Walk in Forgiveness

Forgiveness is not forgetting.  It is not dwelling on the negative.  It is in the past.  It is not your present.  I am working diligently on forgiveness right now.  I am going to those who have misaligned me, have caused me harm through the discourse of gossip.  I can only do what I can do.  There are some things I need to do to forgive them.  It is a tough walk, betimes. 

I am reminded of the braid my brothers and sisters wear (those with the original DNA of the Americas).  The braid represents our body, mind, and spirit.  A strong braid of three does not break easily.  Our body, mind, and spirit all need to be healthy and braided evenly and well, right to the end of the strands.  When one strand is not strong, it weakens the rest.  The damage to one strand weakens the rest. 

Harm is not the Creator’s fault.  Harm is not the Creator’s idea of what we should experience.  It is people.  Since I have moved back to the homeland that I grew up in, I am remembering.  I am immediately forgiving those who harmed a lonely, fringe little girl, teenager, young woman, mother.  I am becoming more of what the Creator wanted for me. 

What harms us, harms the creator.  When we harm others, we harm Creator for life down here on earth is a walk with Creator.  I spent many early years being afraid and then hardened against God.  It was not until I heard and experienced the Red Road, that I chose to replace the name God, for Creator.  It helped me feel less hurt and less alone.  Somehow my soul needed that badly. 

As we walk with Creator, we may have been hurt physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.  Creator hurt with us.  But we had choices as to let it weaken our strands, or strengthen our strand.  We may choose to carry that pain in our body, and it shows.  It shows in our eyes, in our posture, in our actions and our very spirit is inflicted.  We become spiritually hurt and by holding onto that/those hurts, weaken the base strand.  We turn on ourselves.  We become angry and all the expressions of anger show up in our lives.  We can become bitter.  We walk a journey of time in that anger and it shows.  I have walked in all the expressions of anger.  I slowly (because I seem to be a slow learner) began to work on following the Medicine Wheel concepts in order to heal from my personal traumas.  This ios very hard work.  Blessed Be to those who have walked this path before me and shown me the way.

Forgiving the perpetrator(s) is probably the toughest.  We are all fallen creatures.  Someone hurt them and so they hurt others.  They have gone merrily along in their own life path and we are stuck back there when it happened.  We do not have to dwell on revenge in any way.  It is in our heart that we hold that hard nut of anger against them.  In doing so, we keep a strand I our braid weak.  We become weak and end up not walking the right path ourselves. Many of us have walked the walk with Creator weeping.  Creator offers us ways to walk the path of forgiveness to heal ourselves.  We cannot wait for someone, or even Creator to heal us.  Creator gave us a path to healing; we must walk it in order to be strong. 

Oh, then it is trying to forgive ourselves.  When others hurt us, I do not know why we automatically find a way to blame ourselves.  We curtail our future blessings by sinking into a puddle of muddle and our judgments become off, our decisions become off, our braid begins to unravel.  We have to pray for our healing and…yes, pray our perpetrator(s) might be healed as well.  Eventually, it seems to me, that where I was broken, becomes stronger.  I actually met one of my monsters when I moved here…without any ire, we sat and talked for over an hour…oh, my goodness I felt it all slip away.  He was drunk.  I saw he was weak, I guess, and the mother/comforter in me came out.  I have felt so proud of myself.  That healed all the years I had been hanging on to that.  I felt it automatically, miraculously, be whisked away.  Aw, 70 x 7…  got aa lot of work to do yet.  We cannot harbor the wounds we carry and keep them open.  Best healing is having a good long talk with Creator for healing by forgiving and not forgetting.

I find my fight/flight response waning.  My limbic system storehouse was pretty full.  We cannot rewrite our experiences.  But to forgiven means to be forgiven for our reactions to it all, as well.  Positive experiences wash us.  I, also, smudge, carry protection (which reminds me not to react, as well). 

 

I am walking a solitary walk on my journey right now.  I feel like I am coming out of the fog.   I have to remember that my wounds and scars made me who I am.  My spirit, I have protected, well) is strong and getting stronger. 

I forgive them.  I forgive myself.  I love them.  I love myself.  Braid on.

©Carol Desjarlais 6.20.26

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Group Call

 

There is an elder's care home putting out a call for valentine's cards for their Elders. There are 8 males and 12 females in the home. I challenge any and all to send valentines to these elders.

Ochekwi Sipi Cree Nation

Personal Care Home

Box 366

Fisher River, Mb. R0C 1S0

Lets do this to honor such delightful elders. I have gone online and researched and have given them a call to find out numbers, etc. Send out some love.

https://fisherriver.ca/ochekwi-sipi-personal-care-home/

 

 

Pollyanna’s 'Rose-colored Glasses' People

 

 Pollyanna’s Rose-colored Glass People

Do you feel like syrupy people are not really comfortable to be around?  They are toxic in our societies because they are Great Pretenders.  They deny reality.  Life is full of positives and negatives.  To deny their own frailties at the cost of denying ours. Compassion is lost.  Things will not ALWAYS be alright.  Sometimes we DO have worries.  By looking, always on the BRIGHT SIDE, we deny that there are shadows.  Sometimes REASON cannot be known.  Sometimes it could NOT be worse.  How disappointed Pollyannas must be, over and over, as reality slips in.   Yes, Negative Ninnies can be as annoying and hard to be around.  Somewhere in the middle of both is reality.  We are not perfect, living perfect lives.  We are vulnerable to nature, for instance, and sometimes there are floods, and fires, as winds, and disasters both great and small.  We are vulnerable to negative experiences and to deny this is to live in a fairyland.    How do Pollyannas deal with real problems when they come? Do they have skills to deal with negative experiences?  How are we to handle problems if one group of people never share ways to recover? 

All emotions are gifts.  We were given these gifts of feelings as tools for our human states of being.  Feelings are signals that come as ways of change, as points of personal growth, as points of attention needed.  If we deny any of our gifts, we are not truly living.  Emotions realized, and truly expressed, give us a richer life, and if not expressed, will be harder and harder to deal with as we do not develop personal skills for dealing with life as it is.  To, constantly deny real feelings, is to live an unfulfilled life and keeps us from sharing, connecting and showing compassion.  It is downright dangerous.  Emotions can build up until a serious emotional crash. It is self-imposed armor to pretend life is absolutely perfect and others should feel that fairytale as well.  It becomes isolating.   

Be present.  Show your courage.  Be compassionate through identifying with those who are having a difficult emotional time. Yes, of course, we all feel the range of emotions we were gifted with.   Yes, it is good to use affirmations as a way to cope with difficult times and the emotions that ride with them.  Sharing real feelings is a way that human beings get through tough times and a way to stay mentally healthy.  I have a sense that denial of negatives keeps us from being that good, heathy, person who can reach out to others because they can relate to other’s emotional suffering.  What good would we be to the world if we do not honor all our feelings and share them so that we remain of service to all?

©Carol Desjarlais

 

 

ANYTHING GOOD IN ME, I LEARNED FROM MY MOTHER

 

 

I am past 78 years old, and it has hit me.  I have many not-so-awesome qualities but I also have some awesome qualities.  Anything good in me, comes from the mother that raised me came from those 14 years I grew up in this community.

I have recently moved back to my hometown.  A small community; related to most by adoption, knowing who was safe and who was not, surrounded by Good, Good, people.  Every kid could be disciplined by any other mother.  We were kids raised to please others.  We grew up disliking confrontation.  We grew up giving and receiving service. We worried about each other.  We grew up more like family.   We knew a few whispered secrets but knew not to share what we might have overheard.  We, also knew, what we knew, everyone knew anyways. 

My mother taught school for 43 years.  She raised my brother and I on classical stories. She taught me to read by the time I was 5. (That was not common in those times).  She played classical music and had me tell the stories I heard in the music.   She showed, through modeling, how to cook Divinity, bread, lovely meals, setting a proper table, how to dress (she wore a dress every day of her life until she was 75 and joined an exercise group.  She used only lipstick; arch, arch, fill in bottom.  She curled her hair every day.  She was a woman of sacrifice.  She worked as a teacher to support her parents and family.  She married an older man in order to have children.  She lost a baby girl and adopted me, then had my younger brother 2 ½ years later.  She was an honorable woman, sad sometimes, and, as an older parent, had to have been so worn out bringing us two up.  Her life was one of total service.  I get that from her; the service, sacrificing, perfectionism, and a strong bond with children, whether they return it or not.  I cannot imagine babies close to 50 years of age. 

Before she died, she told me how proud she was of me.  That was a tremendous blessing in my life because I was a handful, believe me.  I was unlike her in so many ways, yet, I have retained some of her goodness. 

I am so grateful to have been brought up by her.  She maybe thought I would never be exactly as she wished, but I try, every day to be more like her and I actually see it as my children and grandchildren visit.  I sense her loving them through me. 

©Carol Desjarlais