Meditation for Healing Our Emotions

A Meditation for Healing Our Emotions

I had followed a practice of regular meditation for quite some time before I began intensive healing work. Meditation quickly became a crucial aspect of that healing work itself. During all phases of healing, our emotions swirl and tumble like a stream racing over rocks. The daily practice of simply following my breath and letting the emotions come and go, neither fearing nor rejecting whatever came up, became a source of both stability and insight. When we are healing from childhood sexual abuse, we experience many difficult emotions—pain, grief for our lost childhood, anger and rage at the perpetrator or perpetrators and those who enabled them, and the shame, guilt and isolation that are the inevitable legacy of abuse. We need to be able to experience those emotions fully without being engulfed by them. I found that meditation helped me do that. With practice, we can learn to recognize emotions as changing currents that flow through us, rather than identifying with them and remaining stuck in them. See Many Paths Interfaith Ministries

Proactive Parenting: Use These Tips to Help Prevent Children from ever Being Abused

Jill Starishevsky knows the horrors of child abuse better than most – she’s a prosecutor of child abuse and sex crimes in New York City. The mother of three is also the author of My Body Belongs To Me (www.MyBodyBelongstoMe.com), a children’s book intended to prevent child sexual abuse by teaching children that their bodies are their own.She shares the following 10 tips for keeping children safe from predators:

1. Safety in numbers. Find out what the policy is for one on one contact. Organizations can limit or eliminate the opportunity for abuse if there is a policy requiring a third person to be present (whether it is an adult or another child). In a sport such as tennis where there may not be a third person, parents should consider being present for the lessons.
2. Safe touching vs. unsafe touching. Have a discussion with your child about what types of touching are appropriate in that particular sport. With a contact sport such as football or wrestling, be explicit about what behavior is acceptable and what is not. Teach your child to come to you and ask questions if they are uncertain. Discuss whether there are other touches that you have not addressed.
3. Use a broad brush. While parents may have concerns about protecting their child from a coach, they should keep in mind that other children can be perpetrators of sexual abuse against a child as well. All lessons should apply to anyone who might touch the child inappropriately, whether adult or child.
4. No secrets. Period. Encourage your children to tell you about things that happen to them that make them feel scared, sad or uncomfortable. If children have an open line of communication, they will be more inclined to alert you to something suspicious before it becomes a problem. The way to effectuate this rule is as follows: If someone, even a grandparent, were to say something to your child such as "I'll get you an ice cream later, but it will be our secret", firmly, but politely say "We don't do secrets in our family." Then turn to your child and say "Right? We don't do secrets. We can tell each other everything." Secrecy is the most powerful weapon in a child abuser’s arsenal.
5. Identify a “safety zone” person. Teach your children that they can come to you to discuss anything, even if they think they will get in trouble. Convey to them that you will listen with an open mind even if they were doing something they should not have been doing. A safety zone person can be a neighbor, family member, religious official or anyone who your child feels comfortable confiding in should something happen to them and they are reluctant to discuss it with parents. The safety zone person should be advised that they have been chosen and should be instructed to discuss the situation with the parents in a timely manner. Keep in mind that child predators often “entice” their prey with something inappropriate such as allowing a child to watch an adult movie or miss school, letting them smoke a cigarette or drink alcohol. Children will often be reluctant to tell about inappropriate touching for fear they will get in trouble for the drinking or missing school. Explain to children that they if someone touches them inappropriately, they should tell the parent or the safety zone person, even if they did something that they were not allowed to do.
6. Teach your child the correct terms for their body parts. This will make them more at ease if they need to tell you about a touch that made them feel uncomfortable. Teaching children only the nicknames for their private parts can delay a disclosure. An 11-year-old who only knows the term hoo hoo for her vagina may be embarrassed to tell someone if she is touched there. If a 5-year-old tells her busy kindergarten teacher that the janitor licked her cookie, the teacher might give the child another cookie, not realizing she just missed a disclosure.
7. Practice “what if” scenarios. Say to your child, "What would you do if someone offered you a treat, or a gift when I wasn't there?" Help your child arrive at the right answer, which is to say no, and ask you first. Many parents also encourage children to walk or run away in this situation if the person is a stranger. Parents should note that giving a child a gift and asking them to keep it a secret is a very common step in the process of grooming a child for sexual abuse.
8. Teach children to respect the privacy of others. Children should learn to knock on doors that are shut before opening them and close the door to the bathroom when they are using it. If they learn to respect the privacy of others, they may be more likely to recognize that an invasion of their privacy could be a red flag meaning danger.
9. Let children decide for themselves how they want to express affection. Children should not be forced to hug or kiss if they are uncomfortable. Even if they are your favorite aunt, uncle or cousin, your child should not be forced to be demonstrative in their affection. While this may displease you, by doing this, you will empower your child to say no to inappropriate touching.
10. Teach children that No means No.
    Teach children that it is OK to say No to an adult. Without permission from you, many children may be reluctant to do so even if the adult is doing something that makes them feel uncomfortable. Teach children that all of these lessons apply to children as well. If another child is touching your child in a way that makes him or her uncomfortable, teach your child to say No, get away and tell someone. When someone tickles a child, if the child says No, all tickling should cease. Children need to know that their words have power and No means No.

Editor’s Note: This story is reprinted by permission of the author, Jill Starishevsky, and the National Alliance for Youth Sports’ SportingKid magazine, in which the story was published.
Also, check out Little League’s Parent Guide (PDF) on how to protect children from a potential child sex offender.

Life is a play in several acts

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
Your past history and all of your hurts are no longer here in your physical reality. Don't allow them to be here in your mind, muddying your present moments. Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much longer. But all are necessary, otherwise they wouldn't be in the play. Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

Are you your story?

We struggle to come to terms with what happened to us as children and/or adults in some cases both. To recall faint memories and create our personal history that was blurred.

At some point we discover what happened and we then wonder who we are because the person we created came from a place of needing to be hidden and safe. Then we wonder if that person was created for safety who are we really? how do we let go of the person who in part is us but mostly is what we think other people expect to see or what we found on TV to mold ourselves from, a piece her and piece there until we make a whole person even if hollow inside.

Do we fear removing the pain and thus having no reason to be the person we created?

Do we fear who we might really be and will we even like that person?

Do we substitute the victim person for the recovering person?

Are we addicted to our story instead or working on your future?

How can we let go of we identify ourselves as survivors of child or adult sexual abuse. Yes we survived the fact we are here proves it! Now is time to time to identify ourselves in a different way, but how and in what way?

Stop The Bleeding

“You can accept or reject the way you are treated by other people, but until you heal the wounds of your past, you will continue to bleed. You can bandage the bleeding with food, with alcohol, with drugs, with work, with cigarettes, with sex, but eventually, it will all ooze through and stain your life. You must find the strength to open the wounds, stick your hands inside, pull out the core of the pain that is holding you in your past, the memories, and make peace with them. Iyanla Vanzant

Healthy and Unhealthy Sexuality

Healthy Sexuality
Feels good; is celebrative; adds to self-esteem
Is healing; has no victims; loves, lifts, trusts, cares for and protects the other person
Deepens meaning and spirituality; adds to the feeling of closeness to God
Share vulnerability and regard provide excitement and satisfaction
Cultivates a sense of being an adult
Adds to one’s sense of self
Enhances the sense of safety and security
Uses love; honors the partner; shares control in a meaningful way; an “I-Thou” relationship
Pain is surrounded and infused with love and intimacy
Is responsible to both parties; enhances integrity
Is stimulating, challenging, playful and fun; becomes interesting as feelings are honestly shared
Integrates the most authentic parts of the self
Accepts the imperfect
Exists within a loving, respectful relationship
Creates comfortable intimacy
Is more concerned with feeling comfortable and the partner’s goodness, kindness and joy
Focuses primarily on building the relationship


Unhealthy Sexuality
Feels secretive and shameful
Is illicit, stolen, exploitive, abusive, and/or demeaning; the victim is used, then abandoned or dominated
Compromises values and spirituality
Fear provides excitement
Reenacts childhood abuses
Disconnects one from oneself
Is self-destructive and dangerous
Uses conquest, control, and power; an “I-It relationship
Pain is covered, medicated, escaped, or killed in a sterile way
Is dishonest
Becomes routine, grim, joyless
Requires a double life
Demands perfection
Is separate from intimacy and a loving relationship; sex is confused with caring
Creates distance or enmeshment/engulfment
Overemphasizes superficiality (looks, etc.)
Overemphasizes fears from the past

Breaking The Silence Fresno California

This year's event will once again feature Dakota Draconi, activist, parent, abuse survivor, and dynamic public speaker. Her topic will be Child Abuse in America. Dakota is a powerful speaker, who addresses over 2500 people per year in her fight to end the epidemic of child abuse in this country.

If you've heard Dakota speak in the past, this is the perfect opportunity to hear her again, and to bring your friends and family.

Even if you are not interested in participating in this event, we hope that you will let others know about the opportunity to hear this moving speech. In addition to Dakota's talk, we will provide an opportunity for survivors to speak about their experiences, and hold a Survivors Medallion ceremony to honor those who have broken their silence. If you or your organization are interested in helping to spread the word about this event, please let us know and we will provide promotional materials.

THIS EVENT IS FREE & FREE CHILD CARE WILL BE PROVIDED.

Please share this event with others!

To download the .pdf flyer please visit
http://bts.dragonpack.com/event-2012/event2012flyer.pdf