It’s bluebonnet season in Austin. This is my favorite time of year in Austin. Bluebonnets are gorgeous, and they have an amazing high vibration in terms of flower essences and energy.

​However, individual bluebonnets are not as spectacular as a group of them. The individuals are most definitely beautiful, but it’s the fields of bluebonnets that bring me and so many others such joy. We need the group effort of the bluebonnets to see their true power.

Much could be said of humans as well. Each of us is an amazing, special individual, beautiful in our own ways. However, when groups of us work together, so much more is possible. What was just pretty becomes amazing and breathtaking.

The past two years have taught many of us how interconnected we all are. What one person does can affect so many others. We need to continue to remember that moving forward. When we work together, we can be more powerful than as individuals. We should all surround ourselves with other beautiful individuals so that as a field of beauty, we can change the world.

©2022 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I can’t tell you how many times clients have said to me, “This may be TMI [too much information], but…” and then they share something they feel is mortifying or shameful or just very intimate about their bodies. Almost none of the time is it TMI.

Quite often the details that clients are worried about discussing involve bodily functions. Please know there is no way to give me TMI about your body. To start with, I’ve shared my home with dogs. Any pet lover can regale you with gross stories of the things their pets have eaten, vomited, pooped or disemboweled. It just goes with the territory of loving pets. They are furry, cute, wonderful, and sometimes downright disgusting.

Furthermore, I am a mother. Many parents who have had young children can tell you of a point where they were discussing diaper contents with peers and wondering, “Really? This is what my life is now?” Being a parent has infinite rewards, but it can get pretty darn challenging some days, too. Asides from all the fun with my kids as they grew up, I’ve gone through genital surgeries with two male partners. I’ve had a fully functional female body all my life. You aren’t going to gross me out by discussing what your body has decided to do in a fit of creativity or dysfunction (depending on how you want to frame it). Our society may teach us that talking about our bodies is improper, but that’s not true when you’re working with me. We need to talk about what your body is doing so we can heal it!

Outside of the realm of the human body, I have clients who are anywhere and everywhere on the gender and sexual spectrums. I have clients who are polyamorous. I have clients who are very kinky. I have clients who are having extra-marital affairs. I have clients who use illicit drugs. I have clients who are trying to break addictions and others who have succeeded. All of these clients are special to me, and none of what they tell me about their identities or their life choices makes me think less of them.

Unfortunately, I also have clients who have suffered a great deal of trauma. At least 75% of my clients have been sexually abused at some point in their lives. Many have been physically and emotionally abused. Others also have experienced medical trauma. I definitely fall into all of those categories myself. While the victim feels a great deal shame around the abuse they endured, I don’t view my clients with pity or shame. I see them as humans who need to be accepted, heard, loved, and helped to heal. Whatever they need to share is part of the healing process, and it's not TMI.

I recently told a client at the end of a session, “I don’t think I’ve ever said the word ‘vagina’ so much in one session.” It wasn’t a problem at all for me to be talking about her vagina as we worked on healing the issues at hand. I just had said the word far more than I have before in such short a period of time. And that’s ok! Sometimes we just have to step back and laugh at the absurdity of things when we’re working on healing deep and painful issues.

​Know that it is really hard to present me with TMI, and no matter what you share with me, I won’t judge you for it. Instead, I’ll help you come to terms with that “TMI” and heal it as best I can.

©2021 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

​Recently one of the most prominent politicians of our nation announced that he had been “too busy” to buy his wife a birthday present but he got her a nice card instead. As I read this, I wanted to reach through my computer screen and throttle the man (although I often have that reaction to what he says anyway).

Let’s establish one thing: there are few people in this world who are truly “too busy” to do something for a spouse for their birthday. If someone works 100 hour weeks at three minimum wage jobs while trying to care for multiple children and a disabled parent, that person is legitimately too busy to do much beyond try to survive. Most of us, though, are not quite that pressed for time. Even if our finances are extremely stretched, there are creative ways to come up with free gifts for our spouses if we choose to put the effort into it.

In this situation, though, this particular politician is quite wealthy. While his actual wealth is debated, it’s at least in the millions. He also has multiple personal assistants who work for him. For him, it’s quite possible to hand one of those assistants a credit card, tell them to call Tiffany’s (or whatever the preferred jewelry store of his wife is) and ask them to send over a pair of earrings from this season’s line that cost under X dollars and are preferably in a certain stone. The husband can then inspect the jewelry before presenting it to his wife on her birthday. Or if this man wanted to get his wife something less commercial than jewelry, he could make an online donation to a charity which she supports in her honor. Really, he’s not too busy to make that request of his assistants (or possibly do it himself), and his funds and situation actually allow him more flexibility than most of us even if his time is limited.

When someone says, “I’m too busy” to do a particular activity, what they are actually saying is, “That’s not important to me and I won’t prioritize doing it.” For this man, getting his wife a birthday present was simply not a priority for him. He didn’t care about her birthday or doing something to make her happy. While most of the country suspects they are not a happily married couple, actions like this help to cement the fact that he is not making true efforts to show her she matters.

The next time someone hurts you by saying that they are “too busy” for you, stop and think about it. Are they really too busy? Or are you just not a priority for them? If it’s the latter, then it’s time to reevaluate your relationship with that person. If your romantic partner is constantly “too busy” to spend time with you or to do things for you that are important to you, consider seeing a couples therapist together (which they may very likely object to on the “too busy” grounds as well). If it’s a friend who is always too busy for you, then take some time to let go of your hopes of that friend being there for you in the ways you want and put your friend a little further down on your list of people to associate with. Spend your valuable time with those who aren’t “too busy” to enjoy being around you.

©2018 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., GreenHeartGuidance.com

Many of my clients and I identify as highly sensitive people. We experience the world with an intensity that the majority of the population does not. Elaine Aron, Ph.D, does a good job explaining the basics of people who are like this in her book The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You, but for many of us, we are so sensitive that we experience things that Aron doesn’t begin to touch on.

After a major tragedy, those of us who are sensitive become much more affected than the general population. That doesn’t mean that others aren’t compassionate, loving and helpful and that they aren’t empathetic to all that is happening. For people who are highly sensitive, however, they can experience genuine and very intense physical and emotional pain just by observing others suffering. The devastation currently going on around us from Hurricane Harvey is causing that kind of corporeal reaction for many who aren’t directly impacted. We know the hurt that those people are feeling, and we’re feeling their pain in our own hearts, too.

For those in Austin, where I live, I am also seeing survivor’s guilt beginning to crop up among clients. We know all too well that those who are suffering in Houston could be (or may actually be) family and friends. They also could be us. Austin is 3-4 hours from Houston and the Gulf Coast. It’s an easy drive. We got rain from Harvey in Austin, but nothing like the catastrophic levels on the coast. Had things been different, we could have been the ones dealing with horrendous damage. Many are beginning to ask the existential question of why them and not us when we live so close to each other.

So how does someone who is sensitive cope with the aftermath of a major tragedy or natural disaster like Harvey? It takes a lot of effort to keep one’s sanity, but it is possible to do it. One of the first things you should do is turn of the television news. All of it. There is not a single channel that is presenting news in a way that won’t impact a sensitive person in a negative fashion. The news is designed to be sensational and to grab your heartstrings. You don’t need that right now. That doesn’t mean you have to totally ignore the news. If you want to stay informed, read the headlines only on a non-sensational site such as APnews.com. Most other news sites are going to be using the same emotional manipulation that the tv news stations use to grab and keep your attention. This isn’t healthy for anyone, but it’s really not healthy for sensitive folks. Read only stories that you absolutely must read to get necessary information.

I also get a lot of info from headlines on Twitter. I have a feed set up that is limited to people who don’t post sensationalism. It lets me stay informed but not overwhelmed. When I do start to feel overwhelmed, I take at least a 24 hour break from social media. Sometimes it requires me to take several weeks away from social media, and that’s ok. It helps keep me sane. I also find my tolerance for Facebook is much lower than Twitter, probably because it’s hard to avoid reading negative comments because of how Facebook’s layout works. And for heaven’s sake, never read the comments on a journalistic site!

When you do look at news, try to focus on the positive aspects of humanity. There are many stories about heroes and helpers from Harvey circulating on the web right now. Those are the stories you should read. They will help keep you moving forward because they make you realize that one person can impact many other people through very small gestures. This story about a ten year old girl helping others in a shelter she is staying in is one such example.

Also, while being bombarded by so many negative stories and events right now, make your recreational viewing lighthearted and uplifting. I’ve been wanting to watch season 5 of House of Cards, but I can’t do it right now because the show is too dark and too realistic for the world we’re living in right now. I ended up binge watching The Good Place while we were inside during Harvey’s rains, and it’s a fun comedy that still deals with some pretty cerebral topics. Find whatever will make you smile or laugh, and indulge in that.

After keeping yourself protected, what can you actually do to help with Harvey and other devastating events? The first thing a sensitive has to do is accept that you can’t fix it all. You shouldn’t try. Many of us will see the big picture and realize that there are hundreds of thousands of people suffering. As we play out all the devastation that they are enduring in our minds, we overwhelm ourselves with too much information and too much to fix. Don’t go there. It doesn’t mean you’re being unsympathetic to all of the suffering around you. It means you are being realistic about what you can do, and it also means you are taking care of yourself. So rather than becoming overwhelmed trying to contemplate the entire tragedy, bring the big picture down to a more manageable size. Focus on what you can actually do to help and on doing your part of the solution. While what you do won’t solve every problem out there, if each of us does something, that will make a difference. All of the little things add up quickly. There are so many different ways to help, so your challenge is to figure out how best you can give.

One of the easiest ways for many who have reasonable or abundant income is to give money. Financial donations can be used to buy supplies in bulk and help with overhead costs for shelters and relief organizations. I’m not going to list any links because there are so many websites out there right now with various organizations you can help. I personally chose to split my donations between two groups, one which helps humans and one which helps animals. Most importantly, if you are giving money, please don’t take this donation from the non-profits you normally support. They are still going to need assistance, too. Instead, find a different place in your budget to make the sacrifice to help those in crisis.

If you worry about giving money to an organization and it not making it to the intended recipients, then there are many drives for items happening around Austin. Diapers, menstrual hygiene products, new underwear, cleaning supplies, and non-perishable food items are among some of the things being collected. If all you can afford to do is buy an extra bar of soap or can of beans and add it to a collection basket, that little bit still helps. You have given as much as you can, and that donation will be very much appreciated by someone on the receiving end of the line.

The next way you can help is by giving your time and labor, especially if you are in areas that are adjacent to the tragedy like Austin is. There are so many different ways to go about doing this. Figure out what special talents or skills you have and if any of those can assist those currently suffering. I have seen posts about midwives, aromatherapists, therapists, lawyers, musicians, ministers and more volunteering their professional services to those affected by the hurricane.

For those whose talents aren’t easily applied in the current situation, general labor is needed, too. The Red Cross is full with volunteers from what I’ve heard, but other groups need help as they hold fundraisers and drives. If your church, neighborhood school, business or other community association is helping out, join in with them. Foster families for animals who are displaced by the storm are very much needed in Austin, too. Givepulse.com is listing local ways to get involved in Texas.

Another way that you can assist with efforts is to help the helpers. For example, due to my current medical treatments, I am not physically strong enough to work at a shelter or a drive. I’m realistic about that. However, what I can do is take my kids for an extra evening so that my ex-husband, who is healthy and able-bodied, can go volunteer more of his time to the recovery effort. Aside from providing childcare, consider helping with driving if needed for volunteers or events. Offer to listen to those sharing the stories of their experiences helping during a tragedy because they will need emotional support. Make a meal for friends or neighbors working as volunteers so when they get home from a long day of being on their feet, their self-care cups will get a bit of replenishment.

If there is nothing else you can give because of your own difficult personal circumstances, then pray or send good thoughts out to those who are suffering and those who are helping. Studies have shown that prayer does make a difference for people who are ill, even if they don’t know that they are being prayed for. I truly believe we can impact our world through our thoughts, so send out positive ones to those who need them in this stressful and horrendous time.

Most of all throughout the recovery from this tragedy, if you are highly sensitive, don’t try take on others’ pain. This is a downfall that many sensitive healers often engage in. We want to help others so much that we metaphysically and emotionally take on the burdens of others when they aren’t ours to endure. It’s a hard lesson to learn that if you take on others’ pain, you will make yourself sick(er). During all of your efforts to help, you need to keep yourself well so you can continue to help in whatever ways you can. Taking on others’ pain for them will not truly help them or you.

©2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Over a year ago, I managed to get my heart bruised, not for the first time in recent years. In fact, it felt like the 142nd time, though in reality, it hasn’t been quite that many. However, the pain of a bruised heart always seems to be magnified in the moment. As I was going through the pain of this deep hurt, I said to the other person involved that I would just add it to my long list of recent screwups. Yet the other person didn’t see me as having failed; rather, he saw me as having been brave.

For me, being called brave is a trigger to anger and frustration. It’s not much different to me than “you’re so strong,” another catchphrase that I find utterly exasperating. When people use these phrases with me, I always ask or tell them, “What other choice do I have? I can either surrender to the pain and misery of my life, or I can keep fighting.” To me, there really is no choice between those options.

As I began reading Brené Brown’s Rising Strong for a book group, her words began to help me pinpoint why I find being called brave so frustrating. She writes,

For me, the frustration comes from those who only want to see the sanitized version of my life. They aren’t interested in seeing the struggle and pain. By calling me brave, I fear that people are denying and demeaning the very real challenges I endure every single day. That fear may not be grounded in reality every time, but it's what the situations feel like to me based on past experiences.

Brown’s exploration of what it means to be brave in the face of what she calls “falls” (but what most would call failure) builds on the themes of her previous works on shame and vulnerability. It is a call for readers to live genuine lives that by definition must experience falls in order to move forward and grow.  Brown states, “To pretend that we can get to helping, generous, and brave without navigating through tough emotions like desperation, shame, and panic is a profoundly dangerous and misguided assumption.” Yet most people want life to be that easy. They want to believe that being strong and brave is uncomplicated. It's not. Strength and bravery often encompass a great deal of hidden pain.

Reading Brown’s Rising Strong helped me come to terms with what others see as brave in my behavior; before reading it, I truly didn’t understand what others were seeing in me. However, for me, this is simply how I live my life. I would rather fall flat on my face from having tried and failed than to have regrets about the things I might have done. To me, it doesn’t feel brave at all. It just feels like being me. It also feels horribly painful at times. 

For those who want to live their lives in a "braver" way, I highly recommend Brown's Rising Strong. It offers great insight about learning to face one's own stories that we tell ourselves to deceive ourselves and keep ourselves from living a more truthful life. The book details ways to be open and genuine with others. And most importantly, the book acknowledges the pain of falling flat on one's face when things don't go as planned. Brown truly understands all that it takes to live a genuine life, something few people in our society are strong enough to do.

​©2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

The Japanese art of Kintsugi (also known as Kintsukuroi) involves the repair of broken pottery. Rather than discarding broken pieces, as most of us would probably do in our disposable culture, the pottery is repaired using a gold filling. The object is then regarded as perfect in its imperfection. The filled cracks give character to the pieces that they previously did not have.
 
The idea of people as objects of Kintsugi has been in my head a lot lately. I recently attended a continuing education seminar on trauma. During her presentation, the speaker gave the statistic that around 50% of people have faced trauma in their lives. She asked the group of predominantly psychotherapists, “Doesn’t that seem high to you?” Actually, to me, it seemed low.
 
In my opinion, by the time we reach midlife, almost all of us have faced trauma. Official statistics say one in four women have been sexually abused; I suspect that statistic is closer to one in two. Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. Car accidents happen on a daily basis leading to the deaths of 1.3 million deaths globally each year. Natural disasters kill tens of thousands (and some years, hundreds of thousands) each year. Then there is war, one of the most horrific human-made events that also kills thousands each year and leaves millions more scarred for life.
 
Those who survive these tragedies are left to face the trauma of having lost loved ones and having endured horrific events. It’s very rare for a person not to have been affected by one of these by the time they reach 40. By old age, the statistic has to be close to 100% of us. Every one of us has “baggage.” For some, the baggage can be stowed in the overhead bin and/or under the seat in front of us. For others, the baggage overflows into neighboring seats and clogs the aisle. It’s rare, though, that we travel through life without any baggage along the ride.
 
Yet despite all of these traumas, each of us is an amazing human being. Each of us is lovable, even if we are a person who has done atrocious things. It may be harder to find those redeeming qualities in some of the most damaged members of society, but they are there, buried under the trauma and injury that we both create and sustain from others.
 
All of these traumas we face break us into pieces just as the pottery cracks when it hits the floor. So, too, are we works of Kintsugi if we choose to be. We all have been broken, but we can be repaired. If we chose to work on our traumas and we chose to move forward in life, we can heal. We will never be the same as the innocent child who was born into the world so many years ago. However, we can fill our cracks with gold to create a new and beautiful person. While the process is slow and difficult, we can attain a new state of beauty. Our repaired damage can make us even more beautiful than we were before we faced the most difficult challenges of our lives.
 
© 2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Like many in this nation, I’ve been using denial as a coping technique over the past two months. I’ve been trying to believe that somehow, miraculously, the shift in power we were dreading would not happen. I was hoping that it was all a bad dream or a horrible joke. It’s not, though. Our lives are about to change drastically.

The night of the election in November 2016, my 16 year old daughter came downstairs to the family room at about 10 pm from doing homework. Her twin and I were watching the returns come in with dismay. She had just received a text from her boyfriend about the ominous news. Her only words were, “Tell me it’s not true.” I had to tell her it was. She then asked, “Can we move to Canada?” Given that we have family there, it’s not too outrageous of a request.

My daughter’s reaction left me thinking. Her boyfriend is a darker skinned racial minority whose parents were immigrants to the US. Her best friend is transgender. Her mother is disabled. She is almost a woman. Her world is going to be drastically impacted by the changes that result from the election.

My life is also going to be impacted as well; the obvious is that I am a woman and I am disabled. Both of those groups have been declared targets of hatred in the new era, and I personally have already experienced it. I fully expect large parts of the Americans with Disabilities Act to be repealed because the ADA costs money to businesses in order to make them fully accessible, and in the new order, corporate money is far more important than those with disabilities.

There are other places where the new dawn is going to impact me. Without the Affordable Care Act, I am no longer insurable due to the past 14 years of health issues. I face insurance companies refusing to cover my medical bills because of my pre-existing conditions. Healthcare is going to be the most obvious place where I will feel the change.

Other places are less obvious at first glance, but they are real threats. I have never had an abortion in this life, and I hope I never have to. However, Roe v. Wade has ensured that abortion has always been an option in my lifetime. Now I am at a point in my life where I would have to terminate any pregnancy I might unintentionally conceive because of health issues, yet I expect Roe v. Wade to either be eliminated or heavily restricted in the coming year. If that is the case, I will have to limit my sexual partners to men who have had vasectomies or are otherwise sterile. I’m a little more than angry about (primarily older white men) deciding whom I can have sex with.

There are bigger fears, too. I spent the first part of my life living with a narcissist, and having a narcissistic man who uses gaslighting as one of his primary methods of communication in national power is triggering for me and for many others. Watching someone so ill-qualified and so mentally ill about to assume command of so many life-or-death decisions is truly terrifying, especially if one knows how fickle and dangerous narcissists can be.

I’ve spoken with my spirit guides, and they have assured me that the new Narcissist in Chief will not be pushing the big red button. However, they have also affirmed my fears that we are facing an ugly uphill battle in the near future. As a friend of mine phrased it, we are facing at a decision where we as a nation have to decide if we will be governed by fear or governed by love. As things stand now, we are heading toward being a nation governed by fear.

I choose not to live my life in that way, though. For me, the first question to any decision is always “What is the healthy decision?” That question is always accompanied by other similar supporting questions: “What will bring the most love into my life and the world?” “What will bring the most compassion to me, to others, and to humanity?” “What is the right thing to do even if it is the hardest?” I will continue to strive to hold those values dear even when the world around me is leaning in the opposite direction.

So for me, January 20th, 2017 is a day of mourning. I’m dressing in black, the traditional color of mourning in our culture. I’m letting myself grieve as hard as I need to, but I also am holding my heart in a place of love rather than a place of fear. While I can’t change the national or the global situation, I can keep working to enact change around me, helping those who aren’t accepted by others. I can keep working to get compassion enacted in our society on personal and legal levels.

The final words from “Memories” from the musical Cats have been echoing my head all day, prompting me to write this post. We are facing the new day, the new dawn, but we must hold tight to the memories that bring us hope and love.

Daylight
I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life 
And I mustn't give in
When the dawn comes
Tonight will be a memory, too
And a new day will begin
​
©2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Last weekend, I decided to watch The Giver, a movie based on the dystopian novel by Lois Lowry which I’ve somehow never managed to read. In the film, civilization is controlled by The Elders who protect the people from pain and suffering. However, the removal of the negative emotions has also caused a cascade that likewise eliminates positive feelings as well. Characters receive a daily injection to help suppress their natural emotions and to keep society stable. Starring well known actors such as Jeff Bridges and Meryl Streep, the film utilizes black and white filmography with occasional color to powerfully illustrate the blandness of a world without emotion.

The viewer can understand the instinct to want to remove pain, especially when one selected young boy is learning about those things which cause pain and upheaval in society. The images of war that are shown as he begins to understand negativity are truly painful for someone who is sensitive (like me) to watch. Likewise, the extinction of elephants was a horrid scene for me to watch and contemplate since they are one of my beloved spirit animals. At the same time, the viewer gets to watch the young boy joyfully discovering music and dance, practices removed from society because they possess too much emotion intrinsic to their existence. Likewise, love no longer exists in this world. People merely tolerate and appreciate those in their assigned family units.

As I watched The Giver, I felt synchronicity at play again in my life. I recently spent a lot of time with a man who was afraid of emotional pain. As a result, he was unwilling to take risks that would create pleasure because he didn’t want to feel the pain that was an inevitable result of that risk taking. Mind you, I’m not a crazy adrenaline junkie. You won’t likely ever find me bungee jumping or climbing Mount Everest. However, I am willing to try new activities and enter into relationships with new people who might not seem perfect for me from the start. I know that there’s as much potential for pleasure as there is for pain, and that risk is worth it for me.

We see this most often in our relationships with others around us, especially the relationships that involve love. We know when we enter into any relationship, it will eventually end. Most romantic relationships end with a break up. Others dissolve upon death. When we add pets to our family, we know from the start that we will most likely outlive those pets, yet the joy and love pets bring to our families and our lives is more than worth the pain that their deaths impart. Furthermore, as part of being human, any relationship we enter is bound to have some pain in it. We don’t mean to hurt each other, but we do. It’s part of our personal growth experience.

Since my relationship with the man who was afraid of emotional pain ended, I’m left wondering how many around me are also afraid of emotional pain. I question how many people shut down their lives in an attempt to avoid negative experiences, yet in reality, they are only depriving themselves of pleasure as a result of not trying to feel anything at all. I suspect it’s far more people than I want to believe.

What my experience with this man boiled down to is that living without pain is not how I choose to live my life. There’s no question that life is filled with emotional, physical and spiritual pain. Yet I choose to move forward, leaning into that pain so that I can experience the pleasure that is on the other side of it. Sometimes it’s hard to judge if the pain is worth the pleasure because pain can be truly horrendous. Yet at the same time, pleasure can be just as overwhelmingly powerful if we allow it to be. As the lead character of The Giver says so accurately, “If you can’t feel, what’s the point?”

© 2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

When I opened my email a few days ago, I was greeted by a notification of a post from someone on Pinterest who had told me what an idiot I was to believe in the content of a picture I had repinned. The woman was very clearly someone who worked from a victim’s mentality, the exact issue that post was working to change in people who use that approach to justify any and all of their behaviors, even ones that they are very clearly responsible for. This type of person believes that she is a victim to her genes, her environment, her upbringing, and her education. She does not believe that she has any power to overcome those things. She thinks she is justified in any failings in her life because “they” made her do it.

My response to these posts is pretty simple: I delete the nastiness, and then I hit the block button. I have a zero tolerance policy for such abusive behavior. People who want to engage in intellectual debate of an opposing view? That’s fine. But when the other side attacks me personally, calling me an idiot for my beliefs, there is no learning going on. There’s only abuse. The person has absolutely no desire to learn or grow, only to lash out at a total stranger.

This woman then used my post as a platform for her very maligned views, ones that are exactly the type I help people work through and heal once they are ready. It’s not a view I will let stand as “truth” on one of my pages. She’s welcome to post her opinions on her own pages, but I won’t tolerate that kind of attack on me or others who are my clients.
​
These types of posts are rude, and they aren’t helpful to the person who put them up or to the person who received them. I don’t have to put up with that kind of behavior, and neither does anyone else on most social media. To try and convince her of another view would merely have been a waste of my breath and energy. I hope that one day she gets the healing she needs so she is not such a bitter unhappy person, but I will not be the healer to help her along the way.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Last week I received a message through Meetup from a (now former) member of the group I lead there. It was titled, “too expensive.” She wrote in the body of the message, “I thought that this meet up was free. Asking for 10.00 every time healers, myself included come together to do work for the planet is a little much to as of people. Too bad money trumps light workers from coming together and doing there work together as a community.” (All errors are from the original author.)

This person was one who had been a member of the group for about four weeks but who had not attended any of the actual meetings. She’s an owner of a local retail store in a non-spiritual field but is not a professional lightworker from what I can find on the internet. I have never advertised the group as totally free, so that was her error for which she was holding me accountable. I have advertised meetings as costing between free and $25 with most being $10. Clearly she read what she wanted to in that sentence.

As I mentioned this to my kids, they asked, “Don’t you have to pay for the space you are meeting in?” Correct! My high school aged children were able to do the basic math of running a meetup group in a way that this business-owning woman could not. Meetup currently charges $180 per year for the first group one runs (and two “free” ones after that). One then has to find space to meet in. Many of the “free” spaces around town require a minimum member of attendees and/or a minimum purchase of food that is often unhealthy and/or filled with gluten. Since 75% of my group has issues around food (including me with gluten and egg sensitivities), that type of option doesn’t work well for us. Many public places also don’t allow for privacy which is necessary for the type of group I lead. Hence, we meet in private spaces to create an atmosphere that is appropriate to the healing work we do. Finally, I do a lot of reading and prep work for the group and give out handouts. All of that creates expenses as well. Even the federal government recognizes that business expenses exist and allows them to be deducted!

If this woman had actually attended my group, she would realize that it isn't actually a group of lightworkers coming together to heal the planet. It's a personal growth group as one might expect from the name, "Your Personal Healing Journey of Austin." People are getting my guidance in a group format for a hugely discounted rate. Instead of paying $100 per hour, they are paying $5 per hour to learn from all I can teach them. That’s a pretty hefty discount and makes my resources and guidance very affordable to those who can’t afford to work with me on a private basis. Most similar groups in Austin charge anywhere from $10 to $25 per session with the majority being in the $10 to $15 range. I am definitely not pricing outside of the market value. Furthermore, if one stops and thinks about it, $10 for two hours of guidance that leads to extensive personal growth is a bargain compared to spending $10+ for two hours to see a movie which one may or may not benefit from at all.

I have encountered others like this woman before on other healers’ sites and discussion groups, so I was prepared for this to happen to me. They subscribe to a false ideology that believes that energy workers don’t deserve to be paid for the work they do. If they do deserve to be paid, then it should be an absolute minimum, and the healers should be struggling to get by. Only unholy people should be comfortable in life. Those who are truly sent from God will live on miraculous multiplication of fish and loaves just like Jesus did. These judgmental people somehow think that energy workers’ electric bills and rents also can be paid with holiness (and not money) as well.

All of that is simply not true. Everyone deserves to be paid a living wage. I am a huge believer that the minimum wage needs to be $15 or greater in metropolitan areas where $15 an hour isn’t enough to support a family. That’s $600 per week or a little over $2400 per month. In Austin, finding a two to three bedroom apartment or home for a family is hard to do for less than $1200 per month in the suburbs; closer in it’s impossible. Clearly a single parent won’t be able to take care of a family on that amount without public assistance even if s/he/ze is working full-time.

The same is true of an energy worker who, when it all boils down, is a worker trying to pay bills just like the rest of society. We all work in different ways as we’ve been gifted. Some of us are teachers. Some of us are engineers. Some of us are salespeople. And some of us work with healing and energy. If the healer is a doctor, s/he/ze will bill starting at $300 per hour. Psychologists in Austin charge anywhere from $75 to $150 per hour. While people may grumble about these rates, no one doubts that these healers deserve to be paid for their work. So too, do energy workers deserve to be paid for their time, energy and skills.

As I have discussed this incident with other healers I know and respect, we’ve all come to the same conclusions. Those who truly need sliding scale and reduced fees approach us with very different attitudes and behaviors than those who are just not willing to pay for the healing work we do. Every one of us has stories of people who have pleaded for sliding scale or free work and then have shown up in a brand new car or had stories of exotic vacations taken weeks before or made exorbitant purchases that are clearly beyond the means of someone who actually can’t afford but desperately needs healing work. The bottom line is that they don’t want to budget their funds in such a way as to pay for what they need. Hence, they want their healers to earn less so that they can live a more luxurious life, not realizing that by not paying their healers the full price of their services, many of those same healers then have to make cuts to their own budgets to accommodate the person asking for financial help. It is completely different than people who are truly low income and in desperate need of help but who cannot possibly stretch their budget any further.

When healers don’t charge for their work, they create an energy imbalance in the universe. All of our transactions with others in life involve an energy exchange. You massage my back, and I rub your feet. You give me groceries, and I give you money. I help you solve problems with your health, and you give me money. In the olden days, you might have given me two chickens and a gallon of milk instead. In other societies, it was a handful of sea shells. However, in our society, we use money as a currency of exchange, and it has come to represent our energy exchange. Every healer I know and respect agrees that there must be an exchange of energy in every single transaction in order to keep things balanced. When interactions occur without an exchange, one part of the equation becomes imbalanced. Hence, as healers, we do charge for our work as we feel is appropriate to the situation in order to keep balance in our lives. In some cases, $5 is the appropriate amount. In other cases, it’s more. All of us do need to charge something for every exchange, though.

I hope one day this misguided woman will understand her value and will start charging for her services to others just as she does for the objects she sells in her storefront. I hope she will also come to understand what kind of imbalance she creates in her life by asking others to give to her for free when she offers nothing but a verbal barrage in return.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

J. K. Rowling once wrote, “Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.” She illustrates this concept so beautifully throughout the Harry Potter series as most of the characters are afraid to speak the name of "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” or “You-Know-Who,” but the brave and powerful wizard teenager of Harry Potter refuses to join in their fearmongering. Instead, Potter says the words “Lord Voldemort” loud and clear much to the dismay of many of the other characters who are afraid that just mentioning the name will bring evil upon them.

We might laugh at this example and see it as absurd, but our own mainstream culture lives in fear of certain words which it has labeled as “bad.” I was recently chided for using “the F word” by my middle school son’s principal. I then proceeded to use it again along with some other words she probably didn’t appreciate either. The absurdity of her inability to name the word that disturbed her was both annoying and amusing to me.

The bottom line is that there is no such thing as a “bad” word. Words have cultural connotations, but they are just words and letters. The word fuck, for instance, is both a noun and a verb. The adjective is fucking. These words contain the letters f, u, c, and k just like many other words in the English language such as futtock, firetruck, rackful, sackful, unfrock, truckful, and fullback. There is nothing inherently wrong with those letters or any way that they can be used to form words.

However, if you decide that you find the word “fuck” offensive, then it is you (along with many others in our society) who is labeling the word as bad, and it is you who has issues around the word which you need to process. The word itself is not actually bad. If you don’t know why you are afraid of that word, look to your childhood. Your parents, teachers or church probably taught you that the word was bad and that if you used that word, you were bad. Nothing could be further from the truth. The words we use are merely words. The intent behind the word is what matters. If you tell someone to “fuck off,” in most situations that person will be offended, and probably rightfully so since you are telling them that you don’t respect them or their opinions. However, if you ask your romantic partner, “Want to fuck?”, the response will likely be quite different. The fact that the word fuck is considered profane by many is rooted in a societal fear of sexuality that exists simultaneously in a culture where sexual references abound. It’s a strange bit of hypocrisy in our world.

When we continue to teach others that certain words are “bad,” then we are perpetuating misinformation and conditioning our next generations in the same way we were conditioned as children. My own kids all know every “profane” word in the book, what they mean and why people find many of them offensive. They know them because they’ve heard them come out of my mouth on many occasions! However, my children have been fortunate to have been brought up in a family where it is recognized that words are just combinations of letters, and the connotation that one puts behind the word is the true issue. I know that is not the most common way for kids to be raised, but I am so glad that they are learning how not to bow to the fearmongering around language.

It’s not just so-called profanity that our society is afraid of. Words like feminist, queer, witch, nerd and pagan become taboo words when our culture deems them to be. Yet those words are ones that friends and I use frequently for we consider them part of our identity. We have chosen to embrace the parts of ourselves that many fear. Others can’t use words such as penis and vagina that describe their reproductive organs due to conditioned shame; those body parts are definitely not inherently bad for they are involved in the creation of every human on the planet. However, our culture definitely has issues around words that represent things that we are afraid of.

Synchronicity decided to kick in last night as I was writing this blog post during commercials of the new series premiere of The Muppets. One of the skits and ongoing gags in the show was about Sam the Eagle acting as the show’s network censor to filter out words that he deemed inappropriate for the public to hear. His list during the first staff meeting of the show included “crotchety, twiddle, and gesticulate.” Clearly the show was making a point about how arbitrary our censorship of certain “profane” words really is. Later in the episode, Kermit the Frog declares in frustration with about his ex-girlfriend Miss Piggy that his “life is a bacon-wrapped Hell on Earth.” As he speaks those words, Sam the Eagle walks past to declare, “You can’t say hell.” Such is the role those who wish to censor language: Utterly annoying to those who wish to express themselves freely. While the majority of our rational society agrees that censorship of books is wrong, we still have not come to a place where we agree that censorship of language is just as inappropriate. It’s long past time for all of us to embrace our lives, our sexuality, and our language rather than living in fear of things that aren’t really fearful.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(This article is the second in a series of articles on living life with disabilities. The first can be found here.)

For most people who are able-bodied, they don’t have a perspective of what it is like to be disabled. Some may have taken care of an elderly parent or disabled child, and those people are far more likely to understand the issues that the disabled face. When I was in seventh grade, I injured my foot and was in a wheelchair and/or on crutches for over a month. I also worked in a nursing home as a volunteer and a paid employee when I was in grades 9-11. Yet even those experiences did not prepare me for the full reality of what it is like to be a disabled person.

Oftentimes, I think that able-bodied people will make poor decisions around disability issues out of ignorance. Quite often these people are incredibly well-meaning, but they just haven’t stopped to think through the reality of what their decisions or words will mean to a disabled person. Take, for example, a popular internet saying by Zig Ziglar: “There are no elevators to success. You have to take the stairs.” I understand that Ziglar was trying to make the point that no one can be lazy and successful: He believed that hard work in line with the American Protestant work ethic that dominates popular thinking in our society is the way to be successful. Since he was a Republican and a Christian, it makes sense that this ideology was part of his belief system. (I disagree with that philosophy, but that’s a whole different blog post.)

However, I would bet that Ziglar did not truly think through what his words might mean to a person with mobility impairment. For those who can’t climb stairs, this quote becomes almost insulting. It insinuates that those who take the elevator are lazy or cheating or not working hard. Yet it may take a person with mobility impairment a lot more time and effort to get to the second floor of a building in a literal sense, even if that person does take the elevator. In a figurative sense, the person with physical disabilities may also have to work much harder than an able-bodied person as well because of prejudice in our society that closes off many opportunities to the disabled.

There are other times when I feel like selfishness, narcissism or stupidity are actually the roots of an able-bodied person’s decisions to not help those who are mobility impaired. In some cases, people with disabilities actually can have those same dastardly problems and will make decisions that impair or harm others with disabilities. Decisions like those seem hypocritical to me. The current governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, lost the use of his legs in an accident more than thirty years ago and now requires a wheelchair for mobility. However, despite having personally endured the hardships of being disabled, Abbott has time and again fought against rights for the disabled. As the former Attorney General of Texas, Abbott repeatedly argued that the state should be immune from lawsuits regarding the ADA. He even argued that a woman who was missing a leg was not disabled because she had a prosthesis. Now, as the legislature is about to cut funding for therapies for children with disabilities on Medicaid, Abbott supports the decision as a fraud preventing measure even though he himself underwent necessary intensive physical therapy after his paralyzing accident.

A lot closer to home, I keep encountering different people who make ignorant or narcissistic decisions that impact those with disabilities. Even though my knees are in horrific pain right now, I went to Whole Foods last night to buy groceries for my family. I’ve had Instacart do the shopping the past few times, but I really wanted to go myself this time since I find it hard to flush out a grocery list for others to buy everything we need. I also really enjoy picking out things like produce and flowers myself. By the time I finished a full large cart of grocery shopping and headed out to the car, I was exhausted, sweating, and in screaming knee pain. I had parked in a disabled spot, the third one in the row. As I walked out the door and toward my car, I watched a young, beautiful stylish woman finish loading her groceries into her trunk. She was probably 25ish, and she was dressed very stylishly but casually (which is about as much as you can expect for a Friday night in Austin). As she closed her trunk, she walked two feet away, and then shoved her empty grocery cart… straight into an empty disabled parking spot. That meant that when the next person with disabilities arrived at the spot, s/he/ze would have to get out of the car, move the cart, get back in the cart, and then pull in. The woman watched the cart roll forward for a few more seconds and then turned to get in her car.

At that point, I saw three options. I could do nothing which was not an option for me even with as tired and painful as I felt. I could confront the young woman politely, explaining what she had just done. While it would be rude to leave the cart in any empty spot rather than a cart lane, leaving it in a disabled spot is even more inconsiderate because of the difficulties some individuals with mobility impairments have when it comes to getting in or out of cars. However, given the week I had just had, I was fairly sure the young woman would tell me to mind my own business (if not something less polite and/or more physically aggressive). That left option three: Once I finished unloading my cart, I would move the other cart into the holding lane with mine even though I am disabled and in pain, unlike the very healthy looking young woman who put her cart in the disabled spot.

Mercifully for me, a car with disabled plates pulled up to the spot while I was unloading my groceries. Thankfully for them, they had three people in the car, so one was able to get out and move the cart on behalf of the person in the car with a mobility impairment. However, even if that person who moved the cart was fully able-bodied, it was still a rude move on the part of the woman who pushed her cart into the disabled spot. It would have taken her 10 or 15 seconds longer to put the cart in a holding lane rather than in the disabled spot, but because of her own seemingly narcissistic behavior, she couldn’t be bothered to do so.

I feel like our world would function a lot better if we all made an effort to be more considerate of others around us. Just because you have a janitor who cleans the bathrooms at work doesn’t mean you can’t wipe down the splashed water on the counter with your own dirty paper towel. Just because you hate changing toilet paper rolls, it doesn’t mean you should leave it empty for the next person in the stall. If someone has their arms full, then by all means, take the extra few seconds to hold the door open for that person. And just because you had a long day at work and want to get home, it doesn’t mean you should leave your cart in a much needed disabled parking spot when it would only take you a few seconds longer to put it in the holding lane adjacent. By attempting to make another person’s life just a little easier, we can raise the vibrations of the world in a very powerful way. Compassion and friendliness go along way towards positive change.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Recently the Universe has started throwing disability accommodation challenges at me again. When something like this happens, there is always a reason. However, like many people, I often have a hard time seeing what the Universe wants me to see, do or learn. Oftentimes challenges appear in our lives to get us to change our behavior and actions. In this case, I can’t stop being disabled, so that’s not exactly what the Universe is after. Sometimes the Universe wants us to confront the issue, but in this situation, I am well aware that I am disabled and the impact it has on my life. Sometimes the event is a bit of karma in action, teaching us that something we’re doing isn’t right. However, I strive to make my businesses as accessible to all people as possible, so I don’t feel like the way I treat others with disabilities is the problem.

At times being disabled feels like you’ve lost the Unpopular Discrimination Olympics. Right now in my social circles, gay rights are a hot issue. Transgender issues are as well. Discrimination on those fronts is loudly frowned upon. Discriminating against minorities is also a topic of frequent conversation and outrage. It’s not ok that young African-American men die at rates much higher than the rest of the population, and it’s also not ok that the schools and police treat Muslims of Middle Eastern origins differently than Caucasian Christians. I am totally in support of the outrage at injustice in our society. If you really want to get one of my social circles stirred up, talk about a breastfeeding mama being told to put her breasts away or cover up. The lactavist mamas come out in droves to support other mamas who were mistreated under Texas law.

And then there are the times when I post about disability discrimination, something I face at least monthly, often weekly, and yesterday, twice in one day from two different sources. That’s when the crickets chirp. The challenges of the disabled are not a popular cause at this moment in time. No one wants to acknowledge how widespread social prejudice is against the disabled. No one wants to believe that the disabled don’t get treated equally. 

Part of the "problem" with discussing disability discrimination is that it doesn't play into the cultural myth of the disabled in America. Our society doesn't want to know the reality behind life as a person with disabilities. Rather, what society wants to see is a person who has lost both their original legs yet has learned how to use prosthetics and wins marathons, defeating those who have their original two legs. They want a heart-warming hero story. The American public wants everything to be a pretty picture where good defeats evil. They don't want to acknowledge the reality of what that person with disabilities goes through before they learn to run marathons on prosthetic legs. Most of all, the public doesn't want to face the bitter truth that all it would take is one battle with cancer or one car accident, and they, too, could be that person with disabilities struggling to use prosthetics. 

People point to the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) believing that it has made society fully accessible for the disabled. Just two months ago, President Obama gave a speech lauding the changes that have happened under the ADA in the past 25 years. He acknowledges that those with disabilities still don’t have equal employment opportunities, but that’s barely the tip of the iceberg of the problems those with disabilities face. As a person with a disability, I have to say that the ADA often feels like a lip service law, one that sounds lovely and politically correct but is actually powerless when it comes to making significant change. The reality is that many companies and businesses do not follow ADA regulations. Many government organizations don’t either; my problems have included the Social Security DISABILITY Office refusing to accommodate my disabilities even when it is entirely possible for them to do so at no additional cost and very little hassle. More often than not, when I seek disability accommodations, I have to mention the word “lawyer” or “lawsuit” before people will even entertain the idea of meeting my disability needs. That’s not what a society should look like where the ADA was truly embraced.

Since the Chinese New Year (February 21st for the event in question) of 2015, I’ve repeatedly experienced disability discrimination or difficulties. I have written drafts and outlines of the incidents that have happened, but I have not posted them on my blog. I’ve wanted to keep my blog from being a complaint center. I have wanted to keep it realistic but hopeful. I want people to see the positive side of what changes can happen when one is dedicated and works hard on their personal issues. Yet one thing I can’t directly change is the way others act in response to my disabilities. I can file complaints with various government organizations. I can leave negative Yelp reviews. But for all I can do, I can’t actually make people understand that their actions are discriminatory against the disabled unless they want to see how their actions and words hurt other people.

As I’ve asked my spirit guides what it is that the Universe wants me to do as these disability issues are resurfacing again, the only answer I have gotten is “change the obstacle.” I am working on healing my illness as fast as I can, but I have no idea how disabled my body will remain once the infections are gone from my body. Likewise, there are millions of other people in the world who can never change their disabilities as they are permanent barring major science breakthroughs or impossible miracles. Disabilities are not obstacles that can leave this planet. So I’m contemplating that “change the obstacle” means using my blog to bring social awareness to what I and many others face in the world as people with disabilities. Maybe it will help in some way to bring about some social change in the way that the disabled are treated. 

My daughter was recently looking through my junior high and high school yearbooks. I was healthy and pain free back then. In my senior yearbook, I was voted “the most likely to raise hell.” My daughter thought that was hysterical because it’s still true now. I’m not ok with standing by and letting injustices occur. I believe in speaking out, and I believe in changing what needs to be changed. I really do not want to be the central Texas disability discrimination coordinator. I don’t want to spend so much of my energy and time trying to overcome disability barriers. But if I don’t speak out about what I am encountering, no one is going to do it for me. When I write about and file reports about what I experience, it also sometimes helps others to say, “Hey! Me, too! I didn’t like that it was happening to me, but now I know I’m not alone and that this is not an ok situation.” The process of discussing it and of filing those complaints doesn’t feel so positive for me in the short term, though.

As a result of all of this, I’m starting a blog series for as long as it takes for me to write the blog posts about the discrimination I’ve encountered in the past year as I've begun functioning in society more often. I’m also going to try to balance it out with some posts about people who’ve been amazing in going above and beyond in helping to meet my needs. I hope that these posts help bring about change in some way. Selfishly, I also hope that they get the Universe to stop putting so many disability obstacles in my path!

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

According to one theory of life, the universe, and everything, all of our actions are based in either fear or love. When we make decisions about all of the details in our life, our choices come from a place of fear or love. If we choose to come from a place of fear, then our lives will be fearful and we will see the world as a dark scary place. If we choose to come from a place of love, then we will see the world as being filled with an abundance of love that is available for all who open themselves to it.

I have seen this recently in my life with regards to Craigslist of all things. I use Craigslist quite often to get rid of things I no longer need; I occasionally sell things on there as well. I often have boxes available, so I will post on the free section for someone to come pick them up off my front porch. When someone I knew said he was having the trash company come pick up moving boxes from his house, I suggested that there would be many people on Craigslist who would love to have them to free. At that point, he informed me that Craigslist is a dangerous place and that there are now safe exchange places at police stations in his area for Craigslist users. I didn’t even try to counter this discussion because it was clear he was in a place of fear. I agree that one needs to use common sense when selling high value items on Craigslist. I was contemplating selling a camera lens at one point, and had I done that, I would have required the sale to be a cash or money order transaction which we would have exchanged in the lobby of my bank so I could verify the deposit and so we would have cameras watching the exchange. However, when it comes to boxes, I am not reselling them. No one is going to short change or harm me. I leave them on the front porch, and I let people know to just take the boxes without ringing the bell. I’ve never had problems. I see this as sharing resources that help minimize the damage on the planet, and in a way, spreading love around. I come at it from a place of love.

One could also argue that those who carry concealed handguns are living in a place of fear. Every person I know who carries one lives and works in areas where a gun is unnecessary. They are operating from a place of fear, though, and they can’t feel safe in the world without a loaded sidearm. To me, that is a sad place to be. Even when I was a woman working in a low SES neighborhood and school or as a woman navigating the world alone, I never felt a need to have a handgun. If something suspicious is going on, I dial 911 and let those who are trained professionals deal with the issue. I realize not everyone feels they can safely call in the police, and that is a true problem in our society with fear at its roots, too. However, all of those whom I know who are concealed handgun holders are also Caucasian and not likely to experience negative racial profiling when working with the authorities.

One can also see people who live in fear when it comes to finances. Even if they make an upper class salary, they are certain that they will run out of money. As a result, they becoming stingy with donating their time, their money, and their energy to others. They do not want to run out of anything, so they hoard what they have. However, the Universe seems to function under a “you have to give to receive” type of premise. While I’m not advocating giving away all one’s possessions or even forcing one’s self to live in poverty, I do think we all need to be a bit generous in whatever way we can be in order to keep the good karma moving around. Operating from a place of love dictates sharing with others rather than greedily accumulating millions beyond what one needs for basic comfort and enjoyment.

So how does one go about shifting one’s world view from fear based to love based? For starters, turn off your television as much as possible. The news is by far the worst thing to watch as broadcasts are sensationalized and are designed to strike fear in the viewers’ hearts. Advertising on television and also is often fear based. If you don’t take this medication you won’t be able to function for your family. If you don’t use this highly toxic cleaning product, your family will die of a rare contagion or maybe just get the common cold. If you don’t use this insurance company, you’ll lose everything you own. All of these messages do add up and do begin to wear on your worldview even if you don’t realize it. If you turn off the television and other sources of advertising for several months and then come back to it, you’ll be surprised at how insidious the messages seem.

As you go forward, try to select love-based activities in your life. You could go to a bar and drink heavily on Friday night, or you could go to a yoga class. You could go to the beach to find a hookup for the weekend, or you could join in a service drive or charity event. I’m not suggesting that you never participate in solely recreational activities, but consider whether or not you can make your recreation time more constructively loving rather than self-serving or hedonistic. If you do whatever activity you have planned, ask yourself who will benefit from it. If the answer is more than one person, especially if those people are strangers, you’re on your way to changing to a love based process of decision making.

When you are faced with choices in your life, begin asking yourself not only what is the right thing to do but what the loving thing to do is as well. Try not to let fear rule your decisions. Even though you may be scared about making a loving decision, follow your intuition instead of your fears and see if you can make your life and the lives of those around you a bit happier.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(This is a continuation of yesterday’s blog post about my college roommates.)

My second roommate (“A”) and I were good friends within a few weeks of meeting each other. We both shared a warped sense of humor that helped cement the bond. Though we were both introverts, she had a need to explore the world that I didn’t really share that point. She didn’t like going places alone, though, so she would often tell me, “Get ready. We’re leaving.” I’d ask where and she’d respond a movie, driving in the Hill Country, antiquing, or whatever she had already decided she wanted to do. I would tell her that I didn’t really want to go, and she would talk me into going with her anyway. In retrospect, I am glad A did because we went on some fun adventures that I would never have done otherwise. One night, A decided she was going to use sidewalk chalk and draw a cartoon figure of hers all over the campus sidewalks. She took me along as her lookout. That’s definitely not something I would have gotten up to otherwise!

At the end of the school year, A decided she wanted to move out of the dorms. I didn’t have a car, and so living off campus seemed daunting and inconvenient to me. I knew I only had one more year left, so I decided to stay on campus. By then, I had other friends in the dorm. One of them was losing her roommate as that woman moved off campus to live with her boyfriend, so the two of us decided to be roommates the following year.

During that second and final year of my undergraduate studies when we were no longer roommates, A and I would get together periodically to do fun activities. Things seemed off for a while between us, but I couldn’t figure out what was up. Towards the end of the school year, A finally came out as being gay. Suddenly so much about her and some of her behaviors made complete sense. My instinctive response was to be mad at her for not telling me sooner! However, I understand she was still figuring it all out herself. Once A came out, our friendship really didn’t change except that she was a much happier person now that she was able to truly be herself.

After I graduated and moved to Boston for nine months to work on my master’s degree, A and I stayed in touch via e-mail. She made plans to come to my wedding with her then-girlfriend, a woman whom I really liked. A and I watched with great amusement as one of my future brothers-in-law flirted with her girlfriend at the rehearsal dinner. At one point I asked A if we should be merciful and tell him that A and her girlfriend were a couple, but A told me, “No. I’m having way too much fun watching this!”

When I moved back to Austin in 1994, A and I continued to be friends through her final year of undergrad and beyond. When she would get together with my then-husband and me to do things, it was him who became the third wheel, not her. A and I were like the sisters neither of us had ever had. We often wouldn’t talk for weeks but then we would see each other multiple times within a short span. It was just how things worked with us. We could always pick right back up where we left off with things.

In 1998, four years after I got married and moved back to Austin, A took her turn to move to Boston for nine months. I helped her finish packing her apartment and took her to the airport with her cats. It turned out she couldn’t stand living in Boston, but while she was up there, she met a girlfriend who eventually became her life partner. When I went to visit A in Boston while I was doing dissertation research, I got to meet her partner, “J,” and liked her. When they moved back to Austin together, I was happy to have J as an additional friend though I never got to know her well.

Shortly after that, my firstborn daughter died. A called and offered to do whatever she could to help. Since she had previously worked at a photo developing store at the mall, I asked her to help me find someone whom I could trust to make enlargements of the very few photos I had of my daughter. She found someone she felt was trustworthy, and I took my negatives to him. He did a great job and was very compassionate toward us. I was incredibly grateful to A for that assistance. Her parents, whom I had met several times and been at their house outside the Dallas-Fort Worth area twice, also sent a bereavement card which really touched me.

Then, a few months later, everything changed. A and J decided to move to another state to pursue grad school and better jobs. I was sad to see them go, but I understood. However, a great silence ensued. Even before they moved, I didn’t get phone calls returned. Any attempt to make contact was thwarted. I had no idea what went wrong. Before the one year forwarding period ended, I sent a letter to her old address in hopes it would find her in the new state. In that letter, I offered apologies to her for anything I might have done and let her know I missed our friendship. More silence. As the internet blossomed, I tried to make contact with her through various social media sites, but I again was met with the stunning silence.

It took me over ten years beyond the last time I talked to her to finally let go. While she had been one of my closest friends for almost a decade, it was clear that A was unwilling to have me in her life any longer. The only possible understanding I had for why she might have cut off our relationship was if her new partner felt uncomfortable with the bizarre and close but definitely platonic relationship A and I shared. A and I both knew that there was no chance in hell of me dating a woman (or her dating a man), and we accepted that we were friends and nothing more. However, I could completely understand how a insecure partner might have been threatened by the close friendship we shared. Yet not knowing for sure was torture. This was someone for whom I had a platonic love and whom I wanted in my life no matter what the conditions were.

Oddly, it was my unrequited love for a man which actually helped me let go of A and the desperate desire to make contact with her again. That man and A reminded me of each other because of their incredibly warped but wonderful senses of humor. The friendship I had with each was similar in some odd ways. And when I finally accepted that I would never get over that man while I was still friends with him, I also reached a place of peace with no longer having A in my life either. I realized that after all that had happened in the intervening decade in my life, we might or might not have anything in common anymore. But most importantly, she had made a decision to cut me out of her life. While that hurt because I had no understanding of why it happened, I still had to respect her decision and let her go.

Today is A’s 42nd birthday. I still remember her every year and wish I could send her an email telling her to have a great day. If A were ever to show up in my life again, I would welcome her with open arms. But until the time when we meet again, if that ever happens, I have to be content with sending her good wishes in my heart. I hope that wherever she is and whomever she is with, that her life has turned out better than she ever dreamed it could.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

My kids have always grown up around upright vacuum cleaners. Until I bought a Miele canister vacuum a few years ago, they had never seen one. However, since I use the hose attachment more than anything else because I have no wall-to-wall carpeting in my house, I decided a canister vacuum made more sense for my house when purchasing my most recent vacuum. I had tried my ex-husband’s Dyson upright vacuum and was utterly frustrated by the hose. I complained on Facebook and was quickly assured by many people that Miele hoses were better; many asserted that the vacuums were better in general, too. While I had really hoped to go to a bagless vacuum, I took the advice of friends and bought a Miele S2121 Olympus Canister Vacuum Cleaner. It is every bit as good as my friends promised; it is by far the best vacuum I’ve ever owned.

When the new vacuum arrived, my kids took one look at it and declared, “It’s Noo Noo!” For those who aren’t aware, Noo Noo is a vacuum cleaner-like creature from the Teletubbies, a British show that was globally popular when my children were young. While the show made me crazy with boredom, many toddlers love it. 

Because my household is kind of crazy in the good sort of way, Noo Noo the Vacuum Cleaner had thereby been christened. Now anytime the vacuum is needed, I tell the kids, “Go get Noo Noo.” They also refer to it as Noo Noo, and we’ve got their dad calling it Noo Noo as well. We don’t have anyone under the age of 12 in my household, so when we call the vacuum cleaner “Noo Noo” it sounds a bit odd. However, life is hard enough. We need the humor in it to get through the day sometimes. We certainly need a bit of humor in my household to make cleaning a bit more appealing. The small bit of laughter we get out of calling our vacuum cleaner by a ridiculous name never fails to brighten my day.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

One of our society’s common reactions to difficulties, struggles, and challenges is for people to respond, “At least….” So if you have had your foot amputated, a friend might tell you, “At least you didn’t lose your whole leg.” If you are struggling with finding a job, you might be told, “At least you still have a roof over your head.” If you were emotionally and sexually abused during a bad marriage, you might get told, “At least he didn’t beat you.” If you are suffering from health problems, you will  very likely get the statement, “At least you don’t have cancer.” If you experienced the death of a baby, someone might respond, “At least you won’t have to raise a severely disabled child for the rest of your life.” (Yes, I did get the last two personally.)

On one hand, there’s an element of truth in these statements that could lead a person to issue gratitude for what they do have rather than what they do not have. However, all of the statements are judgmental and opinionated. They deem to know better than the struggling person what would be worse for that person. To me at the time of my daughter’s death, the prospect of raising a severely disabled child seemed far less daunting than facing a future with no child at all.

Furthermore, this method of comparative trials can be devastating for those who are suffering with the “at least” situation. You may be telling your friend that they are blessed that their child died rather than ending up severely disabled, but what about all those who are raising severely disabled children? What is their comfort in this situation? What if someone has been physically abused? What about all of those people who do have cancer or who have lost multiple limbs or who are homeless? What does the “at least” statement that puts them in the worst case scenario do for their self-esteem, their confidence, and their motivation as they wrestle with difficult challenges in life?

It also can seem that when someone creates purportedly worse scenarios, their examples actually downplay the suffering that people have endured. Trauma is trauma, and all of it is devastating to those who are undergoing it. While it might seem comforting to some to pretend there is a worse case scenario, the reality is that the person undergoing challenges doesn’t need to hear those comparisons. What they need to hear is support for them in their own struggles. They need to come to terms with what they are dealing with, not what someone else has endured. What they need is not to be unintentionally judged for not suffering enough to merit sympathy or empathy.

The reality is that every human on this planet endures challenges and issues throughout their lives. Each of us has our own struggles, and each of us handles them differently. There really is that there is no better or worse when it comes to suffering. The reality is that the challenges we all endure are just different. The differences may lie in the type of trauma, the severity of the trauma, and the response of the individuals to the traumas. All of the various elements create unique situations. Each of the people involved must work through these struggles on their own but hopefully with a lot of support of those around them. As we work through these traumas, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, our souls grow and change. In my belief system, these are the struggles we are each meant to face to help us become the best people that we can be.

One of the hardest comments I had to endure in my time of being homebound and mostly bedbound was the statement from clueless people that they would think their lives were challenging until they looked at mine and then realized how much worse it could be. (Yes, they said this to me directly.) These people made me into the the worst case “at least” scenario, and they used my suffering to bring themselves dysfunctional comfort about their own struggles. That doesn’t feel great when you are the one at the bottom of the heap. Rather than making such awkward and painful comments to those you know who are struggling, the best thing to say is “I’m sorry you are struggling.” Or grieving. Or hurting. Or fighting for your life. Whatever it is that the person is enduring that you wish they didn’t have to go through, tell them that you wish they weren’t undergoing such a difficult challenge. Then, if you really want to show your support, ask them what you can do to make their burdens lighter during their time of need. Those are the kind of friends people need when they are in crisis.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Back sometime between 1995 and 1998, I was a subscriber to Austin’s only daily newspaper which I read thoroughly (except for the business, sports, and classified sections). One year on Mother’s Day, there was a huge article with several large photos in the lifestyle section. The piece described a woman whose three children had been murdered by their father, her ex-husband. I was horrified. I didn’t understand how the paper thought that was an appropriate article to run on a day like Mother’s Day. In hindsight, I understand all too well.

Despite the greeting card and flower vendors’ cheerful endorsements of Mother’s Day which falls on the second Sunday of May each year in the U.S., not everyone finds the day to be one of celebration. For many people, Mother’s Day is filled with painful memories and/or current stress. The reality is that not everyone loves their mothers. Many have endured abusive relationships with our mothers, and thanking them for the “care” they provided for their children seems hypocritical at best. Some people are estranged from their mothers: Sometimes gratefully and sometimes with a lot of pain still attached to the separation. Our society provides a lot of support around divorcing a spouse, but there’s almost nothing there for those who decide to “divorce” a parent.

Other people were blessed enough to have wonderful mothers in this life, but those mothers have died. For those whose mothers aren’t here to celebrate because of death, the day can be horribly painful for surviving children, especially in the first years after their mothers’ deaths. While it will not eliminate the pain of the loss, sometimes doing something to celebrate the deceased woman can greatly help ease the discomfort of this holiday. Making your mother’s favorite meal, going to her favorite park, making a donation to her favorite charity… all of these are great ways to remember a mother. In my belief system, our deceased relatives are aware of us and our prayers, so I believe if you send thoughts to your late mother, she will hear them. It’s never too late to tell someone you love them, even if you aren’t able to hear them say it back.

If you are feeling particularly giving, know that there are always people in nursing homes who are terribly lonely on holidays. Either their children live far away, they have no descendants, or they’ve been abandoned by family. Regardless of the reasons why, these people can always use company, but especially on holidays when others have visitors and they do not. Most nursing homes will be happy to pair you with someone who would love to have you show up with a flower in hand and a willingness to talk for a while. (Please note that food gifts are not always the best with the elderly due to health-restricted diets.) If you don’t have a mother of your own to visit, know that there are many other women who could symbolically stand in her place.

For others, Mother’s Day is painful because they have had miscarriages or have lost a child (or even multiple children) to death. This is especially true when the child who has died was the firstborn but no subsequent siblings have been born. The women in these situations know in their hearts that they are mothers, but they don’t have children here to celebrate with them. Our society is less certain about whether these women are mothers, and people often don’t know how to handle the bereaved mothers. As is our society’s dysfunctional tendency, the usual result is that bereaved mothers are ignored on Mother’s Day (not to mention the other days of the year).

For many women, Mother’s Day is a dagger in their heart because they are suffering from infertility. They desperately want to be mothers, but they are not able to for whatever reasons. To see motherhood glorified all around them can make the women enduring infertility feel even more hurt than they already are by the traumas of infertility.

For biological mothers who have put their children up for adoption, Mother’s Day can also create a great deal of pain. While the choice to let another woman become a mother when one is not able to raise a child oneself is an amazing gift, the child that the biological mother gave up will always be in her heart. For some women, Mother’s Day may be a day of “what ifs” and mourning because they are not with their biological child even if they know they’ve made the best decision. For others, it may be a day of regret for making the choice they did.

Thirteen years ago when my twins were still toddlers, I attended Mass at a friend’s Catholic church on Mother’s Day. In what I’m sure the planners thought was a beautiful ceremony, all of the mothers were encouraged to come forward and receive a carnation at the end of the service. I was horrified. I knew that at least one of the women in the congregation had to want to be up in the front but she wasn’t able to be for some reason. While it’s one thing to pray a special blessing over those in the congregation who’ve given life to others, it’s another thing to bring them to the front so that all the non-mothers stood out like sore thumbs among the sea of men. In a probably unnoticed act of solidarity, I refused to go forward even though I had a toddler in my arms.

For me personally, Mother’s Day used to be a painful day. I am estranged from my narcissistic mother by choice. I haven’t seen her in 22+ years. I don’t miss that particular woman at all, but part of me will always miss the fantasy of the healthy loving mother whom I never had. For many years, I used Mother's Day as a time to pay tribute to the women who were mentors for me and who provided me with healthier role models of what women should be like; they played a role in mothering me in when my own mother could not. I also had many years where Mother’s Day was a painful reminder to me that I had lost a child. I now choose to focus on the beauty of the children who are with me, though it took many years for me to get there. I’m grateful that I can now find joy in the celebration of being a mother, but on Mother’s Day, my thoughts and prayers are always with those for whom it’s a day of pain.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

In a sixth season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called “Relics,” Commander Will Riker is speaking with Captain Montgomery Scott, a.k.a. Scotty from the original Star Trek television series. As they examined a small shuttle that was being given to Scotty, Riker says, “She’s not much to look at.” Scotty replies, “Laddie, every woman has her own charm. You just have to know where to look for it.” There’s a great deal of wisdom in that statement, and not just about women. All people are all beautiful in their own ways.

However, our society creates ideals of popularity and beauty that are based on conformity, not individuality. From the moment we start school, we are expected to fall in line and do as all of our classmates are doing. We buy the same school supplies, the same Trapper Keepers, the same styles of clothing (if we aren't wearing uniforms), the same lunch boxes, the same cell phones… the list goes on and on. While we might pick different colors or patterns, the overall items are the same. We conform to peer pressure and want to buy the products that will make us fit in well.

Likewise, our behavior and personalities are meant to conform to certain ideals. In my childhood, the teachers who embraced independent thinkers were rare. Most wanted students to behave according to certain standards and to think like the masses. Students who questioned authority or the “truth” that was being taught were not lauded. Instead, they are branded as trouble-makers. Most of the authority around me, including teachers and parents, wanted the next generation to be safely molded into the same form as they had been.

Despite these attempts of our society to enforce conformity, we are all individuals. We are all different. And while our outsides “might not look like much,” we all are filled with our own charm and beauty. Through embracing our differences, we actually find ways of being ourselves. If we all were truly alike, life would be really boring! As you go about your day today, offer gratitude for one of your qualities that makes you different from others. Likewise, find a way to appreciate the differences in the people around you, whether at home, school or work. Even if you find those differences to be challenging, try to accept that those differences are challenges can make you grow as an individual. Through trying to appreciate the strengths we all have in our differences, we will find the world is a much more beautiful place than we normally think.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

There is a popular saying that if your date treats you well but doesn't treat the waiter well, then your date is probably not a person who will treat you well in the long run. Too often people will put on their best manners for show but their true personality can't be hidden for long.

A month ago, my kids and I went out to breakfast at a popular local restaurant to celebrate my youngest's birthday before school. We were eating and conversing when the waiter came by and picked up some plates we were done with. My older son instinctively said thank you to the waiter as he took a dish away. The waiter got a look of surprise on his face and said, “Wow! Great manners!” It shocked me that the waiter was so taken back by simple basic manners from a teenager. Since this waiter was training a new employee that day, I'm sure he'd waited on lots of tables himself before our meal. I hate to think that is just so rare for him to get a thank you from a teenager that he would actually comment on it.

My ex-husband and I did the initial teaching with our kids when they were toddlers and preschoolers to help them to learn to say please and thank you. Since then, we haven't had to do anything. I am sure they picked up on the fact that they are supposed to thank waiters based on the modeling of my ex-husband and I always doing the same. For us, it's just common courtesy to say thank you to someone who helps you. I'm glad my kids have absorbed this habit. I wish the same was true for all other people out there. 

Today, consider going out of your way to thank someone who does something simple for you. The act may seem small, but the niceties we exchange can make a huge difference in someone's life. Feeling like someone appreciates you is really important. Gratitude is a simple way to make the world a better place.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Many years ago when I was founding my business, I struggled for a name that embraced the meaning which I wanted and which still had the .com URL available for it. I had my heart set on a name that encompassed the concept and/or word “listening” in some way because I see one of my most important tasks as listening both to clients and to higher powers. Since I couldn’t find a name that worked well for me, I did what any other modern woman would do: I turned to friends on Facebook.

Several discussions ensued as friends gave suggestions and I meditated on them. I honestly don’t remember how Green Heart Guidance came about, but when it did, the discussion was over for me. The name was perfect. When you hit on the right decision, your gut will tell you. Actually, your whole body will. There’s a happiness that spreads throughout that can’t be denied.

When settling on Green Heart Guidance as my LLC name, I saw several reasons why it seemed so appropriate at the time. The first was the environmental stance I take. I am undeniably green in my heart in an eco-friendly sense. I help other people who want to change their lives by removing unnecessary synthetic chemicals to improve their lives and the planet’s well-being.

The second ties into the chakra connection: The heart chakra is represented by green. Unlike our Western society which tends to present hearts as pink or red (reflecting the color of the actual organ), some Eastern spiritual traditions see the healthy heart chakra as a brilliant green. On my journey to beginning my business and to healing myself from Lyme, I had to do a great deal of work on my heart chakra. I believe that lessons about love are some of the most important ones that I have been struggling with for many recent centuries. In terms of my work, my heart chakra is also vitally important: I serve others from a place of love.

Many of us have heard popular memes about our spirit animals; I believe we truly do have spirit animals who guide us. For me, my lifelong spirit animal has been an elephant. In the past few years, I have worked with several other animals as well. In addition to all of us having a spirit animal, I also believe we have a spirit flower and a spirit crystal. Up until a few years ago, my spirit flower was a lilac and my crystal was green aventurine. The heart logo on my website is made from green aventurine. (A different view is shown above.) Then, in a powerful shamanic journey a few years ago, my spirit guides changed my flower and my crystal. My initial reaction was not one of gratitude: I responded in frustration because I had just named a business after green aventurine and I was hesitant to give it up! However, I realized how powerful of a statement this was from my guides about the growth I had made at a soul level. The flowers and crystals that had represented and guided me in the first part of my life were no longer as relevant to me. Instead, a white calla lily (shown on the top of my blog) and a red ruby were my new flower and crystal. However, green aventurine is still an old friend who helps me as needed.

In selecting the word guidance, I was searching for something that would convey assisting others. Because of legal implications, I did not want to use words like counseling which have implications that could make it seem I was representing myself as something I am not.  However, guidance is a powerful word to describe the transactions that happen in my sessions with clients.

I continue to love the name Green Heart Guidance and the symbols I have chosen for my business. I am grateful to the friends and the higher powers who helped the name come into being. Any time I see anything with my business name on it, I smile, and that tells me that I definitely made the right choice with this name.

(Thanks to Molly of Green Hope Farm for prompting me to finally write this post. Their flower essences are among my favorites I use in my work!)

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

My kids and I completed watching Star Trek: The Next Generation plus its ensuing movies a while back, and now we have moved on to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I've never been able to get into DS9 the way I enjoyed other modern Star Trek series, but my one son loves it so we’re watching the series via Netflix. In episode 10 of season 2, a new humanoid species arrives as refugees at the space station. The Skrreea are a matriarchal society, something that comes across as shocking to the station’s crew. Haneek, the only woman who arrives in the first group of four to the station, talks with the leadership of DS9 about her culture as they discuss the impending arrival three million more Skrreea from the Delta Quadrant:

Clearly this is meant to be a parody of the biased and erroneous statement we often hear in our society that women suffer from too many hormonal mood changes that therefore make them unsuitable for powers of leadership including politics. There’s a terrible age old joke about how a pre-menstrual President would be far too likely to hit the big red button and start a nuclear war. In Skrreean society, men's emotions are seen as troublesome just as women's emotions are seen as almost dangerous in ours.

The real truth is that we are all emotional creatures regardless of our sex or gender. We all feel and we all act on those feelings. While higher levels of testosterone may make some people more aggressive and higher levels of progesterone may make some people more likely to cry, the bottom line is that we all have emotions that we feel overwhelmed by. How we act on those emotions is probably influenced by both nature (hormones) and nurture (what our society teaches us the gender-specific appropriate response is).

Another truth that our society is very afraid of at times is that all of us possess a masculine side and all of us contain a feminine side. We all have traits that are seen as male and others that are seen as female. What most of us don’t have is a good balance of those traits because we are afraid to embrace one side or the other. In her seminal work Living in the Light, especially in chapters 8 and 9, Shakti Gawain discusses the feminine and masculine within each of us. As Gawain explains, the feminine side of us is the nurturing, intuitive side. We all are nurturing on some level, though not all of us are called to be parents. Still, we know how to care for others around us who are family members, friends, or lovers. We also have intuition, though since the Enlightenment, our science-dominated society has taught many of us to suppress this intuition in favor of rational thought. Unfortunately, our society sees this nurturing and intuitive side as weak and powerless. This is far from the truth. Our intuition can be one of the strongest ways we live if we allow it to be a part of our lives. Men who are in touch with their feminine side, who aren't afraid to follow their intuition or feel their emotions (aside from anger and aggression), are often judge by our society for being weak and feeble as the feminine is poorly stereotyped as such; the media crucifying Howard Dean in the 2004 election season for expressing what was seen as unacceptable passion is an excellent example. In contrast, the masculine side within all of us is the action side. It is the part of us that follows the understanding of the feminine intuition in order to make things happen. Men are expected to be doers, to be problems solvers. Women who have this same strong masculine action side are judged by society as being too “butch” or too unfeminine; Hillary Rodham Clinton is a prime example. However, we all have to be people who take action if we want to accomplish anything in life!

This disturbing division of the feminine and the masculine in our society is based on unhealthy stereotypes. Even in my own life, I've experienced quite a bit of judgment because I am “too masculine” since I am a strong, highly-organized, educated woman who doesn't hesitate to act on what will help her life. I had a male friend act surprised when I said that I missed having opportunities to dress up in frilly dresses; he erroneously presumed that since I didn’t wear makeup I didn’t enjoy most stereotypically feminine things. For me, developing my masculine side was probably more of a survival technique, one that I began in my childhood as a way to protect myself. Like Gawain experienced personally, part of my challenge as an adult has been embracing my feminine side and recognizing that it is not a sign of weakness: The feminine is merely a different type of strength.

It will be a wonderful day when our society can accept the masculine and feminine as different but synchronistic qualities which work together to make our society complete. I look forward to the day when the way women are still treated now is seen as ludicrous as the Skrreean idea that men are too emotional to be involved in leadership. Once the yin and the yang of our lives is more in balance, our society will become totally different than what most of us experience now.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Most therapists and many life coaches choose to present themselves as neutral. They do not indicate political preferences or social views. This is generally seen as the most professional thing to do so that they can appear as neutral as possible and assist as many clients as possible. From a business point of view, it makes sense: In order to attract the most clients, one does not want to present any potentially offending characteristics.

However, those human preferences and beliefs that we all have do impact therapists and life coaches. No matter how neutral they attempt to be, their advice will still be framed from their own education and belief systems. When I was choosing a personal therapist and a marriage therapist in the past, I was seeking therapists who were more open-minded than average. To that end, I looked for those who included “LGBTQ issues” as one of their specialties. I looked for therapists who did not advertise prayer based healing but did give imaginary bonus points those who utilized Buddhist thought in their work.

As a life coach, I am not constrained by many of the professional obligations that therapists are limited by. I still hold myself to high moral standards, and for me, that includes being honest enough to live with myself. I don’t use my business blog or business Facebook page to push my political views, but I do post about social perspectives that are part of the healing work I do. Because I am an open LGBTQQI ally, that means I will repel many of those who work from a position of hate. However, I would much rather work with those who do not intentionally discriminate rather than work with those who hate other people for their fundamental qualities. The work I do requires people to open themselves up to ideas that may be foreign to them; those who are already somewhat open-minded are going to be more likely to be able to successfully work with me.

It’s not a hard choice to me to decide how I want to present myself. I want to help those who are approaching life from a place of love, not fear. So for me, being honest about what I believe furthers my career and my personal growth as well as helping others who might not feel welcome in many places in our society. To me, it’s the loving thing to do.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Following the series finale of Glee just a few weeks ago, I have been listening to some of the music of various cast members on Spotify. In particular, Matthew Morrison (a.k.a. Will Schuester on Glee) starred in a Broadway version of South Pacific. His version of “You've Got to Be Carefully Taught” really caught my ear.  Thetongue-in-cheek lyrics proclaim:

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

South Pacific originally premiered on Broadway in 1949. These lyrics are such powerful words that are still so true 65 years later. Our children are blank slates at birth upon whom we make great impressions. Children come into the world loving, caring, and blind to the social categories that previous generations have created. It’s only when others tell them that skin color is problematic or someone’s sexual orientation is wrong that they begin to believe such untruths.

Recent events in Indiana and elsewhere continue to demonstrate that there are still plenty of haters in the world, and as Taylor Swift has duly noted, “haters gonna hate.” However, it’s never too late or too difficult for each of us as individuals to show love and acceptance rather than hatred and discrimination. As author Shakti Gawain writes, "Transformation begins on an individual level and moves out into the world."  If all of us make changes as individuals, we’ll become role models for future generations who won’t be taught to hate.  And if each of us changes individually, eventually the majority of our society will have changed as well. It’s a slow grass-roots way of bringing about change, but it’s very effective. Change begins within each of us.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a regular reader of The New Yorker.  I’m usually a few issues behind, and I don’t always read them in order, but I do eventually read about 80-90% of the articles in each issue. 

In the February 9, 2015 edition, there’s a great article entitled, “R U There?” by Alice Gregory.  The article explores the founding and function of the Crisis Text Line, a non-profit established in 2013 by Nancy Lublin and Stephanie Shih.  Through their work with DoSomething.org, the two discovered in 2011 that there was a great need for crisis help by texting especially for teenagers.

Reading this article was eye-opening for me as I felt my age declaring itself not so subtly.  I’m a dinosaur when it comes to phones:  I don’t have a smartphone (though that will be changing soon), and I only text a handful of people.  For the most part, I’m of the e-mail generation.  That’s my preferred method of communication if I’m not talking to someone in person.  Yet I immediately realized the truth in what the article related:  Today’s teens communicate through texting.  There’s no doubt that if you have a teen and you give them a phone, they need an unlimited texting plan lest you end up with an inordinate mobile bill.  While I may not like the way our society constantly has their eyes aimed downward at their phones, it is the reality in our world at this point, especially among younger generations. 

Clearly the Crisis Text Line is an amazing organization in what it does to help individuals who need emotional support.  I have no doubt other organizations will eventually see the Crisis Text Line as a role model for further advances in helping clients.  It truly is a victory for the vastly undersupported and underfinanced mental health services in the U.S.

However, there was a moment in the article when all I could do was cringe.  Gregory writes, “[The Save-A-Life League] also raised summer-camp tuition for the children of suicides.”  Here, in an article in a liberal intellectual publication that is extolling the wonders of emotional support for those in crisis, was an unconscionable error that continues to devalue the lives of those who live and die with mental illness.  While it is technically accurate to call someone who has committed suicide a “suicide,” the ethics and political correctness in doing so are questionable.

When people commit suicide, it’s their final act.  It’s a major choice, one that irreparably impacts their lives and the lives of those around them.   However, that action does not negate the rest of their lives.  They were sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, lovers, leaders, students, teachers.… They did so much more than just their final act of committing suicide.  Is it right that they should be identified as their final act? 

People first language is important.  It helps remind us that we are more than the things that might restrict us in this world.  When people commit suicide, they do not become their action.  While most would not condone that action, suicide is an action taken in a time of great pain and desperation.  It’s not the only way people should be remembered.  The New Yorker could have so easily edited that sentence to read, “[The Save-A-Life League] also raised summer-camp tuition for the children of those who committed suicide.”  The sentence doesn’t become bulky; in my reading, it actually becomes clearer in many ways.  Moreover, the revised sentence refrains from demeaning individuals who were dealing with mental health issues.

We have a long way to go in our nation to help those who deal with mental illness.  It’s still a taboo topic.  Therapy is still not accepted by many.  Few mainstream alternatives besides drugs and exercise are promoted to help those fighting even the most minor mental health issues.  I look forward to a day when our culture has a better understanding of mental health struggles and is able to offer more holistic treatments that are affordable and readily available.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC