All Is Well2
more stories of guts and grace,
courage and compassion
Editors:
David Bruner
and
Lee Hartley
All Is Well2
December 2011
Smashwords Edition
Designed and produced by Hartley Publishing
All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 2011
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the written permission of the editors.
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This book is available in print and can be ordered at: www.alliswellbooks.com
ISBN
Hartley Publishing
Los Gatos, CA
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Dedication
This book is dedicated to you the reader. The following lyrics written by Daniel Nahmod beautifully summarize our thoughts and hopes for all of us to replace any old decisions that get in our way with new loving ones:
LOVE IS MY DECISION
Love is my decision
It’s up to
me to give of my heart
…No-one else can tell me to start
And once I decide to change my mind
God will show me how
Love is my decision
My decision,
right here and now
Love is my decision
It’s up to
me to stand on that bridge
…No-one else can make me forgive
Love is my decision
It’s up to
me to dance down the road
…No-one else can lighten my load
And once I decide to change my mind
God will show me how
Love is my decision
My decision,
right here and now
Words and Music by Daniel Nahmod
All Is Well2 is a collection of stories we know will help you to discover the love in all of your decisions.
Enjoy!
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For Your Information
As you are reading All Is Well2 you will notice three references that occur several times within the stories. The references are to “the Center,” the “spiritual director,” and to “practitioners.” You may want to know what they mean.
In the book we speak of “the Center” frequently. The term refers to the Center for Spiritual Living–San Jose. It is the spiritual community and home of all of the inspired collaborators involved in writing their stories, to the editors of the book, David Bruner and Lee Hartley, the benefactors of the book who generously contributed their services, Diane Gralewski and Kaylen Jacobson, and the creative collaborators who worked on the production of the book, Lisa Chambers and Lorna Johnson.
The “spiritual director” refers to Rev. Dr. David Bruner. He has been the Spiritual Director of the Center for Spiritual Living–San Jose since 1999.
The “practitioners” are spiritual counselors who receive at least three years of intensive training in the transformative teachings of Science of Mind. They provide treatments and affirmative prayer, and they participate in or lead various activities, programs and courses at the Center. Also, they provide private sessions.
For further information visit the Center’s website at
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Table of Contents
Ceci Cox
Life Can Change On a Dime
Kat Voci
Ready Or Not
Kathleen Kelly
The Choice Is Yours
Damien Cox
Picking Up the Vibe
What If My Life Wasn’t About Me?
Denny Ready
The Shy Guy
Ann Licater
Listen, Reflect and Act
Climbing Out Of the Abyss... One Step At a Time
“g” Susan Gable
Starting Over...One Step At a Time
Janet Pullen
Letting the Light In
Marcia Bencala
Spiritual Lessons From the AIDS Lifecycle Ride
Taking On the Challenge
Lee Leonard
People, People, and More People
Marilyn Pelz
To Be Or Not To Be (Sick)
Death Bed Left Cold... Or How the Hell Did I Wind Up Here?
Max Overland
On the Edge
Out Of the Darkness and Into the Light
Cynthia Hume
Climbing Out Of the Darkness
Esmarelda Alderete
Decisions, Decisions
Mark Schwab
Dialing Up to Being
Gaby Wise
Change Starts Here
Steve Voldseth
Which Are You?
Karen Mattos
Creating Joy
Tengu Muna
The New Version of Me
Maureen Ross
Worry and Doubt Vanished
The Scarlet Letter—“A” Is for Affirmation
Nicole Fraser
Post-Traumatic Growth‒Life Keeps Getting Better
Lei Ming Petersen
Learning New Steps
B.J. King
Breathe In, Breathe Out
Jessie Kreiss
The Fresh New Path
Luanne Gray
The Truth Comes Out
Scott Springborn
Getting Unstuck
Marji Harding
More Time
David
All the Difference
Marc Eisenhart
The Happiness Continuum
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As soon as the first volume in the All Is Well series was launched in December 2010 the word began to spread about how inspiring it is. Positive reviews were received and encouraging feedback came rolling in. Many people told us that they had intended to read just one story a day, but found they couldn’t put it down once they began, and stayed up most of the night reading it. Also, the subtitle 29 Stories of Guts and Grace, Courage and Compassion was declared particularly apt to what they had learned about the story authors.
Readers reported feeling inspired, encouraged and energized to make their own personal changes. They found that they were starting with a new mindset that included “If they can change their life by changing their mind, so can I.” Others thought “Yeah, I’d really like to…” quickly followed by the questions, “…just what does change your mind mean?” or “How do I do that?” Now they had some specific examples in the book to refer to, and in addition, we taught an All Is Well class for people who wanted to create their own personal change. Actually the first six-week class prompted this second book into being. The final assignment due on the last night was to write a story about a time when they actually changed their life by changing their mind. We had anticipated that all the stories would be read in one evening. However, we quickly realized that the stories were longer than expected and we were running out of time. So we took a vote:
* Stop at 10 p.m. and some stories would not be heard.
* Stay until all were heard (that would mean we’d be there until nearly midnight).
* Come back the next week to hear the rest of the stories read by their classmates.
The stories were so open and heart-warming no one wanted to miss even one, so the entire class voted to return the next week to hear the remaining stories. Every member came back the next week. It was gratifying to see how supportive and caring the group was of each other. The class participants as well as the instructors were so touched by this.
Meeting later at a local coffee house we (David and Lee) discussed once again the power of stories to get our attention and to ignite the full range of emotions that set off our laughter or tears, or motivate us to make new decisions and to align goals. Stories help us to see a multitude of potential solutions to the query, “How do I do that?”
We had just witnessed the power of story telling in action. Stories brought the people in the class together and allowed many of them to begin to think more creatively about solving their own unresolved issues, and to explore being all they can be. Class members learned that stories can actually change a situation from one outcome to a completely different one. Some of those shifts are astounding.
Stories show that we are all part of a larger group and remove a sense of isolation. Stories console us by letting us know that we are united with the rest of humanity and that others have been in the place where we are now. They help us to avoid pain or hurt as we learn from someone else’s story. Many stories stay with us throughout our lifetime and are replayed mentally over and over again and assists us to create a new life.
About a year before we had discussed some of the awesome stories that we knew about people in our community at the Center. Now, we had just witnessed the telling of just as compelling stories that had been shared in class. We knew that these new stories of guts and grace, courage and compassion could assist even more people. As you read you will be amazed at how people have overcome difficulties in their lives and gone on to thrive.
We know that their stories could motivate, stir, encourage, instigate, enthuse and arouse others. So we asked the All Is Well class to share the stories they wrote about how they changed their life by changing their mind…and many from the class generously said, “Yes!” This time, in addition to using a print format, we are also creating audio and ebook formats so that it can be seen or heard by many others.
This book is the result of the story authors’ openness and generosity. Just as the stories in Book I are powerful, these are too. Reading them inspires you to envision what you can create in your own life. The worksheets will help you to process your own “stuff.” Write down your own questions, answers, and ideas to “change your life, by changing your mind.”
Enjoy the process!
David Bruner, DD, RScF
Lee Hartley, EdD, MFT
If you are inspired to write your own story about how you changed your life by changing your mind, use the last chapter of the book to create your own story.
Check our website www.alliswellbook.com to order books in print, ebook and audio formats, book signings, and dates for the All Is Well2 class.
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Prayer is the place where burdens change shoulders.
T. F. Tenney
Ceci Cox
Who could have known that a loving gift to my mother would ultimately cause her death? It started when my mother’s best friend, Cheché, accidentally ran over our little dog while backing out of our driveway. Cheché was beside herself with regret. So when Cheché found a tiny black puppy on the beach the next morning, she immediately thought of her dear friend Ruth and brought the foundling to my mother as a gift. My mother opened her heart to care for the cute little rascal that loved to rough-house and chew on everything, including her left hand, breaking the skin. Shortly afterward my mother began having a problem with that hand and went to her doctor, who misdiagnosed the problem. It was only when my mother became very anxious and was not making sense when she spoke that it became apparent that there was something more severe going on and its true identity was discovered. She was rushed to the Anglo-American Hospital in Havana. It was there that my beautiful, forty-two year old mother slipped into a coma and died of rabies two days later. She left behind a husband and two daughters that adored her. My sister Elaine was ten years old and I was sixteen.
My carefree, happy childhood came to an abrupt end. Each day that followed brought more sadness as I watched my once chatty, happy father sink deeper and deeper into the deafening silence of depression. No matter how much he drank, alcohol seemed to afford him only a little temporary relief from the anguish of losing the woman with whom he had shared so much. I was in a lonely hell of my own and ached for dialog with my beloved daddy, so we might grieve together and support each other through this horrific loss. Whenever I asked him questions about my mother, he would reply without focus or emotion, as if in a stupor. I would see him sitting in his favorite chair, swallowing back the tears, unable to give a voice to his unspeakable pain.
On April 7, 1961, eight months after my mother’s death, my family’s future became uncertain. We were Americans living in Cuba. Fidel Castro, the self-proclaimed new leader of Cuba, had forcefully exiled the previous dictator Fulgencio Batista in December 1959 and had broken all diplomatic ties with the U.S.
Dad told me that there were rumors of an impending American-backed invasion of Cuba that aimed to oust the Communist regime. On the eve of that terrible April day in 1961, my ten-year-old sister Elaine was spending the night with a family friend. Like my father, I understood and feared that Castro would ensure the survival of his new Communist regime at all costs. My father was a kindly man, non-political by nature, but he was American, and therefore, considered to be an enemy of Castro’s revolution. It didn’t matter that our family was well liked by our Cuban friends and neighbors. It didn’t matter that we considered Varadero our home and loved living there. Dad began to make plans for us to leave Cuba.
I never heard the G2 militia (the new Cuban Gestapo) knock on the kitchen door that night. When I awoke, Juanita, the gentle woman that had cooked and cleaned for our family since Elaine and I were little, was shrieking through her sobs that my father had been seized by the militia. They had taken him to a concentration camp where he was falsely accused of attempting to mount a “frog man operation” against the Castro regime because he had too many scuba tanks in our garage. I was so frightened. What on earth was happening to our family? Where was dad? Was he alive?
For the next week, Juanita stayed in the house with me and we slept under our beds holding kitchen knives for protection in case the G2 militiamen returned to harm us. She told me that they would likely return to loot our home. At night we huddled in fear listening to the machine gun fire aimed to keep all of Varadero’s citizens terrified and immobile. There was nowhere we could go. The main road and bridge out of our peninsula had been dynamited so that none of the men in Varadero, or in any other part of Cuba, could join or assist the Cuban refugee-manned and U.S. trained resistance. This was unlikely to happen since any man that was not a member of the militia or a known Castro supporter was now, like my father, incarcerated in a make-shift concentration camp. It was well known that the invaders’ aim was to overthrow Castro’s repressive regime. The phone lines had all been disabled for the same reason. I had no way to call our grandparents two hours away in Havana, to call my sister or to request assistance from anyone.
Each night, hiding under the bed with Juanita crying and trembling nearby, I prayed to God to help our family and Cuba endure this new nightmare. I cried myself to sleep, asking myself what my beloved mother would do in my situation. Early one morning I awoke, I got up and sat on the edge of the bed. I could clearly feel my mother’s comforting arms holding my skinny shoulders. I felt warm and calm. My gut no longer felt like it was in a vise. The scent of my mother’s favorite fragrance filled the still morning air, even though the bottle that held the perfume sat untouched, tightly sealed, on her dressing table, in the bedroom at the end of the long hallway. All at once, every comforting word of advice that she had given me over the years suddenly flooded my consciousness. “Ceci, you are not bony and flat-chested, you are lovely and statuesque. Girls of American descent just take longer to bloom than Cuban girls.” “Ceci, you are a good, smart, conscientious girl. You can do anything you set your mind to doing.” “Remember to trust in Providence.” “Things are never as bad as they seem.” “God always watches over all of His children.” How, I now asked myself, could I have ever doubted that God, whose loving presence I had sensed so many times during my childhood, was suddenly missing in action or that my nurturing mother, now guiding me in spirit, would ever abandon me?
Several events along the way also helped me gain strength and trust in my own ability to survive sanely on my own. I believe that I became an adult the night my dad was captured by the G2 militia. I had only myself to rely on for survival for the greater part of a week. Juanita was more frightened than I was, so I became the adult and reassured her that we would both make it through the nightmare we were living.
A month later, my father was mercifully released from the five foot by five foot chicken coop that had been his prison and would have certainly been his execution chamber had the Bay of Pigs invasion succeeded. He had somehow managed to stay alive for ten days on a minuscule allowance of a little water and a few spoons of rice a day. At first, we didn’t recognize the gaunt, half-starved man stumbling up the driveway. Within two weeks our entire family was miraculously able to leave Cuba swiftly and without being physically violated, which was not the experience of many attempting to flee at that time. The smooth orchestration of our hasty departure proved to me further that completely trusting in a loving God would surely allow me to survive any hardship or sorrow that lay ahead. I never questioned how I would get through the difficult times. I just knew that I would.
I had always confided in my mother, not in my father, so after reaching the U.S. I decided to surround myself with good friends and that I needed to find a mentor. My friend Patti in high school and best friend Penny in college let me know that I was lovable, fun to be with and worthwhile. I knew that I was a good person, I could make it through college and someday I would have a home of my own.
When my father married again it was not a happy household. My stepmother resented my father sharing a laugh with me or talking about a book we had read. Sometimes she made up lies about me and dad would reprimand me. She ridiculed me and put me down in front of him and other people. It really hurt at the time, but eventually I remember feeling sorry for them both. They seemed so broken. About that time I found another good friend in the Language Department at the university. She had also had a cruel stepmother who belittled her, and this sweet, funny woman became my trusted mentor. She encouraged me, invited me to spend time with her loving family and showed me the value of humor and the benefit of not taking everything in life as seriously as I had a tendency of doing.
I decided that my stepmother’s acting like a martyr and always expecting the worst might be her way of coping with life’s hardships and disappointments, but that way of living life was exactly what I did not want for myself. Ever!
It was no accident in 2008 that a person I just met while buying some furniture happened to share with me that she attended the kind of church that I had spent so many years hoping to find. I decided to go there and it’s where I met the spiritual director and all those kindred spirits with whom I now interact at the Center. They show me by their words and actions how to be the captain of my mind-soul ship. The wisdom and deep spirituality of the director’s inspiring humor-laced sermons and the classes I have taken there have allowed me to see that there is more to life than merely making the best of what happens to me. The difference in how I live my life since those days of my teen years and subsequent adulthood is that the faith tradition that I now choose to practice serves me and empowers me spiritually in ways that I could have never, ever, imagined.
These days I monitor closely the thoughts on which I choose to dwell. The positive, empowering ones allow me to thrive.
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Life Can Change On A Dime
By the time people reach adulthood just about everyone has suffered a great loss.
1. What kind of loss have you experienced?
2. Did you have any time to prepare yourself for it or did it occur suddenly?
3. How did it affect you then?
4. Over the course of your life “up ‘til now,” how has it affected you?
5. Have you ever had someone close to you die suddenly? yes / no
6. If yes, who was it and describe that person:
7. If no, describe what you’ve observed in others when someone close to them died suddenly.
8. How did your life change as a result?
9. If someone you knew had someone close to them suddenly die in what ways could you be of assistance to them?
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The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Anaïs Nin
Kat Voci
My feet throbbed and my ears rang as I ran through the dark, rainy night and jumped into my red T-bird. I had rushed from my day job as a dental assistant to my second job as a cocktail waitress at the Red Lion Hotel, and now at 3 a.m. I was exhausted. My car sputtered and I cursed. I arrived home to find a blinking red light on my answering machine. The voice on the other end informed me “This is your sister’s friend. I want you to know that the girls (my two nieces) were taken away by the police and put in a foster home tonight.”
Andrea, the five-year-old, had been put in my custody for six months, when she was three. That was a little before Cherise was born and now she was two. I was upset that they had been taken away, but also relieved. I had been praying for an intervention so that the girls wouldn’t be in that unsafe situation anymore. I decided right then and there I had to go and get them.