Drum For Life

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Drum for Life

I just met Christine Stevens from UpBeat Drum Circles and thought you would love her. For those of you dealing with the holiday headaches and heartaches check out her healing drum kit!

We should bring a few of those to the Army of Angels Conference in March! I'll add a video of this shortly but wanted to give you her site so you could check her out. She is going to Iraq in April for the 3rd time to do a healing drum circle. Wow.

Army of Angels: Get Allies in your Healing !

Army of Angels: Get Allies in your Healing !

The Angela Shelton Foundation

The Angela Shelton Foundation was given to me for my birthday 5 years ago by a man who loved me dearly and wanted to see my name and work live on past my death. After all my work with non profits and witnessing the chaos that comes with them, I let the foundation sit until it became clear what it should work on to fulfill my mission of inspiring and empowering all survivors to heal and lead joyful lives. I didn't want to reinvent the wheel or create more unnecessary paperwork. Now that I am out of the darkness of facing, healing, and dealing with a painful past and moving beyond pain, beyond forgiveness and boldly into a joyful productive life - things have become very clear and all the right people seem to show up at the most perfect moment too!

Now the Angela Shelton Foundation is taking over The Survivor Manual! The board members have discussed it and agreed that expanding my brain child of sharing all information about healing through the manual is imperative. So the Manual will be expanding soon to include many more valuable avenues to healing and joy.

The other major thing that helped me the most has been my magical house on the hill. It has been a sanctuary for me during the most difficult and the most joyous of times. Many people have come here to have catharsis, to purge, to heal and to rejoice. As I move forward in my life with my new projects and literally move up the hill, I am working on donating my house to the foundation so it can continue to be an artist-in-residence and healing center. That is awesome!

The Survivor Manual is now run by the Angela Shelton Foundation. You can write off your donations! The Survivor Manual is FREE but if you found any of the information, videos, or resources helpful please help this project continue by sending your support:

When You Get There

When you get there, it will not look like healing. There, where exactly is that? There, where are we going? There, she says, as if it exists on a map. THIS WAY TO INCEST HEALING. RAPE GOES AWAY THIS EXIT. There, there, as in, to the place of new Earth. You have never been here before, away from the evil of your so called elders, unenmeshed from the black-widow-spun-incest-web. This is healing. It is barren at first. You will look out over the land and think to yourself, why am I here, where there is nothing?  It hurts. It is scary. You will feel alone. Maybe you will feel nothing as you approach the precipice. You will jump, free falling. You must jump, girl. Jump into that nothingness you see, feel, and hear. 

Nothing. Upon landing, you will turn around and see the demons retreat. You will be free. Lonely, yes, aching, yes, but free. Yes, free of lies, of intergenerational poison. Free of Daddy, with his raping heart, Mother who took flight, others who deemed you unseen, unheard.  But this is not nothing, this unexplored place. There is YOU. You are never nothing. 

But when you get there, it can feel and look like nothing, you may want to run into the past, cling back to the old tree vines, rotten and slick as they are, for fear of this seemingly barren nothingness. 

But, if you listen deep and hard and still, you will hear it, you will feel it; 

something….

You are a human seed. You are life springing anew. You are the reason. At first this uncharted territory is blindingly lonely, you look for Proust’s new eyes to guide you, Maya’s strength to rise, Alice’s purple fields to speak to you. Where is everything? You are the first, woman. You are the roots, the branches, the trunk, the rings within the body, the sap, the bark armor. 

At first, it looks like fucking Chernobyl, so vastly damaged. But your eyes become newer all the time, your strength rises toward the sun daily, and in the long, slow future, purple blossoms.  Life herself is what you are. 

Grow your new tree. Your soil is beautiful, your seedlings whole, babies bursting into Earth like light through a prism, all miraculous color and light and reflective. You are a pioneer, Woman, you have led yourself through a quaking terror so sharp and piercing most would have given up, given in, gone along, saying,” There is no other pill to take, so I swallow the one that made me ill.” But not YOU, for you are life herself.  YOU are never nothing.  The trees know this, as do your children and spirits yet to be your children. The light kissed dawn knows this, you are surely something, surely within you a teeming garden awaits germination, the robust, fully grown oak tree within the acorn. THERE, that’s where ‘there’ it is. There lives in YOU. That child inside of you, the one you were, sacred and innocent, curious and free, THERE is the place you are going. And You will know the wonder of it all, when you get there. 

The Courage to Heal

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http://www.ellenbass.com/

http://angelashelton.com/

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Holidays Past, Present, and Future: From Turbulence to Calm

I am feeling like saying say hello for the Holidays. Hello!!

The Holidays this year are pretty darn Merry in my home. This year feels as if a corner has been turned. I have had moments of deep calm and clarity. Partly I believe due to the fact that I have been exercising regularly for quite some time, and getting enough sleep, sex, and food. I have been getting way too much caffeine, but some things never change! I definitely feel energized for the holidays. I've been listening to The Reindeer Room remixed Christmas songs, it's a great compilation of songs set to groovy trip hop beats. I love it! That is part of my new family tree tradition. I have been concentrating on my new family tree as of late, we are the roots, the seeds even. I even bought an actual tree, a "Glitter tree", from Trader Joe's that will grow to 10 feet. We tore all the old stuff out. It's gone, ashes, ciao. I feel like a pioneer. I was having a conversation with a special person in my life the other day, and we were discussing past lives, whether they exist or not, and I said, for me, I do not feel like I have been here before. She said to me, "Maybe this is your first." That really resonated within me in a concrete way. That is just how it feels to me. I must be very careful too with my legacy, with what I pass to my kids having no blueprint to go by.

It's not that sexual abuse and my father are my only story, it's that that experience is one of many .

It's not about living in the past, but allowing the past to live in you and honoring it and healing from it and knowing when to allow it to go, piece by piece. It's not about spinning in circles but traveling the healing spiral and spiraling up rather than down. It's about being as hypersensitive to our goodness as we are our faults and perceived flaws. It is about realizing that this is your world now, not his/your abusers. It is about realizing you just may have to start over, and that you are a pioneer emotionally, spiritually, and physically. It is about blazing a warpath toward helping speak the truth about your life, which gives others in your life the permission to do the same. It is about learning when you are being treated well, and when it is time to let go of that friend or relationship you do not want to admit is killing you because you need to fix people. (I've tried that, and sure enough, my parents can not be fixed by proxy nor can my childhood.) Especially for the holidays, it is about breaking with old patterns and traditions and being a student of your new life. This means learning how YOU want to celebrate, reading about what others do and brainstorming for nouveauways to live from. 

Paths to New Traditions: Create a collage that envisions your new values and rituals for the Holidays. 

New kinds of music. Research ITunes. Google "Nontraditional" holiday music, or whatever you are interested in. If you never had anything traditional and want that as a new way of celebrating, do that. 

I absolutely love remixed Holiday music, Christmas blues, anything that is groovy, loungey, jazzy,  and unique. Get yourself ornaments that are in alignment with your creative side. Use this opportunity to open up your creative channel. Christmas/Holidays are a goldmine for creativity!

The Holidays for me are exciting not only because it is a collective celebration, and a time when things are magical and full of wonder, but also because it is the beginning of new beginnings. After the Holidays we get to look forward to a brand new year! 

Yes, it is hard, painful, and challenging. It is not as hard or painful or costly as giving up or giving in and going along with the old family energy. That is just not an option for me, and so I go forward. Since beginning this and specifically implementing new Holiday traditions with my family, it gets so much easier as the rituals you create become unique to YOU and YOUR family. It is empowering. I feel completely empowered. Of course, I still tear up at times when thinking of my father and how it is not even safe to love a man who could rape you. This is normal. Yet, I can feel those moments and still feel EMPOWERED by what I have created now. And that is one of these basic human rights we had taken from us, the right to be empowered. I want to remind you, especially if you are struggling right now, it is YOUR life now. YOU have the power to change the trajectory your life travels. Allow the soft, the beautiful, the mundane, the sparkling moments, the peace that is your birthright, allow the light and allow the dark too. I think we live in parallels as survivors, ( I know I do)we step into the now, what is happening today, but we know the pain is till next to us, and that is okay too.

 In Maya's wise words:

When we come to it 

We must confess that we are the possible... 
We are the miraculous, the true wonders of this world 
Free to choose our ends, and our new beginnings 
That is when, and only when... 
We come to it.

Maya Angelou

Merry Happy Everything to ALL! 

Love and Light, Sarah

Army of Angels Conference - March 2009

Get tickets to the first annual Army of Angels Conference this coming March!

My new play will be performed as well as the amazing one-woman-show "TOTALLY Kimleigh!"
Check out Kimleigh at http://www.totallykimleigh.com/

Points with Purpose

http://www.pointswithpurpose.com/

Check that out! Another artist using art for healing and awareness and that is always inspiring!