United By Our Wounds

    So last night I had a profound experience. Some time after calling for rapid healing yesterday during my meditation, I used some edibles to fall asleep last night and felt a profound influx of healing energy coming to me and through me, like the energy had finally reached me...or rather I was finally opening to it. And several minutes into this experience, I had the following enter my mind: your powerful story will make you a powerful leader. (Just as I typed that, spirit worked through me again and used the word 'healer' instead of leader; both are true, but last night the word was leader.) In that moment I took in even deeper the idea that I chose these particular battle scars. I chose to go through all of these major traumas in my early life for a reason. Thanks to a book I read called Facing Our Wounds: Looking into the Mirror of My Heart, I also integrated the idea shared in it that people don't typically trust a leader without a limp. And boy, do I have a limp...
    This didn't come with some feeling of grandiosity. Typically, I force myself to think small so that I don't come across that way. This felt like a calling reminding me that I chose my circumstances carefully so that I'd have the credibility to guide people through their own profound experiences of suffering. The whole world is made up of people who have survived terribly excruciating circumstances and frequently these people who have suffered deeply pass their wounds onto others. But I have been ardently trying to make headway in the opposite direction. I want to help others heal their wounds and accept their battle scars. I want to help create a new mentality where we use our wounds as reasons we need to start loving, protecting, and supporting one another.

We are united by our wounds.
But we have decided to allow our wounds to divide us.
We have said to one another, "I am in pain and therefore so should you be."
We have said to each other, "I am unhappy and therefore you should not be happy."
We have said, "I am deeply afraid of the world and therefore you should not have peace."
We have said, "Your happiness makes me angry, because I cannot feel joy."
So we have taken joy, peace, and happiness from others
so that we would not be alone in our suffering.
But we can choose to be united by our wounds.
We have these in common.
And if we were to come together to lift each other up,
we would all win.
We could decide to become wounded warriors walking each other home.

The Possibility of Rapid Healing

    The number one reason behind what I confessed yesterday about wishing I hadn't survived is that I believed it would be so much easier to heal from the trauma on the other side of the veil. I did not wish to heal the hard way on the earth plane. I did not wish to spend years and years toiling through the grief and the shame and the blah, blah, blah. (The list is way too long to put here, but you get the point.) But alas, here I am battling endlessly away. It's wearisome, but I must have chosen to do things the hard way for...I don't know, a greater level of satisfaction as I cross each improbable threshold?
    With all that said, I am meditating now on the possibility that rapid healing can also take place on the earth plane. I am opening my heart and mind to the idea that miraculous levels of healing can still occur while incarnate on the earth. What if healing only seems challenging to us because we are not open enough to it while here?

Dear Mother, Father, God, angels and ancestors, I invite you and invoke you into my mind. Dear Mother, Father, God, angels and ancestors, I invite you and invoke you into my heart.
Dear Mother, Father, God, angels and ancestors, I invite you and invoke you into my soul.
I call upon your light, your healing grace. Please pour your infinite light and healing grace into my crown. I allow the light that you share with me to cleave through the remaining shadows in my energies. I allow the healing grace that you share with me to excise the remnants of darkness and despair, the vestiges of shame, grief, and sorrow.
I allow the infinity of your light, the infinity of your grace to fill me and envelop me.
Thank you, God. Thank you, God. Thank You, God.
Let this be so. And so it is. Amen.  

Battles and Marathons

    I'm still feeling very embattled today. Battling against the constant struggles of my mental health, battling against the fear, anxiety, and desperation that come with the living situation I am in right now. As I have admitted before, the more chaos I perceive in my personal life, the more I want to shut down. It's a form of a trauma response...my "learned helplessness", the idea that I can't do anything right so I shouldn't do anything at all. Or the idea that I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't. And I am beginning to think the other reason I don't have the energy or the will-power to create forward momentum in my life is because I am still dealing with a big portion of my psyche or ego that truly wishes I had never survived. For whatever reason, the wish isn't for it to have never happened, but that I had never survived it and it's hard to make any form of progress with that wish dwelling in my consciousness. It feels as though the trauma I went through stole my life from me...stole my desire to live. But I'm still here because the other part of me continues to cling to the idea that my story and my healing journey will eventually help others. I'm literally still alive because I have the audacity to believe that I could positively impact the world. How crazy does that sound? Is egocentrism keeping me alive then? I really don't know.
    Don't get me wrong here, I am trying my best to climb out of this valley. Yes, my thoughts are all very "doom and gloom" lately, but I have made it to the other side every time, and this time shall be no different. There's a purpose to each of these valleys and when I finally figure out what the purpose is to this one, I will begin to feel a shift and see a change in my outer world. In the mean time, forgive me for being such a "Debbie Downer", such a "Negative Nancy". I'm doing the best that I can.

You may be very keen
to judge me for my melancholy,
and I don't blame you...I am, too.
In my effort to avoid self-pity,
I sometimes
side-step self-compassion.

I ask myself,
shouldn't I be over this by now?
I ask myself,
shouldn't I be moving forward and letting go by now?
I tell myself,
you don't have the right to mope, you got rescued.

But I do have a right
to my anxiety and fits of depression;
that's what C-PTSD gave me.
Healing doesn't happen overnight,
it happens in fits and starts.
Healing doesn't have a finish-line,
it's a never ending marathon;
and sometimes we get winded,
sometimes we trip and fall,
and at times we even crawl.
But I haven't given up,
and neither should you.

I am learning how to trust myself.
I am learning to trust this process,
however grueling it may very well be.
I am trying to believe
in my power to overcome
the overwhelming feelings of
powerlessness and hopelessness.
I'm not sure if I'll ever manage
to get through the weariness
caused by my never ending battles,
but I have people to lean on,
while I limp through
this part of my marathon...

And in fact, I think we are all wounded warriors walking each other home.

Healing is Still Happening

    It's been so hard to write lately. My mind keeps going off the deep end which is why there have been a lot of prayers posted over the last several days. I do the work every day, but there is always another layer of consciousness for me to heal. Last week I had to work through the emotions associated with not having gotten the help I needed after the trauma and that no one was there to save me from my father that day. I kept thinking, no one helped me and my father got away with it. There was no one around to help me process what had happened and my biological father told me to keep it a secret anyway. The adults around me at the time could tell that something serious had happened and in all likelihood they probably guessed, but they weren't able to address the problem.
    Today I had to work on healing the imaginings my trigger word caused me to have. I may have been in denial, but it wasn't a comforting form of denial....and unfortunately, now is not the time to make that statement less cryptic. Throughout my whole denial phase, I did not tell a soul that I had a trigger word and even now, no one in my family knows what went on in my head when the word came up. I think they deserve to know before I make it public here...
    At the moment I am trying to remind myself that even when it doesn't feel that way, I AM healing. I am healing because that has been my intention. But the going is hard, it's exhausting. It's never ending. Yes, there have been good moments and good days, but lately, I'm just getting through the day, getting through the week. I've at least found a reliable way to get some sleep, so that's a big win.

Even when the darkness is creeping towards you,
healing is still happening.
Even when the nightmarish shadows flash across your vision,
healing is still happening.
Even as you shed your tears,
healing is happening.
Even as your ghosts seem to surround you,
healing is still happening.
No matter where you are,
healing is happening.
And when you add your intention to the process,
when you trust the process,
your healing will begin to hasten.

The Love That I Am

I allow the light that I am
to become more tangible
than the body I inhabit.
I allow the light that I am
to expand exponentially.
I allow the light that I am
to transform all the shadows
within me;
the shadows of doubt,
the shadows of shame,
the shadows of guilt;
all of them dissolved
by the light within me. 

I allow the grace that I am
to become greater than
my history of suffering.
I allow the grace that I am
to grow stronger than
my grief and anguish.
I allow the grace that I am
to dissolve the prison
I've made of the past.

I allow the joy that I am
to become more expansive
than my sea of sorrows.
I allow the joy that I am
to envelop the heart of my inner child.
I allow the joy that I am
to outpace my pains.

I allow the love that I am
to settle more deeply into my heart.
I allow the love that I am
to wipe away my tears.
I allow the love that I am
to loosen my death-grip
on my story;
I allow the love that I am
to replace my story full of pain
with a story full of pleasure. 

All That I Am

Know that you are love personified;
As you are the beloved child of God, you are the love of God.
Know that you are peace personified;
As you are the beloved child of God, you are the peace of God.
Know that you are grace personified;
As you are the beloved child of God, you are the grace of God.
All that I am, you are.

Know that you are power personified;
As you are the beloved child of God, you hold the power of God.
Know that you are light personified;
As you are the beloved child of God, you hold the light of God.
Know that you are joy personified;
As you are the beloved child of God, you hold the joy of God.
All that I am, you are.

Unpacking Yesterday's Conclusion

    So yesterday I drew an interesting conclusion: that my trauma and my purpose are inseparable, that they are two sides of the same coin. This may seem preposterous, but everything that I have ever suffered from gives me the credibility needed to support others with similar deep wounds. My intimate understanding of profound suffering has given me a profound level of compassion for others. Just like in Harry Potter when Harry learns of the prophecy and finally understands that the reason he is prophesized to be the one who kills Lord Voldemort not because he HAS to, but because he one, wants him dead more than anyone, and two, he'd want to be the one to do it, my past makes me want, more than anything, to empower the disempowered and to give a voice to the voiceless. I've been at the bottom of the totem pole before, I've been dismissed before, I've been rejected by my peers. I know what it's like to feel worthless and powerless and as I learn how to reverse those feelings, I will eventually be able to share with other people how they can overcome them as well. Now, I'm not saying I'll be as famous as a fictional character, but what I am saying is that my past is intrinsically linked to my future, my pain and my purpose are, indeed, two sides of the same coin.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

Dear God, I allow Your healing grace to transform my painful past into a blessing for myself and all those around me.
Dear God, I allow Your loving light to transform my history into divine intervention.
Dear God, please pour Your perfect vision into my crown so that I can see my past through Your loving eyes instead of through the ego's lens of pain and suffering.
Dear God, please assure me that I am strong enough to transform the script of sorrow and despair into one of peace and hope.
Please, dear God, help me transform the lead weight of my trauma into wings that would enable me to fly.
Dear God, I accept that Your will for me is perfect happiness and I gratefully accept Your help in effortlessly letting go of all that keeps me outside Your kingdom.
Dear God, I open myself right now to receive Your blessings.
I open myself right now to receive Your healing grace.
I open myself right now to Your certainty of my goodness, of my sacredness, of my wholeness.
I open my mind and my eyes to Your truth, God.
The truth that I am Your beloved and holy child.
The truth that I carry Your love and light in my heart and soul.
In this divine moment, God, I choose to see myself through Your eyes.
In this divine moment, God, I choose to see my past through Your eyes.
I accept in this divine moment, that my purpose and my trauma cannot be separated; they are one, they are two sides of the same coin. 

Changing My Relationship to Trauma

    So as I've been on this journey and as I've catalogued it, I have been working towards healing my relationship to my trauma. I have consistently viewed it and the effects it has had on me as one would a source of evil. How could I not? No kind hearted person would be capable of injuring or traumatizing someone in the way that my biological father had done to me...which leads us to the conclusion that only someone evil could perpetrate such violence. But as I've been reminding myself throughout this journey, my father treated me that way because his father treated him that way. My biological father was never given a way out of the abuse, so he created his own twisted way out. As long as he was the victimizer, he would never again be the victim. Perpetrating violence against his own family was a way for him to feel in control. In his world, there were only victims and victimizers, only sharks and minnows...and he had to show everyone he was a shark so that he would not be violated again.

    The lesson I am learning from my trauma is how to turn something horrendous into something that can bless me and the world around me. So far, I have been so focused on making sure other people benefit from my writing that I haven't completely accepted the potential healing that it would also offer to me. But I can't fully help others heal until I view myself as deserving of healing and deserving of the power to create my greatest good. I can't help others fully until I release the roadblocks of self-judgement and self-reproach that have caused me to believe that I am only here to open the door for others to walk through and not to walk through with them.

I am learning that my trauma can be turned into a blessing for myself and others through the infinite and powerful grace of God.
I am learning that I am so much more than my trauma, so much bigger than it.
I am learning that I am capable of overcoming immense obstacles.
I am learning to let go of what my trauma appeared to teach me; to let go of the idea that I must be worthless, that I must be despicable and unlovable. My father was passing on to me what he believed about himself because his father had passed on to him what my grandfather believed about himself. And all of us were mistaken.

I Need Not Fear the Ride

Mother, Father, God, Great Spirit, Our Creator I invite You and invoke you into my heart.
Mother, Father, God, Great Spirit, Our Creator, I invite You and invoke you into my mind.
Mother, Father, God, Great Spirit, Our Creator, I invite You and invoke you into my soul.
Dear God, please lift me into Your loving embrace, please hold me and caress me.
Dear God, please comfort me with Your presence. I open to You right here and now, God. I open to Your guidance and healing ministrations, God. I accept here and now that my path is and has always been meticulously guided, that You have been by my side this whole time.
Dear God I am ready to release and let go of my desire to control every outcome. For every outcome is for my greatest good. Every outcome has been directed by You and my soul to guide me and I need not fear the ride. I need not fear the ride for my guide is always by my side.
Thank You, God. Thank You, God. Thank You, God.

My True Home Is In God

Dear Mother, Father, God, please fill my mind with Your light, with Your grace.
Dear Mother, Father, God, please fill my heart with Your infinite love for me.
Dear Mother, Father, God, please lift my soul's vibration so that it can experience Your peace, Your love, Your joy.
Dear Mother, Father, God, I invite You and invoke You into my heart, mind, and soul right now that I may be lifted to a higher state of being.
Please carry me into the realm of light where I am one with You.
I am weary God. My soul is weary God. My heart is weary, God.
So I ask You to please lift me higher. Please carry me into Your realm of healing light.
Please embrace me, hold me to Your heart, dear God so that I may sense our hearts beating as one.
Dear God, fill my heart, mind, and soul with Your infinite healing grace for they each belong to You, not the darkness they have found themselves in.
My true home is in Your kingdom, God, not the nightmare I find myself in.
My true home is in Your love. My true home is in Your light. My true home is in Your grace. My true home is in Your peace.
Thank You, God. Thank You, God. Thank You, God.

On Learning to Love Oneself

    What's been coming up for healing lately is my inability to feel loved and to feel deserving of love. When I go into meditation and get the reminder that I am loved beyond measure, my ego's response is, "But why?" There's a portion of my consciousness that still feels incredulous about the idea that I could be loved. As I stated some time before this, my ego thinks that if my own biological parents couldn't love me, then clearly no one could. This doesn't mean that I doubt the love of my adoptive parents or my siblings...but it does mean that on occasion, I doubt the love of everyone else. 
    What's odd about this is that while I continue to condemn myself for being a survivor of trauma and for having all the idiosyncrasies that correlate to said trauma, I don't condemn anyone else for their traumas and their response to it. I don't see anyone else as less human due to their past. But I lost touch with my own humanness. My biological father had objectified me and shamed me in such a way that I never really felt like a person. To give an example, I usually feel a connection of some kind when I look others in the eye but when I look into my own eyes...there's nothing. No connection. No sign of self-love. I can't see joy or happiness, nor can I see any pain or sorrow in my eyes. When I look into my own eyes it almost seems like no one's home; I can't see the person behind them.

Dear Mother, Father, God, angels and ancestors, please grace me with your loving presence right now.
Dear Mother, Father, God, angels and ancestors, please surround me with your light, please infill me with your healing and envelop me in your love.
Dear Mother, Father, God, angels and ancestors, I find myself in the valley once again and ask you to please extend to me your guiding hands, that I may be lifted from the mire.
Dear Mother, Father, God, angels and ancestors, please heal the parts of my consciousness that continue to question your love for me. Please heal the parts of my consciousness that struggle to learn self-love.
Dear Mother, Father, God, angels and ancestors, please lift from me all the "reasons" I have for believing myself to be unlovable and undeserving of love. Please lift from me all my barriers to self-love.
Dear Mother, Father, God, angels and ancestors, please remind me that my past has nothing to do with who and whose I am. Please remind me of my holiness. Please remind me of my wholeness. Please remind me of my sacredness.
Thank You, God. Thank You, God. Thank You God.
Let this be so. And so it is.
Asé. Aho. Amen.

My Thoughts on EMDR

    I've had a couple people tell me that I might want to try EMDR, which for those of you who don't know, stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and entails recovering suppressed memories. I'm not entirely sure how it works, but you can understand why I might have some level of trepidation about it. To me, the primary reason I have never been committed to a mental health facility is because I can't remember what happened. I know many of the details of what happened, but I don't have the memory and I prefer it that way. But apparently there is a relatively safe way to recover suppressed memories that, hopefully, won't overwhelm me. My thought is that as long as I have opened myself up enough to be able to receive a big enough influx of God's healing grace to make the recollections bearable, then this form of therapy is certainly worth trying.  

Dear God, I open to receive Your healing grace right now.
Dear God, I ask You to surround me, enfold me, and infill me with Your healing light right now.
Dear God, fill my mind with enough love and light to drive out the lingering nightmare and to keep it at bay.
Dear God, I open to receive Your perfect vision.
May it be that no matter what I learn about my past, that I remember who I am and whose I am; may I remember my holiness, my worthiness, my sacredness.
Dear God, I ask You to please hold my hand as I seek to wander back into the past, please help me bring enough light to those memories to heal from them.
Please, dear God, ensure that the recovery of these memories doesn't wound me further.
Thank You, God. Thank You, God. Thank You, God.
Asé. Aho. Amen. Let this be so. And so it is.

To Obliterate Shadows

    The premise of yesterday's post is that WE are the bright side to our own story. We are the light and love that the darkness calls for. But one thing I want others to know is that inner strength is only half the answer. The other NEED we all have is that we have to have the outside support system in place for us to be able to believe that there is a way through and a way out of the overwhelming despair caused by suffering, caused by trauma. I have been really and truly blessed to hold enough of that magic within me AND to have the grace that comes with others' support.

Thank You, God, for my community.
For I could not have gotten this far on my own.
I could not have come this far alone.
Thank You, God, for my friends and family.

I thank myself for choosing not to give up.
I thank myself for letting the light within me win.
Dear God, I thank You for giving me the strength
to overcome the depths of despair,
to overcome the harrowing heart-break. 

When I return, by mistake,
to the past pain,
I shall remind myself to let the light within me win today,
for I am the light that the darkness calls for.
I shall look into the darkness with renewed courage,
knowing with all my heart
that I hold enough love and light
to obliterate the shadows,
to fill the darkness with my own light.

Thank You, God, for reminding me of my magic.
Thank You, God, for reminding me of my strength.
Thank You, God, for reminding me of my power.

There's Magic in That

I didn't know what I was looking for
when I picked away at my life like a scab...
until I found it.
The magic in it.

The magic in me
that enabled me to give love so freely
even after experiencing
the worst betrayals.
I was looking for the magic
in the people who saved us and raised us,
in the family that chose us.
To know that I was chosen...
the unlovable, broken child was
chosen.

There's magic in that.

To learn that I was wanted,
to have felt safe and secure
in the love of my new parents.

There's magic in that.

There's more than one side of the story...
the dark side, and the bright side.
And my life has encompassed both
in massive ways.
The good news is,
the light is growing.
The light within me is growing,
and the light within my history is growing.
All the darkness felt by the heart of my inner child
is receiving this expanding light.

All the darkness I went through
had me believing that I was one
with the darkness.
But I was the love that shone out.
I was the light that shone out.

There's magic in that.

And to choose to be the light
after being in so many nightmares
takes a lot of courage and strength.
To have been a witness to all the suffering,
all the torture...
to have experienced the hellish place ourselves
and still say to everyone we meet,
"I love you"...

There's magic in that.

Defining Oneself

    I've come to the conclusion that one of the many talents of my ego is that it redacts my life story...it focuses on all the ways in which I feel I have failed, it focuses on all the ways in which things didn't work out for me and completely ignores all the good things that have happened in my life. I've had a lot of successes and done a lot of things right. I successfully overcame an awful lot to get to where I am and my ego insists that my efforts were clearly not enough due to what my circumstances currently are. It takes a whole lot of will-power, energy, and perseverance to get through all the emotional upheavals I've gone through.
    I keep forgetting to acknowledge how much strength it has taken to get here...even if 'here' isn't seen as ideal. I still fought for every moment. I fought my shadows and insecurities and fears. There have been times when I truly felt that I wasn't bringing enough and wasn't capable of bringing enough to the world and that it might be best if I gave up. I thought "how can someone so warped by trauma be of any use here?" What was the point? What could I possibly give to the world from so broken a heart, so devastated a soul? But I am trying to see that although trauma sculpted me in so many ways, it's not my identity. It may feel like it since scientists have been able to put together a list of behavioral traits/patterns common among those who have suffered from the same forms of trauma as me, but we are all more than the sum of our history. Being a survivor of trauma doesn't make us any less lovable, any less deserving, any less sacred. It doesn't make us less valuable.

There is nothing inherently wrong with being a survivor.
Your history has nothing to do with who you really are.
You are the light who overcame the darkness.

Nothing you went through has the power to define you;
You get to define you.
Will you choose to be your trauma or will you choose to be the light that you are?

Own your story, don't let your story own you.
Own your story and you will see yourself as the light that you are.
You were always the light. You just forgot.

A Reminder from the Angels

    You are loved exactly as you are. Nothing you think, do, or say will ever change this. You have been and you are a bright light for so many. Don't worry about the "what if's", don't worry about your perceived limits; you will succeed. Just keep pressing forward, pushing on. Your life here matters. Your impact on the Earth matters. Know that you belong, even when it doesn't feel that way. Know that you have a role to fill, a role to play and you are already filling it wonderfully. Just keep reaching out to us when you're feeling low and we will lift you higher. We will lift you higher. Give us your doubts. Give us your self-condemnation. Give us your fears, worries, and concerns. We will gladly lift them from your consciousness. Let us in. Let us help you and you will have your laurels.

Dear God, I Call On You

    It seems no matter what I write, the peace I get from these meditative writing experiences doesn't last as long as one might expect. I spend a great deal of each night imagining/picturing the level of trauma I experienced and then wake each morning with the same images in my head. This habit has started causing a good amount of nausea. Usually I wake up ravenous, ready to eat...but now, I've done an excellent job tying my stomach into knots by dwelling on a past I cannot change. You might say I'm wrapped up in self-pity...but I have another reason to revisit the pain. I discovered a way to heal the past while I linger there. So I've convinced myself that I go back to the past just so that I can heal it. I am not sure how true a statement that is, but that has been my goal. I dwell there often and while it screws up my sleep and with my overall well-being, my hope is that my intention to heal from it is present enough to assuage the past and present pain.

Dear God, I call on You and Your healing grace right now.
Dear God, I call on Your divine power right now.
Please pour Your healing grace into my deep wounds
that they may be soothed,
that they may be healed.
Dear God, I call on Your wisdom, Your perfect vision.
Please show me the way forward,
please show me the way out of the illusions of pain and suffering.
Dear God, please remind me of my holiness when I revisit the past. 
Dear God, please remind me of my wholeness when I find myself in pain.
Dear God, please remind me of my worthiness, my deservingness.
Please remind me that I am Your beloved whenever I fall into the depths of despair.
For I tend to forget my true identity when I choose to return to the past.
Dear God, please be patient with me as I unlearn what the illusions of the world taught me. Know that I am reaching out to You, God, expecting and accepting Your gifts of healing grace and divine power, of wisdom and perfect vision.
Thank You, God. Thank You, God. Thank You, God.

Light Was All I Ever Was

    I recognize yesterday's imagery was fairly disturbing, but it feels like an accurate representation of how it has felt to be totally immersed and mired in ones own past suffering. I could choose to think about thousands of other positive things, but what I return to is the thick, sucking mud. That's the affect trauma has on our psyche. All the amazing parts of my life, at these times, practically cease to exist. But I am continuing to seek ways to overcome this patterning.
    The odds have always seemed to be stacked against me, but I have proven to myself and others that I can come out winning anyway. I finished the Appalachian Trail while barely able to sleep the whole time and while others saw me as incompetent. I've had trauma related mental illness and learning challenges but I was able to improve my grades enough to not only land on the honor roll, but I was also able to join the National Honor Society in high school. In college I even started acing physics tests with relative ease. I may seem small and therefore weak, and I may be traumatized and therefore always in an uphill battle, but my willpower has always been strong enough to counter my physical and mental limits.

'Light Was All I Ever Was'

My past teaches me
where I perceive my limits to be.
My past may hold all the pain and grief and questions...
but what if it also holds the key to my peace and joy?
What if it also holds all the answers?

What I endured
showed me my strength.
What I endured
showed me my power.
What I endured
showed me my invincible light.

I learned I was never the mud I was dragged through.
I learned that my light was so big
it would always shine through.
I learned that my light was there before the trauma
and that my light was there after the trauma;
that I remained unchanged in my essence.
I remained unchanged in my core.
And I shall remain unchained from my bondage to trauma.
For light was all I ever was
and light is all I'll ever be. 

In My Minds Eye; Resuscitation

In my minds eye, I see angels lifting me
out of thick, sucking mud...
the kind that eats your shoes
as you try to wade through.
I had been face down in the muck
when they came to my aid
and got me unstuck.
With hardly a whisper of breath in me,
they had to resuscitate me.

In my minds eye, I see angels around me
as they scrub the mud off
and breathe the breath of new life into me.
They had drawn out the mud from my nostrils and airways,
before filling my lungs with rarefied air. 

In my minds eye, I see angels place their hands on me.
One has their hands around my crown.
Another places their hands on my heart and solar plexus.
And a third stands at my feet, holding my ankles.
The one at my middle moves their hands up my torso
drawing out residual remnants of the tacky mud in my energy. 

In my minds eye, I see the dark, sloppy paste get replaced
with the healing light my angels are gifting me.
In this way, these angels have not just resuscitated my body,
they've resuscitated my life.
They've replaced the pain and the shame,
the guilt and the terror
with their loving, healing grace.

So whenever I return to the mudhole by mistake,
I envision my angels plucking me out of the muck
and breathing new life into my weary soul. 

Please Tell Me

I'm at a loss. What can I do?
I know two things to be true.
Both the pain of the past
and the healing grace of God.

But how can I leave the former behind
and step fully into God's grace?
How can I give God greater power
than my past pain?
Is there a way?
Please tell me God,
is there a way?

I am tired God.
My heart is weary, God.
My mind is lost, God.
It wanders aimlessly
through the same dark labyrinth, God.

How can I open to Your healing grace?
How can I return to You
when my mind insists on holding itself captive
in its own twisted hell-scape?
Please tell me, God, how can I let You in?
How can I undo eons of conditioned patterns?
Please give me a hand, God.
Please hold my hand as I find my way
out of the valley of the shadow of death.

I want to feel You by my side again, God.
I want to know beyond a shadow of a doubt
that You have never left me.

Please Lift Me From this Nightmare

Dear God, please lift me from this nightmare.
My body has never felt like home,
it doesn't feel like it's my own.
When my body expresses remembered pain,
it's hard for me
not to dwell in shame.
So dear God, please lift this nightmare from me.

Dear God, please lift me from this nightmare. 
I desperately want to let it go,
but I need a hand, for the going is slow.
Despite my intention, despite my desire,
my mind's consumed by the past and its terrible fire.
So dear God, please lift this nightmare from me.

Dear God, please lift me from this nightmare.
I wish my mind could let me rest,
but it can't help but be obsessed
with the terrors of the past.
Please assure me this pain won't last.

Dear God, please lift me from this nightmare.
Dear God, please lift this nightmare from me.

Strength and Power

Strength and power...
Society has taught us that these are qualities
men possess and women lack.
Women are seen as weak,
we're seen as either beings to be exploited
or beings to be protected,
either way, we're seen as nearly powerless.

Women wouldn't need protection
if men could feel secure in their masculinity
without having to seek our oppression.
Men have always been told in order to be a man,
you can't be like or act like a woman.
Men are told not to cry,
men are told to man up,
men are told they can't be emotional
unless the emotion is rage.

But this isn't the main premise I wish to present.
What I hope to express
is that women also possess
their own power and strength.
You cannot survive society's oppression
and acts of aggression
without inner strength.
You cannot say that one
who goes through hours of labor,
and comes home exhausted,
yet still cares for her child,
(who for sure
won't let them sleep),
one who lacks strength and power.
You cannot say that one who battles daily
through the horrifying consequences of sexual trauma
is one who is lacking in power and strength.

The sad fact is, most women are survivors,
most women have been deeply wounded
by society's oppression,
and we are still here fighting.
Most of us are carrying wounds so deep
that if they could be seen,
we'd be asked "how on Earth are you standing
and not on your knees?"
If society knew how wounded we were
maybe they'd ask for forgiveness
and acknowledge our power.

Take in the New View

There's something shifting...
if you take a moment to listen.

Close your eyes and take a deep breath.
Do you feel the subtle movements in your chest?
That's your resistance being lifted.

Take a moment to breathe in slow.
Can you feel your muscles letting go?
That's the weight being lifted.

You're beginning to remember
that you don't have to carry
the weight of the world on your shoulders,
that you don't have to be Sisyphus,
forever rolling his boulder.

Take a moment to take in the new view.
It's time to look back and be proud of how far you have come,
It's time to be proud of just how much you've overcome.
Don't let your ego skew your perception,
don't let it fill your head with deception.
You have come so much farther than you have left to go,
so don't get discouraged, don't lose hope.
Just keep your eyes on the prize and keep stepping forward.
Remember your strength, remember your courage;
you're doing amazing, just keep moving onward.

Please remember, you are never alone, no matter how it appears,
so keep your head up and we'll wipe away your tears.
Simply ask for our help and we'll give you a hand,
for until you reach out, you won't know where we stand.
Call on us and we'll be by your side,
but we can't help you if behind pity you hide.

Vocalizing Anguish

    So yesterday was interesting. Actually the first week of January has been very interesting so far. But yesterday, I finally took the time to write a letter (not to be sent) addressed to the Department of Social Services of Hagerstown, MD. The intention of writing it was to finally put in words the way the choices the DSS of MD impacted me and my emotional and physical well being. After that wrung me out, I tried to write for this blog and I felt like what I wrote fell quite flat. Anyway, with that unnecessary preamble, I am going to aim for some new free write this evening before going to bed.

Vocalizing Anguish

I'm feeling pulled and drawn to my need
to vocalize my anguish.
I was forced to keep all my pain bottled up;
I was forced into silence in the midst of terrible violence
and my voice must be freed.

No more will I keep
my voice,
my pain
in a bottle.
Just as soon as I'm able,
I shall scream into the void
and give voice to my anguish.

It's been pent up for ages,
my rage within cages,
my grief trapped on pages.
No more will I stand for the violence of silence;
I shall give myself full permission to scream, to yell, to raise bloody hell.
For once I acknowledge and allow
that I must let it all out,
I shall also remember that I never deserved it, the hell.

So far I have done all I can to be healed,
all that's left to do now is tear open the seal
and release all the rage, grief, and anguish
in an Earth shattering peal. 

All You Must Do Is Remember

When your past overwhelms you,
when it threatens to drown you,
remember we already surround you.

When your grief returns from its too short hiatus,
when you can't stop saying how much you hate this,
remember to reach a thought out to God and His angels.

When your fears once again begin to crash over you,
when you start to question how someone could care for you,
remember these are just the thoughts of a poisoned ego, don't let them get to you.

If you wish to create the future of your dreams,
you first must release the nightmares of your past.
Not one thing in your past has the power to mar you;
only the perception of wrong-doings and terrible pain
are creating the illusion of coiling chains.
But we assure you, it's all in your head,
all you must do is remember.

Remember who you are. Remember your courage and strength. Remember that your purpose can become greater than the sum of your history. Let your past give you vision. Let your past give you hope. Let your past give you the future of your dreams. Invite and invoke God and his host of angels. Ask them to pour their healing grace into the painful past and transform it into something that will lift you instead of weigh you down, that would quiet the ego's venomous nightmares and replace them with the vibrant dreams of your soul.

When your past overwhelms you,
when it threatens to drown you,
you must keep your head high,
your chin to the sky,
and remember
you will learn to fly.

Here to Take Flight

Deep down you know just who you are,
so stop what you're doing, stop playing small.
Deep down you know you are more than you seem,
so please stop pretending
you can't follow your dreams.

Don't doubt what you're doing,
don't doubt your purpose for living.
You are here to do some marvelous things,
so don't let your "what if's" stop you
from spreading your wings.
You are here to take flight,
you are here to uncover
all of your might.

Don't forget who you are, don't let go of your dreams,
for those are what will give you your wings.
Please remember that you are entirely able,
so don't give your doubts a seat at the table.

Time to Take a Leap

Take a moment.
Sit still, dig deep.
You are on the precipice of transformation
and it is time to take a leap.

Take a moment.
Breathe in, breathe out.
You are approaching perfect vision
and it is time to forget your doubts.

We are not asking you to forget or deny the past
for everything you went through serves a purpose.
The world is awaiting your transformation,
for humanity cannot learn to shed its prison
until you've made a demonstration.

Your true path is calling you.
Will you be brave enough to heed it?
Your transformation is upon you.
Will you be open enough to receive it?

Your past has tried to convince you
that you must be the Devil's spawn.
But you're understanding now,
that you are nobody's pawn.
You have, at long last, made it
to the other side of the board
and received your queen,
for that was always who you were.

Your true path is calling you.
Will you be brave enough to heed it?
Your transformation is upon you.
Will you be open enough to receive it?

Take a moment.
Sit still, dig deep.
You are on the precipice of transformation
and it is time to take a leap.

Take a moment.
Breathe in, breathe out.
You are approaching perfect vision
and it is time to forget your doubts.

My Dear Child

My dear child, I am here for you.
My dear child, you've been so brave,
but its time to let your grief out.
It is safe now.
You can let it all out now.

My dear child, I assure you,
there is so much strength in you,
even through your tears.

My dear child, I am here for you.
My dear child, you've been incredibly courageous,
but it's time to let your rage out.
It is safe now.
You can let it all out now.

My dear child, don't doubt your power;
it is coursing through your veins.
My dear child, stop casting your doubts
into your dreams;
you are here to be free.

My dearest child,
you know deep down just who you are;
hold fast to your visions
and follow your heart.
Our love has been with you
right from the start.

An End to Unending Grief

This poem is a kind of letter to my inner child.

There seems nothing to do
but sit with you
as you grieve an unending grief.

My words, I know, would offer little comfort.
My words would make but a feeble salve
for a wound so grave;
they'd fail to staunch the bleeding.
But I hope the love I pour into you
and your willful, stubborn wound
would dull the sharpness of your pain.

There seems nothing to do
but sit with you
as you grieve an unending grief.

My words, though I try,
cannot make a reliable tourniquet
for this kind of wound.
My words, though clever, would merely
suppress and repress your tears,
and those surely, must be expressed.
But I hope the silence I hold for you
wraps gently 'round your wound.
I hope the hugs I offer you
fill the chill I know you feel
with unceasing warmth.

There seems nothing to do
but sit with you
as you grieve an unending grief.

Please forgive me my occasional impatience.
Please forgive me my desire to turn away.
I can't help but find it hard
to look at you,
to look at me,
with all my scars.
But I am learning. I am growing. I am strengthening.
I am becoming strong enough
and brave enough
to carry you with all your history. 

I shall carry you and your history
with the gentleness,
with the tenderness you never knew.
I shall hold you and your history
close to my beating heart
until you learn what comfort is.
I shall carry you and your history
until you're ready to trust the ground beneath us,
to trust our legs beneath us.

One day, I hope you'll open your tear filled eyes
and see that the dawn has already arrived.
One day I hope you'll see
that there is, indeed, an end to this unending grief.
But I promise to love you,
to embrace you,
to carry you
until that day arrives.