Self-Empowered Health ... the beginning

9:40am                                Writing Practice                          69°  Boise

Gorgeous day. Been awake since 6am and up since 7:30. The white load is in the dryer, the ocean is on the TV, the cats are out playing and I've already spent 45 minutes on Facebook. But it's OK because I wrote a post about colloidal silver and I consider that time well spent, since I'll be writing a chapter on it in my book. Yes, my BOOK! I woke up with an idea last week and I've been working on it ever since. The working title is

Self-Empowered Health: A Memoir of Sorts* 

*Instructions included

I already have the basics sketched out and I wrote the prologue on Friday. I keep getting ideas and memories to include in the book somewhere. I see this as a memoir and also a self-help book. When I look at my life and all I've been through and then take time to appreciate my great health in spite of it all, it begins to make sense that I've created my healthy life with all the little things I do and have done over the years. 

Also, I found this in my On This Day timeline: (I wrote this)

Here's my Little Bit Plan for Healthy Living:
*Eat healthy a little bit
*Exercise a little bit
*Have a positive attitude a little bit
*Love all your people a little bit
It doesn't take much, our bodies are so very forgiving 

that even a little bit of care will make a big difference over time.

I have the information and syllabus from my Healing Sampler Class, all of that can and will be used for this book. As far as structure goes, I think I'll use Part One as the memoir. I can set up the information that will come in Part Two. I've read books and memoirs that include recipes and those always interest me. This will be a memoir with easy-to-follow instructions and simple-to-do exercises and techniques. I've got:

Move More, Eat Less

The Family Motto: If a little is good, a lot must be wonderful!

And more to be listed when I remember them ....

And I've got stories! Lots and lots of stories! Oh my yes, I've got plenty of material for a book and then workshops and coaching programs! And the whole point will be what I have been saying all along: "I teach self-empowerment tools so that each person I work with can become their own personal health coach." When you take responsibility for your own health and well-being, you pick up the reins of your life and begin to trust the direction of your healthcare. 

In many ways, I've been working toward this project for years. The emotional response and excitement I felt when I first heard about Quantum-Touch, when I heard Richard Gordon speak about healing, gives me a clue as to what my heart really wanted. Yes, it's been diminished somewhat over the years as I became disillusioned with Richard Gordon and when I became aware that others were not eager to let me help them heal, especially my own family. The heartbreak of losing my mother, my son and then my brother has really knocked hell out of me. And the truth is, I'm tired of offering to help people and having them ignore me or blow me off. I've come to understand a basic truth here: you can't make people get well, you can only offer to help and then back off. Pain and illness is a messenger and until each one is ready to hear the message and take action, there's really not much that someone like me can do except love them. The medical model we have right now is perfect for the majority of sick people who want to be "fixed" without digging any deeper into the core and causes of illness. What I want to do is tell my stories and offer hope, point a direction and continue on my own path to trusting my intuition. Because that's really what it's all about --- listening to the inner self and trusting the truth of what is heard and then being willing to take the action necessary to get on a more healthy path.

Here's the link to the article about Colloidal Silver:

http://consciouslifenews.com/colloidal-silver-benefits-truth-about-colloidal-silver/1161840/?fb_action_ids=697507770265005&fb_action_types=og.likes

Thursday

10:10am                             Writing Practice                           75°  Boise

Hot already today but there's a nice breeze blowing and it's really quite perfect out there. In here, in my little house, the temperature is just right after having had all the windows open all night. Now it's closed up and the A/C won't kick on until afternoon. My last electric bill was only $40 so I'm doing a good job of managing my cool around here.

Yesterday I woke up with any idea for a memoir/self-help book called Self-Empowered Health. Richard Gordon has a workshop he teaches called Self Created Health but I don't really know what that is, except that when he was working on the first ideas for that workshop, he called me and went over the whole thing. It sounded too vague, I didn't really get a sense of what he wanted to do except he intended to pull together all of his favorite modalities and teach them in one workshop. Lazarus was mentioned, as was EFT. I had already been using EFT with the QT techniques to relieve the emotional overcharge of the client and had found it very effective. It sounded like Rickard was going to take that idea of mine and combine all sorts of techniques and claim them all under the umbrella of Quantun-Touch and Self Created Health. So you know what? I'm going to do the same thing! I've already created and taught a healing sampler class and have the syllabus and outline.

The 45 year High School Reunion and Senior Prom

9:16am                             Writing Practice                           70°  Boise

The 45 year reunion of the Baker High Class of 1971 was ten days ago and I have yet to write one thing about it. I woke up this morning thinking about telling some of my stories to Jan Jones when she stayed the night with me and we went out to dinner. I told her about how I went to prom. I had also told part of that story at the reunion but I had left out the Big Secret part.

It occurs to me now that I could start my personal memoir right there in high school --- tell the story up to arriving at the gym in my Navy blue crepe dress with the plunging, ruffled neckline, holding the school camera, alone. And then go from there to my early years. By the time I get the story back to the gym, it will be quite apparent why I'm at the prom alone as the photographer. Then I can go home with Louis Kingman and drink a rum and coke and have my first kisses, my first stirrings of passion, on my 18th birthday.

And from there I can move the story forward with graduation and my attempt at leaving home in one piece, only to suffer my first suicide attempt instead. Then the summer of '71 where I was barely sane enough to get by and could find no help. My first sex with Louis and what a bust that was, a bus ride to Portland for two weeks and then back to Baker, the job at Fancy Dan's and finally meeting Bob Turner and Jeff Geisler and hopping in with them in their VW van with no heater and leaving for Portland again, for real, never returning to Baker to live --- at least not for 31 years. I moved there in 2002 after my second divorce and tried to make a home and a life. That lasted all of 18 months before I caved and moved to Boise. A suicide attempt precipitated that move, too, but not mine that time. Stephen tried to end his life at his dad's house in Lemoore, CA in early November 2003 and I realized that we were going to lose him if something wasn't done, just like I almost lost my life, all alone and no one to help or understand all those years ago.

Does suicide run in a family? Is it genetic? Is depression passed from one generation to the next? They say the predisposition for addiction is genetic, why not mental illness as well? I'm pretty sure my mother had it. Maybe Granny did too but she found a way to deal with it on her own, sort of like I did. Maybe her mother suffered from chronic depression. Understandable with the life she had. But that's as far back as I can go, Emma Pennington. Emma's mother, Abigail, is a mystery --- my grandmother's maternal grandmother. Rachel Riley was Granny's paternal grandmother and I know more about her but I know nothing of her family or where they came from or even what their names were. I think it's pretty cool that I know as much as I do about ancestors who were born in the mid-1800's. I would hazard a guess that any depression or mental illness issues that were handed down came through the mothers. I could be wrong but I have no way to know the fathers. Granny's first husband and the father of her children was Harlan Adams and he's really tricky to track. His baby brother, Frank, is still alive but he knows nothing except that the family arrived in the west from Independence, MO but he doesn't know when or even how. Harlan Adams died of liver cancer when I was two, I didn't know him. I knew Granny's second husband, Larry Cook, he was my Gramp.

So I can begin my story with the prom. It can begin with my telling the story at the 45 year reunion or as I'm telling the story to Jan Jones or I can begin it in 1971 on the very weekend of the prom. I had hatched my plan earlier that week when I found out that my parents were going to be out of town and they were going to leave me home alone with the family car for the weekend. What an amazing opportunity they handed me! After being squashed for my entire high school experience, I was going to have a brief window of freedom. Holy Cow!

Monday --- 143 weeks

8:45am                         Writing Practice                        63°  Boise

Been a while since I used my blog for writing practice. I've been writing in my journal pages and I've been too busy to write every day this month. The last two weeks, I've probably missed at least five or six days. I just got out my head gear so that I can practice speaking what I want to say instead of typing.  I'm not at all sure how this is gonna work that I can at least try practicing.

I got out Auntie Jan's book last Friday and began transcribing it into a word document using this method of reading it using my speech recognition software. So far it's going very slowly.  Granny wrote the prologue and it's challenging. I'll have to do research and probably rewrite the whole thing, but I'll try to do it using her voice. I remember her voice very well as if I heard it just last week.  Auntie Jan's voice, too.  In fact, I can hear everyone's voice in my head.  My mother is loud and clear and so is Stephen. I have this idea that if I just continued to work on transcribing the work that they did, Granny and Auntie Jan, along with everything I've written so far, somehow along the way all come up with something.

Hardman, Oregon is a ghost town now and I'm sure someone over there remember some history, so I think all plan a trip over and do some research.  Also Cousin Jodi K reminded me that years ago Granny had purchased six graves at the Hardman graveyard and as far as we know, only three of them have been used. I would like to find out who manages that graveyard and arranged to use one of the graves four myself, Stephen, my mom and dad, and my brother  Gerald.  I haven't mentioned any of this to Mark yet but I plan to tell him all about it once I find out more and invite him to join us if he wants to.

Well, using this speech recognition program is tricky and it's going to take practice. Also, I just figured out that each sentence begins with an automatic double space. I'm not sure how to turn that feature off but I don't want a go back and fix every double spaced sentence and this whole document. I'm sure with patience I'll be able to train this thing, but for today it's quite a challenge. Like anything other skill, with patience and effort it will become easier over time.  Also, I will try using it when I write emails and when I do Facebook. That way I can train both of us and practice at the same time.

Well, that was tedious. I lasted a while and then hung it up. It's easy to use that speech recognition program to read handwritten work into a document but it's hard to compose and create fresh, unique material. But like I said, practice will help and I'll get plenty of that as I transcribe all the things I need to do.

Stephanie is coming over soon to plot strategy and she may move in here for a while. That means I'll have to clean this place and pack up stuff. At the least I'll have to empty out the guest room and make room for her there. We can start there and see where this goes. If it comes down to it, I would be willing to pack up and move out (mostly) and let her move in. If we rented a storage unit for under $100 a month, we would still both save tons of money by combining our forces here in this little house. I still have my studio and would probably spend a lot more time there. $813 + $154 + $100 = $1067 divided by 2 = 533.50. Add the utilities at about $150 a month average and that gives us about $600 a month total living expenses. Right now I pay all of it so that would be great ... no job needed! And motivation for going to work in my studio every day. Well, we'll see what happens after our talk today.

Right now I need to go get my face washed and get dressed. I have Auntie Jan's book with me, I can work on it here at home. I also need to back up my files and take this laptop to Steve at Aardvark so that he can clean it up and install Windows 10. The free version goes away this Friday but I don't get paid until Wednesday and the whole thing will cost me over $100. Sheesh, it's been such an expensive summer already!

Give up the studio? Yay or Nay?

9:24am                                   Writing Practice                          62°  Boise

False start yesterday. Got distracted by Lynnie Winkler and her interest in moving to the Boise area and that was all she wrote for me. I never recovered my day, never left the house, barely washed my face. Last week I loaned mom's umbrella to a woman stranded in the WinCo parking lot with a dead car and yesterday she called me and brought it back after she got off work. I had been berating myself for not getting her name and number, only giving her mine, putting all the power into her hands, leaving all the follow-through with her. But my trust was vindicated, yet again! It sure would be nice to write that kindness book right now, get down and focus on it and only it, pump it out somehow and get it published for the world as it is today. Would it help? All the other kindness books were published and the kindness craze raced through years ago. People are madder then ever and hateful and intolerant. And yet when push comes to shove and you're sitting in a hot parking lot, people stop and try to help. When there's an accident, people stop and try to help (until the police and ambulance show up).

I fade in and out of existence these days. I'm doing so much better then I was a few months ago. The desire to end it all was strong there for a while but that idea seems to have left me, I'm no longer in that space. What a relief! I did a 13 minute tapping session with Brad Yates on a YouTube video one time and that's all it took. I could be doing even better with more tapping. Hey! Maybe tapping for focus would work to get me started on one of my books! I'll try that. Why the hell not? I've got all these ideas and no motivation. I've even been thinking of letting my studio go. I can't tell you how much I enjoy sitting right here in my comfy chair typing away. I have the ocean on the TV, a new ocean each day (YouTube is full of them) and the cats are out playing, the sun is shining and my little corner lot is a good place to be. If I moved home with my studio to the back bedroom, I would have the new desktop back there, begin to use it more often, begin to work with Windows 10. Then I could get 10 installed on this laptop and have everything match up. I'll need to install a Word program on the desktop and it will have to be compatible with this laptop. But everything would be here again. All crammed into that back bedroom again. Would I like that? Or could I begin to disperse some of the crap I have that I don't need? No more option of moving a roommate in. But no more rent going out for the studio that I'm not using. I've had it for a year in August. August 10th, to be exact. And other than a few good sessions, I've not used it, it's been a waste.

I could send an e-mail to Horas and Judy and give my notice for August 9th. Then I would have to really get going around here. I have the back yard to finish up and the deck to clean and seal. I could wrap and store the twin mattress and put the base away. Sort through and sell the left overs. I could have a driveway sale. I have two small tables and matching chairs to sell and a little book case. And a little refrigerator, the one I bought for Stephen. I've had it all this time and I don't use it. It's good for $125, I'll bet. I'll give Gerald's microwave to Mark, maybe. I have a place to hang the cork board. Yaaay! Will I hang the shelves again? Do I need to buy a pint of blue paint to touch up that office and the back bedroom? Probably. Do I really want to do this?

Well, it's almost 10am and I have to go check on Olie and take him for a little walk. Then run to the library at Hillcrest and pick up the books on CD that are are awaiting me. I have way more reading materials than I could possibly use right now! It's like I'm overstimulated with all the options and I'm just grabbing at everything. But it's been nice to sit here and type it all out with the cool breeze wafting in the open windows and the sounds of the ocean soothing and lulling me. I was so hoping that the fact of a studio and a place to go work away from home would inspire me but so far, it hasn't. At all. And the summer is more distracting then ever! The weather has been ideal, no fires, no inversions. I've been ziplining in Horseshoe Bend twice already and I want to go again! And I want to go camping! I want to relax and let life come to me in its own good time. And so that's what I'm doing.

I think I'll wait and give notice for the first of September. I'll surely have time to deal with the move by then. 

Back again

9:38am                             Writing Practice                           63°  Boise

I wrote in my journal all last week, when I wrote at all. It's been hit or miss with the writing around here lately, I'm just not into it. I'm working on the back yard, the deck is reduced to a 12x12 with a new redwood top and there will be flagstone and gravel patios on either side with flower boxes next to the house. Or I could have Richard Fabian, my handyman, build benches on either side next to the house. I just got a visual, just popped into my head, how benches could be prettier, more useful and maybe less work. I could set pots of flowers on the benches if I wanted to. Or other fun stuff. Or nothing at all! I'll think about that later today, maybe do some drawings. Good idea!

OK, I got through the July 4th festivities in find shape yesterday. I even got an unsolicited text from Nathan. I wonder if he knows how badly he crushed me last year on the 4th? Anyway, I put my bike on the bike rack and drove to pick up Pam and her bike and we spent two hours tootling around the Greenbelt downtown. I plan to do it again, maybe ride out to Discovery Park with our picnic soon. It's nice to have a girlfriend who is available and willing to go do stuff! I'm sure she feels the same about me. Then I came home to relax with my cats a while and then drove out to Star for Deb Shaw's birthday. Instead of the usual crowd, it was just Mike and Deb for a while and then Matt and his family showed up. That's it, just us ...

Noon

Just finished breakfast. I got waylaid by a phone call and what a treat! Lynne Winkler called to tell me they are buying a home and moving to Boise area. Holy Cow! I'm glad she called, she was looking at Caldwell and I got her off that one. Eagle is where they need to be, they would love it there. So now all they have to do is find one, buy it, pack up two households and move here. HA! Like that's ever going to happen!

Anyway, it's a delightfully cool day and I'm sure I have things so do while I can stand the outdoors. Right now, the temp is 71° with a light breeze. What a fabulous day! I'm off a here.