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

Trigger Alert: This post is about sexual abuse. 

I have been sexually abused by at least three different men in this lifetime. This is unfortunately not unusual. I’ve seen statistics that suggest one in four women have been sexually abused, but I suspect the number is closer to one in two. Likewise, I’ve seen numbers ranging from one in five to one in eight men have been sexually abused. No matter what the actual statistics are, the number of victims is still way too high.

I was recently speaking with someone who has a very young daughter. He knows of my history of sexual abuse, and so as a concerned parent, he asked me how I thought we could prevent it from happening to our children. After a moment to think about it, my answer was one that I don’t like but which I think is ultimately true: We can’t. Sexual abuse is going to happen. We can do some small things to try to ward it off. We can teach our children not to abuse others in hopes of lessening rates for future generations. But like most traumas and tragedies, even with the best preparation for prevention, it will still happen.

So what can we do try to reduce the number of children who are sexually abused short of locking our children into padded cells? The biggest thing we can do is teach our children that their bodies are their own, and no one should touch their bodies without their consent. Then we need to respect what we teach them. That means ending corporal punishment. That means stopping the horrible social custom of making our children hug and kiss distant relatives and unknown adult friends whom they don’t know or care about. It means letting our children know that they are the ones who are in charge of their bodies and “no” is an appropriate response when someone wants to touch them in a way they don’t feel comfortable with.

There are books for helping talk to children about sexual abuse in ways that aren’t scary. One is called “Your Body Belongs to You” written by Cornelia Maude Spelman and illustrated by Teri Weidner. The book frames body safety in a positive manner. There are no scary strange men ready to jump out of white vans to abduct children. The problem with the book: The page that says “Some places on your body should never be touched by other people—except when you need help in the bathroom or getting dressed or when you go to the doctor.” Two of my abusers were medical doctors acting in their official capacity but greatly taking advantage of the situation. These were men I should have been able to trust, but they acted in unethical ways and violated my body. The third man who sexually abused me was a relative, one who was greatly trusted by my parents. We also need to teach our children that even those they should be able to trust will sometimes act inappropriately.

So how do we figure out whom we can trust? The biggest way is to learn how to follow your gut feelings. Listen to that voice inside you when it tells you no. That inner voice is something or someone trying to protect you. If you feel unsafe or uncomfortable with a situation, then don’t put your child into it and/or don’t put yourself into it. Furthermore, if your child tells you, “I don’t trust that person,” listen to them. Find out why your child doesn’t feel comfortable. If it’s an instinctive response, respect your child’s intuition. Children are often far more in tune with their intuition than adults because they haven’t learned to ignore it through society’s mandates. Teach your children to respect their gut feelings, too.

Another very important aspect of sexual trauma is that victims are often not believed. If your children ever tell you that someone has touched them inappropriately, believe them. Do not punish them for what has happened to them. They are children, and they did not know what was happening to them. They were unable to give consent. No older child or adult ever should be touching them inappropriately. Instead, once you have listened to their version of events, seek counseling for them and report the event to the proper authorities. Hiding sexual trauma only allows it to continue, and others will likely become victims to the same perpetrators.

One other way to help reduce sexual trauma (which is not a method all will find palpable) is through energetic work on our second chakras. I believe that many of those who are sexually abused as young children have been sexually abused in previous lives. They come into this life with already damaged second chakras, and that weakness energetically attracts those who will abuse them again. Healing any damage to our children’s second chakras and/or strengthening their second chakras will reduce sexual predators’ attraction to them. This work can be done with talented energy workers who have already healed any sexual trauma they might have endured. If they have not healed their own traumas, you don’t want to have them working on you or your children.

Sexual abuse is scary. It scars us deeply, even when it happens at a very young age. The damage it causes can become the roots for physical illness as it did in my case. Thus, it’s very important that sexual abuse of children be taken seriously so that it does not cause a lifetime of damage. Preventative education can help children stop sexual trauma from happening, but if they don’t know that what is happening is wrong, they won’t be able to stop it. Likewise, education can help victims learn to report what happened rather than living with a sense of shame that they caused the abuse to happen to them. While we can’t always prevent sexual abuse from happening, we can support victims appropriately and prevent perpetrators from acting again.

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

(Potential spoilers about Parenthood, season 4, below)
 
As I watched Parenthood a few months ago, the Braverman family began dealing with major health issues in season four. Grandfather Zeek was diagnosed with heart trouble, and daughter-in-law Kristina was diagnosed with breast cancer. What these two family members had in common was that they began lying to their adult children about their health. Zeek didn’t want his adult children to know that he was having health issues since the problems might not lead any trouble. He didn’t want anyone fussing over him. He preferred to use denial to cope with his health issues. For reasons that are hard to define, Adam and Kristina didn’t want to tell the family that they were facing breast cancer; they outright lied to their college aged daughter because they didn’t want her to worry or get distracted from her education.
 
Unfortunately, this tactic of coping with stressful issues is all too familiar to me. My family of origin and my ex’s family of origin tend to take the same approach to health issues: Adult children are still seen as children, and parents try to “protect” the adult children from bad news.  Yet adult children are actually adults. They are, for the most part, capable of understanding and coping with issues about life and death.
 
In my own family, my father was not going to tell me when my uncle died of ALS until after the funeral. My widowed aunt made it clear that my father had to inform me. The death was not a surprise as ALS is horrible degenerative disease. My health was not going to allow me to travel to the funeral, yet it still was the right thing to tell me about the death. My father didn’t want me to tell my children (who were ages 10 to 13), but I insisted otherwise. They weren’t close to my uncle, but they needed to know that he had died. As my father finally came to terms with my decision, he said, “I guess it’s better than them coming to visit and him not being here.” While this attempt to protect us from the pain of death was well-intended, it also failed to respect our right to know and grieve about a loved one.
 
While they say we often marry our parents, I never believed that my ex-husband was that much like my father until after we separated. Soon thereafter, my ex’s aunt died. Even though I had been a part of his family for more than twenty years, I was very much not close to her. She was an odd bird, and that’s coming from someone who proudly identifies as weird. Her health had been declining, so to me, the death was not a surprise. However, my ex chose not to tell me or our kids about the aunt’s death for 48 hours after she died. When I asked him why he delayed the news, he told me that he didn’t want to upset me. In reality, I suspect he just didn’t want to face the reality of her death by speaking to me or our kids about it.
 
With my children, I’ve broken free of this dysfunctional model of hiding important information from younger family members. I treat my teenage children as human beings who deserve to be respected; I've always done so even when they were little. While I might filter information to frame it in a way that is age appropriate, I am honest with my children about big information even if it is painful. I believe that with children, both when they are young and when they are adults, honesty is the best policy. As a result, my children know that they can always trust me to be honest with them even when they ask difficult questions that other adults won't answer for them.
 
© 2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(Apologies in advance for an insanely long blog post. ~Elizabeth)
 
I am a huge Josh Groban fan. I’ve loved his music since I first saw one of his earliest PBS specials. When I came out of my years of silence, his was some of the first music I found myself able to tolerate. On the nights when I was going through horrible intestinal pain that would last for untold hours on end but my now ex-husband was unwilling to be there to hold my hand and support me through that hell, it was the music of Josh Groban (and others) that I played on repeat all night long to keep myself as calm and relaxed as possible. His albums are still my default when I am dealing with pain that medication and meditation cannot control.
 
I have been battling health issues for 13 years; I was all but bedbound for two of those years and homebound for six. Slowly I have been fighting my way back to health. After successfully attending an event at a local church in September, I realized that I probably could start attending live theater and concert events again. This was something that I hadn’t expected to do be able to do for another several years, and it is a huge milestone for me in my healing journey. Fortuitously, my 15 year old daughter is taking a costuming class as an elective this year, and she’s required to go to a live performance every six weeks, anything from a free one person poetry reading in a coffee shop to a Broadway musical. As I looked for options for her (and me) to attend this school year in Austin, I found that Josh Groban was coming to Austin in October and that tickets were all but sold out (two individual tickets available in different balcony sections). I was crushed. I was talking about this with one of my health practitioners who encouraged me to look on Craigslist or to just show up the night of the show to find tickets from someone who needed to sell.
 
So back in October the week before the concert, I was looking at Craigslist for tickets to see Josh Groban. I was thoroughly annoyed at the number of businesses scalping tickets, but after a few days I eventually I found some seats on Craigslist for original purchase price located in the back of the orchestra section that were being sold by someone with a death in the family. As I sat there debating buying them, I got an intuitive hit to go check the concert hall website where I'd unsuccessfully looked for tickets previously: When this happens, it feels like there is someone in my brain loudly saying, “GO LOOK AT THE OFFICIAL SITE!” When I searched this time on the official site, there were two adjacent front row orchestra seats available (plus two adjacent seats a few rows back from that). This was actually fourth row seating because the pit was covered and three rows were added, but it was still close enough that my daughter commented after the show that Josh had a loose thread hanging from the back of the blue suit jacket he wore in the first act that was bugging her. (Yes, she is Type A, and yes, I do know which parent she got it from. Sigh. :) )
 
Josh Groban got seriously ill with a lung infection in October and had to reschedule the Austin concert. I knew when he canceled his New Orleans show a few days before that there was a huge chance that he would cancel Austin as well; I began praying for a reschedule because I didn’t want to lose those amazing seats I had gotten! When the rescheduled concert was set for December 19th, I looked at the calendar and discovered that my ex had just bought Star Wars tickets for the exact same date at the same time for the kids. Fortunately my daughter was able to grasp the concept that she could see Star Wars any time but Josh Groban wasn’t going to be available to sing at any other time. Her cousin took her Star Wars ticket, and our girls’ night was back on, just delayed by two months.
 
Last night, after overcoming all the hurdles of a disabled individual trying to attend an event at a major auditorium, my daughter and I were finally in the theater. Honestly, I sat there in shock for a bit with my hands shaking, so amazed that I was actually in Bass Concert Hall once again. A few years ago I would have said that this might never be possible. If Josh Groban had decided not to sing, I would have been disappointed but I still would have gone home incredibly happy because I simply made it into the theater. That’s how huge of a deal it was that I went last night.
 
Fortunately, though, Josh Groban performed last night despite a “full-blown sinus infection” which he claimed had him performing at only 86% though I don’t think anyone in the audience would have noticed if he hadn’t shared that information. I certainly wouldn’t have! His music was every bit as amazing as I expected it to be in person, and I enjoyed every minute of the evening. I didn’t take notes as I wanted to be fully present in and enjoying the moment, so my retelling of the evening probably has the setlist in the wrong order though it’s somewhat close to the original experience.
 
While I was expecting to be powerfully moved by this concert since Groban’s recordings can leave me in tears depending on the day, what I didn’t expect to happen was that the evening became a life review for me. As song after song unfurled, images from my life, past, present and future, marched through my mind’s eye. Some of the songs that weren’t favorites before suddenly took on totally different meanings as I found new, deep, and very emotional acceptance about parts of my life.
 
Josh Groban walked onto the stage opening with “Pure Imagination” from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a song that speaks to me of the innocence of childhood. I spent my childhood with my head in a book, the safest and happiest place for me to be, though I was actually kind of freaked out by most of Roald Dahl’s books. Groban followed this with “Try to Remember” from The Fantasticks which was the school musical in my sophomore year of high school. While our El Gallo sounded nothing like Groban, the memories still flooded back to me of that time in my life when I was the stage manager and one of my still current friends ran one of the spotlights, terrifying me by scrambling up to its rather unsafe perch. This, too, was a time of partial innocence. While my life was far from happy, I still had my health, and in no way could I foresee the struggles ahead of me in life. Only three months after that production, I began my 22 year relationship with my now ex-husband.
 
After these first two songs, Josh Groban began talking to the audience. My daughter had asked before the concert started if Groban would be doing anything about Donald Trump like he did on Jimmy Kimmel. I told her that I doubted it, and while she was disappointed in that answer, she was not at all let down by the other humor that Groban amused his audience with between songs. During this first round of talking, he explained that he knew that Bass Concert Hall was probably named after someone with the last name of Bass, but he preferred to think of it as one of those talking bass fish like the ones he gets from his aunt for Christmas each year. After having an amusing conversation with an imaginary talking bass, Groban then said for the first of two times that evening that he was highly medicated. I still can’t imagine being able to perform that well while medicated!
 
From there, Groban sang “Old Devil Moon” accompanied by an Austin trumpeter. The song has been going through my head since then including when I woke up during the night. Groban was subsequently joined by the incredibly talented singer Lena Hall for the duet “All I Ask of You” which he sings with Kelly Clarkson on the Stages album. Hall performed a solo afterward, singing “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World” originally sung by James Brown. I could tell my daughter was really impressed with Hall’s singing as she was Googling Hall during intermission. I listened to the song thinking about the strong woman I have had to be to survive this life and knowing that my daughter is also a strong young woman, filled with self-confidence, who is going to be able to make her way in a world where women often still aren’t treated as men’s equals.
 
As he had promised earlier yesterday on Twitter, Josh Groban began a few of the songs that he has not performed on tour or in recent history starting with “Dulcinea” from Man of La Mancha. That was probably the low point of the evening for me; both my daughter and I found the red moving images on the curtains behind Groban to be disorienting and distracting. Groban also sang the first of two Christmas songs he performed last night, “The Christmas Song.” He introduced the song by saying that his album Noël (2007) had been very successful, but after its success, he was very Christmased out and didn’t want to sing Christmas songs again until now. I found this amusing because when I announced to my sons that I had bought tickets for Josh Groban in concert, my youngest asked, “Is that the guy who sings Christmas songs?” It made me realize that I play Noël around my kids far more often than any of Groban’s other albums though it’s not the album I listen to most often by any stretch of the imagination.

To close out the first half of the evening, Groban sang “What I Did for Love” from A Chorus Line. This song was one of the most moving parts of the evening as the song touched a pain in me I hadn’t known was there. As I had been thinking about my love of theater throughout the evening, I realized during this song that it was something that my ex-husband had never truly shared. He came with me to various events, but he never understood the joy they brought to me nor the passion they ignite in me. Like many other things in our relationship, that power of music and theater was something that I abandoned, and now I am regaining that lost part of my life again. Yet despite what I gave up in my relationship with him, I looked at our beautiful daughter sitting next to me, and the lyrics “Won't forget, can't regret/ What I did for love” hit me hard. Everything I put myself through in my relationship with him and everything I sacrificed was worth it for the three amazing children we are raising. Though I wish I hadn’t gone through so many years of emotional pain in a toxic relationship, I would never give up the blessings of my children.
 
The second half of the evening was no less entertaining than the first. Josh Groban began after the intermission by singing his medley of “Children Will Listen/Not While I’m Around.”  This opened a whole new level of emotional processing for me. As I had dressed for the evening, I tried putting on a labradorite pendant, but I couldn’t do it. I was intuitively being told that I had to wear my clear quartz pendant. I didn’t understand why until this medley when my heart chakra began aching terribly as the music released a great deal of stored emotional pain and the crystal helped fill the emptiness it left with healing white light. The release continued through the next few songs. This medley in particular forced me to acknowledge how horribly painful it has been for me not to have had someone on the journey who would tell me “Nothing's gonna harm you/ Not while I'm around.” This journey has certainly been one where “demons are prowling everywhere,” yet it’s one that I have had to fight without the support of a partner.
 
Rejoined by Lena Hall in a different sparkling dress than she wore before, Groban sang the duet of “If I Loved You” with her; I actually enjoyed their version more than the one with Audra McDonald on the Stages album. As I listened to these lyrics, once again I was shown some of the happiness that awaits me in the second half of my life just around the next bend. I am impatiently waiting for the day when I have a partner for the first time in hundreds of years who will love me in the way captured so beautifully in the lyrics of this song. Lena Hall then followed this with another solo singing “Maybe I’m Amazed” by Paul McCartney and which she had recorded in honor of her father, a huge Beatles fan.
 
Moving on to another set of songs not on the Stages album, Groban announced he would be singing another Christmas song. Someone from the audience screamed out, “O Holy Night” which would have been my choice had I been able to vote on the song selection. To accommodate that request, Groban instead offered up a short version of Eric Cartman of South Park singing “O Holy Night.”  It was truly remarkable; Groban is a better Cartman than Cartman I think. (I also believe this is the point where Groban again blamed his medication again for his actions.) Having somewhat satisfied the audience member’s request, Josh Groban moved on to “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” which he dedicated it to the troops who are not able to be home for Christmas as he does on Noël. During the song (which is actually my least favorite on Noël but which I enjoyed last night), I was flooded with an understanding that Christmas will never again be for me what it was in the past. It’s still a very fun event with my children who so far this year have put R2-D2 in the manger in lieu of the Baby Jesus, but it will never be the Christmas of my childhood again.
 
The next offering was “Unusual Way” which is from the musical Nine. As Groban related yet another one of his very amusing stories which in no way is captured by my summary, he said that this song was recorded but not released on the Stages album. He had seen Nine live with Antonio Banderas, and he was close enough to grasp one of Banderas’ chest hairs (ok, not really) and make a wish on it and now he was on a stage in Austin singing this song. “Unusual Way” is a song which I had never heard before but which is now on my playlist of favorites. I hope Groban releases the recording of it on a future album! This song again lead me to reviewing scenes from my past while simultaneously having an understanding of what is to come in my future.
 
When I was leaving my house for the concert, I had meant to put a wad of facial tissues in my purse because I was afraid that if Groban sang “Anthem,” I would melt into a puddle because his rendition of that song makes me cry every time without fail. Fortunately or unfortunately, “Anthem” was not on the setlist since I forgot to stock my purse. However, one of the last songs was the one which left me in tears, and not too unsurprisingly it was “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” from Les Miserables. Groban dedicated it to the victims of Paris, San Bernardino, and all affected by the recent terrorism and violence in the world. For me, it brought on a reflection of all those from my life who are no longer alive, a melancholic reflection that often happens for me around the holidays anyway.
 
As his closing song, Josh Groban sang, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Carousel. If the tears hadn’t already started during the previous number, they would have commenced here. This was a song that had never particularly hit me when listening to the Stages album, but it’s now my favorite. Over the past year and especially in the last months, I have struggled with how lonely my journey back to health has been. Few of my friends have been strong enough to make it all the way through the years of illness. When I was separating from my ex-husband 4.5 years ago, I was terrified by the prospect of being alone in fighting the health problems, but what I rapidly learned was that I had already been facing it all on my own for a very long time. It was actually easier to fight the health battles without him in the same house as me draining away more of my energy. Yet that still hasn’t made it easier to walk this path alone. Finding faith and hope that I’m not truly alone has been the hardest challenge for me, especially in the recent months.
 
I’m also at a point where I’m deciding if I am going to be able to go forward in life without a wheelchair. I can walk, but on my bad days, trying to go more than a few feet is draining in an inexplicable way for those who haven’t traveled this same path I am on. So hearing Groban singing about walking, even in the metaphorical sense, prompted more tears. If the choice were just between attending events like this amazing one or not attending them, then I would have no hesitation in getting a wheelchair. However, it’s so much larger of a decision with so many other implications and issues attached that the decision isn’t simple. Thus, I was hearing something in the song that I suspect most other people in the audience didn’t hear: I was trying to understand if the “golden sky” is just around the corner or if I’m going to be living with this level of limited mobility for the rest of my life even once my health battles are done.
 
As the audience gave the first standing ovation and waited for Josh Groban to return for an encore, I couldn’t believe the show was over. It was like I had blinked and the evening was over. I felt like Groban had only sang a few songs until I came home and listed everything and realized it was really a longer evening than I thought! I also went into a bit of shock again. I had done it. I had attended a concert from beginning to end at Bass Concert Hall. I was so amazed and proud of myself for having conquered this hurdle. All I had left to do was get home which actually turned out to be easier than I feared.
 
Josh Groban returned for an encore with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” This song has never been the same for me since it was used for Mark Greene’s death on ER in 2002; it now carries a connotation of heaven and the afterlife. I’m sure Judy Garland’s youngish death also impacts the association of the song for me. Yet somehow I left this song with an impression and a hope that the second half of my life is going to lead me to happiness that I’ve never experienced in the first half. My journey through hell is almost over and I will be emerging on the other side, somewhere over the rainbow, in a much better place than I’ve ever lived in.
 
When Josh Groban returns to Austin, I will definitely be going to see him again. The privilege of hearing him sing in person was more than words can describe. Hopefully the next time he returns, the struggles I faced in getting to the concert last night will be a distant memory, replaced with an abundance of health and love.
 
© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I have not been blogging much lately because of health issues, but that, as they say, is another blog post. While I have been spending far more time than I like on the couch, I have been watching Parenthood on Netflix for the first time. I love Peter Krause and Lauren Graham: Six Feet Under and Gilmore Girls are two of my all-time favorite series. I didn’t watch Parenthood when it first aired on NBC because it didn’t grab my attention in previews. To be honest, many things about the show are driving me nuts (again, another blog post), yet despite those issues, I was also hopelessly addicted by the beginning of season two.

The show’s basic premise details the lives of the Bravermans. The family consists of the original parents (Zeek and Camille), their four adult children (Adam, Sarah, Julia and Crosby), the various partners who have joined into and sometimes divorced out of the family (Kristina, Seth, Mark, Joel, and Jasmine), and the multitude of grandchildren who have resulted from these unions.

One of the most endearing things to me is the relationship of these adult siblings to each other. It’s quite attractive to me to see a large loving family like this one even if they are kind of crazy at times. Growing up, I was only one of two children in a dysfunctional family. My brother and I were not close at all as children, and even as adults we are very distant from each other. We just don’t have much in common. We didn’t have a lot of cousins close in age nor did we spend much time with the ones we had. In contrast, my ex-husband was one of four boys who were nine years apart in age; they were all friends growing up and into adulthood.

When my ex-husband and I were planning our family, we wanted to have between four and six children. I always wished I had come from a larger family, and he was happy with how many siblings he had. Life has a funny way of changing one’s plans, though. My ex and I did birth four children, but only three of them lived. After our youngest was born, my health went downhill when my immune system spiraled out of control. I clung to the hope that I would regain my health and we would be able to have another child, but by the time my youngest started kindergarten, I had accepted that our family was complete as I continued to struggle with my health.

Even with only three children in my family, there is one thing that I find unbelievably accurate in Parenthood: The way the adult siblings are always talking over each other when they get together. All four of them  speak at once when they are having a conversation. My three kids do this all the time, especially when they are talking to me. The twins are the worst about it. They both try to talk to me about different topics simultaneously, and they expect me to be able to understand and respond to both of them. When the youngest one chimes in, I’m sunk. I jokingly explain I am not capable of listening to and responding to that much information at once! I’ve explained this to my kids numerous times, and they always laugh, yet for some reason, they continue this barrage of chatter. It seems to be their default method of having a conversation.

Despite the abundance of noise, I wouldn’t trade my children’s crazy talking for anything. I love the amusing chaos that the three kids can create, and I wish that their other sister was still with us to be able to join in. I suspect that even when they are in their forties they will continue this way of communicating that they have embraced just as the Braverman siblings did.

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

When my youngest was three or four, we asked him what he wanted to be for Halloween. He responded quite certainly, “A blue ghost.” We asked him a bunch of questions trying to figure out why a blue ghost. None of the tv shows the kids watched had a blue ghost. He wasn’t familiar with Pac-man at that age. We never really got an answer. But he was certain he wanted to be a blue ghost.

We had an old blue sheet that I’d gotten in a remnant bin at a fabric store for a dollar. I cut it down to size and made eye holes in it, and we had a fast, and easy Halloween costume. It was probably the easiest and cheapest costume for any of my kids in any of our years. It was incredibly unique. I bet he was one of the only blue ghosts in the nation that year!

Many parents would have told a child no to the blue ghost idea, though, and that saddens me. Parents often think that they should be the ones to choose their child’s Halloween costumes, their clothes, their toys, their foods… pretty much any element of their children’s lives. I don’t ever remember having a voice in my Halloween costumes. My mother made what she wanted, and I wore it. I had no voice in such decisions as my clothes until I started buying them with my own babysitting money in middle and high school. I paid for many of my semi-formal and formal dance dresses, too, so that I could wear what I wanted rather than what my mother had selected for me.

Had I come up with an idea as unique as a blue ghost, my mother would have refused because it was too unconventional. She likely would have seen it as a negative reflection on her as a parent in some way. Yet I think the blue ghost showed a great deal of creativity and inspiration for a child that age, and I was proud of my son for coming up with a creative costume. He didn't care if he was different, and I was happy to help him follow his dreams (such as they were at age three). I encourage other parents to do the same. Ask your children for their opinions. Let them make choices. Let their creative voices shine through every day of the year, not just on Halloween.

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

Trigger warning: This blog post discusses infant and childhood death.
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Spoiler warning: This blog post discusses crucial elements of the plot of In the Bedroom (2001).

Other information: October is Pregancy and Infant Loss Month. This is a part of a series of articles I will be writing this month on the topic of losing a child to death.

One of my favorite books of all time is Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s work of nonfiction, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812. Reading this book in my second year as an undergrad, I made up my mind that I wanted to go do my Ph.D. in American Studies. (The professor whose course included A Midwife’s Tale actually ended up becoming my dissertation director.) During grad school, I read Ulrich’s 1991 Bancroft Prize acceptance speech entitled, “Martha’s Diary and Mine.” In it, she describes, “At some point in all this a 250-year old lady took up residence in the loft above my bedroom, alternately cheering me on and chastizing me for my lax habits and flagging spirits.” I’ve loved that image because I found it to be very true in my own research and writing. Your subject becomes an integral part of your life.

When my daughter Rebecca died in June of 1999, I was midway through writing my dissertation on 19th century Irish-American Catholic women. These women had become a part of my life, just as Martha Ballard had become part of Ulrich’s. Ironically, it was also among these women where I found some of the greatest comfort when my daughter died. In the modern American world, we’ve reduced our infant death rate to less than 1%. Few women know the pain of having a baby or child die. This contrasts greatly with an estimated 10-40% mortality rate for children under the age of one and up to a 50% childhood death rate for the earlier 19th century. (Exact numbers are difficult to pinpoint because of poor record keeping.) When women were having an average of seven or more children, having at least one child die was a default expectation, and many women experienced the death of several of their offspring before the children reached adulthood.

Thus, as I immersed myself in the world of 19th century women while I wrote my dissertation, I found a comfort that I never would have expected. At that time, none of my living friends had experienced the death of a child, so in the modern world, I felt very alone. Yet as I read the poetry and letters which many of these bereaved 19th century women wrote, I found myself surrounded by peers even though we were separated by over a century in time. They understood my pain. They understood my loss. Many of them had lost far more than I had, and yet somehow, they managed to carry on.

All of these thoughts came flooding back to me recently as I watched In the Bedroom (2001). This mistitled movie is incompletely described as “A New England couple's college-aged son dates an older woman who has two small children and an unwelcome ex-husband.” However, the movie is far more than that. It’s actually a very powerful drama about parents losing a child to a senseless death. In one scene, the local priest, Father McCasslin (Jonathan Walsh), is speaking with bereaved mother Ruth Fowler (Sissy Spacek) in the cemetery adjacent to the church where she had just been visiting her son’s grave. Father McCasslin says,

The character of Ruth Fowler was not powerfully moved by this vision, but I was because I understood all too well the pain and comfort that McVey described. There is something powerful to being surrounded by those who understand your pain. A local blogger who had experienced the death of one of her sons once described it in a post as joining the sorority that no one wanted to be a member of. You didn’t sign up for the sorority, and you didn’t want to be there. None of the other members wanted to be there either. And yet, there you all were, sharing a bond of sisterhood that no one ever wants another to have to endure.

I am grateful to those women of the nineteenth century whose words reached out from the paper and microfilm to comfort me in my time of bereavement. They helped less my pain and helped me to feel like others understood all too well what I was going through. The internet now provides a multitude of venues for bereaved mothers (and fathers) to connect with others like themselves so that they can find others who have endured the same horrible losses. Compassionate solidarity in suffering can make a huge difference in reducing the pain of life’s greatest burdens.

© 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

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

This week, I have been working on preparing an October meeting for my Meetup group on jealousy. I asked members which topics were of greatest interest to them, and to my surprise, jealousy came out near the top of the list. Jealousy is not something I have dealt with at the levels other people have, so it took me a minute or two to think about when I have been most envious of others in my adult life. The first thing that jumped to my mind was paint envy. Yes, you read that correctly. I have spent the past 10+ years being jealous of other people’s colorful paint jobs in their homes. The walls of my house were painted right before we moved in 14 years ago, and they are a very serviceable and resellable white. However, after 14 years of dogs and kids and regular life, the walls are showing lots of wear and need a new coat of paint.

When my ex-husband and I made the decision as to who was going to stay in the house and who was going to move out, there really was not much of a decision to make. Because of my chemical sensitivities, it made the most sense for me to stay in the house that we’d spent thousands of dollars upgrading to make it safe enough for me to tolerate. It has electric appliances, has all hardwood and ceramic tile floors, and hasn’t had fragrance or chemicals used in it in 12+ years. Finding a house like that is a needle in a haystack, and finding another for me in our price range that meets my needs seemed like a very daunting task. My ex wanted to move to a new location to start over, and I really understood that feeling. I was jealous that he got to leave and I had to stay in the house where I’d felt like I’d been trapped for all of the years of my illness including the six that I was homebound.

As we began dividing possessions for him to take things with him, I asked if he would take the white dishes we had registered for as wedding presents. Ceramic dishes don’t usually need to be off-gassed, so this was something that I could get new and not have to worry about reacting to any chemicals on them. My ex agreed, and so I set forth in looking for new dishes. I knew I wanted Fiestaware, and I knew I wanted color. Lots of color. I told my kids that they could help pick out the new dishes I was going to buy. My older son jokingly told me he wanted orange plates with sharks on them. I told him I couldn’t help him with the sharks, but we could have orange for sure. He thought I’d gone crazy that I was letting him have his way with the dishes, but since orange was part of my plan, it was good by me! We now have Fiestaware in lapis, peacock, cobalt, plum, scarlet, tangerine, sunflower and shamrock. Our table is very festive!

For the first few years after my ex moved out, I could only do limited things to change up the house because my health was still struggling and my chemical sensitivities were still so strong. I rearranged furniture, hung some of my photographic artwork on the walls (which my ex didn’t like so I’d never had it up before), and did a few other little things to make the house feel different. It wasn’t as much as I wanted, but it was what I could do at the time.

This calendar year, my chemical sensitivities have lessened further. I finally hit the point where I could paint the interior of my house. I tested a few paints and determined that Dunn & Edwards’ Spartazero no-VOC paint was the easiest for me to tolerate. My daughter and I spent a few weeks debating colors of paint samples and finally settled on our choices. We bought paint, and as I have energy and time, my kids and I are slowly painting the house. We started with the downstairs bathroom and hallway, and the difference between white and peach paint was radical. All of us were so impressed with the difference. Today we started painting the laundry room a deep lavender. I find myself just standing there and staring at the newly painted walls in awe. I am amazed at how beautiful the color is.

So what does all of this have to do with jealousy? Yes, I was jealous of other people’s paint on their walls. But what I was really jealous of was the color in their lives. I felt like I was living my life all in white, just like my house had previously been. It was the safe choice. My life until a few years ago was the safe and logical choice, too. I was with a man whom I loved but who was not passionate about me. I hid from my metaphysical gifts. I didn’t explore things in the world but rather stayed within what were deemed safe margins. Now, I want color in my life. Not just my dishes and my walls, but my entire life. I am still rational and sensible, but I want to explore new ideas, new places, and new people. I want my life to be truly vibrant.

Sometimes examining the deeper roots of our jealousy can be very telling. It might seem like we are coveting someone else’s new sports car or their fancy house or their promotion, but perhaps there are deeper issues underneath the jealousy that we need to explore. Once we identify the true source of our jealousy, it becomes easier to work on the problem and create a situation in our own lives that helps us reduce our jealousy towards others.

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

When I was in high school, one of the guys whom I hung out with had an inferiority complex around women and intelligence. Any time we took a standardized test, he would come to me and proudly boast his results. I would smile and congratulate him and try to shift the conversation. It never worked. He always forced the issue to a head by wanting to know what my score was on the same standardized test. Every time, without fail, my score was significantly higher even though I was almost two years younger than him and, heaven forbid, a female. He would always get a crushed and frustrated look on his face that once again, a girl had beaten him. Hence, I tried to avoid the topic of testing or grades whenever possible.

As I’ve grown up, I’ve found that there are still many men who are made uncomfortable by intelligent women. One of the quickest ways to scare off a large number of men on a dating site is to tell them that you are a woman with a Ph.D. Other female friends with doctorates have experienced the same. There are men out there who are sapiosexuals, and these are the men I tend to seek out. They are attracted to women who are intelligent and not afraid to show it. Likewise, I am drawn to intelligent men. I want someone who can keep up with me in conversation and discussion. Both of the men whom I have been in love with had doctorates. That’s not to say I wouldn’t date a guy without an advanced degree or even a college degree at all, but I find intelligence incredibly attractive, and I want a partner who feels the same.

Last night, I was watching The Bachelor in Paradise (and yes, you may question my intelligence for doing so!). The Bachelor franchise is my only “reality” television indulgence. This season, there is a man named Joe Bailey who was also on the last season of The Bachelorette. I had a hard time understanding why Kaitlyn Bristowe, the bachelorette, was so attracted to him. To me, he was playing up the stereotype of a Kentucky hillbilly, right down to bringing a bottle of moonshine along with him to give to Bristowe. She really seemed to adore him, or at least making out with him. On Bachelor in Paradise, though, Bailey has demonstrated some very narcissistic tendencies as he emotionally manipulated one woman to advance in the “game” aspect of the reality show. When one of the other men on the show, J.J. Lane, a man who tends to get himself in trouble almost every time he opens his mouth, confronted Bailey about having deceived the woman in question, a very disjointed and pointless argument ensued. Along the way, Bailey insulted Lane by saying he has a sister who is more intelligent than Lane.

Whoa. Really? It’s the year 2015 and a man is going to insult another man on national television by implying that being dumber than a woman is a terrible thing? Things like this shock me, though they really shouldn’t given the number of insecure men I’ve met in my life who have been intimidated by my intelligence. However, I would hope by now that our society would understand that men and women are equal. Clearly our nation doesn’t completely comprehend this concept as women are still blamed for being raped by men, women are seen as being at fault for unwanted pregnancies even though it takes two to tango, and wages for women lag significantly behind. The fact that anyone could still generally assume that all women are less intelligent than all men is really a sad but telling state of affairs.

I have often felt sorry for my poor kids for the educational standards in our family. Even though my kids will only be the third generation of our family to go to college, they’ve got a precedent of a lot of doctorates in the family. Among my ex-husband’s and my siblings and their partners as well as us, there are six Ph.D.s, two M.D.s, one D.O., one terminal master’s and one terminal bachelor’s degree. Three of the Ph.D.s and both of the M.D.s are women. The one thing that my kids will never doubt is that women and men are both intelligent. We may have different innate areas where we are stronger and fields of study that we prefer, but women are not stupid, and insulting women’s intelligence is never acceptable.

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

One of the ways in which sexual shame manifests in our culture is in how people talk about our sexual body parts. Every so often a mom with toddler children will approach a mothering list I am on with a question similar to, “What do I tell my kids to call their genitals? The proper names just don’t seem appropriate for a toddler.” In most cases, this is sexual shame rearing its ugly head. Those adults who are uncomfortable with naming body parts are often people who have grown up in homes where sexuality is shamed. The adults didn’t grow up feeling comfortable with their own bodies, and now that they have children, unless they have some intervention, they will unwittingly pass on that sexual shame to their own children.

When this question appears on the list, most of the long-time mamas will reply, “We call genitals by their proper names at our house from birth onward.” This was the way we approached body parts in my house. Children can be taught words like penis and vagina. While they may not be able to pronounce the words correctly at first, they will eventually learn them. If they are able to comfortably name their own body parts without shame, the first step in change has been made in working to undo the widespread societal shame that is shared about our bodies and our sexuality.

If you find yourself unable to talk to your young children about their body parts, it’s a great time for you to begin working on healing of your own. There are many talented life coaches and therapists who are able to assist you coming to terms with your body and your sexuality, helping normalize them and making it easier for you to teach your children a healthier belief system about their bodies. However, be wary as you select a guide as there are many unhealthy sex therapists or healers in the world. Carefully check out the websites of anyone you consider; if anything seems off to you, trust your instinct that you don’t want to work with this particular practitioner. Keep searching until you find someone who makes you feel as though you will be safe while you process the stored shame you have around sexuality. That may not be the first person you speak with. I am happy to work with those who have sexual shame to overcome, but I acknowledge that I am not the correct practitioner for every person who needs to heal.

With some devoted work, eventually it is possible to succeed in changing your thoughts and emotions around your body and sexuality. Shame can be released, and you can find healing that will allow you to talk to your children and others about sexuality, body parts, and other issues without feeling as though you are talking about something “wrong” or improper. You can reach a place where sexuality is a positive and even holy thing in all its aspects.

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

When I was a teenager, I decided that I wanted to have two sets of boy-girl twins. That way I could enjoy have four children without having to be pregnant four times. Of course, life doesn’t always work the way we plan it. I was right that I was not the type of women who enjoys pregnancy. However, I did manage to have one set of boy-girl twins.

During my first pregnancy, I held out hope until fairly late that I might have twins, but my midwife was confident that I was having a singleton whom my intuition had correctly identified as a girl. My second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage at 5.5 weeks. With my third pregnancy, I had my hCG levels drawn very early, and they were normal. I elected not to have thetriple screen done at 14-16 weeks because of the high chance of false positives. My then-husband and I would not have terminated a pregnancy because of Down Syndrome, so we didn’t see the point.

My third pregnancy had not been easy, but my first had not been either. Carpal tunnel syndrome started for me at 10 weeks instead of the 20 weeks it had started at in the first pregnancy. Morning sickness was only seven weeks instead of 10, though. I was tired quite a bit, but that helped keep me on the couch working on my dissertation. One day while I was laying there on the couch at about seven weeks, I had a passing thought about "when the babies arrived." I mentally stopped myself, not sure why I had thought about my impending arrival in the plural, but I shook it off and went on with my dissertation work.

A few weeks later, I was driving on an entrance ramp to the highway when the thought went through my mind out of nowhere, “What if they are conjoined twins?” Again, I told myself I was crazy. There was nothing wrong with my baby, and I was only having one, not two. When I went to prenatal yoga a few weeks later, my instructor asked me if I knew the sex of the baby. I told her that it was a boy, but there was something else going on that I couldn’t pinpoint.

At 18 weeks, we went in for a sonogram to check on our baby. Given that our firstborn had died during delivery, I had spent the previous eight months researching infant loss and reading stories by other women who had lost their babies. If there was something that could go wrong, I knew about it. For many people, their first sign that something was wrong with their babies came during their initial sonogram. That knowledge was in the back of my mind  as the sonographer put the probe on my abdomen. He held it there only for a second, and then he pulled it off and flew his rolling chair over to the adjacent desk. He began frantically flipping through my file, clearly not finding what he was looking for. I began to panic. What had he seen in that second that was concerning him so much? Finally he turned to us and asked, “Do you know that you’re having twins?”

After the sonogram, my then-husband and I went out to lunch, sitting there in stunned silence as we stared at each other contemplating what we had both been told. After the shock wore off, there was only joy. The only thing better than being blessed with one baby was to be blessed with two.

I carried my twins to term, and after an exciting delivery, they joined us in the world. The first six months were very rough, but our babies were worth every sleepless night we went through courtesy of their undiagnosed silent reflux. After they turned two, life became much easier. Now, as they reach 15, my twins are still an amazing source of joy in my world. Watching their unique sibling relationship evolve over the years has been fascinating to me.

Twins are becoming incredibly common in our world with the advances in fertility treatments. According to theCenter for Disease Control, “The rate of twin births in the United States reached a 33.7 twin births out of every 1,000 deliveries in 2013.” When my twins were born in 2000, the natural fraternal twin rate was 1:85, and the identical twin rate was 1:300. Yet despite how common twins have become, our society still sees twins as something incredibly rare and special. I am grateful that I have been able to have the experience of parenting twins in this life because it truly has been a blessing.

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

For the past 20 years, I have lived in some of the small areas around the greater Austin area that still legally allow fireworks. Unfortunately, since fireworks are illegal in most of the surrounding areas, that means everyone who wants to shoot off fireworks comes to the neighborhoods I live(d) in in order to do so legally. The result is my living space sounding like it is one step short of a war zone during the Fourth of July and New Year seasons. People think I’m exaggerating until they come to my house on these nights, and then they realize I’m not kidding at all. There is no amount of white noise, background noise, ear plugs or OTC drugs that can block out the fireworks going off on all sides of my current house. I’m adjacent to a park which has very useless “fireworks forbidden at the park” signs which are completely unenforced thereby making the park a center for shooting off fireworks. The cul-de-sac on the other side of my house is popular for shooting off fireworks as is the side street next to my house.

Fireworks are immensely popular in Austin and Texas, and unfortunately those shooting them off don’t think about the consequences of their actions. Every single discussion I’ve ever seen on the topic on neighborhood message boards has always had the very erroneous attitude, “It’s just for a few hours, and it’s a lot of fun.” It’s actually every night leading up to and following the event as well. The fireworks started on July 1st by my house this year, and they’ll continue through July 5th, the end of the weekend. In the summer, they start at 9 pm and will go until well after midnight. For New Year’s Eve, again, the days surrounding the holiday are fair game, too. The actual day of New Year’s Eve, the fireworks start around 6 pm when it is dark, and then continue until 2 a.m. This is not “just a few hours.” For someone with PTSD, this is eight hours of hell when one’s nervous system is set to “freak out completely” for the entire time. It’s an experience no one should have to endure in their own home.

When my children were little, I discovered that fireworks can make life incredibly miserable for those with babies. Every loud round would wake up thoroughly exhausted babies whom we had just managed to get to sleep. They were screaming, we were frustrated, and there was no relief in site. One year after we reached midnight, I called 911 and requested that an officer come stop the fireworks. In retrospect, I should have reported the person who took my call. She was clearly very pro-fireworks. Her first response was that fireworks were legal in my area. I agreed, but I pointed out that noise ordinances meant that they were in violation since it was after midnight. She then argued with me that the officer wouldn’t be able to find where the fireworks were coming from. Really? The officer just needed to open his/her/hir ears and drive around my house and would have had no problem locating the fireworks. It was a pointless conversation that justed added to my frustration. I suspect the woman answering the phone never even submitted the order for the police to come out.

Having survived the misery of babies and fireworks, then I faced chronic illness. I discovered firsthand that fireworks can be absolute hell for someone living with PTSD. With PTSD, even if one has not been a soldier in a war zone, fireworks can be a major trigger because one’s startle reflex is so overexaggerated. Someone stealthily walking into a silent room and then speaking when I had my back turned was enough to set me off when my PTSD was out of control. My adrenaline would sore, my body would shake, and I would scream out in fear. It would take almost an hour for me to calm down again. I could not handle any kind of surprise noise. This is because my “fight or flight” response was constantly set on fight due to all the trauma in my body. Thus, even though fireworks are not a danger, they were loud, startling, and traumatizing. They made my life absolute hell several times a year.

I recently saw a photo on Facebook of a veteran holding a yard sign that said “A veteran with PTSD lives here. Please be considerate in your use of fireworks.” I suspect that such a sign in my yard would be absolutely pointless even if I was a veteran. Most people don’t care. Their fun, even if they are traveling to a place that is not their home to set off the fireworks, is more important than the health and well-being of those around them. Our society simply doesn’t have the compassionate understanding to realize that fireworks are not all fun and games for those who suffer from PTSD or who are parenting young children.

This year, if you choose to set off fireworks, consider those around you. Do you have neighbors with young children? Do you have neighbors with PTSD? Will your joyous celebration create a night of hell for someone else? If you don’t know those answers, ask your neighbors how they feel about the situation. Make sure that you are doing the compassionate thing for all around you. Karma is a real pain when it comes back around: know that hurting others with disregard or malice will show up again in your soul’s journey for you to experience the same. The safer, healthier way to celebrate the fireworks holidays includes attending a large, safe, public display that truly is only for a short duration. The results are far more fabulous than anything amateurs can create, and the public displays are always free if you know where to park and watch.

As for me, my startle response has decreased as my healing has progressed. I also finally found an over the counter supplement a few years ago that will dope me up enough to make fireworks tolerable. It leaves me in a very fogged, drugged state, unable to do much besides stare at a tv screen or lay in bed in a semi-comatose but not sleeping state, but this is far preferable to being in hell with the noise of fireworks. Life is short, and it seems wrong to me that I have to dose myself into oblivion to be in my own home several days of the year, but such is my reality until fireworks are finally banned in the area I live in.

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

Before Lieutenant Commander Worf’s marriage to Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax on Deep Space Nine, the leading men undergo a four day Klingon equivalent of a bachelor party, the path to Kal’hayh. In true Klingon tradition, the ritual includes many trials to prepare the groom for marriage. After Worf breaks the news that they are about to begin a four day fast, Captain Sisko inquires:

Sisko: What are the other five trials?
Worf: Blood, sacrifice, pain, anguish, and death.
Doctor Bashir: Sounds like a marriage alright!

I’d beg to differ that all of marriage is as tortuous as that, but the process of divorcing certainly is painful. It’s a very difficult step. The majority of people getting married don’t think that they will want to get divorced in the future. Most of us believe we’ve found our happily ever afters, never expecting that one day we will be viewing our spouses with a “What was I thinking?” mentality.

In a recent post on LinkedIn, someone commented that having kids doesn’t impact the decision to divorce or the process very much. I very much disagree with that statement. Having kids definitely changed how we approached the divorce as much of what we did was in their best interest. My ex and I made decisions that we definitely would not have made if we didn’t have kids.

To start with, my ex-husband and I were separated but still living together for 15 months before he was able to move out. Only our closest friends knew about this. There were financial considerations involved that were related to the kids, and we weren’t sure when we would have the resources for him to be able to move out. It was definitely less than ideal, but as the house we were living in is big enough, it was manageable. We each had our own rooms. When I was “on duty” with the kids, he’d leave the house and go to work or a coffee shop or the movies. When he was “on duty” with the kids, I’d lock myself in my room and turn on the tv, pretending I wasn’t in the same building. We told the kids that we were no longer spending time together to help us fight less (true!). They could understand this, especially when we put it in the context of someone in their classrooms who was really annoying and whom they didn’t want to sit at a table with since they didn’t like that person very much. They understood that just staying away from someone you don’t get along with can be a very good solution.

After that initial in-house separation time had passed and we reached the point where he was going to be moving out, we went public with the separation, shocking many people who’d had their eyes closed to the reality of our relationship for a long time. The kids were not surprised as they knew we were in marriage therapy and were very unhappy. Our goal when my ex moved out was that he would find a rental within the neighborhood of our then-mutual house which I would be staying in. I wanted it to be on the same side of the major street in our neighborhood. What we ended up finding through word of mouth before it even went on the market was a house nine doors down from my house. The kids were able to easily walk back and forth between our two places for the two years that he lived there. I can’t tell you how much that helped the kids, knowing they could always go see the other parent by walking down the street. The arrangement eased a great deal of their stress about their parents divorcing. It was also incredibly convenient as we got used to the intricacies of the kids going back and forth between houses and forgetting homework, musical instruments, and most often, shoes! However, I can guarantee you that my ex would not have rented in that location if it weren’t for the kids. He would have picked something closer to his work and further from me.

As we worked through our divorce agreements, the kids were a HUGE part of the discussions. We had to figure out custody, medical agreements, finances, vacations, clothing, college, interactions with future romantic partners, visitation rights for grandparents, and more. We were able to do most of that with little strife as we agree 99% of the time about what is best for the kids. The finances were much trickier than the rest, but in general, the kids were a huge consideration in all of the negotiations.

Because there were kids involved, my ex and I were a lot more cautious about how we moved forward. We agreed that we would wait one year after he moved out to make certain that divorce was the right thing. However, after four months of him being in his rental, we both knew without a doubt that it was Over. Neither of us needed the full year to come to that conclusion. We let the kids know then that the marriage was definitely over though the legal divorce would be a while longer for financial reasons. Since they’d had four months of us living separately, they had realized how much better life was with two happy but separate parents. None of us questioned that it was for the best at that point. We all found the 60 day “cooling off” period required by Texas law after filing for divorce to be highly amusing as we’d already been separated for over three years at that point!

After two years and right before our divorce officially became final last summer, my ex-husband bought a new house of his own. Again, the kids completely determined which area of town he bought in. Our oldest kids had two high schools in the area they wanted to attend, and either was a possibility. When it became clear that one high school was the winner, my ex found a house that was districted to that high school. His new house is 3 miles and 8 minutes from my house. Again, this is not likely where he would have bought if the kids weren’t part of the consideration, but he loves the house and has several co-workers who live in the same neighborhood. We both appreciate that even though we have some distance between us, we’re still in the same basic area of town. Texas law says that parents can move up to two counties away from each other, but my ex and I both agreed to change that and limited our agreement to the four county area immediately surrounding Austin. Even then, neither of us has any desire to live more than about 15-30 minutes from the other while the kids are still in school because we don’t want the extra driving.

I have actually reached a point where I am considering leaving the Austin area, but because of the kids, I won’t be doing it for at least another six years. I’ve already told the kids that if I haven’t met someone who is tied to the Austin area, after they graduate from high school, I may be moving to another part of the country. I hate hot weather, I hate mountain juniper (aka cedar allergies), and I don’t have anyone besides my kids tying me to the Austin area. Because of the nature of my work, I can easily move to another side of the country without losing many clients. For now, though, I am staying here to be with my kids.

Finally, the biggest issue influenced by divorcing with kids is the constant communication. We truly co-parent; it’s not a fluffy meaningless term as it is in some divorces. We each have the kids about half of the time, but we both play a huge role in making all decisions for the kids. That means that it is rare that a day goes by that we don’t text each other, and we talk to each other several times per week. Even when he was on vacation with the kids recently, I texted him several times and talked to him twice about the health of the kids. This is what’s in the best interest of the children. As anyone who has gone through a breakup can tell you, it’s much harder to get over someone you deeply loved when you have to be around them or talking to them constantly. Our individual healing processes probably would have been faster if we hadn’t had to communicate so often. However, because it is in the best interest of the kids, we do talk frequently about them and their needs and scheduling for their lives. I can guarantee you that this would not be the case if the kids were not involved!

I can definitely see how in a case where parents aren’t focused on their children’s best interests that having kids might not affect the divorce in any way. I’ve seen some nasty divorces where the best interests of the kids really aren’t taken into consideration. I feel deeply for those kids, especially those whose parents end up using them as pawns in a power play situation. However, in the case of my divorce, that wasn’t an issue. We viewed our kids as very important people whose needs were a vital part of the divorce negotiations.

As we have moved forward after the decree was signed, my ex and I are truly co-parenting and working to make sure our kids’ needs are met the best we can. The relationship my ex-husband and I continue have is determined by what we do for our kids. We both agreed strongly that as much as possible, our kids shouldn’t have to pay for the fact that their parents divorced. Instead, we’ve worked hard to make sure that their quality of life has actually improved in many ways because of the divorce. As a result, the kids showed almost no stress or strife in the process of us divorcing. They’ve felt secure and loved by both parents through it all.

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

In Texas, The University of Texas-Austin and Texas A&M University are the two major state universities with a deep century old rivalry. If you live in Austin, you’ll often hear Aggie jokes, and Aggies are known for telling “t.u.” jokes. The jokes are generally meant to insult the abilities and intelligence of the students and alumni of the opposing school. While I found them amusing when I was in college, I have long since stopped finding them funny. I’ve known many Aggies over the years, and I see no reason to insult them. Those friends are great people. They may have chosen a college I would never have gone to, but we can still be friends.

In a similar way, my ex-husband’s family used to tell jokes that put down liberal arts majors. When it wasn’t a formal joke, it was a slam or insult towards those who were liberal arts majors. That is because the parents and all of the children were science or math majors. They had developed an attitude, one that was clearly ego based, that anyone could get a liberal arts degree but it took a clearly superior mind to major in the hard sciences.

This attitude even carried over into casual conversation. I quickly learned that my opinion would never be respected even if it was on a topic pertinent to my academic studies. I was someone who knew nothing, and I was treated that way on many occasions. In one of the most painful, two of my ex-brothers-in-law were having a conversation while we were sitting around the kitchen table talking one holiday. They were discussing a topic I have a degree in, so I stated a sentence of relevance to the conversation. They looked at each other, and then they completely ignored me and my comment. It was like I wasn’t even in the room. That was the day I gave up trying. I knew I was always going to be labeled ignorant (at best) by them. In their eyes, I didn’t know anything.

Even when my ex-husband and I were alone, he carried over this tradition of insulting liberal arts majors to my face. Finally, one day I grew tired of it and I confronted him quite angrily. I asked him if he remembered that I had many degrees in the liberal arts. He did. When I asked why he would insult me like that by making fun of liberal arts majors, he had no answer. He’d been so trained by his family that it was ok to insult liberal arts majors that he didn’t even think twice about doing it with his wife who was an extension of his family in his mind. That was the last time he explicitly insulted the liberal arts to my face, but certainly not the last time my intelligence or abilities were questioned.

As a result of all this conditioning, I internalized the idea that my degrees were useless. Instead of being proud of my doctorate, I saw it as shameful. I hid it carefully away, not wanting to declare my accomplishment of being a Ph.D since it was “only” in liberal arts.

That all changed one day when I was eating lunch at a local restaurant that I frequent. The staff there recognizes me, especially the one woman who was usually head cook on the day I normally came in. However, due to a schedule change, I showed up on a different day than my usual. The woman said hi to me and asked why I was there that day instead of my usual. I let her know that I had some appointments change that week. She asked if I was a doctor, and I said, “No, well, yes, but I’m just a Ph.D.” She looked at me with a very expressive face and said “Just a Ph.D.?”

I realized in that instant how deeply I was undermining myself. I’m not the only one who uses the word “just” to denigrate themselves; an article by a former Google executive suggests that women use “just” far too often and undermine their power in doing so. In my case, I realized that I needed to shed my shame about “only” having a liberal arts Ph.D. My degree is just as well-earned as any other. I went to a highly reputed school, and my dissertation led to me being invited to apply for a tenure track position by another major university (though I unfortunately could not follow through due to my health). The opinions of my ex-in-laws are not healthy ones, and they are ones I chose to deprogram from my mind. I’ve learned to proudly embrace the initials “Ph.D.” after my name, so much so that I think my name looks odd without them now!

As more of the grandchildren are entering liberal arts fields and more of the brothers have married women with liberal arts degrees, I’m hoping my ex-in-laws have learned to curb their denigrating comments about those who aren’t scientists or mathematicians. In my house at least, my kids are growing up knowing that all academic paths are worthy of pursuing. No one is better than another. The world needs all kinds of people in it in order to function, not just scientists or mathematicians.

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

Over the past few years, my life has changed a great deal. I am no longer the same person I was when I got Lyme disease, nor am I the person who suffered miserably with it in the early years. I’ve always been a fighter (or a “warrior” to use the more spiritual term), and that is part of what has helped me to defeat this disease. The spiritual transformation I experienced along the way is not an unusual story, though mine is unique, just like everyone else’s. However, as I worked my way thoughLiving in the Light over the past few months, I saw the generalized path I had walked laid out very clearly by a powerful author. As I turned the pages through the first chapters of the book, I kept thinking, “Yes, been there, done that.”

Living in the Light is about a different way of looking at one’s life than philosophies most of us were raised in modern Christian-dominated America. Gone is the judgment and fear of burning in hell that serves as the motivation in many Christian traditions. Instead, Gawain presents a vision of “a new world” that she sees developing around us. For her, life is a series of lessons to be learned as a we use our intuition to tap into the higher powers around us. By using our intuition, we can become creative channels for the higher powers of the Universe while we work on growing and improving our souls.

Along our road to growth, we have to learn to be truly open to whom we are. We need to become balanced beings who are able to give and to receive. To understand ourselves fully, Gawain argues that we need to face our “shadow sides,” a Jungian term for the parts of ourselves we are afraid of. It is only in accepting every part of our beings that we can find balance. This includes learning to embrace our emotions and face our problems. It also means recognizing that we are both souls and humans in bodily form, and we must live as both. Despite what many schools of thought might teach, our bodies are perfect, just as our souls are. Even though they have limitations, our bodies are amazing, and we need to respect them and listen to them in order to live healthy lives.

Shakti Gawain also discusses the concept of the world as our mirror: whatever we are struggling with inside of ourselves will also manifest externally. By paying attention to these synchronicities around us, we will be able to accelerate our healing and growth. Even though things around us may seem to be negative, they aren’t actually. Instead, what manifests in our lives are gifts for us to learn from; problems are actually messages if we are willing to use our intuition to listen to them. Our careers, our financial situation and even our health will reflect what is going on within us. Then, through the same mirroring perspective, the beneficial changes we make within ourselves will then be reflected throughout the world, too.

The most powerful chapters in the book for me were those on the male and female within which demonstrate that we all have both masculine and feminine energies within  us. The masculine side is the action side of us, the part of us that wants to do things. The feminine side is the intuitive side, the part that helps us find the correct direction to move in. Most of us have embraced one side at the expense of the other, but we all need to have both the masculine and feminine within us to be balanced in our lives. Like Gawain, I embraced my masculine side for the first 35 years of my life; in the more recent years, I’ve had to learn to accept, embrace and love my feminine side as well. As I have done so, I’ve found greater peace than I’ve ever known previously.

Working from this place of balanced masculine and feminine energies, Gawain demonstrates that romantic relationships in our culture have been built on theidea of romantic partners completing the other. Because we are not allowing ourselves to be both masculine and feminine, we end up in dysfunctional relationships because we want someone else to fulfill the part of ourselves we don’t accept or want to embrace. When we learn to be what we want rather than asking others to do it for us, we are able to enter into healthier relationships built on being complete individuals rather than partial ones. This new energy of balanced relationships will also spill over into our relationships with our children as parenting takes on a new perspective. By developing honest relationships and respecting our children, we will no longer expect our children to complete us either.

Living in the Light is not without its minor flaws. At one point Gawain refers to the Native American and African cultures. While an error like this might have been possibly have passed muster in the original edition of the book, the 25th anniversary edition that I was reading should have been edited to correct the better cultural understanding of our times. There is no one Native American culture. There are common elements shared by many different Native American tribes, such as a unifying belief in the sanctity of the Earth, but to speak of one particular Native American culture is lacking in perspective. Likewise, Africa is a continent that is over two million square miles larger than North America; Africa’s current population is double that of North America. To generalize that there is one African culture is completely missing the reality of the multitude of diverse cultures on the African continent.

The one place where I felt that Gawain hasn’t fully worked through her theories yet is in her discussion of “Taking Care of Ourselves” (chapter 14). Often as we as a society develop ideas, we swing between extremes. Think of the conservative 1950s, the liberal 1960s, and the more balanced 1970s. Here, Gawain has responded to the societal tendency to repress our emotions rather than facing them; she swings too far in the other direction by stating that by being honest about our needs and emotions, we will get we want most of the time. To me, this section feels too much like a distorted law of attraction. Unfortunately, honesty will not always get us what we want because those around us are individuals with free will, too. Some will chose to respond to our honesty by removing themselves from our lives rather than engaging honestly with us. Living and speaking honestly will change our lives, but we won’t necessarily get what we want. We will, however, get what is best for us by being honest.

It is rare that I recommend a book to a half-dozen people after I finish it, but that happened to me in the days after I finally finished Living in the Light. As I have begun my spiritual singles meetup, I have shifted the original plans I had for the group in order to use this book, asking participants to read a few chapters each month as we work our way through the larger concepts of the book. The material is that powerful and that helpful. I’ve included a huge list of book group or discussion group questions below that can be adapted as needed for your group. For mine, I’ll be dividing the questions over 20 sessions over eight months or so.

Living in the Light is a book I suspect that I will return to many times over my life, and I suspect it will always be a book that will give me helpful reminders and insight no matter where I am in my journey at that point. Even as I read it the first time, I found that synchronicity prevailed, and whatever I read was exactly what I needed to hear at that particular moment.

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

I was recently approached by a parent concerned about an adult child who is addicted to a dangerous illegal street drug. This parent, like almost all of us who are parents, wanted to help the child. However, I was unable to help parent by receiving a healing message for the adult child for several reasons.

The first is the most obvious: The adult child is an adult. I can not help anyone over 18 who is not incapacitated (such as with those who have advanced Alzheimer's or are in a coma) without their explicit permission. For me to contact higher powers on that person’s behalf without permission would be a serious spiritual violation. Many psychics and intuitives will do this, and it always floors me when they do. Some will actually commit spiritual assaults: in trying to show off their metaphysical abilities, the psychics will start doing a reading for someone in public without the person’s explicit consent. I know one psychic who did this at a dinner party she was at, revealing all kinds of difficult and traumatic information about another woman at the gathering. The targeted woman was understandably upset, but other women at the dinner praised the psychic for doing a good thing and forcing the traumatized woman to deal with her past whether she wanted to or not. Situations like this make me sick to my stomach because it is spiritual assault, and it creates an entirely new level of trauma on top of the original one. I would never want someone to do that to me, and I will not do it to others.

The second reason involves commitment. If people don't want to stop using whatever substance they are addicted to, they will very likely relapse; that had already happened once very recently in this situation after the adult child left rehab after only three days. Families may be able to involuntarily commit loved ones to a rehab center in some states, but whether or not people ultimately succeed in stopping their drug use depends on their own spirits and their own recovery work. (I am completely aware that relapses may happen for some people; it’s part of their individual healing process. Relapses with a desire to quit are a far different situation than continuing ongoing substance abuse without a conscious desire to stop.) In this particular case, the adult child had not yet hit the point of being able to say, “I want to be clean.” The adult child was still wanting to return to a romantic partner who was also abusing drugs. What the parent was asking me to do was find a miracle cure that the parent could give the adult child that would make the adult child see the situation clearly and would help create change. Unfortunately, I can’t do that. The person involved has to take the first step and contact me, and even then, I do not offer or promise miracle cures.

This willingness to heal is only the first part of why I can only work with patients committed to achieving sobriety. The other reason is that substance abuse drags our metaphysical energy down. Much of the energy work I do aims to raise one’s energy level up so that one can heal the traumas that have damaged us during this and other lives. If one is still drinking or using, then one is actively (though unintentionally) pulling one’s energy down. If I were to attempt to help someone who was still using, we very likely would not make progress. The positive energy changes I would be helping create would be counteracted by the ongoing substance use creating negative energy changes. It’s like a tug of war where no one is going to win. I’m not the only healer who has found this to be true: there is a therapist in town whom I refer people to who uses EMDR with her clients. She requires them to be 100% free of recreational drugs and alcohol during the time period that they work together (and not just during actual sessions). She has found through years of experience that if clients are using any kind of mind altering substance, the EMDR will not “stick” and both client and therapist are wasting their time.

If someone has reached the point of wanting to heal, then I absolutely can help them. Once that person recovering from substance abuse reaches out to me, I have literally hundreds of flower essences in my collection to help the individual with the energetic issues that contribute to the problem of addiction; many are alcohol free, and others can be adapted to evade the alcohol in them. The essences alone will not help a person to quit using; the client will also need to be working with a licensed therapist and/or support program. However, the flower essences and other techniques that I employ can help the person to address the genetic, biological, emotional, and spiritual triggers that create the addiction situation in the first place. These triggers are often deeply buried emotions and traumas that none of us want to confront. However, by bringing the triggers to the surface using energy healing, the person has a better chance for a full recovery because they will be confronting the issues that caused them to start abusing in the first place. 

The work I do is one more way to support oneself during the difficult periods of recovery. It’s not a miracle cure-all. It still requires that those involved want to help themselves. In the case of the adult child above, I was able to help support the parent with the parent’s issues around the adult child’s addiction plus give suggestions of over the counter vitamins and supplements to talk to the adult child's doctors about using in order to help facilitate detoxification when the adult child does decide to stop using. However, until the adult child reaches out to me (and to many others) with the desire to heal, the best I can do is send positive thoughts and prayers that person may find the desire to heal sooner rather than later.

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

Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them. ~Khalil Gibran

If we perpetually seek some outer approval for our actions, we will never consciously walk our own road. ~Caitlin Matthews, “The Familiar Road,” The Celtic Spirit

All the advice in the world will never help you until you help yourself. ~Fred Van Amburgh

One of the more frustrating things for me to encounter in clients and in the world at large are people who seek my help repeatedly but who really don't want any advice. What they are primarily searching for in a miracle solution that requires no effort on their part; they also want attention. A friend who is a therapist has dubbed this phenomenon “help rejecting complainers.” That term sums up the issue rather concisely.

With clients, it’s not as frequent of an issue: they’re paying me, so it’s their own money they are wasting, and most people are aware of that. Because of my sensitivity to this issue, though, I will be politely blunt with a client if they’re not applying themselves enough for us to make progress. I don’t force clients to book on a particular schedule for follow up appointments. They can come back whenever they feel they are ready to move forward. However, if they are seeking to get me to do all their work without applying themselves at all, then I ask that they not book further appointments until they’ve worked on their “homework” a bit more. A big part of what I do is help people to learn to listen to their intuition and help themselves. It’s not an overnight process, but most people will move forward at a pace that is appropriate for them. Without following through on any of the suggestions I provide for their issues or on intuition of their own, though, the client can't usually move forward in a positive direction. 

I have run into this situation numerous times in the world at large as well. Prior to starting my business, there were several women in one of my internet groups who would regularly approach me for free advice about issues in their lives, often related to their physical health. These women have very legitimate health issues, and I believe them entirely about those health struggles. However, a very predictable pattern arose with these women: they would seek my help, I would send them detailed email messages, and then they would ignore everything I said. Sometime later, they would email me again letting know me what they had done. Inevitably their independent decisions would cause issues for them, so then they wanted me to not only fix the subsequent problems, but they would ask me for new advice to fix the original problem. However, my answers wouldn’t change. Just because they didn’t like the advice I had given them the first time doesn't mean the answer would magically have changed over the few months or by asking again. In this case, it truly feels like a waste of my time and energy to help.

In particular, there are several women in the group whom I suspect may have a variation of Münchausen syndrome by proxy, a condition where parents, usually mothers, create illnesses in their children to gain attention. In the case of the women I am acquainted with, none of them intentionally harm themselves or their children to my knowledge; I would be morally obligated to report them to child protective services if I thought that was the case. These women don’t consciously want the health problems that are making their lives a mess, yet at the same time, the mothers thrive on the attention they can obtain from the health struggles that they and their children face. They often turn to me and others seeking advice in order to get attention. In one case, the mother asked me questions for which I knew she already knew the answers. Having grown up with a narcissistic mother who behaved in this way, I also am aware of this pattern from personal experience.

At times like these, my willingness to help wears thin rather quickly. One of the life lessons I had to learn around this was in regard to setting boundaries. I am an empath and an intuitive; I’m also an INFJ. For most who fit in these categories, we want to help others. It’s part of our nature, so much so, that unless we set boundaries, we may be taken advantage of or abused. As a result, I’ve learned that there are times when I just have to say no. As much as I want to help others, I’m not willing to let them overtask my generosity. Thus, I no longer wrote long emails to help these attention seekers, instead substituting very brief responses. When I stopped giving them the attention they wanted, these women no longer felt a need to frequently ask me for help, especially once I mention that I now have a business where I charge people who need large amounts of my time. (I do still regularly answer short questions for free for established clients, friends, and community members.)

All practitioners experience this phenomenon to an extent with certain clients, though it’s definitely not the most common client scenario. Those who are paying for help generally do want to heal. However, some people are attention seekers, and they will try to get attention from whomever they can, even if it means paying for it. When they are willing, these people can be helped to find the attention they seek through healthier means by working on their minds and spirits while also healing their bodies. However, the choice to heal is one that only an individual can make. No one can successfully force healing or change on another. As quoted above, "All the advice in the world will never help you until you help yourself."

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

Synchronicity plays out in our lives in interesting ways that we sometimes don’t understand or expect. We also sometimes become the channel and voice for higher powers when we don’t realize it. For me, my most recent experience of this happened on Mother’s Day.

In the past few months, I’ve become an herbal tea addict. Up until this point in my life, I wasn’t a fan, but something shifted in my body recently that not only do I like herbal teas, but I crave them. So when my kids went on vacation for spring break, I asked them to bring me back a tea mug from the Butterfly House for Mother’s Day if they saw something there that grabbed their attention. I was envisioning a mug with butterflies on it.

Two months passed, and on the day before Mother’s Day, my daughter asked me what my favorite animal was. I told her that my lifelong spirit animal is an elephant, but that I’ve been feeling attracted to turtles lately. This was a slip of the tongue: I had actually meant to say frogs. However, it was too late to take back what I had said as my daughter had replied, “Good!” I had no idea what she meant.

The next morning, I was informed that I wanted to drink hot tea for breakfast but was permitted to select a flavor. My kids brought me a cup of one of my favorites, Happy Heart tea, in my new mug. Looking at the exterior of the mug, it was incredibly simple and plain, though it had a pretty handle with polka dots and was larger than the average mug. I opened a card from one of my sons that had two scuba diving turtles on it; above them was a pirate turtle looking over with confusion. My daughter drew me a beautiful illustration of a turtle which I gave her a frame to put it in so we could hang it on the wall. And then, once my tea had cooled a bit, I went to take a sip and discovered two turtles in the bottom of my mug staring back at me.

I really had no clue that the kids had gotten me a turtle mug. The synchronicity of my slip of the tongue seems too uncanny to be just a coincidence. The spiritual meaning of turtle also is incredibly appropriate for me at this juncture in my life, so I am taking this as a sign from above to integrate the lessons of the turtle into my spiritual work. I’m grateful for the message that comes with a reminder each time I use my new mug.

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

When my ex-husband and I were separated but not yet divorced, the date of our wedding anniversary became problematic for me. It wasn’t our anniversary any more in spiritual terms: We’d cut the ties between us and knew that we weren’t going to stay married. Yet in another sense, it was still our anniversary, and it always will be. We got married on May 28th, and that would never change. It was a very special date in my life for a long time.

When I brought this issue to my friends on Facebook, a powerful discussion came forth. What they helped me realize is that there were things from our former relationship that were still worth celebrating, most importantly, our three living children whom we continue to raise together. We share custody equally along with making joint medical, education, and other important decisions about our children. My ex-husband and I still very much have a relationship that centers around our children, one that legally will continue for another 6+ years and probably beyond.

In light of our co-parenting relationship, my friends dubbed May 28th “Co-Parenting Day,” a far more positive statement than “our former anniversary.” Each year on this day, rather than mourning what used to be between us, I celebrate the children we have raised successfully first as a couple and then as divorced individuals. I am eternally grateful to my friends for helping me create this new celebration, one that reminds me of the good things that came from and continue to come from my partnership with my ex-husband.

Happy Co-Parenting Day!

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

In an episode of The Carrie Diaries (1:11), Carrie Bradshaw’s boyfriend Sebastian is dealing with his narcissistic mother who sees him as her emotional dumping ground. She is the type of woman who attracts drama and then uses the emotional fallout to gain attention from others including Sebastian. After having recently dealt with one of his mother’s crises, Sebastian profoundly states, “No one wants to have to get involved in their parents’ personal lives. We want them to be parents, not people.”

As the daughter of a narcissistic mother, I agree with this statement. When I was growing up, my mother was basically friendless. I don’t ever remember her going out with the girls. At one point, she joined a non-denominational Bible study group with neighbor women, but aside from that, I don’t remember her having friends. As I became a teen, my mother eventually became closer to her youngest sister who was 11 years her junior and in a dysfunctional marriage just as my mother was. However, having that one sister to bond with didn’t really fill the needs my mother had for attention from friends. Instead, she used me as her emotional outlet. When she felt the need to talk to someone, occasionally about topics that really belonged in a therapy session with a professional, she instead made me the one who had to listen to her issues.

Sebastian is correct in saying that we want our parents to be parents, not people. We want our parents to take care of us when we are young. We don’t want to have to take care of them, especially as young children or teens. That includes not wanting to be our parents’ confidantes. It’s just not appropriate or healthy for parents to use their young children as friends or therapists. Our children need to be children, not our support systems.

So does that mean we should not let our children know how we are feeling? Absolutely not. Children do need to know that their parents have emotions and feelings. Parents are not stoic statues who can handle anything without it affecting them. Children need to know that all people, including parents, have feelings, and that it is ok to experience emotion. The fine line that parents need to be careful not to cross is making sure that they don’t share inappropriate information. It’s ok for children to know parents are upset about a break up; children don’t need to know the explicit details of the sexual affair that led to the end of the relationship. This is especially true in cases of divorce. It is very difficult and damaging for children to hear their parents speak negatively of their other parents, no matter how true the statements are.

The opposite extreme of this narcissistic point of view where a parent tells a child too much is in the parent who tells a child nothing. This is almost if not equally as dysfunctional. Children are people, albeit less mature ones. They are able to sense when something is amiss in their home. They can tell when parents are upset or happy or under stress. Many children, not understanding the reasons for their parents’ emotional states, will blame themselves for the negative vibes they pick up. This is easily prevented by simply telling children the simple truth such as “I had a bad day at work.” The children don’t need all of the gory details of the parent’s day, but they do deserve a basic understanding of why their parents are acting and feeling as they do.

The fine line for parents between telling their kids too much or too little is a difficult one to navigate. Despite children possibly wanting them to be “parents, not people,” parents are people, too. Parents experience emotions and stress. However, children are not therapists, and parents need to remember to maintain appropriate boundaries when talking with their children.

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