thank you for the invite
@Innocent Forever . I am afraid my response is on the sad side.
Chanukah is a time of light. Of adding light into your life and the world
it is so odd to me now at my advanced age that i can look back and i see this holiday as a time of illustrated darkness bc in an effort to raise his children as atheists, my father made his children (and especially me) look down on all people (and especially people of my heritage) instead as if any person or group of people were less people for having their own beliefs, faith, and sources of comfort and happiness that were different from my dear old dad's! for so many years I shunned people, and most of the time not even realizing that I was doing that (even when told i was) because most of the time i was so busy hating myself I just thought it was I being hated. surely this is darkness! it is no surprise that I developed my own spirituality as my own way of trying to find light but my father had his own reasons for keeping his children isolated in darkness (in the name of openness, light and moving progerssively ahead. - it was all a farce - yet for most of my life I had no idea. so powerful was his need for objects to control and the control itself that my subserviance outlived him by 25 years. So much I wish I could share in the joys of holiday, closeness with other people, community, giving. yet i still am peeling away layers of the harm. but it is so important to note that in my prison cell of supposed forward thinking, it is so easy to see that all that I was isolated from was way more open and accepting that my life ever was. I need to start learning so much that is my own heritage yet know so little about and find the bond between my heritage and the good in the life I made as my attempt to survive for the duration (duration being most of my life).
