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Open Window Newsletter
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Open Window Newsletter will be a window through which you will see how your mind works involving emotions, exploring them to different levels, and looking at their different aspects as they pertain to the psyche. You will learn why we have behavior disorders, how they are created, and how they can be changed. You will read about different modalities and pathways to healing, bits and pieces of knowledge gained through years of counseling, from readers, and other sources and materials.The newsletter is published the first of every month and will include articles, poetry, Press Releases, Upcoming Events, medical information, and new contacts surrounding abuse and PTSD.
If there is anything you wish to see or anything you wish to share, please Contact Us with our questions, suggested topics of discussion, refer another source, or share your story or poetry. Your name will be withheld unless you give us permission to use it.
If you wish to receive the Open Window Newsletter, please email us. You will receive it every month until unsubscribe by emailing us again.
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Self Nurturing
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November & December 2008 - Self Nurturing ©
by Lady "Spirit Moon" Cerelli
Big changes in the wind and we will keep you posted in the January/February Open Window Newsletter. Until then we wish you a blessed Thanksgiving, a joyous Christmas, and a bounteous New Year. We also wish to extend our gratitude to you for staying with us. No one has unsubscribed and we keep adding to our list.
The Body Never Lies by Alice Miller, Phd
One of our readers suggested the book The Body Never Lies by Alice Miller, established as one of the world’s leading child psychologists. Alice Miller, PhD in philosophy, psychology and sociology, as well as a researcher on childhood, is the author of 13 books translated into thirty languages. Her website is www.alice-miller.com. In the book The Body Never Lies, she talks about a child being abused and, yet, “Thou shall honor they mother and father,” according to the 4th Commandment of the Christian Bible. As we grow into adulthood we still try to earn our parents love. She writes that the love an abused child has for its parent is not “love,” but attachment. The book is easy to read, understandable, and offers different perspectives to child abuse and its lasting effect. This is an excellent book if you feel an occasional spanking, or humiliating your child is for “its own good.”
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Virtual Book Tour
A virtual book tour is scheduled for Nov 10 and will run for 8 days. Please check our website www.peacewithptsd.org and www.keybusinesspartners.com for scheduled interviews. Some of our readers are already on the list and should have received your email. I took the liberty to send my publicist this list trusting the folks wouldn’t mind. You can always say no. In any case, this tour is the last event for my book My Journey to Peace with PTSD. I have released it into God’s hands and have gone on. Next newsletter will explain where our path has taken us and what it entails. To give you a clue, I have gone home.
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We have added a new link on What Works page. Enhanced healing offers counseling, free relaxing music with no royalties, and more. Check them out.
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Self Nurturing
I have spoken of nurturing before, but at a conference the first weekend of October had shown me how much I took for granted what I do for myself. Over the years I have learned to give myself the nurturing I didn’t get in my youth. My error was in assuming that others did the same thing. At the workshop, almost in unison, 4 people asked, “How do we nurture ourselves?” Though I taught my clients how to nurture themselves, I erroneously assumed that those not needing counseling knew how.
Nurturing empowers us with strength and courage. It gives us the ability to explore who we are, all the avenues around us, and what we want to do in life. Nurturing gives us the ability to choose for ourselves and have the confidence to deal with the choice if it turns out to be the wrong one. Though, I don’t think a wrong choice is a bad one, necessarily, if it teaches us something. Nurturing gives us the courage to seek our limitations and what we need to do to expand our knowledge to grow. This kind of nurturing is supposed to come from those who raised us. Without this compassionate love-based nurturing in our childhood, we don’t usually have good childhood memories and, therefore, leave our inner child behind as we grow into adulthood. Then as adults we find ourselves seeking the love and nurturing we didn’t get as children. And because we were never taught, we nurture ourselves in negative ways, like overspending, drug or alcohol use, sex, etc. All those negative choices stemming from our ego.
Over the years, watching other parents with their children, I observed the behaviors of the children when they were given nurturing love, as well as those who were mistreated, deprived, or ignored. This was where I learned how to treat my foster children. A little of the feedback they gave me was gratifying but lacked the true nurturing I sought. While seeking nurturing, I became gullible when I overly trusted people as I sought “approval.” For a long time trusting and approval were puzzlements to me until I watched my foster children with other people. My teenage foster children behaved the adults as I did at their ages, yet lacked the sensibility and wisdom as most adults have. At the same time, we were older than most adults on many levels. This I knew to be true because abuse aging a child. In a conversation with a professional, whose name I have since forgotten, I was told, “Perhaps you were so busy seeking approval, you didn’t learn what love is; and in your search you lost your inner child. Maybe, your inner child is seeking the adult.”
I sat for the longest time mulling this statement over and came to one conclusion. I didn’t exactly lose the child. The child never grew up, in many ways on many levels. What I mean is: I diapered my first brother at the age of 4 and became the surrogate to my siblings from the time on. I went from 4 to adult without the advantage of a childhood. That’s why things came so hard and were felt so deeply when betrayed or rejected. The child never had a chance to be a child, yet the adult in the child never had the opportunity to grow into adulthood either.
When I realized this, I went and got my first Teddy Bear. I have gone through many over the years – adding to the collection only to give them away to other children. I felt silly at first, but made the conscious effort to check in with my inner child I knew at 4 and intuited her smiling. I bought tiny tea sets and set them out as a little girl would. I would sometimes play with the toys before I gave them over to the children for Christmas. Don’t tell them I said that. I remembered the baths. We took them in the claw foot tub 2 at a time, starting with the oldest, me, and went down to the youngest. When 6 took their baths, another bath was drawn. When we entered puberty, we took short showers. We paid for water in the city and the money came dear. I now take luxurious baths; sometimes with expensive bubble bath or butters for afterwards. Sometimes, I even pay full price for my toiletries because I know I’m worth it.
Once in a blue moon, I’ll buy quality shoes and wear them only occasionally. I sit down with other children in their play area and play with them, oohing and aahing at what comes out of the toy box. I talked to my dog as a child would and pretend he understands. I had a Teddy Bear that held so many tears that if he hadn’t dried out in between, I’m almost certain he would have weighed an extra 5 pounds.
Today, at 64, I still talk to my dog as though he understands. Never mind I get a blank stare or he turns his head the other way before lying down. It doesn’t matter. I still talk to him. I find a plant I think will go nicely in my garden. Oh, yes! Did I tell you about the Faerie Gardens I’m building? Those winged creatures have always fascinated me, so I’ve decided to create them using recycled wire for wings and recycled plastic bags cut into lengths to crochet their clothing. I can’t decide whether to use real ceramic for their heads or wooden beads. I’m open for any suggestions.
Here’s the biggie, folks. Every morning, no matter how disheveled the image in the mirror, I think, “Lady, I love you.” Yes, I say I love you to myself. At first, I felt silly, really silly. But after a time, I came to believe it. I took note of how I felt before I started telling myself that and how I felt after it became a habit. It was one of those insignificant moments that became very momentous after thorough consideration. Our psyches build up walls of defenses after abuses. After a few abuses, one believes something is wrong and begins to believe she deserves the abuse, and, therefore, an ugly unwanted thing. Deliberately telling myself I love you turned that around in a way I hadn’t expected. No, it isn’t something that happens overnight, but gradually, over time. How long it takes depends on your own self-esteem and how much you put into it. I can almost promise you one thing. The change is going to be so subtle; you won’t remember when it happened.
I also envision my arms embracing my inner child. When she smiles, I smile. I burn incense with fragrances of the Far East and wear perfume of exotic oils (I have always wanted to travel to the India or the Orient), listen to music, talk to myself while cooking – softly chiding myself or chuckling at my mistakes. I literally became my own parent. I was a little angry at first for not learning this concept sooner when I discovered how easy it was. But all things come in their time. I smile more, laugh more, and see joy in the wonders of the little things that had always escaped me because I was too angry or disconnected.
Start small in the beginning. Set aside a few minutes of uninterrupted time even if it’s before the children get up or after they go to bed. Just make it alone time for you. Tell your husband to leave you alone while you take the time to read a book or primp yourself in the bathroom. It was a hard thing for some of my women who had been raped to go into the bathroom and softly wash their bodies with loving thoughts, or their special undergarments or nightgowns. Those things were repulsive to them because of a rape. I had to keep reminding them that the act was the ugly thing, not them, and to not take it on. Once they got past that, the rest easily came when they were ready. It was tough love on my part, but the philosophy is the same as falling off a horse that was forced down with an injury. Once the horse has healed, you have to get past the fear and get right back up on it.
The idea behind nurturing is doing something that not only gives you pleasure, but shows off your uniqueness. An example of this is exploring art, taking a class at Adult Education or at a local college. Creativity allows you to express yourself through your senses, which is the best way to heal. The more you nurture and explore who you are, the more you understand yourself and your boundaries. Truthfully, I haven’t found my boundaries yet. The more I explore myself, the more I grow; much like the universe.
Love yourself and give yourself a hug from me.
Know you are loved, Lady
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Changes and Research
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September & October 2008 - Changes and Research ©
by Lady "Spirit Moon" Cerelli
Please note the date change of the Open Window Newsletter. It will be created and sent out every two months, not every month; due to the time constraints placed on the editor as she begins researching available information regarding the different available healing modalities. We also plan to research and link to sites offering state information connecting to county safe houses. This will take time.
This came about because of the one question people and moderators keep asking me regarding where one goes or does when one has been victimized. My response has always been, “If you feel you have been victimized and it’s an emergency, you run to the nearest Police Station or Safe House for protection. If it’s not an emergency, you still go the nearest Safe House for information on your rights, and available legal resources, for you and your children. Seek counseling as soon as possible. If that’s not possible, then grab the arm of the nearest stranger and start talking; and keep talking. Traumas not shared will soon come out in behavior disorders and/or life altering behavior patterns.”
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Peace-Harmony Progress Forum
Peace-Harmony Progress Forum is the title of a new page on our website. Please check it out. It should be done by the end of the first week of September. We have submissions from victims who wrote their experiences and what they did or are doing on their journey to healing. We will continue to add submissions to this page as we receive from those who wish to share. We will also seek submissions from professionals in the fields of medical, psychology, sociology, or any other field pertinent to survivors seeking a healing path. Again, check in often as this page will continue to change.
If you are aware of any information you feel will help an abuse or PTSD survivor, please pass it on. We will research it and possibly offer the information on our site. This is your site, for and about you.
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Dance of Release DVD
We are in the middle of producing a DVD titled Dance of Release, affectionately referred as the DOR. This video was designed for the participants of our workshops to aid in their healing as they share and experience their openness. The DOR movements were designed by Laura Martin, a highly experienced Qi Gong instructor, based on the requests from Lady Spirit Moon Cerelli.
Whenever you are traumatized or have been hurt badly, you tend to shut down parts of your beings. You stop talking, sharing, feeling, staying open…. The DOR opens your chakras as you slowly dance and move different parts of your body designed to open a particular chakra. As one having done one-hour solos in the Racket room and worked many years in the gyms, I was pleased to discover that the DOR is a mild form of cardiovascular exercise, strengthens the lower back, and tones muscles. I have Spinal Stinosis, and the DOR is the reason I can now work outdoors for many hours. Laura demonstrates the short version of the DVD at the end of the video for those who don’t have the 20 minutes for the full version. The short DOR is followed by a message from Lady Spirit Moon. This video is unlike other Qi Gong videos. The cost for this DVD is $12.00, not including S&H.
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Different Modalities of Treatment
In the August newsletter, I related the healing process and time frame for my clients. Though I have worked with other professionals, I have stuck to my form of therapy because it worked for my clients; with the idea of getting them independent as soon as possible. I started counseling 40 Years ago and there were not very many different modalities out there. In fact, we were just coming out of the mental dark ages, so to speak. I can still remember reading about a few doctors performing lobotomies as a form of treatment several hears before I came on the scene. And can some of you remember the Electric Shock Treatments? I shudder to think.
Today, there are as many modalities of healing as there are people. One form of treatment may be easily adapted or changed to treat many different individuals. One treatment that has come to my attention is EMDR, Eye Movement and Desensitization and Reprocessing. This form of treatment was created by Dr. Francine Shapiro and has been around since the early 90’s. It seems to be successful for various disorders, including PTSD. Wikipedia has the lengthy, unbiased, definition of EMDR, but I think the EMDR website will tell you more.
In what I’ve read in Dr. Shapiro’s book, EMDR, the process is closely related to what we do in our Coat of Harms Workshops, but we use art as the creative process in dealing with the senses related to the trauma(s). Dr. Shapiro desensitizes her clients as they reexperience their trauma. And more often than not, the client has to go through the EMDR more than once, if not several times. Training in the practice of EMDR is offered only to those already a licensed professional, according to the EMDR website.
The EMDR website does have statistics taken from the numerous studies done on patients traumatized from abuse, sexual trauma, crises, anxieties, and PTSD, to name a few. According to the studies, ‘some PTSD victims had good success with up to 12 sessions of EMDR. According to Dr. Shapiro’s theory of EMDR; “When a traumatic or very negative event occurs, information processing may be incomplete, perhaps because strong negative feelings or dissociation interfere with information processing. This prevents the forging of connections with more adaptive information that is held in other memory networks. For example, a rape survivor may “know” that rapists are responsible for their crimes, but this information does not connect with her feeling that she is to blame for the attack. The memory is then dysfunctionally stored without appropriate associative connections and with many elements still unprocessed. When the individual thinks about the trauma, or when the memory is triggered by similar situations, the person may feel like she is reliving it, or may experience strong emotions and physical sensations. A prime example is the intrusive thoughts, emotional disturbance, and negative self-referencing beliefs of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).”
“It is not only major traumatic events, or “large-T Traumas” that can cause psychological disturbance. Sometimes a relatively minor event from childhood, such as being teased by one’s peers or disparaged by one’s parent, may not be adequately processed. Such “small-t traumas” can result in personality problems and become the basis of current dysfunctional reactions. Shapiro proposes that EMDR can assist to successfully alleviate clinical complaints by processing the components of the contributing distressing memories. These can be memories of either small-t or large-T traumas. Information processing is thought to occur when the targeted memory is linked with other more adaptive information. Learning then takes place, and the experience is stored with appropriate emotions, able to appropriately guide the person in the future. A variety of neurobiological contributors have been proposed.”
Too often, clients walk into an office expecting a quick-fix remedy or pills. Medication for depression, anxieties, or various other disorders does work for some of those particular disorders, but not on the trauma, itself. And they don’t do the processing. Short of hypnosis (and then only to a degree) I have not seen a modality yet that does not work without the client going through the memory of the trauma. Though, this may change when I start researching. Medication can stabilize individuals; and has been given to individuals for the duration of their life. While in the VA Hospital and after I related my flashback, I was told the following: “You can go on medication for a year with therapy; or for the rest of your life without therapy.” There were no guarantees given, and they’d have been fools to issue them. I went through therapy in the fourth best VA PTSD program in the country, and was off medication in six months. But the healing was fast with the help of journaling and writing my book.
The gist of the process is: NO MATTER THE TYPE OF TREATMENT, NO MATTER HOW LONG YOU PUT IT OFF, EVENTUALLY, YOU WILL HAVE TO FACE THE TRAUMA. That’s it in a nut shell, folks. You can take courage in the knowledge that you can get through the therapy and the memories with the same strength it took for you to survive the trauma and live with it (them) in your life. Yes, there were days you hung by what you thought was a weak thread. But, my goodness, there had to have been days when you took that same thread and lassoed a varmint in your path and put it in its place.
“Give sorrow words: The grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break” – William Shakespeare
Know you are loved, Lady
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What to Expect When Healing
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August 2008 - What to Expect When Healing ©
by Lady "Spirit Moon" Cerelli
We have readers writing their biographies and are surprised in many ways the effects of going back to the beginning, or to the first trauma. One individual is even interviewing relatives, starting with her mother. As adults, we are in a different emotional state from when we were children, if for no other reason because of our life experiences. Life lessons, learned through experiences as we grow to adulthood, give us a different perspective we would not have had it been explained to us when we were children - we need the experiences rather than the speeches. And our emotions don’t always get involved when hearing about a thing as when we experience it. When we observe ourselves as children being abused, we have the choice of allowing the abuse to become a reality and hurting us again, or view it as a memory – which is the true reality. Observing ourselves is also the third-view perspective; getting outside of yourself and viewing it as though you were watching a movie.
Behavior disorders do not create by themselves, but are the results of a trauma(s) which consist two or more objects, meaning you and someone(s) or (an)other object(s), like a car or a bomb; two or more of the five natural senses; and the state of no control, otherwise known as the state of helplessness. When we feel the state of no control, our psyche doesn’t know what to do. If we don’t have the proper tools in place at the time of the abuse, I promise you, behavior disorders will follow. I ask you, what child will know, on its own, how to use anger against people they love? Or change its personality without provocation?
We need our psyches, or egos, to survive in our society. But if we don’t have the correct knowledge or nurturing in place at the time of the abuse, or it isn’t dealt with shortly afterward, the psyche will begin creating its own protective defenses based on the life experiences and knowledge we had up to and before the moment of abuse. These protective defenses usually turn into behavior disorders, which are a means of expressing or disguising a hurt or traumas. The mental makeup at birth may also a determining factor.
Going back to the scene of the crime and viewing it as a spectator, we begin to see the why of a thing and understand it. We can almost detach ourselves from the idea of being the victim as we get involved in probing into the possibilities behind the reasons of the abuse. We can even go so far as to see what behaviors began after the abuse because we can see the changes taking place within ourselves as they happened. If you question other members in your family, you may even learn their sides of the story and the reasons for their involvement. I don’t know of anyone who has not been surprised, yet. As for myself, I was totally blown away by what some of the other members of my family saw and experienced and what part, if any, they played in my life. I wasn’t the only one abused but was blind to it.
Once you lose yourself in the search for understanding, using the third-view perspective, something very subtle happens. Surprising, even. You begin to change. Through understanding, the psyche begins to let go of anger and some of the defenses it had built over the years. The curious thing is that you are not even aware of all the changes taking place, and rarely will notice when they occur. It’s like a slow melting away of something dark and irksome; a slow realization of a burden lifting. If you follow through with your bio to the present day, the changes can begin from the beginning of the bio to two or three years after, for the most part. While the burden of anger is lifting, there may also be a subtle shift of energy and moods within you and with the people around you. Once I went into therapy after my flashback and I (my psyche) began to understand, the changes were immediate. I kept changing for nearly 4 years.
After you become accustomed to the changes and incorporate them into your life, other issues pops up. You find yourself with habits that existed while you were angry or hurting, so you have to rehabilitate yourself as soon as you recognize the ones you no longer need or want. Your views on things are going to change as well, so you relearn how you feel about things and how you look at them. You actually go through a rebirth as the old “angry you” falls away and this new person emerges. In truth, the anger suppressed the person you slowly come to realize was there all the time. You have the opportunity to change and grow as you become aware, an opportunity to recreate yourself.
This can also be a confusing time. Spiking anger may continue as you heal because your psyche isn’t sure it wants to let go of it – anger being such a good friend for a long time. Some of your disorders my increase or heighten for the same reason. But this won’t last long. You may begin to question yourself as you approach, or are, in the different stages of healing. Questions like: Does anyone else go through this? Am I the only one? How do they handle it? What did they do? Are they going crazy, too? Did they do anything different? Who can I ask? How much do I dare reveal to anyone about myself? Will they understand? All these questions, and more, are the same questions everyone asks themselves. What you are going through is normal, but at the same time unique to you because no one else has had your experiences, background, social environment, race, creed, age, or gender; in other words, walked in your shoes. But I can assure you, as long as your gut doesn’t send up a red flag, you’re on the right path for your own healing.
The downside to all this is as you change, so do your outlook, your friends, jobs, environment, etc. Women usually leave their partners or spouses. The person you were in the past was attracted to something in your partner. As you change, that attraction may no longer exist. As you become stronger within yourself, you may not need what you thought was the strength of your partner. Better yet, you may have the strong self-esteem to leave an abuser. If you were fortunate to have a partner who is willing to walk your path with you, you are indeed blessed.
You will probably change jobs because the talents required for the old you, no longer exist. For example, if you had cut off your emotions, you were probably able to handle emotionally charged people or chaotic situations. Once you come into contact with your emotions again, they will get in the way of your job, making you ineffective. That, or the people or the scenarios will drive you up the wall. With me, I created situations or a cause that used my energy and gave me what I thought was a sense of control and purpose. When I finished them, I went on to another; usually without waiting for accolades, though on some occasions they would spur me on. Now, I’m no longer driven. My passion came back, and I do things because I want to and not because I need to.
If there are other people in your life at the time you go through your transitions, especially children, it makes things rougher. This is when I suggest folks get a counselor for the other parties in their lives, or family counseling. You’re doing enough to handle your own situation. If you try to help others, especially if they have been abused, mixed messages may be received or misunderstood. This requires a third party professional. This is usually done in hard or extreme cases. Either way, as you go through your different stages of changes, people may get confused, angry, or smile. And there are many stages. Just as there were many stages when your psyche took it’s time building its walls defense systems.
While healing, I encourage my clients to get a pot, toss some dirt into it, put in a plant, usually an herb, and place the pot near a window in the house or easily accessible outside. Every day they are to touch the plant, talk to it with kindness, and feed it occasionally with fish emulsion or commercial plant food. Look at the plant as though they were nurturing themselves and providing what is needed. This plant will become an extension of you, the caretaker. As you nurture the plant, you nurture yourself; talk to it with kindness and you treat yourself with kindness; and feed it to grow healthy, you become conscious of your own body and how you treat it. This is also a third-view perspective. You put yourself on the outside, again. But this is different. The interesting aspect of the third-view perspective is that whenever you are dealing with something negative, the psyche will grab hold of your brain or emotions. When you deal with something positive, your psyche will stretch with everything it has and on its own power to feel good.
This is the harmony in the chaos, or what I term Universal Balance. While seeking for the person who was suppressed under the muck and mire, nurture yourself with kindness and words of love while getting to know the person who emerges. One day, you will do what I did. You may point to the image in the mirror and say, “Gosh, she is pretty.”
Know you are loved, Lady
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Nurturing with Life-Altering Choices
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July 2008 - Nurturing with Life-Altering Choices ©
by Lady "Spirit Moon" Cerelli
Sometimes being too close to your own situation can prevent you from seeing clearly – much like being in the middle of the forest when you need to see all the trees. You need to see everything when things continually go wrong, especially if you don’t provoke them. When negative situations not only keep happening, but are out of your control, and put you on your heels, it’s time for you to stop, look within you and decide what is best for your own well-being. When things go wrong for quite a while, it’s time for you look around and discern if you are walking your true path
This is where I have been for several weeks. Perhaps, with my sharing, you will better understand when you can discern for yourself and how and why you should change the course of your life.
About three weeks ago, working on my website, I learned that the auto accident of ‘98 took away more mental abilities than I had first thought. The thing about receiving a blunt-force trauma anywhere to the frontal lobe of the brain is that you don’t know how bad it is, to what degree, to what level, or, and more disconcerting, which abilities are truly affected. It is a matter of beginning a project and learning whether or not you can do it, or if you can even break it down into components. Just to give you an idea of what it is like: say you swam your whole life and became good enough to win a few medals. You receive a head injury in an accident. In six months you’re healed and none the wiser regarding the ramifications of the head trauma. One day you go out to the pool. In your heart you know how to swim, you see it, feel it. You know for an absolute fact you can swim. Yet, when you get in the water, you can’t seem to get the information all together enough to know how to start, where to start, or how to get the information to your limbs.
The mild depression didn’t last long, which surprised me considering I at one time held a job as a Systems Analyst. The Brain Injury of American wrote that people receiving this type of injury are the last to realize it and have the worst time with it. My new limitations have curtailed several future projects. Indeed, it has changed my life. But this is just one of the things that had gone wrong.
I spent nearly three weeks working on a 30-minute teleseminar, only to have it cancelled three hours before it was scheduled to happen. I would not have known of the cancellation had I not checked my email at an unusual time for me. I bought a computer and the company would not honor their contract when it broke within two weeks after purchasing it. It seems that shipping time is also part of your trial period. More things just kept happening, one after another.
There have been several times in my life when I’ve been forced to sit down and have a talk with my self or with God. On one particular Murphy’s-law day about 10 days ago, I’d had enough. I sat on the porch after dinner and said, “Boyfriend, we need to have ourselves a little discussion.” To explain my term of endearment for God, over two years ago, I entered into what is called the Dark Night of the Soul. It’s a place where you and God have a very intense one-on-one relationship. I don’t know about anyone else’s, but ours lasted about two and half months. I now affectionately refer to God as “Boyfriend.”
After my talk with my Boyfriend, I sat and waited for the familiar feeling. After twenty minutes or so, I would sense a change. Like a small amount of energy shifting around me. When I sensed the change, I then asked, “Okay, now I don’t suppose there could be a cleaning lady walking up my drive; seeins how I’ve not done my housecleaning in a week?”
Not a cloud in the sky, but I heard a loud rumbles in the west. “Okay, we won’t push that one.” I expressed my gratitude and went inside.
A few days later, our truck fatally broke down and we were forced to buy another vehicle, which took four three-hour round trips, with another trip scheduled for parts. On the third trip my molar broke. Three days later I wasn’t feeling very regal in the dentist chair when his assistant put on a temporary crown. The trip home seemed longer than usual. When we walked up the ramp, I noticed the plants that needed to be put in the ground and wondered from where so many had come. I thought, “What have I been doing?”
These are just the highlights of the past several weeks. So here I am, wondering what is going on and why I’m not getting angry. At no time did I get upset. Confused? Yes! I’ve learned that sometimes when I get confused, things start churning up emotionally. When they do, I just back away from whatever I’m doing and go back to it later. Does all this mean I have Alzheimer, or dementia? Or am I just plain old and the little grey cells are too tired to rejuvenate themselves.
I have an agreement with my Boyfriend. I’ll do what I can on my part, and He will do the tough stuff…the things that I cannot do. Our discussion calmed things down, but it was evident that what needed to be done was for me to make some decisions, change things in my surroundings, and within me. It is too easy to have a pity-party and blame God when things go wrong, or, as some do, blame the Devil. I don’t do either. I had prayed, now it was time to have a talk with my self.
Loving yourself is not easy. It’s something we have to learn because humans are not born to love themselves. Since I started working with people over 40 years ago, I’ve seen our society move away from nurturing. Parents rely more on the schools or day cares to raise their children. Liabilities prevent such institutions from actually hugging children for fear of being accused of child molestation or sexual assault. So most children are caught in between and don’t learn how to love or nurture themselves.
When working with my clients on their journeys back to the past, I try to get them to latch onto their inner child and bring them forward. It is important to learn to play again as adults as it is an intricate part of self-nurturing. You don’t need to make mud pies, but you can make gooey brownies. You don’t need to have tea parties with your dolls, but you can have coffee time with your girlfriends, or with the fellas—whichever side of the gender fence you fall on. It is very important you have a support system in your adult life; one or more person with whom you can have fun and talk about things.
It’s equally important you allow alone time for yourself. You can sit in silence with a favorite beverage. If you have children, do this before they get up or after they go to bed. A mother once told me that three kids wouldn’t allow that kind of luxury. It took her nearly four months, but she learned to set time aside for herself. She discovered that in the past her frantic running from place to place drained her. But by slowing down and allowing herself a few extra minutes, she got the job done without the hassle. She also learned to follow through with her children. She taught them what they needed to do then refused to budge when they didn’t do it. She even took her son to school in his pajamas because he kept procrastinating and didn’t get ready in time. She only did this once, and he behaved better. Most children’s behaviors come from adults not following through on what they tell their children. If a child knows what is expected of them and what they can expect from those in their environment, they don’t act out nearly as much.
That’s another thing. It is very easy to get caught up in someone else’s schedule or chaos. It’s much like tossing the baby out the door with the bath water; we get in so much of a hurry. You will find that if you stop and take a deep breath rather than give into the chaos, you won’t have to work as hard, be more focused, and have more time and energy.
The idea behind self-nurturing is giving yourself pleasure in small increments and enjoying them. Talking a whole day is good if you don’t have to spend a lot of time planning and working hard at justifying the full day with trying to fill it up. Take a walk around the block, in the garden, or in the woods after dinner by yourself, or use it as quality time with a loved one. Start slowly, but try to incorporate a small amount of time for yourself every day until it becomes a habit. Bad habits are hard to lose. Good habits are hard to pick up. Stand in front of the mirror and smile at yourself while saying, “I love you.” You’ll be surprised how much it will change you. Almost every evening I sit down on the porch with my dog and pet him. Those few minutes with him softens me and gives me more pleasure than a two-hour movie. Don’t laugh, but petting my husband does the same thing, except his kisses are better.
After my talk with my self, I knew I had to make some changes, tough changes. I asked my self, “What do you really want to accomplish with your website and book?” My heart responded that I wanted to get back into spirituality. That I was tired of always spending money on appointments that were not really benefiting me or what I wanted to accomplish. This meant I had to give up the commercialism my book was taking me. I knew the book would get into the hands of those who were supposed to receive it. I would again go back into individual counseling and put on workshops for however many came. On…and on…I made my many decisions. Within a day or two peace again settled within me. Did I really give up anything? A wise person once told me that you can’t lose what you don’t have. This statement haunts me sometimes.
God loves you and wants what will make you happy. However, this may not coincide with what you think will content you. You will know if you are on your right path when you experience harmony in your daily life. Things go well, as though someone is laying everything out in front of you. Peace calms your insides even when things outside of you is in chaos. You have a smile on your face, have more patience with the world around you, and things won’t get to you so easily. If obtaining this goal means you go and talk to someone, even a professional counselor, do it. If it means taking a vacation, even in a tent by yourself, do it.
If things keep going wrong, either it’s not time for what you want or you’re going about it the wrong way. The willingness to change can bring into your life what you desire if you stop fighting with yourself, which is the same as fighting with God. People ask me how they can discern their right path. My response is, “When you base your choices with the God-force within you, you will feel emotional wellness. You walk in harmony when you balance your life with as much giving as you take and compliment and assist others, putting them first. Always remember that everything you do to another you do to yourself. Set aside time for yourself and for those you love. If it’s time for you to have your fame and fortune in the sunshine, then you will have your glory. If it isn’t, you will only hurt yourself by trying to push the weight of the world up a wall. Learn to accept that which you cannot change, and change what you can for the better good of the whole, with yourself at the center. If you surrender a dream out of love, you will get it back ten times.”
So sit in silence and go within to see what things look like and how they feel. Using your heart and integrity, you will know. Look at what tough choices you to need make then DO IT!
Know you are loved, Lady
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Love vs. Being in Love
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June 2008 - Love vs. Being in Love ©
by Lady "Spirit Moon" Cerelli
We were licensed to take in foster teenagers fifteen or older. These pre-adults were the most neglected part of the foster care system. I discovered how surprisingly easy these young people were to care for and educate. Coming from abused homes, I had assumed they would be mentally messed up and difficult to manage.
Our kitchen was 13' x 18'. The table was not quite in the center and had room to run around it and not bump into anything. Every day at 3:15 PM, the chairs were pushed in while one or two boys walked/paced around the table. This is where and how they verbally vented their day's frustrations. If 45 minutes was not enough venting time, they went out on the wood pile to split wood. On rare occasions, they would come in to just sit and talk. The one subject that would eventually come up was the meaning of love.
On one particular day, I was at the stove making vegetable/beef stew. I usually made it quite thick and was tending it during the last stages of cooking when Ryan breezed into the kitchen with, "Hey Mom, I'm in love."
"That's nice, dear. I'm sure it won't take long for you to learn to love her," I responded as I slowly stirred the pot's contents.
"What do you mean? I'm in love. I do love her. Ain't it the same?"
"Aren't, dear," I corrected him. "And, no, they aren't the same."
Ryan came over to the stove and took the wooden spoon out of my hand, stirred the stew, and turned down the heat. I had already taught him some of the basics of cooking. Gently touching my arm, he guided me to the table and pulled out a chair for me. Slouched in the chair along side me, he stated, "Talk to me woman." He had never been shy about learning new things.
Wiping my hands on my apron was a way of preparing me and my listener for something I enjoyed doing most...teaching. Leaning on the table, I responded, "Being in love with someone means there is something in the other person that makes you feel good. How does this girl make you feel?"
"You're right. She makes me feel good."
"How?"
Ryan sat a few moments in contemplation then leaned over and smiled broadly, "Well, she's hot."
Pointing my finger at him, I softly retorted in a mocking tone, "That had better be in a good way, or we're going to have ourselves another discussion."
Gently holding onto my finger, Ryan replied, "Mom, she's good looking. I like looking at her."
"Then you're in love with her because of her good looks. But that's all it is right now. You love her good looks, not her. You don't know her." The confused look on his face prompted me to continue with, "I'm not saying that you can't fall in love with someone's personality, body, or good looks. You could even love one of their endearing traits. But all those things are the outward appearances of a person that represent what they are. Loving someone is knowing who they are on the inside; and that takes time. You know you love someone when you honor or respect them for all they are; not only for the who and the what, but their faults as well. And that's a biggie for a lot of people. It's hard to accept another's faults because you'd like to think you're with someone who will give to you and protect you, maybe even be more than you. And these things are fine. But you have to give back as well. You can't always take, no more than you can always sacrifice yourself. Loving someone is a bond of mutual understanding, or growing to the state of mutual understanding, all the while accepting the other individual's growth, even if it doesn't match yours. Love is nurturing another to allow them to be best they can be, even if their success is greater than yours."
Ryan sat for a moment looking at me, "Do I love you?"
That surprised me. "Don't you respect me?"
With his elbow on the table and pointing a finger to the ceiling, he said, "Give me a moment," before lowering his head. A few moments passed before he looked at me and said, "It's okay to love her body, so long as I respect her."
"That applies to anyone, anything, or any place."
"Huh?" he exclaimed with wide eyes. The brains of all the young ones always seemed to blow a fuse on that statement.
"You honor your car by maintaining it because it's your lifeline and you want it to respond to your needs to go places. You honor your house by paying the taxes and maintaining its upkeep. In return it will keep you dry and provide you sanctuary. You honor your school friends or coworkers for who they are by not trying to change them or their habits. You help them to grow by giving them room and gently hinting or displaying alternative habits. Your friends and family are your comfort and your support team. Simply put. You honor everything and everyone by not harming them. If you disrespect everything and everyone, why should they give to you? Every time you honor something or someone, you give them a strong foundation on which to build a relationship, which will give back to you in profound ways. And you never have to look over your shoulder or have any regrets."
Leaning back in his chair, I saw he was mulling things over. I took the opportunity to check on my stew. I was stirring it when Ryan came and stood behind me. Circling one arm around my waist and using the finger of his other hand, he tasted the stew. I smacked at both hands and succeeded in splattering gravy across the stove and leaving a spoon imprint on my apron.
I smiled when I heard him chuckle while walking down the hall to his room. "I can't believe I'm in love with my foster Mom."
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Taking Things Personal
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May 2008 - Taking Things Personal ©
by Lady "Spirit Moon" Cerelli
Have you ever wondered why you get angry when someone does or says something to you? Sally is sitting at her desk in the third grade classroom. An obnoxious boy comes over and takes her pencil and won’t give it back. It was, after all, her property; and he didn’t ask. She tells the teacher, who, having a lot to contend with in a full classroom, talks soothingly to Sally and gives her another pencil. Sally goes home and tells Mom what happened. Mom just got off work and is trying to prepare dinner. Her mind is elsewhere when she pats Sally on the head and says, “Yes dear.” Since Sally can’t get any satisfaction, she sulks for a while. As with all children, their resiliency allows them to forget the incident.
But the ego doesn’t work that simply. Sally thinks she’s forgotten it; but the brain never forgets. 20 Years later, Sally is in the office with a co-worker, John, who walks by Sally’s desk and picks up her stapler and takes it over to his desk. Sally immediately jumps up from her chair, goes to John’s desk, and grabs her stapler back. In a heated voice, she spits out, “Next time, you ask me?”
Another example demonstrates how the anger doesn’t have to be about an object. It could be a misunderstood word or words lifted out of context. A landlord rents a certain amount of space to a friend. After a while the landlord notices the renter is slowly moving into the landlord’s storage space and storing things that belong to her. The renter isn’t doing anything destructive, just taking over space that she isn’t renting. The landlord also notices that the renter is using things belonging to the landlord, who by this time feels the renter is taking advantage by slowly taking her storage space and using her things without permission.
The landlord understands that if something isn’t done about it, the renter will crowd his space. The landlord emails the renter relating what she has observed. She reminds the renter that she has rented only a certain amount of space but is slowly moving into unrented space. The renter emailed back and asked if the landlord is telling her she was encroaching, using her, and stepping over boundaries. The landlord wrote back and said that they needed to meet face-to-face, that emails weren’t doing it.
When they got together, the landlord related how she felt she was being dishonored by the renter using her things without permission and slowly moving into her storage space. After a few minutes of discussion, the renter shared that she was married to a man who had set limitations upon her and drew out her boundaries, even in their house. This was one of the reasons she divorced him. The renter had misread the message the landlord was trying to convey in the email based upon her impression the email gave. The renter’s mental state of no control resonated back to when she experienced her boundaries being drawn by her husband.
In both cases, when people hurt us physically, with hurtful words, or just plain dishonoring what is ours, it registers in our brain as a state of no control or helplessness. Emotions may not register immediately but will rise up soon or later, involving one or more of the five physical senses. If there is no support system in place at the time of the hurt, or if there is and it’s treated like a small nothing, the brain is going to remember. Every time someone hurts us, one of the five senses acts as a trigger as it resonates back to the original hurt.
Every hurt doesn’t have to be same. But the brain will remember the mental state of helplessness and the emotions involved in the original hurt. By the time you are adults, you have felt the hurt so often and our anger is so entrenched, you fly off as soon as something is done or someone says something. The irony of all this, you may not understand what set us off.
There are ways of dealing with this anger. We can:
- Learn to control your emotions and mental state by preventing yourselves from prematurely flying off the handle. But all this does is create a pressure cooker that will eventually blow.
- Continue thinking you are right with your anger and let things fly. There are actually people who don’t understand why others don’t want to hang out with them after they’ve lost their cool a few times.
- Or, you can do the wise thing. You can sit down with yourself and try to see what actually made you angry by trying to discern what you resonated with. Go deep within and look at the first time you felt the same state of helplessness involving your emotions. Use a friend or therapist to talk it out. I suggest writing it out, in detail, remembering the physical senses as well.
No one likes to think something is wrong with their mentality, so looking within yourself to find faults is not going to be easy. You’ll need to go back and look at the first time you were hurt with an honest perspective. If you accomplish this, you will see from where your anger is coming and why. Once you look at the original hurt with a viewer’s perspective (this means looking at yourself like you were looking at someone else), other emotions relating to the original hurt may, over a few months time, slip away. You may also experience one or more of the five stages of grief as explained by Kubler-Ross in her book, On Death and Dying. Any time your body lets go of something physical, even weight, anything emotional, or spiritual, you need to grieve it. This is especially true when it comes to your ego/psyche. It may be a small, subtle grief. If you were affected on many levels, you may grieve for each level the pain hurt you. You may not experience the stages in order, or all of them; but grieve you will.
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Poem - Take My Dreams Away Forever
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Below is a poem written by a beautiful soul from Indiana. I think it reflects how a lot of us have felt.
Take My Dreams Away Forever
My life is complicated and seems bleak
My life is dazed and confused
I don’t know what I should be
Or how to stop from being used
I want to sleep to fade away
But no one will listen or even see
How sad and torn I feel everyday
I help everyone else, but never me
People are so prejudiced
They won’t see the pain on the inside
They make quick judgments
And choose to only see pain on the outside
Even loved ones choose not to see
Or maybe they are blinded by their own pain
There is a loss of connection that should not be
This loss is devastating and only more pain is gained
I want to be healed and put together
But feel blocked by so many including myself
Why and how are the questions I gather
But the answers are held in a book high on a shelf
Why now are my dreams and thoughts so vivid
Why did it wait to fester in my psyche
How will it go away and quit making me so livid
My dreams, my guilt, my pain go away I plea
I need someone to be understanding
I’m not making this up or being lazy
I am floating and I can’t find a landing
I hurt, I’m lonely, I’m scared; not crazy
I don’t want to die only to sleep
Take my dreams away forever
I want them gone and not to keep
I want the pain to come back never
Thank you, Indiana, for sharing your heart and intimate thoughts
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Events
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- August - The DOR (Dance of Release) DVD is scheduled to debut
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