Discovering Emotional Freedom - The Voice of the Voiceless

So the other day, I was reading Tina Games's responses to me in the Moonlight Mom's cafe as I was trying to connect the dots regarding my unique gifts and talents and how can I serve the universe. Back in March 2011, Tina was the one who formerly introduced me to Christine.

Here's what she initially wrote:

Through your gift of words (language), you are like Moses. You speak to those who are feeling disconnected (the outsiders) - and you speak to their "need to be free" of this prison - and you connect with them through the power of emotion."

I truly believe your gift is wrapped up in the beautiful way you tell your "pain stories" - your "stories of darkness, trying to find the light" - your "stories around feeling disconnected" -- there's so much richness in your storytelling.

When I first read this, my response was like, "oh yeah, well, pain stories. Yeah, what's a story without a lot of pain!"

But on my way to work last Monday, it suddeny hit me. My mission here on earth isn't about helping people write just any old "life story," but "pain stories!" No wonder I was getting stuck!

Duh, duh, duh! Why didn't I connect with this earlier!

Part of my business vision of giving a voice to the voiceless has to do with allowing them to share their "pain stories" - their "stories of darkness, trying to find the light" and "stories around feeling disconnected."


For months I have been focused on the genre of "life stories" but what I want to do serves a moment in time - not to just fulfill a chapter for a memoir. In this fast paced world, we want to do anything to avoid the "pain" - but we are not always aware of it. And in our own way, we slip into those pain stories without fully healing ourselves.

The premise of the book and my chapter for the anthology "Pebbles in the Pond," (to be published in the spring 2012) has to do I believe, with transforming these pain stories. While we write these pain stories, we begin to understand the message and truth of why this situation/feeling/event is happening.

When we are in pain, we struggle emotionally.

We feel like outsiders. We become wrapped up with our words, thoughts and actions.

But deep down inside, we want to be "FREE" of this prison.

This is where I help connect my tribe through the "power of emotion."

We can truly claim our voices when we are able to connect with the power of emotion and transform ourselves.

How can we turn the power of our emotions into something life-changing?

It begins with how we express those stories.

Someone who is reading this might think this is just a bunch of nonsense - What can these "pain stories" offer me in addition to just sharing more pain?

Giving a Voice begins with...

allowing ourselves to trust the power of our pain stories - that everything is happening for the highest good

but...

We may want to find the light, yet we are feeling so disconnected that all we feel is the intensity of the emotion and how stuck we feel.


The power lies in how we are able to explore these pain stories in such a way that we also keep true to our own voice within.

This is also where I will share snippets of my own "pain stories" as a returning "immigrant" coming full circle with my American roots after living years in Israel as I show exactly the relationship between our reality and writing.

We are the driving force of our deepest darkest desires.

Voice comes from a place that is deepr and darker still.

By zooming in on a moment of time, (of pain) we take the time to analyze our own emotional disconnect.

Writing helps transform all the pain into something bigger, much more beautiful.

We don't need to see the pain as an enemy.

That Kind of Voice and Those Kinds of Lines

In Israel, I did a series of tests to determine my personality and which careers were best suited for me. One of the questions required to continue the line pattern depending if the pattern was squiggly, zig-zaggy or whatever. Later the counselor explained that my lines were the exact angle, width, line and shape.

"You need to fit in..." she had said.

That was more than seven years ago.

I'm wondering what those lines would look like now.... of course, I could do this at home, but it's different when you complete it under test conditions and in a different country....

This morning, I woke up with the voice and soul of a 15th year old LaGuardia high school student of Music and Arts.

It was...

"The...
scared but unbeknowst to others
"I know what I want voice but, I am
afraid to admit it
because I might truly be
that... kind of voice."

In Geometry, the right angles had to perfectly right.
In Voice, the notes had to be technically on key.
In Theory, the beats had to be carefully measured.

Well, all those things ARE important, but in retrospect, that gave me comfort, defines me at the time and we all know what adolescence means. There was only ONE problem - NO SOUL in those angles. NO UNCONDITIONAL LOVE in those songs.

Today, I am happy when I check off my "to-do list" - the mere sensation of seeing check marks gratifies me. Ah, the life of a mother-teacher-writer....

But I've come a long way since those lines.....

You've come a long way baby....

Write from the Voice of a Silent Witness

Today, I'm the silent witness. As I write one paragraph, one page for my book, under contract for Pearson on teacher collaboration for the sake of English Language Learners, (in addition to the transformative book) I've made a conscious decision to remain a silent witness.


As Davidji says:
"The witness is another aspect of who we are . . . the silent observer who can participate in every experience without becoming identified with it. When we are able to witness each moment with detached involvement, we can become more deeply aware of who we are, how we are, and why we are. It is in that moment that we can process our behaviors, see the consequences of our actions, and "feel" whether a choice is right. As Deepak Chopra suggests in his book The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, when we have a decision to make, we can place our hand on our heart and feel whether it is telling us to proceed or to draw back and reconsider."

But this process doesn't happen automatically.

First, I must detach. Meditation helps. Gives me empowerment. Gives me emotional healing.
I sometimes need to hear a human voice. So that's why Davidji's meditations give me that extra guidance.
But then I may also need to hear the voice that also "reports" that has an educational value. So I listened Adam Davidson's beautiful footage report, "An Optimist in Haiti."
Then I begin to write.
As I've suggested, if you're really stuck with any book writing project, try writing a letter to the person whose is the subject of the book. To whom the book will have the greatest impact on his/her life.

For example, I write from the point of view of that lonely teacher. Or that teacher who needs more help and support.
The more detached I am. The more I am able to nail "the voice."

And this is of course, true for all areas of life, as well.

Try it.

A Healing Wish (for the Jewish New Year)

Dear Healing:

So you just can't imagine how I felt this morning after yesterday's teaching and writing marathon. Although I had spent my time productively, there was something about the day that didn't quite fit. A busy unrestful state. Not totally present in the here and now. Responding to other people, things and events from a reactionary not responsive state. This is what I have done for most of my waking life.

I think now, I know better - much better. DavidJi is right - we need to choose our friends and our supporters (he calls them our "backers" which I like better) consciously and wisely. Energy feeds energy. For example, not everyone whom we think is a friend, truly meets that criteria. So yesterday, I made a nice long list of my "ideal friend." I'd like to think of this step as the first towards achieving emotional healing. How can we think BIG - global peace, for instance, when we still need to heal parts or ourselves and being? The choices we make aren't conscious choices? The friends we choose don't nourish/satisfy us on emotional, professional and social levels?

As I wrote my list, I thought of Depeche Mode's "Somebody" - you can watch the clip here.

And from this process, I acquired something - the gift of "clarity." In one word, it was the way I expressed at the moment a state of profound love. First the circles of energy that guide me to love first my son, husband and the outer circles family and those friends with whom we speak the same beautiful guided soul language.

And then I saw my tribe emerging - it was clear that I need a tribe who can connect with me in words - a creative language. And I saw that beautifully coming to me too. I think it had to do with the fact that I am now a "transformative author" for the Mastermind series. Yesterday on our first call, I connected with the energy of the most amazing people on this planet. I'm still writing my transformative story to be published in this anthology next spring - here is the cover. I'm so excited. I can hardly wait. I'm a "pebble." I make ripples. When we are together, we can also make "waves." So I honor those voices that also make up part of my HEALING.

So my healing affirmation for today: I will make conscious nourishing choices by bringing out the best in myself as I work calmly and effortlessly.

And this is my healing wish. For today, for Rosh Hashana - the Jewish New Year and eternally.

We transform the world by transforming ourselves.

Speak as if You Found Your Tribe

In just a few moments, you'll be walking up that familiar hill to your son's school. You have waited so long for this moment to spend time with him, and you know he's looking forward to it too.

All the way up the hill, you'll be people observing as if you've lived in Pittsburgh all your life. You call it, "quiet meditating." I call it, "craziness." But .. why not? The weather's in your favor, and you got a little time....just a little...

And then, there's a stranger of a man approaching you, who chats on his cell-phone oblivious of anybody - just like you have become. He thinks probably nobody understands his Hebrew. Nobody!

But you do... only it takes a few seconds to figure it out. He has to listen first and then talk. After all, this IS America. Not everybody is an Israeli - but of course you knew that, didn't you. But that doesn't mean anything for this Israeli - so what if he listens? He talks loudly, but the thing that is most important for you is... well, you UNDERSTAND every single word!

Well, you understand that this flicker of a common language between you and this stranger of a man, is a homey moment. In your hometown of NYC, people just don't have time and don't care if you speak Hebrew because everybody speaks Hebrew, but here's the thing... Pittsburgh, as you are finding out still, is not like NYC. People have time and patience. They also speak as if they found their tribe - that the other person understands even BEFORE they say something back.

You spend a few moments waiting for your son's class to show up from gym. And as you wait, you notice the children from the other first grade class. One skips, one runs to class. The teacher reprimands those that do not conform, and tells them to go back and they walk again... this time quietly. But because they know you are watching them, they walk with a "twinkle" in their step. Maybe two. But you didn't see that - did you?


And in your son's first grade class, you find the-child-in-me-tribe. Children just need to know you are part of their tribe; you can never fake having fun playing a board game. My son proudly joined me and our moment was ours to enjoy. In your game sharing tribe, we learn to share, take turns, "pick an apple," and have a few laughs. The child next to me says, "I like your son. He has red hair." You smile.

And back outside, the sun beats on the dirty sidewalks. You reach the corner of Murray and Forward and wait on the corner for the bus to take you up yet another hill. You've decided to make it easier for yourself by not making yet another trek up ANOTHER hill. A bus is a perfect place for "people watching."

There was this man on the bus who said to me, "bless you," when I sneezed. I had just pulled my nose away from my sleeve. And there was another man catching his breath with a walker. The older man had just a few hairs left on his shiny bald head and it looked as if they were soaked in sweat. It had to be because it wasn't raining. The young man with the walker said something that made the older man go into deeper in thought; the older man chatted with the bus driver as if they had lived in the same town all their lives.

"Now I remember when you could smoke on those T's going up that hill," the bus driver said.

"Yeah - that was another era," the older man said with a nonchalant expression. "So ...these are coach seats?" (referring to the seats, you know, the serpentine bus with an accordion stretcher in the middle that gracefully opens and closes when the bus makes a turn) I had never thought of the seats on a 61D city bus in Pittsburgh as "coach seats." Wait... did he said, "Coach seats?"

I keep a glittery artificial smile to calm the stressed lady across from me. As long as I'm wearing shades - it won't be hard to pull this smile off.

So speak as if you know and found your tribe.

Your tribe is waiting for you. I'm sure you know that by now. If you don't, well, I can tell you that everybody has a tribe. Only it took me words and years of those words to find out my voice through that tribe....


**********

When I hear Hebrew on a Pittsburgh street in Squirrel Hill, I know there isn't this foreign language acting as a barrier between me and the speaker as it was before I left for Israel. I can play the role of the "silent one." Or I can respond in Hebrew. Whatever. I. Choose.

And now, that I've joined a tribe, I can be part of several - for instance, a "bus tribe," or, at "the-corner-waiting-for-the-bus tribe," a "bagel factory" tribe - everything that is language and everything else that isn't - food included. Because a tribe that is universal is also understood.

Israeli "Sunday" State of Mind

You know you are not in Israel, when you don't have to start thinking of Sunday as a workday. As Saturday evening creeped along yesterday, I began thinking, "I got to get my lessons organized to prepare myself for the energy of Sunday..." Then I stopped myself silly...

"Wait, this is one of the great perks of living in the States." You get an EXTRA day to sink into the energy of the weekend. While I was teaching in Israel and a Jewish holiday would happen to fall on a Sunday, I would immediately think, "This is the "holy" weekend that I miss.

Shabbat in Israel, which begins on sundown on Friday and ends on sundown on Saturday, goes in and out with the flash of light.

Having an extra day really does the soul an extra ounce of good. Sundays in the States are...

the "anything-you-want-to-do-day,"
so you can
catch-up

You can be:
lazy,
sleepy,
perky-ready-to-go
anything
you
want....

But truthfully, it's been a journey to find myself with "Sunday energy" ever since returning to live in the States in 2007.

Daddy usually works on a Sunday and it's time for me to catch-up on a lot of writing projects and time to spend with my son. But it's a different kind of energy. I prefer this energy truthfully.

After meditating earlier this morning, I had to make a wonderfully bureaucratic call to Israel for a pending issue and the skype call I have scheduled with my folks in Israel and our upcoming visit to NYC for Rosh Hashana put me in a Israeli "Sunday" state of mind.

That's when I dipped into the energies of Sundays past...

walking through Bryant park after eating Sunday Israeli brunches at my father's apartment right across
doing the NYT crossword puzzle,
bagels, lox and cream cheese.


Well,this Jewish/Israeli can have it all... right?

I prefer the laziness of the American Sunday, but just for now, I'll settle with the energy of writing about all this past energy vicariously.

My son however, has a Sunday energy that's all his own...but, that's another story....

Memory Writing for The Last Garin Girl (WIP - Memoir)

The Last Garin Girl - memory writing for memoir, WIP (very rough)

If you're looking by the way for a good intro on how to get started with memoir writing, here's a great article by Zinsser.

http://www.theamericanscholar.org/how-to-write-a-memoir/




I ended up staying in Danielle's room that night. Something I never thought I would find myself doing. You see, Danielle was one of those stout, annoying little twit guys in our garin (a group of young people serving in the Israeli army together for an extended period of time and serving on settlements and on kibbutzim – plural for kibbutz) who would speak Hebrew in the most annoying way, but I never said anything directly. The girls made fun of him especially when he said, "basar" and he trilled on the "r" for meat.

Or he would say, "ein ba'ayah," for no problem and elongate the 'a' syllable that was so expressive and comical. Each time he would elicit from us an uproarious barrel of laughter.

Truthfully, I don't know what made me want to poke fun at poor Danielle's accent when mine was terribly American as if I was chewing on my own cud.

Now that I think about it, he had the most lyrical and calmest accent.

He would walk bowl legged everywhere and the two Uzis or M-16's he slung across his shoulder from either side dwarfed him even further into the Gaza strip sand, but he was strong and sturdy.

When he told us that he had a [health profile] "profil tishim vsheva - 97" - I knew he would be one of those soldiers who wouldn't complain.

The kind of tenderness I tried to find in Danielle – was like finding a needle in a haystake. He was good friends with the two Gustavos – one who left the army and one who stayed – also bowl legged. The other nineteen year old Gustavo was Danielle's best friend – they both spoke a mile a minute in Spanish…


Danielle loved picking on and teasing the Russian girls. They got into water fights and he was good at pushing them into the pool when they least expected it. I can hear Eina now screaming, "Danielle, azov oti – leave me alone!" in her high pitched screech.

But yet, he never seemed to do any of these things to me. In fact, none of the guys in our garin did. I didn't come across as a tease. I was the classy New Yorker. At least I tried to be. A New Yorker with whom he had eyed forever and I could never see myself being intimate with...let alone with any of the others...

Jake from Canada who thought he was in Vietnam every time he had a gun in his hands. "I'm gonna kill those mother fuckin' Arabs!"

Or Robin from England who was constantly sneezing in everyone's faces

Or Andy who served in England's navy

Or David from the USA who always spoke to me in Hebrew

Or Doug also from the USA who was hardly to be found

Or Akiva from the former Soviet Union who complained all the time

Or Igal, his secretary who smoked all the time

Or Luis, from Spain who had an expansive imagination and predicted I would have seven children.

Or Raul from South Africa who married Geraldine, from France.

Or Darren, from England who wanted to throw all the girls from our garin including me.

Or the two Gustavos….sweet guys from Argentina

Or Larry, who lived with Indian tribes in Arizona for years, the soft-spoken one.

But Danielle.. why get intimate with Danielle? He was a hard worker – both at the base and at the kibbutz.

His forehead always lit brilliantly in the hot sun – shone until the sun burnt it one day to a pulp. I thought hey, this much be what it is to fry an egg on this guy's poor head.

When he told me he came from Uruguay and I immediately envisioned, runaway tunnels, and paradise of coves and islands. Don't know why....

But when he wasn't a soldier or working on the kibbutz, he was a flirt. And when he wasn't a flirt, he was trying to be helpful. Helpful in bed that is. It annoyed me so to see how he would stick his tongue out and rub it all around his teeth when he was around the other girls. Some sick joke. He was crass. He always walked with his boots pointed outwards – he looked like Bozo the clown with his bowl legged walk and his shirts never fully tucked in. I couldn't stand him and kept my distance. He would always miss at least one belt strap – the opposite of Andy from England who served as a fashion stylist for the guys. As once a former captain in the English navy he had always said that it was important to dress "clean" and "proper."

He thought he was sexy especially on Friday nights when we went to the disco; I thought he was putrid. Everything about him repulsed me....but once day I found myself following him to his room on a dimly lit path. That night would change me forever.