Some words on letting go of our anger with ourselves

Rarely will I post on a topic such as Anger, but...
...when speaking in terms of being angry, sometimes, you just have to let loose!

I have been getting very good, very practiced at knowing when I should be angry and when my anger is useless. There is nothing quite as positively forgiving as being able to pinpoint why we are angry. I know why I am...or rather, was...very angry, but about twenty minutes ago I let it loose and I did so in a way which was productive, at least for me, humorous and downright as girlie as it could get. I cannot help it - this is just who I am and this is just how I roll. When I have an issue these days, I am more prone to let it loose and let folks know why I am angry. In doing so, I find out who in my intimate circle of friends and confidantes I can trust and who has my best interests at heart.

In doing so I find out who is willing to be true and truthful with me and who is just playing me. No one likes being played. I am no exception.

First, you have to know that you are angry and not just hurt

I know very well that I am angry. I know that I have the right to be angry, but I also know that I do not have the right to be angry forever, and neither have I the right to be blatantly hurtful to the person with whom I am angry because anymore now, that is no longer how I do things. I cannot be blatantly terrible to people. I have to be who I am and I have to be able to express the anger, much as anyone else would. And I have to do it my way - with words, with a modicum of humor, and with as much restraint as I can in regards to the situation about which I am angry.

I know that I am angry because I listened to the person at whom my ire is directed, took their signs, signals, all of it, into consideration, their words...everything...it was a trigger that caused this, and the trigger had to do with my best friend, a person who does not suffer fools long. I know this because it was she who constantly told me that the one person who made me madder than even the dead man walkin' said and did everything that a person who claims to be upfront with people was not with me, and because of my own foolishness and even the need to hear what I wanted to hear - and yes, what I wanted to hear, from time to time, was said. Still, though, it is not okay to not be upfront. Upfront is what she, my best pal, is very good at, and it is part of the reason that I have a lot of respect for her. I have respect for people who are making it known to me that I am not someone who should be getting in her own way when it comes to healing. This is what she serves me up with, and I won't lie and tell you that it never hurts because the truth often does. However, the majority of people with whom I choose to hang these days are the type who, like her, are upfront with me.

This is what anyone who has a pulse needs - others to not bother with not saying how they feel, with not being who they really are all the time. I know this monster because I was this monster. I have learned well the gift in the truth and more than that, the gift in the silence and even the lies of omission.

First, you have to know why it is that you are angry. Most of the time being angry comes from being hurt by someone. The biggest hurt that anyone can choose to keep as their own is the hurt that is caused by our own unwillingness to not see the bigger picture. I did not want to not see the bigger picture - that maybe I was meant for bigger, grander things than just what I was being told, or not told, and that I was WAY too big of a soul for certain people. When you are in possession of a big giant Soul, and when you are, at times, too Loving and too giving to other people, and when it is that you only care to give to other people the best of who you are, there will always be at least one person in that group of people to whom can be referred to as being "The Cat's Okole." I know my reasons for my hurt are the same reasons for being angry. I am well placed in my anger. I make no apologies for being angry.

First things first, again...know why you are angry. It will make all the difference in the world if you do. It keeps you from saying things out of a place of hurt and it makes you think really hard about why it is that you hurt from whatever it was that visited your life.

Second ...vent it, but do so without turning it into a gigantic daytime drama...

MANY survivors of abuse will agree with me when I say that we are a gigantic bubble of pain waiting to pop, and lots of times we expect other people to "pop" us. That is irresponsible at best, hopeful at worst, and it is the reason that we never know how to come by our hurt the right way. I used to be very erratic in my tendencies, blaming everyone and every event that I was part of for my anger. The truth is that while my anger was well placed, had this been just last year I would still be dramatizing over it as though my life depended on someone else telling me that I am fine and that I have the right to be mad, even if I am mad at me for being foolish enough to think what I wanted to instead of what I knew to. I knew where this "thing" was going, knew that the person in question was all about themselves. KNEW IT, but went ahead, forging ahead like a lost ship on the ocean in the deepest, blackest dark nights.

If you have something to say, and it is not too hurtful to anyone else, and all you want to do is get stuff off of your chest and out of your reality, vent it. Vent it because if you don't you will most surely explode about it another time, and vent it because there is a sweetness called self-forgiveness when you do. Vent it because there are people on this planet who are waiting for you not to, and vent it because it is your right and possibly even your duty to your very self to do so. Venting does not mean that you are going to go on a tirade - it means that you are angry and that you need to let it go. When we vent our stuff we can feel it physically, the release of all those things and feelings that we once felt about a situation. And lemme tell you what - this particular situation is about a decade old and came to a final head August 18th. I won't go into specifics. The people who know me and are close to me already know what the heck I am talking about.

When we vent, at least in my eyes, it is a form of self-forgiveness. When we let go of things that we allow to hurt our very Soul and when we choose to not bother with a thing anymore that has no purpose in the grander scheme of life and of who we really are as a presence in that life, while things outwardly might still seem as crappy as they were prior to venting our stuff, we can literally feel the healing process begin for us physically. If you don't believe me try it yourself.

Venting, when properly done, is never a bad thing. Venting properly takes not only the ability to think clearly, but also some seriously huge "guavas," and not because we are choosing to vent on someone, but because we are choosing to think first and more, because we know that venting only makes our lives that much better for us to get through on a daily basis. If I was not able to let it go in my own special way, I would still be holding onto it as though the person at whom my ire was directed would care. They don't. I know they don't, but I cared about how it made me feel so I vented it and now?

Feeling like at least a hundred thousand dollars...haha

No, you won't feel like a million bucks. You might feel gloriously free though, which I do right now. And yes, it is because I was able, through a trigger, to let go of this thing that I have been hanging on to for too long now.

We can let go of things that hurt us. Even though we may never forget how it made us feel, we can let go because we know, much as all survivors know, that whatever it is that doesn't serve our own purpose as that purpose pertains to other people, we need to let go of. I have been practicing letting go of stuff, and it is with good measure and purpose that I do so.

Why on earth would I want to allow that feeling of anger to control my every move? Why would anyone?

Right?

Riiiiight....

Whatever it is that you are mad about that you have been mad about for too long now...laugh at yourself for hanging on to something that is as useless as used feminine products....yeah, I know, that is a pretty nasty way of painting a picture for you all, but when you think about it for a minute, isn't everything that hurts us and causes us to do things and think things and say things that we don't mean kind of ridiculous to hang on to?

That would be like having a reason to PMS but not having the good sense in our heads to know why we are PMSing....and now I bet you can see the reason that I would use such a picture to paint for you reading this.

Hanging on to our old stuff for the sake of healing does not work...kind of like expecting ourselves to not be disgusted by the very thought of used feminine products....

I Love You All !!
ROX

Na Hula O Ka Wahine 'Ui - The Most Spiritual Spa Day anyone will ever know of

...because every woman is a beautiful woman...

If there is anything that any survivor of domestic and emotional abuse can tell you, it is not an easy thing to come back to your real Self once it is that you have been victimized by someone else. No matter what, every abuse survivor will agree, when you are someone else's victim, you lose yourself.

You lose yourself in the thinking that what someone else told you that you are is the truth of you. You lose yourself to the madness of trying all the time to be the best that you can be for someone else, and it never is good enough. You lose yourself, period. And it is the hardest thing to do to come back to who you are. I know this because I lived it. I made it through it. I Know exactly Who I Am, and Who I Am is not who I was told I am.

For a long time I felt ugly, inside and outside, and then one day I took a good long look at me in the mirror and realized that the reason I felt this way was because I allowed someone else's thought about me also be the same thought that I had about me, even though I always knew better. I have always known that beauty and being beautiful is something that comes from within, is the Aloha Spirit within us all. I was told for many years that Aloha doesn't matter, that Love is nothing without the trappings that come with the proverbial "Glamorous Life."

I Promise you all that there are not more untrue words than the ones that we are told. And we are told these things because of someone else's bitter truth, someone else's belief of things, someone else's fear and pain. As a survivor of abuse, I know this pain, and I know what it is like to have to walk a mile, not even in my own shoes, but shoes which were never mine, and more than that, I was forced, by both him and by me, to walk a path that was not the one I am currently on. The one that I am currently on is one of my own choosing, and all survivors of domestic and emotional abuse eventually make this same decision. The only way that they do not is that they die....either Spiritually or physically, which, if you die a little inside everyday in a Spiritual way, most surely, as my own abuser knows, the body follows.

A Spiritual Spa Day - Na Hula O Ka Wahine 'Ui

While I might not be the most conventional person and neither conservative, I am One Thing Above all else - I am very filled with the Truest Measure of the Spirit Of Aloha. There is no one who knows me who will disagree with this. Not one person. It is the "Law," by which I Live, that of the Aloha Spirit Law This is the tenets by which I live my life daily, this and the tenets of Ho'oponopono, or, "to make right." .

My Sunday Class, Na Hula O Ka Wahine 'Ui, is all about returning to the Divine Feminine within, about the Power which each woman has within her and inherent to her and within her via the Grand Universe. Women are more powerful than we even can begin to know. It was not until I thought about it and realized that beauty, in and of itself, is power and that ALL WOMEN possess just this sort of power within us all. This is not "girl power" because that sort of power is very different. The Power that is Woman is the Power like that of the Universe, because the Universe itself is constantly changing and evolving and more, birthing more and more energy everyday, every minute of the day, all day long. When we think of this in terms of giving actual birth to a human being, we see that women are birthing children 24 hours a day, all around the world, each and every minute of the day.

To bring a human life into the world is proof of our possessing a greatness of power, of strength, of all that Is. Yet, throughout history we have been vilified, have been turned into evil sirens whose only wish is to become man eaters - this is not the truth of us. While there may be women on the planet who abuse their own beautiful and Divinely placed Power, Know now that there is a way out of being and staying this sort of woman. There is nothing beautiful about a woman who has this Power and who uses it only for her own gain. There is a big huge difference in Knowing that you have the Power to create your own life and bring about healing, and knowing that there is this power within us that can be abused and can be turned against others - normally men. We are taught to think in terms of "Us Versus the Guys," when in fact and indeed we are here in unison, to be and to live within the very Spirit of Lokahi. But due to our own misguided thinking about things in terms of men and women, we fail large because we are so worried about being hurt again that we immediately are on the defensive, immediately making this new person or set of people aware that they are not trusted, and that, my friends, is not fair.

It is not fair to bring our pain to other people and expect them to pay for the sins of other people, and it is not fair that we think that somehow, they hold the keys to our healing - they don't. Only we do. Only we can heal our own broken hearts and battered souls, and only we have the very power to do so. Problem is, no one tells us this. No one in our lives who is responsible for making it known to us that we are exactly who we are supposed to be at the time in our lives that we are meant to be whatever it is that we are at that time will take responsibility for who we are. That is our job, and when it is that we have found ourselves making it so that other people carry our weight for us, it is also time for us to know, too, that we are at the crossroads of being who were thought we were and being who we really are. This is not something that happens overnight, and you will have many, many tears, many nights awake, and many nights pondering the idea that you know who you are and you know, too, that you want to change. You want to change and you know you do. I knew I did and so I started doing what I needed to do to heal myself.

Now, I am sharing that with other survivors. Now it has become my Purpose in Life, my Mission, to impart onto other women the way to tap the Divine Feminine within. Now is the time that we must come together to concentrate this very power and turn it into the tool by which those who are lost can find their way through the darkness that is the ugliness caused by abuse.

This class, Na Hula O Ka Wahine 'Ui, is the proverbial Love Child borne of abuse, of the monsters which live only within, even as there is usually a monster also on the outside who is not us. It is not who we are. It is the result of someone else constantly telling us who we are and never giving us the right to be ourselves because to them, who we are isn't important and we are only in their lives to make their lives appear to be beautiful when in reality their trying to mold us into something that is not the truth of us literally kills us and them. We are the only ones who can save ourselves, and this is truly what Sunday Hula is all about. Sunday Hula is about our coming back to a place, together and singly, so that we can radiate the Light that is from within.

When we can behold the Light from Within, it is at that point when we are able to also see that we are very Powerful, that there is nothing in this lifetime that can make the monsters go away other than our very selves. This is powerful. This is what we were born to be - a power unto our very selves.

Come to Hula on Sundays...we will help guide you back to your Self, will help make it so that you will Know for real and for sure just how absolutely beautiful and powerful you truly are...

I Love You All !!
ROX

Na Hula O Ka Wahine 'Ui (The Dance of the Beautiful Woman)
First Class starts at 1:30 P.M. , Sunday, October 7th, 2012
ADAGE DANCE CENTER 
2805 Metropolitan Place
Pomona, CA 91767

Located off of Bonita and Between Garey and White Ave, above the 10 Freeway and below Foothill Blvd and the 210 Freeway

Click here to contact the instructor about class pricing or anything else, for that matter

Do what you will...and make no apologies for it

Whatever it is that you little survivor's heart wants to do, as long as you are not hurting anyone else, you should just go for it!

There is a lot of guilt which is accompanied with the idea that there is an entire population of people on this planet who can call themselves a survivor. I am one of them. I have survived an entire lifetime's worth of being hurt, of being rejected, of being told who I am, of things that are so ugly and torturous to the Soul that it is an amazing thing to me that I made it as far in my life to this point as I have.

Yet, the thing that no one who we are close with will tell us, that is, if they are not "in the know" of what is going on and more, if they are also not one who knows what it is like being someone else's victim, and what no one but us has the very right to do to or for us, is release us from the guilt of trying hard to be happy. When you are someone's victim you are made to feel like garbage, like you are the worst person on the planet because you do not feel bad for feeling good. Eventually, though, we end up repressing all the things that we really feel - like anger, resentment, and hostility, as well as joy, bliss and Love -because we are told that it is not okay for us to have our own thoughts. We are told that our thoughts are not worth the brain which produced them, and in a lot of cases, we are told that we don't have a brain in our heads so how dare we come up with an original thought...yes, if you were thinking that being messed up to the point where your thoughts are constantly jumbled, then yeah, you know what I am talking about.

You know well the idea that you feel like you constantly have to ask for permission, and when you get that permission, you think that you have to do whatever it is that you were going to do to peak perfection, and when whatever it is that you did is done, and you show people, some will think it is grand and great and there will be that one - the person who has abused you and made you feel like dirt - who will tell you that you could have done a better job. This is something that begins the feeling of need of approval, feel the need to beg for Love and for acceptance. Eventually, after we have done this so many times, it becomes a habit and then it becomes part of our daily routine. It is not long after this that it becomes part of who we are, or at least who we have been forced to become.

Then, one day, we decide that we aren't gonna take it (NO! WE AIN'T GONNA TAKE IT!!! ...gotta love Twisted Sister, right? Haha!) anymore....

The day that I decided that I was finished being married to this person, and regardless if he is still living under the same roof as I am, was the day that I seized back and to completion my human right to think on my own and without the threat or at least the feeling of the threat that is inherent in the thinking, period, of those who have been victimized. I knew that one day I would have to be the one to retake my power from this person and while I will not tell anyone that it was easy, I will say and promise anyone reading this or contemplating it to just go ahead and do it. Get your balls back, stiffen your backbone, and do what it is that thrills your Soul.

You asked for permission for too long...now give yourself the permission to be who you are, no matter what...the You who you are becoming will thank you for it 

That anyone needs to get permission, namely an adult, from another adult, is ridiculous, but this is the reality of someone who is or was being abused. There will always be that feeling that somehow you are cheating someone else out of the best of you, but the truth is that you have been cheating you out of the best of you for a long, long time, and there is no need to ask for permission for you to be who you are.

When you come to the realization that you are not this person who you were abused into becoming, very suddenly you begin to feel the invisible chains which held you in place for so long finally and forgivingly just melt away. It takes a little time for a person to get used to the idea that they do not now and never had to ask anyone for permission for anything. It takes time for a person who is on their way to being a survivor time to undo all the brainwashing that they have undergone, and it takes time for an abuse survivor to step out and back into the world and to be courageously brave and become all who they really are.

All who you really are is someone who you have never not been - who you are, sadly, is part of the reason that you were abused. Your abuser told you over and over again that you were somehow wrong in being you. I am  here to tell you that it is wrong to NOT be who you really are, and that you are robbing you of the goodness that you are entitled to. We are all entitled to our own Love, to our own best, and it is not up to someone else to make us feel like we are somehow responsible for the way that they feel. If someone else feels like they have to impede anyone else to feel good about themselves and so that they have control over a situation, they should be more compelled to fix themselves than to try to adjust someone else to fit their own fucked-upness. Seriously. I know, I make up a lot of my own words, but you, the reader, know what I am telling you. You know that you have the power, and more, the right to be yourself and to be comfortable in your own skin and in your own thoughts.

For a whole lot of years I dealt with being told that what I do - I am a dancer, a writer, and a Spiritual Counselor...and yeah...I work with indie rock bands...(Hey, I gotta do what I do and do what I love to do, right? Riiiight) is useless, is right up there with being a hooker, right up there with being a barfly, right up there with things and things that are not so right up there when speaking in terms of doing what we do, and I believed that he was right but not because I really believed him to be right but because I didn't know that I was not wrong.  I was not wrong in loving to dance hula- it is the thing that I grew up doing, grew up to perform professionally, grew up to teach, and eventually was the thing that brought me to a place where I really needed to be, without any apology - back on the dance floor in front of the mirrors, dancing to my heart's content and my Soul's greatest elation.

I dearly needed to be who I really am, and while I was being abused I was not being who I really am. I was not allowed nor permitted to have friends, namely not guy friends, and I have a lot of guy friends. I was not allowed to have friends who were much bigger than I am in size and those friends had to pass his muster with looks...shallow prick....and I had to do jobs that were not in line with my Soul's purpose. When I realized that the reason that I felt so depressed, even though I had become what a lot of people would consider as being "the perfect wife," I still felt so small and insignificant and eventually I started drinking, a lot. To no avail, none of what I was told was the truth, but it hurt like hell and I believed it all.

I believed that I could not think on my own, and I obsessed over the idea that I was somehow not good enough. Well, I say to hell with that, and to hell with him, because I know better. I know that I am a good person, and I know, too, that I have a lot to offer the world in terms of things that I have gone through and emerged from far stronger and wiser than I had in the past. It is because I chose to do my own thing, to be me and fully present in my own life. I am not that great yet at fully living in the present moment, but this present moment I am cheering me on because I took back my power and took back the bullshit about feeling like I have to ask to be me, ask to do what I Love, ask to fulfill my life's mission and my purpose.

We all have a purpose, and right about now I am thinking that the only purpose at this very moment that I am fulfilling is to be that one voice of clarity that tells those who are in the middle of their own hell that if you should all so choose to at least think differently - and I know...man oh MAN do I know that it is really hard - about how things are for you right now, and should so choose to get help and to seek therapy and the company of those whose lives have been marred by the wrong doings of those who likely were also abused in their lives...if you should so choose to think on your own and choose to get help and to take the steps and to do the work required to make your life the beautiful thing that it is meant to be, you will notice that each day that passes is another day that you have lived, have survived. And when you choose to survive, to no longer wear the sadness that victims do, you, too, will know for sure that you were allowed, by your Self and your Soul, to be Who You really Are and have been all along.

It isn't your fault that you have gone through what you have, I promise it isn't.

I hope that one day you will believe me, because it is the truth. It took you a long time to become the clusterfuck that you became, and it is going to take you some time to return to your Self. When you get there, though, the view from the top is gorgeous...

No, really....gorgeous...

All you have to do is believe it....and then do what you have to do to get there. It isn't easy but it is way, way worth it

I LOVE YOU ALL !!
ROX

Chick Wisdom Will Never Fail Us...

For all the things that we each go through, there isn't anything as awesome as the Wisdom which comes from Being a Chick!

Making use of the feminine wiles is not for the faint of heart!

There are a lot of lessons that we learn each day. Some of them are good and make a positive impact. Some of them suck ass but still make a positive impact. All of them are needed. None the less,when it comes to having those conversations with the air, and when we feel like once again we have screwed things SO up that there is nothing that we can think of to make them be better or even different, into the brain comes something which I have termed as being "Chick Wisdom."

Chick Wisdom

You can call it a woman's intuition, or your can call it a Divinely Purposed "thing" that all women seem to possess (and hell, some of us even use it!), but I prefer to call it Chick Wisdom.

Yeah, this post is specifically for the girls and women of the world, namely for those of us who haven't yet been through enough to know how to effectively bounce back from things which may, at the time they are happening, piss us off and break our hearts, but really, all we were doing was learning.

None of us can have any sort of Wisdom without having to go through a few things in life. Things in life aren't always all bad. When we hear about the lessons that we learn most of the time we are prone to believe that what it is that we had to go through was somehow bad. If you learned from what you went through, and you know that you cannot do whatever it was that you did, you learned. If your heart ached but the ache dulled and then you woke up one day refreshed and feeling better than you have in a long while, you learned. If you went through shit, and experienced shit, but you are still in the mindset that all it was was shit, then you didn't learn shit. It is that simple. Really.

You can try to get your point across, but if it is that your words befall deaf ears, and you continue to push and try and do what you think you have to in order to feel better, then you ain't learned a thing.

When we are compelled more to think before we speak or act, think about how a certain thing will affect another person and we are more inclined to impose onto them not only our opinion but also the energy that tells them that no matter what, you are right and they are not, you are not utilizing your own method of the chick in you trying hard to scratch the surface of the issues which are yours and yours alone. While there are other people in your life who might make you miserable, the idea that they are who is responsible for how you feel is preposterous and it is so because you are choosing to let these things happen and choosing to let their shit be your shit, too. And that only makes you feel like a dumbshit, really.

Take it from a professional part-time dumbshit...utilize that Divine Chick Wisdom 

Every single one of us has moments where we lose our clarity and fall victim to our own dumbshit tendencies. I do it a lot. I am sure that I am not the only one who does, but I might be one of the few who will own up to it. Doesn't matter - we cannot go on through life being a dumbshit, and more, we cannot go on through life trying to not be a dumbshit all the time.

What we can do, however, is we can acknowledge that we have been a dumbshit, can bother ourselves with the idea that we are only human and then can use our Inner Chick to guide us through the maze of madness caused by life.

Survivors of domestic violence and emotional abuse sometimes suffer from a largess of dumbshit tendencies, and the truth is that we are only human, and that our own tendencies toward making bad judgment calls and even worse decisions will take over if we are not allowing ourselves to simply just accept that we are not going to always get things right, that we are prone to making choices that might not be the best ones we have made. The beauty of this is that if we know that we are going to screw things up, then we should know, too, that the bigger the dumbshit thing we do, and the more work it takes to come back from that thing, the wiser we will be for the effort and more, for the dumbshit thing that we did.

You are human. You are going to make all kinds of mistakes. Deal with it. Learn from it.

That way the next time you have the opportunity to be all the dumbshit you can be comes to you,  you will have had enough experience to know the difference between doing a dumbshit thing and using that Chick Wisdom you worked so hard to develop.

It isn't that hard to make bad decisions. It is only hard when we cannot accept that we did. You were born for a reason, and that reason was to learn throughout the course of your life, yes, even and especially as at one time the victim of someone else, and then eventually, your very own Survivor!!

...and no one who survives anything terrible can possibly be a dumbshit ALL the time, can they?

Nah...I didn't think so either...

I Love You All!!
ROX