My Name Is Consequences

My Name Is Consequencesby Lorna Tedder · in Relationships

Hi dear friends and followers, welcome once again to my blog. Today I would like to share with you a poem composed by Lorna Tedder about two characteristics named Curiosity and Consequences. Which would you prefer to be?

It always surprises me what I see when I’m out for a walk.

My name is Consequences.

That’s my secret name. Known only to you. You gave it to me.

But not at first.

At first, you called me by the name Curiosity.

You called me Fun.

You called me Adventure and later Happiness, and often Love.

You called me Deep.

You called me Soul Mate.

You called me Positive.

You called me Change for the Better.

You called me The Most Important Person in My Life.

You called me Savior.

You called me Difference.

You called me Lost Without You.

You called me Compassion.

You called me Resolute.

You called me Loyal.

You called me More Than I Deserve.

You called me Naïve.

You called me Gullible.

Now you call me Crazy.

You call me Disillusioned.

You call me Highly Mistaken.

You call me Misconstrued.

You call me Horrible.

You call me Bitch because I’m not willing to stay in an unbalanced relationship and I’m not willing to be Silent.

And I’m not willing to let you feel good about yourself while you continue to hurt me.

But I know you, and I know all your secret names, too.

Best Friend, Soul Mate, Lover, Roller Coaster.

Heartbreak.

And I know that when you’re alone and slumped into your pit of despair–that I so often shared with you and pulled you out of with my fingertips and heart and spine –that you know in your heart of hearts what you may never admit to another soul.

That my name is Consequences, but only because you once chose to call me–

Only because you chose to call me.

by Lorna Tedder

Note: I am certainly not a stranger to the feelings and experience of the author. It seems to me that giving or nurturing, for an empath, is such a deep, introspective, instinctive trait that it can rebound and hurt us because we refuse to accept or even acknowledge the dark parts of another that can hurt. We try to convince ourselves that it will get better tomorrow, but it doesn't. Consequence and catastrophe I was for many years. Now I would like to think I am back to being curiosity.

Thank you very much again, dear friends, for visiting my blog. Please share your thoughts with us, if you will. Have a great day.

✿ڰۣ❤In Loving Light from the Fairy Lady❤ڰۣ✿

Message from the Universe :

Message from the Universe: Just a Test to Make Sure You’ve Got It Right

by Lorna Tedder · in Personal Evolution

Hi dear friends and followers. First I would like to welcome you to my blog and thank those who have dropped by to visit. Today's topic is about making Thanksgiving resolutions and being tested. I have personally had the same experience as the author of this entry and I do agree with what she tells us in this entry. The print in orange are my own notes.

It’s not always easy to turn over a new leaf.

Dammit! A month in and I‘ve already failed. A long lost friend of mine used to tell me that the Universe has a way of ensuring that you’ve made a particular change in your life that you want to make. She used to say you can go days, weeks, months, even years on a new path and then Universe or God, if you will, will throw something in your path to test you. Just to make sure you’ve got it right.

I’ve just been tested and I’ve just failed. On Thanksgiving Day, I made myself a promise that this year would be different. At the Winter Solstice, at my burning bowl ritual with a non-denominational spiritual group I reiterated my plan for this next year…the plan I had been following for the past month.

That plan was to put ME first. This is different for me as I have long tended to do things that are good for other people but not necessarily for myself. Then I get burned and then, then I get resentful. So this year is all about seeing how my life will be if I put my own needs ahead of others. I did really well in that first month. Acquaintances and strangers, as well as those closest to me asked for help. And, while I did the minimum required, I didn’t go out of my way to spend the hours of time giving them something extra. It did cross my mind several times that there were many more things that I could do for them that would really help their situations but could harm my own, and so I stopped short. That was different. But it was also good for me not to get dragged into their dramas.

I invited several people to work with me on projects important to me. Not because they needed to money or they needed the job or they needed the things that I could give them, but for what they could do for me and what they could do for my project. The worst I’ve ever been burned financially has been in helping people desperate for money by giving them a job or helping them find a job. Not because I needed it, but because they needed it and I knew that I could help. You would think I would have learned that years ago, the first time I hired an acquaintance, who couldn’t feed her four babies, for a work-at-home job that I subsequently trained her for and paid her for in advance just so she could buy baby formula.

Yeah, I’m a softie at times.

But, this year is about fixing that. I made some other changes too in that first month, really good ones that I could not have made a year ago or six months ago…probably not even six weeks ago. I made some decisions that pleased my family and friends—they’ve been hounding me long enough—but displeased them in the way I planned to carry out those changes. Then again, it wasn’t about them or what would make them happy. It was about me and what I needed to do and how I needed to do that. It wasn’t about me asking permission from anyone else.

The biggest decision I made in that month was to find a way to get to forgiveness and peace in a previous relationship. Not for him, not for any of the things he’d done, but for me. Because carrying around so much hatred and anger is an awfully heavy burden and there are so many better things I would rather be carrying.

And so, at the end of the first month, I was feeling pretty good about my progress. “I’ve got a handle on this,” I thought. Even with everyone around me stressing out about Christmas and New Year’s, I managed to take care of myself first. And then….the Universe slipped me a fast one.

Christmas was over. My holiday company was doing their own thing and it was nearing my bedtime. The house was clean. I was caught up on all my chores, and I found myself with two whole hours of free time before bedtime. Time that I could spend working on the novel I hadn’t touched in months or editing the non-fiction guide on empaths and shielding that I’m working on or just reading articles on archaeology and ancient history. My point is, I had been given this beautiful gift of time–two whole hours–to do anything I wanted that I had not planned in my schedule.

And that’s when I got a message from a stranger asking for help. There was a family connection, but a very thin one. I could have deleted the message and pretended I’d never received it. But then, I’m the one people call at midnight when they’re suicidal. Yes, seriously, I’m one of a few dozen people that dear ones call at midnight when they’re suicidal but I’m the only one who answers and stays up all night with them. That’s happened quite a few times, and I’m usually in trouble with my boss the next day for being late to work or sleepy on the job.

Maybe I was just tired on this particular night, but my new first resolve faded quickly. Her question did interest me and I knew, when I read it, that I had a near-ready answer. Just not one I was 100% sure was correct. It would take me about three minutes–five minutes max–to provide the information that was requested. Her email was a long one, explaining her plight. Her primary question was one I could give a short answer to, and then a series of secondary questions were harder.
Note: There is never short answers when it comes to doing support work, I know I was a support worker. There is always more questions by the individual who is in need. So what I am saying is if you want to help someone with information to their dilemma, whatever it might be you better be prepared for hours not minutes spent with this individual.  This is not mentioning the research you may have to make to find some of the answers as the author here mentioned

Send or not to send that email? should be a well considered decision.

I provided the short answer in less than five minutes, but before I hit sendon the email, I thought about this woman’s struggle. I didn’t have the answers she was looking for, but I did have access to them at my fingertips, literally. The database was already paid for, for my own use, so it wouldn’t cost me anything extra to give her the information that I had access to. And, it would take only a few minutes whereas this woman might spend years obtaining the same information.

“Easy for me,” I said to myself, “but difficult for her.”

That’s when the little voice in the back of my head said, “Lorna, what the hell are you doing? You didn’t even have to answer the message at all. Why are you spending your time helping this person?”

I argued with myself that it would only take a minute. It was a good deed. It wouldn’t really cost me anything.

Five seconds later, I had logged into a paid membership site that had the information she was seeking. I found what I was looking for almost immediately.

“See?” I told myself. “It only takes a minute. And, this really helps someone else out.”

“What about your writing time?” the voice argued back. “Or your reading time? What happened to setting Focus-At-Will to 100 minutes and pounding out as many words as possible in that time?”

That’s when I hit pay dirt. That’s when I found exactly what the woman had been struggling to find. All right there, right in front of me. I felt that familiar thrill of excitement of helping someone else. Of saving her months or years of time. Of helping. Of being the giver I always have been.
Note: That's the key words for most empaths, thrill and excitement of helping someone else. That is actually a reward for us worth more then money. To help another is the reward. That's our nature and I do not fight it anymore, but I have learned to limit it and actually morph this help in different ways that I can apply on the internet

And then lost myself in my treasure hunt for her.

A few seconds later, I glanced at the clock on my computer and saw that another 45 minutes had passed.

“Log off now,” The voice told me. “Go back to your writing. You’ve still got an hour before bedtime.”

I waved off the voice in my head and kept digging. I was having so much success finding exactly what this woman had asked for.

It was then that a different voice took over in my head, one that said, “Lorna, why are you doing this? Let her buy her own access to this website or let her spend years finding this information on her own. That’s what you would do for yourself.”

Then, the second voice lowered into a prophetic tone, “This woman will not appreciate what you’re giving her. She doesn’t know the money you’ve spent on this effort. She doesn’t know the time you’ve spent on this effort. She simply asks and you will have it magically appear before her and no cost or effort to her. The cost and effort are all yours.”

That was the voice that persisted for the next hour.

I sent a lengthy email full of two hours of my effort. The moment I hit send, the moment I looked at the clock and realized it was bedtime and I hadn’t written a single word or read a single word, that I’d spent it on someone else’s needs, at that moment I knew the second voice was right.

In the morning came the return message. Not only did she not appreciate the information I had provided, but she took exception to it because it wasn’t the answer that she wanted. Oh, she wanted the information–she just didn’t like the answers to her questions. She also wanted more of my time to answer more questions, to dig for more information. And, no, there wasn’t a single word of thanks for what I had provided and especially not the depth of what I had provided.

“Why did you forget about putting yourself first?” the gentler voice in my head asked.

(These voices, of course, are not real voices. They’re intuition.)

I am quite familiar about that little voice, the inner conscience or intuition. I have certainly made the error of not listening to it many times in the past, brushing it off as just annoying stray thoughts. Well let me tell you something, when you hear that little voice and you feel deep inside you should listen to it, well, listen to it, because believe me it's never wrong.
I made a split-second decision to answer an email instead of putting my needs first and then I made another split-second decision to give this woman all the information she had asked for, even though I’d known it would eat into my “me” time. I gave a stranger with a family connection two hours of my life, and the whole time my intuition was reminding me where I needed to be spending my time and that this help I was giving would be a futile effort for me.

Yes, after a month of intentional successes, I had failed the test the Universe had set before me. I suppose it’s a good reminder that I can’t beat a lifetime’s way of being in six weeks. It’s a slow change, these attempts at personal evolution, with frequent slips and frequent scrapes. I won’t kick myself anymore over this slip-up. Instead, I’ll be grateful it wasn’t something bigger, something life-altering. That it was only two hours of my life and an incident I will forget with relative ease. It is an annoying paper cut, and not an amputation. But the annoyance serves me well enough to know that it will be many more months before I fail such a test again.

Note: For me, like I mentioned above, I only changed my form of how I help and support people. Since I am retired I have turned my devotion to helping others through my blog and G+ community on the internet. Oh I did try the website aproach for several years, but that turned out to be more stressful than of any good use for me. I love what I do now, bringing the lighter side of life to people. A refuge from this harsh reality even if just for a short time.

Thank you very much again, dear friends, for visiting my blog. Please share your thoughts with us, if you will. Have a great day. 

✿ڰۣ❤In Loving Light from the Fairy Lady❤ڰۣ✿

Humans Become Fairies

Humans Become Fairies

Unknown author

Hi dear friends and followers. Today I thought it would be nice to share with you something with more lightness to it. Something to enjoy, relax and dream. The land where reality and fantasy meet.

Humans do not have to die to become nature spirits or trooping fairies. Humans are so close to fairies they can, in fact, be transformed into fairies while still living. This should not be so surprising because, as previously mentioned; humans are in essence just another form of fairy.

It has been theorized that many of our fairy stories come from the existence of indigenous peoples in England. People ostracized and driven to the fringes of society or the underdogs who were mysterious to those who rejected them. In Cornwall one man testifies that:

“Pixies were often supposed to be the souls of the prehistoric dwellers of this country. As such, pixies were supposed to be getting smaller and smaller until, finally, they are to vanish entirely.” (Wentz, 1911)

This paints a much more terrifying picture of some of the fairies than we often imagined. According to this account, the pixies who people often think of as cute, little, playful fairies, are small because they are shrinking into oblivion. What’s more, they have had to live for thousands of years with the knowledge that they will eventually disappear and that those humans who would remain are the decedents of the people who forced them into their horrible fate. It is no wonder then that such beings are caught between human-like sympathy and incredible bitterness because, while they must retain some human emotion, much of this emotion must be anger at being driven into their current state.

If we accept the presence of many of our ancestors among the fairies, as we surely must given the large amount of evidence to support this, we must also accept that there are other humans, often far angrier humans, occupying the world of fairies. Further, there are very few people who can claim to be the first inhabitants of their lands and perhaps only two such people groups in Europe. So it would seem that only some fairies would be the ancestors of any given set of humans especially given that as with the pixies whole kingdoms of humans could become fairies. This might explain why people in Europe were so afraid of the wilderness. After they drove the original inhabitants of Europe into the dark forests and mountains, these peoples and the fairies they came to be had centuries to grow ever bitterer.

In Ireland, many people believed that the Tuatha De Danann were an indigenous people who turned invisible and entered a parallel realm when the Irish people invaded Ireland, as the Tuatha De Danann were unable to defeat the newcomers in a test of arms because of the Irish peoples’ powerful druids and deities. The Tuatha De Danann now reside in the hills and rocks of Ireland much as fairies do in other parts of the Europe (Wentz, 1911).The Tuatha De Danann are mysterious but also understandable because they still structure themselves much as humans would with kingdoms and fortresses, wars, and a little bit of both enmity and pity for the decedents of those that drove them into the underground realm who are still stuck as suffering mortals despite their apparent “victory.”

In an Austrian myth, a poor girl freezing to death in the cold comes across a hut of fairies who demand that she sleep with one of them for shelter. The freezing girl, afraid of dying from the cold, ultimately agrees to go to bed with one of them. As she is lying there with him, a woman from a nearby village comes to trade with the fairies and finds the poor girl in bed with them. Disgusted that a human, one of her own, would sleep with such creatures, the woman brings the villagers back to the hut, kills the men, and sends the girl out to die in the elements. (Keightley, 1870) Like the leprechauns, it would seem that fairies in this case were easily taken down by humans. In other words, fairies, at least in these instances, not only have something to fear from humans but are in fact easily overcome by them. This may explain the desire of at least some of the fairies to remain hidden, though this desire is contradicted by the fact that at least in some cases fairies want humans to believe in their existence.

We must also realize that the woman in the aforementioned story felt no qualms about storming into the house of the fairies to discover the girl sleeping with one of them. For if the fairies had had time to hide the girl, they surely would have since they must have known what the woman’s reaction would be. What we have then is a story of beings who are ostracized, considered far less than human to the point that they are dehumanized.

Lest we think that such myths are confined to Europe, we must consider a more recent case of this “fairyification” process which comes from Hawaii, that of the Menehune. The Menehune are the indigenous people of the Hawaiian Islands. As the current Hawaiian peoples moved into Hawaii, they drove the deeper into the jungles from which they mythologically emerged at night to build magical temples before fleeing back to the jungles when the sun rose. Yet despite their mythological status, they were a real people whose ancestors were counted in the Hawaiian kingdoms first census and whose ancestors likely still survive today.

It is not simply indigenous people who can enter the realm of folklore and myth, however. Consider the way Western culture has treated the gypsies in its folktales and movies. Imagine what would have happened if gypsies had vanished before Western cultures had gained high literacy rates, before there had been anyone to document the reality rather than the fantasy. Indeed, even with the reality, available people still tend to think of gypsies as magical beings. It seems strange that magical powers and an advisory role are assigned to a race of little-known people by those who had their own traditions of witchcraft and fortune telling. 

There are Romanian witches as well as the cunning folk of England, and yet we still choose to feature the gypsies in their mysterious role. This, however, seems to be the way of humans– to dehumanize certain peoples as fairy-like beings. For once again, it’s not just Europeans who are guilty of presuming some nomadic people to be magical. Indeed, the people of Greenland believed that the Vikings were literally descended from dogs. And when the Europeans first showed up to the Americas, it was believed that they were god-like beings. Refugees, explorers, and nomads as with indigenous people can be treated strangely. They like everyone can die and become fairies in myths or be sucked into the fairy realm, and there likely isn’t a single place on the planet that hasn’t had some form of nomadic people travel to it.

Humans do not become fairies simply as a means of escaping others or through the mythology of others. Fairies also take humans into their world to join them. In Greece, a fairy queen asked one girl:

"Would you not like to be a fairy?...and live with me in this garden where the sun never ceases to shine and where it is summer all the year?” (Gianakoulis, 1930)

Then, despite the girl’s apparent refusals, the fairies took her soul anyways to become one of them leaving behind her body. This is not, however, an isolated incident. Fairies often take humans away, offering them magical candy that will transform them into fairies or items of clothing which can transform them such as scarves and shawls. At times, this is done because the fairies want a servant. Other times fairies want a sexual partner. However, it would also seem that fairies are also after friends and allies, or that they have some other purpose humans cannot discern.

Consider also that some fairies appear to be simply humans who have some garment of clothing that makes them different and unique. In Greek folklore, many fairies are made fairies by a handkerchief which when stolen forces them to become human. In Scottland, selkies have a seal skin which allows them to become ocean fairies or ghost-like creatures which inhabit castles. (Briggs, 1967) Jacob Grimm points out that in some cases, the immortality of fairies comes from the food they eat in fairy land. Further, as previously mentioned, simply entering fairy land and living there would turn some humans into fairies.Humans are simply fairies who do not live within the fairies’ world.

Thank you very much again, dear friends, for visiting my blog. Please share your thoughts with us, if you will. Have a great day. 

✿ڰۣ❤In Loving Light from the Fairy Lady❤ڰۣ✿

Ask an Empath: Music and Emotions

Ask an Empath: Music and Emotions
by Lorna Tedder · in Empathy

Hi dear friends and followers. Today I would like to share with you on the topic of empathy and music. What effect does music have on an empath? Thank you so much for visiting my blog

Music can take the edge off…or give you an edge.

Question: I have figured out that I am an empath. I don’t know much about it and I am still learning. But songs seem to have a really deep effect on me. Does anyone else have problems with emotions and music, or is it just me?

I assure you it’s not just you.

Music has always been near and dear to my heart. I don’t have the amazing talent that many of my friends do, musically, but both creating music and listening to music can draw emotions out of me that nothing else can, both willingly and unwillingly.

Note: Depending on what kind of mood I am in when a particular piece of music materialises, it can either penetrate to the depths of my heart making me feel extremely sad, or it can go to the opposite end of the scale where I can find myself soaring up into the apogee of the cosmos. Most times these emotions are triggered by past experiences. Or it can be a core sadness because of some sad experience I experienced in the past that I associate with the song. When something hits me deep within, it awakens emotions there that had just lain dormant just beneath the surface. There is no halfway reaction. It becomes fully evolved or it isn't born at all. 

Music in a good lubricant for arousing feelings and and emotions but I believe that there are also other mediums that can effect the same feelings. This next strongest trigger would be aromas, the sense of smell. Third in line is sight, colors. These topics I will come back to at a later date. Today's topic is about the sound of music.

From the tone of your question, I’m assuming you’re having trouble with sad songs. I have the same problem. It’s not always songs that are sad–in and of themselves–that will make me tear up, although many will. But sometimes songs that remind me of a particular time and place can take me immediately back to that spot. I cannot listen to Fisher’s “I Will Love You” without feeling distraught because of where and when I heard the song last–even though it was a very good moment at the time. Hearing it now takes me back to that place and the sadness of no longer having that particular friendship. There are other songs like “Say Something, I’m Giving Up on You” that I associate with a particularly emotional, in a bad way, time in my life. And I can’t listen to it even now without going back to that spot.

On a somewhat lighter note, I cannot listen to Wall of Voodoo’s “I’m on a Mexican Radio” without feeling nauseated because I was sick at a friend’s house the first time I heard it. I haven’t had a Sloe Gin Fizz since!

Sometimes, it’s not even the song itself, but the singer and the timbre of his or her voice that reaches out to me. The singer pours his emotions into the lyrics and it’s very easy for me to tap into, whether I mean to or not.

Note: Yes this is very true. If the singer or actor, actress was not able to actually play the emotions of their character, believe me the movie or song would appear inanimate even for those who are low level empaths.

Music seems to have this ability, to some degree, on all people–empathic or not. It’s not just something to play in the background. It is, indeed, a mood shifter. I’ve seen beautiful, but depressing songs turn perfectly pleasant women into sad, see-no-positive-in-anything people. I’ve seen perfectly pleasant men turn irritated and downright hateful listening to music that I will only describe here as “angry.”

I watched this happen before my eyes: two happy, positive people who immersed themselves in certain types of music so that they could wallow in the emotions that were evoked. In both types of music, the songs, in moderation, had little effect on them. In those two cases, both people used music to put themselves into a certain mood. Ones that they could not drag themselves out of.

The fact that music can shift your mood so quickly is both good news and bad news. We’ve already covered the bad news.

Here’s how music can best benefit you as an empath: in cases where you have connected with someone who is sad, angry, suicidal–whatever–and you need to help break that connection, create a special playlist of songs to break the spell.

Bad day at work? On the way home, start up your playlist of songs you can belt out in the car. Fire up your old time rock ‘n roll, your silly songs, your classical music, your whatever it is that makes you feel empowered. Keep that playlist available as a secret weapon and let the music work its magic on your mood.

Note: Love this last part, do you? So why not put on your favorite now. 

Thank you very much again, dear friends, for visiting my blog. Please share your thoughts with us, if you will. Have a great day. 

✿ڰۣ❤In Loving Light from the Fairy Lady❤ڰۣ✿

Empaths and Limiting Social Media

Empaths and Limiting Social Media
by Lorna Tedder · in Empathy

HI dear friends and followers. Today I would like to introduce you to the topic of online friends. How many on line friends do you truly have? Thank you for visiting my blog.

I’m not one to collect, intentionally at least, Facebook friends and social media followers to prove my popularity or to offer, the trendier term, “social proof” that my words, books, and blog posts are worthwhile to the inhabitants of planet Earth.

The usual advice given to empaths, in regards to social media, is to try to stick with positive online friends or at least those who have little or no drama to pull you into. The more friends you have, the more energetic connections you’re likely to make…even ones you’re not aware of.

From time to time, I unfriend or delete followers because they cross my boundaries. Emotions can be exceptionally jagged during big political elections, religious arguments, and breaking news stories. In most cases, I can merely hide negative people and drama queens…particularly if they’re family members. In other cases, I have to do everything in my power to make sure I don’t view their online offerings…particularly if it’s photos of abused animals or children. This is not to say that positive people, neutral people, or those who never comment one way or the other on any of your posts or opinions can’t be harmful.

After an anonymous Facebook friend who rarely, if ever, communicates with me on social media copied my private posts and passed them on to my boss, I’d decided I’d had enough. Of course, I know better than to think anything said on social media is truly private and though I didn’t mind my boss reading these posts, they had nothing to do with him or my current job and they were misinterpreted and distributed to a wide audience who had no idea of the background of the particular event, though most of my Facebook friends are very familiar with the background, including the offender. Over the next few days, I decided that although I would really miss the posts of some of my co-workers, to unfriend and block about 40 of them. The only ones who remained were my immediate team, friends outside of work, and a few former interns whom I still mentor.

Within a day, I noticed that I was feeling lighter, happier, less stressed. I learned that some of my co-workers who have never spoken to me online had been lurking heavily and admitted to living vicariously through me. Others strongly disagreed with my spirituality, a well-known fact behind my back, and monitored my postings to fuel the rumor mill. Some of my former Facebook friends had always been pleasant to my face, but were in no way supporters…as are many of the other groups that I connect with online, including my writer pals, spiritual friends, close family, and distant cousins I’ve come to know via social media.

By divorcing most of my co-workers on Facebook—including people I really didn’t want to unfriend—I reduced the amount of fodder co-workers had. I also severed their energetic attachments to me 24 hours a day. That part was the most unexpected of all.

As an empath, there are many times I can feel someone thinking about me or focused on me. Social media allows a lot of energetic cords to form with people I’m not closely bonded with and who really don’t support me in any way.

Sometimes I go for walks at night or in the early mornings and I‘ll walk straight through a single strand of spider web, right across my face. I’m not sure where it came from and I didn’t see it before, but I do know I want to get it off me as fast as possible. And now, at night, before I go to bed, I energetically sweep away all those spider webs and attachments to me…from readers, from Facebook friends, from social media followers. Not because I don’t like these people, but because I can’t have that constant tug at my energy. In the morning, I wipe away any new webs that have formed overnight. It’s not disrespectful to my friends and followers on social media…and it’s not meant to be hateful.

It’s simply meant to keep my energy my own so that I can take care of myself first.

Note: How many friends and followers on the social programs like facebook and Google + are truly our friends? The numbers might show thousands, even in the millions, but how many are there that are truly your friends? My guess would be you are lucky if you have enough to spell out the word friend on your keyboard. Possibly 6 truly loyal friends all told. 

 

Thank you very much again, dear friends, for visiting my blog. Please share your thoughts with us, if you will. Have a great day.

✿ڰۣ❤In Loving Light from the Fairy Lady❤ڰۣ✿

That Bullshit about Forgiveness Part 2

That Bullshit about Forgiveness Part 2

Hi dear friend and followers. Today I have for you part 2 of That Bullshit about Forgiveness. Thank you very much for visiting my blog. The notes in orange and my own 

I need this. I. Need. This.

If I couldn’t have his help in understanding, then I’d get it from elsewhere. And elsewhere did come along. It showed up in a white car on the roadside on an afternoon walk. It showed up in a podcast. It showed up in office gossip. It showed up in a new audiobook. It showed up in memories of my father with his easy charisma when he was still young and dashing and flirtatious for an audience and dark and brooding and angry for those who knew him best.

Understanding. All knowledge in the Universe came together, coalesced to help me understand him, who he really was, why he’d done what he’d done. The anger faded. The hurt faded. The Bible story of Jesus on the cross calling out, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do!” suddenly took on new meaning to me. Forgiveness was a place I could get to because I understood his helplessness in who he is and how he deals with life just as we are all helpless to be who we are. That doesn’t condone anything, that doesn’t reignite trust in him, but it does bring me to a place of understanding. I tiptoed into this idea of forgiveness and welcoming the idea of forgiving.

A decade ago, a woman tried to take my children from me. Years later, after much struggle and anger toward her, she would come to me with an apology and an explanation of behaving badly toward me because she was hurt by my absence. She asked my forgiveness and I gave it to her. Then and there. I understood her, even if I didn’t like what she’d done and would be forevermore wary of her. And the old anger and hurt released and our lives balanced. I could not have been more surprised that she would have grown personally to the point of being able to ask forgiveness or how brave she was for approaching me when I wanted nothing more until then than to claw that miserable bitch’s eyes out for threatening my family. I still remember the sense of peace that wafted over me in the days after I’d forgiven her. But then, she’d shown contrition. She’d made the first step to set things right.

I needed to feel the same sense of balance and peace this time, too. I needed the healing. I needed him to understand me as I understood him. I needed to let him know he was forgiven. For him to have that part of the equation to work with in his own healing. I was still thinking then that forgiveness was a gift I could give him in helping to set things right between us.


I. Need. This. 

I need to do this.

Note: I have done my best to forgive this very close friend of mine, a friendship that was as close to a sisterhood as one could have. I have tried on many different occasions to make contact with her personally, but I was unsuccessful. So the only way I could do this forgiving was by way of an email, which I can only hope she will read, and in these documents. I forgive her for any misunderstandings she may have had about me as I sincerely pray she forgives me for any and all wrong doings I may have committed against her. 

Forgiveness for any perceived harm, both intentional and unintentional.

She will always be in my prayers and will always have a place in my heart, and along with her family, I pray that all will be well with her in the future. 

It was as if my spirit guides would not let me rest until I finished the task. And so I defied the barriers between us and told him I was forgiving him. And I did. I really did forgive him, meaning it, willing, doing. So hard, so easy. With a dash of a third ho’oponopono ritual thrown into my message to both grant and ask forgiveness for any perceived harm, both intentional and unintentional.

I did not in that instant feel that soaring sense of freedom that zealots had preached to me, all that bullshit about forgiveness. No, that came later. I waited for an answer, not knowing if one would come at all.

I sat alone on the living room floor and prayed while a storm raged outside, tearing through trees and shingles. I knew that night, as the winds howled and the rains beat against the walls of the house, that I would hear back, and I suddenly knew what the answer would be the next day.

And I was right.

There was no acknowledgement of my forgiveness. And I am unforgivable.

It was then that the cement block around my ankle melted to mud, and I surged upward through the surface of the water. Breaking through. Breathing. I can breathe. He didn’t have to forgive me. I’d been freed of the awful burden I’d carried for so very long.

There were two things I realized in his response that I had not known before, and those things broke the spell I’d been under and gave me the release I so needed. Over the next few hours, I realized that he still did not recognize the extent of pain he had caused me, that he believed his own pain was far deeper and more important than mine. His pain was worthy of not forgiving. My pain was a sad inconvenience, regrettable, but nowhere near as important as the hurt I’d caused him. He knew back then that this thing had hurt me more than any hurt ever done me in my life, and that includes abuse of many types at the hands of other people. This was the height of emotional pain in my life, something I did not think possible to recover from. I think he truly does not–or at least will not–recognize the damage done to my dreams, my beliefs, my sense of trust. Or maybe he just never believed how deeply I loved him or that he could be loved that deeply and so thought that his actions wouldn’t have any long-term consequence in my life and I’d simply be happy again soon enough and we could just pretend nothing had ever happened. In those moments, I was finally able to see him as he was, instead of looking at him through the eyes of a woman in love. It was…freeing…to see him that way instead of how I remembered him. I’d been pining his ghost all this time.

The other thing that stunned me was realizing that he’d done no work on himself in all that time. At least, none that was evident in his answer. I mean, I have done the hard, facing-the-shadows spiritual work that’s gotten me to this new place in my life. It’s been grueling. There has been no rest. It’s been a matter of survival for me, because if I can’t heal these wounds and I let them continue to haunt me, then I’m not so sure life is worth living. I don’t want to live in misery or negativity or hatred until the end of my days. So it’s been “do the work” or stagnate and resign myself to never allowing anyone to love me again for fear that I’ll be as wrong again as I once was.

But I’ve done the work. I’ve done it alone, walking 3000 miles over the same paths and while turning it over and over in my head to make sense of it and figure why I attracted this situation into my life–and I did figure it out, how it’s all connected to a childhood tragedy that I’ve been working hard to heal over the last year. I’ve talked to more than one good counselor, though they’ve lost their patience that I couldn’t release it faster. I’ve done it without the support of friends and family, though they would disagree. Their idea of support has been to hate him. They’ve shaken their heads at me, not understanding. They’ve cursed his name, thinking they understood. They’ve yelled and fussed at me and judged because I couldn’t turn off my feelings for him or either turn all my feelings for him into hated. They’ve stomped out of the room if I’ve mentioned his name or something we used to do together as if the syllables of his name were an incantation to the God of toying with women’s hearts. They’ve tried to be nurturing but overall, they’ve done more harm than good by refusing to allow me to give voice to my thoughts and just be there for me to vent or wonder or work through it in words. So the brunt of the work has been alone and in private. Not a day of it has been easy.

Note: I am fortunate that I have one supporter. Maybe the only one I have in this world who truly understands my feeling and their depths even when I am not being very reasonable. I have not anyone like that in my life for a good many years. I am grateful that this person walks beside me today. I have two confidants, close friends and sisters left in this world. One is at my side and the other is half a world away.

Seeing where I would be in my life right now had I not done the work made me realize just how far I’ve come, how deserving I am, just where a lot of the fault lies that I had placed on myself. And that I can stop blaming myself for everything wrong in myself, even if he blames me for everything wrong in himself.

I forgave him first, then the peace began as I saw things in a new light and could finally forgive myself for my part in his life and his part in mine. I don’t wish that he had never come into my life as he probably wishes about me, and I do earnestly wish that he could get to a good place in his life and to the peace he needs. Sometimes though, I still wish things could have been different, that they could been what I thought they were instead of what they are now.

It’s crazy what you could’ve had.

Thank you very much again, dear friends, for visiting my blog. Please share your thoughts with us, if you will. Have a great day.

✿ڰۣ❤In Loving Light from the Fairy Lady❤ڰۣ✿

That Bullshit about Forgiveness

That Bullshit about Forgiveness

Hi dear friends and followers. Today I wish to share some thoughts with you about forgiveness. Thank you for visiting my blog.

Note: I do not think it matters much what level of empathy or sensitivity you are experiencing in your life, if you have feelings at all and you are an adult of at least middle age, you have most likely experienced at different levels what is told here by the author. I know I have, and more than once. Have you heard of the expression of the dog that keeps going back after the same porcupine over and over again? You may learn to eventually forgive yourself,  but trust may take a long time to return and even then never completely. The rest of this contribution by the author speaks very well for itself. 

Almost 3000 miles I’ve pounded out with my own two feet. That’s what it took to get to the destination of forgiveness.

You’ve heard that bullshit about forgiveness, haven’t you?

If you’ve ever been hurt or angry or hurt and angry or brought to your knees, then someone somewhere has certainly lectured you on forgiveness…and how light and happy you’ll feel when you forgive…and how not forgiving is like carrying acid inside you that eats away at your center instead of the center of the one who hurt you…and how forgiveness is something you do for yourself…and how forgiveness is about setting yourself free…and how forgiveness is not about condoning the awful thing done to you…and if you’ll only forgive, then you’ll find a peace in its place in your heart.

Yeah, that bullshit.

And if you find yourself being lectured, it’s usually coming from someone who isn’t still nursing a gaping, gushing wound that is daily yanked open and salted. They may have deep wounds but not the same as yours. Yours, to them, is so much easier.

But no one sees this kind of wound and they weary of even knowing it exists. Their response to your trauma becomes a secondary wounding. If it were a shotgun blast to the heart, they wouldn’t say, “Just ignore it.” They wouldn’t say, “Just let it go.” They wouldn’t say “Just forgive and move on.” No, they’d put their hands on the hole in your flesh to keep your insides from spilling out, and then they’d help you bind it up, carry you to a physician, sit up all night with you until you stopped moaning, check in on you for days/weeks/months/years to make sure you’ve healed. Not this kind of wound. This kind of wound you have to nurse all by yourself, in your darkened closet, in silence.

They wouldn’t tell you that that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger because you already know the heart will never work the same way again, and that its ability to trust may never be regained. It may still pump life, but there’ll now be a certain kind of caution in its mechanics so that it will never bleed for anyone again with the same abandon.


It’s crazy what you could’ve had. It’s crazy what you could’ve had.

I need this. I need this.

So let me tell you about that bullshit about forgiveness, and what isn’t bullshit and what bullshit is. Because this is a story about healing and getting there when I couldn’t have dreamed it possible in the the last year and much more. This story comes with epiphanies, both before and after the act of forgiving, but it doesn’t come with handy on-off buttons for forgiveness. It comes with understanding, releasing, and release, all without a manual from the wide audience that demanded letting go.

I’ve walked (and run, jogged, and sprinted) hundreds of miles since the fall of 2011 for my health and leisure, but since I was brought to my knees, I have gotten back up and walked almost 3000 miles, sometimes stumbling and sometimes running, but always pounding out my sorrow and confusion in every one of those footsteps on an almost daily basis. That’s how far I had to travel to the destination of forgiveness. Almost 3000 miles. In freezing cold, in sleet, in warm rain, in thunder and lightning, in heat waves, at sunrise and mid-afternoon and midnight. Almost 3000 miles to reach a place of peace.


It’s crazy what you could’ve had. It’s crazy what you could’ve had.

I need this. I need this.

It’s hard to explain this wound to anyone, especially those family and friends who love me. They’re all so good at reassuring me that some people aren’t worth my tears. It’s not that I disagree, but my feelings were real and not something I could just “get over” in a few days’ time. It was the worst I’ve been hurt in a lifetime of many hurts.

But it’s a heavy burden to carry, both loving and hating someone and feeling those feelings swirling every day. At times I’ve described it as an open wound but that’s perhaps not the best metaphor. It’s been more like being cast into a sea of water 6 feet deep, just barely over my head. Being held to the murky sea bed by a cement block around my ankle. No matter how much I stretched, I could not reach the surface. No matter how often friends on the banks either cajoled me to “let go” or berated me to “let go,” I couldn’t release myself the weight holding me down because the weight would not release me. The top of my head, my intellect, was above the waterline. My hands, flailing, reached above the surface. But I was still underwater, still weighed down, unable to rise above it. I could not float. I could not splash and swim and buoy myself up. I was just below the surface but could not reach precious air and…breathe. Anytime I came close to breaking through the surface, I found water splashed in my face or someone stepping on the weight and pulling me further down.

That was my life during that very long time. Every. Fucking. Day.

It’s crazy what you could’ve had. It’s crazy what you could’ve had.

I need this. I need this.

I prayed often for more than a year that this burden would be lifted. I needed it to be lifted. And part of me didn’t want it lifted because I missed him so much. Missed the man I knew back then. Or thought I knew. And because if I could somehow understand why he’d hurt me, then maybe I could find a reason I could live with. And if the burden was lifted, then I might not ever know or understand. I thought I had to understand first.

And I did. I needed to understand. Somehow understanding could make it okay, I knew. Some logical explanation that renewed my belief in honor and honesty. I was always desperate to understand, and yet I was prevented from talking to him about what he’d done and from getting closure. If there was understanding to be had, it wouldn’t come from him. It’s the cruelest thing when you are barred from healing in the ways you know to heal. But I needed healing. I needed closure. And there would be none of it from him. It had to come through my own hard work. For myself. Alone.

I had to find my balance. Forgiveness was a part of that, but I couldn’t see how I could ever do it. I couldn’t unmarry the love and hate that were tangled into one knot. And I’d lashed back at him out of hurt and anger–a frantic attempt to hold onto the one thing I had left in my life.

I’d done two ho’oponopono rituals in 14 months, both with eerie images shown to me, and I understood from both that I still maintained my own light and we were still connected and I was still sharing my light and energy with him. The first ritual had been beautiful and astonishing, the light and love between us. The second one had been vines reaching out from his etheric body to mine, dead and brown vines that turned green at the tips where they planted themselves in my flesh, like vines that propagate by rooting in promising earth. The bonds had been too deep to fade after two releasing rituals. He was still connected to my heart in a way I couldn’t sever.

At my Winter Solstice Burning Bowl Ritual, I announced to my spiritual circle, friends, and family that I was tired of carrying this burden, that I was ready to release it, that I wanted to be able to talk to him and it be decent between us, that I needed to end this feeling of hostility and pain that emerged with every thought of him. My intentions were met with anger and surprise, and more than a few quips of “How can you even still think about him? What’s wrong with you that he still means anything at all to you?”

But this was the final act of a long spiritual endeavor and the most difficult personal evolution I’ve faced out of many difficult experiences. Figuring out how to forgive.

End of part 1 Part 2 continued tomorrow

Thank you very much again, dear friends, for visiting my blog. Please share your thoughts with us, if you will. Have a great day. 

✿ڰۣ❤In Loving Light from the Fairy Lady❤ڰۣ✿