Tag: empowerment

A Different Intention

When you look at life from the soul's perspective and from its Karmic path, you will see the perfection in all things. Each action will get an opposite and equal reaction, have no fear.

As the Justice System appears to fail, the Universal system is running perfectly behind it. Even if you are unaware and not interested in the talk of karma and the dynamics of physics, it still operates without a hitch. I love that it doesn't need your understanding in order to flow.

In religion there seems to be the assumption, that we have to know and practice in order to be in a relationship with God, when in fact it is impossible not to be.

Your life, your choices, your awareness, are all speaking to God.

In fact there is not a moment you are not. Nothing is hidden, nothing goes unseen or felt, it is all recorded, but not in a way to punish, but to give you all that you are asking for with your intentions.

What you intend, you shall have…what you have done, will be returned to you in kind…complete with the exact feelings you have handed out.

The wheel of cause and effect is turned by you.

There is no special prayer to be sent to this Universal system, where you will be spared the just return…once you set an action in motion, it is already on its return trip back to you.

I had to look up the word intention, so I was clear of it proper meaning.

"A course of action that one intends to follow. An aim or plan, a purpose. The state of one's mind at the time one carries out an action."

The state of one's mind…for some reason, I believed intentions to be more about feelings. But I guess, intentions are more about the mind…or a Knowing.

This makes sense in my experience, for when I had a confused mind, I was sending out confusing messages to the Universe.

My mind's definition were wrong, so the Universe could only send back what I had asked for.

It didn't know that I didn't know, and gave me exactly what I intended…it cared not, whether I knew what I was asking for or not.

If I asked for love, and my definition of love was to lose myself in order to please others, I received others to please and not see me.

I steered clear of people seeing me, for that meant "not Love".

Not seeing equals love…so blind folks arrived by the bushel.

You can pray until your blue in the face to the Universe to send you a warm and loving kind of love, which I sought, I just didn't know that my mind had a huge virus and was flipped around. The Universe wasn't getting it wrong, I was.

I had to fix my inner Knowing and definitions and send out a different intention…

February 7, 2012

empowerment, intentions, joy, love, peace, power, Universe
It came True for me.

In a room today were three forces, joined over a common cause; healing victims, empowering victims, reversing the affects of trauma, abuse and being victimized…finding a way to weave together many sources and journeys…Victims helping Victims using the support of all connecting agencies.

Coming together were three pathways…The law of the land, the victims advocate and me.

All of us cared about the healing of the victims, knowing the affects that linger long after the trial, no matter the outcome…win or lose, the victim still has wounds and scars that the justice system can't touch.

We all recognized the healing that begins with the truth being spoken, no matter if a trial is forthcoming, just finding a person to hear your story raises you from the level of shame to acceptance.

Acceptance carries you to courage and courage allows for your truth to be spoken…and what you need is a very open ear.

In the room were open ears, willing spirits, like minds, and a dream.

A dream that one day the shame of being a victim will lessen, where we can all meet and openly share. For victims to leave their solitary journeys of silence and speak.

To stop suffering alone, ashamed…to be able to know that what they feel or not feel is normal. That they are perfectly perfect living the affects of abuse. Being confused and lost is the cost of abuse.

This seems to be the last closet where humanity is hiding, where souls are suffering in silence, and shame the lock on the door.

All three of us are equally as frustrated and perplexed as to what will open the door of abuse.

What can we do to offer a path of empowerment and healing that overcomes the cloak of shame?

How do you get such deeply hurting souls to expose secrets that their very survival depended on to keep silent? How do we ask them to reveal to us who hurt them, when who hurt them is who they love and call family?

Inside of family homes lives the monster that they have always called dad or uncle or brother or mother etc..how do we unhook them or ask them to open that door? When that most likely will lead to them becoming estranged…How to heal…when healing means losing all that you have?

It seems they are sitting on the bottom and we are asking to pull even that away…leaving them in a free fall…to where?

I know this journey…I know what we are asking…And I know the cost, but I also know the reward.

For four hours we talked and learned from each other and a dream was planted.

Ironically or not, it is Martin Luther King Day….and it came to me after leaving the Dial-Help office…"I have a Dream."

I have a dream to demolish the closets of shame that surround victims. To empower each victim to tear down the walls…and to live free.

Free and unashamed.

Free and not guilty.

Free in the truth of their lives.

Learning not only about abuse, but how to unscramble its affects…learning to find the self they lost and hid away, in shame because of being abused.

I have a dream that all abused kids will return to their natural states of innocence…I believe in this dream, for it came true for me.

January 16, 2012

advocacy, empowerment, land, law, of, sexual, The, victims
Who is in charge of our Free Will?

Another interesting section from Power vs Force by David Hawkins…as it relates to getting out of the negative field of energy.

"The entire field of philosophy is merely evidence that man has struggled and failed for thousands of years to arrive at the simplest recognition of what's true and what's false, or the discourse would have reached some consensus long ago. And it's clear from common human conduct that even if the intellect could reliably arrive at this basic conclusion, it still lacks the power to stop the effect of negative fields. We remain unconscious of the causes of our afflictions while the intellect dreams up all kinds of plausible excuses, hypnotized by these same forces. Even when a person knows his behavior is self-destructive, this knowledge has no necessary deterrent effect whatsoever; intellectual recognition of our addictions has never given us the power to control them."

"In scripture, we're told that man is afflicted by forces unseen. In this century, we've learned that silent invisible rays of energy are emitted by innocent-looking objects – the discoveries of radium paid for this realization with their lives. Roentgen x-rays are lethal; radioactive emissions and radon kill silently. The attractor energy fields that destroy us are equally invisible and no less powerful, but are far more subtle."

"When it is said that some is "possessed," what's meant is that his consciousness has become dominated by negative attractor fields. By this definition, we can see that entire segments of society are so thoroughly "possessed" that they themselves are totally unconscious of their motives. Wisdom tells us that one worships either heaven or hell and will eventually become the servant of one or the other. Hell isn't a condition imposed by a judgmental God, but rather the inevitable consequence of one's own decisions – it's the final outcome of constantly choosing the negative and thus isolating oneself from love."

"Enlightened being have always described the general populace as being "trapped in a dream"; the majority of people are driven by unseen forces, and for a great deal of our lives, most of us are in despair over this fact. We pray to God to relieve us of the burden of our sins, and we look for relief through confession. Remorse seems woven into the fabric of life. How can salvation be possible, then, for those who have unwittingly become ensnared by such destructive forces?"

"In fact, even from a merely scientific viewpoint, salvation is indeed possible; in truth, it's guaranteed by the simple fact that the energy of a loving thought is enormously more powerful than that of a negative one. Therefore, the traditional solutions of love and prayer have a sound scientific basis; man has within his own essence the power of his own salvation."

"Humanity is an "affliction" that we're all burdened with. We don't remember asking to be born, and we subsequently inherited a mind so limited that it's hardly capable of distinguishing what enhances life from what leads to death. The entire struggle of life is in transcending this myopia. We can't enter into higher levels of existence until we advance in consciousness to the point where we overcome duality and are no longer earth bound. Perhaps it's because of our collective will to transcend that we've earned the capacity to finally discover an inborn compass to lead us out of the darkness of ignorance. We needed something very simple, which could bypass those traps of the wily intellect that we've paid such an enormous price for. This compass merely says yes or no – tells us that what's aligned with heaven makes us go strong and what's aligned with hell makes us go weak."

"The ubiquitous human ego is actually not an "I" at all; it's merely an "it". Seeing this illusion reveals an endless Cosmic Joke, where the human tragedy itself is part of the comedy. The irony of human experience is in how fiercely the ego fights to preserve the illusion of a separate individual "I" – even thought this is not a metaphysical impossibility but the wellspring of all suffering. Human reason exhausts itself ceaselessly to explain the inexplicable. Explanation itself is high comedy, as preposterous as tyring to see the back of ones's own head, but the vanity of the ego is boundless, and it becomes even more overblown by this very attempt to make sense of nonsense."

"The mind, in its identity with the ego cannot, by definition, comprehend reality; if it could, it would instantly dissolve itself upon recognizing its own illusory nature. It's only beyond the paradox of mind transcending ego that what Is stands forth, self-evident and dazzling in its infinite Absoluteness. And then all of these words are useless."

"But perhaps from compassion for each other's blindness, we can learn to forgive ourselves, and peace than can be our assured future. Our purpose on Earth my remain obscure, but the road ahead is clear. With the consciousness level of humanity finally above 200, we may expect great transformations throughout human culture, as mankind becomes more responsible for its knowledge, and thus its deeds. We've become fully accountable whether we like it or not. We're at the point in the evolution of our collective awareness where we may even assume stewardship of consciousness itself. Humanity is no longer resigned to passively paying the price for ignorance, or its communal consciousness wouldn't have risen to its new level. From this time forth, man may choose to no longer be enslaved by darkeness; his destiny can then be certain." Gloria in Excelsis Deo David Hawkins.

While this may seem very wordy and beyond comprehension, my brother and I talk of this often, how is it that some of us are granted the awareness the rise in levels of consciousness and others seem to be frozen in the negative attractor fields.

He and I have often stood on two sides, that God gives us the grace he will say, and I will speak more from the side of choice.

What I believe David Hawkins is saying is that when man chooses to no longer be a slave to the negative energies, he will then seek to be free.

But, in my experience, many are willing slaves. They seem to enjoy the lifestyle of the negative, they are not trying to escape or find an answer, in fact they use their intellect to form plausible excuses as to how it is impossible to be free.

An interesting debate, who is in charge of our free will?

January 15, 2012

changes, choices, consciousness, david, empowerment, force, free, Hawkins, negative, power, vs, will
By each Choice we Make.

Did you know that brainwashing is when you no longer have the option of choice?

I witnessed my daughter lose her power of choice.

She didn’t even know she gave up her choices while she attended only one option.

The one option became the most important, she was willing to lie to protect that option, she was willing to give up her self for that one option, she lost her self by focusing on one choice.

It soon had control of her and not her of choice.

This secret life, the clandestine meetings, the specialness of feeling that only the two of them knew, created the one option.

This one option wasn’t to be shared.

It was separated from the world.

It was ‘special’.

She lost her other choices for none of them were allowed in the ‘special’ spot.

The special spot and the man who occupied this site began changing her to fit his spot.

She had to change to play there.

She couldn’t bring him into her life; she could only go to his.

This ‘special man’ didn’t fit into her old life; she had to create a new self to fit in his.

In doing so, she lost the options.

She lost the freedom, the flowing back and forth between two lives unchanged.

She had to become different in both worlds.

In his world, they had to be quiet, keep it secret, don’t let anyone know what it was they were doing, it was the key that turned the lock.

This twisted sense of special steals away the person you are and you leave your old life and self behind to fit into this new picture, unknowingly.

You leave yourself bit by bit by bit, until you are fashioned into this new self and the path back to your old self goes dark.

What my husband and I had to do was let her make choices, to unlock the frozen part in her brain.

While his key is secret, our key is freedom.

He had taken away the choices we gave them all back.

We had to do the opposite of what had led her down this road.

She gets to make choices.

We won’t tell her what to do.

We open up the space for freedom.

I share my views.

I show her how I see things.

I allow her to see them her way.

What I love is that we remain our selves and that alone will lead her back to her self.

She left us to play in a secret land we did not leave her.

So she gets to decide, does she want to play in the secret land or play in our land.

Does she want to be the person she needs to be to be ‘special’ with him or does she want to be her old self.

The freedom we allowed was the key that set her free to begin to once again make choices.

Choices, they seem so obvious so simple so easy, and yet that is what the perpetrator seizes first.

You are not given an option to do it any other way.

Their option is the only one that will keep this relationship going.

You have no choice but to go along.

And sadly, usually by this time you have become friends, you have given trusts and faith and love to the individual, and in order to maintain this ‘special’ relationship, IT depends upon your silence.

Your silence and his creates a cocoon that separates you from your self and the world around you.

You live in this upside down and backwards ‘other’ land.

You have to change to fit in there and the changes are so noticeable in your old life.

You have to lie to leave your old life to go to his.

You have to lie to your self and overlook how it makes you feel in your old life.

You come alive in his and die in your own.

What a tragedy.

The greatest thing we did was to give her back her choices.
To allow her to choose what path she wants to strengthen and which one she wants to weaken.

Her brainwashing was in a very short time and she didn’t play in the secret land too long.

The longer you are there, the more ingrained the false self gets and the further away the road that leads you back.

But as far as I can tell, by my experience, is that when I gave myself the option of choice, I was free.

Free to begin, choice-by-choice, bit-by-bit to recapture life for me.

The freedom in allowing all in our home to be free is the key that makes this a non-brainwashing home.

A home of choices, you get to decide which ones you want to make, but make no mistake, each and every choice comes with a consequence, and it is up to you which consequence you choose.

We create a life and self by each choice we make.

January 21, 2011

abuse, allowing, brainwashing, choices, control, empowerment, freedom, lies, loss of control, Man, relationships, secrets, woman
Your love inside.

It came to me while doing yoga, that the only way you can feel sad, hurt, upset is when you lose your power of your love, peace and joy.

So, you are either living in your love, your peace or your joy….or our sad because you lost your way.

You forgot to remember that it is your voice that needs to speak up about what you feel, that you are in charge of your feelings.

When you are feeling sad, hurt, lonely, etc, that means you lost your being in charge button, you silenced your voice, you pretended not to notice your love, peace and joy slipping away.

I love this.

I love that feeling sad, hurt, confused are just sign posts letting you know, ooops you lost love, or joy or peace and they are loud shouting voices informing you of such.

I will now welcome the feelings of sadness, for they are really angels bearing gifts of letting me know I am doing something that leads me away from love, peace and joy.

Feeling hurt is feeling the absence of your love inside.

December 21, 2010

angels, empowerment, gifts, hurt, joy, love, peace, power, speaking
I feel Solo

As I look at my self in my life today, I am so much freer than I would have ever dreamed possible.

While I live in the same house, married to the same man, and still have four children with me, I am no longer chained by their behavior…well okay, I still get stuck for a half hour or so, but I can usually set myself free.

Dr. Berman spoke of the triangle affect, where relationships get stuck when couples move from one corner to the next exchanging roles and manipulating feelings.

I lived on that triangle for years and years, and I was the master at being a hero and dabbled in the victim villain roles pretty often as well.

On the triangle you are never in control of your feelings, somebody owns yours and you own anothers, we forever go around making other people feel and feeling how other people make us…never free to feel by yourself.

If your not moving feelings around, there is the spot of hero, where you literally take over the responsibility of another’s life, where you come in and save the day, allowing them to miss a lesson to grow and learn by experience.

This triangle is dysfunction and it leaves you separated from your feelings, where you are forever at the mercy of another.

My past six years have been unlearning the triangle reflexes of blaming the other, and instead look inside to see where I gave up power.

Looking for the power leak, where I lost control of my own power.

Any time I say, “you disappoint me” or “ you make me feel sad” I am back on the triangle as a victim.

Instead if I say, “I am sad or I am hurt” I am in control of my feelings and I get to explore why.

What actions did I do to wind up feeling this way?

What can I do now to make me feel better?

It leaves the other person out of my feelings; it frees them up to be in charge of their own.

The co-dependency triangle leaves you so tangled up and out of control, where you never can be assured that your peace, love and joy will stick around, that soon something or somebody will come along and steal it away.

What I love love love, is that you are the only one who can give that away. It isn’t stolen, you literally hand it over in a victim like drama way with great words and feelings.

When I learned that my love, my joy and my peace were mine and I had right and obligation to protect them, life was much easier, I walked away from the triangle.

Standing authentic with your feelings isn’t always easy, but always empowering.

I no longer disappoint my feelings or cover them up or speak down to them or pretend them to be different than what they are.

I stand up with them no matter what.

My feelings empower me.

The Spirit of me is alive in feelings.

I am as I feel or I feel as I am.

I blame no one for how I feel.

I feel solo.

December 21, 2010

blame, dance, dr. Berman, dysfunction, empowerment, feelings, joy, losing, lost, love, peace, power, relationships, shame, spirit, struggle, therapist, triangle
My Soul Cheers

Shutting the valves or entry points where I have allowed toxic behavior and or negative energy to seep in, feels soooo liberating, so empowering, so self loving, I feel so lightened by this, if only I knew that I wouldn’t feel alone, but empowered, I wouldn’t have waited so long.

The first time I left my family, I did so in fear, anger and anxiety, in moments of pure panic due to the way they were all acting, I segregated myself in solitary confinement in fear. Fear of who they were and how weak I literally was, I scurried to be far far away from them.

I was out of control in a lonely spot with raging fear, alone and empty inside, twisted up with confused and conflicting images, tangling love and fear, I had to run to survive, not knowing that I would survive…I left.

It wasn’t an act of courage or empowerment but an act of sheer terror.

The difference between fleeing in terror or fleeing with knowingly and great awareness are oceans apart.

One leaves you vulnerable and alone.
The other empowered and alive with great gusts of newfound peace, like breathing or not breathing.

Breathing with the right to orchestrate your world, using your free will to close the source of pain that flows into your world.

What a great thing to know, how empowerment is grown, it is birthed by making a choice, using your awareness and seeing the cause, doing what you can to eliminate it in your world.

This isn’t at all about them, but about you.

You have the right to open and close relationships.

I love that I found the energy to use the switch, to flip the button to off.

It doesn’t change who they are, but it greatly changes their impact in my world. Little did I know, even though I left the window open, that I was the one I was waiting for…

Inside, as my tank overflows with empowerment, my soul cheers!

(I think I scored one for me!)

November 20, 2010

a, abuse, after, away, choice, empowerment, fear, Finding, For, growing, healing, learning, or, terror, then, voice, walking
Runaway and Be Safe Muscle!

“Waking the Tiger” by Peter Levine is a book that was suggested to me by a friend as one to read to better understand how the body responds to trauma.

In the very beginning I found a very interesting concept.

Peter writes, “Waking the Tiger: A First Glimmer.”

“Trauma was a complete mystery to me when I first began working with it. My first major breakthrough in understanding came quite unexpectedly in 1969 when I was asked to see a woman, Nancy, who was suffering from intense panic attacks. The attacks were so severe that she was unable to leave her house alone. She was referred to me by a psychiatrist who knew of my interest in body/mind approaches to healing (a fledgling and obscure field at the time). He thought that some kind of relaxation training might be helpful.

Relaxation was not the answer. In our first session as I naively, and with the best intentions, attempted to help her relax, she went into a full-blown anxiety attack. She appeared paralyzed and unable to breathe. Her heart was pounding wildly, and then seemed to almost stop. I became quite frightened. Had I paved the yellow brick road to hell? We entered together into her nightmarish attack.

Surrendering to my own intense fear, yet somehow managing to remain present, I had a fleeting vision of a tiger jumping toward us. Swept along with the experience, I exclaimed loudly, “You are being attacked by a large tiger. See the tiger as it comes to you. Run toward that tree; climb it and escape!” To my surprise, her legs started trembling in running movements. She let out a bloodcurdling scream that brought in a passing police officer (fortunately my office partner somehow managed to explain the situation). She began to tremble, shake and sob in full-bodied convulsions.

Nancy continued to shake for almost an hour. She recalled a terrifying memory from her childhood. When she was three years old she had been strapped to a table for a tonsillectomy. The anesthesia was ether. Unable to move, feeling suffocated (common reactions to ether), she had terrifying hallucinations. This early experience had a deep impact on her. Like the traumatized children at Chowchilla, Nancy was threatened, overwhelmed, and as a result, had become physiologically stuck in the immobility response. In other words, her body had literally resigned itself to a state where the act of escaping could not exist. Along with this resignation came the pervasive loss of her real and vital self as well as the loss of a secure and spontaneous personality. Twenty years after the traumatizing event, the subtle and hidden affects emerged. Nancy was in a crowded room taking the Graduate Records Examination when she went into a severe panic attack. Later, she developed agoraphobia (fear of leaving her house alone). The experience was so extreme and seemingly irrational that she knew she must seek help.

After the breakthrough that came in our initial visit, Nancy left my office feeling, in her words, “like she had herself again.” Although we continued working together for a few more sessions, where she gently trembled and shook, the anxiety attack she experienced that day was her last. She stopped taking medication to control her attacks and subsequently entered graduate school where she completed her doctorate without relapse.

At the time I met Nancy, I was studying animal predator-prey behaviors. I was intrigued by the similarity between Nancy’s paralysis when her panic attack began and what happened to the impala described in the last chapter. Most prey animals us immobility when attacked by a larger predator from which they can’t escape. I am quite certain that these studies strongly influenced the fortuitous vision of the imaginary tiger. For several years after that I worked to understand the significance of Nancy’s anxiety attack and her response to the image of the tiger. There were many detours and wrong turns along the way.

I now know that it was not the dramatic emotional catharsis and reliving of her childhood tonsillectomy that was catalytic in her recovery, but the discharge of energy she experienced when she flowed out of her passive, frozen immobility response into an active, successful escape. The image of the tiger awoke her instinctual, responsive self. The other profound insight that I gleaned from Nancy’s experience was that the resources that enable a person to succeed in the face of a threat can be used for healing. This is true not just at the time of the experience but even years after the experience.

I learned that it was unnecessary to dredge up old memories and relive their emotional pain to heal trauma. In fact, severe emotional pain can be re-traumatizing. What we need to do to be freed from our symptoms and fears is to arouse our deep physiological resources and consciously utilize them. If we remain ignorant of our power to change the course of instinctual responses in a proactive rather than reactive way, we will continue being imprisoned and in pain.

Nancy became a heroine twenty years after her ordeal. The running movements made by her legs when she responded to the make-believe tiger allowed her to do the same thing. This response helped rid her nervous system of the excess energy that had been mobilized to deal with the threat she experienced during her tonsillectomy. She was able, long after the original trauma, to awaken her capacity for heroism and actively escape.”

Peter Levine

In my experience, I shook like an earthquake was inside of me in the moments after learning that my father abused my niece. I trembled and rattled and felt totally out of control shaking.

I remember feeling that my body knew this truth all along, and now I was joining with acceptance, free to express this truth.

What I find so affirming is that it isn’t so much having to re-live the trauma, but regaining the escape muscles.

It wasn’t too long after the initial hearing of who my father really was, that I was able to articulate how I would deal with this.

How I responded was the key to my ‘healing’.

I somehow had found a way to escape.

Escaping is where the power is returned to you, where you are able to be a heroine in your own life.

I knew my inner power was very much alive and strong in the face of such tragedy, and it did feel like I too had myself again.

Like I found the part of me that had disappeared.

Little did I know I had found the missing escape muscle, which had left me immobilized in fear.

It is the feeling like you can’t escape, frozen in fear and terror, unable to bring to bear a muscle that allows you to run away.

My runaway muscle came alive that day, my runaway and be safe muscle was returned to me!

The trembling was my runaway be safe muscle coming alive! The waking of the tiger is waking of that muscle.

No longer immobilized by fear, with a paralyzed runaway and escape muscle, I now feel complete. It is when you live without this part, there is everything to fear, for you all you can do is be frozen immobile in the face of fear, unable to protect yourself, a helpless, hopeless victim when fear arises.

My last five years have been strengthening and flexing this runaway and be safe muscle!

(I had experience this, but didn’t have the language to explain it.)

August 27, 2010

anxiety attacks, empowerment, escape, fear, freedom, heroine, immobilized fear, Levine, panic, Peter, strenght, trembling, Waking the tiger
Steering Our Own Canoes!

One definition of codependency; Adult children of alcoholics; people in relationships with emotionally or mentally disturbed; people in relationships with chronically ill peoples; parents of children with behavior problems; people in relationships with irresponsible people; professionals – nurses, social workers and others in ‘helping’ occupations. Even recovering alcoholics noticed they were codependent and perhaps had been long before becoming chemically dependent.

Melody Beatte goes on to write.

“One fairly common denominator was having a relationship personally or professionally, with troubled, needy, or dependent people. But a second more common denominator seemed to be the unwritten, silent rules that usually develop in the immediate family and set the pace for relationships. These rules prohibit discussion about problems; open expression of feelings; direct, honest communication; realistic expectations, such as being human, vulnerable or imperfect; selfishness; trust in other people and one’s self; playing and having fun; and rocking the delicately balanced family canoe through growth or change – however healthy and beneficial that movement might be. These rules are common to alcoholic family systems but can emerge in other families too.

Melody’s personal definition is; A codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior.

Melody Beatte

As I sit here 5 ½ years later, I realize that I rocked the family canoe by getting out, I tipped the balance and was seen as crazier than the folks who began steering that canoe long before I was born.

I heard on the radio today, that a family boat is heading down a certain river before a child is born, and our legacy is to pick up an oar and row.

We are taught how to row and in what direction by our parents. And we don’t start rowing at 18, but at about 1 year old or younger.

We are taught how to row and where.

It is my opinion that two mentally and emotionally disturbed people were rowing my family’s canoe, and that the only way to save my self was to get out of the boat, and not to just stop rowing.

I was no longer trusting in the elders who steered our family canoe, nor was I going to ride along with the rest, just because we were born in the same boat.

While I couldn’t change the course of the family boat, I could change mine, but in order to do so, I had to jump out.

It is seen as rejection of all who stayed in the boat.

It isn’t seen as healthy or wise, but rather that I have set boundaries to keep them out.

And I guess I have.

I don’t want people in my canoe trying to steer me in a direction I don’t want to go in.

It has been a long and arduous journey to find the strength and confidence to row myself, to strike out on my own, learning how to row in a direction that is much more healthy than what I was taught.

While the rest may see me as rejecting them, I am only embracing me.

Embracing my independence, my freedom of choice, my boundaries, and learning what is healthy for me and what causes me pain, what I need to live in peace, love and joy. Learning how to stay in my canoe and in my business, allowing and honoring each person to ride the river of life as they chose.

I heartily and cheerfully encourage the rest to jump ship, letting the family’s legacy canoe to finally become empty of dysfunctional codependent folks. It can happen when one by one each of us begin steering our own canoes!

August 24, 2010

canoe, changes, changlings, codependent, empowerment, legacy, life, Melody Beatte, more, no, of, own, patterns, river, self, steering, your