by Debra | Apr 22, 2019
Sexual violence is any sexual activity where consent has not been given!
- An American is sexually assaulted every 92 seconds.
- 8 out of 10 rapes are committed by someone known to the victim 19.5% are committed by strangers.
- 39% are committed by an acquaintance.
- 33% are committed by a current or former spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend.
- 6% are committed by more than one person or the victim cannot remember.
- 5% are committed by a non-spouse relative.
Sexual violence has affected millions of people a year in the United States.
- More than one in three women and nearly one in four men have experienced sexual violence involving some sort of physical contact at some point in their lives.
- Around one in five women and one in 38 men have experienced attempted or committed rape in their lives.
The more we educate our selves and our children regarding this issue; the more we will be able to combat this problem.
We live in a very sexually casual world where people are engaging in a more relaxed environment sexually. I believe that this in itself has created more blurred line.
Women need to watch their behaviors regarding sex and they need to get strong about their boundaries. Learning how to say a hard NO instead of a soft no, is critical. Men need to honor women’s no, even if it’s a soft no. If it’s not a YES, it’s a NO. Men need to recognize when a woman is in a vulnerable state and protect her from predators not act like a predator. Asking for consent is a direct question and getting a direct answer and if a direct answer isn’t given it’s a NO!
I want to say that I know men are violated as well, so this goes both ways.
It’s so important to do your wounded work so you aren’t out there doing damage to others in the world. If someone isn’t honoring someone else’s boundaries this tells me they have inner work to do. We have a responsibility to our selves and others to not cause harm to others and ultimately to our selves. When we violate others we are violating our selves.
If you want to look at how your actions are affecting others, check out my retreats. The individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and how to clean up your past so you can move through this life with love and passion.
by Debra | Apr 15, 2019
What does your mind do during difficult times?
When our life gets difficult what do we do? Do we become overwhelmed and fall apart or do we look at this as an opportunity for some personal growth? It can be very tough to manage a positive attitude when challenging times hit us.
When we look at challenging times as being punished by the universe it doesn’t make things easier. What helps us is to know that we are co-creating with the universe and that everything that is happening in our life is an opportunity for us to stretch and grow. It’s important not to believe that when good things are happening to us it’s because we are being good and bad things are happening to us we are being bad. Life happens, there are ups and there are downs.
The important thing to remember is that whether we have labeled it good or bad it’s an opportunity to check in with herself and see if we are clinging or resisting. When good things happen we have a tendency to cling to them and not want them to go away. When bad things happen, we have a tendency to push them away and resist them. This way of being limits our growth. The reason we are clinging or resisting is because we do not want to feel. We try to get the bad stuff out so we can feel good again and we try to cling to the good stuff so we can continue to feel good. An important part of our growth is to feel all the feelings not just the good ones.
When we are resisting a situation, or mind immediately goes into thinking about how it can make us feel good again, because that is the mind’s job to make us feel good. The best thing you can do in that moment is to sit with the feelings and let your mind know that it is no longer its job to make you feel good.
Once we release our minds from the job of making us feel good during difficult times and allow our self the space to just feel, this is when true healing to come in.
If you want to look at dealing with difficult times in a more conscious way, check out my retreats. The individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and how to clean up your past so you can move through this life with love and passion.
by Debra | Apr 8, 2019
How easy is it to harness the power of partnerships?
When we go into partnership consciously we have the ability to create in a powerful way. All partnerships, not just romantic but creative or professional relationships, we have the ability to pool from each unique talent and ability. Not because we are deficient but more because having two people create has more energy than one.
It’s important not to go into relationships unconsciously because it could make the creative process harder rather than easier. When we go into any partnership because of a need rather than a clear intention, it will usually be good for the short term but the problems of rushing in so fast without much thought can be hard to recuperate from in the long haul.
If you have clear intentions in the relationship you are creating, it is easier to stay on track instead of getting into a relationship and trying to fix it. Again this isn’t just a romantic relationship, this could be for a professional relationship as well. I find that the more okay you are with yourself and you are your own source of happiness, it will be easier for you to not jump into a relationship that doesn’t work for you.
Obviously, there’s always something to learn from all of the relationships we’re in, but they don’t have to be that difficult if we know what we are wanting and not waiver from what we want out of the relationship. All relationships give us the opportunity to look at our self honestly and see our shadow sides and grow from them, but most of the time we need to be on the same path for an easier flow.
When we enter into a symbiotic relationship the chance of drama is way less because both parties have a clear intention of what they are co-creating. Creating on this level offers the opportunity for transformation, flow and an easy collaboration. Think back at when you were trying to co-create in a relationship with someone that wasn’t in alignment with you. Not as easy as you would have liked, right?
In all of my retreats you will learn about how to work through your shadow side and be able to create better relationships in your life. Make your life easier by having relationship you are alignment with.
In all of my retreats, the individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and how to clean up your past so you can move through this life with love and passion.
by Debra | Mar 18, 2019
Can we change the world by changing ourselves?
I think it is a great deed to do charitable work and help others. Going out into the world and making a difference can be an honorable thing to do. It is also important to look at the reasons why you are giving. I believe it was Anthony De Mello in his book Awareness that said that most people are giving for self-satisfaction. What does that mean to give for yourself? We need to be seen as a good person; trying to get the acceptance of others, needing to create community or trying to even up Karma, etc. could be a few reason we might give for our own satisfaction.
I think even if it has a touch of self-serving, it is still nice to participate in charitable events. It is just a good idea to check in with yourself to see why you are giving and see if you can shift it if it is self serving.
The biggest way we change the world is through being self-aware. If you are not working on becoming more awakened, you will project your woundedness all over the people you are working with in the organization and the people you are helping. I have been a part of a couple of organizations that were for peace and awakening, with people volunteering there that were often triggered and acting out.
When we act out of our triggers onto other people, it makes them feel crummy as well as us and it spreads negative energy throughout the group. It is very critical that we do our inner work so that we don’t take our junk and projected onto others.
The most basic part of waking up is being able to not blame the outside world, and not project our feelings outside of us in an unhealthy way. It’s important to contain the reaction to the trigger and go to a deeper place and look at what is going on in us.
If we were all looking to become more awake and not project, imagine what the world would look like. It would be a beautiful place to be with many open hearts.
In all of my retreats, the individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and how to clean up your past so you can move through this life with love and passion.
by Debra | Mar 11, 2019
Dealing with people who are passive-aggressive can be exhausting and hurtful.
Usually passive aggression comes from people who feel powerless and don’t want to feel their own feelings. They can also be blaming you for something that’s going on inside of them, again leaving them in a powerless position. Acting out of aggression comes from people feeling threatened and they are unable to sort out what they are feeling.
When we are not able to express our feelings such as anger, fear, resentment or sorrow in a healthy way, it may come out in a passive-aggressive way. People who have a hard time saying no because they feel guilty and constantly breaking promises, is another form of this behavior. Others could just make snide remarks so that they don’t have to feel their true feelings.
When we are around people playing out their patterns in this manner it’s better to not get drawn into any kind of a struggle for power. The more you try to obtain your viewpoint the nastier it could get. If you have someone in your life that is giving you backhanded zingers and claiming nothing is wrong you may need to seek a mentor that can help you with the situation.
Most of the time when people are doing their personal work, just simply bringing it to their attention will shift things for them. If this is a blind spot and it’s with someone not doing their personal development you may have to walk away from the relationship or except that you’re going to get zingers from them. In most cases when someone isn’t doing their personal work bringing up anything around their behavior will trigger them more and act out worse. The best thing you can do is to just let them know how their behavior makes you feel and do your work around your trigger.
If you are the one being passive aggressive, I suggest that you start to learn to be with all of your feelings. If fear comes up or anger or any other feeling that you’re having a hard time being with my suggestion is to sit and breathe into the belly and relax your body and just be with the feelings.
In all of my retreats you will learn about your behavior and how it is affecting you and others. Most of that are doing our personal work don’t want to project our junk onto others.
In all of my retreats, the individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and how to clean up your past so you can move through this life with love and passion.
by Debra | Mar 4, 2019
Why do we have regret and why is it so harmful?
There are a few reasons why we may have regret. First is because we are not seeing life through our higher minds consciousness. We are seeing life through a skewed wounded inner child. Second, we have created a mess that we have it cleaned up. If we have acted out of our little inner child and we haven’t apologized for our behavior this can cause regret inside of us as well. Third, not forgiving ourselves for our past mistakes.
Not apologizing for our errors or seeing things through our lower minds, causing regret is like dragging a huge weight of our past around with us everywhere we go. This would be pretty exhausting. It drains our energy, making it difficult for us to be present in the moment because we are dealing with our past issues.
When we are constantly in the past it is hard to create something new in the future. When we clean up our past issues or our past messes we have the ability to move more freely in life. We create our life from our thoughts, so if we are always in the past in our minds we are creating our past over and over. When we accept what is happened in our past and move forward it transforms the energy inside of us to a more constructive, creative pattern.
Forgiveness is critical because it heals regret. If we were in a situation where we cannot apologize we can re-create the situation in our minds and imagine a different outcome. Or we can simply apologize in a prayer to a person if they are no longer here. Forgiveness comes up quite often in my mother daughter retreats because one or both parties have exhibited behaviors that have been hurtful to the other.
There is so much judgment when we have regret. We mostly are judging ourselves for not behaving in a way that we see loving. It doesn’t do us any good to judge ourselves on top of the regret. It’s best to do it to need to do with others to remove blockages and to also do your personal work around your own regret.
When we do our work around regret we created a clear path for energy to flow so that we can live in a space of love and passion. When we take responsibility for our actions in this present moment we release our past.
In all of my retreats, the individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and how to clean up your past so you can move through this life with love and passion.
by Debra | Feb 25, 2019
How do we find the strength within us through the tough times of this life?
We all experience challenging moments in our lives when we feel that we are on the edge and can’t handle it. Sometimes we have just moved through a pretty big obstacle or illness only to find another one waiting on the other side for us, before we can catch her breath. Often we keep enduring one challenge after another and feel as though we never get a break from life’s trials. We may question why life keeps piling more difficulty on us when we are all ready our maximum.
We may blame God and even get angry with God, depending on how we view life. When we are continuously tested with one experience after another, it is a learning to be present to our moments directly in front of us. Instead of looking outside of ourselves or blaming someone or something outside of us, it’s an opportunity to go inward and do your healing.
The feelings that come up during these experiences can be completely overwhelming, where you may want to run away from them. The best thing you can do is explore what’s going on with you, what old beliefs you are buying into, sit with the feelings and do your best to let them go.
Depending on what core wounds they are hitting, will depend on your capacity to sit with the feelings. The feelings may be so overwhelming that you feel like you’re sitting in a fire and the need to get out will be extreme. I encourage you to stay with your feelings and comfort the inner child through this experience instead of abandoning them.
Two things are happening when we are faced with challenges. One is the learning so we can understand why we are feeling the way we are feeling and two, to transmute the energy, so we are able to let go. Most the time if we cannot have an understanding for the experience it might be tougher to let go and transform it. So the need to understand it and sit with the feelings are critical to being able to let go of them. To be able to come into a complete place of peace and joy it is important to go through this process to come out the other end.
This is not a journey for the weak at heart, it is for Warriors.
In all of my retreats, the individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and how to be with your feelings so you can move through the trials of this life with ease and grace.
by Debra | Feb 24, 2019
Are you having difficulties in your mother daughter relationship? This is for Both the mother and the daughter.
If you would like to find a way to create a more loving relationship together, here is a gift for you!
Check out my video on Mother Daughter Retreats!
by Debra | Feb 18, 2019
Is it hard for you to being with your feelings?
How tough is it to just sit with your feelings and feel the intensity of them? Most people medicate their feelings away so they don’t have to be with them. They shop, eat, drink, do drugs, argue, complain, blame, they do anything not to feel.
The heart has a wide range of feelings that it experiences, from the deepest of sorrow to the most elated joy. When we restrict feeling any of them because of our old beliefs, they get stuck and it stops our energy, our chi from flowing. It’s much better for our health to allow feelings to bubble up and flow through us.
Often we put our feelings off to the side to deal with them later and we end up storing them in our bodies and minds. If we could get a visual on this is would look like a hoarders house. If we store them for later and never get to them, they stay inside us and block energy from flowing.
No matter how scary it is to look at and be with our feelings, it is always better to deal with them as they come up and not stuff them down, hoping they will go away.
One of the main reason we hide our feelings is because we live in a culture that doesn’t support having emotions. It is our job to allow ourselves to acknowledge our feelings and be with them. If we feel sadness, we can embrace it and let it in and noticing where we feel it in our bodies and allow ourselves to express it through crying or just going inward.
When we give ourselves the right to feel our feelings as they come up, it will be easier for us to let them go. All the feelings want is to be felt. Get out of the story of what is making you feel this way and just feel. Feel, relax and watch your heart open.
In all of my retreats, the individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and how to be with your feelings.
by Debra | Feb 11, 2019
What does it look like to be in surrender?
Surrendering is to cease resistance, yielding, and give in, and succumb. The biggest issue to just letting go and surrendering is our resistance. Our resistance to change, our resistance to staying awake and looking at our blind spot and our resistance to life being exactly what life is! When we resist anything, we strengthen the energies around what we are resisting.
“What you resist persist”
Do you notice how some issues keep coming around repeatedly, no matter how hard you try to avoid or ignore them? It never works to push issues away that we need to process through. The more we push it away, the more we get push back.
Our resistance gives power to that which we resist and leaves us with unresolved issues. To be able to totally surrender we need to look at what is coming up and get an understanding of what it is trying to teach us. It is critical to stop resisting to be able to surrender. Surrender cannot happen without yielding and giving into the lessons in front of us.
What affects us on the inside is a direct call out to us that we have work to do on the inside. If we avoid or run away from the emotions, this causes a resistance inside of us and an inability to let go and surrender. If we have emotions and feelings coming up from the outside world or our thoughts it’s best to do a deep dive to move through them, not push them to the side.
Everything happening on the outside or inside us with our thoughts and feelings is a reflection of what we need to work through, it’s always an opportunity to go deeper into our learning. It’s difficult to go running straight into our fears and of course you will notice resistance. This is where surrendering to the process will help us go through the fire and come out the other end to peace and serenity.
In all of my retreats, the individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and where surrender is important.
by Debra | Feb 4, 2019
How can you improve your mother daughter relationship?
Mother daughter relationships are so important. If they aren’t nurtured while growing up, chances are they we be strained in adulthood. Creating a healthy relationship can be complex because of all of our old beliefs. There are so many different you can do to create a better relationship together although if you don’t do the healing necessary on yourself, all of these suggestions will fail.
- Look at your expectations of how the relationship should be. Both parties will want different things and it’s important to get your needs met but always remember to compromises. My oldest daughter dislikes talking on the phone. The problem is, we live in different states. I don’t take it personally, thinking she doesn’t love me or want to talk to me. We talk once a week and I make it work and so does she.
- If you have an argument, don’t let pride prevent you from making the first move to mend it. The Ego is very prideful and will keep you away from love. Don’t listen to it.
- Continuously be working through your own issues that keep you acting out of your ego and away from your higher self. If you’re triggered, you need to do the work around your beliefs. Don’t go outside yourself to make yourself fell better. Don’t put the burden on your mother or daughter that they need to show up a certain way for you to be okay.
- Listen to what the other person is saying and step into their reality. Try to see how they feel, realizing there is always a different way to see things. Really explore the opposing side.
- Don’t try to fix each other’s situation. Moms do this mostly. If your daughter comes to you with a problem, stay out of fix it mode. Listen to them and maybe say something that lets them know you can relate and hear them. Maybe saying “ I hear how hard this is for you, if you need anything from me, let me know.” Don’t jump into telling them what they should do. Telling them what to do makes them feel inadequate.
- Communicate your needs to each other. No one is a mind reader; they need to know what you want. Also be prepared to not get your way. It’s important to express your needs to one another and talk about a compromise.
- Realize we are all human. Forgive each other for being human. We are going to make mistake, so make sure you allow room to be human.
- Don’t dig up old issues and bring them into the present. Leave the past in the past. Deal with the issues at hand and don’t complicate it with your emotions around old issues. If you are bringing up old stuff it’s because you don’t understand the workings of the mind and need one of my retreats.
- Don’t avoid conflict and think that it will miraculously go away; it usually gets bigger. Make time to come together and clean up the issue. So things don’t pile up.
- Stay away from blaming each other for feelings you are having. Realize your feelings come from your belief system not their actions.
There are so many more things you can do to create a more harmonious relationship between each other. A good start is to book a Mother Daughter Retreat and get all the tools you need to create a healthy relationship with each other.
In all of my retreats, whether it be, the individual intensive, mother-daughter, or the couples retreat you will learn how to recognize your inner child, love yourself, shift these old beliefs and show up differently in the world.
Is your mother daughter relationship in trouble?
Is your heart aching to reconnect?
Are you tired of being blamed for the problems?
by Debra | Jan 28, 2019
Why are there so many people with depression and anxiety and what is causing it?
In my practice more than ever, people are coming to me of all ages, with depression and anxiety. Anxiety and depression are the two biggest issues that I work with my clients. Again it is hitting all ages, from the 13-year-olds to the 60-year-olds I am working with.
If it isn’t a clinical issue around depression, it could be a suppression of feelings. When we suppress how we are feeling about ourselves, about our circumstances and about the world around us, it tends to settle inside of us. It could be a sense of hopelessness about your current situation or the world affairs. There is a lot going on with our lives and the world to be having feelings about. If we are stuffing those feelings, they could come out as depression or anxiety.
Depression is an umbrella for what’s really going on. Are you having sadness, are you hopeless or maybe you have high anxiety. It’s important to get to what’s underneath the depression or the anxiety. The work that I do gets to the core reasons you are feeling and why. It is so important for us to feel what we are feeling and have an understanding about our feelings so it doesn’t sink into depression.
Depression and anxiety are great indicators that there is something inside of us that we need to look at so we can transform our thought patterns. If we are continuously looking outside of ourselves to feel better and not addressing our feelings, we could start feeling pretty depressed.
What makes this life palatable is that every life experience is an opportunity to shift my skewed thinking from my old beliefs. If I had to go outside of myself and change the situation, that would be very frustrating, leaving me feeling pretty hopeless, which would lead to depression.
In all of my retreats, the individual intensive, the couples retreat, or the mother-daughter retreat, you will learn about yourself and what triggers these feelings of anxiety, hopelessness, sadness or fear and start shifting them.
