"Through the darkness I can see your light." Did you know that the origins of that inner light are all still within you? You may think that the darkness you're been living with since PTSD moved in, is something you will never escape and it killed off everything that was good inside of you, but it is all still there.
Today the feature video is Josh Groban You're Still You because that is a message that anyone with PTSD needs to hear. It is something that I told my husband at least a thousand times over the years. He thought it had all died until he started to heal and was able to see himself again.
I often think about why so many events in my own life did not cause the same level of damage in me that he was going through. Mine began when I was so young that it ended up making me even more connected to who I was inside. There were so many times when I allowed myself to be beaten down by what others thought about me, until I noticed that the only power they had over me, was what I was willing to give them. I was still me...only stronger because of it, so I knew he was still him behind that wall of pain he had been building over the years.
All the things that made you "you" are all still there too. You just need some help finding yourself again.
"You're all I need to get by" would be so nice to hear again but for far too many, they feel as if they cannot do anything for anyone, especially if they are dealing with PTSD. It causes inspiration and hope to be crushed. How can you think you can mean anything to anyone, if you don't think you matter?
Look at the people in your life and know that you do matter. Remember how much they mean to you and what things were like before you transformed from what a world where you knew what "normal" was like, and it all spun out of control.
There was a time when I didn't think my husband I were going to make it another week, yet we're still together after 38 years...we met in 1982. There was a time when he didn't believe he deserved to be happy again, until he finally knew why he did.
I think back to times in my own life when people showed me I mattered, even when I didn't want to even get out of bed. When they were happy to see me walk through the door, when I didn't even want to go there. Little by little, people decided to lift someone else up because it made them feel good inside. It sure as hell feels a lot better than trying to knock someone down.
A lot of people I know have been posting about how they feel used up. They do good for other people, yet what they did was not appreciated at all. I tell them to keep doing good because that wonderful feeling they get inside, is their reward. If it is taken for granted, then, it is the other person's responsibility. I forgive them, shake the dust off my feet and walk away. It does not stop me from doing good for someone else. That is what love is.
I try to remember that in everything I do and you should too!
#BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife from #PTSD
Here is a story about what it means to be part of a miracle.
Stephan Wenz
October 17 at 12:35 AM
DID GOD RIDE THE BROOKLYN SUBWAY
Marcel Sternberger was a methodical man of nearly 50, with bushy white hair, guileless brown eyes, and the bouncing enthusiasm of a czardas dancer of his native Hungary. He always took the 9:09 Long Island Railroad train from his suburban home to Woodside, N.Y.., where he caught a subway into the city.
On the morning of January 10, 1948, Sternberger boarded the 9:09 as usual. En route, he suddenly decided to visit Laszlo Victor, a Hungarian friend who lived in Brooklyn and was ill.
Accordingly, at Ozone Park, Sternberger changed to the subway for Brooklyn, went to his friend’s house, and stayed until midafternoon. He then boarded a Manhattan-bound subway for his Fifth Avenue office. Here is Marcel’s incredible story:
The car was crowded, and there seemed to be no chance of a seat. But just as I entered, a man sitting by the door suddenly jumped up to leave, and I slipped into the empty place. I’ve been living in New York long enough not to start conversations with strangers. But being a photographer, I have the peculiar habit of analyzing people’s faces, and I was struck by the features of the passenger on my left. He was probably in his late 30s, and when he glanced up, his eyes seemed to have a hurt expression in them. He was reading a Hungarian-language newspaper, and something prompted me to say in Hungarian, “I hope you don’t mind if I glance at your paper.”
The man seemed surprised to be addressed in his native language. But he answered politely, “You may read it now. I’ll have time later on.”
During the half-hour ride to town, we had quite a conversation. He said his name was Bela Paskin. A law student when World War II started, he had been put into a German labor battalion and sent to the Ukraine. Later he was captured by the Russians and put to work burying the German dead. After the war, he covered hundreds of miles on foot until he reached his home in Debrecen, a large city in eastern Hungary.
I myself knew Debrecen quite well, and we talked about it for a while. Then he told me the rest of his story. When he went to the apartment once occupied by his father, mother, brothers and sisters, he found strangers living there. Then he went upstairs to the apartment that he and his wife once had. It also was occupied by strangers. None of them had ever heard of his family.
As he was leaving, full of sadness, a boy ran after him, calling “Paskin bacsi! Paskin bacsi!” That means “Uncle Paskin.” The child was the son of some old neighbors of his. He went to the boy’s home and talked to his parents. “Your whole family is dead,” they told him. “The Nazis took them and your wife to Auschwitz.”
Auschwitz was one of the worst Nazi concentration camps. Paskin gave up all hope. A few days later, too heartsick to remain any longer in Hungary, he set out again on foot, stealing across border after border until he reached Paris. He managed to immigrate to the United States in October 1947, just three months before I met him.
All the time he had been talking, I kept thinking that somehow his story seemed familiar. A young woman whom I had met recently at the home of friends had also been from Debrecen; she had been sent to Auschwitz; from there she had been transferred to work in a German munitions factory. Her relatives had been killed in the gas chambers. Later she was liberated by the Americans and was brought here in the first boatload of displaced persons in 1946.
Her story had moved me so much that I had written down her address and phone number, intending to invite her to meet my family and thus help relieve the terrible emptiness in her life.
It seemed impossible that there could be any connection between these two people, but as I neared my station, I fumbled anxiously in my address book. I asked in what I hoped was a casual voice, “Was your wife’s name Marya?”
He turned pale. “Yes!” he answered. “How did you know?”
He looked as if he were about to faint.
I said, “Let’s get off the train.” I took him by the arm at the next station and led him to a phone booth. He stood there like a man in a trance while I dialed her phone number.
It seemed hours before Marya Paskin answered. (Later I learned her room was alongside the telephone, but she was in the habit of never answering it because she had so few friends and the calls were always for someone else. This time, however, there was no one else at home and, after letting it ring for a while, she responded.)
When I heard her voice at last, I told her who I was and asked her to describe her husband. She seemed surprised at the question, but gave me a description. Then I asked her where she had lived in Debrecen, and she told me the address.
Asking her to hold the line, I turned to Paskin and said, “Did you and your wife live on such-and-such a street?”
“Yes!” Bela exclaimed. He was white as a sheet and trembling.
“Try to be calm,” I urged him. “Something miraculous is about to happen to you. Here, take this telephone and talk to your wife!”
He nodded his head in mute bewilderment, his eyes bright with tears. He took the receiver, listened a moment to his wife’s voice, then suddenly cried, “This is Bela! This is Bela!” and he began to mumble hysterically. Seeing that the poor fellow was so excited he couldn’t talk coherently, I took the receiver from his shaking hands.
“Stay where you are,” I told Marya, who also sounded hysterical. “I am sending your husband to you. We will be there in a few minutes.”
Bela was crying like a baby and saying over and over again. “It is my wife. I go to my wife!”
At first I thought I had better accompany Paskin, lest the man should faint from excitement, but I decided that this was a moment in which no strangers should intrude. Putting Paskin into a taxicab, I directed the driver to take him to Marya’s address, paid the fare, and said goodbye.
Bela Paskin’s reunion with his wife was a moment so poignant, so electric with suddenly released emotion, that afterward neither he nor Marya could recall much about it.
“I remember only that when I left the phone, I walked to the mirror like in a dream to see if maybe my hair had turned gray,” she said later. “The next thing I know, a taxi stops in front of the house, and it is my husband who comes toward me. Details I cannot remember; only this I know—that I was happy for the first time in many years.....
“Even now it is difficult to believe that it happened. We have both suffered so much; I have almost lost the capability to not be afraid. Each time my husband goes from the house, I say to myself, “Will anything happen to take him from me again?”
Her husband is confident that no horrible misfortune will ever again befall the. “Providence has brought us together,” he says simply. “It was meant to be.”
Skeptical persons will no doubt attribute the events of that memorable afternoon to mere chance. But was it chance that made Marcel Sternberger suddenly decide to visit his sick friend and hence take a subway line that he had never ridden before? Was it chance that caused the man sitting by the door of the car to rush out just as Sternberger came in? Was it chance that caused Bela Paskin to be sitting beside Sternberger, reading a Hungarian newspaper'
Was it chance—or did God ride the Brooklyn subway that afternoon'
Paul Deutschman, Great Stories Remembered, edited and compiled by Joe L. Wheeler
You're all I need to get by.
Like the sweet morning dew, I took one look at you,
And it was plain to see, you were my destiny.
With my arms open wide,
I threw away my pride
I'll sacrifice for you
Dedicate my life for you
I will go where you lead
Always there in time of need
And when I lose my will
You'll be there to push me up the hill
There's no, no looking back for us
We got love sure 'nough, that's enough
You're all, You're all I need to get by.
You're all I need to get by.
Like an eagle protects his nest, for you I'll do my best,
Stand by you like a tree, dare anybody to try and move me
Darling in you I found
Strength where I was torn down
Don't know what's in store but together we can open any door
Just to do what's good for you and inspire you a little higher
I know you can make a man out of a soul that didn't have a goal
Cause we, we got the right foundation and with love and determination
You're all I want to strive for and do a little more
All, all the joys under the sun wrapped up into one
If anyone is telling you that you cannot have a happier life...they are lying to you. Some people want to just take hope away because it makes them feel better about themselves.
If anyoe is telling you that you deserve to be miserable...they are lying to you. Some people want to make sure that if they are not happy, no one else is.
I get so tired of hearing people say all kinds of things to push people down instead of help them up. I know in my own life, everytime I was losing the ability to see any hope, someone came along to make me feel better, and give me hope that things would be better. They help me feel better because it helped them feel better doing it. Even now, I feel better doing whatever I can to make life better for people I don't know. It is healing for me. If it wasn't, then I would still be doing it after almost 40 years.
Today, the feature video is Bruce Springsteen LAND OF HOPE AND DREAMS
That is where you are right now. There is no time to sit back and work on hiding your pain, because you need to be working on healing and being happier, There is no time to feel sorry you survived when you need to be helping someone else heal too. That is how it works in this world of hope and dreams.
We are here to help build futures, not leave someone stuck in the past. You cannot change a damn thing that happened before right now, but you can change what comes in the next moment.
The question is, which kind of person do you want to be? The kind who wants someone else to be miserable because you are, or do you want to be the kind of person who wants to help someone to feel better about themselves...because it makes you feel better too?
#BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife from #PTSD
Oh oh this train, I'm riding this train
Don't you wanna ride
(This train)
Oh get on, get on (this train)
Grab your ticket and your suitcase
Thunder's rolling down the tracks
You don't know where you're goin' now
But you know you won't be back
Darlin' if you're weary
Lay your head upon my chest
We'll take what we can carry
And we'll leave the rest
Where sunlight streams
Meet me in a land of hope and dreams
I will provide for you
And I'll stand by your side
You'll need a good companion
For this part of the ride
Leave behind your sorrows
Let this day be the last
Tomorrow there'll be sunshine
And all this darkness past
Big wheels roll through fields
Where sunlight streams
Meet me in a land of hope and dreams
This train carries saints and sinners
This train carries losers and winners
This train carries whores and gamblers
This train carries lost souls
I said, this train dreams will not be thwarted
This train faith will be rewarded
This train hear the steel wheels singin'
This train bells of freedom ringin'
This train carries saints and sinners
This train carries losers and winners
This train carries whores and gamblers
This train carries lost souls
I said, this train carries broken-hearted
This train thieves and sweet souls departed
This train carries fools and kings
This train, all aboard
I said, this train dreams will not be thwarted
This train faith will be rewarded
This train hear the steel wheels singin'
This train bells of freedom ringin'
Come on this train
People get ready
You don't need no ticket
All you got do is just get on board
On board this train
This train, people get ready
You don't need no ticket (oh I know you don't)
You don't need no ticket you just get on board (people get ready)
Did you know that the story of your life will never stop being written? Everyone you touch, will touch others. Everything you do, will change others.
We live in very trying times in this country. Turmoil and adversity, suffering, misery and fears, but people have gone through dark days before. It makes me wonder if the Founding Fathers ever envisioned what their vision of a "more perfect union" would become? It shows that as much as they thought about what they were doing, it is hard to imagine how their lives would still matter to all of us. The book on their lives is still being written. So is yours.
Today the feature video is Bob Seger Turn The Page. We keep changing the story of our lives everyday. New chapters are written all the time. In the process of writing ours, we keep writing in the book of our parents lives.
When you survived whatever caused PTSD to become part of your story, it began rewriting the chapter you were living with. All the other chapters, fed off that one.
The thing is, if you decide to change the chapters from this point on, then you control how the rest of your story goes. How do you want to leave those you care about? Do you want to leave them with warm memories knowing you did everything possible to be the best you could be, make a good difference for their sake and take the power you have to change for the better? Or do you want to leave them with a story that has no ending, no peace and endless questions you will never be able to answer?
You control what is on the next page and the page after that.
Music has the ability to change the mood we are in. It also has the ability to trigger memories. That happened to me earlier today when I heard "Heaven Knows" by Donna Summer.
"I'm not talking just for play, listen to me please
Heaven knows it's not the way it should be and
Heaven knows it's not the way it could be and
Don't you know there's no need to leave"
That is a message we all need to learn. Suffering after surviving is not part of the deal. Being so miserable that you regret you lived, is not part of the deal. It isn't the way it should be and not the way it could be.
If you are suffering learn that you are only limited by what you are willing to accept. If someone you love is suffering, then you want them to be happy but wishing won't make it happen. Waiting for a miracle won't happen unless you accept the miracle that already happened and that is that they are still alive. They made it through something you may never understand. Value that miracle and then do what so many other miracles have provided for you to learn from.
PTSD researchers dedicated their lives to understanding what traumatic events do to people. That research has been going on for over 40 years. Their work is how I understood what being a survivor did to me as much as I understood what being a survivor did to my husband, but the power of that knowledge only came when I was made aware that no one is stuck suffering. Miracles happen with this all the time as long as you are not willing to settle or just walk away from someone you love...or someone who loves you!
#BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife from #PTSD
Baby please, please don't take your love from me
I am yours forever more, 'till eternity
Silently, listen to the words I say
I'm not talking just for play, listen to me please
Heaven knows it's not the way it should be and
Heaven knows it's not the way it could be and
Don't you know there's no need to leave
Heaven knows I never wanna leave you
Heaven knows I only wanna please you
Don't you know love is what I need
Down inside, don't get caught with foolish pride
Put all the other things aside, there's only you and me
Believe in us, we were always meant to be
Me for you and you for me, 'till eternity
Heaven knows it's not the way it should be and
Heaven knows it's not the way it could be and
Don't you know there's no need to leave
Heaven knows I only wanna love you
Heaven knows I never wanna lose you
Don't you know love is meant to be
Heaven knows it's not the way it should be
Heaven knows stop with the pretending
Come on now, hear me when I cry
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Pete Bellotte / Giorgio Moroder / Donna Summer / G. Mathieson / Julian Lamadrid Manon / Jackson Hirsh
