THE JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES… starts with a single step
If I think of ALL the information I want to share, all insights I may still be missing, all angles and layers and perspectives there are to be covered and understood in this matter, the idea of building this new life’s work, this EDUCATION, is almost daunting.
But I know I want to do it, with religious conviction. The White Tigress – a name I borrowed from the Taoist cult The White Tigress because it resembles most closely what my message is – is my Magnum Opus. The legacy of a ten year journey. Although when I started in 2006, it all seemed a lot smaller and a lot more personal.
On the surface it wasn’t that big a deal. I had experienced one three year, and one fourteen year relationship. I was 34, and I desired some adventure. There were no children to be split, nor did I have a desire for children. It was a peaceful parting.
But under the surface, much deeper and darker waters were stirred. Because of course, there had been a reason I had chosen the relationships, over fooling around at a young age. A stage when it is in most circles more or less accepted that you experiment and stay single. The reason was simple yet unbelievably real; aids.
I had my first period in the early eighties, right when aids was discovered. We had lived in Africa, and I knew immediately I had been at risk there. Not at risk as in;
“I had no idea how aids was distributed, and in my childish mind I exaggerated.”
But at risk as in;
”That ball of cotton wool with Iodine the school nurse used, was used for the whole school!”
I m a bit of a cry baby, and this had served me. Because the second time I came there for treatment and she reached for it, I said it hurt too much and I got a disinfecting spray from a can. One exposure less! But my Africa background had put me at risk before my first period, and before anybody knew anything.
And that was before sex education dug its filthy claws into me.
For those of you born after 1985 let me give you a little background info on the eighties; It is generally viewed as the most depressing, gloomy decade since the second world war. There was financial success and gain for some, and lifelong unemployment for many. If you graduated in the eighties, you had studied to be on welfare, and would be lucky to find your first job at 35.
Next to this grim employment market we had Thatcher in England, Reagan in the United States, and the cold war was peaking into an arms race on one hand, and anti-nuclear demonstrations on the other. With its bright and neon coloring, the eighties were a decade that looked fresh on the outside, but it was a desperate era and a spiritual wasteland.
And that was before the first footage of aids patients surfaced. I will not even begin to describe how an aids patient looked like those days, but suffice to say that if your job was to educate people on how to prevent getting the virus, the absolute fucking last thing you needed to do was to scare them even more. The. Absolute. Last. But like I said; it was the eighties. It was not the time nor the place for subtle messages, so they printed brochures where the word aids was written in blood, deep kissing was advised against because it could not be excluded as a potential risk, and oral sex was dangerous. And I know I said it was written in blood, but it was actually blood spatter. As if Freddy Kruger would come get you if you had unprotected sex.
Aids became the same stick pregnancy had been before;
A way to beat all sexual freedom out of a whole generation.
But then something happened. And I m still not sure how this was possible, but I think it must have had something to do with all the other teenagers already being hardened from all other misery and agony they were confronted with each day, because NO ONE got the message. I have not had a single girlfriend, or boyfriend, who gave safe sex a second thought. They were all immune to the indoctrination, and the mental abuse that sexual education was in the eighties. All. Except of course; one.
And she went into hiding.
<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living
note from LS Harteveld;
I’m publishing my books The Wait Worth 8 and for the final leap, I m going ALL IN. So I won’t be writing new material, for two to three weeks. In the meantime I will repost these White Tigress Notes – which were created at Facebook earlier this year.
My White Tigress teachings are based on a book by Hsi Lai and my personal journey.
You can like the White Tigress page on Facebook, or sign up for my new official White Tigress blog at; White Tigress Lair
extra; (Dutch/Nederlands)
De Witte Tijgerin – gids voor solitaire vrouwen die een geweldig seksleven willen en plenty energie