The Monsters in the closet of the past

Fearing the monsters of the past

My other blog discusses the price that we must pay for forgiveness. Survivors of emotional and physical domestic abuse are very good at retaining the memories of what happened to us. I used to do it a whole lot. I feared everything, all the way down to the color of nail polish I would wear on my toenails. We do not need to fear things that happened to us. I know that this sounds and might read easy, and I also know that there are some of you right now, tsk tsking me and shaking your head in disbelief that someone like me would dare suggest that you should just get over what has happened to you.

No, I am not. I would never suggest that, but at the same time I also know that to be a victim who has raised her own self to the level of survivor is one of the greatest gifts that we can give to ourselves. Yet, it is a gift that, even as we all want it, many of us refuse to receive it because we are too afraid of what might happen to us should we venture down that road to personal and Spiritual freedom through the release of the things that we have been through.

This is not to say or to suggest that you can just easily shrug off all you have gone through - I am living proof of the idea that outwardly a person can appear very strong and very solid in their own convictions, but underneath the facade of all that they appear to be and to have there is the reality that on the inside we are very afraid of everything. We fear people and what they might say to us or do to us, and we fear situations that have not occur and may never occur. We fear our abuser will do exactly what they said they would and make good on threats that were made in the heat of passionate argument.

And yes, I sit here right now thinking about how much I do not trust this person even though my reality is no where near what I thought it might be should I choose to stand up for myself, keep my feet firmly planted in what is the truth right now and forgetting about what it is that I might THINK could happen. The truth is that yes, all those horrid and ugly things that have happened could very well happen again. But, when I think about it more and the way that it culminated for me, I know that I cannot ever turn back. I know that I will never turn back. I know that what I did on Friday the 13th of January, 2012, was what needed to be done, not only to release me from what was a love that may have been applicable for a younger and less confident woman, but also because it was just time for us to do like thinking adults do and finally, forgivingly, release each other to whatever it is that we each see as "our lives."

The Monsters in the Closet of the Past

For many years I have written about the Monsters which live in the closet of the past. The closet exists only in our minds and only in our memories, and the closet is ours, which means that we have the option to clean out the closet or just to simply shut the door. Cleaning out the closet makes more sense, but most of the time we choose only to shut the door, ignoring what all is behind it.

If we could realize that we are the ones who are keeping alive within us the monsters which exist there we would know for sure, the moment that we choose to acknowledge that there is a problem, we would find ourselves to be much better off and that we could simultaneously discover that we have always had the peace we want but that we chose the monster that only tells us that it will hurt us over the reality that what happened cannot be changed but what can happen IS change.

I chose, on Friday the 13th of January of this year, 2012, to no longer allow what might happen to me if I speak up and let this guy know that I am no longer his doormat, that he is no longer allowed to talk to me as though I am, that he is through telling me what I am allowed to do, and that no longer are we married anywhere else than on paper.

And believe it or not, he accepted it that way, and it was not for any other reason than that he had no choice but to.

When we choose to look at the monsters, we find out that the monsters only lived in our head, and that once it was that we saw it for what it really is, it really was nothing more than a spider whose ominous nature was highlighted by the flashlight which was trained only on the past which we feared would have been our future.

I Love You All !!

...Rox

Girlie Mojo

There comes a time in the life of every abuse victim to rise up and be a survivor


When it comes to things that break our hearts, there is nothing that makes my heart break faster than does a fellow female of the human persuasion willingly giving up her right to her own Girlie Mojo.

Call it our femaleness, our magical feminine selves, that thing that we do...whatever...whatever it is that you want to refer to your being able to well up the strength within you to be able to be all your beautiful girlie self that prompts you now to think a whole lot about taking your rightful place at the altar of womankind and use what you were born with, call it what you want, but there is one thing that is absolute in it, and that one thing is that you gave it up to one person at one time, and you allowed it to flounder and to just sit beneath the surface of your soul, and now there it is, scratching and clawing its way to the surface and now is the time that you have to let it rise to the top like cream.

There is a reason that now, in this time of your life, that you are wanting badly to wear make up and high heels, that you want to do your nails and get a facial and saunter around in those high heels as though you can run a mile in them (I can), why it is that you get giddy when you are in the company of other women and more, why it is that you can physically feel the stirrings of a man's soul, even as you may have only recently met said man or perhaps seen said man as only a friend for many years.

It is your Girlie Mojo, and I am glad to be the one to reintroduce you to that woman you thought you left behind when it was that you thought you would be able to change the man you Loved, and more, the "man" you became. You were turned into something that you were never meant to be, and at first that was a victim, and then one day you chose to call yourself a survivor. And now, here you are, all survived and gorgeous from the heat of the battle, and you really, really want your nails done ..haha!! You are not abnormal, honey - you are a girl and now is the time that you have to take the time to reinvent all the girl you can possibly be.

It is our Sacred and secret weapon against all who would try hard to take from us the Power that was ours before the abuse began, the Power that has always been there, the Power that you Are and were meant as. Beauty is Power, ladies, and Power is very sexy, sometimes more when a woman wears it than when a man does. That Power will never go away, will always belong to you, and can never be taken from you, and I say that it is time that you let it loose and let the fur fly...it is time to let your Girlie Mojo take the reigns and take you back on the Path you are meant to be on!  So what if you want to wear something tight or hot or cute? That is your right to do so! And so what if you want to do is sit and watch chick flicks and what of it if you just want to sit eating strawberries and chocolate and wash it all down with cheap champagne? What of it if you want your own tool belt to be soft pink and who cares that your work boots have to match and so do the gloves you wear to protect your perfectly manicured hands?

What you are feeling is nothing strange. You have felt this way all along, and you have denied within you the Power that is in a beautiful woman, and let me tell you what - ALL women, as I have said and maintained for many years, are beautiful creatures, all of us, and there is no man alive who can tell me otherwise. I don't care if you are pear shaped or shaped like a damned stick, don't care if your hair is blue or if you have a million and one tats and piercings everywhere - you are a part of the Divine Feminine, and you are beautiful and perfect just the way you are.

There is nothing wrong with healing from the travesty that was once your life, once your reality, through means of the Girlie Mojo.

Today can be the day that you would begin to use your own brand of Girlie Mojo


When I chose to no longer allow my husband to lead my life for me, and when I chose to move my things out of the room that we used to share, that was when I knew that finally, I was strong enough to use my Girlie Mojo to get myself out of a jam that took more than twenty years for me to end up stuck in. I got tired of him calling me names and more tired of my just taking his crap because that is what I had done for two decades. Yes, things are more icy than they were before I chose this way, but this way, even as it seems harder, even as it is testing my strength and testing my resolve and really testing the part in me that fears this guy, this way is the ONLY way that I will heal.

And truly, it is the only way that you will heal, too!

Standing up for yourself is a way of employing the Girlie Mojo. When you recall back to the time when you were directly in the middle of the crapstorm that your life became and you bring back that feeling that you have no choice, no say so, no nothing without this person telling you when you can or cannot do or be or have who you are and what you want, you are calling the ghosts back, not to be revisited but to be extricated from your life. This is what using the Divine Feminine within prompts us to do. It makes us look at who we thought we were when our ordeal began, and it forces us to choose if whether or not we like the way we are being treated and choose to no longer go through what it is, and it is hard to choose not to go through something that we have been going through for long periods of time.

When you choose the way of the empowered Woman, you are choosing the way of the Spirit Warrioress, and you are ultimately exacting your own healing through your willingness to go through, one last time, a lesson that has presented itself to you, to me, over and over again, showing us who we are in the eyes of someone else so that we can see to the truth of who we are to our very weary selves.

When we choose to no longer be in the Shadow of the past, and when we choose to not allow any longer that which became our lives to be who we think we are, this is when the healing begins. This is when the long,hard road back to our Selves begins and this is where we have to watch out for the boulders and the storms that caused us so much pain to be what we will base our lives on. The foundation that we were given prior to becoming the target of someone else's lack of vision and Soul becomes the ground on which we stand and becomes the ground upon which we rebuild and reinvent who we are and who we will choose to become in time to come.

When we choose to be empowered rather than hindered by what has happened to us and when we see that what we have been through is nothing more than yet one more lesson that we must learn, and most of all, when we can accept that this has been our life to this point but that it does not have to stay the thing that we recognize as such, we have begun to use the Girlie Mojo we were each born with. Once that happens and once it is that we have chosen to go through the pain one last time, this is when we start to see to it that we heal and this is when the doors open for us, doors which lead us into the future, not only as women, but as Spiritually strong and Divinely and finely tuned leaders.

...but you have to want it, and you have to choose it. You have to want to look past what you have been through, choose not to be the victim anymore and choose only to survive the hurts from the past,  choose to be part of something that is simultaneously within us and outside of us through our Sisterhood, through our Divine and Sacred nature, through all that is, was, and ever will be again.

You have to choose to be whole again. You have to choose to heal. You have to choose your Girlie Mojo over the whims of small people.

You can do it. I know you can. I did.

I'm not sorry that I did. I can handle the slings, the arrows, the attrition and the evil eyes. I can handle it all, because I was prepared for this fight- and make no mistake, it is a girl fight if ever there was one.

Choose. You cannot heal until you choose to.

I Love You All !!

Rox...

(Rev. Roxanne Cottell is a Freelance Writer, Speaker and Spiritual Counselor residing in Southern California. For inquires regarding Stirring your own thing up, would like to discuss planning a charitable rock n roll event, or any other inquiries. send an email by clicking this link . Her latest book, "Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens" can be purchased at lulu.com and amazon.com)

You cannot make other people "get it"

Too often, the abused turn to people who cannot understand the depth of the issues

I won't bother to "out" the person who chose to run his mouth today about an issue that is really not a huge thing. I also will not go on to tell anyone who it was whose fracture of peace that was hard worked for almost wrecked, just because that person felt a little bit disgusted by the remnants of what someone else did. While I get it...really, I do...it - the 'it' that caused this havoc today, and surprisingly no, the "problem" has not seeped into my marriage to this person, was such a minor thing that it really is making me wonder if who in the lives of the abuse survivor and survivors-in-training are really listening to the people who are going through the mess called domestic abuse?

If you don't listen, you won't have a clue


This is not meant to insult anyone reading this, but if you are a loved one of someone who is being emotionally abused and you are not listening to what it is that they are telling you and if you are willing to compare your own childhood with your own abusive father to what it is that your loved one's children go through, please stop. Though the technical similarities are there, I know, for a fact, that no two situations are alike, so please stop behaving as though you know how to fix your loved one's problem because, no, you do not know.

You want to be there, and that is fine, and you want to help, and that, too, is fine. What is not fine is the idea that you think that what you yourself have been through in any way at all somehow validates that you know better than the victim does. Again - no, you don't, and there is no more bigger an insult that someone who goes through the abuse can receive. You cannot begin to know what is happening, are not qualified to give advice, can never fix things for them because the bottom line is that you do not know what to do and your attempts a trying to get your loved one through their time of heartache, though appreciated, may only serve them with more grief.

Believe me, I know this one personally. If I didn't, I would not have anything to write about today.

You cannot make things better by making your abused loved one feel like he or she is not doing enough to get out of the very volatile situation by making a phone call to the nearest shelter or even to the police.


From experience I can say that yes, calling the proper authorities when your loved one is being physically harmed is the best thing that you can do for them. Yet, when there is only an exchange of words, and this is not to tell anyone that verbal abuse is less damaging than physical abuse (because it is lots worse on the victim, and yes, I know this one, too), there really is nothing that calling any authority, any shrink, any person will do to help. And please, spare me the "they don't want help. If they really wanted out, they would get out." To those who would think and believe this, let me give you the biggest "go fuck yourself" that you have ever had.

You do not know what it is that abused people go through, even after their abuser is not in their lives. You do not know how to make it go away, and you can suggest all you want what you THINK you would do, but you are not in the situation and you cannot try to make an abused person get into your head when most assuredly it is YOU who needs to get into theirs.

To suggest that any abuse victim or survivor LIKES being told who they are, what they do, blah blah blah, is just adding huge insult to permanent emotional injury that the abused person has to heal from all on their own, and your adding your two fucking cents to a matter that you know nothing about, that you have not researched and that you are basically clueless about only pisses your loved on off. You are not helping the problem. You are adding to it, and you are quietly being placed on that list of people who abused them as well. Watch your mouth and your ass, because you do NOT get it and if you say horrible things to them about their life situation, you are just as creepy and clueless as is their attacker. You know nothing when it comes to what other people go through, and you will remain to know nothing as long as you continue to flap your fucking jaw muscles about an issue that you have some very real feelings about but not an ounce of real knowledge. Knowledge is key in these kinds of things, and without a scrap of even knowing at least your own part in their pain, again - you are no longer a part of the solution but have, without realizing it, become a part of the problem instead.

Way to go, hero!
Duh

...and arguing with an abused survivor or with someone in the middle of their crap over what YOU think they should do is like a sin against God and mankind


The term STFU completely applies here, because getting up in the proverbial ass of someone whose life is in utter turmoil is just like telling them what to do. Telling them what you would do if you were in their situation is a bad thing. You do not know what the hell we go through, so shut your sorry ass up and no, you WOULD NOT do all those things that you are telling your loved one to do. Stop turning them into your newest science project in societal bullshit. You do not know what you would do. You are telling your loved one this because you are not in the middle of the same pot of shit soup that they are in and you keep making it seem that they are somehow indebted to you for being the foremost expert on something that is foreign to you.

If you have not been hit by someone who outweighs you at least by 100 pounds, shut up. If you have not been bullied by someone who outweighs you by at least 100 pounds, shut up. If you have not been afraid of someone who outweighs you by at least 100 pounds because you have a memory of what happened to you and you cannot go through that shit again, please, shut the hell up, really. You cannot glean from television or the internet enough knowledge to get your ass out the door in terms of and in regards to having been abused in some way, shape or form.

Again, please, shut up. You do not know what the fuck you are talking about. Unbeknownst to you, and I am just telling you this as a favor to you - you, not so coincidentally, do not know it all, and no, your fucking big fat graduate degree does not make it so that you know more than a survivor or victim of domestic abuse and family violence. While you may know a lot more about whatever it is that you studied, unless you studied psychology and at least have a passing interest in the thinking of the abused...shut...the...fuck...up...today.

One more time...


You want to know how to help your loved one? That's easy - shut the fuck up and listen to them, because that is what all abuse victims and abuse survivors really do need, just someone to listen, to not judge them, to not put their own two cents in about how they feel about the abuser - talking about the abuser to the abused only places the attention and your attention on something that you do not need to further etch in the abused person's head.

Shut your foolish ass up and fucking listen. Listening will give you the opportunity to really know what it is, even in a very tiny way, what it is that they have gone through, what we have all gone through, and what a lot of us always go through, even after the abuser is no longer in our lives.

The very best thing that you can do for your loved one if you really want to help them is to simply just be there and to listen, because anything else you tell them will fall on deaf ears, as their entire lives are lived on the idea that they must always look over their shoulder, must always sleep with one eye open, must always have that sixth sense that tells us that we have to be careful...

Since we know that we have to be careful, perhaps, too, you might also want to be careful as well.

Wouldn't want to be the cause of yet another fight, or worse, another bruise caused to your loved one because you had shit to say, now, would you?

I Love You All...(yes, even you idiots with no idea of what you are advising to your loved ones)

Rox<3


(Rev. Roxanne Cottell is a Freelance Writer, Speaker and Spiritual Counselor residing in Southern California. If you want to exact change and cause a Stir, you can contact Roxanne by clickinghere. Her latest book, "Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens" can be purchased at lulu.com and amazon.com)

FIGHTER, Part 2 (18+)

No one is anyone's Bitch

I like to think of myself as an advocate in training, because yes, my abuser still lives with me in the same house that I do, but this is the short end of it all because very truly his health is an issue. This does not mean that I am not damned angry at the idea that even in his current physical state of health he feels as though I am somehow still his sounding board for all the threats, veiled and otherwise, of "what might happen to you, Roxanne..."

So,ladies, gentlemen, today I am still so goddamned angry about the incidents of the last week that I know if I do not let it out somehow, not saying that I did not give him a taste of his own medicine, I am going to be the one to once again be the fool.

On behalf of all those who have suffered at the hands and because of the words ...


...you think you are so fucking smart, all of you, don't you?

You seem to think that the longer you fuck with me, with her, with them, with us all, that we will never decide to rise up against you, when you are in your neediest of time, and fuck right back with you. I have learned a thing or two about abusers, and the one thing that came through loud and clear yesterday was that you aren't all the shit you think you are. You have to reach back into the past - sometimes the very distant past - in order to have some sort of something against me, anything against, me, because you know that at this very moment in time, you've got nothin'- not one goddamned fucking thing to say to me that will ring true, that will heal the pain that is so still fresh in my head, the hurt that permeates me in every possible way that is not physical, the anger which causes me to shudder at the thoughts that come with it and what I will NOT do to you because frankly, asshole, you are just not worth my time anymore.

I have never had to resort to threats, to physical shows of aggression, and it is because that is not the way that I do things. Yet, I think about all the shit that you have said and done to me, and it makes me laugh that you think I would want you after all those times you bothered to talk AT me to tell me how much of a dirty whore you think I am because if I am not fucking you then I must be fucking someone else, because apparently that is all that I have to offer anyone, man or woman, and that is where my worth lies. Too bad for you that not even you believe that, because if you did you would not have had the very nerve to ask me if I would fuck you later on.

No, I will not, not ever again. I am too hurt, too angry, too preoccupied with my own priorities, and had you bothered to bother thinking that maybe there was and still is a human person living in this body that you can no longer have, no longer can abuse (because you are too ill to breathe without trying to, let alone chase me who walks a minimum of 3.5 miles almost daily, who eats right, has cut down on a lot of bad habits...) and can no longer judge with the harshness that you seem to think is needed with another person. You took the softness that was me, turned it into something that it totally was never, and now you expect me to just be nice and loving and most of all, horny for your sorry ass.

Well, I can't, and no self respecting woman would. If there is one thing that I have learned very well over more than two decades it is that you cannot demand anything out of someone, cannot belittle it out of them, cannot have respect if you are not willing to do more than bully a person into it, and I ain't being fuckin' bullied by another motherfucker ever again, no matter what, because when you met me I was a nice young lady with dreams and hopes, but now? Now I am pissed off, am the cunt and the vile bitch you keep telling me I am, and it is fine that you think so, because this is the monster which you yourself created, so you can take your accusations, your threats and your fucking insults and shove them up your ever-widening ass.

I am done with you. Do you not get it?

Oh, that's right...I'm a liar...so I must be lying when I tell you that I am no longer available for you for anything other than the most menial of tasks....

Sincerely...
The worthless cunt dirty whore bitch

What you Give...

In a time when having little to none at all, it seems a bit of a task to give, but in reality, it is the only way to get back to You


Biblically, it is said in the book of Matthew that "the meek shall inherit the earth." Depending upon how you interpret biblical meaning is what will make this a meaningful post to you, namely if, like I was feeling this time last year, you feel like you have nothing left to give. The best thing that someone who is learning to heal on their own can grasp and wrap their head around is not some weird fad diet, not cosmetic surgery, nothing tangible, but instead, is the very simple and inborn gift that we each have to give.

Because I was raised up in the church (in other words, was force fed the hellfire and brimstone yet Unconditional Love of God ... and found out later on in life that sometimes, being force fed something as great as Unconditional Love is what is best for us because it matters in regards to our larger Life Purpose) and because I am a Hawaiian person, my Life was meant as a testament to the healing properties of giving Love. However, for someone who has never willingly accepted being a statistic for data compiled for reasons of collecting information about spousal abuse, it is hard to give.

Hard to Give

Once it is that a person has been subjected to the whims and the madness of another, another who promised never to do the horrid things that no person should ever have to go through, you begin to learn very fast that what you have you have to keep, no matter what it is. You begin to think this way because the simple fact is that an abuser will do what they have to and basically whatever it is that they want to in order to keep their victim too afraid to be their true selves. In my case it was that my husband wanted a trophy wife, and he wanted a wife for other people to look at but not a wife that would be allowed to have her own thoughts and her own life and her own Self. Though he swears that he never took anything away from me (because what he took was intangible), the proof that he did is that here I am 20 years later, and I am about to re-embark on a journey into connecting with the world at large and have started my ascent back into the world of entertainment, of being with like minded musicians and artists, both well known and on their way to being well known, (or perhaps only worried about the music itself, as long as someone hears it and likes it) who are on a mission to rebuild the world, one person at a time, beginning with their very selves.

Sound familiar? It should.

Our Very Selves


All abuse survivors know that what they have been through is not and was not ever their own fault. It is not the fault of an abuse survivor to take responsibility for their bruises or their fractures, not their responsibility to have to deal alone with their own disbelief, their own heartache, the mess that has been made of their lives. We know without doubt that we are meant for a bigger purpose, that we are here to suffer, at least we know this to an extent if we are lucky enough to have people in our lives who know us well, so that we can go out into the world and help to heal it. This is not to say that we accept our lot in life, because no one with a brain in their head would ever agree to being treated like property, but rather is to say that each of us has a compelling story to tell and that our story was never meant to be a secret. What we go through is shameful, but of that shamefulness is borne the strength, and more, the willingness to go on in Life and to be a part of change and charity.

We are forced for long periods of time to be a very tiny, very closed off piece of the puzzle of Life that once it is that we release ourselves back into the fray we have no idea what we want to do in the grander scheme of things, even though we are aware that what we have gone through is a testament to survival, to the undying human spirit, to being whole again. We end up getting back into the world, not really aware that there are still people out there who want to hurt us, and we end up ending up with those people.

Then one day we get a clue and we figure out all on our own that being a person who will go out into the world and hurt others because we have been hurt is not the way to go. We go through the rebound thing, sometimes not with other people but with things. In my case, and because my old man always made sure to it that I knew that the reason that I ended up with anything "label" is because he bought it for me, I was the one who spared no expense on "pretty things." There was no brand new Victoria's Secret bra that I did not own, and there was not a pair of shades expensive enough that I did not want. I was a glutton for pretty things, a glutton for glory, if you will. Once all my things were gone, and about a year after I began seeking my own Spirit and its Cause, I realized the reason that John came into my life. He was brought to me to show me that though I loved the pretty things in life, I Loved more the things of an intangible nature. He showed me what and who I am not, and more, led me to the rediscovering of Who I have always Been.

I say a lot about our intangibles, and it is because our intangibles are permanent for us. Our intangibles are those things in our lives, those ways of being, which compel us to be there for one another, no matter how big or small a scale it is. To a certain and limited extent, it is actually a good thing that he came into my life and stayed, even though the way that I was brought back to me should never happen to anyone, it came the way it was supposed to and came with my having realized now that the pretty things in Life were always mine and that no one had to give anything to me as I'd already had what I needed, which in turn, to this point after realization, has brought me some very, very pretty things (thanks, April, for the very pretty shoes, girl!! I hope you like your gift as much!!).

Everything is with purpose, even the things that seem to make no sense to us, especially our suffering and learning through that suffering.

What You Give

Some folks are more prone to throw money at a thing, but there are others on the planet who LOVE to DO for cause. I am one of those people who very much like to raise money for causes, whose lives and day jobs are dependent on the giving nature of human beings and for the need we have to be of good service to one another. For more than twenty years I have fought the undying fire within me to do something big and grand and do it for the Love of being with other people. My husband told me, even though I never believed him, that people are horrible, that they will try to take what you have and then some, and that people in general cannot be trusted. And if there is anything that any abuse survivor knows well it is that sickening feeling of not being able to trust others. The ability to not trust others, by the way, is a natural reaction. It is the fight and the flight within us all. The difference between the human animal and the rest of mammalia is that we humans are able to reason.

With that ability to reason and to discern what others are up to we have also been blessed with an ability, namely when you have been forced into a situation which calls for our natural ability to sense a bad thing, to see in others that which can be called "good."

When we find that "good," we want to look at it and admire it and call it ours. What we are not realizing at that point, the point when we want to call it ours, is that it IS ours and it is also our right to claim it. We find at that point that it was never what we were given up to that point of realization, but instead has always and only been what it is that we have given to another, given to a situation, given, really, to ourselves. No one asks to get beaten up physically, but it happens to the best of us, and one way or another, we learn from what it is that we have been given. Some of us never learn, but most of the time, we figure it out, and once we do, we never unlearn.

One thing that we all eventually learn is that it is never what you have got, it is only ever what you give.

Find a cause to give your Love to. Find a reason to be happy, to be on fire, to have the will to never look back at what has happened and only look forward to what you can imagine.

Love is My Cause


Love is my Cause. I support a lot of causes, from AIDS and illness to, of course, making sure the world knows that violence among spouses is never a good thing, to the bringing out in the Goddesses in training the beauty which cannot be purchased at the make up counter, and yes, of course, to those whose lives are lived in the throes of danger so that our right to express ourselves stays intact.

When the beginning of 2009 came, and I sat with my head in my hands, in tears because my house and my pretty life were gone, with as much of a quickness that the tears came, so, too, did the thought in my head come to me that I needed to travel a Spiritual Path to wholeness, that I needed to find that piece of myself, all over again, that begged for the opportunity to give and to be who I am through the use of my gifts and the use of my communication skills and my penchant, simply, for desiring to make my own Prayer of Jabez kick some serious ass...and you know what?

It worked, like a charm, the idea that since it is that like all Pisceans, I, too, wanted to swim in the big ocean of Life instead of staying like the rest of the guppies and settling for a nice home life with a set schedule and the same old, same old, everyday of my life. I wanted to be a part of the changes happening, and I wanted to bring people together again, like I did when my hair and my attitude were both bigger than my heart even though my heart knew back then what it wanted me to do. Even then I knew I was meant to exact some sort of change in the way that people do things and who they do those things for, but until New Year's Eve 2011, I had no real idea of what it was that I was supposed to do. I just knew that it was big and that no matter what seemed to stand in my way, there was and will always be a way and that maybe that block in the road is meant to be there so that I can find another way to do things.

And yup, that is exactly what all the blocks in the Path were twenty years ago. Twenty years ago I was the rocker's fantasy chick...all hair, legs, and attitude (and of course it helped that I am one of those island chicks...something about an island chick and a rocker guy that just...well, you know...lol) but these days, I am the rocker and rocker in training's best friend in so far as causing a stir, putting asses in seats, making sure that the reason that any of us are here and breathing is to be of service to the rest of the species.

SO, with that said, it is time to get on out there and scream your own name, and to do it for your favorite Cause.

What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation? Yeesh! Get your asses out there and change the world already!!

I Love You All !!

Rox


(Rev. Roxanne Cottell is a Freelance Writer, Speaker and Spiritual Counselor residing in Southern California. If you want to exact change and cause a Stir, you can contact Roxanne by clicking here. Her latest book, "Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens" can be purchased at lulu.com and amazon.com)