Stockholm Syndrome [a poem]

🍁🎄Plus, some gift ideas for the passionate-beautiful-creative people you love

Nov 21, 2023

They say Stockholm syndrome—a condition where captives start to sympathize with their captors—is rare. But as I thought of the way I’m willingly drawn to social media over and over again (even though I know it harms my mental health and creativity and real-world connections) I couldn’t help but wonder: Do I have a new-age form of Stockholm syndrome?

Deidre Braley

I have a poem for you today as you get ready to head into the Thanksgiving holiday 🍁, and also some gift ideas (that I want to give YOU & that you might want to give others). So if you’re a super-scroller—make sure you scroll ALLLLLL the way down!🎄

I sat down this morning feeling (figuratively) hoarse from shouting into social media.
It felt a lot like it used to feel when I was still teaching in the classroom: when it got close to the holidays, it didn’t matter how many times I asked or how important my material was—I could not get those kids to listen. Who can compete with the excitement of turkey and unlimited pie and later, Santa Claus?

I’d come home exhausted, and often voiceless.

Lately I’ve been feeling like social media is like that—a classroom of second graders who don’t give a flying flip about anything if it’s not jingling or sparkling or made of sugar. Is anyone else feeling this?

For a while, I thought maybe I could be jingling and sparkling and made of sugar, just to keep eyes on me. But I’m slowly starting to realize that it is killing me a little inside, to do all that dancing and entertaining and pleading to be heard above the noise.

I thought that social media was serving me, but I was wrong.

I’ve been serving it.

Do we all?

And if we do—how can we snap the ties that are holding us captive so we can live, really live, in this real-live-breathing-colorful world, rather than eternally lusting after the rectangles in our hands?

Stockholm Syndrome

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What would it look like
to be loud with our silence—
to snap the 
invisible threads
and see our Stockholm syndrome
for what it really is?

Instead of diving
into the fingers that don't hesitate to touch
us and leave us,
to take what they will of our frail and fragile offerings
as we cry, "This is my soul, broken for you:
gorge yourselves 
and declare me delicious," 

What if we re-emerge
into the pulsating color
of the living world? 
And—breaking the surface of our slavery—
we'll gasp for air as our lungs fill
with almost 
unbearable lightness,
hardly conditioned for receiving such glory
after breathing the incantations of idols 
for so long. 

And there in the noonday sun,
we'll close our mouths
to retreat into reverence
And revelation will shimmer
from every pocket of time, magnified
by the hush.

No longer will we plead, naked,
to empty rooms; nay—our silence
will sing hymns
too holy for the casual consumption 
we confused for love. 

And the hands of all who've touched us
will grope in the dark 
void, greedy for our beautiful 
curations. 

But we'll be in the wild real world
where they can't reach us,
having finally realized that
our lusty cries have made us hoarse
and we've got no more air
for screaming into obscurity. 

- Deidre Braley

Gifts for you, gifts for the people you love

This year I had the goal of getting all my Christmas shopping down before Thanksgiving. [Let it be known that I did get close, but I will not entirely meet this goal because WHAT DO YOU EVEN BUY THE MEN IN YOUR LIFE?]

If you’re like me and love to get your shopping done early so that you can:

a.) Do it thoughtfully

b.) Spend the majority of December inhaling Christmas candles and reading books

…then I have a couple of ideas that I’d like to share with you. [I know, I know: me and the rest of the Internet.]

But I just had the extreme privilege of working with Steve Veasey on a new design inspired by my post, I Am Not a Genre, and now it’s an anthem that you can wear and drink from and stick to your water bottle.

Oh, and I want to send you some of it! 🎄

For anyone who becomes a paid subscriber OR gives a gift subscription between now (November 21) and December 8, 2024, I will send you whichever new I AM A GENRE design you want. Yep. For real. I’ll pop it in the mail and you’ll have it in time for Christmas 🎄.

Want to gift it?

Not only does this make a super rad gift for the creative, beautiful, artsy, passionate people in your life, but it helps support my teeny-tiny business. (And guys—I love Amazon as much as the next gal, but I guarantee they don’t do a happy dance every time you place an order). Here are a few of the designs, but there are even more in my shop. Check ‘em out: