Today the sun and working outside warmed my soul. But also an email made me feel stigmatized. Ignoring the sun but hurting bythe stigma I looked on www.nonviolentcow.org web page for a copy of my simple essay: “Stigma Stains the Soul”. I did not find it on the web page so I decided to use it for tonight’s posting. So instead of comments on the sun you get thoughts on stigma tonight. Tomorrow will be another day, the sun will rise and the hurt of the stigma will go away.

Stigmatizing a person
Is like calling the person morally defective,
A flawed human being.

In every stigma there is some truth,
The ‘mentally ill” usually are persons with a mental illness,
Persons who “talk too much” are usually very vocal.
“Terrorists” often do promote terror.

However, a stigma depersonalized the person receiving it,
Often justifying cruel and inhumane treatment.

It is difficult for one to accept the truth of the stigma,
Since accepting it often means accepting being less a human person.

Often, the people in the system that ‘treat’ the person with stigma,
The very persons that desire to stamp out the stigma,
Impose the biggest stigma of all on a person
By the way they treat the person with the stigma.
Sometime they are too condescending, talk about the person in their presence, like the person is a third party and not part of the conversation.

The best way, perhaps, to deal with stigma
Is to look at it as it as violence to the mind
And treat it in a creative non-violent way.
Thus not to react to it,
But to absorb it as it is,
No matter how much that it hurts.
So that by not reacting,
Not letting it stick to one’s soul,
It will naked, exposed and made powerless,
Thus be seen for what it is,
A stain to be cleaned,
Hurtful not healing,

Then and only then
Can the person stigmatizing see it?
And stop it,
And the person being stigmatized
Not identify with the stigma
But use it to more deeply understand who they are.

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