Leftist goyim misunderstanding (often purposefully) the concept of Jews as a "chosen people" in order to further perpetuate their antisemitism is making me want to bang my head against a wall.

Step one: Birkenstocks or similar sandals that make it clear you showed up on a whim having otherwise had big plans for gardening

Step two: don't shave your legs. If possible, adhere more hair.

Step three: some kind of chunky belt (studded?)

Step four: make sure your undercut is appropriately sharp

Step five: profit

this is a weird Q and i fully expect to get no replies bc i myself am stumped, but I'm trying to figure out how to butch up an outfit:

the outfit in question is for a themed party and is the only thing i can find in my house that matches the theme: it kind of looks like Jana's dress in that last post tbh except my sleeves are more like regular tshirt sleeves and the v-neck is more like a tshirt v-neck. plus the pattern is this bright green and white floral:

so more casual looking than Jana's, but even still i honestly feel uncomfortably feminine in it just as it is. so outside of like, black doc martens HOW would one appear more obviously bisexual while wearing it??

Can confirm. When I told them I was bi and my mental health issues are existant but well-treated, they had to get a tribunal together to make sure I was sufficiently gay/crazy for this hellsite (affectionate).

Gays and crazies? Really?

yes when you join tumblr they check your mental health records and dating app history to verify that you're gay and crazy enough to use the site. it's in the terms

You very literally made me LOL at your caption

Nightmare blunt rotation

Guess I'd better start practicing!

there's actually 2 levels of heaven regular and VIP, and the only requirement for VIP is the lady gaga dance from Judas (no mistakes)

Did anyone else want to be Mandie from the Lois Gladys Leppard books? Or was that just me?

There was a tweet or meme a while ago about thinking you were really religious and then discovering that you actually just loved live music.... that hit me hard. A bunch of people singing together really scratches an itch in me that nothing else does.

Mostly, I've missed the community. It's hard to find the same sort of thing it in other places but I've had some success with being an adult member of Girl Guides, attending library events, and joining parent groups at local family resource centres (Early ON/ON y va in Ontario).

For those who were once fully-devoted and later left organized Christianity, what ways have you found to meet your spiritual needs now?

Solid advice from @spurgie-cousin. I probably wouldn't be able to stop myself from asking follow-up questions. Does this woman genuinely not have anyone in her life that she would trust to take care of her kids for a few hours? Does she know that that is neither nor normal or healthy?

I know that not everyone is lucky enough to have parents and/or in-laws that are alive, want to be involved in their grandchildrens' lives, and are safe and healthy people for children to be around. Most people do have siblings or friends that take on the role of family.

Children need more people in their lives than just their parents, and I've never once met parents that never needed help with their children. I did not local grandparents growing up, but there were sweet older ladies at church that took care of my brother and my a handful of times, like when my dad had an emergency appendectomy.

I'm a mom now, and I can tell you, there is no one that I choose to have in my life (excluding acquiantances) that I wouldn't trust with my kids. Anyone who is unsafe to be with my children is someone who I do not want to be around by myself either. There are plenty of people in my life that wouldn't be my first choice to watch my kids, but that's because I think either the adults or the kids would not enjoy the experience, absolutely not because I expect my kids would be harmed.

If you genuinely believe that you cannot trust anyone in your life to safely take care of your kids,you need to seriously consider whether a) you need to surround yourself with different people; b) take a deep look at why you have trouble trusting people; or c) both.

A friend just threatened to ban my fiance and I from ever seeing her kids again if we choose to ask that the only kids present at our wedding are immediate family and kids in the wedding party. Her kids would be in the wedding party, but because we’d be implying that parents get a sitter, we’re encouraging unsafe parenting and are no longer safe to be around her kids if we go through with this choice.

I want so badly to tell you this is an April Fool’s day joke but this girl is already 1 foot on the tradwife/fundie/doomsday mom track so I’m not surprised yet I’m absolutely dumbfounded at the same time about how she jumped to that conclusion.

oh wow that's a headscratcher tbh, when I first read this I was like "ok well that woman is uniquely crazy" but the more I thought about it, the more it 100% sounds like a trad or fundie move to deem any and all babysitters dangerous and freak out about that.

not gonna lie I'd have no idea what to tell this woman either....... it sounds like she's far enough down the trad pipeline that's she's been convinced her children aren't safe with any person on the planet outside of their immediate family (very statistically untrue sadly) which is giving me like, Karissa Collins vibes. that's a few steps past the raw milk stage I feel.

i'm really trying to think of what I'd say in that situation bc I highly doubt there's any chance of making her be introspective about why she feels that way........ if she's a good friend I'd probably ask her to explain that thinking too me, because I don't understand?

I would also probably say something along the lines of, I'm really sorry you feel that way, but it is not my job to police how every single person I know parents, and I have to do what I need to do for my wedding set up/venue. And if she still feels that way then that's her prerogative as a parent but that's very upsetting for you, obviously.

idk that's a tough one and I'm sorry you have to deal with that. That's a really unfair and shitty position she's put you in.

Yup. I'm checking tumblr while in the car (Mr Mama is driving) and I'm checking tumblr to distract myself from Baby #2 screaming inconsolably because he hates the car.

I am so burnt out from my day-to-day life, and I know that I am so lucky and have it so good, but I have literally nothing left of me to give at the end of a day.

i've felt a lot of guilt lately for feeling the impulse to skip any content i see about the absolutely horrifying things happening to Palestinians (i don't, but lately i can't deny that i have the urge to) and the guilt i think originally came from assuming that i was feeling that way bc of empathy fatigue or whatever that fucking buzzword is that sometimes gets people off the hook for caring

but upon reflection i think it has more to do with the fact that as far as the limits of what I can do to help people, i've reached it, and i will keep giving as much as i can, but every time i hear another story knowing i am doing all i can but that it's not going to make anything stop, i start to think about all the people who COULD be helping. like the people with millions of dollars in spare change who could even charter a plane if they wanted to, or who could buy 20 million Sim cards without it affecting them in any way, or the people with so much influence on Western society that they could make one tweet and probably shift the popular political opinion in multiple countries.

and i will never stop paying attention to Palestinians and i will never not do what i can to help them but if i do have any kind of fatigue, it's a direct result of knowing so many people who could make a difference just won't because it might lose them some followers or cut their bottom line by 10% when they already have more money than God and like that is just........ that is a very infuriating and depressing reality to have to live with on a day to day basis. it is a literal genocide and people are thinking about the "optics" of saying a genocide is bad like........ oh.....my fucking GOD

I read something a while ago (I think it was in the context of parenting) that said that if you need to redirect someone's behavioir, it can be beneficial to begin by gratefully acknowledging something positive about the behaviour. In this case, that would be something like, "It means the world to me that you are so supportive of my life and my relationship, and that you're so eager to help me when you can. I love you and I know how lucky I am to have a sister that cares about me so much." And then say what @spurgie-cousin suggested about checking in with you first.

Basically, "I know that you feel X way" + "What I need is Y" = "Can you please show me X by doing Y."

Dear spurgiecousin, could you give me advice? I have been with my boyfriend for 5 months, we started talking about moving in together and I feel the relationsip is progressing nicely. We don't have an exact date but we're not in a hurry. My sister is very happy for me but how can I tell her I want her to take a step back from my relationship. Like she allready gifted us some things for our future home, added him to a family group chat without asking me, she's very sweet but it's too much :(

oh that's a tough one, I've only had to deal with that in like, the reverse lol where my relatives are the ones rushing to add their brand new relationships to the group chat or family photos (I will forever be stuck with my aunt's bald gym bro situationship in my wedding pics).

I think the only thing to do really is just have a gentle conversation with her saying that, while it's great she likes your bf, you're trying to take the relationship at slower pace than she might have thought you were bc that's what feels the most comfortable right now. And for that reason, can she please ask you before doing anything that might inadvertently speed that pace up or put pressure on you to do so? Like adding someone to the family group chat for example, which might sound like a small thing to her, but it's you and your bf who have to deal with the hurt feelings involved if that happened too early and things didn't work out, so he had to be removed, y'know? Or even housewarming gifts when you don't have a house to move into yet, one or two is whatever but a bunch might make you feel pressure to take that step before you're ready.

I'd just ask her to run things like that by you first, since the relationship is still pretty new in the grand scheme of things, and let her know it's just bc you're just trying to be careful about rushing the relationship (which is smart!).

DAYUM

SAY IT SISTER

Results of JD Duggar running for the Republican Constable Seat

Urgh, it's also awful and I can't stop thinking about how intimate his hand placement is 🤢

Ben's little brother got married. If you go to her Instagram, you'll see that in October 2023 her post was about her going to the homecoming dance with Ethan. Someone better at sleuthing will probably be able to figure it out, but I can't tell if she is married prior to graduating high school.

gentle friendly reminder to my queer mormon/christian friends to make sure the rhetoric you use to clap back against homophobia in the church isn't falling into the "cruel old testament god versus loving jesus" trope (or the related "the law of moses is backwards and obsolete" trope). invoking those ideas means invoking a couple thousand years of antisemitic history-- even if calling jewish people backwards, cruel, stupid, and/or evil wasn't your intention.

Holy fucking shit!!!!

Kaylee posted a video of Gideon getting scared/overwhelmed/uncomfy by the sound of a clarinet and actually passed it off as him getting “emotional” from the music “touching his heart”. Girl WHAT.

oh my GOD‼️‼️‼️‼️

Babies don't hear loud instruments and cry because it "touches their heart" you fucking morons‼️‼️ he's crying because his ears are brand new and the loud sound he doesn't understand is scaring him, or possibly even hurting him...

Holy shit I knew fundie homeschooling was bad but Jesus........ how stupid do you have to be to think your brand new baby is crying because he is just so moved by a loud instrument and not bc he's a BABY who doesn't understand anything yet?? This made me legitimately so angry I was going to leave a comment, but they have them disabled 🙄

I have some questions to ask in good faith. First, I want to say that I absolutely believe that missionaries do far more harm than good and that mission work is more of a religious circle jerk than actual support work like the Red Cross or other groups do. Obviously it's patriarchal and colonial and capitalist and arrogant.

But I don't see why she finds this training program quite so offensive. I'm sure that it doesn't accurately depict the cultures but I'd imagine that a lot of people who attend these things do leave with more empathy and compassion than when they arrived. If someone is going to react badly (emotionally or physically etc) to a mock-up of what they are going to experience in the field, isn't it better for that to happen on US soil where they're actually able to seek out supports?

Am I missing something?

..interesting

Sorry if this is a personal ask but as an ex-Christian how do you deal with the paranoia that you might go to hell when you die? I have considered myself agnostic for a while but lately I’ve been feeling like I should go back to Christianity because I am so scared of going to hell but I also feel like I should want to be a Christian for more reasons than that. Have you ever dealt with something like this? How did you handle it? Thanks and I love your blog!

Thank you! And that's a great question. The idea of going to hell got its claws in me deep as a kid so this is something I definitely struggled with even as an adult.

For me, the thing that helpe the most was just completely deconstructing and then reconstructing my idea of spirituality. A big part of that was studying other religions, particularly other types of Christianity but also Judaism, Islam, new age stuff, etc. The idea of hell can vary SO much from denomination to denomination, some believe it's not such a bad place, some believe it's temporary, and some don't even believe in it at all. It really got me thinking about how many ways the Bible can be interpreted and how even if hell was a real thing, maybe my own church's interpretation wasn't even correct. People are imperfect after all and we know religion can attract people who care more about power and control than spirituality. There are so many ways people think about the afterlife, how can I be sure what I was told is any more correct than what my Jewish neighbor, whose religion is even older than mine, believes?

Along those lines, another thing that shifted my perspective was learning that most people's idea of hell as a fiery, torturous underworld was actually not even included in the Bible but invented by a poet and philosopher named Dante Alighieri. Even Biblical scholars consider the poem in question to be complete fiction, but the idea burrowed its way into our collective psyche through other fictional media like movies and stories.

I think another thing that has been really important for me personally is defining my morality outside of the Christian idea of it. Basically sitting down with myself and deciding what few things, if any, I know are almost certainly true about myself, people, the universe etc. One of those things I decided was that despite my flaws, I do not think I am inherently bad (as my church had told me). I know that I do my best to be kind, fair, and always try to be a little better than I was the day before, even on the days I don't do it as well as I'd like. From that perspective, the idea that a supposedly benevolent creator would send me to eternal suffering for breaking a few arbitrary rules starts to feel less and less like the truth. If there is a God and he knows everything about me (and is not a masochist) he knows my heart and intentions.

There's definitely more but this has gotten long lol so I'll stop there for now. I guess the tl;dr of this all would be, to try to reframe your idea of spirituality as a whole. Learning about different kinds of spirituality, doing some serious self-reflection, and being very honest about it will help you do that, which can help you get out of your old ideology's grip. I hope any of that makes sense or can be helpful in some way ❤️ let me know if there's anything I can clear up, if you have other questions, or want to talk about it more