The Fire Walker

When you are in doubt about things, just Be

Yes, there is no doubt in my head that now is the time to just Be. Be all that you are, all Who You Are, Be part of the greater All That Is.

I say this right now because right now, in the world of people who hurt, there is much to be said about the value of learning to Be. Most survivors of almost any atrocity will tell you that the hardest thing to just do is to just Be. Sometimes we want to fix a thing so that it works out how we want it to, and other times we want to go to the nearest person who is not us and ask them what to do, but there are times when we need to just be still and simply Be. Now is one such time for me.

While I remain ever the activist, ever the healer who still smarts from the pains of my everyday living, I have chosen, at this moment, to really leave things alone and as they are and simply and only Be. Be all who I am, albeit very quietly, and Be there for my kids, like the mother lioness with her pride of cubs. We can only hope to fix what is within our power to attend to, and all else must be left to that which we cannot see, that which we know is there, is always there, that which we cannot access anywhere but within.

Within is where many survivors of anything ugly tend to Be, for the most part, and I know this because it is where I dwell. I am safe within. In my "within" there are no people there who can harm me, who can tell me that I am wrong, who can try to hurt the very soul of me. Abused people who are on the road to recovery don't know this until we are told. We don't know that it is just fine and dandy just to take pause and simply breathe and be happy for the body's ability to do what it has to and do what it is meant to. We don't know until we know within that who we are was never this mess, was never this person who hurts, who will have a permanent part of them that, while it won't hurt forever, it also will not forget. It will not forget the lessons it learned and neither the pain that it endured. It will never be lost on the idea that what the Soul has endured was meant to teach and to aid in the healing process, because in the manner that is medicine, the way that we treat the flu is with the flu, in tiny amounts, and the way that we heal from abuse is to, in our minds and within, traverse the Fire which burns and which cleanses, the fire which hurts and kills and is the same fire that serves to protect and remind us that it is hot to the touch, can burn us, can kill us, and that is ours to walk across or ours to avoid.

I prefer, at this moment, to walk the Fire's Path, to face the epitome that was my fear and is now simply my fear waning. I prefer, right now, to think of myself as the Firewalker, the one who transcends the pain and the hurt and the endless burning embers of the memories which used to haunt me but now serve more as the honored emblems of the battle won. While my feet ache and the soles are numb from the endlessness that is the heat of the moment, my Soul rages on within, knowing that this is the calling which was cut out for me and me alone, to be that one person who will walk the Fire, who will cross the Path, leading others behind her, to the coolness that is the River of Life which beckons us all. While I will never tell another Survivor that she needs to do things that she or he knows will hurt them, I will also never tell another survivor that they need to fear everything. The last thing that any survivor needs to be is fearful. Walking the Path of the Firewalker is the Path which we walk anyway...so go forth and walk, my friends, and do not fear the fire, do not fear just to Be Who You Are, because that is yours alone.

If we think for a moment that what we go through as victims, and then as survivors, we see that we have been, thus far, cleansed and refined by this fire which was the abuse.

The Fire Walker is me...is You...We are the Path. We are the Firewalker. We cannot get lost on this travel, cannot think that we are alone, because always, there are people there...

Take my hand...I will lead you there...

I LOVE YOU ALL!
ROX

Violence at Home begets Violence in the Streets

There's no need for Mothers to mourn their fallen sons, at least not like this...

I am calling out to the masses, calling out, almost crying out, to the parents in my town. I want to know why it is that we are allowing this within the borders of this town where we are all raising our kids. I take these sorts of things personally, and also, with a quiet vengeance that is all Love, all the time, for the people of Pomona, CA. We do not deserve to go backward, not when we have come so far.

This is home to us, Pomona, and right now I want to know why it is that the town in which my kids are growing up seems to adhere to its violent past like a two year old with a vice grip around his favorite toy. We can have good memories, if only we would believe this about ourselves collectively. We believe nothing at all if it is not here and in our faces. And please, do not tell me we cannot fix this, because we can, but we have to work together at it. Instead, we sit looking at each other wondering why this is happening again. Yes, I said it - it does not have to be this way.

Why is it that we are all just accepting without trying to change the things about this town, and why is it that we are just accepting it as "the way that it is." I do not believe that, not for a moment, because for a long, long time, there was not more shootings to think about, at least not the way that there have been here lately, and there was no such thing in this area where people were out and trying hard to hurt our children.

You can be mad at me all you want, and you can say awful things to me and about me, but this writing is not about what other parents are not doing as much as it is about our kids growing up violently. It is far too long ahead and into the game called "Peace" to be having people shot for no good reason. It is too far along in our history as humans to have to live in fear. In Pomona, the time has come, not to repeat our violent past, but to seek ways to continue to live peacefully, or at least without shedding the blood of our kids.

Does anyone else think about the idea that we can have peace here, but that peace has to begin at home, and parents at home have got to stop being scared of other peoples' kids, or is it only my thought and that of school officials and administrators and yes, of course, the kids, too? They are bored, but whose fault is that? They are bored, but there are things they can do, and it is the weight which must be borne by us, the parents of these kids, and we are failing them, some of us are, and it needs to stop. We need to pay attention and we need to be involved and more than much else, we need to have things for them to do OTHER than drugs, having sex and doing things that cause a mother to mourn the death of her baby.

The problem is not that they have nothing else to do, but more that they have nothing to be proud of other than having had the control and the power to take another person's life. That is not power. That is not anything that is positive. It is hurtful. It makes people afraid to be at home. It makes an entire population of people know that ours is the stain of abuse gone rampant, ours is the black badge of children dying in our streets and parents who believe that nothing can be done. Lots can be done. Lots can be done and we are doing none of it, sitting idly and waiting for the schools to do something about it or the city's leaders. Whether you believe me or not, it all rests in OUR hands as parents. We have the be the ones to exact this thought in their head, and we have to be the ones who will sacrifice on their behalf our fun, our "me time" and I say it because a parent who cares more about their "me time" has kids who will also only care about their "me time," and that "me time," we see, is spent with other kids who also feel this way, and in our town, that can be a matter of life and death, as well as the difference between the two.

Yeah, I said it, so deal with it. I am sick of hearing the gunshots late at night, tired of knowing that somewhere in this town, a set of parents is mourning the loss of their baby. This is not right. We have to come together, not be torn apart by the fear spawned by the madness that comes from feeling helpless. We cannot turn to the rogues of society, cannot think that going backwards somehow is what we need to do in order to move forward. Gone are the days that we have to prove anything to anyone, but the mentality is that of a pack of wolves,  menacing those in their environment, scaring the good people in this town, and scarring the entirety of us with the deep red stain of the blood of innocents.

This is not a good feeling, not at all, to know that not very long ago there was a shooting, and over what? This is Pomona - I am sure that I do not need to expand on what it was over, because it is always over who is claiming what and who is with what set and who is allowed to make the calls and who is going to claim this corner or that corner as theirs. I cannot sit here and tell anyone that they need to change, because it should never have to be said.

We have moved backwards, not forward, and our children are again at risk.

Violence at home begets and becomes violence in our communities. There needs to be no more bloodshed, no more mothers crying over the loss of their sons.


There just needs to be no more children dying in our streets.

Know it as our Community's Kuleana, as our being the Village who has GOT TO come together to save the children in our midst....here is proof that pictures speak volumes louder than words...

Full Story

I Love You All
ROX

Rev. Roxanne K. Cottell (Reverend Roxie)can be contacted for coaching sessions, to book her for a public speaking engagement, or for any other reason by clicking here

An Open Letter to my Fellow Clergy People...

Dear Other Clergy - 'Auhea Wale Ana 'Oe - PAY ATTENTION

Ministers. We are a strange lot, we are. Most of us work in two worlds...the Physical and the Spiritual. Since it is that I know this is the truth of us, at least the most of us, that is, what I also know is that there are still a whole lot of us - especially those of us who are specifically and only in the business of marrying two souls together - who dearly need to get a damned clue already. Yeah...I said it, now deal with it.

Deal with it. Deal with it because it is our job to deal with the ugliest of the ugliest in our midst, and deal with it because you are doing a great job at making money off the wedding services you are providing, but you are doing a lousy job at keeping people safe and informed. As Clergy it is our duty to put into the heads of the marrying folk of the planet that enough is enough, that there is no place for violence in marriage, and that there is no place for violence in the home, and that there is no place at ALL for violence in the lives of children. If you think kids are not affected by the things that they see and that they hear then you are really NOT thinking at all. This is the thing that makes me the angriest with these people who are ONLY "wedding officiants."

My thought is that while it is very easy to become ordained, and easy to know the laws and rules as they apply to the technical aspects of marrying two people together, it is not easy to wear the color of the cloth for real and for true and there are a whole lot of people running around pimping out their wedding services and not a lot else, leaving the after part that can and sometimes DOES happen, int he hands of the community which these two people come from.

We have a duty to the communities we live in, and that duty includes having a clue and giving a clue about how to BE a community, and you "clergy" who are in it for the money only have failed, miserably, and the best part about that part is that you have left the rest of us who have that same sort of ordination the mess that you helped make...you leave that part for us..the ones who had no time or desire to allow themselves the pomp and circumstance it takes for a 'real' church to want your services. Some of us ordained folk decided that we needed no building, that the streets and the hearts and minds of the world...THAT is where our churches are and we are dearly pissed off at YOU!

We are DEARLY PISSED OFF AT YOU!

You can get butt-hurt all you want, but the fact remains that you are sorely missing your opportunity to make right what can go terribly wrong. That book you like to tell others how to live from, while I do not refer to it a whole lot these days, I have a great deal of respect for it, and you have failed your charges miserably if you have chosen to NOT be Christic in your thoughts and actions, and you have allowed violence into the lives of innocent children. You have turned what was a Sacred and Divine Union into nothing more than another pay day for you, and you have not regarded in this madness the children which are left in the wake of the storm.

You can help prevent this. You can do more than just get a rise out of being the person in charge of the rest of the life of two people, and you can think about what their future might look like if you do not realize that in front of you is a 50-50 chance at that bride and the children she either brings with her into the union or the children who they bring into it together being hurt, physically, damned surely emotionally, or worse, you may have signed their death warrant, and all because you could NOT see past your ego, your arrogance, your payday.

Children are being hurt, physically, and women are dying, daily, and these things are happening at the hands of the person who helped put in charge of that household the moment that your pen hit that signature line on that legal document that melded these people together "until death do us part," and yeah, I am calling you out. I am calling you out, not only on behalf of the beautiful brides who ultimately became the target of verbal abuse but also physical abuse. I am calling you out on behalf of all those step-children who are being tortured because someone in the marriage that you legalized through your solemnization and your signature DID NOT DO ENOUGH BEFORE YOU GOT PAID!

That's right...I SAID IT...now DEAL WITH IT!

You are not better than the merchants who Christ blew up on when said merchants were selling their wares on the Sabbath. You are not better than those preachers who have a person in the congregation "finding" someone with an ailment that you can "heal" in exchange of a few silver coins. You are not better than the people who create ponzi schemes, and you are not better than the last CEO of the last conglomerate church that was found to be hiding the abuses to women, that was found to NOT be addressing the sin of abuse and control and disrespect in marriage, and you are not better than the people who you look down on from your ivory tower in hopes that you will be able to intimidate us with your great big R-E-V. status and I want you to know NOW that you are not better than me.

You might think that because you wear that nice suit on Sunday that somehow your piety is tied to the tag in the collar that reads "Oscar" or "Vera" or "Chanel", but the tag in mine reads "Metal Mullisha" and I buy my things at the thrift store. You have the right to marry people, but you do not have the balls to make sure that these women are safe, and the bitch of it all is that a WHOLE LOT OF THOSE TO WHOM I AM ADDRESSING THIS ARE WOMEN!!

Where is the mom in you? Where is the part of you that does not want to see kids hurt, and more, where is that part of you that feels like you have a duty, a kuleana to these people, yes, even AFTER you have performed your "magic" ? Where is that part of you that wants to do more in the community and where the hell is it that you keep your compassion?

Ahhh...there, I see it...you keep it there, next to your bank statement, because that is truly where your heart is, is where your treasure lies....

Mine? Mine lies with the future being one that is less violent, where there are happy children who live in happy homes where violence does not exist. This is the scenario that, ultimately, we want to see, but the longer you people take in getting the balls to talk to your charges BEFORE they sign that check for wedding services and do so without the idea that you might lose them and their money if you say something to them that might be construed as you telling them it will happen. If you are good enough to be "Of Spirit" and worthy of the title "Reverend," then you ought to be out there NOT doing like so many "Good people of the cloth" (without naming any religion you already know where I am going with this) have done and OPEN YOUR EYES AND YOUR MOUTH and most of all YOUR HEART AND SOUL and LET YOUR PEOPLE KNOW THAT THIS CANNOT GO ON!

If you are at a loss for words, send me some of that "hard earned" (yeah right...more like swindled) money to me and I will teach you how to talk to people so there is less chance that those two who you are giving the truth to do not run like hell in opposite direction of each other. That you think I am foolish enough to NOT know that you are protecting your payday is one thing, but to say nothing and sanction the abuse by not telling them it could happen...that is another thing altogether and one that tells me that you are not worthy to even be INSIDE of a church, let alone running ANY kind of ministry.

GET A F*CKING CLUE ALREADY !!!
Violence and Love do not mix...we are not all "Sid and Nancy.." and you are not the freakin' rockstar reverend you think you are....note that I said "think"...it is that thing you do with that thing that is sitting on your shoulders at the top of your neck that is not supposed to get as swelled as has yours.

You are responsible for giving people a clue. You are responsible for putting their lives above your paycheck.

This is what we are called to do. It is people...reverend people...like you...who make me tout the benefits, in some cases, of a Justice of the Peace...that guy doesn't expect you to make promises before God that at least one person who is saying "I Do" has no intent on keeping.

I said it...all of it...hate me if you want to, but this is the truth...so deal with it already....

I LOVE YOU ALL
ROX

To contact Rev. Roxanne K. Cottell, please click here. Visit and Like The Sisterhood of The Soul's Facebook Page. Please visit our website, and also our partnering ministry, Kindred Souls of The South facebook page and also The rev. Vel-Danielle Gambrell's official Kindred Website. Sign our Petition to raise awareness about Domestic Violence. Please, click on the picture of the little hula girl and donate to our "Speaking Out Against Domestic Violence" Campaign to raise awareness through a 30 second ad-spot to be broadcast during Projectindependent.net's metal showcase for indie music.  

We have no choice- 'tis a battle which must be won...

It is a bad thing that violence is a normal part of our everyday lives. We can do a lot to stop it...

"Wake up and smell the coffee. Your people are hurting. And you have a job that is part of the response. God is trying to get your attention." (Dr. Rev. Marie Fortune, FaithTrust Institute)


It is sad the way that we Americans sanitize things to make them more emotionally palatable for us to swallow and accept as the truth. The truth is that we are more inclined to avert our attention to other, more pleasant things, but the fact that violence in the home is where violence in the streets starts is not going to change. It will never change unless we, as a collective whole, are more willing to be the people who enact the changes in our own lives so as to exact them in the greater world around us.

As a woman, I find it sickening all the way to the Bones of my Soul that people on the planet feel that scaring the hell outta little kids while in church, rather than teaching them the ways that Christ would have wanted, is what people worldwide feel is okay to do. As a mother I am made sad at the idea that there are men on this planet who are not worried that what they show and tell their kids in regards to their own mother and women in general is that not only are kids not as worthy as are men, but that no matter what, women are meant to be seen and never heard. This, my friends, is the stain on the Soul of the World, the crushing blow to the collective psyche of women all over the place. This, guys, is the thing that should not be, the thing that still is being, and this is the thing that a lot of people are dearly done with, myself included.

There is nothing quite more devastating than to be told as a child that if you do not listen to your parents, no matter what they tell you and even if your own little soul is not okay with it, that you will...WILL burn in hell for it, no matter what. I was born with certain gifts of the Spirit. You can imagine that the reason I never ever shared it with people was not because I was scared they would think I was weird (they thought that anyway) but that they would reinforce what it was that I was being told, over and over again, in church, by my ill-informed mother, that because I had these gifts, I was going to go to hell. And make no mistake, I felt like I was a bad omen to her, like I was to be the pariah that my pentecostal yet ill informed parents and ministers of the faith that I trusted for a long time, that I was a bad person because I could read people, because I could tell anyone what someone else was thinking, even from a distance- a long distance, too. Then put into the mix the idea that my mother, God Bless her, held and yet holds what is contained beneath the two hard covers of a book that has ruled the world of the Christian masses for many generations as being the literal truth and then you put with that the fear of her own words told to me about being an Empath and being drawn to things that are not like what I was taught, and then give that same person - me- a reason to fear you will have the foundation upon which many, many women have not only been abused because of, but have also been killed...sadly, children too.

The pit-stain of this issue is not that we are not aware of it, but that we are trying to make it pretty, and there is nothing pretty about scared and crying children, just like there is nothing pretty about scared, crying and bruised and battered women.

The Speaking Out Against Domestic Violence Campaign, which is being fueled by the women of both The Sisterhood of The Soul as well as The Kindred Souls of the South, will address these things, but we need your help. 

We need others who have been there to tell their stories, and we need ministers to join in the fight to save our children and the mothers and women of the world who are caught between hell and purgatory with no thought of a chance of redemption.

Basically, we need people - LOTS of people, and we need them NOW, not only joining any campaign including mine, but joining in on the movement against violence. Violence in the world comes from violence in our towns, which is born of violence in our communities, which is brought into being by violence behind the closed-door privacy of the home. Home is where we are supposed to feel safe, but sadly, and more and more I find, that is not the truth. Just because society appears to have calmed the violence it does not mean that underneath it all the same is to be said. Appearances can be deceiving.

Do not buy the idea that a Christian person, a Catholic person, an Earth Spirit person are all the kind that we assume they are. There is prevalence of violence in all parts of our society, and it is a sickness that permeates and tells us a story about the truth of who we are, and who we are collectively is a violent society, namely here in our country.

We need to stop this madness guys, and we need to do that NOW, because no child should fear their parents, and no child should fear the safety and warmth that is Spirit, that is God, and more, no woman who is the mother of that scared child should be forced to choose between keeping herself and her babies safe, and giving in to a man who is not pious, but arrogant.

Thanks for reading!
I LOVE YOU ALL !
Aloha Pumehana...
ROX

The Reverend Roxanne K. Cottell (Reverend Roxie) can be reached for appointments, lectures and speaking engagements by clicking here.

The Biggest Obstacle (18+)

The Biggest Obstacle that Survivors Face is Believing 

Once you have been told that you are not worth the time it will take to be good enough for anything, you believe, based on what you have already lived through, that yes, you are not a lovable person. I know this monster because I still live this hell. While I already know that this is not the truth of me, I also know the reality that is fighting the demons within, the ones that remind a person that there are people who, at one time in your life, were the very most important in your life, and when these people breached your trust, that is when the garbage in the mind became more believable than what the reality is, and the reality is that no matter what happens and no matter who is closest to you who makes you think that you are not worth the Love that you at least have, no matter how small it might seem, someone on this planet Loves you.

But it is not the idea that we are unloved, but the idea that someone would make us feel so awful about who we are and according to what is not the truth, and having that crap shoved in your face and down your throat, again and again - this is what makes it hard to believe that anyone else can or will bother to know that we hurt enough to need the healing light that is Love. All abuse survivors, no matter how long it has been since the last time anything horrid happened and no matter with whom, go through this. This is one of those things that no one will understand unless they have "been there," and is the paradox in Love because while we long for someone else to know, really know, what it is like, even though you know you are loved, it doesn't feel like it. After so much time of having been taught that Love is conditional, you begin to believe it. You begin to think that you have to prove that you are worth Love, and pretty soon you start to believe that what everyone else is saying is...IS your truth.

I will be the last one to tell someone that their pain is invalid, because that is another lie. No one who does not know what the hell it is that we have gone through has the right to tell another person what they should do, and more than that, those who really have no real clue of what it is like being someone else's constant pariah and who can only 'imagine' what it is like are the worst of all. They are not the ones who tell you that they wish they could help you, and they are not the ones who say nothing, preferring to not be the next asshole who tells you what should happen. It is the ones who like to start their overly opinionated and "I watched it on Discovery Channel" people who think they know what they would do who make you feel the worst, because these are the very same fuckers who seem to think that giving an abuse victim advice unsought is Love. It is not Love. It is control and it is conditional Love. I think I love it most when these idiots tell a survivor "That wouldn't happen to me...I won't allow it." I am sorry, but you are not the one who gets to choose who will and who will not give you the taste of what it is that I along with many others have gone through. You are the boneheads who have so much to say and know so very little about the truth of us and you are also the same bunch of people who, when you feel like you are not being heeded, and when you feel like your sorry advice which comes from a place of "if it were me..." is the only and the best advice.

No, dumb ass, it is not. It is so not, and you have nothing to say, because you really have no clue what it is like to be that scared - scared for your fucking life, and all your real sin was was to Love someone who you should have Loved, be it a parent or a partner. You have no idea. You can sit there ass hurt all you want, and you can sit there and think that someone like me actually deserves what she or he gets and you can make all the wrong assumptions about abuse victims your little tiny brain can think of, and no matter what, unless you have been where we have, you really do not know. You will never know, for real, the measure of fear, and no matter how many times you go and say shit to people who it doesn't matter to because they know less than you do, it will not matter because your gossip only makes things worse.

This is where the part where, as a victim OR a survivor,  you feel unloved and unwanted and it really begins to cement itself in your head, and unless someone who has been there comes along to clue you in on the fact that really, you are totally a loved person, that there is someone on this planet who cares enough to tell you so, and that you were never wrong for not leaving when someone ELSE told you to...you have nothing to make up for.

I got tired of hearing about how many people were tired of hurting because I hurt, and that gave them an easy way out. The last thing that someone you claim to love needs to know is that one more person does not think that they can handle their own emotional bullshit so therefore they simply wash their hands of you. This is what an abuser does, too. They get to that point where they are tired of talking, tired of telling you who you are, and you become so numb to the idea that you believe no one loves you, that you begin to behave as though no one does. This is the reality of the wake left by abuse. This is the energy left behind, and this is where we all end up - in tears, all the time, because we are hearing the things that we can never not hear again. This is what a lot of folks don't think about - the fact that while they were all well meaning, and while at the bottom of it all it was about Love, to sit there and without realizing it, blame the abused person for their inaction to make YOU feel better about what they are going through is SHIT.

SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! And yes, I am on a tangent and have been and I will tell you this much, and namely if you were once close to someone who you had the nerve to tell you could not be there anymore because you needed to NOT feel their pain anymore...You are a creepy asshole, period. The abused person already feels very isolated, and they feel isolated and  your isolation of you from their lives proves their attacker to be 'right' again, and if you think for one moment that said attacker will not use your words somehow against the person who you chose to bail on and who you KNOW would never leave you, you are fucking wrong. WRONG WRONG WRONG !!! When you hurt, I am guaranteeing that they were there for you. The problem with people like you is that when this person comes to you in full faith that you will LISTEN and NOT ADVISE is that you also are so arrogant in your ways of NOT thinking about THEIR pain and only relaying what you THINK you have gone through "for" them and that comes screaming through, loud and clear. It is like telling that person again that if they had only listened to YOU and what YOU THINK you would have been able to do, they might not be in this situation.

Let me tell you something about a situation that is a maddening circle of hellish insanity....it is not nice, period. There are SEVERAL people reading this who are, right now, tsk tsking me, my words, my anger at the entirety of the whole of those who think they know what they would do, but I know they would not know what to do, and those who think they would, well, those are the very same ones who would seek out the advice of people like me - the ones who have survived, who sit in the seat of judgment STILL of those who have no fucking clue of what really happens in the minds of those who have fallen victim. It is not that we don't want to leave, but that we don't want to leave and have to keep looking over our shoulders, and believe it or not, that stupid fucking TRO that you THINK will protect a victim only makes the abuser madder and madder, and that is the part that no one realizes. A piece of paper cannot stop a married person from cheating on their spouse if that is what they do, so what the fuck makes a person believe that all abusers are going to behave because a judge told them they have to? I ain't saying that there are no abusers who do NOT follow the court order, but I AM saying that there are more who are so arrogant in their idea that they are above the law that they really don't care if there is an order in effect, and they don't care how many times the cops show up...they just do not care, and here is some fucking news for all you assholes who will sit there and blame the victim for not doing more....you can't do more, and the bitch is that it is because the abuser, whether your fairy tale bullshit in your head about what YOU would do has subsided, also has rights.

There's something all the people who knows for sure that they would never find themselves the clusterfuck of fear almost all survivors still have within them...yup...abusers have rights, too...regardless of what you think you would do, this is the thing that, when one of these morons who have said this TO ME come to me because yup...they have gone through it and now they want to know how I got out of the emotional mess that I still have the tendency toward being. They want to know how I made it through this, they want to know what they can do and they want you to help them because you know what it is like. And I promise you, I leave no one hangin, or at least I try not to, which means that given my place in life, it is my duty to at least tell them that no, they do not just get to leave and not be scared anymore, they do not just get to voice their sorrows to their attacker and expect the motherfucker to care, and most of all, no, it is not true that no one loves you, but it is true that you have to have a lot of self love to make it through this shit, and welcome to the reality that is this hell called healing from abuse.

Abuse survivors, even as we are as tough as we end up being, still need to be loved, and told that we are loved, because we have a hard time trusting love and being in love, and we have a hard time not getting mad, not only at ourselves but at everyone else for not listening to OUR words, that when it comes down to it, we are the prime example of what happens when a person loves too much. Abused people love so much that sometimes, we find ourselves in the miry goo of what has happened that we cannot bear to look at it one more time.

And then someone comes along to remind us that we are not worth a kind word, only useless and baseless advice coming from an idiot who, at that point, is worse than the abuser. Care comes in silence, too, you know, and sometimes it is that you need to shut your mouth and stop telling this severely hurt person in front of you that you would never be in their place, because you don't know that. You don't know if it will happen that one day, you know totally how they feel. I work with other abuse survivors, and yes, I work EXTENSIVELY with those who are stuck in an abusive situation, and an abusive situation is NOT always one where there is a couple and one of those in that couple is a big enough creep to put hands on the other one. Sometimes, that abuse comes in the form of being abandoned by family members who refuse to come to the mat with the truth, and the truth is that those family members hurt as much as the victim.

Problem is, arrogance and pride and the fact that not a lot of people KNOW how to deal with their own pain comes in to play, and what the hell are you doing advising someone about something that you are so god damned clueless about in the first place?

I mean really, YOU think you know BETTER than that person who came to you not for advice but only a shoulder and a pair of arms to hold them with? You don't. God help you and I hope you never do. Based on the idea that you think you know what you would do is telling of the fact that really, you have no clue what you would do, because as usual, you think you know what is best for them, and you don't. The best way that you can help that person who you care so much about is to just tell them that you will listen. Hold them as they cry, because that crying is not on the surface...

...no no no...that crying comes straight from the bones of that person's soul...

You don't know ...you really don't know. LOVE them, because that...THAT is REALLY what they need.
And STOP telling them that they "should just leave," because even though that is the truth, there are steps that need to be taken before they can just up and bail, at least the majority of victims, that is. There is such a thing called stalking, harassment and homicide, and all of those things CAN happen to a person if they do not plan their escape. There is NOT ONE advocate or shrink who will instruct an abuse victim otherwise, because those people KNOW the truth of an abuser.

You do not.
No matter what - you do not. And how creepy are you to have left that person who believed that you loved them enough to not be one more asshole who chose to judge them?

Where the hell was your Soul then? ...oh, that's right...it was busy being scared while your big fat ego was busy telling the world how you would never let that happen to you...

Haha!! dumb ass...as though anyone would ASK to have their ass kicked...

ROX

Rev. Roxanne Cottell can be reached via email at reverendroxie22@gmail.com. Please visit mapu70.wix.com/sisterhoodofthesoul today !!  Know that you are Loved...aloha !! 

Children are not meant to be trained like animals...

There is actually book written about how to "train up" a child
(and the dude who wrote it is STILL not in jail but should be)

At this time there are a lot of words being exchanged about a book by a fundamental Christian about training children's will to be broken through none else than the old fashioned switch method, and this is something that the person who wrote this believes is appropriate for babies who are nursing and who bite...he tells the reader in this book that to stop the baby from doing that, all you have to do is give a little pull on the baby's hair and to keep doing it until the baby is trained to not do that.

I am a parent. I have three normal kids who have been taught - NOT trained- to be the best humans they can be, and they have not disappointed me yet.. I was raised up "in the church." I know well the idea that people believe that GOD said "spare the rod and spoil the child," but I have yet to find those exact words. I do, however, know all about the verse in the Bible that tells us that the "Sons shall bear the weight of the sins of the father," and in my opinion, not only is that Karmic in nature, but more, it speaks very well the truth that I am aware of after having lived through it. The man who fathered my children is still the child who is scared, who is hurt, who is dealing with the demons that now he must face and do so without the help of a prescription that will make him NOT angry, NOT say ugly things, NOT do all those things that a clouded mind doesn't know that it is doing because it is so not aware of anything OTHER than the fight ensued with themselves. The sons who pay for the sins of the father are the sons who were, themselves, abused by those same men. The "sin" part of that, the way that I am thinking of it, is that these boys who become men with the idea in their head and because of the example they were shown that abuse is discipline because the Bible told them so who grow up to be the example of this one living truth.

And that one living truth is that yes, absolutely, children are like sponges and they do pick up on everything they see and hear and energetically receive from all sides. They grow up with the belief in their head that the way to get people to do anything for you is to beat them to the punch and keep them under control, and it is for no other reason than that the child who they still are on the inside still does not know what to do with all the pain they go through so they do as they were shown, take a child's and a woman's words as defiance rather than freedom of thought...you can guess what happens then, right?

It is my ...assumption....that if this "writer" is willing to switch a baby to train it like a dog not to bite its mother's breast, then, too, said same person likely is one who has also, through his words and threats controls the mother of his children and there is no one who can tell me or  make me believe that there is not also at a minimum, and yes, through that action that the man demands from his family, emotional abuse. I could never hurt a child, let alone a baby, to train it in a manner that is hurtful, because that baby is not going to forget that he or she was hurt - no one would. What this "training" does is sets the kid up to be bullied and sets the mother up, through the use of religious or spiritual abuse, for a lifetime of subservience and servitude rather than what we are all meant to be in this life - in service, not indentured. Yet this is not what "author" Mike Pearl wants the world to know.

The book, thus far, reads as though his sorry attempt at making light of this all in comparing children to mules and dogs (and the fact that he says he is not fond of cats tells me, too, that this is a person who will show children how to be bigoted against anything that such a creep would say is ok just because HE does not like them) and also to soldiers in the military who, through constant training of standing still on the commanding officer's words, have been brainwashed into giving up their own free will to choose, and the choosing here is not about anything other than the right that anyone, namely children, have to being all who they are, no matter what.

This book and its sorry attempts at humor even invites "unbelievers" to test out his methods of horror and abuse and encourages people to do so in order that the parents...the very ones meant to also teach these little people values and character that is natural rather than physically forced on to them...can have a break from the madness that is raising children.

I did not grow up in a militarily run home. I grew up in a 'scared we are going to hell home...what? Roxanne? Mapuana? You mean you know what is going to happen before it happens and you know what that person over there is going to say?"...yes, I did, and throughout the bulk of my own life, and due to the unneeded parental overflow of fear of what they might have to go through if I did something against the teachings they gave me in church. From a young age I believed that I would go to hell because I was gifted Spiritually. It was my mother more than my father who exacted this in me, and it was because she had the crap scared outta her when she was a kid by all the stories she was told about how we would bring some strange curse back to her family if we thought we might be able to practice whatever it was that I was told is akin to black magic. It was not till many years later that I was able to study why it was that this happened, and what exactly it was that brought this thought to her and her family, and it all boils down to how much a person really and truly has bothered to learn about a thing.

I bothered to learn.

And this is really what needs to be done - bothering to learn. If we bother to create new human life to be the mirror of who we are, and we are worried that the people who we bring into this lifetime are going to make us look foolish, that is not on the children but on us, the parents. Every single little thing that we say and do, and the energy that we put forth in the form of Love and Discipline through and with Love, and everything and every way that we show and share our Love with the rest of the world is shown and reflected through the light of our lives called our children. Why on earth would we want to squash that light with force and with violence, and why would we want to give the world another shot and people who are outwardly morally upstanding but who inwardly are still those very tiny kids with issues they are too scared to talk about for fear of going to hell? This is the sickest paradox of all- that parents control their kids who believe every little thing they are told and shown as being the truth, and it is our first heart break when we find out, at whatever age we find out (for me it was 42...no shit...), that our parents, for all their well-meaning intentions, really had no clue of what they were doing or saying and most of the time the things they are teaching their kids is the same information they were handed as children.

This is the ugliness and the black eye of domestic violence. When people think about the words "domestic violence," immediately the first image in their minds is that of a battered and bruised, emotionally and mentally drained woman who looks somewhat emaciated. This is the poster child for abuse at home. Yet, the reality is that domestic violence is not only a "woman problem" but a family and community problem. Violence in the home imparted on those who are told they are not in charge but in servitude becomes violence in play when children are toddlers, and becomes the bully at school throwing sand at other kids. Violence at home becomes that bully in the sand box playing house with that cute little girl with the boingy things in her hair and who emulates what he or she sees at home and violence at home becomes that silence of tears behind the door that is your teen-aged daughter who will not tell anyone her boyfriend is beating her or being awful to her because that violence at home is right outside that same bedroom door. Violence at home begets that same daughter marrying her high school sweetheart who was initially the bully in the sand box in grade school  and who begets children who will be raised in the fear that she has known her whole life as normal, even though she, in the middle of her self and down to the very bones of her very soul, always believed that something was just not right.

Violence at home is the reason that people in high schools are gunned down for no apparent reason. Violence at home is the reason that drive-bys and robberies and assaults happen for no reason at all, and violence at home is one of the very most preventable communicable diseases known to man, and is also the very one which we all have, at one time or another, turned a blind eye to when in reality it was never that we were turning a blind eye to anything because the majority of us were raised in an atmosphere of religious fear, emotionally draining arguments where only the abuser got what he needed and to hell with the rest of the humans, not only under that roof he or she likes reminding people that THEY bought and that THEY ARE NOW ENTITLED to everyone in that house being scared of them and for what?

So that the abuser can feel comfortable with the controlling bullshit that he or she suffered as children themselves. I know this is the truth, because I have a parent who is scared to death of everything even though she tells me all the time that she is not and that her God has her back, and the other, who was my caretaker when it mattered for a kid to have decent and loving care, who was brutal with me when she felt I was out of line, and even if it were unintended. Yes, this is the truth and there is not one person reading this who will deter me from speaking my own truth, because in speaking my own truth, I not only get to let those whose eyes happen upon this blog know that they are so not alone, but more, I see where I have been, know what I have been and realize now that no matter what, for the most part, I did not deserve any of the abuses I was forced to endure.

This is the reality of how abuse bleeds out into our homes and how that ugliness of thought and energy becomes part of the normalcy that sadly, many, many "followers of God" have made as part of the everyday living in those homes. My thoughts and prayers go out to those kids, those wives, because inherently they know....

Inherently and down to the bones of their soul, they know they are being treated wrong. They are too scared to go to hell. Guys...I promise...you are not going to go to hell...

Spirit would never make it so that in any manner, violence is somehow something that is not reactive. Violence IS reactive. Time to respond rather than react...

I Love You All !
ROX

Rev. Roxanne Cottell (Reverend Roxie) can be reached via email by clicking this link.

There are no pretty words...abuse is abuse

No matter who says what, it is not okay

I get it all the time, people demanding why it is that I "go against" what I know is right and follow the things that I was taught as a kid in church and in and with certain parts of my extended family. Let it be well known right now that while there are many more churches now which are making it known very well that domestic violence and emotional abuse are no way at all allowed by the God they follow, what is not being said to these people is that there needs more to be done in the way of telling the world that it is not okay.

Too many times people assume that the white picket fence means that the person who brought home the money also is to be assumed that they are as lovely a person as is that fence and that ideal of what is a happy family. Too often, too many people are more inclined not to get involved, not to say a word, not to do a thing, and because of the silence, more and more women, and now men, too, are being killed. These people are dying for Love. I know this animal. I was this animal. The women in particular are more vulnerable than are the men, and the children are also as vulnerable, because there are several hundred churches on this planet who encourage the beating of children and women, as though both groups are somehow meant for it. It makes me wonder if the idiots who wrote that garbage are even looking at either of those two with their eyes upon them or if they have their heads down looking at a book they are misusing as God's guidance to rid the world of strong independent women and well adjusted children.

My call is out to the men in the world, the ones who think that it is okay still to put hands on women and children and to make this the way that you force them and control their lives. Who do you think you really are and why is it that you assume your religious rights are somehow being impeded if you are told by a woman...ME...that you are a piece of garbage and that you do not deserve the representative of replication of Life and the proof of that power by her and within her through that child who you are teaching "violence is needed." No. Violence is not needed. Violence is not needed, but you need to learn control, and you need to learn that it is you who has the problem, and you need to realize that what you are doing is nothing short of criminal and absolutely is repulsive beyond anything else that this Minister can think of.

It breaks my heart when I hear other women telling me stories about what has been done to them, because I have been there, and it is not fun. It is not fun to be afraid of the one person who swore to take care of you and those precious children. It is not fun to live one's life feeling as though they are meant to walk on eggshells all the time. It is not fun to have to wear long sleeved tops in the summer time, when it is hot out and because you want to cover the bruises which ensue from the rage of a man's arrogance and ego gone unchecked. It is not okay to perpetuate this teaching to the boys and younger generations. You are the ones who continue to perpetuate the violence, not only in your home and in the tree that is your family's, but you are proliferating it out into the world. Columbine guys...Virginia Tech guys...Uni-Bomber guys...all these guys and the rest who do not make the news...all of these people came from, in some manner, abuse. There are many ways to abuse people, and we as a society call it "normal," but no one told you that there is a huge difference between what is normal and what is tolerated. Violence is not normal, it is tolerated.

Violence is not normal. It is tolerated.

Do NOT tell me that the reason that anyone will grow up to be abusive is because that is all they know and that that is how they were raised and oh well can't do anything about it....really? Are you sure about that? I beg to differ. No one but a person who was picked on as a kid has the option to grow up as a bigger version of that kid BUT that kid. It is up to that kid to learn early from the adults in their lives who are NOT abusing them that violence in any manner is so not normal. Domestic Violence breeds more and more violence in the world. In order for there to be violence there must BE violence. I want you all to look around you right now and think about that for a minute and let it sink in because for many generations we have tolerated violence as a means to control people.

I grew up not realizing that what I had gone through as a child with the people who I grew up with ...no, not my parents, even though they are a very good example of people who do not realize that allowing this to happen in their lives is perpetuating it...and who also used threats, yelling, taking away of a favorite toy and never giving it back...I could go on and on...these people are the ones who brought to my life the violence through being "disciplined" with a belt, a wooden spoon and these people are the ones who told me that I needed to toughen up and these are the people who showed me through their making of excuses as to why I needed to be physically dealt with in that manner that abuse, while it is never okay, is normal, and they call it DISCIPLINE.

Hitting a kid with a belt or a wooden spoon...abuse...a closed fist...also abuse...a gentle swat on the rear end and a stern talking to...NOT abuse but discipline. Name calling...telling anyone that they are worthless...pathetic...useless...all of it...all of it is abuse, no matter what. This, the hitting with the spoon and the beatings with the belts, the yelling and calling of names and the belittling and berating...all of this is abuse, and all of it another kind of preventable disease that kills a lot of women and children everyday. While we are so busy with fighting for causes that are preventable diseases, we are not doing enough to prevent this one, and this one DOES cause other diseases and not all of those diseases are physical, but mental and emotional, and it seems even with VAWA in place, our rallying cry is still "someone please make them stop hitting us" and it is a slap in the face that when a woman who is really being abused calls the police for assistance, they will not take her abuser to jail because they cannot see the injuries. And the bigger slap in the face is that if it is the abuser who calls first, the victim is who will go to jail...all true...ask a victim...

When the hell are we finally going to understand that this is not cool?

 It is not cool to hurt people. It is not cool to make people who you say you love live beneath the weight of your thumb and see things through the lenses of your own perceived strength, which, by the way, is not strength. It is weakness. Only the weak prey on the weak. This is truth in nature as it is in human awareness. This means that even though an abuser might be physically stronger than their victim, there is no way ever, unless they are willing to get help, that they can ever be stronger. No way at all. The reason is that because the abuser is and has been the way that they are, but the person who they victimize likely was not someone else's victim, and now the victim has to learn to survive. Once that is in play, there really is no turning back, and the survivor of all the nonsense is not only better off for having learned that method of survival, even though it sucked, they are now smarter for having to have gone through the crap that they did.

If you don't believe me, ask me, because I am living proof of this in action. It is not that there are no programs in place to help these people after the fact, but the FACT that there should be no real reason for them to be in existence in the first place. That is the black eye, the stain on society - that for every wrong there is a way to fix it. Yeah..I Know...never gonna happen...yeah yeah...I know....And while it is that those programs are invaluable resources, it does not address the entirety of the whole, and the entirety of the whole is that just as much as victims need these programs so that they can learn to survive the wreckage that was their life, so, too, must their attacker, because the truth of the matter is that abused people become abusers if they do not have someone there to remind them daily that abuse, even as it might be accepted as "normal" for some people, on the whole, it is the furthest thing from it.

And to all those ministers who are claiming in their instruction books about disciplining children and having it be a godly thing to beat your family....you are not ministers- you are abusers. You are the worst kind of abusers, the kind who tell people that God told them to do it. God did not and would not tell anyone to harm a child. Knock your bullshit off. Instead of beating kids for no reason, why don't you sit them down, be firm with them...do not beat the shit out of them and expect them to change, because they won't. They will not recognize real Love, you creepy assholes, and you will have shown them to fear rather than to have true respect. They will not know what it is like, and they will end up in an endless cycle of abuse. I cannot believe that you believe that a God that could create such beautiful creatures, such wonderful and amazingly complex creatures, in HIS image, THROUGH US and that that same God would instruct you to tear those beautiful beings down!! You are the wolves, the very wolves in sheep's clothing, because you go and you tell many, many people your lies - that basically, women and children are not people, they are owned. Nah, dude...not okay, not cool - yeah, I AM talkin' to YOU, because I have to fix a whole LOT of people JUST LIKE ME because of people JUST LIKE YOU and I promise you that you don't scare me. You are not allowed to beat kids or women up. I would challenge you to a fight, but I would win, because I fight like you do - LIKE A GIRL and yeah, asshole, dirty as hell...I say if you can dish it then I hope you can take it, because Karma demands respect, and I promise you...Karma WILL get her due...

And I promise you, too, that if you think I am a bitch...Bigger one than you, even, because you use a switch...'cause you probably hit like a bitch, right "Pastor"? My OKOLE..pastor....hmmph!!
haha!! Yeah...I said it- deal with it! Real men don't hit and don't make excuses.

Karma's a bigger bitch than I will ever be!! Maybe even a bigger one than any abuser is already...just sayin'...


I LOVE YOU ALL !!

ROX

Rev. Roxanne Cottell (Reverend Roxie) can be reached by clicking here. Please do your part in raising awareness about domestic violence and emotional abuse. Donate to the "Speaking out against Domestic Violence" fundraising campaign. We are spreading the news online via a PSA during the Project Independent Metal Showcase Tour. Please click on the link to see their sponsorship link. Then please visit our gofundme.com page for the details. For the best in indie rock music, please visit www.neueregelradio.com ...Mahalo...aloha nui...ROX ! 

Doing for your own self also means you are doing for others at the same time

It is time to include ourselves...

Doing nice stuff for other people has been something that I have always done. My Hawaiian upbringing prompts me to "Live Aloha," and I do, in every respect and in every part of my life, personal and professional. I have spent many years doing things for other people, and in listening to the lessons that I was taught while sitting in that church congregation that my parents called "Ours," I learned very well that no matter where you are or in what respect we are thinking or talking about, unconditional Love is meant to be part of our own awareness. Thing is...while we were out and about doing nice things for other people, we forgot about ourselves.

It is not a bad thing to want to do things for your own self in all areas of life

Our staunchly Christian thinking leaders in their staunchly conservative mindset and their staunchly rigid post on the side of big business sort of, to an extent, put us little guys in a precarious predicament. There was no way that we could compete, but the beautiful and forgiving part of that is that while we were busy thinking that we were never going to be able to compete with the big guys, we were also building for ourselves a good reputation that included the things that money cannot buy, not even if we have been offered those things.  Things like integrity is one of them. In listening to the radio, I heard a commercial that was selling the promise of one's ugly and possibly criminal past gone like the winds that blow. This made me laugh on the one end, but sad on the other, because as a whole, at least a lot of us, are more inclined to hide the ugly sins of our working past through means of hiring other firms to make our misdeeds vanish.

What happened to our integrity, you might ask?

That's easy - we bought into the greed, and we bought into the idea that whoever has the most money at the end, wins. By my count, the guys with the most money are also the guys who are the most hated, and my thinking is that the time is NOW to start a new thought that needs to be a contagious one at a minimum. In fact, that new thought needs to be as big and as addictive and as fervent as the bigness of that greed and that thought that we, collectively, all thought. We all thought that what we were doing was only for money, and now we know that this time around, it NEEDS to be personal. We need - BADLY- to have a sense of oneness, to be able to talk with each other and know, down in the bones of who we are, singularly and as a whole, that who we are - not only how much we bring to the table - is what truly matters.

You see, no one will tell us when it is that we are being taught something - that is ours alone to realize. No one also tells us that who we are matters a whole, whole lot because essentially who we are is what we are, and what we are is what we are really marketing and NOT only what wares or services we offer to the world.

What we really need, guys, is to be back with each other - NOT in competition...NOT in the energy that is "I am better than this guy because..." and NOT with the thought in our heads that what we have to do is run over anyone in the process. That is how we ended up in this mess - through greed, and those who prompted the greedy masses to continue the madness are the very ones telling us that we cannot do what we were meant to do both privately and professionally if we are not also willing to cut them a big giant piece.

There is no big giant slice of any pie, folks...the truth is that NOW is the time that we are SUPPOSED to be working WITH one another in order to bring about the energy, not only of change, but also of commerce. Commerce has to stop with all the one-upping and commerce has to realize that who we are is what matters now. Who we are and what we have been through and yes, of course, absolutely who we know, too, because who we know anymore is how anyone gets anything done at all. I know this. I live this everyday, and I love every minute of it. I love every minute of it because all day long I get to make friends - useful friends - who are more inclined to help me with my own endeavors than much else, because these new friends and associates also know the way that reciprocation works.

Reciprocation NEVER fails, and always we are given equal energy for equal effort, and if we are able to just accept things as they are, and we are able to step away for a moment and see where it is that we are meant to be and what it is that we Know we are supposed to be doing, everything else, no matter what, WILL FALL RIGHT INTO PLACE and we will not even begin to know that it was through our Tribal connections which we have made these last six months that will bring those things, situations and people to our lives who will absolutely help us with what it is we call our mission in life. My own mission in life is NOT as "Fairy Godchick" to the greatest indie band I know and Love, but more, to be the Light at the end of the darkened tunnel of abuse, of people not realizing that while it might seem that they have failed in their lives, that no, they haven't, because there is no way to fail at being human. 

THIS ...THIS is my mission and purpose - to serve my fellow human beings with whatever it is that I bring with me that is of good use to them and their endeavors. THIS is how the new commerce works, guys. No longer are the days where we have to beat around the bush to get what we need, because in doing so our ego selves are still in control. We need to learn to depend and more than that, TRUST the Soul within us, because the Soul within us NEVER FAILS US OR THE THINGS THAT WE ARE MEANT TO DO THAT WILL BRING HARMONY TO THE COMMUNITY OF THE WORLD...and I am ALL about communities coming together for a good cause.

This time, that good cause is Our Very Selves...

Remember that the next time you want to one-up a brother or a sister whose mission is as important as is our own...

I Love You All !
ROX

Rev. Roxanne K. Cottell is available via email or chat. If you would like to schedule a Spiritual Coaching session with her, please contact her by clicking here