The beginning of this path was guided by the work of Harvey Jackins (The Human Side of Human Beings and Re-Evaluation Counseling), which focuses purely on emotions moving. My mother embraced these methods so far as to become a certified instructor, and for many years she held classes and workshops at the request of friends and family members, although she was really a "fringe" teacher, heretic that she is at heart. Most importantly, she brought it to our family and it became a way of life for us.

A Word About RC
I never became a part of the Re-Evaluation "group", and I was really sorry to read online so many stories from people who had negative or cult-like experiences with them. The emotional healing process was gold, and I can't express strongly enough how much it changed our lives. The problems the RC group/community has doesn't diminish for me the value of the healing process. It simply validates for me that groups - of any kind - have the potential to be damaging. Any time people gather in groups, you have an atmosphere where patterns and pain take over, where jockeying for position becomes the primary activity. Groups tend to carry out the denials and patterns of the founder, and apparently Harvey had some pretty heavy sexual patterns that never got healed. It's sad. All I can say now is, if you want to learn to use the processes, go to a few classes, find an alternative group (there are some online), but don't lock yourself in to the group or to any particular leader. It's the gold you want, not all the junk surrounding it.

Anyway...

At ten, I was beginning to close in on myself -- the precursor to teenage angst, on top of all the emotional problems I already had. I was a terrified child. We had lived with alcoholism and abuse, neglect and constant fear. Prior to beginning her own healing, my mother's rage was a volcano that could erupt at any time, and I spent a lot of my time trying to "be good", be quiet, don't do anything to disturb the volcano. I have begun to write the story of my tenth year and you can read the beginnings here. For now, I'll just say that it was a world shattering, reality shifting, incredibly painful year. Nothing was the same after that.

I spent my teenage years crying almost every day, but I didn't make a conscious, "adult" decision to embrace the process until my junior year of high school.

I went through a period of rebelliousness and one of the things I tried to rebel against was the constant crying that went on in our household. I tried to stop. I refused to cry at all, about anything. And what I found was I was only doing damage and hurt to myself by not letting my feelings out. I also found that after years of crying freely, I no longer knew how to hold it in very well. When feelings welled to the surface, triggered by everyday life, I tried to hold the tears back and found the holding so much more painful than anything I'd experienced before. The clenching, the freezing, the holding it inside, created such pain in my eyes and throat and chest!

I lasted about 3 months, and then I finally realized that this was not something forced on me by an overbearing parent. This process was something *I* needed and wanted to do. Something *my* body wanted to keep doing. I actually laughed with relief and let myself have a good long throatful cry.

At that point I turned from child and follower, to embrace the Path of Tears and walk it with my mother as an equal and partner. We have been traveling this path together ever since.

The Next Step

The method and the material as laid out by Harvey's framework was good, but it had no spiritual base. The spiritual elements seemed crucial to us. Without God, without the idea of a higher power or the possibility of elevating oneself to a higher state, it seemed many people would just dip a toe into the sea of their pain and then back out again. Without a spiritual goal, there is no real impetus to keep delving into the buried, hidden, wholly horrible painful memories. It also became immediately apparent that we were seeing and experiencing past life memories in the things we were crying, there was no other explanation for some of the things that were coming up.

We saw ourselves as being on a path that would lead back to God. We believed that what stood between God and ourselves was the unexpressed pain from past painful experiences. Frozen and built up over time, unexpressed pain created repeating destructive life patterns and a barrier between our consciousness and our higher conciousness, which was where our connection to God was. Our primary goal, then, was to cry all the pain, find the frozen memories involved, and reconnect with God.

I spent a lot of time during my 20's trying all kinds of things in addition to crying ... meditation and body work and chanting and visualizing... all to try to reconnect with God. I couldn't understand why I was having so much trouble. What was this huge barrier between me and God?

The missing key was that there were parts of me that hated, feared, and mistrusted God.

In my late twenties I began to cry things that made no sense to any past-life context. I tried to keep the doors open, but it was difficult. Mind wants to make sense of feelings. Mind wants to understand memories, put them in context. Mind could not understand the feelings that were erupting about God. I began to despair.

And then my aunt found the first of the Right Use of Will books in the late 80's. The blue book coming into our lives launched us on another leg of the journey. The RUOW books helped me put many things I'd been crying and remembering into context, they helped me understand why I had so much trouble connecting with God. They allowed me to open the door to all those feelings that I had in denial about God, and over time, helped me understand who I am and what my focus is.

Finding Myself

Finding my right place has been a really difficult journey, and it's not over yet. I have wanted to be many things, I have wanted to avoid looking at myself and who I really am. I wanted to be a Green Rainbow spirit, I wanted to be a Ronaloka, I had affinity for both. Then I thought maybe I'm nothing, maybe I'm a whole bunch of fragmented essence, and I have no real self or core identity.

For the last 4 years, I believed that I was a fragment of the Mother. That was not an easy thing to admit. I fought against it for a long time. Finally I accepted it within me. And the acceptance brought with it a whole new batch of triggers.

I have wanted to elevate myself to a visible place, sit on the Queen's throne, wear the Wise Woman's robe. I have raged at not being acknowledged or recognized. I have raged at myself for being too attached to being the Mother. I have strongly identified with the parts of the books where the Mother doubts herself and begins to believe that maybe somebody else would make a better mother, she's wrong to want to be the Mother, she's wrong to want to have that place.

I have cried terror and heartbreak and pleaded with God to kill me, let me sink down into the earth and forget and be forgotten. I have tried to diminish myself and make myself smaller than anybody else. I have tried so hard to be nothing. I have tried to go out of existence.

I'm not sure today who I am. I am still working on fragmentation and identity issues and personality and building my inner core, and looking forward to a time of greater knowing.

There are only a few things I feel relatively sure of... and even these are subject to change.

The first thing is that when I am triggered, when I cry, these feelings and memories I share in these pages are what come up. I have allowed these memories to define me, to assure me of my identity. But, I was told by a channeling that this normal for a piece of a heart spirit, or green rainbow spirit, to bring through aspects of the mother and feel as if those feelings are your own. I don't understand this, and I have huge trouble believing it. If my memories and feelings are not my own, if I cannot rely on them to tell me who I am, I think that's the most cruel trick in the whole universe.

The second thing is that nobody can tell me who I am. No channel, no psychic, nobody. Nobody knows all the nuances and energy flows and parts and bits and drives and feelings and destiny path... of me. There have been many times a person tried to tell me... believing that they have the knowing, and the right, to tell me who I am and what I deserve. They don't. And they don't. It baffles me that they believe they can know something like this, and feel justified in their hatred or judgments. It's baffling. But that's not my problem, I just know to avoid those people, and in the end, knowing who I am and what my right place is ... is up to me.

The third thing is that my greatest longing, my strongest drive, my most urgent desire, is to bring all fragments back together. My greatest joy is doing this. So, no matter what my identity turns out to be, I am a Gatherer. I don't have to be at the front, I don't have to be wise or wonderful or visible. I don't have to BE or DO anything, except what I'm comfortable doing and being, and that's exactly what I have been doing... crying fragments. Bringing in parts. We have a way to heal together now, and that is my focus.

And that is the last thing I'm still sure of, and after almost 40 years, I doubt this one will change. Crying works. No matter what the pain is, or how hard it is, or how confusing it is... I can cry it. I can cry the rage, the terror, the heartbreak that feels it will never mend... and come out the other side with more essence and greater understandings.

For now, my task is to to gather pieces and fragments, to bring them in and give them voice. To let them cry, to remember their stories with them, to let them remember and heal.

Memories that others hold will hopefully be shared and contribute to our wholeness. Fragments that are still out there lost will be found, cried, healed, and remembered.

The problem of fragmentation can be healed, even with the most polarized parts. I have brought in warring parts and have found that, once they cry and express everything they're holding, they can heal with eachother. They reach a sort of natural alignment. But they have to each be allowed to cry whatever it is they're feeling with full acceptance. This is my focus, my thoughts and feelings are bent on solving this problem all the time. That's the primary purpose for these pages, to share this process...