Be happy

I have personally learned something VERY VALUABLE that I would like to share with you...

If you are in an abusive relationship; healing from an abusive relationship and fearing another abusive relationship; THIS message is for you. ONE THING that abuse cannot do is IMITATE JOY. An abuser or mentally ill person will PROJECT their negative emotions and "bad behavior" onto those who are "acting" in a way that will sustain that "belief". They really WANT to believe that they are not the ones who are abusive but that they are the victims, and being abused by us. 


So what do we do when we are the victim of projection; the denial of unpleasant and even painful revelation of emotions faced by another person; maybe one who has a mental illness? 

• PUT ON A HAPPY FACE...they cannot project their "Nasty attitudes" and "Nasty tone of voice" to someone who is not mirroring it back to them!!!!! (let that sink in for a moment)

• BE HAPPY...BE YOURSELF...NO ONE can make you less happy than you can make yourself, and there is NO ABUSE or PERSON who is powerful enough to take your joy away. HOLD ONTO YOUR JOY and smile and be happy around those who want to accuse YOU of abusing them...like an argument, it really isn't even a "conversation" if two people aren't talking. Don't try to appease them...BE HAPPY.

• It is so true that MISERY LOVES COMPANY; don't invite Misery to your house for dinner. INVITE JOY and HAPPINESS and you will see that Misery loves "other company" and should "stay home" if they aren't able to DUMP their negative feelings and self-concept on you. Problem solved. 

• I have studied abusive behavior a LONG time and this seems to be a SOLUTION to abuse. DON'T give it power by "being like it". Don't be the mirror which enables them to USE US to project feelings that they do not want to deal with onto us!!!

• JUST BE YOU!!! You can call me "smiley face" from now on because I am not "waiting" for anyone to make me happy. I will bring my own happiness into my life and keep it; if no one wants to be around happiness, that is fine with me. 

• You are worth it!!!

Catch a falling star...

Art by Josephine Wall

Have you ever "let your imagination run away with you?" I know that I had been afraid to imagine my life as I would truly wanted it to be. My "self" was damaged and feeling unworthy due to believing how an abuser defined me and constantly disrespected me. It might have also been partly due to my own fear of NOT getting what I thought that I had wanted. And then again, I was not willing to "imagine having what I had always wanted" for fear of being discontent in the "here and now".



If you have felt this way, we might both feared dreaming because we might have talked ourselves into believing that "dreams do not come true" for us. I felt this way for a long time and no doubt, you might have also. But one day, it changed for me. In one epiphanic moment, I was struck dumb and filled with grief over a co-workers tragic and sudden death. I became like a child who was watching a falling star. I had believed that if I saw a falling star, that I only had to make a wish upon it and my dream would come true. This "falling star moment" was my moment of getting past ALL my fear...looking deep within myself and deeming myself worthy of my dream, if not only for a moment. I sat there, staring deeply into my fear of NOT getting what I had always dreamed of and realizing that I needed to "make my wish known". I only had to "imagine" that my dream could come true...if only for a moment. A moment was all that I needed to make a wish upon it and then "catch my falling star". 

This artwork spoke to me. I have felt like the beautiful being catching the falling star in Josephine Walls beautiful painting. Just imagine, if only for a moment...when your "falling star" comes your way. Dreams do come true. Make your wish. Don't allow fear to come between you and your destiny!!!

When woundedness is NOT weakness

I have been meditating on WHY WE ARE IN SUCH DENIAL about the abuse that we have survived.

Sometimes I wonder "how well" we survived as we try to live our lives as it never happened.

This is one of the worst tragedies that I can imagine...to try to live a life without living it fully and freely. Living it in the woundedness and accepting it as a weakness when I believe that woundedness and KNOWING and being aware of our psychological and emotional anguish and angst is NOT a bad thing, it is NOT a weakness, it is a woundedness.


A child rides a bike, or skateboards or roller blades and falls and scrapes his knees and elbows until they bleed...THAT is woundedness...wounds that are visible, are palpable, or able to BE FELT and that NEED attention in order to heal.

This may be the reason why there is such SHAME surrounding mental illness and the damage caused by abuse. We are ashamed to see our woundedness and "push it aside" in denial, as one does with not wanting to remember the abuse and relive its pain.

Let's look again at the child...the child in us even. When we have endured OBVIOUS wounds, pain that hurts and may even be visible, just imagine if we DENY it and when our parent comes to clean us up, we push them away and say "What are you doing? I don't need you. I am not hurt". SEE, I am JUST FINE!!!". As a parent, we would be perplexed at the least and possibly very frustrated to see that our child is DENYING their wounds, treating them more like a "weakness" that brings shame but even MORE tragic than that, they try to "live with their woundedness" and pain and dysfunction rather than choose to "find themselves, heal from abuse and learn to dream again". They seem to have internalized  the effects of abuse and see themselves as "weak" and the shame that they feel is shunned and hid in the denial of their pain. How tragic.

I believe that there is not even ONE person who has not been "wounded" emotionally and psychologically, somehow, in their lives. We ALL have wounds that need healing. We ALL have weaknesses that we can turn into strengths. The great injustice that we do TO ourselves is when we confuse these two elements. We do not need to be ashamed of our wounds any more than we should see our weaknesses as permanent character flaws. We deserve to heal and live happy lives. We did not deserve to be abused. We did not bring mental illness or distress upon ourselves. We CAN grow and overcome a personality weakness that we see and acknowledge. We really are worth it.

***If you have read this and understand and feel that this has affected you, would you PLEASE join @/Singing a New Song on Facebook to comment and discuss and like and share the healing thoughts and encouragements that this community has to offer YOU.
YOU are worth it!!!

Plan on your dreams

At "Singing a New Song" we discuss and write about what appears to be a wide range of life experiences, from finding yourself and healing from abuse to learning to dream again. We can't stop there though. We hopefully can find ourselves somewhere along this continuum but let's not leave out an important step in SEEING OUR DREAMS COME TRUE...and that is PLANNING on your dreams.

Personal experience has taught me that just having dreams isn't enough. I rarely "gave into" my dreams because realizing that NOT living my dream caused me to be so dissatisfied with the life that I was living. I was just barely emotionally holding onto my life in an abusive (christian...and this is a whole other story in itself!!!) marriage and my dream "took me back" to a younger and more loving time with my First Love. Who wouldn't DREAM about love that was lost when you feel no love around you??? Well, I admit that I DID give into it, sparingly, but his image, love and my longing for him was so strong that I confessed to a good friend that I had a "bad/good" dream about "him" last night. I knew after this had gone on for some time that I was still in love with him and that my "real dream" was to be with him.

Before we can PLAN out our dreams we need to identify what they are. What do you feel and think when you hear the phrase "dream come true"? I knew what it was for me. I lived with it many years, believing that it was impossible to ever be with him again and to live out the rest of my life loving him and being loved by him. I thought that mainly because, though I was married, it was an abusive marriage with no end of the abuse in site. He had denied it infront of counselors, discounting what I said and felt. He even mocked the tears I cried but one thing he did not do...he could not say that I was unfaithful to him, though I had been "loving" my First Love in my dreams for years!!! I truly believe that I had only done that because I had emotionally been so damaged that I detached myself from my then-husband and did not feel guilt about "loving my First Love and being loved by him" in my dreams. There was NO guilt at all. I was not unfaithful to him; to NOT acknowledge my love for my First Love would have been unfaithfulness to myself and to my First Love.

Put your dreams into words or images. Write them down in a safe place, entrust them to a best friend/confidante and write poetry, sing songs, paint pictures, create collages or anything else that creatively expresses your dreams. Start LOOKING at them. Thinking about them. Bring their reality into YOUR reality. I wrote my First Love a song...I sang it all the time, hoping that I would stop loving him. It didn't happen. It was even a "goodbye song" and I couldn't say "goodbye" though we had not seen each other for 25 years. Though it did not do what I had wanted, it was expression of the dream that I had held in my heart for many years but would not acknowledge. A dream has a way of making itself known to us...we need to listen to our hearts.

Once your dreams "have a life of their own", it is time to "clear the way" to making room for your dreams (check out this blog entry: Making room for your dreams: Singing a New Song )...it is time to look at your life and allow yourself some deep soul searching and ask yourself "what do I really want in my life" and start "rearranging". In my life, I saw no way to bring him into my life, I would have to leave this life; my job, location, friends, even family and GO AFTER my dream!!! One day, my dream was made real to me in an epiphany. There was a tragic death of a coworker and through her sudden passing, I realized that it could happen to either me or my First Love and that could "end my dream" of ever seeing him again. I was motivated as I was never motivated before...I contacted him and within a week, we saw each other for the first time in 25 years. We are both older and a bit wiser and both had wanted "this dream come true".

The fact is: DREAMS DO come true for those who PLAN ON MAKING THEM COME TRUE. I hope that you will "find yourself, heal from abuse and learn to dream again" as I have. I can show you the way. I have been RIGHT where you are, right this very moment. No matter if you are single, married, divorced and wanting more for your life...I know where you are. You deserve to have the kind of life that only you can dream of...put some plans to your dreams.

NEVER give up on your dreams...they will never give up on you and neither will I.

It is always darkest before the Dawn

I remember getting up in the wee hours of a summer morning to pile into the car with my family as we headed to visit relatives in a nearby state. I never fully understood the reasoning that dad had for getting up in the ungodly hour, it must have been about 3 am and it was SO dark outside. Why do we want to start a journey in the dark??? 

Maybe because it just "happens to be dark" that we find that there are less cars on the road, less obstacles, and easier to travel with kids having fallen back to sleep in the back seat. 


For our healing journeys, it feels like we "find ourselves" in the dark and yearn for the "light of day" where we feel good about ourselves and others around us. We long for somewhere we do not feel disrespected and abused. Somewhere and with someone with whom we feel valued and loved. 

Ironically or not, I have always loved the night. It is peaceful and serene, for me. It may not be seen that way by everyone until we become aware of the darkness within ourselves and realize our great need to "find ourselves, heal from abuse and learn to dream again".

The "dark night of the soul" is a place that I have found to be a sacred meeting place with our hearts and minds. It allows us the solitude and introspection that we need to do the deep inner healing that we all deserve.

Don't be afraid of the dark...the "dark" within you. Embrace it and take it with you on your healing journey; it is a part of you that needs healing. 

You deserve to "come out of the dark", the dark of confusion and pain. Embrace your truth so that you can begin "Singing a New Song".