All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell
Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.
Mahatma Gandhi

​Breaking News! Breaking News! Breaking News! Breaking News! Breaking News! Breaking News!
 
 
ACORN DEVASTATED!
Because It Transformed Into a Tree!
 
 
In Related Headlines
 
Caterpillar Hates Being A Butterfly
 
 
“I never saw it coming,” Acorn declared according to reliable sources.
 
“I didn’t ask for this,” Caterpillar, who will be leading a symposium on how to halt the sands of time, is quoted as saying.
 
A flurry of lawsuits and protests are rising up across the country to support efforts to stop evolution with the slogan: Keep Things They Way They Are.
 
“What’s the big deal with trees anyhow?” is the question put to the reliable source by Acorn. 
 
Added Caterpillar, “Anyway, who even likes butterflies?”
 
 
In Other Related Headlines
 
Kittens Demand to Stay Little and Cuddly Because Cats Are Annoying
 
 
There is growing fear that now puppies and ponies may get in on the action.  If that occurs, experts say a revolution to stunt the growth of all living things is inevitable.  Authorities warn that if babies find out that they are way cuter than teenagers, they easily could be convinced to join this rebellion.  Should that happen, all hope is gone.
 
On a positive note…there would never again be shame attached to wearing a diaper.    

​WHEN YOU’RE STRANGE
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
 
Anxiety has strange written all over it.  If you understand this, welcome to the club.  Though not really.  This is not a club anyone would want to belong to.  Not if they had a choice.  I don’t have a choice.  Anxiety is here.  It is real.  It comes from somewhere.  And then it attacks.  Anxiety is strange.  If it is strange, then I am strange.  There is no evading this.  Although I would like to.  Evade it, that is.  Evade all of it.  Only, there is no evading.  Only acknowledgement.  Then understanding.  Accepting its roots.  Accepting the effects of the trauma that produced the anxiety.  And the hardest part, accepting its real-time triggers. 
 
The triggers…now that’s tough.  Because to outsiders—those who aren’t strange—the triggers are invisible, ghosts only the afflicted can see.  Outsiders only witness the behavior instigated by the ghosts.  Yes, ghosts.  If you don’t understand this, get down on your knees and offer gratitude for every single thing in your life.  If you do, I extend my sympathies.  You are in strange company living in a strange land.
 
Apparently, the ghost of my stepfather is alive and well, living a quiet life somewhere inside my brain.  This is strange, considering he’s been dead for over forty years and it’s been sixty years since he laid down his own form of marshal law and declared war on his kids.  Corporal punishment for my brothers.  Assassination by way of embittered ridicule for me.  I’ll spare you—and myself—the morbid details of his cruelty.  Suffice it to say that he was an effective assassin who utilized mockery and shaming to attack the most personal, intimate parts of me.  It was ugly then.  It’s ugly now.  His finger is always on the trigger.  Always.  Sometimes he pulls it.  That’s when things get very strange.
 
Escalating stress and anxiety come as no surprise to me.  I prepare myself.  I have practical strategies and trusted dependable support.  I also have limits, which I can push to a certain degree and still walk away intact, if not a bit rattled.  But when my limits begin to disappear in the rearview mirror, trouble starts brewing and piece by panicked piece I start drowning in real time.  That’s when I become isolated, as confusion and amnesia rise up and take over.  Don’t misunderstand, I am aware that I am drowning, I just can’t stop it.  If I am fortunate enough and can escape before crazy starts creating a spectacle and I begin babbling nonsense, I am at least relieved of that humiliation.  If not, it all becomes part of the aftermath, that private emotional crash where reclaiming myself—my equilibrium—seems impossible because now I don’t even remember who that other self is, or if she ever actually existed.  There you have it: a schematic of an anxiety attack.  When I say strange, I mean it.
 
I am very well-versed in trauma and its savage, living legacy.  I understand it.  I work daily to deepen my understanding of the complex intricacies of its influence and to continue to expand my knowledge of its resolution.  It used to cripple me.  It is no longer a dominate force.  But I am not cured.  Trauma is not curable.  Trauma is manageable.  And sometimes despite my--your—best efforts, events conspire; the trigger gets pulled; a fuse is lit; and it burns its way back to the waiting dynamite.  Explosion! 
 
Nothing can erase the root cause of trauma or halt the unavoidable consequences once its energy gains momentum and speeds past the point of no return.  But comprehension and acceptance of how trauma affects each of us personally are the great assists in recovery in the aftermath of an anxiety/panic attack. 
 
The crash is a mentor.  It takes us back to the event—not to torment--but to teach.  It shows the first warning sign, then the second, then the third…all the missed and ignored opportunities for averting the crisis.  It reveals triggers.  Including those that were immediately and deliberately rejected because of cultural and emotional attachments.  Truth comes to rest in the aftermath of a trauma crisis: choice and resistance.
 
There is a beauty in how much sense trauma makes.  Those of us affected by it, dance with a strange ghost.  But that ghost always dances to the same tune.  Once we learn to listen and hear its rhythms, we begin to understand its moves.  With understanding comes power and empathy.  With power and empathy we can create new rhythms and design tomorrow now.  
 
When we truly accept, truly deeply see that past trauma exists today—in real time—we are acknowledging the invisible.  We acknowledge the energetic connections that move and sway, backward and forward in this strange dance of time and space and experience that we are engaged in.  We see the ghosts.  Through seeing we gain power to muster our courage to make healthy, and oftentimes painful, choices.  To outsiders we are strange because we see what they cannot fathom.  We become mystics, not of the occult, but of truth.
 
 
Namaste        

by Phil Foley

The attached link: https://apple.news/AHlaKkpEJTVmRga9-wAy21A is from an article in The Atlantic. It illustrates the catastrophic consequences of the Law enforcement community failing to Protect and Serve. Criminal Sexual Assault is a plague on our society. There are steps that can and should be taken.  Reducing the number of these heinous crimes is within our power.Those with the power to act must recognize and not dismiss victims who have the courage to come forward.
We need to demand that our Law enforcement community follows their mandate to Protect and Serve. This Epidemic of Disbelief is further compounded by the current political assault on reproductive rights.
We can and must do better.

MEN & THEIR FATHERS
 
Untangling the Knots
 
By Kathleen Hoy Foley
 
 
I am not going to give that guy a message from his dead father, I whispered to Phil.  But that old familiar sensation of density and pressure, of walking through glue when a spirit energy is close and wants to connect was increasing.  I’m not going to do it, I insisted.  I have my rules and boundaries.  An opportunity must present itself and must be very obvious.  I never search—I only respond.  Those are my parameters and I stick to them.  
 
Bringing up a deceased loved one to a stranger is always risky.  Not everyone is okay with the concept of communing with the departed, and I wasn’t up for the stink eye and banishment from the premises with silence and a long, cold stare.  Plus the guy—tall and lanky, well north of fifty if I had to guess—looked way too reserved, far too intellectual with his nose buried in a book as we browsed, apparently unnoticed, in his antique shop. 
 
So, I ignored him and his dead relative, kept my eyes on the treasures, and soon escaped to another room.  Just another undeliverable message…  On the bright side, I’d spared myself all possibilities of the stink-eye curse.  Then the guy poked his head in…friendly, chatty, artistic, kind…  Still I resisted.  Until the opportunities began appearing quicker than I could shut them down.  The man’s dad was persistent.  He needed to talk to his son.  Sorrow and promise weighted the air.     
 
A bruised boy becomes a bruised man.  But when a boy is bruised by his father—the most significant, most influential male in his young life—he is more than bruised, he is deserted.  Stranded alone on the pothole-strewn path to manhood.  Shut down by his principal mentor.  Left to his own undeveloped devices to get where he does not know he is going.  And the bruising within keeps widening, tunneling, quietly becoming entangled with love and anger, guilt and responsibility.  Along with the historical demands that pit personal growth and emotional survival against duty, expectations, and obedience to an unworkable image in an unmanageable dynamic. 
 
So it is that the beautiful boy even as a beautiful man may not identify this bruising—this emotional damage—caused by his father as trauma, but trauma it is.  And the knots of that trauma keep tightening.
 
And so, on that day, in those very humble surroundings of small trinkets and minor valuables, a father in spirit worked against all odds—including a reticent medium—to reach across dimensional planes to attempt to heal the heart of his son.  The son said “yes.”  The time was right.  The energies aligned in harmony.  So, I delivered the message:
 
Your dad knows.  He gets it.  He really gets it.  He wants you to get it, all of it.  He is profoundly sorry about it.  He will not burden you by asking for forgiveness.  He only wants you to know that he now understands.  And he totally supports and encourages you to go all the way to the bottom of it and express every single thing about the pain he caused you.  He does not want to be an obstacle to your growth in any way.  Say it all.  (Even the things you think you’re not supposed to say or think.)  This is the path to your healing.  And, yes, now he is in a very good place because he finally understands what he has done. 
 
I don’t know what the “it” is that the father was referring to.  It is not my business to know.  What is certain is that the love this father expressed for his son is unconditional.  And that kind of love—born from the deepest depths of profound understanding and self-evolution—has the power to transform. 
 
Healing is a long, slow journey of twists and turns.  But whenever the son decides to go down its path, his dad will be present, guiding him to the source of trauma hidden within the bruises of betrayal and disappointment.  The older soul will be embracing the younger soul’s tender heart with unconditional love and complete support as together they explore the tangles and knots of secrets and consequences in his boy’s search for clarity.  The old man will ensure his son’s safety on a path that often feels so frightening, lighting the way forward for his beautiful boy: forward into freedom.
 
In case you’re wondering, this message is not at all unique.  Though I go through my little hissy-fits of anxiety when I’m presented with an opportunity to deliver a message, it always comes through the prism of profound, unconditional, evolved love.  It does not matter whether the communication comes from a late relative, a departed childhood friend, a long-ago, mostly forgotten, deceased acquaintance, or the gentle light of an unknown, invisible guide.  It does not matter whether the message is given directly, overheard in a crowded room, carried by the wind to a listening ear, or stumbled upon by a reader. 
 
If the message resonates, it is for you.  And be assured that there is a loving, evolved spirit who is—and has been—reaching out to you.  
 
It’s a beautiful thing.
 
 
Namaste             
​