Tag: sacred

  • Self Love

    If you held a woman’s vagina sacred, if you held a woman sacred, you couldn’t murder her or rape her or mutilate her or hurt her. Eve Ensler

    I just listened to the Vagina Monologues.

    What an incredible and insightful look at the one body part that has been used and abused to take our spirits and how sad most often it occurs in young childhood, before we even know it intimately ourselves.

    The heart of a woman, the place where we can experience and express the wild nature of women, is captured and raped before we even connect, stolen before we find our own worth.

    Eve Ensler opens the dialogue in how detached and unowning we are to our own body parts after they are misused.

    We walk away from the wound too.

    We treat ourselves as others treated us, without care or feeling, we turn ourselves off.

    In one part she mentions a group of young girls who just returned from Rape Camp and how they lined up with their mothers to have a picture taken, and not one of the girls looked at the camera, all heads down in shame.

    Looking down in shame for being raped.

    It is how they see themselves now, through the eyes of their abused vagina.

    Their sense of being a woman has completely changed by the treatment their vaginas received.

    The treatment they received is now the ruler of self worth.

    What a journey into regaining your power back, to hold yourself worthy, to find the specialness, to feel again after the most sensitive and sensual part has been brutally treated.

    By looking at abuse from the body part which abuse occurred is to see the difference between a sacred and loved vagina to one who has been ravaged by abuse.

    Again, the saddest part to me is that very young girls are being abused before they even know what it is, how it works, that it is sacred, that it is an expression of love, a tool for pleasure not pain, and they are driven away from the most intimate part of themselves.

    This disconnect creates frozen or careless owners, where they are ‘ice maidens’ or floozies. The swing from one pole to the next shows how out of control of their bodies they are.

    Learning to love and hold sacred our own bodies is a huge part of the healing process, to reclaim them from the abusers, redefining them once again, returning them back to their innocence.

    Because it is such an intimate part of ourselves, when abused, we lose our sense of intimacy, a personal loving relationship with self.

    This loss of self intimacy is our greatest loss…we lose reverence and sacredness of self, we lose our own self love.

  • Spoiled Brat?

    Sarah Ban Breathnach writes in her book, “Moving On,” let’s take a fresh look at the word that saps our strength often:

    Scared.

    “What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?” wonders Toni Morrison. Fair enough question. Woman have always know how to comfort the fears of others; we just don’t remember to use the same tender, loving, tactics on ourselves. So the next time you feel a random panic attack starting, take a deep breath, and transpose the “a” and the “c” in “scared” and you’ll find not only another word but a world of difference. You’ll uncover the

    Sacred

    Doesn’t that make you feel better already? It works for me, every time. I’d be willing to bet the house that your sacred, like mine, is very close – the walls surrounding you or the floorboards supporting you, even if they need a good scrub. The best definition I ever heard of fear is “False Events Appearing Real.” When I am anxious I notice that my fears seem to be speculative future-tense marauders. Will there be enough? What will I do? How will I cope? The best way I know how to disarm such fear is by keeping a Gratitude Journal. A Gratitude Journal is a polite, daily thank-you note to the Universe- and a reminder to yourself of the very real blessings you have now. In this moment. You know how insulted you are after you’ve knocked yourself out for your kids and all you get in return is surly silence. What am I raising you probably wonder, a bunch of brats? Well, an ancient spiritual axiom teaches us, “As below, so above.”

    Because you’re not spoiled rotten, at the end of every day write down five things or moments you experienced for which to be thankful. Small pauses that brought a smile or a sense of relief during the day. The kindness of somebody holding your place in the post office line when you have a lot of packages to get from the car. The plumber showing up on time. Fitting in to last summer’s shorts. A hug from a friend. A fortune cookie with just the right message. Saying no to a bake sale without guilt. Easily switching carpooling days. Getting an extension on the deadline. Better yet, meeting the deadline, Phew!

    We think it’s the big moments that define our lives – the promotion, the new baby, the renovated kitchen, the wedding. But the narrative of our lives is written in the small, the simple and the common. The overlooked. The discarded. The reclaimed. Life is not made up of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years, but the moments. You must experience each one before you can appreciate it.

    Whether you are chopping carrots, shampooing your hair, writing a memo, making love, talking on the phone, walking the dog, or eating an apple, savor those sensations involved. All of those moments, whether happy, routine, or even painful are Life’s heartbeats.
    Sarah

    In the past six years I have been made to be much more sensitive to each of life’s heartbeats, to feel that which is in reality now, and even how life seems to be lived on a pinhead of time, how it literally is the heartbeat of life.

    This moment, the one we are breathing in is where life happens and to be grateful or even to see all that arrives is overwhelming.

    I love how she says we could be like spoiled brats and not even pay attention to all that the Universe gives us each day.

    Yesterday while delivering mail in the high winds and whiteout conditions, I focused on the black bare roads at times, and was so grateful to see their blackness in midst of swirling white. “Thank you black roads!”

    When you begin to look for things to be grateful for, you will find more and more grateful things.

    I will just watch how I go about my days, how I approach or leave little moments in time, and I a grateful child or a spoiled brat?