Where Is The Diva in Her Journey Today?
In April 2010, I relocated operations to the sunny coast of Southern California, where I discovered a warm and welcoming community full of like-minded individuals. It’s been an enriching experience.
Since being assaulted in March 2010, I have begun consciously employing various healing modalities in clearing my past of the 24 years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse that preceded my recent joyous discovery.
I can both create power in my Present, and eliminate the blockages from my Past permanently. Do you yet know that the same is true for you? Do you accept that the same is true for you? The only difference between knowing and accepting, is your choice to move from one to the other…
Two Tools the Author Uses to Feel Like a Diva
- 100% Raw Vegan diet with an emphasis on Green Smoothies and Green Juices (as of mid-June)… Why so many Greens? In my experience, fresh, organic, home-prepared greens are grounding, aid in detoxification, and are high in mineral content which is crucial in my continued physical healing journey as well as my emotional healing journey!
- Intentional Gratitude… creating lists at least a few days a week (though daily is much more effective) of no less than ten things I am grateful for each day. I sometimes post these lists in public places, which is not necessary but I have found often keeps me encouraged to continue writing and appreciating my day-to-day experiences. The power of gratitude has been written about by countless best-selling authors and earth-shakers down through the generations… affirm that power in your own life by giving the practice a one-week trial. I recommend creating a free profile at Bodacious Living or Raw Food Talk and joining the folks who write Daily Appreciations in the forums.
- And the third tool……………..?
#3: Righteous Anger!
Since creating this site in October 2009, I have intentionally been an open book about my life, my health and my healing journey. I share my life openly with you because I believe that by speaking clarity and truth about both the painful AND the joyful, I empower YOU to do the same in your life. Sometimes, simply feeling “free” to speak your truth is the key to your own healing.
Over the last few months, I have received numerous letters from women and men who experienced abuse in the past and are opening up their own lives, writing their own stories down, and telling their families things they have kept hidden for years.
In one instance, a young woman who has feared repercussions from her parents since her early childhood finally began speaking out – publicly in print – about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her parents’ friends. Her bravery has cost her those relationships, but has opened her heart to deep healing. (I would argue that relationships with family or friends who do not support your desire to speak truth, openly, and heal from your past are NOT healthy relationships in the first place. Losing those who drag you down is no loss, at all! And she agreed.)
Breaking the silence is how we break the patterns that we often feel have locked us down… and breaking those patterns is how we free ourselves to create new experiences, new relationships, and new visions that enable us to live healthy, nourishing, joy-filled lives brimming with richness of all kinds.
And there’s one other tool that may actually be imperative if you want to clear the old fatty deposits of your past experiences PERMANENTLY so you have room to create a new and better life.
That tool is Righteous Anger!
*crash BOOM Smash!!!*
I know what you’re thinking. You’re remembering Vacation Bible School and images of a (generally Caucasian, white-bearded) angry God hovering over earth on a cloud (Heaven), pounding his fists and glaring beet-faced down at you and I as we hapless minions huddle together in terror at his feet (Earth).
While this image may have terrified you as a child and may cause you to smile a little today, it’s not exactly what I have in mind when I’m discussing Righteous Anger… rather: Righteous Anger as defined in the Diva’s Dictionary of Dauntless Terms v.2010, is an adjective describing “The process of allowing oneself to fully experience and expressively release the inner rage that one may have allowed to build up inside throughout a lifetime of negative experiences.”
Wait a Minute, Isn’t Anger Unhealthy…?
Today, my therapist, a gentle and encouraging woman I will call Jane, told me something that was mind-blowing to this old-fashioned-past, strictly-raised, heavily-disciplined young woman… she said, “Don’t discount the value of allowing yourself to be angry about what has happened to you in your life.”
Think about that for a minute. Then run down the following list and ask yourself if you identify with these points:
- Each one of us had things happen to us in our lives that we perceived as “negative”, whether it was the loss of someone we thought we couldn’t live without or something as simple as a red light at the wrong time of the commute.
- Many of us have chosen to express the feelings that follow such “negative” experiences by locking them up, pretending to forget about them (and even succeeding for a time)…. or, lashing out at others or ourselves in anger at “God and the world” for what you perceive to have been another dark act in a stormy plot against your happiness.
- Most of us regret the anger later, and wonder why it is we feel angry, and by questioning the validity of our anger, we make ourselves MORE angry AT ourselves, until it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle of self-condemnation and angry outbursts.
- Most of us have been taught as children to consider expressions of anger to be an improper display, unhealthy, and/or deserving of punishment.
- Some of us, deep down, aren’t sure that Point #4 is really all that accurate anymore.
If you’re a human being reading this, chances are you are very familiar with Anger! Chances are you identify with not just one, but most of the five points listed above.
In the book, You Can Heal Your Life by best-selling author and teacher Louise L. Hay, Louise describes her childhood and the years of abuse and emotional torment she suffered at the hands of her step-father and others. She tells how she developed Cancer, and learned that it was her resentment and pent-up anger from her earliest years that had caused the dis-eased cells to form in her body.
She then provides a beautiful, succinct description of the healing power of Righteous Anger:
- “I knew I had to clear the patterns of resentment I had been holding since childhood. It was imperative for me to let go of the blame. Yes, I had had a very difficult childhood with a lot of abuse – mental, physical, and sexual. But that was many years ago, and it was no excuse for the way I was treating myself now. I was literally eating my body with cancerous growth because I had not forgiven.. With the help of a good therapist, I expressed all the old, bottled-up anger by beating pillows and howling with rage. This made me feel cleaner.”
(Excerpt from: You Can Heal Your Life, Louise L. Hay, ed. 1999, p238)
So there you have it. The Diva’s third tool of choice. Whether it’s pounding pillows… writing fiery streaks of old feelings, intentions, and memories across pages of my journal… crying in the shower or crying behind the wheel of the car… singing songs that express the past and make room for the future… working with a therapist or counselor you can trust… or occasionally screaming at walls… or some other safe, guided, and serious method you choose to release the locked-inside emotions from your earliest years to today — I recommend you give Righteous Anger a go.
This Diva chooses to remember the past, accept the past, embrace the past, and release the past — and occasionally, throwing an intentional fit is how it’s done!
All text copyright Martine Eros 2010 except for the quoted excerpt from You Can Heal Your Life, copyright 1999 Louise L. Hay and Hay House publishing company. Permission required before reprinting the content of this article. Email dauntlessdiva@gmail.com for more information.