I've always been a big reader, though the world of COVID has moved me more toward fiction than nonfiction because of the stress release it offers. I've also started listening to audiobooks while I sew, and that helped me polish off 67 books last year. I read in a variety of areas, but I especially enjoy fantasy, murder/mystery, and historical fiction. These are some of my favorite books from 2022. Trying to name my favorite of the year is impossible, but if you want the books I've recommended to the most people, they are Matrix, Hacienda, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, The Vanishing Half, The Gilded Ones, Honor, The Last Karankawas, and The Hero of This Book. So most of them. :) 

Murder/Mystery:
Before She Was Found by Heather Gudenkauf
Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson
The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James (This also ventures into supernatural.)
​The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf
A Madness of Sunshine by Nalini Singh
The Maid by Nita Prose 
The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas (This is also supernatural and historical fiction.)

Fantasy:
The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean (feminist topics)
The Gilded Ones and its sequel The Merciless Ones by Namina Forna 
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
The primary four books of The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

Historical Fiction:
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson (but not so much its sequel)
Matrix by Lauren Groff 
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab (This also is supernatural.)
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Romance:
Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon 

Memoir:
Somebody's Daughter by Ashley Ford 

Fiction:
The Last Karankawas by Kimberly Garza 
The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken 
Honor by by Thrity Umrigar 

©2023 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I am a woman who, according to the Texas government, lost my fetus during delivery at 38.5 weeks. When she died, I was given a “fetal death certificate.” There was no birth certificate and there was no birth despite the fact I spent 17 hours in labor and delivered a 7 pound 11 ounce “fetus.” She was a much loved and desired baby in our family, and her death 23 years and 2 weeks ago was devastating to us all.

For most of the past year, abortion has been illegal in Texas where I am after a “heartbeat” occurs at 6-6.5 weeks, two weeks after a person misses their period and only four weeks after conception occurred. These rapidly dividing cells are not viable at all. Many people don’t even know they are pregnant at that point. Yet the right wing in our country insists these cells are a baby, not a fetus, as my term child was labeled.

The short version logic of why my child was a fetus and not a baby: to prevent us from claiming a stillborn child on our tax returns. Had she lived for even one second, that tax credit would have kicked in. However, the government wants to make sure we and other bereaved parents didn’t get an ounce of money out of our child’s death. Therefore when it suited them, she became a fetus rather than a baby.

And now, in 30 days, all abortion will be illegal in Texas thanks to Roe v. Wade being overturned. If I should need an abortion due to my advanced age (48) and multitude of health issues that would make carrying a pregnancy to term dangerous for me, I will have to travel many states away, a huge challenge with my health problems. I use birth control when I have sexual partners, but we all know that the only birth control that is 100% effective is abstinence and/or removal of reproductive organs. Even vasectomies and tubal ligations fail. In the cases of rape and incest? Birth control is often not an option for the person with a uterus.

After losing my oldest daughter, I spent a great deal of time on infant loss boards in the early days of the internet. I met so many people who lost children to genetic conditions that were incompatible with life. I met people who chose to have late pregnancy terminations when they discovered their child was not going to live no matter how hard they prayed. Conditions like anencephaly, the absence of a brain, are not compatible with life. None who had late term abortions did so without extreme grief.

There is a huge hypocrisy of conservative leaders. My life and its safety don’t matter, nor do those of any other person who have a uterus. What matters is controlling women. It’s not about babies, as my daughter’s fetal death certificate demonstrates. It’s making sure those with penises control the bodies of those with vaginas.

My throat began screaming as soon as I read about the Roe v. Wade decision. The throat is the seat of our fifth chakra, the place where communication arises from, the place where we often react when we feel unheard. I feel so unheard today, as do so many millions of other Americans who lost the rights to their bodies.

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

Wow.

Just wow.

By the time I was 50% of the way through The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed, I was in complete awe of this amazing book. While billed as a young adult book that focuses on a group of high school girls, there is still much in the book for adults as we all are facing a society that is finally recognizing how large of a problem sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and rape are in our culture. 

The Nowhere Girls starts with the beginning of the school year as Grace, a liberal minister's daughter who is new to town becomes friends with Rosina, a Hispanic lesbian outsider at the high school, and Erin who has Asperger's disease and a hidden history others at the school know nothing about. Grace has moved into the home of Lucy, a girl who was raped by three boys from the high school last year. Unfortunately, Lucy was not believed by the community and was shunned by her peers. Her family left town in disgrace.

Now Grace wants to find justice for Lucy. As she learns about the rape, Grace convinces Rosina and Erin to help her form "the Nowhere Girls," a group devoted to bringing about change around the rape culture in their small town. While there are great doubts among the girls as to whether the group will do any good, slowly but surely its numbers and its effectiveness grow. Soon the establishment of the town is fighting back, forcing the principal to suspend any members involved in the Nowhere Girls for daring to accuse the boys of the town of inappropriate behavior.

Midway through the book, a group of 31 girls clandestinely meet and have an incredible discussion. Among the topics they broach are virginity, sexuality, pleasure, and what they owe boys. The girls begin to realize that they don't owe boys or men anything in terms of sex. They have a right to make choices about their own bodies. They realize they need to start supporting each other regardless of whether they are virgins or sexually active. They speak out against the slut shaming that happens in our culture wherein boys can be sexually promiscuous but girls are not allowed to be. As I read this discussion, I began wishing that The Nowhere Girls was mandatory reading for all high schoolers, though I can see the religious right screaming in terror at such radical ideas being promoted to impressionable youth.
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Mixed in with the primary themes of rape and sexual activity are also discussions of what it means to be accepting of others. Current topics that are part of the national discourse such as community activism, immigration issues, racial issues and transgender acceptance are all part of the book. The Nowhere Girls was published in October 2017 just as the #MeToo movement was beginning to emerge, but the book is very much in line with all that has happened since.

Without spoiling the ending, I will say that I was left choked up in very good tears at the end of the book. Amy Reed powerfully engages readers' emotions, especially those of us who have dealt with the same fears, struggles and obstacles that her heroines face. For young people facing these same issues as they come of age, The Nowhere Girls can give hope that things are changing in our world for the better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disclaimer: I know the author of this book from professional contacts.

I am one of the most musically un-hip people in Austin. For many reasons, I don’t take advantage of the live music scene here. While I enjoy music, I am terrible about remembering who sings what song. When I dated a very not-famous musician (because if you live in Austin, you most likely will date a musician at some point), I drove him nuts for being so musically ignorant.

Hence, when Kristin Casey mentioned to me she was writing a book about a famous rock star she dated, it didn’t really grab my attention. When she released the title of Rock Monster: My Life with Joe Walsh, I actually had to go Google to find out whom Joe Walsh is. As I read his bio, I was able to say, “Oh, The Eagles. I’ve heard of them.” But really, I’m not one who would normally pick up a book to read it because it’s about a rock star. However, I’ve really enjoyed the blog posts of Casey’s that I’ve read in the past. I knew she was a skilled writer, so I was curious to read her book. The sample she shared at her book release at BookPeople in March was tantalizing, and I was anxious to jump into reading the rest of the book.

I was not at all disappointed. As the book flap summarizes so concisely, Rock Monster is the “sexy, crazy, cautionary tale of two addicts in love without a single relationship skill.” For me, the book felt as though the masquerade ball scene from Labyrinth was taking place in the Upside Down of Stranger Things. Casey’s life with Walsh was filled with fame and luxury. She describes accompanying him on tours domestically and abroad while staying in hotels such as The Plaza. They visit places such as Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Switzerland. Their social lives involve contacts and friends from among the rich and famous; Casey casually mentions at one point that Lionel Richie had agreed to marry her and Walsh as though this is typical for most people when choosing the celebrant for their wedding ceremonies. Walsh gives Casey clothes from his ex-lover Stevie Nicks (who also joins them for parties) along with beautiful jewelry.

Yet despite all the opulence of the seeming fairy tale of romance and fame, there was a very dark side to the life that Casey and Walsh shared that was permeated with emotional, physical and substance abuse. At one point they were living in a penthouse, but there were few usable areas in the space due to Walsh’s clutter and mess. That outward physical disorder symbolically represented the rest of their relationship as well as Casey struggled to find her place in Walsh’s life despite being soulmates. They shared a kinky sex life, but one that met his needs more than hers. Casey painfully discovers that she is not and will not be Walsh’s creative muse. Often left on the sidelines waiting for him to beckon her, Casey loses her connection to herself in favor of following Walsh in his world. Emotionally, he is often neglectful, subjecting her to long periods of abusive silence.  Alternating with the neglect were periods of violent verbal rage where he abusively berated Casey in front of others. Add in a few physical fights, and the lack of relationship skills between them are very clear.

And then there are the drugs. Lots of drugs. Drugs in amounts that I didn’t think were possible to use and survive. As the relationship continues, their drug use escalates and begins to destroy Casey. At one point while on tour together, Ringo Starr offers to pay for Casey to enter rehab, a gift she declines because like so many with addiction issues, she wasn’t ready to admit she had a drug problem. Despite knowing that Casey is alive and well today, I read with trepidation as the book progressed because I knew rock bottom was coming, and I was worried about how bad it would be for her. As with most people with severe addiction issues, her rock bottom was truly horrendous, though it happened in a way I didn’t expect.

I was truly captivated by Casey’s story: I had to force myself to put the Rock Monster down and go to bed on two nights before finally finishing it on the third night. As with many well-written memoirs, the prose pulls the reader into the world of the author leaving them wanting more. I even woke up one night on two separate occasions having been dreaming about what I had read before bed!

At her book release, Casey stated that she thinks she has at least two more books in her. I hope that one of those books will be more details about her tale of healing, of working through the emotional abuse of her childhood that predisposed her to addiction issues and the turmoil of her life with Walsh. As she stated at the release, “We keep saying that kids are resilient, but they just aren’t.” This underlying truth leads to the dysfunctional adult lives that so many people in our society struggle with. Learning how Casey overcame her abusive past after hitting rock bottom to become a successful woman is a tale that many can benefit from hearing.

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

In October 2016, football player Earl Thomas was so excited about a scoring a touchdown that he expressed his joy by hugging a referee. In response, the referee flagged him. Many people felt this was an overreaction on the part of the referee, but was it? Did Thomas have a right to hug anyone in his exuberant moment?

This isn’t the only hugging incident in the media in recent months. Pop star Kesha had a hug refused by comedian Jerry Seinfeld who didn’t recognize her. According to CNN, “[Seinfeld] denied her three times and even stepped away from her when she tried to touch him.” In response, Seinfeld stated, “`I don't hug a total stranger. I have to meet someone, say hello. I gotta start somewhere.’” That seems like a more than reasonable position for anyone nonetheless a famous individual who has to deal with a lot of fans without appropriate boundaries.
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In my opinion, it’s very common for men to try to hug women without their consent. Recently Marco Rubio went to hug Ivanka Trump who stiffly refused his advances. Back during the preparation for debates for the 2016 Presidential election, Hillary Rodham Clinton actually practiced evading a hug from her stand-in for Donald Trump. The video of the rehearsal is actually quite funny. As amusing as the parody was, the reality behind it is not. A very high-power woman who has been one of our nation’s leaders was rehearsing an encounter with another now prominent politician. Part of that rehearsal was intentionally trying to make sure this man, one who has admitted on video to having sexually assaulted women, did not violate Clinton's boundaries by trying to hug her. Her aide got rather into the roleplaying and went a tad overboard creating the humor. Had he not been someone she was close to, this video wouldn’t be funny at all. However, the message behind it is powerful: Even women who are world leaders have to work hard to avoid being manhandled in hugs that they don’t want.
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It's not just women, though. James Comey admitted to trying to hide in the White House curtains to avoid encountering Donald Trump who then tried to hug Comey despite Comey making the first gesture towards a handshake only. Trump is someone who is very aware of the power of dictating physical boundaries with those around him. He shows this not only through his unwanted hugs but through his ridiculous handshake politics.

Hugging is a very strange thing in our culture. I grew up in a family where hugging was not a part of the family dynamics. I don’t remember my parents ever hugging me. When I was in high school, I joined a youth group where hugging was a part of the culture. We all hugged each other as a greeting just as most would say hello or goodbye. I discovered I really liked hugging my friends. As I have gone forward in life, I have raised my children in a home where hugging is a daily occurrence. Their parents hug them, and they hug each other. I am very comfortable with hugging among those I’m close to.

However, with strangers, I don’t always feel that comfort. Once I entered the dating world in my post-divorce life, I began experiencing what I dubbed as “the consolation hug.” After a date which was suboptimal, men would give me a hug after declining to have any further dates with me. To me, the consolation hug was unwanted and unwarranted. It felt like the men were implicitly saying to me, “I know I just hurt you, and I feel bad about it. However, I am not aware enough to think about how hugging you might feel to you. I’m just trying to console myself into thinking I’m a decent guy by hugging you to show there are no hard feelings. Whether you want to be hugged or not is irrelevant to my thought process. I just need to feel better about how I just treated you, and hugging you will make me feel better about myself.” I began loathing the consolation hug though I never got very good at evading it.

At one point I went to a Meetup where I ran into a man whom I had previous interactions with. He knew I was attracted to him, but he was not attracted to me. We were both clear on where things stood between us, and despite our history, we managed to have a great conversation together throughout the meal. When we walked out together, he very unexpectedly gave me what felt like another consolation hug. I fumed internally about that hug for quite a while, and then I finally sent an angry email to him very unjustly accusing him of doing something that was demeaning to me. He was understandably clueless as to why I was upset because he looked at that hug in a very different way than I did. He explained to me that he had been raised as a Southern gentleman, and the appropriate social custom was to shake men’s hands when saying goodbye and to hug women. He meant nothing beyond that.

When I took this new information about Southern social customs into consideration, I realized this man was right. Every single man who had given me a “consolation hug” was actually a Southerner. The men who did not were raised in the North. Suddenly a lot more made sense. Having lived in the South for 25 years now, though, I was clear that Southern culture very much dictates that women’s bodies are not their own. This social custom of hugging women without their consent was just one more sign of that mistreatment of women. It’s at the foundation of our rape culture. Men should not automatically have the right to hug women, yet in a culture that doesn’t respect women’s boundaries, a hug is seen as appropriate behavior for men towards women (but not towards other men). Once again, we’ve encountered a situation where we need the societal rule to be “yes means yes” rather than “no means no.” Unless people have indicated that it is ok to touch them, then it’s not ok to randomly hug them.

I recently went out to dinner with a man I had never met before. We spent a wonderful evening talking, and at the end he very respectfully asked me, “Do you hug?” These are just three simple words, but they raised my opinion of him even higher than it already was. It told me that he respected women and their boundaries. He knew that I might not want him touching me. However, I am a person who hugs when the situation feels right, and it definitely did feel right in this case. I walked away from this hug feeling appreciated rather than violated. It would be great if all hugs left people feeling the same way.

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

Love is where compassion prevails and kindness rules. ~my tea bag’s inspirational message this morning

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending the Southwest Sexual Health Alliance’s presentation of Chris Donaghue, Ph.D., who lectured on concepts from his book Sex Outside the Lines: Authentic Sexuality in a Sexually Dysfunctional Culture and an upcoming book. While I have yet to put up a book review of Sex Outside the Lines, the short version of my opinion of it is that I both loved it and hated it. It’s a work that asks readers to stretch their minds and ideas, sometimes outside the realm of reality and into a utopic society.
 
One of the things that Donaghue is very good about acknowledging is his own privilege: He knows he is a good looking, intelligent, well-educated, white male. He also recognized during the talk that he’s been recently alerted to the thin privilege he experiences. While I think his awareness of the privilege of being a fit and attractive person is a good start, I feel several of his more popular ideas continue to play directly into the overwhelming prejudice in our society against those who are not thin.

My own experience in the dating world as an obese woman is one which very much demonstrates the attitudes and prejudices in our society towards those of larger size. In the four years since I opened myself up to dating again after my separation and divorce, I’ve had very little success through either Meetups or numerous dating websites. My experience is not unique; almost every overweight person I’ve met who has tried online dating has given up because of the discrimination they faced. I can immediately name you a handful of friends and acquaintances who haven’t been on a date in years because they are seen as undateable by most of the population because of their weight. It’s not due to a lack of openness or effort on their parts.

Despite their desires that I not do it, I often call people on the difference between preference and prejudice. One of the most common things I see on dating profiles is men stating, “I don’t date fat women. I know that sounds rude, but it’s just a preference of mine.” The reality is that it’s a prejudice, not a preference. When we judge others before we even interact with them solely based on their appearances, we are discriminating. I ask people who say or write these words to replace them with a racial minority. Would they say, “I don’t date black women. I know that sounds rude, but it’s just a preference of mine”? The reality is that most of the people I interact with are aware enough to understand that to say such a thing would be incredibly rude and prejudiced. However, to them, it’s ok to have that same prejudice against those who are overweight and excuse it as “just a preference.” To say that you are not attracted to all fat people is blatant discrimination against an entire population of people without knowing them as individuals. It’s judgmental, uncompassionate, and unloving.

While Donaghue laudably argues that people should expand their boundaries and date outside of their comfort zones, he simultaneously argues both in his book and at the presentation yesterday that people should date those whom they are attracted to. Unfortunately, to most men (and probably to most people, though I don’t have the experience outside of my heterosexual experiences to verify that) that translates into being immediately attracted to others’ physical appearance. In her fabulous senior thesis Can She Really 'Play that Game Too'?, Leah Fessler describes the dating experience at Middlebury College in 2015 with a focus on the difference between men and women when it came to the “hook up culture.” One of her assertions is that a majority of men refuse to consider being with a woman if she is not immediately physically attractive to them:

I suspect a wider study of American society would find a similar pattern.   

My own experience has confirmed Fessler’s theory and expanded upon it. When I first got on dating sites, I put up professional quality pictures. When I messaged men, 95% of them did not respond. However, in my most recent round of online dating, I put up a profile with no picture; I noted at the bottom that if men had read that far, I was happy to send them a link to my picture if they were a good match for me. This time around when I messaged men, 95% of them DID respond. What I discovered is that I am very attractive on paper. Men see a woman who is highly educated, open-minded, compassionate, not looking to trap them into a marriage with babies, sex-positive, and more. I’ve had dozens of well-matched men interested me, many of them asking me out, some even providing phone numbers so we can arrange the dates. However, the moment they request and see a picture, the same men disappear into the woodwork. Only a few have the decency to send a final “thanks but no thanks” note. The overwhelming majority of men I approach have interest in me as a person until they discover I’m overweight. Suddenly the same very attractive woman is no longer appealing. That is the very definition of fat prejudice.

I also believe based on my personal experience that sexual and romantic attraction is rooted in much more than just physical appearance. Two of the three men I’ve been in love with in this life were friends before they were love interests. I was not incredibly physically attracted to either of them when we first met. Sexual attraction can develop over time once one has gotten to know the other person better. More often than not, that hot sexual attraction leads to relationships that are doomed to be short-lived. It’s nothing more than hormones speaking. While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having relationships like that, it’s also not wrong to open oneself to relationships that might develop from mutual interests rather than hormones. Sexual chemistry and connection can be very successful in a relationship even when there’s no immediate physical pull towards that person if one opens oneself up to the possibility.

Thus, when Chris Donaghue advocates that people should date those whom we are attracted to with no qualifiers attached, he’s perpetuating social dating dysfunction. Donaghue is very aware that people are highly influenced by the media and advertising. Study after study has shown how deeply advertising and media can influence our subconscious minds, changing what we think we want and what we think we are attracted to. Magazines, advertisements, tv shows, movies: They all tell us we “should” be attracted to slim people who fit a certain profile. Most people aren’t consciously aware enough to realize how media is warping their attractions in the dating world. It takes very rare and very strong people to step outside of those cultural ideals and date people who are attractive on the inside when their appearance is outside of that approved by social media. Most people don’t even recognize that their “types” are actually rooted in dysfunction, not genuine attraction.

One of Donaghue’s ideas that I’ve seen shared in numerous places is, “Experience a lot of sex/sexuality so you truly understand it.” This quote was directed towards a person who wanted to become a sex therapist and wanted Donaghue’s advice about it, but a statement like this also becomes shaming for those who daily fight fat prejudice in our society and who, despite their efforts, can’t find dates nonetheless sexual partners. Likewise, stating as he does in Sex Outside the Lines that “Working on oneself while solo is easy and lazy, and is an actual avoidance of doing the real work” also is a very shaming statement for those who are not single by choice  (101). It’s far better that individuals work on themselves when single rather than sitting around and feeling sorry for themselves. Just because they aren’t in a romantic relationship does not mean they are not in relationship with others, and just because they are working on themselves while solo doesn’t mean they are lazy.

Last weekend, I went on a generally enjoyable date with a man I’d met online. We messaged for a few days, discovering that we had a tremendous amount in common, so we decided to meet for dinner on the following weekend to see what the chemistry was like in real life. Despite having seen full-length pictures of me in advance, this man declined the opportunity to pursue anything else with me after that dinner because after seeing me in person he decided I was too fat. This is the reality of dating in modern America for those who are overweight. We aren’t fighting against attractions and preferences. We’re up against outright prejudice.

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

(As always, I am not a medical doctor.  This information is based on my personal experiences and should not be substituted for medical diagnosis or treatment.  Please speak to your health care providers about your personal situation.)

During the 2016 Super Bowl, I was taken completely off-guard by one commercial: a thirty second spot drawing attention to opioid induced constipation (OIC). The black and white ad was not promoting any drug in particular: It was sponsored by five pain related organizations to bring attention to this major issue for those with chronic pain who rely on opioids to reduce their misery. After it aired, I tweeted, “Wow. Attention on chronic pain in a #SB50 commercial. https://www.oicisdifferent.com/.”
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However, the popular response to the commercial was not the same. There were many uncomfortable poop jokes since our society is embarrassed to talk about natural body functions like bowel movements. Most of the negative comments, though, incorrectly and discriminatorily deemed the commercial as contributing toward junkies and the “opioid epidemic” that the CDC has decided is destroying America. Public figure Bill Maher even insensitively tweeted, “Was that really an ad for junkies who can't shit? America, I luv ya but I just can't keep up[.]” I was fairly outraged at the popular reaction, tweeting in response, “Less than amused at the abundance of ridicule by Twitter followers for the OIC commercial. If you haven't been there, don't laugh. #karma” followed by “Also, not all opioid users are junkies. That prejudice is unacceptable when so many people are in chronic pain. #oic #sb50.”

I have blogged before that I see a pain specialist. I am not secretive about this fact because I want clients and future clients to know that I truly understand their pain on a level that many are blessed not to. While my first methods of approach to almost every health related issue are natural ones, I am more than willing to admit that natural healing has its limits. When those natural methods fail, I am grateful that there are drugs available to help make life more bearable. I do not judge others who need Western medical treatment either.

I am not a wimp about pain. My twins were born in unmedicated vaginal breech and breech extraction births. For those unfamiliar with the terms, breech births are when the baby is born feet or butt first rather than head first which is the norm in about 96% of births. A breech extraction is often done in twin births when the second twin is breech. After the first baby has been born, the doctor inserts hir* entire hand into a woman’s vagina and up past the cervix, grabs the second baby’s feet, and then pulls the baby downward so that the breech birth can complete with the baby being born feet first. This is not exactly a comfortable procedure, but I did it without drugs. During the labor for those same twin births, I was arguing medical studies with the doctor on call in between contractions. This is not something most women without epidurals can do at that point in childbirth because the pain is so overwhelming, but my ability to handle the pain allowed me to do so. In my planned homebirth with my 10+ pound youngest child, I labored by myself through ten centimeters, the time when pushing begins. While I was waiting for my then-husband to shower and the midwife, assistant and doula to arrive, I had to distract myself from the pain of back labor. So to do that, I worked on putting away clean laundry while I was in transition. Again, this is the point where most unmedicated women are incapable of doing anything but laboring, yet I am a woman who is able to mentally overcome a great deal of pain through determination and personal strength.

Despite my strength and ability to overcome the pain of childbirth without drugs, I cannot conquer the chronic pain of my ongoing health battles without drugs. To be sure, I use alternative methods including meditation, acupuncture, craniosacral therapy, massage, manual lymph drainage, chiropractic, energy work, an organic gluten free diet, and over the counter legal herbs to help minimize my pain. However, even after spending thousands of dollars each month on complementary methods which keep me minimally functional, it’s not enough. I still require several prescription drugs including an opioid to allow me to be able to do things like take showers, prepare food, get myself dressed, and sleep. Without the opioids, I have absolutely no quality of life and become suicidal due to the unbearable levels of pain. With them, I am able to keep my pain levels at a 5 out of 10 instead of being at an 8+ continuously. In order to completely be pain free, I have to take doses of drugs that render me very heavily spaced out if not unconscious; as a result, I am never pain free.

When I made the decision to go on long acting opioids 24/7/365, one of the major considerations for my holistic practitioners and me was the impact that pain was having on my adrenal glands. In an oversimplified explanation, our adrenal glands sit on our kidneys and are responsible for the hormones that guide us during the “fight or flight” reflex. For someone in chronic pain, the body interprets this as trauma and is constantly in the “fight or flight” response. The adrenals are being asked to do a job they were not created to do, and often they “burn out,” leaving a person deprived of hormones they need to get through every day. The body then begins robbing hormones from other glands (such as the thyroid and reproductive system) to create the necessary adrenal hormones to keep a person functional. There then is a cascade of health problems because one’s body is so depleted from constantly fighting chronic pain. My health care providers and I agreed that the damage I was doing to my endocrine system from the pain I was enduring was not helping my healing process. It was time for me to turn to a pharmaceutical solution for pain relief.

Unfortunately, most drugs come with side effects. Opioids are no exception. The almost universal reaction to opioids is constipation. When I switched between my first and second pain specialists, the new doctor asked me, “What are you doing for constipation?” It was not a “Do you deal with constipation?” question. He presumed, rightfully, that l like others had to battle constipation in order to take opioids. While my battle has never been as horrific as it has been for some others, I still must take action every single day to make sure that I have a daily bowel movement to keep myself functional.

So how do I approach opioid induced constipation? Full force, with determination. Anything less results in a great deal more misery for me. When I first began taking opioids on an infrequent basis, I would use psyllium husks to relieve constipation. However, after a while that began to fail as my body built up tolerance to them. The next place I turned was vitamin C. I had previously been taking vitamin C to assist my completely wrecked immune system. At one point, I switched between brands of powdered vitamin C. The old brand required one tablespoon of crystals for four grams of C. The new brand required one TEAspoon of crystals for four grams of C. Not reading the label carefully, I took one tablespoon or 12 grams of C. The result was that within 30 minutes, everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, in my bowels was evacuated. That’s a mistake one only makes once! However, it also demonstrates how powerful of a laxative higher doses of C can be.

For many years, magnesium was my next approach to handling OIC. Lyme bacteria and other parasites rob the body of magnesium, so it is something I almost always need more of. However, due to absorption issues, it’s difficult to get the amount of magnesium I need in me through oral means. When one hits bowel tolerance for magnesium, the result is loose stools. In the case of OIC, it means that magnesium can act as a natural laxative. However, more recently my body has started using even small doses of magnesium to rapidly kill Lyme creating additional unbearable pain, so I have had to abandon magnesium as a laxative for the time being.

My first pain specialist had recommended Smooth Move tea available at health food stores. However, I am using Get Regular tea which, despite its long list of herbal ingredients, simply tastes like a pleasant mint tea. A web search finds many other herbal teas designed to help with constipation. I am taking Vitamin C in conjunction with the tea, and the two together are very effective for me. At some point they may stop working, and at that point, I will switch to another natural means of coping with OIC.

The public response to the commercial discussing OIC is an indicator of why those with chronic health problems which create horrid pain are treated terribly by the medical system. Those who use opioids are indiscriminately labeled “junkies.” People with chronic pain are automatically presumed to be drug seekers who are addicts contributing the downfall of the so-called “War on Drugs.” Ironically, many of the football players in Sunday’s game will end up suffering from chronic pain after having put their bodies through such intense physical trials in their younger years, and many of them will have to use opioids for pain relief as well. For the 100 million plus people who live with chronic pain, opioids can make the difference between being in bed all day every day and being able to enjoy life. They are not used to get a high for the vast majority of those in pain. They’re used to try to be remotely human.

Like most of those who struggle with chronic pain, I am not a junkie. I am a mother who eats an organic diet and keeps a chemical free home. I am a woman with a Ph.D. who runs a successful business helping others find complementary means of healing. I personally decrease the amount of drugs I can take any time my body will allow. None of these are behaviors of “junkies,” or to use a more compassionate term, people with addiction problems. However, I deal with OIC just as millions of others do. While it might have caused “your Super Bowl party [to come] to an uncomfortable pause with a black-and white ad aimed at chronic pain drug users who suffer constipation,” the commercial was speaking on a wider problem about chronic pain and its daily impact, one that our society needs to accept and research rather than judge.

© 2016 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC
 
*I use the words ze/hir as gender neutral singular pronouns.

(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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the highly acclaimed movie Avatar, the well-trained scientific volunteer Norm Spellman has to help explain the Na’vi culture to recently recruited and completely untrained human volunteer Jake Sully. Most crucial to understanding the Na’vi culture is understanding the phrase “I see you.” Norm states, “This is a very important part of it. It's not just, ‘I'm seeing you in front of me,’ it's ‘I see into you. I *see* you.’” Many have compared this phrase to the Sanskrit word “namaste” which loosely translates as “the god/spirit within me honors the god/spirit within you.” The Na’vi statement of “I see you” is a powerful phrase that recognizes the inner truth and soul of every being. 

In English, we don’t have a similar phrase. We casually tell people “hi,” “hello” or even “wassup?” A few more sophisticated people still cling to more formal greetings such as “good morning.” Yet none of these have a connotation anywhere near the meaning of “I see you” in Na’vi. It’s a very revealing statement about our society that we rarely see each other as we truly are. We don’t look into each other’s eyes and feel the other’s soul. Instead, we remain superficial and distant from each other, not daring to risk the intimacy of truly seeing someone or of being seen for who we really are.

Even in English, this phrase of “I see you” is something incredibly powerful when used properly. In the movie Beyond the Lights, rising pop music superstar Noni attempts to commit suicide. Noni is sitting on the edge of a balcony several stories above the ground, and in a desperate attempt to save her, the police officer who eventually becomes her lover looks in her eyes and tells her, “I see you.” Having her soul acknowledged in her time of crisis contributes strongly to Noni’s rescue.

It is a sad fact of our society that we rarely see each other in the ways mentioned above. We run into dozens of people -- if not hundreds-- as we go about our days, but we don’t bother to look most of those people in the eye. We don’t recognize the souls within the bodies. We are far more likely to ogle the figures of people who pass by us than to actually acknowledge their spirits.

I believe this refusal to truly see other people comes from a fear of intimacy. We don’t want anyone to truly see us, flaws and all, so we don’t try to see others either. By hiding our souls from others, we avoid any kind of intimate contact. As a result, our society interacts at a very superficial level. Our friendships are not filled with love, and our love affairs are not filled with intimacy and honesty.

It is beyond time for our society to embrace this kind of intimacy and to truly see and honor each other. We are far more than our physical bodies. We are souls who are perfect even with all of our imperfections. If we were all to truly see each other, our society would shift dramatically. There would be a great deal more compassion and understanding. We would recognize the deep and amazing power within us all. This shift could help us become a more peaceful society filled with love rather than fear and hatred. The lyrics of Karen Drucker’s song “See Me” reflect how powerful the intimacy between us could be if only we would truly see each other.

Just ask me a question, you might be surprised.
There's wisdom and humor behind these old eyes.
If patience and kindness are part of our plan, then I could show you who I am.
And then you'll see me. Really see me.
When you take the time, there's more that you'll find, you'll see me

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

Trigger warning: This blog post explicitly discusses infant and child death and the pain surrounding them.

Today, October 15th, is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day; October is Pregnancy Loss Awareness Month. However, in the hubbub of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, this other issue that affects at least one in four women does not get much publicity. However, it’s an important day for many who have lost a child. It’s a time to gather and share in the grief of having a child die way too soon. It’s a day to say to the world, “It’s ok for me to miss the child I lost so many years ago even when society says I should be ‘done’ with the pain by now.”

I have experienced both an early miscarriage and a term stillbirth. The summer after my daughter Rebecca died in 1999, I watched a great deal of television as I healed from my physical and emotional pain. When John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s plane disappeared five weeks after her birth and death, I was glued to the non-stop news, not because I was a fan of his, but because I had the tv on as a distraction. As it often does, life forced me to face my pain even when I was trying to ignore it. As the newscasters tried to fill dead air time when there was really no new news to report, they began recounting the many tragic deaths within the Kennedy clan. They spoke of John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy’s son Patrick who was born and died two days later in August 1963. I had previously heard of him, and his death did not bother me at all.

However, what hit home all too closely was when the announcers began discussing the firstborn of JFK and Jackie Kennedy, an unnamed stillborn daughter. This little girl had been largely ignored by history to that point, never named, rarely acknowledged. That was how stillbirths were handled by society in the 20th century until towards the latter years when stillborn babies were finally being acknowledged as beloved children. I cried very painful tears at that point, weeping not for JFK, Jr. but for his forgotten sister and for all the stillborn children of the world whom people had tried to forget rather than facing the deep and horrible pain of their loss. Any time I approach the subject of the Kennedy children, I end up in tears thinking of the little girl whom history tried to forget.

Five years later, I was watching news in the aftermath of the December 26, 2004 tsunami which killed an estimated 230,000 people. One report showed a bereaved mother, holding her young dead son in her arms and keening. As I watched the woman wracked with emotional pain, I thought to myself, “I can’t even imagine what she’s going through.” And then, from nowhere, it hit me. I did know what she was going through. I had held my dead child in my arms, too. There were some big differences in how our losses happened and the age of our children, but I knew all too well what that woman was feeling in that moment. Even though we live half a world away from each other, I have never forgotten this stranger’s face, her pain or loss. That was one of the last times I watched the news for the constantly reported suffering became too much for me to bear.

Much more recently, I was watching “The Quarterback” episode of Glee in which the cast mourns the death of character Finn Hudson whose actor had died from an accidental overdose three months before in July 2013. The episode was poignant and well-done in my opinion. One of the most painful moments for me was listening to Carole Hudson, Finn’s mother, talking about the loss:

Again, I knew exactly what she was describing, and obviously one of the people who wrote those lines understood the pain all too well, too.

Losing a child inducts mothers into a “sorority no one wanted to join.” In the US, an estimated 1 in 4 women have experienced miscarriages and approximately 1% of mothers have experienced a stillbirth or neonatal loss. Today, as many of us join together around the nation and the world to remember our losses, we understand each other’s pain all too well. There is no other pain in the world that comes close to the death of a child. It’s no wonder our society wants to try to forget about this horrific part of life.

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

Recently Helen Mirren proclaimed, “It annoys me when I see men with an arm slung around their girlfriend’s shoulders. It’s like ownership. Of course, when you’re young, you want the guy to take your hand and look after you. But when I see girls being leaned on, I want to say, ‘tell him to get his damned arm off your shoulder.’” This statement has created quite a bit of discussion on the internet about whether or not a man’s arm around a woman’s shoulder is anti-feminist or sexist.

I really think this is an issue that is situation dependent. There are definitely men whose public displays of affection (PDA) are territorial. They’re making sure that all other men in the area understand that their women are their property and no other man should even glance at the “taken” women. In these cases, the men often don’t let the women step more than a few feet away from them. It is actually suffocating for the women, though I’ve known women who have happily gotten into relationships like this after having previously been in neglectful relationships with men who didn’t pay any attention to them. In those cases, the women think they’ve hit the jackpot with men who are interested in them not realizing that they are sacrificing their independence and their basic selves in relationships with possessive and overbearing men.

In other situations, though, a man’s arm around a woman is a beautiful thing. It’s a simple reminder to her that he’s there, and he’s got her back in a supportive way. He lets her move away when she needs to, and he doesn’t mind her talking to other men. For him, it’s not a possessive act but one rooted in love and affection. I personally love seeing couples like this where the physical connection between them merely reflects the deeper emotional connection between the two partners.

For me, one of the more painful parts of my relationship with my ex-husband was that he was not comfortable with PDA. He felt it was rude to other people to engage in affection in public, yet on a subconscious level, this was in part a story to cover up his own personal discomfort. When he was willing to touch me in public, it was often reluctantly and was generally limited to hugging or hand holding. Putting his arm around me was definitely beyond his comfort range. As a feminist woman whose love language is touch, I always was disappointed that the man in my life did not put his arm around me.

In the end, this is an issue that really boils down to the individual couple and what they want. Short of public sexual intercourse, we really shouldn’t be judging how others show (or don’t show) affection to each other. Our only focus should be on our own relationships. If Helen Mirren doesn’t want her male partner to put his arm around her, that is her choice. But it’s not her place or any of our places to judge others for how they interact with each other.

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

Several years ago, I began changing my Facebook usage. I realized that most of my 300+ “friends” were actually people whom I had no real contact or relationship with. Some lived out of state and rarely checked Facebook. Others were people whom I felt like were gawking at my life like a trainwreck: They wanted to watch the pain in my life to comfort themselves that their lives weren’t nearly as bad as mine. Those people had very little desire to actually be involved in my life. When I asked someone to help, they were never there for me. Having confronted the reality of how much time social media was taking from my life, I pared my “friends” list down over several cuts eventually landing on a list of less than 45 people.

More recently, I became aware of a very disturbing pattern among the remaining people on my friends list. Very few of the people whom I let see my most intimate posts were able to support me in my disability discrimination struggles. When I post about being discriminated against, there were crickets chirping on a regular basis. Had I posted that I had been told to cover up while breastfeeding, a large portion of of them would have been outraged and would have called for a nurse-in. They would have stirred up online protests and would have gotten the media involved. Had I posted that I was stopped by the police for driving while black, another large portion would have been up in arms, ready to protest against racial discrimination. But when I post that I am experiencing disability discrimination, almost none of my “friends” could be bothered to say something to me either on or off of Facebook.

To me, that is very telling. Friendship is supposed to be in good times and in bad. Friends are supposed to want to celebrate your joys and support you in your suffering. As Stephen and Ondrea Levine state in their book Embracing the Beloved, “To be in relationship is to open to the life pain of another on the way to yourself.” I am someone who gives to the limits of my being when others are hurting, yet I often do not find people who want to give in return. Furthermore, it is very hard to find friends who want to support you when your issues are not a hot cause or something they can identify with personally. Perhaps they are too influenced by the media and choose to only support causes that are popular right now such as #blacklivesmatter or #breastcancerawarenessmonth (not that those aren't extremely valid causes). 

Let’s have a reality check: Every single person in this world who is not disabled is only one major accident or infection away from being disabled themselves. Perhaps that is why no one wants to see the blatant ongoing discrimination I and many others face on a daily basis in our society. They are too scared to recognize that someday they, too, may be disabled and in need of assistance. If you have ever told yourself that disability discrimination is an issue that doesn’t affect or matter to you, stop and ask yourself: Why don't you actively support the disabled in our society? What are your prejudices? What are your fears? What makes you potentially unable or unwilling to support this problem even on the very local level of saying, "I'm sorry you got treated like a second-class citizen" to one of your friends when they experience disability discrimination?

So many people have told me, “But I don’t know what to say.” That, too, is an indication of personal work that they need to do. When these friends see other friends or acquaintances struggling with personal troubles, the death of a loved one, or another life challenge, they have no problem offering support. They offer up generic words of encouragement: "I'm sorry you're facing this." "I am sorry you hurt." "I hope things change for you." "I wish you weren't having to go through this." Using the examples above, even when friends don’t understand struggles on a personal level because they aren't black or they haven't had breast cancer, they still know how to say, “I’m sorry you are having a rough time” or even "That sucks!" It's Basic Friendship 101. That is part of what being a friend is about. If they chose to, they would be able to apply the same skills to their disabled friends and their struggles. However, with the topic of disability discrimination, people, even those who purport to be my friends, want the issue to be invisible. They don’t want to have to face it.

The sad reality is that I’ve done another Facebook purge as things like this show me clearly who my friends and acquaintances really should be. They are the ones who understand that my life is a roller coaster, just like most other humans', and if they want to be my friend, they have to be there for both the ups and the downs. I have found that fair-weather friends are abundant in this world, and I really don’t have a need for them. It’s the friends who are with me through thick and thin that really count.

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

(Apologies in advance for the super long post!)

Three years ago when Jenny Lawson published her first book, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir), I was still mostly homebound, not yet well enough to attend social functions. The night Lawson read at BookPeople, I threw myself a pity party as I sat at home staring at the clock knowing that just 20 minutes from my house there was an event happening that I wanted to attend but my health would not let me be at. It was crazy making for me.

This time around, my life is very different both personally and professionally. I am so grateful to be in a much better place. I’m still not able to do nearly what most people do on an ordinary day, but I am doing so much more than three years ago. Hence, I made plans to attend Lawson’s reading of her new book, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things, switching custody nights and various appointments so that I would have enough energy to attend the event. Yesterday afternoon, my body tried to give me a migraine, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from attending. I took the drugs I can take for migraines and headed out.

As I sat waiting to turn left onto Lamar to get to the bookstore, my stomach started churning with nervousness. Despite how much better I am doing, there’s always the fear that I will get to an event and not be able to physically handle it. I do still have to leave certain situations when the chemical fragrance is more than I can handle. After the issues I had last week around disability accommodations, I was really worried about what the Universe might throw at me. It’s still a physical challenge for me to get from point A to point B, and sometimes I just can’t do it no matter how much determination I have.

When I arrived at Bookpeople, the parking lot was full but mercifully the two disabled spots closest to the door were still available. Once in the building, I debated the stairs versus elevator issues I have, and I decided to take the stairs mainly because it was what other people were doing and since I haven’t been in BookPeople for 11+ years, I wasn’t sure where I was going. When I arrived at the top of the stairs at 6:40 for a 7 pm reading, it was already standing room only. There were no chairs available in my vision nor were there any places to sit on the floor anywhere within visual range of the podium. I approached a store employee and asked him if they had disabled seating; I let him know that I could sit on the floor but I couldn’t stand for the event. He asked if I had called ahead, and I had not because it hadn’t dawned on me to do so. I now know for next time! However, they had a few extra seats set aside as reserved for those who needed them. The reserved seats were in the first and second rows. At first, former Catholic that I am, I tried to sit in the second row (because Catholics never sit in the front row in church unless it’s the only available seating, and even then, sometimes they prefer to stand). However, I quickly discovered that I couldn’t sit in that second row because the seats were too close to the row in front of them and I couldn’t bend my legs at an angle that was relatively painless. So I moved up to the front row between another woman who was likely in her 20s or 30s and a senior citizen couple. None of them were loaded with perfume, thank heavens, so I was ok for the entire reading.

While we were sitting there waiting for the presentation to begin (15 minutes late), the older couple next to me were chatting with each other. To preface this, I have to say that I have issues around fame and people’s private lives being in the public eye. I had to do a great deal of personal work before I could be comfortable with having a website with my picture on it on the web. So part of me still feels strongly that what people choose to share publicly should be respected as the limit; paparazzi, reporters and fans should respect those limits. However, this couple next to me were talking about Hailey and Victor, Jenny Lawson’s daughter and husband, in a weird way that sounded like they knew everything about the Lawsons just from her blog. It was kind of freaking me out that I had managed to end up seated next to a couple of senior citizen stalkers who seemed to think they were actually part of Lawson’s life. It also was a reality call for me to recognize my own prejudice that stalkers are only young people. These senior citizens were teaching me otherwise.

Before the reading began, a BookPeople manager came over to our section with another employee and told us that he would be escorting us upstairs via the elevator to get our books signed first. I actually had not bought a book because I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to handle the full evening and because waiting to get it signed at the last book signing I attended at another store was hard on my body. If I had known that BookPeople was aware of this kind of issue for the disabled, I definitely would have pre-ordered one; I now know that for future events as well. However, I’m actually grateful I didn’t order the hardcover because after listening to Lawson read two chapters last night, I really want to listen to the audiobook. I’m not a fan of audiobooks 99.9% of the time which makes this is an exception to my norm. Lawson also mentioned during her “no pants party” on Tuesday night that there is an extra chapter in the audiobook, so there’s that incentive as well.

When Jenny Lawson finally made her appearance, she looked around with grateful and amazed tears in her eyes and said, “Holy shit, you guys! There are so many of you here." She was greeted with a raucous round of laughter that along with her comment set the tone for the whole evening. It was a truly amazing crowd; I’d bet there were 250-300 people there. Lawson’s phone wouldn’t let her take a panoramic of the whole crowd because it was too big! (My leg is on the far right of the top photo; I’m cut out of it mostly, though.)

Lawson began by reading two chapters from Furiously Happy. After reading one in which she describes the advantages of passing out with a speculum in one’s vagina, she commented that she had been practicing looking up and making eye contact while she read about her body parts at the gynecologist’s office. When she actually did look up during the reading, she saw her grandparents listening to her read about her vagina. She then said, “Hi Granny and Pop-Pop!” and waved at the senior citizens sitting next to me. Oh. No wonder they sounded like they knew the Lawson family so well. They weren’t actually crazy stalkers after all! Not even once did it dawn on me that they might be relatives of hers even though she lives in central Texas.

Moving on to the Q&A session, Lawson began by addressing a question about parenting with mental illness; she gave a similar answer during her No Pants Party. She said that the amount of openness one can have with a child about one’s condition is going to depend on the age and personality of the child. Lawson said that her daughter Hailey knows now that she has mental illness, but Hailey knows that no matter how bad things are for Lawson that Lawson will always have time for her. Even if all they can do is watch Doctor Who or Miss Fisher’s Murder Mystery Series together on the couch, it’s still time spent together. Lawson does not allow her daughter to read her blog though many of her daughter’s friends do. Hailey does get to read anything written about her and has veto power about what is said. There are some things about Hailey that Lawson doesn't share because she doesn't want her to be tormented by mean 14 year old girls. When Lawson does share something to Hailey, she reads the blog entry out loud so she can censor the language in it. Lawson believes that most kids are far more perceptive than we realize when it comes to what is going on around them.

Another woman from the audience asked how one balances taking care of one’s self when dealing with a mental illness and still actually managing to get writing done. Lawson responded that a great deal of it is about respecting the need to not write at times. She admitted that writing about certain topics can be triggering for her, especially the darkest parts. At those times, she had to give herself permission not to write and just take care of herself. She said her editor helped her to see that sometimes the best breakthroughs for writer’s block come when engaged in recreation such as when she was refilling her creative cup such as watching Doctor Who or reading. In addition, Lawson mentioned the phrase, “If you can’t write, just sit down and write.” She said that while that used to make no sense to her, she’s learned that some days that she has to write stuff that’s not very good but which will eventually evolve. Lawson said she’s got a thousand pages of stuff that may someday actually be good enough but they’re not there yet.

On a lighter note, someone asked Lawson if there was a piece of taxidermy she really regretted not buying. Lawson said that she limits herself in that the pieces must not be too expensive, they must have died a natural death, and they need to be old. She said the one piece that she is still haunted by is a unicorn at Paxton Gate in San Francisco which is actually a French horse head. She said it’s not white like the typical unicorn but brown and actually rather jinky looking. The unicorn is missing some of its teeth and is “so messed up.” From there, Lawson went on a very long-winded and extremely funny diversion about her Bank of America credit card recently being put on a fraud suspicion hold because Victor had bought a taxidermied beaver for her at Paxton Gate while he was there with a friend. Any transcript of the story would simply not do justice to Lawson’s fabulous storytelling ability. She’s just one of those people you could listen to for hours while she talked about almost anything because she could find a way to make it funny.

When asked which author Lawson herself would line up to meet, she said that she still has difficulty doing this because she’ll get in line to meet an idol and then panics when she gets close to the front. She said she is a fangirl of anyone who manages to finish anything, but more specifically she loves Neil Gaiman whom she got to meet backstage at an event. She also loves David Sedaris but she hasn’t met him; her friend Dylan Brody opened for Sedaris and got him to autograph a book to Lawson which says, “Any friend of Dylan’s is a whore.” (See comment 68 here). Most of all, she would bring Ray Bradbury back from the dead because he really does it for her.

A more recent fan asked Jenny Lawson why she began the Bloggess. Lawson said that many years ago she was working at a non-profit in human resources ironically teaching people how to act appropriately. She had actually started writing as a child as an outlet for her anxiety disorder. Eventually another mom blogger in Houston decided to quit her job because that blogger didn’t think one could be a good blogger and a good parent. Lawson decided she must be the crappiest parent ever because she volunteered to not only write on that blog but to do it for free. However, she was frequently getting in trouble for what she wrote, so eventually she started her own blog where she could write whatever she wanted without censorship. She said she now blogs to read the comments because the humor from her readers makes her laugh quite often. (And it's true. While I generally abide by the rule "never read the comments," I love reading the responses on her blog.)

Lawson ended the evening with a great question from a man in the audience: “What do you think of The new Doctor [Who]?” Lawson asked if they couldn’t discuss something easier like abortion. After loud laughter from the audience, Lawson said that she is still getting used to him. She thinks that it is an interesting take on The Doctor, and he is “way alien” but doesn’t make a very good human. He’s definitely not her favorite, but for her the pinnacle was Doctor Donna. And with that, Jenny Lawson closed the Q&A and headed upstairs to beginning the signing portion of the evening.

After 75 minutes sitting in the same chair, my body was definitely ready to leave. So much has changed for me physically since just four months ago when I went to see Chris Harrison's book release. When I left the book signing this time, I could feel that my body was exhausted, but I wasn’t having many of the symptoms I had when I walked out of the last event. I didn’t go into a lot of pain last night (aside from the migraine I was already trying to fight off), and I slept really well-- no fibro flares or any other assorted misery. I am so happy that my health is finally returning to a place where attending events like this is a reality for me. It was a wonderful evening filled with great people watching an abundant laughter. I was also incredibly grateful to have a positive experience around disability accommodation thanks to BookPeople instead of the obstacles I’ve encountered in so many other places of late.

© 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When I first enrolled at UT as an undergrad, one of my hopes was to blend into the crowd. I had graduated from a class of 51 at a small Catholic girls' school that had about 600 students in grades pre-K through 12. Everyone seemed to know everything about what you didn't want them to know. At one point as a senior I went to the business office to drop off a tuition check, and the women working there commented on something going on in my life. I didn't know these women's names, but they knew what I thought were relatively private things about me.

Thus, I figured by enrolling in a university with approximately 50,000 students, I would be able to disappear into the crowd. Surely no one would know whom I was there. I took a few "weed out" classes my first semester: huge lecture sections which required students to perform well enough to survive the college experience. They were meant to fail those who couldn't handle advanced work in the future. My government class was one of them. It wasn't a class I wanted to take, but it was a degree requirement. After the first exam, we had to go up to the various TAs and claim our blue books. As I said my name to the TA who had my paper, she looked at me and said, "Oh. You got the highest grade on the exam." My response was not what the typical response would have been at that point. The one word that went through my head was "CRAP!" I wanted to blend into the crowd, not be easily identified by a TA who had never met me before. This was exactly what I had been hoping to avoid!

As I have gotten older, I have noticed something that has changed greatly in my world. I'm now an overweight, middle-aged and disabled woman. When I am attending events in person, I seem to disappear from the sight of those around me, especially middle-aged men. Some days I start to question if I am even visible even though I am pretty sure I am still in flesh and blood form. There's a popular story in natural healing communities about the arrival of Columbus' ships in the West Indies. Supposedly the only natives who could see the ships were the shamans. This was because the other natives were not used to seeing something that their mind could not identify. Rather than seeing the ships as something unusual or different, the natives saw nothing at all. While I'm skeptical about the authenticity of the story, it illustrates a powerful point: Some of us only see what we want to see. All other things disappear. Thus, as I am a woman who is not in my prime of beauty or fitness, parts of society would prefer not to see me and often try to avoid me.

I experienced this most recently at the event I attended last Friday night. I have attended this group once before about two years ago, I think. There are over 1000 members on this group's Facebook page, so it's not a small membership. I had forgotten that they have the awful custom of calling out newbies and focusing attention on them. While I realize that many people think this is a great way of recognizing and welcoming new members to make them feel wanted and to get them to return, for introverts it is often undesired attention. Once introverts have found the strength to attend a new group of people they don't know, the last thing they want is to be singled out for attention. However, one of the leaders asked during a momentary break who was new there that night. One of the young men was, and he was happy to engage with the leader. The leader then moved on to the man next to the new attendee who was someone who had not attended in a long time. After that, the leader looked around at the remaining people who happened to be all female and said, "All of you are regulars" or something to that effect. I was puzzled. While I was grateful not to have been singled out for attention, I was also surprised at how I had once again managed to disappear from the sight of this man. 

This is not an unusual occurrence in our society. There are many people whom our society would prefer not to see. The homeless, the disabled, and many minorities are at the top of the list. These groups make many feel uncomfortable. A lot of people think that by avoiding their gaze, these "undesirables" will vanish if not literally, at least long enough to pretend they don't exist. As an overweight, disabled, middle-aged woman, I've unfortunately experienced this "disappearing trick" many try to play with me in hopes that by avoiding my gaze, they won't have to admit that I am there. It's a sad state of affairs when our society wants to pretend that many people who are a part of our human family don't exist. Those people are there, and no matter how much you try to ignore them, they will not go away. The only thing individuals prove by diverting their gazes is that they have much personal work to do in the area of acceptance.

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

Our society is enamored with the Cinderella myth. We like to believe a young girl’s prince will come and carry her off into the sunset. With the notable exception of James Lapine’s Into the Woods, most fairy tales don’t end in divorce. They are about happily ever after. And thus, most of our young girl fantasies involving finding our one and only who will make us happy for the rest of our lives. Yet the reality is that happily ever after rarely happens in a Cinderella story manner.

In my first marriage, I though I had found my Prince Charming. My ex-husband and I had a very unusual relationship for modern America in one particular way: we were each others’ first and only partners from the time we began dating until we separated, a duration of 22+ years. This came about in part because of how young we were when we began dating. I was 14 years 8 months and a sophomore in high school when we changed from being friends to being romantic interests; he was recently turned 17 years old and a junior in high school. Neither of us had dated anyone else previously.

After many years of chronic illness, our relationship grew apart. We both were raised Catholic though we have each evolved in different ways in response to the tragedies and difficulties we encountered in life. My ex doesn’t believe in past lives; he sees himself as somewhere between an agnostic and an atheist. On the other hand, I have become highly spiritual but not at all religious as a result of all the challenges I have faced. However, I couldn’t explore my spirituality fully while I was still partnered with my ex-husband because I felt intimidated by his belittling tactics towards ideas he didn’t understand or agree with. For me, it felt safer to hide my beliefs from him. (And yes, that is a sign of an unhealthy relationship!)

Once my ex-husband and I separated, I began exploring my past lives in earnest. Learning about my past life relationships with other souls helped me to be less devastated by the loss of someone I thought was my “one and only” for this life. I was able to break away from the cultural myth that we only have one soulmate and instead understood that we the potential for many soulmates in each lifetime. Thus, when one soulmate relationship ends, it doesn’t mean that you have used up all your romantic love for one lifetime. It simply means that the person who was right for you previously is no longer right for this part of your journey. I believe that the option for other love interests, including soul mates, is available to all of us more than once in a lifetime.

As I explored my past lives, one of the first souls I had to deal with was my lover from my three most recent past lifetimes (and probably more that as well). When he showed up to talk to me just before the summer solstice, he tried to convince me he was one of my guides, but things felt very wrong. The more I learned about him, the more I realized what a toxic soul he was and how much work he had to do as an individual. He was very mad at me for reincarnating without him this time around, but it was time for us to move on separate paths so that we (or at least I) could heal. I cut ties with him and sent him away. Yet the experiences with him helped me to realize that my relationship with my ex-husband in this life was definitely not my one and only soulmate relationship. I have been partnered with many souls across the millenia, and some of those souls are still in my life in different types of relationships in this lifetime.

The lyrics of "For Good" from Wicked strike me as a powerful way to explain this relationship with our soulmates. They declare:

We are here for our paths to cross, and we will forever change each other when they do. Yet there comes a time when we must say goodbye. That doesn’t mean we will never encounter this soul again nor does it mean we will never share love with them again either. But for this lifetime, our journey together is done. It is time to move on to share in new adventures, new love, and new growth with another soulmate.

© 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

Every once in a while, a pop culture reference ends up being far more spiritual for me than I think its author(s) probably intended. Such was the case as I listened to “Locked Out of Heaven” in the car one day not too long ago. Its lyrics proclaim:

While there are some pretty hefty double entendres going on in that song, one could also take the song out of context and change the melody up a bit, and it would be a powerful love song that combines the spiritual with the sexual. 

Our culture has very dysfunctional approaches to dealing with sex and sexuality. Christianity has taught us for millenia that our bodies are a source of depravity rather than seeing them as beautiful works of God/dess which can bring us closer to the divine through sacred sex. As a result, many people prefer to hide the fact that they are sexual beings. Premarital sex is shunned in many sex education courses around the nation. Yet at the same time, premarital sexual activity is estimated at over 90% in our nation. Despite participating in sexual activity, however, American society is reluctant to open to the idea common in many Eastern religions that sex can be spiritual.

Most sex in our hookup culture is anything but sacred. Instead, sex is built on one night stands and finding the prettiest partner one can for quick, theoretically meaningless, sexual experiences. These encounters are not meant to be sacred at all. They’re not even supposed to create intimacy. They merely meet a biological and emotional need to have sex. Many women and men don’t actually enjoy this new popular hookup approach to dating promoted by sites such as Tinder, but there’s no denying that it is having shockwaves on the rest of our culture as more and more people feel that one night stands based on physical appearance are what dating and/or sex is meant to be about.

I suspect in future years, many other healers and I will be working with many of these former hookup participants when they come to realize that they feel terribly empty and alone. Casual sex will have not filled their needs emotionally or spiritually. Some will go to the opposite extreme and turn to a born-again Christian approach of denying the flesh to attempt to find peace. Optimistically, the majority will realize that sex can and often should be more meaningful than the way they used it in their younger years. Once they’ve settled into relationships, hopefully they will be able to find a different kind of sex that can be truly life-changing.

So what makes some sex sacred? Intimacy is definitely part of it. There is no way to experience God (or tantric energy or whatever higher experience/power you’d like to find) through sex unless one is willing to be intimate with one’s partner. That means not just sharing bodies but sharing emotions, desires, and souls. It involves stripping away of all barriers just as clothing is shed before sex. It requires that participants be truly naked and present on all levels for their partners. Without this openness and connection, trying to find the sacred in sex can be very difficult if not impossible. While sacred sex is thoretically possible to do within the framework of casual sex, it’s far less likely than in an a serious established relationship where partners are sharing more than just their bodies with each other. My guess is that rarely if ever actually happens in hookup situations.

Metaphysical energy contributes significantly this powerful connection. On an energetic level, sexual activity allows partners’ second and fourth chakras in particular to connect and share energy. If partners have not done the healing work they need to do as individuals, they may not be able to healthily open their chakras to each other during sexual acts which will limit (but not prevent) the exchange of spiritual energy between them. The less burdens one is carrying, the easier it is to shed the ego and find the holy.

Intent is also a huge element of sacred sex. Wanting to connect to a higher power during sex is one of the first steps. From there, the more one opens oneself to intimacy, connection, energy, and emotion with one’s partner, the more likely one is to find that elusive sacred sex that American culture writes off as mythical.

As Marianne Williamson writes in Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power of Enchanted Relationships, “When two hearts join in ecstasy and rapture, an army of light ascends and the world is brought closer to heaven. Literally. The beloved’s hand on us, like a baby’s hand, holds a power that is straight from God. Heaven is, in metaphysical terms, the experience of our oneness.” Or in the words of Bruno Mars, “'Cause your sex takes me to paradise...'Cause you make me feel like I've been locked out of heaven.”

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

One of the quickest ways to piss me off is to tell me directly or indirectly that my pain is not real. I’ve spent the past 12+ years living in chronic pain. I don’t function in the world in the way most people can because of that pain and the associated disabilities that come along with it. No part of my life has been untouched because of what I have endured. Yet despite knowing I am a much happier and better person now than I was 12 years ago, I wouldn’t wish the hell I’ve been through on anyone; the only exception to that is when someone tells me that my pain doesn’t exist. Then I would like those people to spend a month in my body. I would bet you anything that when they came out of my body after having spent a month literally walking (or unable to walk at all on some days) in my shoes, they would be singing a very different tune.

Today, I managed to let someone push this button of mine yet again. In a discussion about the overprescription of antidepressants in our society on Facebook, I put up a links to blog post I had written that talks about Lyme patients being erroneously misdiagnosed as depressed and put on antidepressants rather than the physicians actually looking for the real problem. I also linked another post I had written about how depression is sometimes caused by issues beyond brain chemistry but that most Western doctors are ignorant of those other causes. One of the people involved in the discussion, clearly not my lifelong friend, immediately responded that chronic Lyme does not exist and there’s no scientific proof that it does. Wow. You mean like this recently released study from a researcher at Northeastern University talking about the biological mechanism through which borrelia burgdorferi survives the standard antibiotic doses recommended by the CDC? That kind of evidence?

This is the point at which I hit the block button on Facebook. I have a zero tolerance policy for people who will directly attack me or my life. If you want to believe differently than I do, that’s your choice, but don’t tell me directly and rudely that my diagnosis doesn’t exist and that the pain I’m in isn’t real. What was most stupefying to me was that this person stated that she has a mental illness that requires antidepressants. I would bet that at some point at her life she has been told that she just needs to pull herself up by her bootstraps and she’ll be fine. Mental illnesses are still not accepted by our society, and they are poorly understood. However, that doesn’t give this woman the right to turn around and tell others their diseases don’t exist either. Compassion to all who are suffering is appropriate even if you don’t agree with their diagnosis or choice of medical treatment.

The cyberbullying that our culture continues to foster in this regard is amazing. So many people believe that they are anonymous on the internet. They don’t have a problem spewing hateful words and demeaning obscenities at total strangers. Somehow the internet creates a situation that causes people to forget their basic manners. Most of the time strangers are polite to each other in public, but the internet removes that civility and results in a great deal of anger and pain.

Last week on The Bachelorette: The Men Tell All, host Chris Harrison and bachelorette Kaitlyn Bristowe addressed the problem of cyberbullying. Bristowe has made choices that not everyone agrees with this season, and she has been the recipient of a lot of vitriolic criticism as a result. During the show last week, Harrison read some of the worst of the tweets that Bristowe has received including death threats. As he read the tweets (with the usernames blacked out to protect the not-so-innocent), Bristowe’s eyes filled with tears. A great number of the comments on Twitter at that point were in support of The Bachelorette’s decision to address cyberbullying. However, many were not. Even some people whom I usually find to be fairly level-headed and rational disparaged the decision to discuss this topic. I read quite a few attacks on Harrison for “torturing” Bristowe by reading those comments out loud. From what I can tell of Harrison, he is a genuinely nice guy who did not pull this discussion about cyberbullying out of thin air. I’m positive he had Bristowe’s consent before he started especially based on the quiet comments he made to her as they went to commercial break. Bristowe’s genuine tear-filled response was important for America to see even if (or especially because) it makes us uncomfortable. Those users on the internet whom the cyberbullies are attacking have real feelings and real emotions. The tears and pain are real, too. The mere fact that so many people bristled against this discussion shows how desperately it is needed. If television stars and societal leaders aren’t willing to speak up against this kind of bullying behavior, change will be much slower in bringing about its end.

I’ve mentioned before that I left online dating, tired of the rude behavior and horrid comments about overweight women. What was clear to me in the world of online dating and again today on Facebook is that cyberbullying is real. Compassion is sorely lacking on the internet. Our world is full of so many wonderful reasons for living, and the internet brings about so much positive change in the world in ways that couldn’t have happened before its existence. It is long past time for that change to include an end to discriminatory words, hateful posts, and demeaning responses. We can be better than this as a society.

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

In this season’s most controversial issue on The Bachelorette, Kaitlyn Bristowe made an alcohol-induced decision to have sex with contestant Nick Viall. This was not a major surprise to the audience who had been watching Bristowe drool over Viall since he first joined the season during episode 4; the two looked ready to consummate their relationship from the start. The morning after the magical event, Bristowe began lamenting her decision nothing how guilty she felt. She realized that it was probably not a good decision on her part even if it was one made in passion. However, had Bristowe made the same decision outside of the show, I doubt she would have felt so much remorse. Her guilt was primarily arising from the fact that she was still dating many other men at the same time as she had sex with Nick; she felt guilty for having betrayed them by giving Nick special privileges. This guilt was rooted in a societally based belief system that sexual behavior should be monogamous.

All of us draw on social mores when it comes to our interpersonal behavior. In regards to sexual behavior, the rules become more complicated and more emotionally difficult. We are sexual beings from the time of our birth. Our families, our religions, and our society at large begin piling expectations, judgments, experiences and often abuse onto our experience of sexuality. These ideas and ideals about sexuality and sexual behavior become our sexual baggage before we have even begun to engage in intimate sexual relationships.

Some children are fortunate: they are raised in homes where bodies and sexuality are seen as normal, healthy parts of human life. Unfortunately, that is not the most common experience for most of us. We grow up in cultures and in families that shame sexuality and bodies. We’re taught at a young age that touching ourselves beyond necessary washing is sinful and something to be avoided. Many religious groups preach that masturbation is a terrible sin. Likewise, premarital sexuality or any sexual act outside of heterosexual married love is condemned. Children and teens hear this often growing up. It may not be on a daily basis and it may not be explicit, but these messages are made clear to us as children.

The damage of these messages we receive about sexuality as youth is greatly understated in our society. I’d argue that any religion that tries to dictate sexual behavior in its members is venturing into territory where it has potential to do a great deal of psychological harm. However, religions are allowed to define the appropriate sexual behavior of their members though most would judge that to be something a cult would do if the idea was taken out of context. These moral dictates of often conservative religions end up being very damaging for many of their members even once they begin to participate in sanctioned sexually intimate relationships.

Much of this damage doesn’t end up being discussed in our society. Sexual baggage is loaded with shame, and most of us shove it under our metaphorical rugs. We don’t want others to know our dirty secrets. We blame ourselves for having done things that our religions preach against even if we don’t agree with the religious perspective. We don’t have an objective view about our own sexuality because of the baggage we carry. When we get into relationships with others, even if they are heterosexual marriages blessed by our churches, we still bring our sexual baggage with us into the relationships. We’ve been told all our lives that our bodies and our sexuality is wrong, but now that we have a piece of paper and a blessing from a clergy member, suddenly we are supposed to be able to have healthy sexual relationships with our religiously sanctioned partners. Yet all that sexual shame we carry doesn’t magically go away during the marriage ceremony. It joins us on the honeymoon and beyond, one of the unwanted parts of our psychological dowries.

I speak from experience on this: I saw sexual baggage create major rifts in my former relationship for almost the entirety of the 22 years I was with my ex-husband. Midway through the relationship, I began to realize how much baggage I had, and I began working on it myself without the luxury of a therapist or coach to guide me. I made tremendous progress on my own, and when I began working on the issues with a therapist in later years, I found even more healing. The problem arose when my sexual healing enormously outpaced my ex-husband’s. Once we were in very different places with regard to our sexual baggage, our sexual relationship began to shatter, slowly but surely, ultimately contributing to the demise of our relationship.

The problem with sexual baggage is that it is so insidious. We are ashamed of it, and we hide it away deeply in our bodies. We avoid talking about it for fear that we will receive more judgment from those we turn to for help. Healing sexual traumas and burdens is not an easy path. However, once one is able to let go of that sexual baggage, one can find great happiness and pleasure in ways one never previously dreamed possible. Through Green Heart Guidance, I help clients release some of this sexual trauma, however and whenever they accumulated it. I work from a place of compassion having been a victim of sexual abuse and sexual harassment and someone who was raised in a conservative church that preached against natural sexual behavior. I know how hard it is to heal these wounds. I work from a place of non-judgment, encouraging clients to be themselves no matter whom that is. To promote healing, I often use energetic flower remedies, essential oils and crystals to help clients release the energy of sexual trauma that creates this baggage. When that stored energy is released, it can be much easier to work through the damage of the sexual traumas most of us have, and from there, healing is much closer than we ever believed possible. The work I do with clients can’t undo the past, but it can make for a much brighter future.

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

(*I use the gender neutral pronouns “ze” and “hir” in this post for further protection of the client mentioned. I look forward to the day when the MLA and other language authorities will designate an official third person singular neutral pronoun aside from “it.”)

In season 2, episode 18 of Star Trek: Voyager, an immortal being named Q arrives. This particular Q has been the bane of many Starfleet officers in the recent series for his antagonistic behavior towards humanity. In this episode, he is trying to convince Captain Janeway to not give asylum to another member of the Q continuum. Janeway proposes a deal to Q, who responds:

It says a great deal that a conniving and manipulative being such as Q is upheld for not being a liar. Truth-telling is a separate virtue than many of the other things Janeway accuses Q of being. In our society, liars are not well-respected for the most part. Perhaps this is because the Ninth Commandment in the Judeo-Christian tradition is “You shall not bear false testimony against your neighbor” which is translated to “You shall not lie” in more modern editions of Exodus. One could also argue that the Ninth Commandment arose because Jewish society already put such a strong emphasis on truth telling.

In my own life, I’d never realized how important the truth is to me until suddenly I was confronted by many lies. Throughout my relationship with my now-ex-husband there were many times that he neglected to tell me the full story about something. In our Catholic upbringing, this would be considered a sin of omission: failing to take the honorable path when one is clear on what that duty is. However, with our separation, my ex-husband’s behavior switched to sins of commission: knowing that an act is wrong but doing it anyway. In this case, he began intentionally telling me half-truths and lies (and felt completely justified in doing so). Suddenly I realized how vitally important honesty is to a relationship and how much I had valued his previous honesty now that it was gone. My respect for my ex-husband and my desire to maintain a friendship with him suddenly dissolved because I want and need my friends to be honest with me.

Personally speaking, I don’t lie. I’m not able to do it. Anyone who knows me well enough will even be able to tell clearly when I’m only telling half the story by my body language and my energy. I’ve been rightfully described on many occasions of being honest to a fault: if you don’t want to know the truth, then don’t ask me a question. I will gently tell you that yes, that dress does make your butt look large. I would never volunteer that kind of information to anyone but my closest friends without being asked, though!

Within my practice, this truth-telling is also vitally important to me. I have a great sense of honor in keeping my word. I believe confidentiality as vital to my relationships with my clients. I’ve noted in many places that the only reasons I will break confidentiality is if I am ordered to by a court of law or if there is a high risk to someone involved (such as calling Child Protective Services about an abused child). Recently, I had to break client confidentiality for just such a reason: the client was a danger to hirself* and/or others. My body was literally shaking when I spoke with the person to whom I referred the client and hir major issues. I was fighting back tears through it all, and afterward, I did cry. There was absolutely no question to me that I was doing the right thing in breaking confidentiality to get this person the help ze needs in a life-threatening situation. However, it was still devastating to me personally to have to break the confidentiality that person had placed in me. My word matters to me, and I recognize clearly that a person who doesn’t honor hir word is not trustworthy. I hope one day that the client will be able to understand why I did what I did for hir. For now, I know that getting hir help is far more important than me keeping hir secrets.

Even as large parts of our society are moving away from a religious based moral guidance system, lying remains a despicable trait in our society with good reasons. False promises fall into this category of lies. Balthasar Gracian has written, “A single lie destroys a whole reputation of integrity.” Lies are that powerful.  A person who tells the truth is seen as having a very redeeming quality and in turn is trustworthy as a person. This is the standard to which I hold myself.

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