Each time around the holiday season a number of people in my crunchy circle (what the hell is “crunchy” Talina?) find themselves upset when trying to mesh with non-crunchy loved ones that are often downright rude and generally not accommodating.
Year after year I hear about…
- People that insist on hosting a holiday celebrations but whom refuse to acknowledge an attending family member’s food allergy or food preference.
- People that downright un-invite you to events because of your crunchy preferences or food requests.
- People that accost you at events for parenting choices.
- People that just ridicule you behind your back.
- People having to prepare their own meals to take along to events where eating choices, needs or food allergies aren’t considered by the host.
- Children being slipped no-no foods, drinks or toys behind parents backs just to make the parents angry.
- Children being snubbed because of their parents crunchy choices about foods or toys.
While I don’t usually have to deal with meshing our own crunchy beliefs with family members around the holidays (since we live so far away from all of them and we celebrate by ourselves) but I do get my share of online “crunchy hating” or “crunchy flaming” so I can relate…
Apparently October 30th & 31 were popular days for my blog according to my site stats notifications. So I peeked at what posts and back links were driving so much random traffic. Turns out some crunchy hating (that can be seen on: http://bit.ly/1ckq0ud as of right now) brought some 500 new hits to my site on Halloween… but I’m not mad. Just mildly curious sort of amused. Here is a screenshot of the above link in case it is removed for some reason:
LOL, I’m so trendy I guess… Who knew!? Better yet, who really cares?
Apparently a number of people do…
I have a theory or two about crunchy flaming… What never ceases to amaze me is how people react to what you are doing, like you are doing it only to judge and shame them or something. There is often such rage and offense behind people’s actions or words. Somehow people get so darn offended because then they actually have to face the fact that they themselves are also making key choices about things and they have to reconcile their own hangups about those things.
It reminds me of a loved one’s response to my birth experience having Everly. Nathan was present for Everly’s birth and very involved in the lengthy birth process. Anyway this loved one didn’t have similar birth experiences, her husband wasn’t involved… possibly not even present for her deliveries… and this made her feel certain things that she later just heaped on me in an unrelated attack. We later discussed this in great detail. I was the living, breathing representation of what she never knew she was missing in her births and that wasn’t easy for her at the time I guess. So she dumped a heap of negativity on me about the first thing she could find.
My recent online crunchy flamer has said:
“I like to think of myself as pretty open to some crunchy, hippie choices (I’m vegetarian, my primary doctor is a naturopath, someday I plan on an unmedicated birth)… but she’s having her two under-5 kids in the delivery room?! It’s their “full disclosure parenting style”. Were the kids present when the baby was conceived, too?“
I personally LOVE that my two daughters wont ever fear childbirth or have to learn the very basics about breastfeeding should they ever choose to take the same paths I have. I am exposing them to these things that I wasn’t exposed to and was therefor ignorant of. My girls wont be ignorant because they get to witness these key things for themselves.
| Do they watch when babies are conceived? Is that really the argument here?! Of course they don’t watch us having sex! However, they DO know about sex and the proper names for all parts involved, they also know that it is for adults and not kids and that the main outcome of sex is to procreate (to the right you’ll find a good book for teaching ALL the sex details)… but our teaching them those things has nothing to do with birth or trendy bandwagons. It is because of my own childhood sexual abuse, my poor communication about what was happening and my desire to empower my daughters to express inappropriate touches and encounters with us, should they every occur.
I’m not going to sit here and argue the judgements made, I’ve no reason to. If someone had an honest question about some choice of ours and they came to us, we’d be happy to discuss how we arrived at our decision but our decisions aren’t ever up for argument. We have no time or energy for that kind of hate filled bickering. |
I’ve shared the above crunchy hating experience with you today because I know for a fact several of my friends are about to endure similar crunchy hating as families come together for Thanksgiving and the winter holidays…
Keep your head up and let it run off your back.
Regardless of the reasons why people crunchy hate I just try to remind myself that we’ve arrived at our decisions about various things after much contemplation, research, personal experience and weighing of the pros and cons. Weighing the opinions and possible judgements of others usually isn’t part of the decision making process nor should it be, so the views in response to what choices have been made are basically irrelevant.
…and if someone wants to genuinely and maturely talk about the reasoning behind choices and decisions I’m sure you are like me and feel willing to have a conversation with them. But please don’t let people make you feel like you need to defend each of your choices or decisions! If those people were really interested in knowing your true heart and mind they wouldn’t be attacking you with hate and negativity.
Maybe at a later time they will come around and be open to having a mature conversation about their concerns or questions but maybe they wont, and that is okay too.
Just focus on what you can control and let the rest go.
How have you found your own successes in battling crunchy flaming or crunchy hate?
