Tag Archives: joy

A New Beginning For This Blog As We Continue Healing Our Childhood Wounds

Sharing our story sets us free

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.  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.use your voice…brave…live life imagined

Now I am stepping fully into the light with my real legal name and claiming my story.  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.  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. Being yourself…is easier

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.Owning our story…brave..our light

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.

The truth will set us freeI 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.follow fire in heart…passion is your purpose

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.  Sometimes in winds…. find our direction

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.  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.like the End of world is a new beginning Please enjoy listening to a sample of A New Beginning below:  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: 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!  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.  It’s a great cause!  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.  We need to do extra kind things for ourselves each day!  Please try it and let me know how it works for you–I welcome the testimonials!

Thank you for reading today.  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.  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)

 

Roxanne
Submitted on 2014/02/11 at 12:59 pm | In reply to Judy.

Thank you so much, Judy! That’s 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

Judy theprojectbyjudy.wordpress.com
Submitted on 2014/02/10 at 2:26 pm

Congratulations. I’m looking forward to step onto this new path with you.

Roxanne
Submitted on 2014/02/09 at 4:58 pm | In reply to Alec.

Hi Alec! Thank you so much for your kind words and encouragement! Yes, I’ve got new wings to fly higher!–I hope it is “uplifting” for all! Stay tuned for my next post in 2 days–it’s about my “amazing” past year.

Alec
Submitted on 2014/02/09 at 8:32 am

This a great step! Well done! You are flying on an amazing trajectory!

==============================================

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!  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

Journaling for Joy and Finding My True Voice In A Poem

Hello to all of you sensitive souls.  I hope you are enjoying this beautiful week of Indian Summer we are having. The news says that most of the U.S. is experiencing gorgeous mild temperatures and colorful changing leaves right now.  It is definitely my favorite time of the year and it feels like such a gift from above now that I can relax and take it in and be in the moment and fully appreciate it.  As many of you who follow my blog already know, it wasn’t always this way for me.  I used to be numb to my feelings, keeping too busy to feel, compelled to be a people-pleaser and a perfectionist, and full of self-doubt and anxiety.

There are many facets to my journey to finding my voice as a person, many of which I describe on my blog so that I might inspire other highly sensitive people (HSPs) to believe in their dreams.  Writing out my feelings in a journal has been one of these many facets that contributed to my awakening to my true spirit which was hiding inside. I have been writing poetry in a journal since the age of 14, but it wasn’t until about 2002 that I set out to to try to do Julia Cameron’s morning pages (3 pages of free writing every day) which turned out to be extremely therapeutic “inner grief work” that took place over a period of 5 years.  It was during this period that I wrote about the feeling that I was “growing a backbone” and this felt very miraculous indeed.  I knew I was finding my voice finally and it had been hidden away in fear for so long.  I was writing songs and poetry and it never really occurred to me to seriously share them with others until one day when an extra special one poured out of me.  When I wrote this poem, it dawned on me that I had been transformed and now, finally, I could reach out and help others–something I had always wanted to do but I always felt I had to figure myself out first.  I had a new found sense of self and there was no going back.  I am very happy to be sharing it with you today.

After I wrote this poem, I got the idea to write a book sharing many of my poems and my growth along the way to finding my voice and that this poem would be the final one in the book–a finale of sorts.  However, since then I have written even more special poems and songs so I have decided to go ahead and share a shortened version of it here in my blog. (I haven’t written my book yet but I plan to start it in the near future.)  This very special poem is entitled, “Joy, Our Birthright, Waiting There”.  I want to explain that I wrote this with my children in mind– when I say “and I was never there for you the way I thought I was, it’s true”.  What this means is when I went through growth and gradually had more access to my true self, then I couldn’t help but feel regret about the past when I had been doing my best but I was not able to be my strong confident true self yet.  When I expressed this regret to my children expecting them to agree and feel relief and tell me it had been hard for them, they both instead said they always felt I was always emotionally available to them and it meant a lot to them that I always apologized to them whenever I made emotional mistakes and they felt fully validated at each step along the way in their upbringing. For this I feel extremely grateful because nothing has ever been more important to me than my children feeling good about themselves and their unique gifts and breaking the cycle of dysfunction that my husband and I experienced as children.  Still…I can’t help but wish I knew then what I know now….

So here it is:

Joy, Our Birthright, Waiting There

By Roxanne Smith

Feb 21, 2007

Telling someone helped me heal

All the pain inside was real

No wonder I had been so tired

My whole heart had been so mired

So much grief to lead the way

Let it out, so much to say

I was never there for you

The way I thought I was, it’s true

Because I was empty – none to give

Alive but I just now learned to live

Soulful is the proper word

I have “me” – it sounds absurd

Let your painful feelings out

You can’t be whole and live without

Expression of unfairness do

Your soul will help you live anew

And learn compassion for your self

Don’t put feelings on a shelf

Any doubt is harmful thought

The truth is–look how far you got!

Negativity and blocks

To true self and joyful shocks

Being blamed can stunt our growth

Fear of feelings: anger, both

Also fearing joy and bliss

Pain comes up and we all miss

The connection to our rightful heir

Joy, our birthright, waiting there!

Love is what we all deserve

Joy it feels when then observed

Share it then and it comes back

Filling up the past we lacked

Helping others heal their wounds

Nothing like it – glowing moons

Stars are twinkling, warming sun

Nature loves us one by one

Let the love come down on you

It is there don’t block the view

Doubts of self will keep it blocked

You must trust your soul’l be rocked!

With this truth I’m trying to tell

Creative soul fear-blocked is hell

Heaven is a word away

Love is here please let it stay

You deserve its welcome home

Inside you it does belong

Love yourself I’m trying to say

God is trying – just light the way

Ask him to comfort your soul

Believe!  And he will rock and roll!

I’m not kidding this I know

I let out grief and felt a glow

A light inside I did believe

I’m OK. I feel. I grieve.

Compulsions all have fear beneath

God has no “shoulds” or “work hard” teeth

Be yourself and kindness do

Serve to help others heal anew

Help them see that love transcends

We can all relax and mend

“Relax and enjoy your life

and everything will be alright!”

This phrase came in a dream so real

I hope this poem will help you heal

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

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

Moving on from a Narcissistic Parent–The Obedient Child’s Journey Towards Freedom–Way Over Yonder

(This post is the most viewed post on this blog with over 18,000 views and 146 comments at the present time–2019.)

As a life coach and now as a spiritual counselor,  I have experience helping HSPs with emotional wounds from childhood often stemming from one or both parents being a malignant narcissist.  Emotional abuse is an especially horrible experience for a highly sensitive child.  It may be that you felt there was no caring about your feelings whatsoever.  You may have felt invisible and as if you don’t matter. …As if your feelings don’t matter!   If you were emotionally abused or continually diminished as a child by your parent it’s not healthy to hold that in! Let it out–voice it or write out the truth, acknowledge what happened and then continue to practice letting it go–releasing it–sending it out away from you to be replaced by comfort, compassion, and love for yourself.  It’s not healthy to hold onto blame–but admitting it is important and the start to healing repressed and denied emotions.

At under age 2, when we can’t express ourselves with words, we can only cry to get our needs met.  A sensitive child becomes obedient out of mortal fear but you can’t tell–they don’t look afraid because they have repressed it. As an obedient highly sensitive child, you put your own needs away and focus on pleasing others–but lying under the surface those unmet needs are still there!  Begging for attention!  Longing for love!  There is nothing wrong with you!  You are just afraid to speak up and ask for what you deserve.

And in some families there is no genuine love to be given.  And even as a tiny child you know it.  As the sensitive child in the family you felt it’s absence and it hurt like hell!  And you cried and complained and may have had tantrums of despair in the grocery store!  But then at some point it was too much and you stopped crying or complaining and you stopped being …YOU.  The fear of being hit or just the mean look from their eyes would feel like a spear of pain through your heart and it would shut you up over and over again until you gave up and became obedient.  And that is the trauma!  The pain so unbearable to a child that you cannot survive it and so the repression happens. (See Alice Millers’ book, The Drama of the Gifted Child.)

If you experienced this too, the fear you had to repress also held down your true self and all the feelings that went with it.  You became obedient and fearful from the trauma but instead of expressing your rage at the injustice of it all, you pushed your feelings down so deep you hid them even from yourself.  You didn’t know ’til now that you have such a rich and deep inner life, and a wonderful, loving personality.  It was all hiding in fear.  Until now.

Now it is safe to come out.  For whatever reason, your beginning years were spent in an environment of fear and no love, but there is love out there to be found! Get some support and start a life with stronger boundaries so that you can fully heal.  You may need to cut the strings so you can feel safe and free.  You deserve to live a life of peace that is free from guilt-inducing manipulations, negative comments undermining your confidence, fear-inducing threats, comments about the rewards others will get for being “good”.

It’s wrong to take care of the feelings of anyone who continually diminishes you in any way at the expense of yourself. It’s difficult but very necessary to set boundaries with malignant narcissists.  It’s especially hard being blamed and turned into the bad guy more than anything. It’s excruciating!   But you are worth the fight and you must be strong. You have to take care of yourself and your health.  You will also feel a sense of exhilaration and freedom and pride in yourself for being honest and no longer pretending like you approve of how they treat you.   With support from your new loved ones in your life you can move forward and go for your dreams!  You can learn to comfort yourself through the hard times.  Know the truth and be strong and hang on ”til the good times–“the sweet tasting good life”…   I love that song…”Way Over Yonder.  …the sun shinin’ golden, shinin’ right down on me.”

For more on the subjects I have written about today please click on “Recommended Books”.  Thank you so much for reading.  Please leave a comment about your story.  It will help others to know they are not alone.

With love,

Roxanne

Way Over Yonder lyrics
Songwriter: King, Carole

Way over yonder is a place that I know
Where I can find shelter from the hunger and cold
And the sweet tasting good life is so easily found
Way over yonder, that’s where I’m bound, that’s where I’m bound

I know when I get there, the first thing I’ll see
Is the sun shinin’ golden, shinin’ right down on me
Then trouble’s gonna lose me, worry, leave me behind
And I’ll stand up proudly in true peace of mind

Talkin’ about a, talkin’ about a
Way over yonder is the place I have seen
In the garden of wisdom from some long ago dream

And maybe tomorrow, I’ll find my way
To the land where the honey runs in the rivers each day
And the sweet tasting good life is so easily found, yes it is

Way over yonder, that’s where I’m
That’s where I’m bound, talkin’ about, talkin’ about
Way over yonder, that’s where I’m bound

On Overcoming Self-doubt: The Story Behind My Songs of Hope and Healing

Hi everyone. I believe there are many, many highly sensitive people (HSPs) out there that are gifted in so many areas but are suffering from self-doubt from their wounds from childhood and by being misunderstood in our society in general.  I want to tell you about how I came to be able to write songs and share them with you in the hopes that this will be helpful or inspire you in some way.  My being able to write songs is a story about overcoming self-doubt and finding and expressing my true self.  It was my songs that helped me uncover the truth of who I really am and what happened to me in my childhood.  The ability to write and sing these songs gave me a connection to something spiritual so that I learned to love myself and stop doubting the gifts and feelings that were within me.   Writing these songs turned me into a believer–and I now know I am loved and supported by the universe and I became more spiritual and drawn to reading more about what that means. 

I feel there is something in the words and melodies of most of my songs that came from something bigger than myself–I was just the channel.  I want to inspire, encourage and empower others who are in emotional pain and afraid to show who they really are.  I believe those highly sensitive souls are voices that are needed in our society and they are sensitive for a reason.  They have a connection to something bigger than themselves that they do not realize and don’t dare show to others because they don’t want to be hurt anymore–so they are hiding.  I understand this hiding.

The songs were an instrument in me telling my truth–and gaining the strength to stand up and assert my self and my true voice. These songs were instrumental in my gaining strength and energy and learning finally that there are people who we must avoid while we are healing and people of light and love that are safe to go towards. Being highly sensitive is a gift!  And I am grateful and honored to be one of those people.  I  feel blessed in this gift I have been given and I now have the positive energy to give to and love others only by loving my self first.  That is what these songs have done for me.  Here is my story:

In 2004 I started writing songs.  I had been writing  poems in a journal since I was 14.  At that time, I was told that things I wrote were crazy but I kept writing anyway because it made me feel better.  At that time I trusted others more than I trusted myself and so when I was criticized, ignored, and shamed for my singing too it broke my heart and I gave up on my dream to sing.  But I was compelled to sing and write anyway–in secret and in private. I dreamed of being a singer like Linda Rondstadt and sang in my bedroom to all of her albums.  I started learning the guitar at 17. (A boyfriend bought it for me–not my parents.)  I slowly started learning to play chords to my favorite songs. These were songs by Carole King, James Taylor, Carly Simon, and Linda Ronstadt. (Later on it was songs by Bonnie Raitt and Sheryl Crow).  I sang in the choir in high school and college and got great praise but I didn’t believe it. My college voice teacher told me I had the best voice in the whole school of music.  But my fear felt too big to overcome so I refused to do any solos–I had stagefright and by graduation I gave up on my dream.

But about once a month something in me would make me sing and play the guitar.  I would sing and play my favorite songs for hours for only my self or sometimes for my husband and kids and then put it away for another month.  They liked my singing–but I was sure that I wasn’t as good as I thought I was in my heart.  I did that for many, many years.   Meanwhile,  I heard about a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.  I  began writing 3 pages a day of free writing called Morning Pages to unblock creativity. (Ellen Degeneres has mentioned on her show that she also does this). Something started happening to me–I was finding out who I was and how I really felt about things.  More good writing and poetry started coming out of me–I was feeling more confident in myself and happier.

My children were having big successes in singing at school.  I had been careful not to push them in any direction but the ones of their own choosing.  To my surprise they both were drawn to singing in their own way.  My eldest became a soloist in high school and eventually a lead singer in a cover band in college.  My 2nd child was successful in acting and sang beautifully in solos in musical theatre productions at school.  They had no stagefright at all!  I was so proud of them and proud of myself for raising children with no stagefright!   I would often joke,” I can die now”,  but it made me realize how important singing was to me but I was still paralyzed in fear that my voice was not good enough for others to hear.  I knew this was irrational and started singing more often but there was still so much doubt in my mind.  It was exhausting to try and easier to just not try to sing for others.  I sang more often but still just kept it to myself.

When my eldest child went off to college and my husband started traveling more throughout the week I had more time to myself to recharge and suddenly one day I was inspired to put music to the poem I was writing in my journal.  I remember a melody came to me and it seemed as a gift from above to go with these words I was writing.  Not until after I was done writing it (long hand), with this melody in my head, did I pick up the guitar to try to play it and miraculously it fit perfectly with the few chords I knew well.  I recorded it on a tape recorder and, during a rare and brave moment, I dared to show it to my other child’s voice teacher who really liked it and said “you are a folk singer/songwriter” and also that he was jealous because he had a masters in music and couldn’t write any songs. This first song was entitled I’ll Believe and it felt like this song may have been a gift from above and that I had just been open to receive it and put it all together.  After that, songs just started pouring out of me and I always put the date on every song I write because it is important to me to acknowledge when it was given to me. 

Not only that, each song was prompted by an emotional state and a painful learning experience.  Sometimes I would feel a lot of shame after the song was complete because I dared to pour out my truth.  I soon realized that my best songs were the ones I felt the most shame about initially.  I knew this shame was not the truth. Then I would make myself listen to a tape of my recorded songs when I wasn’t feeling good about them or myself.  Every time I listened, I was surprised that I had written these songs and they changed my mood from feeling lost and numb to finding myself and finding my joy in life again for that day. It was a very healing experience as I saw myself getting more and more confident in expressing my “voice” in more ways than one.  I realized that because of the internalized shame from my childhood, I was beating myself up all the time and it was up to me to start believing in myself and to stop believing the inner critic inside my head.  It wasn’t true.  I was actually good.  How many other things I believed about myself also were not really true?   I was finding my voice as a person as well and speaking up for myself and standing up for myself in all areas of my life.

So it is the lyrics and the music that I feel helped me to find myself and I hope that they will be a source of hope and healing to you as well. Right now, I have written about 40 songs.  20 of them that I am releasing the lyrics to you I call my “Songs of Hope and Healing”.  And that is the inspiration for the name of this website.    Please let me know either by comment or by email if there are lyrics that speak to you.

15 to 20 % of us are Highly Sensitive People (HSPs).  We are a valuable and essential resource to our planet!  Overcoming self-doubt and finding our voice IS our true purpose in life.  Find the courage to trust that those gifts you were given are meant to be expressed and will be helpful to others by inspiring them to find their gifts as well. The desires deep in your heart are the path to finding your true purpose in life.  You can overcome your self-doubt! You are sensitive for a reason!

Thank you to my readers.  I have been getting emails and it’s great to know that I am reaching you and that what I am doing is helping.

With love, Roxanne

%d bloggers like this: