​Breaking News! Breaking News! Breaking News! Breaking News! Breaking News! Breaking News!
 
 ACORN DEVASTATED!
Because It Transformed Into a Tree!
  
In Related Headlines
 
Caterpillar Hates Being A Butterfly
 
 “I never saw it coming,” Acorn declared according to reliable sources.
 
“I didn’t ask for this,” Caterpillar, who will be leading a symposium on how to halt the sands of time, is quoted as saying.
 
A flurry of lawsuits and protests are rising up across the country to support efforts to stop evolution with the slogan: Keep Things They Way They Are.
 
“What’s the big deal with trees anyhow?” is the question put to the reliable source by Acorn. 
 
Added Caterpillar, “Anyway, who even likes butterflies?”
 
 
In Other Related Headlines
 
Kittens Demand to Stay Little and Cuddly Because Cats Are Annoying
 
 There is growing fear that now puppies and ponies may get in on the action.  If that occurs, experts say a revolution to stunt the growth of all living things is inevitable.  Authorities warn that if babies find out that they are way cuter than teenagers, they easily could be convinced to join this rebellion.  Should that happen, all hope is gone.
 
On a positive note…there would never again be shame attached to wearing a diaper.    

​WHEN YOU’RE STRANGE
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
 
Anxiety has strange written all over it.  If you understand this, welcome to the club.  Though not really.  This is not a club anyone would want to belong to.  Not if they had a choice.  I don’t have a choice.  Anxiety is here.  It is real.  It comes from somewhere.  And then it attacks.  Anxiety is strange.  If it is strange, then I am strange.  There is no evading this.  Although I would like to.  Evade it, that is.  Evade all of it.  Only, there is no evading.  Only acknowledgement.  Then understanding.  Accepting its roots.  Accepting the effects of the trauma that produced the anxiety.  And the hardest part, accepting its real-time triggers. 
 
The triggers…now that’s tough.  Because to outsiders—those who aren’t strange—the triggers are invisible, ghosts only the afflicted can see.  Outsiders only witness the behavior instigated by the ghosts.  Yes, ghosts.  If you don’t understand this, get down on your knees and offer gratitude for every single thing in your life.  If you do, I extend my sympathies.  You are in strange company living in a strange land.
 
Apparently, the ghost of my stepfather is alive and well, living a quiet life somewhere inside my brain.  This is strange, considering he’s been dead for over forty years and it’s been sixty years since he laid down his own form of marshal law and declared war on his kids.  Corporal punishment for my brothers.  Assassination by way of embittered ridicule for me.  I’ll spare you—and myself—the morbid details of his cruelty.  Suffice it to say that he was an effective assassin who utilized mockery and shaming to attack the most personal, intimate parts of me.  It was ugly then.  It’s ugly now.  His finger is always on the trigger.  Always.  Sometimes he pulls it.  That’s when things get very strange.
 
Escalating stress and anxiety come as no surprise to me.  I prepare myself.  I have practical strategies and trusted dependable support.  I also have limits, which I can push to a certain degree and still walk away intact, if not a bit rattled.  But when my limits begin to disappear in the rearview mirror, trouble starts brewing and piece by panicked piece I start drowning in real time.  That’s when I become isolated, as confusion and amnesia rise up and take over.  Don’t misunderstand, I am aware that I am drowning, I just can’t stop it.  If I am fortunate enough and can escape before crazy starts creating a spectacle and I begin babbling nonsense, I am at least relieved of that humiliation.  If not, it all becomes part of the aftermath, that private emotional crash where reclaiming myself—my equilibrium—seems impossible because now I don’t even remember who that other self is, or if she ever actually existed.  There you have it: a schematic of an anxiety attack.  When I say strange, I mean it.
 
I am very well-versed in trauma and its savage, living legacy.  I understand it.  I work daily to deepen my understanding of the complex intricacies of its influence and to continue to expand my knowledge of its resolution.  It used to cripple me.  It is no longer a dominate force.  But I am not cured.  Trauma is not curable.  Trauma is manageable.  And sometimes despite my--your—best efforts, events conspire; the trigger gets pulled; a fuse is lit; and it burns its way back to the waiting dynamite.  Explosion! 
 
Nothing can erase the root cause of trauma or halt the unavoidable consequences once its energy gains momentum and speeds past the point of no return.  But comprehension and acceptance of how trauma affects each of us personally are the great assists in recovery in the aftermath of an anxiety/panic attack. 
 
The crash is a mentor.  It takes us back to the event—not to torment--but to teach.  It shows the first warning sign, then the second, then the third…all the missed and ignored opportunities for averting the crisis.  It reveals triggers.  Including those that were immediately and deliberately rejected because of cultural and emotional attachments.  Truth comes to rest in the aftermath of a trauma crisis: choice and resistance.
 
There is a beauty in how much sense trauma makes.  Those of us affected by it, dance with a strange ghost.  But that ghost always dances to the same tune.  Once we learn to listen and hear its rhythms, we begin to understand its moves.  With understanding comes power and empathy.  With power and empathy we can create new rhythms and design tomorrow now.  
 
When we truly accept, truly deeply see that past trauma exists today—in real time—we are acknowledging the invisible.  We acknowledge the energetic connections that move and sway, backward and forward in this strange dance of time and space and experience that we are engaged in.  We see the ghosts.  Through seeing we gain power to muster our courage to make healthy, and oftentimes painful, choices.  To outsiders we are strange because we see what they cannot fathom.  We become mystics, not of the occult, but of truth.
 
 
Namaste        

MEN & THEIR FATHERS
 
Untangling the Knots
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
I am not going to give that guy a message from his dead father, I whispered to Phil.  But that old familiar sensation of density and pressure, of walking through glue when a spirit energy is close and wants to connect was increasing.  I’m not going to do it, I insisted.  I have my rules and boundaries.  An opportunity must present itself and must be very obvious.  I never search—I only respond.  Those are my parameters and I stick to them.  
 
Bringing up a deceased loved one to a stranger is always risky.  Not everyone is okay with the concept of communing with the departed, and I wasn’t up for the stink eye and banishment from the premises with silence and a long, cold stare.  Plus the guy—tall and lanky, well north of fifty if I had to guess—looked way too reserved, far too intellectual with his nose buried in a book as we browsed, apparently unnoticed, in his antique shop. 
 
So, I ignored him and his dead relative, kept my eyes on the treasures, and soon escaped to another room.  Just another undeliverable message…  On the bright side, I’d spared myself all possibilities of the stink-eye curse.  Then the guy poked his head in…friendly, chatty, artistic, kind…  Still I resisted.  Until the opportunities began appearing quicker than I could shut them down.  The man’s dad was persistent.  He needed to talk to his son.  Sorrow and promise weighted the air.     
 
A bruised boy becomes a bruised man.  But when a boy is bruised by his father—the most significant, most influential male in his young life—he is more than bruised, he is deserted.  Stranded alone on the pothole-strewn path to manhood.  Shut down by his principal mentor.  Left to his own undeveloped devices to get where he does not know he is going.  And the bruising within keeps widening, tunneling, quietly becoming entangled with love and anger, guilt and responsibility.  Along with the historical demands that pit personal growth and emotional survival against duty, expectations, and obedience to an unworkable image in an unmanageable dynamic. 
 
So it is that the beautiful boy even as a beautiful man may not identify this bruising—this emotional damage—caused by his father as trauma, but trauma it is.  And the knots of that trauma keep tightening.
 
And so, on that day, in those very humble surroundings of small trinkets and minor valuables, a father in spirit worked against all odds—including a reticent medium—to reach across dimensional planes to attempt to heal the heart of his son.  The son said “yes.”  The time was right.  The energies aligned in harmony.  So, I delivered the message:
 
Your dad knows.  He gets it.  He really gets it.  He wants you to get it, all of it.  He is profoundly sorry about it.  He will not burden you by asking for forgiveness.  He only wants you to know that he now understands.  And he totally supports and encourages you to go all the way to the bottom of it and express every single thing about the pain he caused you.  He does not want to be an obstacle to your growth in any way.  Say it all.  (Even the things you think you’re not supposed to say or think.)  This is the path to your healing.  And, yes, now he is in a very good place because he finally understands what he has done. 
 
I don’t know what the “it” is that the father was referring to.  It is not my business to know.  What is certain is that the love this father expressed for his son is unconditional.  And that kind of love—born from the deepest depths of profound understanding and self-evolution—has the power to transform. 
 
Healing is a long, slow journey of twists and turns.  But whenever the son decides to go down its path, his dad will be present, guiding him to the source of trauma hidden within the bruises of betrayal and disappointment.  The older soul will be embracing the younger soul’s tender heart with unconditional love and complete support as together they explore the tangles and knots of secrets and consequences in his boy’s search for clarity.  The old man will ensure his son’s safety on a path that often feels so frightening, lighting the way forward for his beautiful boy: forward into freedom.
 
In case you’re wondering, this message is not at all unique.  Though I go through my little hissy-fits of anxiety when I’m presented with an opportunity to deliver a message, it always comes through the prism of profound, unconditional, evolved love.  It does not matter whether the communication comes from a late relative, a departed childhood friend, a long-ago, mostly forgotten, deceased acquaintance, or the gentle light of an unknown, invisible guide.  It does not matter whether the message is given directly, overheard in a crowded room, carried by the wind to a listening ear, or stumbled upon by a reader. 
 
If the message resonates, it is for you.  And be assured that there is a loving, evolved spirit who is—and has been—reaching out to you.  
 
It’s a beautiful thing.
 
 
Namaste             
​

Forget About Heaven

Excerpt: Chapter 106, pg. 273-4

                                      Mary Patricia

I’ve had my gripes about this side. Coffee and cigarettes were high
on my list. I figured that after a lifetime of aggravation, God the Father,
His Son, or one of the hundreds of saints I’ve “adored” or the souls in
purgatory I beseeched over the years could’ve taken pity on me when I
came over and at least thrown a few stubbed-out butts and some stale decaf
my way. But that’s not the way it is. And I suppose it’s not the way it ever
was. Nothing’s easy around here. I’m still mad that this isn’t the heaven
they taught me about –– the one I was promised –– when I was alive. It’s
taken me a long time to come to grips with the way things really work. I
came here expecting life to be a piece of cake. After all, I made novenas.
I made sacrifices. Never missed Mass even on holy days of obligation. I
thought I earned Heaven a thousand times over. Boy, was I in for a rude
awakening. You think it’s tough where you are? That’s nothing. Things
are a thousand times tougher on this side. Especially for someone who
doesn’t know the ropes.

I was sold a bill of goods, that’s for sure. When I was on your side, I
never had a problem getting people to do things for me. I could always
persuade some handsome buck to help me with my suitcase when I was
flying north for a vacation. Or rile my kids up enough to get them to drop
what they were doing and come running. Around here? Forget about
anybody waiting on you. Believe me, I can attest to that. There’s no use
in begging for favors, either. Or crying the blues when you don’t get what
you want. Take it from me, it’s just a big waste of energy. Around here,
everybody’s got important things to do, and listening to you whine and
carry on isn’t one of them. Still, that didn’t stop me from griping that
they could at least offer a few services to people like me who were sick
and tired of it all and just couldn’t do things for themselves. For pity’s
sake, even in Florida you can call up and order groceries and they’ll deliver
them right to your door. And for a nice tip, they’ll put them away for you,
too. The way I looked at it, it wouldn’t have killed them to help an old lady
out. But that’s not the way it is in this so-called heaven. If you want something,
you have to do it for yourself. It’s not the way I’d run things, but nobody asked me.
What’s big around here is the word create. I swear, if I heard that word
once, I heard it a million times. I heard it so many times that I wanted to
spit. But my attitude didn’t change a thing. Create –– that’s the main idea
in this place. And believe me, you can’t avoid it. Whatever you want, you
have to create it for yourself. It’s dog-hard work, and you have to do it.
They call it aligning yourself with specific conditions to create your soul’s
desire. Sounded like gobbledygook. A corny line from a Disney movie.
Take it from somebody who knows: this business of creating for yourself is
no picnic. It’s too hard. And I was too tired.

That’s why I decided to get back at them and their dumb ideas. So I
played dead –– dead-as-a-doornail dead. Trust me, playing dead doesn’t get
you anywhere. It doesn’t even get you any sympathy. I should’ve listened
to the grapevine on that one. Because unlike my kids, nobody came running.
If you play dead, everybody assumes you are and leaves you be until
you decide to get up and live again. That was a tough lesson. It took me a
while to come to the conclusion that I could play dead for all eternity if I
wanted and nobody would try to coax me out of it. I could’ve been lying
there in the dirt, cursing all the action going on around me and holding
on to being pissed about not having coffee and cigarettes, and nobody
would bat an eye. I didn’t understand why having a temper tantrum didn’t
work –– where I came from, everybody would’ve been hell-bent for election
to help me. Live and learn, that’s what I used to say. Die and learn,
that’s my new motto.

Namaste ​

​JUST THE FACTS MA’AM…Sgt. Joe Friday
 
Cops and Sexual Abuse Trauma
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 Just the facts, ma’am.
 
Duly noted.
 
Just the facts, ma’am.  Just the facts!
  
I get it.  I get it!  Nobody wants to talk about sexual abuse.  Least of all cops.  Especially when it’s personal.  Especially when it sort of, maybe happened to you.  Especially when it did happen to you.  So here I am stuck with facts…only there aren’t any.  Not the kind that can be quantified and measured and put on a stat sheet. 
 
Sexual abuse is the type of criminal activity that sneaks through the sewers undetected.  It starts with kids…boy kids, girl kids.  The gender never makes a difference.  It’s a matter of opportunity and convenience for the abuser.  Every kid is vulnerable.  Once you were vulnerable.  If it happened to you…you still are vulnerable. 
 
Every victim of sexual abuse—and I am one of them—wants to hide.  Desperately needs to hide.  Clings to the protection of personal privacy.  Nobody wants their vulnerability exposed and exploited by the trolls and lowlifes who take pleasure in accusing and shaming, and in attacking with malicious judgment until both your personal and professional life are all but destroyed.  I don’t need to tell you that cops are favored targets in the public sport of people shredding. 
 
I was publicly shamed and accused--very publicly—over details of sexual abuse that I never wanted revealed, and sure as hell never wanted turned into fodder for strangers to gnaw on.  No one wants that kind of scrutiny and blame.  If I was noble, I’d say that I wouldn’t wish that kind of agony on my worst enemy.  I am not noble.
 
I must confess, I don’t drink beer, way too many calories for me.  But I know that beer talks.  Drink enough of it and you’ll be telling your mother-in-law how much you’re enjoying her visit.  Alcohol alters the brain chemistry and loosens inhibitions and starts those lips flapping.  And soon inviting your mother-in-law to stay forever somehow seems like a really great idea.  And you tell her so. 
 
Trauma works the same way, only opposite.  It too alters brain chemistry, but it constricts.  Trauma blocks and suppresses emotions that demand resolution in order to clear out.  Without resolution, the energy of sexual abuse trauma becomes imbedded pain: serious, dark pain that lumps in your stomach and amasses like deadweight in the center of your chest.  And when that emotional pain is triggered and starts throbbing, trauma starts “talking”.  Like how that beer magically pops somebody else’s dumb words into your mouth, trauma impersonates you as it directs your actions and behavior.  It manifests as sickness.  Reveals itself through injuries.  Trauma uses anger to express itself through your mouth.  It speaks through the depression it buries you in.  Trauma wants you to hear it.  It will not let up until you listen.
 
There is emotional risk in revealing something as explosive as being sexually victimized.  Exposure carries with it the weight of humiliation over the act itself, over being rendered helpless, over the inability to physically and emotionally defend and protect yourself.  In a profession where defending and protecting go with the badge, a cop who discloses such personal information risks being judged weak.  Though actually, the weakness lies within those who mock and vilify.  It’s a slight-of-the-hand trick used to deflect attention by those being strangled by their own dark secrets.  But that’s little consolation when you’re on the receiving end of cheap shots.   
 
In reality, confronting your past where the trauma of sexual abuse remains alive and thriving is a powerful, take-charge action that reveals authentic courage.  It is one of the toughest jobs you will ever do.  When you allow the victim hiding within you to speak bluntly, you will lose the weight of trauma and begin to build real muscle. 
 
But I’m realistic.  I know that a snowball stands a better chance against a blowtorch than I have of assuring you of these facts.  Still, no matter how strong you appear outwardly, unresolved trauma will continue to generate inner havoc.  It is relentless.  Ignoring it only emboldens it and weakens you.  That’s just the way trauma energy works. 
 
Addressing trauma doesn’t have to be a big deal.  You don’t have to announce it or talk about it.  Or join a support group.  Or make an appointment with a professional.  You can start without a lot of fanfare right where you are.  In the privacy of your own thoughts, in your own time, and at your own pace you can begin the process of healing simply by developing an inner pathway of compassion for yourself. 
 
By silently acknowledging that yes, something happened, you take the first monumental step toward self-care.  The next step, admitting that yes, something happened to me, is another huge step toward emotional relief and resolution.  Strength is built one step at a time.  Each acknowledgement builds on the one before it. 
 
By using the discipline of your professional training—the process of creating order by asserting facts to calm the chaotic—you will build the inner strength to match your outer muscle. 
 
The basic facts of sexual abuse are these: the victim of sexual abuse is never at fault.  You were a victim of sexual abuse.  You were not at fault.  The pain is real.   
 
It is a safe place to begin.
 
Sgt. Joe Friday lives…
 
 
Namaste
 
(To schedule a confidential healing session, email PK@anunobstructedpath.net

So close to home…yet feeling so far away…                                                    
 
COPS AND TRAUMA
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
Experience, I suppose, was the sergeant’s crystal ball.  Either that or he was just being sadistic when he told the class of rookies that most of them would end up divorced.  Or as alcoholics.  Or entangled in some kind of vice from which there would be no return and no reprieve.  The price of the job, he warned.  Ominous predictions for a bunch of idealistic, fresh-faced young warriors out to save the world, or at least the city of Trenton.  That was a lot of years ago.  Phil was barely twenty-five.
 
In order to achieve its goals and protect and keep its members functioning successfully in a profession that by its nature involves conflict, aggression, and violence, law enforcement maintains a closed society, a tight culture that governs itself with the unwritten codes of silence and image.  It is an issue of mission and survival.  Chaos may or may not erupt between long stretches of mind-numbing boredom and endless, mundane report writing.  When chaos does erupt, the law must be imposed.  The chaos controlled.  Order restored, by force if necessary.  There are protocols and procedures.  Sometimes they fail.  Bodies on both sides get injured.  Catastrophes occur.  The goal then becomes survival.
 
Nothing could have emotionally prepared me for the morning Phil walked through the front door after a midnight shift, his uniform dirty and torn saying, “I’m okay now.”  But he wasn’t.  Not after staring down the barrel of his own service revolver pointed at his head by an enraged suspect during a domestic dispute.  An old timer, probably only in his thirties at the time, used to say to Phil, “Any day I don’t get shot at is a good day.”  That’s a pretty low standard for a workday.  In the end, the suspect didn’t pull the trigger.  I suppose that then qualified as a good day.  I don’t want to be overly dramatic here, but I’m eternally grateful that I dodged widowhood that morning and that our young daughters were spared a dead father. 
 
However, you don’t have a gun pointed at your head and get spared trauma.  No one is immune from trauma, not even cops.  Cops might not think about trauma, but trauma always messes with cops.  No one on the front lines of law enforcement escapes its shadow.  Trauma comes with the territory.  Phil and I didn’t understand this.  We do now. 
 
Trauma does not discriminate between witness or victim, instigator or mediator.  A basic principle of living is that sustained contact with violence and aggression damages and weakens our life force—our vital energy—at its deepest level.  When normal reactions to highly-charged, distressing events must be suppressed and are consistently refused a truthful voice, the possibility of gaining strength through resolution and healing is overpowered and trauma quietly begins laying its groundwork.  So when young officers relinquish parts of their tender hearts to the misguided, unspoken oath of strength through silence, they are truly surrendering parts of their souls.  Phil and I didn’t understand this either.  We do now. 
 
So it is that when the idealism of serving a noble cause fades under the weight of incorrigible realities, it yields to the path of least resistance.  During the course of any workday shift, where a hastily made decision can severely and irrevocability alter the course of a life, a culture of cohesiveness is the muscle that offers protection and support.  And once the external environment of conflict that pits good against evil splits and turns inward, it solidifies into a stoic, emotional posture of “us vs. them”—a survival mode that resists emotional growth and evolution. 
 
In the void created by the growing separation between the authentic, innermost, compassionate self and the projected outward image of power tasked with dominating aggression with aggression, distance from home--from your true self—continues to expand.  And any notion that there exists a possibility of inner peace and the necessity of consistent, nourishing self-care, remains a constant basis for ridicule in such a closed, authoritarian environment.  Without the ability to stay connected to your deep-down self, suppressed trauma becomes your authority. 
 
It’s not as if retirement can dissolve the layers of embedded trauma.  Once the uniform is packed away for good, the energy of aggression and conflict—so integral to policing— remains.  Only now that energy has no focused place to be.  So it goes everywhere.  Black and white, militaristic thinking tries to control the lax civilian world, which only invites anger and frustration.  And the predictions made by the fortune-telling sergeant come true.
 
Transformation from the constraints of duty-aggression and the trauma it conceals is doable.  A life can expand beyond its controlled boundaries and indoctrinations, and the blocks created by the stranglehold of entrenched, difficult emotions can be dissolved.  An inner world will unlock and self-compassion and self-honor will begin to heal the secret wounds hidden behind the blue wall.  And through that experience of deep reconnection with the tender heart of the young warrior within, trauma dissipates and a new, profound power rises.  It is called strength.  And it is real. 
 
Namaste
 
(To schedule a confidential healing session, email: PK@anunobstructedpath.net 

TATTOOS & FRENCH LAVENDER
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
“What’s a guy like you doing selling soap?”  The words drifted out of my mouth before the finicky Miss Manners who camps inside my brain had a chance to rouse herself and bink me on the side of the head.  To be fair, he looked like he’d be more at home in a prison—on either side of the bars—or heaving meat carcasses across his shoulders in the back of a butcher shop, not surrounded by a sensory display of handmade soaps.  Surely there was a big, old Harley waiting somewhere…
 
But there he was, bearded and ponytailed.  All bulk and muscles poured into a tank top.   Every inch of skin exposed below his neck tattooed with thick, gray-blue arcs.  Extolling the virtures of herbs and lather, and essential oils.  The best scent for a closet? I asked.  French Lavender, he answered without hesitation, using the romance language so familiar to those in the business of creating products to soothe the soul.  Great.  I’ll take one.  All that soul-soothing…a steal at five dollars a pop.
 
And then as energy does—beckons and connects seemingly over the trivial to reveal the significant—the story of his eldest son unfolded.  A heartbreak in a family of go-getters, this young man is a hardcore heroin addict turned criminal, living who-knows-where in a drugged stupor, supporting his addiction one burglary at a time.  All attempts at counseling and rehab failed.  Five hundred dollar an hour therapists, he complained, and nothing.
 
The story was very familiar.  It sounded like the plot of a B-movie I could have written myself, down to the pricey counselors and the drug-addled, criminal exploits.  My brother died of a heroin overdose, I said.  I’m so sorry you’re going through this.  He shrugged.  That’s all I’m waiting for now, the phone call telling me my kid’s dead.
 
Standing there in the middle of sweetly scented soap, yet separated by years and seriously contrasting appearances—me bedecked in enough bling to blind an innocent bystander; he sporting tattoos wild enough to frighten little children and small animals—the story of a shared tragedy converged.  And despite the disparity between crystals and ink, youth and age, I am reminded once again, of the unity of experiences.  Of the shared threads of pain and growth.  Of ugliness and beauty.  Of failure.  And escape.  Of contraction into darkness.  Of expansion into light.  Of brokenness.  Of healing.  Of drudgery.  Of creation. 
 
For a few moments, the debris and chaos obstructing the sight of the energetic connection to “the strange and different other,” falls away and what remains is the unassailable truth—that everyone I encounter is the same, all are struggling with something profoundly significant in their lives.  And I am reminded once again that beauty can prevail alongside of pain.  That crystals and ink and bars of handmade soap can converge at anytime, even at a raggedy flea market on the way to nowhere, and offer up an unexpected link of understanding and inspiration.  This day it took the form of one tattooed biker dude involved in his personal process of healing, of creating beauty, and presenting it into the world—one French Lavender bar of soap at a time. 
 
I am grateful.
 
Namaste      
​

​“ ‘PLODE ”
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
There is nothing funny about unresolved trauma.  But occasionally humor slides in by way of the gallows and pierces its grim heart with a clarity reserved only for such perverse jest.  Husband Phil and I were discussing how victims of unresolved trauma either implode or explode.  Sometimes both.  But never neither.  It’s the inevitable road that unresolved trauma pushes its captives down.  A road of no choice and no escape.  Our conversation was becoming very dark and creepy.  But trauma is dark and creepy.  But so is the unavoidable fate of imploding and exploding. 
 
Yeah, one way or another, you’re gonna ‘plode!  That was Phil.  And it was funny.  Bizarrely funny.  Yet shockingly on target.  Like hitting the bull’s-eye using a warped bow and a crooked arrow.  And it was also true.  Unresolved trauma chases its captives in one direction only: into a ‘plode.
 
We’re not talking about having a bad day where you’re exhausted from lack of sleep and have had enough nonsense and lip from those near and dear, and there you go exploding into a hissy fit which involves stomping on a couple of cream donuts that just happen to be on the floor where you threw them a few seconds ago in lieu of inflicting physical harm on a certain, defiant bane of your existence.  Or a nagging sense of depression and hopelessness when you step on the scale and see that you did not get away with eating half that box of donuts and now payday is here.  These are garden variety incidents.  It’s fatigue talking.  Disappointment shading your mood.  The ups and downs of daily life that can be remedied with attention and consideration.  An apology.  An extra hour or two of exercise to burn off the unwanted pounds.  A desire and commitment to go forward making healthy decisions; choices that will create and build a life that nourishes and rewards.  It takes work, you know that.  But it’s doable. 
 
It doesn’t work that way with unresolved trauma.  It’s in charge and stays in charge.  And its power expands, growing fatter as it gorges on the calories of time.  Unlike the excess calories from donuts, there’s no exercising away the ballooning weight of trauma.    
 
It is devastating to me that I had no notion--nada, none, zero—that unresolved trauma exerted such powerful control over my life.  How can you live over fifty years and not have one iota, not one single, brief whiff of this truth?  Or even a vague perception of its realness?  Or the slightest concept of what being traumatized is, let alone its profound, lingering effects?  And that I--that I—was suffering from it? 
 
The answer is that the truth was not available to me.  And without that one, specific, imperative truth—that deeply hidden trauma was the cause of my consistent emotional torment—there was no possibility--nada, none, zero—for me to achieve wholeness, no matter what I did. 
 
You don’t know what you don’t know.  I needed sensible, comprehensive knowledge.  I needed to be taught truth and guided with accuracy and clarity.  Without that, there was no possibility for me to recognize that the dark void in the center of my chest was living, breathing trauma.  That it was unresolved trauma criticizing every decision I made.  Listening to and judging every word I uttered.  Watching and condemning every action I took, even while baking chocolate chip cookies. 
 
It was not, as I was indoctrinated to believe, a revered deity taunting me for my own good, simply urging me toward superior perfection.  All along the darkness at the center of my life was unresolved trauma.  Emotional implosions?  They were just a part of my daily life.  I didn’t know there was any other way to live.  But of course, there is.
 
Trauma is energy that defies visible shape and conventional reason.  The traditional, constricted perception of logic does not apply to trauma.  But unseeable energy is quite logical.  Energy connects all things.  It follows consistent pathways.  It ebbs and flows.  It becomes blocked.  Trauma is emotional pain.  Its counterpart is physical pain.  Trauma pain is as logical as physical pain.  All pain—both physical and emotional—can be logically managed, understood and remedied in one way or another. 
 
Unresolved trauma is blocked energy.  A clogged artery blocks the flow of blood to the heart.  Unresolved trauma blocks the flow of love to the heart.  Unlike an artery clogged with the energetic particles of plaque that can be seen and measured and therefore, remedied, trauma energy is ghostly.  It manifests as symptoms easily dismissed or immediately assigned to another cause.  That forty-something woman guzzling down a tumbler of wine at a festival last weekend didn’t just like the taste of Chardonnay.  It wasn’t physical thirst she was desperate to eliminate.  
 
Lack of knowledge about trauma and its daily, continuous effects locks its victim into a life narrowed down to emotional survival.  Enormous amounts of frantic energy are required to preserve just a semblance of emotional order.  Unfortunately, sooner or later desperate measures fail.   
 
There is nothing funny about unresolved trauma, but yeah, one way or another, you’re gonna ‘plode!  Sometimes it takes twisted humor to illuminate a straight truth.
 
Namaste
 
We are so focused on our search for truth,
we fail to consider how few actually want to find it. 
But it is always there.  
Whether we see it or not…
 Quoted from Chernobyl, the mini-series.    

ANONYMOUS STRANGER
 
by Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 Many years ago, so many that it’s now considered the Stone Ages, Woman’s Day magazine ran a special deal too enticing to ignore.  For a nominal fee and a few words scribbled on plain white paper, a renowned expert would analyze readers’ handwriting and provide a comprehensive report on many aspects of their life.  Financial, personal, professional, character traits, love—all the usual subjects, that as part of the human race, we’re forever curious about. 
 
Maybe, just maybe this anonymous stranger with his honed, interpretative skill would erase all my emotional pain with his analysis and insight, and along with it predict my future, which of course was going to be sunny and wonderful because that is the answer I was looking for.  Back then I believed in miracles, the kind where all it took to heal inner darkness was fervent praying of the rosary and a strike or two of benevolent lightning.  So much for fantasy.  Maybe a handwriting guy was the answer. 
 
Turns out, Handwriting Guy was my answer…but not in the way I thought.  Handwriting Guy gave me the answer: of where to look, of where to begin.  Right there on the printout in front of me sat a conspicuous sign pointing directly to the path that would lead me to healing.  It was a flashing light.  A neon road sign.  It may as well have been jumping up and down and calling, “Over here!  Over here!”  But I didn’t hear.  I didn’t see.  Decades passed.  Still I didn’t hear.  Still I didn’t see.
 
Amid the generalities in my report, two words stood out—actually screamed out: tyrannical upbringing.  My reaction was visceral: What the hell was this crazy guy talking about?  There was no tyrant in my young life.  Handwriting Guy was wrong.  Very wrong.  Absolutely wrong.  I wasted my money. 
 
Had I not been blocked by something I did not understand, I could have seen that my rigid emotional response—my noble denial—to Handwriting Guy’s conclusion was in truth a sign, a very, very big signal that something important was hiding in plain sight.  What I was so viscerally, yet so casually dismissing was the exact issue I needed to explore.  But it was the Stone Age and I just wanted to be dazzled and permanently healed.  My heart pain had nothing to do with any tyrant.  Just give me the light already… 
 
Handwriting Guy was correct.  There most certainly was a tyrant in my upbringing.  It took writing Woman In Hiding for me to see.  That tyrant—my stepfather—with his tyrannical, abusive behavior toward me and my brothers shaped and set the course for my entire life.  The echoes of his treatment still to this day test my sense of balance and wholeness.   
 
My tyrannical upbringing was the beginning of a force field of fear and chaos, where terror and pain fused into a type of survival that calls for a little girl to tiptoe about and squeeze into hidden corners.  Praying for invisibility.  But never finding it.  If I was ever to experience any kind of true wholeness, true resolution of emotional pain, then I needed to begin with understanding my tyrannical upbringing.  Handwriting Guy, an anonymous stranger in an article in an insignificant magazine that touted the wonders of meatloaf and drugstore face creams, saw this and reported it back to me. 
 
It is not that Handwriting Guy was some kind of weird mystic gifted with magical powers.  The energy of abuse and pain surrounded me.  Anyone familiar with how energy works would be able to intuit and read this.  Handwriting Guy was a healer, offering his practiced skill so that others might see.  And all those years later, I did see.  Seeing led to understanding.  Understanding led to knowledge, which led to emotional freedom.
 
Those two words--tyrannical upbringing—were a light, a place to begin.  A place to start clearing.  I was so quick to dismiss what now is so obvious.  Handwriting Guy’s message was that benevolent strike of lightning I was searching for.  Only it didn’t offer the instant healing, as I hoped it would.  But it led me to my path.  And when I was ready, the guiding words of that anonymous stranger were still there. 
 
That’s the way of healing energy.  When you’re ready, healers show up.  Or…you finally notice them.  A healer could be an anonymous stranger with the exact words you need to hear, or maybe the exact touch you need to feel, or the exact surroundings you need to begin the “journey of your life.”  That’s the beauty of energy healing.  It comes from anywhere. 
 
Namaste. 

SPITTIN’ ANGRY WOMEN
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
I am very familiar with angry women.  My mother was angry.  Spittin’ angry, in fact.  For the uninformed, spittin’ angry ranks high up there on the woman’s rage scale…next step involves the commission of a crime.  Say walloping some annoying shopper across the face in a grocery store parking lot.  That’s where my mother’s anger drove her.  And worse.  Dumb luck and the fact that she just looked like a sweet, little old lady was all that stood between her and jail time.  I wish I was exaggerating.  I’m not.  Last week I unexpectedly encountered another spittin’ angry woman courting criminal misdeeds.  Bodily harm to be exact.  Spittin’ Angry Woman wielded a shovel and threatened to beat me up with it.  Whattttt?????
 
All of us are well acquainted with anger of the messy variety.  But when stripped down to its purity and directed toward improvements and solutions, anger is a powerful motivating force capable of provoking necessary change and propelling light into darkened corners where evil hides.  Starved of emotional reaction to fuel its combustion, freed from accompanying turbulence, anger is a laser beam of potent energy that can drill down to the truth with focused precision.  Used intelligently and efficiently, anger is a magnificent tool. 
 
Unrestrained and chaotic, however, anger is nothing more than a temper tantrum any two year old could throw.  Only the consequences for a toddler are minor.  A few minutes of settling down time.  And the drone of a sensible grownup trying to explain the advantages of being nice.  But with adults, uncontrolled anger can ruin relationships and destroy families.  Angry adults crush their own heart’s desires.  My mother called it biting off your nose to spite your face.  Angry people litter society with seeds of anger that trail in their wakes.  And those seeds take root.  And then you have a spittin’ angry woman and her temper wrecking a beautiful spring day.
 
And that’s what it was, a gorgeous spring morning…
 
Out for a brisk walk, plugged into my own rock and roll world, suddenly I collided with the exact combination of energetic circumstances necessary for a spittin’ angry woman to indulge her rage.  Rage that was primed to explode long before—days, weeks, months, years—I rounded the corner and stumbled into her world.  Her trigger is unimportant.  It could have been anything at all.  I was simply the convenient match that ignited her internal inferno already waiting and looking for a reason to blow. 
 
She was a nondescript, grandmotherly woman laying down mulch, grooming her flower beds.  But in an instant while surrounded by the soft glow of a spring morning, she switched from gardener to mad woman and turned the shovel she was holding into a weapon.  And at that moment in time, for reasons rooted far deeper than she would probably ever acknowledge, Spittin’ Angry Woman set in motion a chain of events that easily could have ended in bloodshed and handcuffs.
 
Anger poisoned my mother’s life—her artistry, her relationships, her feelings about herself.  Supremely creative with an innate sense of color and balance, my mother was so often consumed by inner rage and hatred that it crippled her from blossoming into the remarkable woman she was meant to be.  With age, her anger only intensified, hardening further her heart to love and kindness, keeping her prisoner inside its lies.  My mother’s anger forbid love.
 
A connection exists between elder women and rage that leads directly to underground wellsprings of throbbing anguish and pulsating trauma, and clawing monsters that continue to roam their pasts.  Monsters powerful enough to burst into the present dragging with them chaos and violence.  My mom was a victim of violence and terror.  Trauma and panic controlled her life, protected the small, hurting child huddling in the bleak corners of her past.  Spittin’ angry women lug around unnamed demons ready at a moment’s notice to attack.  Maybe mistaking anger for courage in the way that my mother did.  Spittin’ angry women—hurting child-women—don’t understand that courage constructs, it does not destroy. 
 
Authentic power rises from truth.  True courage lies in generating the energy to go on the difficult quest for the haunting, unspoken truths buried beneath the urge to explode.  Anger is a symptom of pain that intensifies with age as our perceived power to control our lives decreases.  Anger and the trauma driving it are resolvable at any age.  And with the resolution of trauma, anger wilts and a brand new life blooms.  A life where creativity flourishes.  Where love thrives.  And relationships can heal.  Where a gorgeous spring day is pure celebration.  And a lawn is sweetened under the balm of tender attention and the appreciation of a stranger passing by.
 
Dementia finally blunted by mother’s anger and along with it, her capacity to experience joy.  I know where Spittin’ Angry Woman and her shovel are headed.  Remember that shopper in the parking lot?  I’ll be keeping to the opposite side of the road.
 
Namaste
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