Maybe it's an image of your most powerful ancestor or your favorite social justice leader. Carry it with you. Touch it when you need to remember love instead of fear.

18) Find a therapist trained in EMDR—a very simple trauma processing technique that is highly effective and heavily researched. One place to start is Psychology Today’s therapist search. Click EMDR on the left hand side. This has been made a bit more complicated in COVID times, but therapists have all gone online and on-phone these days, so it’s also in many respects easier. Even a few sessions can help to get to the root traumas and process recent incidents. You can also search for a therapist trained in Somatic Experiencing, another trauma therapy modality that is excellent and based in the fight/flight/freeze response. There are many beautiful forms of this work, and it’s expanding by the year.

19) Learn-up on trauma and how the body stores extreme stress and see what strikes you personally, and supports you to better understand your own system and history. These podcasts by Resmaa Menakem, Gabor Mate, and Bessel van der Kolk are great places to start.

20) When you're ready, emerge from any feelings of being helpless or useless. Helplessness is a result of the freeze state. It is a very natural response to trauma, but it does not have to end there. If you’ve felt crushed, we need you to come back to life and to trust that whatever small and large gifts you can provide to one person, one animal, or a whole big group is what we need. You are profoundly useful. Your art is useful. Your hugs are useful. Your writing, your cooking and baking, your ability to fix things, your knowledge, your kindness, your directed anger and passion, your teaching, your leading, your sense of beauty. You do not have to "be useful" all the time (bleh!), but it's important to try to get released from any feeling of helplessness. We need your unique gifts, big and small, to help all of us move forward. (If this step feels too confusing, return to the body stuff over and over again. Bring your body back to life and the rest will follow naturally on its own.)

You are each valuable. This journey takes daily learning and a combination of vulnerability and fight. We’re in this together and we’ll get through this together.

Sending love to you,
Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, LPC & Director of The Salome Institute

If you could use more support, the short 6 recordings I created for the Simple Habit meditation app on how to managing anxiety through the body & imagination are available for free with code: IAMSAFE

Portland is Under Occupation. Portland is Beautiful.

July 20, 2020

I’m writing you at a table outside. The crows are flying across a beautiful purple and blue evening sky where I’ve discovered Jupiter (I think that’s Jupiter) shining brightly, just above the horizon line. It’s quiet in Portland tonight where I am. But just across the river, the protests are gathering and will remain gathered all night long. Because, in addition to the nearly two months of protests in support of Black Lives Matter and in favor of reallocating funds from Portland’s police force to much needed social services, Portland is now under military occupation from an unwanted group of federal “officers”—hard to know who they actually are—who will not leave despite the fact that our citizens and elected officials do not want them here. So Portlanders are gathering in increasing numbers to show we are not a city “under siege” from our own citizens. 

I was at the protest last night for a couple of hours. It felt very good to be there and very beautiful to see the solidarity. I know that this escalation of force in my city is not a fire drill for fascism. This is fascism, and it’s not hyperbole to say so. This is not a government “acting like a dictatorship.” This is a dictatorship.

image by Satya Doyle Byock

It was a joy to encounter the #wallofmoms as I crossed the Hawthorne bridge, and to walk with them towards the protests, with their sunflowers and their yellow shirts, helmets, and masks. Everyone was wearing masks.

I have planned a trip at the end of this week to finally visit my family. After weighing the costs and my various responsibilities, I decided to keep myself away from the protests until I get back. 

But goodness, I’m missing being out there. I’m also loving being able to watch this livestream of Portland’s abundance right now. It’ll be live every night, apparently.

These images are screenshots from the livestream, around 10pm PDT, 7/20/2020. — Venmo: @SolxLuna or PayPal: omnisossy@yahoo.com to support the livestream

The crowds are growing, led by local Black activists. It’s a stunning thing. Who needs concerts and sports when you’ve got this beauty?

If you’re in Portland and want to join in the future, just show-up!

If you’re in another city governed by Democrats, prepare yourselves. There is every reason to think that you’re next. Better yet, start gathering in advance! Spread the word that Portland is not under threat from our own citizens. We are under threat from a Federal government and Justice Department that stopped honoring human rights or the American Constitution. Remember: this is not a drill. This is live. Join the Resistance in every way you can. 

Sending you all love.

In Solidarity,

Satya

Satya Doyle Byock, Director of The Salome Institute