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Skills In Breaking Free

recaliming your soul healing from sexual abuse retreatI talk much about taking action in life and acknowledge that we all take action towards a conscious purpose. To illustrate this today I share the skills and knowledges document created at the Reclaiming Your Soul Retreat last month.

All of these skills were experienced, named, and described by the participants. It needs no introduction.

Skills In Breaking The Cycle Of Abuse

We are people who have chosen to participate to the Reclaiming Your Soul: Healing From Sexual Abuse and Sexual Assault Retreat in April 2013. Continue Reading →

Resilience of The Human Spirit

How do they do that?

resilience of the human spirit

Having worked with so many people who have undergone unspeakable trauma, I’ve heard stories of amazing survival skills. It is surprising what we can endure and survive. I think many of us agree that we can’t imagine what it was like to be kept as prisoners in a house for 10, or almost 10, years. We let our minds go there for just a moment, it becomes overwhelming and we skirt away.
We know that so many people who have walked this earth endured horror beyond our worst dreams and within that space, figured out how to live the unlivable. Survive 17 days in a crumbled factory. Survive a concentration camp. Emerge whole and full of light after being sexually, emotionally, or physically abused. Keep alive during combat.

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Rape In The News: There Is Justice

Just Sunday morning I woke up to three national news stories of rape.

Air_Force_trainer_gets_4_years_for_raping_trainee

Ohio_to_consider_charges_against_others_in_rape

Indian_police_arrest_5_over_Swiss_tourists_rape

justic for rapeIt is not because rape is more prevalent. It is because girls and women, wrapped in their communities, are coming forward. Saying this is not OK. The community support is what makes a difference. It is most difficult for a woman to break the silence alone.

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Writing To Heal-Words To Heal By

Painful feelings expressed into words uncap a pressure and undermine a power that can bring us down. My clients and friends often write me to release this pressure. The proverbial “getting things off your chest” can be just the ticket to get through a hard moment, or a difficult day.

words to heal by Continue Reading →

A Valentine’s Story: Your Kindness Healed Me

 

“Love Heals, Kindness Heals”  was first published on my Anxiety-Schmanxiety Blog. It has received over 36,000 hits. I am glad romance still holds as much value to all of you that it does to me. Share if this makes you feel good! 

 

love heals this valentine's day

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Breaking the Silence of Rape and Sexual Abuse

Every two minutes someone in the US is sexually assaulted. Every two minutes. That’s twenty people in the time it took me to write this post. Nineteen of them are women. (With childhood sexual abuse, victim’s gender ratio is 3 girls to 1 boy.)

Rape and sexual abuse are hard things to talk about because of fear and shame. But silence just makes fear and shame more rampant. I believe by not talking about them–our opposition of abusers and support of survivors–we are perpetuating the problem. Sexual abuse thrives in silence. Rape thrives in silence.

breaking the silence sexual abuse rcovery

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Begin With A Beginner’s Mind

There are three ways to start the day:

“This day is going to be awful.”

“This day is going to be great.”

and 

“I don’t know what today’s going to be like and what it may mean.”

Begin with a beginner's mind

Beginning with a beginner’s mind is a method taught in Zen Buddhism. It is meant to strip the meanings our monkey minds put on everything that happens to us. Did you ever notice that we tend to jump to conclusions? And these conclusions make a huge difference in how we feel and how we act. Continue Reading →

“Call Jodi. She’ll know what to do.”

“Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”
― Martin Luther King Jr. 

There’s an interesting phenomenon that has followed me around for more than half my life. I turned it into a fulfilling career. Let me give you an example… In college, my housemate once knocked on my bedroom door. She entered my room with the phone in her hand, and told me her friend was crying and she didn’t know what to say. She barked into the mouthpiece, “Here, talk to Jodi, she will know how to help you feel better.” I remember thinking this quite odd, I don’t even know this person. I hesitantly received the phone as it was thrust into my face.

I spoke to the distraught girl, because how could I say no? I had no idea how to “make her feel better.” So I just listened. And validated her feelings. Continue Reading →

Heal Now Through Compassion

You have heard me mention that “acknowledgement” (call it what you want–compassion, appreciation, love, validation–it’s all the same to me) is the foremost way to heal?

Well, today, have a treat for you. Recently I have interviewed, Edward Mannix, who has a similar view.  (I met Edward when he sent me his new book Impossible Compassion to review.) In fact, he has dedicated his life to sharing the healing benefits of “Directed Compassion.”  In reading his literature, I wonder if both consciously and subconsciously this is exactly what I do. It is cool, fun, and simple. And full of self love. Just the way I like healing to be.

This is Edward Mannix.

Here’s the interview:

Continue Reading →

Your Personal Invitation To Heal

Why do people need a personal invitation to heal? 

personal invitation to heal

 

“Moved by the force of love fragments of the world, we seek out one another so that a world may be.”

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Continue Reading →

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