YOU MIGHT THINK IT’S OK* …

You might think it’s ok …
to yell at your children.
You might think it’s ok …
to hit your children.
You might think it’s ok …
to tease, ridicule, or humiliate your children.
I don’t think it’s ok.

You might think it’s ok …
to push your children to grow up,
before they’ve even been children.
Before they’ve even had a chance to develop.

You Might Think It's OK
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This is the message that complements Judith's blog post on the same topic: https://judithbarr.com/2019/03/31/you-might-think-its-ok/

You might think it’s ok …
to believe thinking is more important
than any real feeling at all.
You might think it’s ok …
to disregard or forget the truth –
that in the first stages of their lives,
children cannot think at all;
they can only feel – physical, sensory, and emotional feelings.
You might think it’s ok …
to teach your children to ignore their feelings.
I don’t think it’s ok.

You may think it’s ok …
to enslave your children under any guise at all.
You may think it’s ok …
to brainwash your children under whatever pretense you choose.
I don’t think it’s ok.

You might think it’s ok …
to sexually abuse your children.
You might think it’s ok …
to force them.
You might think it’s ok …
to threaten them.
You might think it’s ok …
to seduce them.
I don’t think any of those things are ok.
I don’t think it’s ok to sexually molest, abuse, engage with children …
under any circumstance whatsoever.

You might think it’s ok …
to deny the abuse you experienced as a child.
You might think it’s ok …
to pretend it’s over and not affecting you.
You might think it’s ok …
to imagine or pretend the trauma you experienced as a child
is not impacting anyone at all today.
I don’t think it’s ok.
I don’t think it’s the truth.

You might think it’s ok …
to make-believe your taking things out on
children in your life today
has nothing to do with your having been abused as a child.
I don’t think it’s ok.

You might think it’s ok …
to justify all the reasons you think you have a right
to abuse the children in your life,
instead of taking responsibility for acting out your childhood traumas
on children in your life today.
I don’t.

You might think it’s ok …
to champion your excuses for abusing the adults in your life today, too,
instead of taking responsibility for acting out your early traumas on the adults
in your everyday current life.
I don’t.

You might think it’s ok …
to create trauma in someone else’s life today,
instead of owning and healing from the trauma in your own life –
today and long, long ago.
I don’t think it’s ok.

You might think it’s ok …
for you to be unconscious about trauma.
I don’t think it’s ok.

You might think it’s ok …
to normalize abuse and trauma.
I don’t.
You might think it’s ok …
to be blind to abuse and trauma.
I don’t.
You might think it’s ok …
to be deaf to abuse and trauma.
I don’t.
You might think it’s ok…
to be numb to abuse and trauma.
I don’t.
You might think it’s ok …
to refuse to do anything at all to help yourself
see, hear, and feel trauma.
I don’t think that’s ok.

I don’t think it’s ok to shut yourself off to your own trauma.
I don’t think it’s ok to disregard the trauma you create for others
when you ignore your own trauma.
I don’t think it’s ok for you to cause trauma for others near and far,
as a defense against recognizing, acknowledging, remembering,
feeling, and healing your own trauma.

You might think it’s ok …
for you to deny, discount and denigrate everything I’m saying.
I don’t.
I think your denigration is itself a red flag showing
everyone how you hide from your past trauma
and its consequences in our world – past and present.

I’m simply holding a mirror to you of yourself,
your culture,
and most of our world’s cultures.
A mirror of how we corrupt our power.
A mirror of how we perpetuate that misuse and abuse of our power …
up close and personally, as well as way out in the public arena and view.

You may think you’re entitled to do so …
because you have money, because you are bigger, because you’re well known, because you have power.
But I don’t think you’re entitled to do so.

You may think it’s ok …
for you to be a parent without doing your own inner healing.
I don’t.
You may think it’s ok …
for you to be a coach without doing your own inner healing.
I don’t.
You may think it’s ok …
for you to be a teacher without doing your own inner healing.
I don’t.
You may think it’s ok …
for you to be a spiritual teacher without doing your own inner healing.
I don’t.
You may think it’s ok …
for you to be a psychotherapist, counselor, or healer without doing your own inner healing.
I don’t.
You may think it’s ok …
for you to be a doctor without doing your own inner healing.
I don’t.
You may think it’s ok …
for you to be a business leader without doing your own inner healing.
I don’t.
You may think it’s ok …
for you to be a media guru without doing your own inner healing.
I don’t.
You may think it’s ok …
for you to be a celebrity without doing your own inner healing.
I don’t.
You may think it’s ok …
for you to be a government leader without doing your own inner healing.
But I don’t.

I don’t think it’s ok.
In each case you create more trauma for others –
for those who have already been traumatized and
for those who are being traumatized by you —
right now and in the future, short- and long-term future …
just because you were traumatized and refuse to tend to your own trauma.

You can make believe what you’re doing is ok.
But I know it isn’t ok.
You can make believe what you’re doing is the truth.
But I know it isn’t the truth.
You can make believe what I’m saying is fake.
But I know what I’m saying is the deep truth …
and is occurring throughout our land.**
You can make believe what you’re saying is love.
But I know it isn’t love.
Deep love and truth sees, hears, and feels the trauma you are causing
as a way to defend against the trauma you experienced as a child.

You might think it’s ok.
You might think it’s what you need to do to survive.
You might think it’s what you need to do to stay sane.
I think perhaps it was what you needed to do to survive and stay sane as a child.
But to do these things today ….
is irresponsible.
Cruel.
Harmful.
Destructive …
to you, to others, to our children, to our world, to our Earth.

The evidence of that is visible.
The proof of that is audible.
The verification of that is felt.
The confirmation of that is all around us.
The confirmation of that is within and all around us.

And every single day you think it’s okay for you …
to ignore, deny, and resist acknowledging this confirmation …
you perpetuate the problem,
you escalate the problem,
you increase the consequences for yourself and everyone else in our world.

You might think it’s ok.
I don’t.

 

*I thank Adam Schiff for the powerful words he used to convey his message. “You might think it’s ok.” These words resonated deeply to form the framework for my message. This is not political. It is, rather, about the trauma we’ve experienced and acted out on others.

Note:  I am a depth psychotherapist and midwife to the soul. In those capacities, I understand that we become more and more conscious as we open to it, as we develop the ability, readiness, and strength to safely remember, feel, deepen, heal, and grow. This is how I work with people.

But I also understand that there are people who have no intention whatsoever to do so. And that our cultures can become infected with that lack of intention, causing great harm to themselves and others.

Sometimes children run out into the street without looking – no awareness that they could cause their own harm or the harm of others. A caring adult will protect such children by pulling them out of the street. Sometimes adults in our world act in the same way. Someone needs to pull them out of the street … for their own sake and for the sake of others. And they need to alert others to the realization that there are adults acting like children, running out into the street and causing harm.

And someone needs to alert the others to look in a mirror and see how they, themselves, might be complicit in the harm.

**To learn more, read How Did We Get Here? Our Refusal to Know the Truth About Ourselves. Mysteries of Life, 2018.  https://judithbarr.com/how-did-we-get-here/  or Amazon: US | CA | UK | DE | ES | FR | IT

 

© Judith Barr, 2019.

HOW IN THE WORLD DID I GET HERE?

Recently I shared with a group of my colleagues about the backstory to the
publication of my new book.  The responses were meaningful, touching, heartful.
People appreciated knowing something about the process that led me to
“birthing” How Did We Get Here?
I hope the backstory will be meaningful to you, too.

My first book, Power Abused, Power Healed, took 7 years to birth –
from my first sentence to publishing.
It was a learning, growing, profound sacred journey.
At the same time, it was a wild ride … and I was pregnant with my book for 7 years.
Near the birth I was saying “What being on the face of this earth has 7-year pregnancies?!?”

As our paths often unfold, all this time I was growing, developing, expanding,
deepening in ways I knew, and also in ways I didn’t yet know.

The book was born …
For the first time in my life, I had written and published a book.
For the first time in my life, I began doing interviews on radio shows
(and some tv and print media).
For the first time in my life, I became a trusted source for some media hosts.
I received lots of feedback about how down to earth and clear I could make my points –
and how delighted they were that I wasn’t speaking “therapese” to the audience.
I was moved.

And I was passionate about helping people see that we need to explore and heal
our own relationships with power.
And I was passionate about helping people see what is really driving us …
beneath what most people know.

How can we make changes we really need to make if we are unaware of
what is driving us to be the way we are?
How can we grow into who we were meant to be
if we don’t know where we have gotten stuck in our growth and development?
How can we heal from wounds and trauma we have experienced long, long ago
if we insist on keeping those wounds and traumas buried and held at bay,
so we can pretend – to ourselves and others – that we have moved on?

People kept asking me when I was going to write another book.
Regardless of how tactful my outer response was, my inner response was ‘no.’
The ‘no’ was really to another 7-year pregnancy.
But my muse and I couldn’t stop writing.
To that there was only a ‘yes.’
So I wrote my monthly blog from 2009 on.

As interviews and blogs unfolded …
As I witnessed what was going on in my practice,
in the lives of those around me, in our country and our world …
I began to see –
I had a gift in connecting the dots between our wounds and traumas as individuals
and our communal wounds and traumas as countries and a world …
between our healing as individuals and our healing communally and globally.
I began to see –
That this gift was developing as I witnessed and wrote and taught
and helped people heal.
And that this gift gave me a new way to help our world,
a way that was not available to me previously.

Then on May 15, 2018 …
A tornado hit my town, my neighborhood, and my home.
That experience opened me on a heart and soul level in ways I couldn’t have imagined.
Within a month and a half … My muse awakened me in the middle of the night,
“took me to the computer,” started “dictating,” and told me we were writing a book.

She didn’t say how long the pregnancy would be or wouldn’t be.
She called me, awakened me, and …
There was no ‘no’ at all within me. Only ‘yes’!

I witnessed as I surrendered to what was emerging …
Knowing that this was my next way to work to help us heal –
ourselves, our countries, and our world.

People all around me – up close and personal and media in all venues –
were asking how we got here.
And many were saying, “This isn’t who we are.”
I knew they were not aware of aspects of themselves and all of us
that were driving us individually and globally.
I knew they weren’t answering the question “How did we get here?”
at the deepest levels possible.
I felt I could help people understand on those very deep levels.

This has all come very quickly …
Much more quickly than I could have imagined!
I am sending both of my books to the Frankfurt Bookfair …
hoping there will be international publishers who will want to translate
both of my books into their language(s).
I’m also exploring how to get word out to major influencers, the media,
laypeople, the therapeutic community, and more …
so I can help my book have the greatest positive impact possible.
I welcome any inspirations, connections, networking you can share to this end.

Thank you for reading, receiving, and connecting with me through my blog …
and with me in relation to my book, which, as you can see,
is both very personal and very much a part of my passion
to help us all become more conscious …so we can heal ourselves and our world.

*****
The best way I can give you a brief description of my book itself …
is what is written on the back cover.

How Did We Get Here?
Our Refusal to Know the Truth About Ourselves

So many of us ask ourselves in these times, “How did we get here?”
So many of us even believe we know.
Sadly, when most of us try to respond to this difficult question,
our answers barely scratch the surface.
Few of us – far too few of us –try to go deep enough to see
even the barest roots of why our lives, our countries, and our world
are in the condition they’re in.

People have all sorts of explanations for how we got here – nationally and globally.

It’s financial. It’s political. It’s patriarchal. It’s prejudicial. It’s misogynistic.
It’s abuse. And more.
Each viewpoint can be discussed and seem to explain the cause
from a valid standpoint.
Yet … they are all accounts at or near the surface.
No matter how long we have believed the explanations …
no matter how deep they appear to go …
none of them reaches the roots of the way in which we got here.
None of them even alludes to the reality
that there are root causes deep beneath each explanation.
And none of them even hints at the central reality that underlies all the explanations.

So … how did we get here?

In our adult lives, whether we realize it or not, we re-enact again and
again the wounding and trauma we experienced as children.
More of us than we know were wounded long, long ago.
As a result, more of us than we can conceive are re-creating the trauma in our lives today…
affecting us, those close to us, our country, and our world.

Imagine if everyone made the commitment to explore and heal those roots in themselves!
Find out more and be part of the healing.

My heart is full as I share with you,
Hoping my book and I will be heartfully received…
Hoping you will utilize this post to help you become part of the healing …
Hoping if you are inspired, you will pass this along to others as a way to help in the healing.

Many blessings from my heart to yours …

Judith

You can order my new book now!

 

https://judithbarr.com/how-did-we-get-here/

You can order through my website
Or
You can order through Amazon  …
For best international shipping costs use Amazon: US | CA | UK | DE | ES | FR | IT

© Judith Barr, 2018

 

 

 

 

IT’S TIME FOR MIRACLES

In this time when the light shines through on the darkest day …
In this time when we celebrate miracles from times gone by …
It is time for miracles.
It is time for our consciousness to grow.

It is time for our consciousness to grow.
It is time for us to realize that sexual abuse doesn’t begin in the workplace;
it begins in the home.
It is time for us to be aware that sexual abuse doesn’t begin with
the abuse of adolescents and young women and men;
It begins with the abuse of children.

It is time for us to know that the supportive reactions to men like Roy Moore –
here in the United States and all over the world –
are the same kinds of reactions that families have to the men in incestuous families …
frank denial, support no matter what, lies by the mouthful, guises by the dozens;
not believing the one who has been sexually abused, blaming the victimized,
bullying, buying off or exiling anyone who dares to speak the truth;
staying aligned with the family’s sexual abuser in an attempt to accomplish one’s own agenda – to protect one’s own interests, the consequences be damned.

It is time for our consciousness to grow.
It is time for us to know …
This is not political. This is personal. This is familial.
This is personal wounding experienced in our families
that has silently, unconsciously crept into our culture
and is showing itself in many venues
including politics.

It is time for our consciousness to grow.
It is time for us to realize that what is occurring in our government –
here in the United States and in many other governments the world over –
is not political,
is not partisan,
is not about purported causes and agendas,
is not adult,
is not conscious.
It is time for us to know …
what is occurring in our government
is not the work of grown-ups;
It is the acting out of little children –
wounded in childhood.
Little children wounded in childhood –
who either don’t yet know they are wounded and acting out,
or who don’t know the child they once were is still alive inside them and acting out today,
or who don’t choose to know,
or who don’t choose to heal their childhood wounds.

Little children wounded in childhood –
who, in not choosing to heal …
are acting out their childhood wounds
in the halls of government,
on the stage of our country,
on the stage of our world and our earth.
Acting out their childhood wounds
on millions of innocent people
all over our country,
all over our world.
Acting out their childhood wounds
on Mother Earth.

It is time for our consciousness to grow.
It is time for us to know …
This is not political. This is personal. This is familial.
This is personal wounding experienced in our families
that has silently, unconsciously crept into our culture
and is showing itself in many venues
including politics.

It is time for our consciousness to grow.
It is time for us to wake up and see that each of us plays a part,
even if we didn’t realize it before now.
It’s time to wake ourselves up and acknowledge
that even “the best” of us plays a part.
Even “the best” of us is somehow re-enacting our painful childhood
experiences …
in the family of the country, in the human family.
Even those in the media who seem to be trying to offer the truth –
the real truth, not the fake truth –
are playing a part.
Their fascination with politics somehow mirrors the politics
in their family of origin.
Their roles in the media somehow reveal their roles in their
childhood families.
This is true of us all.

It isn’t obvious; we’ll have to dig.
It will take time; we’ll have to sustain.
It doesn’t just happen; we can’t just be passive.
It will be hard work; we’ll have to commit.
We’ll need to feel … safely and for healing.
We’ll need to let our defenses dissolve and open our hearts.
We’ll need to change; we’ll need to grow.
But we all need to wake up and become conscious
of our part in what is happening in our country and our world today.
Conscious of the escalated, painful, re-enactments
the unhealed children within us are together acting out on our world stage.

Conscious of the suffering we are causing
by “forgetting,” ignoring, trying to hold at bay
the suffering we experienced once upon a time long ago
in our childhoods.
And we all need to wake ourselves up and be accountable
for doing the healing we’re called to do.

It is time for our consciousness to grow.
It is time for us to know …
This is not political. This is personal. This is familial.
This is not political. This is not economic.
This is not religious. This is not racial.
This is personal. This is familial.
This is personal wounding experienced in our families
that has silently, unconsciously crept into our culture
and is showing itself in many venues
including politics.

It’s a time for miracles …
leaps in the growth of our consciousness …
leaps in the growth of our willingness …
leaps in the growth of our holding ourselves accountable …
leaps in the growth of our healing our childhood wounds …
leaps in the growth of taking responsibility for the personal
so we don’t contaminate the political, the religious, the business,
the cultural with the roots of our own wounding.

It’s a time for miracles …
I pray for these miracles …
I work every day for these miracles.

© Judith Barr, 2017