Unarmed

how I feel safe with my protectors

I asked him, teasingly "how come you get to be the one to sit with your back to the wall?"

I was working in a correctional setting, so I had some hypervigilance associated with having my back to a room. He'd been a marine and a cop for all his adulthood. I'd argue his duty began when he was still only a boy. 

He leaned across the table of our corner booth, controlled, quiet, and asked me pointedly "Are you armed?" 

That put me right in my place. 

This earlier version of me had so much fun testing men with my own masculine energy. I still love to play there with my brothers and fathers in the world. 

And, this was one of the first real invitations from a man to be all the way in my own feminine, not to protect myself but to be safe because someone else is protecting me. 

In truth, this experience is available at all times. 

Safety is NEVER available. Death may lurk in our veins, in our environment, in a catastrophic event, and death is guaranteed. Safety is not available. BUT. 

We can experience safety. We can experience a drop of our protection-practices and a relaxation into trusting a moment we know cannot be known. 

I acknowledge and honor the protectors at my castle walls to feel my safety within them.

I walk into a space alone, and my sight, heart, and attention goes to the men who notice me and account for my presence in the space. 

That is *all* they are doing, as regards their attention on me, and they are almost always doing it unnoticed. But I notice them. 

This is the subtlety of soft cock masculine energy, the watcher, the observer, the HOLDER. He's quietly taking inventory of the environment, and he is *ready to rise.*

He's not *risen,* not blustering about how he's gonna protect everyone if someone comes in through that door. 

He's gently alert, holding the space and experiencing what is happening. He can participate in the play while he holds the space, and he knows he holds the space with other men. 

This applies to provision as well, even more subtle, even less likely to be noticed and applauded. 

Like when we went to pick up a couch for my friends, and two men, whose business it absolutely was not, took charge of the whole project of moving it down the stairs. 

This happens all the time, and do we sound the trumpets for these men? Who asked them to show up and make it all happen? What can we imagine they're getting out of this, if we are so committed to seeing men as pillagers? 

Oh, there are SO many layers, and you are welcome to unpack those nuances, but please don't expose them to me like I'm ignorant of them. All that goes into men's grooming in our culture, the ways they are shaped and sliced, the ways they are sacrificed and scapegoated. The ways they are primed and predator and protector and prey. Spare me the way society *should be,* we are here to talk about how things ARE. 

All I know how to do is love men anyway, to keep my eyes on the loving men and trust them to keep their eyes on the dangerous ones. That's the best experience I can have of men, seeing their love in the world and receiving it, letting them know I know it for what it is. This appreciation has impact on them, but I do it for me. 

I love men for me. I feel into men's protection and choose safety within it *for me.* I don't ask you to do it. I just tell you how good it feels when I do it.