Climb on out of the cage….

Source: Climb on out of the cage….

Climb on out of the cage…..

Spring is quickly running into summer, with soft breezy nights, greenery and bulbs a-flourish, kids and couples staying outside to parade along tree-lined paths arroyos and streams. In short we are going into the out of doors, that place of our origins.

Anxiety has grown in this great country of ours, just as people have taken to the indoors, the tv screen, to the screen you are reading from. Have you seen Gorillas in zoos, particularly the old fashioned zoos where cement slab meets primate? Eyes frozen and dull.

Newsflash: we are primates. We need nature bathing. That’s the in-vogue name the Japanese are calling time out in nature. Research is showing just how vital it is to get out on walks in nature, not cement city blocks

So if you don’t have a dog or a pet centipede, may I urge you to take it to the dirt, maybe even without the ear buds. My lab companion Frannie and I already took to the trails this morning. We saw the new buds and some of the old unraveling. We heard bird songs. We collected vitamin D into our skin and coat. We gathered peace and inspiration in the vistas and the views, and we gathered relaxation and wonder as we pulled in the perfume of the spring morning air. Inoculate yourself with wonder and stamp out anxiety. Check into nature.

Candida Jones, Psychotherapist

Traveling Trauma

I was watching the post-quel or prequel or whatever quel of film “300”, the tale of the mighty 300 or so Spartan soldiers whose rose to fight the Persian’s expansive army. I paid attention in hoping to gain some insight into my militaristic –Spartan ancestry as we all carry our ancestors with us.

 

I was delighted to note that Spartan women, unlike the Athenians and other women of the era, were considered equals to men, educated and allowed to own property. This seemed just and right and my admiration for my ancestry locked in. I wasn’t much for their militaristic orientation nor their proclivity for infanticide, but I did admire their ability to serve the majority through discipline and serving the community as a whole.

 

As the story unfolded, I discovered that the Persian army was poised to destroy the greeks under the devilish commander, a Greek woman, who was raped as a young girl as she watched her family murdered. In that moment of abject horror and trauma, she vowed to return to her native Greece and to destroy the Greeks who had killed her family and defiled her. She claimed her blood and birthright Greek, her heart Pure Persian.

 

This a story of trauma and PTSD and how it can alter the fate of individuals, of families and ultimately of nations.

 

And then I consider the trauma that the author of Mary Poppins, PL Travers, the daughter of an alcoholic whose father died in her seventh year and how her trauma translated, at least in part, to the creation of Mary Poppins. A balm to the troubled family—the celebration of a partnership modeled society, a page turn away from patriarchy….a celebration of the suffragettes of that era.

 

And I consider how the childhood traumas of Trump and Clinton and Bernie have all woven separate textiles, some life affirming—some not so much.

 

Trauma travels around us daily. May we seek to join with those whose traumas and fears and hopes that might differ from ours with one real goal in mind: To support life on this planet, not just survival, for it is in the mending of the broken that we may all thrive.

 

As we gaze at the horizon of 2017 may we keep our eyes poised north to Standing Rock and the water protectors there. The Lakota have been traumatized as history tells….But in their trauma they have not lost sight of protecting Mother earth—-she who sustains us all. Let’s pay attention to our individual and collective traumas, bring them into consciousness and place in our alchemical basins the ingredients of strength, kindness, discernment, and ownership of our strengths and our shadows. Let’s be clever as we mix our magical alchemical brews so as to support life fairness and love in the years ahead.

| Candida Jones, Licensed Psychotherapist, Santa Fe, New Mexico on WordPress.com

Sou

I was watching the post-quel or prequel or whatever quel of film “300”, the tale of the mighty 300 or so Spartan soldiers whose rose to fight the Persian’s expansive army. I paid attention in hoping to gain some insight into my militaristic –Spartan ancestry as we all carry our ancestors with us.

 

I was delighted to note that Spartan women, unlike the Athenians and other women of the era, were considered equals to men, educated and allowed to own property. This seemed just and right and my admiration for my ancestry locked in. I wasn’t much for their militaristic orientation nor their proclivity for infanticide, but I did admire their ability to serve the majority through discipline and serving the community as a whole.

 

As the story unfolded, I discovered that the Persian army was poised to destroy the greeks under the devilish commander, a Greek woman, who was raped as a young girl as she watched her family murdered. In that moment of abject horror and trauma, she vowed to return to her native Greece and to destroy the Greeks who had killed her family and defiled her. She claimed her blood and birthright Greek, her heart Pure Persian.

 

This a story of trauma and PTSD and how it can alter the fate of individuals, of families and ultimately of nations.

 

And then I consider the trauma that the author of Mary Poppins, PL Travers, the daughter of an alcoholic whose father died in her seventh year and how her trauma translated, at least in part, to the creation of Mary Poppins. A balm to the troubled family—the celebration of a partnership modeled society, a page turn away from patriarchy….a celebration of the suffragettes of that era.

 

And I consider how the childhood traumas of Trump and Clinton and Bernie have all woven separate textiles, some life affirming—some not so much.

 

Trauma travels around us daily. May we seek to join with those whose traumas and fears and hopes that might differ from ours with one real goal in mind: To support life on this planet, not just survival, for it is in the mending of the broken that we may all thrive.

 

As we gaze at the horizon of 2017 may we keep our eyes poised north to Standing Rock and the water protectors there. The Lakota have been traumatized as history tells….But in their trauma they have not lost sight of protecting Mother earth—-she who sustains us all. Let’s pay attention to our individual and collective traumas, bring them into consciousness and place in our alchemical basins the ingredients of strength, kindness, discernment, and ownership of our strengths and our shadows. Let’s be clever as we mix our magical alchemical brews so as to support life fairness and love in the years ahead.

rce: | Candida Jones, Licensed Psychotherapist, Santa Fe, New Mexico on WordPress.com

Sand play

Sand play.

Sand play, a journey of the soul…..

Sand play.

Initiation

When the ice on the Chena River
finally breaks up
it cracks everywhere
all at once

What was solid and six feet thick
suddenly fractures
a jigsaw puzzle
of a million white ice chunks

flowing downstream to the Bering Sea.

Glacer ice cracks, too
with an unearthly sound
that reverberates off cark canyon walls
and alters the air we breathe
and the thoughts we think.

For a moment, after the echoes stop,
nothing is as it was.
The entire Creation re-sets itself in the silence.

One thing is true:
When ice fractures
There is no going back.

           Carol Parker Ph.D.
           January 2013