There's a Reason it is called "Eve" - Christmas Love for all my Soul Sisters (and Soul Brothas, too!)

Merry Christmas! It's time to get your Girl On!!

I have never not been the rabidly charged and insanely jubilant Anti-Cheerleader, especially when it comes to all things "Girl." Because we have all been through marked and life changing stuff lately, I thought that it would be appropriate to bid you all a couple of good Christmas wishes, Girl Style, and let you know what exactly it is that a Girl wishes for on Christmas...

While it may not be the merriest of Christmases for a lot of us, there are a few things that I need to say to you all, and I thought that this would be the best way to do it...


Today I woke up to the thought in my head that we all need to prepare for the year ahead, and I do not mean to prepare yourselves for something horrible to happen - even though something horrible can happen. I want you all to think and dwell on everything that you have been given by Spirit in 2011, and I want you to think about all that you lost during that time, and now I want you to think that it is not a bad thing that these things happened.

You've gotta start thinking about all those perceived losses as the Hand of God wiping away your muck, taking all of your worn out ideals and presumptions that no longer fit anymore and think that God gave them to the local Thrift store. You have to have faith in everything that you do and you have to see yourself as a diamond in the rough. Right now your nerves are raw, your body, weary, your mind tired of all the bad things that it has processed.

All the tears that you cried, and all the arguments you had, and all the crap that you were doled out this past year was not without purpose. You were meant to go through it all. You were meant to learn.

Merry Freakin' Christmas, folks! You are now smarter than you were at this same time last year. (And you thought it was just going to be another drama-filled Christmas...not hardly, and not even close...)

 "Get Your Girl On"


I want you all to think about what it is that you have been through these last 12 months, and when you do, don't cry. Don't cry for lost time, and neither for all of the pain that was caused by someone else, pain meant for you to feel and to carry, but certainly not yours alone to deal with. Think about how angry you have been, how many times you cried and how many times you looked to the sky and asked God if this was all there was for you. Think about every argument, every loss, every tiny little thing that you have gone through and be grateful for it all because without it, you would not be who you are now.

The greatest gift that we have to give to ourselves this year is the acceptance that we may have come into 2011 weak, insignificant to another, confused and not really caring to learn more than we already did. We started out impatient with no direction and no idea of where it is that we want to be, but in the months that passed you did not realize that you have changed and all the changes were for your own good. You were made stronger by the adversities in your life that were not your cause, and you have been made into the Goddess You Are now because of it all.

If you were called names, belittled, told who you are, told that you are unworthy, useless, pathetic, anything that is not Truth, take heed and know, NOW, that you were once a diamond in the rough, once a mere piece of earthy green jade that looked more like a glistening rock that needed to be washed more than anything else.
But now look at ya - now you shine brighter than the diamond that was hard to see through the blackness of the coal, are more lustrous than any other jade known, and it shows.

Today walk out into the brightness of the Sun and see your shadow for the very first time all over again. Look into the eyes of those people who call you "Mama" and see there, too, the beauty that is You. Look into your heart, into your Soul, and never mind what it was that you were told about anything ugly, anything not conducive to bringing out that brightness that is You. You are the one who makes this year the merriest of all, and  you are the one who makes it beautiful. Get on out there into the great big world and strut your stuff, all of it, all at one time, because you earned it, darlin', you really earned it.

Take a stare at the mirror and see there that you have changed and see too that the changes were right, were needed, were the gift that you gave yourself the day you decided that you have had enough of someone else telling you your worth, your abilities and talents, who you are and what you will always ever be. You are Who makes your world great, and you are who makes your world shine, and you are the one whose place in the world is in manifest, so go on out into it and make your Oscar Night entrance, and know that it is the greatest gift that you have ever been given.

Don't go for second best....put your Love to the test... (You've gotta Love Madonna !! ) and get out there and be of good cheer, spread Joy and Love everyone with whom you have an encounter, no matter how brief or odd...don't settle for less than what you deserve, and make sure to it that everyone else knows that this is your own gift to yourself - the gifts of strength, self-Love, beauty and day-dreaming.

Take it upon yourself today to make sure to it that this time next year, you remember that you Shine like the Sun, are mysterious like the phases of the Moon, are more able to do things than you were last year, and now you are all you need to be at this time in your life, so as to move on, to move forward, to Be Who You Are.

The World Awaits....Mele Kalikimaka

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) 

"The Greatest of These is Love..." (1 Corinthians 13:13)

The greatest gift another can receive from us is our Love

I just finished writing my other blog  and find that the one thing that survivors of domestic abuse are very unsure of is being able to Love fully again.

Let me tell you one thing, folks - no one is not ever capable of not Loving completely, no matter what or who. We were designed with the capacity to Love, with the capacity to give that Love, and it does not matter how many times we are beaten, literally or figuratively, the one fact that remains and will always remain is that no matter how much we want to believe that we are not lovable, no matter how many times we tell ourselves that we will not ever trust another person again for as long as we each live, there is not one person on the planet who is void of the ability to Love.

The Ability to Love


We, at one point, believe that we are not lovable, believe that we are somehow the only person on the planet who is not getting the Love we deserve and the one person on the planet who was meant as the poster child for who has been abused. NO ONE NEEDS to be abused, but it happens a whole lot, and in the time that it takes for someone to beat out of us the idea that we do not need Love from many sources we are at the point where we believe there is no return.

When speaking of Love, there is no such thing as a point of no return - Love is always returned, maybe not by the person who we try to Love and who we want to Love us, but from the rest of the planetary Tribe we are all an important part of. And when it comes to that point, it is the time that we find a way to involve ourselves with something outside of ourselves so as to give to the world the thing that lives within us.

Love.

There is no gift quite like it

This time of year we are bombarded with mail and emails and pop-ups and people at our door who are soliciting donations for various causes. And of course I would encourage anyone to give what they can, but when you can't give something tangible, give something that you can give all the time, without needing to stand in line to pay for it, and give something that is guaranteed to come back to you.

We are convinced by others that we are not worthy to receive what it is that we need, and if we believe this we end up with nothing, or what seems like nothing, but there is always our inborn capacity for Love.

Give of your Self - find a cause to support...


In all the years that I have been in this marriage with this now dying man, I never really understood why it was that I felt like I was not doing enough. The truth was that I was doing plenty for him and nothing for me. When the first AIDSWalk that he knew about my participation was about to start, he gave me so much grief for it and badmouthed me to the point of not being able to think straight. Then one morning I woke up and looked at him and saw that it is not because he is a homophobe, not because he is choosing ignorance over common sense, that we was like this, but because it was something that he was not willing to know more about, and what he was not willing to know more about was the idea of giving of one's self through time and effort.

To people who have no cause to support, theirs is a world which is black and white, cut and dry, and there is no such thing as being able to give without also expecting to receive something tangible in return. This man knows that though I love my tangible goodies, I am someone who Loves and Loves giving intangible gifts. It is no wonder that I do what I do for my job - I Love people, and I Love communicating with people, and I Love to give people things that they can feel but cannot touch.

In short, I Love to Love others, and my Life is about giving it freely to those most in need of it. It is my cause, to be here in this Life to Love others by teaching them and including them in how they heal from the brokenness of their own lives so that they can go on with Life with their heads and hearts vibrating in unison, lending to the greater Whole of Life itself.

If what you have been through in Life has taught you anything at all, I hope that it is the knowledge that you are Loved, are lovable, and that you have a lot of Love to give, not just to one person, but to the world at large. By joining a cause, you give yourself an avenue through which you can work out your imbalance of wanting to Love but not being able to or wanting to show it or give it to the person to whom you entrusted your Self to and then later found that you judged them incorrectly. Where you feel like there is nothing, there is something and that something is Love and the nothing that you feel is just there to remind you to get out there in the great big world and start giving it away...

You can do it. You can be your own cause until another one comes along that needs your brand of Love!!

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)  

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)