Turning The Light On

And Then There Was Light
March 2010 by SusanKs

Learning to see, understand and accept the world on its terms meant learning to 


see, 


understand 


and 


accept when I wasn't.

Eh?

Along the way one of the things that was core and foundational to my transformation from that...

perpetual victim

to

the powerhouse I am today :)

began with...

Here it comes....

Wait....

Wait...

Its really simple...

but it is definitely not

easy.

Here it is....

Almost there....

Ready?

The lightbulb began to glow dimly when I 

began to choose

Awareness. 

Instead of

Avoidance.

Yup.

Awareness.

No.....


Not of what everyone else was doing wrong and that pissed me off


or hurt me, scared me and sent me running


with my tail between my legs


finding comfort in my weakness...

I can't...

But they...

But its....

so

HARRRRRDDDDD.

Yup.

That was me. 

Just a few short years ago.

And it began to change

when I began to change.

Awareness.

Its the beginning of

the end

of the nightmare.

Its where I began to discover that I held the power to create the change

that would ultimately

change my life. 

Inspiration.....Return To Innocence

A friend and member of the Empowering Solutions Community on Facebook shared this with me today....and I wanted to share it with you.




Love (Love, Love)
Devotion (Devotion, Devotion)
Feeling (Feeling. Feeling)
Emotion (Emotion, Emotion)

Don't be afraid to be weak
Don't be too proud to be strong
Just look into your heart my friend
That will be the return to yourself
The return to innocence

The return to innocence

If you want, then start to laugh
If you must, then start to cry
Be yourself don't hide
Just believe in destiny

Don't care what people say
Just follow your own way
Don't give up and use the chance
To return to innocence

That's not the beginning of the end
That's the return to yourself
The return to innocence 
~

It is never too late...


to create your best life. 


Return to you to find your light...


Follow your passion


To discover your purpose...


And there is where we can make sense of that which makes no sense.


With love,


SusanKs


Lyrics from sing365

Karma? Or Religion? Or Abuse?

How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours. ~ Wayne Dyer

I read a variety of authors and genres. One is Dr. Wayne Dyer who has some really good ideas...

Although...

I can't say I agree with everything that anyone else writes - but then...

That’s part of being an independent thinker...

The ability to take in information and make ones own decisions and construct ones own meaning without having to resort to black and white thinking to support their own choices. (Deep shit, eh?)

But as good stuff goes...

This particular quote has a lot of meaning to me because…

The idea that somehow we caused our abuse/trauma or...

its payback for something we did in a past life or...

that we were somehow not good enough to not be abused/hurt/traumatized….

Or we have displeased god - however "god" looks for you...

Is just not cool.

And while I have my own faith and cosmic level of consciousness

I don't often see the human constructs of religion as helpful...

Especially when it requires someone who has been through life’s ringer and coming out the other side all f*****d up to carry the burden of the abuse or trauma experience.

So when I found this version and view of Karma and cosmic accountability I find empowering vs defeating …

And I just wanted to share it with you :)

Peace

Namaste

Bless you

and

Carry on:)

~

Visit Darlene Ouimets blog Emerging From Broken to read up a bit more on learning to recognize and combat the damaging messages we get from those who use religion to oppress and abuse by clicking here. 


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Creating My Best Life; Emotional Awareness

Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

Recently on the Empowering Solutions Community page I'd posted this: "Avoiding my emotions created a teapot effect where I would blow up or boil dry. ~SusanKs". 


The way I described myself in the past was as having 2 emotions; angry to the point of rage and sadness/depression that would debilitate me. In between I lived in a state of numbness where I didn't feel anything. 


Emotional extremes and swings from one extreme to the other was my normal until I understood that I could learn to connect with my body and my physical responses to my life experiences aka my emotions and...


...that there was a full range of emotional experiences not just the highs and lows I was accustomed to.


I'd like to invite you to join me at the ES Community page. Give us a "Like" and recieve the daily updates, notes and discussions in your own FB Newsfeed.


Connect with us there by clicking here. :) 

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I Was Looking for Happy....In All the Wrong Places

Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

I remember being asked...

"So when will you be happy?" by those who seemed to have some secret that I didn't know about. My life was miserable. My relationships were often full of strife, my job was never the right job, my boss never the right boss, my hair, my weight, my car, clothes....

Were never just "enough".

I used to strive to be more, have more, do more. My value, my worth and my happiness were determined by people places and things that I could have, be or do.

The thing was - my focus on doing and having really didn't have much effect on my state of being and being happy.

I was happy for a minute if all worked out the way I thought it should work out.

Likewise if there were any snafu's I was not so happy and often sad or angry but not often truly "happy" but for a minute or two - when all was sparkly shiny and new.

Learning to understand that my state of well being was dependent on things outside of myself motivated me to search for the answers to being happy when the people places and things outside of my physical person didn't dance to my tune the way I thought they should.

I sought and I found that in letting go of the outcomes I usually got the outcome that I wanted.

Learning to let life unfold naturally meant learning to recognize when I was seeking my happiness in all the wrong places....

And that when I stopped looking...under the rocks, at the mall, the car dealership, the mortgage company or the boyfriend, husband, kids...

I found it in myself. :)
~

Happiness is (Not Always) A Choice Read here about how by understanding the source of my pain I was able to finally let go of it :)

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Creator of My Life

Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

When I was encouraged to and did identify my normal emotional response to abnormal life experiences as an illness I believed something was wrong with me instead of with my life experiences or dysfunctional relationships. 

This denied the reality of the source of my pain and caused me to become stuck in managing symptoms instead of going through the normal emotions of acknowledging what I survived and learning how to cultivate healthy relationships.

Shifting away from a paradigm of "illness" empowered me to begin to see that what I was lacking in emotional resiliancy and healthy interpersonal relationships - I could learn. 

It shifted me from being an enabled victim to an empowered creator of my life. 

Emotional and Psychological distress is real but treating it as an illness or as symptoms to be managed left me powerless to learn to live beyond it and left me dependent on coping and managing instead of creating and living the life I wanted for myself.
~

Did you miss the live broadcast? Listen to the archives of the most recent Empowering Solutions program at Blog Talk Radio....Christina Enevoldsen and I talk about how we came to understand that were were not the problem but how we could be our own solution. Click here to download or listen! 

From the Archives...

Claiming A New Paradigm For Myself Part 2

This Became My Truth

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Getting Unstuck Sometimes Requires Rocking the Boat

Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

 Creating My Best Life:)
Wednesday, April 27, 2011 7:29 AM

From a recent post at the Empowering Solutions Facebook Community page....


Feeling the anger at being violated and having that anger heard can lead to the grief that offers the soothing balm of the tears that allow our emotional wounds to heal. Denying our anger or sharing our pain with those who cannot separate their own issues from ours serves to keep us stuck and unable to move into, through and out of our pain. ~Susan Ks 2011


Getting unstuck sometimes requires rocking the boat. When we are not finding relief from our pain we can take a look at what we are doing with it. 


Becoming mired in "doing" the work or doing it "right", following someones "model" or therapeutic theory, accepting unsolicited advice from well intentioned but unenlightened folks who are still working out their own pain by fixing and rescuing others....


serves very simply and quite often as busy work that allows us to deny our feelings of anxiety and distress allowing us to put off doing the "hard work" of emotional healing.


Learning to identify "stuck" as a signpost of denial or bargaining where we are still looking for someone to... 


"rescue" or "fix" us...


tell us what to do or what we are doing wrong....


can create the momentum that will allow us to move into, through and out of that place of stuck.


Emotional healing requires making that shift from "doing" to that place of "being" where we connect with and engage in emotional healing.


The only way out...


is through.


Trusting the process requires trusting myself.


We all hold the light and the wisdom.


It was when I stopped trying to find it in others that I found it in myself.


Read about what that was like for me here. 

~


From the archives...


This is How We Do It...The "Hard Work" 


Pain Is Pain


Intellect and Insight 


"story"? Or "Story"?


~

Happiness Is (Not Always) A Choice

Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

Photo Credit

One of the things that I hear from survivors around the world is how the "positivity" movement neglects to take into account the reality of the traumatic experience.

Its as though somehow magically if we paste a smile on our faces and do the infamous "fake it till you make it" thing that our pain and distress will just....

poof!

Disappear.

And to those well intentioned folks who continue to tout the idea that the past has no impact on today I'm going to respectfully say...

Not. 

Over at Emerging From Broken trauma survivor and Coach Darlene Ouimet has posted yet another article on learning to live beyond broken and how happiness for someone who has been given the burden to make everyone else happy by discounting their own pain - is really not a choice.

Read up on this post here at Darlenes Blog....

It is only by understanding the source of our pain that we are often able to let go of it.

The benefit of this is that we can finally begin to see that we truly do hold the power over our own lives - but only after we give responsibility for others lives and happiness back to them.
~

From the archives...

Being Positive vs Being Pollyanna and Part 2 here is a guest post by Danni of Positively Present that discusses the difference between positivity that denies reality and that which honors it.

Creator? Or Constant Victim? Yeah...I was done with that!

Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

Victim? Rescuer? Perpetrator or Troublemaker?

We all play these roles at different times and sometimes in the same situation. 

Learning to recognize this is how I learned to change it.

The benefit was that learning this helped me to learn how to cultivate healthy vs dependent relationships.

This empowered me to begin to stop recreating the pattern of abuse in my life that left me feeling powerless over my own life yet feeling responsible for everyone else's life.

On top of that this knowledge helped me to feel more confident about life and the world in general.

Why?

Because I was now in creator of my best life vs. a constant victim of life. :)

~

Psssst!


Keep your eyes open! Things are a growing and changing here in my world and I've got some irons in the fire! 


What? You say?


Yes; well, I don't want to give too much away but this year you can expect some stuff!


So - if you haven't yet signed up for stuff...


You can do so in the form at the top left of the page where it says...


SEND ME STUFF! 


With love and appreciation for sharing the journey,


Susan Ks.

There is Only One Hero: And its You

Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

There are some things I AM powerless over but one of those things...is NOT me.

One of - if not THE key issue for survivors of childhood oppression, abuse and neglect is that of feeling powerless.

But for me - I didn't know I felt powerless AND I'd been told by well meaning, albeit unhelpful, folks and programs of the past that I was powerless...

to let go...

let god...

and wish, pray and hope that life just kind of worked itself out and...

that there was nothing I could do.

That I was simply an observer and had to stop trying to "control" things. 

The thing is and was that this never helped me to escape the pain that drove my misery. 

Accepting being mistreated is not acceptable. 

Accepting a life of "less than"...

is not acceptable. 

In this frame of mind - that I was powerless over my life and the things that left me feeling abused, unhappy and generally discontent and 

miserable

I was stuck. 

After all - if I am powerless...what is there for me to do? 

If I cant "make" others treat me well and life be fair...

well, what the hell? 

This was that place where my focus was on what was going on AROUND ME...

instead of what was going on within me. 

It was in understanding the difference between what I was truly powerless over...

People, places and things outside of myself

And what I DID have power over....

My beliefs, thoughts, feelings, emotions and choices...

that enabled me to shift from feeling powerless to understanding the meaning of...

being empowered....

from the inside out. 

From the Archives

Be Your Own Hero

Have to's, Shoulds and Can'ts....I felt Powerless

I Held the Key to My Freedom

"story"? Or "Story"?

The Power Within

I. Am. Not. Powerless.

“Sometimes we get stuck focusing on the maltreatment and wanting what’s fair before we move on. Waiting for justice distracts us from doing things that are beneficial to us--like healing. We can’t change what already happened, but we can change the way we respond to those things. The abuse taught us to think like a victim waiting for rescue, but as adults, we’re empowered to rescue ourselves.” ~Christina Enevoldsen from www.overcomingsexualabuse.com

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Keep On Keepin' On

This journey is not about finally doing it right enough that life is easy although when we learn how to do life - it gets eas-ier.

Its not about being right enough that there are no more bumps in the road...its about learning that we are enough and life - just happens. 

Its not about never getting knocked down - but rather its about learning how to dip and dive as life throws us punches.

Its not about never falling or struggling - its about knowing how to get back up.

This journey is not about competition or keeping up....

Its just about being able to keep on keeping on. :)

From the archives...

When the Student is Ready...the Teacher Will Come

Truth and Dare

Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!

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It Wasn't Me

This morning I tweeted this little ditty...


Understanding that there is a reason why I/my life was f**d up is different than when I make it an excuse that it is still f**d up.


Whaa at?


Heres the thing...


When I thought the problem was ME 


ie that I was sick, disordered, bad, wrong, defective, a bitch, a (fillintheblankdad)...


I lived in that place where I had to justify myself, my existence, my thoughts, feelings and choices.


Why?


Because I had a really difficult time shouldering the burden that something was WRONG with me was the "why" behind my life being a shipwreck.


And why did I carry this burden of proof of my f****ed-upedness?


Because I was taught from an early age that whatever was wrong was my fault.


That I was not and never would be "good enough".


That I never did, never could and never would do anything "right enough".


I was being blamed for what was wrong by those who modeled the world and how to view it to me. 


I was taught that its not nice to blame mother and father for what they did to me but rather


that what they did to me I caused it, was responsible to fix whatever it was that made me do whatever it was that I did that made them do what they did.


So naturally I grew up believing that blaming was "normal".


Well, as I grew up and started my own life I of course engaged with the bigger world from that perspective.


There was always someone or something or some reason why I did what I did or didn't do.


This was that place where I was stuck in "story" and could not yet get to my "Story" in my healing journey.


It was when I gave back that burden and realized that the state of the union was NOT my fault...and it was not my responsibility to fix it that I was able to understand that my "normal" ie blaming things outside of myself for the crappy state of my life was not really "normal" aka "healthy"...nor helpful.


So...


When I was able to let go of feeling responsible for everyone and everything else that was wrong in the world and my relationships...


I was able to understand the difference between understanding that my past life experiences were the reason my life was f***ed up and...


using my past as a reason why it is still f***ed up.


Learning to live beyond broken, learning to live beyond trauma, pain and past wounds came down to understanding that someone WAS responsible for why my life was f***ed up...


And that it wasn't me.


Learning to let go of that burden of proof allowed me to learn to let go of the pain of the past and begin to see that while I could not change the past...


I could learn how to live beyond it. 


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 Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!