FOSTER BOYS

Lifelong Healing

Next door this month's
boys bounce a basketball,
call fouls,
shoot and miss
shout insults
shoot and score
groan and flop around inside
some ill-fitting girl-friend-shooting celebrity vision
they, unfortunately, may yet grow into.

Questions 1 & 2

Lifelong Healing

For the abused, sometimes there are more questions than answers. Sometimes the answers curl up inside the questions. Sometimes by asking the questions, we can move beyond befuddlement, enchantment, enthrallment and find energy to move on.

Question 1

We've been well schooled in what to do

when the roads diverge before us.

But what shall we do when the once wide way 

abruptly ends    and the world slams down 
dreadful and silent before us?

Question 2 

How does it start -- this

journey    back 
or is it this

journey in or through or to?

No matter.
The question hits its mark    hooks the answer
in the belly of every cell    sends it howling forth:
Go-o-o-o!

No bag to pack

No call to make

No epiphany to enlighten

No amulet to protect

No Odyssean guide

No seductive pause on diverging roads --

No archetypal pattern -- not even a primal urge for forward thrust

But  a simple   certain   cellular  guttural utterance in unison --

     Go-o-o-o!  

Warsaw writer recounts journey from abuse to healing

Lifelong Healing

Reprinted with permission from THE DUPLIN TIMES

Todd Wetherington

Staff writer

WARSAW — The Southern U.S. has long been known as a region where family is honored as a source of strength and nurturing, where the ties that bind serve to both protect and maintain values and traditions developed over generations. But those ties can also serve darker purposes, ones not generally discussed in polite company—to cloak secrets and actions of the most heinous, soul-deforming nature.

Sandra Pope is living testament to the damage families can inflict with those secrets. Sitting in the living room at her home in Warsaw last week, her pale blue eyes reflecting the early evening light spilling in through the blinds, the 65-year-old mother of two discussed the events that led her, five years ago, to write a book detailing the sexual and psychological abuse she suffered at the hands of family members as a young child. The book also recounts the years of soul searching and recovery that would eventually lead her back to the community where so many of her most troubling memories still linger.

In her book “Growing Up Without The Goddess: A Journey through Sexual Abuse to theSacred Embrace of Mary Magdalene,” Pope vividly recalls her early childhood years growing up in Greensboro and the central Tennessee mountains in the 1950s with her mother and stepfather. The book  moves through Pope’s teenage years in the Duplin County of the mid ‘60s and continues on to describe her attempts, as an emotionally troubled adult, to free herself of the confusion and self destructive habits arising from her past. 

Pope’s story eventually leads her back to the land of her father’s family, Warsaw, and the decision to revisit her past by setting it down in book form.

 “I think I was drawn to write it because there was so much dysfunction and confusion in my life,” explained Pope. “I just reached a time, after I came here and I had revisited many of the places that had been a part of my childhood and a part of my wounding, that I just felt it was ready to be told, that my personal story had places in it that many people would intersect with.”

According to Pope, beginning at the age of seven she was raped repeatedly over a period of nearly four years by her brother, Arthur. As an adult, she would come to believe that she had been sexually abused at an even earlier age, by her birth father, who died when she was an infant.

The book also recounts physical abuse Pope suffered at the hands of her stepfather, known as Big Arthur, in the form of beatings that would leave her bloody and bruised.

Though the early chapters of “Growing Up Without the Goddess”  graphically detail the circumstances of Pope’s sexual and physical abuse, they also offer vivid and lovingly rendered evocations of the southern landscape — woods, rivers, favorite trees — where the budding bookworm and nature lover would seek refuge from her often harrowing family life.

In the book, Pope is also frank about the ambiguous nature of the abuse she suffered at the hands of her brother, who she admits to loving unconditionally throughout her childhood. “I was able to lose myself in school and nature during the day, but at night, I lost myself in him. By then, it felt natural,” she writes.

In the fifth grade, Pope found an outlet that would prove to be key to her future peace of mind and process of self-discovery — writing.

“I’ve always found that it’s a way to, not just tell a story, but to figure things out,” she commented.

At the age of 11, Pope was separated from her brother and sent to live with her paternal aunt and uncle in Warsaw — called “Wisteria” in the book — after a court battle in which her mother was declared unfit to care for her.

Pope describes her high school days as “the numb years,” a time when she attempted to forget the disturbing events of her past by focusing on academics and presenting herself as a “proper” young woman.

Though she strained to conform to the wishes of her religiously conservative relatives, the knowledge she had gained far too early in life as a result of abuse set her apart from her peers, leaving her uniquely aware of the suffering and hidden intentions of friends, family members, and strangers.

After graduating from James Kenan High School in 1966 Pope attended the University of North Carolina in Greensboro but dropped out after one year, turning her back on two full scholarships.

Having left college, Pope embarked on a life of political activism, working as a community organizer for Lumbee Indians and African American populations in  Greensboro and Fayetteville. Pope describes her persona at this time as “a hard core politico, not an alternative life style flower child.”

According to Pope, this period in her life was marked by an inability to form lasting relationships with men, and by the almost unconscious transformations she would undergo in order to better accommodate each new partner.

“What happens when you’re abused is you form other personalities, you dissociate, and I was quite clever at that all my life,” she explained. “If I was with a man who was a comedian, I could very quickly develop my talents that way; if was with a political activist, I was an even better political activist. But there was a hollowness that I wanted to fill.”

Pope eventually landed in California, where after several divorces and the birth of twin daughters, she would finally begin seeking answers to the emptiness she sensed inside herself.

Pope said the birth of her twin daughters, Ana and Dani, when she 32 coincided with her realization that something profoundly disturbing was beginning to rise to the surface of her consciousness. Shortly thereafter, she began attending guided imagery sessions, a form of therapy in which a facilitator uses descriptive language intended to psychologically invoke mental imagery, often involving several or all of the senses, in the mind of the listener.

She also became a practitioner of Jungian therapy, named for the Swiss psychiatrist who developed the concepts of extraversion and introversion, archetypes, and the collective unconscious.

 Twenty years after leaving North Carolina, Pope would reunite with her mother. “I was searching for the missing parts of my story that might explain my brokenness,” she writes.

She would also discover that her father had abused his own sister, Pope’s Aunt Dolores, when they were children.

“There were invisible forces at work in my life, suddenly pulling me in directions I had not planned to go,” she remembers.

At age 54, Pope reconnected with a man she had dated during her senior year in high school, Bill Rollins, and returned to Warsaw. Pope and Rollins would eventually marry, a bond that has provided a haven for her to delve deeply into the past, with all its attendant shadows and traps.

“It’s not the positive story that anybody wants to hear so that’s been hard, but I’m okay with that now because I know consciousness is medicine, it has been for me and I know it will be for other people.”

After a four year process of writing, editing, and rewriting, “Growing Up Without The Goddess: A Journey through Sexual Abuse to the Sacred Embrace of Mary Magdalene,” was published in 2008. Discussing the title of her book, Pope explained that the Goddess, as personified by the figure of Mary Magdalene in the Christian religion,  represents the sacred feminine energy that acts as a balance to masculine aggressiveness at work in the world. Pope argues that any society that does not value and respect that feminine image will ultimately accept and rationalize sexual abuse.

According to Pope, the act of recalling past events brought about many of the same feelings and reactions as the original experiences.

“I was lucky that I was and still am in therapy, because I would get to a certain part of the experience and start to describe it and I wouldn’t be able to breath easily. I would have to go do something else. The thing about emotional landscapes is that when you revisit them its as though it’s happening in present time, so I would remind myself that I wasn’t eight anymore, or 11 anymore.”

Pope describes the book as her attempt to unearth a certain aspect of male dominated culture that allows men to mete out abuse on the women in their lives with impunity. “That part of our culture is still active. It may not be as active but it’s still active and there’s still people, both the perpetrators and the victims, who are stuck in that dynamic.”

Pope stressed that her book is not meant as an indictment of any particular region or people. “I don’t think it’s a damning story. I think it’s a historical phase where there are parts of a culture that need to be exposed so they can die off and a new cycle can begin. And I don’t think it’s just limited to this area; of course it isn’t. But this is where it happened to me, this is where it grew from for me and this is where I am.”

Though she has held readings of her book across North Carolina in the five years since it was published, Pope said she has only now begun to feel comfortable publicizing  it in her home county. 

“I hadn’t been doing much writing so I went back to my book and started reading it, and I realized my story is everybody’s story, even if they haven’t been personally abused. I realized I was egotistical not to let this story go, to pretend that it’s just mine.”

While the raw details of the book read like a southern gothic novel, the facts as Pope recalls them are all too familiar to thousands of women throughout the U.S.

“According to the statistics, one in four women in the U.S. has been abused. There’s a really big cesspool there that has to be cleaned up.”

Pope said she believes society as a whole has made significant gains in educating its citizens about sexual abuse. She said many young people are now more aware of the potential dangers from would be abusers.

“It’s not as easy for perpetrators to groom their victims over time because of information about what’s appropriate that is out there. It still happens and it still happens way too much but I think the whistle might get blown a little sooner and there might be help available a little sooner.”

Pope said she has come to understand the perpetrators are often victims themselves. “That doesn’t mean I want to be around them. But it means that I understand that it has been a part of the culture that needs to be brought to light and needs to be changed.”

According to Pope, she has attempted to contact her brother since returning to Duplin County. Though she has spoken to his daughter, there has been no reunion with Arthur. “Does he fear me?” asks Pope in the book. “Does he feel the shadow of the past fall across the path of the life he has built so painstakingly since he closed the door on our dark deeds decades ago…”

Asked to describe her present state of mind concerning the trauma that was visited on her as a child, the strength of will that allowed a seven-year-old child of the South to carry on in the face of her own terrible knowledge rises just beneath Pope’s composed, seemingly fragile exterior.

“I’m in total non-acceptance. I’m in total recovery and healing and resistance to the ways of being that I learned in order to survive that weren’t right for me. I will hold my peace; I will hold my tongue most of the time. But there are times when I won’t. There’s no other way for me to be.”

Todd Wetherington may be reached at twetherington@ncweeklies.com or 910-296-0239.

The "Righting" Process and No Place to Hide (Was there ever?)

Lifelong Healing

GROWING UP WITHOUT THE GODDESS was published five years ago, but I kept it secret in my hometown. I had readings in Raleigh, Greensboro, Wilmington, and an invitation-only secret reading in Magnolia, NC. I was afraid to go public locally, afraid I could not stand the scrutiny, the judgment, the misunderstanding, the denials, and the anger my story of sexual and physical abuse could unleash.

A few months ago after being unemployed and wondering about my life's purpose for months, I read GROWING UP WITHOUT THE GODDESS again. I was surprised at the writing. Yes, by its quality, for it is certainly well written, thanks to the muses that be. But the lessons the book taught me, the understanding that came through the writing/righting process surprised me most, and I wondered that I had ever known them. Grateful, then, to learn them again.

Grateful, too, to understand that those lessons were meant for more than me, that writing the book was truly about making right again a pattern that had been warped in my life from an early age because I was abused by family -- by those who should have protected, nurtured, and honored me. Writing the book showed me that what had been warped in my life and stolen my power had been warped in the culture as a whole, and certainly in my hometown Southern culture.

All of us who have been sexually or physically abused know that healing is a lifelong process -- one that recurs, perhaps on a higher level each time, but must recur, must be revisited again and again. Not the searing pain. We can leave that behind most of the time when it has taught us all we need to know or can bear to know in the moment. Healing the continued pain caused by the vibrational patterning that was set askew and has made us unable to be ourselves and use our talents fully -- that healing is lifelong. And any knowledge about ways to create that healing belongs to everyone.

Tomorrow an article about my abuse, recovery, and book will appear in our local paper, THE DUPLIN TIMES. My community is small. I am known as a teacher, a wife of a prominent writer, and as an old schoolmate to many of the 3,000 residents in my town. Tomorrow there will be no place for me to hide this other previously unknown Sandra, no wondering if others know my dark secret and the lifelong warping it caused me.

Fortunately, neither will be there be a hiding place for the shadow side of family values that de-valued me and allowed the men in my family to abuse me.

In that exposure lies my hope that having owned that piece of the culture that I, unfortunately, know well, that having brought its ugliness to light, others may speak out in their own time, find their own healing, and together we can howl out loud till fathers and brothers and cousins and uncles and strangers no longer find cultural training or support for their dark deeds, and what's wrong in the culture is righted.

Lifelong Healing

A Certain Refusal, Other People's Lives, and Wasps

In my daily work world I was assaulted twice in the last three years --physically by a favorite older student and emotionally by a trusted colleague. Now a certain, very specific refusal to work has arisen within me.

It is not laziness. It is not fear. It is not willful or intentional. It is almost paralyzing.

I simply cannot even imagine a job site without seeing danger everywhere and becoming unable to summon the old perfectionist, hyper-vigilant, appeasing energies that fueled my out-in-the-world work for decades. I look at my resume and wonder who that person is, who has those skills and talents, who held those jobs for decades.  I want to believe the refusal has purpose, allows a slow dissolving of false selves -- the secretary, the teacher, the tutor, even the writer. What will be left of me then? Will my work personas never rise again?

I don't know.

So, I fill up with other people's lives.  A critic of television and a mother, who years ago only allowed my daughters two hours of watching a week, I am now a detective mystery television show addict. I log many hours on Netflix with Luther, Rosemary, Lewis, Endeavor, Frost, Jane, Morse, Poirot, Columbo, and others.

There is one reprieve I have received that relieves the paralysis:  the old love of the inner world that Nancy Drew activated in my early years retains its power. Personal versions of these televised lives have begun to inhabit my dreams, and through them I can see what parts of myself have been cut off, separated, made vile and need re-integration. Each day I enter that dreamworld and speak with my fractured selves. There is much inner work to be done, to dispel the constructed selves, the destructive energies, break up the vibrational pathways set down by that early abuse and re-activated by workplace assaults.

Occasionally, I break away from both the inner dreamworld and the television world. I set a simple task in the outer world and eventually finish it. It may take months of looking at the same unfinished work before I can act -- like the bullet-shaped bird feeder that hangs from its metal staff by the Bradford pear tree that I see many times a day from my kitchen windows.

The feeder drew a wasp in the spring that built its nest inside. Once, in summer, I tried to oust her with blasts of water from the garden hose, my own serpent in her garden, but she returned. Remembering the bees, I left her to her work and watched from a safe distance as the weeks passed. The nest grew. Newborn, the wasps emerged.

Mid-January now. Cold. The water in the birds' dish freezes nightly. The feeder, glazed green with mold, is empty. No birds come.  Today I bring the feeder inside. Hot water and dish detergent, simple non-anti-bacterial natural dish soap, fill my kitchen sink where the bullet feeder lies submerged for hours. Gloved, I scrub it, remembering the wasps. Dry it.

Why did it take me so long to wash this feeder for its return to the birds, not the wasps? I suspect the wasps, some of whom arose from sleep during our last unseasonably warm spell, will swarm again in springtime around this remembered womb.  No matter how hot the water, nor strong the soap, I cannot dispel the vibrations that will draw those wasps again.

I do not know how.

But the birds, if they come, will know. I spill some seeds as I fill the feeder, leave them where they fall upon the ground -- a simple flirtation with fate, perhaps, a momentary conjunction of chance and will.

The Tend and Befriend Magdalene

Lifelong Healing

The Tend and Befriend Magdalene Response

When I read about Joan Norton's Magdalene Circle radio broadcast on "The Weeping Magdalene," I  was struck by the wisdom that weeping connects us to wholeness and harmony.

At first, I thought that weeping in times of challenge and crisis, like Mary Magdalene did, must cause the goddess-in-our-cells to release the tend and befriend harmonizing hormone oxytocin.

A closer look showed I was half-right:  While weeping does not produce oxytocin, it does remove its opposite, the fight or flight adreno-cortisol hormone from our blood. And this clears the way for a tend and befriend response by the parasympathetic nervous system.

The  parasympathetic nervous system is located in the brain stem, called the "old brain" by some. This  nervous system has to do with emotions, is felt in the body -- often in the stomach -- and produces the hormone oxytocin.

Oxytocin is sometimes called the birth hormone because it is released during childbirth. It is also produced during breastfeeding, hugging, cuddling, and all kinds of intimacy. It causes us to tend and befriend ourselves and others, especially in times of crisis.

Many sources say that as we women evolved, we developed the tend and befriend response as we reacted differently to threats than men did. The masculine fight or flight reaction, which dumps adrenalin and cortisol  into the body, didn't work for women -- then or now -- because we women could not fight or flee when we had small children, oldsters, heart-life, and hearths to care for.

Interestingly, men evolved so that their bodies process and eliminate adrenalin and cortisol much more rapidly than women's bodies do.  Since adreno-cortisol can cause all kinds of health problems  from diabetes to heart disease, getting rid of it fast is important.

Because we women can't discharge adreno-cortisol quickly, we're much better off if we don't go into the fight or flight response when we encounter non-life-threatening challenges in our daily life.

On the other hand, adrenalin and cortisol work well for men in daily life. These hormones allow men to be successful warriors every day in a business environment they created "in their own image" and that fits their biology, not women's.

Knowing this, women are beginning to experiment with consciously bypassing the fight or flight response and going into the tend and befriend response. I connect this tend and befriend response with qualities of the Goddess and with Mary Magdalene as the "Goddess in the Gospels." 

Fortunately, if we women find ourselves overcome by stress and unable to bypass the fight or flight response, then weeping can restore balance. Weeping is purposeful crying.

Researchers, including William H. Frey II, a biochemist at the University of Minnesota, report that crying eliminates stress hormones, specifically, the flight or fight adrenocorticotropic hormones. He reports that women cry more easily than men and five times more often. It seems that women are hard-wired to cry often because our bodies need to release toxins that men's bodies generally release in other ways.

The process for women to manage stress well and to be in harmony with the goddess-in-the-cells may be twofold:

• Learn to activate the oxytocin/tend and befriend response before flight or flight takes over.  We can do this by taking a few conscious breaths and asking for this response, by meditating, by praying, or by creating a connection to the inner goddess in some other manner.
  

• Alternately, if we women are overcome by stress, we can allow ourselves, like Mary Magdalene, to have the natural response of crying, which releases the stress hormones from our bodies.

The Goddess Earth Mother has also given us several plants, whose essential oils help release and sustain the oxytocin response in women. They include sandalwood, myrrh, cedarwood, and possibly frankincense. These oils activate the parasympathetic nervous system along with the limbic system, which some scientists say will counteract the fight or flight response.

Sources:  Dr. Ellie Drake, who founded Braveheart Women, a social network for women.
                 THE FEMALE BRAIN by Dr. Louann Brizendine, M.D.

The Temple of the Body

Lifelong Healing


We all know now that when the patriarchy thundered through Europe with the fiery death-dealing machinery of the inquisition, the Goddess was attacked. She, who had arisen again through Mary Magdalene and was ready to rise in everyone, was attacked where She resided -- in the human body, and mostly in the female human body.

The formal machinery of the inquisition lasted from the twelfth through the early nineteenth century, and its cultural and psychological legacy continues today. To protect those who held her form in the feminine lines of our bodies, the Goddess hid her vibration so well that even we – whose cells were her chalices – did not know where she went.

Some said she was hidden in the moon.

Others claimed she was hidden in the land, in the wild cry of the hawk, in the deep, silent presence of a pine grove, or in the sudden rainstorm, for they experienced her there.

Like many, without knowing for whom I searched, I found the Goddess, lost her, and found her again many times and in many places during my life.

Most recently I found Her hidden


in a coming-of-age conversation my guardian aunt had with me fifty years ago.

“Your body is a temple. It is the dwelling place of God,” my aunt told me. “And sex is beautiful when God is present in the bonds of marriage. But sex is awful, ugly, and sinful without God’s blessing. You’ll get pregnant and shame yourself and your family and your child. And you’ll go to hell for it, and don’t you believe you won’t suffer these dire consequences. Because you will.”

It was 1959. I was eleven.

God was a great big white man who called the shots from on high, so I did not tell my guardian aunt that my older brother and I had been having sex from the time I was seven. Or before then that my father, her brother, had abused me as a baby, as I later learned, he had abused her, too.

I listened to her speech, hid my shame from her, and lived and breathed and acted like a virgin. I knew she would disown me if she knew my secret, and I would be homeless in the land of the fathers, who clearly could do what they pleased.

I believe now that the ritual coming-of-age talk, though usurped by the patriarchy and twisted to serve it, held the barely audible whispers of the Divine Feminine. Across the decades, those whispers tutored my unconscious about my divine nature and warned me that I would be misused by men, empowered and degraded by the patriarchy.


Here’s how the "talk" informed me of my nature and warned me of this misuse:

“Your body is a temple. It is the dwelling place of God,” my aunt told me. “And sex is beautiful when God is present in the bonds of marriage."

Our women’s bodies are natural receivers as well as transformers. That’s how we are built. We receive higher vibrations or lower vibrations and transmute the lower energies into higher ones and the higher into lower through our chakras to keep the balance between body, mind, and spirit. And that’s what natural or constructed temples do. This transformer effect is always operating. During sex, this effect is heightened.

"But sex is awful, ugly, and sinful without God’s blessing."

The patriarchy captures our women’s bodies while it conditions our hearts to be open constantly to men. In a patriarchy, we women often receive and transform the lower vibrations for our fathers, brothers, nephews, or rulers.

And abused, hyper-vigilant women, like me, often keep our awareness focused on men’s more destructive vibrations to clear them and thereby, protect us from abuse. Because we are always monitoring our situations to see if we are safe and using our energies to clear or appease our abusers, we have little left to live authentic creative lives.

"And you’ll go to hell for it. . . "

Conditioned by the patriarchy, we clear men who come into our presence. Unless we know what we are doing, we take on their negative energies.

Sometimes we also use the transforming power of our presence to clear destructive vibrations on a social or political level where our actions are seen as “service.” If this work is unconscious, it is dangerous to us women. For we not only clear the negative, we also take on the imbalances unless we know how to discharge them.

". . .and don’t you believe you won’t suffer these dire consequences. Because you will."

This process debilitates and destroys our bodies, causing sickness. Taking on this negative energy creates a personal hell because it cuts us off from our true selves, our souls.

Here’s what I have come to understand about my Body-the-Temple:

• The Divine Feminine, the Goddess, is in every cell of our feminine bodies (and in the cells of loving men).
• The Divine Feminine balances the body, balances the being, so that each of us can live harmoniously in the world with all other beings.
• She balances us vibrationally through our energy centers, the chakras.
• She balances us “chemically” through our endocrine system, for each endocrine gland is governed by one of the body’s chakras.
• When we are balanced, we are in harmony with the Divine within us, and our very presence can balance others.
• Sometimes we do this unconsciously.
• Other times, we knowingly say or do the things to balance or offset the negative energy of those we encounter.


Vibrationally speaking, here’s what happens during sex:



• Our vibrational energy increases as our chakras are stimulated during sex.
• These centers or vortexes open and turn more energetically and connect with those of our partner.
• A woman’s body is a receptor. As the partner, who has the intention to penetrate, enters it physically, he also enters it energetically through the chakras. Gender doesn’t dictate this. Intention does.

Here’s what I have learned about how my woman’s body, my Body-as-Temple, functions on the vibrational level during intercourse, a time when the transformer effect is heightened. I learned this by using a pendulum before and after intercourse.

• I used the pendulum to map the direction and openness of my chakras and my partner’s chakras before intercourse.
• As a Healing Touch practitioner and aromatherapist, I knew how to balance my chakras and did this regularly. So, not surprisingly, my chakras showed a balanced pattern: they moved clockwise, had medium spin, and equal diameters of about 3 inches.
• Some of my partner’s chakras moved clockwise; some moved counterclockwise; some were still. Some were 3 inches in diameter; some were only one inch in diameter. I wrote down the pattern.
• After intercourse, I used my pendulum again and mapped the chakras.
• My partner’s chakras were open and balanced, mirroring my pre-sex balanced pattern.
• My chakras mirrored his pre-sex chakra unbalanced pattern!


I had taken on his imbalances and balanced him. I believe this is how my woman’s body was created to function. But I also believe that in a culture where the Divine Feminine is honored in the male and female, that all men would learn to balance themselves without using our bodies to do it. Even now, our individual partners can learn to balance themselves if they are loving and conscious.

But this transformer effect is always present, even around strangers. It is simply heightened during sex. So, in this culture women’s bodies are always at risk of being used – consciously or unconsciously, physically or vibrationally -- by others to clear and balance themselves.

What, then, can we women do to re-balance our bodies, so we don’t hold the negative energies of others?




• I return to the Mother through nature, and she re-balances me.
• I engage in healing modalities like Reiki and Healing Touch, among others, to rebalance myself.
• I find aromatherapy – especially sandalwood, cedarwood, or myrrh – rebalances me by activating my limbic system and producing the balancing feminine hormone ocytocin.
• Most recently, I re-imagine the coming-of-age “talk” as an artifact of a ritual prayer that once opened women to the Divine Feminine within our cells and let its original power speak to my soul.

Here’s my inner recovered text of what I believe was an original ritual initiation prayer:

My body is a temple. It is the dwelling place of Goddess. I am in sacred union with the Goddess who is present in each of my cells, and anyone who comes into my presence will experience her power. From this sacred union will come offspring that will be blessings to all others and me because they come from the Divine temple that I am and that protects and balances me. Always.

Sacred Union and Necessary Falls

I practice mercy toward my former selves,
and so see my life – not fractured –
though full of starts and finishes.
Reincarnations then these starts –
leaps of Sandra-faith into the new.
Those finishes – necessary falls, times
out of daily world and rhythms when
emotion and intellect collide, constructs collapse.

Yet this body has not died and
spirit, though clothed in foreign garments,
remains wedded to this earth.

I spiral up and then I spiral down.
Sometimes I spiral in.
Sometimes out.

But there is a center.
And it does hold. And some revelation
Always is at hand.*



*William Yeats begins the second stanza of "The Second Coming" with these lines:
" Surely some revelation is at hand;/ Surely the Second Coming is at hand."  As I wrote this reflection, felt the energy of the "gyre" of which he writes, but I felt the vibrations as Sacred Union and living reincarnations.



Note:  Yeats’ Vision speaks of two conical helixes that are joined so that the widest part of one helix meets in the same plane of the point or smallest part of the other helix.  Certainly, this the hexagram formed by the chalice and the blade is a cross-section of this union.  And two helixes joined this way from the side would also form this pattern of the Sacred Union.

An Earth Day Prayer to Our Mother the Earth

Lifelong Healing

I love that Earth Day and Good Friday are on the same day this year. I am gardening and praying to Mother Earth. 

Acupuncturist and healer Sally Norton, who makes rosaries, found this prayer in one of the lost gospels twelve years ago, and we used it when we did healing work with writer David Ray at the Hollywood United Methodist Church chapel.

Jesus said, "And after this manner, pray to your Mother the Earth:

"Our Mother which are the Earth, hallowed be thy name. 

Thy kingdom come, and thy will be done in us, as it is in thee. 

As thou sendest every day thy angels, send them to us also.

Forgive us our sins, as we atone all our sins against thee. 

And lead us not into sickness, but deliver us from all evil,

For thine is the earth, the body, and the health. Amen." 

EMOTIONAL FREEDOM by Dr. Judith Orloff Develops the Intuition and Heals the Heart

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EMOTIONAL FREEDOM: Liberate Yourself From Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life (Harmony, $24) written by Judith Orloff MD is the perfect book to come along at the perfect time. I couldn’t put it down!
We live in a tumultuous, fear-dominated period in history and must become masters at overcoming fear and other negative emotions so they don’t sabotage our power. With skill and compassion, Dr. Judith Orloff shows us how to become heroes in our own lives by transforming anger, loneliness, and envy and more rather than simply “reacting” when our buttons get pushed.
An Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA and intuition expert, Dr. Orloff shares her wealth of personal and professional knowledge to illuminate the field of emotions. She draws on wisdom from traditional medicine but goes light years beyond it by presenting emotions as a path to spiritual, energetic, and intuitive awakening. Why is this leap so important? The intellect has restricted vision about emotions, but bringing intuition into the feeling realm lets us go deeper within. Dr. Orloff asks us to see every success, every heartbreak, every loss, every gain as vehicles for transformation. She teaches readers to view emotions in a non-ordinary way, rather than simply making you happy or miserable. Everyone will benefit from the insightful instructions that continually guide us and also from the author’s intimate personal journey and well-earned life wisdom. Judith is the kind of doctor we wish we all had.
    Part One of the book introduces you to the four components of emotions: their biology, spirituality, energetic power, and psychology. Understanding each component in yourself will lead to inner breakthroughs that aren’t possible without seeing the whole picture. It offers a self-assessment test to evaluate your current level of emotional freedom so you can increase it practicing this book’s principles. Dr. Orloff invites you into her romance with sleep and dreams as revolutionary states of consciousness. She also helps readers determine their “emotional type” including “the intellectual,” and “the empath. “so they can make the most of their own finest qualities. As an empath, Dr. Orloff knows the gigantic challenges of being an “emotional sponge” and teaches other empaths who’ve been labeled “overly sensitive” how to stay grounded in an often-overwhelming world.
    You’ll enjoy the “emotional vampire survival guide”--specific advice for dealing with emotional drainers. We’ve all met them. You’re talking to someone, when suddenly you feel anxious, depressed, or tired. She describes the narcissist, the victim, the controller, and other types of vampires. Plus, there are quizzes to help you determine “Are you in a relationship with an emotional vampire?” or if you might be one yourself. Sometimes, we all have the capacity to be draining, but with mindful compassion we can catch ourselves early and make a shift.
    Part Two of the book offers a hands-on approach for facing the most prevalent negative emotions and building positive ones Each chapter is called a “transformation” in which you learn how to transform a negative emotion into its counterpoint. For instance, fear is transformed with courage, frustration with patience, and jealousy with self-esteem.
You learn to do this in your life by taking a wealth of quizzes, from Dr. Orloff’s patient studies, and her own intimate journey with each emotion.
      Emotional Freedom is the rare book that can open your mind and your heart to more empowerment. Give yourself a gift and read it.

Breaking the Silence Surrounding Acquaintance Rape

Lifelong Healing

I met Renee DeVesty on BraveHeartWomen.com, the social network for women who want to change themselves and save the world. Founder Ellie Drake says that this online community "brings together women from all around the world to share and receive inspiration. Through conversation, compassion, and community, BraveHeart Women empowers women of all ages to discover their own voices, expand their potential, and be the change they want for themselves, their family, community, and the world."

Renee Devesty is truly a BraveHeart woman, who was raped at 19, recovers daily as all survivors do, and tells her story to help other women break the silence and seek help so they, too, can begin to thrive, not just survive

She has agreed to be a guest blogger and share her story below.

BREAKING THE SILENCE SURROUNDING ACQUAINTANCE RAPE

It's been almost three decades since I was raped -- not by a stranger, but an acquaintance. The man who held me down was someone I knew and trusted. It happened among people who were lifelong friends; and like so many women, I was terrified, confused, and blamed myself for far too long. I'm telling my story now because I am ready for this with every bone in my body. I've been waiting to heal for 30 years. It's time for the silence to be broken.

What Happened
I'd gone for an overnight trip to my best friend's camp on a lake in upstate New York. There were 10 of us who'd gathered there, all 19 years old. We had all attended school together, lived nearby and knew each other most of our lives.

I rode to the camp with my best friend and her husband. They had married young because he had joined the Navy. Though they now lived out of town, they'd returned for the weekend while he was home on leave. When we got to the camp, my best friend told me I could have the best bedroom upstairs, since everyone else was sleeping on the floor. Excited, I put my belongings in the upstairs room and changed into my swimsuit for a day on the boat.

Back then, the legal drinking age in New York state was 18 and we'd been drinking on and off all day. When evening came, we were all hanging out on the deck enjoying ourselves. I wasn't much of a drinker and after being on the lake all day, I was the first to go to bed.

Betrayal
I awoke to a feeling of pressure. When I opened my eyes, there was my best friend's husband standing over me, one hand clamped against my mouth while he held me down with the other. He was a big guy and I was frozen with fear and intimidation; I absolutely could not move a muscle. His buddy, another friend I had known all my life, was now on top of me also holding me down and grabbing at my underwear. It was the middle of the night; I was half asleep and thought I must be dreaming.

Soon, it became evident I was not dreaming. It was real, but psychologically, it didn't make any sense.

Where was everyone? Where was my best friend? Why were these guys -- my friends -- doing this to me? It was all over quickly and they left immediately; but before he walked out, my best friend's husband warned me not to say anything or he'd deny it.

I was definitely afraid of him. I was raised a strict Catholic and immediately thoughts of fear, shame and disgust filled my head. I began to think this was all my fault. I thought I must have done something to encourage this. And then it hit me: Was it really an attack because I knew them? Was it actually rape since they were my friends? My head was spinning and I was physically sick to my stomach.

"I never said a word"
When I awoke next morning, I was still terrified, and it got worse when I went downstairs and saw my attackers in the kitchen. I didn't know what to think or say. My best friend's husband just stared at me. My best friend appeared to be acting normal. "She'll never believe you," I told myself. This is her husband and she loves him. Silently, I packed my things and rode the whole way home in the car with my rapist. And I never said a word.

I immediately blamed myself and thought if I had only slept downstairs with everyone else, it wouldn't have happened. Or if I didn't wear my swimsuit, I would have been safe. My mind could not comprehend this whole scenario, so in order to cope with it, I blocked it out as if it never happened. I shut down completely and decided I would never tell anyone about it.

Pregnant from the rape
A few months later I realized the nightmare wasn't over. I had become pregnant from the rape. I went into shock again. Being a strict Catholic, I thought, "How could God allow this to happen to me?" I was convinced I was being punished. I felt enormous shame and guilt. This was 30 years ago. Practically no one went to counseling then or openly sought help for such things. I could not tell my mother, and I was too ashamed to tell my friends. And who would believe me now two months later? I still could not believe it myself.

Because of my shame, fear, disgust and the belief I had no one to turn to, I regretfully made the decision to terminate the pregnancy.

Trauma and aftermath of being raped
The rape and then the trauma of the subsequent choices I had to make as a result of being raped haunted me for years. I found that although my body healed, my thought process and my inner core were deeply damaged. Because I blamed myself, I hated myself. I became a severe alcoholic, drinking seven days a week to numb myself.

I had a job that I should have been fired from because I would show up late and sleep on the couch in the restroom during my lunch hour. Bill collectors called me non-stop. My relationships with men were abusive.

I was terrified to sleep alone at night, had horrible nightmares and finally resorted to sleeping with a baseball bat, a butcher knife and a cordless phone because of the fear that it would happen again. This act that had ended years and years ago continued to torture me every minute, every hour, every day of my life.

It wasn’t until I was married and then pregnant with my son that I became sober and started counseling. I was 31 years old, and it had been 12 years since I was raped. In my first session, I ran to the window and tried to physically open it because I felt like all the oxygen had left the room. I truly could not breathe. I stayed with it, but the pain of uncovering these old wounds was mentally and emotionally traumatizing.

Caught in the cycle of abuse
Because I stopped using alcohol to soothe the pain, I chose food as an addiction. My weight fluctuated constantly until I stopped eating at one point altogether. My counselor told me if I didn’t start eating I would be put in 30-day treatment facility. I remember days of physically forcing myself to eat one slice of cantaloupe, because I couldn’t bear the thought of being away from my son. I would eat not for me, but for him.

That’s how psychologically devastating rape can be. Rape takes away your sense of self. You disappear. In order to survive, you don’t exist in your mind. It is too painful to see yourself through the pain, through the action that has taken place. Your body is your canvas, the picture you show to the world. And if someone has violated your personal canvas, how do you remove that image in your mind? You become disconnected from your body and are convinced that nothing will ever erase the marks that are left behind. Nothing.

Recovering
Having my son forced me to take care of myself. I had someone I loved so much who needed me, I had to get better. I worked extremely hard to get the help I should have gotten for that beautiful, innocent teenager all those years ago.

Because of what happened to me and how deeply affected I was by the entire experience, today I am a rape survivor, not a rape victim. There are so many more places available to address issues similar to mine than there were 30 years ago, including many community-based rape crisis centers. No one should ever have to suffer in silence.

Helping others to survive and thrive
I currently am a high school youth leader and I conduct retreats for women and teenage girls on self-empowerment, teaching a sense of belief in and love for yourself, and how to make healthy choices despite your circumstances in life.

I've come forward with my story after so many years -- and am now an advocate for ending abuse and violence against women and girls -- because the psychological damage caused by rape takes its toll unless women seek immediate help. To reclaim their lives and become rape survivors, rape victims need to realize that they are not to blame The negative thoughts of self-destruction that follow rape or sexual abuse are so detrimental that it is imperative that some form of healing begin immediately.

We are pure, whole, and beautiful
We need to remember our beautiful canvas is ours and ours alone. Nothing or no one ever can -- or ever will -- be able to alter your inner core, your center of purity, wholeness and beauty. Only we have the power to continually wipe it clean and begin again.

And we must believe that, indeed, we are important enough to begin again.

Professionally, Renee is a Marketing Consultant with over 25 years experience in the management, coordination, and promotion of corporate and non-profit events, concerts and fundraisers. She is the founder of Blossom/Take Root & Grow, wellness retreats emphasizing the importance of emotional, physical, spiritual and financial health and well-being of women and teen girls.

She has been a featured public speaker at events including V-Day's Vagina Monologues, Junior Achievement's Young Women's Symposium, and an exhibitor at WISE—Women Igniting the Spirit of Entrepreneurship in 2009 and 2010. She is also a member of WomenTies—Together Inspiring Entrepreneurial Success. As a high school youth leader, she works with teens on projects that emphasize service in the community, support of self-esteem and self-image issues, and how the choices you make directly impact your future. Renee is passionate about community service, and her commitment to helping others is at the forefront of everything she does.

For more about Renee visit http://www.reneedevesty.com