Owning My Personal Power - Insights

Owning my personal power is something that I feel like it has taken me years to do. In the beginning, I had no idea what personal power was. If I had any, where was it? What was it? How was it going to change my life?

As a child and a victim of incest, I felt like only my abusers had any power. When I tried to be powerful and not afraid, the abusers quickly made sure that I was put back in my place. I was always afraid of other people - afraid to speak out about the abuse, afraid to speak up and call attention to myself, afraid that if people knew about the incest they would blame me and call me trash, whore, tramp. I was afraid I would die from the shame if others knew. From that position of victim, I couldn't see that I had any power. Those thoughts continued into my adulthood.

As a survivor, I had to work hard to discover who I was. Knowing who I was didn't come easy. As a child of incest, I forgot all of that in order to stay sane and to stay alive. I did a lot of trial and error, as a survivor, starting with recognizing the things that I didn't like and didn't want in my life. As a child who saw only negatives from the surrounding adults, how could I possibly, as an adult, automatically know about positives in life? I didn't.  All I could connect with, in the beginning, was what I didn't like. After acknowledging and letting go of the negatives for awhile, I could begin to see positive things happening in my life. I could begin to acknowledge,
"Yes, I like this."
"Yes, this feels good."
"Yes, I want this in my life." and finally,
"Yes, I deserve to have this good in my life. I deserve to not have to constantly struggle and be disappointed in myself, others and life in general."

Then there was room to see the positives in my life and in who I was. That change started with learning to love myself and forgiving myself for my reactions to the abuse or to the triggers in life. I could change from reacting to acting which meant letting go of the need for drama and really, fully living my life without the hyper vigilance of my childhood and the stress that went with it. I could find real calmness and peace within myself rather than just the surface calm that most people saw in me.

As a thriver, I am coming into my own power and glorying in it. I am a person of great value. We all are. I am not a victim and I am more than just a survivor.

Owning my own power means I can be me, whoever that is. Shining my Light for everyone to see, loving myself in all of my perfection and imperfections, loving and nurturing all of my inner children while not allowing them to control my adult life, truly loving all of me, even the shadow parts - this is owning my power in all of its fullness. Being able to say, "I am sorry." and then changing any behaviors of mine that have been inappropriate or dysfunctional is a step to owning my personal power. Letting others see me in my imperfections takes courage that I seem to have plenty of. As a child, I didn't think that I was courageous at all. I was. Courage is needed to survive incest. Even more courage is needed to become a survivor and even to thrive and I am worth it. So are each of you who are reading my words today. I encourage you to look for your own courage. It is there inside of you. Be brave. You can do it. I am no different than any other thriver who has been through the fires of incest and has come out the other side.

This article was inspired by a comment that I left on the blog of a friend, Sophie whose blog post "Owning my Power" you will find at the following link:

http://www.attunementsforthesoul.com/owning-my-power

Thank you Sophie for the inspiration and for your blog Attunements For The Soul.
Patricia

Dialogues With Dignity And 22 Ways To Love Yourself

Yesterday I was on Dialogues With Dignity again with my friends Dan Hays, Ellen Brown and Stash Serafin. I love being a guest on their radio talk program. The title of this program was "Learning To Love Ourselves."
Here is the link for the dicussion:

http://dialogueswithdignity.podbean.com/2012/01/18/learning-to-love-ourselves/


I hope you will listen to the program and leave comments on Dialogues With Dignity and then come back here and leave a comment. Let us know if you liked the discussion. Thank you to Dan, Ellen and Stash for having me back for this discussion.

When I was getting ready for the show, I printed out a few of my past articles on learning to love yourself as a healing tool. Then I sat down and made a list of 22 ways to love yourself. Here is that list:

1. Reconnect with and pay attention to your body and what it tells you.
2. Forgive yourself for being that child who got abused. Know that you didn't cause the abuse and you couldn't have prevented it from happening. You were a child.
3. Feel whatever feelings come. Don't stuff or deny their existence. That is how addictions start.
4. Learn how to take care of your needs and wants. You do have them. You deserve to be nurtured.
5. Learn to trust yourself and your intuition.
6. Do things that make you feel good emotionally and physically.  Do something that is fun that your inner children will enjoy doing.
7. Use affirmations to build your feelings of self-worth.
8. Know that your value comes from within you, not from others.
9. Know that you deserve to be loved by yourself and by others.
10. Let go of your abuser's love - it isn't love and you don't need it when you love yourself.
11. Work on taking back and building up your personal power. (My next post due on Jan. 22 is about personal power.)
12. Move. Exercise. Diet if you need to so that you can improve your health.
13. Make a dentist appointment or doctor's appointment if you need it and keep it. Don't let your fears and shame keep you from taking care of your body.
14. Find a doctor that you trust.
15. Hug a special teddy bear to nurture your inner child. Sleep with it if it comforts your inner child and makes her/him feel safer at night. As silly as it may sound for an adult to sleep with a teddy bear, it helped my inner children to start to trust the adult me.
16. Use meditation to calm and ground yourself. Become aware of your breath and your connection to your body. Many incest survivors are totally disconnected from their body and the hurt that it experienced when they were  children.
17. Take small steps in healing. Pretend that you love yourself and watch others who show that they love you until you can start to love yourself.
18. Surround yourself with people who love you and support you in your efforts to heal and to become functional. Let go of those people who don't support your healing.
19. Recognize that change is scarey and it is a choice. Face your fears and change any way.
20. Be willing to be vulnerable and open your heart to those you love.
21. Love yourself today by accepting you right where you are today. With acceptance comes awareness. Accepting yourself is the first step to loving yourself. See your inner children as a product of your childhood and love them any way.
22. Loving yourself means not allowing you to hurt yourself. It also means not allowing others to hurt you. Say no to abuse in any form.

It is my belief that loving yourself is the foundation of all healing. You deserve to heal and to feel good about yourself.

Don't forget to check out our talk at Dialogues With Dignity. I wrote this list before doing the show and you will hear me mention most of this in my part of the conversation. Again, thanks to Dan Hays, Ellen Brown and Stash Serafin for having me on Dialogues With Dignity.
Patricia 

Dialogues With Dignity Show January 17, 2012

"Peace starts within us- we cannot bring to the world what we do not have to offer." -Daily OM (January 5, 2012) (found at http://www.dailyom.com/ )

Today is January 14 and this is my first blog post of 2012. I have spent most of the first two weeks of January recovering from a bad kidney infection and the antibiotics that mess with my stomach and give me a headache the first three days of taking it. 

I am also officially dieting, which I rarely do. I am a vegetarian and have diabetes so most diets just don't fit. I will let you know how this goes. I have lost one and a fourth pounds this week. I am hoping now that the doctors have finally diagnosed me with a thyroid problem and I am on medication for it, I can finally lose weight and get healthier. I will post more on this topic soon.

On January 17 at 5:30 ET/4:30 CT, I will be a guest on Dialogues With Dignity, one of my favorite radio talk shows.  The show isn't live but it will be taped and posted shortly after it is finished. I so enjoy being on the show with my friends Dan Hays, Ellen Brown and Stash Serafin. In the meantime, there are plenty of other shows that you might want to listen to. The link is as follows:

http://dialogueswithdignity.podbean.com/

Some of Dialogues With Dignity's latest show were on topics such as:
Feeling Good Without Feeling Guilty
Listening Between The Lines
Creative Waiting
Faith at the Crossroads
Timing Is Everything

The show on January 17 has the topic of learning to love yourself as part of your healing process. I am not sure of the title. I will come back and post the title and the link when it is posted. As always, I am looking forward to this talk with my friends Dan, Ellen and Stash.

My friend Dan Hays from Dialogues With Dignity has a birthday this week on Sunday.  Happy Birthday Dan.  Hope you have a glorious birthday and 2012. 
Patricia

Related Articles:

DialoguesWithDignity Guest February 23, 2011 @
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2011/02/dialogueswithdignity-guest-february-23.html topic was "Reconciliation Is It Always Possible?"

Dialogues With Dignity: Progress Over Perfection @
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2011/08/dialogues-with-dignity-progress-over.html topic was "Progress Over Perfection"

Happy New Year From Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker

I am hoping that you all had a wonderful Christmas this year. In saying that, I know that for many survivors, Christmas and other holidays are not always happy. Too many memories seem to come up of past childhood holidays that were very unhappy. In my own childhood, holidays meant my dad was off work, which meant more opportunies for drinking, also more opportunities for his little trips to town which meant more sexual abuse events for me to endure.  When my dad got drunk, he was like his dad and got mean.  Not physically mean, usually, but verbally, emotionally mean which can have longer lasting effects upon others than physical abuse where the bruises eventually go away. I don't mean to sound like I am downplaying physical abuse.  I would never do that.  I know that some have died and many have nearly died from physical abuse.  Emotional abuse leaves long lasting scars that may never go away.

This Christmas, I didn't experience any of those memories or thoughts about my childhood. I did share one good memory from when I was about 8 years old with my son-in-law while we were talking about the existence of Santa Claus.  We were at my paternal grandparents' house, spending the night on Christmas Eve.  My dad came from a family of 13 kids.  He was the 3rd from the oldest so I grew up with the younger ones. Around 8:00 p.m. all of the kids were made to go to bed.  I remember being so excited about Santa coming the next morning. I don't think that my dad was the only one of the older siblings who was visiting their parents' house that night. The house was full of kids and adults.  I remember the adults seemed as excited as the kids all were. I rarely slept when we were at my grandparents' house even when it wasn't Christmas because I always got stuck sleeping in the middle of two other kids. I would get too hot to sleep. With the excitement of Christmas, I laid there most of the night listening to the excited talking of the adults in the rest of the house. They got to bed sometime in the early hours of the morning.  The kids started waking up at daylight.  We couldn't open any presents until the grown-ups were awake. I don't remember what I got as a gift from Santa.  I just remember the wonderment of Santa and Christmas.  That is one of the good memories of childhood that I cherish.

This Christmas was full of good memories too.  Around my birthday on December 11, we exchanged Christmas gifts with our son and his wife.  On December 18, Daniel and I got on a bus to go to Boise, Idaho where our daughter and her family live.  Daniel decided that he wanted to spend Christmas with our grandchildren this year.  We have not spent a Christmas with our daughter since her oldest daughter was eight months old.  We have four grandchildren that we wanted to celebrate Christmas with. We had a wonderful week of visiting with them - Christmas shopping after we got to Idaho, going out to eat at a nearby Mall where Daniel loves a chicken dish at a cajun restaurant in their Food Court, a baptism for our middle two grandchildren into the Mormom church, visiting with all of our son-in-law's family that came for the baptism, Christmas Eve dinner with our daughter and her family at our son-in-law's cousins' house.  Best of all was watching our grandchildren open all of their presents Christmas morning.  We drove to the nearby Sawtooth Mountains the day after Christmas to experience the beauty of the mountains and snow.  We saw cross-country skiers, antelope, snow mobilers, and beautiful snow covered mountains. 

Daniel loved the time at our daughter's but hated the two bus trips.  The last one was the worst.  We watched our last bus driver break up a fight and threaten to kick two people off the bus.  We had one young man who was probably on drugs of some kind.  He talked loudly almost non-stop until about 3:00 a.m. when he finally shut up and went to sleep.  No one woke him up at our Ft. Smith, Arkansas stop because we were all tired of his talking and cursing.  He was just loud enough that the bus driver could ignore him.  We left Oklahoma City 45 minutes late and so when we got to Little Rock at 6:40 a.m. on December 30, we had missed our connection to Hot Springs by about 30 minutes.  I called our son and daughter-in-law to let them know that the next bus to Hot Springs was at 7:00 p.m.  Our son was already at work.  Our daughter-in-law came to N. Little Rock to pick us up after I was able to give her the address for the bus station.  An employee of the bus station told us that the bus from Oklahoma City was always late and that we should call for a taxi to take us home.  I told him I would only do that if the bus station was willing to pay the bill.  He said no they wouldn't do that. 

On Monday, I plan to call the bus company and complain.  At two of our transfer points, we were the last ones on the bus and filled it to capacity.  One of those stops there weren't any more passengers waiting to get on the bus.  At the second stop, about 8-10 people were in line behind us and had to wait for the next bus to come along.  All of this may have been because we were traveling for the holidays but I was not impressed by customer service at all or by most of the bus drivers.  Daniel says we won't travel by bus again.  I kept a good mood until we missed our bus in N. Little Rock.  I remained nice to the bus personel but I will make an official complaint.  We had to put gas in our son's car after our daughter-in-law came and got us.  We stopped in Benton, Arkansas at Waffle House on the way home for breakfast.  Instead of getting home around 7:00 a.m., we got home around 9:30 or 10:00 a.m.  Our journey was a great experience overall with only minor frustrations along the way. 

I am glad that I had my husband Daniel to experience the adventure with me.  The highlight of the trip was the day after Christmas when our oldest granddaughter posted a comment on her Facebook page saying that our visit was the best Christmas present that she had ever received.  That made our day.

Today is the last day of 2011.  It has been a year of struggle and triumph, tears and joy, awe and wonder. Some experiences I would not want to repeat.  Those hopefully were lessons that I learned so they don't have to be repeated.  They were mostly relationship lessons which can sometimes be the hardest when people get hurt and friendships end. My best friend had a heart attack and I didn't know about it for several weeks because we weren't speaking at the time. That was a first for us. We have never had any major disagreements like this before. I am very glad that she survived and so has our friendship.  It scared us both.  The year ended with our trip to Idaho and back home.  We had a great time.

I want to end this year of 2011 on a good note as I wish all of my readers and friends a very Happy New Year for 2012.
Patricia

Healing Tools That I Have Learned

Some important healing tools that I have learned and used over the years are as follows:

1. I can't fix someone else's problems but I can listen because sometimes a good listener is all that is needed. Become an active listener instead of planning what you are going to say when the other person shuts up.

2.  If someone else's words upset me or make me angry, I need to look at where my reaction is coming from. What wounded part of me is feeling the anger, hate, fear or confusion? What can I do to change from reacting to acting? My upset is mine, not the other person's.

3.  Don't attack someone else because of what I am feeling.  I sometimes fail miserably at this one.  I have to think and act or not, rather than react to what I feel. I can do a lot of harm if I simply react out of my hurt, anger or fear. I can say I am sorry and make changes in my behavior if need be to make things right.

4.  Look at my own feelings and figure out where they are coming from. What do I still need to heal?  What steps can I take to heal these feelings? My feelings are my responsibility. The other person rarely sets out just to make me upset. What I do with my feelings is my own responsibility. I can choose to heal. I can make the committment to do my own healing work.

5.  Share from my own experiences rather than offering advice.  Advice makes me sound healthier, stronger, wiser - whatever superior word that my ego likes to add to make me appear better.  I am not any of those things.  I am equally wise and unwise, healthy and not so healthy, strong and weak in different areas and at different times.  I don't need to feed my ego to be the person I am or to be the person that I want to become. I am better than I was and I still have a long way to go to be who I want to be. Some days I am healthy and some days I am dysfunctional.  Some days I am a kind person and some days I can be mean and irritable.

6.  When I attack others, I am coming from my own place of woundedness which is something that I don't want to do.  Rather than attack, I try to look at what is going on inside of me.  Again, sometimes I am not so good at doing this one in a healthy manner. Progress is more important than perfection.

7.  My truth is my truth.  It may not be yours. I don't have the right to use my truth as absolute to attack you with.  I don't know your story.  You don't know mine.  Even when you share a part of your story here, it is just a part of your story so I can't and shouldn't make judgments about you or your story.  I ask the same consideration from you about me and my stories. I hope to always treat others with dignity and expect the same from others toward me.

8.  I am just as human, just as fallible as everyone else. Life is a constant journey with many ups and downs.  Many times I fall and have to get back up. It is the getting back up that is most important. Baby steps are better than no steps at all. Holding someone else's hand when I get scared helps. Lending someone else a helping hand helps them but it also helps me to become a better person.  Shared experiences and shared hope make for an easier journey.

9. I may be further along on my healing path than some others but it only takes one trigger to make me feel like that hurting, frightened child again. I have learned to take the time to comfort that child as my parents never did.  Reparenting my inner child has been an important step in healing.

10.  If I leave at the very first sign of trouble, how does anything get resolved.  Running away doesn't help.  It just keeps me in denial that I have a problem.

These healing tools were part of a comment that I left on the blog Emerging From Broken.  Here is a link to the article that I commented on:

http://emergingfrombroken.com/my-mother-doesn%e2%80%99t-love-me-and-the-process-of-grieving/

What healing tools help you in your life?
Patricia

Merry Christmas For 2011

I want to wish all of my subscribers Merry Christmas for 2011. I appreciate you reading my blog and also leaving you comments and letting me know what you think and feel after reading my posts.

Christmas can bring on a confusing mixture of thoughts, memories and feelings for survivors. Some Christmases, like this one, are full of joy, excitement and peace with myself and with the world.

Other Christmases can bring memories of the past, from my childhood of incest and emotional abuse.  Christmas, as a child, meant that my dad would be off for a few extra days which meant more drinking in excess.  I can't tell you what year my dad went from being an occasional heavy drinker to being an alcoholic. In my memory, my grandfather was always an alcoholic who was a binge drinker who drank on weekends until he would pass out usually on Saturday night. My dad was very attached to his father so we spent almost every weekend with my grandparents at their house. For me the weekends with my paternal grandparents started around the age of seven. Before that a lot of my time was spent with my maternal grandmother and the uncle that lived with her. For those of you who are new to my blog, these extended visits started when I was two years old and got whooping cough.  I couldn't stay at home because if my baby brother got the disease, he could have died from it. My point in revisiting this is to let you know that the family disease of alcoholism has always been a part of my life and played a big part in my painful memories around Christmas.

My father and grandfather were both mean drunks.  Because of this, many of my Christmases were not filled with happy memories. Some Christmases, those memories come up and are in my face. Those Christmases are sad. I used to try to stuff my way through those days with food.  When that didn't work, I tried to just ignore the feelings.  Neither of those methods of coping worked for me for very long. The feelings were still there. I have learned that I just have to feel what I feel. There is no way around feelings. Letting myself be sad or letting myself be happy is not just ok but is very necessary if I want to be healthy physically and emotionally.

This year, I am happy and excited. My husband and I are going on an adventure. I have never done this before. My husband has, but for shorter distances. As a Saggittarian, I am supposed to be adventurous. As a child that was kept hidden in me as was many other things along with the secret of incest.

We are going to visit our daughter, son-in-law and four grandchildren. We are not driving. We are going by bus which will take two days.  When we get to Boise, our daughter is going to pick us up and take us out for breakfast.  Then we will probably go back to her house and crash from lack of sleep.  I doubt either of us will get much sleep on a moving bus.

We are going from Hot Springs to Little Rock, Arkansas to Kansas City, Missouri to Denver, Colorado to Laramie, Wyoming to Salt Lake City, Utah to Boise, Idaho. We will have many short stops along the way to pick up and let off more passengers. Our longest layover is five hours in Kansas City.

We come back a different way. The route stays the same from Boise to Denver. Rather than going through Kansas and Missouri, we come back through Amarillo, Texas to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma to Ft. Smith, Arkansas to Little Rock and then on to Hot Springs in time for an early breakfast and then to crash in our own bed at home. Our longest layover on the return trip is five minutes short of three hours in Salt Lake City.

We get to see our two middle grandchildren being baptised into the Mormon church a day or so before Christmas. Our daughter and son-in-law are excited about that. I am excited for them to be raising their children in the religion of their choice. I didn't have that as a child. Neither of my parents went to church. My son-in-law was raised Mormon, my daughter was raised in the Church of Christ as was my husband. I am happy that they have a church family that they are happy with and that loves them.

This will be the first Christmas that we have spent with our daughter since her oldest daughter was a baby of eight months. Shortly after that Christmas, they moved to Idaho.  Our youngest grandson who just turned six less than a month ago keeps asking his mom if today is the day that grandma and grandpa are coming.  Our oldest grandson will turn ten on the day that we leave Hot Springs.  He will have to wait for us to tell him Happy Birthday when he sees us two days later in person. He was born seven days after my birthday.  Both of our grandsons are Saggittarians like their grandma.

I have my next post already written and scheduled to come out on December 26. Please feel free to post comments but I may be a little slow in getting them published along with my reply.  I will probably have limited access to a computer once I get to my daughter's.  I will have the two days there and two days back on the bus that I won't have access to a computer at all. Thank you all for your patience. With my daughter and grandchildren around, I won't be spending much time on the computer.

Sending love and Christmas blessings to you all. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Below I am sharing some of my blog posts from Christmases past for those of you who weren't here to read them the first time.
Patricia

Related Articles:

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year To All @
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2010/12/merry-christmas-and-happy-new-year-to.html

The Spirit Of Christmas @
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2009/12/spirit-of-christmas.html

Christmas Is Over For 2008 @
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-is-over-for-2008.html

Cry When You Need To @
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/12/cry-when-you-need-to.html

Shutting Down To Get Through The Holidays @
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2009/12/shutting-down-to-get-through-holidays.html

An Attitude Of Gratitude Changes The Way You Feel

This week a friend of mine asked me to be her Gratitude Buddy for the week.  That means that each day we send each other through an email, a list of three things that we are grateful for each day.  I immediately accepted her request to be her Gratitude Buddy. I challenge each of you who reads this to find your own Gratitude Buddy for the week.  You might want to even extend the time for a month or more if you think that you feel better by starting your day with thinking about what you are grateful for.

Here are some of the things that I expressed gratitude for over the past few days:

1. I am grateful for my friendships. They enrich my life.
2. I am grateful to be at a place in my life where I can look at my expectations and let go of them when other people are involved.
3. I am grateful for the best friend that I have in my husband.
4. Today I am grateful for the warmth of the beautiful sunshine outside my window as I sit and type on my computer. The sunshine always cheers me, especially in the cold Winter months.
5. I am grateful for the people in my life who teach me lessons about myself.
6. I am grateful to my guardian angels who protect me and to my guides who do their work even when I get so busy that I forget to ask for their guidance. I ask for a most benevolent outcome for this day.

Feel free to share a few things that you are grateful for here in the comment section of my blog and then go find yourself a Gratitude Buddy to share with.
Merry Christmas to all of my Christian friends here on Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker.
Patricia