The lotus flower symbolizes rising from a dark place into beauty and rebirth, as this is exactly how a lotus flower grows. Lotus flowers grow directly out of muddy and murky waters and produce beautiful white and pink blossoms. Lotus flowers are

often referred to in Buddhist studies and they are a symbol of strength among adversity. 

I woke up that Memorial Day in 1989 and decided to open the pool. That night I was exhausted - I fell asleep - the last chime I heard on my clock was

7:30 PM. When I woke up - the clock was chiming 11:00 PM - Something started to happen - I knew I was awake - I could feel an energy entering my body from the top of my

head - I heard the chime for 11:15 PM. I could feel the energy move into my forehead down through my eyes. My eyes became empty sockets - my head became a skull of a

dead person - as the energy continued to move down the rest of my body - my body was now a skeleton with skin on it - I remember me saying - Oh my goodness, did I die?

Then “an energy” started returning into the bottom of my feet on up to the rest of my body. I could feel the skeleton under my skin filling up - when it got to my head - the eye sockets were now my eyes - it then moved up and out the top of my head. I then heard

the chime for 11:45 PM - I never heard the chime for 11:30 PM. When I became fully awake - I said, "What in the world was that." - I hadn't been afraid.

I have never been the same since that day.

That Saturday of Labor Day Weekend of 1989 I needed to lie down on my bedroom floor. I dozed off and woke up a few minutes later

and tried to get up. As I tried to sit up, out of the blue, a Hand lay on my chest and gently pushed me back down and then this booming voice said, "Gwen, you are going to

go through a very rough time; but know you will be OK.”

In 1971 I saw this painting of a little girl in a red dress with these big black eyes.  I stood at awe in front of this painting, feeling almost frozen in place.  It was not until 20 years later when I was in therapy that I realized the reason for the impact of this painting.  It was not until the early 1990’s that I was able to find the name of the artist, Margaret Keane,.  I came to find out she painted many, many children with these same eyes and they were children of war in the artist’s eyes.  In fact, she either loaned or donated a painting she had done depicting children of all nations, race and creed with these eyes to The United Nations [of which] I was told, hung in the lobby for years.  I had learned, in the 1990’s, of an exhibition she was having at the Laguna Art Museum in California so I called them for her catalog.  It is from this catalog I have taken the excerpt of an essay titled: So—What is it About Those Eyes?” (How Pain Becomes Kitsch) by Judith E. Vida, MD a psychoanalyst who writes about life and art.  The beginning of the essay:  “It is by finding out what something is not that one comes close to understanding what it is.” ~Alan de Botton.~  The last few lines of the essay say:  “Kitsch is what we call it when we belittle with contempt that which frightens us, that which unnerves us for our utter inability to contain its contradictions. There is a gap between what we see when we first come upon “those eyes” (when we too are open) and what we see when our defenses shut us down. There is a gap between the larger social purpose for which World War II was fought and the millions of individual lives sacrificed or deformed to attain that purpose. “Those eyes” of Margaret Keane looked into that gap, and then they, too, became as frightened as the rest of us to go on looking.”

Margaret Keane feels

“Eyes are the windows to the Soul”

The Movie BIG EYES

Is Margaret Keane’s True Story

The name of the painting “Up The Down Staircase”

We’re together My Little One and I

“I know I am 51But I feel like I am 5

Last feels firstYoung feels old

So it is TRUEI was 51 when I was 5”

                                                                    ~Gwen J – March 1990~

I did not know in 1990 that I was born in 1937

not 1939

Beginning in 2016 My EFT (Emotion Freedom Technique) Tapping Script:“If I keep holding you accountable in the court house of my mind, I will always have to limp

around with the wounds. I am sick and tired of limping. I am sick and tired of being afraid. I am sick and tired of doubting myself all this time. I am sick and tired of criticism. I am at a cross road. I can either hold you accountable for ever and keep my wounds or I can move forward

letting you be less important in my adult life. I am wired to be filled with courage. That is my TRUTH. I am wired to shine with every cell of my body.”

“This is a True Story. The names have NOT been changed to protect the innocent. If I am going to write my story, it is going to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth; or there is no sense in me writing it at all. If there is going to be “truth” it needs to be all the way, not just a little bit here and a little bit there to protect an adult including myself. The only innocent here is the innocence of the child for whom this book is dedicated. The innocent need to be heard. The innocent need to be named as we all were “the child” and I cannot let it go unsaid and silenced in the name of political, religious and cultural rituals as I write for all of us banging on the doors to let us out of the insane institution that put us there, the family honor, the family greed, the family jealousy, the family guilt, shame and fear. The house where the crime scene was roped off by yellow tape, with the message No Admittance. The house where some prisoners of war survived and some did not. The house where the concentration camp, too, existed where some survived and some did not as our number was branded into our soul as if we were cattle and some sort of commodity waiting to be used, killed and/or sold.

The Rite of Passage not the rite of “ritual cult” within politics, religion, race, greed, jealousy and fear or the owning of land, no matter what state, country or continent, that is not ours or theirs to begin with as it all belongs to Mother Earth her very own Self [in which] two legged animals insist on destroying in the name of being human resulting in sexual, physical, mental, verbal, emotional and last, but first spiritual abuse, killing the innocence of the child. This is My Story, how it all began, how it ended and The Healing Process in between. If anything has gone unsaid, it is because I have yet to evolve to that level of enlightenment on My Journey. It is not my intent to judge or blame anyone. It is my intent to Share what I can Give, to Live, to Grow, to See, to Know, and TO BE all that God, as I know Him, intended me To Be.

It is my intent to share “my experience” as I embarked on The Journey Into The Self not knowing, at the time, what I was asking as I entered my home in Hauppauge, NY after a return visit to ND, November 13, 1986 at 9:30 PM, stood in my den, folded my hands in prayer position, looking upward and hearing myself say: “Let Thy will be done not mine, as I can no longer live this way.”

~Gwen J October 4, 2000~