My intentions and a brief introduction to ME

This is the first blog in a series I am calling "Letters to YOU" in which I am using the medium of writing as a therapeutic tool to sort out various issues I am dealing with in my own life. I have noticed that through the process of writing to someone, much like how talking to a therapist who will just sit back and listen to you talk, I am writing through my "problems" so that I can come to a resolution of whatever I am dealing with on my own. Initially a lot of us try to find answers to questions we have about our own lives by looking to others for a guide. By looking outside of ourselves for the answers, we are not finding answers that resonate with the truth of our own selves. The answers that will do that for us come from within. Psychologists recognize this fact, which is why many of them will just sit and listen and let the patient work through it by just "talking it out". Well in that same spirit, I am going to do the same for myself by "writing it out". I could keep a journal, but I find that I am more successful at resolving any inner conflict I have when someone is listening to me, or I know that what I am writing is going to be read by someone. It helps me to really tell the truth and to get to the core of the issue, and then to find my way back out of it with an answer or solution.

That being said, let me provide any of you that might be reading this with a little background information about my life. I was born to a predominately Mormon family in Salt Lake City, Utah. However, my parents, having been brought up in the church their entire lives up to that point, decided to move out west to southern California to start a new life, away from the church. Growing up I always liked to think that my parents did this not only for themselves, but so that I would not be raised to only believe one paradigm about the nature of our existence and God. That they wanted for me to be able to keep a very open mind about all of this and make up my own decision as I lived through my life, using the various lessons that life has to teach us to learn the nature of these two crucial aspects of the human experience.

My parents got divorced when I was about 5 years old, and in retrospect I don't think it had that adverse of an effect on me, however at the time it was happening I was having problems at school with beating up the other children and having emotional outbursts. The fatherly presence in my home was soon filled with a wonderful step-father whom has always had my best interests at heart. And I don't resent my parents for getting divorced. When I was about 11 my father moved up to Seattle, Washington and I thoroughly enjoyed my time that I spent up there, getting to feel that I grew up both in southern California as well as Seattle.

Let's just say junior high and high school were quite the blur, aided by my recreational habits, however I was able to make it to college where I got my B.S. in Biology. During the course of my college career I met and fell in love with the man that I was to spend 8 years of my life with, 3 of which we were married. During the course of our relationship, I graduated college and started graduate school, working on my doctorate in Biology, with an emphasis in Anatomy and Neurobiology. Towards the end of my graduate school experience is when we decided to get a divorce, and thus ensued a long drawn out emotional roller coaster, as I was trying to separate my life from my ex-husband while trying to finish up my dissertation, two feats alone that are very difficult to go through, however I am going through them simultaneously. Couple that with a 29 year old girl who has never really been on her own in the world, coming to grips with her own sense of self and identity, as well as trying to develop her spirituality amidst so many various forms of religious/spiritual/new-age teachings out there and you have one stormy mind that has been searching for an outlet to sort out all of these experiences.

So that is where I currently am, and thus begins my therapeutic journey into the world of using letters to YOU to help me heal myself, through myself, with YOU the audience as the catalyst and canvas for this method of "self-help". Just a warning that most of these blogs may start out seeming like rantings on a soap box, or a self-pity party, but as you will see that as the blog progresses, I slowly start to sort out the problem, or at least, "change the station", so-to-speak, to help get myself out of the manic mood I was in when the blog started. Each blog will be a journey through my mind, sometimes meandering completely off-topic, sometimes seeming like the journey is starting to get so chaotic that the vehicle is going to veer off the road, but I am determined to write as long as it takes to get this vehicle back on track by the end of each journey and hopefully to the desired destination, or at least a comparable one.

And as I am trying to find my own personal center in myself, community, and the human race as a whole, I do delve into a wide range of topics, including religion/spirituality, science, psychology, community/society, etc. I am not intending to offend anyone with anything I say, I am just trying to sort out my own perception of the world around me and my place in it. However, I realize that not everyone will agree with all that I have to say, and some might find it straight up offensive, blasphemous, irresponsible, or perhaps the opposite of that. Just know that it is not my intention to step on any toes or belittle anyone else's point of view. I am just trying to understand what I encounter in my life from the only perspective that I have, my own. Sometimes that perspective is very naive and uneducated, but I try to learn about various things by experiencing them myself, rather than reading about them and what someone else perceives of them. So, many times when I describe something that may be well known by others, it is in fact my own novel description of what I perceive (insert phenomena/practice/experience here) it to be, based on my own direct experience of it, which is unaltered by someone else's influence of the situation.

That all being said, let me also say that I am very grateful for all of YOU, especially those that donate their time to read what I have to offer, and even more so for those of YOU who are willing to leave comments or start up a dialogue on any particular topic. No topic is off-limits and I will do my best to not take offense to anything that is contributed, and give it the fair evaluation it deserves.

Love, light and blessings to ALL