committing to practice love, writing and guidance by Jacqueline Valdez
There will always be more untold stories of heartbreak than can be told, but this does not diminish the raw, experience of each and every story. When we hear stories about sexual violence, we tend to want to gloss over the individual’s story and instead, focus on the facts, the statistics, the numbers. The facts and statistics have always been inaccurate, because most of these stories have remained untold.
A complete transcript beyond the fold Read more
I recently returned from another pilgrimage to my beloved ashram in India. I have been traveling to India to make this pilgrimage for the past twenty five years. I haven’t gone every year and I spend anywhere from two weeks to six weeks each time I go there. The trip is a wee bit more difficult because I am a wee bit older, but it is still very manageable and I am very grateful.
I love traveling to India because it allows me to be unplugged. I do not take my I Pad or my laptop or a phone, however, this year I did take a phone to take photos with. I always have my writing pad and pens and I write quite a bit while I am there, but not this time. This time I wrote very little, instead I found myself sleeping, yes sleeping. I am a naturally good sleeper, (thank God) but on this trip, I was sleeping deeply for nine hours straight, plus an hour or two during the day. I even had to challenge myself not to sleep more.
When I was a child, my Mother told me something extraordinary. One afternoon, my parents had had a disagreement. Afterwards, my Mother told me, “Don’t worry, disagreements happen when there isn’t just one person doing all the thinking.” My Mother told me gold.
That moment taught me to never think of myself as a woman standing up to a man, but rather, I’m a woman, having a disagreement with another person, who happens to be a man. Regardless of gender, disagree, yes, of course, but disagree with dignity. That’s what I saw at the Women’s March on Saturday.
The women’s march was the largest and most peaceful march in US history. Why’d we do it? Because it’s 2017 and women are still nagging about equal pay and the right to make decisions concerning our own bodies. Women around the world still don’t have access to equal education, health or political rights. Yes we’re STILL nagging over basic respect. Read more
The virtue is Love and the saboteur is Hate.
I have been asked many questions over the last 34 years of my career. I have been asked about finances, family, romance, well being and so on, but all these questions are about love, even the finance questions.
I’m so worried there won’t be enough money for the mortgage, the children’s college fund, that special vacation we want our children to experience. You may say love won’t buy these things and you would be correct, however, the intention of wanting these things is to share love.
We all make mistakes in life. We over spend, over eat, over criticize, over talk and we have too much anger. Each of us say things that are hurtful. It’s just easier to see them in others, rather than in yourself. We always have a reason why we’re over doing or under doing and that leads us to think that everyone else is just making excuses. We have reasons and they have excuses. That’s convenient.
