Feb 26, 2017

Who would believe? A reflection from Sweden

To quote Donald Trump: who would believe?

Who would believe Sweden would be thrown into the Trump rhetoric? Who would believe the Swedes would turn into a weapon in his dangerous xenophobia hand? It makes me sick to the stomach to out of nowhere be a part of this.

It was last weekend that Donald Trump twisted an already twisted Fox news story, telling the world something horrible - and very vague - had happened in Sweden the night before. We woke up stunned by these ridiculous news. Which would have been fine if we could only respond by a laugh brushing it off our shoulders with some funny videos as a reply. But we can’t can we? Because this man (and the brains behind him) does anything to create fear, and his populist politician fellows around Europe are going high on the success among his crowd.

Sverigedemokraterna (the Sweden Democrats), the Swedish nationalistic xenophobic party, is growing and on the brink of being the second largest party in Sweden after the Social Democrats. At the Trump gambit they played the card writing an article of opinon in the Wall Street Journal seconding Trump. We have come to a point where Sverigedemokraterna consciously is hurting their own country in international media!

Which forces the Swedish government to take to countermeasures, conveying their view and facts in American media, writing articles and giving as many interviews as possible. So, Swedish politicians are at war with each other in foreign media! Good job Trump!

It is not that Sweden is vaccinated against problems. Of course not. And here, as in any other country they occur the most in neighborhoods where the unemployment numbers are high and people feel like they don’t have a purpose. Which is true whether you are born in Sweden or has come here because the option to stay in your native country or return there really isn’t an option at all.

Monday evening a riot happened in the Stockholm suburb Rinkeby. Due to drug dealing the police has increased their presence which annoyed criminal groups. During an intervention the police was attacked and cars were set on fire. A police officer was cornered and fired off a gun. Nobody was injured from the shot. 

This shouldn’t happen of course. Neither the gun shot nor the riot. Or the drug dealing.  Or criminality. Or being unemployed. Or having to flee your country. Or wars. Whether they are between countries, peoples, religions or beliefs. It shouldn’t but it does. And what we can do is to help each other out. Not throw up hate and fear from tribuns around the world.

Now, I don’t agree with the Swedish government who has closed our borders and are sending people back (among them unaccompanied children) to war zones and in many cases countries where they have no connections since they have spent years in refugee camps elsewhere or are even born there. But I am happy to see former PM Fredrik Reinfeldt and also PM as well ass secretary of state Carl Bildt (who I didn't agree with either as they are right wing) speak up firmly against Donald Trump. And the Washington Post publishing an article with enlightening facts about Sweden, crime, immigration and integration, read it please.



And to end this post from a confused, frightened and outraged Swede spurred by the presumably most dangerous American president of all times, I will quote the official message on Swedish Foreign Policy News by our Minister of Justice and immigration Morgan Johansson:


Feb 19, 2017

Who would I be?

The other day I had the strangest experience. 

My mornings are always fragile. Especially those after a treatment the day before. I wake up and navigate in my pain to get a grip on where it is centered. How scared I need to be. And sometimes it takes a while to figure out where my body is at and where my protection needs to be focused.

Friday morning I woke up and the scanning happens automatically. I didn't notice a cramp anywhere though. And I did not feel like I was locked either. What was this? It was Jannie helping me out of bed and back after my start of the day. I told her how puzzled I was. The whole thing was odd and unfamiliar. A feeling of my pelvis being open. Free. Not framed. Liberated as well as unprotected.

And the really weird thing was how my brain was kind of up in the air. Like it had lost it’s focus. I could actually sense it soaring above my head. Like a butterfly waving it’s wings randomly (it seems) changing directions in search for something. 

In that moment I am realizing my brain’s normal position is always pointing downwards. Focused on controlling the pain and keeping my pelvis from not going totally over board, leaving me unmovable in a scream of fear.

What happened this morning was my brain was suddenly out of work. It was unemployed. And everyone who has been in that situation knows it really throws you up in the air.

In half an hour it was over. An intense cramp to the right of my left sit bone occurred. Order was restored. My brain found it’s focus. It’s assignment. This I know how to do.

I am wondering how many percent of my brain capacity 24-7 is occupied by pain and body control. This experience makes me think 97%.

The soaring brain above my head had the shape and the feeling of a light summer cloud. The colors white and blue. Transparent. Flexible. Receivable. Open for… what?

What would my brain do if it wasn’t pointed downwards? With what would it make itself busy? Who would I be? 

Closing my eyes recapturing the feeling of that half an hour the sense of my pelvis and my brain is very similar. Open. Nonrestricted. Free for any impulse. And room for that impulse to expand and happen. So who would I be? What would I do? And how would I feel? 

Feb 12, 2017

It will be okay, she said

She is giving me her hand and she says it’s going to be okay. I am closing my eyes asking her to say it again. It’s going to be okay. Her words are landing in the little girl within me.

I am lying on my right side in my bed. I am acute and shivering from fear. We have to get me out of bed. And I am reaching for Josephine’s hand to pull me up. She takes it and tells me it is going to be okay. I am listening. And she pulls.

I am acute in a way I haven’t been for a long time. And it all comes back. Passing out out of pain in a hotel room in Seattle. Being stuck at my kitchen sink not able move. Stuck at the Nordstrom entrance. Crawling up my stairs. Stuck in a Montlake apartment. My son putting his feet under mine walking me to the bathroom. Stuck in a Queen Anne condo. Stuck in the car. Not being able to move.

When acute, it’s not only the present pain that takes a grip on you. It’s all the traumatic body memories flooding your senses with a nameless fear and there is no way you can control it. 

I am pondering a lot about feeling safe/unsafe these days. My situation since four years now is that I am quite exposed and vulnerable since I am physically restricted, having to rely on others for my daily survival. I think most people during those circumstances feel more or less unsafe.

I have come to understand though there are people harboring all the safety they need within them. People who don’t need other people. For feeling safe. For support. For loneliness. They might enjoy other people. For fun. For inspiration. For company. For friendship. For love. But they don’t depend on anyone else for feeling good and safe. They fill their own needs.

I though, am ridden by a general feeling of being unsafe and has been so all my life as I recall. It’s a feeling of existential character I would say. Growing up, I didn’t have access to a voice telling me it was going to be okay. So here I am, a 60 year old woman scared in my bed, being offered those words by a 25 year old girl. And I can feel my little child inside receiving them. Like my body is hungering for the sunbeams in the summer. I wonder who I had been if cradled with those words?

I have a sense. There are good days. There has been good times. When I feel anchored. Strong. Solid. Safe and content by myself. Here, alone at the end of the road. Or driving I5 in the Seattle rush hour traffic. Knowing my way around. Trusting myself. Confident relying on having the capacity to handle most every situation. 

And I have a picture that’s what it is like being a grown up? Mastering your life. Always. And the fact that I don’t every day, makes me feel I am still a child. I didn't make it all the way.

For a long time now I have been only me. And I have learned to master most things coming up in a regular life with a homestead and home care personal. There is plenty I can’t do myself but I find the people to hire and help me out. I take care of things to the extent that I have come to think sharing shores and troubles with someone would be cheating. If there was a partner or a best friend at my side for everyday challenges or life dito that would be like escaping reality.

Last week one of the home care people who hasn’t been with me for a long time was back. It was wonderful seeing each other again. We laughed. And we even shed a tear. We had missed each other a lot and finally had the chance to share up dates on our lives for the past five months. During that afternoon I could feel myself relaxing in the company of someone who I feel safe and comfortable with.

And I am thinking I will start trying saying to myself things will be okay. Telling the mature woman as well as the little girl. It will be okay. Meanwhile mastering my life. And allowing myself to relax and laugh and cry when there is company who want to share those moments with me. 

Feb 5, 2017

Grain by grain

It’s like grains of sand, she said. You don’t notice the first one. Hardly the second and third. Then you start feeling them. But gradually you are getting used to the change.

Hédi Fried is 94 years old. Born in Rumania she survived both Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen as a little girl and arrived on The White Buses in Sweden in 1945. Her first memory from here is the hot chocolate she was offered by the nurses welcoming her. 

Hédi Fried became a psychologist and author and has spent her life telling her story. Again and again. In books and lectures, most often in schools and among children and young people. The mission of corse is clear.

I am listening to her Friday night on the Scandinavian talk show Skavlan. Fredrik Skavlan is asking her how it happens. When it happens, how can it happen? And she responds:

It’s like grains of sand. You don’t notice the first one. Hardly the second and third. Then you start feeling them. But gradually you are getting used to the change. It’s happening.

Sverigedemokraterna (The Sweden Democrats) a nationalistic, social conservative, rasist and xenophobic party was voted into the Swedish parliament in 2010 by 5,7 %. Sweden was in chock. Up until then our governing had been clean from brown boots and the fear that rules these opinions. And all the other political parties swore they would never even talk to them, even less give them any kind of power.

In the 2014 election Sverigedemokraterna had 12,9 % of the Swedish vote. Now the third largest party in the parliament. It’s hard to tell when the shock was more massiv, in 2010 or 2014.

Gradually most of the other parties have incorporated opinions which originally you did only find within Sverigedemokraterna. You can even recognize the rhetoric. Grain by grain. And by the massive stream of refugees during 2015 our fundamental Swedish values of solidarity went out the window and we closed our borders.

http://homeisawayawayishome.blogspot.se/2015/09/have-you-forgotten-your-history-how-is.html
http://homeisawayawayishome.blogspot.se/2015/10/the-end-of-one-journey-and-beginning-of.html
http://homeisawayawayishome.blogspot.se/2015/12/sweden-becoming-fortress.html

The next election will be in 2018. And a couple of weeks ago the Swedish right wing party Moderaterna started talks with Sverigedemokraterna. Grain by grain.

Since January 4th 2016 all travelers crossing the border between Denmark and Sweden  must show an ID card. I don't have the most recent numbers, but in 2014 95800 persons were commuting between the two countries every day. Their commute is now, due to the ID check, 30-40 minutes longer, making at least an extra hour a day.

The other day I was watching a news clip on the subject. For a year now people have had to go through this process every day to get to their job and back home. Quiet and patiently waiting in line. Most of them of course looking very Scandinavian born and bred. And this will continue. People have adapted. Grain by grain.

A week ago I was stating Donald Trump’s hyper active manic behavior might cause so much disturbance in society that even people different to Seattle mayor Ed Murray and Washington governor Jay Inslee could realize the country might collapse. Well, the republican U.S. District Judge James Robart, appointed by President George W. Bush, Friday ordered a national halt to enforcement of President Trump’s controversial travel ban, arguing it as “unlawful and unconstitutional. This also happened in Seattle. I am a very proud in heart Seattleite.

I am thinking about the grain by grain theory though, watching Donald Trump. His behavior sure isn’t grain by grain. It’s an earthquake no one can escape. It’s a volcano erupting. Yet, listening to CNN’s chief political analyst Gloria Borger at the end of the week I am wondering.

Was it last Saturday when he was on phone with eight world leaders on the same day, I think so. Hearing this I was stunned. Thinking there was clearly no time for contemplation between those calls. No time for taking in. No time for processing. No time for other than shooting from the hip. So it wasn’t surprising hearing Gloria Borger reporting how Donald Trump had been so rude and aggressive during those calls some of the experienced White House staff had gone white faced.

But what worried me the most was Gloria Borger discussing in terms of the nation and the world getting used to this. His behavior. His actions. Getting used to the change. Getting numb.

Can an earthquake be one grain of sand? A volcano erupting the second? A tsunami a third? Is what’s going on right now the little grains of sand? Then what will The Big One be?