Rowan's Journal

This is the clearest description of bullying I have ever read.

http://cbpotts.livejournal.com/614994.html


And this is hopeful, part of the "It Gets Better" idea that Dan Savage so wonderfully promotes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhhTir-UQTQ

This one is beautiful and brilliant, made me tear up with joy for his happiness and his eloquence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDMBOIMD5dE
This one is AWESOME! This woman talks about The Trevor Project, a 24/7 help line for LGBTQ. Great message this woman has!

There are others on YouTube; a wonderful number of other clips on "It Gets Better"; all worth viewing.

My take on it? Sad, very sad that this young man felt so pressured and so helpless; so many have said it so much better than I can. But the thing is, DO something about it; don't just shake your head and move on. Surely there are people in your life who feel nearly equally hopeless. What can you do? Show more love to those around you. Pay attention to kids and young adults who seem withdrawn or isolated. Take the time to get to know people you pass by without a glance at work, at gatherings. Care. Be concerned. Reach out. BE more loving. Act on that kindly impulse; it doesn't take long at all and it's cumulative. If you cause one person to smile, chances are that they'll make someone else smile and then think about the chain that you started.

Energy naturally goes in loops and spurts, negative as well as positive. What you project, what you think, the expression on your face, the odd bits of thoughts running through your head DETERMINE the sort of energy you will have in your life and the sort of energy you project to those around you.

What would happen if we all started consciously being more kind, more loving to one another; if we started smiling at people on the street? If we reached out to those around us to let them know that we cared? What would happen if we worked as hard at being loving as we did at keeping current with TV or with the latest gossip? Quite simply, I think we could change the world.

But then, I've always been a cock-eyed optimist.

EDIT: Watching that second "It Gets Better" YouTube, I had to transcribe her quote. It made me cry, it's so awesome.

I’m an old warrior, I have my scars and I have counted my losses. But I am stronger than ever and I am not running away. I am here for the distance. You can depend on me. When your faith is weak, walk with mine.

Grandmother Parisha

...not being around.

But (thanks to Google ads, which rock my socks on a regular basis) I discovered this nifty, thought-provoking article by a fellow gardener, George Ball, Chairman of Burpee Co. (one of the gardening catalogs that I devour.) This is taken from the Philadelphia Inquirer (my birth town, btw) and is very worthwhile to read.

( A celebration of drudgery )

Amen. I wholeheartedly agree. The "sweet spot of drudgery..." I LOVE that!

I'll take it one step further; you either glorify your work and yourself with your good attitude or you poison it and yourself with a bad attitude. The choice is up to you.

When I think kindly or lovingly about the individual for whom I'm doing something, I firmly believe that it imbues that object with virtue, good-will, magick...whatever you want to call it, whether that be sewing, cooking, gardening, bookwork, car mechanics or even, dare I say it, sex.

The effect is further magnified because when I'm thinking positively or happily about whatever I'm working at, it's good for me too. I mean this literally; mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically. I think I can change myself at the cellular level by using positive energy on a daily basis. Change your mind and you can change the world. If you read "the Secret" or any other work about the power of positive thinking, it simply makes sense that whatever energy you use in your tasks is magnified. YOU get to choose whether that energy, times one or three or whatever, is positive and helpful and energizing and nourishing or whether it is negative, unhappy, sour and unhealthy.

I believe that it is impossible to separate out your energy from your work. We experience feelings all the time; we CHOOSE our feelings all the time, if we're adult and choose to behave as adults. Whatever emotions we choose to invest in our work and our relationships, even (especially!) ourselves, we build our world to resemble.

If we give good value in our work, no matter how mundane or drudgery-seeming, we get more than good value back.

Your choice, your work, your life.

And mine too...this is as much to remind myself of these principles as it is to preach to anyone else.

Choose LOVE.

I have another one of these on forgiveness but that's for another time really soon. It's been percolating for a couple years now, oh more than that, really.

I read this over at my friend, adammaker's LJ and wanted to share it.

PLEASE read this, no matter for whom you voted. This is wonderful stuff:

http://www.theroot.com/id/48726

This wise, wise woman shares advice from which we could all benefit.

I have a philosophical post brewing; been making notes on it all afternoon. Must simmer a bit longer while I sand.

I've noticed that activities like sanding, beading and gardening are all good for either thinking nothing at all or really deep thoughts.

Later...wanna sand while I still have some light outside.

Well, as long as I've set off a political debate on my LJ, might as well add this one, since I've received it twice now.

Read it once and well, Deepak Chopra is someone whom I was honored to meet amongst the luminaries I was privileged to meet while attending Unity of OP, like and the "Chicken Soup..." guys, Barbara Marx Hubbard and most importantly to me personally was Jean Houston, whom I have met twice. I'll have to journal that sometime.

But right now I wanted to pass this along. It does make one think, if one is inclined to do so...

Came from his blog:
http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2008/09/obama_and_the_p.html

( cut for more political philosophy or liberal mumbo-jumbo, depending upon your POV )

On Tuesday, Becky and I went to Barnes and Noble as well as to JoAnne's fabrics. Along with a couple Misty Lackey books, I also picked up "the Secret" on a whim. Well, not quite a whim; I've been curious and it was there and on sale so I got a copy.

Glad I did. There's nothing really new in it; things I say and believe but it's the concentration of the visualizations and the intensity of the joyfulness in the book that contains the secret of its impact.

And the next day we come up with the idea for this new business. Coincidence? I really don't believe in coincidence and haven't for a long time.

So in the interest of sharing this joyfulness and spreading it further, I've decided to post a bit of the book every day. Read it or not, believe it or not...but I KNOW that increasing the flow of positive, joyful thoughts everyday is a powerful thing.

So for this evening:

The Law of Attraction

The Law of Attraction says like attracts like, so as you think a thought, you are also attracting like thoughts to you.

The only reason why people do not have what they want is because they are thinking more about what they don't want than what they do want.

The law of attraction is a law of nature. It is impersonal and it does not see good things or bad things. It is receiving your thoughts and reflecting back to you those thoughts as your life experience. The law of attraction simply give you whatever it is that you are thinking about.

The law of attraction is the law of creation.

The law of attraction is always working, whether you believe it or understand it or not.

Like all the laws of nature, there is utter perfection in this law. You create your life. Whatever you sow, you reap! Your thoughts are seeds and the harvest you reap will depend on the seeds you plant.

The law is simply reflecting and giving back to yu exactly what you are focussing on with your thoughts. With this powerful knowledge, you can completely change every circumstance and eent in your entire life, by changing the way you think.


Change your thoughts and you can change your world.

Here's the latest update in the, "Oh, what a difference (one-two-five-six) years make!" scenario of Rowan being a happy woman.

I did my 'wake up in the middle of the might and think deep thoughts' thing again last night. This time was distinctly odd, it wasn't any personal angst or problem, it was a real urgency to get a message across to my friends. I debated on making this 'friends only' since it will be soul-baring but that would defeat the point. This is about heart sharing, truly, sharing from the heart.

You see, my life has changed so radically in the last five to six years and definitely from when I started on Live Journal. This is 'ancient history' now but so many of you, I didn't know back then. *grin* Some of you remember this stuff in RL and are probably rolling your eyes. Bear with me, please.

I left my husband in '99 and sailed right into another relationship, talk about unwise. In '01 and '02, I was living a life of quiet loneliness and frequent desperation, in a very unsuccessful triad, not divorced yet but not really living happily either. Oh sure, I had moments of bliss since that's my nature to find them wherever I can, but there were so many times I cried, wondering what I was going to do and how I was going to make it. I made some very unwise emotional and financial decisions, squandered my divorce settlement on basic living necessities like rent since the other two kept losing jobs and not really caring about getting more. Frankly, I spent some of the time high as my two lovers were most of the time, just out of not wanting to worry and stress so much. What a waste of time and resources that was, that fake feeling of 'oh, things'll be fine!" because they weren't. Then came the nasty break-up where I was abandoned, truly; they moved out while I was gone on a State Fair statue gig, packed up and moved out and left me a note to find when I returned at midnight on August 18, 2002. That was probably the lowest night of my life.

But then the two weekends after, as KCRF started and I was the Evil Villainess in Scenario, I met this handsome Scotsman and life got more interesting. See, he was married and not too happily at that, as I soon discovered. They had this 'arrangement' but it worked for her benefit, not his and caused him lots of grief. I still had lots of stress and worry, with a new roommate who wasn't paying his way so I'd traded one set of frustration and upset for another. Then add the falling in love with a man I'd probably never get to have, true distress and heart-break. Long story short, all summer long I loved this man desperately and he was going through hell, four hours away and I couldn't help but on IM and an occasional visit. I was going through personal hells of my own as it became obvious that KC was no longer a place for me. Here, he had to deal with betrayal and illness and eventual death, and more betrayal even in that. Not happy times, much of which is posted back in his journal and some in mine as well. But times that we learned from, there is no doubt of that. And that was the time during which we began the band that would end up as "Queen's Gambit" which brought much joy to us and to others, even through the growing pains.

But in the end of that time of turmoil, we were able to be together as I moved here, way too quickly for a man in bereavement who has just realized that he is not of the nature he'd been conditioned to think he was; poly-amory was an entirely new concept to him when he met me. But I'd been stifled in both closets, Christianity and Monogomy, for far too long to go back and try to be who I no longer was anymore; it was much too hard work getting there in the first place. He could have me as I was now or not at all. And I could see that he'd been held back from being who he really was for all of his life.

Thing is, and this is the IMPORTANT part, once we were together, we could work as a unit to build bridges which, yes, was in our wedding vows, independently written. And we can and must work together to determine our goals and move forward on them. Time to heal our hearts, to rid ourselves of anger and angst and to heal and work on forgiveness. You see, trials and challenges are meant to be lessons from which to grow and then be able to help understand and aid others who are in challenge and conflict. I believe it's part of our job as human beings, to help one another, to grow closer with candid communication and trust, to learn how to love better and to grow closer to our dreams of perfection, not someone else's.

I believe the goal is to find joy within; to have no enemies, to have no resentment and no fears; to live life with each day being new and full of potential. To learn how to forgive and be forgiven and to move on in joy, having learned the lesson so that it does not have to be repeated until one finally does learn...'cause that's what life does, you know. Life presents you with the same thing, over and over, until the lesson is learned. Then you get new ones since it's true that we're all still flawed human beings! No one can move forward while holding onto blocks of grudge and resentment; forgiveness of self and of others, with the expectation that the hurtful behavior has ended, of course, is how that game works. But when one can forgive the self and forgive the other, what joy is discovered! That is the meaning of freedom, so far as I'm concerned.

The thing I was determined to convey here when I first awoke this morning is that the risk is worth taking to open our hearts to one another, even a bit at a time, to allow love to shine through, to take the chance to be real and genuine, to connect, one with another. In this season of Light, it is my wish for you that you can look beyond the challenges currently faced and the challenges past and see Light in the future. The only gift we can truly give one another is that gift of ourselves.

Still, this hasn't come across exactly as I'd pictured it in the middle of the night, but it's as close as I can get at this moment. Now I must go back upstairs and finish a little pink princess dress for Bruce's grand-daughter.

Love and Light....

Relationships=Communication

Since I post this web-site all over the place SO often that folk seem to think I'm proselytizing (which I AM NOT doing! Folk are either poly by nature or they aren't; lots of folk pretend to be poly and aren't, I really don't care one way or the other.) I thought I'd just copy and paste this wonderful thing on communication, since it seems to be up for a lot of folk lately.

NOTE: Please if you're about to roll your eyes and say, "There goes Rowan again..." STOP. Read this. It probably means you have some issues with communicating and especially need to read this. I don't care if your relationship is with your dog, your cat, your left hand, your parents, your kids, your lover, your co-workers. Get it? If not now, come back and read it later; have your roommate or sweetie or SO or whomever read it, too. This is about you learning how to be the best YOU that you can be for yourown self. Damnright, I'll proselytize about that.

Sure,it's posted on a Polyamory web-site but good writing about communication is just that; doesn't matter one damned bit who wrote it or what site it's on. And yes, I want to meet this person.

Ok, enough preaching, I have errands to run, a kilt to make.

( the best damned piece on relationship communication I've ever seen )

Yeah, I'd love to meet this guy, shake his hand and thank him for all the times he's helped me get my head back on straight. Um, not that I'm trying to imply that I'm straight or anything, right?

Something my dearly beloved Capi posted that needs to be shared.

She and some others of my friends, such as Br.William and Lady Niniane and others I could name, exemplify what Christianity should be in my book...loving, hard-working, non-judgmental and above all, LOVING.

She gave me permission to share this and I'm copying her text since it's f-locked:


The lady who sent me that email (fwd) about homosexuals and the church yesterday responded to me with a *loving* list of reasons (Biblical list) that i should review (just in case i'd not read my Bible) so i would know better in the future, why she was correct in her position. At first, i merely did not want to engage her, but upon thinking on it overnight.... here is my response to her.

I merely side-stepped the issue of whether or not homosexuality is a sin or not; it's a very tangled issue, and not the main issue in my book.


"I don't know you, nor do you know me. It is not my desire to guess where you are in your walk with the Lord, nor to challenge how great is your faith. I do not presume to judge you; that is for God alone.

Yes, i've read His Word, and i believe every word. I believe we are all sinners and every single one of us have sinned. I have noticed that He spends a LOT more time telling us how much He despises, for example, lying, than He spends on homosexuality. I've done comparison studies. Wow, He REALLY must not like lying. And all of us have lied. Every last one of us.

I believe it's the SIN, however, that He loathes, not the sinner. I think this is about hating the sin, not the sinner. Yet the church continues to revile the homosexual. I don't think the church focuses on the sin in this case, but on the person. We shun homosexuals, we persecute them, we do all manner of hate crimes on their person.... all in the name of Christ. I cannot support that

Jesus summed up the law in two brief statements, saying we must love God above all things, and love one another above ourselves. And that means EVERYONE. Homosexuals are just as much my neighbor as my husband, my best friend, my offspring, my pastor, that alcoholic living under the overpass, that ex-con who was released from prison two weeks ago, that shut-in who lives alone and pines for someone to visit her, and a host of other forgotton souls that we refuse to see as we hurry on our way not to be late to church.

I believe it is time for the church to wake up and really begin to live the lives of love Christ wanted us to lead two thousand years ago.

Your sister,


Now I'm really getting offa the time-sucking computer!

1) I think everyone should seriously consider that their own viewpoint might be myopic, that they might not necessarily always be right and that someone else's point of view might have merit. Thinking you are always right and everyone else is wrong is one of the major ills of this world, IMHO. Being considerate, listening and allowing for someone else's opinions and ideas is a much better way to communicate. Having to prove you are right and someone else is wrong completely halts communication every single time.

2) Noted: it is off-putting to say during an intimate moment, "OH honey, I think I just felt a tick on your back." Yes, it is. But the good news is that the mood can be recaptured if both partners wish to do so.

3) The size of the plate and the size of the contents has once again gotten to be extremely disproportionate.

4) I'm at the end of my patience with having un-caring people making messes in my kitchen and laundry room while we're away and having to clean it all up when I get home. The good news there is that it is only one more month and I'll be home, sorta, all that time. The bad news about that is contained in number 3.

5) It is supposed to rain most of this week so I must get out into the garden now if it's ever going to get anything planted to actually grow in it.

6) Truly, if you are in good health and your family is in good health but you find you're suffering from anxiety, depression or moodiness, try picking yourself up and being grateful for the many blessings that you do have in your life. I look around and see brave people all over the place laboring under massive handicaps and doing amazing things; there's always more to be grateful for than to complain about and if you look for those things you'll have the energy to do what you need to do. You are LOVED! And yes, heeding my own advice....

7) I need to get off the time-sucking computer. There's no way I'm going to catch up with all you lovely, chatty folk this morning.