Wind of the Soul

Anyone familiar with the proverb (or Hillary Clinton’s 1996 book): “It takes a village to raise a child”, will recognize my play on words in the title of this entry. While I don’t have children of my own, the psychological well-being during a child’s formative years is a cause that’s very close to my heart. I suffered with severe forms of depression, obsessions and compulsions throughout my childhood. It’s a child’s development, for better or worse, which will continue to impact them throughout the remainder of their lives, far beyond their formative years. I know, because I’m still working on healing my past.

I often talk about changing the world. If it’s true we must be the change we want to see, and I believe it is; shouldn’t that change be directed primarily towards the youngest of minds, as they will come to have the greatest impact on the direction of humanity?

The majority of psychological issues faced by most adults were exacerbated during their childhood. The sad fact: as a nation, the United States has more children with mental health issues than ever before. I’m not talking about institutionalized conditions. I’m talking about “common”, “ordinary” issues like depression, eating disorders, emotional issues, body dysmorphia, etc. If our ways of raising, educating and socializing children are working so well, why are we seeing an increase in psychological trauma?
(Read the rest of It Takes a Conscious Village…)

Have you ever had an experience in which you honestly felt you weren’t fully responsible for making the decision or the choice to engage in a set of circumstances or an event – it just sort of slipped up on you? This line of thinking is not my normal approach with regards to taking full responsibility for everything in our lives. However, I’m willing to entertain such a thing because I felt something similar regarding my “choice” of becoming a vegetarian in 2008.

Prior to this last year, I had always been a meat eater. That’s not a fact I’m proud of, but it’s something I’m willing to admit. Though I was raised in a household where my mom was a vegetarian, I still consumed meat. Even after embarking on the path of becoming more consciously aware and respectful of all living things, I continued to consume meat.

The contradiction in that last sentence should have been obvious to me at some point, but it wasn’t. Just like so many of the issues I’ve had to face in becoming more self-actualized, my “taste” for meat (as a young adult) was motivated by my own issues of low self-esteem.

As a teenager, I was constantly teased for being painfully thin. This situation only compounded an already burgeoning state of insecurity. By age 18, I began a very serious bodybuilding and weight training hobby, with the hopes of shedding my old appearance. I had grown to hate the body I saw in the mirror and was willing to do almost anything to permanently alter or change it, even if it meant hurting myself in the process. My motto was: “I can’t do anything about my face, but I can certainly do something to fix my body” – somewhat empowering, yet simultaneously self defeating, wouldn’t you say?
(Read the rest of Becoming a Vegetarian…)