+PEAKS AND VALLEYS – HEALING AS A PART OF LIFE

++++

Silly me.  Of course my healing journey must include peaks and valleys!  Healing is not something separate from life.  Life certainly has those peaks and those valleys.  What was I thinking?  I cannot separate out what I choose to accomplish toward my healing from my life itself!  “This, Linda, is a ONE THING!”

Night before last was an awful sleepless night – simply AWFUL!  Yesterday was no day to “write home about,” either!  Now, the day before yesterday was one of the best I have ever had.  It is so rare for me to FEEL GOOD for that many hours in a row!  And then the dark came – as it does – and BAM!!!!!!  There I was in an emotional crisis that lasted nearly 24 hours!

I did not understand – and still don’t – what triggered my crash.  I did NOTHING, thought NOTHING that I could track, and certainly did not ask to feel like absolute HELL.  And there I had been doing so WELL!

Dang!  Seemed pretty unfair to me!

I went hunting in every direction I could think of to find “what I had done wrong” that had created “what had gone wrong,” and I could find nothing.  My fall from my state of grace had simply taken me over without explanation!

The best I could come up with was that Shelley Redford Young and Robert O. Young who wrote the book that is my guide to healing, The pH Miracle: Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health left out an important piece of information!  Leave it to me.  I found it.

These authors describe what they call a physical “healing crisis” that must nearly inevitably erupt for people so drastically changing their lifestyle, especially if they undertake the organic green vegetable juice (I strain mine) cleanse that I am in the middle of.  This is what they wrote:

WHAT TO WATCH OUT FOR

During a cleanse, toxins are dumped from where they’ve been stored in the tissues into the blood so they can be eliminated.  This means that for a while your blood is actually dirtier than it started out.  You may feel worse before you feel better.  Different people experience varying degrees of unpleasantness, or none at all, during this “healing crisis,” which may include nausea, weakness, dizziness, headaches, light-headedness, rashes, bad breath, flu-like symptoms, and fatigue….

A healing crisis is actually a good sign.  But it can be too intense, and therefore discouraging or even harmful.  So monitor your progress closely .  Some mild discomfort can be expected, but you should not experience undue discomfort.  A healing crisis should be short-lived.,,,”  (pages 176-177)

As I have mentioned in previous posts I seriously doubt these authors come from the malevolent world of severe early abuse and trauma, so it would be natural for them to “forget” to mention EMOTIONAL healing crisis that must, I believe now, be a natural part of this detoxifying process for we survivors.

I am grateful that last night I went to sleep instantly and slept just fine.  Today I am better than fine because I am so aware of how painful the hours of yesterday and the night before were! 

I am so determined to accomplish this life change that will enable my body to heal itself that no drift or crash into a healing crisis of emotional HELL is going to keep me from continuing to move forward.

Everyone I know in town today who saw me when I went in to run errands commented on the incredible transformational changes in me!  I have lost 20 pounds since the beginning of this month, have a buoyancy in my gait I haven’t felt for over a decade, my spirit shines with new intensity in my eyes, and hope and confidence inform my every spoken word.

What is this?  Could this be life?

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

+WHAT DO WE STRIVE FOR? HEALTH AND WELL-BEING

++++

There are times in our healing when what we need is so important that we must find a way to translate what is nearly always written by non-severe early abuse and trauma survivors presumably for the SAME — into something we who ARE such survivors can understand and work with.

My guess is that as Shelley Redford Young and Robert O. Young wrote the words I am going to include in this post in their book, The pH Miracle: Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health they had no thought for the kind of lives — usually greatly difficult and shortened lives — that infant and child abuse survivors endure.  Because I don’t see how I can continue to live much longer or with any quality of life in a body that has lost the ability to digest ANYTHING without a run immediately to the bathroom I am left without any choice but to try to find a way to help myself to heal.

There are wonderful ideas in the following passage and there is nothing actually preventing we survivors from apply this wisdom to our own situation.  I do feel it is important for me and other survivors to keep in mind NOTHING about our life is as it might seem to people who are completely uninformed about what early severe trauma can do to its victims.  Yes, STRESS is STRESS – and even though we have lived with great traumatic stress and its distress, the physiological impact on our body CAN be lessened.

Enough.  Here is a section from the chapter “Motivation — How to Get It, How to Keep It” from the book mentioned above that is the basis of my current cleansing, healing efforts.

++++

THOUGHTS AND EMOTIONS

“Those who wish to regain their health [note:  Severe early abuse and trauma in childhood greatly interferes with our ability to grow up entirely healthy in the first place.  This in NO way prevents us from healing to the best of our ability!] or prevent health challenges must be properly motivated to address the issue on all fronts, including eating, drinking and thinking.  This is not just a diet; the true pH miracle is a lifestyle.

“The eating and drinking part is actually sometimes the easiest.  The “thinking” part includes your thought processes, belief system, psychological health, emotional well-being, personal level of consciousness, and an entire host of attitudes, feelings, and behaviors.

Emotions can cause even more acid [not good, harms the body] than food and drink.  Powerful negative emotions come from all sorts of places and in all shapes and forms.  They can include thoughts, feelings, experiences, conscious and unconscious memories [I certainly include the vast amount of body-based trauma memories survivors of infant and child abuse trauma and neglect carry], and dreams.  Any of the many and various problems in living can cause emotional trauma.  They all come under the umbrella of “stress.”  And stress causes signficant amounts of acid to be dumped into your body.

“The great majority of people, even people in the most profound medical crisis, can return [note:  Don’t let this concept stop you!] to an excellent level of health if they conscientiously work to rebalance the body’s original alkaline design.  Conscientiously changing their eating, drinking, and lifestyle, and carefully following the pH Miracle program, they can and will be successful.  They can return to a level of health they have no experienced for many years, a level of health they never even quite imagined.

“But a small percentage of people fail to find full good health despite working hard to change their unhealthy eating and drinking habits.  They share one crucial trait in common:  They are challenged by psychological, emotional, behavioral, or spiritual problems that, perhaps, they do not fully address [note:  Well, we survivors have more of these and suffer from them more intensely than I believe these authors could ever “quite imagine.”  Improved health is STILL our birthright!], and in any case do not fully resolve.  [note:  Personally, being honest and completely realistic, given the extent of my infant-child abuse history I don’t believe it is humanly OR miraculously possible to “fully resolve” the extensive trauma-based troubles I AND my body face.  But I am giving this my ALL anyway!]  Where they fall down [note:  Grr!  Knocked down and nearly crushed to death during our most vulnerable stages of development is more like it!  I have to say, this kind of bias IRKS ME!  I’d like to see any non-survivor live through and live with the consequences we survivors do!  Anyway, continuing to focus on the positive, I continue.  We DO do some of what the authors describe and we can always make improvements.] is at the “thinking” part of the pH protocol.  Their patterns of thinking, ruminations, and emotions aren’t addressed in enough detail.  Unhealthy beliefs, attitudes, biases, value systems, or a diminished level of consciousness hold these people back.  They seem unable to bring an end to ongoing guilt [note:  I would certainly add shame.], grief, blaming, resentment, anger, self-pity, fear, anxiety, feuding, self-loathing mistrust, greed, false pride, spiritual confusion, and son on.  Perhaps they need professional guidance to deal with whichever of these issues dogs them, but do not seek it.  The stress of all this adds significantly to the acid in the body, and not even an alkaline diet can fully balance it out.  [note:  I would say the diet changes are a very good start!]

“When physical health challenges are accompanied by serious emotional and psychological problems [note:  I would say, very frequently so closely caused by these that we have huge difficulty disentangling the two.], you must somehow address them.  Despite what you may be thinking, it is not always a “shrink” that provides the answer.  There are many ways to relieve stress and begin to reduce this part of the acidic overload.  Of course it’s true a well-trained and experienced psychologist, psychotherapist, or psychiatric social worker can make a critical difference.  But so can a minister, priest, rabbi, or other spiritual adviser with years of experience and wisdom.  A good book can set you on the right path.  Reading the works of great thinkers in the realm of intellect and spirit is an excellent way to change your mind-set and quietly challenge the type of thinking that keeps your body mired in an acidic lockstep.  (Some of our favorite books are by David. R. Hawkins, MD, PhD, who writes about the body/sense/mind/intellect/spirit continuum so clearly that simply reading his work will immediately raise your level of consciousness.) You may want to study the stories of miracle workers, saints and mystics, religious martyrs, past-life experiences, near-death experiences, people who apparently died and came back to life, and the lives of Great Spiritual Souls such as Jesus, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Mohammad, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and Shirdi Sai Balba.  As you become more aware of how higher consciousness actually operates, it helps you leave behind some of those thoughts and behaviors that pull you down.  Higher consciousness equates to more peace and alkalinity for the body.  Lower consciousness equates to more turmoil and the creation of unwanted acid.

“To fully experience the pH Miracle for yourself, you must explore, pursue, investigate, read, inquire, and search for answers that set your mind at ease.  Why do bad things happen to good people?  What are we to learn from accidents, devastating illnesses, or setbacks in life?  How is it that some people seem to be able to forgive and forget or simply turn the other cheek?  How can you learn to do that?  What does it mean when people say, “Expect a miracle?”  What does it mean when people say, “There are no mistakes in life?”  These are questions that everyone must answer for themselves.  Look for ways to answer.  Develop understanding.

“To gain or regain your ultimate goals in health and wellness [note:  Well put.], your motivations must reach out far enough to encompass the broadest spectrum of the world around you.  You must strive to eat the foods that bring healthy physical and mental processes to your life, drink the fluids that help to cleanse and purify your body, create the thoughts in life that allow you to forgive yourself, cut others some clack, look only for the good in every situation, and bring peace and understanding to yourself and those around you.

“The value of change is the result.  In this case, the peace and harmony that can arise from embracing the change of this program as part of everyday life are yours for the asking.”  (pages 240-242)

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

+WHAT WAS OUR FAMILY ALASKA HOMESTEAD FROM THE AIR – REST OF MY ALASKA VISIT PICTURES

06 2013 valley alaska homestead now 1

++++

Our homestead land, now subdivided.  The Red barn shaped building sits on what was our original home spot.  The large cleared field at the top was near the edge of our top boundary.

Seeing this land, the home of my heart and soul – just makes me feel sad.  My parents couldn’t find a way to hold onto the land and neither could any of their six homesteading children.

06 2013 valley alaska homestead now 3

++++

The following are pictures of the Eagle River Valley floor, of the lake that is the headwaters of Eagle River and of Eagle Glacier back at the end of the valley.

Eagle Glacier

06 2013 valley alaska eagle glacier ridges

Eagle Glacier – Ridges

06 2013 valley  alaska lake ER headwaters

The glacier melt feeds this lake that is the headwaters to Eagle River.

06 2013 valley alaska ER glacier view to inlet

This is a view of Eagle River Valley taken from the glacier looking toward Cook Inlet in the Anchorage direction.  (Our homestead land lies forward to the right.)

06 2013 valley alaska ER toward inlet

A view of the back of the valley the eagles could see that flew over me as a child but that I had never seen myself until the day of this flight.

06 2013 valley alaska ER valley floor

Coming back into the valley I could see from our land, at least this land is fortunately at least currently protected within the boundaries of Chugiach State Park.  This is the place where the vision I had as a teenager (see link below) left me standing as it ended.  I am so homesick!

06 2013 valley alaska Angel mt river

++++

Those readers of this blog who have followed my writing will have heard me refer to “the angel on the mountain” or Angel Mountain.  I took one picture of it but it was the pilot, Marc, who kindly took two I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR!!

06 2013 vallely alaska angel mt not perfect

There my childhood angel who saved my life as a so-severely abused and traumatized child up there off the right tip of the plane.

I have been blessed to have gone through several Native American healing ceremonies in the years of my adulthood.  During one I found what felt to be the essence of who I am floating in a bubble in the air in exactly this spot!!

06 2013 valley alaska ANGEL MT perfect

The pilot saw exactly what I was telling him about.  There is my angel on the mountain who changes with each tiny change in the seasons!  She was ALWAYS there for me and I talked to her and felt the love of her presence in my life ALWAYS.  As a child, I did not question.  This innocent absolute belief in this angel being there never faded.

eventually this can be cropped to include HER, but for now I am thrilled to have this picture, also.  Thank you, Marc!  And thank you to my brother for arranging this air excursion for me.

++++

About 30 years ago I read a quote that I have never found again, so I can only paraphrase it.  At the moment I encountered those words a shock went through me to the depths of my soul.  How could this be true?

The most pathetic human being is greater in the eyes of God than the mightiest mountain.

It’s still hard for me to accept this truth.  This is one of the great spiritual testings of my lifetime as my soul seeks the illumination of truth.  I am not of myself any kind of a fan of humans.

A great motivation for my current cleansing is because I want to live healthily long enough to be able to live again in Alaska.  This motivation is taking me back to a Native American healing woman this coming Friday.  A friend of mine has seen her and will be taking me.  I am specifically going to ask for assistance to stop smoking cigarettes.  This requires for me a spritual healing.  I cannot do it by myself.

++++

June 23, 2013.  It has taken me some time to even face my feelings about seeing the urban sprawl that has infected the virgin wilderness that was my home growing up.  My parents staked claim to 160 acres in 1958 when I was seven.  Back then there was only a faint rugged Jeep trail back into the Eagle River Valley that has, since I left home in 1969, grown into a 2-lane paved highway and is now back under construction.

Through the kindness of my brother and his pilot friend I was able to see the Eagle River Valley and the land that was our homestead before my parents “lost” (sold) it.  When I was a child from my point of view from the mountain there was a small bump we used to call the loaf of bread beyond which I could not see.  Finally, all these years later I saw what lies beyond it.

I have many thoughts and feelings related to the topic of this post but it is not the time for me to consider them or to write about them.  I simply present the pictures here.

 See also: 

+SOME SCENES FROM MY RECENT ALASKA VISIT

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

+THE DAY HAS COME I CAN FINALLY SAY, “I SAW MY FIRST UFO!”

++++

Late last night as I sat outside in a gentle breeze under a brilliant moon to the south (to become a full “super moon” of even greater beauty tonight) I looked toward the northwest where my neighbor’s huge pine grows.  The sky was dark indigo in that direction.  There I saw a very bright white light.  “Is that a planet,” I wondered.  “What could be that bright?”

It was not a planet.  It was moving, but moving to the southeast too quickly to be a satellite. 

It seemed about as high as the jet planes I occasionally see flying at night over the Mexican border line.  I wondered about passport and customs checks, about who was on this jet and about what their destination might be.  I waited for the sound of the jet engines.  Only silence.  There was no sound of motors.

I noticed the light grew larger and I wondered if a particular turn of the jet had caused it to catch a full reflection of the light of the glorious moon.  By then I was becoming extraordinarily intrigued in this object.  “Am I watching my first UFO?”

I had never seen a night-flying jet heading into Mexico whose flight path took it right over my house.  Just as I expected it to reach a point nearly right over my head the light blinked out as if it had never existed before.  Gone.  Vanished.  “What?”

I stood and walked around my yard to see if I could see where this object had gone on its pathway.  There was no sight of it – anywhere.  No trace.  Gone.

On this warm summer night I believe I finally DID get to see my first UFO.  I have spoken over the 14 years I have lived in this high desert on the Mexican line to several people who grew up here and remember seeing them – some of them rather closely – all of their lives since childhood.

Well, I believe I saw one and the experience has somehow gently, subtly changed me.  It makes me wonder what other people’s personal experience is when they see their first one.  Not overly wonder, but wonder just the same because I suspect such a reaction must tell a lot about a person’s beliefs about being alive and about their spirituality.

I also smile a bit at the lore in our family about my maternal grandmother having formed the first UFO abductee support groups in Los Angeles after she moved there with my mother in the 1940s.  True?  I doubt we will ever know what grandmother was up to, but the stories fit what I know of my grandmother.

Personally I have no fears that any UFO’s inhabitants have sinister intentions regarding humans.  I think they watch to see how we mature as a species.  I see no harm they could inflict upon us that could be greater than the harm we are already doing to ourselves, to one another and to this precious, glorious planet we have been gifted to reside upon.

Was that some craft built by our own species?  I certainly don’t know.  I do not believe that it was.

It doesn’t matter to me.  I matter to me and somehow I feel a little more special for having seen what I did last night.  I only sense beneficence from this experience, a warm sense of not feeling so alone here.  That comforts me as if I was briefly in the presence of benevolent angels that for a few moments I could actually see.

My take is that I feel safer, more protected, more connected in grander ways to life itself.  My response brings me an expansion of my soul and mind to include an increased felt sense of how intricate and HUGE the web of life really is that we are all a part of.

I feel gladdened and encouraged to continue my own healing journey because I believe every choice and action every person makes and takes influences the healing of all and an increase in goodness is shared by all life – near and far.

I contemplate that because there is only one God Who made everything everywhere, there is no stranger to us in existence.  I find myself thinking that it may well be that our species has been chosen and designated by God to be the mirrors of His spiritual light so that we will become the spiritual leaders of all of his creation.  All of it.  This would mean that ALL that exists on this side of the next non-physical world NEEDS us to grow up and do our job.

Maybe those who visit us in UFOs know this as fact.  They are then waiting for us to figure this out.  It may be that the sooner we grow as the blessed, great spiritual species of power for goodness that we are the better off all of life will be.

If this is true everything all of us do matters a great deal.  It is important.  Today I am even more inspired to do my part.  Back to my green organic vegetable juice cleanse I go!  Yet I will never be quite the same now that I both saw – and then did not see – that brilliant moving light as I was before.

I have a renewed sense of purpose and a new sense of hope.  Nothing about being in this life looks or seems the same to me as it did before last night.  I am glad.

++

Our species has been given our detailed instructions that tell us how to create true and lasting peace and well-being among our species on earth.  What part will we choose to play in this grand unfolding?

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

+HEALING IN THE WOMB OF THE WORLD

++++

I was formed in the womb of my mother and then born into the womb of this world as we all are.

This world.  This second womb.  The place where our soul grows.  If we let it.

I realize at this point in my life as I take response-ability for trying to let my body heal itself that this detoxification cleansing process confines me to the womb of my home (if not its bathroom) for however long this healing journey takes.

I can go nowhere.  I am so appreciative of having a home, of having this time I need to go through what I am hoping will be a transformation of this human marvel that lives in connection with my soul.  “Go with the flow” could not be a more apropos description of this healing work.

My early trauma related disabilities have already shrunk my world.  This detox has shrunk it temporarily even further.  I have a cell phone so at least I can talk to people, and I can email.  My computer and Facebook are at war with one another so my contact with friends and family is erased through that avenue.  At least that’s the only website where the computer freezing problem seems to lie.

I am in a hospital of one.  I am both physician and patient.  And boy this healing requires patience!

As I have been writing in my recent posts I am also mothering myself in the purest and most basic ways possible.  (I am also having body memories returning regarding my difficulty quitting smoking and my increasingly difficult breathing patterns as they connect to my psychotic Borderline Personality Disorder mother (see previous post) placing her giant hand over my tiny nose and mouth when I cried – from birth.  And she did not do so gently.)

My world is very quiet and I need that.  I am being assisted in my rest times by Netflix streaming of 180+ episodes of Star Trek:  The Next Generation which I have never watched before.

++

I am looking around my home today asking myself, “Is this what you want your home-womb to look like?  Do you actually want all this stuff in here?”  The detox of my home is moving forward very slowly – but it also happening.

I thought a few days ago that I would be moving far away to live near family, but their plans might take them even further away – and all is currently on hold.  Many people seem to be on the verge of change.  Maybe there is a kind of cosmic force that is assisting those of us who are willing to move in new positive directions.

Big changes as destiny calls for — when that call comes it is hard to ignore it.  What forces ARE at work?  What new lessons and teachings for our soul?

It’s best to be reasonable and cautious, to investigate and consider all fronts when changes beckon.  I am waiting.  I am healing.  I am patient.  That is good.

Patience is a quality, a virtue of the soul that helps it mature so when it leaves this womb of the material world it is better developed to thrive in the next world.

This world.  Our testing field.  Our education.  Our time and place to make our choices for good or for ill.  To learn or not to learn.  To be healthy and strong as a soul when we are born into our forever world — or to end up there a deprived spiritual cripple.  I ask myself — “How am I doing in all of this?”

++

I need my body healthy as I prepare for turning 62.  I cannot see what lies ahead.  But I am preparing.  I want to do what I can through my actions to help my body be at peace with itself.

So strange to me that we have so institutionalized sickness feeding billions of billions of dollars to a system that in the future will be seen as being primitive, ignorant and perhaps truly evil.  Vast areas of truth are withheld from us regarding our health needs by that system that does not benefit at all by having us take control of our health leaving them out of our life cycle.

Accurate health and healing information is available when we are ready to take it in but it will not come from “modern organized medicine” practices! 

Youth of itself is a great protector but aging, remaining alive here in the womb of this world eventually requires more conscious choice and willful action of us to keep on going without falling apart.

Where are our gentle cleansing and educational centers?  Why do we insist at being stupidly shocked as so many people we love and know (and ourself) become attacked by one kind of devastating ailment after another?

We then talk about the sickness, the doctor appointments, the fear, the treatments and surgeries and drugs drugs drugs.

Why do we not face the fact that health is normal and sickness is NOT?  We are not passive victims in our life.  We make choices that keep us well or that make us sick.

But becoming healthy and remaining so is not about a one-stop, one-shop endeavor.  Nobody can do this for us.  Being alive healthy is about living a healthy life.  And I now realize I need to jump rivers when it comes to everything about my diet.  EVERYTHING!  I ran my body as far as it will take me and without the changes in how I eat and drink I see the crash coming.  It is not a pretty sight. 

At my age I know the sick, the dying, the dead.

Yes, our body and our soul will inevitably part company.  I am seeing around me the sickness and suffering that so often precedes death of the body.  Life then becomes a hell on earth.

I don’t want to live in a way that will directly cause me to die that way.  (Yes, accidents happen but that’s an entirely different matter.)

++

An infant in the womb of its mother has to suffer what it cannot change.  I can change much even though the trauma changes during my development cannot be reversed.

My body has been patient with my mistreatment of it.  I hope with hope I have not passed the mile marker down the road of my life beyond which I cannot reclaim my health.  My soul has wrested my motivation out of the grips of my depression.  It has also opened my eyes to the truth that in order to remain in this world with a body in “good enough” working order I better continue with these changes.

++++

My choice for healing is the plan based on the work of Shelley Redford Young and Robert O. Young, who wrote The pH Miracle: Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

+GENTLE AS A NEWBORN

++++

In today’s fast-paced world of junk food and junk news it’s a welcome moment when gentleness makes its appearance.  It’s in the world.  It’s in plants.  It’s in animals.  And it’s in many humans and many creeks and many breezes.

Do we bring out the gentleness in other people?  What brings out the gentleness in me?

I feel much better today and even did my 45 minute walk with no trouble today.  Gone is the scary ugly feeling of the previous two days when I could hardly lift one foot to place it in front of the other one.  It’s been 5 1/2 years since my last chemotherapy treatment for advanced aggressive breast cancer, but I know THAT feeling!  That is exactly what I felt like these past two days, like I had been given chemo.

If it takes a diet of strained fresh organic vegetable juice and a temporary life in my bathroom to clean up the toxic dump that the inside of my body has become then I am willing.  I can pray all I want to God for healing but I know faith is a partnership.  It is my time to do my part no matter how new and strange and uncomfortable this journey may be.

I am determined, and fighting my way through the effects of infant and childhood abusive severe trauma has taught me that my determination is my formidable friend.

I am drinking fresh juiced aloe right now.  As I strained it I realized I could put the little bit of fiber left over on the skin of my face.  Such small new learnings!  As I came back later to wash my face with tepid water I realized what a gentle plant aloe is, what a gentle action I was taking for myself in making space in my life to let it and all the other wonderful foods I am learning to consume (even if only in strained juice right now until my system has healed enough I can handle any fiber) to help my body to heal itself.

This is an extremely grueling routine.  I won’t say that it isn’t, but I am no stranger – no stranger at all – to grueling.  I can do grueling.  If I could not I would have long since been dead.

++

I am finding that I am for the first time in my entire life bonding with my body and becoming consciously attached to this physical system that keeps my soul in this world.  Being born to a psychotic Borderline Personality Disorder mother (as I mentioned in my previous post) left me being hated and abused from birth through the next 18 years. 

I am not complaining.  That has never been my style.  But I was born a newborn.  I was born gentle.  I did not come from the devil at his bidding as his child with the desire to murder my mother as I was being born — as she so permanently believed (and “punished” me for).

To FEEL the truth of my innocent gentleness is coming through taking the best possible care of this body that I can.  This is serious cleansing and I need it to continue my life.  I kid you not, there is a plastic drop cloth pathway across my carpet – and you can figure what that means.

I am — we all are — always in the presence of angels.  As I go through this process I can nearly feel them touching what is becoming new skin, the new skin of Linda.  Our body uses every possible avenue it can to get rid of the toxins in our body — and certainly the horrible toxins created in our bodies given to many of us through early abusive trauma have residues inside of us that I believe can be released through a healing cleanse.

I am losing weight as the toxins stored in fat cells are released, giving the fat cells no reason to continue to function in my body.  I feel lighter.  The world is beginning to look brighter.  I have a long ways to go but for myself – I am heading down a gentle road of healing.

(More info on my cleansing is in previous posts.)

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

+DISCOUNTING – SOME THOUGHTS

++++

It is taking me some time to read slowing through the book I am using for the basis of my choice to change my life by working with diet.  This green vegetable juice cleansing process has taken away most of my energy.  I am moving – and thinking – much more slowly than I am used to.  But I bet this is part of what this level of deep healing needs.

I found a section today that I found interesting, helpful to me, and perhaps of use to this blog’s readers.  So for informational purposes only I am going to copy some of the words of Shelley Redford Young and Robert O. Young, who wrote The pH Miracle: Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health into this post.  That’s about all the energy I can find at the moment – energy to move my fingers!

++++

DISCOUNTING

“Some psychologists talk about levels of “discounting” when it comes to problems, a process of not seeing reality clearly enough, ignoring the importance of some aspect of a problem or situation.  Discounting can harm you and hold you back.  If you cross the street without looking both ways, you are discounting several things such as your health, life, family and friends, various responsibilities, finances, consideration for motorists, and so on.  The higher the level of discounting, the more potentially serious a problem might be.

“The first or highest level of discounting is to deny the existence of a problem.  We see this with addictions like alcoholism all the time.  But we may be discounting the existence of any number of problems — not just addictions.  For example, many people consider as normal the long list of symptoms that plague so many of us, like excess weight, fatigue, skin problems, anxiety, depression, allergies, irritability, the flue, indigestion, headaches, PMS, high blood pressure, yeast, food cravings, and getting one or two colds a year.  These problems may be typical.  They may even be statistically average.  But they are not normal in a healthy body.  Calling them normal is discounting the existence of a problem.  If you don’t admit to yourself that excess weight or headaches or indigestion are a problem, then you are certainly not likely to address them.

“The next level of discounting is to admit the existence of a problem but to deny that it is important.  “Yes, I get very tired all the time, but it’s no big deal.  I just take a little nap during the day and I’m fine.”  The next level of discounting is to admit that a problem exists, and admit that it could be a serious sign of something, but to discount that there is much that anyone can do about it.  “Yes, I’m forty pounds overweight, and yes that’s probably making my heart work too hard, but half the world is overweight and doctors admit they have very little success in helping people lose weight and keep it off.  In the long run, people just can’t change certain things.”

“The final level of discounting is to admit the existence of a problem, admit that it could be important, admit that some people can change, but conclude that you cannot change.  “Yes, I know that many people have given up this terrible and dangerous habit of smoking, but I’ve tried everything and I can’t do it.”  Or, “Yes, I know that my terrible indigestion is bad for me, that it could lead to other problems, and that being on pills for the rest of my life is not a good solution.  I have one friend who gave up coffee but she has more willpower than I do.  Besides, when I go out with people, I just can’t find anything good to eat that’s supposedly healthy.  So what can I do?  I just get so tired of beating my head against the wall!”

“News flash!  There are solutions to life’s problems, and there are many positive ways to approach them.  This new updated version of The pH Miracle: Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health clearly shows you personally can solve both the little health problems and the big health problems.  Meanwhile, you can eat plenty of delicious food and regain a feeling of health that you have not experienced for many years.  But you cannot discount at any level the reality of whatever it is that you are dealing with.  In order to be motivated to make the changes, you first have to be realistic about the existence of problems, their level of seriousness, and the fact that there are solutions that you can implement in your own life.”  (Pages 233-234)

++++++++++++

The authors next include clear and helpful information in depth related to making a committment to take charge of you health – these are only the chapter subtitles:

Step 1:  Define and Record Your Motivation

Step 2:  Set a Realistic and Appropriate Plan

Step 3:  Practice Your New Habits

Step 4:  Evaluate, Review, and Reward Your Progress

Step 5:  If You Fall Off the Wagon, SImply Get Back On Again

++

The next section of the book is about “WHAT YOU THINK, MATTERS.”  I am considering including that part in my next post.

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

+PERSONAL POST, DON’T READ IF YOU WILL BE OFFENDED

++++

I just had a realization that stuns me.  I didn’t plan WHAT I would experience as I drink nothing but strained green vegetable juice to alter my body pH to alkalyn so it can heal itself in areas that greatly trouble me.  (See recent posts.)  I live very near my bathroom, of course.  I am hungry all of the time.  But I am SO focused and SO determined to follow this through correctly.

This may take 7-21 days.  I don’t know how I will know I am done.  I am learning as I go to recognize what my body is telling me, especially about need for repeated daily doses of calcium, magnesium and potassium supplements.  But there is far more than just physical processes involved here, unless I include in “physical” the person that I am living in this body.

I have recognized how food is such a comforter to me.  I would reach out and consume all kinds of things if I could, and because I choose not to (can’t by the “rules” of this diet) I am left feeling exactly that hole inside of me that so desires to be comforted.  Food, of course, NEVER does that.  I don’t believe I am alone in my interactions with food that believes it can comfort me.

A few minutes ago I realized that in literal, physical ways I am remothering my infant, newborn self!!

Because my mother suffered a profound and permanent psychotic break during her labor with me that told her the devil had sent me to kill her (I was a breech birth), she hated me from BEFORE I was born for not being human, for belonging to the devil, for intending to murder my mother.  Nothing ever got any better.  (Mother suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder with psychosis.)

There are plenty of readers who come visit this blog whose mothers were profoundly abusive and NEVER gave for one INSTANT the kind of love, affection, care and comfort to them as infants.  This is infant abuse.

Every part of my life was contaminated with the toxins of trauma through Mother’s hatred of me.  Coming all the way down to my age now at 61, I realize that being limited to ONLY drinking strained green vegetable juice during this cleanse is like feeding infant me not milk, but the greenness of life itself.

I realized this as I prepared aloe juice for myself and set the timer for 15 minutes so I could go back for another 4 swallows.  I realized that from here on out I need to keep a detailed record of which vegetables are in the juice, when I consume the juice, how much I drink, how fast I drink it, and what happens to me afterwards (you know, the diaper part).  I need to maximize this whole process by gather information about myself in interaction with my pure “infant” diet.

I realized I am doing for myself in a very similar way exactly what I did for my 3 babies, what I would do for ANY baby!  And in this cleanse I trust absolutely that toxins of all kinds are being found and removed from the INSIDE of ME.  That’s what bodies are designed to do, and once the toxic waste dump that my body has become is all cleaned out, something new and wonderful is going to happen.  I know it.

A body that is clean and fed correctly is designed to heal itself.  I want to know what that feels like!  (Timer went off!  I will be back after my 4 swallows of fresh juiced aloe.)

I am confined to my home as much as I would be as a newborn.  I had to plan my entire morning’s intact of fluids and juice to make sure I could run to the post office in the afternoon to mail an important package without exploding before I returned.  I made it but barely.

What will I do with my time?  I have less energy, which is to be expected, although I still walk at least 45 minutes in the morning before my first juice.  I am learning to give myself permission to LAY BACK and to take it easy!  Not easy for me.  Not at all easy.

I sadly think of the children being born in our country who are (unless their mother polluted them while they were in her womb) perfectly pure at birth.  Then, a floodgate of polluted “food” is forced into their mouths!  This continues and continues until when we begin to choose our own food it is the COMFORT we are really after, the illusion of trust, feeling safe and loved.

I have posts on this blog – I don’t think I can find them now – where I wrote about the connection between community and food sharing.  We are a social species.  We are designed to be loved and to get along with one another.  When we are at war with our children, when we are at war with ourselves, there is no comfort in our eating!  When we choose horribly toxic food to consume, which is what 99.8% of the space in our grocery stores are full of, we are putting so much toxins into our acidified body that there is little hope we will reach our older age without suffering from some (surprise!) terrible illness.

Well, for now I will be my own GREEN BABY.  I am doing this cleanse because I realized for the first time in my life I can feel it inside myself that I WANT TO LIVE.  I CHOOSE LIFE!

I didn’t feel that at all 5 years ago through cancer treatments.  What I felt was that I didn’t want to die.  That is far from being the same thing as wanting to be here, to be alive, and to do so as healthily as I can manage.

I imagine there are schools of therapy that would “do” rebirthing processes with me.  Certainly my birthing was HORRIBLE!!  I don’t choose to go that way, it would not accomplish what needs to be done.  I need to take serious measures to bring my own body back to life — no matter how difficult this process may be.

After this is all done I know I will never be able to return to the foods I have eaten all of my life.  There is no magic.  I won’t get away with it any longer.  So be it.  I am ready.

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

+THE DISSOCIATION DANCE

++++

Dancing is a good and happy activity even when dancing alone.  Yet no one would ever wish to have been so traumatized growing up that even the self itself has been forced to never truly dance alone.  Some fraction of our awareness is always focused somewhere, never feeling safe.

I am fully aware that all I am belongs to me.  To this one single me.  Yet “Who’s on first?” or “Who is in the driver’s seat?” is often not a part of me who maintinas central awareness by choice.  And heightened stress — be it ‘good’ or ‘bad’ stress — in my life can so easily change that word “often” to “usually.”

I don’t like that.  I don’t WANT to live this way.

I suppose that because I have been living a stable destressed life alone for a number of years in my little house with my animals and gardens, with a small town nearby where there are friends to visit when I want to, I have calmed down greatly.  And yet because I have made the decision to move from here far, far north to be with young grandbabies and my daughters I have chosen to open a floodgate of stress that can threaten to turn me upside-down and inside-out.

I have to pay attention.  I have to be extra careful of myself.  Even opening my blog right now to write this post and seeing that WordPress has made changes to the way things look here STARTLED me!  What am I equipped to cope with?  What not?  How do I transition without flying apart like an exploding supernova?

All I can do is take this all one step at a time – in ORDER.  Order is good.  Trauma is chaos.  I will try very hard not to insert the chaos of my severely traumatized self into any part of this process and situation where trauma does not exist!

In the meantime because of these years of calmness and because of my writing work both on this blog and for the books, I have learned a lot that I can use to help myself.  As this moving process begins to move forward I look for changes especially in how I am within my body.

I mentioned in a previous post my great difficult both with sleeping and with breathing.  I found myself totally holding my breath, withholding my exhale, even as I wrote that sentence.  At night I can feel many “identities” within me competing for the right to breath or not to breath.  This is very scary and uncomfortable for ME.

One of my solutions is to alter my bedtime pattern to make sure I take a warm shower before bed, spray on some good smelling something, light an incense stick (I don’t use these regularly, only in “emergencies” when something is emerging from deep within me), and I spread a sheet down in the middle of my living room carpet to sleep on the floor rather than try to sleep in my bed.  (Yes, I have versions of bed-sleeping trauma that makes going to sleep in a bed a trauma trigger much of the time for me.)

My self wisdom came up with the floor plan (ha! ha!) for sleeping because it forces me to focus as a ‘one being’ on exactly what I feel like with my body on the floor.  How do I shift and turn and move and arrange myself to be comfortable takes some thought — useful, productive thought — which takes my focus off of any other stressful thoughts over things that do not belong in my mind in the middle of the night.  I am continuing to look for things I can change versus things I can’t.

Well, this all makes sense to me?!?!?!  The bed-sleeping trauma trigger difficulties are ongoing no matter how destressed my daily life is.  It always takes energy and effort for me, on some level, to sleep.  Because of the escalation now of my life stress I can’t do both jobs at the same time.

As I sleep on the floor I have used my version of an active coping ability to solve the compounding problem.  In addition, I can pay attention using active coping abilities to make myself comfortable enough to get to sleep – although it can still take hours.

The breathing competition is not something I want to get into the middle of to try to figure out how to STOP that business.  I have recognized that these difficulties are escalating due to my decision to try to make some positive changes in my life.  Change cannot happen without a disturbance of the status quo, and being a trauma survivor means that change to me is always super stressful!

I will work with the breathing issue via the yoga breathing book as soon as this cleansing I wrote about in the last post is over.  But I wanted to mention the third realization that has come to me related to why I have for so many years avoided going back to northern cold (Fargo is like Siberia in the winter) places.  COLD HURTS!  Well, because I endured so many horrible beatings over the 18 years of my childhood having my body sick or HURTING is a direct trauma trigger to my past body memories of pain.

Well, I am thankful for this insight into the cold-pain-trauma connection!  I can work with this now when I am north and the bitter cold winds slice me.  It is NOT nice to hurt!  But, I can make sure to find the very best winter clothing and wear it rather than trying to dash around not adequately dressed for winter.

There are many other concerns that are going to appear as I go through this process.  I am super aware post-cancer treatment trauma that if I am stressed and someone is trying to give me information I will not be able to comprehend — not even follow their wording — a single thing until they slow way, way, way down and talk to me in kindness.

Even the technical problems of deciding what to keep, what to do with what I don’t NEED to take, how this move is going to be paid for (I need help and I hate asking for or needing help!), who will help me get a truck to rent because I do not have a credit card, even the stress of leaving my home and garden, my friends, these lovely mountains, this lovely climate — all of this has the potential to upset me.

Knowing more about myself now helps a lot!  I HAVE to know myself!  Nobody else will!  What I need from others is patience and kindness when they interact with me.  I hope for the best — in all of us.

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++

+GETTING AWAY WITH (FROM) BEING SO SICK

++++

A friend I met in a college art course over 30 years ago called me this evening.  She has lived in Manhattan for a long time now so we don’t see one another often.  As she gave me a report on the past six months of her life she told me of at least ten people in her circle of friends who are either battling cancer or have died of it in recent months.  One of the people battling uterine cancer is my friend’s dear sister.

How good we are as a society at blandly accepting the tragedy and devastation of major sicknesses of all kinds while we seem equally adept at pretending to ourselves and one another that we simply do not understand how these bad things happen to us!

I enjoyed telling my friend of my new actions to take control (finally) of the state of my body although my entire day – and probably quite a few more to come – looked exactly like this:

WHEN WE SAY CLEANSE, WE MEAN CLEANSE.  All this can have quite a laxative effect.  Green juice alone can do it.  This is the way your body physically gets rid of the acidic bad stuff.  It doesn’t just evaporate.  This is just what you want:  to make sure you get rid of the pollution that has built up in your body, and in particular in your small intestine and colon.  Until you know your body’s response to the program, it is wise not to have anything else planned so you can focus on the pH Miracle Whole Body Cleanse — and just stay fairly close to the bathroom facilities.  Be prepared to pay a visit to the bathroom at least six to ten times a day as the acidic toxins clear from your body.” — by Shelley Redford Young and Robert O. Young, The pH Miracle: Balance Your Diet, Reclaim Your Health Page 175

++++

I am fortunate to be home in order to do this cleanse, although the reasons I am home do not make me remotely happy (trauma caused disability).  What would happen to us as a nation if we all decided we have had ENOUGH of our ignorance and of our stubborn refusal to see what is actually right in front of our face if we quit believing all the lies we tell one another and believe ourselves? 

What would happen to us if everyone working decided enough is enough – “We want to LIVE and do so WELL?”  What would happen is that water usage would go way up as people going through detox made very good use of their “bathroom facilities” as the vast amounts of toxic waste in our bodies left us behind. 

What would happen is that the amount of CRAP FAKE PRODUCT we pretend is food and beverage would crash the market as sales plummeted while green vegetables of all kinds could not be found in enough mass to feed the starving masses (that is what we are actually doing as we consume “food” that is not really food).

++

I have never wanted to be one of those “weird health food nuts.”  Yet if I don’t get with the health program I know for a fact I am going to meet an ugly demise due to death by an awful disease that will take not only my quality of life away but take away my very life.  These are not “bad” people that we hear of with diabetes, thyroid, autoimmune diseases, arthritis, heart disorders, depression, digestive disorders, “nervous” disorders, cancers – the list is seemingly not only endless but is growing.  Who is immune?

Who will bother to spend the time and money to click on the link of this book (above), pay to order it and then READ it?  Nobody.  That is my guess.  Nobody who comes to this blog will hear a word I am saying.  Nobody I talk to about the terrible consequences we are suffering due to wrong DIET and unhealed emotional difficulties including high stress will listen.  Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies make billions right along with the medical mainstream establishment from our stupidity and stubborn refusal to learn the truth about what our BODY NEEDS us to do for it so that it can heal itself.

Why am I surprised?  I look around myself from my little corner of the universe and detect daily the evidence that the human race is truly insane.  That is just one more species-wide sickness to add to the rampantly disintegrating state of our world. 

Yet one by one we can make different choices.  What I am doing now is mentally and emotionally nearly as challenging to me as were the horrors of my chemotherapy treatments five years ago.  People loved, supported, cared, helped me THEN — but here I am alone racing against time to the toilet as I try to FIX the mess that I have created (with major help in the beginning of a psycho abusive madwoman) in my body so that I can BE WELL and not get SICK.

++

Nobody attends to us when we do this kind of work.  Do we LIKE being sick as a nation so we can get attention?  From family members and friends who feel so badly for us because they love us?  From doctors and medical professionals whom we PAY huge volumes of money to when we fall on our pathetic backsides?

I guarantee there is NOTHING pleasurable about doing what I am doing now — but boy is this making me THINK, FEEL, WORK, STRUGGLE and GROW!  I find myself wondering how, when, where, why did we ever come to believe that eating our food was supposed to be right in line with the major Hollywood entertainment industry?

There is nothing particularly charming about throwing 10 fresh spinach leaves and broccoli florets into a blender to make the required juice for this first healing cleanse.  No whipped cream?  “I want a potato chip!”

Petulant child in me wanted a potato chip tonight.  I don’t EAT potato chips.  I just want what I can’t have.  I want to eat totally useless CRAP, pretend that is fun because everyone else is doing it, and remain immune to the consequences.

“Linda, you are turning 62 years old.  GROW UP ALREADY!  Get informed and get busy!  This is the only body you are going to have in this lifetime and you trade its health for brownies and nachos?  Girl, you are gonna get what you ask for.”

++

P.S.  I am up writing this two hours after I tried to go to sleep.  As I lay there in bed for an hour I noticed something interesting as I continue to struggle with my breathing.  I suffer from chronic dissociation that began with severe infant abuse.  I have Dissociative Identity Disorder without the identies due to the horrendous abuse I suffered for the first 18 years of my life.  Tonight I clearly discovered that there are multiple “mes” each trying to breathe at the same time!!

Of course one of those breathers still smokes which is making the breathing increasingly challenging for the rest of me/mes.  I didn’t take time to read the yoga book on breathing today that I mentioned in my last post.  I have enough on my plate right now — well, no, that’s not quite the right analogy!  I actually have NOTHING on my literal plate as I live for 7-21 days on a green vegetable juice “feast!”

++++

Please click here to read or to Leave a Comment »

++++