Learning to Trust again, to Love again takes a lot of Soul Work

"It's like the wind...I can't see it, but I can feel it..." (Victoria Kristine White)

It is a rare occasion when I will quote another person's words, but it was this young woman named Victoria,a woman with whom I am only familiar in a Facebook kind of way. Yet, her post this evening sent my being stuck for words a bit of a kick in the ass, and I know what it is that I wanted to tell you all, and yes, it relates to all that we have, as survivors, been through.

Regaining our sense of trust in others begins with our own ability in our sense of Trust, not only in ourselves, but also with the Soul, with the Spirit which guides us and with the idea that everything in the world, other than what you see materially, begins with a thought, and this does include those things which can be counted as 'intangible.' It would be cliche' for me to write something about Christmas, but in trying to keep with the whole  holiday spirit, I guess this would be an attempt at my reminding people that we cannot know how to give anything to anyone until we can first give ourselves a chance to grow. If we do not allow ourselves to grow, we will not be able to heal, and if we cannot heal, we cannot trust, and if we cannot trust, we can never really truly know how to Love again, no, not even ourselves. While this is a very ugly thought, it is the truth of the matter.

It took a lot for me to trust, as well it should have, because trust is the thing that is the hardest for people to rebuild within themselves. Mistrust is where doubt is created, and the first person we doubt is never someone else, but only ourselves, and we project it out onto other people, this feeling that we cannot let go of, at least not right away. It is too hard to let go sometimes, because we know that the risk is too great. Risk is what got us into the messes that we found ourselves in and it will be the trust that we will rebuild within that will help us to climb out of the despair that has enclosed us in a shell that might look like us, might act like us, might technically be us, but it is so not who we really are.

First, you must remember

The first thing that you must remember is that you learned how to mistrust people and that just as you learned how to do that, like much else, you will have to relearn trust. It is a sad truth that abuse survivors end up going through more than we bargained for when all is said and done, but the beautiful part in all of this is that you get to pick how you want to come back, and you get to practice talking to people, practice not talking about you so much that you give away more than you even have for yourself. It took me these last three  years to come back to me, to know and to reinvent me, and it has been a bitch of a time doing so, but it has also been a great time that offered me the opportunity to grow into this outrageous, fiery, passionate person who is full of Spirit and is deeper than the very recesses of the Soul within. This is who I am. This is who I have always been, and I Love Me, just as you should also be so inclined to Love You.

"...don't you even worry pretty darlin', 'cause you'll find Love again, I Know..." (Tesla, "Love Song")
The thing that I am asked all the time by other survivors of domestic violence is if I am scared to Love another person, and to that question I simply explain that I never lost Love for people and that Love is the thing that will carry you through everything and anything and will always be the thing that you will find will heal you faster and better than everything else.

When a person is abused by another person who has promised to Love them and that person chooses to fracture the trust that an abuse survivor has built up, it is hard to imagine that there is any Love there at all, but there is, and the Love that remains is the Love which has always been within ourselves. If we continue to believe that the Love we deserve is outside of us, we will always be chasing it, and we all know what happens when we chase something or someone - they run. They run like fire burns old newspaper - fast. The reason that we chase is because there within us is the person we were the last time we thought we had to go out into the world to find what already lived within us. We were made from Love, which means that we do not have to chase it because it exists within us and never will die.

Love does not die, even the shattered remnants of what it was that we were told and shown was Love from someone who themselves could not fathom Love because to them Love equals ownership. Love and trust are not borne out of a need for someone else to control who we are - yes, I said need. We seek the approval from someone outside ourselves to validate us, and all we get is the version of ourselves that someone else wanted or wants and is never really the person who we know we are, and the person who we know we are is the best person we can hope to even think to be because it is ourselves in our truest essence. There is nothing quite more beautiful than a person - a woman - who knows who she is and who is confident in herself, who Loves all of herself, even her quirks and the little things makes us who we each are.

It is not only the Romantic sort of Love that I am telling you about


Love is the highest form of respect that anyone can show another person. It was a long time before I could even think to tell anyone that I Loved them, but these days, after a whole lot of work on myself, it is a daily thing for me to tell someone that they are cared for, that even if it seems that they are unlovable, that I Love them, and when I say it, I mean it.

Yet, being able to tell another person you Love them takes a lot of trust. You must trust that you can give that piece of your Self away and you must trust your Self not to get hurt when they do not say it back - not everyone is comfortable or feels safe saying that they Love someone, anyone, and even if they don't say it, you know it because like Ms. White posted, Love is very much like the wind- you cannot see it, but you can surely feel it, and that is what matters the very most. It is important that we realize this about us, that we are able to Love, and that we are able to Love from the moment that we are brought into this life. Because someone else takes away the Love that we have for them, chips it away by being horrible to us, it does not mean that the Love within us dies. Love does not die. It is like Light - you can have all the darkness in the world and it can engulf you, but once the tiniest sliver of Light is shone, there is no more darkness. This is what Love does.

Illumination

Love illuminates our Selves, and with that illumination we are able to Light the world with the flame within which is our true selves. Once we have illuminated who we are and once it is that we have seen, through that illumination, our own flaws and imperfections is when we can know within that we have reached a point where we never thought we would ever be again. While there will still be much work to do, and while it will be that no one but us can reclaim that piece, it is a freedom like no other to no longer fear that we are not able to Love or to be Loved.

Being someone else's victim hurts in many ways, but being able to come back to who we are is like water for a thirsty person. Love drenches us in its healing nature and brings to the surface the ugliness that we have allowed to rule us and it sets the standard for who we want to be and who we want to grow into. Being abused makes us shrink into ourselves, makes us believe that this is all we will ever be - defeated, bruised, Spiritually maimed and scarred in the soul. Yet knowing that scars mean that healing has taken place is the salve that brings us back to Life, back to who we are, and makes us know that everything is going to be alright.

If we can believe that we can trust ourselves to do anything, then we should also believe that we will be able to Love again, in every way imaginable, and that what we asked for in the past has come and gone and now we can Love the person we have grown to become. We can take the ugliness, the hurt, the anger and the pain and turn it into the beautiful thing that we have become. We can turn someone else's trash and the rubble of what was and what became of us in to a beautiful piece of art, original and raw and primal and screaming from the inside, out.

We can choose to be who we are and we can choose to Love who we have become, and we can do all this all on our own. Yes, it will take time, and yes, you will cry like a woman in mourning, and yes, you will feel cleansed and brand new. One day you will wake up and just know....

One day, you will just know...it is like the wind...you know it is there, and you know it because you can see the evidence in the birds which fight it in flight, and even though you cannot see the wind, you can feel it.

So, too, is the nature of Love. You know it is there. You cannot see it.

You can feel it.

I Love You All ...
...Rox...

(Rev. Roxanne Cottell is a Freelance Writer, Speaker and Spiritual Counselor residing in Southern California. For inquires regarding the Ka Wahine 'Ui dance program for survivors of domestic abuse,or any other inquiries. send an email by clicking this link . Her latest book, "Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens" can be purchased at lulu.com and amazon.com)

There is nothing scarier - enlarging our territory the Jabez way

To survive you must enlarge your territory, so to speak

If there is anything that someone who has been through the travesty of both domestic abuse and domestic violence knows about it is being afraid of everything and everyone. This is the tragedy that is borne of the scourge of domestic violence. There are a million and one survivors out there in the great big world, who, because of someone else and what that someone else did to them, have limited their social circle.

We live life fearful until one day we realize that what happened in the past is done and over with and that the only thing we can do now is to learn from our fears and to learn to work with what has been done to us. I could sit here everyday and think and believe that I am everything that my own attacker told me I am, or I can bother to think about what all the other people in my life think of me and lemme tell you what - their version of me and his version of me are markedly different. Yet, not even their opinions matter in the grander scheme of things. Only mine does.

Only your own opinion of your Self matters, no matter what

My abusive spouse would, if he could, sit here and monitor everything that I write, but this does not mean that I would not come back and write what I really have to say, and what I really have to say is a whole lot. Yet that would solve nothing, not for him and not for me. He should not waste his time with trying to correct everything about me that he feels is wrong with me, because he would not bother to sit and listen to me as I go down the list of all the things that I think he could work on, not for me but for him. I say this because I know and have known for a really long time that what I have to say is really not a big deal to him because frankly he thinks that I am not as big of a deal as I know I am and yes, I happen to think all of us are a really big deal. If we were not and if we had nothing to do in this lifetime not one of us would be here.

There would be none of us to tell our story and there would be no one who would know that only our own opinion of us matter and that what other people think is irrelevant in the bigger picture because opinions, as it is known, are like assholes - everyone has one, and in my case, I have two.

We, even I, have to accept this truth about us. No one has the right nor the strength to occupy our thoughts about us - no one. If we could wrap our heads around this we would all be fine. It is the reason that for a lot of us it might seem that we need no one in our lives, that we do not need to be a blessed part of the lives of everyone else who occupy the planet, and that we need not be a blessing unto our own. This is what robs us, the idea that we must please everyone. That is impossible. We cannot please everyone. We need to please us first, even though your minister might have made it seem that you have to give up yet more of you for someone else. You don't.

I Promise.

The Jabez Way

Man, there was a time when referencing the Bible would give me the dry heaves, but anymore now I look to it so as to make sense of the things that for many years were used "against" me in that book. Yet, just like in life, period, we find our solace in places we never thought we might. In my case, it is the Bible. Maybe it is because of my upbringing and the fact that I practically had the Bible force-fed to me, or maybe it is because I feel like more than not, in it there are too many references to women being lesser than men.

There is much Wisdom to be gleaned from the Bible, and this morning, after I had been told that I don't need anyone else, (yes, by IdiotBoy) I began to see, both with my mind's eyes as well as all around me (nothing is coincidence, mind you) the word "Jabez" and "territory" and things that point to my enlarging my own readership.

We cannot be whole people if we are not willing to let people into our lives. I am a very private person in real life and choose to have but a select few friends, and yes, it does have a lot to do with the fact that after all I have been through I have become very selective with who it is I choose to spend my very valuable time with. Unlike money and tangible things time can never be replaced, and this is something that is lost on someone who is abusive, who is greedy, who worships their money and allows their things to speak for them. Once all the money is spent and once the things are no longer a part of their life they become helpless because now they have to learn to be right and upstanding with others. Now they have to be who they are in order to enlarge their territory and truth be known, it is not the person they abuse who they need to help change, but it is their very selves.

The same does not hold true for abuse survivors. We are a force and a power unto our own. We know well what it is like to have the power to enlarge our reach taken from us and we know the uncomfortable feeling that comes with not being able to reach out to others. This is a challenge for us, because what we knew to do in order to do such a thing has been called wrong, stupid, a waste of time, and everything that we know that is truth and true according to us has been washed away forcibly, and we feel like there is nothing that can or will bring that back for us.

Thing is, you have to bring it back. You have to enlarge your territory, and you have to be willing to see what is not there, and yes, I am talking about the mighty hand of God (or the Goddess...or whatever else it is that you choose to call your Higher Power). It comes at a time when you feel the most alone, at a time when you find yourself willing to let go of the assumption that your attacker knows better what is best for you, and it comes when we least expect it to, the need and the desire to call out to God like a child having a nightmare screams for his mother. Socially, abuse survivors are left without any tools to use that they have not tried, and we don't fancy using the ones that we did in the past because subconsciously that is how we believe we drew the person who abused us to our lives (this is not truth - you drew them to you because you thought that you were not good enough to have anyone who'd appreciate everything about you -yes, I said it, now deal with it. I have been there and I know that this is what happens...acceptance is key here, folks). We forget about what we knew back then because we feel like it only works to draw bad people to us.

What we know is our truth, and if you can bother to see to it that this is only a truth specific to you, you can then begin to enlarge your territory.

The Prayer of Jabez

The Jabez Prayer is known worldwide, even though not everyone in the world was raised up in the church (I am SO not the churchy reverend...not at all...). Basically what the prayer says is that Jabez wanted to "enlarge his territory" (his circle of people) so that he could go out into the world and bless people with what he was gifted with at his conception.

When I happened upon this prayer and this verse this morning it came at a time when really, I feel like there is nothing left for me to do other than enlarge my own readership. Had this been a mere six months ago I would likely raise an eyebrow, say that it was a good idea and forego the idea that there is an entire population, of women, mainly, who need to know that really, even with all of the offers of safety and all of the well meant offers of a new life, there is someone on the planet who understands and can relate to them, and really that is the first step in getting out into the world and remembering who we are. Who we are are not these wilted versions of our former selves. I took the opportunity to reinvent who I am to fit the mold of my life at present, and I am choosing to see it for what it really is - a transition that I was meant for, that no one else can get through like I can or in the manner which Spirit needs it done. It is only me, myself, who can do this.

I have been tasked with screaming at the top of the proverbial mountain that there is hope, that it is ok to want to be all the beautiful that you can be, that it is fine to want to be who you are and that it is ok to be afraid of what you do not know can or will happen at the hands of another. I am also tasked with screaming at the top of said same mountain that it is not ok to stay that way, that it is not ok to let anyone tell you who you are or control you or to just be downright shitty to you. Those things are not ok, but those are the things that we each have to get through. My purpose in this lifetime is to tell others that they can be who they are, that it took them some time to unlearn their Selves and that it will take them some time to relearn who they are.

This is my Jabez prayer, this blog...and these are my words and my gift to you all - to tell you that I am here, that I will always be, and that if no one else gets it, I do.

I "get it."

I Love You All!!
...Rox...

(Rev. Roxanne Cottell is a Freelance Writer, Speaker and Spiritual Counselor residing in Southern California. For inquires regarding the Ka Wahine 'Ui dance program for survivors of domestic abuse,or any other inquiries. send an email by clicking this link . Her latest book, "Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens" can be purchased at lulu.com and amazon.com)

"Physician, Heal Thyself..." (Luke 4:23)

When it comes to our healing from the things which we have gone through, we have to remember that how we feel is all our own.

It used to be common for me to blame everything on my abusive spouse. As years passed and I started becoming more and more clear in what it was that I have been through one thing that resonated with me a whole lot was that even though we get hurt by others, it is our responsibility to not hurt anymore. The thing that makes us hurt is the thing that sets off into motion the things that we can call our monsters, and the monsters and how we feel about what has been done to us is what makes us angry. It is not always and only the action taken against us, but the way that we feel about what has been done that matters more.

Placing blame on the person or the people for how we feel after the fact - immediately after the fact- is one thing, but to continue to allow them that much control over how we feel about anything is something that a lot of abuse survivors choose to do. I know this because I chose it, and now I have unchosen it, because it is not and never has been conducive to my healing. How can I expect to fully recover from the heartache if I am only willing to go back and revisit the past so that I can hand control over how I feel about myself to the person who made me feel crappy about me in the first place?

Physician, Heal Thyself

Rarely will I defer to biblical reference when it comes to something that is nowhere near being anything that any one belief system can "heal." Yes, it is very important that we have support systems in place, but to become and allow ourselves to become completely dependent upon others to make us feel better about what has happened to us is a habit that we need to learn to break. It is like depending on a cigarette to make us calm down when we are angry - we know that puffing away will help us ease the tension from having gotten angry, but in reality it is not the smoking but the act of smoking that makes us feel better. I mean, come on - we all know that smoking cigarettes is very bad for us, so let's not give credit to an inanimate object.

Instead, what we need to do, and what it is that I have made an art form, is the conscious act of learning how to heal one's own self. In order to do this, though, we have to be willing to live through the hurts and the anguish that we felt when we were going through what we went through. We have to revisit the pain to see it and where it lives and what caused it. We have to know and see for ourselves those places within where we hurt the most so that we can go within and see to it that we are able to heal from it all. Sometimes, the scar that stays still will bring back to us the pain that we went through, but forever it will remain a scar and not the wound that caused it.

We must be willing to see to it that our past pain is not as big as our desire now to no longer hurt, to no longer have the propensity to place blame on an old hurt and to be able to get past it all takes a lot of forgiveness, and a lot of patience. Yet, the bottom line is that in order to heal ourselves, we have to be willing to accept that we have to not look back, not place blame, and to no longer live in that hurt. It is Divine no longer allowing our abuser to have the control of how we feel.

If you want to heal, you have to take the first step in that healing. You have to be willing to let it go with them and keep it all for you...what, you ask?

Everything. That's what. Every damned thing. It is the only way that we heal, the only way that we get past it all. We can never heal from the past if we continue to live there. We cannot go forward if we hang on the anchor's weight of the past. It just will not happen for us. We have to let go of the need to keep our abuser at the end of our leash because them being there only enslaves us further to them, and again, that gives them all the control. We can stay mad, but if we stay mad forever then we will end up sick and dead at their hands, or at least, because of their influence. We already gave them pieces of ourselves that will forever remain theirs. That is the part that they took. The rest belongs to you, ok?

Physician, heal thyself...no one else can...

I Love You All !!
Rox

(Rev. Roxanne Cottell is a Freelance Writer, Speaker and Spiritual Counselor residing in Southern California. For inquires regarding the Ka Wahine 'Ui dance program for survivors of domestic abuse,or any other inquiries. send an email by clicking this link . Her latest book, "Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens" can be purchased at lulu.com and amazon.com)