THE TRUTH OF ABUSE: HOW TO NOT LET IT RULE YOU (2011)
I preface this read by offering a quote posted on a flyer taped up all over a remote, dusty, mining town, called Nevada City. The flyer was written by a dear friend of mine in light of the first annual ‘Souper Saturday’ in support of California’s women-of-abuse. “Social change occurs when deeply felt private experiences are given public legitimacy.” (Spoken by The Great Mahatma Gandhi)
Does one attract abuse into their lives? Does one ask for it, as some abusers would have the person on the receiving end believe? I don’t know. My logical mind says “NO!” of course not. While at the same time, I’m a believer of karma. I believe that we attract into our lives certain lessons to teach us a ‘brighter’ way, if you will.
I want to share a story with you about someone very close to me.
In the year 2002 a young woman had a dream. She wanted to leave behind all she had ever been shown was reality, in exchange for a new way, one she believed she was capable of creating. She wasn’t sure what that new way was, but she knew she wanted it. So, she kissed her Mother goodbye in the city of Miami, Florida, where they were living for a short time, and got onto a plane, headed for New York City.
Let it be known, she was from a small town on the Atlantic Ocean for 17 years of her life. This was a big, no—enormous—step. The next three years would create a whole new way for her, but not how she would have planned it. In New York City acting classes at a highly accredited school called Lee Strasberg awaited her, where New York University graduates were permitted to attend only after they completed all the other degree requirements, as a ‘final test.’ Anyway, this young woman had worked at a small Chinese restaurant in Miami all summer long, in the hopes of saving enough money to be able to fly to New York and pay for her first semester. Sweat would cover her back and seep through her tailored white shirt, each summer day, after walking the short distance of five blocks from the apartment she and her widowed mother resided in, to the restaurant nearby. With her plane ticket in hand, first semester paid for and four hundred dollars in her pocket, she was ready to start a new life. One no longer riddled with the pains of losing a brother and father at a young age, nor stained by the challenges that come from living in the ‘Dysfunctional Household Model,’ that so many of us know growing up.
She didn’t know anybody. Had no family or friends in New York. She had a friend of a friend of a friend’s place to stay at in Long Island City, for as long as 7 days. Long enough to find a place to call home, purchased with the money in her pocket. Her father had passed without leaving anything in the terms of finances. Her mother had been having severe health problems, and had lessened her workload because of it. Her mother, who loved her very much, had been sorry to see her go. And, when her daughter left, continued on with her own life.
Setting off for a new world, she was not deterred by any of these prior circumstances. She secured a room in an apartment owned by an elderly Puerto Rican couple, in the Chelsea area of the city near 8th avenue and 20th street who swore Jennifer Lopez, the then soon-to-be-rising-star, visited them in their living room for ice cream. They seemed nice enough. And, the acting classes were the perfect combination of everything an aspiring thespian could ask for. Work came in the form of being a hostess at a restaurant, where bartenders were called ‘Star Bartenders’ and both the inside and the outside of the establishment were
covered in only the richest of colors, materials, and designer brands.
Everything looked great on the surface, until one night when she was invited to go out with her fellow co-workers, and the owners of the restaurant. The other hostess at the restaurant, when out of earshot from the owners, explained to her the Godfather was more than just a movie.
She grew uncomfortable with the surroundings. Though the lounge was ascetically nice, she felt there was lacking an undercurrent of a real sense of humanity. She didn’t feel connected to the people she was talking to, in snippets of sentences, above the loud music, as she was accustomed to feeling when interacting with people from her small, hometown.
“I’m going to go home.”
One of the men around the table stood up, “I’m going, too. Where do you live?”
“20th and 8th Avenue.” She responded as she recognized him as someone she had been introduced to earlier that evening, a friend of the owners of the restaurant she worked at, in the heart of the city.
“No problem. I’m going right past there in order to get to my apartment. We’ll share a cab; we’ll drop you off first. That way you don’t have to pay with your hard earned money.” She recalls a smile spreading across his face so wide, it could win an opposing prize fighter over.
He seemed assured of himself, and his words were simple, without menace. She allowed herself to sit in the cab that had appeared from Bleecker Street on the left side of the road, “Okay, sure.” What could be the harm in sharing a cab? He was sitting in the front and gesturing for her to sit in the back.
That evening the seemingly harmless man went on to prompt the taxi driver not to listen to her request to let her out at the street where she lived, as they sped by 20th street, full force. It is uncertain whether the man held a one hundred dollar bill out, or a shotgun, but for whatever reason that cab driver did not listen to her plea to be let out. The next time the car stopped was in front of his place, another fifty blocks north. She was in shock by then. As the friend of her employer jumped out and opened the back door where she sat, he grabbed her arm firmly and hastily shut the cab door, with his other free hand.
Though this is not an article about prevention, but more so about cure, I’d like to share wisdom taken from this story, and many other stories heard from women around the world: Please do yourself a favor. Do not go out drinking with anyone who you have not known long enough to know them inside and out. Both their light side, and shadow self. We all have both, though we each have more of one, than the other. This precaution includes accepting a cab share with friends of friends. To the Mothers, Sisters, Aunts, and Nieces out there, make sure to communicate the importance of this simple message: “Do not question trust, but always trust to question—when risks of safety are at stake.“
Returning to this particular story I’m sharing, though. From the point of being pulled out of the car, for sake of sanity in that moment, she held onto the illusion that she had even an ounce of control. As she was dragged to his front door, she said “But I really don’t want to hang out any longer. I’m tired.” with the pleading thick in her voice.
She didn’t see the light of day for another twelve hours. She, terrified, was pulled into his home, where she was raped. It wasn’t until two years later that she could admit what happened to her after traveling from one State to another, in attempts of forgetting what happened. It wasn’t until three years later that she had it in her to let what happened to her go, so she could help others who had experienced the same, or worse. She had been pinned down against her will. She had not been punched, cut, or shot. She had cried, after her ‘No,’ ‘Please Stop,’ was continuously ignored.
What gave her the strength to step aside from the ego that was infuriated, shocked and disgusted that this had happened to her? An Oprah magazine article put out that year about women in Africa raped repetitively as a weapon of war. Her heart split open and spilled over, to reach all those around her from that day forward. She would go on to share her stories with friends, and family. Nine years later, after significant healing, her mother would go on to host a first annual event for women-of-abuse day in California, giving all proceeds to the local safe house. Because her mother held this function, mothers and grandmothers, from all over the community came forth to share their stories of being raped for the first time. And because of this, they received support, and love, for their wounds. For the first time.
Since then she has taken professional and creative writing courses in California and at the University of British Columbia, as a means to express the myriad of feelings and experiences she has lived since her experience. She has lived in Los Angeles, where she wrote synopses on scripts for the film industry and has written her first novel in Vancouver with a heroine within it, who leads, shaping positively powerful environmental, and social, change throughout the tale.
This dear friend of mine would go on to shine the light of her heart on the women she met in her Yoga, Healing and Empowerment classes in The States, and then in Canada, where she moved. From there, she met a young man who loved her for her, and treats her with nothing but love. Though it took her eight years to truly allow one to be close to her in that beautiful, intimate, sense, it was well worth the wait. She went back to visit New York, years later, for her career with her chin held high and safe in all her glory. She went on to travel to London for her blossoming career as a writer—her first trip abroad, where she trusted to travel alone, without the companionship of friends and families. She goes on to embrace spontaneity in her day-to-day life, while living within a bustling, progressive West Coast city lifestyle.
She teaches a variety of people in the most beautiful, prosperous parts of her community. She held a free series of classes in 2010 for women-in-transition for 6 months, called EmpowHer. This gave her practice in shaping her skills for the home she is to build for women to lift up and out of the oftentimes life-threatening affects of abuse. She has also begun spending time volunteering at a women’s clothing store, My Sister’s Closet, where all proceeds go to women-of-abuse.
How do I know this one story so well?
Because it is mine. And, now, it is time to share the practical steps I know, of shifting from survivor to thriver:
1) Forgive. Because if you don’t you’re letting that person get between you and your deserved happiness. If you forgive, you win.
2) Embrace that you feel something has been stolen from you. It has. And, it’s called a part of your Past. Now, you have the decision as to whether or not ‘they’ will be a ‘thief’ of the present and/or future.
3) Embrace the feeling of disconnect from your body as part of the moment’s reality. Now let it go, allow it to be the source of a magnificent desire to reconnect. Now, do so. Take a deep breath. Now, take another one, into the very depths of your body. Tissues, bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons, organs. Sigh, “Ahh” as you exhale. Now inhale to match the length of that last exhalation, silently saying, “I love you.” That’s the best start on reconnecting one can begin with. Let an exhale out with a sense of completion and wholeness, mirroring that last inhalation you just took. If you didn’t, read this step again, give it a try. Experience of abuse or not.
4) Make it an experience by choosing to view it as so. The more we accept what happened, the more we can see it as a part of our truth, not the whole truth. The whole truth is we are, and always have been, all we could ever dream to be. One experience does not change this.
5) Reach out to other women and/or men who have been affected by sexual abuse. Reach out because you want to help.
6) Focus on the tools that act as solutions: empowerment; information; acceptance, forgiveness, kindness, care, love.
7) Surround yourself with people who see what happened to them as a blessing. Give a silent blessing of healing to those who still stew in anger, rather than grow with love.
8) Express yourself through art. Art requires one to see life from all perspectives, from all angles. It often allows one to see themselves through the eye of positive change, courageous acts, and simple, yet great truths.
9) Meditate. The word itself can seem intimidating, with all the ‘Masters of Meditation’ in the world these days. Meditation is simple. It’s a one pointed focus. Walking in nature, slowly, while listening to breath, can be a great start. Then, moving to sitting, while listening to breath. And, for those who have a busy mind that is slow to be quiet, try meditating by saying a mantra that brings peace to you. Mantras are said over and over. Meditation gives one their focus back, reconnects to courage and impresses upon oneself that they are worth stopping for, taking a break from the world’s busyness and worth ‘showing up’ for.
10) Evaluate your surroundings. Do you feel safe, secure, happy? If not, then let this temporary circumstance be of inspiration to embrace your positive personal power to create change on small and great levels, one breath at a time.
Remember, friends, abuse is oftentimes used as a tactic to suppress women. If a woman is scared, she is less likely to go out, to live her life fully. Are we going to let that happen, though? I didn’t think so.
“Social change occurs when deeply felt private experiences are given public legitimacy.” (Spoken by The Great Mahatma Gandhi)
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HIDDEN INGREDIENTS (2011)
Okay, so, I attended my first evening at UBC's Social Media class with Kate Trgovac last evening. It was amazing. To say the least. I love when the classroom is full and the level of desire to learning is beaming through the roof! There were about thirty people in that classroom and a long list of people waiting to get into it.
I had some time before class to utilize skillfully (notice wasting time is not in my vocabulary for many reasons). I wanted a tea, or shall I say more accurately, I was yearning for one. Everywhere I looked on the Vancouver streets were Starbucks. Granted, I was at the city's downtown core, where more of this 'corporatacracy,' as John Perkins calls it, runs rampant. John Perkins, if you are not already familiar, is the author of the book, "Confessions of an Economic Hitman."
I wanted something unique, something different to my taste buds than the sugar and chemically-created flavours Starbucks puts in their coffees. But, there was nothing very close and I had a class to catch. So, I decided not to be 'teacentric' (kind of like ethnocentric) and headed for their doors. Upon arriving a woman, with the look of being hell bent on receiving her caffeine asap, looked at me with beady eyes, "Are you next?"
Granted, she had her right to be antsy, as I was dreamily looking up at the board, seeing if they had magically become more organic over the last year, since the last time I had to go into one. "No, no, you go first." Part of being a good person is allowing other people to attain their cravings as soon as possible, right? My new mantra: "Thou shall not stand in one's way of their addictions." Once the woman was finished I had an idea of what looked like it had potential. "What are your Tazo Tea Lattes?"
"A full leaf Tazo Tea Latte bag and steamed milk. You take the teabag out when you want to."
"Oh...okay. Hmm...well, you know how about I get a single shot of decaf expresso mixed with your soy milk; it's organic, right?"
"Yes. it is." The woman with nice dark skin and eyes looked back at me with an expression immersed in the practice of patience. I liked her.
"Okay, you know, that's what I'll do."
The barista had overheard some of my questions and revealed his listening in, "You're a vegetarian, arent' you?"
"Yes; but I don't have a problem with eating animals. It's the way that they're eaten in the last several years."
He doesn't say anything at this point. Both he and the woman on the till look at me as if they want me to continue. I usually don't push what I've come to learn through some great documentaries (The Corporation; Food Inc and the one on Monsanto the dreadful corporation putting the emphasis on making fruits and veggies double their normal size, all the while drenched in chemicals, all in thier proclaimed need for 'food security). "I mean that so many people eat animals as part of their meal two to three times a day when the body likely only needs a small serving of it once a day. Granted tofu, beans, dairy, certain amazingly tasty grains can give us our protein, too. It's the industrial farming that really gets me; cows standing up to their knees in eachother's poop, in a warehouse. They never see the sunlight, breath fresh air."
"Yeah, and did you know that they are supposed to inject them with stuff to numb the pain when they kill them but often times they just don't have the time to do so each and every time because they're such an increased need for them because of McDonalds and all those companies and all those people eating so much meat...more than most of us need like you said."
"Hmm..No, I've never heard that before." I extended my five dollar bill to pay for my tea.
"Here, I only charged you for a single shot." the cashierist whispers with a smile.
"Thank you." I scoot along toward the barista who had also chimed into the conversation. His belly extends so far toward the edge of the counter that he must make alot of effort to reach his arms fully forward toward the coffee grinder, "Okay you're not going to like this but the expresso is NOT organic and we're out of decaf expresso."
"Really? Okay, wait...what if we do organic coffee roast and only put a shot of the decaf coffee into it; I'm really not good at handling caffeine, even if it's decaf."
"Okay. But I want you to know that the way Starbucks decaffeinates their coffee with methyl chloride. It's a chemical."
"Right." A quote comes to my mind that I had read slightly over a year ago while researching for the second book I now focus in on, "Do you know what food is, 'Food is sunlight condensed into matter,' all that other stuff made in labs--the flavours, the colors put into packaged food, it's not food. Our bodies have no idea what to do with it."
I watch him step away from the counter, even his bellly no longer presses against it anymore, "I like that quote." This is a young man with much intelligence, readers. In fact as he acknowledges the quote in resonance with him his eyes even sparkle a bit.
"So...do you have a shot of regular coffee that's organic, then?" "Sure. It'll be fourteen--I mean four minutes."
"Thanks." I look at my phone, "And by the way, I'm going to look up that methyl chloride stuff. Google will probably tell me exactly what's up with it."
"Yeah, you can even look on your phone right now."
"That's true." I decide that disengaging from the interaction would appear insincere with lack of priorities, so I instead hang out while he makes it. After leaving I google it as I wait for Social Media class to begin. Methyl Chloride (Chloromethane) ... Acute (short-term) exposure to high concentrations of methyl chloride in humans has caused severe neurological effects. ... www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/hlthef/methylch.html
Oh goodness, people...please, oh please love yourself and justice enough to question a business who would allow this sort of garbage in their food; it's either ignorance or indifference. Neither one are favorable. I don't care how many times I see 'Natural' on their posters, I'm not listening anymore. I'm moving on to the mom & pop shops opened by local families with a conscience; I want to live a long, fruitful life, free of deceiving gimmicks on the food I choose to put in this body I have come to care for unconditionally so.
I hope you will do so, too.
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Madeline's Adventure Fiction: inviting your imagination to play alongside the globe's greatest developing questions.
Madeline Standing is a cutting edge writer with hints of Margaret Atwood's futurism, Kurt Vonnegut's unmatchability and Paulo Coehlo's spiritualism.
I LOVE ELECTRONICS (2010)
I began my writing career as an avid diarist. While it served as a means to purify myself inside, and out, it also created an avenue for questions unexplored to arise. One day I found myself wondering about how our bodies interact with electronics. I remembered the question was sparked right after I had attended a workshop in northern California. Esalen, the renowned center of learning in Big Sur, had hosted a man by the name of Thornton Streeter. Thornton, a former doctor, turned curious investigator of what the energy field around our body looks like, opened up a whole new world for me. The name of this field, as I learned from my research, is called the human Electro Magnetic Field. This bright, light-filled emanation surrounding our bodies has also been given the infamous ‘hippy term;’ aura.
The pictures taken by this man were captured by means of his creation, called Polycontrast Imaging Photography (PIP). The pictures were of all the workshop participants in attendance, including myself. We went, nude, into the darkened back room, where our sides, backs, and front bodies were captured. The results were what looked like an oval-shaped circle outlining our skin’s edges. Each circle, depending on which participant the photo was taken of, appeared differently. Some had more orange than anything else, some blue, and some red; the dominant color changed from person to person. No one really knew what particularly to make of it; even the teacher himself wasn’t entirely sure yet. The workshop had been part of his ongoing research to reveal the puzzle of what this Electro Magnetic Field around the body could mean, and offer up in the face of modern scientific discoveries.
Being a teacher of yoga, my curiosity of the human body, and the various elements that affect, and comprise, optimal health, has taken a trip upward, soaring as fast as a rocket launching into the infinite world of space does. It is easy to forget that we have electricity being created and stored in our bodies. It’s even more difficult to remember that one of the first encounters we have had with electricity is back in the 1700’s when a hand rubbed against a spinning wheel. It was at that point that the sparks began to fly. Let’s go back to what is easy to remember though; is there really anything that is one hundred percent entirely easy in this life? Is the attainment of optimal health easy? I ask you, because my experience is that health, like all else, is very complex. For those of you agreeing, are you ready to consider that health is even more complex than we have yet to know?
Observing bodies in yoga class (yes that includes my own!) I notice a lot of shaking. There, of course, are many explanations for this. From what I have felt in my own body, I present an explanation that seems most intuitive to me; our bodies, oftentimes locked, release a flow of energy throughout the body, once again, as part of the opening process. By locked, I mean that I often see people’s knees, wrists, elbows and hips locked, creating a stagnation in the overall flow of energy throughout their bodies. Think about the body as a machine for a moment. Imagine visible, unregulated energy, flowing freely through the machine. Now, imagine the machine hasn’t been greased properly, and the joints of this ‘machine’ become frozen, stiff, and – if this machine had the ability to feel-they also become achy. Now, imagine some friendly people walking over to this cramped up machine and lengthening their extremities by lengthening one arm, and then the other. In fact, they do the same for the legs, too. Imagine a powerful wind current being turned on (that’s the breath) while the machine is being stretched and moved. Energy begins to flow again, through the machine. Only now, we not only have all the energy that was already flowing through the machine before the pulling on its extremities began, we now also have the gain of the energy that had been previously trapped in the ‘joints of the machine’ now discovering ‘flow’ again! To all Yoga-or Pilates- enthusiasts out there, this is another one of those infinite possibilities that may be happening to you when you get ‘the shakes’ in yoga class!
Okay, so looking at the big picture, we’ve now been given the reminder that we have energy flowing in our bodies in the form of electricity, and the possibility that that energy flow can become restricted due to tightly held joints, and muscles. Now, what else has an Electro Magnetic Field emanating around it? Any guesses? That’s right, electronics… During my research, I discovered that people around the world are experiencing what is known as electrosensitivity. It is when the EMF around electronics adversely affects the EMF around our bodies. ‘How much harm can it do?’ you may be asking. The answer; a significant amount. It is public knowledge that people, around the globe, have had to quit their sit-in-front-of-the-computer-all-day jobs because of electrosensitivity. We also have people experiencing excessive migraines, nausea, depression, insomnia and anxiety, as side effects. Hmm, I wonder if EMF’s being shed from our much-needed electronics are not only affecting us physically, but also affecting our own Electro-Magnetic Field. What would scientists discover if they decided to study this field of questions? Activities that boost our EMF are being outdoors around natural settings, sleeping well, eating well, and of course, not overusing our electronics. What can we each do to be health smart when it comes to our modern lifestyles? Though there are many ideas, formulas, and solutions out there, the preservation of our own energy is monumental in the face of the equation representing optimal health. Besides, seeing friends face to face, away from a computer screen; leaving the cell phone behind when we go for a stroll around our neighborhood, or to a short run to the grocery store; turning our cell phones off when we’re at work, instead of having them glued to our hip pockets, are all ways to brandish not only certainty of our health, but also a way to maintain sanity in a world that is forever increasing its pace.
Let’s face it, we have become a world where we develop new variations of our favorite electronics every few months, in order to meet our desire to have every bit of the world at our fingertips. We are accustomed to having answers, and emails sent to us on the wireless wave currents within milliseconds. Even if you don’t believe that electronic’s EMF could possibly interact with our own, we do know that the use of electronics in moderation creates a happier, healthier earth. It takes many energy plants, and transformers, to continue to run 10 million cell phones a day. Let’s be wise about how we spend our energy, and the earth’s. Are my scientific postulations true? How many people out there are already taking into consideration these ideas? I do know many are, for sure! They’re on Facebook! How many though exactly, I don’t know. I’m not a scientist, and I do not research these things all day and all night; why should I, or you? We have our intuition, and our ability to feel these things in our own bodies, for ourselves. I’m simply a yoga teacher for therapy, writer by trade; buried in the books I write and dreaming about a day where people no longer place an all importance on other’s facts anymore, but instead believe in their own discoveries.
Madeline Standing is the writer of "Heaven in the Meat Packing District," a book inspired by Madeline envisioning this EMF ' what if ' scenario. Now, three years, after the day she started writing the book, science shows her imaginings are true! In her free time she can be found taking nature strolls around one of the beautiful neighborhoods situated in Vancouver, Canada, where she resides, in the name of divine replenishment. For more on her completed novel, and the next she is working on, "Jail or Garden" read more here at the site. To learn more on the PIP technological discovery, or Dr Thornton’s work, visit http://biofieldscience.org
"You needn't take responsibility for the creativity, intelligence that you emanate, or the wisdom that breaches forth from the Unknown. Let it come through you; let go of all doubt and questioning of it's divine brilliance. Honor the qualities of the material by continuing to focus on the intention to bring peace and introspection to your life, and other's, through your life's work. Instead of merely executing a task, be it, surrender to it, let go of any anticipated outcomes. Feel the task and ask Spirit what else you can deliver to the world through adaptation of your worldly existence. We are the sorcerers, bridging day-to-day living with the mysterious travel to the unknown worlds within one's self. Without stepping foot outside of the physical room, our soul calls our body that we live in, that we wake up to, and go to sleep with, without ever deserting the gross physical room with four corners we now stand in.
It is the world at large that reaps the benefits from your many gifts and blessings that befall your crown, that you then allow to source through your being, pouring out through your hands, to those fortunate around you. At the same time, we receive the sense of gratification and satisfaction from surrendering to that which is greater than our minds, bodies and emotions: Spirit.
Embracing the cinematic view and standpoint, acknowledging that it is when we partake in that which ignites our souls that we share with the world the finest gift we may give. The poetry of our souls...all souls being one, we feed the world in its bliss to receive.
Let these callings be the fuel to feed your intentions born into actions. To remain at the peak of success, on top of the tidal wave on which we all flow, from one soul's story to the next, let the fallings between the waves be that which we share in glory and not in shame.
Persevere with the reins of opportunity in your fingertips leading you to your many victories throughout this fantastic journey called success.
Look yourself in the eye once a day. Tell yourself "I love you." "I believe in you." "I'm here for you on your unique, one-of-a-kind purpose-filled mission." Repeat until you no longer carry any urge within to look away.
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