Posted by @triciact:
I used to walk around in this life and wonder "what is my reason for being?" "what is my purpose in this life?" (I don't have children so I guess it made me wonder it even more so). I realized that I'm part of a collective of souls that want to help mother nature, her earth and those who inhabit it. Some of us like myself may only have small parts to play but each cog in every wheel assists the wheel to drive the bus.
You [@jeanne-mayell] help steer us along, bringing your light and wisdom, and are the captain of a ship of souls who are trying to capture and spread the light. Thank you so very much!
Yes yes yes! Where do I begin? I spent my childhood and teen years in a highly sensitive, empathic, traumatized psyche and body; my early adulthood making some bad life choices as a result of that traumatization; 25+ years of my adulthood in different forms of therapy; and my senior years reaching an understanding, and receiving help to deal with, the somatic aspects of that trauma. I’m not “cured,” but I am awake and aware. I am more present and have coping skills. As I’ve grown in that personal understanding, I’ve also come to understand the collective trauma of this earth and its inhabitants. So that understanding must count for something, right?
I’ve spent decades working on my shadow self, but also believed that I was a slow learner, or much too sensitive to just get over it. I used to think that I was born at the wrong time. This has got to be a mistake. Until now, I’ve also questioned my “reason for being.” Like @triciact, I do not have children – long story as to why and how that played out. But at the age of 40, I understood that I would have been a good mother. I’ve often felt deep sadness over that, especially in these later years. But it wasn’t in the cards for me, at least not in this lifetime.
I am almost 68 years old. My life has been challenging, and I am exhausted. I say this not to elicit sympathy – most of you in this community know exactly what I am talking about and feel the same. Whether our lives have been difficult because we are empaths, or we were given traumatic challenges early in life to prepare us for this time – hard to say. Maybe a bit of both. Our hearts were broken, over and over again. But perhaps that brokenness happened so we could understand each other's brokenness. And to allow more of the light in.
So here we are, at this place and point in time. We understand that things can’t go back to the old normal. WE GET IT. Many people do not yet understand. They are angry, floundering, treading water, terrified of drowning.
Much love and thanks to you, @jeanne-mayell, and to everyone in this community. I thank God that I was led to this site in December 2016. This community can be the life raft for those who need a helping hand, understanding, and healing. Each of us, in our own unique, beautiful, even kooky way, has a part to play. We need each other, and we are needed – NOW.
I am watching Gov. Cuomo right now on YTube live - he is simply amazing! My brother worked directly for him for years and thought he was one of the best AAG in NY ever!
I wish he were our POTUS right now.
It's probably simplistic for me to blame people's denial and lack of social distancing on the President -- but I am blaming this, in HUGE part, on the President. The tone is set at the top. I don't need to rehash the Mad King's behavior this past 4 years, and in particular, how he's handled this pandemic. Whatever life is lost is in his hands, as well as those who enabled him.
Love you and this sharing so so so much. I helped a dear friend get out of a bad situation and into a arduous therapy/ healing energy and somatic work for years and years and tears and tears of stories and agony of sharing lifetime of unbearable secrets.
Because of her, children, her sister, her aging aunts and cousins.i learned so vety much about this level of pain and trauma among dozens of women in one family. It was indeed exhausting and broke us both open in the process as it did many of her and their relationships.
Eventually she found her courage to do as you have done and continue to be doing now. Oh how you have connected to your own trauma and began the healing. I haven't seen my friend in decades but we keep in touch and she is happy, healthy, and balanced in one place loving life with her loving partner with shared children and grandchildren and no loner carrying the massive burden of trauma without the enormous fear and lack of self worth or the splintering into fragments anymore.
Each person and each situation or life path and learning through releasing is different. But your releasing now is huge!!! Huge! Oh what a treasure and a gift you are to everyone here now!
I can only imagine all you have endured and been through to move through so many layers and levels of this your own particular journey and healing but my gosh i do know how incredibly incredibly challenging this work truly is.
You my dear spirt-sister-friend are so well on your way now. You are a marvel, a miracle, a blessing and a delight in my life and those of us here in this forum.
You all came to the right place at the right time for a reason, a very long season and to be forever friends even if we never meet in person.
We all meet you in heart and spirit and our hearts and spirits are radiant with this beautiful connection here we are all so blessed to share.
?Love love love for who you are?
Something happened yesterday. My youngest child, special needs, came inside just frantic for me to stop what I was doing and come outside. When I went out, sitting right there a few feet in front of our gate, was a bunny. Brown, medium-sized, cute, eating some kind of leafy weed. It looked at me, not afraid, and kept eating.
I felt like crying for a moment. It was just so weirdly normal. This rabbit had no idea of the world's chaos, and its calmness, coupled with my child's excitement, was just what I needed to remind me, once again of the necessary appreciation for simple things.
Ha! We can learn a lot from a bunny. The bunny has no care for the chaos because for the bunny there is no chaos, only the Here and the Now, sitting in the sun, eating a snack. The past is done, the future unset and elsewhere is not Here. The only thing real is this Now Moment, which is calm and peaceful. Practice Being the bunny, if only for a few moments a day, and you too will soon find that peace.
May the lessons NY learns from handling the virus benefit the whole country, the entire world, just as they have already learned from S. Korea, Italy China and others. May the experimental treatments they are now testing be enlightening and helpful. May other states also battling a surge in cases find solutions and insight which will help the whole world.
May scientists and doctors around the globe think, study, create, improvise and inspire solutions, cures, help, ideas, hope and collaborations internationally. May the solutions and resolutions be because of work done across boarders and by joining forces worldwide. May it be for the greatest good of the world, not a company, individual country or government.
We are all connected. A global full court press for the good of all humanity.
For the highest and greatest good.
(Apparently, I think this virus is supposed to be a catalyst for the world to work together as one to solve this crisis jointly, showing we are stronger together and well, you get the idea.)
Amen sister! Indeed it is. Its not what many expected exactly but it is a plague of immense proportions and as it hideous and life changing as it will be for those of us who survive it we must never ever forget the truth of it and the transformation it created
It has only just begun (? ) but we will get through it. We will learn to focus on the transformation that is needed within each of us and within our nation and the world.
And we do it or we lose it all. But with love and hope and faith and all the other good things within each and every one of us love and light will prevail ?
I don't understand some people. Ridiculous. SO selfish. I am curious, what state do you live in? Do you have many known cases?
We live in deep red flyover country- Nebraska. There have been 35 confirmed cases,most of them here in Omaha. We cannot keep a sign in our yard for any Democrat running for office. They all vanish. I was on the local 'Next Door' site and had to get off, I was being threatened for not being 'patriotic'. Gives you a flavor.
If this continues, many of these folks will lose someone in their families, sadly it will take that before it hits home.
Survival ethos marks New Orleans, now an epicenter of COVID-19 | National Catholic Reporter
On March 10, Louisiana had its first reported coronavirus case. Eight days later, 240 people have tested positive, out of 575 tested in less than a third of the civil parishes, or counties, with six deaths attributed to COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, according to state officials.
The deaths and 176 cases have been reported in New Orleans, the epicenter of a state that "now has the third-highest rate per capita in the country," reports the Times-Picayune/Advocate.
The three-week Carnival season of crowds at parades, dancing at balls and packed music clubs seems now a perfect storm for "community spread."
https://www.ncronline.org/news/people/survival-ethos-marks-new-orleans-now-epicenter-covid-19
STILL waiting to hear if Jazz Fest will give us refunds - only email I got so far is that they're trying to reschedule. Very frustrating. I'm not going to go this year no matter what, I need that money back. I'm talking thousands of dollars just for those tickets (air and hotel were not a problem to cancel).
Here in Tennessee, we have over 600 cases as of today, and 6 in my town. we are practicing self isolation, except my fiance. He has to go work at one of the state prisons, we are staying positive!!! He rolled his ankle yesterday at work so he is home for the next few days. My heart goes out all to everyone and all the families affected by all of this.
The human individual toll during this pandemic is getting buried by the staggering numbers reported.
Here is a story I found which deeply touched me as it is the ultimate sacrifice and ultimate expression of love.
An Italian priest has died of the coronavirus after giving his respirator to a younger patient also suffering from the virus.
Fr Giuseppe Beradelli, parish priest of San Giovanni Battista since 2006, died in the early hours of Monday 16 March, in the hospital of Lovere, Bergamo.
Aged 72, he had been hospitalised for several days due to a coronavirus infection, and his parish community had bought him a respirator to aid his fight against the infection. According to hospital sources, reported by Italian media, Fr Beradelli had voluntarily given up his respirator so a younger patient without one could use the device. Fr Beradelli, who did not know the younger patient, died shortly afterwards.
Good news --The virus isn't mutating quickly, which suggests a vaccine could provide long term protection.
According to scientists, the coronavirus not mutating significantly as it circulates through the human population, according to scientists who are closely studying the novel pathogen’s genetic code. That relative stability suggests the virus is less likely to become more or less dangerous as it spreads, and represents encouraging news for researchers hoping to create a long-lasting vaccine. Click on the link to read more. -- Washington Post
I'm so grateful for everyone's wisdom and love and resilience here, even through all the anxiety and fear.
@deetoo, it sounds like we share a very similar early experience. I'm still in my 40's (and never officially attended therapy for solely financial reasons), but here we are. Our bodies—not just our minds—understand in a very visceral, felt, lived way what it is that other people go through in times of suffering and uncertainty. For all the pain and weariness (I battle crushing fatigue nearly every day due to autoimmune conditions), that kind of sensitivity feels like a gift. It feels purposeful.
I'm grateful that you're still here; that you survived your story and that it brought you so much wisdom and light and compassion. Your presence is a gift to us all. ?
I recently moved to central new york- finger lakes ( Hi @Rosewalla - we may be neighbors). While most of the NY cases are downstate-by NYC- we have a low number 18- as of today in my county. But the feeling that eventually, upstate will be hit- hopefully not as harshly as NYC and their surrounding areas- is certainly in the air. We are one state. Gov. Cuomo- is planning on moving patients to hospitals and college dorms around the state as new beds are needed. As they should, absolutely. In my family I have two teens- one with asthma and my Mom just arrived last week to stay with us- through the pandemic- she is a heavy smoker and 73. So two members of my family are slightly compromised. I had done a huge grocery shop right before they sent the kids home for the next month and told my husband to telework - (4 days later). But on Sunday, it was clear we needed a few things and so I suited up in rubber gloves and a N95 mask I had ( not new- used because I am a ceramicist- I have a few on hand- all used or I would donate). As I got to the store- put on the mask and gloves had my clorox wipes at the ready - and I thought I would look crazy. I did not. About half of the people shopping also had gloves and masks on. The others did not- but did not seem off put by my attire. I felt so horrible for the workers- they had NO GLOVES OR MASKS! They are putting their own well being on the line- so I could run into BJ's to get food and medicine ( much of which was sold out-but I did still get enough). The whole process was so scary and anxiety producing-felt like a dystopian novel. As you say your prayers- also keep in mind the grocery store workers, the post office delivery people, your trash and waste removal people. They too are on the front lines.
In my meditation, I asked what I needed to know for this moment. I saw of vision of what felt like myself- in a medieval garb- but the back my bodice was down and on the back of my rib cage the word: castellation was written. I have never heard of the word castellation and I thought it might be a made up word. After my meditation I looked it up. Castellation: the act of adding parapets meant to reinforce and defend a castle. I took it to mean two things 1. Since it was written on my body- I took it to mean I need to reinforce my body ( my castle) - physically eat well, take care of myself physically, mentally, and spiritually. 2. My home is my castle- we have been social distancing- only going out when absolutely necessary. We had been taking walks at the local park-which is usually not crowded. However, this week we decided that was even too much and now only on our own property or the field behind where we live. We need to batten down the hatches and stay home.
Also this week during meditation- I asked what I needed to know about the pandemic. First I saw a fire breathing dragon - setting everything in its wake on fire. Then I saw another dragon- like Puff- a dragon who still was a dragon but breathing smoke. He was still dangerous but somewhat tamed. Then I heard the words: "Which do you prefer?" After I heard Mr. T say he hopes that the country will be open and rarin' to go by Easter- I thought about those two dragons. We can let the dragon burn down our country and leave us decimated or we can social distance- take precautions- take care of one another and our hospitals. The dragon will still be a dragon- but he will breath smoke. You can still die of smoke inhalation- but not the same amount of mass devastation as a country burnt to the ground. Who do you prefer? Me- Puff the Dragon.
Only in Arizona.
Only From Gov. Ducey.
Our Governor has made an edict that golf courses are essential businesses and must remain open. Cities are prohibited from shuttering them....seriously??
It will get worse until people are forced to comply with social distancing. This weekend two houses in my suburban neighborhood hosted what appeared to be large family gatherings. Cars parked up and down the street just like nothing had changed. Great way to kill Grandma.