Trust is Tangible

You are proof that Trust is a tangible thing

Please don't get me wrong - by stating that you being in the presence or lives of people makes it so that you trust them or that they trust you is NOT what I am talking about. Abuse survivors know one thing is truth - we all know that trust is a thing that has to be in any relationship or else it turns into a master/servant thing at best, and well, we all know what happens that can mark the part that is "at worst." 

By my stating and thinking that trust is a tangible thing and that you are proof of it is that all abuse survivors end up with new people in our lives, people who we may have had the luck of coming into contact with a second time around, or people who we never met before and that all of us have to relearn how to trust other people. It is not an easy thing to do, either. We all want to have people in our lives, all want to be loved and cherished and want to have closeness with people, but how we handled not being trusted by the ones who were supposed to trust us, and the ones who made us work for their trust even as they demanded that we not question their trustworthiness, how we handled others not trusting us for no reason at all versus how we handle our being able to trust anyone at all after the fact are two very different things.

That anyone who has gone through something as awful as any kind of abuse is one thing, but to expect that anyone who has gone through it at all and come out at the other end able to deal with things and also able to try and trust other people again is almost impossible to believe, given  the circumstances, that anyone in that situation can trust again. Trust is not easy. Once it has been fractured it takes a bit of time to regain it, not in the person who broke it, but with anyone. Abuse survivors know what it is to feel like no one and no one's words can be trusted, and we find out that no matter how many excuses we are willing to make for people who have done us wrong, at the bottom of it all we know what is the truth, and the truth is that trusting others is not only something that needs to be regained in us, but more, is something that we have to try hard not to falter on. 

We second guess everything and everyone, but no one more do we do this with than ourselves. You have to remember that we have been physically assaulted, accused of cheating, of lying, of stealing, of doing things that are all chalked up to an assumption, and the assumption is the thing that keeps an abuser in control. They want to own us, not love us, because they have no idea the truth that is Love. This is what we, the abused and the formerly abused, know as our reality. We have a hard time taking people for their word, and we have an even harder time with trusting ourselves with trusting anyone, ever again. When a survivor of abuse comes into your life, it is a gift. It is a gift because you have the opportunity to watch trust become a part of a person's life. 

Too often in life we take for granted that we will be trusted, and then one day we meet someone who we trust our whole self with and that one person ends up breaking that trust, either by not trusting us or outright accusing us for doing things that we would never do. It is immediate that we have to try hard to come out of our selves, to reach out and to be with people who, at the onset, we so dearly want to trust - and it hurts to not trust another person. As humans we are not meant to be anything other than with each other, and when the trust has been broken we become confused as to how it is that this happened. We do not know when it started, all we do know is that it hurts, that it cuts all the way to the bones, all the way to the soul. The first thing that anyone experiences with someone who is going to put us to task with our ability to trust others is the idea that we are not anywhere near good enough to be taken for the words that are coming out of our mouths. When all you have is the words that you speak, and someone who is meant to just trust you because we so readily trust them, does not extend that same energy in return, it creates a climate of "master/servant."

When we have to beg to be who we are, and beg to be able to feel okay with ourselves and someone who we wanted at one time to so dearly trust us, and they think the thoughts that they do that make it difficult for those who have been abused, those who have survived the abuse, those who are still in the throes of the abuse to be able to get out of that mold, that energy that we do not fit into, but that we are being told is who we are. When we are not allowed to be who we are, this creates a serious sense of mistrust. It is an energy that tells us each that who we are is not good enough to be trusted, that we are "not up to spec" with the person who we gave our whole selves to. Our whole self is the only thing that we really can claim to having and when it is that we are told that who we are somehow is not good enough to behave in a manner that is befitting of someone who is meant to be loved and means only to love, and we get told, perhaps not in so many words that the way we are is so irritating to another person and that we feel like we are not even liked by them, let alone loved, it creates an energy of mistrust - not only in other people, but more, and sadly, within ourselves. 

Trust is a tangible thing, a tangible energy, much as is everything, because trust is us. We are the embodiment of trust. We are trust come to life. When an abuse survivor can become trusting with themselves is when it becomes tangible, because with that trust in ourselves also comes the luxury of just being able to sit in our skin and finally, after many, many years, we can feel our wholeness coming back to us, can feel like we are meant to be this person who we have fought so long and so hard to be again. My thought about not being trusted is that because an abuser is such an insecure person with their own selves and with their own thoughts and essentially are not happy with themselves, they must find others to help them understand this part of them, and the best person to do that is someone who is like them in opposition. 

To believe otherwise- that we are anything other than the most purest of evidence that trust is a tangible thing, is to take away the things from us, the lessons that we learned, which tell everyone, including ourselves, that we have not been through everything that we know we have been. It is like telling a child that he or she has no reason to fear the monsters in the closet after we have told them that monsters exist. The only monsters that exist are those who are willing to breach our trust and expect that we should just deal with the idea that who they are in their own mind is so important to the benefit of mankind that somehow, to not trust them and their words and their actions is somehow a sin against man and nature.

The idea that we are not willing to trust them as well as a lot of other people is not giving credence to the fact that we know what we went through, we know how we felt and now, how we feel. We know that who we are is important, and we also know that there is an energy between us and our abusers, no matter who they are or where they are, that only with our own ability to rebuild trust in ourselves and for ourselves, that there will never be trust for another again until that happens. 

This is how we know that we are trust come to life. Because we are cautious, because we hurt, because we bear the scars and the wounds of the battle within ourselves is why it is that trust is a tangible thing. 

It is tangible because in order to trust someone enough to love them, we must be able to give ourselves to them, in every way that we can imagine.

Without trust within, there can never be trust on the outside, either...

I Love You All
ROX

I hope they've learned as much as I have

It is hard to let go when you don't want to...namely, when you know it is best you do

There are things that I know I have to do. I have to do the laundry. I have to prepare for school, for widowhood, for lots of things. So the one thing that I need to do very dearly is simply to let people who try hard to break me, who will not bother with telling me what is their truth, and who hide behind their fear...well, let's just say that I am tired of my intelligence being insulted, and I am sick to death of being told one thing only to find out otherwise. We shall also say that this is not completely a goodbye, not really a "good riddance," but more my own way of seeing what needs to be purged from my life, and the one thing that I know needs to be purged from my life are those who seem not to be able to release the old so as to make room for the new and the better. 

In essence, this is not really a goodbye, but more along the lines of letting some folks who need to learn about themselves and then try harder to grow out of their old patterns so that they can realize the new part of them. It is this new part of themselves that is trying hard to escape the old patterns, but it is the old part - the part of them that requires no work to change for their own good and their own life purpose, and which is also the part of them that is connected to their Ego sense. Recall that when I talk about the "Ego sense," that I am talking about that part that resides in each of us that is scared to grow because it will take too much time, or it will hurt to much to try to change the things about us and the habits and the ways that we make ourselves not have to feel our own life's pains to become what they are each meant to be. What they are each meant to be are lessons, are teachers to our lives, and sadly, there are a lot of folks who, for one reason or another, are having a hard time trying to get to that place that they know they want to be but for the life of them just seem not able to overcome what it is that plagues them.

What plagues them, essentially, is fear. Humans are taught to fear and to not question. We are taught that we have to use other people, have to try to hide a piece of who we are so that no one can see the reality that is ours, and we are scared as hell of being judged because we do not want our truth to be made everyone else's truth. Everyone else's truth never has to be our truth, but sometimes we buy it. Sometimes we buy other peoples' bullshit. No where else is this more prevalent than in the lives of the abused and formerly abused. Those who have been abused tend to think in a way that is always "how can I not ever have to feel that way again?" and the most unfortunate part of this is that there are many who are in one of these two groups of people who will easily turn to things outside of themselves that eventually causes them to turn ON themselves. It is like when an octopus is feeling anxiety and starts eating its own self - this is what happens when we are more inclined to do what we have always done in order to escape the pain of our lives. 

Then the "fun" thing that happens after that is that those who are choosing without realizing that they are choosing to habitually drag other people into the fracas that is their life.  It is essential to our growth, to our ability to be able to heal successfully without having to turn to things tangible, things and people outside of ourselves, things that we know WILL hurt us, that we look at who we really are and realize that even though we might essentially be a train wreck at the moment, it does not have to be like this forever. However, there are a lot of people who are choosing the familiar discomfort of things that worked temporarily in the past rather than choosing wisely and deciding to grow out of the old and to wear, from day one, that which is the glorious and the new. Like brand new jeans, so, too, do new ways and new thoughts and the newness that is the growth that hurts us need to also be worn, to also be tried out and looked at and used to our own advantage. 

The hurts that we experience from the growth is different than the ones that were brought to us by what we thought was helping us. We each know that there are things that people do to themselves that cause them to think that the secondary things they do...drink, indulge in ugly substances that we know will screw us up, try things that we have been told work that seem like a good idea but on the whole we KNOW are anything but...end up being 

We know when "the better" is coming, and not only because it will be revealed by the Goddess those things which no longer serve us or our purpose, but also because new people, new ideas, and new energy reveals itself, too. Where once there was the energy that was fraught with being scared and inundated with fear, there is now the energy that is letting go, is the energy that tells you that you can live without certain people and situations in your life. It is not something that will be easy to do, letting go of those whose purpose in our lives or perhaps for whom our presence in theirs was to bring about the energy that was needed, but is something that, when the time comes, we will just do. 

When the energy came for me was sometime last evening while I was talking with someone who is very close to me and they'd mentioned that there was, at that moment in their lives, much as it is with my own, a list of people who were being extricated from said close person's cell phone. As minute as it sounds, in the realm of the Soul and all that is healing from the pains and abuse from the past, it is huge. When I was told by this person that this is what they were doing, it was with an immediacy that I'd told them that I, too, was doing the very same thing. I was doing the same thing because if I do not do the same thing - keep on symbolically removing people who've no business or purpose in my life through whatever means it is that I do so - it will only drag me and my energy down, and I have been down for so long now, much as this close person, as many of my closest friends and confidantes have also been, that the only way to relieve my own self of the pain and the hurt that comes also with the idea that someone, that anyone at all, is going to tell me one thing and do the opposite, is to release them from my life, even if temporarily.

This is not simple to do. We attach ourselves not only to people but also to the outcome that we want to see for them, for ourselves and for the situations at hand as well as the ones in manifest. It is not that the outcome is not something that I cannot wait for but more that the outcome, for some people, might seem impossible to realize, might hurt too much to have to go through the work involved, and the work involved has only to do with the self.  "So, Rev., why would anyone want to get rid of things and people they think are important?" is usually the question that I am asked when people ask me what it is that they should do when trying hard to get through something with someone else, no matter who they are, and the answer that I give is relevant to my own life at this time. In my own life at this time much is happening. There is the ending of one part of my life and the start of an entire new part which, when I think about those two things on their own I am made both happy and afraid. I am happy because very simply, it is about time, and afraid, because no one, not even a well paid and proven psychic can tell us what the exact outcome will be. No one can. We create the outcome we want to see or one that is better than the one we want to see. 

With that said, it may well be understood by anyone reading this that I am no longer open to draining my own energies for those who will not also help with the work that they know they need to do if they are also not as at least as willing as I am to help them get their lives back. Abuse survivors are very uncannily able to tell when we are being lied to, when the truth is being hidden, and there is not one of us who, even if we do not realize it, cannot sense it when someone is not being as open and truthful as we are, as we have been. Just because it is my job to counsel, is my job to intuit the energies that I sense, my job to sometimes and physically place my hands, sometimes my whole self, onto others so that they may have a bit of the good energy that they need in order to get along in their lives with the thing that they are supposed to do and more, to be, it does not mean that mine is an endless energy even though technically, it is. 

It is not the energy that is not endless, but the level of patience that is. It is the worn out thinking in others that I will be there for them, at the ready, because that is how they know me to be. What they have yet to go through is the fact that even highly energetic people like me get tired, on many levels, and lately it is the wish upon my own heart and soul that while I want to see that everyone gets their own lives healed, when it comes to my life and the things that I want to see happen in it, I cannot allow myself to let the energies that I know will deplete my own be the thing that eats me alive. I cannot wait here for people to stop being afraid of the work involved, can't just be the one person who is just always going to be there at someone else's whim even though I am essentially always there for people to seek a way to heal their own lives. I will always be there for that, but will no longer be there for people who just need a quick fix of good energy so that they can deal with theirs that is not so good, and I will not be around for those who will tell me that things with people are one way when in reality that is not the entire story. The entire story may or may not be believed.

The entire story may or may not be believed for the simple fact that if a person is willing to live without integrity, it also means that they are willing to live with the things that they hurt from, and more, willing to continue hurting from them, and willing to medicate themselves in whichever manner it is that they have for a long time just so that they will not have to deal with the pain of the shame of the losses, the pain of the abuse that was once there, which was there by someone else's hands and then when the pain became too much, by their own hands, in manners that no one with a brain in their head would bother with. Everyone on the planet has been hurt, but not everyone who hurts becomes abusive to others or more, to themselves. This is the other reality that comes with abuse - somehow, there has to be healing, and it has to come from within, and always there will be someone who will be able to help those who have ignored the things that I have told them in matters of where the pain is coming from versus where they can send that pain...most listen, but there are those few who do not. 

I could sit here and say that my choices ...the ones that I have to make as of now....hurt me a lot, but that is a lie. The choices that I have to make - the ones that are "should I help this person or should I save it for me?" - are not easy. On the outside of it all it seems that no matter what I have said, no matter what I have done, no matter what it is that has eaten their lives and no matter what it is that these people have tried to heal themselves with, it is to no avail. It is to no avail because while I understood that no one is guaranteed that they will be able to heal their lives on their own, it is a promise that no one who doesn't at least try to heal, will. They will not heal, because the mess that is in front of them called "their lives" is familiar to them, comforts them knowing that they can deal with the mess because the mess is all they know. So they keep creating bigger messes that look like the last mess and keep on expecting different results from the same messiness that is still not better, not smaller, and only gets worse.

It breaks me up inside a bit to know that for a moment, I have to step back and have to do so because should I bother to stay where I am, I will not be able to move forward, and my future is a beautiful thing indeed, filled with laughter and love, with friends and people who I care deeply about and who are considered to me as family, and the antics that these people have heard about thus far, while said antics do not affect me in the manner that is direct, they effect me in that I have cared, and cared, and talked, and emphasized, and propped up, and basically been there, and at the moment, it feels like it was all for nothing, even though that is the furthest thing from the truth.

It was not all for nothing, because without those people who are too afraid to grow out of their own messes I saw my own. That is the blessing in what seems at the moment like it is a loss. It is not a loss. My thought is that I have to let them go and perhaps in my (hopefully temporary) absence they will grow, will get a clue, will be able to take what very little they came to me for and utilize it. My prayer is that in my absence that they will know that I truly do love them, enough so that I would imagine that if the tables were turned that they would not want me to not heal on my own. I would imagine that if I were them, and they were me, that they would have done this a long time ago. I would imagine, too, that they know that I am human, that I fail at things, that I am not the greatest healer on the planet, but that I may indeed be one of the most loving. I hope they learned from me that they were worth my time when they were worth their own time.

While I cannot say that these people with whom I must, at this time, part ways, know who they are, I will say that they all know, and hopefully believe it when I say that really, it is for your own good, my own good, and that I Love You...

...I Love You...I always will...but I love me, too, and I am a priority.


Why aren't you a priority to YOU?

I LOVE YOU ALL
ROX

Scathing filthy foul words for people who lack real Integrity

Integrity is something that a lot of people are lacking.

...this has been written on behalf of all those people on the planet who are tired of having their intelligence insulted, their respect not returned, and most of all, their own integrity, based on the actions and words of others, compromised. 

Frankly, it is bullshit, and I have had about enough of it...yeah...you betcha...I AM talking to you, and no, I ain't talkin' any kind of shit at all...because if what I am saying to you bothers you, then it must mean that what I wrote here is the damned truth. You felt compelled to talk shit, to say things about me that were not more than the tiny little thoughts composed by your tiny little brain...you, dollface, is who this shit is written for. If anyone is offended by what this says, you don't have to read it...in fact, I prefer that you not. To behave and to think that you are above these words is telling of the reality of who you are, and more than that, you probably think that somehow, you are above reproach.

Nope...

If there is one thing that I am not good at, it is being possessed of a nastiness for other people who need to check themselves before they wreck themselves. However, the one thing that I am better at not being good at is allowing acceptance in my own life for other people who seem to believe that they are pulling a fast one on anyone - I promise you that you are not. If you are trying to pull a fast one on me, you are not, not now, not ever, and I am very dearly offended at the idea that you think you can fuck with someone the way that you are doing now. This, after many times the question being asked of "what is wrong with me?" Well, my lovelies, I am about to tell you what the fuck is wrong with you, and no, I am not apologizing for my language, my demeanor which is akin to that of a rabid and feral kitten attached to your sorry face in this writing because there are a few people who will read this, who will end up ass hurt and who will go ahead and talk more shit about me than they ever have in the past.

To those people, I invite you to have the balls to say that shit to my face. You know you won't. I know you won't. What you will do, though, is take the liberty to talk more shit about me, in which case I am cool with it because the only thing you are doing is making me famous and you look worse than you already do. If you feel the need to do more damage and hurt more people and you feel the need to behave in a manner that NO ONE with a clue or an original thought would, then once again...I have been proven right, and again, talk all the shit you want...all it is is a testament to my being that one thing that you will have a hard time ever being...actually it is more than one thing....the first one being believable, the second being thought as being as smart as you keep telling people you are (it's like telling people you are cute...if you have to tell them that you are cute YOU ARE NOT!!) and the third being that when I say something to anyone, I do so with the thought in my head that my words are all that I have. So when I tell people ANYTHING AT ALL, I try my DAMNEDEST to make sure that I am able to do what I say I will and if I cannot, I make sure that I do whatever it takes to make sure that people know I didn't mean to not be able to come through for them.

I suffer fools not at all. In fact, if you are a fool I will have nothing to do with you unless you are able to come by it honestly the idea that you want everyone else to believe your shit talking, but you do not want that shit talking to apply to you. Lemme tell you what, Sweetcakes - if you have anything to shit talk about anyone else, and you can recognize it in someone else and call it out, then guess what - that same shit lives in you, too, and you are too arrogant and egotistical to, at a minimum, come to terms with the FACT that that which you can see in others is also noticeable in you. If you think for one moment that you are somehow a better person because of the things that you say you will not do that you know other people are doing, and you are ballsy enough to tell any healer about it, ballsy enough to bring it to the surface, and ballsy enough to call people out on it, your sorry ass best be ballsy enough to deal with the FACT that whatever it is you notice in others exists in you as well. If you can see ANYTHING AT ALL in someone else...good, bad, crazy, whatever...IT LIVES IN YOU !!

I said it so deal with it.

NO EXCUSE

I come from one of those families where, on the one side, people are magnificent at talking shit, and on the other side, they are as magnificent at talking shit as is the other side, but this side is also more able to come to grips with the idea that if they can see it, they know it is something that they have to work on to make right or else all they are doing is a lot of shit talking. Shit talking gets no one anywhere, and the truth of it all is that if you talk shit, that yeah, of course it means you see something in someone else but what you do not believe is that if you see it in others, it lives in you. This is not my rule. It never was my rule. I know that there are a lot of things that I see that irritate the piss outta me about a lot of people, but anymore now I am more inclined to remain intact in my integrity and NOT talk shit about people who I do know, for SURE not talk shit about people who I DO NOT know, and most of all, if I talk shit, I know that the Universe is GOING TO send me someone to my life who will, without a doubt, call me on my hand and tell me that it ain't no way anywhere cool to be talkin' shit about anyone, at all.

When we feel like we have to do this, it makes us do all kinds of stupid stuff and that stupid stuff ALWAYS makes us make a decision from our emotions, and we all know that decisions from emotions are the sort where actions spawned from that decision will not be the greatest show of our own integrity at all because the straight and frankest truth of it all is that, hands down, the problem with your integrity is not...NOT other people. If you feel like other people have control of your emotional life, that is on you, because you believe that shit, and if you believe that shit, it must make what they said or did, and more than that, makes what you did in reaction to it, the truth of you. 

...and another thing...

Whenever someone feels like they, in any way at all, have to hurt someone else to get their attention, to make ourselves feel better, and most of all, for the purposes of ego vindication, all the way around you are stone cold fucking wrong, period. There is no way that what anyone else thinks of anyone, no matter what, that will matter. You need to ask yourself if the shit talking you are doing is really about them, or is it truly about you?

Because the only thing that I know happens when we shit talk anyone is that either the shit hits the fan, or the shit lands back into our lap where we either have to defend it or prove it, and whenever it is that we feel we have to defend anyone or prove anything to anyone else, we are already wrong, not because we have to do it, but because we believe we have to do it. This is a mechanism of the ego, a thing that our smaller selves want us to do because inherently and no matter what anyone tells me, we are, to an extent, every single each and every one of us, an attention whore in some manner, and by this I do mean that hell yes there are people on this planet who feel like somehow they are important enough to have the right to talk shit, but in reality all they or anyone else really ever has is the option to exercise that right.

When you make it someone else's problem, whatever it is that you are making someone else's problem, automatically you are making them responsible for how you feel when for real it is all on you. If I could count how many times in my lifetime that I had the very nerve to believe that who I am makes it all okay to be saying anything, doing anything, promoting through shit talking about anything, about anyone at all, I know that I would need more than a dozen pairs of hands and quite possibly twice as many pairs of feet. That's right - I am an expert shit-talker, as you can tell, but the grand difference between us is that I won't call anyone out by their name, not in writing, because then I am being just like you. I know who you are, and at this point I really don't give two fucks about if you know who you are because I would never do the shit that you do, and if I did, it would not be on purpose and for sure it would NOT be to make myself feel better about me. I don't have to shit talk anyone to do that. I am me. Not everyone is going to like me, love me, want to be around me, and that is okay, because the one thing that I know that no one can ever call me on is my integrity.

That is what this writing is all about, and if you can see you in this ugly picture I have written then you have a large and ugly problem that is not mine even though you want it to be anyone else's but yours. This is the truth. And the fun part for me is that you know this is the truth.

You want to think that you are worth the shit talking that you are doing, but you want to also believe that the person who you are talking shit about is somehow not the same caliber person as you are, but I promise you that you are not any better than they are and that hell yes if you can see what you think is wrong with them I am telling you now that the truth of the matter is that you also possess that same trait and that THAT is the reason why they irritate you so much. You want to believe that you are better than others, but you are not. You want to believe that you are smarter than the other, but you talk too much shit, so much, in fact, that you cannot likely remember the shit that you have said. This is also another added boon to people like me - when a person is not inclined to talk shit but to just talk, period, it is like telling the truth versus living a lie : When we are truthful, we have nothing to conceal, but when we are not truthful, we have to work hard to cover a thing that is going to be found out anyway, and the fun part is that it will likely be you who blows your own cover. I don't have to prove this, because I lived this...

It took me a whole lot of years to fix a reputation that I alone did not build for me, and what a reputation it was...one that was rife with my being called a whore, my being told that I am crazy, and my being told who I am and what I am and in accordance to what the hell other people assumed of me. I told them, and now I am telling you, and you know who you are, that you are never going to ever be the same caliber person who I am, and no amount of talking shit about me or anyone else is ever going to change that. Only you can change how small you feel, and only you can tell you the truth about you. The truth, at this moment, about you is not a great truth at all, I would imagine.

I say I would imagine because I don't like looking back at all the non-truths that ass hats like you have always swore was the truth of me, but we both know the truth, and the truth is that people who talk shit get talked shit about.

People who back their shit up?

Well, I know I got nothin' to hide, from anyone, and I promise anyone reading this that unlike people who have little or NO integrity, when I say that I will do something, when I say anything at all, you can depend on it being the truth. It will be the truth because no one likes being someone else's fool. And at this time you are my fool, and I say so for one thing, Love...that one thing is that there are not too many secrets that anyone can keep from a strong Empath whose intuition kicks into high gear long before I care to accept that someone who calls themselves "my people" is found out to be not so much a liar, but an attention whore and one who is fond of calling me what they will but one who is not that great at keeping their Integrity in full tact.

...and the reason that your particular integrity is not in full tact is because you chose to bare your teeth and your claws and your smallness along with all that shit you talked.

I forgive you, but I promise that I will not ever forget. You know who you are. You have been found out.

The 'duh' in this is on you, certainly not anyone BUT you. STOP blaming other people for your sorry smallness and grow your own fucking bigness.

The only thing you really need to do is to get a clue.

Too bad you cannot do like tampons and buy yourself a box, just like you cannot lube your ass with a tube of integrity you think you can buy.

Integrity...it is not something you just have. It has to be cultivated.

Sorta like those fairy tales you keep giving to the world...you should commit them to paper and make something of your life. At least people with a tiny brain who should have a tiny brain because they are tiny in stature and age will believe you...anyone with a clue?

Try me...because I have a clue, but I promise you that you will not be getting away with your shit talking, your lies of omission, and the idea that you can pull the wool over the eyes of a person who does not need to see things physically...you know who I am and what I am, yet you think you can still hide shit from me...

Nope...have balls to at least back your own shit up and if you do not have them or will not bother to try to grow some, then please go fuck yourself.

To the nice people with loads of integrity who read my blogs anyway...sorry if your eyes feel like they might bleed from the cutting words which, yup....I mean every single one of them. They are not meant for you...but really, I am sure you have been right here where I am, right now.

I have had enough of small brains backed up by big mouths and a bigger energy that is the cluelessness that comes from having gotten away with talking too much shit about one too many people.

I am quite positive that you know who you are. More than that, I am quite positive that you will have nothing to say to me, because you are not the caliber person I am.

I am also quite positive that now you know this

I Love You All....yep...even the people to whom this is telling that they need to get a fucking clue about having even the tiniest bit of anything remotely having the appearance of Integrity...

Yup...it's true
I LOVE YOU ALL !
ROX

Reverend Roxanne Cottell is the Kumu Hula and Creator of the Healing with Hula Program for Women and the Co-Founder of Na Hula O Ka Wahine 'Ui - The Sisterhood of The Soul. She is a blogger, book author, choreographer , Public Speaker, Domestic Violence and Emotional Abuse Survivors Advocate and Spiritual Coach. If you would like to contact her for speaking engagements, Spiritual Consultations, or for anything else, please send an email to reverendroxie22@gmail.com 
(c)  Roxanne K. Cottell. All Rights Reserved

DON'T BE SO DAMNED RUDE !! Words about Courtesy

There is nothing quite more distressing to another person than when we are being rude or dismissive to them about anything

Listen up, folks - there is a big fat thing in the world called "people wanting to be cool but who have no idea that it has nothing to do with being rude to others for a laugh or a high-5" and frankly it's old already.

We have become very much a populace which enjoys one-upping others, no matter who they are and no matter if we are related to them or not. The problem in the world is not only that we hate on each other for no apparent reason, but that we do so with such blatant and real fervor every time we disrespect anyone else that we believe that this is somehow the norm.

What I would like to know from anyone right now is why is it that anyone would believe that being rude to other people is okay and acceptable? Why is it that we are more primed to believe that we need to be rude to one another to get our point across to them? Why is it normal that this is okay? I will tell you why. When we think to ourselves how it is that wars are started, how it is that corporate takeovers happen, how it is that we hear about mega-divorces in the media, we know already that (1) it is possible that those two factions should not even have known each other, let alone partnered up, that (2) we are about to see people being nasty to one another and the entire world is going to see it, and (3) what we are seeing is 'normal' because it is normal in our society these days for people to feel like they have to hurt one another somehow and on some level so that any one of us can get ahead. This is the wrongest thing to think because it is the most untrue thing that anyone has ever believed about anyone else, including our very selves.

We are how these things happen. We are who makes the phone call not returned, the text ignored, the voicemail not listened to, the email not replied to, and most of all, the sense that in our care is the other person's trust and we have totally and absolutely, with that one thing that we did not do, fractured it somehow.

It is a common courtesy for people to stop with the dispensing of their own opinions of people who they do not know personally. It is a common courtesy for us to excuse ourselves when we have done something rude without meaning to. It is a common courtesy to tip our hat or apologize to others for behaving like morons. It is a common courtesy for us to know when we are being rude and a common courtesy to make it right when we know this is the truth. It is a common and tragic thing, though, that we know all of this but do nothing to remedy it because for the most part, we have, as a whole and on the whole, failed ourselves.

And it is time that it STOPPED.

Rudeness abounds...

People who know me for real know one thing about me and it is one thing that my photos do not announce to the world and that one thing is that I am a huge stickler for good manners, for behaving in a proper way, for not assuming that any one of us knows the truth of a thing without our first also finding out that we are or are not correct in our assumptions. We see this sort of behavior EVERYWHERE we go anymore, the assuming that we know better because we think we are that damned much better than everyone else and everywhere we go and everyone we meet seems to have this energy about them that tells them that their opinion is fact, that they had a good reason for being such a rude person, that they had a good enough reason for someone to do or not do what they knew was the most courteous thing to do. Sometimes it is unavoidable, the things that irritate us, like when our phones are in need of being replaced or when we are so busy with what we are doing that we cannot send a message back to anyone - and it happens to us all.

Yet, more often than not, human beings are inclined to go with whatever it is that allows us each to have to have the thought in our heads that a good decision must be made, one made from the brain and not from our emotions, and one that is tied to our being able to handle the thing that is at the end of it all, and the thing in this case that is at the end of it all is called courtesy. Courtesy is something that is a rare find these days. In my own line of work I am called upon to do the "mom thing" and teach grown people how to have manners. Yup, you read that correctly - among us are those who are our age (you know..ADULTS) who obviously and apparently did not pay attention to whoever it was who was the one in their lives who taught them, or maybe did not teach them how to behave properly in the company of other people. This is a sad fact that as a whole we have cultivated and have as the very truth of us all.

We have taken our own arrogance and our own egotistical ways and have enforced them onto the rest of the planet. We have taken it upon ourselves that we know better than everyone else, and in that inclination we have also made it so that who we are in the lives and eyes of others is this person who, if you are not in agreement with them, they will take offense and think you are against them somehow. Let it be well known now that no one is really "for" or "against" anyone else at all, and that this is yet another mechanism of the Ego self telling us each that somehow, while other people are important to us and to our lives, they are not as important as we are in the grander scheme of the All that is. While this is the truth that we have to be the priority in our own lives as far as happiness and peace and Love is concerned, where it is that we need to be these things stops when we feel like making others feel like they are not important at all is where we are wrong. And when we need to compare us to anyone at all is when this load of crap hits the fan.

I am likened to telling people that they have to think about how it was that they came to the idea that somehow they are more important than other people are. I am often times audibly heard telling someone that they "need to check yourself before you wreck yourself," and it is something that does not register to a whole lot of egotistical people and it does not register because by the time they are in my awareness, whether or not they showed up there by someone else's referral or they were sent to me by their manager or they were simply just meant to be part of my own consciousness....it does not matter...by the time they end up with me is about the time that the entirety of the world which they call their own has finally had just about enough of their crap. This crap that they like to place into other peoples' lives is the thing that anyone wants these people to get rid of. People actually love the people in their lives, even the crappy and arrogant ones, and it is because to a whole lot of us it is not the attitude but the reason behind it that is telling us more than any arrogant fool will believe we are told.

The truth is that there are people on the planet like me who have had about enough of people showing up at work or in the lives of other people period and believing that the only truth there is is their own. This is correct, because we all have our own truth and we should all live by that truth, but that is a truth that sometimes, when we are not as highly evolved as we want to believe ourselves to be, is lost on a whole lot of people. It is a beautiful thing to see a grown man who behaved like he was still a 19 year old kid come to the point that he knows he must change, that he knows he has to be the one to exact that change, and lo and behold - one day, this formerly boorish idiot evolved into the most attractive person on the planet to a whole lot more than only one person. This is called the evolution of man, literally. 

The truth is that more times than not, it takes someone whose job it is literally to make it known to a person that they are behaving like a fool, that who they are has been so overblown by the person they think they want to be and who they try being before the work they need to do takes place that no matter what they do outside of someone teaching them and showing them not only where they are wrong but how to make it right, that they literally give off an energy that is like poison to the newly evolved but evolved and do not know they are evolved. They give off an energy that is like fleas on a dog in August, an energy that is like having eaten way too much and releasing gas into a crowded room and then having the audacity to blame it on the food and still not correct themselves with a simple little phrase that is "Pardon me..."

That is too difficult for some folks. It is too difficult for some folks to think about themselves in human being type terms, enough so that they would make an ass out of themselves than to have manners, believing that having manners is somehow a sign of weakness.

Having good manners is anything but a sign of weakness. It is a sign of personal, professional and social strength. It means that there is not a situation that you cannot deal with, even if you cannot deal with it, and that no matter what, it will be with grace and ease that you will get yourself out of a situation that might suck for everyone involved without certain social skills. This is the commonality between us all that is like lice in a kindergarten classroom. Either way, common courtesy is something that is most assuredly learned and is something that we all need to have a sense of, because having a sense of those things also opens the doors for us in other areas of life. It doesn't mean that you are not cool if you don't say "excuse me" when it is appropriate, and is, in fact, quite the opposite, and if you don't believe me try pushing past a very beautiful woman or a strikingly handsome man and be a boorish fool with them and then think about their reaction.

It will be one of disdain and they will be repelled by your energy. This is not my rule but that of the Universe.

This is not my rule but is one rule which I have not only stood by but am teaching other people to learn to live by - the idea that having manners is somehow uncool escapes my thinking. To believe that we are here but that only some of us are privileged enough to have the very nerve to think that there are some of us who are allowed to be rude to others and expect that they will not be rude right back just annoys me to no end.While it is within certain rights of freedom of expression in some countries, it is also our right and more - our human being type duty - to treat other people decently. 

The very idea that we are allowed to be rude to whoever we want to be is one thing, but to go out into the world and actually live this way is the reason why so many of us believe that we are somehow above everyone else, and well, that is just another sort of thing that I teach that really, I never thought people would need to be taught. And I make no bones about it when I am schooling someone in a properly mannered sort of way. It makes for great writing.

Don't be so damned rude ! Yeesh !

I LOVE YOU ALL
ROX

Reverend Roxanne Cottell is the Kumu Hula and Creator of the Healing with Hula Program for Women and the Co-Founder of Na Hula O Ka Wahine 'Ui - The Sisterhood of The Soul. She is a blogger, book author, choreographer , Public Speaker, Domestic Violence and Emotional Abuse Survivors Advocate and Spiritual Coach. If you would like to contact her for speaking engagements, Spiritual Consultations, or for anything else, please send an email to reverendroxie22@gmail.com 
(c)  Roxanne K. Cottell. All Rights Reserved

Let me break it down for you like this, fellas...

A beautiful woman is not a hair style or the tag in her clothes...

My heart just breaks when I hear that someone has decided to be way, way creepy and has told a woman - any woman, namely one who is just looking for someone to be nice to her, that how she looks is who she is, is what is the most important thing to any man.

Don't listen to anyone who tells you that you are not beautiful just as you are

The line in the song says that we are beautiful, no matter what they say, and this is the damned truth. I think the most upsetting thing to any woman is not that she is not anyone's preferred type, but that someone has the very audacity to tell her that there is something wrong with them because said woman is not the ideal of one man. I say to hell with that person, and to hell with anyone else who cannot get themselves past the idea that who we are and what we are made of and what we are each all about is only important if we look a certain way with a certain hairstyle and a certain number in the tag in our jeans.

This is hurtful is what it is. It is hurtful for anyone to tell anyone else that what they look like is the thing that matters the most, and I am here to tell you that the only person to whom that matters is someone who cares what other people think of THEM, not you. They are worried that the woman on their arm is not someone who their stupid friends would think was beautiful, and the last time I checked, there is no real woman alive who would not be hurt by the words breathed by an unenlightened guy who only goes by what is seen of a woman. It is hurtful for us to hear that someone thinks that there is something wrong with us because we do not match up to their ideal of what is a beautiful woman.

What is a beautiful woman

...or rather who, is more like it.

A beautiful woman can be seen and known, not by what her hair looks like, and not by who designs her hair, not by the tag on the ass pocket of her jeans, and damned sure not by the tag on the inside either, but only and truly by who she is on the inside. A beautiful woman is a woman who is human and capable, is one who can accept her flaws without making an issue of them, and this is also the woman who, with a little time, will be the one who the man who hurt her feelings with his insensitivity and his boorish remarks watches walking away from him, and when that day comes, it will have been after she has told him that he is just not ready for her and quite possibly will never be.

He will never be ready for her because he is the man who needs to collect certain types of women, like we are prizes or notches on his belt. He will never be ready for her because he is too busy with being the guy who everyone is judging by the things and the people he is with, and he is the guy who might be easy on the eyes but in the heart and the soul he is like sandpaper on a fresh wound. He is the guy who will, eventually, be the one who thinks that he has all the answers, will be the one who expects a good woman to kneel to his own perceived greatness and he will be the one who will tell this woman, the one who he hand picked and the one who he also used his hands to pick on, that she is good but that she is not as good as he is, and he will be the one to tell her that she needs to act a certain way, and be a certain way, and he will also be the one who, if she marries him, will make her life a private living hell, just from the things that he tells her that she is not.

What she is not

What she is not is his property, and what she is not is not the one who will make him look good because guarantees are that if one person thinks he is a douche bag, there is likely a whole lot of other people who think he is, too.

What she is not is the representation of all the things that he thinks he deserves, and what she is not is his show pony. What she is meant to be is the culmination of the love within him and not the culmination or the prize at the end of the game called "I have goals and a hot chick to my specs is one of them..."

She is not a goal. She is not a score. She is not something that is not tangible at the same time that she is an intangible being because she is not a thing and she cannot be owned.

A woman is not a thing, but a human being. When the world realizes that we are powerful in our own right it will also know that this has been the truth all along.

I Love You All !

ROX

Stand Your Ground (18+)

When it comes to the Sanctity of Life and perpetuation of Love through every means possible, there is no other way....
You must stand your ground.

We are all feeling the effects of the Stand Your Ground laws which played a huge role in the most notorious case since the 1990's. I will not make mention of what happened, because there is no reason to remind the world of parents that a mother and a father lost their son.

We must, people, learn to value Life, period. This is the tragedy born out of the fear that has been pounded into our heads since we were all children - that it is better to be safe than it is to be sorry, even if safety is through lethal means. Sometimes, as has been proved just by judging how poorly people are dealing with this, lethal means is not the best way, because it makes people think they are allowed to take the life of another person  This is a sorry state that we have come to. The only thing that anyone needs to be sorry about at this point in time is the sadness that a young man's memory will be tainted by what a jury panel decided was important - and you do not need to be told that it was life and that it really is not freedom to carry or use a weapon, and not "justice," because when there is a loss of a young life, there is no justice. It is life. This young man did not have to die this way. Yet, he did, and now the whole world ....the ENTIRE world...is being told that it is about race.

I am sorry folks, but it is not about race. It is about hatred and having an excuse to act like jack-offs and use that hatred as the fuel that excuses people from thinking, period.

I reiterate - this is not now nor has it really ever been about anything more than fear and hatred, and both of those things, when chosen as the prevailing energy, suck ass.

It is not about racism

This is not about racism. This is about the idea that we devalue the life of another human being so much that we have, again, become divided, and over what? A law that said that guy could shoot someone else if he was afraid? Really? And now we have these big giant shows of hatred, and people protesting...(whatever)....on the damned freeways...in Los Angeles- wake up, folks - this has NOTHING to do with race, at least not the way that we are thinking it does.

That the shooter made this about race is one thing. That the populace should know better than to buy into mainstream media's idea that we have to fight over skin color, and then they go further to bait the populace is another story all together. Really, what time it is is NOT time to make this about race, because it is not about race, but rather and only about the sanctity of life.

We do not value life anymore. It is evident in the way that people vote for women's health rights and thinking that the only way to value life is to control ours. It is evident in the way that we look at each other - through eyes that have been seeing through lenses that are scratched and that make everything seem like it is something that it is not. No one said that we have to continue to fight with each other, over the most insidious things - people believe that they should have things handed to them, including the right to take up arms, gather up the hateful masses, and make this tragedy their reason to hate.

Guys, this is NOT A CALL TO FIGHT but a call to think about who we are for real. We are not meant to hate on each other, but that is what we are doing, using this young man's memory as the reason why. There is not enough talking me into the idea that I should be on one side or the other, but I chose and will remain to choose the side that says we are not thinking about that young man's family, and we are speaking for them, so to speak, at least a lot of us, when what they really need is to shut the hell up, sit the fuck down,  and be able to let this young man rest peacefully.

It is not enough that his parents already lost him, but to have his memory and who he was to them tainted by all this hate, by all this ignorance, by all these things I am sure that his parents do not want happening is the thing that we need dearly to stand our ground on and against. Yes, the shooter legally had the right to shoot this kid, but that is why this is so terrible - because adults who think they are thinking with their hearts are thinking with a heart that is filled with hatred and believing that because they are a "color" that they have the right and the duty to speak for someone else. I am sorry, but I, too, can be thought of as being a "color," and I promise I do not agree with ANY of the violence that is happening in the name of the boy, who was black, and the shooter, who was not, and neither do I believe that any one person who is making all this noise and causing all this bullshit has ANYTHING to say about anything other than that they believe that this is about race.

It is NOT about race, but about equality, and if you feel like you should be handed anything, including the right to behave like a jack-off and make more violence become our collective reality, the right to shoot your mouth off, the right to threaten people because of their race, then you are a big giant jack off. A big giant jack off  who does not think with the entirety of the whole of us in mind... A big giant jack-off  who believes that they must be the karmic debt repayment for the sins that they feel were committed on them. It was the shooter who used poor judgment, but it was the jury who people should be considering and NOT the jack-off who pulled the trigger. That the shooter is a panty-waist is one thing, but that we are making his foolishness the reason that everyone else has to behave like jack-offs is an entire other story all together.

This is so not about race, was never about race.

It was not about race until someone said that it was. That the shooter is what he is is one thing, and that the boy was what he was is another, but this is not about race. This is about fear. This is about hatred. This is about anything other than preserving the memory of that young man and more about reviving memories that a lot of us don't have.

This is fear at its finest, because there is a large majority of us in the United States who have taken this up as their own fight for equality, and the only equality that they are claiming is that they, at one time in their lives, because someone else said so, believed what they were told about themselves, about the color of their skin- they believed it. I know this is the truth because I am a recovering closeted racist. My excuse a lot of years ago that I had made up was not one about my hating on white folks, but my hating my own self because I was not white. Yep....you read it right...I used to think that I was not right, because I was not white. I am not that person anymore, and I am very proudly Keiki O Ka'aina...I am fiercely, proudly Kanaka...fiercely proudly Hawaiian, and I am not scared to let people know that no, I am not white, and that yes, I am proud of my roots, but no, you have nothing to do with the past that spoke of the slavery of my people on our own islands. If you do not believe me, ask a real historian with Hawaiian roots and not one that is not of that origin. Not because of anything other than that you will get the entirety of the truth about the Hawaiian islands. That is neither here nor there, because I love me and I love where I came from.

I found out a lot of years later that I do not need to be anything else but a human being, because that eliminates anything "race." I am not a race. I am a human, and the majority of us on this planet are also human. If you feel like you have been made less human by anyone it is because you believed what you were told, believed what someone else said that hurt you, and you carried that with you, all this time. I could get ass hurt, be a whiny bitch about how I feel that the justice system failed this young man, but that is not the truth. It is a tragedy, period. No matter how anyone wants to look at this is irrelevant, because it is all based on an opinion that really is not the fact.

The fact is that people who think that they need to spend their time behaving as though the outcome of this whole entire travesty has more to do with 5 white jurors hating on people of ethnicity, let me remind you that the more hatred that anyone puts into this mess, the more we mock the life of that young man, of his family, of ourselves, and the more that we choose to believe that we are inadequate because we have skin color, the more that we make people who really do feel like they are better than "colors" will ever be, and the truth about those people is that they are not worried about things as much as the rest of the world of colors is, because theirs is a quiet hatred, one that is as old as would be ANY generation and ethnic hatred would be and is.

...yes...I have a place to talk...because when that verdict was handed down, suddenly I had skin color...again. I am not a color, and neither is anyone else. Period.

I have skin color. Period. I like it. It goes well with my black hair and my brown eyes. I could sit here, angry at the whole white race for things that their ancestors did to the Hawaiian Monarchy and our last sitting Monarch, Queen Lydia Liliu'okalani Paki of the Nation of Hawai'i, but why? Why should I bother with the idea that a long, long time ago, business interests from the United States went over to the islands and took them. They jailed our queen in her stateroom in her home - 'Iolani Palace - and to this day Hawaiians are not only up in arms but in a somewhat quiet manner we are divided, and this should just not be. Where some of us fight to keep the Hawaiian Spirit alive by passing on our treasured traditions and ways, there are a lot of us who are tying hard to take the islands back. I wish them luck. .

My thought is that we should not be showing our babies and the younger generations of Kanaka Maoli how to hate, but that is exactly what is happening. We, not me, not really any mainland Hawaiians, and a few on the islands who are more worried that our beautiful culture of Aloha and of Lokahi and Ohana are going to be lost in the fight for our sovereignty as a nation, when instead we would be better able to preserve our culture's ways. We should be passing on our spiritual traditions, and while I get it with the idea that we need to be recognized as a nation of people, what I do not get is that we have to fight with each other over things that will take generations to make right.

To perpetuate the fight within our children is one thing, but to encourage them to hate strangers for something that said stranger's ancestors did a long time ago is preposterous to me and a monstrously huge amount of time and energy wasted on people who just do not care what we think. We would sooner fight for a label than the truth. We are supposed to be teaching our kids to love, but instead we are instructing them on who is to be hated, because of the color of their skin, and this just breeds an entirely new sense of self-hatred and makes a kid question why it is that if they are so special, why is it that they cannot claim as theirs what is rightly theirs?

Hatred is not theirs, but it somehow belongs to the whole of us when we decide that one tiny group of people have made a choice and that that choice makes it okay for us to go out into the streets and behave like stupid assholes.

We need to stand our ground, be proud of who we are as humans, not quietly angry that this is a setback for racial rights. It is not a setback. You are an asshole if you think that this is yet another person trying to make peace by kissing ass. I do not kiss ass. I am not an asshole. I know how to be angry without hating people for something as stupid as our own beliefs about what someone else told us was the truth. It is not the truth that the boy died because he was black - he died because the shooter is a chicken shit, and I really don't care what the fuck anyone thinks about this, do not give two shits if I lose readers, could not care one little bit less if anyone goes off on a rant with me about how I have no clue about the reality of racism in this country.

Really, asshole? I think I might have a tiny little bit of a clue...now run along before I cuss your sorry ass out!

Get on out into the world and create peace, not lies. Create Love, not hurt.

Get on out there and create a new life with us, and stop hating on yourselves because a long time ago someone named "Al" told you that it is the white man who holds us back. I promise you that it is not the white man, but that it is men like that fucker Al who like stirring shit up and making minorities feel like motherfucken minorities.

And to THAT fucker...I say that if he wants to debate someone, do it without cameras, or at least without all of his "people"...dude, you have no people...you ain't god damned Moses.

If what you want to see is the creation of a new world, it has to start with a new thought, and we are the ones who have to come up with that thought...

I Love You All!
(Even though at this time many of you are pissing me off)

ROX

It all begins with you

Everyone wants change to happen. Change doesn't just happen.

Change doesn't just happen. It has to be cultivated, and it has to be thought out, and it has to be able to become real. A whole lot of people just think that when they change their mind that it is so very simple to just go with it. This is not the truth. The truth is that in order for us to go from our darkness and toward our light and getting there guided by the Light within, there needs to be some work going on, and that work has to start on the inside. To change anything at all takes time, because what we are dealing with everyday is a fluctuation in the things that we believe. Change is not easy. Change takes work and change takes time and change takes everything within us each to believe that there is something better for us that will come to us and through us. Without our involvement, we will only want change to happen. In order for change to happen, we have to do what it takes to make it that way.

We have to start with our thought process.

While it is the truth that more and more people are beginning to take notice of the thoughts that they think having everything to do with what they perceive to be the world in which they themselves both live and have created, what is also true is that the people in our lives who seem to be having the hardest time with life in general and who are bitching about it all the time are the very people for whom this is written. To those people who want change to happen TO them, well, y'all are waiting for God to come knockin' on your door like so many evangelists annoyingly do far more than anyone needs to know their version of the word of God.

You have to actively want to have things better for you, and as much as you want the changes to happen to you is as much you also have to think that all the work that you are going to do is worth it. Change is not easy. Change means, to a lot of people, that we are just not right. To believe that we even need to change anything about ourselves is, again, for some people, akin to telling ourselves that there is something essentially wrong with who we are. There is nothing wrong with anyone. There is only the stagnant nature that is the will of the Ego prodding us to remain in our comfort zone and hope and pray that change will visit us. If that isn't enough, a lot of people also believe that good change only happens for lucky people.

Of course, then there are those ones who seem to believe that they are somehow owed by Spirit the things in life that they want so bad. These are the people who are the abusers in our midst. These are the ones who live their lives with their arrogance plainly seen by the very world and these are the people who believe that who they are is the greatest example of what everyone else on the planet would like to be like, and if they don't want to be like them then there is something wrong with everyone. else. These are the types who we see in government who refuse to let go of a woman's right to choose what is best for her life and her body, and these are the types who feel like they have to put anyone at all in their place, just because putting someone else in whatever it is that the overblown morons seem to believe is the only right way to do anything, think anything, be anything.

These very people, the ones whom I have described in the paragraph above this...these are the ones who are the most fearful, because these are the ones who believe that they know what is best for everyone because they happen to know what is most comfortable and appealing to them. When someone feels like they have to maintain control over anyone else it means that they are afraid, and they will, even knowingly, make other people afraid to think for themselves, will make a person hurt for wanting to be who they are. This happens everyday to a whole lot of people, and there is an entire population of people who are on the receiving end of those ways who are, for the life of them, caught between a rock and a hard place. Abusers are people who hurt, dearly, and are people who never believed that there was anything about themselves that needed or need to be addressed, and these are the very ones who go through life fearing anything different, new, and more, anything which will render them no longer in control of someone else.

The thing about this, though, is that what these abusers are not realizing is that not only are they scared of everything, but by their very own actions based in fear and manifested as control of others, are completely out of control.

Completely OUT of CONTROL !

There is not one single survivor of DV who will not agree with me when I say that when someone feels like they need to control someone else, the person who needs to have that control is completely OUT of their mind. Parasitic people who believe that what is someone else's is also theirs to take are out of control because when they were growing up, someone else had control over their lives, and they didn't like it. Yet, even though they know what they went through with the people who were bad to them, some of them, in order to feel some sort of normalcy that is the most abnormal sense of normal that any one person could believe it to be, take control over someone else.

Parents are phenomenal at control, namely the very strictly religious parents, as well as the "I will live vicariously through my kids because I didn't live my life the way I wanted to and I still don't because my own parents are still controlling my life and my every thought" sort of parents. When we as parents do not allow, within certain reason, our own children to make their own choices, to think their own thoughts, to choose what they will and will not believe, even if that means what they believe is not the same as what we believe, we end up stifling their Spiritual growth, end up harming their souls in the long run, because when we have to have control over everything that they feel, think, are, will do, whatever, it means that we are still, somehow, under control of our own parents. When we try to make right the wrongs that were done to us as children, and we choose to follow the same pattern that our parents showed us, and we impart that mark on the soul without regard for the human being they are meant to become.

When we show little regard for the children who we bring into this lifetime, and we deal them the same hand of cards from essentially the same deck our hand in life was drawn from, we are paving the way for those children to do as we do rather than to do what it is that comes most natural to them or to anyone else for that matter - the natural ability to simply be who they are for real. As parents we haven't the right to ruin them, to make them feel unworthy as they are. This is what telling people what to do, and what trying to keep others under our thumb causes them - a very real feeling of not being good enough and a feeling that the person has that tells them that even in their own skin they are not right.

It is a judgment on us when someone else criticizes us, a ding to the heart and a marring of the pride in who we each are. If we are told that we must be one way and that if we do not remain that way, the person who tells us this threatens to take away the thing that all abuse victims and survivors crave, want, and the one thing that all humans need - Love, of others, for others, of ourselves and for ourselves. Telling other people that they have to not grow and not be who they really are so that we can feel better about who we are not is the most common and very much the harshest kind of abuse there is, because it is abusing the Self within that takes place. And the Self is who needs to grow, and if the Self cannot grow or more than that, is manipulated in to believing, through the ego of the person who is being abused, not allowed to grow because of false boundaries and a conditional and violent nature of the "love" from the abuser, then surely, the Self will become crippled.

We were meant to be different, meant to like things that are not the same as everyone else, and we were meant to also change and grow and become the best version of who we each are, to not remain safe and secure in the false notion that if we choose to change to better our own lives, we are somehow not good enough for ourselves, because we want to change, and this makes our abusers manipulate that one thing in us so that they can maintain control over our lives. If we choose instead to follow the whims of the warrior within whose only mission in this lifetime for you, the body on the outside, is the growth that you are meant to experience, we find out through the pain and the hurt that on the other side of all the tears is the ocean called freedom, of choice, of will, of self, of soul, of Life.

And these are the gifts which we are offered in exchange for the false sense of security that comes with the promises made to us when things are rosy, when things are tolerable by any measure at all, and when the person or people in our lives who deem acceptable the reigning in of the Self so as to not impede their goal of never allowing anyone else to become the best version of who they are, simply and only because the abusers of the world fear everything.

Of course, the one thing that is scariest to someone who is afraid of not being all that they tell everyone else on the planet they are- no matter what it is - is that other people will know that while they are scary on the outside, on the inside they afraid to grow, afraid to change, because ultimately, they are afraid that who they really are in the Soul, no one will Love. Let me make this much clear...you can only be truly Loved by everyone else when you can truly Love Yourself. These abusers fear Loving others completely, because they do not understand, will reject, do not believe that it all begins with them. It all begins with Love of Self.

That one thing that all abusers are is afraid of being found out, afraid of other people no longer fearing them, no longer living in the shadow that is the evidence of another's own inner demons constantly giving them the idea that without someone in their lives to reign control over, they have no proof of their power. The other thing that they are deadly afraid of is the scariest thing of all to them...

...that you will have proof not only of their lack of control and power over themselves, as well as proof of the overflowing dearth of power and control that the person who they told and believed to be weaker than they are actually possesses and actually always has had.

You are more powerful than you know, than you believe you are. You have the power to control the world that you call your own.

It all begins with you!

I LOVE YOU ALL!
ROX

Reverend Roxanne Cottell is the Kumu Hula and Creator of the Healing with Hula Program for Women and the Founder of Na Hula O Ka Wahine 'Ui - The Sisterhood of The Soul. She is a blogger, book author, choreographer , Public Speaker, Domestic Violence and Emotional Abuse Survivors Advocate and Spiritual Coach. If you would like to contact her for speaking engagements, Spiritual Consultations, or for anything else, please send an email to reverendroxie22@gmail.com 
(c) 2013 Roxanne K. Cottell. All Rights Reserved