braintissue

My husband suffered a massive heart attack Christmas week of last year. In that time he has managed to apply for SSI and be denied and now we are smack in the middle of an appeal, an appeal that he is scared will be yet another denial.

I am aware that some people do return to work after they have suffered a heart attack, but when the doctors you depend on are not very clear in the way that they deliver their message about the condition of their patients, and those patients go with the idea that they can and might go back to work, finding out that they can never return to a job they love is something that not only the heart attack victim goes through.

I love this person very deeply, but even I have my limits. Yet I know and understand why it is that he is so angry, so bitter at the same time that he is depressed, down on himself, thinking thoughts that none of us wants to deal with, especially now in the middle of what seems like hell to the rest of the family. I could sit here and do what other people who write about this have done, but then there is just one more person who knows just as much as anyone else does (nada, if you think about it.) My mission as a writer is not only to entertain you but to inspire you to do things that you know will help the rest of those people who are going through the same things we are.

Doing what I am doing, not for fame, but because it is right to do

Applying for Social Security benefits is a pain in the ass. There are so many forms to fill out, so many different things that need to be disclosed and so many reasons why the SSA will deny your claim for benefits. I don’t want to sound like one of those …wives… who feel like their pain is what the world needs to know about when in fact it is the pain of a man who was able to take care of his family for many years only to be taken down by something like a heart attack. People work all their lives so that they can be taken care of by a system which they pay into. Once they need this help it is almost impossible to get because there are too many people who have no clue about what they are looking at who could not care less than they do about the person filing a claim to what is rightfully and should rightfully be, theirs.

The whole thing about applying for and getting denied your benefits is that the SSA feels you can work and will deny your claim because they feel, regardless of what a trained medical professional says, you can still work.

What the hell happened to compassion, to caring for the people who helped fund this nation, and when was it made OK that we would turn our backs on the people who have, for years, cared for the country simply by having a damned job?

The time is now for action

We need to stop the madness of red tape and denial that people who need the help cannot get because they can still work. This is wrong. For generations we all were given to the idea that we could work our whole lives and if something goes wrong we can depend on what we paid into to be there to take care of us, but this is the furthest thing from truth. What we get instead are a bunch of people who know as much as medicine as someone who is not a doctor knows. These are the people who are in charge of approving our application for disability insurance.

What happened to our believing that we could get through things because we paid into a system that promised us that we would have it to depend on? We cannot depend on our leaders to take care of us, and while we are out here in the real world people who need their disability cannot get it because they are not injured enough, sick enough, whatever enough, and daily people die waiting for their benefits to kick in so that they can live.

A little history

My husband likes to have a good time, and his entire life was wrapped around his ability to make a living. He had a heart attack, tried recovering as quickly as he could, paid attention to the calendar and when his appointments with all of his doctors were. It was the visit to his cardiologist that started this mess, and it will be several more before the mess has been completely fixed. He is waiting for his disability claim to be approved, and even though we applied for them back in January, we are still fighting a system which only does the very bare minimum for people. I have seen people with lesser issues get approved quickly, but when a man who has worked hard his whole life cannot get the help he needs from the government he paid for, a person tends to get a little bit angry.

In his case, he is a lot angry, and he should be. We have been jerked around, lied to, given on diagnosis after another, one opinion after another, written statements saying that my husband cannot work at all. We have had no income that is steady in eight months, and with three kids, a car payment, prescriptions that are not covered by the state’s insurance plan, having no income that is sustainable is very hard on a person, let alone a family. We are falling apart at the seams, constantly arguing over the most trivial things and everyday we wear each other down, grinding each others’ nerves on the gravel of disappointment and depression. Yet it never changes, and though we have enlisted the help of a disability advocate, the control still remains in the hands of a careless, faceless government that tells us everything is fine even though our outward reality tells us that the opposite is true.

In order for this all to change, we have to change it. We have to stop sitting around ruminating about what we should do and what we wish we could do and actually do something to change the way that things are. People who are sick should not have to worry about how they are going to care for their families. They should be able to live life a little better than by only their very wits. Life is hard enough, and when you get that letter of denial telling you that according to Social Security and their outdated charts and regulations, etc., etc., you are sick enough to no longer work when they say you are. I would like to see one of them come around and visit these people who live their lives precariously because they have to and not because they want to.

We cannot afford to even leave the house some days, and this is when it starts to get difficult for not only me, but also for the kids. The man is always in pain, always in the middle of an anxiety producing situation that leads us to fighting with one another over something that we really have no control over at all, and that is the part that sucks the most. He is a very sick man, and I know his time is very limited here. His cardiologist sent it in writing - he cannot work anymore, so just chill.

But we still have to wait until November 27 to get a yes or a no. How the hell are we supposed to live on waiting that long for something that should already have been determined as a no brainer? He cannot work because the risk of him dying at work is too great, and the jobs that he can get in the shape that he is in are not the ones that pay well enough to become the spouse’s 2nd income.

We need to stand up and fight for the rights of those who are very surely becoming that crowd of people who daily are becoming that crowd that you only hear about in the news - the sick and the poor.

Any takers?

I think it was yesterday that I became completely faithless in the way that things are shaping up in this country. Everything is ass-backward and the wrongest of the wrong are the ones being bailed out. Meanwhile, people are still losing their livelihoods, their homes, their families.

I must have been either really desperate, bored, something else that equates to those two things, because I am not the one to be one of those home party consultants. Thankfully the person I signed under is a good friend of mine, otherwise I would not have been convinced that perhaps this is something that is supposed to take me to yet another place where I need to be in life. I keep on thinking this way and hopefully one day it will be true.

However…

Given the shape of things as they are right now, I thought better than to ask the question of why I should sell PartyLite candles. I thought better because all the time there has been the reason blatantly there and in front of my face for the rest of the world to see but for me to totally just not see - Maybe I am supposed to be cutting my teeth on other kinds of writing, or maybe I am supposed to make friends who also sell these lovely, clean burning candles, or maybe…aww, who knows? The reason for this blog is because I am truly a statistic now in that I am educated and continuing to get that way, am jobless even though I am educated, am embittered because I did what all those who want to have a good job go and do - get an education. And this is not to say that people who “do” these kinds of businesses are not smart, but it is to say that people like me are not that great at this sort of thing and I am truly hoping that what I tell people here in this part of my blog (I tend to think of braintissue.today.com as the place where all my personalities have their very own say so…yes, even the one whom I refer to as Loretta who smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish, curses like a sailor, and a host of other things that most women who are not me balk at the idea of admitting to doing!) will prompt them to have a damned PartyLite candle party.

The idea that we are all in this crappy economy together is wrong

Make no mistake - the more that I think about this, the more I am convinced that we are in this economy on two sides of very different ideals. There is the side of this mess where people are convinced that this will all come to an end and that our current President will be the hero of the day. I hate to burst your bubble, kids, but that ain’t gonna happen, and I will tell you why. Though he is a very nice man, a great public speaker, a knowledgeable scholar, after seeing all that I have seen I am convinced that this man has no real clue of what is really going on in this country. We are in the middle of the very worst economic time since the last recession. This time, though, there are a lot of other, more heinous things that have happened since then, with one of those things being that we are too eager to pander to the countries of the world to get stuff made cheap so that the rich folks can get richer and the rest of us can just go screw ourselves.

Yes, I am one of those people who have an unfailing faith in things bigger than we are, so much so that I even write another blog about it. However, when enough is enough, it is truly, truly enough. We have been battered, bounced around, told that things will get better all while we are being also shown that in this economy, we, the People, are not the ones who matter. Of course, us spending our money matters, and us applying for loans matters, and us doing a whole lot of things that we all did when things were falsely better, we are expected to do still, even though our income is not commensurate with our expenditures. The thing that told me this first was this $4,500.00 “credit” we would get if we decided to trade in our “junk” cars that are too old, whose motors are too big…etcetera, etcetera…but what a lot of people do not understand is that I happen to know (I asked a car salesman) how much they mark up the price on a car.

Roughly, 5,000.00 . NOW, we are expected to give up the cars that we, the People, who love our American Heavy Metal, are being asked to give up our way of life for a credit on a new car that may or may not end up being the one that we love. I am sorry, but it is going to take a lot more than 4500 bucks to make me give up my beloved 99 Mustang GT. I LOVE big motors. I will take the roar and the growl of a V8 long before I will bother with the savings promised with these smaller, imported, NOT TRULY AMERICAN cars. I would sooner spend the money in gas in my big old 4.6L SOHC motor than I would take one red cent of money that sooner puts people here in this country at risk of losing their jobs here in this country. Though I know that most of the parts are not made here, this does not mean that the car itself is not made here, either.

Basically, from what I have been told, the 5,000.00 mark up on a vehicle is what you haggle over with the car salesperson when you buy a new car. So guess what? Those same guys who got bailed out before are the ones who were bailed out this time, too and what’s more, the government has decided that they will “give away” a 4500 dollar credit to an ignorant-to-the-fact that the 4500 is still 500 less than the wiggle room you have when you buy a car anyway and since it is that they are “giving” you this credit for a new car, this makes it less your inclination to try to haggle the price lower because you were just given that “credit.”

Apparently, there are people who have jobs…

I signed up with PartyLite for one reason and one reason only - I cannot find a job anywhere, and I figure that since I have no luck with that job hunt, I might as well try my luck at selling candles that smell good enough to eat. I can’t really screw this up too much because it is basically one of those products that sells themselves (I swear, if I could eat the candles and be sure that they tasted the way that they smell I would never have to go to the grocery store again because I would live on the candles). I have bought PartyLite candles in the past, have been to a few really fun, really great candle parties, and I know that these things sell. The thing that bugs me the most about this whole ordeal of “fill out an application, wait, call, wait, email, wait, fill out an application…” is not that I am not being hired but because of the reason that I am not being hired.

I am overqualified.

I am too qualified for many of the jobs that are hiring right now, and I am not qualified enough to do what I am in school for. I have had many, many, many tearful arguments with my ailing husband about why it is that I cannot get hired, and though I know that I should not list all my educational accomplishments, my volunteerism, my background as a choreographer and studio owner, my background as a staff writer or my editorial background, my marketing background, the fact that I am a self-published author…I list them, because dammit - I worked very hard at all of these things and I am sorry that offends a lot of people who are in charge of other people for anything other than their accomplishments and totally because they kissed the right ass at the right time. (Yeah, I said it now deal with it)

I am convinced, probably wrongly convinced, that the reason I am not getting hired is for no other reason than that I am very good at what I do, and also because smart women scare the hell out of other women and totally scare the crap out of men, period. I am a smart woman. I know lots of other smart women, and I have been told the same things by these other smart women - they have a hard time getting hired.

I don’t want your job - I want a job!

So maybe I won’t be too terribly bad at selling PartyLite candles. Who knows? It might be exactly what else I am good at and don’t even realize it yet. I am not afraid to try, and man, do I hope that I don’t fall completely and flatly on my face doing this. I don’t crumble too easily, and I am actually great in front of a crowd. I have a lot of ideas to market them, but the sad fact is that a lot of people believe they do not have the money to buy candles. I could totally hook up with a coven or some eco-people who would rather spend the money using one less lightbulb.

Not too much scares me, but this does, and I am not sure if it is a scary scared or a fluttery scared.

The point of this blog

Lots of people are starting to go the route of self-employment. It is not a road that too many travel and come away from being able to deal with the responsibility let alone all the maybes. Yet there is not a lot that can be done about not being hired right now. Not a lot of people are hiring, and for every one job it seems that there are ten acceptable applicants, and the worst part about this is that the one hiring is the one who is looking at the applications and scanning them for people who are smarter than they are. This is sick and sad, but it is true. I have this friend. Her name is Vanessa. This girl is probably the very brightest person her young age who I know who is capable of so many different things, who is well educated, who is an employer’s dream come true. This girl can school any man, can do the job of ten women, and is one of those people who an employer can totally depend on to get the job done.

Problem is, the economy sucks.

I also know this one lady who is a fantastic writer, a masterful communicator, is educated, self-published and well-respected in the circles where authors and readers collide like stars in the great, wide sky. This broad can’t get hired to save her damned life!

And why?

Because. Because employers are no longer looking for quality workers. They are looking for people who will kiss their asses for no perks, no health insurance, no retirement benefits, and nothing other than a paycheck and that is just the way that it is going to go, dammit.

I have applied here, there and everywhere, and now it has come to me trying to get a part time job in a health club so that I can continue to write my blogs and my books, and also to sell the hell out of these smelly, pretty candles, so that I don’t have to sit here and complain about the waning economy. Yep - that’s me…the Candle Lady.

That was supposed to make me feel better about the whole thing

…but it didn’t, because as of this moment, I am still not employed, still scared of the rejection that comes with being a distributor, still worried that I am going to be stuck in this damned tiny little house all while begging God to please let me go back home to the desert! That is what this is all about. My husband, God save him, is very sick. Though I am one to believe that what we think about becomes our reality, I am also thinking that I knew a long time ago that he would end up with these kinds of health issues. When you are raised to believe that you are not as smart or good or whatever, as so and so acts like they are, you are inclined to believe that you are not. I wish like hell that he was not sick, that I did not care, and that I was not as homesick as I really am, but wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which one fills up faster.

I am not sure what the hell this particular blog is about other than that I am now a PartyLite candle consultant and that if we do not bother to help ourselves, we might as well just move to Mexico because our chances of being able to get our money that we lost to the economy and the banks and the mortgage industry is as good as our being the one who opens the door and finds the PCH Prize Patrol on the other side of it holding one of those big giant checks and shoving a mic into our faces while we try hard to catch our breath because we won the Super Prize! I think I have grown past the idea that at the moment I will end up being anywhere near hired by anyone, at least not on a full time basis. I will take part time at two jobs, sell my candles, write my books, do my best, and know that what I am doing is sending us well on our way to that place we call home!

MAPU

Marijuana is a safe alternative to pharmaceuticals available by prescription by a medical doctor. In some cases, Marijuana is still illegal, even though it has never been shown to cause the same dangers as do many of the other, traditional and presumed safer-because-they-are-FDA-approved drugs most doctors prescribe to their patients for a myriad of conditions.

I will not lie to anyone reading this - I LIKE marijuana. I like it for all the reasons that a lot of people like it. It mellows me when I am in the middle of an uncontrolable fit of rage, and it soothes the cramps that many OTC medicines do not. It does not nauseate me the way that Vicodin does, and it makes me fall asleep gently unlike the Baclofen that I am prescribed, along with the Temazepam and the Xanax that I am supposed to take that I get prescribed by my doctor. I cannot take these meds for a variety of reasons, but the one reason that I prefer to not take them is simple.

I am a legally prescribed patient covered by California’s SB420, also known as Prop 215, better known as Medicinal Marijuana. Because of this plant, I am able to cope with all those maladies, real or imagined, WAY better than I do when I am passed out from one of those others that I have access to.

Killing the Ignorant Monsters

We all know - ALL OF US KNOWS - that there is nothing implicitly unsafe about Marijuana. In short, it is a plant, a plant that has been around longer than any one reading this has been. Sure, its main purpose for it being in a lot of peoples’ lives is so that they can get high. (Yes, today’s strains are WAY better than the ones that were over-glorified in ANY of the Cheech and Chong movies…those guys would never even know what the hell to do if they got ahold of this stuff on a regular basis). Yet there is a large majority of people, I am one of them, who has grown tired of all the wrong rhetoric being slung around by a media that would not know its own head from its ever-widening ass if they bothered to look at it. No one can, unless they try it themselves, say anything about how I medicate away the migraines, the depression, the anger. No one, and unless and until people decide that they are going to ask instead of assume that what they are saying is right, people will sooner stay cloaked in a cloud of ignorance, more worried about being wrong all this time than finally dealing with the truth.

Yes, I was once a pothead for sport, but these days, given the way that life has come at me in full force and has seemingly decided that I can hang with my travesties, I have to get rid of all my maladies the way that I and many others like me have done for generations - toking it away.

May God send me to Hell if I am doing something wrong to someone else

If you have been reading what I have been writing about all these years, then it is not a secret that I am a huge believer in God. I am also a huge believer in the idea that if God did not want Marijuana here, if it did not have a purpose, or further, was not the herb that the book of Proverbs is talking about when it says “Physician, heal thyself,” it- the marijuana - would be gone, just like the dinosaurs.

I blame the ridiculous claims made by people who have no clue about this plant other than that it is “technically” and federally, illegal still. The state of California can use the boost in profits and taxes that can and should come from the revenues taken from the sale of it. I am all for making legal those things that are studied and measured and known to be safe.

Some meds on the market are still in the testing phases, but doctors still prescribe them.

My husband, the one to whom I refer to as “Heart Attack Guy,” was prescribed a blood thinner at the time that he was being released from the hospital after he’d undergone Quadruple Bypass surgery over the Christmas holiday. I will not say what the name if the medicine is, but I will say that it is currently being prescribed to those people in need of blood thinners, especially to those who have, like my old man, been through open heart surgery.

We tried unsuccessfully to fill the prescription for this blood thinner, only to find out from the pharmacist that it was not covered by our insurance, or by any insurance for that matter. It perplexed me to think about how it is that a person who was just released from the hospital after undergoing major invasive surgery would be given a drug that he or she cannot pay for and one which was not covered by any insurance plan. We later found out that the drug in question was not covered because said drug is still in the testing phases.

That’s right- those commercials you see are there just to make you feel safer without a guarantee that you are really safe.

I was told that drug makers release drugs into the wild blue yonder long before they are deemed safe for use by actual people who need them. The pill that my husband was supposed to take comes with a multitude of possible calamities, sold to the public as “side effects.” If you read some of the warnings on the side of the box that those little magic pills come in, you would find somewhere in that rhetoric are small inklings, hints of the multitude of bad things that can happen, yes, even death.

No one is going to tell you about this because if a doctor tells you what he knows about the meds, and said doctor is somehow in cahoots with any one of the major drug manufacturers, that doctor will end up losing his ass in court because when he chose to be what I refer to as a “test doctor,” he chose to side with the drug maker and not the side he is ethically supposed to - with the patient.

Marijuana has no side effects

In sharp contrast to what we are not told about manufactured medicine, we are told a lot about the benefits of marijuana as medicine. This is not to imply that it does not come with its own set of things that can go wrong, but in comparison to what has gone wrong with other, legal and marketed drugs, marijuana is benign. Yes, if you smoke it you could end up with cancer, but again - show us the stats on that one instead of the stats on the number of deaths caused by manufactured drugs (at least the deaths that happened where we heard about them) and put them up against the stats for marijuana in any form and you will see what potheads have known for generations.

We got it right.

We know what the effects of our medicine is, and if eating, laughing and then falling asleep is a side effect, I think that I will take my chances with a plant and not with the cheesy smile hiding the slithering tongue of the guy wearing the suit that was bought with heartache and addiction. We are the most prescribed bunch of people in the Universe, we Americans are, and we continue to be because we know that whatever the guy in the white lab coat says is golden, because after all, he’s a doctor and you can trust him.

NO, you cannot trust them all. Although I trust my doctor as much as any one stranger can trust another one, the same cannot be said for many doctors throughout the nation and the world. Many doctors’ licenses are currently in question because they have found out that there is a lot of money to be made becoming the dope dealer of choice to a mass of people who started out having pains, ended up getting a pain med script, and went on with their lives, never realizing that the say that went back to the doctor’s office to ask for a refill of their pain meds began the addiction, not only to the medication, but to the false idea that what they are taking is better for them than much else is because their doctor told them it was.

If you believe that, then you probably believe, too, that the converible Jaguar he drives is not his but belongs to the medical group he is working for.

Just a thought
MAPU

I am in the middle of a long, drawn out spiritual lesson, and though I might complain a lot through it all, the truth is that at the end of it I will be stronger, wiser and one step closer to being my Authentic Self than I was before my world seemed to crumble around me.

My lessons started back in 2007. I started drawing deeper into spirituality when I came home from what was a lousy vacation in Hawaii in June of 2007. My learning began soon after the plane landed. I did not think that things could go as remarkably bad as they did, but they did and though it was hard and I cried a lot, lost a lot, hurt a lot, I learned a lot, too. I learned that what we see in front of our eyes is not the outcome of one singularly painful event but the culmination of many painful events. I learned that there is truth to our knowing who our real friends are when hard times come to us, because there are people who helped us even though they couldn’t, helped when they needed help, helped, period, and there is a longer list of people who did nothing other than dispense advice which was not asked for and neither needed.

We are made stronger by the experiences we have, wiser by the losses, more able to stand up for the pain we go through, but we make it through it all and we look back, shaking our heads in disbelief that after all we went through we made it. And we are glad we made it, because normally there are things that happen during the times of learning, of loss, of clearing out that we do not expect to happen. Most of the time these are those moments we wait for, those moments of clarity and moments when we can turn to someone who made excuses for their actions by copping out with the old “you know how I am” excuse, and the truth is that no, we do not and we never do. We find out who is more important when it comes down to it all, and normally, it is not us.

An Eye for an Eye takes on new meaning

Think about that show where the guy tries to snatch the pebble from his teacher’s hand, or when the student teaches his teacher, or better, when a child gets to turn and tell the parent that they have hurt us and that they have been hurting us for years. When we have these unique opportunities, we must make the split decision of if whether or not we care to be angry and we care to be so in-your-face about things, or if we want just to impart wisdom onto them and tell them that they really need to stop and think about what it was that they said or did what they did and think about what their reasons are for the exclusive nature of the reason. Why is it that they seem to get a free pass to screw up but you and I do not?

We are never willing to see the sins we see in others in ourselves even though we know they are there.

My entire life I was told that I was not good enough, not smart enough, not this or that enough, for whatever reason people had. These same ways of being are still very much in effect in my life today, but the difference is that recently I realized that there is nothing that anyone can say or do to hurt me because I am the one who calls the shots, not them. This same thing goes for all of us. Unless and until we allow ourselves to be hurt by what others say or do to us, we are the ones in control of it all. We are the deciders of our fate and we are the ones whose future rests on our shoulders.

For the bulk of each of our lives we can each think back to a time in our lives when we hurt so badly because someone else had an opinion of us. At that time we are not prepared to be serene about things - we want to be angry, and in some cases it is appropriate to be angry. Yet time usually makes it so that we can think about the thing that made us so mad to begin with and when we find out what it was, it was never what was said but was left over pain from another memory. We bring to others the pain that was someone else’s and we blame them for our pain when the truth is that we can let go of it just as easily as we were willing to hang on to it.

What we are in pain from is rarely the issue at hand but is something that melds itself to this new hurt that takes us to that old hurt to revisit it again.

Recently my sister and I had a falling out. If I thought about it long enough I might be able to come up with the real issues but at this point in time I am just leaving it to the fact that there are a lot of comings and goings in the lives of a lot of people whom I love and care about, yes, even Napua’s. We, all of us, never have problems with other people until we are forced to have to defend that part of us that took so long to heal and that someone else ripped the scab off of. I have done it. You have done. We all have done it and we will all probably do it again and again, because this is human nature to do so.

When we are in the midst of turmoil with others, and when we are forced to look at ourselves in the show of their anger or their hurt, therein lies the opportunity of a lifetime if not to heal the hurt before it takes place in the other person’s life, but to understand your own. I absolutely know now what my problem has been all this time, and it totally had nothing to do with anything more than people judging me. I will not go into specifics, and I will not further the hurt. I will say that my entire life long the reason that I may have sounded like I suffered from a learning disability is not because I have one but because I kept on and keep on getting cut-off mid sentence, told without being told that what I have to say is not as important as what the other person has to say, and basically told to shut up because my opinion is not important right now, not when someone else is speaking. This is the thing that colored my life for so long that when I thought about the things that led up to everything else that has happened since the big blow out, I will tell you all now that I hurt badly when I was faced with the truth - but finally, I was freed, because what I had known all along was made evident in the happenings of the last few weeks.

I was made to see the hurt I caused and in that hurt I was able to better see my own. It made a lot of sense and gave me some measure of closure. I finally found out that I am the Black Sheep for a reason, and it was not even the reason that I believed all these years but something else more genuine and true.

We truly are never given more than we can handle, and if we think we cannot handle it it is because we are being taught something very important

I am not one of those mothers who uses swift and Biblical punishment with my children. I was made to look foolish as a child because my caretaker - normally my aunt - seemed to like punishing us kids physically. Maybe it made her scarier than she already was, or maybe, like I believe it to be true, she is what I have always known and recently accepted as being truth - she is a bully, and the worst kind. Hawaiian mothers are made to believe, for the most part, that if the kid doesn’t listen, physical punishment is the only way to go. I am probably wrong in this judgment of things but as far as my life and my memories go, this was the way that things were handled when we spoke out of turn, out of line, or simply just did not listen. We were handled in a Biblical sense.

Kids do not forget the shame in having their spirits crushed, and it is my own experience that when you physically harm a child, you are breaking their spirit. Children are not horses - they are little human beings here on the same mission as most “civilized” adults are. Why, then, do so many people believe that in order to control an unruly child, they must be smacked around in order to gain control? If this were true, then my children would be out of control. We are non-spanking parents - -there are ways to make a kid understand the rules, ways to make a kid realize the errors of his behavior and none of it involves physically hurting them or emotionally scarring them.

(It’s called tearing everything out of their closet after they have cleaned their room, and keeping the cords to their PS2, their computer and their cellphone until they have done what they have been asked without questioning why they have to do it until AFTER it is done…no physical harm, no foul)

I was treated to being often times ruled with the proverbial iron fist, and I was treated to weekly spankings from those whose care I was in because it was my aunt and in many Hawaiian families, that is just the way it is. Whose rule this is, I will never know, but it is one that I have not adhered to because I recall the shame, the anger, the rage that I felt after it happened. What I do not recall was being told why I was punished and what action it was that I did that would cause them to be that way to me or anyone else for that matter.

This past Saturday I was able to redeem my broken self by questioning the reason why it was that anyone would want to do such a thing to my oldest son who is 15. The answer I got was that because I know how the person who did this, is. This was not a good enough reason for me, and I told them so, and it was one of those rare moments when all those lessons that you were being taught all these years, and all those times when you just hung your head in shame and cried your eyes out not because you hurt physically, but because your very heart was breaking.

Live and let live should apply to us all but does not

Too often in life we are told what we should believe and what we know to be true does not match what other people assume it turns out that we are the ones lying because it is not comfortable for them. I say - enough is ENOUGH already. We can and should be angry.

No one has the right to judge anyone else, no one, and in families from one end of the Universe to the other, there are issues within that family which make it seem that since it is that the way people handle things is to pass a judgment on them is normal, everyone should just accept it that way and go on with life just hurting. The problem with this is that we want to judge, like to judge, but we do not want to be judged, questioned, told that there is a better way. It is in these small kernels of truth that we find the diamonds in the coal, the sparkling specks of gold through the murkiness of the stream, the ancient coins at the bottom of the deep darkness of the sea.

We are more inclined to judge than we are to accept and observe. This is the lesson that I learned, and that is that we are only here for a short time, and in that time we are lucky enough to have company on that journey, and on that journey if we are lucky enough to have company we go along that road and have the realizations that where we have been we have learned and taught, and it should be not only the goal of the soul to have learned, but also the goal of the soul to impart wisdom as well.

Namaste…I LOVE YOU ALL !!!

MAPU

Roxanne Cottell is a freelance writer who calls Helendale, CA home. She is married with three children. For copies of this writing or for other information please send her an email at revrkcottell@yahoo.com

Ever felt like somehow God forgot that you were part of the world and that it was never fun that you go through what you go through?

It was never meant that we were supposed to suffer without learning something about that suffering we went through. Hello, I am the Black Sheep of my extended family. And it’s OK, because somebody has to do it. Why not me?

Why not you?

As Black Sheep we are prone to accepting our fate as the ones who go through it all, and by this I mean that we go through things with those people in our extended families that at the moment we are going through it we feel that we have had some sort of dirty joke played on us by God. We have not.

Instead, we have been chosen by God for our strength, our candor, our gifts of the spirit and the heart and the mind. Our passion is great, our drive is unmatched, and like a battle worn soldier, we realize our own greatness in small doses instead of a gluttony of pats on the back that mean nothing.

There are going to be a few people who will email me or post a comment to this who will have the audacity to tell me that I am wrong about this, but I am not. We who’ve been branded with this label know that we are the ones who have been made this way because we can handle it. It might seem that we are tied to the proverbial whipping post, but the truth is that all Black Sheep have many characteristics in common.

We are sensitive with our words when sensitivity is called for. We understand the idea that sometimes you gotta hurt and we know that always, always, always, there is a place in the world for us, even though there may not be a place where we fit into our family quite right. And maybe, just maybe, after we have thought about it for a little while, we end up being grateful that we never did fit in. Grateful because there will come a time -more than one time- when it is the strength we have been granted by God which we impart onto those who have deemed us as this, the Black Sheep of the family.

While it may seem that our families and everyone within that group are busy telling us what they think of us, telling the world what they think of us and telling other people who we are in relation to their own greatness, we fall into that area where we are greeted by a greatness that is all our own. Our light shines brightly through the dismal place called being the Black Sheep. It is not a place where those weakened by the opinions of others matters, not at all. Be glad for your place. Be glad for your strength, your tenacity, your Divine Nature of Spirit and Soul.

It is not a dismal place, although there are times when it seems it is. It is how you, how I, how we have always handled the world from our corner of it. We are not bad, we are not wrong, we are not what the rest of the world of regular people have labeled us as being. We are not the label, we are the person who has been chosen to wade through the murkiness of human emotion in such a manner that we make being who we are, though hard to do, seem almost glamorous, beautiful, dare I say - easy?

The Black Sheep are the ones who endure what we do with grace, with a measure of strength that many do not possess, and because of our place in the world, in the hearts and minds of those who indeed do love us, even as we are judged for who we are thought to be, we are the ones for whom the lessons in life are not lost on. If there is anything that a Black Sheep knows all about, it is about the lessons in life which we are served up. Our lessons are challenging, but we muddle through them, one by one, getting stronger and stronger as the days and the assumptions of who we are fade away like so many memories of yesterday. We are the ones who were laughed at, mocked, told that we are not good enough, done wrong to, lied about. Yet we remain the ones who stand remaining, our heads held high, not only with pride but in utter defiance of all that has been given to us as a means to make us crumble. We are the warriors, the troopers, the ones for whom the bells toll constantly but toll like music to our ears.

We are artists and writers and dancers, musicians and poets and geniuses, but we are not recognized for more than our strength which is named arrogance and nonconformity and outright and straight up lack of concern for those who have placed themselves in that place of being marked as “correct.” We are told that we cannot do what it is that we know we are meant to, and we are told that there are ways of being that do not resonate with the things that we hear all the time from the people who tell us this, that and the other. The bottom line is that all that stuff does not matter to us, the Black Sheep of the world. This is not to say that there are people in this life who do not know suffering, sorrow and pain, because that would show a severe lack of an understanding of life and the lessons contained within it.

Though we may from time to time become a mess of falling tears, we never fall to our own demons. We fail, but we do not quit. We keep marching even as our feet are sore, our legs wobble with exhaustion, our heads hang and our shoulders droop beneath the weight of our world. Through it all, we are the ones to see the light before the dawn, the ones who hear the song of the muse when all others only hear the gnashing of teeth and the wailing from the pain and bitter suffering the world knows to give to us all through a toothy, menacing smile.

There is nothing like being loved, but there is nothing better and more rewarding than being Loved for Who You Are, and if You are the person described in this writing, then know that You were chosen specifically for this battle called your own Life and that in the end, the spoils of war are Ours!

Hold Your Head Up High. Glorify in the battles, and smile through the adversities. Feel blessed that you can do these things without having the regrets caused by the untruths spoken in your name. Be glad for your place in the world, my friend.

You earned it.

I LOVE YOU ALL

MAPU

Roxanne Cottell is a freelance writer who calls Helendale, CA home. She is married with three children. For copies of this writing or to contact her directly, please send an email to revrkcottell@yahoo.com

When thinking about the life lessons we are taught, we try to block out those painful things we are going through and replace them with things that are a bit more comforting to think about. What we are not realizing is that the trials we go through and keep on going through are the lessons that we are supposed to be learning.

If there is one thing that I know a lot about, it is adversity.

Adversity is a strange thing. We hate it when it visits us, but the minute that an applicable event touches our lives we are so glad that we went through what we went through at the times that we did because it taught us a valuable lesson. We complain and sulk about things and wish like hell that they were better even though we know that the thing we are going through is the thing that we need to go through.

OK- so SOME of us know this but the rest of us continue to fight it

Have you ever punched a brick wall? If so, and when you did, did said same brick wall crumble before your eyes or was it you who crumbled from the pain? And why were you hitting the wall to begin with? Most of the time we only see the proverbial brick wall in front of us without looking to the left or the right to find if there is another way around the wall. We would far rather fight something in our way, ignoring the reason that it is there to begin with.It always baffles me when people who are smart, popular, secure and essentially good cannot get it through their thick heads that they continue to go through the things that they go through, over and over again, because the last time they went through it they learned nothing, ignored the problem and (yikes) handled it the way that they keep handling it.

Believing that treating the problem the same way as it has always been treated will eventually make it go away is not only wishful - it is foolish.

Like a dog returning to its own vomit

Human beings are creatures of habit. We think we know how to handle a problem - all those things we label as a problem– but we don’t ever see that what we do every time we have this problem is ignore that there is a real reason as to why we keep going through the exact same thing over and over and over again. I have said it a million and one times: we get what we think about it.

Whether we want something or not, the more we dwell on something, the closer it becomes to being part of our reality.Those things that keep on happening to you are things that you have ignored in the past, lessons which needed to be learned that were just passed off as being something that you just did not care to deal with. I do it. You do it. We all need to stop doing it.

I have a bad habit of saying things that need to be said

I get that fabulous trait of saying whatever pops into my mind from my dad. Over the years I have done my fair share of hurting peoples’ feelings and not realizing it. Sure, there were times that what I said really did need to be said, but then when I would stick another 2 cents into the mix ,problems would occur and feelings would get hurt and people would stop talking to me and it would turn into a great big mess.

NOW, I understood then what I totally know now, and it isn’t that some things should be left unsaid (that is the furthest thing from the truth) but that some things should be said to people nicely because that is the way that things are supposed to be.There are times that I look back and can see where it is that I meant to hurt people, to get the one up on them, to make sure that they knew that I thought their pain was somehow funny. And if it wasn’t funny, I rested easily knowing that since I caused the pain, their pain was bigger than mine and the added extra bonus is that I caused it.

Responsibility is a two way street

There is another thing about this thing about getting one’s feelings hurt and having to deal with the pain. Are you ready?Sometimes, when that thing that needs to be said gets said, the person who it was said to gets their feelings hurt and does not say anything about it. NOW, if you are one of those people who tends to get their feelings hurt easily but refuses to say anything about it, the fault should be equally shared with the person who said what they said. You cannot continue to go through life being the poor little victim who got their little feelings hurt and you cannot go through your life feeling like everyone owes you an apology for hurting your little feelings. The world does not work that way! You need to stop being a victim of your own self pity and start looking at your Self and understand that what was said needed to be said, was not said to hurt you and dammit - grow up already and realize that there needs to be a change made in your thinking!

And there is a method to the madness of causing hurt

Being hurt is like being slapped in the face with a hot spatula. It would sting like hell, and you would remember it happening, and all those feelings that you felt when it happened would always be there. The most important thing in this is that you need to remember not only the feelings of hurt that you felt, but also and especially the feelings that you felt when you intentionally cause hurt to someone else!

There are people whom I have known my entire life who intentionally hurt others to keep themselves from having to face the hurts they have caused. There is no need to constantly be the one in control of a situation. Situations that are not comfortable can be avoided, but the truth is that those conflicts are the very things that teach us what we need to learn.

There have been plenty of times that I have tried to become friends with people to whom I am related, but every time I try to start over again, my past sneaks up on them and reminds them of all the things that they perceive to have been all because what I said did not resonate with their agenda. What many do not think about is that there has been immeasurable hurt placed on me since I was a child. Do these people see it this way? Maybe. Maybe not, but this is not my burden to bear and it never was.

If you feel like you have to hurt or manipulate someone in order to make them feel like they are not worthy of your time, are not worthy of even considering how they might feel after you do what it is that you are planning, and you go ahead and do what you have always done, you deserve every single terrible thing that is going to come your way. The Universe, God, The Almighty, that head of lettuce that you have adorned with glitter and placed atop a pedestal and have thusly named Ralph the II - all these Higher Beings see what is in your heart, know your intention, can tell if you are doing things because you want to teach someone a lesson (which, by the way, is not your duty to do so), want to make sure that they understand your message (even though you may not have bothered to see the hurt you have caused in sending the message), want to make it understood that they have no rights in anything that has to do with the life that they share with you (this could be any family member - a spouse, a sibling, a child, an uncle or a cousin…) - whatever it was, was not ever your business trying to remind them of something that you have been reminding them of for years and years, maybe even their entire lives long.

Just because someone is hurting, this does not mean that you have the right to hop on in and try to save them

Advice is something that people seek out. It simultaneously is also something that if it is not sought out should not be given. The world is full of well meaning people who mean to help others with their advice. Though it might not be that these same advice givers are trying to tell someone what they should or should not do, the bottom line is that advice that is not sought is also usually not welcomed. If you are the one to be delving into a problem that is not yours, trying to help someone else with a problem that is similar but unique to the other person’s life, the last thing you want to do is try to help someone who is only venting their frustrations….because then comes along the spider called “I know what you are going through because I went through it myself…”

There is nothing worse than having someone else tell you about their pain while you are going through your own

I try hard - really, I do - to not use my own pain to measure against someone else’s. Though there may be similarities in the pains that we each go through, the truth is that each situation is different. The advice that you are trying to give may not do anyone well enough to feel better about the problem at hand. Recently it was brought to my attention that the idea of my ever working in a normal 9-to-5 job may not be the right fit for me, and the truth is that I have known this for years but have tried relentlessly at fitting into that mold that labels me as “gainfully employed.”

I have been self-employed for years and this is the first time in my life that I have looked for something to gainfully employ me .The reality is that I know inherently that any job that I get that would be acceptable in the eyes of society would be a job which within a year I would either lose or walk away from. The gainful employment which I am given will have to be something where I have a LOT of control and where creativity is something that the employer needs badly. I am fine with being told what to do, but what I am told needs to be comensurate with the dollar value placed on it.

This is the curse of the formerly self-employed-but-trying-to-be-self-employed-again . We are remarkably dependable, responsible, good to people who need our talents but we are really, really, really bad at realizing this until time comes that we need to find gainful employment and we are labeled as “over qualified,” “intimidating,” “very talented but…(fill in the blank with silly label),” and you know what? It is probably all true. However, just because it is true it does not mean that it is right.

People need to work, but what people who need to work do not need to hear are more reasons as to why they will not be hired, even though they are all these great descriptors that make someone like me feel like I am actually as good as I say and prove I am at what I do, it is doing the opposite. Trying to help someone who does not want more than some venting room is like trying to quell an angry pit bull with a Beggin’ Strip - it is not going to help and you stand the chance of having your head chewed off of your shoulders.

And then the fight ensues

OK, we won’t call it a fight. We will call it someone with a savior complex trying hard to pat themselves on the back a little too hard, one too many times, and now has come to rescue you and you just do not want any part of it. Again, you might need to hear it, but what you do not need is one more person telling you to not feel sorry for yourself, telling you that they know what you are going through, telling you that you are not the only person going through this, and probably a whole lot of other crap that just does not resonate with your life at the moment. You are the one who makes your life what it is, no matter how it is, and no matter what happens in that life. You are the builder of your own dreams, the ruler of your own Universe, and what you do in it is what really matters.

You can tell your spouse over and over again to quit smoking, to quit drinking, to not eat an entire box of Oreos even though you totally understand the reason why, but unless and until they realize that you are simply trying to be of good service, the truth is that you are not. You are being a pain in the butt, and you are doing something that is not yours to do. People only need to be told one time the way that you feel, because after all, the way that you feel simply and at the very core middle of it all is only your opinion.

You can talk and talk and talk, but until they listen it is just hot air.

Learn from those times that seconds seemed like hours

That is pretty much it, guys. There are no snappy metaphors and no beating around the bush is needed - learn from what has been done and said to you, and more importantly, learn from the mistakes you made when you gave unsolicited advice (especially when you knew better than to do it), when you decided quite by yourself that you had an agenda that saved a group from hurting but continued to hurt the one who you have hurt forever (because they should be used to it already, right? Yeah…just like those Columbine kids who shot everyone were used to it…), or maybe did something that you meant well when you did it but you knew better than that it would not hurt if you did it and the truth is that something deep inside of you either wanted to hurt the person, wanted to control certain outcomes in the person’s life, wanted something to make yourself feel better, even if that meant that they would again be hurt.

Though they should not be hurt, the truth is that people know who they can trust and who they cannot trust and usually, it is this intuition that tells them who they can and cannot trust. So, think about it - why does that one person who you tried to help you ended up hurting? More importantly, what have you learned in the greater scheme of things in the world related to the both of you? Have you learned anything at all, or are you still right and are they still wrong? Have you realized why it is that you may feel that they are the reason for many hurts or is it that you are so blinded by the ego in you that you refuse to see the hurt that has just sat there like a lump of dog crap for so long that it is more like furniture now than it ever was anything resembling help?

What is it that you did to someone else that you meant to do in order to teach them a lesson when perhaps the lesson was not that they needed to learn from you but that they needed to learn it period?It may never have occured to anyone that maybe the lesson is not for them to learn from you, but for you to learn that maybe they really do not need you to teach it to them?

Something to think about, ain’t it?

I LOVE YOU ALL!

MAPU

The world is chock full of unhappy people who have a lot of money. It is very possible to be rich and unhappy, and it all boils down to knowing what you are supposed to be doing with your life versus what it is that you are doing for your bank account. Though there is nary a soul who will not equate being rich with being happy, there is a fine line between being who you are and being who you think you are just because the money is good.

How many times have you looked at a picture of someone who is rich and famous and have not seen them smiling? Britney Spears is one of them, and so is Lindsay Lohan. Michael Jackson was one of them. All three of these very rich, very famous people have one thing in common - they are, and in Michael’s case, were, miserable in their personal lives.

When we are willing to do whatever we can in order to have a lot of money, a lot of fame, and we do these things which o not resonate with our souls, we find ourselves rich in the wallet but not in the soul. It is fine to desire being wealthy, as wealth from our own doings does one thing for us - proves that for a moment, we were doing those things that resonated with our souls, no matter how fleeting they were and how superfluous.  Yet now, after we have been shown the difference between achieving our very soul’s desires versus getting what we want and getting our way, we find ourselves empty and wanting more of the thing that we think is success when in fact all it is is nothing more than proof that wanting our desires enough truly pays off materially.

And you thought money bought happiness

I will not lie - I like being rich. I was rich, and now I am the furthest thing from that image of fur coats, customized cars, social clubs with other golf course wives, parties on someone’s lake house deck. I was the epitome of “living large.” For a really long time I thought that all of this law of attraction stuff was the greatest thing in the world and for a little while it worked but what I forgot - what we ALL forget - is that there is a lot more going on when we are manifesting the desires of our souls, and though sometimes we desire something bad enough and we get it, often times we are left with more stuff but less fulfillment. This is because though at the time when we wished our wishes with childlike and wild abandon, we were not thinking from our souls, even as the thing we desired was there and was the momentary longing of it.

Everything has a price

Yes, people are under the impression that Love is free, that dreaming is free, that lots of things are free, but I beg to differ. Everything comes with a price, and sometimes that price is very steep. We have a lot in the pocket but not a lot in the heart and the soul and that is where the crux of it all lies- within the soul. When we desire riches what we are looking for in reality is security. When we long for love what we want is friendship to quell the emptiness inside.

Everything we want in life has some sort of pricetag on it. We must give up shards of our Selves that we might not be willing to give up and that serve only our lower, physical energies and not our energies which resonate with our soul’s longings. It might seem strange and confusing, but it isn’t. In fact, it is the furthest thing from strange.

When everything seems to crash down onto us is when the lesson is loud, clear and obvious - you are not doing what you are supposed to be doing

I love to write. This is not news, and it is not something that has not or did not dawn on me a long time ago. I Love to write SO much in fact that when it came down to what I wanted to do more of - write books, blogs and long-winded emails, versus continuing to teach dance, the answer was easy and clear and not one that I had to think much about.

I am a writer, and though I am possessed with an artist’s soul, the pictures which I paint are done in typewritten media and not with paint. The things that I cultivate in the middle of my soul are those things which make a person think about how they feel about what I wrote and allows them to conjure their own image in their own minds about what I just wrote. Instead of creating beautiful images with dance, I chose instead to do what resonates with the longings of my soul.

I am a writer and there is nothing that I can say or do to change that, and it is not my fate but my future. I was placed on this earth to do one thing well, one thing above others with whom I share DNA and relatives with, one thing that I am noted for. I was born to write and to bring to the world the messages of Love, Hope, Self Respect, Honor and Joy, even if it is that I bring these things while the reader hears the constant pounding of the mediocrity one feels when they KNOW they are not doing what it is that they are supposed to be doing.

You know what it is that you should be doing, so why are you not doing it?

I know - everyone needs to work so that they can eat, and at the moment I am stuck in the middle of this chase of finding work doing activities that I do not care to do but have to. However, I know what it is that I am supposed to be doing and what it is that I do better than everyone else I know. It takes a lot of work to be a great writer, and I have worked hard to hone my craft and have done so since I was a child. This is the thing that I recall doing the most of when I was a kid, and if I were supposed to be dancing in front of large audiences, I would find my joy in that but I know for sure that this is where I am supposed to be - planted squarely in front of my keyboard and sitting squarely inside your head, telling you that yes, you need your day job, but you also need to let your soul fly by doing that one thing that you are really the very best at.

For me, this is the written word, and there is no person on the planet who can tell me otherwise.

What, dear friend, is that one thing? Only you know. It is that thing that you do that makes you feel lighter than air, that should make you feel like you are the one at the front of the line and that if someone had to choose, the only right choice would be you.

Think about what it is that you should be doing and do it - your fans are waiting!

I LOVE YOU ALL~
MAPU

Roxanne Cottell is a freelance writer with her latest book , “Your Rock Star Moments,” due outin time for Christmas, 2009. Check her out on the web at www.auntymapuana.webs.com. For inquiries about this posting, please send her an email at roxannecottell@yahoo.com…namaste !

Over the course of time we learn things about ourselves through others. Though it is painful, we all grow out of relationships, and sometimes this does not mean that we grow out of them and abandon them, but that we grow out of what they have grown into. It is up to us to step back and take a long look at what was important and what has become important to us and how those things can help us understand the deeper meaning of the thing that happened to us and to our loved ones.

It was never supposed to get as big and ugly as it did. My sister and I had always been very close friends. She was like one of my own kids and I was the mom she could depend on for things that were not what our mother deemed as being socially or spiritually correct according to her own venture in raising the two of us. There is 17 years which splits our age groups, and in that division of time there are marked differences between us that I knew would one day be the thing that being the demise of us as we knew ourselves to be.

The point of no return

I think that when speaking of relationships in general, there is a point where once you get there, there is no turning back. My sister and I are just one example of how when we start to no longer understand one another it is not that we have grown to hate one another but rather that we have come to that point in the road of life where we have become who we would at this point in our lives and that there is nothing that anyone can say or do that will forge in us the idea that we need to change for anyone.

What bothers us most is that we stay back in that place called “Yesterday,” where life was nice and those whom we deem as our loved ones remain in that perfect little glass case where we keep our memories of not only who they used to be, but also who we used to be. We want that little piece of our own perfect universe to remain that way because it gives us cause and pause to smile. We LOVE our memories, yes, even the bad ones because when we remember things and events we can go back to where it was that that version of love is and bask in it.

The problem with this is that we have not yet, or maybe do not realize it, decided to look at that time as a stepping stone to now. We are so busy trying to numb our “now” by thinking only of our “then” that it becomes painful emotionally and sometimes spiritually for us to accept things this way. I do it, have done it, will probably still do it - we all do it. We hang on to not only our happy memories but also our painful ones. We hang onto these things because without realizing it, these are some of the only things that we can lay claim to as being “ours.”

LET IT GO…and then grow, grow, grow!

For two days now I have been in a funk, and it is not because I may have reverted to the “old me,” where instead of allowing things to flow I allowed that lower energy to replace what it is that I have worked so hard to cultivate. It did not occur to me until I sat here, trying to figure out what it was that I wanted to write about today, and then it hit me - the reason that I have been fighting with my kid sister all this time is not only because of her, but also because of me. She has yet to figure out who she is, and she operates from the lower levels of consciousness all the time. This is because unlike me, she has not yet experienced enough loss in her life to prompt her to HAVE TO learn to depend on her spirit and her soul, only her physical self. It took me some time to get to the place where I am now, and I suspect that it will take her as long, if not longer, to realize that things do not remain the way they are and the way they appear to be.

She is not always going to be this bratty, mouthy, full-of-someone-else’s-attitude person she thinks she is. One day, when the strong winds blow, when the sky is dark and the only light seen is that of the stars and the Moon, it will dawn on her, just like it dawned on me, and like I assume it has dawned on many, many of us. One day, the fact that she is not the center of the Universe will suddenly occur to her and what it is that I am sure she thinks I have put her through will become all the more clearer to her, and this will happen when she needs to know it and will be at that crux in time when it seems that her life is perfect. It will be afterwards that the thing that she is learning now (hopefully it is humility) will come in handy. She will reflect back on all the times that I reminded her of just how finite we all are in relation to the whole universe, and she will recall that more times than not, and not because I am smarter than she is, but because I am far older than she is, she will know what I meant all those times that I was gritting my teeth and cursing her very existence.

One day, when she has grown into her soul, she will understand what it was that I was saying all this time. Sure, she thinks she knows what I am talking about, but she cannot fully realize it all until she has to experience tragedy in her own private life, where our parents are not aware of things that happen, where not even I have the slightest clue of what is going on. It will be in that time and that one unique moment where she has to make a crucial, critical decision that will affect her life in ways that no one can manipulate, not even her.

This is where the growth comes in. This is where everything we learned and everyone we ever learned it from comes into play and in that same, simple moment when it dawns on us that though we may have been right in believing that how we felt was more important than much anything else, when what we wanted and what we believed mattered more to us than saving someone else the hurt of our truths.

…but what if we were supposed to hear those words and go through those dramas?

Ahhh…the lessons which we are supposed to learn ! This is the place in time where we are supposed to be able to discern our trials and tribulations into those growth patterns which give us reason to continue on in our lives. Though I may not agree with my sister’s seemfully selfish behavior, I can say truly that there is nothing in the world that I can do to make her see the hurt she has caused because I am too busy knowing that I am in pain. However, there is nothing saying that I have not also caused her pain.

The pain, folks, is in the learning.

I have said it before, and I will say it again… I HATE STATISTICS !

“How does that fit into your writing today, you nutball?” you may be asking. I am using it as an example. Recently I found out that I have to retake Statistics. It is the most confusing, most infuriating, most tear producing bunch of crap mathematics that I have ever had the displeasure of having as a requirement for a college degree. I HATE statistics, but I have to learn it, because without it I will not receive my Bachelors Degree and will not be able to advance on to my Masters program.

All the same can be said for everything that we go through with the people in our lives. I will admit to not allowing my kid sister to grow beyond what it is that I have always held her as in my thoughts. I never thought for a moment that she would turn on me like she has and I never thought in a million years that I would make it my mission for the moment to no longer talk to her until she has learned the lessons that she so badly needs to learn. We all need to learn our lessons, and some of us need to catch up on some. Thankfully we all eventually learn and we even grow beyond what it is who we think we are. This is the problem. We have, throughout the course of our lives, allowed what others have said about us to direct who we really are and to turn us into these people we are more willing to make excuses for instead of seeing as an example to what we should not be.

Some people might read this and think that I am just outing my sister’s sins, but that is not the truth. I am not someone who shrinks away from her own sins, but that was something that I had to learn and it was not a grouping of easy or fast lessons that I had to learn. Everyday I have to live with those horrible things that I have said and done in the past, and everyday I learn from those things. It is an unfortunate truth that sometimes we are given the same lessons over and over in life, and we are likened to think that somehow, God hates us. The truth is that God Loves Us enough to bring back into our lives those instances of sanity when we finally have an “AH HA” moment.

Our Rock Star Moments cannot be until we are ready to live up to our AH HA! moments. The two go hand in hand.

We live for our moments in the spotlight, but what we are not willing to do is wait for the right and the ability that we have worked toward having. We cannot have ANY Rock Star moments until and unless we are ready and willing to learn from those moments of discernment which make us see who we really are. It is not until we have learned from our pains that we can bask in the glory that is Wisdom. Myself , I have come a very long way in a short time, and it is not because I wanted to learn these lessons but because of two things - I needed to learn them because (and here is number two) I LIKE having my Rock Star Moments.

Rock Star moments are those moments in time where for a split second we are the very best at what we do and who we are and it is that singular moment when we KNOW that at that time there is no one on the planet or even in the Universe who is anywhere near as cool or as good at what we do as we are right in that very unique moment. These are those times when we passed the test without studying, made the entire Thanksgiving meal and didn’t burn the house down, created the perfect this or that, or maybe…wrote the perfect posting that is in and of itself a lesson unto its own.

We live for those moments when we know that all we have been through in life led up to that moment of realization and recognition where who we are and what we do is not as important as the recognition for those things that we give our own selves. Those moments, like when you hit the ball and in your head you see the green and the ball rolling into it on one and you get there and surely enough, it made it. You made a hole in one, and it is great and grand and there is no other moment like it, because it was meant solely and only for you as a reminder from the Creator and Our Guides that this is what we do and who we are and this is the proof.

But you cannot stop there, because learning is forever

I am still very angry, very hurt, and I am still prone to telling people these things. Yet I am not interested in telling the story of what happened or why, but rather, am telling people what I have learned thus far. I am not needful of a pat on the back, of a “there, there now, dear,” not interested in anything more than the lesson at hand. People tend to sulk about their pride being hurt, while others glorify in being able to tell the story from their point of view. I am sure that the story of what happened the other day has been told, over and over and over again, and at this point, whatever was said and to whom is irrelevant because what is one person’s truth is certainly and by no means another’s. What my sister says to others about the happenings of the day will not be the same as what I say happened, and the fun part of it all is that both versions are true, but only true to what each of us discerned it all to be.

Learning is forever, and the one thing that I learned and have been learning is that daily I have grown out of the relationship with my sister as it was, and it is hard to see her as an adult, especially when there have also been times that she has behaved so not like one. Yet the lesson is not that I will continue to be mad, but that I will one day be able to look at her and pat her on the back and tell her that I was waiting for her to grow into her soul and not just into her body. Telling her this right now is pointless, because again it will be viewed as just another stab at her character.

Apparently, these people do not know me very well, do they?

To wait, or not to wait…that is the quandary and the quagmire…

Perplexing as it seems, these such situations are like double edged swords, being both a quandary and a quagmire. We find ourselves in difficult situations that we are not sure how these things ended up being this way, and then we are perplexed as to the way that it all played out and ended up being the thing that it is. I have always had issues with family, and I am sure that it has much to do with the First Born Daughter thing in Hawaiian spiritual culture, as much as it has to do with my personality. There is so much to one situation that is served up to us that to take it all in at once would be akin to being a hungry person at a buffet - we want it all, and we want to try it all, so we dive into it all and before we can get a taste of all of it, we find ourselves full of the crap that was not the main course. We find ourselves full on side dishes (gossip) and not entrees (truth).

We sooner accept the gossip as the truth because in the gossip there are similarities with others. We do not like to do anything alone, and we were not created to do things alone but with each other. Yet when it comes to doing things together we cannot because we are so busy allowing our egos to take control that we forget about the soul. When we forget about the soul, we forget about our very essence and we allow the ego to be who we are just so that we can win.

I want you to recall the last time that you felt like you had to hurt someone in order to feel better about who you are, and recall what it was that you felt like after the fact. Then ask yourself one very important question.

In light of it all, and how much you had to do in order to get to where you are now, and knowing that you caused a lot of pain and a lot of hurt that you know the other person will not ever, ever forget, how do you feel now?

Let me ask you, do you feel like a winner now?

Something to ponder isn’t it?

For now I will just let it all go, including my sister. This is not to say that there will not come a day when I will be able to look at her again, smile and laugh about what just transpired. I just cannot hurt anymore, and it is a choice that I did not come by quickly, but over the course of a year. It took time for us to get here, and it will take time for us to get to someplace where there is a better understanding of one another.

I need to realize that she is not a child, and she needs to realize that I am not impressed by her antics.

Let’s see how this all plays out, shall we?

I LOVE YOU ALL

MAPU

The news was very hard on everyone. We’d seen much come and go…mostly go, but this time was rough. The pain is real. The loss is huge.

I have not cried this much in many years, and perhaps the tears were more to quell the aching in my own soul, and the aching that was and is felt not only in Silver Lakes, not only in Oro Grande, not only in Hesperia, but little by little, everywhere. Our soul’s pinings are the ones which reverberate throughout the space-time continuum, and it is those tiny little glimpses of forever which intrigue and scare the hell out of us all at one time. It is that nauseating mixture of grief and love and loss so very deep and profound that there really are no words alone which could adequately describe the depth of these emotions.

Kids are kids no matter where you are, and kids will do as kids do, and they will react to events big or small in manners that seem to be trivial to most adults. Adults grow to be harsh and unfeeling, like so many boulders lining Historic Route 66. We tend to bounce back and forth between ideals, decisions and opinions because many of us happen to care about what the rest of the world’s opinion of us and who we are and what we do is. I don’t. Kids don’t.

Dustin didn’t. No matter what, Dusty did not know how to be fake. His love was real. His pain, real. His life, real. The loss of Dustin is one which those who knew him and loved him will always feel. There is nothing like this sort of loss, for in its wake there leaves pain and heartbreak that in its own right is the lesson of life that we all each ponder to the point of helplessness. We grieve sometimes in place of being angry. This time the emotions are mixed - anger, frustration and loss are things which are not new to the world, but in this case the loss was and is monumental. When an old person passes we all know that proper preparations have been made and things are in order.

This time, though, nothing of that sort could happen. People scrambled to do what they could, not only to properly say goodbye, but also to properly and without too many tears, prepare themselves for emotions that not too many of us are ready to. As parents we are never prepared to say goodbye to our children. We ready our own selves for passing, but we fail to remind them that life is finite and life is precious and life can be taken from us in the blink of an eye.

Kids care about each other. They cry about each other’s losses and they miss each other when they are gone from one another’s presence.  And like them I do not care that I say what I say or that I do what I do, and it all is clearer to me now why it is that young people fear nothing - it is because they have not yet been tainted by a world which is harsh, lifeless and void of vibrance.  I wanted to write more about this young man named Dustin days ago, about his life and about what I knew of him. I wanted to let the world know that this young man wanted badly to be someone.

What he does not, did not realize is that he was already someone.

Sometimes in life we pine to be something or someone special to the rest of the world, and we place all of our energies into that one, daunting and life long project of giving a damn about what other people think of us. We do not get to the point where we only care about what others think about us as long as it is correct in our own thinking until we are already geriatric, already planning what we want done with our remains and who gets our stuff.

Unless they are terminally ill, young folks don’t think about that stuff. They have too much going on. They play their final game of ‘pretend’ while they are still allowed to be kids while living under the protective wings of their parents and the roof covering that place they only know as home. Dustin was practicing becoming a proverbial star on the desert horizon. His home life at times left something to be desired, and though there were times where it seemed that the future looked bleak for the family, Dustin never thought that way - he was one of those kids who did not and could not imagine his life being bad. Always smiling, always having a kind word and always with a good thought and a prayer within him was Dusty.

The kid I knew as Dusty will remain alive in the hearts and the souls of those who love him …and let me tell you what - there are a LOT of people who truly, deeply love him. I am one of them.

I watched Dustin grow from being a curious baby to a bumbling toddler, then from the toddler to a little boy, a boy to a teen. He became a man very young in life, but in many ways, he’d been destined for it. At times in his life there were events that seemed like obstacles, and Dusty’s life could very well have taken a turn for the very worst. Yet, it didn’t.

Dustin was an athletic kid who ran like the wind, daring people to catch him if they could, teasing people but not to do so in a hurtful or harmful manner but instead to make folks try harder so that they could find out a few things about themselves they never knew. Dusty used to like to read my writing, would ask me about what books I’d completed and if he could read the notes, the poetry, the musings. He was impressed with my abilities, told me that one day he expected me to mention his name when I made it to the Oprah Winfrey Show so as to hawk my books. “…and when she asks you who Dusty is to you, it’s ok to tell her that you are my aunt…I’m gonna watch so don’t forget to say it, ok? ” Ahh, the precocious manner of the child turned man who the world has had to let go of far too soon.

Dusty always made sure that those whom he loved knew that he loved them. He told secrets about his life, mentioned who the girl he had crushes on to me, and even asked me to give him clues as to which one was kind of sweet on him. Judging from the crowd at his life celebration yesterday, it would have been effortless to figure out which one was dreaming of being the one girl who was the girl of his heart, because there were many who came to speak of his attributes, with the physical ones being last on the list.

To all of you reading this who are aware of these things mentioned in this writing, know now that if you knew Dustin, then you knew love, know love, are loved, and if you realized this much upon knowing him, then indeed you were lucky enough to know that all these words written here are words of truth, honor, light and love. You have been blessed by an angel, unaware. Dustin’s measure of character and his depth of Love for all whose lives he touched will go unmatched. Never in any of our lifetimes will any one of us be able to recapture the light that was Dusty. However, this does not mean that we cannot try ourselves to be as bright a light as we can be, for we are all beacons of eternal light and Universal Love. Dusty is the light that shone brightly in the dark deepness of the desert. The loss is huge and the grief is profound, but in it there are shards of light that give clues as to why it is that Dustin blessed us all with his presence and all too soon was called home to gather his wings.

To those of you carrying the weight of this burdensome pain, whose heart aches and throbs with the loss and the grief, remember always what it was that Dusty was about and know that forever in the hearts and minds and souls of those in the high desert will burn the memory of a precocious young man named Dustin whose memory is blazed onto the surface of our hearts.

Dustin, you were a huge part of our lives, our families, our world. You are loved beyond measure, and we are all better having known you.

I Love You All…may your hearts be comforted by the knowledge that the light which was Dustin Rogers Martin, though darkened all too soon, was one which shined for us all!

“I’m gonna live my life from day to night with no hesitation
Make the best of every situation that I find myself placed in
Decidin right from wrong, choosing my final destination
Cause when it’s said and done, it’s just yourself that you are facin’ “

(Kottonmouth Kings, ‘Tangerine Sky.’)

DUSTIN ROGERS MARTIN - March 15, 1992 - June 15, 2009

May you all remember him when the strong winds blow, when the sun shines brightly in the day, when the moon and the stars dance in unison as if in collision with one another, giving us all something to smile and recall the days when we sat beneath them dreaming of life, Love and eternity…

Aloha ‘oe, my dear young friend….

Roxanne Cottell is a freelance writer, ordained hospice minister and book author who currently calls Silver Lakes in Helendale, CA home. She is married with three children. For copies of this writing or for other inquiries please send an email to revrkcottell@yahoo.com

Saying goodbye to our childhood icons is never easy.

Though I cannot say that I was never a fan of Michael  Jackson, I can say that I was not so crazy about his weirdness over the last few years. I never pretended that I was ever Fawcett’s Charlie’s Angels character (I was more interested in Smyth’s rich-guy dating and limousine riding character…even met her recently - VERY nice lady who is not that tall in real life.). I watched Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon on the Tonight Show basically because back then it was the only thing on that late at night and I usually only was able to watch while on vacation in Hawaii and staying at my Auntie Charlotte’s house on the big island.

Today marks a sad day in the lives of the people who were at one time classified by whomever it was back in the day as “Generation X.” We lost three Hollywood icons seemingly at one time, and though I did not know these people personally, it feels like I knew them well enough from what they did on television and in music to know that a huge part of my childhood has gone away.

We will always be able to hear their voices, see them perform, listen to their laughter. Theirs was a gift to the world that will remain unmatched, from Fawcett’s many bouts of Ryan-Rage to McMahon’s penchant for marrying women several years his junior, and no one can forget the propensity toward the eccentric that Jackon was most well known for. With their quirks and their outlandish behavior and everything else in between, there is one thing that I can say that is absolutely true for just about all of us : Love them or hate them, childhood would not have been the same were they not such a huge part of it.

Their presence in the world made it seem that indeed dreams can and do come true, and that no matter who you are, what you go through, where you have been in life, their trials throughout the span of the lives we knew they lived should prove absolutely one thing for sure - they were as prone to the folly of life. They hurt, got angry, screwed up as much as anyone else could or did, and through it all, the world and her inhabitants always had a soft spot for them. Michael with his eccentricities, Farrah with her goofiness, and Ed with his old guy manner were all such a large part of who each and every one of us who can say that we know who the Brat Pack is, why it is so funny even now to think about the ‘Where’s the Beef’ lady, all are familiar with Farrah’s million dollar smile, Michael’s glittering glove, and none of us will ever forget “heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere’s Johnny!”

To the families of these three celebrities I bid my aloha, my mana, and send light evergy of healing and Love to you all.

To my fellow Gen-Xer’s, I give you Billie-Jean, Karnak and feathered hair and a toothy smile.

I Love you All

MAPU