Where am I? Where are you, child of light and of compassion?

I am struggling. Rising and falling. Fear settles in and it smells stale and useless. Dreams shrivel away reminding me of everything that I have not done.

My motivation is low.

Being is hard.

The twisted electrocutions grind my spirit to flakes.

There is a deep wailing that none can hear.

Pulsed Radio Frequency Ablation

Is there hope for relief there?

Tired, trudging, falling

Ketamine?

What?

Where?

Where do I turn to for help?

God give me strength for I feel defeated. Scared of this beast that holds me to its tortures, scared of  this beast that has terrorized my faith. Scared of the beast that has taken hold of my Father. I pray for peace and for freedom from pain. I know no such freedom or peace. I know not where to turn. My vision has been stunted and maimed. I fear.

I pray to God/Goddess, where else can I turn if not to you. You have redeemed me, you have breathed the breath of life into my body. Please help me find the way towards healing for I am lost. The maze has trapped me. I am forsaken in darkness, my strength has been taken from me, I am downtrodden, I am forlorn, I am trapped in the darkness of suffering. I call out to you God/Goddess, renew my spirit so that I may take awe in your beauty. Renew my spirit so that I may find that the pathway towards you is paved with light and love and compassion.

I pray, renew my spirit so that I may walk in Your Light, so that I may follow Your Path, so that I may Know and Embody Your Truth and Your Eternal Blessing. Holy Goddess/God, renew my spirit that has waned and died away so that I may walk beside you, embracing the Vision of your Compassion and of your Healing.

Renew my Spirit so that I may know the Joy of Forgiveness and the subsequent Redemption. Clear my eyes so that I may bask in awe at the beauty of your Loving Tenderness. I am lost. I have lost my vision of your way. Please, take my hand and guide me back so that I may know, so that I may return to your Holy Blessing.

Oh, God/Goddess, I cry out to you in my pain and in my agony. I know not where to turn to. My head is towards the ground. I cannot see your Ways though I know that only yesterday I walked them. Oh, God/Goddess, my home, my body has turned against me, it has lashed out at me in fury and in fire and I am small, I am crippled, I am stunted and maimed, deaf and dumb before the assaults and afflictions that are upon me. I know not why this is my lot, I beg to be redeemed for my spirit is in flames and my soul is in constant flight and desperation. I am chained. I am shackled. How can I pray to you, how can I walk in your ways, with this affliction holding me in the bowels of the earth, murdered before you.

I am slain. I am divided. I lay broken before you and you do not hear my cries? I call out to you and you deafen your ear?

I call out to you. My hand is raised. My soul is above my body, I cry out in desperation and in terror. Help me heal myself, dear Lord. Guide my hand so that I may become WHOLE.

 Last night while stubbornly trying to turn the knob to my door I learned that I can pass through doors and walls as though they were not there. I could not understand why the door would not open, maybe so that I would finally have the guts to try another way. So, I tried and I passed through the door as though there was nothing before me but open space. So, so much for doors. Maybe from now on doors are there just as symbols of my fears. They are there to teach me and to encourage me to pass through them harmlessly and effortlessly.
I also learned last night that I am afraid of leaving my body. The fear is very real. I was afraid of not being able to find my way back to my body, of meeting obstacles along the way that would harm me and block me from returning to the physical safety that my body grants me in this physical world. Whether this is a fear that like the door I will learn to pass through I do not know. Maybe initiations into this 'other' world will continue, maybe not. I am not particularly eager to learn this aspect of-  i don't even know what to call it-, though all my life i have had knowledge of it and have wanted to be initiated into it. I am not sure what makes me ready for it now, I only know that it is happening.
What else have I learned. I learned that men are intimidated by women that are more intelligent then them or that are highly knowledgeable of the feminine powers. These powers are not uniquely feminine at all as there are men that are aware of them and using them and through-out history have been what we called "wizards". Still, the majority apparently are afraid of the so called 'female' powers and thus the witch-hunts. In Islam the fear of the female is so profound that the subjugation and oppression of the female is of the order and law of the time.
I learned last night that I am afraid of flying. Maybe a broomstick would make flying feel more secure for me. Though, unlike women in the past,  I have no special attachment to a broomstick, in fact I do not have a broomstick at all. Maybe a carpet would give me the security that I need? I have a little carpet that I bought from a craftsy store a while back in Newtonville. I wonder if that might help. I must admit that it does not look particularly magical but looks are not what matter, right?
So, I am afraid of flying. Last night, instead of flying or floating out of my room, I scaled the walls. I guess something like spider-man only that I did not have webs. What I did discover is that using some-kind of doughy material which wasn't clay or play dough but something similar to them in make-up, helped me stick to the walls. I used this play dough -like material to climb the wall and ceiling of my room. Finally I reached the door and that is when I returned to normal upright position and persisted on trying to turn the door knob. After numerous failed attempts I gave up and decided that I have no choice but to test the waters. Thus I learned that I can pass through doors and I assume walls with no trouble at all. Door-knobs and doors belong to the physical world only.
Regarding the doughy material, I find it funny that I needed to use that but I guess that beginners do need some props from the physical world before they gain the confidence to just let go. I must say that I feel far away from being able to fly into the night to meet my fellow travelers in the trees. I really have no such desire. I would much prefer to have a good night of sleep. Life has and continues to teach me that I am not in control and that I have to follow whatever destiny is mine with love and appreciation for the journey. So, if I find myself sometime soon, sitting (i hope not sitting, that would be painful for me or maybe it would not??) floating or standing on the branch of a tree consorting with other creatures who like me, have by no choice of their own discovered that they possess these very strange though recognized abilities, then I will laugh at the absurdity of all of this. Others might call it a cackle but I know for certain that I am a good witch so the word cackle does not seem appropriate to me. I am thankful that the witch hunts have ended years ago. The idea of being hung by my hair and burnt alive does not thrill me, though compared to PN, how horrible could a torture that ends withing a few hours or a few days be?

Good Luck,
from a newly initiated witch

I am ready. I am ready to embark on a new journey. Maybe, I am thinking to myself, that if I call myself a writer i will eventually believe my own words, and i will write, and isn't it true that a writer is someone who writes.
The only person that I need to convince here is myself. If I say it enough times, I will believe it. Believing it will make it happen. From now on i am a writer.

Having agreed with myself, now I can begin.

I am embarking on a new journey. There is no airplane, no boat, no means of physical transportation. What I am using is only my heart and no one can question the power or force of that.

I understand and can commit to the understanding that there may be times that I will wish that I had chosen differently, there may be times that I wish that I had had better luck in certain areas. I give you the ticket, it is in your hands now, and together we board this passageway. Romance. No, not this time. Seduction, no, not on this ship. How about, some dance, something elusive, yes's and no's and maybe's thrown around like petals on a treasure hunt. No, not for me. I have had enough of these. Then, what? True Love. Don't you think that that just might be a little much for you. To venture out onto such a journey. And injured still.

Yes, this is where I am heading for. Yes, these are the roads that I travel. I have plucked enough dandelions and wished enough dreams for a city of twelve year-old girls.

I am no longer budding. My breasts are full-blown. Pretty balloons of any color that you wish them to be. They are real. I have grown them tenderly with love since a very young age. At night I hold on to them, they are mine.

I won't be journeying alone this time. That is precisely the essence of it all. I am giving up something that I have cherished even when cherishing it meant crying out and praying with tears for something, for someone to fill in the gap of loneliness. I am handing it in, giving it up. And I am doing all of this with a smile. And with some indian food in my gut holding me back.

Surrender. Of course this is about surrender. But, nowadays, surrender is easy, have i not spent years, decades, life-times surrendering my self to pain...

To surrender myself to love, should not be harder. No, it will not be harder. And if there will be fear, it will be of a different sort. A sort that i would prefer not to conceive of but that I know is there, for me, for all of us.

So, before I meet you tomorrow, surrendering to you own need, remember that you chose how and where and when and why and that there is no going back...

Once you begin, it continues with a volition all of its own. And if you think that you will be able to make sense of it all, as you are swept into it, remember that true writers are written by their books and not the opposite.

It is your very words that will create the reality that you will live in. And needless to say, don't deceive yourself by thinking that because you are the one writing that you can control the situation.

Surrender means surrender. And because your life has steered itself to hell and back, maybe you are finally ready to accept the truth about love:::

And so tomorrow I will pin my hair up exactly to make me look young and innocent and I will meet you, knowing that you too are ready to hold my hand into everything that we cannot as yet conceive and may be never will be able to.

Stay tuned for the first episode of  "I don't know if I am dealing well with my life or if I have lost it."

Wigs
Make-up
Eye-Lashes

Cheerios
M and M's
lots of medicine bottles

Signs
Pain Attack
VAGINA letters
different colors and sized letters

Stake from outside
chain

SHIT!!!!!!!

Going nutts!!!!

Sleepless
Restless
Rain
Pain
Slices

Julia came for a visit and bought a necklace and requested that I make matching earrings for her. I will do so. Elie also bought a necklace from me too. I have decided that whatever money I make from selling the jewelry that I have made will go towards buying a video-camera so that I can become independent in creating my documentaries. It is nice to have a goal. I should be able to buy a camera within the next few months and then I can start at least with gathering B-roll footage on my own. This is good. As always, my mind is swirling with ideas that I see in pictures. Piecing it all together will be a long process, work that will bear its fruit in due time.
It was very nice to  meet with Julia. It was very nice to meet with Elie. I would like to keep up with my friendships. Tomorrow I hope to work on the casting of my body with Maayan. On Friday I will spend the day with Yaarit. I must immerse myself in normalcy so as to remain connected to life and to creation as opposed to stagnation and fear. Abba. I wake up anxious, Abba's condition is contagious. I have to make sure that I remain unconvinced by the doom that he embodies. I have to remain focused and present and with faith so as to continue embracing life.

I am less inclined to visit my blog,  maybe I have come to desire more privacy in my life. Maybe my creative energies are focused elsewhere. The documentary has a long road to go. I know now what I want and this makes it easier. I have more focus and with the help of Ido more of a sense of direction, movement and possibility. I feel that I can rely on him to be there for me and I value his advice and his mind. He has a creative mind. A sharp mind. And he is prepared to work with me. I have set a date for an interview with Dr. Jameson for Sept 11th. I have yet to set a date with Dr. Volovska. I will have to interview Raquel again. Jim's filming was too dark. Some of the footage that Jim filmed for B-roll is artistic and inspiring. Coonie is beautiful. Siabonga has died. The life that I lived is worlds away now aside from Liat, Deganit and Donna who continue to journey with me, my devoted and beloved sisters. Savta should leave her physical attachment soon. Her spirit has long been in the other realm. She was the first light to merge with me. Soft, tender and welcoming.
Siabonga.
Ido.
I wonder what it all adds up to in the end. I only know that I have to keep on moving with the pain, moving and creating and working towards a greater good. There is only one way to go. I continue to carry the pain with a diligence and with an ache for it to end for once and for all. It never ends, there is no moment of respite. The closest moments to respite are those where I lose my sense of being for a moment because my spirit is fully invested in something else. These moments are few, they are like miniscule illusions that leave me with the prayer that maybe the day will come when I will find freedom from pain. For now, the freedom that I have is the freedom to act, the freedom to create. This is a freedom that I do not take for granted. This is what I drink, eat, dream, pray...that it all add up in the end, that the word get around, that pelvic pain be on the news, in the headlines, on the radio, in women's magazines...
I would like to see it happen in my life-time. I would like to know that I was part of the change. I want to witness the way we chose to liberate our deepest feminine selves. I want to see, feel, breath the change. Whether I will or will not is not for me to know. All I know is that I am driven to tell my story and I believe that this time my story will be heard. I will not die in isolation. I will live in pain and my life will my victory over ignorance, indifference and oppression.
Atara

Apparently I am learning something
Things are adding up
I understand this because I am beginning to grasp how much work I have ahead of me
This is a very good thing
I am devoted
I am committed
I just hope that my family members stay stable enough so that I can go on with my work

So, with the help of the short classes at New TV and the help from Ido I have got some focus and clarity and I know how to progress. I have a lot of transcribing to do and a lot of documentaries to watch. I have informed Abba that he is my apprentice and that we have a lot of work ahead of us. He, of course, complains about everything and anything that demands of him to part from his bed and to disentangle him from his devotion to Depression. He still has a good-enough brain thank god and if strategically courted he usually obliges to being helpful. Thank God because i would want to shoot myself in the head if I had to listen to and transcribe all the interviews, including myself, alone.

I have informed him that he will be joining me for three of the most basic classes at New TV: camera, audio and lighting. I hope that he won't make things too difficult with his typical resistance to anything that involves interacting with others. Now that Ima is on her way to Israel I feel an added responsibility to make sure that Abba function at least minimally. Taking him as my apprentice (we just laughed together when I informed him of his new position) may help us get through the next five weeks relatively unharmed. We should be okay. Hope I have.

So,

Happy Birthday
July 31st, 1974
You made it alive
Being pulled out of my cozy me into those sharp blazing lights and those strange noises was a terrifying shock
I was totally unprepared
There were no warnings

But, I like my Mom
So, I survived

And she clearly liked me
So,  I did okay

And then I met my Dad
And I liked him too
Especially his mustache

So, I figured that I will hang around

And, here I am

Still kickin (no kicking, absolutely no kicking for me, that is what got me in trouble in the first place with this PN mess)

Happy Birthday
Birthday Girl

I am here for you

Love,

Atara

legs spread open, knife each side, being holds ripped head high with hands upwards, head looking down horror at knives

do to

dark

light

white

black

do to

and wait


head in hands

hands hold head up high

hands dislodge head

head in horror

knives right

knives left

legs spread open

wide open

do to

do to

and wait


yes

can do

knife
each side
left
right
right
left
head in hands
looking down
horror
knives

do
what do to
to what do
do to what
want to do
do what want
do to

do to

found

do to

that is it

do to

do to

do to

wait

light vs. dark
the contrast
curl up into your arms
shield yourself
light
dark
only
you and them
left to express
what the remains are

where there is no other color
black white
dark light
white black
light dark

separate

then

wait

until

it

happens

and witness

it

Depression
Alone
Out on the streets
disabled
can i be someone's pet?
i am affectionate and loving
what a sad thought
and funny too

grief

loss

depression

fears

anxiety

insomnia

desperation

negative negative negative

my body hurts

get me out of it

i want a new body

every minute minute minute

insomnia no sleep no peace

didn't send in any writing

pathetic, hate the subject

want to throw PN up

The Subject

Subjugated to this till death do us part

death do us part!!!

Yes! Something to look forward to!

come death, come

take me away into your loving arms

so many years till that is gonna happen

burning burning vagina all the time all day long

great awesome life, uh -huh

can i drown my head just for a night

shut the signals down!

did you hear me? I said shut the signals down!!!

what's she talking about

she's talking about the signals, shut them up already!

mam, i don't got no machine that can do that

what? well, then get off of your lazy ass and create that machine fast

get those signals shut down now, i'm telling you

you don't want to see no daughter of mine splattered down there now, do you?

that won't be a pretty sight now, will it?

no maam, that won't be no pretty sight

I will get  to work

you better get to work or there won't be no dinner waiting for you

and tell those boys to put their shovels away

she ain't jumping off no building tonight, no she ain't

but you stop looking at me now with those beetle eyes of yours and start working on that signal machine

i will be damned. they know how to make signals talk through the air but they don't know how to shut down my baby's signals that are right here, right here in this little brain of hers

ain't no sense in this world

no, there ain't no sense in this world at all

and i'll tell you why there ain't no sense around here

its cuz the signals they got running around are wired to that hanging thing attached to where we got our 'down there'

the wiring is off, did you hear me, mister

i said fix that wiring in her head and tell it to stop going to the wrong places, you just get it to shut right up and fast, did you hear me straight or what?

And tell those men down there to put their shovels away. i made blueberry pie and she ain't gonna go when there is blueberry pie on my table. she know i made it for her.

I got very anxious today before going to my private water-coloring lesson. In order to get to my teacher's house I have to walk the way that I walked the first year here when I was at my worst, lugging my tormented body to physical therapy at Marathon Sports in Newton Corner. I trudged my way through the snow and slush and made my way through the winter into spring. Then I was told to do Botox and my descent into the Underworld began anew. I lost all the progress that I had scraped out of God's frozen ear. I lost it all, again. And went under, suffocating under cement, turning into molten tar. And still I watched my body walk to Marathon Sports, my brain focused on high buildings, images of razor blades and bodies of water that could smother the pain for once and for all into nothing raping my mind.

My anxiety. Today I crawled back into bed an hour before I had to go. I wanted to face the wall and to not leave my bed or my bedroom.

I went. I went to paint with water-colors. In the Spring of that year I started taking water-coloring classes at the New Art Centre in Newtonville. I discovered that I could stand for the three hour class and that I could paint lying down in my room. I discovered that I could paint. I realized that I had talent. I was mystified by the birds of many colors that appeared on my papers. I had gained something. The birds were a sign of progress, of life and of hope. Then I had Botox. For the second time, life and hope disappeared and sirens choked the darkness. I rocked my body back and forth on the floor of my room. I could no longer go to Micheal Milbourn's water-coloring class. I could no longer stand for three hours or for two or hours or for one hour. I could no longer schedule anything. My body caved into torment. My mind caved into torment. Windows were to jump out of. Ponds were to jump into. Tall buildings were magnets to my mind. Pills. Poisonous mushrooms, berries and back to pills.

I don't want to remember. I try hard to forget. I want to be present today, not jarred into the past. I don't want to relive it.

I walked through, past and into...

And once I reached my teacher's house and started painting I was here again.

I lost so much breath today.

And I gained two fish and a lot of homework; many more fish to paint.
Next week I will brave the way again.
Something good will come out of all of this.

I am sure.

the sun burns me

inside

i spread my legs

to accept

my self

Before me

i see

pictures that i have taken

dolls bleeding from their eyes

this is me

i can no longer hide

behind a pretty

aging

face

i have to let it out

all the blood that never spilled

it's time to stuff the fear into what it belongs

and to show

it all

to anyone

who wants to see

what it really feels like

the true face

the true face

behind this silent deadly monster

its time

even if it claws through minds

everyone has their destiny

mine happens to be real ugly to look at

and as true

as the guilt you felt

with the first lie that you ever told

i follow one

only one

from her i learn

how she wants me

to love

her

lonely goddess

collect your tears

they are diamonds in the night

they will be stolen and sold

collect them quick

if they find them

they will take you hostage

and make you cry

and they will laugh

they will sell your tears for money

they will sell your tears for power


Collect your tears
hide away
in the distant caves
if you must cry

make sure they never see
if they see
they will take your sisters hostage too
and they will laugh as they cry

they will laugh

as they die

maybe i have finally understood

that i can conquer my own fears

in the act of surrendering

i accept

your divinity

i accept your order

and your command

over me

i accept

i surrender

to you


no longer to them


but to you


and finally

i become your

apprentice

Goddess


to you i

will

i will

i will

my own surrender

i have to listen better

i want to listen better

i want to know you

i want to learn you

i want to understand you

the way

that no man ever took the time to do

i don't want to be like them

i want to know you the way that i love to know

with patience and curiosity

i want to be taken in by you

and will you please lead me?

i am willing to come, knowing nothing

knowing only that you

are the lover

the only lover that i ever had

that i am the only lover that you have ever wanted

teach me, please

how to seep like honey into you

how to flow like water into you

teach me

please

what it feels like to

know

you

the way

that you

have always

wanted to be known

there was blood on that beach

did you see it leak into the ocean?

the moon witnessed it all

the moon knows all the secrets

she watched me run

my arms wide

my legs like wings

carrying me through waters and darkness and moon-light

and the love

women-love

my two loves were with me

dancing the dance of gratitude and joy with my body


you must have seen the blood there

the ocean swept it up into itself

you must have seen it

the moon witnessed it all

one day it will

it will

split open and that blood will cover it all
even the ocean

will

turn

red

Wow, So I have my period and I am feeling good. The sun is shining.



underneath the vines
intertwined
like the curls
the tight curls that shaded me
down there
down where
that opening


that men were always trying to get into
fighting to get into
as though the uglier that they were
as though the cruder that they were
as though the more impatient that they were
the better their chances to



enter



petals and soft
your eye-lashes kiss flowers
your curls have swum in ponds
water and earth and the soft smell of your familiar joy

i know you
i know you when you are peaceful
when you are happy, with me

i know you


their moist invasions
don't thrill you

there is nothing there
in the way
they enter


they slam into flowers
indifferent to the petals that scatter
and all that shaded beauty melts into the scorching sun
and you are gone



just another that tried to enter



this time
i am in love

this time i know
how precious you are
this time
i know exactly how i want to be made love to

i know how
i see you
each petal a doorway into your breath
your truth
your essence, open before me

maybe, i finally understand you
the way that i understood you

before i let them in
and thought that they were the ones that would teach me who you are,
what i am



this time i know
that your petals are the butterflies
the eye-lashes
the sand buckets
red and green and yellow

with shovels
that build castles
and once again
and each time
watch
as the ocean wipes them back into its self

that is the way
that i will take you
into me

sand castles

with petals as shovels

and oceans

i carry you away

way

there is a way

this time

i will watch as the ocean surrenders to the sand castle

and i will wonder

how i ever saw it the other way around

this time

i know the way

my way

Today we filmed Raquel. It was a very good interview. Jim says that he wants to film a few more people and then he thinks that we should put the documentary together and send it out to the world. So, I have to be precise about who I interview and what message I want to get across. I also will begin taking classes at New TV and may buy myself a camera so that I can start filming on my own. I have a lot to learn and I can't be dependent on other camera-men forever, not if I plan on creating documentaries long-term. And that I do. Chronic documentaries may be my new condition. And it doesn't hurt!!! Amazing!

Tomorrow we will have the second part of the Art Therapy Workshop. I am sure that it will be good. And tomorrow I begin a new round of physical therapy. New hands up my vagina. Yahoo!

I would like to interview Dr. Volovska about PN and I would like to interview Dr. Jameson. I will go in tomorrow to set appointments with them. I doubt that Dr. Volovska will be able to. But maybe Dr. Jameson will. I would love to have him in the documentary. His thoughtfulness and insight would add another level to it.

I could go on forever, interviewing women. Knowing that Jim wants us to start editing and to add only a few more interviews is good in a way. It forces me to focus, one thing at a time, instead of thinking in series and projects that twine into other projects. It is good. It is a challenge. I have a lot to learn and I believe that our work will leave an impact.

I have my period. I am okay today. Hard times in every day. But doing okay. It is exciting to think about piecing something together and letting it free. I started working a year ago with Jeremy. Then for a long time I had no idea how to continue. Life was such a struggle to survive, I did not know where or what I was moving towards. Today things are much clearer, still hard, still frightening at times, but I can see the next step more clearly. That is good.

Thank you Jim for working with me on this! We have been moving along quickly. In two weeks we will interview Pat. And then we shall see....

Love,
Atara

I must be like one of the kittens or birds that I tried to heal but I am not sure which one. No, I am not like them. Their suffering was shorter I believe. They either died or lived. They struggled towards life or let go into death. This is so different. That is why it is so much easier for others not to hear. No one wants to know the truth. No one wants to understand that hell is a part of life. No one wants to have to feel that vulnerable, that insecure, that terrified, that desperate, that tortured.

We are left with our own destiny and with each other, determined to hold onto the strings of our lives, determined to believe that we too can weave a beautiful tapestry out of what is left of us. I will believe this until the end. I will believe this through the nights of senselessness and longing. I will believe this over and over and again and again even as I lay here stranded, my wounds drenched and pus-ridden, my insides moss-ridden and sharp...I know that I belong to this world, if only to prove it to myself that I am worthy of the blessings that it holds for me so close to its bosom, holding me up to where milk and honey flow so that I will yet know for certain that every bit of suffering was worth the price I had to pay. I hold on, I know this to be true. Suffering has taught me this.

Beauty.

Beauty.

Beauty.

is always so near

beckoning me

and i

embrace it with a ferocity that creates more of it

right, underneath, right through the warmth of my embrace

how can i give in

when i know how much lies in the earth

just waiting,

just waiting for the warm tender rays

magical wands that pull flowers

of all colors and shapes

out of

all of this

messiness


And i continue to amaze my self
in how much pleasure and delight and joy
my soul is bound to

this is what suffering has done
it has brought truth and beauty
dancers of my destiny
it has brought them to me
devoted companions that stay
warm and luscious, sensual and promising
 while suffering chisels uselessly through my cells
beauty remains, adoring sister
whispering to me "the flowers are growing now"
"the colors will be magic"
"you will dance to the beauty that you will recognize"
"the sun will embrace you and darken you"
"the wounds will once again quiet down"
"wait, sister, wait, it is happening now, soon sister, sister, very soon you will see it, you will feel it all again"

And I imagine the nights that I spent with my blond-haired, blue-eyed sister and how I took for granted that the next day would be sweet like the day that just rolled away. And I miss that so much. Sister, you are so far away now. Sister, I carry you inside my broken body now. I miss you. I want to go back to when my body was what it used to be.

And beauty sits by my side. She is no longer scared at all by suffering. She watches it. She hears its senselessness. But more then that She sings to me of colors and flowers and breasts and vaginas and thighs, warm thighs spread wide open, beckoning a lover....

"This is my sister", she says to the lover. She is clothed. I am the one soft in my nudity. "This is my sister", she whispers to the lover who is approaching me, "She is ready. She knows it all now. She is open. Take her into you and love her. She is ready for your passion. Delight in her."

And as I lay there, she turns. I tilt my head to grasp what she is looking towards. And there, before my eyes, I recognize all of my sisters, together, bending towards me. There is Passion. How I missed her. There is Love. She never left my side. And Compassion. Her gentle clothes are torn and dirtied. A soft light shines through the tears. It is the light of her body. I can see her angel beating its wings against her skin. I have learned so much from Compassion. She has been my most devoted friend. She has taught me healing. And then there is Determination and Resilience and Laughter. And they all carry their small musical instruments that they themselves have made. And Creativity smiles at me and blesses me with her warmth and her wisdom.

They are singing. They are singing.

As I take my lover into me. As I accept you, they sway and turn to greet Life. And as Life walks toward us, tired and uncertain, desperate and determined...beauty rises in embrace towards her haggled figure and She is transformed into

You and Me

Together

How I longed for you

And how you embraced all of me, suffering and all my sisters.

I love you.

The weather affects my pain level. This rainy, sticky, moist, grey yuckiness is what my body is feeling like now. I wonder if along with the earth, my body swells too, taking in the moistness, bloating with rains. The surgeon's scalpels have been scraping, slicing through my vaginal walls and deeper through my cervix all night. I feel like a rag, a damp, aching rag of a human body.
The days of warmth and sunshine were a haven and a heaven for my body. I almost felt great, I almost believed that the wound had healed and that I could march back into life with my healed and gracious body. And then the rain came and stayed and poured down and the earth kept swelling and swelling and my aching, tired body once again surrendered to the inevitable cruelty that it had escaped from for five whole days of delight.
Sleep did not come tonight. Chopped, chiseled, sliced, diced. If my body would bleed, there would be a deep puddle of dark red underneath me now. My body doesn't bleed, it keeps its suffering to itself, sharing its fate only with me.
What is left for me to do but to wait and to know that the sun will come back out, that my earth will heave and sigh underneath its warm and sensual arrival. That the plants whose flowers have been pounded away by the torrents will grow new ones. That my body will be joyful again and that it will sing again to me the way it did only a few days ago. It will once again tell me that there is so much hope for me and that there is so much beauty awaiting to unveil itself to me. I will once again believe it and I will once again feel the blessings bestowed upon me.
What else can I do, but relish, remember, give praise to those moments that now feel so foreign. And how quick the change is, like a cruel transformation from butterfly back to bug.
The knife is sharp, lodged deep inside. I imagine my legs, open, wide open with a beautiful tulip, open, wide open where my vagina is. These are the paintings that I want to paint. Bodies, open, wide open and blossoming. These are the images that help me make my way through the nights that feel  like a fight and a graveyard full of losses.
Nights of restorative sleep are for the angels. I am flesh, blood, nerves and knives.

Atara

It has been a blessed four to five days. My pain level has been low, I am smiling, my body is joyous, my gardens are growing, changing...just added sharp pink petunias to the purples and oranges and what a difference they made. The gardens look like gardens! What one color can do. These days are beautiful. Please remember them as you savor them now. Remember how real they are so that when the pain takes over you will not let go into hopelessness. Remember the joy.

Dear Atara,
I spent yesterday at the beautiful Cemetery which is like a nature reserve in Newton. Jim took me there to do some B-role for the documentaries. Jim is great. He has a good eye and an artistic mind. I loved the day. I ended up staying at the cemetery until the evening because I met the most beautiful and sweet baby raccoon. I watched it for hours until we finally got comfortable with each other. I am not sure who trusted whom first. It is possible that I was more timid then necessary but I was also the one who made the first move!! Touching the little fur-ball was a bit of an ecstatic experience. Oh, feeling him allow me to touch him was exhilirating. It was like taking our love to the next level! I held the gorgeous fluff ball and he let me hold him. He even enjoyed the way that I touched him. When I massaged him underneath his little chin the way that I used to do to Siabonga, he picked his little head up further towards me. He liked it!!! Oh, I fell totally and completely in love. I was ready to adopt him only that coonie was not happy at all about my trying to get him into a box. No, he got pretty stressed out by that and he might have lost faith in me because after that he escaped up the tree and though I could still see a little ball of fur I knew that I would not be close enough to see his eyes that day.
So, I went home and read up on raccoons and learned that what I thought was most likely true. He was probably lost or abandoned. Racoons stay with their mother and litter for the first year of their life. He was all alone and at times looked quite distressed, especially when he was trying to move from one place to the next in order to drink some water from the pond. I went back today with some blueberries and cottage cheese and called and searched for him but he was nowhere in stght. At first I felt a sense of loss but then I accepted that I had reveled in delight one full day and that that is a blessing to be thankful for. And I lay down on the grass in the same place where I was yesterday and enjoyed the day. I just hope that either his mother found him or that he found a new haven nearby.
I will absolutely look for him again. I feel that that space is ours. The memory of him will forever be there, waiting for me. I saw a baby rabbit too, yesterday and today. And so many frogs that make a deep vibrating sound that penetrates the earth and my body. Nature. Nature. Nature heals. It heals. Nature heals.
My heart was aching from having to say goodbye to the man that I had spent the last two months with. I knew that we had to continue on our own paths but the separation was painful. And then Jim brought me to the Cemetery and my soul refilled itself and life beckoned me. And while I told Jim about Africa and about how nature speaks directly to the soul there I saw a tiny tail hanging down from a high branch and then I made out the tiny body of a baby racoon. The night before I had seen two adult raccoons and though my soul was heavy and my heart forlorn I cried out to them "You are so beautiful." Their peering eyes touched me deeply and I wished to myself to find a baby raccoon the way that I used to find baby kittens in Israel. And then the following day I met coonie. And he was as beautiful as any baby piece of fur could be. And though at first I was afraid him I learned that he was a very gentle creature and that he just wanted some warmth and comfort just like myself.
I was able to let go of Mark with the help of all that love in my heart that coonie brought out. I recognized how true and important it is to let things that need to end end so that life can continue its dialogue with us in all its fullness.
We got Him on Video!!! This documentary will be a beauty. I am starting to believe!!!

Dear Atara,
So, I am trying to calm down, to keep my frustrations at bay and to stay focused. I was ambushed with exhaustion yesterday and today. It is a heavy weight that leaves me in bed feeling guilty and useless. Adding the guilt and the feelings of being valueless sure help me. I did manage to make jewelry and this was one of the goals that I set for myself. I am making jewelry now with the hope of selling it so that I will be able to pay for private lessons in painting. I want to study privately with my water-coloring teacher and with my new acrylic/oil painting teacher. I have come to the understanding that I have potential and that it is time to invest more seriously in that potential so as to take my self a step further into expression and art. I can see the progress that I have made just in the few classes that I have taken till now and I want to continue progressing. So, I have to make some money so as to be able to take private classes with two amazing teachers and artists this summer. Encountering good teachers is a gift that I am taking seriously. Thank God I am physically able to paint. Thank God it is an art-form that is done standing upright! And missing out on learning from artists who inspire me would be foolishness. I have also met a wonderful jewelry teacher and I intend on continuing taking classes with her. Good teachers are blessings on one's path. And art helps me cope, helps me survive, helps me come face to face with my passions. So, I intend on going deeper, diving in and I hope that it will sustain me and bring me joy.
Partaking in the group therapy for artists that have suffered from trauma has helped me put My Art in the forefront of my mind. It has helped me understand the power and the gratitude that I have access to. And so I pray to continue to embrace it and to continue to reap insight and wisdom into the pathways to healing that it carves out for me to follow.

Love, Atara
Good Luck on your Journey

Somehow, I am surviving this period along with the hemorrhoids without any pot. Today was Open Arts Studio and I walked forever with Ima and Bella and got some ideas. I want to make art with vaginas and fabrics and ribbons and possibly pictures of dolls...
I would like to write an article for the Newton Tab. And an article about Pain and Art.
I have collected over 70 signatures for the petition. I could go on and on collecting but have decided to limit myself to 100 signatures. I know myself and I know that I can't allow myself to take all the responsibility for this. I have to work on letting go because more and more I am feeling frustrated with how slowly things are moving. I think that going deeper into my art-work can help me. Incorporating my photography and painting and finding my artist's way to express my feelings will help me. One day, maybe my art will speak to a larger audience. The board meeting at V-Matters was frustrating for me. Everything feels to be moving so slowly, sometimes I feel that we are just pushing our aching bodies into steel walls and that we are heading nowhere, going around in circles, around ourselves. Does it really matter how many signatures I get? And if I got 1000 signatures would the Harvard Men re-think their thoughts? And none of this will change anything for me but I see no other way to live. My mind is always churning, always scrambling in and out of ideas, trying to believe that things will change.

I am exhausted from all the walking that I did today but pleased to have the pictures of the art that I saw in my mind. My vagina, deep inside, is burning. What is new? And as for my sexuality and my sensuality and men, I try to keep that out of here. Anyway, frustration can explain what I feel in that territory as well.

I met some sweet black children (i know that black isn't pc but black is beautiful and i am brown). I played and talked to them and they showed me the nests that they were building for their dolls. Five siblings, one mother and three fathers. I liked them a lot. I can feel emotional need and I love being with children that way, just Being with them is fulfilling for me and for them. I hope to see them some-more this summer when they play outdoors on warm days. I miss children and I especially miss those children whose hearts are hungry for attention and love. I always have some to give them. And they give so much in return.

Nests. Building nests for their dolls out of grass. And they put rolled dollar bills in the nests as well.

I would like to write an article to the Newton Tab soon.

And to play around on video, to put up on face book.

Boy do I wish that I did not suffer from this.
But, boy am I learning to suffer gracefully as though this was my calling.
What a heavy crucifix to carry. What an invisible yoke it is. Clawing its will into me, I defeat it. Again, again and again. Every living minute of my day and of my night, I defeat it by saying yes to life, yes to creativity, yes to interaction, yes to faith...and I carry on. Oh, how lucky are those that do not carry this agony in their bodies. How lucky are those artists that create with agile comfortable bodies and joy in their hearts.

My life is always double-edged, always hurting, always bearing... and often my smile is still wider then everyone else's and my warmth still encompasses many. How is this so? I suppose because I believe that the yoke that I carry is mine. I own it. I have learned to accept it, to come to psychological peace with it. Not complete peace. But some peace.
And so I think to myself, "how i wish that i could be an artist, to have that freedom in my body so that i could create without having the crush bear down on me and send me to my bed....how good i could become...And if there is a feeling of loss I accept it and remind myself that for me it will be art, art and pain together. And that my message will be different, unique. It will touch different people. And my search and my statement and my prayer and my hope will be unique too. And that I will find my voice.

My vaginal voice. Soft? Sweet? Courageous? Outspoken? Embarrassing? Shocking? Thought-provoking? Where do I find it? How do I begin to search for it.

Love,
Atara

Shabbat is on its way and I wanted to go to Kabbalat Shabbat but here I am, still connected to the computer. My hemorrhoids are back. Thank you Botox for nearly killing me and for leaving me the gift of my life.

The Art Therapy Workshop went very well. We were rushed for time and I had to keep track of our time to the minutes and I succeeded in doing so. I felt a bit controlling but it was important to stay on track and to have time to create and re-create, to journal and then to share. All the while Mary Frances was filming us. Hopefully we will have a continuation of this workshop within no more then a month. I feel very connected to my piece of art-work and want to continue exploring it. I might just do my journaling right here, straight into my blog.

I have taken pictures of my art-work from many different angles and distances and I have focused on different parts of it. I feel that it expresses a tremendous amount for me and I do look forward to venturing into it through writing. Maybe I will post a picture here and then write about each particular picture. I like that idea. It is a good way to share with others my work.

In the meantime I am doing okay. My mind is spinning with a lot of ideas. And there is so much work to do. Sometimes it feels so large that it is untouchable, impenetrable and immovable but because I know that I have made progress and have been able to re-create life for myself I know that just because things feel immovable absolutely does not mean that this is so. So, I continue to work and to live and one day in this life-time I will see the changes.

Pudendal Neuralgia, Vulvodynia, Vestibulitis and Interstitial Cystitis WILL BE WELL-KNOWN conditions. Every doctor and gynecologist will have heard of them. This is in my head and it will become a reality.

Over my dead body will we be denied. Harvard Medical School you will oblige. If you don't then FIRE will come. I swear. The suffering WILL END. And WOMEN WILL SPEAK UP and DEMAND to get the HEALTH-CARE THAT WE NEED.

Dressing the trees as women, after-all they are women and they need our help just as we need theirs. Tomorrow is support group. Sunday is workshop day! Interviewed Dr. Stewart. Going to get petition going. The Vagina Military is forming. Monologues aren't enough. We need a military now. Now or never and it is going to be now. We will form a force and over my dead body will our little "women's issues" continue to be treated as god-damn yeast infections. These things should have been documented and studied 300 years ago. I still can't wrap my head around the treatment of women. CAN'T GET IT, REFUSE TO GET IT, WILL NOT GET IT UNTIL IT IS IN YOUR GOD-DAMN TEXTBOOKS AND IN YOUR GOD-DAMN CURRICULA  AND YOUR GOD-DAMN EXAMINATION PAPERS AND IN YOUR GOD-DAMN HEAD MEMORIZED STUDIED AND FUCKING RESEARCHED BY ALL OF YOU!
Nope don't get it. Won't get it. Can't get it. And you want to tell me that this has nothing to do with discrimination against women. I will eat your head off if you dare. Doormats. That is what we are. Doormats, cattle, sex-slaves,....little walking complaining yeast infections in your god-damn head. The patriarchy will crumble. You wait and see. The patriarchy will be shamed. You wait and see.

"It is in your head" will mean something very different.

The Vagina Military
Terminology: It is in your head
Translation: It will be in your head forever once we are through with you. Hope that we don't mean a bullet.

I am very angry inside but I don't want to write about it to my blog because it has to do with my family. All I can say is that family members can be the cruelest least compassionate of the lot. I have one like that in mine. He is going to be getting a "it is in your head" if he continues his bullying behaviour.

I believe in the Vagina Military
Till the end, I will believe
And change will come
In my lifetime I will See the change before my eyes and I will know that I am a force in its creation

Reown It. Reclaim It. CUNT. My older brother called me a cunt. I reclaim the word, I will own it.
And I reclaim and reown and transform "It is in your head" also.

"It is in your head"

That will be the first weapon of the Vagina Military
Wait and see
You will get it

A dream too terrible to write about
The type of dream that I want to just forget
But I can't forget it. It was so vivid. I will write it down. I am strong enough now to deal with it. I wish that i could erase it all. But I cannot. What I have left to do is to confront it. I have lived through the worst. What is wrong with a bit more of hell?
My nights are full of terror. Sometimes it is easier not to sleep than to dream what I dream.

She came to us all crying, her eyes horribly swollen and black. Her eyes were closed. She could not see through them. She held her nose, it was all blood. She explained that she had tried to cut her hair but that she had cut too much of it and that she had cut part of her brain stem too. She turned around and we saw the open wound in the back of her head. She cried as she heard from us that it was so, as she had thought that it would be. She would be blind. For many years she would be blind. Possibly her eyesight would return but if it did, it would take many years. "By then my youth will be entirely over."
We all were struck by the horror, each one of us living her pain. There was no sympathy to be given. It was too terrible for words of encouragement or consolation. There was. There is. And it continues.

My God. Where are you hiding? In Spain, sex slavery is in style now. And the young men from France come along together in happy groups. They travel from France to Spain to have some fun with women that are forced to sex slavery.

In Pakistan burning women's faces with acid is a long known tradition.

And there is me.

Abba is paying me five dollars a day for reading the newspaper. He wants me to get educated. He wants me to have the newspaper education. My Mom thinks that this is an important education to have. So, I have begun reading the New York Times. And at night I dream. The articles I read about US are coming up now in my dreams.

I started therapy at the Rape Crisis Centre. Finally I have a space for myself, my uniquely woman-self.

And yesterday I shaved off all of the hair from my vagina. I want to get to know it better and I like it bare for now.

I was afraid that I would hurt myself. That by mistake a part of my vulva would get snagged into the 'epilady.' Or worse that my clitoris would be twisted into it. I was very careful. I pulled my skin, stretched my vulva tight and controlled my epilday well. It was going to be my friend not my foe. It was going to help me get a little closer to my vagina.

My bare and beautiful vagina. I took pictures again.

Our vagina and our brainstem are one. Our 'fight or flight' instincts are gathered there. Our maternal bonds and mating bonds, our sex drive and our response to threat are situated there.

Our vagina's under fire attacks every aspect of our female- being. Our vagina's are under fire and every aspect of our being female is attacked.

My clitoris is safe. My vulva is safe.

Women in Africa, are yours?



I have had enough for now. Maybe my night terror can recede into the background now that I have dismantled it.

Only that I am behind on reading the newspaper. I haven't read yesterdays yet. Should I collect the articles? Should I cut them out and save them?

I know the answer now. Only that I will have to rummage through the garbage...

I want power.

I paint. I write. I do my mosaic work. My father joins me.

I want power. Power to change, to re-organize the world.

Give yourself compassion. You are hurting. Enough for now.

Love,
Atara

Shit shit shit week. Pain. Period. Pudendal Neuralgia. Cold. Grey. Rain. Knives. Can I rip my insides out. Nope. Cannot.

Up and down. And all around. Life with so much pain stinks. My period is over and my body is still screeching. Heeeeeeeeelp!!!!!!!!!!!

Mosaics and me

Mosaics and Me
How are we?

I have my period. Been laying real low since its arrival. The day before her arrival I gave my mosaic workshop and I was in a lot of pain. When night came I was ready to dive into bed with opium up my butt. Augusta slept over. She is the sweetest of souls to have with me on my journey. I am lucky that way, the wonderful women that walk by my side are my blessings. The following morning/afternoon I got my blessed period. No pot. No more panic attacks for me. I want a clear head and I have one. The day befor her arrival (my period from now on has a gender) I was feeling really crappy with pain crawling all over me into lower back and hips. Got through the day teaching and watching the mosaics evolve. Following day, with her arrival, I felt better and began breaking dishes and ceramic candle-holders that I found and enjoying the sun and the beautiful heat. On Shabbat I lay low and most of today I had no motivation to do anything but lie in bed. My body feels exhausted though not in bad pain. The weather sucks, back to low temp. and with the disappearance of the sun my mood has plummeted. It was in the 70's and the 80's all week!!! I was ecstatic, as ecstatic as someone with can be:) Ugh, back to the cold...please pass the sun around this way please!
I have spent the last few hours fiddling with the weebly web-site that Pat has introduced me to. It is quite the discovery. Very good indeed. I will post the pictures from all of our workshops there and will put up times and dates for the up-coming ones as well. And at some point I will also create for myself my own Jewelry web-site.
In the mean time my head continues to swarm itself with ideas. I was very active this week. Unusually so, considering how little I sleep. I must have been running on solar energy. The flowers have not blossomed yet but every day I watch how they grow and their presence delights me. I will post here the pictures of the flowers as I promised that I would in the fall that just passed. Blessings.

My mind is so full of large thoughts that I exhaust myself.
Sun please come back, I miss the way that you make me feel so much.
Love, Atara

Gratitude

Tomorrow we will be having a mosaic workshop here! A spring fling with pots and plates, hammers, tiles, cement and grout! Yeah!! Sandi, Annette, Mary Francis and Augusta will be here joining me for the excitement. This is good and we are going to grow and evolve and.....life is good for the Goddess. There is so much gratitude in my heart. So many times during the day I feel blessed. I feel blessed by the flowers and the sun and the warmth and by my chubby little big-breasted body that is doing so much better than it was last year this time. Psychologically my state of mind is so much healthier. I no longer suffer from the terror of falling back into the pit of tortures. I feel confident in the pain control that my meds are giving me and I no longer have fears about being left without meds and having to kill myself. Thank God!!! I think about last year this time and I see so clearly how much progress we have made. The we is my body, my soul and my mind because really all of us have to be taken care of and all of us have worked so hard together to reach healing and wholeness again. It is true, it is not just a dream that we can be whole while we struggle with chronic pain or illness. I am whole. My spirit compensates for whatever my body struggles with. Lately I have been feeling lucky to be feeling so much gratitude. I know where I could be and I feel lucky for not being there anymore. I feel lucky for knowing and valuing life so profoundly. I see and recognize each flower. I feel the flowers in my soul. I take this Spring as the deepest of blessings. There is so much of life streaming in my veins, pumping through my heart and my creativity like the spring is blooming. The bulbs that I planted last year will soon enchant us with their beauty. I have seen a few cats outside. I miss cats. The sun on my face. The ability to walk. The ability to feel joy, to feel beauty, gratitude.....it is like waterfalls through my soul.

Thank you Life.

Thank you Life.

Thank you Spring Goddess for blessing me.

Thank you. Who, what do I thank for being given another chance at life???

Too many of my brothers and sisters are still where I was.

I never forget them. I never forget the pit that I came out of. I bask in life. 24/7 genital pain is basking in life! If this is not wholeness then what is?

Love,
Atara

Abba helped me today move some of his boxes so that I could have more room around the table in the basement to make my art. It is something. Slow. But progress is made in tiny steps until one day we realize that we are still together, that we still have each other, that love can and does heal and that it is a part of our hearts that we can rekindle and rekindle. That is faith, i guess.

And what is pain?

Pain is the loss of life.

It is the loss of hope and of dreams.

And what is faith.

Faith is the acceptance that we create our lives anew all the time and that it is in our power to live with meaning, joy and beauty by our side forever. Faith is the belief that compassion and creativity will forever merge into life and that we can be the force behind that merging.

And what is God?

Everything together and the way that we choose to weave and build and recreate our lives for each other and for ourselves.


My heart is so wide. I just have to learn more and more how to give the compassion that I have in me back to myself. When I am angry, I give compassion back to myself. When I am frustrated, I give compassion back to myself. When I am scared, I give compassion back to myself.

I thank God-dess daily, hourly for working his/her way through me. I follow the foot-steps and find you right behind me.

Father.

Hello Blog

Dear Diary,

For years and years I had a Diary. All my notebooks are in Israel. Dear Diary I went to the New TV studio and sat in front of the camera and sang and cried and did a bit of what could possibly be called "acting" or more like "writhing" wrapped in a huge black sheet. I could not scream because I had no desire to scare anyone. I really felt no desire to re-enact my pain scenes. I found myself singing and then telling my story about how what kept me alive was the desire to not leave Ima and Abba alone with so much pain, without me. And the tears spilled so naturally. Wonderful waterfalls. The onion that I had brought and chopped up and smothered my fingers with and dabbed my eyeballs in was completely extraneous. My tears came as naturally as spring rains. The story that I told was unplanned and unprepared. The songs that I sang came from the heart. And when I was finished I felt that I had taken another great step towards healing, accepting and towards completing my blessed video on Pudendal Neuralgia and me. Next, I want to film Abba and me walking together and sitting by the pond and Ima and me delighting in the blossoming flowers.
I believe that my video will be powerful and that it will leave an impression. Something to celebrate.

Kisses

My body wants to celebrate

my soul wants love

as does my spirit

my body will have to wait

patiently

until we meet the right man to share all of our selves with

spring

wisdom

water

woman

i  accept

Tomorrow I will be going to NewTV to do some acting. I have to remember to bring an onion with me to induce the flow of tears. I hope that I do not over-dose on PTSD or scare anyone. I hope that it goes well. It will be just me and the cameras. Gonna be interesting, for sure. Augusta and Mary Francis interviewed me last week. They are such spirited young women, felt a very strong connection to them and am very grateful that they have joined my journey here. The genital pain journey. I will upload pictures of the collages that I made. Pat created a web-site for me where I can upload all the art-work that we do together in our workshops. This is exciting! I like the feeling of having things come together, of feeling progress and evolution. And it is nice to have Shabbat to feel this a bit more. Though tomorrow won't be a day of rest, rather a day of drama. A day in the life of me. Purim has been fun, wearing my wigs and going dancing and socializing. Tomorrow night there will be another Purim party. Ah, to have fun, to dance, to socialize...dancing to my body, to the gratitude of feeling okay/safe in my own body again. Dancing to the gratitude of being able to have sexual relations. Dancing to life again.

Even though there are days that are very hard and long nights of complete sleeplessness and then a day of utter exhaustion.... I feel grace in the life that I am able to live. I feel gratitude in the meaning that I can create and in the insight that so much suffering has given me. There are aspects of life that I will never be able to take for granted again; a moment of peace in my body is an eternity of prayers answered; the ability to dance and feel no conscious pain for a few hours is the resurrection of the body that lay severed and derailed; the things that 'normal' people take for granted to me are a celebration of life, a waterfall of grace, redemption, revelation....And so, though my life is hard and my existence within my body is a challenge, my spirit has grown and grown so much further that it encompasses a joy that is my deepest secret. I drink from life with a thirst and a patience. I know the value of every moment of the life that I can live today.

I called the Rape Crisis Centre and will soon have an intake meeting there. I will be given three months of counseling for free. I look forward to this with the hope that I will be able to untangle some of the pain and the fear and the hatred that I carry from the sexual assaults that I experienced while traveling in India, on the Tel-Aviv beach and in the Israeli army. An unwanted penis never entered my blessed vagina. I was attacked on the Tel-Aviv beach and managed to free myself. In the army I was bullied by some of the officers in my platoon. I was the only female among 80 men. It was tiring being hit on by so many men at the same time. But stupider then that, it was psychologically exhausting and spiritually draining to have to deal with their meanness once they understood that I had no intention of responding to their advances. That screwed with my head a lot. There was the ass-hole who picked me up and put me on the table calmly saying to me "How would you feel if I raped you now." There was India.
India. Oh India, how you fucked with my female mind. How you tormented me. And mocked me. And terrified me. And threatened me. And watched me suffer with glee in your eyes. How I screamed and prayed and meditated and conjured in my mind all the meaningful moments of my life in my mind so that you would not be able to take my body or my spirit. What was I? Was I strong? Was I foolish? Was I so naive? I did not know that what did happen could happen. I thought that I was safe. How dangerous could a train-ride with so many passengers be?
I carry it still.
Still, I carry that pain.
I hope that the people at the Rape Crisis Centre will help me see that it was not my fault, that I was not stupid or foolish or naive, that I was me on a train-ride stuck in a small and crowded compartment with a gang of men that wanted to shame me, to rape me, to what?

Will I ever understand what happened there? Will I ever come to terms with the way that I was treated there? Maybe they can help me put in a framework that will make it easier to carry, so that the fear and the anger won't seep into rabied generalizations about "all men."

After India, I was scared of men. So many Israeli men who came near me got the cold shoulder. Whether they deserved it or not, I don't know. Today, I want to know. I want to trust my instincts more. And I want to be wise, even if the truth hurts. I already know pain. I can take it. What I don't want is to lose faith in men in general. I want to know that there are beautiful men. I know that there are and I want to be near them. And to feel grateful that they are in my life.

Like the way I felt when I taught the Buddhist Monks. Protected, safe, respected and deeply valued for being a living being. Thank You Dalai Lama, thank you Yarpeh the monk for helping me find healing in your presence and in your wisdom.

Love,
Atara

time to get working again

time to get working again

it is purim

the jewish holiday of transformation and redemption

the jewish holiday that tells tales of courage and true heroism

it is time to get working again

there is so much work

as my pelvis aches and clammers in discontent

my spirit demands obedience and focus and determination

hello again daughter of the world

welcome back

how i long for you when you are gone

and how i love you




dating, searching for a consort, really confuses the goddess

and the spring hormones do not help her either

she is all over the place

i can barely keep track of her

constantly have to pull her out of trouble

she is flirtatious and mischievous and puts herself in such curious situations

she is always apologizing and thinking that she is creating havoc


i try to hold her gently in my arms
her and the pain
i rock them, together
and pray that they sleep
that they find peace this night

i have so much work to do
and she, she is busy getting into trouble
tearing things apart
digging old bones up and demanding that they be looked st
she fights for justice on other people's lands
and leaves her own land unattended

she is such good soul
such young soul
and i am there, picking up the mess that she leaves behind
as she storms through yet another tale of justice, betrayal and inevitable exhaustion

exhaustion settles in, wears her down
and i help her sleep
promising her that we will get better at working together
promising her that we will be okay

and she sleeps in my arms
my child
my self
how foreign this world is to your innocent soul
even today

i love you

Again it is the tears

There is something so lonely about living in my body

The tears

I so much want to celebrate the progress that I have made

I have none to celebrate with

My body wants to feel a man so deeply

As does my spirit

What I feel is violation

All the pain from India and from the army erupted outward

And I realize that I want some help, again, in managing the anger that I have collected along my way, inhabiting my woman's body

The memories from India came storming through and the fear, the terror and the anger made me feel that I no longer want to be embodied

I cried, and this scared my parents

Smoking pot did nothing good for me this time

So much pain came upwards and it was too much for me to bear

Watching porn, abusive, demeaning and frightening

left me feeling so vulnerable

And learning that so many men masturbate to this made me feel sick and hopeless

My sexuality is playful and light and eager and passionate

It is not violent or controlling or mechanical

And its song does not sing for money

In India
my soul was raped
my body was saved

I yelled and yelled and somehow kept them at bay

And then I lay curled in a ball

My female body so much wants to be touched and to be loved by a man

And my soul is weepy and tired from wanting

From not finding what my body begs for

I want to celebrate and here the tears spill

What a strange one i am, writing to my blog the deepest intimacies, sharing the most sacred secret parts of myself

What I want is to celebrate that my body has healed to this point

Where a man can enter me, where I can share the joy of knowing and feeling that I can make love to a man, that my vagina can open itself to a man...

And what I find are tears and tears and more tears

Because once again, I feel their hands grabbing at me, their cold hearted hearts circling me

I am their bait,....

What i want is to love and to share

And what I find is emotional pain instead of joy and celebration

I find more and more emotional pain and loss

I have none to share my joy with

How am i feeling?

I feel sad.

Just plain and simple sad.

I hate when I start hating men.

It only hurts me.

But I do it anyway.

I lose my breath.

I start to hyper-ventilate.

A lot of us have been raped and molested.

Why is America in Denial? Why are men getting away with raping women? In our colleges? hello?

anyone?

i was terrified on a train in india, thought that i would be raped by a gang, shouted and shouted at the top of my lungs

i wasn't raped

then i went to teach english in dharamsala to buddhist monks. being with them and also with the women felt safe.

i could be a naturally sexual human being without being chased and without being followed and withouy being groped and grasped, and having men masturbate in the seat next to me and ...

Transformative Psychology

That is where I came to
smhadi or shamadi

samhadi. smadi. shaminism. pain.

and now transformative psychology.

if we can project our thoughts as fast as lightening

then there is a template

a template of life

that we chose to either honor or dishonor

we are a collective and we chose together

Why are so many men choosing to accept porn?

I have decided that I will not invest my love in a man that watches porn. If he can take his love out of his heart in order to satisfy his penis, then he is a beast

And i choke when i watch porn, i lose my breath, there is so much violence and instead of fighting to stop rape and fighting to help animals you guys are jerking off in front of your computers

Whatever.

No thanks.

I will stay a widow, a sorceress, an old old widow that never bore children cuz the world had become so evil

yes, me only me

I am going to save the world

with all this pain in my ass

I am so tired

I just want to meet someone and i want to love them. It is taking forever. It might never happen. This sucks shit. I might never have kids. You watch porn. I can't be with men. I will hang out with women. In the meantime i will invest my female energy in bringing on the 3rd wave of feminism. All men will stop watching porn and then there will be peace on earth. No, I just want to find one man. One man that is willing to give a chance at loving me. So, that I can receive the chance to love again. But I don't want to invest my emotional energies in loving a man that loves porn. I am against it and that is that . I take my stand. You take yours. We can't be together and I don't want to spend more time with you. I would like to meet a man that does not feel comfortable watching porn because he can see the aggression and the violence in it and that feels wrong to his higher conscience. Simple, huh?

My grandmother didn't particularly like men and that might be an under-statement. She let my boyfriends come in and go out of her house. She never seemed impressed by their existence in my life or by their disappearance from my life.
She saw me when my heart was broken.She watched me when i cried. She told me that i should stop thinking too much when i thought too much. She never encouraged me to marry. She had been married at the age of 12 or 14 to a man older then herself, of course. She is from Yemen. She buried many babies and toddlers there. Her husband died there just before many of the Yemenites were brought to Israel. She had two healthy children, a six year old and a three year old. And she was pregnant. She was a beauty. The type of beauty that every man dreams of holding in his arms. She never re-married. She had to work cleaning bathrooms for years. Then she moved to working in a hospital lab. She was meticulous. Compassionate. So sensitive. And caring. She spoke little. She loved deeply. She was my best friend. She was my angel, my love, my family. She was Israel and the whole life that I lived and chose to live there. Going to Israel at the age of seventeen meant being near my grandmother. I was ready to have that, forever.
Really, my grandmother is my hero.
And  I am her granddaughter.
She loved me through it all. Through the boyfriends that came and went. Through the tears, the heart-breaks, the excitement. She was always there to return to. From Africa, South America, India. From Egypt and Jordan and Greece. From nights in the desert and weeks in Sinai. From Tel-Aviv, the Galil, Haifa....Jerusalem was where my Savta lived and where she was was my home.
She was there when a huge Egyptian worm came out of my butt. I felt the long slither and wondered what kind of food could have slithered like that for so long and when i looked down to see what i saw was a long and brown and squirming worm...

I screamed and ran and jumped around her tiny house shouting "It's a worm. It's a worm. In the toilet. Out of my butt." And flailed my arms up and down, terrified that there were more inside of me just waiting to come out.

My grandmother and I were so different. She was meticulous. She cleaned  till her everything shined. I was messy. Dirty. I brought sand from every desert in Israel into her home. I went to sleep with dirty feet. She woke me up and sent me to the shower. I was physical, she kept her hands to herself. I grabbed her hands and I hugged her and squeezed her until she gave me a little slap. That never stopped me from having my hands all over her. It did not matter how many times she slapped me, my hands were always groping for her. She was quiet. She did not talk about the past. I talked about everything. She did not use the phone much. I spent hours on her tiny kitchen call talking to boyfriends and girlfriends.
We were so similar too. I used to go with her to the shuk, the open market. I would help her carry the bags of fruits and vegetables home. I never saw her walk by a beggar without opening her wallet and giving him a piece of her savings. She was generous and welcoming to guests and to visitors. There were always cookies and fruits. I am the same. She adored babies and small children. A baby could bring the hidden laughter and joy from the crevices of her saddened heart. I love children with a passion and a security that magnetizes them to me and me to them. She was an artist, precise, exact, focused and beautiful. The Challah covers that she sewed were a blessing to the Shabbat table. She was a best friend, a loyal and devoted grandmother, a soul-mate....a stable and constant presence in my life, her granddaughter. I like to think that of all of her grandchildren I lived most with her. I lived with her through many summers. I spent Shabbatot with her, delighting in the food that she cooked and the Yemenite breads that she baked. The cookies and the cakes were there for me to enjoy. I departed from and returned to her home through all my journeys and discoveries. Her home was my home. That was as clear as her windows. I never doubted it. I knew exactly where I belonged. With her, by her side, always.

She taught me love in the simplest of ways. We played love together. Only that she always won. She taught me to accept love. She taught me unconditional love. She taught me patience. She taught me gratitude. She taught me compassion. She tried to teach me to save money. That was a lesson that I was not so good at learning. When I came home with a new skirt or a new blouse, she told me to enjoy it. When I bought her flowers she told me not to waist my money.

Sometimes I felt like we were the same person existing in two separate bodies.

She stayed very calm when i told her about the worm. She went to look. She called my aunt. My aunt explained to me about the different worms. My grandmother flushed the toilet.
It was the same with men. She had a practical eye when it came to them. They come and they go. Like with the worm there is no real reason to get too excited over them. She helped me flush a lot of toilets.

My grandmother and myself, the same soul-spirit projected into bodies that can fly like space-ships into other people's heads. Or hearts. The same soul-spirit inhabiting two separate bodies


Savtah

My Savtah

That was another post. Stoned. Smiling. Sexy. Savvy. Sensual. Serenity. Serendipity. Sex.

Vagina, we should start exercising to the word vagina. Vagina 1, Vagina 2, Vagina 3

Hop one two

Hop two three

We are starting to understand it. There is some research. But very little.
We need help.

We need love.


OP, it slipped out. Another post that just slipped out. By mistake. And it went slipping and sliding and oh how gliding ripping through her vagina and the tissues of her vagina. She resisted him. But he didn't listen. He just went right on doing what he planned on doing. He raped her.

Dandy do. Lets go raping our girls. We are all a bunch of chums and we work together to rape our girls, and it happens a lot in the colleges,

So date rape can lead to nerve damage. The tissues can actually be damaged. She was clenched on the inside like a fist trying to resist him entering. And he was pushing in, harder, slamming into her. So the aggressive undesired entrance of an object into our vaginas can lead to permanent nerve damage. Thank god our bodies know how to heal ourselves but we cannot do it on our own, because we are one body, we are not separated ....

okay, bye

So when will you meet the man of your dreams?

You are 37. You have to be on neuropahic pain medicine. You don't know if you want to have children or whether you can have children.

You might never be able to have your own child. All the dreams of your youth have been devastated. You father just came back from the psychiatric hospital today. You had group therapy for artists. It is good. It is part of what has helped me fight the depression. Seeing that I can get up early, I thought that i would never be able to get up early, I thought that I would never be able to wear my skirts again, i try so hard to forgive, i have to close myself alone in my room today because i feel that i hate them all. And we are all suffering and hurting each other and hurting ourselves. And I thought that I would have to stay in the corner of my room for the rest of my life...... How do we know when to stay quiet after trauma. We want to get the pain out. We don't want it to block us. We want to believe that even with the pain of all the losses and the pain of the physical pain.....

and there are so many of us who are suffering from pain, and doctors don't know about it, why is the female vagina property to men, but men don't take the time to understand this property? Do you women and men not see that we are suffering? You doctors why are you denying our suffering? Brother, why did you agree with Dr. Schmidt the psychiatrist when he told you that he diagnosed me with borderline personality disorder. How is it? Did you all think that I was crazy? That I was being dramatic about something as serious as this. I felt that you did not understand me. I felt judged by you. I often felt hurt by you. But I never doubted your love.
And it was the same with my friends. friends dissappeared like lightening when I most needed the. And there were friends that were by my side through it all. Liat is the angel. She is finally beginning to understand that she has a lot of power. And she is so sweet, she reminds us that our importance is not dependent on the things that we do, but on the essence of our soul. And she waves the soul above my head as though she is hypnotizing me and i see hope, and i see faith. Liat was the last person that I spoke to before I went to swallow all the pills that I did. She had no idea that I was going to try to end it. And she told me that if I would have died it would have been a mistake.
Can somethink like that be a mistake? That a normal healthy beautiful young woman not be able to have sex.....and she is called hysterical or frigid. Thousands of women cannot enjoy sex because they are in pain and they are afraid of telling the men that they love that they are in pain. 
This is something that I don't understand.

There are too many of us dying. There are too many of us crying.

Why is our genital pain not heard?

There are so many of us suffering from this.

Why are we keeping it in silence. Are we guilty of not being real woman. Are we lying when we pretend that we are just like any other women. I am no longer like any other woman. Neither are children that I have suffered abuse at an early age.

How much do I share. How do I uncover.

What can I do to get this read, heard, acknowledged, recognized, understood, researched....

if we won't talk about it

this is the loop

that ends us in the noose

(sorry for spelling mistakes...sorry Mr. Roberts, i really do still know how to spell, that B- that you gave me on my paper ripped my ego apart, to shreds....my father helped me correct all the spelling mistakes)

people are snoring here and i am smoking pot

and if i got away from the russian police than i get away with smoking tonight even if it is just for jun

i would love to make love again

but, love means something different to me today

something that i am not sure that i will eve have, and i don't want anything else

i knew what love was since forever, how come there is so much suffering?

And what can i do to alleviate it?

Wearing my wigs help me. I love being mischevous and I am a major flurt. I flurt with everything, babies woman, trees, starts, prayer-books. flowers and more flowers and this is so romantic and.....i feel all around tired of men.

Many of the men that i have spent my days with have been mostly loving and compassion, no maybe not many maybe only those that i got close to...

but i still haven't found what i am looking for

and my stomach fills itself up with butterflies and spring is on its way and maybe my father will survive....or maybe, what????

wow. stop here. stop now. you don't want to share too much. that was how my last date went. The guy told me what i should say and how i should say things on my next date with another guy.

I was like, oh...your blue eyes.....

what can i say, i guess that all in all i haven't been impressed

But then i know the truth that it all depends on me

that i have to accept it all

that i have to live whole with it

and that that is the best that i can do

So, i am trying hard to believe that i will bring on the 3rd wave of feminism...

And what if i don't go to the gym......I cried when i asked a j-dater if we could walk when we go out for coffee and i told him that i chronic pain  so sitting is hard

I cried when he did not answer my e-mail. Testing the borders is part of coming back to "normalcy". Trauma splits things into parts. It creates a new brain that experiences the trauma everywhere...the anxiety takes over everything

my dad

i am doing better, i had a better start, a lot more faith than he did,,,,,am i kidding myself to think that resurrections can happen in one lifetime.

No, I am not kidding myself. It is true. The resurrection, the rise of the erection can take place in the same lifetime. Only that it is only for men. Women will not be resurrected because they are inferior and therefore it is completely right to beat them and to rape them because they already came here as lesser beings. And when they are raped they become public property. A raped woman will not dare to tell the police that she was raped because then the police will rape her.

I want to cry.

I want to scream.

Oh my god, what has happened to our voice?

How terrifying to think. My grandmother disliked men. She had a deep distaste for them. Though she loved her son deeply and she loved my younger brother very deeply. And she did not mind going to the shuk with me and noticing the men notice me. Really, they were noticing her. She had aged with them and some of them respected her.

Hi Blog

Right now, I am tired but I want to take the time to write about the few wonderful days that I had last week. I feel that it is important, that I owe it to myself and also to those who care about me and feel for me through reading my blog. I am tired now mostly because I took a Benadryl in between morning and night. That was a mistake because I was completely physically out of it all day today. Either Benadryl just before sleep or not at all. I do have to say that I am grateful to Lisa who was the first one to tell me that Benadryl works for sleep. I think that the better sleep is part of what has been keeping my pain levels down and my spirits up. I also know that the activities that I am keeping myself busy with are also a large part of my uplifted spirits. It is not about pushing myself beyond my limits. It is about keeping myself focused on doing advocacy and awareness work. When I am busy with the things that I believe in then I have faith. I have faith that this pain is not for nothing. I keep faith that everything that I went through will serve its higher purpose. And I feel blessed and grateful that I am able enough and healthy enough (in body, mind and soul) to be serving God's/Goddesses' will on this earth. And I can even write to you about Happiness, even about Joy. I spent Thursday last week going to Blick's Art Store and then walking my long way to Mass Ave., to Dorothy's Boutique on 190 Mass Ave in Boston. Ohhhhhh, did I have fun. I tried on wig after wig after wig after wig after wig after wig after wig and one more wig and another wig and oh, yes, that wig too and maybe that color also and oh, I just noticed that one......I imagine that at this point you have learned another thing about me; I love trying on wigs. What greater excuse could I have to do so then that Purim is just around the corner and that I plan on having fun on Purim. Somehow, now that I have shaved all my own hair off, the wigs are all the more enticing. I bought two long-haired wigs and I have been wearing them just for fun. It is good to bring in Adar (the month of Purim) early so I wore it to Friday night services already. I am ready to grow my hair back long. Till then, I can play with my wigs. I could write a lot about Purim and its spiritual and transformational messages of faith and of courage. But, I am tired and what I want to write about is this: It was a beautiful day, an alluring preview of spring, I woke up early and got dressed to go to New TV to work on Final Cut Pro. My session was canceled and it was Blick's Madness Day. I had a 40% off coupon on any item in the store. And there were coupons and prizes being given out. I knew that I wanted to buy water-color crayons and that I wanted to buy blank greeting cards for the art workshop next week. I also knew that it was time to buy a wig for Purim. All I had to do was discover where. So, off I went not realizing that I was walking into one of the happiest days that I was to have in the last three years of my life.
What made it so happy?
The tremendous gratitude in my heart. The tremendous gratitude in my soul for having Life handed back to me in a way that I was sure would never be mine again.
And how simple is that?

Not simple at all.

And simply, simply beautiful.

Thank you was my heart.

And I spoke to a young homeless man that was sitting on the bridge. And I felt to grateful that I could bring him a pair of socks and a sweater.

I can walk.

I can laugh and try on wigs.

I can tell pretty boys that they are pretty.

I can talk to old ladies.

I can do so many things.

I can feel her. Her!! Me!!! The one that I thought that I had lost forever! The one that I loved so much because she cared so much about others and felt so much for others and her mischievousness, her playfulness and her passion.....her exuberance, her flirtatiousness....SHE was with me BY MY SIDE that entire day!!!!!

And I felt so blessed by her presence, so high....oh boy, do i know that high well...

Truly, I have been lucky to have her by my side for so much of my life. She is mostly made of love and a whole lot of playfulness inspired by that love.

That was on Thursday. Today it is Sunday. Abba will be coming from the hospital in a few days. I imagine that I will be crushed again soon. But at least I got a taste of her again. For a full and glorious day.

Good night
May you all sleep well
Thank you for joining me on my journeys.

Atara