That’s us.

MORE than a Woman but a GODDESS::

I think a woman that is not desperate for love and attention often confuses men. That does not mean she does not want a man’s love and affection, it just means that she has enough love for herself that she does not have to force or push to be loved by another. She is not looking to convince you to pick her. She has done the science of Self and knows that if you are for her, no convincing is necessary. When you meet her you will know, so she doesn’t waste time trying to be what she “thinks” you might be hoping for… She allows you room to find that in another or better yet, within your own Self…

This type of woman longs for her one just like any other Being does, but she is so solid in her core that she is not trying to make everyone her one… she knows he is special like she is. She is not closed off to the possibility of any him being her him… She is not in a rush with the one that may be him, because he does not complete her. He adds to her but he can never take away from her. In his absence or presence she thrives and blossoms~

So relax men when you are in her presence… she is not pressuring you, nor does she have any expectations. She loves being in the flow of your masculine energy, but she is not trying to make you anything to her, that you do not want to be. She has graduated from such childish manipulations. She is grateful for the exchange of Energy. She is at peace in your presence and out of it… She is a magnifier of what you give her, and if you allow her, she will give you more than you were every willing to offer, and more than you ever expected…

She is more than a woman, she is Goddess realized and personified…

StarFly Awakening~

How To Stick To Your Path When Friends & Family Just Don’t Get It

If you’d asked me when I was 25 years old what my life plan was, it was this: to marry my then boyfriend, buy a house in my hometown in Connecticut, have babies, finish my MBA, and work my way up the corporate ladder. If you’d told me that instead, I’d leave my Manhattan finance job to study yoga while traveling the world and wind up living by the Caribbean in Mexico, I wouldn’t have believed you.

But a series of life events encouraged me to take a long hard look at my life and I found out that while I was on my way to my “plan,” I wasn’t happy. I was working and commuting long hours, my relationships were failing, and my mind was a hysterical mess.

Maybe you, too, got a glimpse that those societal “check-marks” and “things” don’t guarantee happiness. That what you’re really after is spiritual connectedness and peace in your heart. That a life of freedom, love and service is your highest intention.

Of course with that life of freedom, love and service, you still want financial abundance, an amazing partner and babies, and to live in a place that fuels your creativity. In other words, you want it ALL, and why the hell not?

The issue with this can be when most of the people around you don’t understand it. When you start to live in a “unusual” way, like traveling or living abroad, starting your own business, and following your heart, it’s just too risky of a lifestyle for the stable kinds. They don’t understand it. They fear for you. (And they secretly envy you, too.)

But the problem is that their fear can rub off on you and you may start to doubt the path of following your heart. You doubt whether you can “make it” doing what you love, where you love to be, and with whom you love.

So, how do you stay off the beaten path and forge your own way? Here are some tips I learned along the road less traveled:

1. Commit to a daily spiritual practice like yoga, meditation, prayer, and ritual.  

Make time to connect inside as often as possible so that you consistently hear your intuition, your heart and soul, and that voice becomes louder than the naysaying voice of the outer world.

2. Build community of like-minded people. 

Spend more time with people who get it, who are forging their own creative path as well.  Begin to limit your time with family and friends who don’t support your vision.

3. Stay strong. Stay fearless and faithful. Be a badass god or goddess. 

Know that you are a Divine being and you have a unique offering to share with the world that nobody else has.  The world needs your gift.

To find out more about my journey from corporate analyst to my spiritual sabbatical around the world and my current life in Tulum Mexico, visit me at www.taramullarkey.com.

BY TARA MULLARKEY
JULY 19, 2013 8:15 AM EDT

The Problem with Little White Girls (and Boys)

White people aren’t told that the color of their skin is a problem very often. We sail through police check points, don’t garner sideways glances in affluent neighborhoods, and are generally understood to be predispositioned for success based on a physical characteristic (the color of our skin) we have little control over beyond sunscreen and tanning oil.

After six years of working in and traveling through a number of different countries where white people are in the numerical minority, I’ve come to realize that there is one place being white is not only a hindrance, but negative — most of the developing world.

In high school, I travelled to Tanzania as part of a school trip. There were 14 white girls, 1 black girl who, to her frustration, was called white by almost everyone we met in Tanzania, and a few teachers/chaperones. $3000 bought us a week at an orphanage, a half built library, and a few pickup soccer games, followed by a week long safari.

Our mission while at the orphanage was to build a library. Turns out that we, a group of highly educated private boarding school students were so bad at the most basic construction work that each night the men had to take down the structurally unsound bricks we had laid and rebuild the structure so that, when we woke up in the morning, we would be unaware of our failure. It is likely that this was a daily ritual. Us mixing cement and laying bricks for 6+ hours, them undoing our work after the sun set, re-laying the bricks, and then acting as if nothing had happened so that the cycle could continue.

Basically, we failed at the sole purpose of our being there. It would have been more cost effective, stimulative of the local economy, and efficient for the orphanage to take our money and hire locals to do the work, but there we were trying to build straight walls without a level.

That same summer, I started working in the Dominican Republic at a summer camp I helped organize for HIV+ children. Within days, it was obvious that my rudimentary Spanish set me so far apart from the local Dominican staff that I might as well have been an alien. Try caring for children who have a serious medical condition, and are not inclined to listen, in a language that you barely speak. It isn’t easy. Now, 6 years later, I am much better at Spanish and am still highly involved with the camp programing, fundraising, and leadership. However, I have stopped attending having finally accepting that my presence is not the godsend I was coached by non-profits, documentaries, and service programs to believe it would be.

You see, the work we were doing in both the DR and Tanzania was good. The orphanage needed a library so that they could be accredited to a higher level as a school, and the camp in the DR needed funding and supplies so that it could provide HIV+ children with programs integral to their mental and physical health. It wasn’t the work that was bad. It was me being there.

It turns out that I, a little white girl, am good at a lot of things. I am good at raising money, training volunteers, collecting items, coordinating programs, and telling stories. I am flexible, creative, and able to think on my feet. On paper I am, by most people’s standards, highly qualified to do international aid. But I shouldn’t be.

I am not a teacher, a doctor, a carpenter, a scientist, an engineer, or any other professional that could provide concrete support and long-term solutions to communities in developing countries. I am a 5′ 4″ white girl who can carry bags of moderately heavy stuff, horse around with kids, attempt to teach a class, tell the story of how I found myself (with accompanying powerpoint) to a few thousand people and not much else.

Some might say that that’s enough. That as long as I go to X country with an open mind and a good heart I’ll leave at least one child so uplifted and emboldened by my short stay that they will, for years, think of me every morning.

I don’t want a little girl in Ghana, or Sri Lanka, or Indonesia to think of me when she wakes up each morning. I don’t want her to thank me for her education or medical care or new clothes. Even if I am providing the funds to get the ball rolling, I want her to think about her teacher, community leader, or mother. I want her to have a hero who she can relate to — who looks like her, is part of her culture, speaks her language, and who she might bump into on the way to school one morning.

After my first trip to the Dominican Republic, I pledged to myself that we would, one day, have a camp run and executed by Dominicans. Now, about seven years later, the camp director, program leaders and all but a handful of counselors are Dominican. Each year we bring in a few Peace Corps Volunteers and highly-skilled volunteers from the USA who add value to our program, but they are not the ones in charge. I think we’re finally doing aid right, and I’m not there.

Before you sign up for a volunteer trip anywhere in the world this summer, consider whether you possess the skill set necessary for that trip to be successful. If yes, awesome. If not, it might be a good idea to reconsider your trip. Sadly, taking part in international aid where you aren’t particularly helpful is not benign. It’s detrimental. It slows down positive growth and perpetuates the “white savior” complex that, for hundreds of years, has haunted both the countries we are trying to ‘save’ and our (more recently) own psyches. Be smart about traveling and strive to be informed and culturally aware. It’s only through an understanding of the problems communities are facing, and the continued development of skills within that community, that long-term solutions will be created.

Originally published on pippabiddle.com

10 Ways To Guide Children Without Punishment

“The reason a child will act unkindly or cause damage is always innocent. Sometimes she is playful and free spirited, and other times, when aggressive or angry she is unhappy or confused. The more disturbing the behaviour, the more the child is in pain and in need of your love and understanding. In other words, there is no such thing as bad behaviour in children. Instead there is a child who is doing the best she can and we don’t understand her.” – Naomi Aldort

Parents are often surprised to hear that I don’t believe in most of what we think of as discipline (spankings, consequences, timeouts) because it keeps kids from becoming responsible, self-disciplined people. “How will my child learn how to behave?” they ask.

My answer is that children learn what they live. The most effective way to teach kids is to treat them the way we want them to treat others: with compassion and understanding. When we spank, punish, or yell, kids learn to act aggressively.

Even timeouts – symbolic abandonment — give children the message that they’re alone with their big scary feelings just when they need us most, rather than being an opportunity to learn how to manage their emotions. (But I’m a big fan of Time-Ins, during which we remove our child from the situation and sit with him to help him process the feelings that were causing him to act out.)

That doesn’t mean we renege on our responsibility to guide our children by setting limits.  No running into the street, no hitting the baby, no peeing on the carpet, no picking the neighbor’s tulips, no hurting the dog.  But these are limits, not punishment.

Are you wondering how your child will learn not to do these things next time, if you don’t “discipline” him when he does them?  Then you’re assuming that we need to punish children to “teach a lesson.”

Actually, research shows that punishing kids creates more misbehavior. Being punished makes kids angry and defensive. It launches adrenalin and the other fight, flight or freeze hormones, and turns off the reasoning, cooperative impulses. Kids quickly forget the “bad” behavior that led to their being punished, even while they’re processing the emotional aftermath of the punishment for weeks. If they learn anything, it’s to lie and avoid getting caught. Punishment disconnects us from our kids so we have less influence with them. It even lowers IQ, since kids who don’t feel completely safe and secure aren’t free to learn. Quite simply, punishment is never an effective means of raising a responsible, considerate, happy child. It teaches all the wrong lessons.

If, instead, we can stay kind and connected while we set limits, our children will internalize what they’ve lived.  They don’t resist our guidance, so they feel connected, and they see their impact on others, so they’re considerate and responsible.  Because they’ve had parents who modeled emotional self-regulation, they’ve learned to manage their own emotions, and therefore their own behavior. Because they’re been accepted for all of who they are, they’re in touch with their own passions and motivated to explore them.

So what can we do to guide children without discipline?

1. Regulate your own emotions.  That’s how children learn to manage theirs.  You’re the role model. Don’t act when you’re upset.  If you can’t get in touch with your love for your child, then what would a really fantastic parent do right now? Do that. If you can’t, then take a deep breath and wait until you’re calm before you address the situation.  Resist the impulse to be punitive. It always backfires.

2. Honor feelings. When your child is hijacked by adrenaline and other fight or flight hormones, he can’t learn.  Instead of lecturing, do a “Time-In” where you stay with your child and let him have his meltdown in your attentive presence. Your goal is to provide a calm “holding environment” for your child’s upset.  Expressing emotions with a safe, attentive, accepting adult is what helps kids move through those feelings and learn to self-soothe so they can regulate their own emotions eventually. Don’t try to reason with him during the emotional storm. Afterwards, he’ll feel so much better, and so much closer to you, that he’ll be open to your guidance about why we don’t say “Shut Up” (Because it hurts feelings) or lie (Because it cuts the invisible cords that connect our hearts to each other.)

3. Remember how children learn.  Consider the example of teeth brushing. Start when she’s a baby, model brushing your own teeth, make it fun for her, gradually give her more of the responsibility, and eventually she’ll be doing it herself.  The same principle holds for learning to say Thank You, taking turns, remembering her belongings, feeding her pet, doing homework, and most everything else you can think of.  Routines are invaluable partly because they provide the “scaffolding” for your child to learn basic skills, just as scaffolding provides structure for a building to take shape. You might be mad she forgot her jacket again, but yelling won’t help her remember. “Scaffolding” will.

4. Connect before you correct, and stay connected, even while you guide, to awaken your child’s desire to be his best self.  Remember that children misbehave when they feel bad about themselves and disconnected from us.

Stoop down to her level and look her in the eye: “You are mad…Tell me what you need in words… no biting!”

Pick her up: “You wish you could play longer… it’s time for bed.”

Make loving eye contact: “You are so upset right now.”

Put your hand on her shoulder: “You’re scared to tell me about the cookie.”

5. Set limits — but set them with empathy.  Of course you need to insist on some rules. But you can also acknowledge her perspective. When kids feel understood, they’re more able to accept our limits.

“No biting! You’re very very mad and hurt, but you need to tell your brother in words.”

“It’s bedtime now.  I know you wish you could play longer.”

“You don’t want Mommy to say No, I hear you….And the answer is No. We don’t say ‘Shut Up’ to each other, even when we’re sad and mad.”

“No matter how scared you are, I need you to tell me the truth.”

6. Remember that all “misbehavior” is an expression, however misguided, of a legitimate need. 

He has a reason, even if you don’t think it’s a good one.  His behavior is terrible?  He must feel terrible inside.  Does he need more sleep, more time with you, more downtime, more chance to cry and release those upsetting emotions we all store up?  Address the underlying need and you eliminate the misbehavior.

7. Say YES.  Kids will do almost anything we request if we make the request with a loving heart.  Find a way to say YES instead of NO even while you set your limit. “YES, it’s time to clean up, and YES I will help you and YES we can leave your tower up and YES you can growl about it and YES if we hurry we can read an extra story and YES we can make this fun and YES I adore you and YES how did I get so lucky to be your parent? YES!”  Your child will respond with the generosity of spirit that matches yours.

8. Stay connected with special time, every day.  Turn off the phone, close the computer, and tell your child “Ok, I’m all yours for the next 20 minutes.  What should we do?” Follow her lead.  The world is full of humiliation for kids, so for this 20 minutes just be an incompetent bumbler and let her win. Giggling releases pent-up fears and anxiety, so make sure to play, giggle, be silly.  Have a pillow fight. Wrestle. Snuggle. Let her tell you what’s on her mind, let her rant or cry.  Just accept all those feelings. Be 100% present. Kids who know they can count on daily special time with their parent flourish because they trust enough to express their full range of emotion, and they WANT to behave.

9. Forgive yourself.  You can’t be an inspired parent if you’re feeling bad about yourself, any more than your child can act “right” if she feels bad about herself.  You can always repair the relationship.  Start today.

10. When all else fails, give yourself a big hug. Then give your child a big hug. Connection trumps everything else in parenting.

Don’t believe it? Try it this week and see what kind of miracle you can make.

*****

NOTE: I agree with much of this article. Not quite everything mind you. I’m certainly not one for handling people (including children) violently. An exception? Self-defense. Shouting and hitting are generally not my thing. At the same time, I don’t entertain rudeness. Boundaries are important to me. In my view, children should not be allowed to run the show.