SEEKING  APPROVAL  or  SELF-ACCEPTANCE    

 

Facilitated by JM Green  

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

During the most recent Friday night forum, same gender loving Brothers looked at their relationship to Self-Acceptance through the following lenses:

What is self-acceptance?

"A complete love of one's self..."

"Accepting that I am a flawed human being..."

"It doesn't matter what you think of me...I spent a lot of time letting others rent space in my head...what matters is that I love myself..."

"Self-love and self-acceptance are very different..."

"Self-acceptance is a very humble place...a place of humility..."

"[It is] Giving myself permission to do what I want to do...I allow myself to do what I want to do and feel what I want to feel..."

"Taking inventory as to who I am and accepting [that stuff]..."

{Facilitator says, "Conducting self-inventory...being introspective...is an important step on the way to self-acceptance...and by the time I can take inventory of myself and not stand in judgment of myself, I can be said to have achieved self-acceptance..."}

"[It is] to accept yourself unconditionally..."

{Facilitator asks, "'Unconditionally' is a popular sentiment...Unconditional love, for instance...I suspect mothers may tend to love unconditionally...and, not all mothers...God loves unconditionally...unconditional self-acceptance might be an aspiration...or might it give us to settle for being less than our best selves?..."}

"Self-love is the nurturing of one's self..."

"Unconditional love is not a blind eye...It's loving enough to fix something that requires it..."

{Facilitator says, Thanks for that clarification...I believe there are gradations...On the way to self-love is self-acceptance..."}

Are you defining yourself, or letting the world define you?

"I didn't begin to love myself till I was in my mid-forties...I hated everything about myself...nobody had to hate me...I did it for them...I had a cousin who told me when I was twelve, I needed to stay out of the sun because I was no longer even black...I was blue...Thanks to BMX and a shrink that I like, I've [begun learning self-acceptance]...I never liked the word 'gay'...I heard same gender loving, and it made sense to me...it told me that I can love..."

"You never allow others to define your experience...As of now, I define myself...I wasn't crazy about myself [as a kid]...I was a nerd...They used to call me fartmasterflex...I used to hate myself...When I got my first friend, I let her define me...'You're not gay, it's a phase'...When I first tried my first guy, I was happy that I wasn't doing what everyone else wanted me to do and was doing what I wanted to do..."

"None of us can define ourselves until others have defined us...Once the world defines you, then you can define yourself...We need people to define us and criticize us...[in order to find our voices]..."

"When I look and listen to the language about Black men who have sex with men, it's usually negative...How can you use the language of the oppressor to define yourself?...There's definition, but there's also giving meaning to something...I can tell you how to drive a car, but you won't know how to drive it until you sit behind the wheel...I don't want to use the same language that oppresses me to define myself..."

"The gay versus same gender loving thing...A lot of people have negative associations with gay...When I use same gender loving, it's an opportunity to be more encompassing...It forces us to look at the relationships we have amongst one another...It allows for genuine respect and concern for other men"

"I can tell [if I'm letting the world define me] if I'm saying, 'I wish I were...I'm learning to adapt SGL...""For me, [defining myself is] a constant process...How much I participate in other people's definition of me can set how much I am defined by others..."

What do you want to change in your life?

"I want to change...I want to stop being so presumptuous about [thinking I know] who people are in the face of how they define themselves..."

"How do you change people's perception of you?...People assume I'm a bottom all the time..."

"The whole blind thing...You're less than a man...less capable...Is there's a method for combating [negative perceptions?.]."

{Facilitator says, "A reason the role-playing term 'bottom' has a negative connotation is because we live in a patriarchy...and a fundamental part of patriarchy is misogyny...the fear and hatred of women...One of the things that makes us so powerful...and that makes a lot of people afraid of us is that we have access to our male and female energies...But, because of misogyny, we are discouraged from accepting, embracing and celebrating our female energy...So, if you would change people's perception of you, a good place to start might be in changing your perception of you...Of taking up some process of self-acceptance on the way to integrating all your sources in such a way as to be able to celebrate them all...and watch everybody else fall in line..."}

"One of the things I would like to change about myself is my attitude...I [have] always felt like I was under attack...[So] I'm very defensive..."

What's holding you back?

"[What's holding me back] basically is fear...When  you change, you wonder will people like the change?...If they don't, it's kick drop...But now, I'm over it..."

How do we unlearn unhealthy beliefs about being Black and SGL?

"I'm really more intelligent than I thought I was...You don't have a spec of an idea what you really might be...You have to create a track in which your thoughts, ideas and dreams are so you can remember them...So that you can begin to work on them...Unless you get to find out the stuff about yourself...you'll never know how [powerful you are]...Your ideas are sacred..."