when you or someone you care about, near or far, is being hurt by someone, whether intentionally or seemingly unintentionally.
This applies to physical harm and to emotional harm.
Harm is violence, and violence requires a barrier of sorts be built, to recalibrate the “system” without that person or group, and judgement is the means by which this separation happens.
Judgement means separation. It means the conscious creation of distance. But this is sometimes absolutely necessary.
We all have both a right and what I would argue is a positive duty to mend our own fences and tend to your own needs. If you don’t, you become a burden to others, and that is a type of harm.
Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we STILL become a burden. This is OK. Accept help when needed, rid yourself of the need for it as soon as possible, then pay it forward, if I may indulge a cliche.
But for me, despite many years of unrelenting effort and focus, I am still finding ways my mother messed my mind up. What people do consciously can be very hard to detect, if done with subtlety, but when you are dealing with what amounts to a cunning Alter, that is so far in the darkness it is nearly impossible to see.
But I don’t quit. And when you don’t quit, you will sooner or later succeed. I may have just discovered a means of relieving myself of some huge burdens. We will see.