Lambent

Reiki

2008-03-13T02:02:00.002-04:00

I got a double whammy reiki treatment tonight from a couple I know. It was pretty intense...at one point I was asked to open my heart and when I did I exhaled and I heard my girlfriend take a sharp breath in and then I heard her sobbing. I saw a few different colors, a few odd moving patterns and...a few people sitting around a table. I have no idea. It was like I realized I was visualizing something and shut it off immediately. I was told that it will make sense - it's likely something that hasn't happened yet. I feel a lot "lighter"..less stressed, looking forward to sleep, looking forward to making more jewelry tomorrow and mailing a package and yes. I'm going to be going for a treatment once a week for the next two weeks and probably more frequently after that depending on how I feel :)

I have manifested so many things over the past few weeks. I'm doing a 100 Day Challenge which involves putting the laws of attraction into place. We're supposed to do video blogs at least once a week, and do other practices, but the past few weeks I've just been so extremely freaking stressed that I stopped -everything-. I'm already half way through my challenge and it's been like 20 days since I posted a video. Tomorrow I'll be doing a video blog about the manifestations (some are pretty freaking HUGE!) and yeah. If you'd like to join the 100 Day Challenge check out http://ccor.tv, or if you're on Ning - http://100days.ning.com.

I love Spring!

2008-03-09T15:29:00.004-04:00

When Springtime rolls around I start to feel like I'm finally coming back to life. I feel renewed, revived and like I have a fresh start or a clean slate.

I've been having a lot of trouble sleeping and have noticed an increase in my anxiety levels for the past few weeks thanks to all of the stress I've been under. All of my self-care practices have been placed on the back burner and I'm feeling the effects from that, so this morning before crawling into bed (at 9:30 am...) I promised myself that I would get back on track and start implementing some routines to make my life a little easier.

So for now, here's my tentative bedtime routine:

10 pm: Bath (I'm going to take back my bathroom once and for all!)
10:30 pm: Paper Journal - affirmations, goals, ideas
11:00 pm : Meditate
11:15 pm: Go to sleep

Going to sleep just after 11 pm is going to be hard for the first week or so, but once I get on track I just have to stick to it. I've also got some plans and goals for the other areas of my life but one step at a time right?

Interesting Flashbacks

2008-03-05T17:08:00.001-05:00

I haven't had a flashback to any of my abuse in YEARS. I think it's because I've reached a point where I can accept and deal with the facts of what happened, so now I just have to work on the healing part - releasing the anger and rage, the pain and sorrow, and doing it all in a healthy manner. My guitar is an excellent release - when I'm angry I'll play it for hours - sometimes learning up to 3 songs in one night. I've only recently started to cry again, and I've been allowing myself the TIME to have a good cry. Admittedly some days I give myself 5 minutes and tell myself to buck up, but still..5 minutes is more than I was giving myself last month! When I'm feeling anxious, or even calm and happy I dive into my jewelry making. It puts me into an almost meditative trance and I'm not thinking about anything other than the task at hand.

Around Christmas I had a flashback to when I was about 3 years old. My parents had hired a young boy to babysit me, and he was awesome. One night he was giving me a bath...I was lying on my stomach in the bathtub and suddenly I felt his hand spank my bottom. I remember flipping over and asking "What was that for?" or something like that and he told me not to tell anyone. I didn't, and I forgot all about until this year. It came to me in an odd way...I was visiting my father and they just recently installed a jacuzzi bathtub. Every time I visit the women in my family always ask me the same question - "So are you going to have a spa night tonight?" Then it dawned on me. I hate bathing. I really hate bathing at somebody else's house. I used to scream and cry when it was bath time, and it wasn't until I was 14 that I was able to have a shower. If it wasn't for the constant barrage of questions regarding spa nights when I'm visiting I likely would have never felt the need to question myself as to why I feel the way that I do.

When I returned home after the holidays I told my best friend about the flashback. I thought maybe I was over-reacting - nobody really has memories of when they were 3 years old...do they? The look of horror mixed in with a healthy dose of disgust that passed over her face said it all. "So you think that's really what the issue is? Is it possible that this really did happen?" I asked her. Being that she's not a psychologist or a medical practitioner of any sort she couldn't give me a firm answer but she did say that the mind has an incredible talent to suppress memories for a very long time.

About a week later I had another flashback. I was 7 or 8, and we had this new kid in the neighborhood. My mother and I both remember what she said the first time she laid eyes on him..."That boy is going to be a serial killer some day...he's evil...it's in his eyes." It didn't take long before he was making it a habit to lock the girls of the neighborhood into a shed and touching us at knife point. None of us ever told anyone..the kid was scary crazy. When we moved here, his parents stopped in for a visit. We hadn't seen them in a few years and it turns out that they had been living here for a few years. They stopped by for one reason and one reason only - to warn me that he was going to the same high school I would be going to and to stay as far away as possible. I remember talking to my parents about it and wondering why they had warned me...I didn't remember the shed incidents at that time.

At my last counseling appointment I told him that I was having this weird flashbacks to when I was 3 and 7 and that I didn't understand what the hell was going on. He assured me that we'd work through the issues and the next week he was off sick and hasn't been back since...

This past Saturday one of my best friends moved out of town for a few months to get some training for work. He asked me if I wanted to go for coffee before he left town and if I would mind giving him a ride to the bus depot. I drove over and picked him up but could not shake the feeling that I was going to burst into tears at any moment. When we got to the bus depot he left me in the car alone for a few minutes to go buy his ticket. I sat there and just let my thoughts wander...2 more flashbacks.

The first one, I was in kindergarten and we were asked to draw a self-portrait. I had just learned the week before that my name actually means butterfly and I was absolutely thrilled by this revelation. I decided that I would draw a butterfly for my self-portrait. I got yelled at by the teacher - we were not drawing insects today, we were drawing a self-portrait. Look at Billy's picture - see how it kind of looks like him? THAT'S a self-portrait.

The second flashback happened right after the first. I was sitting in a different classroom and we were coloring hearts for Valentine's Day. Everyone else was coloring their hearts in the normal heart colors - red and pink - so I decided that I was going to color mine blue and purple. I got yelled at by this teacher - hearts are NOT purple and blue they are red and pink! If I had only looked around the room at all the Valentine decorations I would have clearly seen that hearts are red and pink.

My friend returned from buying his ticket and I shared what happened with him. It was just so odd...why am I going back to getting yelled at by my elementary school teachers?! Then it hit me - I'd been wondering why it's only been since this past September that I really took hold of my creativity and did something with it. I was taught from a young age that creativity and imagination were bad things, so I shut them off! As I was working through my thoughts out loud I could see my friend slowly start to smile. The announcer came over the PA to remind everyone to tag their luggage and I was jolted back to 2008. We said our see ya soon's and hugged and I slowly drove away as he boarded the bus. It wasn't until I drove past my old high school that I finally exhaled and felt the tears on my face. Before I really had time to think about it I heard a voice say, "Clearing out the old to make way for the new."

This afternoon, I finally understood. I thought it was about my friend and how letting go of HIM is making way for the new but that wasn't making any sense. I put the pieces together and realized that the reason why I'm having these flashbacks and why these issues are coming to the surface is so that I can deal with them once and for all and move forward.

Forward...into the new...into the light...into the JOY!

Rejuvination? Let's hope so.

2008-03-04T21:22:00.001-05:00

Some times a break is the best thing. Whether it's 15 minutes or a whole day, it's important to take some time out for self-care. I haven't been doing this lately and I'm definitely noticing it. I haven't done a video blog in weeks, I haven't been doing my meditations or my affirmations, I haven't taken the time to really visualize the life I desire and deserve and I'm definitely noticing a lull in the creativity department. The important part is that I'm aware of it and that I know what it is I need to do...now it's just a matter of taking the proper steps.

My counselor has been out of the office with nobody to cover for him since the beginning of January. My insurance company has denied my claim because of this, so first thing yesterday morning I contacted the sexual assault center that came out and supported the rally on February 19th and I have a 'crisis' appointment set up for next Monday so that I can at least get a referral and some resources. My counselor is expected to return to the office within the next few weeks, and so right now my goal is to keep my wits about me until he returns. Once he gets back then everything will start to straighten out - whew!

I have everything I need aside from an income. I'm hoping to get that figured out by the end of the week...at least a temporary solution! You know how it is - the pile of money dwindles down and the pile of bills keeps getting higher and higher. So..until he gets back it's MAJOR self-care time. Meditation, yoga, baths, cuddle time with the furbabies, blogging, video blogging, visualizations...and breathing. Never forget to breathe.

Where have I been?

2008-02-27T23:17:00.001-05:00

I was born on a Canadian military base in Lahr, Germany.

I was only 13 months old when I had epiglottitis, which resulted in full cardiac and respiratory arrest and I was pronounced dead for 5 minutes. I was able to talk and walk a little bit before this all happened and afterwards I had to relearn how to crawl. I had to go to physiotherapy once I started school because I didn't have any motor coordination skills - I couldn't even hold a pencil properly.

We moved from Lahr back to Canada when I was 3. We moved to Nova Scotia because out of the postings my father was offered the one in Nova Scotia was closest to a children's hospital should another attack come up. We lived in Nova Scotia for 2 years before moving to Ontario. I started kindergarten and we stayed until I graduated the 4th grade before packing up and moving again, this time to New Brunswick for another 5 years.

New Brunswick was where the first rape occurred. I was 11 and he was a youth group leader at the local church. I had been going for about 6 months before anything happened, and nobody ever felt that anything was off. My father had met him and thought that he was decent, and he was like a big brother to all of us there. One night he asked me to stay behind and help him clean up after youth group, and not having any reason to think anything was amiss I agreed. I was raped at gun point in one of the back pews of the church and was told that if I ever told anyone not only would he kill me, he would kill my family. I still have issues attending weddings and funerals at churches..once I'm past the few back pews I'm fine..but walking into and out of the church is a task in and of itself. My mother and I have sort of talked about that time period and all she can say is that she knew something had happened, something had changed her baby girl - she just didn't know WHAT. I became extremely violent towards my mother during these years - I got so mad that I once stopped on her foot and almost broke her toe. I wasn't even 13 yet. I had stopped caring about my physical appearance - I wouldn't bathe for days, I stopped taking care of my teeth. He always told me that he loved my smile and that it was what made me so beautiful...if that's what guys who think you are beautiful do to you then I'll happily be ugly the rest of my life I thought.

When I was 14 we moved back to Ontario, where I've pretty much stayed. When I was 18, on New Year's Eve 1998, my parents told me that they were getting a separation and that I needed to decide which parents I wanted to live with. I struggled with the decision so much that finally my father told me that I was going to live with my mother. Not even 2 weeks later my mother and I were boarding a plane that was Alberta bound. We lived in a town that had ONE stop light, TWO stop signs, TWO cabs and THREE cops - I was not having any of it. I called my father and told him I was coming back to Ontario whether he liked it or not. Of course my mother called him back and informed him that there was no way she was letting me fly alone and that she was coming back as well. We moved back in with my father for a few months and it was so hard. My parents were getting along better than they were before they announced their plan to separate! They weren't fighting, there was no heaviness in the air...it was really, really confusing for me. It got to a point where I wanted nothing more for them to blow up at each other because at least then I could understand why they needed to be apart.

A few months later my mother and I rented the main floor of a bungalow from my mother's co-worker who lived in the basement. We moved into the house in May, and in August I decided that I was going to move to Ottawa and start my life there in the big city. I worked for a short period of time for an ISP company but the home sickness was too much. I was too worried about my mother being alone and I decided to go home for a week long visit at the end of September.

I was back only 2 nights when I was raped again. I made some pretty stupid decisions that night, and I am so lucky that it didn't cost me my life. I decided to meet up with a complete stranger whom I had been chatting with for 5 minutes on the internet. It was 4 am, and I thought that it would make a great journal entry - I was blogging at this point, but this was before blogs even had a name. I met him at the school that was at the end of my street, and we proceeded to smoke a joint and do some shots of Southern Comfort. We walked to this huge open field and sat down and started smoking and talking. He told me I was beautiful and leaned in to kiss me. I had horrible self-esteem and it didn't matter that I wasn't attracted to him - he thought I was beautiful enough to kiss! The second he tried to go past kissing I started squirming and repeatedly saying "No." He pinned me down and pulled my pants and underwear down to my knees. I was crying at this point begging him not to do anything - I wasn't into him that way. "But I really, really, really like you.." he said. I said "No." "Stop." and even a few expletives over and over and over. I never screamed though. I was too afraid of waking the people who lived around there. I still don't know where this logic came from, and it's probably the one of the hardest things to try and come to terms with - that for that couple of moments in time, people's sleep became more important to me than my own safety.

I reported him to the cops, only to be told a few months later that they would not be pressing charges because there wasn't enough solid evidence. They had performed a rape kit, but because he admitted to having intercourse with me, it was my word against his since he was saying it was "sex" and I said it was "rape".

This did nothing for my self-esteem but bring it down even lower. I got involved in my first "real" relationship about 6 months later. He and I are still friends, and looking back on it, I really wonder how he was able to forgive me. I hated myself so much. I was cutting, I wasn't eating, I stopped taking care of myself again...I became verbally abusive and extremely manipulative - I knew he hated when I cried so I would cry each and every time he wanted to do something without me. The guilt-trips I would lay...it makes me feel so...bleh! We dated on and off for two years before finally breaking it off for good. We still slept together though. Yeah. Self-esteem issues again! Finally, one morning I woke up and decided that I had enough of the "friends with benefits" and started telling myself that if I was good enough to sleep with then I was good enough to date.

Two years later I got into my second serious relationship. The first 4 months were fabulous. Then he finally admitted he was a drug addict. Then we moved in together and I paid for everything - including his drugs. Then we both became abusive towards each other - mentally, emotionally and on one occasion - physically. We broke up for a week, we got back together and four months later I broke up with him over the phone because it had gotten to the point where I was afraid to say it to his face without it turning into a physical argument. The next day I had my lock changed, and I haven't been in a serious relationship since. That was almost 3 years ago.

The first two years were the hardest. I'm a homebody, and I would much prefer to spend a night in with a few friends than a night out at a bar. I had been so wrapped up in my own stuff that I let my friends fall by the wayside and wouldn't you know it - I was totally alone aside from my family. I started to really take some time and figure out who I was and what I was really all about.

My father remarried in October of 2005 and it took me up until last spring to really come to terms with that. I went from being raised as an only child and having a half-sister that I saw once every 10 years or so, to having this freaking GIGANTIC family who loves nothing more than spending time with each other. It's been an adjustment for all of us - I now have a step-brother who is a few years older and a step-sister who is a month and 3 days older than me. I also have some two nieces and a nephew, numerous new aunts and uncles and cousins..and that's just thanks to my father's second wife. My mother's side of the family has always been huge since she's the oldest of 7 children. My half-sister had her son two weeks after my step-brothers son was born.

In 2006 I had three huge goals. My half sister was getting married in July, I wanted to buy a car and I desperately needed dental work. The years of neglect from not wanting to be "beautiful" had finally caught up to me and like everyone on my mother's side of the family, I had to be fitted for dentures before the age of 30. I had 27 teeth removed in one day, and was fitted for a complete upper denture and partial lower denture. By August, all three of my goals had been realized! I had a new car, a beautiful smile, and I was able to fly out to my sister's wedding and see my mother's side of the family for the first time in 13 years.

In May of 2007, I saw the documentary, Searching For Angela Shelton, and my life was changed forever. I was no longer alone with these thoughts and emotions. It really opened up the doors of communication between my father, step-mother and I about me being raped. My father no longer gets up and leaves the room when I bring up what happened. He's not like..super talkative but he listens and offers advice when it's called for. It was a HUGE wake-up call in that I could so relate to all of the Angela Shelton's and what they had been through and what they had done to themselves. I really began paying attention to my self-talk and my thoughts, and I started noticing some huge changes. I suddenly had friends again! I had a social life! I was spending time with my family and ENJOYING the time I spent with them. The first big clue that it was working was when I was sitting and chatting with my step-mother and I told her that in the beginning I struggled with my step-sister because we were both kind of thrown into this family, and since we had both been the "babies" of our families we struggled to find our place. What do I hear come out of my mouth next? "I realized the other day that it doesn't matter where we fit. The point is - we fit. We are all exactly where we need to be, doing exactly what we need to do."

We are all exactly where we need to be, doing exactly what we need to do regardless of where we've come from and what we've been through..it has all happened for a reason.

Who Are You?

2008-02-26T23:52:00.000-05:00

Well, who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
I really wanna know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
Tell me, who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
'Cause I really wanna know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
-The Who

Ahhh..the dreaded introduction post. These are typically difficult for me, simply because I really dislike starting every second sentence with "I".

My name is Vanessa, but most people call me Nessa.

I am 27 years old, Canadian and I'm a survivor of sexual assault. I have only very recently discovered my voice again, and it's been a process I must admit! Thankfully, I have found a wonderful source of support, encouragement and inspiration thanks to Angela Shelton and her Army of Angels! When I'm not browsing various sites of interest on the internet, I can be found practicing my acoustic/electric guitar, making jewelry, listening to music or spending time with my family and friends. I am the servant of three cats and they don't allow me to forget it, either. For some reason the names of Norse Gods and Goddesses intrigue me, and so I named my cats after a few of them:

Loki: The Norse God of mischief.
Thor: The Norse God of thunder.
Freya: The Norse Goddess of love and fertility, war and wealth.

I was actually born on a Canadian military base in Lahr, Germany. We returned to Canada when I was 3 years old, so memories of Germany are very few. I can't wait to go back there some day! Being a "military brat" meant that we moved. A lot. At the time I loathed it. These days I find myself almost craving the military lifestyle. Interesting how our perception changes as we get older, mature, heal and move on isn't it?

I look forward to letting you all into my little world, and I hope you'll allow me into yours as well!