There is a place hidden within me that I call my own. A place where my happiness shines with a warm, orange glow. It is the forest of pleasure that lies at the very center of who I am; a true and unspoiled oasis of the senses. The torrential waterfall of imagination and bubbling thoughts merge with the mountains of creativity and joy to birth my own passion and intimacy. It is a natural sanctuary where my Atman visits to sing and dance. But with the flowing waters of emotion come the scattered pieces of what my awareness must put to shame. I feel with all of my perceptions, every part of my being, until I can't help but absorb the shame and guilt of societal pressures. I know, just as much as anyone, that hidden pain and sadness never go away. I will push myself to express my dissatisfaction's so that I can find my own truth. In doing so, I will find my freedom. Sometimes it's hard to find the origination point of emotional upset, but I can feel within my being that there must be a deeply hidden place that stores these sentiments. This place within is called the Svadhishthana. It is the absolute foundation of emotional well-being, the energy place that whispers to us about how we relate to the world while we seek the formation of our identity. It is the place where we FEEL. It is where we enjoy ourselves and live in the moment, to experience the fullness of life. Svadhishthana is the heaven that we hold within, and it is easily torn away by the world around our physical bodies. On the one hand, we have ideas that bring us joy and partners who share our physical pleasure. On the other hand, we have cultural struggles, societal coercion, and the gross misuse of sexual energy. The culture we live in magnifies unrealistic images of sex, while other parts of the community condemn physical pleasures. We live in a world where feelings are not valued, where ardor and emotional reactions are frowned upon, while abusive fetishes and the denial of one's own desires are a necessary sacrifice for "happiness". The waters between normal, healthy desires and excessive, opportunistic impulses become muddy. We are left in confusion of our true wants, in shame of our natural responses, and with a lack of fire for anything humanly real. This disparity is what turns my own soul place into a hell of internal pain, addiction, and emotional instability. This is where I feel the disconnect between my body and my feelings. I learned not to trust myself and to deny my true desires. How can I create anything of beauty when I am disconnected from my sensual self? I love my body. I enjoy my body. I will walk with bare feet. I will envision the orange glow healing the belly of my closeness. I will do more of exactly what makes me happy. I will allow my energy to transform the feelings within my body, to let go, to move, to feel the winds of change. I will have healthy boundaries. I will feel pleasure and passion with every breath that I take. I will nourish my body while valuing and respecting my own needs. My sexuality is sacred and my emotions are the language of my soul. I am at peace.
Where's your secret place?
Showing posts with label addiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label addiction. Show all posts
Monday, May 28, 2018
Wednesday, May 9, 2018
"A Journey To Self Love- A Southern Trans Woman" with guest blogger Jaisee Alexander
How does one encapsulate their entire experience of life onto a few written pages? I’m not sure that it is possible, but I am going to give it my best. I was born in 1988 in the state of South Carolina. They deemed me male at birth and that was a mistake that would take me my entire life to reconcile.
As a child, I was quite content with life and myself. I was caring, light-hearted, spirited, and loving. I was quite feminine naturally and my parents took notice of it. At the age of five, they put me into Tai-Kwon-Do in hopes that I would be able to learn to defend myself physically from those who might want to do me harm, due to my feminine nature.
By the age of seven I was still sucking my thumb (my first addiction, one of many to come) and my parents made me an offer. They said that if I quit sucking my thumb they would buy me a Pocahontas Barbie doll! My father reconciled this by stating it was NOT a "real" Barbie doll, but a Native American figurine. You see by this time, most of my friends were girls. We always played with Barbies and I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to have one. You better believe that I quit sucking my thumb, and so that Pocahontas Barbie doll was mine. It is important to note that before I even left my mother I was using external means (my thumb) to bring about internal peace. This is a behavior that I’ve carried ever since.
By the age of eight I realized that the way I behaved was contrary to what others expected of me. So embarked my journey on how to become a boy. By middle school I was completely isolated from the male population. I tried to imitate the behaviors of males, but to no avail. No one was buying my act and I’m not sure I did either.
I began to struggle, as I could not harmonize my religious beliefs with my growing sexual desire for males. I tried to throw myself deeper into my faith in desperation that if I just loved God hard enough my profane desires might be alleviated. My teen years were filled with hazing, isolation, self-hatred, confusion, and so on. Spring break my junior year in high school, I finally agreed to try marijuana. It was magically incredible and I was temporarily relieved of my suffering. Within a couple of weeks I began using cocaine and then alcohol. So began my decade of using mind-altering chemicals in order to avoid and alleviate suffering.
Puberty came late and so did the most unexpected. I had been waiting with such hopes that puberty would save me. My body would masculinize so that I could finally fit into this binary system of sex and gender. That was not what happened. I began to develop fat tissue in my chest. As my nipples protruded a pain began to develop. As the months continued, so did the pain. After a year plus, it was unbearable. I used to walk down the halls of school pulling at the bottom of my shirt so that no one would see the development of my breasts. I had to walk down stairs so cautiously because it hurt unbearably. One day I pushed back on my chest and, much to my surprise, a liquid substance secreted from my nipples. Thus began the draining of my breasts. The pain became greater than my shame and I finally told my mother.
My senior year of high school, I under went liposuction surgery and removed all of the breast tissue in order to make my body resemble a male. I am an intersex person, but I didn’t even know what that was at this time. I wanted so badly to be “normal”. I didn’t realize what a mistake of understanding that was. I was normal. I was intersex. Intersex people are normal and are naturally occurring with biology. I eradicated my experience and natural state. If only I had had the understanding of loving myself for myself rather than what I believed others wanted me to be. Now I see that I dismembered my body due to fear and the hopes of acceptance of others rather than my own.
I’ve always had this skewed idea that this next thing is what will bring about peace. I went to college and thought education would save me. I then graduated and traveled Europe. I thought traveling would save me. I went to California and thought being in the LGBT community of San Francisco would save me. I worked on a hippie farm on Mount Madonna and thought that I could find myself under the tit of a goat and chasing chickens. Since that didn’t work, I decided to go live in a hippie commune of two hundred plus people in the forest of Guatemala! That surely should do it. Nope. So on to Santiago, Chile to teach English I went. That wasn’t as successful as I had hoped either.
My life began to unravel in 2012 and I could no longer keep up my appearances. I became fragmented in mind, body, and spirit. My addiction to crack and alcohol had consumed me and I was the hostage. Something came to me in my crack and alcohol induced narcosis and revealed to me that, in order to ever find peace, I was going to have to transition. My pain was so grave that I tried to take my life for a third time to get away from the suffering. I was clearly unsuccessful as I suck at killing myself. I ended up going to rehab and began my transition to female.
My sobriety date is October 25, 2013. Within this time I have done many things, such as work on a leadership board of a non-profit directly giving aid and financial grants to transgender citizens in the state of South Carolina. I’ve held a few jobs but mostly being employed within the sex industry. You see, internationally the sex industry is the #1 employer of transgender people, as many places will not higher us knowingly.
I got lost. Fell off the path and so found myself again using external factors to create internal peace. I stayed sober from mind-altering drugs, but found other ways to get high. I bathed in the attention of males and their attraction to my body. I felt validated in the way I had always craved. I gave my power away and became dependent on their attention and validation.
In January 2017 love found me most unexpectedly. I met with this guy who said that he was looking for a domme trans woman, and I said that I was looking for a versatile submissive male. At the time we had no idea that we weren’t really looking for that at all. He peered straight through all of my masks. There was no deceiving him. He saw my pain and instead of running in the opposite direction he held it. This changed everything for me. I no longer had to carry it all on my own. So I met again since I was a child, what it meant to be vulnerable. Having this man love me showed me all the ways that I still came up short in loving myself.
After he left and returned to his country I was at such a loss. I no longer had the attention of males and no longer had his love by my side. After tasting love I no longer wanted the instant gratification of male sexual attention. I was stuck with the wreckage I had caused. Again pain became too great to bear, and so I cracked into fragmented parts of myself. As I did in 2013, I was able to construct something entirely new from the destruction of my own creation.
I now have a daily devotion to a daily reflection, sending inspiration to over fifty people daily, practice guided and silent mediation daily, practice yoga a couple times a week, attend recovery meetings weekly, focus on a healthy and nourishing diet daily, and aid those that are suffering when presented. I am finally able to see that craving has been at the root of my suffering in life. Unless I work to remove it through compassion and love it will continue to limit my fullest potential within this life.
-Jaisee Alexander
What's your journey to self-love?
As a child, I was quite content with life and myself. I was caring, light-hearted, spirited, and loving. I was quite feminine naturally and my parents took notice of it. At the age of five, they put me into Tai-Kwon-Do in hopes that I would be able to learn to defend myself physically from those who might want to do me harm, due to my feminine nature.
By the age of seven I was still sucking my thumb (my first addiction, one of many to come) and my parents made me an offer. They said that if I quit sucking my thumb they would buy me a Pocahontas Barbie doll! My father reconciled this by stating it was NOT a "real" Barbie doll, but a Native American figurine. You see by this time, most of my friends were girls. We always played with Barbies and I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to have one. You better believe that I quit sucking my thumb, and so that Pocahontas Barbie doll was mine. It is important to note that before I even left my mother I was using external means (my thumb) to bring about internal peace. This is a behavior that I’ve carried ever since.
By the age of eight I realized that the way I behaved was contrary to what others expected of me. So embarked my journey on how to become a boy. By middle school I was completely isolated from the male population. I tried to imitate the behaviors of males, but to no avail. No one was buying my act and I’m not sure I did either.
I began to struggle, as I could not harmonize my religious beliefs with my growing sexual desire for males. I tried to throw myself deeper into my faith in desperation that if I just loved God hard enough my profane desires might be alleviated. My teen years were filled with hazing, isolation, self-hatred, confusion, and so on. Spring break my junior year in high school, I finally agreed to try marijuana. It was magically incredible and I was temporarily relieved of my suffering. Within a couple of weeks I began using cocaine and then alcohol. So began my decade of using mind-altering chemicals in order to avoid and alleviate suffering.
Puberty came late and so did the most unexpected. I had been waiting with such hopes that puberty would save me. My body would masculinize so that I could finally fit into this binary system of sex and gender. That was not what happened. I began to develop fat tissue in my chest. As my nipples protruded a pain began to develop. As the months continued, so did the pain. After a year plus, it was unbearable. I used to walk down the halls of school pulling at the bottom of my shirt so that no one would see the development of my breasts. I had to walk down stairs so cautiously because it hurt unbearably. One day I pushed back on my chest and, much to my surprise, a liquid substance secreted from my nipples. Thus began the draining of my breasts. The pain became greater than my shame and I finally told my mother.
My senior year of high school, I under went liposuction surgery and removed all of the breast tissue in order to make my body resemble a male. I am an intersex person, but I didn’t even know what that was at this time. I wanted so badly to be “normal”. I didn’t realize what a mistake of understanding that was. I was normal. I was intersex. Intersex people are normal and are naturally occurring with biology. I eradicated my experience and natural state. If only I had had the understanding of loving myself for myself rather than what I believed others wanted me to be. Now I see that I dismembered my body due to fear and the hopes of acceptance of others rather than my own.
I’ve always had this skewed idea that this next thing is what will bring about peace. I went to college and thought education would save me. I then graduated and traveled Europe. I thought traveling would save me. I went to California and thought being in the LGBT community of San Francisco would save me. I worked on a hippie farm on Mount Madonna and thought that I could find myself under the tit of a goat and chasing chickens. Since that didn’t work, I decided to go live in a hippie commune of two hundred plus people in the forest of Guatemala! That surely should do it. Nope. So on to Santiago, Chile to teach English I went. That wasn’t as successful as I had hoped either.
My life began to unravel in 2012 and I could no longer keep up my appearances. I became fragmented in mind, body, and spirit. My addiction to crack and alcohol had consumed me and I was the hostage. Something came to me in my crack and alcohol induced narcosis and revealed to me that, in order to ever find peace, I was going to have to transition. My pain was so grave that I tried to take my life for a third time to get away from the suffering. I was clearly unsuccessful as I suck at killing myself. I ended up going to rehab and began my transition to female.
My sobriety date is October 25, 2013. Within this time I have done many things, such as work on a leadership board of a non-profit directly giving aid and financial grants to transgender citizens in the state of South Carolina. I’ve held a few jobs but mostly being employed within the sex industry. You see, internationally the sex industry is the #1 employer of transgender people, as many places will not higher us knowingly.
I got lost. Fell off the path and so found myself again using external factors to create internal peace. I stayed sober from mind-altering drugs, but found other ways to get high. I bathed in the attention of males and their attraction to my body. I felt validated in the way I had always craved. I gave my power away and became dependent on their attention and validation.
In January 2017 love found me most unexpectedly. I met with this guy who said that he was looking for a domme trans woman, and I said that I was looking for a versatile submissive male. At the time we had no idea that we weren’t really looking for that at all. He peered straight through all of my masks. There was no deceiving him. He saw my pain and instead of running in the opposite direction he held it. This changed everything for me. I no longer had to carry it all on my own. So I met again since I was a child, what it meant to be vulnerable. Having this man love me showed me all the ways that I still came up short in loving myself.
After he left and returned to his country I was at such a loss. I no longer had the attention of males and no longer had his love by my side. After tasting love I no longer wanted the instant gratification of male sexual attention. I was stuck with the wreckage I had caused. Again pain became too great to bear, and so I cracked into fragmented parts of myself. As I did in 2013, I was able to construct something entirely new from the destruction of my own creation.
I now have a daily devotion to a daily reflection, sending inspiration to over fifty people daily, practice guided and silent mediation daily, practice yoga a couple times a week, attend recovery meetings weekly, focus on a healthy and nourishing diet daily, and aid those that are suffering when presented. I am finally able to see that craving has been at the root of my suffering in life. Unless I work to remove it through compassion and love it will continue to limit my fullest potential within this life.
-Jaisee Alexander
What's your journey to self-love?
 |
| Photo by Nic Pilch Jaisee is a Charleston native with a traveling soul. Forced to carve out a reality for herself, she lives within alternative planes of existence finding what is meaningful and purposeful for her. She’s worked in F&B, taught English in South America, WWOFed, been a small business owner, worked in theater, and currently is developing a career in adult entertainment. Struggle has been the majority of her life until she was able to untangle the twisted worldview that had been given to her. She strives to empower others through her experience. - Jaisee Alexander |
Monday, May 7, 2018
Powerless- Step 1
The first step to overcoming anything in life is admitting that there is a problem. Step one of the Narcotics Anonymous program states that "we admitted we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable". Alcoholics Anonymous has the same first step, but with the word "alcohol" in place of the word "addiction". I feel like we can take pretty much any issue that we have in our lives and insert it there. But unmanageable seems like a pretty strong word, in fact most people have to reach absolute rock bottom before they can see just how messed up things in their lives have gotten. We're women, we can manage anything, right? So, I personally like to replace the word "unmanageable" with the word "UNBALANCED". Because people can actually become addicted to literally anything. Drugs and alcohol are only the more obviously damaging ones. Games, shopping, sex, church, anything can become so big that it takes dominance over our lives. In the words of Dr. Seuss, "...remember that life's A Great Balancing Act." I am, by no means, saying that you can have a little heroin as long as you feel that you can control it. We're simply applying this thought to other areas of our lives. Sometimes I can get so obsessed with the fact that I'm having trouble sleeping that I literally put myself into a teary eyed panic until I REALLY can't sleep. The thing that we're putting in front of our faces the most becomes the most important thing to us. I like to think that my body, spirit, and mind is composed of two equal, yet dueling, parts. We have the yin on one side, dark, cold, sinister, and passive, and on the other side we have the bright, warm, focused, and active yang. We are all made up of BOTH forces that complement each other. In body we must exercise; we can't be sedentary, nor can we be overly active to the point of exhaustion. This principle is beautiful once applied to your life, and offers a oneness of the self that people tend to forget about. Yes, we are always working to become better people and not let our evil thoughts overcome us. But we still have to remember that those thoughts are what make us human, and they serve a purpose. In certain situations our bodies can respond with anxiety, adrenaline, and negative thoughts- that's normal! We just have to decide in our higher mind whether or not our thoughts are true, and whether or not it is appropriate to act on them. This process allows us to realize that where there's a shadow, there must be a light. In simpler terms, everything has two halves. Two halves make a whole. When split apart, both halves spend eternity chasing after each other to seek balance and wholeness. Nothing on earth is only evil or only good, there is simply imbalance. When our lives become unbalanced we are left with feelings of anger, sadness, contempt, hopelessness, confusion, and even overconfidence. The first step to regaining balance and control is mindful awareness. We have to first realize that there is something wrong before we can fix it, and once we begin paying attention to those negative feelings then we can start to see where the problem is originating. Then simply do the OPPOSITE. I'm starting to feel anxious, so instead of going down that rabbit hole I'm going to stand still and breathe. I'm telling myself that I'm not good enough and that I'll never be able to accomplish the task at hand, so it's time for a little self-love. Tell yourself good things! Imagine the absolute worst thing that can possibly happen, and then envision yourself standing through it all, strong and unharmed. If you're starting to feel stagnant and depressed, get up and move, exercise. Our minds are always seeking balance, even when we are unaware of it. We need to step aside and allow healing to happen. I will leave you with this passage from the second chapter of the Tao Te Ching, while urging you to remember that we always have the power to restore balance to our own lives.
What's your first step?
What's your first step?
"When people see things as beautiful,
ugliness is created.
When people see things as good,
evil is created.
Being and non-being produce each other.
Difficult and easy compliment each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low oppose each other.
Fore and aft follow each other."
Tuesday, April 3, 2018
Inspire A Revolution
By now most of us have heard of Amy Bleuel, the woman who inspired the Project Semicolon. For those of you who don't know what that is, let me blow your mind for a moment. Amy Bleuel was a young woman who was physically abused by her step-mother beginning at the age of six, sexually abused at the age of ten, raped at the age of thirteen, endured the loss of her father to suicide at the age of eighteen, was raped twice more in college, and then suffered from alcoholism and five major suicide attempts. That woman endured more in ten years than any person should ever have to go through. And what did she do with her pain? She inspired a revolution. Amy founded a non-profit mental health and anti-suicide organization in 2013. Amy hoped that her organization would present "hope and love to those who are struggling with depression, suicide, addiction, and self-injury" by encouraging the tattoo semicolon symbol to raise awareness and show support. Selena Gomez jumped on board after she helped to produce the Netflix series "Thirteen Reasons Why", as did two of the actors from the show. A book was later published by HarperCollins entitled "Project Semicolon: Your Story Isn't Over" in 2017 which is available practically everywhere now. This was more than just a fad, it was hope.
In literature, the semicolon is used when the writer could choose to end the sentence, but instead the author chooses to keep going. That is what Amy Bleuel did with her life until March 23 of 2017. The coroner ruled Ms. Bleuel's death as a suicide which left a bitter taste in my mouth. As we mourn the one year anniversary of this amazing woman's death I ask myself, "How could she?" She was changing lives! People all over the world looked to her for support when they had suicidal thoughts or needed emotional help to get through the grief of a loved ones suicide. How could she? I begin to feel angry when I think about what she did, but I know that deep down I'm only angry because I feel the hurt. Suicide saddens me beyond what I can describe. It is the very moment when a person who has been suffering inconsolably for so long, while everyone else around them lives their life normally, snaps their fingers and flips it around. Now, the person who was suffering is no longer in pain, and all the people around them who had been living normally are suddenly suffering instead. I want to be mad and tell those people that they were selfish in the worst way, but who am I to make such a heavy judgement? Who am I to pretend to know someones deepest pain? How could I possibly know what it's like to wake up and feel so much hurt that I couldn't get out of bed? To hate myself so much that no amount of encouragement could calm my mind? So, instead of hate, I will choose to spread love. Good for you Amy! You endured the worst that this world had to offer. You didn't become a serial killer, or the unabomber, or a terrorist. You inspired the people around you to live their best life and get help. I'm proud of you. I support your decision. And I wish that there had been more help for you, you who helped so many others. Today I would like to take two moments of silence. The first as a remembrance for an innocent little girl who was lost to the madness of hate and corruption. The second moment of silence will be for you. The you who is reading this right now. You are still here. You can still make a difference. You can inspire a revolution.
What's your revolution project?
https://projectsemicolon.com/
In literature, the semicolon is used when the writer could choose to end the sentence, but instead the author chooses to keep going. That is what Amy Bleuel did with her life until March 23 of 2017. The coroner ruled Ms. Bleuel's death as a suicide which left a bitter taste in my mouth. As we mourn the one year anniversary of this amazing woman's death I ask myself, "How could she?" She was changing lives! People all over the world looked to her for support when they had suicidal thoughts or needed emotional help to get through the grief of a loved ones suicide. How could she? I begin to feel angry when I think about what she did, but I know that deep down I'm only angry because I feel the hurt. Suicide saddens me beyond what I can describe. It is the very moment when a person who has been suffering inconsolably for so long, while everyone else around them lives their life normally, snaps their fingers and flips it around. Now, the person who was suffering is no longer in pain, and all the people around them who had been living normally are suddenly suffering instead. I want to be mad and tell those people that they were selfish in the worst way, but who am I to make such a heavy judgement? Who am I to pretend to know someones deepest pain? How could I possibly know what it's like to wake up and feel so much hurt that I couldn't get out of bed? To hate myself so much that no amount of encouragement could calm my mind? So, instead of hate, I will choose to spread love. Good for you Amy! You endured the worst that this world had to offer. You didn't become a serial killer, or the unabomber, or a terrorist. You inspired the people around you to live their best life and get help. I'm proud of you. I support your decision. And I wish that there had been more help for you, you who helped so many others. Today I would like to take two moments of silence. The first as a remembrance for an innocent little girl who was lost to the madness of hate and corruption. The second moment of silence will be for you. The you who is reading this right now. You are still here. You can still make a difference. You can inspire a revolution.
What's your revolution project?
https://projectsemicolon.com/
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