@classictravelr Severe dementia can present really tough challenges both for the person living with it and their loved ones who care for them. Some of these challenges can be really heartbreaking. I understand this completely because I've been there, too. I really feel for you, and I'm glad to hear that you've healed your heart, even if it took a while. May you and your deceased mother be surrounded by a warm glow of loving light. May heal all your remaining wounds which came from all the daily struggles and the huge challenge to be a private caregiver of a loved one with severe dementia. Namaste
@ana Maybe this is only your perception? No one is an island, and if social services is sliced, it certainly could be that people are seeking someone competent to get an idea. The leadership these days does make it difficult for people to manage everything themselves.
I find that if I feel as if someone is only seeking something from me, i have to look within myself and ask if I have done that too.
I suspect that if you are female living in the USA, you have been forced to do unpaid mothering, so you are far from alone in that regard. Everyone has done it.
I'm loving these posts! Would love to hear more ideas and questions.
So far, I got these ideas from your sharings:
1. Find your own brief but powerful self protection ritual that you can repeat at least a couple of times a day, and more often if you feel the need.
When I hold the Circle of Light, we take a moment to receive healing from the light that is pouring in to us all. I then ask us to imagine protection over and around our entire being, as well as protection for our most precious loved ones. We also, of course, fill ourselves with loving kindness which protects us. Then we give it to all beings. It's a good daily habit to form, however you do it.
2. Give to others. I find that no matter how tired or down I might get, I am always uplifted when giving a reading, helping someone in some way, or giving to someone in any way. Having a regular practice, or volunteer work that helps others is a huge uplift that recharges you.
3. Take time to recharge, like a walk in the woods where you can absorb the light from trees and wildlife. If you are an empath, then you'll feel uplifted by forest bathing, as the Japanese call it. As Wendell Barry wrote in the Peace of Wild Things:
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives will be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty by the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world and am free.
@earthangel classictravelr @joy @cc21 @tesseract @journeywithme2 @ana @bluebelle @lovendures @deetoo @Andy
Hi All, Chipping in with a couple of thoughts on self protection, as a retired child therapist and k- 6 counselor(three schools , so many children with tremendous needs)
Pay attention to your body and mind and I would add your dreams. Toward the end of my career I began to hit compassion fatigue but kept on. Exhausted, and worse, becoming mechanical in sessions. Then a wisdom figure appeared in a dream, walking beside me by the sea. He said “your footprints will no longer be on this Earth unless you change your ways. Leave this work, go half time if you must.” So I set up job sharing with someone- made all the difference. I think I did some of my best work then. I had worried about financial implications but it worked out
Also pay extra attention to your body. Twice, early in my career while sitting with men who were children’s parents, I felt tremendous twists in my solar plexus. What was this I wondered. I need to be wary of these people for some reason. Well, each of them went on a few months later to murder a family related person ( not the children). Just a lesson for me in trusting your body’s reactions.
comes through you.
@marigold What a great suggestion - pay attention to your body and dreams. When you get sick, hurt your knee or your stomach aches, ask if there is a message for you. It's likely not going to be subtle, like your dream. What a dream! Listening to the body's aches, hurts, and other issues can also guide you to the right work.
@ana I immediately went to being careful of people "attaching" and then I read your post and thought that you get it. I used yoga to wash out the emotions I would take inside and have put up protective walls since I was a small child.
I feel like I have been more called to handle people with love or loving care which feels different from empathy. Rather than me take others emotions in and "wash" them like I was doing, which breaks me, if I fill with love it expands out to them. It is hard for me and I am not sure I can do that and I always forget but feel like the universe is asking for me to try. This is the first time I have tried to put this feeling into words so I hope it makes sense.
Oh so this was hilarious, and something I have to share.
So okay. Backstory. From college I got a job at AMC theatre, went through the ranks and eventually became a manager. I was there for years, maybe even a decade plus. About 10 years ago things happened that caused me to quit, basically bad management at the location I was then assigned to. Since then I have no been at the movie theater, not cause of any hate for the theater or anything, just more cause I enjoy watching movies at home where I can pause. Also because no movies have soooooo called to me that I need to see in big screen.
Then two days ago, out of nowhere, I saw a random thing about the new Superman movie. I went, okay, cool. And thought I would move on. The idea stuck with me, so i looked up when it probably would go online, saw it was in a month maybe and went cool.
Needless to say the idea did not go away, and it stuck with me, and it grew and it grew. I was devouring youtube shorts, thinking about it. And then early evening yesterday suddenly I was like "yeah, I'm getting in my car, going to my local theater, the one I worked at funny enough, and seeing the movie."
From "oh interesting" to "yeah, I'm going", I decided to see the movie. It felt like a strong urge, subconscious/unconscious whatever, but an urge. A meaningful one, for all that I don't exactly know the direct meaning.
The theater itself was paradoxically both the same and different, the same in looks and feel, different in that it was dirtier then I know as a manager I ever let it be. But you know whatever.
The movie was good. Superman was Superman, all the mythos I expected, which was awesome. Clark was how I wanted him to be. The characters great. No spoilers, obviously, but it was good. The message of Truth, Justice, and Hope were there. It was good.
It wasn't "I need to go there", and it definitely didn't like cause a massive personal change (lol), but yeah, something in me, around me, etc, urged me to go and I listed and I went. And it was good.
Also, I think its good to remember there can be Truth, Justice, and Hope, and you can believe that tomorrow will be better than today.
So I figured I would share this. And this seemed like a good post.
Re the dream above that suggested I work half time. A couple of months before that dream I dreamed I was in the back seat of a car full of and driven by fifth grade boys that I saw in my school practice. A rambunctious group.
(One of them in waking life had brought a spent hand grenade, from his father’s war memorabilia collection, on the bus to school - it fell out of his jacket pocket and rolled down the center aisle of the school bus- you can imagine the mayhem.)
Anyway they were carrying on in my dream in this car and one of them said to me, let’s go get you some half and half! I interpreted this as coffee creamer and could not figure it out until after the second dream when it was spelled out to me.
Good news to embrace in divine light…
1. From California:
For the first time in state history, the Presbyterian Church of San Gabriel returned ancestral land to the Gabrieleno Tongva Tribal Council marking a meaningful act of land restoration. The transfer was confirmed by the Tongva community earlier this week. The gesture sets an important precedent in acknowledging and repairing historical dispossession.
2. Pennsylvania museum closes Native American exhibit returns thousands of artifacts under federal law: The Pennsylvania State Museum in Harrisburg has closed its Native American exhibit to identify and repatriate more than 908 individual human remains.79,628 funerary objects under the updated Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The closures began in May, and the museum will reopen a new, collaboratively developed exhibit in 2028 or 2029.
3. Largest-ever land-back deal in California:
The Yurok Tribe has gained stewardship over 47,000 acres around the Blue Creek watershed a deal described as California’s largest land return to a Native American tribe. The newly acquired land, once logged and degraded, will be managed as a community forest and salmon sanctuary to restore ecological and cultural health. This transformative acquisition doubles the tribe’s modern territory and cements ancestral ties to the land.
4. Illinois transfers state park to Indigenous stewardship:
On March 21, 2025, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker enacted a law transferring ownership of Shabbona Lake State Park to the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation. This move restores crucial access to ancestral lands and supports tribal sovereignty and self-determination. The legislation marks a meaningful step toward honoring Native heritage in Illinois.
5. British Columbia hands over island territory to Indigenous control: In 2024, the Government of British Columbia transferred the title of more than 200 islands off the province’s west coast back to the Haida people formally recognizing their aboriginal land title in Haida Gwaii. This historic action acknowledges Indigenous governance and cultural stewardship over sacred lands.It represents a growing international trend of reconciliation through land return.
@earthangel Oh, I'm so happy to read that! That does sound like just the kind of reasons one would want to celebrate. 🤩
@earthangel Perhaps the spirit of these land returns will visit the Middle East sometime in the near future.
@earthangel Thank you for that good news which reminds us of all the good that is happening in our country. With the news dominated by the bad actions of a minority, it is easy to forget that most of the people in the USA believe, as they do in California, in doing the right thing.
Comedy lifts my empath spirit even if that comedy is a harsh indictment of its target. For me, it is my empathic connection with people who have successfully risen above the fear of the Administration.
If you haven't seen them, South Park's latest two episodes (first two episodes of their season 27) has hit the mark. It is behind a pay wall, but if you don't subscribe to the package they are part of, you can take the limited time free offer and then cancel before they start charging.
https://www.tvguide.com/news/where-to-watch-south-park/
Also @earthangel got a remarkable hit with the second episode. She had seen Noem's face melting during her Read-the-Future meditation last month. She could not figure out why she was seeing this so clearly! Then two weeks later, it happend in the South Park second episode.
I felt the need to share this interview of Andry Hernandez by Tim Miller of The Bulwark. Andry is the Venezuelan makeup artist who was recently released from CECOT. His faith, love and compassion for others brought me to tears.
Andry does not share many details of his experience, instead focusing on the positive — his understanding of divine purpose, the joy and healing of human connection, and gratitude. What a remarkable human being.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ySsBj3OOg0
I would like to start a new discussion here by asking a question regarding "how empaths can stay in the light". I increasingly feel that people are more stressed and no longer look at me with the same friendly eyes as I was used to in the past like some years ago. This applies not only to some colleagues who are further away, but also to strangers who do not know me at all. This seems to be due to a social change brought about by new media. Much more negativity is being read into my normal, friendly behaviour and some negative feelings and intentions projected onto me from afar. This is much more than I was used to. I think it has almost become a trend for people to simply burden others with their own negative projections from afar and keep the other one mentally in the own negativity. I also notice this energetically. How do you deal with this energetic burden — inaccurate negative projections that you can almost feel physically, but for which you are not at all responsible given your friendly, cooperative and almost entirely harmless behaviour? I find this general development somewhat exhausting in daily life and look very much forward to your recommendations.