Respect and fear are NOT the same

Respect is something that is always expected...but it shouldn't be...

"Why should it not be just expected, Rox? Isn't that what we were taught as kids...that we have to respect our elders?"

Respect is a very funny thing...and by that I mean that it is peculiar and not hilarious. By that I mean that people who are in their late 30's to early 40's and beyond that age range are a group of people and parents who are teaching our kids to respect but also to be respected. This is not something that people who were raised, at least the majority of us in the generation which I was born, to believe that respect is just a given. It is not a given. In fact, I am a big believer in that if it is meant to just be a given that it should just be given at the time the doctor sees the baby's head - yup...THAT is when respect is a given because it should just BE given to that brand new life. Brand new life is like dangerous animals in the wild. No one would ever, without proper training and without a clue or even a whisper of common sense that we each immediately know upon even first sight of any wild animal that we see in their natural habitat - respect is needed. In the wild where the animals reign supreme and are dearly in charge of the natural order of things, respect is something that cannot be thought about. It must be there. If it is not there, any human who is not more aware of the creature it is confronted with will be hurt, or worse, killed, and worse than that - eaten.

Primal humans, meaning the kind that are brand new to this consciousness, are just as wild as those animals in the wild, and the proper training of that new life comes early on, immediately after it is brought into this lifetime. We would never expect a brand new baby to have what is the majority's thought about respect. It is cute and little and no where near as dangerous as are those animals encountered in the wild, but that new born child could be just like those animals under the right set of wrong circumstances. We all know that children, from the time they are born into this lifetime are just like those wild animals anyway, for no other reason than that we are like them, and they are like us, in more ways than we think we are. This is where today's writing comes into play in that we silly, "civilized" human type people have the ability to reason, and with that energy also comes the ability to still be as primal as we ever were, meaning that we are taught by fear and comfort, and always, one is stronger than the other.

This is where the "right set of wrong circumstances" as far as the human animal is concerned. We are a very dangerous animal. Our ability to reason only makes us more so, because we have the ability to make choices that involve other people. We are met with other people from the moment that we are born, at least in this realm, and in this realm we are given what is called an option. An option is funny, and I teach a whole lot about the difference between a choice and an option. A choice means that one of the choices in front of you is gonna be the only one with a "yes" for an answer, but with an option all of the answers to all of the options in front of you can be "yes" even though not at the moment. This is where a lot of people fail a child, where it is that they want their kids to show respect, but they themselves have no real clue of what respect truly is.

What Respect truly is NOT!

There are a lot of adults who were children who were raised with the energy of fear that the adults in our lives at the time called "Respect." No matter what it was that they used in order to force our respect the way that THEY wanted it, it worked, at least up until now, when a whole lot of us are in the mindset that is trying to repair what went awry with us when it became evident in our reptilian brains that something was not in accordance with the laws of Nature. Somehow, it was confirmed to us that which we already knew for a long time was not right, not okay, and we were, through our souls' suffering and as well, through the generation which followed our own, were tasked with the duty of righting that wrong that was not given to just a few of us, but to us all. We were raised to believe that respect and fearing others is correct, that it is believable that if we are scared to death, that we will not bother to question what it is that we have been told is the truth, and really, it is not the truth.

Fear is NOT respect. To tell us all that we "must fear God" is the biggest, ugliest sin of all, because to a child fear is fear, no matter what. When a child is afraid, he or she knows they are. Of all things to make a child fear, not only Spirit, but the fear that is a child afraid of his or her parents, which is also the fear of disappointing them, of doing things not good enough to please them, which can cause them to tell us that we were not good enough to do something to THEIR specifications ....this is how these people MADE US respect them, and our grandparents as well, because that is where the generation of parents before ours learned how to make us respect, through the use of fear. And it was a fear of things that were not only physical, but also emotional and spiritual as well. To feel like respect and fear are the same thing is very dangerous and causes people to go out into the world and do things and say things that are based in fear rather than in respect.

I hate to sound like I am hating on my 'Aumakua, like I am hating on my Kupuna, but the way that a whole lot of Hawaiian kids are taught as youngsters is the "hit first and ask questions later" type of instilling into kids a forced respect based in fear. This is an act of fear placed on a child by adults who are still listening to the things that the people who, at one time, who, some of them, are not in this awareness that we are anymore, were the adults in the lives of the people who were the adults in our own lives. This is how fear becomes equated with respect, and how this sort of energy is carried down the bloodlines and into the subsequent generations which follow.

What Respect IS 

Respecting other people is how we learn to get along in this lifetime, period. Respect, in its Merriam-Webster's definition is as follows:

"...(2) vb 1 : to consider deserving of high regard: ESTEEM 2: to refrain from interfering with another's privacy 3: to have reference to :CONCERN..." (2006, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus, pg 893) 

Respect is not fearing anything or anyone, but is displaying the qualities that are that of high regard for others, and our not even thinking to pry into another's private and in-the-soul places where no one should be without some sort of permission, and it is being concerned with the well being of others, and, as well, to be able to have even the tiniest bit of empathy in regards to another's life, choices, being-ness, etc.

This current generation of parents, we have the opportunity and the option to teach our own charges what respect really is. Our children are not scared, at least not like we were. They are not afraid to tell us when they hurt because they are not afraid that their parents are going to tell them to choke back the tears because no one wants to be around a cry baby. Our kids are not afraid to be who they truly are....blue hair...tatted out...piercings....LGBT...because our generation knows what it is like to try to fit into a personality and a spirit that is conforming and that is rigid and just not who or what we are, and is also not who they are.

We teach our own children this Kuleana, this responsibility of the Soul that was handed down to us in its rawness, in its violence, in its pain, and with these things we brought to the world this sense of Respect that is the very truth of us....tats, blue hair, piercings and all, and really, it is a beautiful thing, because it is the truth.

There is never anything essentially wrong with the truth. Respect is Truth. Period.

Respect is not violence handed down with a heaviness of the hand and the weightiness of hurtful words that sting the soul, harm the pride within, crushes the Spirit that is essential to who we are on the inside. Respect is not names called in haste, is not the parental authority that was there and present in our own lives, when we were children, when it was our own Kuleana, unbeknownst to us all, that the lessons we were given that were the evidence that Respect was not meant to harm us was not the actuality of this thing that is vital to healing, is vital to the growth of the Soul within. It takes so very little to do small things, but in their anger, in their misrepresentation of the truth that they were forced to accept by their own Kupuna, they gave us that which they knew not was anything but respect.

To violate a person's sense of self using things that they believe is the truth is wrong. To violate anyone as a means to manipulate and cause harm, even unwittingly, is wrong. To teach fear as respect is dangerous, gives someone a reason to feel as though they somehow are wrong for who and what they are. Our lives were not meant to be lived under the control of other people, namely not those whose lives were lived in fear of disappointing people who were likely and also afraid. It is our place in this Universe to give respect, so that those in our charge will learn it and not fear others.

It is dangerous to the all of humanity to teach fear, because fear makes us act out irrationally, and that is the thing that a lot of people who teach with the crack of the whip rather than the truth as it really is do not understand they are doing. When we teach others who we are, we teach them through reaching them in ways that are not felt physically, but from and with the Spirit and those lessons reach all the way down to the Bones of the Soul.

Teach Respect, and TO respect, rather than to force respect through fear and manipulation.

We must take up our Kuleana, both singularly as well as collectively, and remind ourselves daily about the things that we were taught, that were forced onto us, and whose rules were those set by people, at that time, who were no longer in physical existence. We must stop leaning on the understanding of those who have passed away in terms of fear as respect, and we must force ourselves to step outside of the comfort zone of conformity because if we do not, we will create another generation of people who hurt others, who willingly abuse those they say they love, and all for what?

Respect that is not truly respect, but is fear instead dressed up as what we have been told to believe is Respect.

Respect should be a given, not because it is expected, but because all humans should expect to be respected, period.

If we behave like people tell us to, and what they say is based in fear rather than in Love, we will essentially be as those who brought to us the lessons that were not respect, and were anything but Love.


I Love You All
ROX

@ReverendRoxie22

Time Heals

Setting our sights only on the hurt we have suffered impedes our healing

Pisces people are fabulous martyrs. I know. I am one. On the other side of that martyrdom is someone who is strong and vibrant and full of both Spirit and Life and someone who is literally aching to experience the healing needed to survive all the things that they have been through, and I promise you that what they have been through is a whole lot.

If we are left only to ponder the reasons that anyone would want to hurt us we end up trying to find the corner in a circular room. There is no reason good enough to hurt anyone intentionally. No matter what kind of abuse it is - regardless if it is physical or emotional -  there is not a good enough reason to put hands on another person. The abuse begins subtly, can be a passing glance of disapproval or distaste, can be a remark made in regards to what a victim looks like (I always heard that I was a whore because I wore make up, did my hair, liked having my nails done, got waxed...you know...being a girl...I enjoyed it then as much as I do now), can be about their level of intellect, can be anything at all so long as it pertains to what must be done, according to the attacker, by the victim to make them more acceptable and lovable by the person who tries to change you.

There is no level that will be acceptable and there never will be. Once you stop doing all the things that you are told bothers your attacker, and once it is that you have changed everything outwardly they begin the cycle again and this time the damage is not something that can be see (yet) but can be felt and will be known by those who have known you longer than your attacker has. They begin to chip away at the self-existence that is built up, and they start an all out war on who you are, and this is where the real damage begins because the only and the very next thing that happens are the physical beatings. It all happens over time. First you are coerced into not being lovely to look at, then you are manipulated into a pattern of thinking that causes you to react to their words as though they were the words of God himself. Once you are changed both inside and outside, there is nothing left other than the physical beatings which are always the victims fault, at least and according to the person doling out the physical terror on their victim.

I tend to think of my  husband's fate as a Karmic debt being forcibly repaid by him through his losing his life at his very own hands. Only a moron would basically turn their back on their family, decide early on that since they feel that the system owes them something for all the time they put into it that they are now entitled to whatever it is that they feel they are owed, would choose, after having had a major heart attack and then having had open heart surgery, to continue to smoke, to eat like a pig, to be angry all the time, to live their lives with the bitterness that is them to be in charge of their lives.. This is the mantra of the abuser, that they are owed, that they live their lives at a deficit and that everyone within their own circle of social contact somehow is indebted to them for something. In my case it is because he simply did his job and, by his own demanding it, I stayed home with the children and raised them, doing what I had always done - I wrote - books, ghostwriting, marketing and ad materials, basically anything that I was tasked with and contracted for - and I danced, performed, choreographed, taught (and now use as a healing tool with other women with "beauty" issues that cannot be fixed with the help of make up or cosmetic surgeon) hula, and yes, he tried like hell to make me see hula as yet one more island girl's way of ensnaring another white man into her den of iniquity.

But he did not succeed at it. I would not let him. I still will not let him. He cannot take this from me again.
And now he is not long for this world , just as he said he would not be, and just as I have always known and believed.

Time Heals

Time heals. As time passes and memories fade we find that we are no longer the people we were so many years ago when there were blackened eyes and hairline fractures, when there were excuses made for behavior not befitting of a pig as it wallows in its own filth, when there were days filled with terror and nights filled with tears. Gone are the days where I would spend the entirety of a day trying to find a way to make this person see me the way that I knew I was - fine and capable of being my own person, no matter what he thought.

Here we are, the memories of a grimace before the blow, of 17 years long gone, and the voice which was silenced by a choice not made by me but forced upon me through being stalked, being belittled, being all the things in his eyes that I knew I was not. He'd never bothered one time to see me as I really am, and he still thinks that I am a little too weird for "acceptable" society, but if I bothered to let his words and his idiocy be what still ruled me, I might still be that timid little twit who was willing to please him to make him happy which eventually was a requirement needed to please him to keep myself safe. These days, it is the altruist in me, the Piscean nature, that damned Certificate of Ordination and the degrees in health sciences alongside the certificates in wellness that cause me to allow him his last days to be spent with his children. I am hurt, but I am not horrible. I am no longer as angry as I was,but it is all still there, the memories, as though I can watch them on my television screen. It is all like a long and drawn out miniseries that took too long to come to an end.

I have grown since that time and know well now that I have always been safe, always been nurtured by the Light of Love and the Infinite Universe, have always known that God has always had me. He must. If He didn't I might not be here. I might be a statistic that is a far grimmer shade of gray. I might be in traction permanently. I might be an addict. I might be ...anything that I am not truly.

But I am not. I am not any of those things that this man whose last name I share, with whom I share three marvelously Spiritual children, with whom I have shared history, an address, a car....with now whom I share only history, but not much else. I find now that after all these years, it was never me who was damaged and I was not damaged until after he damaged me.

Now I am scarred, but scarred means that to some degree, I am also healed, because the scar is the evidence that the wound that once was there has healed.

Scarred....scarred is good..

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)

Guilt, part two...

This is the other part of the other blog that I wrote today...

Because I am part of a greater statistical whole in regards to domestic abuse I know that there is a lot that goes through our heads in relation to how we feel about things, about people, about ourselves, and the one thing that I am certain that no one ever thinks about is the idea that both victims and survivors of domestic abuse and domestic violence know very well is the guilt which is associated with our feelings toward ourselves and more, our views on our very sensual selves.

In my case, it didn't help much that I had the equivalent of Dana Carvey's "The Church Lady," for a mother, and neither a protestant evangelical minister for a father. It didn't help that my reality of what a woman was versus what I know that we are are markedly different, are nothing in relation to one another the same as each other by far. Add to this ...non-knowledge...of everything that I thought was sensual versus what I was told it was by a very "me-centered" guy for a husband, and throw in some self loathing in regards to my thinking and feeling the way that I used to about me in general, what you end up with is a very strange version of the truth.

The "truth" that I was exposed to was a Biblically inclined truth and one which was very man-positive while also being very woman-negative. In the Bible there is reference after reference of degradation of the life and purpose of women as a whole, references which name us as whores and harlots and purveyors of all things "sin," and for no other reason than because men, throughout history, have made it so that our sexuality was far more important in relation to how we feel about ourselves than was or is our inherent sensual nature.

The Sensual Nature of Women

We have been robbed of who we are and who we are has been chided, punished, reviled... When a man notices a woman's attributes he is being a man, but when a woman chooses to use said attributes to her advantage she is a whore. This is the reality of the woman who can be called a survivor of domestic abuse and domestic violence.

We end up chipping away, slowly, painfully, all that we are, and once it is that an abuser gets it into his head that because of what a woman looks like she is going to do with her body what he wants her only to do with him, and once it is that he has decided that even though he hasn't any concrete evidence of it, she is a cheating harlot with only his heartache on her mind. We are made to be ashamed of our very sensual nature, afraid to be what we were meant to be, and we become more aware from another's point of view of just how dirty and nasty we are according to them and their assumptions.

Women are sensual creatures by nature. We are, by design, meant to turn heads, meant to hush a room to a dead silence when we enter into it., and we are meant to have the attention of the opposite gender. We were never meant for the attrition we are met with, by both men who would like to control us and by other women who hate us because we know what to do with all these curves. A few days ago I was told that the only thing that I use is my looks, but that is the furthest from the truth because if I did not have the forethought in my head to use what I look like to get other women to know that there is life after abuse, I could then be accused of being a brainless twit.

I used to be very ashamed of my own sensuality, made afraid of it by a mother who swore that I would burn in hell for all the dirty thoughts that men had about women and that I was no different if I chose, when the time came, to utilize what I was born with to get what I need. What every abuse survivor needs is the reassurance that she is not dirty, not a whore, not all those things that abusers will tell his or her victim that they are because of the abuser's own declining sense of worth. We are denied the things and the thoughts that all women are privy to and it is because someone else told us that it was not ok that we felt the way we once did about ourselves, all the way down to the way that we feel toward our own sensual nature.

It is not a sin to love the skin you are in

I have always maintained, even while I was being beaten, that I loved Me. I love who I am and who I am is this evolved version of my former beaten self. I have grown into the acceptance that because I chose to believe what someone else said about me and that the only thing I am guilty of in that manner is that I chose to believe it at all. I am not guilty of being a whore because of what I look like, because of the things that I say and think, because I just love being who I am.

It is not a sin to love the skin you are in. It is nowhere near as dirty as any one man has the ability to make it. Abusers are masterful at the art of manipulation. Abusers will tell you that you are beautiful and then use it against you another time. They will tell you to be more freaky in the sheets and then when you do they end up telling you that you have cheated on them because they do not remember you learning that from them (never mind that you have an imagination and a history prior to their entrance into your life).

You are demanded to bring out your sensual diva and when you finally get the nerve up to do so, you are told that you are a whore and that everyone else in the world thinks so, too.

This is the travesty that is tantamount to all other travesties in the lives of the abused. We are made to think that we are the most important thing in someone else's life only to later find out that we are akin to a bracelet which hangs on the arm of our attacker. We end up, after the beatings and the accusations have become commonplace in our lives, feeling guilty for things that we do not and have not done, and eventually we begin to question our own sanity because the things that we are told we are and are told we do kept being repeated to us with the idea in the attacker's mind being only one of controlling us.

This also includes their controlling the way that we conduct our sensual nature. Our sensual nature is the Spirit within us, is that part of us that we each call our "inner goddess," and is the essence of our truest, highest, most important spiritual self. It is that part in us that our attackers want to no longer be in existence because with it we are dangerous, with it we are human, and with it we are able to draw to us other potential partners. This is the great big fear that abusers have - that they are not the last partner or even the last person to whom we will be attracted and that we will take our love away from them. Even our love becomes a possession to them, just like we do. We are no longer human from the start of the 'relationship' with them. We become, at that point, a possession, like a pet, meant to be controlled and never ever to be given the right to think or be who we are all on our own.

They take from us, or at least try to take from us, our inner identity, that piece of us that can be called Our Light. Yet what is not understood by them is that our Light can never be diminished, can never be taken away because it is ours now and forever. To be ashamed of who you are according your own Divine purpose is something that all abusers work diligently on from the day they put eyes on us. They see what they want and they enjoy the package and as soon as they can have what they see they begin to destroy it. This is the main objective of abusers - to destroy, not only what they do not understand but also what it is that they do not want others taking a shine to.

I like being shiny...so should you


It is now my own knowing that my purpose for being here in this lifetime is to bring to other domestic abuse survivors and domestic violence survivors that there is no reason why you cannot shine again. It takes a little ..no, it takes a lot.... of work to regain who you are. The first thing that you need to know is that you are not all those things that you were told you were, and that alone is a battle in and of itself. Now, I do not want anyone endangering themselves because of something that was read here - that is the last thing that I wish for anyone to have happen to them. However, starting where you left off - regaining control of your Soul and its purpose - is the only place that you can start because in essence that is the reason that you feel so empty inside. You have been put through the wringer, been told who you are and who you have been told you are is not the truth.

The truth is that yes, there is one other person on the planet who you can depend on to think correctly about you, and that person is you. There is nothing wrong, should be no guilt associated with any thought that comes to your mind regarding your Self, your worth, your personal sensual nature and power. It is a gift given to us all, to all womankind at conception, that we are granted because our sensual nature is the most powerful, most astounding thing in the world, and as a whole we should be grateful to not have to work to have such a thing.

I used to be afraid of these gifts. I am not anymore, and yes, it is because I chose it to be this way. You have to choose to want to give this gift back to your Self, to accept, realize and understand its potential and its power and know, too, that the potential and the power of it are what really scare the crap out of any abuser. You feel a lot less powerful with blackened eyes and bruises, with hairline fractures and a dwindling sense of Self.

Yet, just as quickly as you think they took it from you (in truth it was a systematic breaking down of who you really are over a stretch of time), you can take it back because you never really lost it. You chose instead to allow it to be covered by the assumptions and the presumptions of someone who does not like who they are, who feels threatened that you might take you and your nature and your love away from them if you found out who they really are. No person would choose to allow someone else to take away from them all who they are, and their taking it away from you does not happen overnight. It takes time to break a person down to a point where any sort of attention and any sort of positive reinforcement coming from anyone, even your abuser, is welcomed. I know this because I was like this. I used to love when he would compliment me for my intelligence and once he decided that my intelligence was not street smart enough is when he would begin to break me down. He broke me down all the way to the bones of my soul, but what he gave to me is priceless because he gave to me the fighter's instinct which instructs me to use what I have been given, but to use it in tiny and manageable amounts because there is no need to flood the world with my mixed blessings.

Yes, he used my own fear against me and it worked. It worked because he chose to take what was already a dirty thought in my mind and made it and me dirtier by his own design, and years later I willingly accept that the reason he felt this way is not because of what I did do but because of what I vehemently refused to do. When a man's only example of what women's sensuality is comes from lipstick lesbian pornography, and when said man's wife looks very much like those actresses in those movies, you can imagine that said man is going to try very hard to turn said wife into the nymphomaniac he thinks he is watching on that screen. When he found out and had to accept that I look like that but that I am so not like those women it became his mission to try to force upon me that somehow I was damaged because I did not perform according to what his primary thought about what a woman really is. I feared him and believed that I was lacking because I refused to go against my own primal and biological leanings, and for that refusal I was called a whore and was beaten.

Yes, there was a lot of fear...not anymore though, and he knows it.

He knows that I no longer fear the gift of being sensual, and he knows, too, that there is nothing that he will say or do to make me become who he wanted me to be because who he wanted me to be is nowhere near the me who I love, who I care about, who is in love with Being and in love with the idea that all he took away from me I took back with a sensual and feminine vengeance. And that sensual and feminine vengeance is something that no man can ever have because they are not women. That nature is what draws like to like, same to same, and in my case, the old man and me are markedly, strikingly different. Our only similarities are children, an address, a last name and history, but that is it.

Be all you can possibly be, even if all you can possibly be right now is a fractured version of your Self. Any start toward who you really Are is a start toward healing, is a start toward regaining everything about you that is all yours and that no one has the right and neither the power to take from any one of us, even though it might seem as though, at this moment, that there is nothing left for you to have because you were forced to give it all away.

Go look in the mirror and past the bruises and the broken heart and see there for a moment the woman who is in manifest and learn who she is now versus who her attacker tells her she is and I promise you that those two women are not the same women. There is the you they have created through violence and hurtful words and action.

And then there is the real You.

What are you waiting for? An invitation? Go! NOW ! Go take a look and see that I am right in telling you that you have always been there no matter what the hell it is that he or she has said or done to you, even if that was only moments ago.

Go now, please, and begin the healing process. You are meant to do this for you.

Don't be afraid and do not feel guilty.

You are yours for the taking, even if but a little bit at a time.

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)dreamhost coupon

Healing your Spirit: How I raised my Self from being Spiritually dead

Just as it took time to become a statistic, it will also take time for you to heal

Those who live their lives in a constant state of fear know very well that the beginning of the end of their safety and more, their sanity, is the moment that something seems amiss in their closest relationships. In many cases, the closest relationships are not our marriages, as I found out quite on my own and with my own marriage. It took me twenty years to accept that my closest relationships were those built because of my crappy marriage.

No matter what they tell you, you totally need the support of your family and friends

When my story started twenty years ago my husband blocked me from seeing my friends, at first, and then eventually he stopped me from seeing my family. I am Hawaiian. Hawaiians and family are synonymous with each other. You cannot be one and not also be part of the other. It just does not happen that way. The first thing to be taken from you is your support group. When I met my old man it never occurred to me that he was systematically excluding people who I loved from my life for a selfish purpose, and that selfish purpose was because he felt, as most abusers do feel and believe, that he was all that I would need to make it in life. Many of them assume that if they take care of us that we have no needs for anyone else in our lives. This was what I was told, and at the time I was a very young woman - barely 21 - and I, like any young and impressionable young woman has the propensity to - believed him.

I believed that when I married him, because he said so, that I would not really need the majority of my friends anymore, and this was wrong, at least partially wrong, because sometimes we do not need certain friends in our lives. However, it is not the truth of all of our friends. Our friends are normally in our lives prior to the creep we let in to tell us how to live and who we are allowed to hang out with. 

It was not until I moved to the high desert that I met with the group of friends I now also consider my family. None of them knew what was happening until I told them what was going on. I told them that this sort of thing was happening for years, that I didn't tell anyone what was going on because I was afraid to let people know that this is what John has been doing to me for as long as we had been a couple. I told them that all my friends from the place where I grew up - friends whom I had for years and some who are still part of my life - no longer wanted to be around me as long as he was around. This was something that just dug into my soul and crushed my spirit. I so loved being with my social group, with my pals, and when John came into my life he shuttered them out. He did the same thing with my family.

Friends are one thing, but family?

My mother, as "churchy" as she can be, is a beautiful soul. There is nothing that this woman could do that would deter me from that truth. John has always adored her. However, when it comes to my father, John hates him. He also hates any male cousins that I have, cannot stand any of my female cousins unless they are easy on the eyes, and do not get me started on the spouses and significant others of any of my female cousins, because according to him they all want to do me, all of them. 

I mentioned that Hawaiian is synonymous with the word "family" and because of this whenever it was that there was a family gathering, the longer that I was married to him, the less I saw of my cousins, and this really tore me apart. It is said that our cousins are our first friends, and in my case this was the very epitome of my childhood. I spent a whole lot of time with my cousins, namely the ones on my dad's side of the family, which is a group that John despises for whatever reason it is that he has. I was used to them being with me, and when he decided that he did not like them because they did not rank high enough on his level of what he felt was good enough for him and not me was the moment that I was no longer allowed to see them as much as I had in the past, and eventually, I never saw them at all.

They were hurt and angry with me, but there was no way that I could tell them about what was going on without also giving caution to the wind and hoping upon hope that he would not figure out that I had spoken to them at all, ever. He hated them for his own reasons, and none of them were valid. Most abusers will tell you that the people who you love are stupid, are not worth his time and that you have to choose between your friends and your man. I tried choosing my freedom, but somehow he was always able to come back into my life, and it was through his systematically crushing my spirit so that he could eventually control me and my life.

Without your support system healing the crushed spirit is almost impossible

A truth that I was exposed to was something that I never saw coming. This man made it impossible for me to have a social group to return to. I was bullied constantly about them, told that I was just as stupid as they were but that my saving grace was that I was beautiful and that apparently "saved" me. He said a lot of terrible things about them all, and I eventually agreed with him and it was for no other reason than that I could no longer bear the pain of being told that I was just as stupid as they were and that if I wanted to be with them I could go with them.

The bitch of it all was that I bought into it. I thought that if I just agreed with him about his thoughts about me and the people who I still loved that it would bring us closer, but it didn't. What it did do was reinforce for him the assumptions that he'd made about me, about anyone who knew me before he did. I still think about it all and am sad at the idea that I allowed him to do this and to have that much control of me. He did what he did because without anyone else in my life my attention would be all his, and just like anything else that happens to be there constantly in your face it becomes something that you want nothing to do with. I wanted nothing to do with him anymore, but he was always right there, in my face, telling me that I loved him and that no one else would love me like he did. What that really meant was that, according to him, I needed no one else because all I needed was him. I needed no girlfriends to talk to (because they were all "worthless cunt whores"). I needed no guy friends (because all they wanted to do was have sex with me). I needed no contact with my family (because he and I were married and now he was all the family I needed). To him he was more than enough, but that is not the truth.

Having too much of one thing is never a good thing. Eventually you get tired of that one thing. This is something that does not hold credence for those with abusive tendencies because to them anyone else in your life is there to make them no longer be in your life. And they are right - if anyone who loves me knew what he was doing when he started doing it he would not have been around for the beatings to start, which, in most instances they normally do. Abusers want to keep you to themselves so that they can force you to be someone you are not. I never thought of myself as being anyone's trophy, as being property, but in the eyes of some men once you take on their last name they somehow own you. This is what he'd told me.

It was at that moment that I could feel the effects of my soul being stolen, of my spirit being crushed by the weight of his assumptions and abuse. 

It was at that moment that I had lost my zeal for life. I felt as though I no longer had a soul.

How I came back from the dead, so to speak

It took losing everything we materially owned and his having had a massive two sided heart attack for me to have been forced into looking at me with my eyes wide open. I thought about everything that led to the point of his heart attack and thought to myself that he deserved this happening to him because of all the things he'd done to break my heart, to crush my soul and to try to change me. There was nothing that I could have done to make him stop being who he was, and who I had become was someone I knew I was not happy with being. I knew at that time that things occurred as they had for a myriad of reasons, but because I am highly spiritual, I also knew that it was my turn to return to who I am. These losses and his ailment were my ticket back to being me. And yes, he completely hates that I no longer am willing to take his shit. He hates that I am strong. He hates that one of my very best friends is a successful business man who is not hard to gawk at. He hates that my best friend is someone who can totally relate to my life. He hates that I am healing nicely, thank you very much.

It took a heart attack for me to realize that all those years that he 'd picked on me. beat on me, threatened me, called me names, and the like, were meant for me to finally, one day, return to who I really am. Who I really am is not someone my husband much cares for because who I really am is not this shut-her-mouth-or-get-her-ass-beat woman and in fact I am the very opposite of what he wanted me to be. I found out that through spiritual practice, through my own choice to return to My Self that I never went anywhere and that I was simply hiding and waiting to Be again. All the things that I loved doing and all the people who I loved being with suddenly showed themselves as my having a second chance at loving and doing all over again. Never again would I allow my fear of this person be what ruled me, and I am not sure if it was because I knew that his heart attack was it - it was the beginning of the end for him because he is a slave to his habits.

I enjoyed dancing and teaching dance, and I enjoyed writing my books. But I enjoyed taking the time to see my friends, and I enjoyed hanging out with my cousins, and most of all, I began to enjoy being me again - loud, boisterous, outrageous, and yes, beautiful Me. It was like the rebirth of Ms. Roxanne...in fact, I know it was. I know that his heart attack was from Spirit, was a gift from the angels, as sick as that sounds. I'd always vowed to him that I would be the Reaper in that I would walk him to his grave, and that is exactly what I am doing now.

A long look...

I took a long look at myself in the mirror one day, about a week after his heart attack while he was not yet released from the hospital, and looked deep into my own eyes in the mirror and started crying like a child. Sometimes we need to cry like a lost child, or like we are in mourning, in order for us to reboot and start where we left off many months or years ago. We have to come back to the heartache, to the thing that made us the way we ended up, and we have to allow the tears to flow because the tears tell us that we have come so far and in so short a time that we had no idea that the pain for another is the healing for ourselves, and not in the ah-HA!You-Deserve-this-you-fuck kind of way. The pain for the other is that we are still very much alive in our spirit, that our spirit never died but went to sleep and the Love within us was covered up so that no one could get to it or hurt it.

The way that we start the journey back to ourselves is simply to take a good look in the mirror and see there what is missing, and we find out that not only is our support system gone by his hand, but he was trying to take us away from our selves as well. This is the epiphany that survivors of domestic abuse and violence in the home all end up knowing - that he was trying to kill my soul so that he could own me. He was able to cripple my soul but kill it he could not because he does not have that kind of power. No one has that kind of power.

You return to your self and you heal your soul through knowing that they were not ever dead, that no one can kill the soul because the soul is eternal. He killed the ego in you so that his could be fed. I loathed being paraded around like a show pony, later to be treated like a whore and then the next day put through it again until there was nothing but me and my big bottle of Patron Silver. This is how my three kids were conceived, and this was how I made it through being the show pony trophy wife living in the private country club community, and this is the way that I was able to rationalize and make "ok" the things that he'd said and done to me over the years. 

Yet the booze was not the thing that healed me. I knew then what I know now, and that is that I am not an alcoholic, that I am not weak, that I do not defer to acts of self hatred and self mutilation. I still enjoy the occasional evening filled with knocking back shots and beers, but these days it is because I want to party with my pal Wendy or because my best friend just so happens to be tending bar the night that I am visiting the place where I am returning to the moment that I am widowed...

We return to who we are and become healed through self truths and NOT through our forcing ourselves to believe the things that our abusers tell us are the truth. While the things that we are told by them may in fact be their truth, even as sordid and sick as it all may seem, it is never our own truth. We are the ones who Know for sure what our own truth is.

My own truth is that I am beautiful, not only on the outside but more so, on the inside, and that the people who I draw to my life are as beautiful. We only draw to us what we are, which is really great. It also explains the reason why he is so repelled by me and me by him...

Take the time to look at you in the mirror and know the truths that are held by that stranger who is staring back at you. I promise you that she is the one with all the answers...

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. please contact her by clicking here . Her latest book, "Goddesses, Priestesses and Queens" can be purchased at lulu.com and amazon.com)