Sex In The Forbidden Zone

Sex In The Forbidden Zone: When Men In Power…..Betray Women’s Trust (by Peter Rutter, M.D., 1986) was a book that helped pull me out of a period of fright I was trying too hard to manage on my own.

I had no idea how very hard it was!

There is a
cost to the quiet!

Today in light of one more sex abuse scandal, involving one more man in a position of power, I am thinking about the messages of this book and what it taught me. 

The book helped me at the time by my reading clinical perspectives on the personal harm being done to me and the lack of integrity and exploitativeness that represented in my abuser.

Added to the apparent stepping over the line of moral and ethical decency of Bill Cosby, I am thinking today, also, of the pain of the women involved, reminding me of my own. The pain of the abusive acts coupled with the pain of carrying a secret added to the pain of telling the truth, at long last.

And, then the backlash as the armchair judges get into the act, dismissing stories that have taken an enormous amount of courage to tell. I am not certain the resulting polarization with those on the side of support makes it much easier. It is all so much pain!

Yet I am sure it does help one regain dignity and balance after awhile -- and -- above all a sense of empowerment.

Even today, several decades later I still struggle with remnants of shame and fear that somehow imbued my rabbi with a greater power over me than I found in myself – or – in my community to help get him away from me.  

But now I am more confident of my role as an innocent in the episode that continued for more than a decade and one-half.

When will it ever stop?

As a psychotherapist I have had far too many reports from emotionally traumatized clients in similar circumstances. And, sadly enough the blind eye of those surrounding these abusers of power and betrayers of trust has, in many ways, been as disheartening to witness, if not more, than the abusers themselves.

I sought out my rabbi for counsel and guidance in dealing with an abusive husband. It was my second marriage and the second time I had chosen a man who would be emotionally abusive. Without the maturity, skill and support I needed to take care of myself – and my children, fleeing from these marriages seemed my only option.

With these two husbands the ploy worked well enough to free me of their direct, personal control over me. However, the consequences still continue to this day, many years later, in the form of indirect punishments of me and my children; defamation of character, continued scandal-mongering, power plays and control games might be the polite terms.

While the rabbi has been deceased now for a number of years,  alive he was not so easily dissuaded as these two husbands. Oh, the tales I could tell about how it was, if I would.

At the time I still believed in rabbis as viable teachers of truth. They were the scholars, the wise men who could interpret the mysteries of life far and away beyond  the limited capabilities of ordinary people such as I. It was difficult to see this particular rabbi in any other way than I had been reared.

Thus, for more than fifteen years, this esteemed man, my rabbi, pursued me in ways that were frightening; his pursuit more like stalking. To this day I have not yet fully cleansed myself of the toxity this infected me with.

Of course, I told no one.

Who could I tell? I was not accustomed to “telling” the things that confused and bothered me most. And, he was so very prominent and well-regarded.

I now know, today, that the greater cost was truly that of being quiet, not having anyone I trusted to tell.

Secrets have so much power over our lives. They warp the clarity we must rely upon to experience the beauty of life, eating away at the very fabric of our emotional, physical and spiritual health.

Yet when telling seems to carry with it an equal or greater threat, how difficult it is to know which way to go.

So, I find myself, as I write these words, pledging, again, anew to hold a space of loving, caring and compassion for whomever it is that would seek me out, yearning to free herself of the –

Burden of truths held back; the cost of the quiet!

I Dreamed A Dream

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep I felt a marvelous shift occur in me – at the level of my heart. Awakening this morning a dream linked my heart felt sense to that bed-time  experience.

My dream showed me a scenario related to the absence of personal generosity that abounds in our society today. The story it told was a parody, spotlighting the self-centeredness I had been seeing in the past months of a dear friend of mine.

She had, all of sudden, taken off into interests of hers that had not included me -- and -- had never, in close to six months, made any serious effort to contact me; from almost daily contact to nothing.

Of course I knew my friend had just started a new job, her son had just gotten engaged and her youngest was still just getting used to college. And, her husband always had his demands. 

Still I did feel a bit neglected and hurt.

All of this, excepting my feelings and observations, dream included, is by interpretation, of course.

Nonetheless, drawing on many wonderfully successful years of training and application of dream work interpretation as a psychotherapist, I have come, at this age of my maturing, to trust my self-confidence in dream interpretation as well as daily living analysis – and – my feelings.

After all, it was my dream and this is my life.  So, assuring myself that one does develop a certain degree of expertise and wisdom about such things, personally, I believe I have more than earned my right to totally not like this circumstance with my friend, if I don’t like it!

I did feel a bit neglected and hurt! That's my truth.

In my dream I was both surprised and disappointed at my friend’s self-centeredness and lack of caring and concern for me. Yet while I slowly made my way into waking another, more uplifting image, came to me that shifted my regret to joy.

This image tied in, somehow, to my letting go into sleep last night, feeling so especially loved by Lisa, New Horizons’ long time board member and Communications Committee Chairperson, that my heart could not help but to swell, thinking of her generous giving, most recently, of our new blog site --

Exploring Your Dark Side: The Adventure of A Lifetime

In a brief moment of awakening, this clarity brought me to imagine “all the people living life in peace...” as John Lennon sang of it in “Imagine.”  

A world where our love and caring, generosity and kindness toward one another can not diminish but only flourish.

Then I realized something very important to remember with love in my own heart.

It is still going to take us a bit of time and continued disciplined hard work to realize that dream -- that imagining of Lennon’s -- and the rest of us idealists.

With these thoughts in mind and heart, in the foreground of my life, standing out in front, I saw Lisa, for this little while, in her giving.

In her hands, surrounded by a white, gold shining light, she is extending a gift to me (and you). Specifically this gift offers me to, at last, have a platform for publishing -- online -- excerpts from two of my three unpublished Random House books; books #1, Surviving Addictions, and #2  Exploring Your Dark Side: The Adventure of A Lifetime.

This reminded me further of all the many people in my life, like Lisa, who genuinely love me and are so incredibly generous in their giving to me and New Horizons, sometimes beyond words and measure.

Please do check out New Horizons new Exploring Your Dark Side: The Adventure of A Lifetime blog site to share in this beautiful gift to me (and you).

Take a peek at this treasure trove, now under construction, and begin your next adventure with me and New Horizons as we seek to bring you – our supporters, volunteers, study participants and guests – the best we have to offer to help ourselves and help others make our world better for our living.

Long time coming!

(Twenty-five years since I began my writing adventure under contract to Random House, oiy veh! A true writer can be this determined to express herself!)

It’s all about the Dark and the Light.

Post Mid-Term Election Reflections And The Wind In My Sails

Chaos, upheaval,order, clarity and the love in my heart

I was frustrated the other evening during my program planning session with Jack, my co-host for the Possible Society In Motion Radio Show.

Typically Jack and I have an abundance of synergy in these show formulating meetings. And, typically, I come away from them inspired and eager to translate our sense of a shared and heightened consciousness into a preliminary script for the show.

But this time was different.

We had agreed to wait for our planning meeting until after  Tuesday’s mid-term election results were in. We had agreed that as the main theme of our show has to do with overcoming polarization, the outcome of the elections would give us much that we could work into our coming Thursday evening’s show.

Just as anticipated there was plenty of viable material to dig our way through.

We had even mucked our way through the election debris to the broader issues of our societal problems. And how this newly elected Congressional body might solve or sabotage our over-all progress as a nation. We were definitely not lacking in program-relevant material.

Still our session was generating nothing but frustration for me. I was troubled, no doubt about it, and completely at a loss as to how to get unstuck.

With this as our closing, Jack and I were all but ready to call it quits for the evening, anticipating that time away from the tediousness of the effort might bring some light. So we called it a night, saying our good-byes -- except for just one more item Jack wanted to share.

All well and good. Just a few moments more. Than shelve the project for the evening.

But that last moment’s topic brought us our turning point!

Hanging up the phone, I was off to my other end of the day tasks.

Then, almost in an instant, I realized that the item Jack had just introduced had, serendipitously, cut right through the ruminations of our very intellectual, earlier conversation – and – had gone straight to my heart!

There was the missing piece!

The shift that occurs when we meet at the level of the heart!

This is what came to me –

Dealing with our political and societal challenges is far and away not something to be undertaken solely with the thoughts of the mind! This notion may not be as apparent to some as it is to me. That's a good reason to keep listening to our radio show, reading our online articles and participate in our study.

The understanding of these ideas may be quite subtle and thus illusive at first. But once you start SEEING what some of us are already SEEING, you will wonder how you missed it so long.

But this is one thing, you might already be realizing -- ruminating about politics, as Jack and I had been doing, is one the most frequent things people like us in a civilized society, such as ours, do in order to survive troubled times. But it is not the only way.

Over-analyzing is a survival-based tendency to think repetitively without finding solutions about certain negative circumstances. Our society and our politics are ideal for this kind of thinking.

Rumination only seems to be a way to solve problems. But on its own, ruminating does not lead to change. In fact it can lead to the very things that obstruct change such as discouragement and depression.

Somewhere, if a shift is to occur to help us truly solve problems, we must find ways to meet at the level of the heart.

The short story Jack shared, almost as an afterthought as our planning session wound down, brought light into darkness, exemplifying, once again, how the human heart transcends polarization. With a good night’s sleep, enabling me to integrate what I experienced as a result of Jack and I shifting out of our cogitations into an appreciation of the human heart, a fine radio script emerged. 

Hear the podcast of that show and join Jack and I, taking a brief respite in terms of how post-election reflections can go in a gentle, low-key way.

The Possible Society In Motion Radio Show with Jack and I --

“Finding The Light In The Darkness Of America’s Secret Civil War”

The Wonderful World Of My Inner Warrior Hero

“I feel the earth move under my feet.” (Carole King)

I feel the fire in the earth’s belly move up through these feet into the heaven above.

I am fighting my way back from a tumble; another blindness-threatening, eye infection crisis. Just when I had, recently, hit the ground running, recapturing the best parts of my childhood innocence,  joy and delight in all life’s greatest possibilities.

Once again I felt like Humpty Dumpty who had a great fall.

I had determined that the prophecy that had guided my life’s journey for forty years was now nearing its most complete manifestation.

I had come to trust my visionary capabilities. I had learned to have faith in my abilities to see, somehow more deeply, more broadly, more completely what others might not be seeing at all, in certain areas.

Then, at almost the very moment when all indicators seemed set to affirm my readings of future outcomes assured, I took a tumble.

Shaking my head at the quake I found myself lost, surprised, stunned and unnerved; my world rocked. Once again the remnants of my “Chicken Little Syndrome’ script awakened.

My fate, according to that script, was that, for me, the sky would always fall right on my head just at the moment of my intended greatest glory. I could not win!

For a day or two, as I simultaneously began to hope that my recent eye infection crisis would not, again, end in blindness, I felt crushed, decimated.

So I did what felt most natural. I took time off from ordinary life’s happenings, slept late, got up only to move myself to my couch with a good book to help me pass the hours. I ate lightly, sometimes not at all. Eating was just too much trouble.

Surprise, delight, I was renewed by doing nothing at all. Thus it began to dawn on me that I’d had quite enough of giving up; enough to begin reaching out to regain my Marjah. (Marjah is the word our Beloved community development mentor, Murat Yagan, taught us to mean the God within, according to his native Abkhazian traditions.)

Letting nature have its way with me, as all good warriors must do from time to time, if they are to endure for the whole of the campaign, I had slowly regained my strength. Feeling the Power within me surge forth, I was ready to, once again, do battle, if need be, to live out the intention of my life’s mission as I have interpreted it.

Maybe I will find out, in the end, that I got the Divine messages as I have been reading them all wrong. On the other hand, maybe I do read them right. Or, alternatively, some right and some wrong. After all when we try to interpret the mysteries of Life we are still operating in the realm of mystery. We can never know what the run of the show will bring until the final act has been played.

But for now, I am back in the game, once again with my wonderful Inner Warrior Hero, my Divine Inner Goddess. intentionally guiding the power within me on the course that feels most fit for me, reaching out to draw into me the power beyond.

She’s an Amazon-type goddess, this Inner Warrior Hero/Divine Inner Goodess in me; strong and focused, passionate and wise, gentle, radiant and serene. I call her Goddess-zilla.

May your Inner Warrior Hero guide you, too, always on the path of the Highest Good as you best determine it for yourself!

At Ben Bradlee’s Funeral

My dream time had me at Ben Bradlee’s funeral this morning. With numerous others I was helping to set up for the reception that would follow the memorial service.

How odd, caterers and waiters would have been tending to this task. But somehow in my dream it looked more like a Shabbat service with an Oneg Shabbat at our local synagogue. (Oneg Shabbat is the gathering after Jewish Sabbath services, often with food and socializing.)

Most interestingly was that there was a table for beverages, alcoholic and otherwise, at which I was placing a Jewish brand of whisky with English lettering of a Jewish man’s name. Even more intriguing is that the name had the initials of my father!

No Hebrew writing, as I recall, but then there might have been in smaller letters that I just didn’t happen to notice. Nonetheless it was a distinctly Jewish brand. And that fact alone held importance for me.

The feeling accompanying the dream was one of warmth, richness, community conviviality.  Absent qualities at gatherings I attended in Washington with much too much on the superficial power game playing level.

However, in this scene the theme seemed to be one of interweaving parts of myself into wholeness and well being. Also there was a sense of something having to do with the inheritance of my two children, now grown, Elisa and Eric.

How very interesting it all was and somewhat unusual as I had only met Ben Bradlee one time, along with his wife Sally Quinn.

The occasion had been a rather intimate brunch, as I recall, at the home of my former sister-in-law when she was writing for the Washington Post. The Omelet Man, entertainer and cook extraordinaire combined, had been our chef, if I remember correctly.

Dreams are so revealing, if one can make use of them as messages from the unconscious to guide one’s personal emerging of clarity.

Being so inclined I have been taking time to do just that since.

Strange the fragments of me, yearning for unity, now coming into my conscious mind from this dream time adventure at this still early time of the day. By interpretation I have, thus far, included these clues from my unconscious was signaling --

• My prophecy-predicted return to Washington;
• The anti-Semitism in myself, finally reversed after decades, that was, no doubt, heightened by my fast track years in D.C.;
• Unfinished business with my former sister-in-law;
• Concern for the legacy I will leave my children.

As the day is still early now. What will this dream herald for me as my day goes on?

What guideposts will I recognize as this dream continues to work its way through my psyche, like the gift of wisdom from a place somewhere beyond that dreams always bring, if one allows?

On the level of earthly reality, a man of great stature and contribution to the betterment of our society (and politics, one would hope) has now passed beyond our mundane world. And, I am grateful to have shared a brief moment of time with this man who made a legend of the Washington Post in exposing the Watergate break-in.

This was an enormous gift for me, personally. I will never forget the model he represented for me of someone who relentlessly searched for truth and had no fear of revealing it, as big and bold as anyone could.

For this I am, apparently, so grateful that I even brought myself to attend his funeral in absentia on a day that I, in actuality, was traveling to Johns Hopkins battling, once again, to save my very precarious eyesight.

On that score, my eye infection crisis, “we are heading in the right direction,” my doctor says while I, concurrently, continue to navigate my return to Washington, as my prophecy predicts, at least in my dreams.

So I take from my having attended Ben Bradlee’s funeral that celebration is unfolding, even in times of loss, especially if a Jewish brand of whiskey, honoring my tribal heritage can show up for the event.

Searching For Goddess-zilla, My Inner Warrior Hero

I woke up this morning; much earlier than intended, feeling crushed, decimated. So I buried my head into my pillow, turning myself over in search of the replenishing power of more sleep.

For the next three hours, in and out of unsettled slumber, I battled my way to regaining my inner strength; the creative power I rely upon to craft the beauty that fills most of my days.

It had been a challenging week, this one just passed. A blindness-threatening eye infection had sent me to Johns Hopkins Wilmer Eye Institute five days out of seven for emergency care.

Thank goodness I have one of the world’s top ophthalmologists, Dr. John Gottsch, as my doctor and am, thus, SEEING improvement today.

But it’s been rough, let me tell you!

There is no way I ever want to be blind again. But there that menace to my well-being was, looming over me again this past week. And, the ordeal, had emotionally caught up with me this morning as progress on the purely physical level allowed me a respite.

My eye disease, keratoconus, diagnosed when I was a junior in college, has been and will continue to be a fast moving roller coaster ride when symptoms of its perpetual presence resurface.

One learns to live with it, have enormous gratitude for the smooth times and lean into  the turbulent ones with the medical attentiveness required.

Fortunately, my life has been dominated by days of fun, adventure and celebration. And, I am not much moved for new tests to my endurance. I like the good times better. Of course, I did rise to the test and, no doubt, am, again, a better person for facing the challenge.

Murat Yagan, our Beloved community development mentor, recently deceased, guided us, his devoted students, to always be intent on refining our skills as alchemists; turning the lead of ourselves into gold. By now the discipline of the practice has become an art form in many of us.

However, today, I was weary from the near ceaseless practice of this art this past week.

Yet evidenced by the way I feel now, uplifted as I look outside my office window at the golden hues of sunlight shining on autumn leaves, I feel my Inner Warrior Hero strength that fuels my life surging through me again. I am an Amazon-bred woman in the spirit of the Caucasus Mountains from which Murat originated, horseless though I be.

My Amazon-self, the part of me that I call Goddess-zilla, feels ready to take on this new day now.  A few hours of added sleep, a bit of telephone hanging out with my Spirit Sister Sue and an innate, highly disciplined Inner Warrior Hero, the alchemist within me have got me going again.

P.S. The Inner Warrior Hero as societal and political transformer is to be the next coming attraction from New Horizons and myself so keep your EYES OPEN FOR DEVELOPMENTS HERE, featuring our new --

Exploring Your DarkSide: The Adventure Of A Lifetime blog site

with interactive applications to help you transform the lead of your life into the gold.

Coming in November!

Scenes of the Crime

Hot Pants, Motorcycles And K Street, in progress, commentary

Anastasia The Super Sleuth says –

Sometimes there is only so much analyzing and theorizing about what’s going on “out there”  if you want to make progress in life.

Actually, Anastasia The Super Sleuth emphatically says –

Truth be told sometimes it’s essential to just simply immerse oneself in living and let nature take its natural course as it will. In other words give up the intellectual gymnastics and embrace an experience.” 

Enough, already, with the internet and other sources of mental gyrations.

No celebs to get you high on their self-generated excitement. No mind- altering chemicals needed -- and – guess what you’ve got?

An adventure into full-blown reality! (Hopefully a safe one.)

So it was with this principle as my guiding belief; be an adventurer and go off on a real live adventure into life, that I made my way into the belly of the beast, yesterday, for a day trip to Washington.  

Call it book research or whatever, I took myself, along with a friend, back to the scene of a whole slew of crimes I committed or participated in, living life on the edge on the D.C. fast track.

OMG! There they were; the memories and associated emotions, each and every mile of the way.

So much to digest from just this one, day-long sojourn to enhance my connecting with me!

I did not, this time, hit the ground running as I did on my pilgrimage to Ohio back in August. 

But then Washington is not and has never been associated with the purity of my young innocence as is my small Ohio hometown. 

No siree, Bob! Washington was the centerfold of my dark side which I will reveal more and more about as we move closer and closer into my full return.

The only purity I ever knew in D.C. was born of the idealism of my young adulthood and the illusions of our “unadulterated” founding fathers. After all, Lincoln’s birthday is associated in my mind with a certain delicious school room sugar cookie and George Washington, of course, with cherry pie.

How sweet it was.

Oh well! Maturity typically comes along with some hard earned wisdom.

Nonetheless, I did make a pilgrimage of sorts back to my young adult roots in Washington,  yesterday, with an adventuresome country friend. Given the inestimable one-way streets and interminable traffic tie ups, round and round we went with me remembering and remembering and remembering.

OMG!

I am truly on my way now to living out the manifestation of my prophecy; the return of the goddess of hot pants and motorcycles to K Street.

Will we have a parade when it’s time to celebrate my return?

So important was the experience that I am going off again, tomorrow, for a bit. This time for a little vacation to have an ample respite to just let these happenings soak into my soul as I allow myself time to investigate the meeting of the inner me and the outer as I prepare myself for goodness knows what next.

Remember while I’m gone that Anastasia The Super Sleuth says – 

Truth be told sometimes it’s necessary to just simply immerse oneself in living and let nature take its natural course as it will. In other words give up the intellectual gymnastics and embrace an experience.

Enough, already, with the day to day details – and  -- internet mental gyrations.

I’m not particularly hooked on this internet game but a bit of a respite will me good anyway.

I thought I’d just let you know what’s happening here.

Have yourself a nice weekend!