Freedom as relationship, not escape
A short distinction with very large consequences.
In the culture I was raised in, freedom was almost always freedom from. Freedom from a regime. Freedom from a religion. Freedom from a family. Freedom from a marriage that had outlasted its honesty. This was earned freedom; it was real; I do not relativise it.
But there is another freedom that I have come to think is the harder one — the freedom that stays. Freedom in relationship. The freedom to remain inside a body, a country, a vow, a family, a tradition, a sentence, without having to perform a version of yourself in order to keep your seat.
The first freedom is bought by leaving. The second is built by staying with eyes open.
I am suspicious of any practice that markets only the first. I am suspicious of any practice that demands only the second. The work, in my experience, is to know which one this season is asking of you.