High Expectations? New Tools For Sensitive Souls’ Healing Journeys.
Hello Everyone! I havenât written for a while because Iâve been so busy just observing this emotional roller coaster ride of the last couple monthsâitâs been hard to put into words! It has propelled me into journaling more to get clarity and as always when I write I am able to access a higher perspective of âwhat the heck is going on nowâ! đłđđHaha! Iâve learned a few things and so I feel ready to share some of the positive things to give all of you sensitive souls on this spiritual journey a boost to feel better about EVERYTHING!
What a roller coaster ride! By this I mean Ups and Downs and Curves and Surprises and Shocks! Can you relate? But at the end of a roller coaster ride at an amusement park, the end of the ride comes with a slowing down and a smooth safe feeling until it comes to a stop and you get off and everyone is all smiles and Gee that was fun. Well, in general I mean haha, and only because you knew it was temporaryâit was a ride you took by choice and it was a safe way to experience a thrill and know it would be over soon.
Compare that to this incarnation of life on this planet. As sensitive souls, we are highly evolved divine beings here to help, but we have expectations of smooth sailing and love and abundance. I really think it is these expectations that contribute to us getting stuck in the lows on the roller coaster that we experience.
All of this is coming up for me to talk about I believe because of this last full moon on October 13-yesterday! If you are like me you may have noticed that you are very sensitive to cosmic changes to the planet and Full Moons and New Moons etc.. I am not very educated in astrology but I find myself searching for YouTube videos to explain whatâs going on cosmically at certain times when Iâm feeling out of balance and sure enough it is a full moon or a solar flare or something like this causing our distress and it all resonates and gives a sense of relief.
I get some reassurance from the information I watch or read from elsewhere but often times I am searching and donât find what I need to feel inner peaceâthen I am forced to write and then I realize as I connect to my higher self, my inner wisdom, my spirit team, my angels, the Universe, God, whatever you want to call âITâ.
I am then reminded that all my answers for my own inner peace can be found âwithinâ. I know this but why do I keep forgetting it? Looking for outside validation has been ingrained in us as humans on this planet and we all feel thisâtrying to fit in and feel understood by other humansâwanting a tribe or even one other person who understands us and makes us feel reassured and comforted that we are OKAY and that what we are feeling is OKAY and that there is hope and that everything is going to be OKAY.
This neediness we feel is understandableâas highly sensitive, compassionate, evolved souls we are awakening spiritually but we are straddling 2 worlds. We are trying to make it in the 3D world and pay our bills etc. and also looking at the higher perspective of the 5D spiritual world for deeper meaning and understanding of why we are here, keeping our vibration high, and living in the moment to access the unconditional love that we have resonated with as Yes, This is it! All is well! We want that feeling everyday, all the time, every morning when we wake up.
But what I am understanding is, when we wake up in the morning with horrible dread and feeling bad about being here on the planet we need to observe this as information and not as our current truth. As divine beings, we have often been astral traveling in our sleep. We love to be in the higher angelic realms where we are from evidentlyâitâs all Love and Light there all the time! đ đ So when we come back into our bodies and wake up as a human on the planet, the densest negative energies, often from our childhoods or possibly past lives come up to the surface so that we can see that these energies are there and are just ready to be âreleasedâ.
We are strong and powerful divine beings with love and light as our true nature but when we were born we didnât know this so these wounded parts of ourselves are taking longer to heal then we âexpectedâ. If you had a narcissistic parent then you were unloved and had unmet needs day in and day out for years and years and so you have many layers of of small hurts and false beliefs about yourself that need reparented and comforted one by one. That may be discouraging to hear that it is going to take longer to heal than you expected but here is the good news. If you observe the big bad emotion you wake up with as just âinformationâ about your past rather than your present truth you can transmute it in minutes!
First, describe the feeling and label it! What is this? Is it shame, dread, hopelessness, anxiety? Then you do the opposite of avoiding it, or believing it, or numbing it out by keeping busyâyou go towards it and you write about it in your journal and you have compassion for yourself about it.
Or if you are already versed in this healing process you go right to a positive affirmation to retrain the neurons in your brain to go a more positive route. You recognize this bad feeling is your inner critic and not the truth. It is your survival âfalseâ self that absorbed the bad feelings from others around you not knowing they werenât your feelings. After all you were just a tiny child and had to believe what you were being âfedâ to survive and to get along with your caretakers who didnât SEE you for the gifted soul you were.
Most of you know this but if you are like me right now you are still surprised that you are still dealing with these long healed issuesâespecially in the last few months. It is my understanding that the last remnants of these layers are possibly the most painful and most deeply ingrained and you are strong enough now to finally look at them, acknowledge that it was even worse than you thought. So give yourself even more kindness, compassion and comforting reparenting than you ever have before. Extreme extreme self care (double extreme đ) is in order whenever you wake up feeling bad!! Be nicer to yourself instead of harder to yourself. After all isnât that what your narcissistic parent or bully said to you when they ran out of patience with youâthey said âwhatâs wrong with youâwhy arenât you over this yetâyou should be feeling better by nowâyou are not doing as well as you thoughtâ. See? These things you say to yourself are judgements you are making just like bullies or abusers did which is the opposite of the unconditional love and comfort you deserved back then and deserve now.
Sometimes it isnât until we get out of our heads and start writing onto paper that we are even realizing we are beating ourselves up just like âtheyâ did (if you had caretakers who maybe even did the best they could but were needy themselves so they didnât have the patience that you needed as a highly sensitive soul who was sensitive for a very good reason.)
So now it is up to you. To KNOW you are pure love and light and when you wake up feeling bad you are to lovingly cleaning away the false residue, the past debris, that is covering up your beautiful brilliant lamp of love and light. You now have some more tools in your toolbox to lift yourself back up to where you belong.
Joy is your birthright and you are doing a great job figuring out how to shine what is rightfully yours every moment that you can. Be nicer to yourself when you feel bad not harder on yourself. You are training your brain to go positive quicker and quicker when you get better and better at replacing the doubts negative core beliefs with positive affirmations. You can do it! You are pure love and light.
Being a human is extremely complex! Be patient with this healing journey that you are on! You may be a sensitive soul who seeks safety and inner peace but you are also a tough warrior with new boundaries to take on this challenge of transmuting darkness into light on planet earth. You chose to come here because you knew you could be successful at finding your true voice and true self and shining your true light.
Just being here on the planet you emanate this light and love energy and it uplifts others who need it. You are making a difference just by being here. So relax and be patient with yourself. It takes time and there is plenty of time for all the things you want to do. Self-compassion and self-care is always time well spent.
Sensitive souls, I am so glad you are here on the planet with me. You make the planet a wonderful place to be. If we join forces we can move mountains. Thanks for reading and please reach out if youâd like one-on-one coaching. My email is hopesinger11@gmail.com. Sometimes just having someone to see us and listen to our feelings with understanding can be so healing. I also offer distance Reiki and intuitive guidance during sessions as wellâyou design the sessions the way your heart desires.
Iâm adding a link to my latest YouTube Video here of a recent performance of my original song, We Are Here To Love. The lyrics to this song just flowed out of me from beginning to end with no changesâit was magical. I feel now is the perfect time to share these lyrics with you.
Lyrics: -We Are Here To Love-
Trudging through the past debris, finding sparks of light
Holding onto highest hopes, knowing love is right
Seeing through the doubtersâ eyes, knowing those above
Want us to believe and know, time is made for love
Chorus: We are here to love, We can fly with wings of time
When we feel the past, We must rise above and shine
We must rise above and shine, We must rise above and shine
Reminded who we are by pushing past the egoâs call
Kindness to ourselves is all we need to break the wall
Pieces still fall down on us, donât misunderstand
Keep the rays of light around and hold each otherâs hand
Chorus: We are here to loveâŚ
Verse not included in this video performance:
(Power from the latest move unearthâs a tender spot
Confusing inner child takes stage, plays out what we forgot
Kindness is in order now soothing wounds so raw
New aliveness, strength abounds, braving what we saw
Chorus:.. We Are Here to…)
Bridge: Learning to be still and yet, adversity remains
But even when we think weâve stalled, weâve unraveled many chains
Working hard it seems we have not played to really live
But underneath we somehow gain renewed hearts to give
Chorus: We are here to loveâŚ
Have faith and know that even in the hardest grief of times
You are loved and cheered about, so take in all the signs
Relish in the life you have, grateful for the rest
All will see the loveliness, you are a force for goodness
Chorus: We are here to love⌠You must rise above and shine⌠shine⌠shine You must rise above and shine. (slow end)
Original Song Š Roxanne E. Smith
Until next time, With Love and Light,
Roxanne âď¸đđâ¨
Part 3 (Final) of Heart To Heart Update
Hello everyone! If you’ve been feeling extra tired, or extra emotional, or stuck, or triggered, I believe the full moon today
 is causing energies that are helping us to clear out some deep unhealed layers of childhood pain. I personally have been very tired and journaling a lot to work through heavy, dark feelings of self-doubt and unworthiness — which hasn’t been easy. Some of my best songs and poems arise at times like these and I’ll be sharing them here hopefully soon to help anyone who resonates and would like to feel hopeful about their emotional state. The poem I wrote on Oct. 1 that I mentioned in my last post will be shared in my next post–I read it again today and it was helpful in moving out the stuck emotions I felt today so I plan to share that in the coming few days.
Now, on with Part 3!–Here’s the last part of my heart to heart series to update everyone on what I’ve been doing while I was on a break from writing regularly on this blog. This post is a long one–future posts will be much shorter for easier reading I promise!
Continuing with sharing the story of my journey to finally start performing, let me just say it took until fall of 2017 for me to feel ready to start looking for paid gigs–I had been practicing a 2 hour set of my songs (including playing guitar) for many months while we got settled in our new house (Oct. 2016) before I felt ready to reach out to venues as a professional musician. Then on one courageous day, I took the leap and did it–made phone calls and sent emails with a demo video I had made.
1st gig on Sept. 23, 2017
I found 2 local venues (a branch of Breweries, and a winery) that were encouraging local artists and paid, albeit meagerly, for 2 hours of a mix of original folk rock and cover songs by my favorite artists: James Taylor, Carole King, The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, Neil Young, and more! My album and the demo I made with performance videos from my open mic nights helped convince them to give me a chance and soon I was performing once a month then twice a month and then eventually 4 times a month. By the end of the summer of 2018 I was doing 3 hour gigs as well with several hired guitarists that I had duos with. Phew!
I stopped in September to take a break and get organized with my coaching and this blog and also to celebrate!– because I feel over a hump and ready to branch out and collaborate with some new musicians and look for higher paying venues. Breaking through a glass ceiling that I never thought I could achieve brings up surprising amounts of grief and emotional pain and is not all just happiness, ease, and fun. 
Yes, when you have childhood wounds that kept you in a state of hiding most of your life, you must keep up with the positive affirmations and self-care of course but also make time for grieving the loss of all the years you didn’t believe in yourself and your gifts. It’s important to leave time for emotional healing and not spread yourself too thin. It took some time for me to find a balance that worked for me.
Okay, so now on a new topic, not only have I been performing and working on my music career, but I have also developed some new life coaching skills and emotional healing tools. From 2014 to now and continuing, I have been working with various intuitive coaches, energy healers, and spiritual counselors. Through my seeking and thirst for knowledge about the spiritual realms, I have developed my own intuitive abilities to the point where I am proud to say that I am now a channel for spiritual guidance  as an Akashic Record Reader and you can read more about this on my new life coaching website. Yay! It’s very exciting! I realize now that I have always had this ability on some level but now I am able to ask for and receive spiritual inner guidance with greater clarity and greater confidence, knowing, and with greater tools to help others.
And this is because: I have had to continually be doing intense emotional healing of my own. Layers of pain coming up to the surface with each new success–the pain and doubt doesn’t just magically go away one day when you have many childhood wounds–having given up on myself at the age of 5 and banished my true self and my dreams away to develop a false self that was hiding and codependent, a people pleaser, and a rescuer–I’ve had to continue to work on healing all of these issues! I’ve continually been working through the PTSD that results from having the abandonment wounds (from being hospitalized as a toddler) and also working through shame and feeling unsafe to be my true self as a child and throughout my early adulthood. I had learned how to survive by hiding away my true desires and gifts and dreams so completely that I gave up on my music for 20 years while raising my children. Perhaps you can relate! 
And so now here I am an empty nester, feeling like I’m in my 30’s (due to a healthy diet and new tools), pursuing a singing career, to share my songs that flow out of me– sometimes from my wounded heart but mostly from the bright light of hope inside of me that knows my purpose on the planet is to write and sing music and also give hope to others who cannot find their way up and out of the painful layers that often feel too heavy to break through.
As I write this I realize I’ve learned and sharpened so many tools since 2012:
 I learned ways to replenish and to re-energize my adrenals; continued my healthy diet; exercise regularly for strength and endurance; made myself more disciplined to practice my music as a priority; tap into spirit often to sharpen those innate intuitive skills and gifts; continue to write poetry and songs as I work through the emotional challenges; I have opened myself up to spiritual knowledge about ascension symptoms, upgrades to the planet, and even the effect of past lives on our current incarnations; practice extreme self-care as I continue to grow from life’s challenges and surprises, and remind myself that the rule #1 from this blog still applies and was really ground-breaking at that time.
And that is that Self-Compassion is rule #1!
I’m grateful to this blog for this all important bit of wisdom to come forth–because it was writing here to you all that caused this bit of wisdom to be born!
And so I say thank you to all of you that are part of this highly sensitive, compassionate, and spiritually awakened community of Hope and Healing from Childhood Wounds. I hope it continues to be a haven of safety for your wounded inner child to come and get strong–as a cocoon for you to grow your wings at your own pace and try out your new wings when you are feeling strong enough to go for your dreams. As always my message is: You Can Do It!! …And have compassion and kindness for yourself as the pain comes up to heal with each success! Because you are strong enough to feel it, comfort yourself through it, acknowledge that you absorbed negativity you didn’t deserve, release it, rest, and rise again!
Rest here in this haven anytime you wish, and reach out to this community or just read the comments from the hundreds who have reached out with their stories of childhood wounds and emotional healing in the comment sections. I would love to hear from you! Please leave a comment to let me know you are helped by what I am sharing or if you are new to this community so that I can welcome you.
Wishing all of you comfort, inner peace, and so much love as you continue to heal,
Roxanne đâď¸đśđâ¨
Roxanne Smith – Folk Rock Songs For the Soul
To All Highly Sensitive Souls–You Are Loved
You Are Loved
Lyrics by Roxanne Smith
I once was lost but then I opened up my heart
It took time to see my journeyâs sad start
Strength in me came with feelings inside
Courageous purging with joy on the other side
Somehow I know that love is all there is
Inside every dark and painful fear is bliss
This I know because I left no stone unturned
I face the pain when the bottom was learned
It lays waiting until you let it go
Forgiving those who donât connect with their soul
The soul has answers and comfort and love
Go within to hear angels from above
Chorus:
They surround each and every breathing heart
You are loved every day right from the start.
You are loved, you are loved, you are loved, you are loved
You are loved, you are loved, you are loved, you are loved
Repeat from the beginning
Add end (slowing)
You are loved, you are loved, you are loved, you are loved
Original Song Š 2017 Roxanne Smith
Hello Everyone! I am sharing this song to the public for the first time here on this blog. It’s such a personal song I have not performed it yet, waiting for the perfect audience, the right moment. You all, however are the perfect audience for lyrics like these. Here on this blog I feel comfortable letting it all hang out and feel proud of the healing journey I am on with all it’s ups and downs but always “with joy on the other side”.
I just saw that it has been since April 5 that I have put out a blog post and I apologize for that! Time has been flying by since I decided to start my life coaching business back up. I just completed designing my brand new life coaching website. I’m happy to report that this blog has gotten over 45 new followers in just the last 2 months even though my recent posts were short and not really up to my standards yet. So I am getting the message that my blog posts here are important and to make them a priority in my life!
I am very excited about this. I love talking to you all! I love giving hope to all of you like-minded souls out there who resonate with my message of hope and healing to become your highest selves! We strive to be our healthiest, kindest, most confident, and helpful to the planet while being complex and highly sensitive souls who often feel we don’t fit in with others. We are overcoming deep-seated negative feelings and beliefs from the past that keep popping up out of the blue just when things are going well. Phew! Why are we so hard on ourselves when we already know that extreme self-care makes so much difference in our lives?
Time to pull back again. Get quiet. Go inward. Write out ALL your feelings with self-compassion as if you are writing to your most trusted friend in the world who really GETS you! Be your own container when you can’t find a safe person to vent to. We all need to vent all the frustration we are feeling about EVERYTHING! I had a surprising amount of anger to release in April. It was all about codependency issues that I thought I had healed long ago. Surprise!–there was more! Releasing it all (which was not easy) moved me to a new place of strength and independence at the core of me that I didn’t know existed. And the month of May… well it’s starting out with a virus from some recent airplane travel that has got me layed up and resting to clear it all out. So all my exciting plans for coaching and more performing are on hold while I rest and clear out this virus and with it lots of emotions too. My intuition tells me I’ve moved to a new level of vibrational success so I need to clear out more …whatever! đł I’m not as frustrated as I am fascinated and trusting that whatever happens it will be for a good reason.
Sometimes things are so hard and then we get through it and see the silver lining that was there all along. And that is that We Are Loved. We are loved from above. We are here for a good reason. We are highly sensitive souls who are here on the planet at this time because the planet needs our gifts, our light, our true essence. We can relax and just BE and know we are loved.
Just being here is enough. You don’t have to do anything–just heal and learn to love ourselves. If we really GET this we can recharge and become strong and then we have more energy to give more light and love to others. But we can’t do it if we don’t love ourselves first. Let the love in that is beaming down for you at all times. Believe it.
And if you can’t believe it at least be OPEN to the possibility. Let down your guard and allow the possibility that your guardian angel/spirit guide/God/ Universe/Highest Self just might be sending you messages of love and comfort through your intuition. They just might be sending you guidance on your next steps for the highest good of your soul. Follow your heart to hear the inner guidance. Hear it? It is saying, You Are Loved! Exactly as you are! You don’t have to change yourself, you only need to love yourself. Let that sink in. Marinate in that truth for a while. I’m sending all of you so much comfort, caring, and encouragement to see your unique gifts as highly sensitive souls. I’ll be writing more uplifting blog posts soon so stay tuned.
With love and light đ â¨,
Roxanne đ đś
“Noone Was There”–Song Lyrics of Hope For Healing Childhood Abandonment Wounds.
Hi Everyone. I’m excited to write a new post and share the lyrics to a new song I just wrote. Life is full of change and growth for us highly sensitive souls, and new layers of childhood wounds seem to pop up when least expected. Abandonment wounds are some of the deepest and most painful. I woke up feeling terror for some reason and immediately got paper and pen to write out my feelings to sort it out. As always, I just started describing how I felt and I gained clarity about where the feelings were coming from and compassion for myself, and then I felt a song coming on.
When I start to write a song I always tell myself, this is for me only, and then I let the creativity flow. Later I decide if I want to share it or not and that takes pressure off the process of writing a good song. If it’s completely from the heart it’s always ends up “good” and this one flowed out from beginning to end with few changes. The words came first and then the melody was already there in my head too when I went back to read it. Adding a bridge came easily to make it more interesting and poof! Done! A new song!
The creativity process is so healing that the original pain is somehow transformed into a feeling of pride and achievement. When I first started writing songs I felt shame about them because I was exposing forbidden feelings often straight from my inner wounded child. If this shame happens to you, keep at it and share them only with a safe trusted friend who will help encourage you and not criticize. It’s amazing how healing writing can be. I kept my songs hidden for a long time and now I’m proud to share all of them because they help others! I’ll be adding more songs to this blog now–I’ve written quite a few that I’m ready to share.
This song is dedicated for those of you who have not yet found your voice yet to describe and heal unbearable emotions from childhood or trauma that often remain hidden until we are strong enough to release them.
I plan to start posting more posts again and I am going to be doing Coaching again on Wednesdays only too. My music and Coaching are going strong and for the first time I’ll be doing both. I’ll be performing more of my original songs of hope and healing now and sharing the videos here as well. So please stay tuned for more! đ
Noone Was There (Hope for Abandonment Wounds from Childhood)
By Roxanne Smith
3-21-18
LYRICS
Feeling so alone. Canât describe the pain.
Falling in a hole. Doom makes you insane.
Pain is not the truth. Itâs just your darkest fear.
Noone was there to comfort you my dear.
Noone was there to comfort you my dear.
That is all it is. This dark and empty thought.
Fill it up with love and give it all youâve got.
You know that love exists and it is All There Is.
So why not be the one to show us it exists.
So why not be the one to show us it exists.
It exists in every heart, not just a chosen few.
Every single human has the chance to renew.
When youâre feeling all the worst, hopeless feelings inside,
Love yourself so much, so much more than you ever tried.
Love yourself so much, so much more than you ever tried.
You didnât know how empty, how raw you could feel.
Writing is the way, to fill you up with love and heal.
And when you forget and youâre feeling really low.
Ask for help from the Angels who will guide you how to go.
Ask for help from the Angels who will guide you how to go.
They love you all the time, but you canât tell theyâre there.
Unless you ask for help, you donât know how much they care.
Pain is not your truth, Itâs just your darkest fear.
Noone was there to comfort you my dear.
Noone was there to comfort you my dear.
BRIDGE:
Comfort is there, when youâre feeling lost.
Let the Angels in, when youâre feeling tossed.
They are always there, when you feel alone.
Love yourself so much until you feel home.
Home is in your heart, it just gets covered up.
It feels so far away, but itâs always close enough.
All the comfort that you wish for, is already there.
Just let yourself believe Heaven really cares.
Just let your self believe Heaven really cares.
No one was there (slow to end) to comfort you my dear.
Original Song Š 2018 Roxanne Smith
Sending comforting, caring wishes to all!
With love,
Roxanne
Part 2 Of My New Beginning Journey–How 2013 AMAZINGLY Gave Me Wings To Fly in 2014.
PART 2:
Hi Everyone. So much has happened since my last post, I want to update you about all that has transpired. In fall of 2012, I was drawn to look for a new family doctor for myself and just for fun googled Highly Sensitive Doctor in Indianapolis haha. Â What I found was not a doctor who called himself highly sensitive but a doctor with amazing reviews from patients who said he was highly sensitive to their needs. Â I made an appointment even though I felt I was in pretty good health at the time and didn’t really have any dire need–I just wanted a doctor who would understand and support my quest for the best holistic and alternative health care I could find.
I had to wait 3 months to get in with him but it was worth it. Â He listened to all of my theories on how I had healed my food allergies, chronic fatigue, candidiasis, adrenal fatigue issues through holistic means and an anti-inflammatory gluten-free diet. I also shared how I was feeling pretty good considering my age and the impending hormonal changes. Â He was impressed rather than skeptical and I was thrilled at his response. Â Still he ordered a pretty extensive blood test to be sure and I am so glad he did. Â The results came back that I had low thyroid function and had to be put on thyroid medication immediately!
The amazing thing to me is it turned out he was a specialist in knowledge about the thyroid–the exact best person to help me with this particular condition! And so gave me a prescription for Armour thyroid which is the best naturally derived medication and it’s hard to find an open-minded Dr. who will prescribe it. Â Another amazing thing was I didn’t have symptoms until I was waiting for those blood test results and I suddenly gained 15 pounds in 3 weeks even though I was eating extremely healthy and watching carbs and calories. Â It was quite shocking to see my body react this way but also to know that I had the perfect kind of care at the exact right time.
And another amazing thing that happened was that during my first visit with that doctor a large Bald Eagle flew past the window and the Dr. was shocked and said Oh my gosh did you just see that?–with that I looked out the window and saw this beautiful majestic bald eagle flying in the air. This was in a busy neighborhood inside the city limits!  I was thrilled that the doctor felt as I did that this was quite an amazing and beautiful sight and agreed with me that maybe it had  been a special “sign” that I was in the right place at the right time–all this on the first visit before I found out about the thyroid issue!
Now at this point I am feeling really blessed and cared for from up above to be guided to just the right doctor at just the right time. Â But I also had big questions now. Â Why had I gotten thyroid problems with all my healthy lifestyle habits? Â Well this doctor’s thorough questionnaire I had filled out helped me to see that I was working too much and I was feeling stressed even though I loved what I was doing, I was feeling pretty drained a lot of the time. Â This is when my coaching was at a peak with a waiting list of clients and I was really loving all the success my inner child healing practice was doing for others and it was very fulfilling helping others heal.
When I did some research about low thyroid I found out that it is in the throat chakra which has to do with creative self-expression and I immediately knew…  I hadn’t been singing.  All the songwriting had sort of stopped and I had been too busy with my coaching and I had stopped making time for my music. It was clear to me–I knew it deep inside–I am supposed to be singing and getting my then 40 (now over 50) original songs of hope and healing recorded and out to help others heal– as it was the songs that had helped me heal,  find my “voice”, and were the impetus to start the blogging and the coaching!  It had been the music that had started everything healing and moving forward to my vitality and inner peace and I realized I had neglected this important part of me.  So I cut back on my coaching and immediately felt better as I devoted time each week to resting, singing, and songwriting, and in May 2013 I started making professional recordings of my songs!
At my second visit back with this doctor he gave me adrenal supplements and other vitamins saying it was the low adrenals affecting the thyroid and that he thought if I reduced stress and took care of myself I could gradually get off the thyroid medication. Â And he was right! Â I did it! Â I worked on recording my songs all summer long and I also went to a new chiropractor who gave me Neuro-emotional Technique (NET) treatments each week. Â By the end of summer I was completely off the thyroid medication! Â And I still am! Â Amazing!
Okay and there’s more amazing news. Â That fall (2012) that I had just been put on thyroid medication I knew I wanted to do more singing but I wasn’t sure how I was going to move forward with it. Â Well, one saturday night my husband and I decided to go to a little nearby bar that we had never been to before to listen to some live music. Â And there was a young guy age 29 singing all of my favorite songs that I used to sing harmony to growing up and over the years. He was playing guitar and harmonica and was extremely talented but here he was in this little bar so I felt compelled to ask him if he’d be interested in helping me record my songs. Â He said Yes! Â He needed some extra money and I needed some professional help recording and guidance on how best to proceed with making an album.
Turns out that this guy turned out to be very professional indeed and the perfect guy to help me. Not only that, he slowly revealed to me as I got to know him, that he was very close to being signed with a music contract for his band with his original music, had met Clive Davis, had been flown to Hollywood several times, had opened for John Legend, and had many friends in the music business.  He is a songwriter too and he liked my songs and songwriting ability.  He liked my singing too but I had pretty bad stage fright to perform in public at that time and it was not even in my mind to attempt to overcome it–I was just planning to make an album, not perform.
But as our collaboration was working successfully, as my vocal coach he invited me to sing with him at his gigs so I could get used to performing! Â At first it was one song, then 2, and by the end of the summer I was singing up to 8 songs with him at his gigs and had overcome my fear of performing on stage! Â I got to sing harmony to my favorite songs from the Eagles, Bob Seger, John Mellencamp, Tom Petty etc., it was a dream come true! Â And it was so much fun! (I have pictures of this on my music website).
The best part is he and I worked on my songs–we got 6 songs completely done, mixed, and produced by him, and he laid down the most beautiful guitar tracks for 22 more of my songs, and he taught me how to record and mix the rest of the songs by myself. Â And with his encouragement I have been improving my own guitar playing skills as well so that I can start going to open mic nights while I record my songs. Â And that’s what I am pursuing now!
Wow, what a summer!  This fall and winter I have continued to write more songs and work on the albums and it is going really well!  I can’t wait to share my songs with all of you!  I have been working hard on this new music website and figuring out how to integrate all my work  so all my healing songs, coaching and blogging are easily accessible for those who will most find inspiration and healing from them.
So now I want to share with you a sample of an especially healing song from my new album A New Beginning that is one of my absolute favorites and I wrote it last summer. I hope you like it. Â It’s call Hole In My Soul and here is a sample: Â
I am very excited to announce that all 6 professionally recorded healing songs from my new album are now available for purchase with free samples of each song for you to listen to first! Â You can buy downloads of the songs there on the website www.RoxanneSmithMusic.com–all proceeds will go to continuing my work to help others heal from childhood emotional pain. Â It’s a great cause! Â I highly recommend playing the songs especially in the morning each day as you get ready–it will change your mood for the day and has a healing effect. Â Many people have told me this and I have experienced it myself with my own songs which I feel were somehow “given” to me from “above” when I wrote them–they healed something deep inside. Think of it as part of your extreme-self-care healing routine each day which is so important for us survivors of childhood trauma. Â We need to do extra kind and comforting things for ourselves each day! Â These songs were written for you! Â Please try it and let me know how it works for you. Â My second album, Songs of Hope and Healing will have the most deeply healing songs on it and it is in the works as soon as this first album is complete. Â I will be releasing each song individually as it gets finished so keep checking back for more song releases.
Thank you for reading today and please like my facebook community page (if you like it) called Higher Ground Haven– I have now attached it to this blog so that our community can reach out and grow and connect in even more ways than before.  I look forward to your comments and to meeting and seeing you on facebook where I will be posting updates and information about healing childhood wounds, narcissistic parents, highly sensitive people (HSPs), unblocking your creativity, and how to go for your dreams, as well as videos of me and my music.  Remember, you can create the life you desire in your heart.  You are a shining light of compassion and love.  You deserve comfort, encouragement, compassion, and a community of safety and healing support that we all missed out on as children. I hope you find all of that here on my blog as your new Hope and Healing Haven. đ
Sending all of you much love and light and deep caring,
Roxanne
A New Beginning For This Blog As We Continue Healing Our Childhood Wounds
Hi everyone. I have an announcement to make but first I want to thank all of you who have followed this blog and who have shared your stories and have felt part of this community of hope and healing. It was years ago in January 2010 that I started this blog and many of you have grown and evolved with me as we have shared and healed our childhood wounds together. Â I want to fill you in on the details and the big changes ahead for this blog. Yes, it is time for some exciting new changes and the biggest one is that I want to reveal my real name and take ownership of this blog that I am so proud of.
I have been upfront since the first day of this blog saying on my About page that I was using a PEN name. Elaine D. Sanders. I chose this special name so that I could write uninhibitedly about my journey in emotional healing and so that I could help others who are struggling to find and express their true voice as well.  My pen name served me well and I have no regrets about being known as Elaine and proudly using this name for my life coaching business that came about because of the success of helping others through this blog.
Now I am stepping fully into the light with my real legal name and claiming my story. Â I feel and hope this will be very empowering for others who are healing from childhood wounds as well. It is with love and compassion and gratefulness in my heart that I share this information with you, my followers and readers, because I know you will understand and support this new venture of empowerment for all of us to step into our truth, and be unafraid to speak up with our true voice about our childhood experiences and our healing journeys. There is no shame in telling your story, nothing to fear when you speak up for yourself about times you felt diminished and unloved as a child. Â Telling the truth and coming out of hiding is the right thing to do and doing so will support others to do the same.
My middle name really is Elaine.  I love the name and when I first decided to start this blog I was proud to find out that the meaning of the name Elaine is “shining light”.  My legal first name is Roxanne and I was thrilled to find out the meaning of Roxanne is “dawn”–light of a new day-a new beginning. Right now I am gradually changing all posts and comments from Elaine to Roxanne.  It will take a while to complete the change and until then I hope all will be understood. 
Some might ask, with the great success of this blog why not stay Elaine?  Well, about a year and a half ago, I wanted my grown children and husband to be able to tell of my new successful career as a life coach and singer/songwriter without having to tell a long story of why I had a pen name. Also, I wanted to start a home community life coaching business and I also wanted to be close to my family (and also to this new support network) through facebook.  So I started a home community life coaching website, a new blog with more songs, a personal facebook page and community facebook page in my legal name that I go by on a daily basis with close friends, my husband and kids. Through this experiment I eventually realized I now felt uninhibited to talk about inner child healing and my own healing journey with great confidence– I was able to do both and go back and forth to both blogs and websites with ease for quite a while.  I gradually saw how I was dividing myself and my energies.  Recently it came clear how I could integrate everything to my legal name and that this would be very empowering for all for me to do this. My energies of late had been mostly with my new creative ventures in my world as myself, Roxanne E. Smith.  I am now ready to come out on this blog and say this is who I am, this is what I experienced, and this is how I recovered, and I want to be a role model to help others to come out and express their true voice as well.
Upon beginning to write about my past, I had no idea that this blog would be so helpful to others as it has become.  My intention was and is to help and support others by sharing my experience and journey of emotional healing.  I have no resentment, anger, or bitterness towards any people from my past. I do not carry any hard feelings towards them and I wish them only peace and love.  I believe I may have chosen everything that happened to me because I knew my soul was strong enough to recover so that I could help others.  I am now grateful for everything that has ever happened to me for now I am on this path of enlightenment and helping others see their beautiful shining light within that is underneath the layers of pain and self-doubt. I believe helping souls to break through to their true essence is my true purpose in life.  I have come to a place where I know that the absence of light experienced as children is because parents and caregivers of children may have had atrocities and abuses from their own childhood that may have caused a complete separation from their own light.  We absorbed all that darkness as  highly sensitive gifted children but now, after emotional healing, we can now give that light back to ourselves — as for myself, it was only through much inner grief work that I recovered and this is what I now help others through my work–through blogging, life coaching, and through sharing my healing songs and their lyrics.
I shared my honest feelings on this blog because this was my experience and it was this candidness that most helped people relate their own feelings and stories and heal on a deep level. Many of my songs continue to reflect the painful journey to wholeness and joy from a childhood of feeling lost–I feel it was through the gift of music and creative song writing that I was able to heal and express my voice and this self expression continues to heal me as well as others.  I have continued to write and record more healing songs recently and this is the project that has kept me busy this past year.
I have a new music website for my newly created and professionally recorded Album–A New Beginning!  I am excited to share with you my songs which are my new passion and focus as of right now and my album of 10 professionally recorded songs is now available for download and also on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and many other sites worldwide.
Other changes on this blog and my websites include the adding of a link to my facebook community page called Higher Ground Haven. So please check it out by finding it on the right side of the page and clicking on the name of it–you don’t have to be on facebook to enjoy it–it is open to the public and will just be another means of support for this community.  
There will be a new name for this blog–it is being changed from Hope and Healing with Elaine to Hope and Healing Haven.  I hope you like it and will remember it easily.  I think it is a great fit!  The domain name is going back to hopehealing.wordpress.com. Elainedsanders.com will no longer be.  I won’t be taking new clients for an indefinite period of time because my singing/songwriting career is taking center stage in my life right now and I will be sharing my song lyrics which are self-help poetry put to music as I embark on this new career.
I hope that you will enjoy embarking with me on this NEW BEGINNING journey. Â My song A NEW BEGINNING has new meaning now as it has been rerecorded professionally and is the perfect tribute to this new phase of this Hope and Healing Blog that I hope will continue to be a Haven for all souls seeking healing from their childhood wounds and empowerment to find their true voice and true self.
Please enjoy listening to a sample of A New Beginning below: Â press > play to hear Another song I’d like to share is called “I’m All Right”–you can listen to a sample of it below:
My new music website is finished and it is ready to share with you, you may visit it here:Â RoxanneSmithMusic.com. 10 professionally recorded healing songs from my new album are now finalized and available for purchase with free samples of each song for you to listen to first! Â You can buy downloads of the songs there on the website–all proceeds will go to continuing my work to help others heal from childhood emotional pain. Â It’s a great cause! Â I highly recommend playing the songs especially in the morning each day as you get ready–it will change your mood for the day and has a healing effect. Think of it as part of your extreme-self-care healing routine each day which is so important for highly sensitive survivors. Â We need to do extra kind things for ourselves each day! Â Please try it and let me know how it works for you–I welcome the testimonials!
Thank you for reading today. Â I am excited to re-connect with all of you survivors who are searching for emotional guidance and a safe place to feel connected and to heal from the past. Â This is a wonderful community to be a part of and I feel truly blessed and grateful. Welcome To Hope and Healing Haven!
With love, blessings, and warmest caring wishes,
Roxanne
(Read the following comments from the bottom up)
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Here is an edited version of the original “About Me” when I was using a pen name, written in December 2009 and used through February 2014 (the original was changed a few times over the years ):
Hello and Welcome! Â Elaine is a name that has special significance to me and I have chosen this Pen name because it will make it easier to be completely honest and uninhibited in all my writing. My wonderful supportive husband and I have both had many childhood wounds to heal and overcome and we have made a new wonderful life and have raised two amazing children.
I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Child and Family Services with emphasis in humanistic counseling psychology, sociology, family dynamics, and child development.  There was nothing more important to me than raising children with high self-esteem and to be emotionally healthy, and breaking the cycle of emotional repression that has been passed down for generations through our extended families. Our children are in college and beyond now, adjusting well to all of life’s demands, and my husband and I couldn’t be prouder of them, not just because of their accomplishments and achievements but because of the relationships we have with them and the caring, loving people they have become. We are supportive and encouraging of whatever they choose to do with their lives and we are there for them to listen to their feelings and they in turn are supportive and encouraging to us and grateful and loving human beings.
I have discovered many things along the way to building a healthy family and finding my true purpose in life. I have discovered I am an INFJ, an empath, a highly sensitive person, an avid journaler, writer of self-help poetry, and a singer/songwriter writing many songs–including my songs of hope and healing. These songs were written mostly to help myself through the pain from my many childhood wounds and the ups and downs of life. Most of all, I have discovered the depth of my skills as an Empathic Life Coach. With this, I have discovered my true purpose in life-all my skills of writing and singing and songwriting have been catalysts in helping me express and find my true voice–to realize that my true purpose is empowering other highly sensitive souls to heal from their wounds from childhood and become the person they are meant to be.
I feel it as a privilege for me to provide comfort and support to any soul who is in emotional pain and to let them know there is hope and someone out there who understands. With the help of this website,  it is my hope to validate, inspire, and give hope to people through my writing, my music, and my availability to you as an Empathic Life Coach.  So often a person just needs a companion to listen–someone to validate the complex and confusing painful feelings that come up when childhood wounds are triggered and then keep us from moving forward to become our true selves.  Our blog community strives to be an “enlightened witness” for any person who needs to be heard about childhood wounds or if you have no family members or friends who understand you.  Please check out the comment sections of each post which contain lots of guidance and sharing of experiences. We understand and we care. Welcome to our community!
With love,
Roxanne
Forgiveness Is For Your “Self”
Hi everyone.  I have been wanting to share my song “Help Me to Forgive” for a while, but I wanted to explain what I mean by forgiveness because it can be such a confusing and guilt-inducing concept. For myself, forgiving was something I kept trying to do because I thought it was the right thing to do.
As highly sensitive people (HSPs), we want so badly to be compassionate, fair, and kind. I kept forgiving and forgetting the past. I pretended like everything was going to be okay if I just forgave and moved on but I continued to let myself be walked on. I ignored my feelings and kept telling myself I was forgiving and that was the right thing to do. For me, it was the wrong thing to do and the pattern continued until I felt so hurt one day by  blatant disrespect for my feelings–when I made a simple assertion that was not to this person’s liking and then they said they were going to do it anyway whether I liked it or not.
I could not deny my feelings any longer. My rage shocked me–I knew it was from childhood and way out of proportion to the event at hand. But I listened to my feelings and it felt good to feel this truth–it was how I had always been treated me and I kept giving out the benefit of the doubt. The anger awakened something in me that needed to come alive–my assertiveness about my needs and feelings and about the boundary that kept being crossing and I kept letting it happen all because I felt it important to forgive and forget.
Now this anger fueled me in a healthy way for a while. It felt good to feel instead of being numb and self-doubting for so long. I wrote a lot about it and found myself in my journaling to have a lot of wise insights and a lot of reasons to be completely fed up with the insidious and mean things that were said to me with a smile.
But I was still so angry, it scared me how angry I was because it was so intense I felt hatred. And this makes sense really when, as highly sensitive children, our trust in ourselves and our spirits feel consistently stomped on until we give up and repress and hide our true selves and feelings away so completely–this is a trauma!– not feeling safe to express our intense anger we hide our true selves away. Now for the first time, I was so angry but I felt alive, I knew it was the truth I was feeling.  I was somehow grateful for everything that had happened to me to give me the self-awareness to finally know the truth! Writing my feelings out helped me make sense of it all.  I was able to see actions from my childhood which were the cause of much pain and self-doubt. It was very clear! I will never forget this moment in my whole life when I realized there was absolutely nothing wrong with me and that I had just been the victim of a person that I wrongly trusted with my heart and soul. So I made myself a promise not to trust this person with my private feelings (a healthy detachment) and set some boundaries for time and space to heal and it has been a very important decision in my life.
All these emotions coming up helped me connect to this wonderful aliveness–a connection to my true spirit and a connection to God and that he was there with me all along. I know it sounds strange–how could all that pain be so awakening in a positive way but it was. In the midst of the pain, I felt bliss and freedom and truth and so I knew it was right to stop trusting this person. And after a long period of intense anger, pain, grief, and then acceptance, I finally understood what all the talk and importance of forgiveness was all about–I needed to forgive God/The Universe and stopped blaming Him/It for “giving me” such a painful childhood.  And I needed to forgive myself because I knew I did the best I could at figuring out a very confusing situation and for blaming myself as a child out of survival. I needed to forgive the whole situation and all the pain it caused me because I had ME again. I do not have to forgive a person who is not sorry to their face and never will be–but I do forgive what they did.  I had been holding onto a lot of resentment which I didn’t realize was hurting me and taking a lot of energy.
And that is when I sat down and wrote the song “Help Me To Forgive”. I’ll never forget writing it. It was a very spiritual and pivotal moment in my life. It helped me to start the process of trying to forgive God, The Universe, and me, and the whole situation, and my pain. That is what forgiveness really means for me.  Then, a few weeks later, I wrote the song “This Too Shall Pass” with a newfound ability to comfort myself through the worst feelings of rejection and betrayal.
Yes that was quite a month–September 2007. And I am glad I have these two songs to commemorate that special time when I reclaimed my true self and found inner peace and acceptance. And I also discovered a way to let God’s love in my life and really feel it and believe it. As the saying goes, ” The truth will set you free,”  but you must feel your feelings to get there.
But in all my writing just now about forgiveness, I don’t want to forget my reasons for writing this post. It is to support you, the highly sensitive child with childhood wounds, from not feeling guilty that you cannot forgive yet. And that trying to forgive even God and yourself before you have gotten through all of the anger and all the repressed emotions from your childhood can leave you feeling guilty and beating yourself up. Please do not feel guilty if you are not ready to forgive anything yet. Please be kind to yourself and love and comfort the wounded child inside for all the feelings you were denied being allowed to express. That is the first step and it takes a long time to tell your whole story–to let out the entire truth. The song “Help Me To Forgive” is meant to comfort you on those times you are filled with anger and resentment about the past–and you are realizing how strong you are because of the pain you’ve been through and you are ready to stop holding on to blame.  I share the lyrics with you with the utmost compassion and love in my heart.
With love,
Roxanne
How My Best Counselor Helped Me to Break Through My Illusions and Self-doubt
Hi everyone. Yay it’s Spring! I hope you are enjoying the beauty of nature as it comes to life again. That’s how I’m feeling too–as if I am coming to life–happier than I’ve ever been in my life.  And it is a new feeling–I catch myself out of habit being tensed up in my shoulders and neck and then I realize it and relax. It feels like for the first time I can finally… really relax! It is really quite amazing to me–this feeling of exhilaration with my life and how I can feel happy in the moment.  As highly sensitive people (HSPs) we are all too hard on ourselves–as children it HURTS to be different from almost everyone else around us–so without proper encouragement and support, we hide our gifts away to protect ourselves from further pain.
It’s taken me so long to come to this place where I understand what it means to be my own best friend. I used to hear people say that or I’d read about it and it just sounded like Blah, Blah, Blah, (like the adults sounded on Charlie Brown ha ha). But now I get it. I found it difficult to feel good about myself or love myself growing up. I grew up in a time when I felt I wasn’t even supposed to like myself. I could feel the “Who do you think you are?” judgement of those around me much of the time. I didn’t know who I was but I felt who I was trying to be was never ever good enough.
I have realized that illusions play a valuable role in our survival as children when we have been emotionally diminished (abused), whether it was intentional or not. The pain of our disappointment is too great to bear as highly sensitive children, so we make decisions about ourselves that help us to cope with the situation. For example, rather than facing this pain we say to ourselves, it must be me, I need to act differently in order to get love and approval so I will become obedient and do what others want, then I will be loved and seen. And it appears that we feel accepted as long as we keep up this facade and keep our “real” selves and feelings hidden away. I believe this is why journaling “for your eyes only” works so well to uncover the truth of how we really feel about things–and we can then break through those illusions and gradually free ourselves from our false self that we created to survive and eventually find our true voice. But you really need to do it often enough that the voice in your journal (and your heart) becomes dominant over the negative voice in your head. I know I’ve written about this before, and I apologize if I am repeating myself. But I guess I feel it is crucial to really make this point–the way you speak to your “self” is ultimately what ends up mattering the most in your ability to be able to comfort yourself and relax and enjoy your life in the way you truly deserve.
I apologize if I make it sound easy. It can be really difficult if you don’t know where to start and when you write it’s all bad feelings and it doesn’t help you feel better. I guess my real success in journaling really didn’t start until after I had found a person I could trust to talk to–an outside support for the hidden “me” that I was sure was supposed to be hiding away because I was sure I was flawed and thought “something is wrong with me”. I had forgotten about the fact that I really felt that way most of the time but it wasn’t even in my awareness–I didn’t know I was hiding–I just existed that way–it was completely hidden from me.  I thought, this is who I am–an insecure and anxious person who will always and forever need someone else to take care of me. Until that special day–the day I went to my first counselor who turned out to be the best counselor I’ve ever had in my life–and she really changed my life.
At the time I had no idea how hard it would be to find another counselor who came close to her compassion and depth of understanding ever again. But I will never forget her words and wisdom and how she saw the potential in me that I didn’t dare even imagine. I was 22. She listened and cared and I learned to trust her with my deepest feelings and I shared some of my poems with her. She told me, to my surprise, that I was a gifted writer and that I could be my own psychotherapist if I kept on writing in this special way. Together we discovered the roots of my self-doubt and she revealed to me that she had benefitted from counseling too in the past. She confided that, as a counselor, she felt it was important to have been on both sides in order to really understand the helping process. Another very helpful part of this special counseling experience was when she had me take the character and temperament test from the book Please Understand Me (See Recommended Books). My results were that I was an INFJ–Introvert, iNtuitive, Feeling, Judicial and that this type is only 1% of the population. Then she told me I had the gift of empathy like her and that she was an INFJ too. (I will explain more about the 16 temperament types in a future post). I thought how could this be…like her? She had a Ph.D and was a successful professional clinical psychotherapist and yet she said I was like her. Unbelievable…could all those hopes and dreams I had in the back of my mind actually be a possibility? I went out and bought that book and I studied it a lot. The book talks about the positive aspects of each of the types and my type described me so well I felt special and normal and understood for the first time in my life.
I went to see her once a week for 6 months and then I had to stop because our health insurance only covered 25 visits per year. During that time, my confidence soared and, I remember now, I joined the Sweet Adelines and had fun performing in a barbershop quartet. (It was easy to perform with these other ladies on stage with me–I continued to have stagefright about performing alone or singing the kind of music where I expressed my soul though, but it was a start in overcoming it ). I also started taking some guitar lessons and learning to play and sing the songs I had always loved. Even though I had my college degree, I had temporarily taken a job at JCPenney’s catalog ordering service because I thought I wasn’t ready to help other people until I figured myself out first. But she said this job was way beneath me and encouraged me to go to graduate school in counseling psychology. (Even with a 3.8 in my major, much praise from my professors, internship experience, and letters of recommendation–when my graduation was barely acknowledged, all my confidence had evaporated.)  “Make sure it is a program that is APA approved,” she said. And I listened.  And I grew in confidence and continued writing my self-help poetry. And you know what happened next…I was so confident in myself, I thought I could even change my relationship with my extended family!  Without talking to her first, we moved many states away from my wonderful counselor.  We decided to start a family and I put graduate school on hold…
And now, telling you my story, I realize I do NOT want to emphasize how tragic it was…and that I had to wait so long to find myself and be happy and figure myself out so I could finally be that counselor/coach and writer that she saw that I could be. Instead I feel strongly that it all really worked out for the best. I grew so much as a person watching how my children thrived with our unconditional love and emotional support and I saw the world through their eyes and healed my soul right along with them experiencing the wonders in this world. And I continued to write in a way that I was able to be my own psychotherapist–writing through the layers of pain and breaking through the illusions that helped me survive a childhood of feeling emotionally diminished and misunderstood.
And I see how I had to try everything before I had the ability to start setting boundaries in certain relationships in my life. My counselor back then never used the word narcissisism and I wonder if that would have helped me realize the futility of my quest for healthy give-and-take in certain relationships in my life sooner. It is all right though, because I know the meaning of the word now and had to find out the depth and scope of it’s meaning in my own way. I hope my journey inspires you to embrace the path you are on but also to look inward and explore your true feelings and write about them–and keep listening to your hopes and dreams that exist in the back of your mind . For I believe that is the voice of your true self that you must not ignore.
Finding a caring, empathic counselor to support the true reasons for my deepest fears, and self-doubt, and to believe in my unique gifts made all the difference in my life.  Her words kept me on the right track and kept me writing through the layers of pain that would arise between the numbness or anxiety. Her words kept guiding me towards the release of my pain and ultimately to the joy and pride on the other side. It changed the course of my life and to her I will always be grateful. I hope my story has been helpful to you and provides you with some comfort and encouragement.
Today I am releasing the lyrics for the song “This Too Shall Pass”. This song was written to ease myself through a period of my worst grief and anger when I started setting some boundaries for myself–and instead of getting respect and love, I felt rejection and experienced guilt-inducing manipulations. It was a pivotal point in my recovery when I let go of my illusions about the potential of  certain relationships and grieved for what would never be and comforted myself by writing this song. After writing it and singing it, I felt stronger than ever before that everything was going to be alright and that ultimately I must take care of myself and honor my feelings. This song still comforts me when I am feeling my worst and I hope it does the same for you.  I hope you enjoy it.
With love, Roxanne
I Was Lost But Now I’ve Found Me
My very first post, Dec. 30, 2009:Â
I Was Lost But Now I’ve Found Me
Lyrics by Roxanne Smith
I am strong but they canât see me
I am wise but they canât hear me
I am kind but they canât feel me
I was lost but now Iâve found me
I can see the truth in me
I can feel the love in thee
I can have the strength I lost begin again
Your belief in me makes me free
CHORUS
I am sad and you are there to hold me
I am weak and you are there to guide me
I am scared and you are there to love me
I was lost but now Iâve found me
I can be all that I can be
Overcome the fear they gave me
When all I feel is lost and unaware
You are there to say you care
When I allow myself to feel
You are there to help me heal
When I allow myself to cry
You are there to help me sigh
And surrender to the truth
That I learned from my youth
That I had you all along
The painful lesson is now a song
CHORUS
I am sad and you are there to hold me
I am weak and you are there to guide me
I am scared and you are there to love me
I was lost but now Iâve found me
I was lost but now Iâve found me
I was lost but now Iâve found me
Original Song Š 2009 Roxanne Smith
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Hope and Healing Haven 
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Thank you so much, Judy! Thatâs wonderful that you will be joining me! You are an important part of this community and I appreciate your support and participation as we journey ahead! With love and light, Roxanne
Congratulations. Iâm looking forward to step onto this new path with you.
Hi Alec! Thank you so much for your kind words and encouragement! Yes, Iâve got new wings to fly higher!âI hope it is âupliftingâ for all! Stay tuned for my next post in 2 daysâitâs about my âamazingâ past year.
This a great step! Well done! You are flying on an amazing trajectory!