Archives February 2019

I spent a long time withdrawn from the World in a self-imposed prison of the mind due to my PTSD. I convinced myself that I was forsaken and that bad things happened because of me. I constantly picked up on the bad vibrations in the World and the negative energy people carried with them without even knowing. I had known for a very long time that I felt other peoples pain, sorrow, anger, fear and grief as well as their joy, happiness, elation and love. Because of my own negative mindset induced by various trauma and muliple episodes of re-victimization I failed to see the good right before my eyes and was caught in a cycle of blame, guilt, and self-pity.

I did not know about energy and how it flows all around us. This was not in my traditional upbringing or covered in any of my tradtional education, including my Bachelor of Science in Nursing. I always knew there was an outside force I did not comprehend and it affected me but without being able to put a name to it I could not understand it and I am the type of person that totally needs to know what I am dealing with so I can combat it or work with it.

I had a deep connection with nature when I was young and I loved it. I felt like Snow White and I could communicate with the forest and all of the animals. I saw things in the water that were not fish and because of my conditioning I was scared. No one understood what I was feeling or even believed me. When I was in Grade 3 I began to write stories. Every week I wrote a chapter about my friend Spooky the Ghost and our adventures. There was someone in my family home that I could feel but could not see. I knew he walked with me and did things with me and no one else could see him but I had no other words that Spooky the Ghost. Looking back now I find it ironic I called my friend Spooky but was not one bit afraid of him. There were certain places in my home that I could feel Spooky more than others. The basement was one of them. I should add that my Grandfather Dutch passed away in the driveway of my family home on 16 December 1970. I was born on 23 October 1972. My grandmother and parents would call me silly and shut me down quickly if i started to speak of him. I stopped feeling him but knew he was there, he didn`t make a real reappearance until I was 19 and got wrongfully punished in the Canadian Armed Forces. I knew he was in my room with me on my confinement to barracks but I could not put words to it until I was much older. I believe that is when I wrote my first letter to him, and when I began to put my thoughts to paper and process my feelings through a form of poetry. I was not educated in the art of poetry, only being taught things like Haiku in elementary school, and I do not recall having to write much of it in high school. I could put thoughts to paper like nothing else. My passion for writing that began in Grade 3 was reignited but sometimes I lost my passion because of my depression and anxiety and lack of belief in myself.

I wrote on and off over the years trying to process what was going on around me. I started a book that reached 660 pages before I quit writing in 2013 complete with documentation and pictures so it would be believed. For some reason I felt that I had to prove my life. When I moved out to Curve Lake First Nation Reserve #35 my connection with nature was re-established and I began to awaken again. My feelings began to flow on paper again. Good and bad and it all started to come out. Repressed pain and fear and love and all of the things I had bottled up for so long. Because I was living on a Reserve among Indigenous People I felt that I should take a course at school in Indigenous Studies and it was very eye opening for me. I actually went back to University after a 10 year abscence and sat in a class with a large group of individuals. A whole new perspective and take on life, through the eyes of a different Culture. I started to have a paradigm shift and see the World with different eyes. In my 2nd year I decided to take An Introduction to Indigenous Environmental Sciences and was introduced to Professor Dan Longboat, Director of the Indigenous Environmental Sciences program at Trent University and my life changed forever.

https://www.trentu.ca/indigenous/faculty-research/full-time/dan-longboat

I had never had a teacher thank me for attending class and make me feel what he was teaching. At the beginning of the course Professor Longboat made a point of talking about energy and how we all have it. He spoke of rhythm of energy in nature and how it is always constant and flows evenly in a gentle balance of up and down curves when it is actually measured as generally people cannot see this. Some have been known to feel it but if you were not taught of this concept it can be rather frightening. He spoke of how monks in meditation produce this same energy rhythm but the majority of the populations energy was extremely chaotic and illustrated it with a very jagged up and down line with no ebb and flow. There were no curvy flows, no rhyme or reason. This concerned me greatly as Professor Longboat said this was the reason behind much sickness and stress and heart disease. However suddenly my mind blew wind open because i could put a name to what i felt from people. Energy. We all had it, everything that was living possessed it and it could be felt on personal objects. I now knew why I picked up on things that others did not because I could feel the energy that surrounded everything and I have to be honest it was scary. It was frightening yet exhilirating to finally after all of these years have a validation that it was real. I was not crazy, I now had answers to the questions I had had for so long.

When I began to be able to put to words what I could feel all around me because I finally understood it my writing changed as well and I could tune into emotions in others. It was the start of my awakening. I knew I was an Empath and I could claim it but I needed to learn how to harness it so I was not a conduit for others emotions. I needed to find a balance between when to subject myself to this and when not to because i was starting to also realize that isolating was wrong. I was not really living and I had to create a new mindset. I needed to create boundaries, wear my invisible shield and prepare for battle when leaving my home and face the World head on. I finally began to be me. I finally started to use to tools in my toolbox that had been there for so long and grow. I also realized that if i could feel the energy I could project it and if your happy, even if your faking it a little everyone else is happy and then all of a sudden you really are happy. Happiness is contagious and no one really likes a person who is down all of the time. An amazing thing started to happen to me thought because the more positive I was about things, when I started to see that all my mistakes were not really mistakes but lessons I needed to learn and I tried to find the light in situations that should be very dark my whole mind, body and spirit shifted. The black hole inside of me that fed off of the negative emotions and mindset of others started to question the realness of the situation. If i could feed off of negative emotions and stay negative because the energy was bad I would stay that way but when I shifted into positive I started to see the good in even horrible situations and I became grateful for every experience I have had no matter how it played out. I was now able to integrate what was positive energy and what was negative and as I am a slow processor it took me a while. I met many along the way that are teaching me new tools to use when I am getting into my negative mindset because I truly want to believe my dreams are possible, just like anybody else. My favourite tool lately came from a friend Chris Power from Power Transition Services

https://www.powertransitions.ca

and https://www.facebook.com/powertransitions/

It was a meme that said to add the phrase -and it is okay- after everything so if I have a list of things to do and I only get one done, it is okay. This led me to start working on the fact that being so immersed in my negativity and trauma I had failed to see my successes and had not acknowledged them as I had become so hard on myself and used to what I thought was failure.

My discovery of energy and the way it changes everything as it is all around us was one of the most amazing realizations I have ever had. So if you do not like the negative vibes around you then change them up. Raise the vibrations in the room, put on a happy song, do a little dance, colour a picture, be happy. It ultimately is up to you, your choice. Stay stuck in the negative energy or evolve and raise your vibrations and live a little….

Abuse of Humanity

They said you were ugly

Because they were jealous;

They said you were weak

Because your power scared them;

They called you names

Because that is how they felt about themselves;

They continually bullied you

Because it gave them a sense of control;

They belittled your accomplishments

Because they couldn’t do it;

They harassed you to give up

Because they wanted the fame;

They preyed on your vulnerabilities

Just to try to keep you down;

They told you couldn’t do it

Because truthfully, they couldn’t do it;

They tried to keep you down

Kicked you over and over

But you were made from a different stock

And refused to ever let them win.

FYI…

An excellent mental health course provided by a true leader. Warrior Suicide Prevention Training. It fills me with great joy to see others taking the initiative to help others heal so they don’t go through what they have gone through. Check it out. Any tool in your toolbox can help, and sometimes its good to have the tools to lend out to a friend in need. Knowledge is the true power and it is meant to be shared. Check out this Veteran’s program if you so choose. You won’t be disappointed, I can assure you. Any learning is good learning. It is also a go at your own pace course so I suggest you check it out.

https://pathfinder-strategies.teachable.com/p/warrior-suicide-prevention-training?fbclid=IwAR2O6deLXEQt6mGisu5KPyMcDilhAMHW-yRVb-oMKgkINeAO-v98dAf7rI0

You can also check out Mr. Todd Holmes Pathfinder Strategies facebook page at:

I strongly believe that the only way for us all to heal is to support one another in a truly magnificent stand to take back our lives. To live a life of agony and suffering is to be in your own created hell. Why not takes the steps to take your life back. Living really isn’t that bad. Feeling is real. Make a decision today. Do you want to be what everyone expects of you or do you want to be who you always wanted to do before life knocked you down a little. If anything, you may be able to offer someone assistance like I am sure someone has shown you at some point in your life.

There is nothing wrong with knowing you need help. There is not one thing to be ashamed of. If you do not want to be in the darkness anymore, find a light, plant a seed and watch it grow. Stop being like a flower that has been picked and be the beautiful flower that sprouts from a long winter and is more beautiful than it ever was before.

     I was 45 years old when I finally found and met people who felt like they had been my “real” family all of my life.  I was a part of a rather large family that I felt I never truly belonged to.  I looked like them, talked like them, acted like them but never felt like them.  I always had a yearning, a desire for more.  To test my limits, my boundaries, to learn all I could.  To get an education and boy did I ever (not all in a traditional sense).  I was different than everyone in my family including my look-a-like Irish twin younger brother who I longed to be.  As a girl I had the limits and boundaries of a patriarchial society placed on me yet I continually tested the believing that gender was a confine being placed on people to control their true abilities. 

Because of injustices done to my personhood and blame of governmental systems and society in general, I placed myself into a self-imposed exile and prison of the mind created by vicious cycles perpetuated by low self-esteem and a lack or self-respect and self-worth.  It was when I truly stood up for myself and realized my worth that I started to attract my real family.  The ones that I was meant to meet to help me break free from the solitary confinement of my own mind and truly let society see the beautiful butterfly this caterpillar has turned into.  When I met people that did not confine me to one certain role, one stereotype, I started to grow.  All of the seeds that other people planted in my mind while I imprisoned myself were lying in wait for the perfect conditions and are becoming the tools I use to create positive change and help others see their truths.

     Life is a series of lessons, based on the conditioning received by those closest to us in our environment.  Growing up we are not just influenced by our parents and closest relatives. As children we are conditioned by our teachers, our government, authority figures and any adult we find amusing really. We learn from a very young age to absorb the environment around us because we are constantly immersed in it and often not shown anything outside of this. If you grow up in a strict conservative family of lawyers, politicians or doctors it is probably expected you will also be one and adhere to your family values you had been taught throughout childhood and never deviate.  As humans we are creatures of habit. We do what we are taught and return to what is comfortable. So, most people of influence grow up with an idea of what they want to be, and this starts very young.  Born, bred and raised, encouraged at every second and praised for every accomplishment they achieve. These people are born to be leaders or taught they should be leaders, but are they all? Really, they are following the “social norms,” doing as they are told and following in footsteps of their parents or grandparents. What if this youth were to deviate? Step outside the comfort zone of their family and do something different. Say what is on their mind, not conform, be the rebel. Well then, they are a societal outcast, a black sheep. Sometimes these people are disowned, and their ideals shunned because they don’t jive with the “normal views of every day citizens.”  These are the people that think outside of the box. They are not conventional thinkers, they want to know more, they want to know why, they want to be shown or experience it for themselves.  Why chastise someone for having a mind of their own? Why make youth feel wrong for having opinions that are not the same as the people around them. Why teach children outdated systems and knowledge because leaders don’t want to spend the money to rewrite history.

     So, we end up in a world with conformists, non-conformists and people who really don’t have a clue because they have never had any guidance, or proper knowledge of the Universe and feel completely lost until something big wakes them up. There are children born into families that feel alone and like they don’t belong because they have a bigger purpose. A lot of time it takes great pain, grief, devastation and sorrow for this purpose to come into play because these youths were not granted the affluence of good parenting or a higher education.

     Broken homes, alcoholism, drug addiction, abuse, denial and violence have become common place in a Society that seems to be teetering on devolving. Discrediting people whose ideals we do not like has been going on for centuries. Some great minds were actually murdered for telling the truth, yet leaders who continually lied are honoured and relished in history. Columbus is honoured and credited with discovering a Country and things in it that was already inhabited. He is responsible for the deaths of Indigenous populations in the America’s. He imported South African’s as slaves for his own selfish purposes.  The conquistadors killed thousands in a quest for gold and it’s all celebrated.

     Have we not learned from history that all great civilizations eventually fall?  Rome was not built in a day, but it survives forever through the writings of the people that were there and still honour it today and are interested in the history of it.  We have had so many great empires and civilizations. The Aztecs, the Mayans, the Egyptians, The Greeks, The Mongols, The Romans, The Celts, The Vikings. Where are all these people now.  Absorbed into blended societies under the guise of different religions, ethnicities, but where is their greatness now.  They all fell. They are obscure, yet we honour and worship their principles.  The Haudenosaunee people also known as the “Iroquois Confederacy” shared their knowledge with the fore founders of the United States of America and some of their ideals are included in the Declaration of Independence but what happened to them.  Their ideas were taken, absorbed into the knowledge of Freemasonry and twisted into a Christian ideal for the American people so that they could live a free life.  So now we have Countries or great Nations rather that are multi-cultural and very diverse with multitudes of religions and ethnicities living together and are trying to conform them all to one ideal.  One paradigm of thinking.  The pen has remained mightier than the sword, yet we continue to have war.  We honour history as if it is still happening and what we should be learning from it we are just repeating.  Ideas that the whole world should be hearing are being supressed for fear of reprisals from outside agencies. Money has become the central object in the Universe and the idea of “how much can I get paid for this” has started to become the norm. The government is supressing knowledge that could help heal us all since they would not get anything from it.  Drug companies don’t want to cure you, because then how would they get paid.  So Big Brother “the government” makes sure that if something doesn’t fit with the societal norm it gets squashed.  They also squash things that they don’t agree with or do not want to be public knowledge.  The elected governments of the World like to keep their dirty little secrets and dirty laundry hidden so that they still maintain a level of Authority and Superiority for the general public. 

     In Canada, a perfect example would be the removing and shaming of public figures from the past that were involved in the beginning of the founding of this Country.  While I agree whole-heartedly that what happened to the Indigenous people that lived here when people like Samuel De Champlain and General Cornwallis arrived to colonize this Country I disagree with what is happening today.  Sir John A. MacDonald was the first Prime Minister of this great Country we call Canada when it was formed as a Dominion in 1867 (it did not officially become a Nation until 1982, but really it is just an “Economy”). In Victoria recently one of his statues was removed because of his part in the Residential School fiasco.  While this was horrible and tragic and has robbed a people of their Culture, he was being advised by others and was just doing his best with the knowledge he had and how he had been conditioned.  He grew up in a way that conditioned him because of the “Bible” that these Indigenous people were Savages and they needed to “kill the Indian in the Child” because that is what he was told and taught.  Had he had the knowledge we have today of what would become of his decision, do you think he would have made the same one? So, we dishonour him and erase him because he made a choice based on the knowledge he had at the time. Cornwallis was the same.  His statues removed and his great deeds now trying to be erased because of a decision he made at the time.  In depths studies show that there was a war going on and there were various miscommunications from various sides that resulted in some wrong decisions being made. But they were made.  Let’s learn from these mistakes and get to the bottom of things before we just erase people.  I’m pretty sure they did that in ancient Egypt, but we still know the people they tried to erase existed. 

     So, choices, good and bad, we all make them.  We suffer the consequences and sometimes these consequences are not even known for years.  Sometimes we are so blinded by conditioning that someone needs to point out that we are making the same choices over and over and we need to break free from the cycle we are in.  If another person’s choices are creating bad situations for you then you need to look at the choice you have yet again.  Ultimately it is up to you. To seek the information to make the choice.  You can learn to tolerate the choice or educate yourself and break free knowing that everything that happens is a learning experience.  We have learned from Sir John A. MacDonald. What to do and what not to do.  We have learned from the Ancient peoples, yet we have forgotten their ways.  We have become dependant on an outdated book called the Bible which we choose to believe is the be all and end all all things.  I never comprehended how we could go from having many Gods and Goddesses to just one.  We have faith in what we cannot see or believe a book that we have been told is true, but we will not believe the person next to us that is telling us the truth because its just too far fetched. 

     We have dismantled families by making things so expensive that both parents (if a child is so lucky) need to work (sometimes long hours) and electronic devices have become babysitters which sometimes cannot be controlled.  Television, video games, social media, radio, podcasts, and the Internet are now conditioning our children. How can we control all these things?  On top of this they are still banning books and saying things that were perfectly acceptable for our generation are no longer appropriate for children today.  We are medicating our gifted children because they are different under the guise of ADD, ADHD, and autism, along with various other “labels.”  It’s entirely possible that our systems just need to be rewritten because they are now outdated.  We have created divisions in Society through vulnerable sectors and marginalized people. We have women trying to get equal rights still throughout the world when really, it’s more just equal recognition they want.  They are half the population after all.  We have people being denied who they are because of who they love. They are having to speak up and demand equal rights because they do not fit the “norm.”  Indigenous studies taught me that They say everything is a choice. A choice we made, or a choice someone else made that affected us. Sometimes it feels like there wasn’t much choice in that situation, and sometimes something that feels like it was a bad choice at the time can actually turn into the best thing that ever happened to you.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton