One Year Ago Today I Committed To Me…

It would’ve been my 7 year anniversary of being with my former mate. Last year, this time, though we were still together, something really changed in me. I can’t say exactly what it was, but I have the distinct memory of thinking “I’m going to commit to this blog thing and see where it takes me”.

And I did.

I haven’t been 100% consistent…hellz no, not at all.

But I’ve tried… I’ve challenged myself…I’ve connected to some of you…I figured some things out…

I figured that things I couldn’t blog about I probably shouldn’t be about.

I mean at my deepest. I’m a writer. Since I was a tiny one, with neon colored Lisa Frank notebooks, I’ve written and written and written.

The other thing about me…I LOVE sharing my shit! I laugh at myself and share my struggles and insights and I’m rarely embarrassed or ashamed. That is my nature…I mean, I never felt like my life was private. I always felt that it was public. I always felt the buzz of the internet, long before I knew what it was. (universal consciousness and all) I also felt the buzz of the ancestars and have felt a connection to the future as well, as if I have always been living for them… I’m going back to that Aniweda Dream ya’ll…the one I met in childhood.  I guess you could call it TRIBE.

Magyar: Forrás: http://www.bukhara-carpets.com/img/yurt/DSCN5853.jpg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m one of those introverted people written about at the http://www.carlkingdom.com/10-myths-about-introverts. I need to talk to people about real shit, and share scars and wounds and ecstatic goofiness and geekiness as well.  I need to feel deeply accepted and trusted.  I like to connect deeply…too deeply for lots of people.  I’m intense I’ve been told.

Anyway, time has been a thread for me…I never felt like “old people” were old, or the turn of the century was a long time ago, or a disconnect from the beginning of time. What I’m trying to explain is that I’ve never felt like anything ends, everything is a part of the same story. That’s why I can’t check those cute little boxes on government forms. I am…I am…I am…

Me. And when these little questions started popping up for me, about what I could write about…which parts of me I couldn’t share, I started wondering if maybe these parts of me, weren’t. To quote J.Lo(;)) “I’m Real”… and I was connecting myself with beliefs and conditions that were false.

There’s a reason that catch-phrase persisted. It is all too easy to attach to, claim and blend into the falsehood. It could be because of persuasion, trauma, embarrassment, confusion, loneliness, even excitement. It could be something that slowly sank into you or something that you spontaneously swerved into. It could be something you can’t pinpoint, haven’t even noticed, can’t escape or don’t dare to acknowledge.

I don’t know what it is(or was) for you. But I can practically guarantee everyone will or has (and probably at many points) head in a direction of being who they are not. For me it was a bipolar tug-of-war. I was constantly pulling myself out of the pit, building myself back up and carrying on, only to be pulled back in, over and over again. Finally, I realized I needed to untie myself from the ropes.

Fire Ropes (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This blog helped me to do that. Not with the things I published, not really even with my famous backlog of drafts. It was in the things that I struggled to even write, that I struggled to even wrap my head around how to write or if I could. These things gave me the impetus to write what I could, make connections, learn from other bloggers, and commit to me, the real me.

I am grateful for all the readers, bloggers, businesses and supporters who helped me stick with this, and finally define my vision. I had a dream, when I first started this blog. But when I started this blog, that vision was a barely flickering flame lit in a closet that I was afraid to open. I knew it was a part of me, I knew it was my soul in there, but so much death in my life was fearing me away from it, telling me I couldn’t have it, telling me to be someone else. But I gave hope to that vision, I protected it’s source, I fed that flame, and it has grown into a blazing inferno, just like it was when I lived it many years ago.  But now… it is ALL MINE! (mwahahaha)  To have and to hold and to never lose sight of again.

That’s what community and commitment are for.  Setting up that foundation for reality to expand and still fit in where it started.  (Don’t forget where you came from, ya’ll.  It’s your key to getting back to you.  Your heart…your real home.)

My partner’s grandmother said something to me before I left.  Okay she said a lot of things and I have an awesome draft about it, that I’ll publish someday, but she said “I felt the same way about my first love.”  It dawned on me…damn.  I never thought of it as my first love.  It was intense and I thought it was forever, but now I see why I needed those years to know my capacity to love.  Now I know.

How did your first romantic love teach you about yourself?  I’m mad curious, yo.

Hope Renewed, Picking Up The Pieces After Loss, GIVEAWAY ENDS MAY 25TH

Hope Renewed by Christy Lowry  Christy Lowry is a mom who lost her eighth grade daughter in 1983.  She wrote her first book titled PAM after her daughter.  She has a BA in History from Cal State at Long Beach …

Need A Change of Scenery?

If you need a change of scenery I think the best place to start is in your mind…go somewhere else with your mind…

Do you ever get into a funk? Experience a few too many days that blur into the next…that feel too much like something is missing? I mentioned some blogs ago that I was reading Eric Maisel books. One of the main ideas he emphasized was the need to have meaning in life. To make meaning.

It really inspired me and yet when things changed in my life I feel a need to find renewed inspiration, courage and confidence in my need to make-meaning in my life. It comes to me through living and loving my purpose in life.

I’ve found that almost any behavior or attitude is a matter of habit.  When we challenge ourselves and allow ourselves to experience changes and learn new ways to be miraculous things can happen…we just have to make an effort and stick to it.  Keeping confident is imperative.  I feel so empowered when I can look back on the things I’ve changed about myself and share and inspire others with my story.  In the same way I can look at things I want to change and find stories of people who have changed in the way I want to.

I think I use this blog for that purpose as well as spending copious hours on youtube and webforums searching for the kick in the ass I sometimes need to feel the force. Here’s a new video I watched that really inspired me:

 

The Astrology Reading That Changed Me…

I’ve been very close to losing my faith in humanity.  Not all of humanity, just most… In general, I’m not really that kind of person, I’m usually positive, loving and see the good in everyone or almost everyone.  And it’s …

Emotional Abuse and Pop Culture Negligence

Abuse (Photo credit: Ex-InTransit)

 

February is National Teen Dating ViolenceAwareness and Prevention Month. 

Violence in relationships can be physical or emotional and it happens in a variety of different types of relationships.  What makes it even more difficult for teens is that little experience with relationships and the pop culture negligence can lead to confusion.  Even for adults it can be difficult for the abused to realize they are being abused.  This can be even more difficult with teens.  Casual relationships as well as very serious relationships in the teen years can be abusive.

These kinds of relationships can be very harmful to self-esteem, body image, mental health and can affect the whole life of the abused.  Abusers can also constantly struggle to experience fulfilling relationships and suffer from mental health issues.  These incidences can also be dangerous and it is very important to be aware of the signs and safety precautions.  It is important to acknowledge any issues with relationship violence head-on and as soon as possible, no matter how benign or over things might seem.  Although physical abuse is terrible, I’m focusing on emotional abuse because physical abuse is usually accompanied by emotional abuse, emotional abuse is more difficult to notice right away and I have personal experience with emotional abuse.

Image via Wikipedia

.  Chris Brown and Rihanna had a very public incident with domestic violence and now the two have collaborated on a song as if the whole thing never happened.  Did either of the two get the help they needed to recover from their abusive past?  Teens might think it’s possible to just forgive someone who has abused them and get back together because Chris Brown and Rihanna are okay.  Unfortunately abuse runs very, very deep.  Those who experience abuse in their childhood tend to either become abused or become abusers and unfortunately many, many people have experienced abuse in their childhoods, including neglect and abandonment and not having that in the past doesn’t prevent a person from experiencing it later in life.  It takes a concerted effort to really iron out the issues associated with domestic abuse.

Parents can also be emotionally abusive to their children.  Some children may take abandonment or neglect into themselves internally and cope with it by seeking abusive relationships or partners they can manipulate and control in response to their own perceived ways of participating in a loving relationship.  Oftentimes abusers have ideas of what the role of a man and woman are in a relationship that is unbalanced.  They believe there must be someone in control of the relationship and fill that role themselves.  This can lead to a number of surprising and confusing attitudes and activities.

Please check out www.thehotline.org and determine if your relationship is abusive or if someone you know might be in an abusive relationship.  Look into the ways of getting out or helping your friend or family with support.  This is important and it is very difficult to understand the reality in the face of careful manipulation.  For teens, families and relationships everywhere, we must stop this cycle of abuse in our culture.  A whopping 1 out of 3 high school relationships are abusive according to www.acadv.org  and similarly more than 1 in 4 teenage girls in a relationship (26%) report enduring repeated verbal abuse.

(Liz Claiborne Inc. study conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited; February 2005.)

Domestic Violence (Photo credit: UMWomen)

What is the solution to this problem we have? 

I think creating healthy models of relationships is important.  Another important thing is to make all these facts and warnings known to teens and adults, male and female.  We also need to seriously, as a culture, stop denying the trauma we have faced and work on correcting and healing from them… When we recognize our issues and the mental health reality of ourselves, our loved ones and our culture, we should take the responsibility to give realistic standards and expectations for growth and stability.  Should people with abuse in their past work on those issues or follow the status quo and keep falling into false love relationships because it is “normal”?

We also have to look at celebrities as real people;  People with high-stress lives and honestly consider that to live their lifestyles most of them will either have to be very, very unbalanced, or very, very balanced.  It is not difficult to see where one stands if you’re looking beyond the glitz, glamour and commercialism and look at their actions, expression and the way they present themselves.  Now, should we allow these celebrities to be role models?  She we encourage our kids to look up to celebrities like royalty?  Should they get tons of money and lose their privacy and personal identities to satisfy some skewed view of an American Dream?

I think not… they should not be working if they are not well.  They should not work all year long, constantly in their role of “celebrity”.  We need to create a sustainable community in which creative people are not fueled by marketing machines and management.  Maybe then people will stop looking at the TV at all the train-wreck scandals and wonder why so many of our hometowns are becoming world news.  Let’s take care of our children…teach them the value of community and establish healing from crises and healthy relationship standards based on sustainability rather than vanity and Hollywood dreams.

–Still Dreaming For A Healthy Future

Read these for a different side of the story:

• Rihanna & Chris Brown Collaboration (masculinityu.wordpress.com)
• Did Rihanna Forgive Chris Brown? (myfoxphoenix.com)
• Everyone Needs To Stop Misdirecting Their Anger Over Cultural Misogyny At Rihanna (thegloss.com)