Dream Your Way Through Darkness

Welcome to a New Year. Physically speaking, January is the dark time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. It is a time when one can look into the dark, to know it, to find a way through it and in doing so to discover that is hidden inside. You may find your energy, your sense of purpose, your courage. You may celebrate the effort. From that, you will celebrate yourself.

Martin Luther King did just that. He was born this month, January 15th, in 1929. He walked a long dark way and helped many to freedom and a higher sense of self. He found a purpose traveling through the darkness of segregation. He found help in the light he found on the other side, in the idea, in the dream of change made possible, through the courage one can find by surviving the dark. He advanced a dream.

The dark can be found in everyone and anywhere. It is both outside in a night without moon or stars and inside a room with no light. It is in us. It lives in our memories, in our childhood nightmares, in our collective minds and in our broken hearts. It grows or shrinks, depending on who we are, where we live, who we live with, when we live and certainly how we live.

There are some of us who are courageous enough or desperate enough or lucky enough to reach into it and find a path out to it. And there are some who are desirous enough to edge our way through it and by doing so to clear away its hold on us.

It holds us as fear does and as pain - unexpressed - does. It hold us because someone or something brings it to us or we find it on our own. Some, unknowingly, seek it out or want to lay down in it. Some want to disappear.

The young people I work with today were often born into it. We often hear children say they are “afraid of the dark.” They tend to want to sleep with the light on. They struggle to keep the dark away. They are afraid. But really deep inside, they are grieving. Some are even physically damaged. Others are emotionally and mentally damaged. These young people want light. Really they want new parents. They want any parents. They want teachers. They want a home. They want to be able to think clearly, to trust, to be held, to dare, to hope.

A fifteen year old girl I work with was born addicted to cocaine, with a club foot and high anxiety. Through our work, she can just begin to feel her way through her own harmed body and mind because she can imagine a path through the dark. One that takes her into poems and stories. She loses herself in images she transforms into words. In that imagined realm, she walks a bridge over her own dark pain and fear. She reaches down and pulls stories out. She follows her written achievement. She celebrates her dream of publishing a book. She feels empowered. She hopes.

A young man I know draws or paints the images he finds in the dark places inside his mind. He feels stronger. He learns he does not have to be a victim of his dark past, of his nightmares, of his memories. He can transform them on a page, on a canvas. He wants to paint murals so others can see how he walked through the death of his father and the imprisonment of his mother, toward himself, toward who he can be.

Another girl I work with, who has no home, cries as she tells her story. She transforms who she is and who she has been into a dream because that is the only way she can survive through the pain. She has a dream of being an immigration lawyer to help people like her father, who was unfairly deported and forced to leave his family without income. She misses her father. Life is dark, it is frightening. Her mother and siblings are all frightened. Through it all, she feels energized, thinking of how she can change her life and the world by studying hard. She is indeed a high achiever. She will graduate this year, and she plans to go on to college.

All of these young people struggle with darkness. They have courage. They develop faith in their struggle. They use their own selves, their souls, their force. They survive. They have a dream. So, remember to always dream, and always start with a dream. That is what Martin Luther King, Jr’s famous words reminds us of – “I have a dream.”

The Light from the Darkness - A Time of Blessings

Feliz Navidad. Merry Christmas and best hopes for all your days ahead. This is a time of year when we celebrate a light born out of darkness. It is a time to welcome rebirth and new visions...to celebrate our abundance…to know our own strength. And to know our power.

I have been working with children and adults who, in the midst of their own suffering, are able to find their abundance. They are able to emerge out of childhood and young adult patterns that include severe abandonment and abuse. These are individuals who can find, at the core of their inner selves, a light or force that gives them a sense of grace, of joy and of possibility. When asked why they believe now in their future, they say “I feel strong. I feel full of hope.” 

A woman I spoke with a few days ago who is worried about paying her rent, feeding her family and staying strong physically as well as mentally and spiritually, said she feels at peace in spite of all her troubles because she believes in herself. She feels she can do what she has to do because she believes in her own abilities. That when she rests at night she can meditate as she has learned to do and feel the force come through her like a river of light.

A young adult who is a survivor of childhood abuse and is plagued by nightmares resulting from that abuse, can look into the corners of her dreams and bring out what she can do, will do and sometimes must do to survive and follow her special path forward into the light. She is studying to become a healer. She has begun to trust that she can heal others and that she can celebrate because she has overcome a great deal because of who she is at her core.

Another woman I work with has just begun the journey of reclaiming her life after a long hardship. She overcame tremendous obstacles and despite being knocked down more than once by those who feel threatened by the power of her core inner self, she emerged a hero to herself. She left me a message the other day to tell me that in this holiday season, even though she has no family, she feels joy and hope for her future. 

These stories and more are ones that I take pride in helping to shape as the individual learns how to heal himself or herself.

This is hope. This is abundance. This is grace. This is the miracle of this time of year.

Blessings are everywhere because they come from inside of each of us.

The Orphan

Every November in the U.S. we celebrate Thanksgiving, a time that we typically associate with family members coming together for a feast to give thanks for what we have, and to share with and remember those who have less. This year, let me share with you a state of being I see often in the people I work with. It is called the Orphan. You may remember certain characters in classic American literature such as Little Orphan Annie, Huckleberry Finn or Oliver Twist, and you likely also remember the recently passed Steve Jobs, founder of Apple. They all share a common characteristic about them. They were abandoned (“orphaned”) at some physical (and/or emotional) level by their parent(s) at a very young age. Orphans may also be actual children who are currently being abandoned at a level that triggers a primal cue about the need to survive alone.

The reasons for that abandonment and how these orphans became orphans are many - drug and alcohol abuse by the birth parents, poverty, a death, divorce or mental impairment. Abuse that is severe enough or constant, is experienced as abandonment by the child. Abandonment occurs when a parental figure is so preoccupied with himself or herself that the child is not nourished or oftentimes seen (or known) at all. The child receives a primal cue very early in life that he or she is not safe or protected in this world.

The child struggles to find himself or herself in the place where safety outside of the self has lessened or disappeared altogether. Fear and pain are present and need to be absorbed and changed into growth. That is the great challenge.

Each child needs an adult. If no one is present or the person(s) who are present (i.e. the birth parents) are inadequate at a deep nurturing level, the child reaches within. It is in that inner place, not named or perhaps consciously known, that the child does or does not find the strength to thrive.

Survival becomes the issue and answer to the primal cue received of the lack of safety and protection. The capacity to love oneself must be considered. The capacity to use whatever natural, inherited, genetic abilities latent at the core are used. The child needs guidance, and that guidance has to come from within, i.e. all of this happens unconsciously. The child reaches out for a teacher, a mentor, a guide - to anyone who can hold the thread. The child pulls on that thread and unwinds it, bringing it to the self. If the child is lucky, there is someone who responds. If not, and the child is able at the core, that “someone” has to come from within.

It is the core energy or force within the child that makes the difference. If the child has the capacity and that capacity is experienced, then there is hope. For the Orphan, there always needs to be hope. Hope is a state of mind and heart. It is energy that gives the child the ability to continue. That hope is born out of relationship and spirit. If the relationship is weak, the child turns to spirit. Spirit comes from within the child. Spirit is experienced and seen as energy. That energy moves the child along through life and creates in others a response so that the child is seen as attractive, welcoming, strong, able, loving, warm. Others then come close.

The Orphan reaches out. At the same time, the Orphan holds to the core. Trust is earned only after much time and always, the Orphan relies on self. The ability to rely on another is rare and easily pulled back.

The Orphan is seen as independent, capable and able to help others. That is true if the core self is strong enough. A strong core determines whether or not or how well the Orphan survives.

There are many well-known leaders, scientists, artists and writers who are orphans – we know of them because they learned to survive and thrive on their own in the world without the safety and protection that those with positive parental guidance and nourishment received. What most of us do not know is that they were orphans. Research studies over the the last 30-40 years on these orphans have discovered a link to genius based on receiving that primal cue early in life.

A client I have been working with exclaims happily, “Orphans Rule!” By that she means orphans continue in a strong and powerful life in spite of loss. They survive hardship at the basic child level. They know that within themselves there is a force that feeds them, that informs them, that is who they are. Yes, they wish or dream of parental support. They sometimes create mythical parents. They attach to surrogate parents. They listen to parental voices unheard outside dreams.

The Orphan is often highly creative. The creative is an expression of their core. Of their independence. Of their aloneness. They know that all relating is temporary though lovely, though wanted, though divine.

Their first and strong bond is with the self, out of the self and from that spot they can love and create and thrive, if they are lucky and if there is hope.

So this Thanksgiving, let us be thankful for The Orphans, those in this world who learned to thrive despite their circumstances and made this world richer with experience, creativity, genius and innovation for the rest of us.