I don't have a problem being excluded from society because I have lived on the fringes of mainstream society for over 3 decades but it is a bitter pill to swallow when your own flesh and blood turns on you so viciously, accusing you of all sorts of evils for simply caring that they don't take the shot and seeing this division play out, in families and relationships across Australia is devastating.
My first experience of exclusion was being engaged and pregnant at 18, and being told by almost everyone that having an abortion was the right and sensible thing to do. My bridesmaids told me, after I married that we could no longer be friends as I was making different life choices, that my marriage was based on lust and they would have the socially responsible 1.8 children!
Somehow, excluded and free to make our own choices, unconstrained by friends, we ended up home birthing, home schooling, eating natural organic foods even pumping water from the springs and buying raw milk, to living a tree change, sea change and acreage change, while running a web development business together. Together, my husband and I had so many children, people would count them on the street in disbelief. Since we didn't fit into a religious cult either, we didn't find our tribe easily but we birthed and raised our children, our closest friends.
I long ago accepted I was different. I have had spiritual experiences from my childhood, and many near death encounters but the hatred, criticism and intolerance for simply living differently, or persecution by the State (way before covid), or being turned on and hated by my eldest, I never expected in this life.
For a long time, I thought people were as open and tolerant, accepting of different life journeys as I was but I came to find that Australian society generally was outwardly so; but inwardly cruel, bullying and fake to those who did not conform.
So it's no surprise to me, when I met up with a LinkedIn friend this week, that she was excommunicated by her family and thought of as diseased for not taking the jab. I wonder if soon people will experience unboostered segregation, exclusion and vilification and the ranks of the unjabbed rise even more, as the campaign for the boosters ramps up?
Covid mandates has super charged the anti-vax, anti-pharma movement and raised awareness of so many things wrong in the world and the deep levels of corruption, immorality and self interest in it.
Just like how the no jab, no play and no jab, no pay legalization, 6 years ago brought together many "crunchy" parents into extensive somewhat underground networks, covid in a similar way is creating communities and friendships.
There is nothing quite like persecution and shared suffering to bond people together!
As I sat chatting with my friend, our conversation turned to the future of raising children not just educated but with consciousness and critical thought, full of love, and kindness. To a model of education that encompassed recorded video lessons, but also virtual and face to face tutorials and hands on learning. Teaching everything from effective communication, nutrition and movement, to embracing music as expression of one's own self not molded by other's expectations, to higher level mathematics and problem solving, with parents contributing from the wealth of their experiences and knowledge. A true community, united by shared values. The old systems lead us here to this place of incredible cruelty and intolerance.
Even if this all ended tomorrow, in the words of Dr Dolores Cahill, we can't go back to the same things that got us here in the first place.
I salute all those who are standing alone and true to themselves despite the incredible social pressure, threats and vilification from those nearest and dearest to them. Embrace this journey but connect in real life to those with shared values, pray for those who wish you harm and know that you stand on the right side of history because even if taking this jab was the fountain of eternal lasting life: to bully, coerce, mandate and threaten another to take it, is immoral. We don't want the society that has devolved from this madness but we all need community.
One can only live in exile for so long.
