Posts Tagged ‘healing’

My last post has struck a nerve for some of you, and I’m glad to know I’m far from alone in critically examining this word “witch” and trying to understand what it means in an original sense, rather than a pop culture, commercial, colonial, Christian or patriarchal sense (did I leave anybody out?)

 I feel the need to explain why being called a witch is something that stopped me in my tracks.  I have been proud to be a rebel or outsider all of my life, not being willing to be defined by any category or fit into the main stream ideas of what a woman is supposed to be.  I have flaunted my independence, and happily yelled “THANKS!” when someone told me I was weird or different.  However, unlike when a fellow yelled at me from his passing car, “DYKE!” in my buzz cut college phase (I was fine with that mistaken label), being called a “witch” felt too close to home, insidious, and brought up a sinking feeling of terror. 

 I couldn’t understand why I would feel that way in terms of my actual life.  I have never identified myself as a witch, although in my spiritual practice I do some things that might raise the eyebrows of bible thumpers (such as meditation, using homeopathy and herbs to treat illness, and dowsing, a very useful skill I learned from an old woman in the mountains of North Carolina). Of course, my shamanic work could be classified as witchy were it not for its connections to the indigenous populations…or are they “witches”, too?

 While I lived in the village where I was “identified as a public enemy” (before I knew anything about these behind-the-hand remarks about me) I had intuitive flashes in which an angry mob would come drag me out of my office, grab me by my hair and drag me down the street.  The intuitive vision would stop there, not revealing the fate of the woman I seemed to be in the inner vision.  But the feeling of cold stones weighing down the innards of my belly did not easily or soon cease. 

This was not an entirely new sensation for me.  Back in Asheville NC, where we lived for 7 years, I had multiple odd spontaneous awarenesses that involved flashes of me being disemboweled, drowned, or beheaded.  One such instance was preceded by a physical break down of my right shoulder…for weeks it got more and more sore and incapacitated.  After many attempts to have it corrected through chiropractic and massage work (and Advil), in a strange fit of inner knowing, I paused in the living room on my way to take some laundry upstairs and asked silently what my body was telling me. 

Giving in to the motion, my body then took over…I began to move as if somebody much bigger than me was rearranging me like a puppet.  My inner eye saw a lovely young woman with reddish blond curls and a long flowered dress being brought forcibly into a crowd of people.  She must have been 18 or 19 years old.  She was pretty, but had a gleam in her eye and a set to her jaw. My right arm went slammed tight behind my back, fist up behind my heart.  I was forced down to my knees.  My head was pushed down so that I was crouched over.  In my mind’s eye, I saw a bloody stump of a tree, where I was now resting my chest.  As my eyes looked down on red ground, I heard and felt a stalwart, “I will never let this happen to me again.”  Then the “memory” faded, and miraculously, my right shoulder was completely cured.  Never another pain.

I stood there in a bit of a daze.  What the hell had just happened?  Was that girl me?  I wasn’t scared; more I had the feeling of knowing that my body had revealed something to me, and because I gave it permission, something had been released.  It was a pivotal experience affirming my life philosophy, which I have incorporated deeply since, that our bodies are the key to so much wisdom.

Was what happened a playing-out of some kind of cellular or collective memory? Or did I actually live through that?  When I was called “witch” in the tiny town in Colorado where I used to live, was it bringing forth another wave of memories that were asking to be acknowledged and released through me?  If so, what did this mean to me personally?  Why is this such a prominent and repeated feature in my life?

And that’s why I am asking these questions of all of you wise people, and why I feel the need to explore this line of thought.  What is a witch, really?  Where did the word come from, what are its origins?  And when did it become a word for something that was evil, scary, and needing to be put to death?  

And do any of you have these spontaneous memories or experiences?  If so, I would be so honored to hear them.

I saw the movie that is taking the world by storm the other night, and it has taken me several days to have some words to be able to describe my experience.

First let me say that I am not so much a popular movie buff.  I do like some movies that happen to have fallen in the popular range, such as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings…those stories carry that mythical quality that appeals to my Hero’s Journey mentality.  But most of the time, I will not see movies that most others see; I usually find them to be hollow.  I certainly don’t attend first run movies in the theater unless there is some very good reason to see it on the big screen.

Avatar was one such occasion.  A bit of a geek for visuals (I am an artist, after all), I wanted to see the new technology every one is talking about.  Similar to when Star Wars first broke into the movie industry, Avatar is carrying a whole new ability to enter the film as if we are part of it, and this is due in no small part to the new computer and filming technologies used to make the movie.

 It satisfied in that respect, totally.  Avatar was eye candy from the beginning, and so the artist geek in me that totally gets off on the visuals was delighted.  Completely.  Very.

And now that I have acknowledged that, I want to deepen the conversation for a moment to the larger philosophical, ecological, and spiritual implications of the film. 

Other innate aspects of me are my love of universal themes, my love of humanity, my love of the earth, and my innate awareness of my connection with All Creation.  This movie appealed to those aspects, as well.

It interested me that the geek side of me was completely revved up…my geekiness seems to live in my head, at least that is where I feel it.  It is a fascination with the pretty things, the distractions, the amazement at what we can create with our brilliant, curious minds.  But the story, and the larger impact, I felt deep in my being.  My experience was of being stretched like taffy from top of my head to the core of the earth, where I choose to ground my energy to the planet.

And perhaps that was intended on the part of the moviemakers.  So much of the time I see humanity hanging out in our heads (what I call “the Penthouse”), a place up high with a fabulous view, where we don’t have to interact with the messy stuff that lay at our feet (the stuff of being human).  We can hide in the penthouse, being fascinated with our mental constructs, believing we have control of our lives, inventing all kinds of brilliant (if flawed) philosophies and get rich quick schemes, and keeping ourselves “safe” from connecting with each other. 

 I see many using their bodies as a kind of walking prop that carries the penthouse around, not really grounding and connecting with the earth in the deep way we were intended to (and our ancestors used to do).  I have done it, too, and feel I am rescuing myself now from the edge of making that way of life a habit for me.  I have made no secret in the years I have been writing publicly that I feel this is a kind of madness, a sickness that has taken humanity away from our feelings of connection with the earth and with each other, resulting in disastrous consequences.

Seeing Avatar left me with a sense of fullness, but not over the top fullness.  It was a fullness that my entire body, my entire Being could hold.  It was a, “Wow, that was an amazing feat of technology, and hmmmmm, yes, that story is so familiar to my heart and belly, and therefore not a big deal”.  I know for some the story will be a new awareness, and perhaps this is even one reason many are so deeply affected by the film.  Perhaps the use of the new technology to appeal to both hemispheres of our brain, coupled with the deep and ancient nature of the story, was a guarantee that the messages would get through, in one way or another.  For this I am glad.  

An utterly visually beautiful film, an eye popping experience of technology….but what really felt important to ME was how old the story is…to me it is the ages-old tale of how we struggle in ourselves to feel as if we are in control of our own destinies, denying our connection to Source and All Creation, the web of life. 

Do we flail about our whole lives, building walls around us, living in a box of our own creation, resisting the attempts of the universe to break though our self-imposed barriers?  Or do we let the Light in; do we take the risk and surrender to love, opening to the inherent goodness of the universe and allowing ourselves to experience our connection with the All That Is?  And what will be the consequences of those choices?  To me, that is the essential message of this film.

The story in Avatar is as old as the hills….perhaps the most ancient story there is.  I pray that each of us find our way back to the awareness and experience that we are all connected in this Web of Life.  Therein lies our salvation.

The completion of the last moon cycle on the 15th saw me on my knees, raking through the deep sand and mud in the subterranean waters I have been visiting of late.  I swam with the dark fishes through underwater caverns, navigating dark, narrow passages as I searched for missing pieces of my life.

It has been a challenging few weeks for me; Thanksgiving kicked off some wild feelings of powerlessness, a waft of a former age, when I used to be a child.  Catching the scent of those crazy holidays with my family of origin and all of its ghosts was enough to trigger my inner child into being very present. 

She (my inner child) is alternately delighted with the holiday time, and so, so, so fearful and anxious and sad.  The old days were scary.  The evidence of that is her terror.  My job is to hold her hand and be as loving and capable a parent as I can to her.  Sometimes, it is hard to remember that I am both the parent and the inner child, though….when the little me has feelings, they can seem so big as to blot out the rest of the world.  It then becomes apparent it is time to don the trusty diving suit, plug into the oxygen machine at the surface, and go down into the depths with her, because she IS trying to show me something.  It is always the trick to remember not to dive alone.

In shamanic work, we know that retrieval of disenchanted parts of ourselves is a healthy and necessary expression of our wholeness.  This is seen in psychology, too, where the desire and intent of therapeutic work is to integrate the compartmentalized aspects of self. 

This is exactly what I have been doing when I elect to follow my inner child’s call down into the dark waters.  A kind of waking shamanic journey, we enter the earth through openings in the mountains, holes in the earth, and travel quickly through the rocks and soil, passing moles and earthworms, until we emerge into the caves and caverns deep underground.  There, we then must swim the great black seas that exist where the sun doesn’t shine, for at the bottom lies treasure.

There are dangers, though, to this work.  Sometimes, the immense pressure of this deep inner environment is enough to make my eyes want to pop out of my head.  I can feel the pressure of the vast waters and the miles of earth on top of me in my body, as I walk here on the topside through my day, shopping for groceries or driving my children to orthodontist appointments.  How interesting, I think, as I merge safely into traffic, while underneath I am reaching through dark crevices to see if a gem, or part of myself, is inside.  How odd, I notice, as I kiss my husband while I am digging through the primordial slime and hitting something of note with my fingertips.  I live in many worlds simultaneously.

In shamanism, it is important to have your lifeline attached when you go into the other worlds to retrieve those parts, or you can get lost.  I have fortunately chosen some very able and supportive helpers in my life who hold me and love me as I writhe around and wrestle with those dark creatures under the water that threaten to hold me down until I give up.  Just when I feel I am going to lose my life or my mind because something powerful and I have gotten ahold of each other, either my own soul and spirit give me the strength suddenly to bring the great beast to the surface, where I can look at it in the eye and see it is not going to kill me…..or some grace-filled creature or person in my life senses I am floundering and reaches a hand down through the layers of reality and pulls me up.  Thank Godde for love.

Now that the new moon cycle has begun on the 16^th, I experience a release of pressure.  I am back topside.  I retrieved some great bounty from the depths these last few weeks, and have now emerged with the spoils, breathless but alive and jubilant, at the surface.  Navigating the multiple worlds that I do, they all collapse into one world, the here and now, and I am more powerful because more of me is here, playing happily in the sun.

Relationship with Nature as a Step Towards Healing our Fear for Our Survival

My last entry scared even me….why would my inner guidance urge me to write about the fear for our survival that seems to be permeating even those of us devoted to bringing sweet thought to humanity?  Am I adding to the fear by talking about it?

I am soooooo Jungian in that I know that if something exists and I try to pretend it’s not there, it won’t make it go away.  It just makes it scarier.  Don’t you remember screwing up your courage to face the monster in the closet, and when you flew open the door and saw the closet was empty of the horrible visage you imagined, you felt a sense of how silly it was that you’d worried so much?  I find this now when I am thinking through a conflict that needs to be resolved with another adult…in my mind, it can be much worse than it actually turns out to be in real life.

I wonder if this is might be an appropriate metaphor for the immense concerns we have about the plight of humanity via the earth’s climate change, pollution, environmental distress, etc.  Some folks are yelling it from the rooftops because they feel that some others aren’t listening; and others are sticking cotton in their ears and pretending climate change is not happening. 

I’m not here to argue with anyone about climate change.  I am not a scientist or environmentalist or someone with an education about the many eons of history that this earth has been through.  All I can speak from is my own experience. 

My experience is this: when I was a child, I LOVED nature.  I was outside so much of the time, playing in the dirt under the sky, climbing trees, trying to get lost in the woods (never could).  I felt the eyes of the trees on me, felt the support of the ground under me, felt the love of the sun and the moon kissing me.  Nature was an every day friend, a trusted companion, a silent, neutral and accepting partner that had no agenda with me.   

No, the trees did not have a mouth like I did, but they “spoke” to me nonetheless.  No, the rocks and mountains did not have eyes like me, but they “saw” me nonetheless.  I felt seen, heard, accepted, respected as a daughter of this world.

And I have always felt that every aspect of creation has a consciousness.  It may look very different from what we think of as human intelligence…maybe not a brain that looks like ours, maybe not thinking linear thoughts like we do.  But there is for sure an intelligence that keeps things running in crazy orchestrated balance that nature performs every moment of every day since the beginning of time.

The presence of Nature that I felt loomed large…it encompassed me, surrounded and held me, cared about me, interacted with me.  It did not hurt me, unlike those other humans.  Nature was a host of other beings, entities, creatures that co-inhabited this earth with me.  Humans were NOT the most important….we were one of the many. 

In this way, I got to know the strength of creation, to know it and to trust it.  I had a knowing of the power of Nature and this planet to do its own work, to follow its own process.  It was my knowing, and I felt very secure in this knowing, that Nature was a wise and all-powerful co-inhabitor and conductor of the planet.

I reflected on this as I sat with my previous entry, wanting to fix it, wanting to offer suggestions.  The fear that humanity won’t survive hits me in the gut, hits me where I live.  I have two children, and I am invested in seeing them live their lives and have children of their own if they wish to.  I love this earth, and I love human beings, and I want us to be able to be together in harmony.

What I realized as I was thinking about this was that I don’t spend hours and hours outdoors any more.  I sit inside and work on my computer much of the day, sandwiched in between being mom and wife, which involves going outside to get to the car (an interior environment), leaving the car to get to the store or the school or other activity, reaching another interior environment…you get the picture.  I am not abandoning myself to the great outdoors anymore.  And I am feeling that loss of relationship with Nature. 

Then I started thinking about what happens when we aren’t with someone for awhile…we forget some things about them.  Guess what I forgot about Nature….how strong and self sustaining and powerful it is.

It didn’t take long to put it together that because I am not outside walking in the woods, I have forgotten Nature’s grounded, pervasive, kick-butt survival abilities, and instead I am feeding the fear for humanity’s survival by replacing my outside time with sitting in front of my computer, where the hyped up headlines blur past me and I hear the comments of opinionated folks on FaceBook.  Oh my, the drama!

 My point here (I will get to it eventually) is that we need some more outside time.  No great surprise of earth shattering insight here.  When we cultivate the relationship with the incredible power and sustainability of Nature, we might begin to remember that it is not so fragile that it will break in two weeks.  A lack of relationship with Nature is breeding fear.  If we look our fear in the eye, and see it is not an insurmountable problems we face, we might get off our asses and do something.  And, maybe have a good time doing it.

How many of us used to run around outside when we were children, loving the feeling of being part of a larger world, and feeling safe in it?

Nature is the balm to soothe our fears.  Yes, I do believe Nature will outlive us, probably by a long shot.  But we don’t have to feel we need to overcome it, or control it, or dominate it, or plead with it not to kill us…we can feel its incredible strength as an ally instead of something to be frightened of.

And from a place of integrity and balanced relationship, we can work on the problems that threaten to wipe humanity out in a way that is not so fearful.  We can tackle the problems together.

Because we’re ALL IN IT.  Some of us believe we are more enlightened than someone else, or more religious than someone else, or more educated than someone else, or have it more figured out than someone else.  And all of that may be true!  But regardless of all of that, we are all in this together.

In my inner guidance time this morning, I asked what to write about-my question comes in the form of “what to offer humanity today”.  I was interested that the guidance came in very clearly to write about the fear for our survival, and the suggestion to heal that fear.

The fear for survival is one that is a collective as well as individual fear that we are being faced with.  It is so deep under the surface of our daily walk that we don’t know it is there.  But the fear of ceasing to exist ranks up there as one of the greatest there are.

Naming this fear alternately seems so basic and yet such a revolutionary act.  We have so many other issues we are looking at; gay marriage, religious tolerance, racial affirmation, women’s rights, children’s protection, world peace.   I certainly have spent time and energy on all of these worthy pursuits!  But they all become a moot point if humanity no longer exists. 

What could be more basic, more primal, than our relationship with our Home?  The ground we walk on, the physical matter from which we came, is so under our noses that we cannot see it.  We take for granted what is the most beneficent force in our daily physical lives.

My sense is that it is important to name this fear.  I find that naming something within me is the first step towards healing it.  Otherwise, it has power over me because it is unconsciously driving me.  Naming a fear calls it to the surface of my attention, and allows me to look it in the eye, size it up, and deal with it.

The next step in healing after naming what is happening is to accept that this is going on.  I am surprised how often we will deny that something is wounded inside of us, and amazed by the expert coping mechanisms we will develop in order to continue to deny it.  It is only possible to change if we accept that there is indeed an issue first. 

The next important step is to make a choice about whether we want this issue to be an unconscious driver in our lives anymore.  This is a pivotal moment.  Once I can see something and name it, then accept it is an issue within me, I have the power to do something to change the situation or to let it lie.  I find that making the choice to change is a powerful decision that moves worlds, both within and without me, that support the change.

We are threatened like we never have been before…of course, there have always been threats to our survival, whether it was the herd of buffalo we stalked trampling us, or the famine, or the bomb…but now it is the very ground we walk on that is compromised. 

We cannot underestimate the intensity of the fear that we are all carrying, whether we are conscious of it or not.  Under the surface of our thoughts, under the skin of every decision we make, there is the question as to whether or not we will survive.  We make some very poor and short sighted decisions because of this fear.

If humanity wants to be around for more than another 100 years, then each of us as kernels of the collective must make decisions that ensure our survival.  Naming, accepting, and then choosing to change the issues that prevent us from having a balanced relationship with Home is the way to heal.  The earth will go on without us, that is for sure.  But if we want a world for our descendants, we have to get right with Home.  There is no escape.

In cultivating respect for our partner in physical existence, the Earth, we must heal ourselves and ensure a future for our species.  In healing our own fear for our survival, we can begin to create this ideal relationship with Home.

Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems painful can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

-Henry Miller

Licia Biker Santa, by Terri 2009

I wrote this back in 2006, when I was fiercely examining how to reclaim the holidays as my own delightful invention, rather than something belonging to someone else that I was trying on. 

Many of us seem to blindly follow the crowd, as if in some sort of trance, when it comes to holiday time.  I certainly did this for many years!  But the anxiety and disgust that I started to feel about the holidays clued me in that something wasn’t quite right in my relationship with what could be a truly joyous time of year. 

You see, in order to see the culture, we must step outside of it.  Whatever it is that we are enmeshed with, it is very difficult to get clarity about the relative health of the situation unless we remove ourselves from it.  The extrication can be messy, especially when we are dealing with families and the high expectation of holiday time. 

It’s not an easy road to walk to look with a critical eye at the unconsciousness that can abound this time of year.  But I feel it’s better to deal with the discomfort that comes with the truth than to live with a lie. 

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Here we are again!  It’s the holiday time, and it never seems to fail to come back every year.  In my healing work, I think of things coming back over and over to prompt me to look at something about myself that needs some love and perhaps a change for the better.  I wonder if the holiday season might be a ripe opportunity for this kind of self reflection?

I think of the holidays as a time when we lose our center so easily!  It’s when the family trance comes over us like a mist, and we move about like robots following our marching orders.  Where are those orders coming from?  We are indoctrinated early to associate the holidays with over-consumption of all kinds.  We buy in to the idea that we must get together with families and that we must all have a wonderful time together.  We keep expecting the magic and mystery of the holidays to fill our hearts, but more and more of us are barely surviving until after the New Year, when we thank our lucky stars that we made it through one more holiday season.  ENOUGH!

I have come to see the madness that begins at Halloween and lasts through January 2^nd (here in the U.S.) as an embarkation on a crazy, out-of-control bus.  If you ever saw Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, you might remember the wild bus ride that Harry endures when he is whisked away from his ordinary muggle-life to another year at Hogwarts.  As Harry alights on the bus, the driver steps on the gas and the bus careens at insane speeds through traffic, almost running pedestrians over.  The ancient, decrepit bus driver is guided by a shrunken head who advises in a creepy, sarcastic tone when to brake, when to lift the skirts of the bus over other traffic, and when to make the bus pancake-thin in order to get through various obstacles.  Harry seems to doubt whether he will survive this bus ride; it is so crazy, so out of control, so frightening.  It is INSANE.  Perhaps the holidays don’t always make us wonder if we are going to remain bodily intact, but I know that many wonder if they will survive the crazy ride emotionally intact!   

It is interesting to me how I have moved through different cycles during my years of celebrating the holidays.  Certainly, as a child, I was delighted and mystified and just loved the essence of the holiday time, but I picked up on the adults’ stress and discontent, too.  They talked a good talk about the reason for the season being about giving and thankfulness and love, but that did not match with the alcohol, the family fights, the tears and stress around holiday time.  I dove into my presents and played with my cousins and tried my best to ignore them.  I hung on blindly to the idea of santa claus, a sweet, generous man who expected nothing in return.  I was devastated when my mother broke it to me that he did not exist (at age eleven!)  The mystery was gone.

Then it became about getting stuff….as an adolescent, I wanted but could not have the fancy things my fellow high schoolers had.  As a young adult putting myself through college, I do not remember a single Christmas (was I in a fog or did I just not celebrate?)  When I met my husband, I was adopted into his family and became part of the mega-family-holiday machine.  They had traditions that had been in place for generations in their southern aristocratic lineage.  I did not feel the permission to question or reject their traditions, so played along for awhile as a I thought a dutiful daughter-in-law should. It was overwhelming and exceedingly uncomfortable for me.   

When my husband and I had our own children, at first we tried to continue to attend holiday gatherings with the extended (and I do mean extended….like 50-plus people) family, but then there was the hardship of trying to honor my own family of origin.  Whose turn is it this year?  Let’s see, Christmas with mine, Thanksgiving with his…no, that’s how we did it last year.  I started to feel like the sausage two dogs were fighting over!  Then I got bitten by the Martha Stewart bug and wanted to create the most magical holiday season possible for my family-the only problem was I did not have a staff of 300 to help me out!  I got over that one pretty quick. 

And then there was this little voice inside me that said it was time to create our own traditions, in our own nuclear family, on our own terms.  I wanted to choose consciously where to put my energy for the holidays.  It was a huge shock to Peter’s family (not so huge for mine as I had already set some firm boundaries with them) for us to elect not to participate in the machine.  Peter’s parents expressed their unhappiness, and I am certain we were called some unattractive names by some in his family of origin, but we held our ground.  Now, some years later, it is expected by all that we will be having our Christmas at home with our own little family of four (and our cat!)  They are allowed to feel how they want to feel, and that is okay; I cannot control their choice to take it personally when we stay home.  But I do not feel responsible for their happiness any more.  They are free to choose what they want to do with their time just as we are.  AH….freedom!

It has been quite an exploration over the years to look at where I am trying to make others happy, trying to meet some unspoken obligations, trying to exceed expectation.  Identifying what resonates with my heart, instead of blindly clinging to traditions just because others do.  And now, our own family is expanding our idea of what the holidays mean to us.  We feel into our hearts as to what is best for us.  Yes, we consciously choose to incorporate some “traditional” rites during the holidays, but because they resonate with us.  And we incorporate some other things that are not traditional, again because that is what resonates with our family.  For example, we choose to celebrate the Winter Solstice as the beginning of our Yule celebration; we have a giant party with bonfire and wonderful food, and several craft stations set up to make snow flakes, paper-bead jewelry, cinnamon ornaments, and other fun things.  Then we have a ceremony to acknowledge the year that has passed, giving thanks for the bounty and the successes.  We write on colorful pieces of paper those aspects of ourselves that we feel we can lovingly release and transform, and then we throw them into the fire, blessings them as they burn.  We dance, we sing, and we celebrate being alive.  It is a wonderful night of kinship and love.

I am realizing it is always up to us, that we can choose consciously to enjoy what we already do for the holidays by being fully present and with a loving heart, or we can choose consciously to re-form what we do to reflect what makes us happy.  I don’t see much sense in a lot of running around and stressing out and settling for interactions that make me feel unhappy or even crazy!  Life is too short!   

Blessings to you and yours for this holiday season and always!

It seems to be in the media everywhere right now!  Between Mackenzie Phillips, Oprah Winfrey, five men in one family arrested, and the movie “Precious”, it seems the collective mind is attempting to bring up the heinous topic of sexual abuse. 

I hear many saying how disturbing it is and wanting it to go away.  I understand that, for sure.  It is ugly, uncomfortable, and unbelievable that sexual abuse goes on.  But as a survivor, I know it does, and I also know that the culture of secrecy around it is why it continues to infect people’s lives.  It must be talked about, it must be SEEN, in order for it to stop happening.  Children’s lives are at stake, RIGHT NOW.

The below article is something that I found some years ago that was helpful in knowing what adults can do to stop sexual abuse. Source- http://www.darkness2light.org/KnowAbout/adults_responsible.asp

Child sexual abuse: the hidden epidemic

Child sexual abuse is a hidden but significant problem in every community in America. Experts estimate that one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before their 18th birthday. Less than one in ten will tell. Research clearly shows that individuals who are sexually abused as children are far more likely to experience psychological problems often lasting into adulthood, including Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, depression, substance abuse and relationship problems. Child sexual abuse does not recognize region, race, creed, socio-economic status or gender; it crosses all boundaries to impact every community and every person in America.

If child sexual abuse were like most childhood diseases, the prevalence and consequences of it would lead to telethons to raise money for its cure every weekend. But child sexual abuse is one of the last cultural taboos. With the exception of child-focused personal safety programs, almost nothing is being done to address it.

Darkness to Light believes that adults should be taking proactive steps to protect children from this significant risk. It is unrealistic to think that a young child can take responsibility for fending off sexual advances by an adult. Adults are responsible for the safety of children. Adults are the ones who need to prevent, recognize and react responsibly to child sexual abuse. Yet, the statistics clearly show that adults aren’t shouldering this responsibility. Darkness to Light believes that adults just don’t know how.

What adults need to know about child sexual abuse…

• It happens more than you think. A lot more - one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before their eighteenth birthday.
• It can happen right under your nose and you may never know – less than one victim in ten will tell.
• The perpetrators aren’t usually “dirty old men hiding in the bushes” – 34% of those who sexually abuse children are family members. A further 59% are friends and acquaintances of the child and his family.
• You probably don’t realize how big the problem is – 67% of the victims of all sexual assaults (including adults) are children.
• And we’re not talking about young teenagers having consensual sex – the median age for sexual abuse is just nine years of age.
• Child sexual abuse is not just a bad experience. Child sexual abuse wrecks young lives – victims of child sexual abuse are at far greater risk for all sorts of psychological disorders including PTSD, depression, substance abuse and relationship problems, often lasting into adulthood.

The personal pain of child sexual abuse…

• Adolescents and young adults with a history of childhood abuse are 3 times more likely to become depressed or suicidal as compared to those without such a history. ( Brown, Cohen, Johnson & Smailes, 1999 )
• Women with histories of childhood abuse report a greater number of physical and psychological problems, and lower ratings of their overall health than their peers. ( Moeller & Bachmann, 1993 )
• 34% of children who are either physically or sexually abused, and 58% of children who are both physically and sexually abused meet the criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. ( Ackerman, Newton, McPherson, Jones & Dykman, 1998). Untreated, PTSD is a chronic disorder. The residual emotional, behavioral, cognitive and social symptoms persist and contribute to a host of psychiatric problems through life. ( Ferguson & Horwood, 1998 )
• Adolescents and adults who are abused in childhood are significantly more likely to drink alcohol and/or use illicit drugs than their peers. Adolescents and adults who were victims of childhood maltreatment have been consistently found to be more likely to engage in high-risk sexual behaviors.

And the cost to us all…

• A 1996 National Institute of Justice study estimated that each year child sexual abuse in America costs the nation $23 billion
• Victims of child sexual abuse generally spend more on psychiatric care and medical services throughout their lives. Some victims of child sexual abuse require more expensive special educational services. Child sexual abuse causes lost potential and productivity. These expenses, which would not be necessary if not for sexual abuse, are a financial drain to each and every one of us.

So, what is happening to prevent child sexual abuse

• Preventing sexual abuse with child-focused programs… There are several well-known and successful programs that teach children self-protection skills and techniques, as age-appropriate. These programs also teach children about physical boundaries and about discerning types of touch. These programs are valuable to children. The skills learned by children in these programs have thwarted some abductions and sexual assaults. However, we must not fall into a trap of thinking that these skills are the only protection children need.
• Think about it. It is unrealistic to expect a six-year old to fend off sexual advances from an adult relative. A six-year old can’t recognize sexual advances for what they are. And a six-year old has been taught to “mind” adults who are authority figures. It is unrealistic to think that a six-year old can or even should protect himself in this situation.
• Adults are responsible for the safety of children. We strap children into car seats, we walk children across busy streets and we ask our teenagers questions about where they are going and who they will be with, all to keep them safe. Adults should also be responsible for protecting children from sexual abuse.
• Why don’t adults do a better job? Child abuse statistics show that adults do not adequately protect children from child sexual abuse. There are a lot of reasons why, but the main one is THEY DON’T KNOW HOW!!!
• Research suggests that adults are unaware of effective steps they can take to protect their children from sexual abuse. Most do not know how to recognize signs of sexual abuse and many do not know what to do when sexual abuse is discovered.

Mother Five by Licia Berry, 2006

I was reminded this weekend that I am a healer.  I’ve always known this, but haven’t always wanted to own it.  I think there are a lot of us out there.

I don’t have to say a word.  Just my presence, a smile, will sometimes awaken the desire in others to offer up their wounds for me to kiss.  If I offer more, such as a hug, a home cooked meal, a conversation, or god forbid an invitation to stay in my house for some days, the healing can be more wild and wooly.  But opportunity for healing nonetheless.

Healing is not always pretty.  In fact, I frequently find that healing requires that it will hurt more before it gets better.  This is true whether resetting a broken bone (OW), ripping a scab off an infected wound (OW), or re-opening a heart hurt that has been glossed over by a desire not to feel pain.

We went camping to the coast for the thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S.  There we met a lovely family while strolling on the beach.  There was an instant connection, a feeling of wanting to get to know these folks.  Conversation led to enjoyment of each other, and we got together for dinner that night.   

In a very short time over delicious food, our conversation turned to deeper heart matters, such as love, marriage, relationship, commitment, priorities, and family.  Our sharing turned very personal, very quickly.  Old hurts started pouring out as well as the tears.  For some reason, the fact of the four of us sitting together opened up a safety zone within which the swirling energies of love could stir up and cleanse what was unsaid in each of us, and healing could occur. 

I don’t find this unusual; in fact, it seems to be the way it goes most of the time.  I know from personal experience that, when the ideal factors are present, alchemy can occur.  Sometimes the chemistry in a group is not so ideal for transformation, but for another purpose.  Perhaps an example might be a social gathering that is intended for networking or making friends.  But I always hunger for the chemistry that allows true and deep opening and therefore healing to happen. Not adept at the “how about this weather” types of conversations, I seem to need to know the precious soul of a person in five minutes or less.

I hesitated several times in writing this because I don’t want to sound egotistical.  To say that I am a healer could very well incur the wrath of those who don’t understand the subtle energetic nature of healing, or those who say that healing is a dying art or not needed in the world.  To be a healer necessitates that some will not trust you.

But others can say that they are a lawyer or a gardener or doctor or a writer or a chef….so why not say that I am a healer?  I don’t pretend to understand it fully….far from it.  But, at a very basic molecular level, this is what I am.

I notice after 44 years that my good friends are pretty brave people.  Or maybe tenacious.  Or in the case of my husband, very very forgiving.  I’m intense, and not an easy person to be friends with.  There is something about my presence that reveals the wounds, makes those hurts rush to the skin and inflame the face, where the person who possesses them then has the choice to yield them to me and therefore relinquish their smallness to love, or to hang on to their construct and fight.  And interpreting their discomfort as something that I have done, they will sometimes judge me for having innately, unknowingly called the pain to the surface.  Frequently I am projected upon…as a maker of conflict, as stupid, as difficult, as fill in the blank.  It makes me think of the man who called the flounder to the water’s edge…the fish came from deep within the sea to grant the man’s wishes.  But eventually the man asked for too much, and when the wishes were taken away, he projected onto the fish as the cause for all his ills.

I don’t feel understood by many people.  I sometimes feel I am a wild force too big to be contained, and that the only safe course of action for someone who wants to be near me is to surrender.  Of course, the nature of free will beings is to resist this, even in times when their well-being may depend on it.

Perhaps it is the abundant amount of mothering energy I seem to have embodied since I was a little girl….friends in school would confide in me, seeming to know that I was a present listener.  My body has always been on the rounder side, like the Great Mother archetype…soft arms for hugging, all breasts and hips, large lips and hands for kissing and holding, long feet for holding me up and grounding me to this earth, long wild and wavy hair, and big blue eyes that seem to take you in unconditionally, pain and all.  I was born to be a Mother.

I don’t have many close friends.  I am blessed with a host of devoted readership around the globe.  I am associated with esteemed international colleagues.  I have many, many soul sisters, and a few soul brothers.  Perhaps this distant closeness that is created by the digital age is a way that I can feel my kinship with others without their having to be so close to be as to get burned by my healer’s presence.

My beloved and my two children must have souls of steel, or rather more accurately, the tensile strength of love and many, many lifetimes of soul wisdom, in order to be with me every single day.  Of course, my sons will leave someday and go into the world, and our relationship will change.  But my Beloved…goodness, the resolve it must take to love me and choose again and again to remain.

I feel best, safest, most sane when I am around others who value honesty and integrity as I do.  Who are honest with themselves about how they feel, who look their own darkness in the eye, name it, and choose to do what it takes to heal it.  It is a courageous path that many do not take.  But those are the people that I want to know in the world.

“When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.”  -Adrienne Rich

free bird

There is something about having an audience that provokes an artist (of any kind, whether writer, musician, visual artist, actor, etc.) to rise to the occasion and express themselves.  I find this to be what will cause me to sit down and write, sometimes more than the need to express, itself.  But the need to express today is strong.

When I was a little girl, I had a vivid imagination.  I imagined worlds and dramas and tragedies and great tales of heroism.  I sometimes told these stories during show and tell in 1st grade, interweaving the facts of my life with the fictions in my mind.  These acts of creativity were unappreciated for what they were, however.  The era, the lack of knowledge or understanding in the family I grew up in, and the location of backwoods North Carolina where I grew up had little appreciation of normal child development, and so I was labeled a Liar.

That label followed me around for many years….again, doing what normal children do to sometimes cover up their mistakes, to try to look good in the eyes of those who have the power, to try to minimize the punishments for falling down, I sometimes did not tell the truth.  No, I did not take a cookie.  No, I don’t know anything about the candy in Grandmom’s drawer being gone.  No, I did not take the few coins on my father’s dresser.  It is absolutely true that I did those things.

Later in life, as I understood some of the crazier events that happened to me in my family, I began to see that labeling me as a “Liar” was a brilliant, if unconscious, strategy.  No matter what excellent grades I brought home, no matter what awards and accolades, my identity at home would be one of not being trusted to tell the truth.  And so, when I did understand the importance of speaking out about my early life and dealing with it head on, I would have an inner conflict set up even before I started.

I wonder now if there is a different standard for boys and girls when they do the inevitable and make up a reality, or lie.  Are boys expected to be “naughty” and therefore not stigmatized about lying?  Are girls expected to be pure and chaste and innocent, and so if they act out in ways that children do, they bear the brunt of unfair discrimination?

I remember a particular day when I was 11 years old, when I was caught in a lie (I cannot remember what it was, perhaps the stealing the change on the dresser thing), when I was sent to my room.  I lay on my bed and cried for a long time, feeling a sense of injustice and not being understood.  My parents did not give me an allowance, so I did not have money to buy myself little things like candy or toys.  At the time, I didn’t intellectualize the fact that children need to feel a sense of power and control over their lives in some aspects as they begin to enter adolescence, a healthy, normal development, and that my taking the change from my father’s dresser was an attempt to have some power.  I just knew I felt zero support and understanding in my world.

My father came up and sat on the bed with me for a long time, speaking the importance of telling the truth and how all we have in this world is our reputation.  It may surprise some of you to know that this was one of the most beautiful gifts my father gave to me in our twisted, convoluted history together.  While he raged and sexually preyed on me as a drunk at night, when sober, he became the kind of man my inner masculine wanted to model myself after.  His sharing of his concept of honor made such a deep impression on me at that age that I am touched by his teaching to this day, and part of my moral code and devotion to truth I attribute to this conversation.  How interesting and ironic that my dear father, whom I love and hold in my heart despite everything, would coach and prepare me to reveal what he did to me.

Perhaps I was at the age that I began to understand the difference between truth in the consensual reality and the truth of my imagination.  Perhaps at age 11-12 the child’s brain is capable of conceiving what that means.  Already a prolific writer and winning competitions for my essays in school, I had some sense of the worlds that I had access to through my artistic ability.  I began to learn that I was intelligent, and that the way I put words together had an impact and inspired people.  But add the complexity of what had been done to me in the name of satisfying sexual greed in the dark of night, and the desperate need to keep the secrets in an alcoholic family, and you will see how the telling of the truth has become a very loaded topic.  The gravity of the truth began to shine clear, and the heavy weight to burden me.

What is the truth?  Is something true if we don’t want to look at it?  Is it true despite our attempts to deny it?  What are the ramifications of pretending something isn’t true when it is?  These are all questions that I have wrestled with in endless cycles since I began to wake up.

To this day, I have an obsession with truth.  To the point that if I try an experiment and say something that is NOT true, such as “My name is Beth”, I will start coughing.  I can’t do it.  My inner barometer won’t let me speak or write something that I don’t personally experience as true. 

I have examined many spiritual traditions as well as modern physics and understand now that there are as many realities as there are perspectives, and all are valid.  I also know (and experience) that if a reality is unobserved it may as well not have happened. 

Additionally, I understand that there is some modicum of truth that we can all agree to, if we are willing to acknowledge it.  While my family has given slight, grudging acknowledgment of the sexual abuse and no acknowledgement of the alcoholism I encountered as a child, there is great resistance to me talking about it.  Does this make it untrue?

In my desire to be a loyal daughter, I have censored myself for many years, even though the truth has leaked out in ways through my writing and art and conversations.  Even in therapy I have protected my family as a “good daughter should”, revealing only parts of the story, perhaps the parts that I could handle revealing to myself.  I love my family, as people and as having been the sieve through which I arrived in this world.  I would not be who I am without them.  I have even attempted over the 21 years that I have been in conscious recovery and healing work to actually heal my family, out of my love for them and desire that they, too, be free from the sickness that bound us.  They have been unresponsive, however.

Now, the bird that has lived caged in my throat must be freed, and I am going to talk about my life openly and unapologetically.  I will censor no more.  I choose not to become a raging fanatic for a cause, because that would be out of balance.  Yes, I am a survivor of sexual abuse and an adult child of alcoholics, but that is not my identity or the sum total of who I am.  Not by a long shot. 

My desire is to tell the truth in a measured, grounded way, honoring myself, with the intention and purpose to heal and to give permission to others to acknowledge the truth within themselves, no matter how heinous it may be to see.  I know from my own life journey of looking at these truths that therein lays the path to integration and Wholeness.  And an even deeper appreciation of The Truth.