And as I journeyed further
Walking through the golden gateway of compassion

I found that all of the shattered pieces that I had thought were 'my self'

Were but beautiful reflections of all of us

It was in this shattering

That I awoke

To how tightly I held onto this sense of self

that was nothing but an illusion

As I bent down to collect the broken remains

I saw that each shard

that I had thought was 'me'

was just a reflection

I held the shards up to the light

recognizing all the forms of suffering and sorrows

And vowed to practice compassion

even more deeply

It had become clear to me that 'i' was made of nothing of any substance

And that there was only one unifying force

and that it was my duty to learn and to study and to practice

the way

-Atara Schimmel

It became clear to me
as I shattered
into a million pieces
that there was only one gateway out of this hell

It became clear to me that I could choose to continue suffering
trapped in rage, sorrow, despair for eons

Or I could make my way to the golden gate
that stood before me
humble and small
shackled and bound and utterly free all at once

And so I walked through that gateway

the gateway of compassion

And there I found all of the pain that I had been shutting out of myself

And all of the suffering that I had been denying

And i came to it with love

And I came to it with tenderness

And I came to it with forgiveness

And i was healed

-Atara Schimmel

My hands are not broken yet.

I will weave fire.

And I will carry this burden back to you.

To be a balm for all those that still suffer.

I will restore my own healing.

I will weave fire and flame.

Wait and see.

you are not done with me

I will be back

the bullies might seem strong now

but they will fall

they will crumble down

as i walk over their forlorn bodies

there are those i will hear

and there are those i will pass over

justice and compassion will reign

A love poem for you.

For your bravery in coping with so much suffering.

For taking so much on.

So that you could find your way through.

So that you could teach.

As the leaf blowers rage and you feel like you are splitting into pieces

sharp pieces that only desire to slice you down

into pieces

Remember

that you made it through

you made it through

over and over again

So what if you fall

so what if you become hard like a brick from anger

that devours you completely

you'll always be back

you will always be back

i can't stop writing  cuz i have been suffering so much

for so long now

And if i stop writing i will feel the knife lodged

this was supposed to be a love poem for myself

i don't know what it is

i just now that once again the leaf blowers came and stole all of my peace again

and i am so angry that my peace was stolen again

because of the lack of compassion

i relinquish all desire

devoting myself to the practice

one tear

slid down my face 

and stumbled into a pool of blood

and pus

twisted in my gut

where the animals reside

it trickled through

through 

and through

until it reached you

reaching for me

we held it there together

mending ourselves together

our pain intermingling

mine untangling yours

yours untangling mine

we sat patiently together

sharing the ache as though it was all that we had left to share

until the breeze came through and your stars crumbled all around me

the leaf-blowers came 

this time i can feel them slitting my pelvis in two

and you are there

holding

holding

holding

reminding me that peace is my choice

my blessing

and that whatever hurts

can always be transformed

 - Atara Schimmel

I have reached the shore.

I am safe again.

I have made it through.

Your hand.

You extended to me.

I took it.

And turned the other away.

I understand that you want me now.

I am here now.

Resting.

Here.

Now. 

Resting.

My tear slides into your hands.

You hold it in your hands for me.

And show me all of the colors of the rainbow that my lonely tear contains.

I look. I come. Closer.

You show me the yellow. The red. The blue.

I notice the traces of pink and I come even closer.

You pull me in with your words.

And I borrow them for my own poetry.

So now we are writing together.

Writing our poetry together.

I understand what we are doing now.

                           Atara Schimmel

As the leaf blowers rage.

I lay on the floor of my room.

Understanding that I am leaving something behind me.

Understanding that I have to go further.

Go deeper into peace.

Deepening my understanding of suffering.

I understand now where I am going.

I am understanding that I must practice.

Practice with a Sangha.

I understand.

Your bloody fist opened and the rose petals fell to the floor.

I stooped so low to pick them up.

And kissed the sacred ground that cradled my feet.

Each petal a tear.

Each drop of blood a dream for peace.

Transformed.

I took you into my arms and watched you dissolve.

I leave slowly, so as not to abandon or frighten anyone.

I leave because my life is sacred and I must honor it entirely and completely.

                                                        - Atara Schimmel

Let go of the clinging.

Let go of the craving.

Let go of the desire.

Return.

To now.

Allow yourself to be.

Be the way.

Be the way.

Be the way.

Practice and you will become the way itself.

    -Atara Schimmel

"In the garbage I see a rose.

In the rose I see the garbage.

Everything is impermanent.

Even permanence is impermanent."

                                           -Buddhist




Stay with your suffering.

Stay. Stay. Stay.

There is nowhere to run to.

Nothing to run from.

Everything is here.

Enlightenment is here.

Awakening is here.

Love is here.

You need not search anymore.

Just be.

Be.

Be here now.

I am here now.

I am here.

Here.

Now.

We can do this together.

We can do this alone as well.

We can do this, always.

Here.

Now.

Here.

Now.
.
I devote myself to practicing the way.

Back.

To myself.

If you can find yourself within me.

Than I can let you go.

We are both free.

Free.

Free from attachment.

Free from the cycles of birth and death.

Understanding and compassion is what I seek.

To teach.

To bring the rose back to its petals.

They disperse and crumble back to the earth.

They flutter and fall.

Into the arms of my own clinging desire to escape my pain.

Your arms like the rose fade away into a fist.

That opens and holds my heart.

I promised you poetry.

To mend my broken heart that has never been broken at all.

Back into this moment.

Where the practice guides me.

I will sail and I will return taking the shore with me.

Dissolving into the sea where I imagined that you walked with me.

     - Atara Schimmel

https://soundcloud.com/blue-cliff-monastery/discourse-on-the-eight-realizations-of-the-great-beings-m-woyo-nuevo



I am tangled

twisted

ropes tie me down

I am deeply free

Peace is within me

I am seeking to escape

I am here now

Right here with you

I am running into others

Only to find that they are all me

and that running

lands me right back on the floor

to my self

All of my longing to be in someone else's arms

I drop back down on my knees

left always with only me

We are all one

so what could i possibly run into

whose arms could i drown all of this pain in

when we are this pain together

can you hold my pain

playing hot potato

that is what we do

the kinder and more compassionate we are with each other

the easier it is to pass and carry this hot potato

more and more i want to be relieved from this suffering

more and more i want to accept this suffering

more and more i want to shave my hair off and practice the dharma

more and more i want to go to a buddhist monestary to practice

to practice holding

holding

holding this suffering

holding

holding

holding

this suffering

I have made an important decision that so far I have been very good at sticking to. I want to reduce my time on facebook significantly and to use facebook with clear intention of inspiring and offering healing. I have been spending the last few months on facebook reading so much about factory farming and looking at the violent images and the unimaginable cruelty of the factory farms. And then I post to facebook. When I post I am so angry, so distraught and so emotionally drained from the violence and the suffering that I expose myself to. I am stopping with this. Stopping because I no longer want to suffer from anger. I no longer want to walk around in this world thinking that everyone is selfish and inconsiderate. I am tired. I want to return to compassion. I want to believe that people are kind. I want to inspire people to choose compassion. I don't want the anger or the blame anymore. I want peace. I need peace.

We lost Tammy Bergrstrom to Pudendal Neuralgia.  I painted this angel for her two children, Anna and Cole. Anna is 5 years old and Cole is 3. I will send this to Anna and to Cole sometime soon.
Painting the angel helped me process Tammy's loss. I am tired of losing people that I care about. It has been such a long and harrowing summer.

Project Angel seems to have come back to life at least in terms of what is expected of me. Being called to serve again has woken me from my depression. There seems that there is too much to do again. The fact that Abba is in the hospital suffering from psychotic depression is not an excuse to give up. Nothing is. Tardive Dyskenisia isn't. The despair I feel for the animals isn't. The fear and anxiety that I feel over all of my health challenges.....None of these can be excuses. There is too much work to do and too many of us continue to die from these conditions.

Mary Frances did a beautiful job on her short documentary about Project Angel.

https://vimeo.com/186303327

And my short documentary on Sunny Meadow Sanctuary came out lovely as well.

https://youtu.be/-ThkVsoOaZw

The veggie festival is coming up this weekend and I look forward to that. On the 5th of November I will be exhibiting Project Angel at the Pudendal Neuralgia Association's medical conference. This is a great honor and a leap forward. Somehow Tammy will be with me there. We don't know yet if she committed suicide or if she died from a complication from the surgery. Either way PN kills. 

My angels are starting to make it into more and more clinics all around the country. Progress always feels slow to me but I still recognize it.

Atara

You can heal everything.

Each broken part of yourself.

Can be mended.

You have the power to heal yourself with acceptance.

With love.

With kindness.

With patience.

Each broken part can be mended.

This is your art now.

This is you now.

You can become the wound and the balm at once.

You can hold them both as you would a crying child and see the perfection in the holding itself.

You can hold your own suffering.

For as long as you need to.

You can hold it in the arms of your own healing.

              -Atara Schimmel

My greatest challenge is to keep my heart open to humans. I must practice compassion towards humans daily.

June 26, Artist Deanna Yildiz created this for me after I posted the nasty comment that a woman from the Provincetown Community Facebook group sent to me. Yes, someone actually sent this to me as a message via facebook. Hatred of vegans. Hatred of animal rights activists.

June 29th

The suffering of the animals causes me great suffering, great pain, great sorrow. The numb disconnectedness that the majority of us chose TERRIFIES me. I am scared of what we have become. Scared of how lost we are. Of how far we have ventured away from our own souls. My only desire is to bring unity and compassion so that we can be whole again. So that we can be who we are meant to be. So that we can live in peace with ourselves. We, we, we, we have lost our way. We have fallen so far from our ourselves.








July 8th

Being vegan is not a choice. It is an obligation and a responsibility. Holding ourselves accountable to the suffering that we are creating is the first step in our spiritual emancipation. As long as we continue to torment animals we will never become whole, we will never heal, we will never know peace.


July 20th post from facebook

The pigs in the factory farms literally go insane from being confined for months on end without being able to turn around. They bite obsessively into the iron bars until their teeth break off. They bang their heads into the bars to no avail, desperate and in perpetual and relentless agony. Can you imagine what it is like to be confined in a space the size of your own body for months? I pray every day that people connect to their compassion and leave the flesh of these sensitive and deeply humble animals off of their plates. Every new vegan is a blessing of peace and hope to this world.


July 20th  post from facebook

All of the animals in the factory 'farms' suffer from chronic pain, profound depression and deep despondency. I know how deeply they suffer because I have suffered that deeply myself. I know because I know what it feels like to be chained to pain. I know what it feels like to be caged in my own body. I know because I know what it means to live in a body that is my own torture chamber. I know because I know what it feels like to be denied compassion, to be denied help, to be denied care. I know because I know what it feels like to be abandoned by people that claimed to love me, that claimed to be my friends. I know because I know what it feels like to be invisible, utterly and completely invisible when my screams were loud and clear. I know because I know what it feels like to beg for help, to plead to be seen, to be recognized, to be saved....and to have the very people that were supposedly there to help me turn and look the other way....I know because I know what it feels like to suffer so profoundly and relentlessly and to wish and pray that I just be granted death. We all know. And we can choose to do to them what so many have done to us or we can choose to be for them what we had wished others would have been for us.

July 20th post from facebook

This post is for my friends with Pudendal Neurlagia and other chronic genital and nerve pain conditions. I have a question that I was thinking about last night and I would love it if you would share your thoughts with me. We have all suffered so much and some of us continue to suffer relentlessly oftentimes in isolation. Many of us have felt abandoned by loved ones, denied the care that we needed and blamed for our own suffering. We all know suffering. We all have lived in realms of hell that most people could never imagine. This is my question to all of you. If you knew that the animals in the factory 'farms' were 'living' in the same realms of hell as you have or are still living in would you fight to release them from that hell? If you knew that for that animal to reach your table they had to live through months and sometimes years of torture, grief, isolation, chronic pain and utter despair and despondency would you keep them off your plate?

July 6th, 2016 post from facebook

At the farm sanctuary I cried with the cow and i promised her that I would fight with all of my heart and soul. She is suffering from ptsd from having had her horns severed from her. She doesn't trust humans, she cowers when humans go near her head. I looked into her eyes, into the depth of her soul and I promised her that I would do everything I could to help the the cows. The animals have strengthened me. Being near them, feeling their sanctity, their kindness, their humility has strengthened me. I can speak in front of hundreds of people now. I am no longer afraid at all. The animals must be protected and I am proud to be chosen to be a voice for them. Their purity humbles and inspires me.

From my timeline:

"I am from planet Vegan. On planet vegan we dance and sing with the animals. We especially love the cows and the pigs and the chickens. Everywhere we are surrounded by animals and by vegetation. We are happy on planet vegan. But some of us had to leave planet vegan because we saw that planet earth was destroying itself and we felt deep sorrow for the human beings that were suffering and causing suffering. So we left our spiritual realm and we came to this physical plane. Life here is very hard for those of us from planet Vegan. Some of us even ate other spiritual beings and wore other spiritual beings while we were here only to find out that we had been harming life. Our hearts broke for the suffering that we caused and we yearned to return to planet vegan where the spiritual and the physical are one and where kindness prevails. On planet vegan we were taught that the animals were our brothers and our sisters. We were in awe of their intelligence. We were humbled by the way they loved us and communicated with us. When we came to earth we lost our way. Now we have so much work to do to restore and to heal life. We are tired but we know where we come from and our mission is clear. We are here to teach love. We are here to protect life. We are here now and one day soon we will return to where we came from. One day soon we will live in joy and in harmony with our brothers and sisters, the animals and with all of nature again. I am from planet vegan. I am here for only a very short time."

              -Atara Schimmel


Morning has officially arrived and I am still not tired. Breaking through all of my fears of is exhilarating and seeing the waves that breaking through my own fears has created in the 'external' world is a incredible. But the fact remains that 75 million animals are killed every day in America alone. Still, I have proven to myself that I don't have to die from despair. I can speak my truth and celebrate my victories and watch how each internal barrier that I break through reverberates in the 'external' world. In reality there is no separation between any of us. We are all each other and we are the animals as much as they are us. Their suffering is ours. Our denial is their despair. Our liberation is their liberation. Their liberation is our liberation. The challenge is to remain loving and compassionate and hopeful and to keep on working. The challenge is to take care of my teeth!

And to fall asleep. Please.

Maybe my mistake was in actually thinking that ACOG was part of the solution. Believing that if they only knew the truth they would change things.

Maybe what I should have seen is that ACOG is the problem and maybe what I am beginning to accept is that knocking on their door is like knocking on the devil's door asking for some compassion. Why on earth would the devil give you compassion and healing when he makes money from your suffering. He wouldn't.

Naivete goodbye.

Our medical system is so corrupt and I am only beginning to awaken.

Good morning Vegan Sisters.

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.”

-Marcia Angell


On another note though it is the very same note indeed. I continue to get resistance. Even here in so called opened minded provincetown. Matt from the library told me that people came to complain to him about my performing  my mesh poem. Was the word 'Vagina' just too much for our open-minded and progressive Provincetown audience? Mind you an audience that consisted of local writers and poets?

It seems that whatever I do is not right and that wherever I turn people are trying to silence me.

I have never called myself or considered myself to be radical in any shape or form. The concept that it is radical to be compassionate and to speak up for those that are suffering be it humans or animals.....is an insult to my basic intelligence.

-Atara Schimmel

This was me a few days ago. I was feeling so crushed, so discouraged, so helpless, so angry. I had just discovered what Dr. Vigna had written about ACOG. He wrote this over a year ago, long before I started petitioning ACOG, long before Project Angel and many others sent in our devastating personal testimonies, long before I received a HORRIBLY DISMISSIVE letter from Dr. Chris Zahn from ACOG, long before my conversations with Dr. Sandra Carson, vice president of ACOG. In other words what I discovered is that Dr. Hal Lawrence, Dr. Chris Zahn and Dr Sandra Carson have known for a very long time about the existence of Pudendal Neuralgia. They have known for a very long time that transvaginal mesh is causing Pudendal Neuralgia. They have known for a very long time about the need to educate doctors about Pudendal Neuralgia and yet they are continuing to play dumb in the face of our despair, our agony, our desperation.

These are Dr. Vigna's words:

First, as a physician I must say the medical community has failed in mobilizing to protect and treat these women. There has been an utter lack of leadership from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologist. Simply by making a mandatory Continued Medical Education requirement for clinicians to participate in that describes the symptoms of pudendal neuralgia could have saved significant distress for women turned away by uneducated ears. To date I am unaware that American Medical Systems, JNJ, Boston Scientific, and Caldera informed their implanting surgeons of the symptoms of pudendal neuralgia which is clearly the most severe medical complication from both a properly placed mesh device or a malpositioned device which is an expected outcome of the flawed design.

Here is the link to his article: http://www.meshmedicaldevicenewsdesk.com/pudendal-neuralgia-and-pelvic-mesh-serious-injury-serious-decisions/

The despair that I felt was crushing. The apathy of an institution that is supposed to be helping us is devastating.

I am trying to regain my focus and my balance now. I have a very important genital/pelvic pain Awareness Exhibit coming up next week. It will be my third year raising awareness during Newton Open Studios and it will be my first year raising about the dangers of mesh. I want to be calm, peaceful, grateful and centered for the exhibit. I know that I will have many visitors and I want to enjoy the support and the appreciation that is being offered me.

How do I find balance? Always by returning to my creativity, to my curiosity... I have been wanting to create necklaces from opal mermaid tails. But I couldn't find opal mermaid tails. What I have found are opal whale tails. And though at first I resisted the whale tails because I wanted mermaid tails....The change came when I realized that maybe the whale tail was trying to tell me something. Maybe at this moment in time I didn't feel a connection to the whale because I just wanted a mermaid but maybe now was my moment to connect to the whale!

And so I searched for whale symbolism and came across the What's-Your-Sign.Com blog by Avia and this is what I found.

"Those who are magnetized by whale energy will tend to be incredibly deep in sensitivity. The depth of feeling whale-totem-people endure can be overwhelming. Whale people are super-perceptive about the feelings of those around them, and this can manifest into an internal pressure that can be quite crushing. The whale can help with overwhelment of feelings and even temper the onslaught of emotions picked up from other people too. If you are extraordinarily affected by the emotions of others, or your own emotions are so intense as to cause discomfort, your whale totem can help.

Why? Because whales are masters of:

• Navigation: Moving through emotional depths
• Communication: Effectively expressing emotional experiences
• Conservation: Using emotional energy for fuel and not being consumed by emotional floods"

Here is the link to the blogpost: http://www.whats-your-sign.com/celtic-symbols.html

I have yet to read and explore more in depth what this all means to me. All I know is that I can't burn myself out. I can't keep on feeling crushed and desperate. I have to restore peace, equanimity, faith. At the same time I am determined to get Pudendal Neuralgia into the curricula. Now even more so then before. 

How do I make this happen without destroying myself in the process?

There is still a part of me that wants to believe that Dr. Sandra Carson really does want to help us. I don't want to burn my bridges, Dr. Carson can you hear me? Do you want to help us? Can you understand how important it is to create guidelines, educational objectives and curricula for Pudendal Neuralgia today?

Do you know of the 100,000 and more women that are being destroyed by transvaginal mesh for prolapses and urinary incontinence? And if you know and you have the power to change this are you working towards creating change? We need you. We need your help. Can you hear me?

Atara Schimmel

Wow, I just discovered an incredible poet and inspiration.

I am humbled and inspired. I love that combination.
 
https://youtu.be/BadlHRCah6k


https://youtu.be/9PA0v9ANTrY


Goddess bless you!!!!!

The sacred healing tent of self-compassion.

We sit together here.

In this tent.

Some of us cannot sit.

Some of us can only lay.

And so we lay together.

In this tent.

Our bodies racked with pain.

Our souls fighting agony, desperation and despair.

Still, we sit, we lay together.

We share our prayers with each other.

We share our blessings with one another.

When one hurts the other helps.

When one helps the other hurts.

It doesn't matter who or when or why.

What matters is that we care for each other.

What matters is that we see our kindness in each others souls.

What matters is that together there is still a reason, a hope, a moment to stay alive for.

If we hold tight onto each other.

Just like this.

Holding hands.

Even as we lay with agony by our sides, with agony inside.

What matters is that we teach each other to love, to love ourselves, to forgive ourselves, to bless ourselves.

And as we teach we heal. And as we teach we grow. And as we grow we celebrate.

We celebrate the strides we make. We celebrate the strides we made in the darkness all alone. We celebrate the strides we made in the light with our beloved community.

We grow to love, to love our community so deeply that there is no longer an I and a them.

We grow to love so deeply that we understand that taking care of ourselves means taking care of all of us.

We grow to love so deeply that giving becomes the very same as receiving.

We grow to love so deeply that our hearts are filled with this gratitude, this grace, this ever-present determination to fight not just our own fight....

For we see, we have come to feel, to know, that our fight is the one same fight,

We fight together and this way we are so much stronger, so much more complete, so much more full of grace ....

And gratitude becomes our daily prayer and our daily blessing