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Inspired by Corey Washingtons "Conversation Derelict”.

It’s been discussed that the habits we learn about listening and conversation come from the habits we were exposed to or developed in our youth. It’s been recognized that this time in history, we are at a crux of conversation, where understanding, listening, and reflecting take place at rapid speeds, often in repetitive forms. In my own life, I see that the ways in which I express myself as a woman, differ greatly from the men I surround myself with. The vulnerability in affective connotations is a shared language with other womb men, while the informative connotations go over well with men. This observation changes in context when referring to different cultures and geographical locations. I bring this comparison to the table as I try to unearth the root of my own conversation derelicts, to seek my way out to a clearing. 

I was inspired by Corey to delve into my own communication praxis, because I too am a mother with a baby due this year. I too come from Baltimore, where the culture is one of kind, filled with sentimental love shrouded in fear. A place that has shaped my parents, and bore me, thrusting me out into the world to see beyond its borders, to be an observer of other forms of communication. 

I struggle, at 28, to change habits of frustration, arisen from misunderstandings in communication. And they are plenty. I am partnered with someone 14 years older than me, and from another country. Our ways are similar, but much gets lost in translation. I feel this to be true, because often I have an “attitude” linked to my upbringing in Baltimore that I can’t seem to get rid of. I’m not sure that I need to, honestly, but I am interested in softening my approach. To be better understood, and to be a better example for the future. Yet, I wonder if this observation of my “attitude” in conversation, is something to be derided because of difference in culture, or something to be understood and handled with care…

We, myself, my partner, Corey, are all a part of a society who’s cornerstone is judgement. Judgement to control, judgment to exert domain, judgement for power. 

I see this manifest in conversations online, in the streets, in my own thoughts. I believed it helped us make sense of the world, now I see it as a crutch to deny the very difficult task of changing the pattern.