Yesterday was fun.  Went to get my kids when I was done working, Dan had a skating birthday party, Grace was sleeping over at a girl friends, so that left Cal and Zac.  “Well isn’t this convenient,” I mulled around in my head?  “Hummmm, “The Book of Eli” is playing and Zac and I still have a movie ticket left over from our Christmas gifts.”  The mere suggestion to Zac that we snag this open time frame to go and we were disappearing out the door.  Cal hung out with his father till we got back… well, he hung with the computer as he loves the on-line game that he plays with friends through the internet.  He barely knew we were gone  .

Great movie is all I have to say about “The Book of Eli”, it really spoke to me about my mission that I’m on with John Solomon, John Mark, and Frances to get our book, Red Book and Cotton-Journey to True-Freedom, written by John Solomon Sandridge out to the public.  This is one powerful book with a life changing message for anyone who reads it.  Add to that a terrific and beautiful life story and you have a home run read.  Today I’ve given a lot of thought to how the movie effected me and although I’ve been sluggish with getting things accomplished, I’m inspired.

Well, it’s nearly 3 am here and I’ve really got to, “flatten the mattress” as my friend in Aussie says….
Night, Love ya,
Theresa Jane

When I came home and pulled into my parking space I spied a package setting in the threshold of my door.  A surge of excitement filled me when I realized that that could be “the book.”   The shape and size were right.   I gathered my purse from the seat next to me and with keys jangling I made it for my door, scooped up the package and read the return address…sure enough it was “the book”, “Yes, the Red Book and Cotton / Journey to True Freedom, written by my friend and business partner, John Solomon Sandridge, is here.”  I squealed to myself.  I unlocked the door, swooshed it open, dropped my keys and purse onto my table,  swept the door closed with my foot and tore the cardboard lap open on the packaging open.  Then carefully slide it out from its darkness into the light of my waiting hand, dropped the cardboard after birth onto the table with the other and stood there  just gazing at it.   “It’s here.  Months of work and finally it’s here,” I said.  I ran my hand over its front cover and read it, turned it over and did the same absorbing every detail and font.

Then I gently opened it’s front cover and was instantly transported back to 4th grade when my teacher, Mrs. Hyer, taught us how to handle our brand new math text books…”First you set the book on its spine and open its front cover flat to the desk, now the back, now take a small section of the front pages and open them and run your finger along the inside…”  As carefully as that 4th grader I opened it’s cover and viewed the fresh new insides.  Flipped through the pages of text, without opening it fully keeping in mind its newness, and  absorbed the new layout and feel.  Ahhhh, perfect.  Better than it was.

I want to say that I’ve been especially honored to be a part of the birthing of this book from editing manuscript to final copy.  As I mentioned I was one involved with editing it many times over and was a part of getting it to its first print.  But to now be on this end, the “re-do” and movement into our company, comes with it’s own unique joy.

You may notice that their is now a sub-title.  I don’t remember if I mentioned this before, but since we were in the process of having to re-do the cover and inside layout we discussed everything.  The new title came into being because the book is about so much more than slavery, it’s also about finding True-Freedom in our life and how to create it.  Ergo the subtitle.

The other occurrence  yesterday was, one of my kids was sick and throwing up…  the one I’m diligently working on restoring a relationship with.  They ending up spending the night and after a good bit of vomiting, poor thing, they felt a lot better and we talked and talked.  Which explains why there was no post yesterday.  And I want to say right here that yesterday felt like it always used to, but better, because I’ve healed and changed (changes I’m still working to make automatic rather than paying attention to myself, but I’m getting there) and so have they and we’re finding sweet harmony again.  The transition is occurring with beauty and grace.  And I am tearfully thankful.

You know?  This transition from primary care taker/stay at home mom to … their adults and you’re hands are now off, has been a sticky wick and that’s been in spite of the fact that I thought I had done what I needed to do as they moved through their teens to reach this point.

So what about today?  Lot’s of things business, seeing my kids, and Caleb ran around with me doing business. 

Night, love ya,
Theresa Jane
-who will be going to bed and it’s only 12:25, amazingly early for me 

In the Steven King movie I talked about last, there was a female character who was dying a terrible death.  It was made obvious that it was due to her holding on to hate.  Her line: “Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold on to.”

Translation: this was what allowed her to survive.

The movie shows us that she was obviously hurt in her childhood and then in her marriage.  Her “demons”, Bitterness and Hate, permeated her and in the end they devoured her with sickness and twisted her outside body into a terrible form reflecting what was inside… She wanted to die.  It was the only way she knew to “kill them off” and release her from them and her awful existence.

These “demons” we/I co-exist with exact a terribly high price to allow us to live off from/hold on to them…

I want to be released from my “demons”.  However I know that I don’t have to die to be released, but they have to.  I can go on to live a beautiful and peaceful existence after I’ve killed off my “demons” (my issues) and replace them with “angels”.  In this case “angels” of Forgiveness and Love for all people including my mother.

This is also the message of the book John Solomon wrote: Red Book and Cotton.  It is the entire theme really.  How to overcome the issues that keep us from “true-freedom”.  The man, Nimrod, had every reason to hold on to his anger and hate, he was born and raised an African American slave.  Who was treated worse than the slaves??  But in spite of his childhood and adult treatment and existence he was able to overcome and go on to live in not just the paper freedom that the government granted in his lifetime, but he was able to arrive at his true-freedom as well.  By learning to love and forgive those that had been atrocious to him and his people.

To me it has been a tremendous eye opener to how I needed to live.  His life story has played a very powerful role over the years to my inner healing.  Because if anyone “deserved” to hold onto to their hate it would have been him.  But he learned to let it go, “kill off his demons” and because he did he was able to experience true-freedom and this is the message to us that is in the book.  Through his life story we learn of his pain and traumas, the horrors committed against him and were all around him and then we are shown how he learned to free himself of the anger, hate, and unforgiveness he harbored toward the white people.

The book has been inspiring.  Provided me tremendous guidance and self-revelation to jerk me awake and to keep me on the path to my inner healing/True-freedom.  Read it.  You’ll be glad you did.  Check out John’s blog too, click here, it’s based on his book and the truths that lie within.

Night, love ya,
Theresa

Thoughts since the !BLAM!…

A great metaphor for the forgotten child.

!BLAM!ming my parents was one of the best things I’ve ever done.  I feel so different inside.  I’m experiencing transformation daily.  I let my parents know that I was a forgotten child in all their violence, drama, and destruction.  And I did it calmly.  No screaming, no yelling, no my parents yelling back…  I let them know in a controlled, clear adult manner that what they did effected me.  That I’ve never stood up and said.  I had always basically summarized: “You and dad were terrible.  You were out of control…”  This time I let them know what they did hurt.  How I felt.  How I was effected.  That I remember what they did to each other and me.  It was REAL.  It happened.  It destroyed me.  I’m tired of it not being acknowledge and them expecting me to just go on as if, to quote my mother, “We were just a family who had problems”.   Good God, it was more than that.

I grew up in that mess.  I was a child.  I had to find a way to survive.  Through my private sessions with my couch/therapist… I discovered that I never came out of survivor mode.  Possibly the best way to describe it would be to say, I functioned like a vet who suffers with post war trama: flashbacks/jumpy/edgy/suspicious/on alert/ready to protect and defend…

Not me. Just a great pic for here

I have lived on “survive mode” since I was a child.  It has only been until the last 7-8 months that I can say I am finally, really, really coming out of that state.  Out of the “training” I went through at home, when I grew up and my brain was forming.  The way I processed life, my psychological state of being, formed and letting that go and even seeing some of it was a very difficult thing to do.  A very tough row to hoe.  Those ways of being were what allowed me to survive what I lived through.

Letting go took two things: A committed couch who wouldn’t give me any way out and my unwavering commitment… leaving appointments with swollen red eyes or swearing a sailors stream of cus when it came to the session I just left, “what did that son of a bitch know about anything…”

Since leaving home I have searched for my healing.  Tried many things.  So I could live normally.  Feel normally.  Like other people.  It wasn’t until 6 years ago this January 2nd that I really found the source of my healing.  That’s when I found my life couch and he had a system (birthed from the book he had been writing: Red Book and Cotton) and through it I found the way out.  However it’s taken a lot of work and it wasn’t until the last 7-8 months that I can I say I have had the earth shattering break throughs that could allow me to say, “Now I’m really starting to live my own life.  I feel it.  I see it.  The lingering effects are falling off in chunks… finally.”

That’s not to say that through the years I haven’t seen major changes in my life, emotions, reactions, how I deal with life around me.  It’s just to say that all that work finally added up to the “Wow” I see and feel in me today.  And the !BLAM! rocketed me.

I know I’m not done.  I have more work to do.  And I will, “Sell all I have in search of the pearl of great value”…that being my wholeness.  I have to be whole.  I have to feel like a confident adult who has value and worth.  I have to be happy from the inside and not from what happens on the outside to “make” me happy…  So I’m not stopping…

Love ya,
Theresa Jane
-if you are clueless about what I’m talking about when it comes to what I did when I !BLAM!med…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3dcbzTwu7Y&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

I’ve not had any particular path I followed these many years to achieve my goal of success.  It really has been a trip through my own personal Wonderland.  Following that white rabbit I spoke of in previous posts(click here for referred posts).  But I have done purposeful things. Such as…

On the personal level I’ve work consistently with my life coach and not quit no matter “how hot the water gets” and have taken his training courses, in order to heal my life issues that grew out of my childhood.

In the arena of business there’s been successes and failed tries.  Disappointment, frustration, loss, living close to the line financially and going without to get to where I am so far and where I want to be.  Here’s some of what I’ve done:

Went to college, for two reasons:

1. To carefully chose courses to carry me along on my intended path
2. To thrust me into this arena because I had never gone.  
I had side stepped.  For a few reasons: 
   a. It took so much for me to finish high school due to the nightmare I lived at home I was burned out on school and just thankful I had gotten my HS diploma
   b. I was so focused on my marriage I didn’t think I should go: stuck in the mentality: be a good wife, let the husband lead…
   c. After watching Scott in college I developed a lack of belief in my capabilities.  Since I recognize this flaw, I knew I had to face it.  How else could I go on to be successful when I carried a fear towards something as common as the college experience?

I took business courses, psychology, computer, English 101, speech, and writing.  I made the Dean’s list each semester.  After a year I stopped.  Why?  I didn’t want a degree.  Didn’t go to get one.  I wanted to write my story.  Publish my book.  Form some type of business around it.  There wasn’t a degree for that.  I had gotten what I needed.

I assisted a few friends with the different businesses they had.
I did this for very little financial gain.  Because I wanted/needed training.  I did things right.  They complimented me.  Annnnd I messed up.  Screwed up.  Two removed me from various projects and threatened to never let me do anything with them with business again…  All three said, “I had been a housewife too long.”  They wondered if I could ever come out of that way of thinking and be in business for myself.  Thankfully they relented and allowed me to assist again because, “you have potential…”

I helped John1 edit, line by line, word by word, Red Book and Cotton three times.  I charged nothing.  I believed in the book, he needed assistance, and I wanted experience.  To sharpen my skills.  My first time through paled in comparison to the third… John said, “Your editing skills are incredibly good.  You’ve come a very long way from where you began.  Your input has helped me make the book better.”  The last time I was his main choice to assist going through all the individual editorial comments made by the publishing company’s editor before sending it to print.

Today I’m in business with him.  Successfully.

Night, love ya,
Theresa Jane
-I think my first post in this series came off wrong.  In my effort to condense, I left too much out.  So today and yesterday have been the fill in.  Tomorrow I’ll get to where I wanted to be when I began.  Thanks for your patience…

So I was up at 7 a.m. This should impress you.  Remember, I’m a night person, not a morning person.  I was cruising up the HWY to pick up John1 at 8:30.  Then to the office to get the two paintings and metal stands.  Then to the library to set up for the 11 o’clock start time.  We had 20 minutes to spare.

We were there till 3 meeting and greeting some wonderful people and some friends that came to support him.

I was dropping John1 at his house at 4:30.  Off to get the boys from Extended Day, then to get Grace, off to Walmart, then home.  Make dinner, call my cable company…annoying call.  Issue didn’t make me happy, but  I really needed to eat the meal I made and get to work.  I’ll deal with it another day.

Tonight I found different templates for John to pick from since the one we had chosen keeps breaking and we can’t find out why, can’t find a support site anywhere.  John2 can’t either.  Go figure… so plan B.  Search for new templates.  John2 and I linked up via phone around 10:30 p.m. to get the new blog into our hosting site annnnnnnnd around 12:20 it was up!   John1 will begin posting tomorrow or the next day.  Exciting.  There’s plenty more work to do with his blog, but we are on the way.  That’s what’s important.  Can’t wait till everything is perfect or you may never begin…

Sooooo, I’m too sleepy to be snappy with my blog today and I have to go to a book signing for the other company I work with with John1, his daughter, and Frances: the children’s book company I’ve talked about before.  This body needs to be standing there at 11.  I’ll be there till 3.  So I can’t do the: pop toothpicks in to hold open my eye lids and create a blog post full of creative expression.    Which means no more today on the lying “mini series” I began two days ago.  But I’ll get back at it.  I promise 

Love ya, night,
Theresa Jane
-still glowing from the exciting day!

  !!!!!!HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!!!! 

Why no post yesterday??

-First there was computer work
-grocery store-gather ingredients for holiday baking
-then meeting and work on video with John1, Me, John2, Frances (who’s working with us on the Red Book and Cotton book project)
-back to grocery store because now my eggs had exceeded the four hour without refrigeration limit by an hour and a half and they were now officially trash and I had to have them for Thanksgiving baking…
-Stand in line with all the other late Thanksgiving meal shoppers
-home
-greet Zach, who has been with me for the last 4 days 
-drop grocery sacks on floor, peel off coat, dive into sacks, grab cookbook, start dumping ingredients into Kitchen Aid blending bowl
-duel task: prepare dinner
-Have a thought: haven’t checked emails all day, oh dear: quick check.  While there: check the job site I’ve joined to find a new family to nanny for, no leads, pop onto Facebook to post a quick status report, “Oh, there’s two emails”, tell myself,  “Ignore them, too busy,” can’t ignore, I’m a terrible ignorer, read emails, respond to the quickest one, forget to post status
-eat a nice meal with Zach
-keep an eye on the baking Pumpkin Bread loaves
-clean up–because I’m doing my level best keeping up with my dishes
-respond to another FB email
-Dial up John1 and together we set up his new channel on YouTube.  Lots to do and lots of decisions and who knew.  It never ceases to amaze me how long filling in start up information can take. Profiles go on forever and if you want a respectable one they take time.  Then the proofing, tweaking and finally its done.
-Hang up, now it’s like right around 11:10 p.m.
-back to FB write another email response
-pittle around with some other necessary things
-bed 1:30 a.m.  Choose sleep over blogging I was zonked and I wanted to be really fresh for tomorrow…

TODAY:
-shower
-On phone: with kids, John1, kids again, my brother called and I missed it and am just now remembering, ugh, decide with John1 we’re going to launch the video today…
-Peel Sweet Potatoes, boil, mash with butter, brown sugar, and top with cinnamon/brown sugar and marshmallows
-Phone call, jam phone under ear continue to get ready: John1-what do I think about…??  (YouTube wise)… Again, firsts…loaded with time and questions
-Go get Zach a fresh set of clothes, he was out.  Blah.
-Return with Dan to help with wheel chair
-Phone call: John1, bouncing YouTube question off me…Then….Yes!!  Theresa we have liftoff!!  The sucker went.  And I feel like I just birthed a baby. Now the wait for it to be posted!
-Myself, Dan, Zach, his chair, Pumpkin Bread, and hot Sweet Potato dish are now in truck, on the way to the kids/Scott’s/the ‘exs’ house.
-Arrive. Right on the money for dinner: 2 o’clock.  Phew.  Make gravy while Scott gets food on table.  Eat.
-It was a enjoyable day.  I determined that I was going to do all I could to ensure that not a single annoying word passed between Scott and I annnndddd…there was a couple.  But overall, no bickering, no rubbing “the cat’s fur the wrong way” in any real noticeable manner.  Triumph. 
-Got home around 10 called my parents, talked for about 45 minutes.
-Checked to figure out why the video never showed up on YouTube.  Dig around… ohhh, the silly thing is set for private: another thing to “set”, Well…tomorrow we’ll launch it.  The name of John1′s channel: http://www.youtube/JohnSolomonSandridge
-Got ready for bed annnndddd just couldn’t go…I needed to spend a few minutes with you first   Missed you yesterday!  Glad to be back today.  Wondering if any of this was interesting… Humm, well, it’s the 2 days in the life of a woman entrepreneur/mom anyway, if you ever were wondering what we do

Night, Love ya,
Theresa Jane
-who will be up at 4 a.m. to go to Walmart’s door buster sale to press through crowds of people…before the sun is up.  Oh Yippee…    Oh and the pictures today are the smile faces 

In the vain of “business woman”. I took pictures today of my Inspiration Board (I named this board something else, but do you think I can come up with that title right now) that I’ve been working on creating. It’s not finished and for good reason. I look for just the right person to add. And just the right picture. Here’s the picture I took, I wish it turned out better, it’s washed out, probably too much light. I even took it outside so their wouldn’t be a flash reflecting off the pictures:

I made this board in order to have business people, mainly woman, that I admire always before me. If they could do what they did. I know I can do what I have a vision to create. Having this board in front of me keeps me inspired and motivated. I’ve either read their life stories or watched movies on their lives and often both, and to say the least they have each been very impressive. I have a few more that I want to add very badly. Julia Child’s being one. However, trying to find the picture is a bugger. I didn’t start this project with the intent to finish it right away. I wanted to have it be a very thoughtful process created with visual beauty. It really is very nice to look at when it’s not all washed out
Tomorrow I will list the woman and why I have picked them.

Now, it’s sleep time,
Love ya,
Theresa Jane
-psyched that tomorrow is Halloween, or today really since by the clock “tomorrow” is already here. Trick or Treat!! And please, don’t smell any feet!