Bodies are interesting, but the mind is amazing, extraordinary, miraculous!
When Donald Trump was elected president, I was in Thailand. And it was interesting to me that shortly after the time he was announced as the winner of the election my back went into painful spasms. I didn’t know he’d been declared the winner – until later.
I felt as though all the many people I knew who were likely very upset by this and were experiencing pain, were influencing my body. I had the thought that maybe I’m so empathic I was carrying their emotional pain in my body.
Here’s another reason this is interesting to me – I had no TV coverage and couldn’t find any live feed to watch the election coverage in Thailand, but my mind knew and sent my body into painful spasms. Or so it seemed to me.
One of the things that bothered me A LOT at the time of the 2016 election was this: In my life as an adult woman, particularly back in the 1970’s and 1980’s, men who I would describe as very much like Donald Trump, groped and grabbed me in different situations. They clearly believed there was nothing wrong with molesting me, they had a right to.
They would laugh and try and make it be as though they were just playing around, and couldn’t I just be playful too.
And then, with Trump elected, it was to me as if those hurtful men who had assaulted me were being elected to the highest office in the land. A lot of women felt that way.
I won’t catalog all the insensitive and disrespectful things those men said to me – but this Trump rape trial has given people a good idea of the kinds of things that are said.
Suffice it to say that those men who groped me blamed me. It was my fault.
They couldn’t resist because I was so attractive.
It was my fault they molested me.
In the workplace.
I would never have screamed.
If I had, it would have brought me more grief.
It was better to just move on rather than to announce to everyone “my boss has no respect for me as a person, he only sees me as a sexual object, a conquest, a play thing, a decoration.”
And I didn’t know who I could tell what happened without being labeled in a negative way. There was no Human Resources Department back then.
As a young woman – 18, 19, all the way up to 35 years old, back then, I was grateful to have an opportunity to prove myself and if I told anyone what these aggressive, disrespectful, fathers and grandfathers, my bosses, did to me, I would probably have been fired and certainly I would have been labeled as difficult.
That’s how things were.
Even to those good and kind hearted people that I worked with, which is most people, I would have a mark on me. I would have some kind of stink on me that they didn’t want to catch and they’d pull back from me. I know that because I did sometimes talk about it with women in the office and they would shrug and say things like:
“What do you expect? They’re men. All men are like that.”
Such a hopeless scenario for someone like me at that age. It was so discouraging and confusing. And it made me feel angry.
This past week, with the news swirling around the Trump rape trial, I’ve seen numerous comments online where women are saying, “this is how men are, and most men are like that.”
Even though I’ve had PLENTY of experience that could lead me to be of that same narrow mind if I wanted to be, I don’t.
My experience of life has led me to absolutely know that most men are NOT like that at all. My father, my brother, my grandfathers, my friends, my counseling clients, men in my classes, they are NOTHING like that.
The vast majority of men I know are amazing and wonderful and so kind and loving. They’re strong and empathetic, caring and compassionate, introspective and respectful. Many are heroic in the way that they are determined to shift the culture and raise their sons to be the best of men.
To the women who read this blog, if you hear comments like, “what do you expect, they’re men.” Please, please speak up, don’t just go along with that old and false story.
In my life, I’ve only met a few men who were predators like Donald Trump has declared himself to be. They were men who appeared to feel entitled to grope and grab and take what they wanted and it seemed as though they didn’t care what ANYONE else felt or experienced.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to live their life. To feel entitled to traumatize others to get what they wanted and to also be that insensitive to others pain and suffering.
To be inured to causing others trauma is not a real life. It’s a kind of half-life, barely lived. Being in loving and kind relationships with other people is the BEST part of life and folks who think and act in this unfeeling way miss out on all of the good in life.
They’re deprived, and they can’t stop doing it to themselves.
It seems that it’s likely that they behave as they do because they were loved-starved as children and were so intensely traumatized themselves by their own experience at a young age that they’ve shut down most of their ability to feel, to relate, to have compassion or caring for others.
Most abusers were abused as children. They are acting out of their trauma, and we can have compassion for that. If we push them away and reject them, they’ll feel even more justified to act out. Let’s not perpetuate the cycle.
Many of Trump’s generation and before were told to be silent, to be seen and not heard, to shut down their feelings, to do as they were told and some were severely emotionally and physically abused.
People who’ve been traumatized, if they don’t make a real effort to heal, they get stuck in that traumatized state. Healing is possible.
The great heroes of my life are people who have overcome the trauma of childhood, healed and gone on to raise beautiful loving children and families. Trump generally seems so deeply sad and hurt to me. His resting face is that upside down smile. He often looks resigned and hopeless when he’s just listening to others and not speaking himself.
I believe we pray for our brothers and sisters who treat us poorly and we don’t curse them or mentally abandon them. Since 2016 I’ve held in my mind that Trump could have kind of awakening that Saul, the persecutor of Christians, had on the road to Damascus that turned him into Paul the dedicated Christian proselytizer.
If we abandon Trump and folks like him, declaring “he’ll never change”, we’re abandoning our own ability to know the truth and denying our own ability to awaken.
And that’s not okay with me.
I recognize that some people may be bothered by what I’m sharing and still, I’m 100% clear that the way to Peace and happiness is through extending Love, and seeing my brother correctly.
AND, the fact that the former President of the United States of America was the defendant in this rape trial meant that it was discussed every day by the major media outlets. People who’d never really thought about these issues got schooled. That’s a real service. Things will not be the same. Real change has occurred, and it will be felt.
When we change our mind about the world, the world changes.
When we change our mind about people, people change – we change.
And when we change our mind about our body, then we can be at Peace.
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