Witness Truths Heal , Tell Your Story

“The truth is, in order to heal we need to tell our stories and have them witnessed…The story itself becomes a vessel that holds us up, that sustains, that allows us to order our jumbled experiences into meaning.As I told my stories of fear, awakening, struggle, and transformation and had them received, heard, and validated by other women, I found healing.I also needed to hear other women’s stories in order to see and embrace my own. Sometimes another woman’s story becomes a mirror that shows me a self I haven’t seen before. When I listen to her tell it, her experience quickens and clarifies my own. Her questions rouse mine. Her conflicts illumine my conflicts. Her resolutions call forth my hope. Her strengths summon my strengths. All of this can happen even when our stories and our lives are very different.” — Sue Monk Kidd (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine)
Arna Baartz Artist

Why Do kids lie?, It’s easiest to avoid pain

Why do kids lie? 
…
There are many ways to avoid pain and lying is one of the most common. Ever wondered why children lie? It is usually to avoid perceived or real psychological/physical pain. Our brains are wired for protection and protection means avoiding pain. 
Lying is a protective measure. It’s comforting to the brain when we feel that we are able to protect ourselves. The reason why adults lie is more or less the same reason – protection.  
We don’t want to hear the truth, because that involves change and change involves struggle and struggle is pain. We also don’t want to admit the truth because admitting we were wrong or did wrong brings shame and shame is psychological and social pain.  
We want to get our own way without perceived obstacles. Obstacles in the way of getting what we want are perceived in our brains as pain because it involves struggle, so to avoid pain we lie. 
Lying is an avoidance of pain. It’s the avoidance of having to work through the fall out of something you did wrong or avoiding obstacles on your path to getting your own way. Lying can lead to inhibited emotional growth and maturity. This is the sad, and inevitable personal consequence of lying. 
If we punish lying with pain it will lead to more lying. To help kids to stop lying, sit down with them and discuss the consequences for doing it, (inner and outer).  
Usually, the antidote to anything is its opposite, tackle lying with the truth – make the truth a way of life – make the truth known, and hold your kids personally accountable to it. 
For more parenting help and resources like this visit my pagehttps://www.facebook.com/victoriousparenting

Silence

Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, **not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. 

The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence. It is hard to find. In its presence we can remember something beyond the moment , a strength on which to build a life. 

Silence is a place of great power and healing ..


~ Rachel Naomi Remen ~


Art by Pascal Campion

Empathy and Lovers , S.Campbell PhD


Empathetic people are the most beautiful, and oftentimes the most misdirected and abused. Sadly, having a soft heart can get us locked into traumatic love connections where the gift of our empathy works against us. Empathy is something we feel for another person as we try and place ourselves in their shoes. When we are giving this to a manipulator, we are finding empathy and understanding in places that we shouldn’t. We do this because we want to believe people are honest, good, and authentic, so we project these qualities onto our abusers as a way to stay in the relationship and to avoid our own feelings and fears of abandonment. We cannot stand behind ourselves with zero empathy and give it out to those who do not deserve it and make our way into a happy life or relationship. Step back for a minute and ask yourself why are you not being empathetic towards yourself, towards the pain you feel at the hands of the toxic people/person in your life, and giving yourself the sage advice to do better for yourself? We must ask ourselves why it is so foreign to us to take the loving advice we would offer to others in the same position? If we could practice being more empathetic towards ourselves, we would certainly develop a more honest relationship with ourselves, which would lead us more naturally into making healthier decisions when choosing relationships with others because we would never want anyone to hurt in the ways we are hurting.