I was with female clients all day yesterday and many of them were very triggered because of the Kavanaugh/Ford testimonies. The Senate hearing was activating PTSD flashbacks of their own sexual assaults. I was facilitating them through their traumas and referring out for expert help. As far as I know, I have never been raped or assaulted, but with the blessing and curse of the empath, I could feel in my own body the collective PTSD of the billions of women and children on the planet who have been assaulted like Dr. Ford. What are we doing? Are we in hell? How have we created a culture where this horrific violence is so ubiquitous? Men are supposed to be the protectors of vulnerable women and children. How have things gotten so sick and twisted? I felt the collective rage boiling up and bowling me over. I felt the power surge of women telling their stories and feeling like their stories matter. Perhaps the days of "he-said-who-cares-what-she-said" are over. The scent of rebalancing power is in the air. If men assault women, the natural consequence of abusive, violent, and unethical choices, even in youth, is that they may have a #MeToo finger pointed their way, and it could destroy their families, their career, and their social status. No more can they get a hall pass of "boys will be boys." If that's what boys do, we must stop this. As one of my shameless warrior abuse survivor clients coined the phrase while looking into the innocent eyes of her grandbaby, #MeTooNeverYou.
Saturday night should have been a peaceful, perfect night. I was attending a Broadway Under The Stars fundraiser event at Jack London State Park with my husband, my dear friends Dawson and Christine, a delicious picnic and perfect Indian Summer weather. I had never before been to the sweet town of Glen Ellen or to the park, which was once Jack London’s 130 acre Beauty Ranch. Apparently, he is buried on the grounds there.
Like many people, I have wrestled with my relationship with my desires for many years. I’ve gone through the phase of working my patooty off to try to get everything I want, then having an expectation hangover if I didn’t get it. I’ve had phases of getting everything I want and then not actually wanting it when I get it. I’ve used spiritual bypassing tools—like the Buddhist teaching of non-attachment to desire—to pretend I was not attached and didn’t want what I deeply craved, when I was actually deeply attached and couldn’t handle the feeling of unmet longing in the face of the intensity of my desire. All of this left me practicing spiritual surrender and entering into a relationship with desire that led me to claim to have distilled down my desire into one desire—the desire to live in alignment with Divine Will. And while that is true on one hand, it was also another spiritual bypass! I came face to face with that around my desire to be truly met in a spiritual partnership. And I had to quit bypassing in order to feel the pain of my unmet longing in my ceremony to call in my beloved, which I wrote about here.
Physician burnout is all the buzz in hospitals these days. With rates of physician suicide, addiction, depression, divorce, and early death rising uncontrollably, and with physician drop out rates peaking, hospital administrations know that something has to change—or we’ll wind up with no doctors, and with no doctors, there’s no business. Sadly, that’s what it seems to take to get the attention of hospital administrators these days. The well-being of doctors doesn’t seem to matter so much. It’s dollars and cents that drive the system, and if there are no doctors, the business of health care falls apart.
Dearest Doctors, Nurses, Midwives, Therapists, Chiropractors, Naturopaths, Energy Healers, Acupuncturists, Caregivers, and Coaches,
I know how much you care. I know you are an empath who feels the suffering in others and devotes your life to alleviating it. I know you feel the pain of others as an ache in your own heart, and as a light worker, you long to bring love, comfort, and peace into the hurting hearts and bodies of those you serve. I know you feel called to do this the way priests are called to the priesthood, as a spiritual calling and a Divine mission. I know you are grateful for the impact you have on those in need. I know it fulfills a deep longing to feel like you’re the hands of the Divine, serving love as only you can. I know you need to be needed, and it gives your life purpose. I am so grateful for your service. Thank you for how much you give.
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