Come As You Are, Mes Chers Amis

Mes Chers Amis,   [translation below]

Mon coeur va à vous dans l'amour et l'amitié. Votre vie ne sera jamais le même. Vous avez été touché par la violence d'une manière qui restera à jamais éclater votre innocence, sentiment de sécurité et la confiance en soi pour les années à venir. Dans cette nouvelle ère, vous serez obligé de se interroger et de redéfinir beaucoup de choses, y compris vos positions sur les libertés civiles et la vie. La route sera incertain, encore rempli de tristesse , la colère et la dépression . Ce ne est pas une étape , vous pouvez éviter. Ce est une partie nécessaire de la guérison.

Se il vous plaît savez que vous allez finir par être en mesure de ramasser les éclats brisés de votre monde pour composer une mosaïque de votre nouveau monde d'une manière qui vous aidera à aller de l'avant et finalement vous guérir. Je dis cela par expérience car je sais le voyage que vous allez prendre. Au cours des prochains jours, je vais poster des informations sur les façons dont vous pouvez gérer le choc et la douleur de cette expérience , afin de faire face aux événements qui se sont produits dans votre pays hier.

Je prierai pour votre paix et la guérison, car je ai connu ce que la colère et la vengeance peut faire pour la vie d'une personne. Reste avec moi au cours des prochains jours et nous allons marcher sur ce chemin de la guérison ainsi que de chacun de nos attaques brutales. Pour aujourd'hui, vous permettre de ressentir la profondeur de vos sentiments. Soyez en colère si vous devez être. Pleurer si vous avez besoin, il est préférable que de l'enfouir à l'intérieur, parce que la douleur est supprimé plus dangereux. Pour aujourd'hui, permettent juste vous sentir et vous pouvez éventuellement guérir. Je vais vous laisser avec une chanson que je espère, le confort de votre esprit.

Envoi d'étreintes d'amour à vous tous!


My Dear Friends,

My heart goes out to you in love and friendship. Your lives will never be the same. You have been touched by violence in a way that will forever shatter your innocence, sense of safety and self-confidence for years to come. In this new age, you will be forced to question and redefine many things, including your stances on civil liberties and personal privacy. The road ahead will be uncertain and filled with sadness and anger. It is not a stage you can avoid. It is a necessary part of healing.

Please know that you will eventually be able to pick up the shattered slivers of your world to compose a mosaic of your new world in a way that will help you move forward and eventually heal you. I say this from experience for I know the journey you will take. Over the next few days I will post information on ways you can manage the shock and pain of this experience, in order to cope with the events that happened in your country yesterday.

I will pray for your peace and healing, for I have known what anger and revenge can do to a person's life. Stay with me over the next few days and we will walk this journey of healing together from each of our brutal attacks. For today, allow yourself to feel the depth of your feelings. Be Angry if you need to be. Cry if you need to. It is better than burying them inside, because pain suppressed is more dangerous. For today, just allow yourself to feel so you can eventually heal. I will leave you with a song that I hope Will comfort your spirit.

Sending many hugs of love to all of you!

Mon Cher...

Mes Amis en France, mon cœur souffre pour vous aujourd'hui. Se il vous plaît être forte au cours de votre douleur. Nous vous aimons et vous soutenons. 

XOXO

Returning to the scene of my crime

Today I accompanied Detectives to the scene where I was attacked to go over what happened, retracing my steps to the beginning and then back again. I had to relive the event blow by blow.  We started out at the crime scene in broad daylight to see if there were any cameras etc. that captured the attack. When they methodically retraced my steps to where it all began. Where I first was made aware of that I was the attacker's target and prey.

In spite of all the support I've been getting, visiting the place where I was brutally beaten, was not easy. But showing the police step by step what happened, including the blow by blow description of the attack was worse. I kept thinking to myself what could have I done differently. The little training I remembered was never for an attacker that was 7-9 ft away.

I just hope the flashbacks and nightmares don't return or at least as intensely as they did at the start. At the beginning every time I closed my eyes I would see the attacker's face and my mind would immediately fast forward to the attack causing me to startled and jump. Its gotten a bit better over the last few days. I'm not jumping out of my skin every time I start to doze off.

This morning I was finally able to get a few hours of un-interupted sleep after my doctor picked me up and went with me to the gym just so that I could walk-off the anxiety, fear and stress out of my body.  He was right and it worked, because I got 3 hrs of sleep. As we slowly walked on the treadmill side by side, we talked about music and politics and raising kids. All of it meant to distract the mind long enough to interupt the PTSD brain-loop pattern. He's a former active-duty veteran, so he knows what works and this is working well for me.

He knew that even though I've improved, I'm still in full PTSD mode. His objective is to get me better as soon as possible so I can go back to work. I'm hoping that with the daily acupuncture treatments for the pain, taking long walks, and receiving continued support (like I've been getting) that I will be able to have the symptoms reduced enough for me to return to work monday.  Today was my first train ride with the Detectives and I was relieved they were with as I rode the subway.

So in order to create a mind-shift of my own, I think I'll take an inventory of the positives:
- I have less body pain than I did yesterday.
- I was able to sleep for at least a few hours.
- My Dr. helped me get some exercise and told me he had arranged for me to receive free self-defense classes for when my body is healed.  
- My Acupuncturist gave me an extra 30 minutes treatment to help alleviate the pain.
- People from the Temple stopped by to bring me food (so I wouldn't have to make dinner and gave me a spiritual book to keep my mind occupied.
- My downstairs neighbors stopped by to visit to offer to drop off and pick-up laundry or go grocery shopping for me.
- My next door neighbor made some really delicious Thai food for my son (I'm a vegetarian).

In the end I do feel grateful and blessed. 

Habibi

~ My Burning Heart's.... Bittersweetness ~

Poems by Rumi; Translated by Deepak Chopra; Reading by Chopra & Madonna

~ My Burning Heart ~

My heart is burning with love
All can see this flame
My heart is pulsing with passion
like waves on an ocean

My friends have become strangers
and I’m surrounded by enemies
But I’m free as the wind
no longer hurt by those who reproach me

I’m at home wherever I am
And in the room of lovers
I can see with closed eyes
the beauty that dances

Behind the veils
intoxicated with love
I too dance the rhythm
of this moving world
I have lost my senses
in my world of lovers

~ Bittersweet ~

In my hallucination
I saw my beloved's flower garden
In my vertigo, in my dizziness
In my drunken haze
Whirling and dancing like a spinning wheel

I saw myself as the source of existence
I was there in the beginning
And I was the spirit of love
Now I am sober
There is only the hangover
And the memory of love
And only the sorrow

I yearn for happiness
I ask for help
I want mercy
And my love says:

Look at me and hear me
Because I am here
Just for that

I am your moon and your moonlight too
I am your flower garden and your water too
I have come all this way, eager for you
Without shoes or shawl

I want you to laugh
To kill all your worries
To love you
To nourish you

Oh sweet bitterness
I will soothe you and heal you
I will bring you roses
I, too, have been covered with thorns

~ Intoxicated by Love ~

Because of your love
I have lost my sobriety
I am intoxicated
by the madness of love

In this fog
I have become a stranger to myself
I'm so drunk
I've lost the way to my house

In the garden
I see only your face
From trees and blossoms
I inhale only your fragrance

Drunk with the ecstasy of love
I can no longer tell the difference
between drunkard and drink
Between lover and Beloved

Looking For Your Face

~ Looking For Your Face ~ by Rumi

From the beginning of my life
I have been looking for your face
but today I have seen it

Today I have seen
the charm, the beauty,
the unfathomable grace
of the face
that I was looking for

Today I have found you
and those who laughed
and scorned me yesterday
are sorry that they were not looking
as I did

I am bewildered by the magnificence
of your beauty
and wish to see you
with a hundred eyes

My heart has burned with passion
and has searched forever
for this wondrous beauty
that I now behold

I am ashamed
to call this love human
and afraid of God
to call it divine

Your fragrant breath
like the morning breeze
has come to the stillness of the garden
You have breathed new life into me
I have become your sunshine
and also your shadow

My soul is screaming in ecstacy
Every fiber of my being
is in love with you

Your efflugence
has lit a fire in my heart
for me
the earth and sky

My arrow of love
has arrived at the target
I am in the house of mercy
and my heart
is a place of prayer

~Poem by Rumi; Translation by Farsi scholar Fereydoun Kia

HELLO?!

bring me back

What hurts the most