Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Press Release: Seventy Years Of Adverse Childhood Experience Wounds Healed By Truth-Telling
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Lynn Cullather-Popkin
Phone: 301.775.1432
Anastasia Rosen-Jones, now just past her seventy-ninth birthday, is living proof that healing from the effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) can be achieved.
While it is essential to not over-simplify a lifetime of PTSD adult challenges Anastasia has battled, a series of dramatic episodes last year has now brought Anastasia to the pinnacle of living her life free of adverse childhood experience (ACE) wounding.
Through the ordeal of Anastasia’s standing-up to confront an abuser, her former psychiatrist mentor, Martin G. Groder, M.D., with a professional ethics complaint for what had been a long-buried succession of sexual harassment and power abuses, Anastasia is discovering a well-earned liberation gaining momentum day-by-day, as she now begins to experience living free of the weightiness of secret-keeping in which survivors of adverse childhood experiences (ACE) are typically mired.
What is Anastasia's plan for this next and last leg of her life's journey?
First and foremost, as Executive Director and Founder of the New Horizons Support Network, Inc. a non-profit, 501 C (3) organization, Anastasia is determined to put her teaching stories from a lifetime of accumulated personal struggles and achievements, along with an equally remarkable cache of clinical treatment strategies and theoretical advancements in the fields of psychology, community development, violence prevention and personal and social evolution, together and into the hands of those most ready to make use of it, with a special focus on serving the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) movement.
Anastasia’s lifetime journey presently bringing her to reach this pinnacle began initially once she was freed from the captivity of an emotionally tortured childhood, under the domination of a mother hell-bent on destroying her, plus an abusive early adult marriage. Simultaneously, in 1973, she began therapy for herself as well as her education and training to become a psychotherapist.
In Anastasia’s case, hard work, inordinate self-discipline, determination, accumulating skillfulness, a clear-headed vision of a meaningful destination, an enormous creative talent, faith -- and the love, devotion and support of her father, removed from her emotionally torturous daily environment, was enough to set Anastasia free.
Free she is!
With boundless energy, now that her liberation is here to share her abundant wisdom and well-honed expertise on living well and doing it in such a manner as to turn the lead of the treacherous times into gold, personal alchemy at its best!
Free to be enjoying the next and final cycle of her life, Anastasia has pledged to now do her utmost to follow in the long-life footsteps of some of her family members, one of whom lived to be one hundred and eight -- and -- do the living well!
Read articles on Anastasia’s three blog sites to begin drawing from her vast treasure chest of teachable-moment tales, theories and practical applications. And, hear Anastasia broadcasts and discussions on her two online shows, Anastasia The Storyteller Radio and the Possible Society In Motion Radio.
Also avail yourself, personally, of one-on-one, couples and family guidance through Anastasia’s Super Sleuth’d Coaching and Consulting Services – and – for community, business and organization guidance.
Anastasia can be reached at MountainWomanRJ@aol.com.
All proceeds presently being donated to the New Horizons Small "Zones of Peace" Project.
Monday, July 15, 2019
WOW!! Hear Anastasia, On Podcast, Describing How Truth-Telling "Set Her Free….
… to soaring, as if on the wings of an eagle."
And it’s only the beginning of exciting things ahead – for Me/Anastasia.
And for you!
You may not be able to get “IT” yet – the magic Anastasia/I is/am trying to convey about how truth-telling/speaking truth to power set me free - and - can do the same for you, if you are intent on developing it as art.
But you can truly HEAR the lift of my personally transforming experience, in my voice, my New Horizons Board Members have told me, as I describe how my Ethics Complaint of 2018 was sabotaged, almost from the get go by the International Transactional Analysis Association (ITAA), yet I came out a WINNER, in spite of the obstacles.
And, indeed I did! Winning was always my intention!
I made certain that I would, no matter what anyone else intended for me!
Or didn't care enough to even consider.
(Some of the history and details of my Ethics Complaint ordeal are described on this page, referencing Martin G. Groder, M.D. about whom the complaint for sexual harassment and power abuse was filed with the ITAA. Other posts on this issue can also be found in the Anastasia The Storyteller blog site archives at: Beyond Gender Tyranny, Ethics Complaint and Ethics Complaint Healing.}
As an acknowledgement of the courageous and meritorious ways in which I/Anastasia managed this ordeal, New Horizons Support Network Inc, of which I am the Executive Director, has now chosen, as of yesterday, to name me their Truth Or Dare Movement Poster Girl, suggesting that I have exemplified and am, thus, a worthy role model on how we, as an organization, would like to see people handling, not only #MeToo ordeals such as mine, but areas of conflict in general.
I am truly honored by this acknowledgement! And very joyful to see the alter ego image they have created for me.
If truth telling or not truth telling, in politics, your workplace, friendships or family, has been affecting your life, personally or professionally, as it has done in my own and Lynn’s, my radio show studio manager, previously and/or presently, please do sign on with New Horizons, as we move, full-steam ahead with our Truth Or Dare Movement, gearing up for action now, including, but not limited to, the following main objectives —
- Teaching YOU the principles and strategies of New Horizons Truth Or Dare GAME – So you, too, can learn the art of truth-telling, in general, and speaking truth to power, more specifically, no matter where you need/choose to do so.
- Guiding YOU to be an intern Truth Or Dare Conductor, as is Anastasia with more than forty-five years of playing the GAME, so you, too, can learn to bring truth-telling to your community, your workplace, friendship circle or family. On this track, after a suitable training time, you will learn how to reach "awe" and transform your life -- and the lives of those around you!
- Engaging YOU in signing the Pro-Truth Pledge, original or expanded versions, and getting everyone you know on board with this simple action, on the way to cleaning up the lying and corruption in our society as if these DO matter!
These objectives of ours are here to help you.
You, also, can draw on my vast experience in transforming dark into light by contacting me for your personal, business, organization and/or community challenges.
Also, look forward to further details and instruction on how to create the same for yourself, truth-telling -- speaking truth to power, as Anastasia and studio manager, Lynn Cullather-Popkin, embark on a new radio series, exploring the extremes of how and why truth-telling can be dangerous or the path to liberation and personal transformation.
Discover for yourself how truth-telling as art can be your pathway to freedom and liberation!
On a new radio show series, with Anastasia and Lynn, to be introduced on Anastasia The Storyteller Radio, on their next show
Tuesday, July 23 4 p.m. EDT
Promising to be an especially intriguing discussion, as Lynn is the one New Horizons Board Member who, at least for now, is refusing to sign the Pro-Truth Pledge!
Now what's that about?
New Horizons Truth Or Dare Movement is here now!
Monday, July 8, 2019
New Horizons Truth Or Dare GAME: History and Background
Find out some of the basic philosophies that make New Horizons Truth Or Dare GAME an activity to invest your time and energies in. New details posted, here, today!
With an awe-inspiring agenda, New Horizons Truth Or Dare GAME, formerly known as the Discount Derby, in its earlier incarnation, 1976 -- 2003, became known, throughout the Washington, D.C. area, as the therapeutic group strategy that "could cure 'em (meaning any thing dark in the human repertoire), or nobody could."
Now, in its new incarnation, the Truth Or Dare GAME, this lively, personal and collective transformation process is making its way back into being an interactive activity of which to take note, if:
- Building and sustaining "zones of peace" is on your agenda;
- Divisiveness, polarization, lying and corruption in society and politics go against your core values.
Find out how you can qualify to play New Horizons Truth Or Dare GAME
by contacting Anastasia at: MountainWomanRJ@aol.com
Sunday, July 7, 2019
The Extremes Of Truth-Telling Explored
Lynn, my new radio show studio manager, was surprised that I was shocked to learn that she lied, more often than not, to her kids.
(You can read about the “happening” of that discovery on this blog, in the section identified as Friday, June 28.)
I was astonished to discover she saw nothing wrong with this state of affairs.
She was mystified at my amazement, having assumed that she and I were like-minded on things of this nature, especially as we had shared quite a few years of Truth Or Dare GAME playing, as far back as the ‘90s.
I was startled to find that she had spent the many hours she had in the GAME and New Horizons GAME support groups without knowing that the main agenda of these was truth-telling, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Pursuing this track of discourse I came to realize that back in the former days of our GAME, circa 1976 -- 2003, I had not yet identified, either for myself or the others, that getting to “The best obtainable version of the truth,” was of the highest priority to be gained from the process.
That would come later.
Now I know!
Might it actually have taken my experience of going through my Ethics Complaint ordeal of 2018 to heighten my awareness of this?
I’ve been wondering about it.
Or had my devotion to the GAME always been predicated on how it had, from the very first time I experienced it, provided me with a solid, reliable pathway out of all I knew of darkness, up to that point, initially by instinct, later out of the scientific, psycho-social and spiritual foundations I would come to embrace as most dependable?
(My first GAME experience was in 1976 in an Asklepeion-model GAME I played with convicts – and TA (Transactional Analysis) colleagues of mine, running it at the James River Penitentiary in Richmond, Virginia.)
I could attempt to answer these very deep, probing questions by writing, as I often do. Perhaps I could even, with enough words, come close to an enhanced clarity that would satisfy my curious mind.
That would not, however, be enough for me, as I want to share my genuinely satisfactory answers with others, believing there is much of value to be learned from them. And doing so would take at least one full book. I am not quite yet ready to take up this project though I am playing around with it, with a working title of “How Watergate Helped Me Break The Corruption Code Of My Family,” as, indeed, what that GAME day brought me was to, over time, alter the course of my life.
Furthermore, my immediate quest is far more directed toward gaining an understanding of how it is that Lynn and I, like-minded in so many ways, loving one another as client and friend for close to thirty years now, could end up at such extreme ends from one another on the importance truth-telling plays in our lives? Especially as we have shared many hours in New Horizons Truth Or Dare GAME (originally called the Discount Derby for reasons I will explain at some point).
If I asked Lynn what she thinks might account for this, which actually I have, she would likely respond with something such as –
“Well, Anastasia, in thirty years we have both done a lot of growing. Some of it similar. Some of it with very different priorities.”A larger question, however, looms in my mind, along with this.
What does it mean, beyond Lynn and I, beyond New Horizons Truth Or Dare GAME, beyond New Horizons developing collaboration with the Pro-Truth Pledge, in an era of U.S. crises, with lying, divisiveness and cruelty being pivotal elements, now of epidemic proportions in our country, for people, any two or more, to be so extremely opposite in addressing the importance of truth-telling for helping us to move beyond these difficulties?
New Horizons “expanded” Pro-Truth Pledge, supported by the “original” Pro-Truth Pledge suggests that we “Honor Truth Because…”
- Human dignity and respect require truth telling;
- Truth and truth-telling bring order out of chaos to human affairs.
I am open to finding answers to these questions. And I am committed to bridging the gaps such as Lynn and I have on this issue. She is too. No wonder we’re still loving each other after all these many years.
Be sure to hear Lynn and I, on our forthcoming radio show as we begin exploring the dangers of truth-telling and how we might be able to move beyond these. So that truth-telling can truly set us free,, without undue harm, with a majority of people being of like-mind on the issue.
Thursday, July 4, 2019
Truthfulness Can Set Us To Soaring, As If On The Wings Of An Eagle
Is this not a self-evident truth?
Much to my surprise, it is not!
A subtitle for this piece, therefore, might be –
“Dealing With Realities Colliding: A Tale Of Truthfulness Setting A Person To Soar, Up Against Truth Being A Dangerous Commodity”
Here’s my backstory of how those two themes banged up against one another, leading me to realize, after the fact, that instead of my doing an Anastasia The Storyteller Radio Show on the subject of …
to be followed by --
Friday afternoon, June 28.
There I was, sitting myself down with my new Anastasia The Storyteller Radio Show Studio Manager (I just now made up that official title for New Horizons Board Member, Lynn, as my “new” studio manager) for a program planning meeting, when I came face-to-face with a greater reality than my own, obviously limited view, bringing someone else’s “truth” to my amazed attention.
I was feeling some pressure to get Lynn and I moving on script development as our next radio show broadcast was scheduled for Tuesday, July 2. And, due to a series of wide-ranging chaos-breeding events, I had been unable to broadcast since mid-January.
One of these happenings, a major accident for Lynn, prompted an emergency room visit, leading to immediate surgery, leaving her very limited in her daily activities and in unending pain.
With this as a backdrop, how does a show host, like myself, relying on Lynn as I had been, account to a listening audience for a six months lapse in broadcasting a program intended to be weekly, or bi-weekly, at the least?
As it had turned out, I could not easily do my show without studio assistance, especially as the required internet service for broadcasting is unreliable up here in the mountains where I live and work. And, my former studio host, not so readily replaced, had been fired for being high on marijuana while on the air with me on a show back in December.
Also, freshly on my mind was that the previous day I had completed an Anastasia Super Sleuth’d Coaching and Consulting Evaluation Session with Lynn. It had been a gift that seemed more than appropriate to provide her.
Lynn was, after all, a New Horizons Board Member which naturally entitled her to a 50% discount on sessions with me, plus she had been a former psychotherapy client who had come into treatment with me almost thirty years ago, bringing her partner, who would eventually become her second husband, four kids and a daughter-in-law along!
Recently she had come back to re-connect with New Horizons and myself and had become a board member, along with becoming a dear friend. Then there was my wanting to show appreciation for her willingness to run the show studio, a support without which I could not easily do the show.
Our evaluation session, which was intended to be the first of many coaching and consulting appointments on her behalf, had centered on Lynn and I reviewing her answers to my Compassionate Warrior Quiz.
There were few surprises for me with her answers, fewer still for Lynn who had been attending counseling and other forms of self-help such as parenting classes for decades. And, thus, was quite self-aware.
However, for both us there was one huge surprise!
As we completed the assessment, rounding it off with a discussion on question number twenty-five.
Question number twenty-five asks –
Do you indulge in behaviors or feelings you attempt to hide from friends or colleagues?Answers range from –
Always True – 5 to Never True - 1Knowing Lynn as I do – and for as long as I have, with her having been a devoted Truth or Dare GAME player, as far back as almost thirty years, I was not surprised she gave herself a “1” on this, “never true.”
What did throw me, however, was when, after a brief pause, she said, almost blurting it out, “But with my kids, my answer would be “4,” often true.”
OMG!! What have we here, I hear my mind saying, in retrospect?
“What does this mean for my dear Lynn?
That she is more often than not lying and hiding things from her grown kids?
And what can this mean for her assisting me in doing a radio show program, especially one focused on truth-telling, where she will have off and on dialogue with me, on the air in the service of our listeners?”
Yikes!
I see it now, in hindsight, further surprises lay ahead, a good hand full of challenges and a few disappointments, as Lynn and I, rather innocently, got more and more involved with our program planning. And then made our way, eventually, onto the air.
Hear our show, now on podcast, and listen to how an emerging set of quandaries played out.
Also indulge me here as I acknowledge that I was disappointed enough to spend some of my precious July 4th figuring out how to turn the mishaps that arose to the good.
I'd like you to hear the podcast from yesterday’s program. Even with its blemishes it has some richness to offer.
Then tune into its sister broadcast/podcast –
Part II, How Truth- Telling Sets Us Free:
… where the messages of the last ten minutes or so, of Part I, will be offered a second time in order that what they were intended to convey does not get lost behind the fuzziness, the significance – and – the power of the first twenty minutes of Part I, which, delightfully, now open the gates to what will become a lively discussion on ...
Tuesday, July 23 4 p.m., EDT
With a follow-up series, based on this theme, soon to be scheduled, featuring Lynn and I discussing how we are going to help her, too, to discover “how truth-telling can set us free.”
Wow!! What an adventure life can be when we stay present enough to watch what is truly unfolding before our eyes and, as one of my Watergate heroes, Carl Bernstein suggests, seek –
“The best obtainable version of the truth.”From this platform even seemingly magical things can arise.
For example the fact that Lynn and I now will be embarking on a whole new series of radio show programs, to be broadcast on the New Horizon’s sponsored The Possible Society In Motion Radio Show, on educating people to learn how to move beyond “truth-telling can be dangerous” into experiencing how “truth-telling can set us free.”
Without this shows mishap -- and -- our truth-telling, problem solving ways we might never have discovered that this could be an important next step in supporting New Horizons' Truth Or Dare Movement mission, embodied by the Pro-Truth Pledge.
Coming soon!