Podcasts about Shala

This new episode is a slow drift into the textures of South India: the restless pulse of Chennai's streets, the stillness of a yoga shala at dawn, and the vast orchestration of a tropical night storm. These layers are touched gently with electronica—like glimmers of memory, like the way technology sits side by side with tradition in India. And, punctuating the journey, come the voices of teachers: fragments of WhatsApp messages that carry not just words but intention, care, and a lineage of practice in the simplest of forms.The episode is structured as a weave.Streets: density, rhythm, surrender to chaos.Shala: stillness, breath, intimacy with silence.Storm: scale, power, surrender to nature.Messages: guidance, lineage, the human voice carried across time and technology.Electronica acts as a thread, never dominating, but stitching the worlds together. A filtered bass line might echo the rumble of a bus or a thundercloud. A synth pad might stretch like the silence of a shala breath. Digital glitches mirror raindrops striking metal roofs.The weave is intentional but not forced. India itself is a weave: tradition and technology, chaos and stillness, ritual and improvisation. The episode mirrors this reality.The practice of this episode is the practice of listening. Not just passive listening, but active, embodied listening. In yoga, we speak of shravanam—the act of hearing as a form of learning. This is not entertainment. It is presence.

  Black women face unique challenges and risks in the perinatal period. Let’s talk about Black maternal mental health! Carleigh Joseph and Shala McKee, Black Maternal Mental Health  

Our main paranormal man, MERLE, from the Paranormal Roadtrippers, based out of Vancouver, B.C. Tonight, Merle brings in his spooky friends, Shala and Shiane from Spokane, Washington's Paranorthwest team to talk about strange happenings in their area. It's more than ghosts and things that go bump in the night.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/spaced-out-radio--1657874/support.

Episode #362: Myanmar has recorded the world's worst casualties from landmines and explosive ordnance for the first time, with over 1,000 casualties in 2024 alone, 29% of whom are children. The inaugural episode in our “Navigating a Minefield” series kicks off with Bekim Shala, a humanitarian mine action expert whose journey in the field began in his native Kosovo, heavily contaminated by landmines during the breakup of Yugoslavia. Witnessing the human toll there, he recognized the importance of mine action. “By being exposed to people who have been injured really quickly, it became clear how important this work is,” Shala says. His work has since taken him to numerous conflict and post-conflict zones, including Eritrea, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, and Vietnam before arriving in Myanmar in 2016. As a coordinator for humanitarian mine action in the country, Shala led a team contributing to explosive ordnance risk education (EORE) and secured permissions for surveys through engagement with Naypyidaw, while pushing for permission to conduct de-mining. Shala believes that “had COVID-19 not struck and the coup not unfolded, [they] would have been clearing landmines in Myanmar by now.” However, the 2021 coup worsened the situation, with landmines now pervasive across all states and regions, moving increasingly into residential zones. This shift, coupled with indiscriminate mining by less experienced parties, has led to an increasing threat to civilians that could take decades to defuse. Most landmines are factory-produced by the Myanmar military, although improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are also made by some ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) and People's Defense Forces (PDFs). Systematic clearance is impossible given the conflict and lack of permissions. As Myanmar is not a signatory to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, Shala's strategy focuses on engaging all parties to reduce landmine use, especially in civilian areas, looking ahead to a future where the country can be cleared of explosive ordnance. “Even small reductions, such as refraining from use in populated areas or encouraging basic record-keeping of where landmines are laid, can shave decades from the other end,” he says.

For years, Shala Nicely looked like she had it all together, but in reality? Her mind was consumed with obsessive thoughts and nonstop mental rituals. Because her compulsions weren't visible, no one — not even Shala herself — realized she was suffering from OCD.In this interview, Shala shares how mental compulsions made it easy to hide her struggles but impossible to feel peace. She opens up about the toll of living in secret, how long it took to get a diagnosis, and what finally helped her step out of the cycle and into recovery.If you're stuck in mental loops no one else can see, you're not alone. NOCD therapists specialize in treating mental compulsions with ERP, the most effective therapy for OCD. Book a free 15-minute call at https://learn.nocd.com/YTFollow us on social media:https://www.instagram.com/treatmyocd/https://twitter.com/treatmyocdhttps://www.tiktok.com/@treatmyocd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kate Waitzkin is a mother of three, yoga and meditation teacher, writer, mentor, and Founder of The Shala and The Shala Online. She has taught yoga and meditation for nearly two decades and is recognized for her accessible and potent approach to teaching. In addition to The Shala Online, Kate has shared her expertise with goop.com, the Yoga Wake Up app, and CamilleStyles.com. In 2019, Kate led breathwork and meditation classes at goop league - goop's first-ever fitness experience in Austin, Texas. Her writing has appeared in Magnolia Journal, Texas Highways, goop.com, camillestyles.com, and teach.yoga. In today's episode, Nada sits down with Kate for a discussion packed with practical tips and advice for those looking to branch out in a new direction. Kate opens up about various career pivots informed by life circumstances and intentional reflection. The two discuss her forthcoming book, and the process and challenge of writing and getting published. Kate offers advice for those looking to launch an online presence, encouraging us to just get started!To find out more about all that Kate has to offer, check out her website. And to get in touch with Suzanne Kingsbury's Gateless Writing community, visit her website. Follow on Instagram: @katewaitzkin and @suzannekingsbury. Please follow us at @thisislibertyroad on Instagram; we want to share and connect with you and hear your thoughts and comments. Please rate and review this podcast. It helps to know if these conversations inspire and equip you to consider your possibilities and lean into your future with intention. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On today's podcast show, we're joined by Rebecca, an angelic reiki healer, tarot reader, and intuitive healer. After being told she had 'the gift,' Rebecca embarked on a powerful journey of energy healing. In this episode, she shares how spiritual experiences, deep personal growth, and learning to become a clear vessel transformed her life — and how she now helps others do the same.

2nd Date Update: Shala's date with Timothy was truly "out of this world"... full 543 Tue, 29 Apr 2025 14:10:00 +0000 NuULBzf0786d2VMQUwdmX1OXnNaMjxnB music Thunder & PT Repeat music 2nd Date Update: Shala's date with Timothy was truly "out of this world"... The best audio segments and bits from this week on the Thunder and PT show! If you could not listen to the show, check out the weekly repeat podcast! 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. Music False https://player.am

Tonight, we'll read from the opening to the 1923 travel memoir Peaks of Shala by Rose Wilder Lane. It is about a walking tour of mountainous Albania. The daughter of writer Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lane was an American journalist, travel writer, novelist, and political theorist. Though she is perhaps best known today for her work editing and shaping her mother's Little House series, Lane led a bold and independent life that took her far from the American frontier. In the early 1920s, she spent time as a foreign correspondent in postwar Europe, traveling through parts of the continent still recovering from World War I. Albania, then newly independent and largely unknown to the Western world, captured her imagination with its dramatic landscapes and fiercely traditional mountain communities. Peaks of Shala recounts her journey on foot through the northern Albanian highlands, a region governed more by ancient tribal codes than by any central government. Her writing blends observation and introspection, offering glimpses of rugged hospitality, isolated customs, and the physical demands of mountain travel. The book remains a rare first-hand account of a Western woman's experience in one of the most remote corners of Europe during a period of great transition. — read by 'N' — Sign up for Snoozecast+ to get expanded, ad-free access by going to snoozecast.com/plus! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dave Charles starts your day with The Morning Show, weekdays from 6-9am on Radio Life & Style - proudly sponsored by Bidvest McCarthy Toyota Ballito. Broadcasting live from the heart of Ballito, The Morning Show serves up a curated mix of contemporary music and classic hits from across the decades, alongside interviews with tastemakers & influencers, plus a healthy dose of local news & views from the booming KZN North Coast. Listen live on lifeandstyle.fm, download our free Radio Life & Style app or find our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all good platforms. ........................................ *About our Sponsor - Bidvest McCarthy Toyota Ballito: Welcome to McCarthy Toyota Ballito Our qualified and friendly staff are here to help you purchase a new or pre-owned Toyota and assist with all your vehicle requirements. We aim to exceed customer needs and expectations by offering you affordable vehicles and products, and giving you exceptional service at every point of the journey - from sales, through to finance, and much more. We value every customer who walks through our doors and our expert team members are here to ensure you are taken care of. Let us help you lead the way on your next Toyota adventure, visit us today. Radio Life & Style on Facebook · The Morning Show Sponsor: Excellerate Security

rWotD Episode 2896: Children's LoveCastles Trust Welcome to Random Wiki of the Day, your journey through Wikipedia’s vast and varied content, one random article at a time.The random article for Tuesday, 8 April 2025 is Children's LoveCastles Trust.CLT India (registered as Children's LoveCastles Trust) is an Indian non-profit, non-government organisation based in Jakkur, Bengaluru. It was founded in 1997 by Bhagya Rangarchar. It aims to provide education using technology to the under-served communities and its solutions serve the base of the pyramid.It operates an e-learning delivery model. This model has been implemented in government schools across Karnataka, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, among other states in India. CLT India is a certified GuideStar Gold level participant. In an impact assessment study by Christ (Deemed to be University), Bangalore, it was found that 83% schools which were a part of the CLT India’s e-Shala program reported increased enrollments and 72% schools reported reduction in dropouts from their academic course. It was chosen as a Dasra fellow for their Research Publication in partnership with USAID as one of the few change makers that are making a difference in the way girls are impacted in secondary schools. Having scaled up the low cost technology model, CLT's e-Patashale content runs in over 12,000 classrooms in India today.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:12 UTC on Tuesday, 8 April 2025.For the full current version of the article, see Children's LoveCastles Trust on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm standard Brian.

A Butterfly wants to kill the World?Book 3 in 18 parts, By FinalStand. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels.Although Love is both fire and shadow, we often forget to take comfort from the coolness of the memories when the burning flames are absentThere were precisely two things, okay, four things, keeping me alive. The fourth thing would come to her later when her 'furious was replaced by her 'curious' ~ as in how I knew her inhuman lingo ~ which would lead to my legacy with Grandpa.The top three reasons -She had poked my chest. It was a challenge, calling for one of my guardians to come out and play. The avatar knew I was the chosen heir of the Goddess Ishara and my goddess had devoted a good deal of time and effort to my survival and continued service in her cause. If Ishara made an 'appearance', it would be enough reason to not eviscerate me for my foul treatment of her august personage.Nope. It seemed Ishara was busy at the moment.Still, she most likely knew SzelAnya had shown a keen interest in me in Romania, though I'd never told Selena, or any other member of the 9 Clans, the Dragon's Daughter had killed Ajax for me. Figuring out SzelAnya, a storm deity, had helped me and Aya escape from our kidnapping in the midst of a cyclone in the Pacific Ocean wasn't much of a reach.But no bolt of lightning coalesced from my chest to singe her finger. No clap of thunder. Not even a cloud with a hint of disfavor appeared above us.Her obsidian fingernail began penetrating my shirt, touched my skin, then drew my blood, and something 'twitched'.That would be Contestant Goddess #3. She wasn't actually hanging around me. She didn't have to. She'd left me a memento of our last shindig before we parted ways. That was the nightmare-inducing episode where she, the chthonic goddess Sarrat Irkalli, had compressed one man's body into a dagger and then proceeded to suck another's soul into it to use as a power source for an Airbus 350 (a commercial airliner, if you didn't know).I still had that snaggletooth-looking thing at my back. Well who the Hell was I going to leave it with? Honestly, the only people I felt could keep it safe I loved too much to curse with it. Anyway, the second her divine claw touched my blood, the long dormant weapon whispered to me in a somewhat bored, lofty feminine voice from beyond the grave,Do you want me to discorporate this pathetic has-been for you?Quick check. Only the avatar and I, and her priestess-savant heard that. Of course, in downtown, New York City, noon Sunday, how weird would such a declaration be? The avatar's eyebrow arched. Her big bat-ears (still looking human to the normal viewing public) flicked this way and that, figuring out precisely where the threat originated from. Slowly, her once poking hand began to slide across my chest, along my ribs and around my back.She touched the dagger. Nothing.Gingerly, she drew it forth. I'd had a makeshift sheath made. As the blade made its journey around me, she took a half-step back to better observe it."Please don't kill him!" Theddy squealed. "We haven't had sex yet!"Being 'who' and 'what' she was, the avatar did what came natural. Fortunately for Theddy, I'd become accustomed to working with psychopaths.She stabbed the dagger at Theddy. I clamped my hand down on her wrist. The claws of her left hand came down on my constraining wrist. My free hand came down on that hand, trying to pry it free. It was a hopeless struggle, except.Yes, my old friend 'except'. Except the avatar was holding the dagger. As powerful as Ītzpāpālōtl was, she wasn't pushing against me. She was pushing against Sarrat Irkalli.Ītzpāpālōtl was a living, breathing terror machine who killed and received sacrifices on a regular basis.Sarrat Irkalli hadn't been actively worshipped in 3,000 years.Uneven contest? Oh yeah.See, Ītzpāpālōtl had spent the past 500 years continuously fighting against the Weave to keep her fingers on this side of reality.Meanwhile, for the most part, Sarrat Irkalli had sat upon her throne in the Sumerian Underworld with hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of souls toiling under her watchful gaze for eternity. Sure, her version of Hell wasn't getting any fresh deposits, but she knew how to milk the system well.Even the bad karma for the dagger's creation wasn't hers. She'd stolen it from the foolish Gong Tau sorcerers who had meant to enslave my soul, aka one-third of the Baraqu-Alal-Cáel deal she'd worked out millennia ago. It was the Weave giving her a 'freebie' for playing by the rules, if you considered the Weave sentient.And now Ītzpāpālōtl was touching it. Whoops. It wasn't as if Ītzpāpālōtl was stupid. It isn't like there are tons of magic weapons running around, much less soul-munchers like the one I had. Rationally, who would give a novice like me, a weapon like this? I say again, 'whoops'.Once I'd figured this out, I couldn't stop being me."Theddy, do you like girls?""What?" she squeaked. Here was this psycho trying to drive a Smilodon incisor into her bosom and I was giving her a sex quiz.Ītzpāpālōtl was really starting to struggle now."I, ah, are you okay?" she continued."Oh, I'm dandy. I'm serious. You think this chick is hot? I mean, would you do her in a three-way?" I proposed casually."Timothy?" Sovann."Bro?" Timothy to me."It's all good. Sovann, you want to know what my life is like? This lady who came to discuss business with me today is an immortal mass murderer. You give the word, I'll let go and this knife is going to cut her up like a Ginsu blade on market day because just cutting her heart out isn't going to be enough. Worse. Eventually she'll get back up.""Timothy?" Sovann repeated, this time with more concern. He thought I was nuts. I released my left hand. The blade flipped up, twisting in the avatar's grasp. That was the point her minions figured out something was wrong."El Amado?" the priestess-savant called out softly. The three goons began reaching for 'things'."Call them off, or I open my other hand," I cautioned the avatar. She spared me a swift, hostile look. My fingers tingled."Esten quietos!" she snapped. They stopped."Cáel, bad day, or not. This isn't you. Stop it. The girl's in danger," Timothy spoke up. He didn't mean Theddy. He meant the avatar."I'm being a real asshole, aren't I?" I sighed."Pretty much. You never let the bitches get to you before. Girl pops an attitude, you smile and move on. Life is too short," he reminded me. Too true."I'm going to put my hand over the blade," I told Ītzpāpālōtl. "When I do, you can let go."She didn't say anything for several seconds, even after my left hand covered the semi-serrated edge."Why should I trust you?" she sizzled."Because 'me' letting anything bad happen to you would make me a total, judgmental jerk. I don't know you. Whatever you did before you showed up today shouldn't matter to me. I acted stupidly. I should have stopped you. I didn't. I didn't even warn you and I could have. I was angry, and not even at you. Just angry and I apologize. Now, let go.""Why?""Hi. I'm Cáel Nyilas. Can I have my knife back? Please?"Blink. She released it. For a millisecond, it wanted to do something else because bitches are bitches. It didn't, so my palm wasn't sliced open. My right hand took the hilt. I carefully put the blade away."Yes," Theddy gulped."Huh?" Sovann shook his head at the sudden evaporation of the life and death tension. Welcome to my life. Theddy meant 'yes' to the 'girl-girl-guy' thing I had proposed earlier. It pays to keep things prioritized."What is this movie you were talking about?" Ītzpāpālōtl asked. Had she forgiven me for anything which had transpired? Bwahahaha, no way. She was taking the initiative and going with Option 1 from my earlier insane diatribe."Wait!" Sovann nearly shouted. "You nearly, I don't know, threatened Cáel's life and tried to stab Theddy and now you think you can go with us to a movie?""I told you," Timothy put an arm around his shoulder, "life with Cáel is rarely dull.""I thought you meant he was fun to party with, or something like that," Sovann looked up at his lover. "I thought his uncle showing up, and trying to kill him and then being blown the fuck away by those women and federal agents, and that other girl who pointed a gun at us, is this the new normal?""I love you, Sovann," Timothy grew compassionate. "Cáel is my best friend. He'd never deliberately hurt either of us and normal friends are something he has in short supply. Today being a great case in point."Ten seconds passed."The title is 'As Above, So Below'," Sovann addressed the avatar, "and what do we call you?"Since 'if you are not a worshiper and addressing me, I normally am about to kill you' would sound really cool in Olmec-ic, but I might be asked to translate,"How about we go with 'Obsidian', please?" I pleaded with her.She knew I was currying favor now ~ and behaving like a weather vane caught in the wall of a tornado ~ she gave a gracious bow of her head."Obsidian will do for now. Is the Legend of the dagger 'business'?" Translation: it had better not be."No," I smiled. "It's pillow talk." Rancor, 'how presumptuous', followed by 'but that dagger ups the count to three Goddess interested in him', and next to recalling all the trivial babble about me being a sexual dynamo (I prayed my PR was that good) having some relevance. Her chimera emotions allowed me to get a few more crucial words out, because even women who aren't sleeping with me are jealous."Esta mujer fue la primera en ofrecer bienes funerarios tras la muerte dee mi padre," I reinserted Theddy back into my close company. For some reason, Obsidian considered me unreliable thus had to verify what I'd just said."Did you make funerary offering upon his father's passing?" she asked Theddy. Let's think about this. The wacko chick questioning Theddy had tried to stab a huge freaking blade into her not a minute ago. Fleeing in terror while screaming for the cops? Nope."Yes. I baked him some walnut and caramel chip cookies," she nodded. "It is a family recipe." Sovann looked over the three of us, then back to Timothy."I told you 'that's impressive cocking like I've never seen before'," he explained."She may remain," Obsidian 'permitted'. Theddy wrapped up my right arm with her left and gave it a squeeze. She wanted attention/explanation."Obsidian is a Master Vampire, Theddy," I leaned in and whispered. "Before she was turned, she was captured in a raid by the fey, mentally, spiritually and physically raped and made into their sex-slave. Part of her spirit never healed properly. While this imperfection allows her to walk around in daylight, her heart can never hold on to any emotion for long, so she is forced to forever seek passion, no matter how dangerous, from the world around her."Revealing secrets? Ha. I had noticed Theddy had every work done by Laurel K. Hamilton in her place, including the comic book series."You are not supposed to know, so act like I didn't tell you anything, okay?"'Okay,' she mouthed back at me. I could see it in her eyes. My chaotic life suddenly 'made sense' to her because a best-selling fiction author said so.Obsidian thought the movie was; hilarious. She couldn't stop snickering, giggling and poking at me as horrible shit happened to the various actors. She thought the plot was 'insightful' and wouldn't stop whispering to me throughout the entire thing. During the closing credits, I told her I'd get her the DVD for Christmas ~ she knew the concept behind digital technology, but didn't own any ~ she kissed me.The first kiss was fierce and joyous with the added benefit of her tongue doing things no normal tongue could do, it stretched. Not sure how I felt about that. The second kiss was more sultry, longer and came with some accompanying body action which, I'm no virgin. Not even close. She was on my left side, so when she twisted in her seat, her left leg insinuated itself between mine. Her left hand cupped my jaw and held my head in place as her lips played along mine.A dance of the scorpion perhaps? Tender at first, then suddenly stabbing, dominant and brutal. My lips and tongue battled back, using my superior Kiss-fu to nullify her natural strength and agility. She liked it. By her moaning, she liked it a lot. As the kiss progressed, more and more of her flowed from her seat into my seat, body facing me. Her body rose over mine, forcing my neck back to maintain contact."So, Dot Ishara is hovering around somewhere close, isn't she?" I murmured as our lips separated barely a centimeter apart. One chick kissing you to make another one jealous. It's happened to me plenty of times. Obsidian didn't give a damn about Theddy, or any other mortal woman in close proximity so,"Yes," she purred. "Do you mate with her?""A man does not brag of such things, but no, unless heavy petting counts?""What will she do to you when I steal your seed?"'When'? Why was I not surprised? Why was I not surprised another concussion was in my immediate future either? Was it possible I was, learning?"Chastise me for not fighting harder," I breathed across her lips, "and, in case you forgot, I'm on a date with the girl beside me.""Who I care nothing for," she sent a cruelly playful look Theddy's way. Wisely, the girl shivered."Who I am indebted to and how I honor my debts might matter to you," I hazarded. My words hurt Theddy's feelings. That was on purpose. Obsidian took pleasure in me hurting Theddy because she was basically a vicious monster."Yes?" I pressed her gently."Yes," Obsidian allowed, easing up slightly both romantically and physically."And Theddy, if you believe I'm with you solely because of some sense of obligation, you clearly haven't been listening to your recordings," I shot the human girl a wink."Oh.""Am I, or am I not, a sex-obsessed little monkey?" I teased her. Theddy giggled. I paid for my diversion with four obsidian claws to my ribs outside of Theddy's view. After all, it wasn't like Theddy could possibly compete with her for my attention. Considering Obsidian's legendary ability to rip open her opponent's ribcages and feast upon their hearts, I slipped my left hand, the one next to her between her legs and stroked her cotton-slacks covered cunt.Theddy hugged my right arm and put her head against my shoulder. Not to be outdone," Qu  un centenar dee hombres se quemaron vivos como el sonido?" Obsidian inquired with sexually sadistic hunger. Ah, memories of burning 7P Commandos.Whoops. Theddy knew Spanish."No lo s . Ten an respiradores en," I replied casually. "Si lo desea, puedo describir lo que se siente al tirar de una flecha de guerra lanzar mi propio muslo.""Eep," slipped out of Theddy's lips."Why did you do that?" Obsidian looked over us both."Well, I was showing a little girl I believed in her,""And she shot you?" Theddy gulped."No. She hit the target I was standing next to. A co-worker mistook me for a cardboard cutout of a Jehovah's Witness and let fly. Seems she had issues with organized religion as well as a reaction to the oscillation effect of florescent lighting and ceiling fans.""But why did you pull the arrow out?" Theddy asked. "Couldn't you wait until you got to the hospital?""Mosquito," Obsidian menaced, insinuating Theddy was a pest."I wasn't thinking rationally at the moment, I work in an asylum, I had a hot date in a few hours, any of those three will do," I smiled at Theddy."Copil such as Cáel don't bother with petty human conventions," Obsidian turned my gaze back her way with her hand on my jaw. 'Copil's were 'god-touched' in her lingo."More than one girl?" Theddy mused."Four.""Okay," she sighed happily."Theddy, three under-age girls and the police office he was dating acting as their chaperone," Timothy intervened. "He hurried home so he could keep a promise to the children, not for sex." Bastard. He really was my best friend. He didn't mention my post-injury, pre-festivity sex with Odette giving me a few extra, urgently needed Brownie Points to suggest I might be a decent human being."You are a wonderful guy," Theddy ran a fingernail over my free hand. Clearly I was 'wonderful' enough to risk Obsidian's anger over. The screen went blank as the last credits scrolled away and the room was plunged into darkness. Five seconds later, the lights snapped on.Pain!"Fuck," I hissed. It wasn't any extra physical trauma causing me discomfort. No, a metaphysical dam had burst within and my stream of conscious thought had been turned into a white-water rapids. The competing cyclones of thoughts in my mind had stopped cooperating and my hypothalamus was letting me know I was in danger."Cáel", "Cáel", "Bro", and "Ishara" all came in rapid succession. I needed some space both tangible and social."I need to step outside," I eased Obsidian off me and stood up. My sense of my personal danger was ratcheting up. While I had been studying Obsidian, so I could screw her, I had discovered more and more Alal-badness.The light display had ignited a series of pressing implanted memories which had been clamoring for my attention. Things like not all 'divinities' were stewards of the Weave. Some even wanted its destruction, preferring risking all on a chaotic restructuring of reality over what existed now ~ things like Obsidian. They weren't attempting to do so because they thought they had no chance.But there was. A real serious chance to unravel reality existed; and it was staring her in the face. It wasn't 'me' as in 'I was the Anti-Christ'. But with the torrent of memories pouring forth, I knew where the peril lay and I was completely responsible for it. Hell, I was a prime ally of Armageddon and hadn't even known it.'Holy Shit!'I blinked. Timothy was shaking me. We were out in the lobby."Oh my God, Timothy," I nearly wept. "What am I going to do?""I have no idea what you are talking about. Is there someone you can talk to about this?" he suggested. Normal folks were around us. Obsidian was at my side. Sovann was behind Timothy with an arm around Theddy's shoulder."Theddy," I looked at her. "Can I catch up with you later? I just realized I've screwed up something fierce." I put my best 'really don't want to go but I gotta' face on. Her worried look brightened, she slipped around Timothy and gave me a tingling French kiss."I'll hold you to that, Cáel," she murmured when we parted."Timothy, go home, I got shit to deal with," I hoped my grin didn't become as feeble as I felt it to be."I," he started to say something. "Time not to ask questions?""Yeah.""Okay.""Wait." I pulled us to the side and went on to my toes, leaned in and whispered in his ear, "Tell Pamela 'he' sent Ajax to kill the Professor, his family and the sisters. They were the targets all along. It wasn't me, or the other women. Just in case,""Okay," Timothy patted my arm. It was cryptic. It was the best I could do. See, I wanted to cry so badly.{2:09 pm Sunday, September 7th ~ Last day}Where to begin:Every mythology across the globe has some creature, or creatures, which threatens Existence. Usually a God, or a Hero-God, slays the creature and everything is right with the world, except such a being, being older than Existence itself, can't really die, so they are carved up, buried ~ what have you.Illuyankamunus was one such manifestation of this underlying cancerous desire to destroy reality. He'd had a far more real child, SzelAnya, and she's never quite given up on her dad. Of far greater critical importance, she was 'part' of Illuyankamunus, somewhat in the way I was part of Alal and Baraqu. And yes, that meant all the offspring of Bolu, the guy I'd praised a few hours earlier, held the seeds of that malignant deity as well.And Alal knew it. He hadn't been killing off the descendants. He'd left that task up to a group far more capable of the task, the Egyptian Rite, who knew a fucking threat to existence when they saw it. Lest I forget, No secret society are the 'good guys'. Also lest I forget, I alone decided to go after the Arinniti sons to fulfill Vranus' quest. I had no divine mandate I was aware of nor any real world orders.Inadvertently, I had rounded up the last five mortal remains of Illuyankamunus in one place for convenient disposal in a remote Transylvanian town. The only problem was: if someone didn't get to them quickly, I was also about to whisk them into the loving (and heavy-armed) protective embrace of the Amazon Host, where the completion of centuries of culling would have suddenly become a cast-iron bitch instead of a simple disposal.Enter Ajax. Yeah, I bet the Egyptians were trying to figure out how I stopped him as well as Alal. I thought I was being clever by not telling most of the world. In fact, they most likely suspected; and the reality of SzelAnya watching over me was much more terrifying. Ishara had put a serious curse on the Amazons, yet her curse only affected her followers, the Amazons, who were fair game.SzelAnya had killed someone for me, and I hadn't been one of her followers. Thus I had committed a blasphemous act only a magician of some significant ability could have managed. I wasn't a sorcerer, but I had a cornucopia of mystic knowledge rolling around in my noggin. Trying to figure all this out was one of my major headaches.The others?I even suspected I knew who betrayed me ~ kinda. They didn't do it on purpose. At least I hope they didn't, because my odds-on favorite was my Mother by way of Captain Delilah Faircloth. Realistically, there was only one secret society who might help her against Grandpa and that was the Egyptian Rite, and they did send three people to Dad's funeral including two 'somebodies'. I'm an idiot.I'd chatted away in fluent New Kingdom Egyptian and it never occurred to me how odd it was for two of them to also be so fluent in it. Know it, sure, but as fluent as Kimberly had taught me to be? That should have been a Red Flag.The Earth & Sky had sent Iskender, who should have been the benchmark I judged the other delegations by, damn it.Three Condos? They'd killed my Dad and their guys had been flunkies.The 7 Pillars had been nobodies, which they'd proven by their inaction.Now I had to question why I had 3 actual  9-Clans  assassins at my dad's funeral too. Holy Ishara, I wasn't nearly paranoid enough.Anyway, why would the Amazons be aiding and abetting the End of All Life on Earth? Normally, they wouldn't be, but 3000 years ago, the majority of Human life did a colossal dump on the Amazons. And when they needed help, they got it in the form of SzelAnya and her dual-sex followers. I seriously doubt they told the Amazons their purpose was to resurrect SzelAnya's daddy. I imagine the Amazons didn't pry too much either.It turned out almost to be okay. During the 2nd Betrayal, the Amazons betrayed SzelAnya and almost short-circuited her plans by exterminating her lineage.Except for the Arinniti elders and Bolu. Good old 'except'.I can imagine when the Egyptians heard about the 2nd Betrayal, they figured they were 'okay'. Those wacky Amazons had inadvertently done the world a favor. Except an act of maternal love kept a slender hope of Illuyankamunus' return alive. By the time the Egyptians realized they'd been prematurely hopeful, Bolu's descendants were all over the Balkans and hunting them down had proven difficult.But, it gets worse. Much worse.When those Gods shattered Illuyankamunus, they scattered him in the relative certainty no one would ever gather the parts back together.His flesh was scattered across the land, modern day Turkey, but encompassing everything from Pakistan to Italy and Egypt to Poland. The flesh became soil, then plants, the things that eat plants, then food for humans. Get the picture.Whoops. SzelAnya had been doing just that for centuries upon centuries every time she mated with a mortal of Illuyankamunus' line and had offspring, they accumulated his energy, which made hunting down the few remaining ones easier to find, since they were 'beacons of badness', except...There were two key pieces missing which SzelAnya could never get. After all, you would think burying them on the far side of the world would matter, right?The 'breath of Illuyankamunus' ~ his cosmic fire ~ they buried in a volcano in a distant land far across the Great Sea. His spirit 'body' they imprisoned in a great river, again, across the Great Sea.But wait, it gets worse.The being standing next to me knew precisely where the 'breath of Illuyankamunus' was. Seems Mesoamerica is laced with volcanos. They'd discovered 'the breath' long ago and used it as a weapon called Xiuhcoatl. Better yet, Alal suspected she and her buddies were more than happy to reunite it with the rest if they thought the Weave itself wouldn't annihilate them for daring to do so.In their current, weakened state they were vulnerable to such a karmic backlash. In theory, a reborn Illuyankamunus would have access to power beyond the bounds of the Weave, older and more terrifying. Still, without the mortal remains to anchor the energy, giving it to the spirit would be pointless.Alal knew where the spirit body was (in general), but that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was where it was,Of all the places the Arinniti sons could have fled to, they had to choose Brazil, the burial place of the restive spirit body of Illuyankamunus. Mother-fucker.And Ildiko 'Alkonyka' aka Dusk Lovasz had sworn she'd travel to Brazil to fulfill Bolu's side of the quest in the same way I was holding up Vranus' end. If I tried to stop her, SzelAnya would know something was up. Fuck.I was processing all of this when Obsidian violently yanked me out of the way. A cabby had swerved to avoid a flurry of trash and nearly run over us. It was the third near-concussive experience in the past five minutes she'd help me avoid while she had walked by my side. I'd been mumbling like a madman."That would be my Goddess wanting to talk with me," I looked her way."I know," she gave me a clever smile."She's really not going to like that," I shook my head."I know that too," she kept smiling. "Where is your mind?""Five lives away from making the world a safer place," I sighed."Safer for who?" she purred. Where were all the bimbos? Not only was it an insightful question, it cut straight to the heart of my dilemma.What decision could I make? If I elected to help my fellow Amazons, I risked screwing with the world. In truth, I was risking everything even if I did nothing. Well Dad was always clear that things didn't change by themselves. You needed to do something that would have an effect. So, 'What are you going to do?'More to the point, I wasn't Grandad. Killing the last five of the line of Illuyankamunus wasn't 'me', so it wasn't going to be something I'd worry about.SzelAnya wanted to bring back her Dad, I could understand that. I'd have to figure out a way for her to believe this world sticking around was more important. How? Well, I had a goddess-like creature right in front of me to probe for ideas."You are an immortal," Obsidian commented. She'd been weighing her opinion for some time. I could tell by the wonderment with which she gifted each word."What? No. I can die.""No. I don't think so. Your wounds. Normally the wounds I inflict flow freely for some time. Yours have already scabbed over," her eyes flickered to the various minor scars she'd imparted to me in the few hours we'd been together.Of course, her idea was insane, Oh God No! I was in Grandad's body. Well Duh! His body was supposed to be immortal."Are you sure?" I looked deep into her eyes."You are a young immortal, the youngest I've ever met, but you are an immortal," she seemed to be convincing herself as much as me.Stupid Assumption (on my part)! I wasn't in Alal's body. I was in Cáel's. Because the Cáel soul shard was young, Alal hadn't been able to find it because it had moved through Time, to me, sonofabitch! 'I' hadn't been around for him to find. No! I was making yet another damn assumption.What did I know? When Pamela found Baraqu, it had been in an object, not a person, though she had been short on details. When the Alal-shard went to the Land of the Endless Black Sands to bring Saku back, the Cáel-shard had been in reality, so it had been allowed to create a body, 'me'. Still, the curse Sarrat Irkalli placed on Baraqu was on Alal and myself as well, which meant I might just be immortal.My Alal-mind agreed with Obsidian's assessment. In his first years, his healing had been slow, still taking days for what took mortal people weeks. I'd stupidly attributed my swift recovery to Amazon medicines, ugh. Because I got wounded more than most Security Detail trainees while concurrently entertaining two and three sex partners."Can you talk with Dot Ishara?" I asked her."Yes, but why would I?""Sex?""We are going to have sex anyway," she smiled. I'd tricked her. Set her up with the right so I could now drop her with the left."I can bring the mbo  tat  back to life," I pledged. That was not what she was expecting at all. "If you bring the Xiuhcoatl, I can bring the flesh and we can unite the three." Mbo  tat  was the Tupi name for the legendary 'fiery serpent' of the Amazon Basin. In Portuguese, it had become Boi-tat , a will-o-wisp with a confused, Christianized mythology ~ a serpent dwelling in darkness, devouring the eyes of corpses, glowing in the forests at night."Where is the flesh?" she whispered."In his mortal children," I replied."Who?""You are a monster, Ītzpāpālōtl. I'm not going to tell you and you don't have the time to drag the information out of my mind before my allies drop on you like a nuclear detonation," I drew my body tightly to her."Why would the Amazons do this?""They are not. This is a deal between you and me," I kissed her lips. I pulled back. A few seconds later she kissed me back."Why?""My grandfather had my father murdered and I would avenge him. In the end, despite my father's Amazon heritage, my 'Sisters' will let his death go unavenged for the greater good of the Host. He was a man and they will never look beyond that ~ they will never value his life as they would that of a woman.""Your mother's father?""Yes. Cáel O'Shea of the Illuminati.""We are not at war with the Illuminati," she murmured. It was a casual observation, not a protest."You are at war with Cáel O'Shea.""He was slain.""He didn't stay dead.""You know much more than you are saying," she was finally catching on."Absolutely.""I need much more than a few names to convince my kin to help," she purred, a cocktail of sexual immersion and flesh-flaying pain."I don't work for you. You are agreeing to work for me," I was hard as iron in more than one way. Why? Boundaries. She lived in a world where only the fundamentals of reality constrained her. Having a human, no matter how polished my pedigree, or how much I might appear to be 'special', tell her 'you are not the boss' in a reasonable fashion was new and very unwelcome."What would make you think that?""My mentor taught me knowledge is a curse. It is our inability to forget, and I can see into your soul, Ītzpāpālōtl. You care not one wit for the life of an assassin. But the thought of the other 'Factors' of the 9 Clans treating you as an equal galls you almost as much as the crushing reality that you need them."You have lived 500 years in chains and I'm offering you a desperate grab at freedom," I added."Your brief glimpse of immortality gives you no insight into my existence," she bristled."Oh, how many have given up? How many have decided the fight was no longer worth it and faded from the Sunlight to make their final trip into the Underworld, never to return? Do you even visit them?" I spoke with a voice tinged with compassion and loss. I pulled upon the pitiless, blank memories of a childless Alal all those centuries and imprinted on them my own fears of fatherhood and failure."How do you know so much?" she let her fa ade crack, then blow away, in the hollowness of her own sorrow. How could I pity such a monster? I could because I was me and I wouldn't surrender that to the barbaric past and most likely horrific future. I pulled her close, resting my chin on the top of her head."You are not the first, wonderful, very bright woman who has stepped into my life, Obsidian," I whispered. "You are not even the first divinity. For all the millions of differences enforced by power and time, I think love, hate and the conflict between the two wear upon us all. If anything, you face an endless parade of hope and misery. Even if you chose to ignore it, you have seen it and perhaps it leaves its marks ~ water scarring the rocks of a riverbed."We paused. I was able to peripherally scan about and realize we'd made it to Central Park ~ the Ramble and off the beaten path."Your Goddess is a fool for not keeping you closer," she murmured."She does keep me close. You have been actively keeping me from her," I reminded my guest. "She also plays by the rules, so is of limited help in my plans for vengeance."Translation: I could enlist Ītzpāpālōtl's aid while still remaining loyal to my matron Goddess. Ishara could not provide what I needed and my Amazons wouldn't agree with my scheme, so I needed her. Three hours ago, she wouldn't have considered me a worthy supplicant, much less an allied equal, yet here she was conspiring with me to shake the foundations of Creation.Personally, I was thanking Mamitu, Destiny. Had I not been having my worst Sunday ever when we first crossed paths and then acted like a total cockhead, pissed her off and led her to holding Sarrat Irkalli's dagger, thus putting her life in my hands, and not had Timothy as a best friend, I wouldn't have taken her to the movie, and my mind wouldn't have wandered down those dark corridors of Alal's memories to piece things together.Whatever itinerary Obsidian had approached me with, my abrasive behavior had forced her to it cast aside. Dagger, movie, revelations, I was now so much more in her eyes than she had envisioned."Share my need and share with me an ounce of your sorrow," I murmured to her as I gently curled my fingers in her hair and directed her head up until she faced me."The dagger," she rumbled. While she was stroking my hard-on, I knew she was using it as a double meaning."I was pinned to an onyx sacrificial table," I began my tale. We worked off pants to mid-thigh then 'got busy'. Penetration was only going to be possible by turning her around. Ground-breaking was her ready acceptance of my instruction. I leaned against a tree, then pulled her onto my lap. She guided my phallus home.One locomotion and I sunk in deep. It was warm molasses until I hit and pressed against her cervix. For a second Obsidian trembled, then her muscles clamped down tightly, gripping my manhood firmly in a vise, keeping me still."Ah," I groaned. Obsidian had her neck twisted, so we were kissing with eye contact as I described my adventures with the Gong tau sorcerers. She shot me a quick twinkle of delight, a connection. She'd relayed physical pleasure in the way I was giving her cerebral gratification, aka hope.I rolled up her shirt, and gave both nipples a brutal tweak in response. She gasped. I was applying a little 'rough' with my tender intercourse. She rolled her tush against my groin, an invitation to double-down on my nipple-play. I kept my left hand working over each tit while working my fingernails down her abdomen. As I described the terror in old Tsu's face as he shouted out 'M iyǒu! (Mandarin for 'No!') as he recognized too late the curse he was invoking. She relished the visual of the Han necromancer's terror.'Me' smacking two fingers down on her clit earned me a squeal and a small gush of fluids on my nut-sack. Her look of astonishment was something I'd always cherish. Before me, sex was something she demanded from her followers/victims and definitely orchestrated. Her partners being fearful/worshipful must have limited their initiative."A-a-a-ah, we are being observed," she groaned, her lips less than an inch from mine. It took me a second."Which direction?" I kept pumping her, strumming her clit and treating her tit like taffy on a hot Coney Island summer afternoon. Her hooded eyes flickered to our right. I gave it ten seconds. I had to get Obsidian refocused on what I was going to do to her next, in case this was innocent voyeurism. Nope. It was Chaz.Why Chaz? See, I'm an idiot. My cryptic warning to Timothy for Pamela had been good for all of one minute. He'd called her and she'd gathered what she could and come looking for me.Why was she concerned? I was babbling to Timothy then wandering off with a 'beyond-freaky' chick I had just met named 'Obsidian' who came my way courtesy of another chick with the name of Estere.Let me see, Estere was Hashashin and for Timothy to describe someone in my life as 'beyond freaky' was bad news. Timothy was seriously worried about me and Timothy was an emotional rock ~ he didn't panic. Lest we forget, I was in a federal taskforce. A quick peek into New York traffic cameras revealed me and Obsidian wandering into Central Park from the south, so in the rescue party went, splitting up and Chaz 'lucked-out'.I still had two, no, three problems. I was really enjoying my sexual excursion with Obsidian and she was seeming to truly enjoy her experience with me. Oh, and Central Park is big, Pamela had been pressed for people, so she had pressed some unlikely participants into my rescue party."He's," smooch, "my brother, by adoption," I headed off the whole idea she'd been briefed on me already."Visual, Peacekeeper Six, OS2, L-11," Chaz muttered into his headset before taking up a casual stance on the path overlooking our trysting spot. Sex with an audience didn't bother her, so, we worked out as much action from twist, turns and two inches of in-and-out motions (she liked to keep our bodies tight) as we could. Obsidian was humming along in no time. Her vaginal walls were undulating, wearing away at my self-control.Panting, not from us,"Is he o, are they, who is she?" huffed and puffed a trio of voices from Chaz's locale. Oh. Pamela had recruited my 'Hounds'.I accidently (from a timing perspective) took that moment to grind my nails into her left nipple, pinched her clit and hammered her as hard as I could. Obsidian howled. Her vocalization exited the human realm in a cataclysmic manner.The noise scared avians a mile away into terrorized flight. Cats hissed, then raced for cover. Dogs tucked tail and ran. Streetlights a hundred yards away shattered in sprays of glass. Better yet, for the entertainment of my viewing public, she lashed out with her right hand at the closest Black Cherry sapling, exploding it into a mist of sap and pulverizing the bark and wood fiber into pulp.On the downside, her cervix gave my balls an ultimatum ~ release my seed at once, or she was going to twist off my head. My cock and balls have a long history of making decisions without me. I began lavishing her. Before I finally got the feeling I was out of the danger zone. She was back to rubbing against me and purring in blissful satisfaction."Onun g zleri," whispered Belgin, one of the Turks. 'Her eyes'?"Cáel, are you aware of the alternative nature of your liaison?" Chaz coolly cautioned me. Translation: 'mate, do you know you have your cock in a demon?'"Yeah," I coughed. I had a face full of her hair. I was working on some post-coital nuzzling along with slowly helping her get her pants back up."Ininzqueoccehpa," she hummed to me, ignoring our gathering. That was 'let's do this again'."Tehuatlcochitlehua," I replied with some fondness. She studied me for a second before deciding my term was one of endearment, thus 'you are what dreams are made of', not 'nightmares'.Obsidian had another issue to deal with. Timothy would call it a righteous cocking. Whatever it was, her hold on her human mein had slipped and her inhumanity was slipping through, mainly in her glass-like, black, multi-facetted eyes and her fingers which now ended in molten obsidian talons. On the subconscious level, her predatory nature was setting everyone close-by on edge. I could also make out the high pitched, ultrasonic pipping of her chiropteran cries ~ purpose unknown.Obsidian made her way off farther into the underbrush leaving me a few precious seconds to appreciate her retreating posterior while holstering my equipment. More people were arriving. I had one more thing to take care of before, oh look, Nikita had brought her Mom along, the NYPD Sergeant."Chaz, I need to have a quick chat with Dot before I can explain things. She's been waiting and that's unwise," I looked to the Brit. He nodded."Cáel? Mr. Nyilas? Prince?" all came my way. I relaxed as best I could. Chaz went to a body blow to stagger me, then an epic upper cut to send me to Lullaby Land.Dot & the DragonessDot and SzelAnya, in dragon form, were waiting as I tumbled forward. By the state of my haziness, I knew my unconsciousness wouldn't last long."You gave her your seed," came the accusation."Yes," I staggered, "and now you should be able to track her," I pointed out the bonus part of the arrangement. No comment."I've got to make this quick, SzelAnya, I've found your father, geographically speaking," I dropped the bomb."Don't," Dot Ishara commanded. After all, she and her divine cohorts had done the killing and corpse-dividing eons ago. Undoubtedly, they'd executed their own oaths to one another to 'never reveal what they had done' as well."Too late," I shook my head. SzelAnya's attention was magnetized. "I owe you and I'm paying my debts. I'm not blind to the dangers, believe me.""You have no idea what power you are invoking," Dot's undercurrent of displeasure was the worst I'd experienced."Wrong. I've got thousands of years of Alal boiling around in my head, Plus the rest of you betrayed her 2600 years ago. It doesn't mean I have to. And now, given the chance, I'm not. Even if you kill me, she's got enough toBack in the Ramble"Really expect me to believe," Nikita's mom was growling."Man down," I waved a weak arm skyward."Mr. Nyilas, what is going on here?" the Sergeant addressed me. I was reclining in a circle of my 'Hounds'; most were kneeling. Chaz was in a tiny bit of trouble for having clocked me."Umm, thanks for coming out and looking for me. I assure you, Mr. Tomorrow did what he did as a matter of his professional duties ~ intelligence gathering." As I struggled to stand, my ladies helped me. I saw Pamela with three Hounds coming up fast from one direction and Virginia with three more coming from the other. The gang was all here.The mutterings in non-English tongues suggested a bit of explaining was already going on."You've been bleeding," Nikita pointed out with an unspoken 'again'."This?" I pulled my shirt out and looked at the first bloodstain of my encounter. "This is the just the start of the bad news." I shed my windbreaker and then t-shirt.The professionals shouldered aside the others to take a closer look."All of these are from noon and less than an hour ago," I identified the damage. Sarge was skeptical. Chaz, Nikita and Virginia less so."They look older," the senior lawman noted."I've been curious about that," Chaz frowned."I've inherited my Grandfather's curse. My soul fragment was in the 'Here and Now' twenty-three years ago while his was, 'over there', so I was allowed to come into creation. According to my recently departed guest,""You are immortal," Virginia mumbled to finish the thought. Had the speaker not been a member of the FBI, who knows how the thought would have been received."From the memories I've been gifted with," I tapped the tiny divot on my forehead, "his healing abilities started out rather slowly too. I certainly don't want to test this theory, so no worries there," I scanned the group."How do you explain seeing your Grandfather in Hungary and again in Rome?" Virginia wondered."Again, that woman who just left," I got out."Was no woman," Nuray, another one of my Turkish Hounds interrupted. "Her eyes..." she tried to explain, "and look what she did to that tree," she pointed to the greatest piece of evidence of supernatural wrongdoing. The other two witnesses nodded."We all saw the same thing. Her eyes were, bottomless, definitely not human," Belgin affirmed. The veteran players looked to Chaz."She had a collapsed nose-bridge, lacked a blink response, her dental work was carnivorous and her tongue was extremely clipped and showed prehensile qualities," he reported calmly. Pause. Chaz was a freaking intelligence operative, after all."If her hands were a type of glove weaponry, I've never seen it s like before. While I know it is possible for a human to exert the force-pounds necessary to snap a two inch diameter tree trunk in one blow, it is a rare skill and requires intense discipline. This appeared to be done spontaneously, without preparation of any kind and as a reaction to other stimuli," he added."It was also your assessment he needed to be knocked unconscious?" Nikita's mom countered."Mr. Nyilas' psychological constructs are something the whole team has to work around. At times, he seeks 'insight' from his mind in a deliberately unconscious/non-sleep state," he replied."He claims to be talking with spirit powers. I know when he returns to consciousness, he delivers useful intelligence. I'm not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or psychic. I don't know why his mind functions that way. I do know results. And I know I work with people who would achieve those results by other means if it were at all possible. Since we haven't found another method, we accept that from tim

Guardian Goddess in Manhattan.Book 3 in 18 parts, By FinalStand. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels."Our Princess grew up around a woman whose keen intellect we rely on to protect us from unseen enemies," Saint Marie's voice became deeper and more threatening. "At the age of ten, she," Saint Marie looked my way as my hand shot up mimicking Aya's identical plea for attention."Yes Ishara?" Saint Marie chose to acknowledge me."She's nine.""Fine. At the age of nine, she earned an honorific, Mamētu me eda, which I didn't accomplish until my 19th year." 'Yes Ladies, I'm an epic bad-ass and I've been out-performed by a child'."She was kidnapped along with the Head of House Ishara. They tortured her by clipping off two of her digits, one at a time, then seared the damage with a blowtorch. She gave them nothing. At the end of the encounter, the two of them managed to defeat thirty Seven Pillar's commandos, over fifteen she disabled personally.""After killing nearly half as many enemies as the 35 I have personally dispatched in my entire career, she crossed a mile and a half of barren rock in the midst of a Category 4 Typhoon. Cáel Ishara only helped her half of the way because he was engaged with the last two members of the Seven Pillar's team.""I have utter confidence the madness here today, while assisted by House Epona and Ishara, was the brainchild of Krasimira. I say 'assisted' because Cáel Ishara spared Kwenhamai's life on the battlefield. Katrina Epona removed Kwenhamai from Romanian custody to keep her out of the hands of those who wished us harm. I was aware Kwenhamai was in New York, but not her precise location.""My read on the situation is this:"Aya of Kururiyahhssi was aware of Kwenhamai and Krasimira's plot to adopt her into the bloodline of the first Amazon.""She was not aware of Kwenhamai's plan to exit the Host in the manner she chose. I read the shock and pain in, Aya's face.""Our Princess has not given me a single order and I am the only voice here today that matters, I am the Golden Mare and the Council has consistently failed to agree on a Regency.""Krasimira, why have you done this?" Saint Marie abruptly asked for either a denial, or acquiescence of her perception of events."As directed by the Ancestors, the statute of a goddess of a First House was recast then returned to her perpetual spot. It brought new light to a dark, sacred and painful place. In that moment I realized that for the first time in nearly 3,200 years, the descendants of every Amazon gathered before the walls of Wilusa (Troy) had been reunited.""I was troubled. Was this a portent the augurs couldn't divine? In their council (the augurs) then came up with the words 'speak to our eldest'."Oh shit, the rest of the Council was racking their minds trying to figure who was the oldest surviving Amazon. I knew for a fact they were overlooking the two top candidates."I sought out the eldest Amazon alive. They claimed to not have the answer for my worries. She had far more numerous things weighing on her mind such as her intimate demise. Though I hated sharing the same air with her, I asked her to tell me her greatest regret.""I had given up on the Amazon Race until an Amazon reminded me, through martial effort, valiant spirit and a kind heart, I was wrong to abandon my faith with my people. Now I will die, unable to pass on my renewed hope because the one Amazon I would trust with my legacy is equally childless.""I asked her the name of this Amazon she felt was worthy of her legacy. Then I informed her she was wrong and the Amazon in question did indeed have a daughter. She asked to meet the daughter,""Last night I requested the presence of a female child residing with members of House Epona," the Keeper of Records looked up at the Golden Mare. "I provided neither the resident female (Caitlyn, Aya's Mother), or the House Head with an explanation."Female childSince my revival, Amazons were using 'female' child a lot more often. This meant, the motheer had never told her daughter farewell. The true fate of Aya of Epona would never officially be recorded. She has been born, but never recorded as an Amazon of her true House."The three of us met alone. The two embraced; birth mother and daughter. The eldest of us proclaimed she saw the light of Kururiyahhssi in her daughter's eyes. Words were exchanged. The child agreed to be adopted then departed. Further arrangements were made without the child's knowledge as we have recently observed.""I testify that there is only one Amazon alive today who knows what transpired and I will take those conversations to my grave. Does that suffice?" Krasimira finished. I was already regurgitating my mental quandary with my Isharans. Was Aya really a daughter of Kururiyahhssi?"I will leave it to the others to contemplate your, bizarre actions, Krasimira," Saint Marie frowned. "As for the rest of you, Aya has impressed me. If she has not impressed you, I do not care. I think she is definitely influenced by those two," Saint Marie motioned to Katrina and me. "It is a given since Katrina was of her blood and she has risked much in the presence of a man she calls 'Atta' and he calls 'Duma'.""Katrina is a cold, heartless snake and I am convinced she is one of the best 'First Bearer of the Sun Spear through the Halls of Night and Death' the Host been served by in a long, long time.” Saint Marie paused then looked at me while she said; “ Cáel is a fool who leads with his heart when he should let better women take charge. Fortunately for the rest of us, he is reliably successful despite his multitude of handicaps."Was I upset about being insulted? No. The truth hurts and a Man needs to learn to roll with the punches. Buffy I could deal with. Katrina most likely appreciated being associated with a dangerous reptile. Saint Marie hadn't forgotten Katrina threating Saint Marie's daughter that was for sure."I am considering much of what our Princess would like me/us to do, because it is based in keen insight and well-reasoned thought. She wishes to spare our sons so we will have more warriors in the fight. We have already added men to Havenstone and one to the Council, as was the Will of the Ancestors.""Let me see, she wishes a bodyguard of fourteen (2 First House and 1 from Africa, Asia, Europe and North & South America, the Amazon presence in Australia was minimal and I doubted they would bring someone up from Antarctica, plus the seven matching Runners) without removing permanent members of any House and allowing all Houses to have access to our future Queen. I approve. It is a fine idea and I wish I had thought of it.""Should we add Runners directly into the Royal House? She doesn't think so and I feel this decision shows a remarkably insightful into the long history of our People and protects the Council's sensitivity on such matters. I approve.""Placing our sons into the care of the Royal House? We need to free up as many sisters as possible. Men under the care of the Royal House will be tradesmen and help-mates. Not a single weapon will be in their hands. If none of you have realized herlike will take two decades to implement, it only increases my eagerness to see her become 'casted'."Aya's hand shot up again.Yes?""I would hope the Council, or the Regents, will consider a 'like' which is not mine. It is a man's and it should be of no surprise the idea is Cáel's.""If you feel it holds merit, Aya, tell us," Saint Marie deferred."The 9 Clans have shown some interest in a children exchange programs among our youth as it would provide new techniques we can add to our arsenal an a new avenue to experiment with new ideas. I find the idea to be promising as the Host takes part in affairs beyond our own immediate needs. It would also supply partners between families to be shared for a season or two."Translation: Amazon women could breed with men of allied Secret Societies to reduce our dependence on our own, much smaller, male population. In the short term, it would go a long way to rectifying the Host's child-bearing problems.The Council's quarrelsome behavior was biting them in the ass big time. Saint Marie was right, the only opinion that mattered was hers until the Council elected a Regency. Had we not been at war, the Council would have ruled, but we were, so we took orders from the Golden Mare. Even if the High Priestess had been alive, she would have deferred to our designated War Leader on most things."Cáel Ish, Cáel Wakko Ishara is a very dangerous and devious male, Aya. Be careful of any council he gives," Saint Marie's caution was more playful than menacing."I'll be okay," Aya peeped. "He doesn't have sex with any woman until she is eighteen." That wasn't what the Golden Mare was cautioning her about. We all knew it. Aya was working to defuse a sticky bit of mental juggling, listening to a man's advice."On that we can agree," Saint Marie conceded. "Back to what I would 'like' to say. The New Directive is being implemented. I feel it goes beyond the purview of my mandate. I will leave it for the Regency to deal with. Katrina and Tessa have already invested in the groundwork in this endeavor, so I will endorse it if that is the decision of the Regency.""I have zero desire to add a single Runner to the Security Detail. I will open up slots in the training program if that is what the Regency demands. Each House's policy for dealing with the First Directive is their business, not mine. If any of you wish to consider something the Princess considers to be important, so be it. The idea of 1,000 Isharans does not appeal to me. Look how much trouble their tiny numbers have already caused us and take heed."Buffy began growling, which amused/worried the Houses on either side of us. Unlike me, Buffy didn't 'roll with the blows' and considered all manner of insults to me, House Ishara and her Isharan sisters to be answerable with violence. I loved her so. There was also no way I'd let her go after Saint Marie. The Golden Mare would crush her; I had no doubt."The unwelcome blood feud: are both House Heads ignorant of my forbiddance of such things? Apparently so. Both defied me by tossing insults back and forth. Considering we are at war with two of the most powerful Secret factions, I am angered by both for their idiocy.""The solution the Princess likes is rather novel," Saint Marie was punishing both Messina and me with her low voice and fiery gaze. Krasimira coughed."Yes?" Saint Marie suspended her anger."The suggested resolution is not without precedence," Krasimira spoke with a scholarly detachment. "In our early days, the Host settled such disputes in Spring and Fall gatherings by contests of foot speed, hunting, horsewomanship, archery and wrestling. If we revive the tradition, the competing Houses could nominate one woman for each contest to settle the matter. Only the hand-to-hand match would risk either contestant's health.""I will consider it and render judgement before the Sun sets today," Saint Marie nodded. "The final like pleases me greatly. Dealing with the 52 of you is, Cáel?"I was on the spot. I couldn't let down my fan base of one, Aya. Perhaps it was five, Buffy (who would never admit it), Daphne (who liked me), Katrina (because she liked fucking with my head) and Desiree (who was less likely to admit she found me funny than Buffy).I felt I gave a decent effort."'A ginormous pain in my hemorrhoids?' the basic one.""'More painful than having my cornea scrapped with a spoon?' more gruesome.""'Enough to make me want to give Sakuniyas a surprise French kiss?' most likely to be fatal.""'Worse than waking up to discover I'm related to Cáel Wakko Ishara?' most horrifying, for both of us.""'Inspiring me to toss it all away and take up Professional Bikini Mud Wrestling?' a personal fantasy of mine.""Why do we put up with him again?" one House Head remarked."Because I am worried that one," motioning to Buffy, "will stab me in the elevator after a meeting.""My First, are you acting psychotic around the Council members?" I looked over my shoulder at Buffy."Wakko Ishara, it is not an act. I am psychotic," she responded deadpan."Are you still packing that thermite grenade?""No Wakko Ishara. Daphne stole it from me and hid it," was her quick delivery."I love working with you two," Daphne whispered."What is it with you, your unsubtle sexual innuendo and me in a bikini?" Saint Marie stared at me."I find the combination of brilliance and lethality sexy. Just ask Elsa," I grinned. Then I grimaced as Buffy stomped on my toes. The House Heads and Apprentices on either side of me noticed and clearly expected me to do something, like to show outrage (because she was my underling), or start crying (because I was a guy)."Prestige," Daphne hissed quietly. "Prestige." She was reminding Buffy that beating me up in public made the other Amazons think even less of me than they already did."I will go with (B), the cornea scrapping," Saint Marie gave me a nod."Damn it," I muttered. I also got my foot out of the way before someone did any more damage to my phalanges.'Best Daddy Ever,' Aya mouthed to me. Back to the main action."It is not my place to order the rest of you to elect Shawnee, Rhada and Buffy to be the Regency. I do admit I admire the mixture of candidates," Saint Marie declared. I shot Rhada a quick look. She seemed really, really enamored of the idea of being part of the Regency, thus staying in New York for the next decade, or so."Before the idea is rejected out of hand, I suggest we ask the three people our Princess would like to be part of the Regency if they would accept the nomination," the Golden Mare continued. "Shawnee Arinniti?""I bow to the logic and reason of the proposal," Shawnee replied."Rhada Meenakshi?""I wish to join my sisters in battle, yet I accept the reasoning behind the proposal," Rhada nodded. "If my Head of House agrees, I will stay and do my part for our People." What was she saying to me? 'You are going to whip me, beat me, torture me, humiliate me and push me to beyond the limits of any pain I have experienced until I pass out ~ repeatedly'."I despair of finding any other compromise," Mahdi frowned. "If my Apprentice understands the greater difficulty she will face gaining prestige among her House-mates, I will consent to this proposal." Essentially a 'yes'."Buffy Ishara?""I was really looking forward to ripping the spines out of still living foes, but I would be a fool to go against Aya of Kururiyahhssi's smarts. If Wakko Ishara wants to walk out of this room unassisted, he will see the wisdom of this decision as well," she gave me a shark's smile. Daphne had surpassed her limit and punched Buffy."Hell ya, I agree," I exclaimed. "Now I know there will be certain times of the day when she isn't stalking me.""I'll work more pain into our limited schedule," Buffy grumbled."Are we sure he is the House Head and she is the Apprentice?" Yet another House Head joined the 'shit on me' train.It was telling of our group dynamic how we accepted the Pyramid of Pain. The underlings dispensed advice and violence as they felt necessary without their 'superior' getting pissy about it. Buffy felt totally justified hitting me and accepted being hit by Daphne, who continued to act unimpeded as Buffy's rapid-fire translator."If I was House Head, I'd handcuff him to me," Buffy clarified for her."What she said," I pointed a thumb Buffy's way. I'd have used a finger, but she might have grabbed, twisted and made me scream in pain."Perhaps the Council can vote on this as their second order of business," Saint Marie cloaked her command as a suggestion."Cáel Wakko Ishara, can I ask you a personal question?" Kohar of Marda caught my attention."Shoot, wait, probably not the best terminology in this crowd. Ask away," I replied."Have you faced a House challenge yet?""Yes. Just last night in fact. We free-climbed the north-face of Havenstone. I beat the next closest contender by three floors. I also had Princess Aya on the roof dropping bricks on anyone who attempted to get past me.""That means he isn't going to answer you," Beyoncé  interpreted for my audience."Can't you ever take these meetings seriously?" Febe Mielikki glowered."La, Febe, in the past few minutes I have watched the person I love most in the world get her life shat on," I shook my head."The only thing worse than seeing this happen to Aya is knowing this is her sole opportunity to not lose her soul, so I'm sucking up my heart's pain and putting forward a jester's persona so I don't put any more pressure on her than she's already been subjected to. Like me, she doesn't want the distinction of being a Person of Note.""Like me, she knows she must sacrifice her dreams for the sake of our People, the Amazon Host. Trust me, you would rather have 'me, the jester' than 'me, the Amazon' furious with the destiny that has foisted this pain on her'. Do any of you take responsibility for forcing the events of this morning?" I growled. If they wanted to see the other side of the Janus, so be it."Had you chosen a Regency in the fucking weeks you've been bickering, Kwenhamai could have been dealt with privately. The fate of the Royal House could have been put off a few years. Had you not all been so dead-set on being heroines of the Host, three of you would have sacrificed your bloodlust, your birthright and the future accolades you could recite on your final night (before taking themselves to the cliff), but none of you did.""Instead, you set the stage for dumping all of your indecisiveness on the slender shoulders of a nine year old girl most of you had written off as too fractured and frail to survive her 12th year only three months ago. So Febe how do you like the honest 'me'?" I finished off furiously.It was not lost on anyone in the chamber I was an Amazon raging against the cruelty of fate. Every other bitch in the room knew they had discarded my daughter's life as trivial and I was prepared to unleash violence on the next one to show an ounce of disrespect over Aya's surrendering of her destiny and my grief at failing to find a way to stop this from coming to pass. St Marie had just reminded them that I was 'reliably" successful despite my handicaps. Not an enemy anyone in the room wanted any part of. Saku would have been proud.A Note:I have been remiss in informing my readers of the names of the 53 Houses, even though I created it some time ago. I have made a few alterations to the original version as I've had to rethink certain parts of this tale, but here is the list I now use.List of Goddesses:The First Twenty Houses in no particular order :1) Ishara, Oaths, Medicine and War (to North America) (died out 450 CE; Reborn in 2014)2)   (Deceased) Anat, Goddess of War, Fury and Blood Sacrifice (died out 6th cent. BCE) ~ possibly resurrected by Sakunyias3) Anahit, water, wisdom and war (to North America)4) Arinniti, Sun Goddess (to North America)5) Hanwasuit, Sovereign Goddess6) Illuyankamunus, Dragon God (to North America) (Special Case)7) Inara, the Hunter Goddess8)  au ka, fertility, War, healing9) Kamrusepa, Healing medicine magic (to Africa)10) Lelwani, Goddess of the Underworld (to Africa)11) Hapantali, Pastoral Goddess.12) Hatepuna, Sea Goddess (to India)13) Hannahannah, Mother Goddess14) Moirai, Fate15) Selardi, Lunar Goddess (to Africa)16) Nammu, Primordial Sea, sailing, sailors (to India) (to Indonesia)17) Uttu, Goddess of plants (to Africa)18) Lahar, Cattle Goddess (to Africa)19) Ereshkigal, Queen of the underworld (to India)20) Istustaya and Papaya, Twin Goddesses of Destiny (to North America)Additional Houses, founded in Europe:(Code: Sc = Scythian; T = Thracian, P, Phrygian, C = Celtic, R = Roman, Sl = Slavic)21) (Sc) Marda, the One-Eyed Goddess/Vengeance {fantasy creation}22) (Sc) Farānak, A Scythian Goddess also known as the Lynx Goddess and the Silent Huntress (Dora)23) (Sc) Stolgos, Monstrous Slayer of Greeks (known to the Greeks as the Gorgon Stheno) {semi-historical}24) (T) Cotyttia, Thracian Goddess of Sex, War and Slaughter (to North America)25) (T) Bendis, Thracian Goddess of the Moon and Hunting.26) (T) Semele/Rajah, Thracian Goddess of the Earth and Birth (to India)27) (T) Hylonome, Centaur Goddess28) (P) Cybele, Phrygians Earth Goddess on Lion's throne (to the Amazon)29) (C) Andraste, War Goddess; also Goddess of the Moon and Divination; 'the Rabbit Goddess'30) (C) Epona, Horses (to North America)31) (C) Cyhiraeth, Goddess of springs whose war cry precedes death (to Africa)32) (C) Maeve, War Goddess, the Enslaver of Men33)   (Deceased) (C) Nantosuelta, Earth, Fire and Fertility (died out 1st cent. BCE)34) (C) Artio, the Bear Goddess (to North America)35) (C) Nemain, Goddess of War and Panic36) (R) Minerva, Roman Goddess of War & Strategy37)   (Deceased) (R) Diana, Hunting and Archery (died out in India 16th cent. CE)38) (Sl)  iva, Love and Fertility49) (Sl) Morė, Goddess of harvest, witchcraft, winter and death (to North America)40) (Sl) Zorja, The twin Guardians (Evening/Morning Stars)41)   (Sl) Oźwiena, fame and glory (died out in 1944)42)   (Sl) Koliada, Sky Goddess and deity of sunrises/dawn (died out 17th cent CE)43) (F) Mielikki, Goddess of the Hunt44) (N) Ska i, giantess, Goddess of bow-hunting, skiing, winter, and mountainsAdditional Houses, founded in In dia:45) (I) Mookambika, Demon Slayers46) (I) Bhadra, Goddess of the Hunt (to Indonesia)47) (I) Meenakshi, The Liberator (Rhada and Madi's House)48) (I) Durga (Dark Mother) (to Indonesia)49) (I) Chandala Bhikshuki, Queen of Night, Death, Destruction and Rebirth50) (I) Jaya (Goddess of Victory)51)   (I) Chelamma, the Scorpion Queen (died out 16th cent.)Additional Houses, founded in Africa:52) (A) Oshun, (Yoruba Goddess of Love, Sexuality, Beauty and Diplomacy; Lady of the Orisha ~ life spirits)53) (A) Yemonja, Mother of Rivers (to the Amazon)54) (A) Oba, Goddess of Betrayal and Exile55) (A) Ox ssi, Goddess of Hunting, Forests, Animals and Wealth56) (A) Jengu, Goddess of Jungles and Water SpiritsAdditional Houses: founded in North America(NT = Native Tribal)57) (NT) Uusheenhiton (noo'uusooo' heeninouhuusei hitoniho') (Arapaho), Storm Horse Sister {fantasy creation}58) (NT) Gahe, Apache (supernatural spirits who live in the mountains)Prospective House:59) New, (Hittite) SzelAnya, the Dragon's DaughterCurrent Number of Central Houses:12 in North America (9+Ishara from Europe and 2 native)10 in Africa (6 from Europe and 5 native)3 in Amazonia (1 from Africa and 2 from Europe)8 in India (3 from Europe and 7 native)3 in Indonesia (2 from India and 1 from Europe)17 in Europe6 Deceased{7:35 am Sunday, September 7th ~ Last day}Right where we left offMy rage over Aya wasn't called into question or challenged. Practicality had trumped tradition in the inevitable Amazon fashion. The only one elevated in anyone's eyes was Aya. Krasimira's apparent political adventurism was probably hard for the others to deal with. But in context, only Mahdi, Katrina and Saint Marie had seen her denounce Hayden, so this seemed a new side of Krasimira to most people in the room.Krasimira wasn't the spiritual authority, that was Hayden. She wasn't the Generalissimo, that was Saint Marie. Katrina and I were both appointed officials, we retained our House status. Saint Marie would die a member of House Inara and join her ancestors with pride. Her litany of accomplishments were well known to the Host.But Krasimira? She would die a member of House Cybele unheralded. The Keeper of Records recorded the feats of others, not their own. Nearly two generations ago, a young Krasimira had joined the Keeper's House as a guardian to an un-remembered (save by her) augur. The augur passed and she took up other duties within the house.When the old Keeper faced her final months, she elevated Krasimira to her spot. High Priestess Hayden had approved the choice without really knowing who Krasimira was. (No one outside the House of the Keeper had personal bonds with her anymore.) Seamlessly, she had sat in the old Keeper's seat and the Council kept chugging along.For the past eight years, she had sat quietly at Hayden's side and only speaking when addressed. Mostly, she did nothing overt. The actual note-taking was done by an underling. The Keeper took her own private notes squirreled away in her mind, to be written when she was by herself. Those notes would be handed over to her successor, for the Keepers' eyes and theirs alone.I don't think Krasimira knew me in particular when she dutifully followed Hayden into these chambers the day my death, or life in a cage, was bantered about. It was the day we first crossed paths. She would have known of Shawnee's request for the tooth of an Isharan, though she lacked the authority to ask why. (She wasn't a voting member of the Council.)But when Shawnee made her claim, Krasimira hadn't balked in her support, despite the oddity of Shawnee's declarations, I was indeed Ishara and my sisters could not dispose of me. The outrage of the others meant nothing to her. She pursued her obligations with true Amazon fearlessness both inside and outside of the Council.On the night of the 2nd Betrayal, a Keeper had sat there in silence as her fellow Amazons, the Ash Men, were sentenced to an unjust death. She'd had neither the numbers nor the authority to alter events, what else could she have done?So the Keepers kept track of the names of nineteen 'unaccounted for' Ash Men. For what purpose? An episode of Amazon history no one would ever want to revisit? Yet in my hour of need, coming back 2,600 years was the name 'Vranus of Ishara', sitting only a few keystrokes away. No one, save a few Arinniti diehards, wanted to know the truth of the Amazon Ash Men; and even they didn't want to remember us as individuals. To them, Vranus existed as a notation on the secret Charter of the Arinniti Sons.To Krasimira, Vranus had been a living, breathing warrior of the Host, not even dead, still mythically fighting the enemies of our race because his death had never been officially recorded. With my appearance, I stood in mute testimony to his death, and that of his sons and their sons for a damn long time.Still, I hated playing catch-up.With the Amazon custom of adoption, had no one asked if another possible Isharan heritage still persisted?I would bet they had. And I'd bet they had sought for that knowledge in the Rolls of the Host, always finding that pathway devoid of hope. But if the Keeper had known, why had she kept quiet?Pride, shame, Krasimira's words: we show anger when we should show humility. We are proud of our shame. We are arrogant of our weaknesses. We have heaped insult upon insult on our ancestors, yet are now aghast that they turn away from us, I had confused her soliloquy with that of an accusation, not the long held understanding of her office.Even staring extinction in face, the modern Host hadn't truly accepted the answer, the line of Vranus. Faced with the truth, the Amazons would have 'forgotten' the descendants of Vranus all those centuries ago in the same way they 'forgot' all the other Ash Men on the day I was brought into the Host.But the Keepers did something more than maintain the rolls and records of the Amazons, more than watch over the augurs and make sure their messages made it to the proper ears. They safeguarded the truth. No matter what the Council decided and the High Priestess commanded, the Keepers remained honest stewards of the real history of the Amazons.Why?The Amazons were terribly practical and the truth could run contrary to the needs of political reality. Honesty wasn't a highly stressed Amazon virtue, loyalty was. So was bravery. And thus generation after generation of Keepers had lied to the Council and the High Priestesses. Every time those august personages had committed something to 'the nothingness', the Keepers had defied them and not forgotten.The first heads of the first twenty houses had surrendered their names for the unity of their people, but the Keepers remembered. All twenty of those women had been of the Amazon tribe of the Pala people living on the southern coast of the Black Sea when the Trojan Wars began. Over time, their true blood descendants had founded new houses and been adopted into others.Aya was truly a daughter of Kururiyahhssi; I had no doubt of that anymore. Had she not shared the same blood as the first Amazon, Krasimira wouldn't have brought Aya and Kwen together. Resurrecting an ancient tradition in a complicated fallacious coup attempt wasn't in her; nor was such a maneuver even a necessity. The Host would elect a Regency eventually and Saint Marie was handling the war in a highly competent fashion.So Krasimira hadn't sought out the heirs of Vranus, yet when one appeared, she welcomed 'him'. And when she stepped into the President's office with Hayden while waiting for me to be brought upstairs to face judgement that night, I imagined sending Hayden to the cliffs was the farthest thing from her mind.The rest were playing politics, gender politics, and couldn't see the truth staring Krasimira in the face. The truth was a bitch and didn't play favorites, or worry about the sensibilities of others. Krasimira had seen her sisters refusing to acknowledge the ugly reality they had created for themselves.Krasimira wasn't an advocate for Ishara, that was my job, and my crappy performance was something between Dot and me. She wasn't an advocate for the males and the New Directive. That was what Katrina was for. No, like a hundred Keepers before her, Krasimira was the silent sentinel for the Truth and, the Truth didn't care about anything but the Truth."The assassin is indeed in this room. Its name is Amazon was a rather grand pronouncement from the Chief Librarian, wasn't it? Krasimira didn't chastise Hayden. That wasn't her place. Technically, neither was she disputing Hayden's ability to rule.This wasn't the climax of a dinner-theater 'Who Done It'. The crime before the High Priestess was High Treason and I was the pre-ordained guilty party. My 'ally', Katrina Epona, had not been an advocate for my defense. No. Again in my Hour of Need it was Krasimira.Lacking any true authority, she had defied her sisters and made her definitive statement. What truly transpired was Krasimira staring Hayden straight in the eyes and saying 'you cannot lie your way out of this one, High Priestess. We (as in all the Keepers past and present) will not let you'.Had she used those words, Saint Marie would have gotten around to asking what Krasimira meant. Krasimira would have rather died, because once those bitches discovered their nerdy sisters hadn't erased a damn thing in 3,000 years, they would insist they do so immediately. Krasimira wasn't about to do that. Thanks to the chaos surrounding Hayden's departure, no one had confronted her over her crucial action.To put it more precisely, the Golden Mare had been too busy and Mahdi had been wrapped up in Hayden's Decree and the resulting pressure on the Heads of House to pick the Regency. Katrina was probably a case of I'm not going to ask you so you don't have to lie to me. The only other living person in the room when Hayden's fate was sealed was me, and I'd had my hands full as well.I had to think about what I should and could do. I couldn't beat her up over Aya anymore than I could punish my Isharans for their misplaced arrogance. I decided to extend a 'thank you'; and not only for myself, but for every conceited bitch who had ever sat at this table, or all the other physical mediums the Council had used before this one.We held three votes: The Council couldn't collectively decide on how to implement Aya's other likes (1), so they agreed on her suggestion for a Regency instead (2). The final vote was to set a date for the next Council meeting (3). A date within 9 days of the Winter Solstice with the Regency to decide the precise date and give the House Heads two weeks warning.The last calamity at the meeting was initiated by a question of etiquette."How do we address the Princess at Council meetings?" the Head of House Hanwasuit inquired of Krasimira."There is no precedent for addressing the Iwaruwa alone. By our laws, she is not truly Dumalugal Aya either. She is Nasusara," Krasimira responded. Queen."She is a child," a third House Head declared, "not an Amazon.""No," Mahdi shook her head. "A, Aya is 'un-casted'. She bears an honorific presented to her by the leader of an established stronghold (Summer Camp) and confirmed by the Golden Mare minutes ago.""Congratulations my mamētu me eda," I winked to my past and present Princess, "you've just become a single-digit aged teenager.""Go Aya," Daphne and Buffy whispered behind me. Aya raised her hand, waiting for Saint Marie's recognition.However, Saint Marie moved steadily forward, declaring: "Until the Regency alters my decision, I decline assigning anyone to the Iwaruwa (heiress) whose sole purpose would be to stop her from sneaking off to endure her 12th Year Test. I judge it to be better we know where we placed her as opposed to failing to outsmart her as she needlessly proves to the Host she is, in fact, already an Amazon of the Host." Aya lowered her hand.Thus,'Yes, Aya is an Amazon of the Host' and 'Aya will take her 12th Year Test because she wants to take it, won't let us talk her out of taking it and the rest of us had better accept it'."So, she is our Queen then?"No one appeared to have an answer. Aya raised her hand once more."Yes?" the Golden Mare smiled down at her."Am I in charge?" Aya's other hand squeezed Saint Marie's as she spoke in a barely audible voice."Perhaps.""If I was in charge, I would like it if there was a law that declared the Queen of the Amazons would be officially represented by a Regency until she becomes casted, and antedate the law by one hour so this never, ever comes up again," Aya kept looking up at Saint Marie."Aya," Katrina exhaled.The council chamber was a mixture of awe, resentment and amusement. If Aya was Queen, she could make such a law. The Queen-ship was a Bronze Age autocratic institution designed to provide leadership to a 'state' in near-constant warfare with is neighbors.It was guided by oral traditions and military necessity, not written laws. As long as the queens provided successes on the battlefield and through diplomacy, she was deemed fit to rule. The traditional way of choosing a House Head was the same for the Royal House, the ruling Queen chose an heir.In the long list of Queens, less than half had been the 'eldest' child. No, those ancient War Leaders picked the bravest, smartest and most successful daughters to succeed them. Their wisdom in those selections showed in the fact the Amazons had held off a male-dominated world for over 600 years before fatally marching off to answer an ally's call to fight in the Trojan War."I advise against it," Saint Marie shook her head. "You are young. You are also the only Royal we have. Duty demands and sisters must always answer their sister's call."Translation: Aya was an adult now. It was similar to the first lesson Pamela gave me upon learning I was Ishara. We lived with bitches, it doesn't pay to play nice with bitches."Thank you," Aya nodded. She was 'thanking' Saint Marie for the lesson, no matter how hard it was to accept. Krasimira coughed."Now that the matter is settled," she spoke. The matter wasn't settled. Krasimira was steamrollering the discussion. "What do we call you?", to Aya."I, oh," in a very small voice. Aya's brow furrowed and her tiny nose wiggled. "I wish to be known by the legacy of my Anna (mother) and Atta (me, Cáel). I will be Assiyai hamai.""Love song?" Daphne murmured to Buffy."Assiyai hamai?" Krasimira asked for clarification. 'Love-song' was hardly the name of a 'fierce' Amazon Queen."The only other name I could come up with was Markappidusmene, which seemed less auspicious," she meeped. Markappidusmene meant 'Tiny Smile'."Perhaps Talliyahulla would be more auspicious?" Saint Marie nudged Aya. 'War Cry'."Oh no!" Aya balked. "That's your job.""What do you think your job is?" the Golden Mare questioned, suddenly realizing she'd made the mistake of making assumptions where Aya was concerned."To go to the cliffs with twice as many Amazon daughters, each equal to the likes of Saint Marie, Katrina, Oneida, Buffy, Elsa, Kohar and Tad fi as exist today. We must not 'survive', or simply replenish our numbers."We must become stronger because the World is a terribly messed up place," she raised her wounded hand and splayed her digits for the others to see the two she was missing, "and has become too small for us to seek safety in hidden freeholds any longer. If we cannot hide, we must rule openly. We are Amazons. Having no equals, we must rule alone. The only people we can trust, really trust, are the sisters at our sides."My job is to advance my People's cause with both compassion and cruelty and I will do so alone, because the Amazon Queen has no equals, only daughters."Not a sound. I could count out the individual fan blades recycling the air."Let our enemies tremble," Saint Marie nodded, repeating an earlier declaration."Assiyai hamai," Krasimira intoned, making Aya's royal name official before adding, "Assiyai hamai, you are mistaken about one thing. You are not alone. You have a mamētu me eda.""Oh," she perked up, shedding the gloom which surrounded her. She looked at me, our eyes met and we both grinned, then she giggled...and yet again, up her hand went."Yes?" Saint Marie looked upon Aya respectfully and then at me with much suspicion."Is the mamētu me eda of my mamētu me eda also my mamētu me eda?" Aya asked.Just like old times, only Katrina was ahead of the game. "Oh, by Epona," the Spy-mistress snorted."Cáel Wakko Ishara, who is your mamētu me eda, oh no," Saint Marie bristled."Ah, indeed," Krasimira nodded. "An unlooked for bonus.""Does someone care to enlighten the rest of us?" the head of House Nemain prodded."Oh!" That was Elsa."That's right!" Oneida, she was definitely a fan of me and my spasmodic lifestyle."Wakko Ishara's mamētu me eda, other mamētu me eda, is Temujin, Great Khan of the Reborn Mongol-Turkish Khanate and ally of the Host," Saint Marie let them know. "They are bonded by Cáel risking his own life to save Temujin's. It is actually a privately understood and publically declared fact.""In Temujin's words to the international press when our Cáel and our new Queen were kidnapped : I believe Cáel is still alive. If he wasn't, we would be seeing piles upon piles of dead enemy around him and his 'boon companion', clearly visible from orbit. Until they discover this carnal pit from Hell, I am sure they are both still alive," Oneida added. Rhada flashed ill-distilled hate her way."Shawnee, is your Apprentice's mind addled with the birthing hormones of their child?" Mahdi snipped. That was merely a cultural zing, not an attempt to expose my sinister erotic misdoings. Unfortunately, she was somewhat correct. Okay, she was totally correct."That was uncalled for," Shawnee graciously chided Mahdi, thus demonstrating her ignorance of the facts soon to be in evidence."Yes, I am carrying a child of Arinniti and Ishara," Oneida proclaimed loud and proud. "We share a Warrior's Love."I wasn't really sure how anyone else reacted to the news because House Ishara exploded into violence. That is the politic way of saying Daphne and Juanita were trying to stop Buffy from beating me to death. Here was yet another Ishara-baby and it wasn't gestating inside her. I was too stunned to defend myself.And the old refrain: 'and then it got worse'."Ta  ah kattanda!" (IN HITTITE for 'you pig's ass'), Rhada howled. I missed her drawing her blade, vaulting to the top of the table and lunging at Oneida. Most of the Amazons in the room stood, yet held their ground.They weren't shocked into indecisiveness, only trying to understand the nature of the conflict before intervening. This was not the first 'your Amazon did something my Amazon found infuriating' public threat they had to have dealt with. Rhada was more volatile than the average woman of her breed and station, true, but a violent in-chamber assault?That wasn't the 'worse' though. Oneida drawing her blade in an open challenge to Rhada wasn't the worse either, nor was her shouting."He loves me! He merely saved you!"Saint Marie yelling 'Ishara! Ishara!' over and over again, demanding I put my house back in order wasn't the end of my woes, nope.Me being yanked free of my House fur-ball into the volcanic gaze of Elsa as she seethed, "Rhada?" Oh yeah, Elsa's people and Rhada's people had a bit of a blood feud going on, how could I have forgotten that?But wait!"Not Fabiola!" gasped Messina, bizarrely assuming I slept with, okay, not such a huge assumption."Gael?" voiced by the Head of House Bendis, followed by Gael's "I'm late.""Damn it!" I pulled away from Elsa (slightly)."No. She only lets me ejaculate on 'safe days'," to Messina, Fabiola's Mom."Oh, come on! We had sex one time!" to Gael of Bendis, and finally,"Stop it!" to Rhada and Oneida, (deep breathe). "Really?" with my most believable happy face plastered on. "This is great news!"No. No it wasn't, and I could read the ugly emotional undercurrents on the faces of everyone present, except Aya, who kept the faith."Ishara," Saint Marie rumbled. I held up one finger to forestall her wrath."Oneida, Rhada and I have already decided to name our daughter Parvati. My daughter by Tad fi, ordained by the Goddess to be the first born, will be named Shala while my first son will be called Harki heni (White Hair, I'd call him Raider when we were in the 'outside' world).""My daughter by Miyako Yuri will be named Suwais-urāni, Fushichou in her Mother's tongue, in honor of Sakuniyas. My, other relationships," I would have liked to say 'none of your business', except Amazon mothers, or not, those children would be of Ishara's blood and potentially their kin.

The Fools confront Alayna and get some solid exposition. Then, they try to use Governor McAllister's connection to the Shala's Tower to gain access. After being turned away empty-handed, the Second Breakfast Club Decides to insist. Forcing their way into the Governor's mansion, the Fools find the Governor quite alone and the home quite perilous.Support us on Patreon at www.patreon.com/CreativeTypo and get additional content at www.afoolsquest.com Cast: Mike Cole = Uorag - Druid Furbolg Shifter. Tony Kinney = Eddie Falzone - Human Wizard. Jess Owen = Adira - Fire Genasi Barbarian. Jesse Wicks = Bill Quiverlance - Human Bard. Nico Rodriguez as your DM. If you would like to follow along with our map, you can find it on our social media pages: www.Facebook.com/afoolsquest /  www.Instagram.com/afoolsquestpodcast Special thank you to our Patreon Executive Producers: Nick Mead and Patrick T ArsenaultDungeon World: https://dungeon-world.com/ Music: Music Provided in part by Midnight Syndicate. www.MidnightSyndicate.com Additional music provided by Algal the Bard. www.youtube.com/user/alvariu and Epidemic Sound

Çdo mëngjes zgjohuni me “Wake Up”, programi i njëkohshëm radio-televiziv i “Top Channel” e “Top Albania Radio”, në thelb ka përcjelljen e informacionit më të nevojshëm për mëngjesin. Në “Wake Up” gjeni leximin e gazetave, analiza të ndryshme, informacione utilitare, këmbimin valuator, parashikimin e motit, biseda me të ftuarit në studio për tema të aktualitetit, nga jeta e përditshme urbane e deri tek arti dhe spektakli si dhe personazhe interesantë. Zgjimi në “Wake Up” është ritmik dhe me buzëqeshje. Gjatë tri orëve të transmetimit, na shoqëron edhe muzika më e mirë, e huaj dhe shqiptare. 

Hell Rains Down.Book 3 in 18 parts, By FinalStand. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels. Would you choose ephemeral beauty, or rugged determination? Brief Segway :Senator Susan Collins of Maine, JIKIT's Congressional mentor, at our urging had proposed an amendment to the Taiwan Relations Act Affirmation and Naval Vessel Transfer Act of 2014 which would allow 'Turkey' to purchase six 'Oliver Perry class frigates for $10 million each. The same act already proposed four such vessels to be sold to Taiwan for the same amount as well as giving two to Thailand (and two to Mexico) free of charge.Things had immediately bogged down in the 113th US Congress. It was too easy for Democrats in both Houses to take the President's position that any additional weapons into the South China Sea area would further destabilize the region. The pro-PRC lobby was equally opposed to the bill. Under normal conditions, that would have been good enough to send the measure off to the procedural graveyard.Except in the current contrary nature of the US's chief legislative body, this meant Republicans found themselves drawn to the anything the White House opposed. They could claim they found the anti-Communist, anti-Islamic Extremists stance of the Khanate to be attractive to them though none of them felt the need to actually talk to anyone in the Khanate to find out what they were really all about.We were happy with that policy because true congressional oversight was the last thing we needed. They might start asking uncomfortable questions like...'Who gave you the authority to do any of the crap you pulled?'(No one. We lied like big dogs, purloined resources and cloaked ourselves in 'National Security'. Plus we let our elite personnel have a crack at doing what they had so dedicatedly trained to do, wreck things.)'Wasn't that, that, and that an act of war against the People's Republic of China?'('No comment'. If that didn't work, we would try 'they will never find out'.)'Why are 90% of all the names on these documents redacted? We are the freaking Congress! You work for us.'(Work for them? Not to our way of thinking. We earned our paychecks without any slavish devotion to corporate campaign contributions. We were working so that the lives of Americans and Brits abroad would be that much safer, the world more orderly and for the US and UK to have an ally they could really rely on. We couldn't tell them that. They'd throw us in jail. We'd redacted the records because the names were for people that did not officially exist, or existed in a capacity that didn't imply they were elite warriors, spies and assassins.)Besides,('Those are private citizens not in the employ of this group, or any other government agency we are aware of'.)'We don't care if they are private citizens. We want to know.'('You don't want to know' followed by some major gobbledygook with the term 'deniable assets' interspersed relatively often.)'What do you mean ~ you don't want to know? We asked you a question.'(We meant you people leak information like a sieve and the people we are protecting aren't going to be afraid of getting revealed. They are going to murder people to ensure they are not ~ basically you don't know what is going on and we don't want to tell you, for both our safety's sake.)So,('Trust us. There are factors we are taking into account that you are unaware of because you don't know what's going on'.)'Of course we don't know what's going on. That's why we are asking you.'('You really don't want to know.' We are your highly trained and underpaid experts on this, we aren't raging assholes and we are telling you that bad shit will happen if you force this, thus 'you really don't want to know'.)'What do you mean ~ you really don't want to know?? Yes, we do. We are warning you,'(Okay. Execute Plan B. 'Excuse us for a moment, {create a plausible lie.}'.){Pregnant pause,}Congressman-type: 'It is rather odd that they all had to go into another room to take that phone call.'{Minutes pass}'Go see what is taking them so long.''What do you mean they are all gone? Find them!''What do you mean they seem have left the building? Find them!''Who do I call about this? The FBI, Homeland Security, or the CIA?And finally,'What do you mean they appear to have fled the country? Find them, damn it!'(Hey, I worked with some real shady characters.)Then would come the international manhunts, the flight to avoid prosecution and then resurrecting my life under a different ID in another country which hopefully had a dim view of handing me over to the FBI, or the Navy SEALs.Now back to our regularly scheduled diversion :'It has to do with giving something to the Khanate if you expect them to do anything for you.'Tony: 'You can't appreciate how that is going to look. Besides, that is a political decision, way above your pay-grade.'(Not a good time to remind him that he didn't pay me.)'What precisely do you want us to do? Please be specific.'Tony: 'How is the Khanate going to react to an intervention on the part of the United States?''They will ignore you.'Tony: 'What if the President makes public statement.''What is he going to say?'Tony: 'That the US is dedicated to a peaceful resolution of the unrest in Thailand.''They won't care. They truly believe that actions speak louder than words. If Thailand requested our intervention, or was a client state,'Tony: 'A what?''Client state, a country beholding to the US, or UK for their external security.'Tony: 'I know what client state is. That is 20th Century Imperialist thinking. No one does stuff like that anymore. Besides, the UN is responsible for the external security of its member states, which Thailand is.''The Khanate doesn't see it that way. We won't let them into the UN, so they see no reason to play by the UN's rules. The President can evoke the UN Charter all he wants. Unless he makes UN acceptance dependent on their cooperation, they will see no reason to cooperate.'Tony: 'That's not going to happen.''What part of that won't happen?'Tony: 'The President is not going on international television and endorsing the Khanate as a prospective UN member. What happens if we imply through back channels that the President will support such an action at a later date?''You want us to lie to them? Do you have any idea how badly that will compromise our working relationship with the Khanate?'Tony: 'We will deal with that later. Would they accept such a bargain?''So you are going to lie to them, Mr. Blinken, they will never forgive this act of treachery.'Tony: 'No, you are going to lie to them.'Addison: 'I will resign. I suspect that the rest of the team will quit as well.'Tony: 'What is wrong with your team, Ms. Stuart (Addison)? Can't anyone over there do their damn jobs?''We are doing our damn jobs, Mr. Blinken. We are telling you this is a diplomatically fatal move that will not only reduce this taskforce to uselessness, it will have long term consequences for all future Khanate-American relations.'Tony: 'That is a ridiculous assessment.''That is our experienced assessment. They believe treachery is only forgiven by death. They do believe in loyalty and keeping one's word. In our country, perjury is an unfortunate side effect of the judicial progress. To the Great Khan, it is reason enough to cut your head off.'Tony: 'Fine. I am ordering you to open back-channel talks with the Khanate concerning their admittance to the UN contingent on them taking a reasonable course of action.''Even if we were to do such a moronic thing, the Great Khan will ask Cáel directly to verify this. It is that important to him and his state.'Tony: 'Okay.''Perhaps you could suggest to me what form of coercion I should employ to make Cáel to commit such a blasphemous act?'Tony: 'Tell him to do it. That is what we pay him for.''Mr. Blinken, Mr. Nyilas is an unpaid consultant. At the job he is on sabbatical from, he makes more money than I do. He has an Irish diplomatic passport, been nominated to be the Prince of Albania, Georgia and Armenia, been proclaimed a warrior-prince of Transylvania and is a hero in both Hungary and Romania. He has no brothers, or sisters. His parents are both dead. His only surviving kin are people he is not particularly close to. Since economic and social blackmail are off the table, I am asking you if you are ordering me to use enhanced interrogation techniques to exacting his cooperation in this foolhardy endeavor.'Tony: 'You mean torture him?''I would never go on the record using that word. I don't advise you to use it either.'Tony: 'What kind of people are you?''The kind you engage to take on a mission of this delicate nature. You honestly don't want to know what we've done in the name of our constituent national bodies. You employ us so that you don't have to know. As you said, we 'get it done'. Until now, you have never asked us 'how' we got things done. You wanted the intelligence so we got it for you.'Tony: 'No member of this administration ever asked you to violate US, or International Law.''Which is precisely why the government employs me, so that you can keep your hands clean while mine are steeped in blood. Nothing our team has done will ever blow back on you, so don't worry about that. Why don't we get back to our current dilemma?'(I think until that moment Tony had convinced himself that Addison was another civil servant drone and people like her only existed in the 'black bag' fantasies of conspiracy theorists, hackneyed movie scripts and questionable 'true' spy novels. People like Addison and Lady Fathom weren't standard issue intelligence officers by any stretch of the imagination. They were almost unique in that they did what they did for the very beliefs they had sworn an oath to uphold, to serve their countries.There were no personal vendettas going on. No slush funds were vanishing into Cayman Island accounts. Neither had a God Complex. There was no desire for personal power, career advancement, or fame. I was beginning to think that was why Temujin used them, and me, because we could be counted on to do the right thing when required and only when required. Addison and Fathom had damned themselves forever because someone had to pay the price and get the job done. I imagined they really felt blessed for the opportunity. I worked with maniacs.)Tony: 'Thailand, yes. What if we put troops on the ground in Thailand?''How many?'Tony hummed and hawed so we had to guess.'A Marine Expeditionary Unit? If that is all, they better have an exit plan. Sir, if you want to impress the Khanate with the White House's resolve, you need to start landing troops from the Rapid Deployment Force starting tomorrow. Base aircraft out of Thai air bases. Threaten to ram any Indian Naval vessels that get in your way.'Tony: 'Is that what it would take?'('Yes. It would take the US to growing some balls, damn it!' was not the diplomatic reply though it desperately needed to be said. Hey, I could be a bit of a jingoist when I feel the lives of my loved ones are in danger.)'That is our current assessment of the situation. The Khanate has no reason to take any American threat of force seriously. They won't see anything short of a full-court press as nothing more than posturing for the home audience and what allies we have left.'Tony: 'What does that mean?''It means you are taking the cooperation of Taiwan and Philippines for granted. Our people tell us they see American influence in the region waning and we have been letting the Chinese push them around. Now the Khanate appears and knocks the Chinese back three decades on the World Stage. The Khanate is trying to create a ring of allies around the PRC and a few of them are curious why the US is dragging its heel about such a critical regional issue.'Tony: 'You don't dictate US foreign policy.'(No, we simply enacted foreign policy without your knowledge.)There were probably a large number of Special Forces operators who would be shaking their heads in bewilderment when they found out the US was trying to face down the Khanate over, of all places, Thailand. Hadn't they just busted their humps trying to make the Great Khan see their nations (the US and UK) as potential worthy allies?Working with the Khanate had been 'interesting'. If you asked them for anything, they got it for you, danger and consequences be damned. They'd try anything for the men they considered 'brothers in the struggle'. If you were pinned down by fire from a hillside and asked for fire support, they would napalm the whole damn mountain if that was what it took. The man/woman on the other end of that radio cared for your life, not the human rights of the scumbag shooting at you, or any of the people they might be hiding behind.You also know if they couldn't get it done, it was only because the resources didn't exist. The Khanate Special Forces hadn't acted like co-belligerents, or allies. They treated you like their own kin. They would and had died to make sure some of them got home to their families. If ordered to, they would definitely take the fight to the Khanate. I believed many of them would be asking what had it all been for.'We wouldn't dream of it,' Addison lied.'Good. You have your marching orders. Now get to it,' and Tony hung up on us. Everyone in the room was looking around. What exactly were our marching orders? Had I'd missed that part of our conversation?"Well," Fathom sighed, "there is only one thing we can do." I seriously prayed she would ask me to lie to Temujin."Understood," Mehmet nodded. "Somehow we get the Khanate to launch their offensive into Thailand in three days.""Can they do that?" I blurted out."They do it, or everyone in this room is in a shitload of trouble when they get around to it next week," Addison grinned. "The Khanate high command isn't going to back down just because we ask them to. I wouldn't if I were them.""What happens if they can't make the three day window?" I asked."Then you call up your blood-brother and ask him to fuck over his nation to save us from lengthy prison sentences, or outright assassination," Fathom smirked."If he says 'no'," I looked into her eyes."That's the real tragedy in all this, he won't," she gave me a comforting look. "He isn't going to leave you hanging in the wind. He'll call off his attack dogs because he isn't the kind of man to fuck you over because it is politically expedient. I'm staking all our lives on that. I always have."The Black Lotus? We'd explain to them the ugly reality that neither of us could afford to be painted into a corner over this Thailand issue. We were doing our best, but our political masters were dead set on making a colossal error and we had to follow through with those directives. The Khanate would do everything in their extensive power to support the Black Lotus and if they could invade in three days with some nebulous chance at success, they would go.The Black Lotus, the entire 9 Clans knew JIKIT had no power except what we finagled from the US and the UK. We had borrowed their resources to accomplish what we'd done. The Black Lotus had profited from some of those operations and both the Khanate and JIKIT would owe them big, but we were good for it. That truism was why they worked with us.My personal problem was that I knew the Great Khan would not forgive, or forget this interference by the US. It wasn't in his nature. Worse, the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington would see this as a victory and an expression that the US remained the globe's premier super power. Too few would remember the price of this sense of superiority would be born on the back of Thailand's masses. The revolution would fail after a short, brutal civil war. The tyrant would remain in power and the voice of the Thai people would be stilled.The end result of that late night phone call? We weren't told.What follows is pure conjecture on my part, fueled by intelligence information provided by other JIKIT resources and knowledge about how much the political landscape of Southeast Asia had been transformed by the PCR being driven back to their own coastline, leaving a power vacuum India, Vietnam and the Khanate were eager to fill.The Republic of China/Taiwan --'Aren't you the same people who said only a week ago that sending more weapons into the region would only escalate tensions? And now you want to use our airbases against our latest ally in the region? Do you understand how much internal political turmoil this will cause? Half of us are jumping for joy that someone big and fierce embraces our independence. The other half think it is time to retake China.Yes, we mean the territory currently under the oppressive yoke of the People's Republic of China. Yes, the China the Khanate just kicked the crap out of. The nation that might not be able to protect say, Zhusanjiao. That would be the Pearl River Delta to you Westerners, that huge area on the mainland adjacent to Hong Kong. Hainan is looking pretty ripe for conquest as well. That would be that big island off the coast of, yes, we have indeed suspected you could read a map.At the moment we are expecting the permission of the Khanate to use Woody Island as a forward staging area and logistic base to help us do just that. Take Hainan, yes, that large island currently, and temporarily, under the illegal occupation by those illegitimate bastards in Beijing.What do you mean 'don't declare war on them'? We've been at war with the People's Republic since 1945. No, we are pretty sure we would recall signing a Peace Treaty with them. No, we can't 'get over it' either. Why are you even asking us that? Don't you know our history?Anyway, if we help you, can we expect the same level of cooperation from you as we are getting from the Khanate? In case things go sour, Yes, a shooting war would qualify. See, your people at JIKIT have been helping the Khanate and us, your people, at JIKIT, we are pretty sure it is made up of Americans and British personnel. Why would we think that? Are you serious? Because that's what your governments told us, that's why. Besides, why are you asking us what your people have been doing? Don't they work for you?Speaking of the US government helping us out, what progress is there on the Taiwan Relations Act Affirmation and Naval Vessel Transfer Act of 2014 ? We sure could use those vessels. While we are at it, how about sharing some of the technology used in the F-35. We'll build our own, or a model vaguely similar to it. We value your friendship and know you will help us out in a pinch.Right?'The Philippines --'Sigh. If you really think this will help. By the way, aren't your fighters going to need some in-air refueling? What are you going to do if the Khanate engages them over Philippine airspace? What are you going to do if you get into a shooting war with the Khanate? Will you defend us from their ballistic missile threat? We have a long history as your allies, but the Khanate is totally ruthless, and they scare us. Can you hold our hand, say for the next twenty years?'(The Philippines rolls out their Wish List)Maybe you could give us some advanced fighters?We are a poor country and can't afford to buy any before 2018.We are not greedy, 72 F-16s will do and you are upgrading to the F-35 anyway so we know you have some lying around. Could you also help us with the maintenance cost? We are a poor country, but very large.Some of your decommissioned naval vessels would go a long way in showing us some love. One of those Tarawa-class amphibious assault ships would be really nice and you've got the USS Peleliu decommissioned and about to be scrapped. We have hundreds of islands in our Republic so moving stuff around is pretty tough. Can you help us out?If you could toss in the ship's complement of 20 AV-8B Harrier 2 and 12 V-22 Ospreys with a fifteen year maintenance package that would be even better!We are a poor country. We could never afford to buy any of that stuff.Maybe a frigate, or three? You have a dozen Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates sitting around. We can finally retire some of our World War 2 relics and make one our new flagship.We know you aren't going to give us one of those powerful nuclear submarines, but maybe you could secure a few loans so we could buy some of those nifty German-made, diesel-powered Type 214's. We hear they are pretty cool, very silent and practically a steal at $330 million per boat! We love you guys! And, we are poor.Oh, and some helicopters!We were going to refurbish some Vietnam-era Iroquois, but since your Marine Corp is retiring the far superior Bell AH-1 SuperCobra, can we have a dozen of those instead?We were going to fix up some of our aging Sikorsky S-76s as air ambulances. Getting new ones would be far superior, don't you think?You also have those cool Blackhawks. You have so many. Could you spare us, say twenty? You're the best!And some guns. And artillery. And some APC's.Did we mention we are a poor country going through an expensive force modernization program?Got any amphibious vehicles lying around? We could use a few of more of those small unit riverine craft (SURC)'s we bought from you recently. They are excellent counter-insurgency tools. You want us doing well fighting the War on Terror, don't you?Did we mention that we are a poor country? And we love you guys!The Federation of Malaysia --We like this idea. Give us say a week to ten days and we can jump right in.You want to go in four days? With what precisely? Compared to the force projections you have been providing us, Who? JIKIT, of course. Who else would you send us to when we requested intelligence on Khanate activities from you? Did we believe them? Why wouldn't we? They are your people,When do you think Thailand will let us intervene? We've asked the Prime Minister if he needs our assistance and he politely declined. Apparently he thinks he's got things well in hand. He does retain command of over 200,000 troops and the opposition is much smaller. I hope you have better luck than we did in convincing him he's in serious trouble.Also, what do you plan to do about the Indian Navy's South China Sea taskforce? It is pretty big, not something we can tackle on our own.Yes, we kind of need to know what you are doing before we decide what we are doing. You do realize that the Gulf of Thailand is currently under the complete domination of the Indian/Khanate/Vietnamese Axis, right?48 combat aircraft? What gave you that idea? The Vietnamese have been refurbishing their Mig-21's like crazy, using Khanate stockpiles, plus there are nearly a 150 Su-22's. Sure, they are both older than manned flights to the Moon, but they can drop bombs, fire rockets and launch ground attack missiles with the best of them. They are still jet aircraft.Worried? You are aware that those antiquated pieces of crap can bomb the northern part of my country, aren't you? So 'yes', we are worried about those 300 flying deathtraps being more than a 'manageable' nuisance.What about our air force? I imagine it will be doing what we trained it to do, defend Federation air space because I doubt those relics will be coming at us unescorted. We can already tell you that the Mig-29's and Su-30's the Khanate and Vietnamese will be flying are excellent aircraft. We fly them too, just not as many.Of course you can base your F-22's out of Sultan Ismail Petra Airport as long as you supply the logistical support. How many? A lot? Could you please be more specific? Two squadrons? My, that's going to get pretty dicey. I believe you when you say the F-22 is a highly advanced stealthy fighter. I also believe that they are a lot less stealthy when they are sitting on the ground re-arming and refueling.Do we think they will really threaten us? They are threatening us, over our Spratly Island claims, are you sure you know what you are getting into? By the way, when this blows over, do you think you can pressure the Khanate into giving us their Spratly island airbase? It is rapidly approaching completion and is over 3000 meters long.How did they do that? They are dredging the ocean floor, it is a man-made island. Didn't your government protest the environmental damage they were causing?No, not the Khanate, the Chinese.Yes, the Khanate currently controls it. They stole it from the PRC hours before the ceasefire. So, can we have it?Yes, we know it belonged to the People's Republic, but it doesn't anymore. Besides, we both opposed it when the Chinese were dredging it up the island from the sea floor, so giving it to us isn't all that egregious, or unexpected, action. It would also go a long way in supporting our just and worthy claims to the Spratly Islands. We really don't want those greedy Chinese, yes, both the People's Republic and the 'Republic of', or, those incompetent Filipinos to steal them from us.Both of us knocking the Vietnamese back on their heels will be going a long way to getting those Communist knuckle draggers to back off as well. Hey, if they do get antsy, can we also take the Vietnamese base in the Spratly's? It isn't as big as the one the Khanate stole, but it is finished, and closer to us. We are sure that if we help you out, you will do the right thing when the time comes. Right?The President of the United States --'They want what? Have they lost their fucking minds?The Philippines is talking about a billion dollar aid package and guaranteed loans we doubt they can ever repay. We only want to use their air bases for a month, maybe two, not deflower their teenage daughters. It isn't as if we are really going to go to war with the Khanate over Thailand. Besides, the last time we 'got involved' like that, George Bush ran up a trillion dollar deficit, and his party was thrown out of office. Doesn't anyone care we are facing a difficult mid-term election in November?So, the Taiwanese think this is the appropriate moment to invade mainland China? And they want our help? Do they know how expensive that can get? Do they understand how much that will unbalance the already shake state of Asian affairs? It is another land war in Asia for the love of God!'And, the Malaysians are going to help us, but not actually help us and they want tens of billions square miles of ocean for the measly concessions they are making? What do they expect us to do with all the Filipinos, Chinese and Vietnamese who already live there?What do you mean none of those islands are actually inhabited? They are just military bases, some of them nothing more than rusting iron hulks on submerged reefs? OH, God damn it! Why don't we take the God damn Spratly Islands for ourselves if they are that fucking important? We have a Marine Corp. Aren't they good at taking islands? I read about it somewhere.No, I'm not changing the damn mission. I'm venting because the world seems to be inhabited with greedy assholes who can't appreciate peaceful discourse without trying to lift my wallet.Okay, okay, I've got this. We are going to form a new international commission to resolve this Spratly Island's nightmare. Have the French chair it. They love that kind of stuff. Makes sure the Germans are on the commission too. They need to look less like money-grubbing douchebags after that fiasco over the Greek economic collapse. Then invite Russia, India and Pakistan. That will pretty much guarantee nothing gets accomplished.That will allow us to keep our promises to those three leeches without having to deliver anything and, when it fails, it won't be seen as my fault. (Groan) What we really need is new videos of Khanate soldiers bayoneting babies, another ISIS atrocity, or more indisputable evidence the Russian Army's involvement in the Ukraine. The Great Khan really screwed us over Tibet (you know, by allowing them to become a free and democratic society), Putin is an evil cuck (who most likely laughs at me behind my back) and another round of Islamophobia-bashing to remind everyone how this is all Bush's fault.No wonder George spent so much time at Crawford Ranch. Navigating international relations is totally thankless and no matter how rosy we paint the latest economic numbers, someone still finds a way to make me look bad. Oh well, if this blows up in my face, I only have two more years in this shooting gallery. Maybe then I might change my mind and decided I really was born in Kenya, or Indonesia. I really wish Hawaii was an independent country. I'd like to retire there if there weren't so many of those damn contentious Americans.The US President wanted to run this operation on a shoestring, not engage in 'nation-building', much less backing an invasion of anybody. In fact, he was trying to stop an invasion.The Philippines was a poor country. So what? It wasn't his fault. He had poor people in the US too and they cast votes.Taiwan suddenly thought it could take on China? They were insane. Of course he would be ignoring a major stated political goal of the ROC for the past 65 years ~ reunification on their terms. Any high-level technological transfer wasn't going to happen because if the Republic ran off the reservation, the President would bloody well be sure no one could trace that decision back to anything he'd done.At least Malaysia was on board, sorta/kinda. They wouldn't actually be able to help until day ten, or fourteen and, unlike the Republic of China, they had a small air force that might not be able to protect forwardly deployed troops. If he ended getting of those National Guard yahoos killed his party would be murdered in November.For a split second, he wondered if he should attempt to make a personal call to the Great Khan, potentate to potentate, except he had this sinking feeling that a winning smile and a handshake would be worse than useless. The man would look him straight in his eyes and start making demands. He would demand action and when the Leader of the Free World prevaricated, he knew the Khanate would call his bluff.And they would fight. The alternative was a grand spectacle of public humiliation and that he could not accept. The US military machine would fight and they would win. They would win because he needed them to win, fast and clean and home for Christmas. Maybe he would authorize the mobilization of those California airmen. Just in case.In the end, Secretary Kerry gave POTUS what he asked for.The Philippines would let them use their country's bases for logistics and strategic assets (aka bombers).The ROC would extend their air umbrella out 200 km to the east, south and west, acting like a shield between the Khanate and US Pacific assets moving through the tight Formosan Straits.Malaysia gave them an airbase from which they could strike into Thailand, or Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The US Air Force would have the opportunity to be lethally effective.Had they known the sum total of the US commitment, they would have been appalled. The Khanate did not fuck around.One Carrier Strike Group,Forty (maybe sixty) Air Force fighters,Lumbering B-52's flying half way around the globe,Hadn't they been watching the dogfights over China for the past month? Maybe they would like to dive down and examine the wreckage of the PLAN carrier Liaoning and see just how it met its grisly fate?Apparently not.(I live, love and have loved)"What are you doing here?" she got the preliminary nonsense out of the way. With the way she was dressed, I was an expected visitor. She was expecting some make-up sex. I was thinking 'paying for my past mistakes' sex because I was already seeing way too many women who required me to do things outside the bedroom, non-sexual things. I had my dress jacket swung over my shoulder. It would only get in the way later."I brought you motorcycle over. You left it parked by my place," I kept any appearance of lust, or glee off my face."It is one o'clock in the morning," she glowered."I was called into work. I'm on call 24/7.""Let me guess, you can't talk about it.""You wouldn't believe me if I did, so suffice it to say I was doing things I didn't want to do instead of coming over here, waking you up from a sound sleep.""I wasn't asleep. I was angry," I pointed out."I apologize. Maybe I should have waited until morning." She didn't think I should have waited as long as I had. Keeping her waiting until morning would have left her volcanic."I wasn't asleep.""Your bike is in the parking lot across the street," I handed her the lot ticket."How did you find it?""There are only two places in my neighborhood that allows parking and the second one is poorly lit," I replied."And the attendant let you steal it?" she frowned."He knows me. I do a ton of business with him and it wasn't as if I was dressed like your average carjacker.""How did you start it?""Chaz showed me how to spoof the lock. He's got this spiffy lock-pick set on him.""That he carries with him for such contingencies?""Hey, he's the spycraft professional. I'm the amateur who tags along because karma is a bitch," I grinned."Did you ruin the ignition?""No. He's got this skeleton key thingy. I need to get me one of those," I added. See, I was drifting down the path to becoming a hardened criminal and she had to save me. Girls love saving bad boys from themselves. There is an entire literary genre devoted to the topic."Get in here," Anais barked. She emphasized that command by grabbing my tie and dragging me into her room. Now I could ogle her in her bra, panties and dress shirt left open. As I said moments ago, she was expecting me. Anais had thick, light-brown, just-past-the-shoulders hair with blonde highlights. Her dusky skin tone suggested some ancestral link to the South of France while her deep green eyes suggested Celtic ties.She was definitely someone I would describe as possessing an hourglass figure. She worked out just enough to stay fit, practiced judo (in and outside of the bedroom) and ate right. Her ass was the correct mix of firm and fleshy, her breasts were pleasant without too much bounce and she sported broad, but short, nipples that liked to get bitten.With her bare foot, she kicked the door shut, spun me around by my tie until I slammed, back first, into the wall in the short hallway that led to her bedroom."I repeat, what are you doing here?""I never actually apologized for how things ended up," I sodomized the truth. "Anais, I am truly sorry for how badly I fucked up our affair. I acted without a thought for the possible consequences, or thinking about how betrayed you would feel. Can you accept my apology?""You came here to have sex," she declared. She stepped up tightly against my body, her eyes boring into mine. I had around six inches on her so she had to tilt up her chin to do so."That too," I shrugged."I ought to throw you out the window," she growled. We were on the seventh floor. The window didn't open and the safety glass looked alright."I'll go then," I nodded. Now to make her beg for/demand sex."You are not going anywhere," she snarled. Then she kissed me, a tongue-grapple ensued and she finished things by biting my lower lip so much I tasted blood afterwards. I dropped my jacket. I was about to need both my hands."I think us having sex would be a mistake," I pushed her buttons. I wasn't some wimp acquiescing to her demands. I was a free-willed being; a strong man who needed to be wrestled down and forced to perform.She pulled me down into a second kiss. This was an 'I will leave you incapable of thinking about anything but me' kiss. Yes, I had names for kisses too. They were similar to naming the ingredients of a choice meal. I propelled her back until we slammed into the opposite wall. Anais was a tough chick and a bit of banging around was par for the course.I cupped each ass cheek and pulled her up. She responded by wrapping her legs around my hips. We were still kissing. Anais slipped her hands along my sides before linking them up at the small of my back. She pulled me hard against her while she ground her crotch against mine."Clothes," she rumbled from deep within. As in 'why was I still dressed?'"Been a while," I taunted her. Since she was glommed on to me, I used my freed up hands to rip off my tie."Yes. I bet it hasn't 'been a while' for you," she sizzled."Long as in 5:30 this morning," I teased back. At this point in the foreplay that revelation was akin to throwing gasoline on a fire. I was being an unrepentant dog and she was taking me to confessional, between her thighs."Bastard," she condemned me as well as the entire male side of the species."It doesn't mean I haven't missed you, this, us," I riposted. She retaliated by turning her humping motion into to more of a grind. Bad kitty. Bad kitty wanted to be spanked. Woot!"You are never going to change," she dug her fingernails into my flesh. I yanked my shirt off."If I hadn't changed, you wouldn't be here," I reminded her while nipping at her nose and lips."You are still an egocentric bastard," she growled."Hey, I always took care of your needs," I countered. I had. She knew I had and since she currently wanted me to take her to that higher erotic plane, she wasn't going to contest that fact. Instead, she began working her shirt off and in doing so, squishing her boobs against my chest.Holding her tight, my left hand under her right buttock and my right hand on her mid-back, pressing her torso into mine. We dance through two slow circles before crashing, side by side, on the bed. Anais rolled us over so that she was on top. I didn't let her get in a totally dominant pose, oh no. I had a kitty to take care off. I grabbed her firm ass and propelled her up until I was face first with her gusset.I might not remember to check my bank balance, or the atomic number of Technetium (I once had a girlfriend who would rate my performance on the periodic table in the midst of our fucking, I never made it higher than Copernicium before she passed out), but I can recall the precise taste, texture and topography of every cunt I've had face to face contact with. I knew right where to tongue-fuck Anais to twist her up inside.Control-orgasm, control-orgasm, Anais was pig-headed and wanted to keep dictating our reunion. She also wanted to return to the level of sexual bliss we had shared so often before. Her compromise was to hump my face; really grind it in. Black silk underwear is an excellent medium for transferring force and wetness between partners.She rubbed her love-nub against my upper lip/teeth while I did tongue-ups into her cunt. She was wetter than Bangladesh in the rainy season. That was an indicator of some serious masturbatory sessions stopping just short of orgasm before I arrived. I had some aching sensations to play with and I wasn't cruel. I maneuvered a hand between her thighs, underneath the band of her underwear and exposed her vaginal opening to my fingers and tongue while keeping that silky feel for her clitoris."Rurr," she began growling from the depths of her diaphragm. That was how she always was, thundering like a female grizzly bear in heat. It was an expression with deep subharmonic components that caused the heart to flutter and her flesh to shimmer with the vibrations mixed with her bodily sweat."Come on, Baby," I urged her on.That pissed her off. She was trying to hold off her orgasm for a few more seconds. My 'baby' crack shifted her resolve into anger allowing her climax to overwhelm her."Rah," she howled. It didn't sound like a female coming to fruition. It was more akin to the sound European soccer hooligans made when their team scored a goal. The muscles in Anais' thighs were strumming along like the cords of a piano, her belly was undulating in and out, and her head had rolled back so that she was screaming to the ceiling.The countdown was on. The people next door/across the hall/above or below us would be waking up, think that someone had unleashed a wild animal in the hotel, figure out they were not immediately on the menu, then call the front desk, stating their fears as justifiable fact. Anais and I had been down that road before.I gave Anais' flank a light smack to get her attention. Sure she looked back at me with simmering anger, yet she also knew the score. That had been round #1 in a nightlong bout of sexual conquest, rebellion and re-conquest. She drew her knees to her chest so she could pull off her damp panties in one swift motion. I worked off my shoes, pants, socks and underwear. While she soaked up my naked flesh (muscles, scars and all), she retrieved the phone from the side table and placed it beside her. She wouldn't want to break up our rhythm when the phone rang.No romantic small talk interrupted our shared lust. She wanted that cock and I wanted to give it to her. I moved between her inviting thighs while she examined me, her upper body uplifted by her arms resting on her elbows. Bite-kissing-biting resumed. I slowly pushed her head to the bed with the force of my kisses and strength of my upper body pushing down on her. Somewhere along the way, I slipped into her.Condom? Crap. I was slipping. I would have to pull out, because stopping to put a condom on would earn me some serious ferocity on her part. I plunged in. Anais placed her hands on my hips, claws beneath my kidneys, guiding my pace and power. I may have been on top, but she wasn't giving up on one ounce of control."Damn you," she hissed."Yes?" I leered."Fuck you.""I'm working on it. Is there anything," I teased."Bastard," she looked away, "You remember how I like it.""Whatever made you think I would forget?" I kept at it."Don't look so smug.""I'm working on it," I looked smug. Anais dug her fingernails in. I had to be punished, just ask her."When do you have to go back to work?" she huffed."Six a.m. When do you have to go back?""I have two days off.""Good to know," I stole a kiss from her lips painlessly. Good to know.(Painful dreams)I edged back into consciousness realizing that I was not alone. The muffled sense of my surroundings informed me that I wasn't really awake. She sat on my side of the bed, feet on the floor, side to me."Good evening, Dot," I yawned."Good morning, Cáel," the Goddess Ishara let her melodic voice float over me."Hold on," I interrupted her. I weaved as I leaned over, pawed at my pants (still trapped in the real world) and finally drew forth my offering."A fortune cookie," she chuckled. "I admire your dedication.""It is a simple enough request and I aim to please." I hesitated. "We don't have much time, do we?""You are dreaming, not concussed, so we will be alright if we tread carefully," she told me. "This time, I have no cryptic warnings, or specious pieces of information. I am giving you a gift. Take my hand."I did, not that I had much choice. We 'went', where to, I wasn't sure yet I suspected we were skirting the Weave itself where concepts like Time and Distance had little meaning.The Goddess released my hand and I stepped out of the fog brought about by the abrupt nature of our progress to see a woman sitting beside a pool, no, a sunken bath. She looked up at our approach. Oh shit, it was,"Cáel? You are Cáel, aren't you," she smiled. She stared at me with her blind eyes while waiting for my response with deaf ears."Yes, Tad fi, I'm Cáel. How did you know?""I bear our shared life inside me," she graced me with her serene presence."Ah, I was warned," I stopped myself. I was going to add 'this might happen'. That would be unfair as she appeared pleased with this alteration of her life path. "I was warned by the Goddess that she had something to show me. How are you feeling? Is there anything I can do for you?"She put her hand over her lower abdomen and rubbed the spot with her palm."Seeing you and giving you the news in person is enough," she glowed with happiness."Have you picked out a name yet?" seemed weak."I will leave that up to you.""Oh, come on," I relaxed slightly. "This is something we are doing together.""No, it is not, kind Cáel.""Just because she will most likely end up an Isharan doesn't,""No, Cáel. This birth will cost me my life. I am not destined to ever see my daughter draw her first breath," she confided in me."No!" I recoiled. "That's unfair." What else could I say? 'I take it back. I shouldn't have listened to my Goddess and screwed you out of what little life you had left.'"I am content with my fate, Cáel Nyilas Wakko Ishara. Our daughter will be the first female of the Isharan line in nearly 1600 years. Rejoice that we have been confronted by Destiny and triumphed. The light of the Peacemakers will shine once more among our sisters.""It is not worth the cost of your life," I responded bitterly. This was colossally unfair to all three of us."That you grieve for the short time I have left gives me strength, knowing our daughter will grow up with a strong, caring father. I,"I could sense Ishara close by my side."You must go, my Cáel. We will next see each other in the Halls of our Ancestors. Take our daughter and raise her well. I have faith in you," she sighed pleasantly, as if I had sheltered her from the rainstorm with my umbrella."We must go," Ishara whispered in my ear and then we left. I was back in the hotel room, looking down at the tears on my sleeping face and it hurt so much."You gave me that command knowing what it would cost her," I sounded so hollow, chin on my chest, eyes closed instead of looking at my feet."We are not an easy people to love, Cáel. We are harsh. Endless centuries of suffering, pain and mistrust have made us this way. Please understand that what you see as one life passing is really one life coming into being. It is a life Fate would have denied the line of Ishara. I took you to meet Tad fi because I wanted you to greet your daughter with understanding, not sorrow. I owed you.""Steal my anger why don't you?" I chuckled bitterly. "Can I even blame myself for this tragedy? It isn't like you made me do anything. I did it because I wanted to and never gave much thought to the frail health Tad fi was hanging on to. This is so wrong and I don't know what to do.""Wake up. Keep living. If this news turns your heart, or fills your mind with doubt, then both of us have failed you. Tad fi didn't have to tell you. I didn't have to bring you to her. I believed you were owed the chance to say good-bye.""I didn't say that," I exhaled sadly."You openly grieved and let her comfort you. That is more of a 'goodbye' than most people are able to convey. She knows your heart. You were honest in your sorrow. She saw that and that eased her suffering knowing that you are a person who is free with their heart. For a woman who expected nothing but wickedness from men for so long, that was the ultimate gift. You did help her. You truly did.""I," I woke up. Anais was looking down at me, concerned."You've been crying," she noted by touching my cheek with a finger then showing me the dampness."Do you believe a person's soul can fracture?" I murmured. That sort of talk was unlike the 'me' she once knew."Do you believe that another can help you put your soul back together if that happens?" I continued."You are not talking about us, are you?" she studied me."No. I'm thinking about being a parent, not just a father. Can I fuck that up as much as I've screwed up so many of the other women I've cared for, am I going to be worthy of being a Dad?""Oh, I don't know. You are not the man I knew two years ago. I think you have changed for the better. You are still far from perfect yet, you seem to be trying so much harder than previously.""You think I'm going to screw things up, don't you?""Yes. Yes, I do, but I also think you will only make the same mistake once. That is better than most men can hope for," she let her gaze soften."This is us breaking up,""Yes. I think if I stayed, you would break my heart; and I am starting to believe neither one of us wants that," she nodded. "One more time?""I'd love to," I smiled at her. I still hurt. I was using sex to bandage my pain. Anais knew that and was giving me this unlooked for piece of kindness. It was the best break up I'd ever had, or could ever hope for.{5:45 am, Saturday, August 30th ~ 9 Days to go}"You look like someone strangled your kitten," Pamela told me as I exited Anais' hotel room. She was leaning against the wall across the hall. I had the feeling she had been there a while. Of course I hadn't been allowed to wander off alone; most likely, Chaz had kept an eye on me until Pamela relieved him."I, I got Tadifi killed," I unloaded on her.Pamela immediately dropped her casual fa

Ashley Lyon joins Shala, Chris, and Damian for an entertaining yet insightful discussion about impostor syndrome, getting past being afraid of The Worst Thing Happening, and more. Resources: https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/129099/how-to-know-if-i-am-a-real-developer https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleylyon1/

Andrew Brown joins Shala, Chris, and Damian for a re:Invent re:cap of their favorite announcements, tips on how to attend re:Invent, and more. Resources: https://genai.cloudprojectbootcamp.com/ https://www.exampro.co/ https://x.com/andrewbrown https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-wc-brown/

Empower your family with the gift of freedom tech with FUN this holiday season. ALL Donations Benefit Toys for Totshttps://djvalerieblove.com/donateLearn how Bitcoin can empower your modern family with fun and creative books, games, content, and courses. Grab some impactful holiday gifts that your family will LOVE!Are you looking for holiday gifts that will actually appreciate in value rather than getting used once and tossed away in the landfill? Give the gift of financial empowerment and FUN! Kid Inspired Gifts:Free Market Kids https://freemarketkids.comBitcoin Junior Club https://www.bitcoin4youth.com/SHAmory https://shamory.com/loveBTC Trading Cards https://btc-tc.com/LOVEBuy Bitcoin:River https://partner.river.com/LoveSwan https://swan.com/djvalerieHODL HODL https://hodlhodl.com/join/NMKLQStore Your Bitcoin Safely:Coldcard https://store.coinkite.com/promo/PEACETrezor https://affil.trezor.io/SHd9In this special episode of the Bitcoin for Families Virtual Summit, we bring together some of the most innovative minds in the Bitcoin education space to discuss how Bitcoin can be a powerful tool for families. We kick off with Daniel Prince and his daughter Lauren, who share their journey of integrating Bitcoin into their family life and the impact it has had on their homeschooling approach. They emphasize the importance of community and how attending Bitcoin conferences as a family has enriched their lives.Next, we hear from Scott and Tali Lindberg of Free Market Kids, who discuss their unique approach to teaching Bitcoin through games. They highlight the importance of meeting people where they are and using games as a bridge to understanding complex concepts like Bitcoin. Tali shares her insights on the challenges of introducing Bitcoin to older children and the importance of positive messaging.The conversation then shifts to the broader impact of Bitcoin education, with a focus on the importance of critical thinking and the role of parents as guides rather than heroes. The panelists share personal stories of how Bitcoin has transformed their family dynamics and the joy of seeing their children engage with the Bitcoin community.In the second half of the episode, we are joined by Sela from Bitcoin Junior Club, Scott Sibley from Shamory, and Tomer Strolight, author of "Satoshi Nakamoto and His Bitcoin Invention." Sela shares her experiences organizing the kids' zone at the Adopting Bitcoin conference in El Salvador, highlighting the importance of creating spaces for children to explore Bitcoin in a fun and engaging way.Scott discusses the evolution of Shamory and the joy of involving his children in the Bitcoin community, while Tomer talks about the inspiration behind his children's book and the importance of fostering creativity and belief in oneself. The episode wraps up with a discussion on the power of storytelling and the potential for Bitcoin to inspire future generations.

We dive into the exciting world of Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador with three incredible guests: Kemal, Kiki, and Sela. They share their insights and experiences as they prepare for the upcoming Adopting Bitcoin conference on November 15th and 16th. The episode also highlights the various events and activities surrounding the Adopting Bitcoin conference, including workshops, panels, and the vibrant Bitcoin community in El Salvador. Our guests share their passion for Bitcoin and the positive changes it's bringing to individuals and communities, encouraging listeners to join the movement and experience the magic of Bitcoin firsthand.

In this episode of the vBrownBag, Shala demonstrates how & why she uses Hashicorp Terraform (for her day job!) to stand up proof of concept tests on AWS far faster than what is possible in the console. 00:00 Intro 1:37 Shala walks us through her GitLab repo

Good morning and happy Thursday! Aurora's first morning news program is live at a new place today, Shala Farms LLC! This is an amazing farm in Oswego and we speak with Tammy & Ron, the family owners of the farm about their history and life here at Shala Farms. We see some cool farm animals as well so this is a really cool morning. Big "thank you" goes to our friend Tracy Hodges for making this meaningful day possible. Check out the full video here!

Shala, Christine, Terra and more shared their good vibes to help the Metro have a great weekend!

Olivia, Jesse, Shala and more had some great vibes to make this Tuesday just a little better!

Exploring the relationship between faith and recovery, especially when it comes to managing Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), reveals a complex but fascinating landscape. It's like looking at two sides of the same coin, where faith can either be a source of immense support or a challenging factor in one's healing journey. On one hand, faith can act like a sturdy anchor or a comforting presence, offering hope and a sense of purpose that's invaluable for many people working through OCD. This aspect of faith is not just about religious practices; it's deeply personal, providing a framework that can help individuals make sense of their struggles and find a pathway towards recovery. The sense of community and belonging that often comes with faith can also play a crucial role in supporting someone through their healing process. However, it's not always straightforward. Faith can get tangled up with the symptoms of OCD, leading to situations where religious beliefs and practices become intertwined with the compulsions and obsessions that characterize the disorder. This is where faith can start to feel like a double-edged sword, especially in cases of scrupulosity, where religious or moral obligations become sources of intense anxiety and compulsion. The conversation around integrating faith into recovery is a delicate one. It emphasizes the need for a personalized approach, recognizing the unique ways in which faith intersects with an individual's experience of OCD. This might involve collaborating with religious leaders, incorporating spiritual practices into therapy, or navigating the complex ways in which faith influences both the symptoms of OCD and the recovery process. Moreover, this discussion sheds light on a broader conversation about the intersection of psychology and spirituality. It acknowledges the historical tensions between these areas, while also pointing towards a growing interest in understanding how they can complement each other in the context of mental health treatment. In essence, the relationship between faith and recovery from OCD highlights the importance of a compassionate and holistic approach. It's about finding ways to respect and integrate an individual's spiritual beliefs into their treatment, ensuring that the journey towards healing is as supportive and effective as possible. This balance is key to harnessing the positive aspects of faith, while also navigating its challenges with care and understanding. Justin K. Hughes, MA, LPC, owner of Dallas Counseling, PLLC, is a clinician and writer, passionate about helping those impacted by OCD and Anxiety Disorders. He serves on the IOCDF's OCD & Faith Task Force and is the Dallas Ambassador for OCD Texas. Working with a diversity of clients, he also is dual-trained in psychology and theology, regularly helping anyone to understand the interaction between faith and mental health. A sought-after writer and speaker, he is currently mid-way through writing his first workbook on evidence-based care of OCD for Christians. He is seeking a collaborative agent who will help secure the best publishing house to help those most in need. Check out www.justinkhughes.com to stay in the loop and get free guides & handouts! Kimberley: Welcome, everybody. Today, we're talking about faith and its place in recovery. Does faith help your recovery? Does it hinder your recovery? And all the things in between.  Today, we have Justin Hughes. Justin is the owner of Dallas Counseling and is a clinician and writer. He's passionate about helping those who are impacted by OCD. He is the Dallas ambassador for OCD Texas and serves on the IOCDF's OCD and Faith Task Force, working with a diversity of clients. He's also dual-trained in psychology and theology, regularly helping anyone to understand the interaction between faith and OCD, most commonly Christians. But today, we're here to talk about faith in general. Welcome, Justin. Justin: Kimberley Jayne Quinlan, howdy. Kimberley: You said howdy just perfectly from your Texas state.  Justin: Absolutely. Kimberley: Okay. This is a huge topic. And just for those who are listening, we tried to record this once before, we were just saying, but we had tech issues. And I'm so glad we did because I have thought about this so much since, and I feel like evolved a little since then too.  So, we're here to talk about how to use faith in recovery and/or is it helpful for some people, and talk about the way that it is helpful and for some not. Can you share a little bit about your background on why this is an important topic for you? Justin: Absolutely. So, first of all, as a man of faith, I'm a Christian. I went to a Christian college, got my degree in Psychology, and very much desired to interweave studies between psychology and theology. So, I went to a seminary. A lot of people hear that, and they're like, “Did you become a priest?” No, it was a counseling program at a seminary, Dallas Theological Seminary. I came here and then found my wife, and I stayed in Dallas.  And it's been important to me from a personal faith standpoint. And I love the faith integration in treatment and exploring that with clients. And of course -- or maybe I shouldn't say of course, but it's going to be a lot of Christians, but I work with a lot of different faith backgrounds. And there are some really important conversations happening in the broader world of treatment about faith integration and its place. And we're going to get into all those things and hopefully some of the history and psychology's relationship to faith, which has not been the greatest at different points. For me personally, faith isn't just an exercise. It's not something that I just add on to make my day better. In fact, a lot of times, faith requires me to do way more difficult things than I want to do, but it's a belief in the ultimate object of my faith in God and Christ as a Christian. I naturally come across a lot of people who not only identify that as important but find it as very essential to their treatment. And let's get into that, the folks that find it essential, the people who find it very much not, and the people who don't. But that's just a little bit about me and why I find this so important. Kimberley: Yeah. It's interesting because I was raised Episcopalian. I don't really practice a lot of that anymore for no reason except, I don't know, if I'm going to be really honest.  Justin: So honest. I love that.  Kimberley: Yeah, I've been thinking about it a lot because I had a positive experience. Sometimes I long for it, but for reasons I don't know. Again, I'm just still on that journey, figuring that piece out and exploring that.  Where I see clients is usually on the end of their coming to me as a client, saying, “I'm a believer, but it's all gotten messed up and mushed up and intertwined.” And I'm my job. I think of my job as helping them untangle it. Justin: Yeah. Kimberley: Not by me giving my own personal opinion either, but just letting them untangle it. How might you see that? Are you seeing that also? And what is the process of that untangling, if we were to use that word? Justin: It's so broad and varied. So, I would imagine that just like with clients that I work with and folks that come to conferences and that I talk with, the listeners in your audience, hi listeners, are going to have a broad experience of views, and it's so functional. So, I want people to hear right away that I don't think that there's just a cookie-cutter approach. There can't be with this. And whether we're treating OCD, anxiety disorders, or depression, or eating disorders, or BFRVs, fill in the blank, there are obviously evidence-based treatments which are effective for most, but even those can't be a cookie cutter when it comes down to exactly what a person needs to do or what is required of them in recovery.  So, yes, let me just state this upfront for the folks that might be unduly nervous at this point. First of all, the faith piece, religious piece, does not have to enter into treatments for a lot of people to get the job done. In fact, actually, for a lot of people, it was much more healing for them, including many of my clients. I have friends and family members that sometimes look at me as scant. So like, “Wait, you went to seminary, and sometimes you don't talk about God at all.” And it's like, “Yeah, sometimes we're just doing evidence-based treatment, and that is that.” And as an evidence-based practitioner, that's important to me.  So, when people come in, I want to work with what their goals are, their values. And a lot of people have found themselves, for any number of reasons, stuck, maybe compulsions or obsessive thoughts or whatever, are stuck in all things belief, religion, or faith or whatever else. And sometimes actually, the most healing thing for them to do is sometimes get in, get out, do the job clinically, walk away, experience freedom, and then grow and develop personally.  But then I've also discovered that there's this other side that some people do not find a breakthrough. Some people stay stuck. And maybe these are the people that hit the stats that we see in research of 20% or so just turn down things like ERP, (exposure and response prevention) with OCD when they're offered. And then another 20 to 30% drop out. And we have great studies that tell us that most people who stick with it get a lot of benefits, but there's all the other folks that didn't. And sometimes it's because people -- no offense, you all, but sometimes people just don't want to put in the work and discipline.  However, we can't minimize it to that. Sometimes it's truly people that are willing to show up, and there's a complex layer of things. And the cookie-cutter approach is not going to work for them. Maybe they have the intersection of complex health issues, intersection of trauma, intersection of even just family of origin things where life is really difficult, or even just right now, a loneliness epidemic that's happening in the world.  And by the way, I'm a huge believer in the evidence base. There's a lot in the evidence base that guides us. And as I'm talking today, I want to be really clear that when I work with folks, even when we get into the spiritual, I'm working with the evidence base. Yeah, there's things that there's no specific protocol for, but a lot of folks, I think, can hopefully be encouraged that there's a strong research base to the benefits and the use and the application and also the care of practicing various spiritual practices through treatments.  So, to come back to the original question, it depends so much. It's like if somebody asked me a question like, “Hey, Justin. Okay, so as a therapist, do you think that --” and I get these questions all the time, “Is it okay for me to...? Like, I am afraid of this.” I got this question at one point. Somebody was curious if I thought it was okay for them to travel to another city. And it's like, it depends. It's almost always an “it depends.”  So, that's where I'm going to leave it, that nice, squeaky place that we all just want a dang answer, but the reality is, it is going to massively depend on the person and where they are, and what their needs are. Kimberley: Yeah, I mean, and I'll speak to it too, sometimes I've seen a client. Let's give a few examples of a client with OCD. The OCD has attacked their faith and made it very superstitious or very fear-based instead of faith-based. And I think they come in with that, “Everything's so messy and it used to make so much sense, and now it doesn't.”  For eating disorders, I've had a lot of clients who will have a faith component where there are certain religions that have ways in which you prepare foods and things, and then that has become very sticky and hard for them. The eating disorder gets involved with that as well.  And let me think more just from a general standpoint, and I'll use me as an example, as just like a generally anxious person. I remember this really wonderful time, I'll tell you a funny story, when my daughter was like five, out of nowhere, she insisted that we go to every church. Like she wanted to go to a Christian and a Catholic and Jewish temple and Muslim and Buddhist. She wanted to try all of them, and we were like, “Great, let's go and do it.” And I could see how my anxious brain would go black and white on everything they said. So, if they said something really beautiful, my brain would get very perfectionistic about that and have a little tantrum. I think it would be like, “But I can't do it that perfect,” and I would get freaked out, but also be able to catch myself. So, I think that it's important to recognize how the disorder can get mixed up in that. Justin: Yeah, absolutely. Kimberley: Right? Let's now flip, unless you have something you want to add, to how has faith helped people in their recovery, and what does that look like for you as a clinician, for the client, for their journey? Justin: Yeah, absolutely. Well, on the clinical side of things, the starting place is always going to be the assessments and diagnosis and treatment plan. And then the ethics of it too is going to be working with the person where they are and their beliefs and not forcing anything, of course. And so folks are naturally -- I get it, I respect it. I would be nervous of somebody of a different belief background that's overt about things. Some people come in, they look at the wall, they see Dallas Theological Seminary, they've studied a few things in advance. So, yeah, the starting places, sitting down, honest, building rapport, trust, assessing, diagnosing. So, for the folks where the faith piece is significant, I'll put it into two categories. So, one is sometimes we have to talk about aspects of faith just from a pure assessment sample. So, a common example of that is scrupulosity in OCD. So, I have worked with even a person on the, believe it or not, Faith and OCD Task Force who is atheist. And so, why in the world do we need to talk about faith? Why is that person even on the Faith and OCD Task Force? Well, they're representing a diversity of views and opinions on the role of faith and OCD.  Kimberley: Love it. Justin: And it's so interesting to look at it at a base level with something like OCD. But frankly, a lot of mental disorders or even just challenges in life, if clinicians, one, aren't asking questions about, hey, do you have any religious views, background, even just in your background? Do you have spiritual practices that are important to you? We're missing a massive component. And here's the research piece. We know from the research that, actually, a majority of people find things of faith or spirituality important, and secondarily, that a majority of people would like to be able to talk about those things in therapy. Straight-up research. So, a couple of articles that I wrote for the IOCDF on this reference this research. So, it is evidence-based to talk about this.  And then when we get into these sticky areas of obsessions and anxiety disorders, of course, it's going to poke on philosophy, worldview, spirituality. And so, it could be even outside of scrupulosity, beliefs that at first it just looks like we need some good shame reduction exercises, self-compassion, and so forth, but we discover that, oh, the person struggling with contamination OCD has a lot of deeper beliefs that they think that somehow, they are flawed because they're struggling. They're not a good enough, fill in the blank, Christian. They're not good enough. Because if so, surely God would break through in a bigger way. If so... Wouldn't these promises that I'm told in scriptures actually become true?  And the cool thing is, there's a richness in the theology that helps us understand the nuance there, and it's not that simple. But if we miss that component, and it's essential for treatment, it's not just like, “Oh, I feel bad about myself. And yeah, sometimes I'm critical with myself.” And if we don't go at that level of core fear, or core distress, or core belief, oftentimes we're missing really a central part of the treatment, which we talk about in any other domain. People just get nervous sometimes, thinking about spirituality. It's like politics and religion, right? Nobody talks about those things. Well, if we're having deeper conversations, we usually are. And as clinicians, those of you that are listening to the podcast as clinicians, you know that you have to work with people of different political leanings, people of different faith leanings, people who actually live in California versus [inaudible]. I love California.  So, the first category is, if we're doing good clinical work, we're going to be asking questions because it matters to most people. If we don't, we're missing a huge piece. It doesn't mean you're a bad therapist, but hey, start asking some questions if you're not, at a minimum.  But then there's the second piece that most people actually want to know, and most people have some aspects of practice or integration, or even the most religion church-averse type of person will have any number of things come up such as, “Yeah, I pray occasionally,” or “Yeah, I do this grounding exercise that puts me in touch with the universe or creation or whatever it is.”  So, there's the second category of when it is important to a person because it's part of the bigger picture of growth, it's part of the bigger picture of breaking free from challenges that they have, and, frankly, finding meaning. And I'll just make one philosophical comment here, because I'm a total nerd. Psychology can never be a worldview. Psychology tells us what. Psychology is a subset of science. And by worldview, I mean a collective set of beliefs, guidance, direction about how life should be lived. We can only say, “Hey, when you do this, you tend to feel this way, or you tend to do these behaviors more or do these behaviors less.” At the end of the day, we have to make interpretations and judgments about right and wrong, how to live life, the best way to live life. These are in the realm of interpretation.  So, surprise, surprise, we're in the realm of at least philosophy, but we very quickly get into theology. And so back to the piece that most people care about it, most people have some sort of spiritual practice that they'll resonate with and connect with. And then most people actually want to integrate a little bit into therapy. And then some people find that it is essential. They haven't been able to find any lasting freedom outside of going deeper into a bigger purpose, `bigger meaning. Kimberley: You said a couple of things that really rang true for me because I really want to highlight here, I'm on the walk here as well as a client. And I love having these conversations with clients, not about me, about them, but them when they don't have a spiritual practice, longing for one. I've had countless clients say, “I just wish I believed.” And I think what sometimes they're looking for is a motivator. I have some clients who have a deep faith, and their North Star is that religion. Their North Star is following the word of that religion or the outcome of it, whether it be to go to heaven or whatever, afterlife or whatever. They believe like that's the North Star. That's what determines every part of their treatment. Like, “Why are we doing this exposure today?” “Because this is my North Star. I know where I'm heading. I know what the goal is.” And then I have those clients who are like, “I need a North Star. I don't have one. I don't get the point.” And I think that is where faith is so beautiful in recovery.  When I witness my clients who are going to do the scary thing, they don't want to do it, but they're so committed to this North Star, whatever it might be. And maybe there's a better language than a North Star, again, whatever that is for that person. Like, “I'm walking towards the light of whatever that religion is.” I feel, if I'm going to be honest, envious of that. And I totally get that some people do too.  What would you say to a client who is longing for something like that? Maybe they have spiritual trauma in some respects or they've had bad experiences, or they're just unsure. What would you say to them? Justin: Yeah, that's really great. And first of all, I just want to really say that it takes a lot of vulnerability and strength to talk as you do. And one of the ways that I admire you, KQ, is through your ability to have these vulnerable conversations. So not just like the platform of expert, because at the end of the day, we're all just people and on a journey for sure. And so thanks for being honest with that.  And I'm on a journey as well. And certainly, I realized jumping on podcasts, these things put us in the expert role and we speak at conferences and things like that. But I think that's a bit of the answer right there, is that being where we are to start with is so huge. And I mean, you're so good with the steps to take around acceptance and compassion. That's it. It's like fear presses towards a thousand different possibilities, and none of them come true exactly that way. And it can lead towards people missing a lot of personal growth stuff, spiritual growth stuff. And one of those things, I think, that we do is we sit with that. Clinically, I'm going to assess, ask a lot of questions, Socratic questions as a subset of the cognitive therapy side of doing that. Let me just come back to the simplicity. I think we get there. We sit in it for a second. And otherwise, we miss it. We're rushing to preconceived solutions or answers, but we're saying that we don't necessarily have an answer for that. So, what if we take some time to actually notice it and to be with that and to actually label it and be like, “I'm not sure. I'm yearning. I'm envious. I'm wanting something, but I don't know. So, put me in, coach.” I'll sit with people. That's really the first thing.  Kimberley: Yeah. What I have practiced, and I've encouraged clients is also being curious, like trying things out if that lines up with their values, going to a service, reading a book, listening to a podcast, and just trying it on. For me, it's also interesting with clients, is if they're yearning for it, try it on and observe what shows up. Is it that black-and-white thinking or perfectionism? Is it your obsessions getting involved? Is it that it just doesn't feel good in your body? And so forth. Again, just be where you are and take it slow, I think.  I have a few other areas I want you to look at in terms of giving me your professional thoughts. If somebody wants to incorporate faith into their treatment, what can that look like? Can it look like praying together? What does that look like? Justin: You're asking all the good questions. Yeah, absolutely. And also, one other thing to reference, I know you're friends with Shala Nicely and Jeff Bell. And so they wrote a book. And for those that are on that, I would say, more “I'm seeking journey,” it's When in Doubt, Make Belief: An OCD-Inspired Approach to Living with Uncertainty. And I love Shala and Jeff. They're so great, and they've been really pivotal people in my own life, not just as friends, but just as personal growth too. And so, that's an example specifically where Shala talks about the throes of her suffering. Is Fred in the Refrigerator? is her basically autobiography that goes into the clinical piece too, where at the end of the day, there was a bit of a pragmatic experience that she couldn't -- the universe being against her, she basically always had that view and she needed something that was different. And so she got there, I think. I hope I'm reflecting her sentence as well, but got there pragmatically. “The universe is friendly” is something that she said.  Now, I just know that my Christian brothers and sisters, if they're listening to this, they're probably like, “What the heck is Justin talking about? The universe is friendly?” Because that's very, very different from the language that we've used, but it's just such a great example to me of just one step at a time, a person on the journey. They're looking at those things and assessing, okay, what is obsessive, what is compulsive, what is this thing that I can believe in and I ultimately do, but maybe I'm not. I don't want to or I'm not ready, or it doesn't make sense to me to make a jump into an organized religious plea for whatever else. And so, how does it look for clients?  So in short, do I pray with clients? Yeah, absolutely. Do I open up the Bible? Yes, absolutely. Actually, it is a minority of sessions, which again, on my more conservative friends and family side of things are almost shocked and scratching their heads. Like, “You're a Christian, you do counseling, and you're not doing that.” We're a bunch of weirdos. We're in that realm of the inter-Christian circle in a good sense. We believe so deeply that God loves us and God has interceded and does intercede, and interacts with our present, not just a historical event here and there, and we're left on our own, the deistic watchmaker, to use a philosophical reference there. That because we believe that so strongly, we're not going to take no for an answer in the sense of the deeper growth and deeper faith.  So, sometimes that backfires though, especially getting into the superstitious, like, “Well, God's got to be in everything, and I'm not feeling it,” as opposed to like, “Okay. Is it possible that I could just have a brain that gives me some pretty nasty thoughts sometimes and it doesn't necessarily reflect that I'm in a bad state, that I can be curious about what a person getting mangled by a car might look like mentally and then be terrified by that?” And then like, “Thanks, brain, for giving me the imagination. Glad I can think through accidents so I can maybe be a safer driver.” Yeah, absolutely. But I will say that's one of those sticky points a lot of times for Christians because we believe that thoughts matter and beliefs matter. And so there can be this overinterpretation of everything is always something really big and serious about my status and my heart, and something that's really big and serious about spiritual things or demonic stuff, or fill in the blank.  So, the faith integration piece, I do carefully, but I'm not scared of it. I've done it so often. It's through a lot of assessments. It has to be from the standpoint of the client's wanting that. Usually, the client is asking me specifically, like, “Hey, would you pray at the end of the session?” Sure, absolutely, in most cases.  And this, such a deep topic. I'm fully aware that there are those in the camp that view faith integration as completely antithetical to what needs to happen in treatments. And they argue their case, they're going to argue it really strongly, but the same exists on the other side as well. And I try and work in that realm of, okay, what's good for the clients? And are there some things that I don't do? Yeah, but I'm not really asked to do them.  I've had a number of Muslim clients throughout the year. I don't join in with Ramadan with clients in various practices or fasting with a client, for example. That's not my faith practice there. But can I walk with the client who is trying to differentiate between the lines of fasting and I had water at this point, and the sun was going down and I thought. And other people were having water, but I'm getting stuck on assessing, like, was it too early, and did I actually violate my commitment, my vow? Did I violate what I was supposed to be doing?  I can absolutely work with that person, and I need to. I can't really work with OCD or anxiety disorders if I wanted to turn that person away at the door and be like, “Oh, well, I'm not Muslim, so I'm sorry.” No, we're going to jump into it and be like, “Okay, so tell me about this thought and then this behavior that came up at this time, and you're noticing that that's a little different from your community, that other people are starting to drink water, eat food. And so, you mentioned that it was right at sunset, but what time was that?” “Well, actually, it was like 10:30 p.m. It's two hours dark.” It's like, “But I think I saw a glow in the distance.” And it's like, “Okay, now we're into a pretty classic OCD realm.” And so the simplest way that I can say that faith integration can be done in therapy is carefully, respectfully, with good assessments. Kimberley: Do you have them consult with their spiritual leader if you're stuck on that? And does that involve you speaking with them, them speaking with them, all three of you? What have you done? Justin: Yeah, absolutely. So, there is a collaboration that goes in a number of different ways. Most of the time, people can speak with their clergy member or faith leader pretty directly, pretty separately, and that is going to work just fine. I would say in most cases, people don't need to, especially if I'm working with OCD. A lot of folks usually have a pretty good general sense of, “Okay, I know what my faith community is going to say about this is X, but I'm scared because it feels like it's on shaky ground, I'm obsessing,” et cetera.  So, the clarification with the clergy, for instance, or a leader is more from the standpoint of if there's not a defined value definition practice, and that does come up for sure. So, helping that person to even find who that might be, especially if they're not a part of that, and/or maybe a good article to read with some limits, like, okay, three articles max. Check out a more conservative view, a more liberal view, a more fill in the blank.  And then my friend and colleague Alec Pollard up at St. Louis Behavioral Medicine Institute, he's been on scrupulosity panels with me. He uses this excellent form called the PISA, (Possibly Immoral or Sinful Act). And it's just a great several-question guide. That or any number of things can be taken to clergyperson, leader in Christian circles a lot of times, like a Bible study or community group. Maybe flesh those things out just a little bit, maybe once, maybe twice max.  And so, back to how much others are integrated, yeah, it's a mix and match, anything, everything. For me, with direct conversations with clergy, it's actually because I'm pretty deep into this realm, I have pretty easy access to a lot of folks, so I don't really need to so much talk directly or get that person on a release. But a lot of people do, especially if they don't know that religious belief or faith traditions approach on certain topics.  Kimberley: Yeah. It's so wonderful to talk about this with you.  Justin: Thanks, Kimberley. Same here. Kimberley: Because I really do feel, I think post-COVID, there's more conversations with my clients about this. This could be totally just my clients, but I've noticed an increased longing, like you said, for that connection, the loneliness pandemic. Justin: Yeah, that's statistical.  Kimberley: Such a need for connection, such a need for community, such a need for that, like what is your North Star? And it can be, even if we haven't really talked about depression, it can be a really big motivator when you're severely depressed, right? Justin: Absolutely.  Kimberley: And this is where I'm very much like so curious and loving this conversation with my clients right now in terms of, where is it helpful? Where isn't it helpful? As you said, do you want to use this as a part of your practice here in treatment, in recovery? And what role does it play? I know I had mentioned to you, I'd even asked on Instagram and did a poll, and there were a lot of people saying, “It gave me a community. It immensely helps. It does keep me focused on the goal,” especially if it's done intentionally without letting fear take over. Is there anything you wanted to add to this conversation before we finish up?  Justin: Yeah, I guess two things. So, one is you talked about that, and we talked about a couple of those responses before we jumped on to recording. So, in summary, the responses were all across the board, like, “Ooh.” Let me know if I'm summarizing this well, but, “I have to be really careful. That can be really compulsive or not so much. I don't like to do that. I don't think it's necessary.” And then like, yeah, absolutely. This is really integral and really important. Is that a fair summary? Kimberley: Very much. Yep.  Justin: Okay. And so, I'm building this talk, Katie O'Dunne and Rabbi Noah Tile, ERP As a Spiritual Practice. We're giving here at the Faith and OCD Conference in April, if this is out by then. And in my section that I have, I'm covering the best practices of treatments, specifically ERP (exposure and response prevention) for OCD, and clinically, but then also from a faith standpoint, what do we consider with that? And there's this three-prong separation that I'm making. I'm not claiming a hold on the market with this, but I'm just observing. There's one category of a person who comes into therapy, and it's like, yeah, face stuff, whatever. It doesn't matter, or even almost antagonistic against it. Maybe they've been burnt, maybe they've been traumatized or abused with faith. Yeah, I get it. So, that first camp is there. But then there's also a second camp that people like to add on spiritual practices. They might mix and match, or they might follow a specific system, belief system. And whether it gets into mindfulness or meditation practices or fasting or any number of things, they find that there's a lot of benefit, but it's maybe not at the heart of it.  And then there's this third prong of folks that it is part and parcel of everything they do. And I work with all three. They come up in different ways. And sometimes people cycle between those different ones as well in treatments in the process.   Kimberley: I'm glad you said that. Justin: Yeah. And so, I just thought that was interesting when you pulled folks that had come up. Really, the second thing, and maybe this is at least my ending points unless we have anything else, you had mentioned to the audience that graciously, we had some tech issues. You all, it wasn't Kimberley's tech issues. It was Justin's tech issues. I spilled coffee on my computer like a week or two prior. It zapped. It's almost like you'd see in a movie, except it wasn't sparking. And I'm like, “Oh my goodness.” And it was in a client session. That was a whole funny story in of itself. And I'm like, “Oh my goodness.” It wasted my nice computer that I use for live streaming and all of that. And so I'm using my little budget computer at home. It's like, “Oh, hopefully it works.” And it just couldn't. It couldn't keep up with all the awesomeness that KQ's spitting out. And I shared with you, Kimberley, a little bit on the email, something deep really hit me after that. I felt a lot of shame when we tried back and forth for 30 minutes to do it, and my computer kept crashing, basically because it couldn't stand the bandwidth and whatever else was needed. And one might think it's just a technical thing, but I'd had some stuff happen earlier that week. I started to play in my church worship band, lead guitar, and there was something that I just wasn't able to break through, and I was just feeling ashamed of that. And it just really hit me.  And one of my key domains that I am growing in is my own perfectionism, as a subset of my own anxiety, and perfectionism is all about shame. And I love performance, I love to perform well. I like to say, “Oh, it's seeking excellence, and it's seeking the best for other people's good.” But deep down inside, perfectionism is this shame piece that anything shy of perfect is not good enough, and it just hit me. I felt like trash after that happened. I felt embarrassed. And you were so gracious, “It's okay, we'll reschedule.”  And so, I went for a walk, which I do. Clear my mind, get exercise. And I was just stuck on that. And one of the ways where my Christian walk really came in at that moment was, I started to do some cognitive restructuring. I started to -- for you all who don't know, it's looking at the bigger picture and being more realistic with negative thoughts. Like, “Ah, I can't believe this happened. I failed this,” as opposed to like, “Okay, we're rescheduling. It's all right. It actually gave us more time to think about it.” And I didn't know that then, but I could have said similar things.  I was doing a bunch of clinical tools that are helpful, but frankly, it wasn't until I just tapped into the bigger purpose of, one, not controlling the universe. I don't keep this globe spinning. I barely keep my own life spinning. Two, God loves me. And three, it's okay. It's going to work that out. Four, maybe there's something bigger, deeper going on that I don't know. And I can't guarantee that it was for this reason. I'm not going to put that in God's mouth and say that, “Oh yeah, okay, well, He gave us a couple more weeks to prepare.” I don't know. I really don't know. But it helped me to tap into like, “Okay, it's all right. It's really all right.”  And it took me about half a day, frankly. I'm slightly embarrassed to say, “No, I'm not embarrassed to say that as a clinician who works with this stuff. I have full days, I have full weeks. I have longer periods of time where I'm wrestling with this stuff.” And yeah, areas have grown. I've improved in my life for sure, but I'm just a hot mess some days.  Kimberley: But that's nice to hear too, because I think, again, clients have said it looks so nice to be loved by God all the time. That must be so nice. But it's not nice. I hate that you went through that. But I think people also need to know that people of faith also have to walk through really tough days and that it isn't the cure-all, that faith isn't the cure-all for struggles either. I think that's helpful for people to know. Justin: Yeah, that's right. So, thank you for letting me share a little bit of that. And yeah, the personalized example of why, at least for me, faith is important. If folks come into my office and they say, “Nah, no thanks,” okay, I'm going to try lightly, carefully, or just avoid it altogether if that's what they want. But oftentimes it's really at the center of, okay, purpose, meaning, direction, guidance, and okay, you want to do that? I'll roll up my sleeves, and let's go.  Kimberley: Yeah. See, I'm glad that it happened because you got to tell that beautiful story. And without that beautiful story, I would be less happy. So, thank you for sharing that and being so vulnerable. I think I shared with you in an email like I've had to get so good at letting people down that I get it. And I love that you have that statement, like God loves me. That is beautiful. That's like sun on your face right there. I love that you had that moment.  Justin: Yeah, it comes up so much, so many times. In the Bible and even to -- like I wrote this article on Fear Not. So, the most common exhortation in all of the Christian Bible is fear not. So, one might think like, “Oh yeah, don't commit adultery,” or “Don't kill, don't murder,” or fill in the blank. Not even close. The most common exhortation in all of scriptures is actually fear not, and then love, various manifestations all throughout. I could go on, but I know we're out of time.  Kimberley: Well, what I will say is tell people where they can hear about you and even access that if they're interested. I love to read that article. So, where will people hear about you and learn more about the work you do? Please tell us everything. Justin: Yeah, sure. And I'll include some stuff for your show notes that you can send to the things referenced. And then JustinKHughes (J-U-S-T-I-N-K-H-U-G-H-E-S) .com is my base of operations where the contact, my email practice information, my blog is on there. And you can subscribe to my newsletter totally free. Totally, totally free. And I do a bunch of eBooks as well on there that are free. JustinKHughes.com/GetUnstuck to join one of four of the newsletters.  Other than that, that's where those announcements come out for different conferences. So, Faith and OCD, if this is out in time in April, but April every year, it's getting to be pretty big. We're getting hundreds of people attending. We're now in our fourth annual IOCDF (International OCD Foundation Conference), local conferences, various live streams. So, anyway, the website is that base, that hub, where you'll actually see any number of those different announcements. Thanks for asking.  Kimberley: I'm going to make sure this is out before the conference. Can you tell people where they can go to hear about the conference? Justin: Yeah. So, IOCDF.org. And then I think it's /conferences, but you can also type into Google conferences and there's a series of all sorts of different conferences going on. And this is the one that's dedicated to OCD and faith concerns. And just when you think that it's just one specific belief system, then prepare to be surprised because we've done a lot of work to have a diverse group of folks, sharing and speaking and covering a lot of things, ranging from having faith-specific or non-faith nuns, support groups. So, there are literally support groups if you're an atheist and you have OCD, and that's actually an important part of where you are in your journey. But for Christians, for Muslims, for Jewish, et cetera, et cetera, we're trying to really have any number of backgrounds supported along with talks and in broad general things, but then we get more specific into, “Hey, here's for clinicians. Hey, here's for the tips on making for effective practices.”  Kimberley: Yeah, amazing. And I'll actually be speaking on self-compassion there as well. So, I'm honored to be there. Thank you for being here, Justin. This was so wonderful.  Justin: Yeah, this really was. Thank you.

In the Shala gettin purified..

In this episode, Wade welcomes his dear friend and fellow agent Shala Lamboy, to discuss the journey of infinite banking. Shala shares her early experiences with money, including insights gained from working with successful entrepreneurs and witnessing the wealthy's unique mindset towards finances. Together, they delve into the concept of infinite banking and how it offers a strategic approach to saving and wealth-building. Shala's personal anecdotes, including her family's intentional approach to travel, highlight the importance of aligning financial strategies with personal values. Join Wade and Shala as they explore the power of intentionality in achieving financial abundance. Episode Highlights 02:29  - Shala shares her passion and interest in money and how this has shaped her financial journey. 13:37  - Shala recounts her personal journey in applying the principles of infinite banking in her life, particularly with regard to finance availability for activities like traveling. 19:29  - The importance of engagement and education before undertaking any endeavor, financial or otherwise, is highlighted.  34:11  - Discussing the regret that many people have when they realize the potential of intentional saving and infinite banking. They encourage listeners to take action, get educated and start being intentional about their money. 38:38  - Her advice to listeners is to create a life they love and find out what's missing if their current life doesn't reflect that. She adds that learning the infinite banking process and being intentional about finances can aid in creating a life of abundance.   Episode Resources Connect with Wade Borth https://www.sagewealthstrategy.com/ wade@sagewealthstrategy.com Connect with Shala Lamboy shalaree@factumfinancial.com  

Bob Belderbos is a Software Developer, Python Coach, Mentor, Trainer, & Entrepreneur! In this Developer Career Coaching interview we talk about what developers should be learning when they are at the beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. We also get into how to use AI to become a better programmer at all levels!! Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 02:00 - Who is Bob? 05:20 - Chris triggers Shala with C++ comments :-D 06:40 - Why did Bob get into coaching? 10:00 - What kind/type of students? 16:30 - Tutorial Paralysis & the real world is messy 20:30 - Beginner Advice 23:00 - What other skills does a beginner need to pick up? 27:00 - Intermediate Advice 35:00 - Keep a "Wins" file & overcoming Impostor Syndrome 37:00 - Advanced Advice 41:15 - How to best leverage AI 43:45 - Why soft skills are (still) so important 47:30 - Python book recommendations 50:30 - When do you know you've leveled up? Resources: https://pybites.circle.so/ https://codechalleng.es/ PDI Program: https://pybit.es/pybites-developer-init/ PDM Program: https://pybit.es/catalogue/the-pdm-program/ https://pybit.es/ https://form.jotform.com/233191638982062 https://github.com/PyBites-Open-Source https://www.beekeeperstudio.io/ What would you want to ask a Developer Career Coach? #developer #coaching #projects Intro music attribution: Artist - MaxKoMusic

This year at AWS re:Invent we are going to interview conference attendees, AWS Heroes, and AWS employees. We're asking them what they are excited about at re:Invent and what they are working on! Join us to hear the answer to these questions from some of the top minds in the industry!!! Resources: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giftedlane/ https://twitter.com/GiftedLane https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_qpgVCE35WQ1_ga9Gy1FSg Intro music attribution: Artist - MaxKoMusic

Kimberley: Welcome, everybody. This is a very exciting episode. I know I'm going to learn so much. Today, we have Caitlin Pinciotti and Shala Nicely, and we're talking about when OCD and PTSD collide and intertwine and how that plays out. This is actually a topic I think we need to talk about more. Welcome, Caitlin, and welcome, Shala. Caitlin: Thank you. Shala: Thanks. Kimberley: Okay. Let's first do a little introduction. Caitlin, would you like to go first introducing yourself? Caitlin: Sure thing. I'm Caitlin Pinciotti. I'm a licensed clinical psychologist and an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine. I also serve as a co-chair for the IOCDF Trauma and PTSD and OCD SIG. If people are interested in that special interest group as well, that's something that's available and up and running now. Most of my research specifically focuses on OCD, trauma, and PTSD, and particularly the overlap of these things. That's been sort of my focus for the last several years. I'm excited to be here and talk more about this topic. Kimberley: Thank you. You're doing amazing work. I've loved being a part of just watching all of this great research that you're doing. Shala, would you like to introduce yourself? Shala: Yes. I'm Shala Nicely. I am a licensed professional counselor, and I specialize in the treatment of OCD and related disorders. I am the author of Is Fred in the Refrigerator?: Taming OCD and Reclaiming My Life, which is my story, and then co-author with Jon Hershfield of Everyday Mindfulness for OCD: Tips, Tricks, and Skills for Living Joyfully. I also produce the Shoulders Back! newsletter. It has tips and resources for taming OCD. Kimberley: Shoulders Back! was actually the inspiration for this episode. Shala, you recently wrote an article about post-traumatic OCD or how PTSD and OCD collide. Can you tell us about your story, particularly going back to, I think you mentioned, May 2020, and what brought you to write that article? Shala: Sure, and thank you very much for having Caitlin and me on today because I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about this and to get more information out in the world about this intertwined combination of PTSD and OCD. In May of 2020, I moved to a new house, the house that I'm in now. Of course, we had just started the pandemic, and so everybody was working at home, including me. The house that I moved into was in a brand new neighborhood. While the houses on this side of me were completed, the houses behind me and on that side were not completed. I didn't think anything of that when I moved in. But what I moved into was a situation where I was in a construction zone all the time. I was working at home, so there was no escape from it. One day I was walking behind my house, where most of the houses were in the process of being built and there were no sidewalks. As I was walking down the street, I saw, down at the end of the street, a big forklift come down the street where I was walking with my two little dogs backwards at a really high rate of speed, and the forklift driver seemed to be looking that way, and he was going that way. It happened so fast because he was going so quickly that all of a sudden I realized he was going to hit us, my dogs and me, and there was no place for us to go because we were on the road because there was nowhere else for us to be. I screamed bloody murder, and he heard me. I mean, that's how loud I screamed, and he stopped. That was not all that pleasant. I was upset. He was not happy. But we moved on. But my brain didn't move on.  After that incident, what I noticed was I was becoming really hypervigilant in my own house and finding the construction equipment. If I go outside, I tense up just knowing that construction equipment is there. Over time, my sleep started becoming disturbed. I started to have flashbacks and what I call flash-forwards, where I would think about all these horrible things that could happen to me that hadn't happened to me yet but could. I'd get lost in these violent fantasies of what might happen and what I need to do to prevent that.  I realized that I seemed to be developing symptoms of PTSD. This is where being a therapist was actually quite helpful because I pulled the DSM open one night and I started going through symptoms of PTSD. I'm like, “Oh my gosh, I think I have PTSD.”  I think what happened, because having a forklift driver almost hit you, doesn't seem like that could possibly cause PTSD. But if you look at my history, I think that created a link in my brain to an accident I was in when I was four where I did almost die, which is when my mom and I were standing on the side of a road, about to cross. We were going to go between two parked cars. My mom and I stepped between two parked cars, and there was a man driving down the road who was legally blind, and he mistook the line of parked cars where we were standing as moving traffic. He plowed into the end of all the parked cars, which of course made them accordion in, and my mom and I were in the middle of that. I was very seriously injured and probably almost died. My mom was, too. Several months in the hospital, all of that.  Of course, at that point—that was 1975—there was no PTSD, because I think— Caitlin, you can correct me—it didn't become a diagnosis until 1980. I have had symptoms—small, low-level symptoms of PTSD probably on and off most of my life, but so low-level, not diagnosable, and not really causing any sort of problems. But I think what happened in my head was that when that forklift almost hit me, it made my brain think, “Oh my gosh, we're in that situation again,” because the forklift was huge. It was the same scale to me as an adult as that car that I was crushed between was when I was four. I think my brain just got confused. Because I was stuck with this construction equipment all day long and I didn't get any break from it, it just made my brain think more and more and more, “Boy, we are really in danger.” Our lives are basically threatened all the time.  That began my journey of figuring out what was going on with me and then also trying to understand why my OCD seemed to be getting worse and jumping in to help because I seemed to get all these compulsions that were designed to keep me safe from this construction equipment. It created a process where I was trying to figure out, "What is this? I've got both PTSD now, I've got OCD flaring up, how do I deal with this? What do I do?" The reason why I wanted to write the article for Shoulders Back! and why I asked Caitlin to write it with me was because there just isn't a lot of information out there about this combination where people have PTSD or some sort of trauma, and then the OCD jumps in to help. Now you've got a combination of disorders where you've got trauma or PTSD and OCD, and they're merging together to try to protect you. That's what they think they're doing. They're trying to help you stay safe, but really, what they're doing is they're making your life smaller and smaller and smaller.  I wanted to write this article for Shoulders Back! to let people know about my experience so that other people going through this aren't alone. I wanted to ask Caitlin to write it with me because I wanted an expert in this to talk about what it is, how we treat it, what hope do we have for people who are experiencing this going forward. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OCD AND PTSD (AND POST-TRAUMATIC OCD)  Kimberley: Thank you for sharing that. I do encourage people; I'll link in the show notes if they want to go and read the article as well. Caitlin, from a clinical perspective, what was going on for Shala? Can you break down the differences between OCD and PTSD and what's happening to her? Caitlin: Sure. First, I want to start by thanking Shala again for sharing that story. I know you and I talked about this one-on-one, but I think really sharing personal stories like that obviously involves a lot of courage and vulnerability. It's just so helpful for people to hear examples and to really resonate with, “Wow, maybe I'm not so different or so alone. I thought I was the only one who had experiences like this.” I just want to publicly thank you again for writing that blog and being willing to share these really horrible experiences that you had.  In terms of how we would look at this clinically, it's not uncommon for people to, like Shala described, experience trauma and have these low-level symptoms for a while that don't really emerge or don't really reach the threshold of being diagnosable. This can happen, for example, with veterans who return home from war, and it might not be until decades later that they have some sort of significant life event or change. Maybe they've retired, or they're experiencing more stress, or maybe, like Shala, they're experiencing another trauma, and it just brings everything up. This kind of delayed onset of PTSD is, for sure, not abnormal.  In this case, it sounds like, just like Shala described, that her OCD really latched onto the trauma, that she had these experiences that reinforced each other. Right now, I've had two experiences where being around moving vehicles has been really dangerous for me. Just like you said, I think you did such a beautiful job of saying that the OCD and PTSD colluded in a way to keep you “safe.” That's the function of it. But of course, we know that those things go to the extreme and can make our lives very small and very distressing.  What Shala described about using these compulsions to try to prevent future trauma is something that we see a lot in people who have comorbid OCD and PTSD. We're doing some research now on the different ways that OCD and trauma can intersect. And that's something that keeps coming up as people say, “I engaged in these compulsions as a way to try to prevent the trauma from happening to me again or happening to someone else. Or maybe my compulsions gave me a sense of control, predictability, or certainty about something related to the trauma.” This kind of presentation of OCD sort of functioning as protection against trauma or coping with past trauma as well is really common. STATISTICS OF OCD AND PTSD Kimberley: Would you share a little bit about the statistics between OCD and PTSD and the overlap? Caitlin: Absolutely. I'm excited to share this too, because so much of this work is so recent, and I'm hopeful that it's really going to transform the way that we see the relationships between OCD and PTSD. We know that around 60% of people who have comorbid OCD and PTSD tend to have an experience where PTSD comes first or at the same time, and the OCD comes later. This is sort of that post-traumatic OCD presentation that we're talking about and that Shala talked about in her article.  For folks who have this presentation where the PTSD comes first and then the OCD comes along afterwards, unfortunately, we see that those folks tend to have more severe obsessions, more severe compulsions. They're more likely to struggle with suicidality or to have comorbid agoraphobia or panic disorders. Generally speaking, we see a more severe presentation when the OCD comes after the PTSD and trauma, which is likely indicative of what we're discussing, which is that when the OCD develops as a way to cope with trauma, it takes on a mind of its own and can be really severe because it's serving multiple functions in that way. What we've been finding in our recent research—and if folks want to participate, the study will still be active for the next month; we're going to end it at the end of the year, the OCD and Trauma Overlap Study—what we're finding is that of the folks who've participated in the study, 85% of them feel like there's some sort of overlap between their OCD and trauma. Of course, there are lots of different ways that OCD and trauma can overlap.  I published a paper previously where we found that about 45% of people with severe OCD in a residential program felt that a traumatic or stressful event was the direct cause of their OCD on setting. But beyond that, we know that OCD and trauma can intersect in terms of the content of obsessions, the function of compulsions, as we've been talking about here, core fears. Some folks describe this, and Shala described this to this, like cyclical relationship where when one thing gets triggered, the other thing gets triggered too.  This is really where a lot of the research is focusing on now, is how do these things intersect, how often do they intersect, and what does that really look like for people? Kimberley: Thanks. I found in my practice, for people who have had a traumatic event, as exactly what happened to Shala, and I actually would love for both of you maybe to give some other examples of how this looks for people and how it may be experienced, is let's say the person that was involved in the traumatic event or that place that the traumatic event was recent that recently was revisited just like Shala. Some of them go to doing safety behaviors around that person, place, or event, or they might just notice an uptick in their compulsions that may have completely nothing to do with that. Shala, can you explain a little bit about how you differentiated between what are PTSD symptoms versus OCD, or do you consider them very, very similar? Can you give some insight into that? SYMPTOMS OF OCD & PTSD  Shala: Sure. I'll give some examples of the symptoms of OCD that developed after this PTSD developed, but it's all post-traumatic OCDs. I consider it to be different from PTSD, but it is merged with PTSD because it's only there because the PTSD is there.  For instance, I developed a lot of checking behaviors around the doors to my house—staring, touching, not able to just look once before I go to bed, had to be positively sure the doors were locked, which, as somebody who does this for a living, who helps people stop doing these compulsions, created a decent amount of shame for me too, as I'm doing these compulsions and saying, “Why am I not taking my own advice here? Why am I getting stuck doing this?”  But my OCD thought that the construction equipment was outside; we're inside. We need to make sure it stays outside. The only way we do that is to make sure the door stays locked, which is ridiculous. It's not as if a forklift is going to drive through my front door. As typical with OCD, the compulsions don't make a lot of sense, but there's a loose link there. Another compulsion that I realized after a time was probably linked with PTSD is my people-pleasing, which I've always struggled with. In fact, Kimberley, you and I have done another podcast about people-pleasing, something I've worked really hard on over the years, but it really accelerated after this. I eventually figured out that that was a compulsion to keep people liking me so that they wouldn't attack me. That can be an OCD compulsion all by itself, but it was functioning to help the PTSD.  Those would be two examples of compulsions that could be OCD compulsions on their own, but they would not have been there had the PTSD not been there. Kimberley: Caitlin, do you want to add anything about that from symptoms or how it might look and be experienced? Caitlin: Sure, yeah. I think it's spot on that there's this element of separation that we can piece apart. This feels a little bit more like OCD; this feels a little bit more like PTSD, but ultimately they're the same thing, or it's the same behavior.  In my work, I usually try to, where I can, piece things apart clinically so that we can figure out what we should do with this particular response that you're having. When it comes to differentiating compulsions, OCD compulsions and PTSD safety behaviors, we can look towards both the presentation of the behavior as well as the function of it.  In terms of presentation, I mean, we all know what compulsions can look like. They can be very rigid. There can be a set of rules that they have to be completed with. They're often characterized by a lot of doubting, like in Shala's case, the checking that, “Well, okay, I checked, but I'm not actually sure, so let me check one more time.” Whereas in PTSD, although it's possible for that to happen, those safety behaviors, usually, it's a little bit easier to disengage from. Once I feel like I've established a sense of safety, then I feel like I can disengage from that. There doesn't tend to be kind of that like rigidity and a set of rules or magical thinking that comes along with an OCD compulsion.  In terms of the function, and this is where it gets a little bit murky with post-traumatic OCD, broadly speaking, the function of PTSD safety behaviors is to try to prevent trauma from occurring again in the future. Whereas OCD compulsions, generally speaking, are a way to obtain certainty about something or prevent some sort of feared catastrophe related to someone's obsession. But of course, when the OCD is functioning along with the PTSD to cope with trauma, to prevent future trauma, that gets a little bit murkier.  In my work, like I said, I try to piece apart, are there elements of this that we can try to resist from more of an ERP OCD standpoint? If there's a set of rules or a specific way that you're checking the door, maybe we can work on reducing some of that while still having that PTSD perspective of being a little bit more lenient about weaning off safety behaviors over time. TREATMENT FOR OCD AND PTSD Kimberley: It's a perfect segue into us talking about the treatment here. Caitlin, could you maybe share the treatment options for these conditions, specifically post-traumatic OCD, but maybe in general, all three? Caitlin: Absolutely. The APA, a few years back, reviewed all the available literature on PTSD treatments, and they created this hierarchy of the treatments that have the most evidence base and went down from there. From their review of all the research that's been done, there were four treatments that emerged as being the most effective for PTSD. That would be broadly cognitive behavioral therapy and cognitive therapy. But then there are two treatments that have been specifically created to target PTSD, and that would be prolonged exposure or PE, and cognitive processing therapy or CBT. These all fall under the umbrella of CBT treatments, but they're just a little bit more specific in their approach. And then, of course, we know of ACT and EMDR and these other treatments that folks use as well. Those fall in the second tier, where there's a lot of evidence that those work for folks as well, but that top tier has the most evidence.  These treatments can be used in combination with OCD treatments like ERP. There are different ways that folks can combine them. They can do full protocols of both. They could borrow aspects of some treatments, or they could choose to focus really on if there's a very clear primary diagnosis to treat that one first before moving on to the secondary diagnosis. TREATMENT EXAMPLES FOR POST-TRAUMATIC OCD Kimberley: Amazing. Shala, if you're comfortable, can you give some examples of what treatment looked like for you and what that was like for you both having OCD and PTOCD?  Shala: Yes, and I think to set the ground for why the combined treatment working on the PTSD and the OCD together can be so important, a couple of features of how all this was presenting for me was the shift in the focus of the uncertainty. With OCD, it's all about an intolerance of uncertainty and not knowing whether these what-ifs that OCD is getting stuck on are true or going to happen. But what I noticed when I developed PTSD and then the OCD came in to help was that the focus of the uncertainty shifted to it's not what if it's going to happen. The only what-if is when it was going to happen because something bad happening became a given.  The uncertainty shifted to only when and where that bad thing was going to happen, which meant that I had lower insight. I've always had pretty good insight into my OCD, even before I got treatment. Many people with OCD too, we know what we're doing doesn't make any sense; we just can't stop doing it. With this combined presentation, there was a part of me that was saying, “Yeah, I really do need to be staring at the door. This is really important to make sure I keep that construction equipment out.” That lowered insight is a feature of this combined presentation that I think makes the type of treatment that we do more important, because we want to address both of the drivers, both the PTSD and the OCD. The treatment that I did was in a staged process. First, I had to find a treatment provider, and Caitlin has a wonderful list of evidence-based treatment providers who can provide treatment for both on her website, which is great. I found somebody actually who ended up being on Caitlin's list and worked with that person, and she wanted to start out doing prolonged exposure, which I pushed back on a little bit. Sometimes when you're a therapist and you're being the client, it's hard not to get in the other person's chair. But I pushed back on that because I said, “Well, I don't think I need to do prolonged exposure on the original accident,” because that's what she was suggesting we do, the accident when I was four. I said, “Because I wrote a book, Is Fred in the Refrigerator? and the very first chapter is the accident,” and I talked all about the accident. She explained, “That's a little bit different than the way we would do it in prolonged exposure.” What's telling, I think, is that when I worked on the audiobook version of Fred—I was doing the narration, I was in a studio, and I had an engineer and a director; they were on one side of the glass, I'm on the other side of the glass—I had a really hard time getting through that first chapter of the book because I kept breaking down. They'd have to stop everything, and I had to get myself together, and we had to start again, and that happened over and over and over again.  Even though I had relived, so to speak, this story on paper, I guess that was the problem. I was still reliving it. That's probably the right word. Prolonged exposure is what I needed to do because I needed to be able to be in the presence of that story and have it be a story in the past and not something that I was experiencing right then.  I started with prolonged exposure. After I did that, I moved on to cognitive processing therapy because I had a lot of distorted beliefs around life and the trauma that we call “stuck points” in cognitive processing therapy that I needed to work through. There were a good 20 or so stuck-point beliefs. “If I don't treat people perfectly nicely, they're going to attack me somehow.” Things that could be related directly to the compulsions, but also just things like, “The world is dangerous. If I'm not vigilant all the time, something bad is going to happen to me.” I had to work on reframing all of those because I was living my life based on those beliefs, which was keeping the trauma going.  I recreated a new set of beliefs and then brought exposure in to work on doing exposures that helped me act as if those new beliefs were the right way to live. If my stuck point is I need to be hypervigilant because of the way something bad is going to happen to me, and I'm walking around like this, which was not an exaggeration of really how I was living my life when this was all happening—if I'm living like that, if I'm acting in a hypervigilant way, I am reinforcing these beliefs. I need to go do exposures where I can walk by a dump truck without all the hypervigilance to let all that tension go, walk by it, realize what I've learned, and walk by it again.  It was a combination of all these and making sure that I was doing these exposures, both to stop the compulsions I was doing, like the door checking, but also to start living in a different way so that I wasn't in my approach to life, reinforcing the fact that my PTSD thought the world was dangerous.  I also incorporated some DBT (dialectical behavior therapy) because what I found with this combination was I was experiencing a lot more intense emotions than I'd really ever experienced in having OCD by itself. With OCD, it was mostly just out-of-this-world anxiety, but with the combination of PTSD and OCD, there were a lot more emotional swings of all sorts of different kinds that I needed to learn and had to deal with. Part of that too was just learning how to be in the presence of these PTSD symptoms, which are very physiological. Not like OCD symptoms aren't, but they tend to be somewhat more extreme, almost panicky-like feelings. When you're in the flashbacks or flash forwards, you can feel dissociated, and you're numbing out and all of that. I'm learning to be in the presence of those symptoms without reacting negatively to them, because if I'm having some sort of feelings of hypervigilance that are coming because I'm near a piece of construction equipment and I haven't practiced my ERP (Expsoure & Response Prevention) for a while, if I react negatively and say, “Oh my gosh, I shouldn't be having these symptoms. I've done my therapy. I shouldn't be having these feelings right now,” it's just going to make it worse. Really, a lot of this work on the emotional side was learning how to just be with the feelings. If I have symptoms, because they happen every now and then—if I have symptoms, then I'm accepting them. I'm not making them worse by a negative reaction to the reaction my PTSD is having.  That was a lot of the tail end of the work, was learning how to be okay with the fact that sometimes you're going to have some PTSD symptoms, and that's okay. But overreacting to them is going to make it worse.  Kimberley: Thank you so much for sharing that. I just want to maybe clarify for those who are listening. You talked about CPT, you talked about DBT, and you also talked about prolonged exposure. In the prolonged exposure, you were exposing yourself to the dump truck? Is that correct? Shala: In the prolonged exposure, I was doing two different things. One is the story of the accident that I was in. Going back to that accident that I thought I had fully habituated to through writing my book and doing all that, I had to learn how to be in the presence of that story without reliving it while seeing it as something that happened to me, but it's not happening to me right now. That was the imaginal part of the prolonged exposure.  This is where the overlap between the disorders and the treatment can get confusing of what is part of what. You can do the in vivo exposure part of prolonged exposure. Those can also look a lot like just ERP for OCD, where we're going and we're standing beside a dump truck and dropping the hypervigilant safety behaviors because we need to be able to do that to prove to our brain we can tolerate being in this environment. It isn't a dangerous environment to stand by a jump truck. It's not what happened when I was four. Those are the two parts that we're looking at there—the imaginal exposure, which is the story, and then we've got the in vivo exposures, which are going back and being in the presence of triggers, and also from an OCD perspective without compulsive safety behaviors. Kimberley: Amazing. What I would clarify, but please any of you jump in just for the listeners, if this is all new to you, what we're not saying is, let's say if there was someone who was abusive to you as a child, that you would then expose yourself to them for the sake of getting better from your PTSD. I think the decisions you made on what to expose yourself were done with a therapist, Shala? They helped you make those decisions based on what was helpful and effective for you? Do either of you want to speak to what we do and what we don't expose ourselves to in prolonged exposure? Caitlin: Yeah. I'm glad that you're clarifying that too, because this is a big part of PE that is actually a little bit different from ERP. When somebody has experienced trauma, when they have PTSD, their internal alarm system just goes haywire. Just like in Shala's example, anything that serves as a reminder or a trigger of the trauma, the brain just automatically interprets as this thing is dangerous; I have to get away from it.  In PE, a lot of what we're doing is helping people to recalibrate that internal alarm system so that they can better learn or relearn safe versus actual threat. When you're developing a hierarchy with someone in PE, you might have very explicit conversations about how safe is this exposure really, because we never want to put someone in a situation where they would be unsafe, such as, like you described, interacting with an abuser.  In ERP, we'd probably be less likely to go through the exposures and say, “This one's actually safe; I want you to do it,” because so much of the treatment is about tolerating uncertainty about feared outcomes. But in PE, we might have these explicit conversations. “Do other people you know do this activity or go to this place in town?” There are probably construction sites that wouldn't be safe for Shala to go to. They'd be objectively dangerous, and we'd never have her go and do things that would put her in harm's way. Kimberley: Thank you. I just wanted to clarify on that, particularly for folks who are hearing this for the first time. I'm so grateful that we're having this conversation again. I think it's going to be so eye-opening for people. Caitlin, can you share any final words for the listeners? What resources would you encourage them to listen to? Is there anything that you feel we missed in our conversation today for the listeners? Caitlin: I think, generally, I like to always leave on a note of hope. Again, I'm so grateful that Shala is here and gets to describe her experience with such vulnerability because it gives hope that you can hear about someone who was at their worst, and maybe things felt hopeless in that moment. But she was able to access the help that she needed and use the tools that she had from her own training too, which helped, and really move through this.  There isn't sort of a final point where it's like, “Okay, cool, I'm done. The trauma is never going to bother me again.” But it doesn't have to have that grip on your life any longer, and you don't need to rely on OCD to keep you safe from trauma.  There are treatments out there that work. Like it was mentioned, I have a directory of OCD and PTSD treatment providers available on my website, which is www.cmpinciotti.com that folks can access if they're looking for a therapist. If you're a therapist listening and you believe that you belong in this directory, there's a way to reach out to me through the website.  I'd also say too that if folks are willing and interested, participating in the research that's happening right now really helps us to understand OCD and PTSD better so that we can better support people. If you're interested in participating in the OCD and trauma study that I mentioned, you can email me at OCDTraumaStudy@bcm.edu. I also have another study that's more recent that will help to answer the question of how many people with OCD have experienced trauma and what are those more commonly endorsed ways that people feel that OCD and trauma intersect for them. That one's ultra-brief. It's a 10-minute really quick survey, NationalOCDSurvey@bcm.edu and I'm happy to share that anonymous link with you as well/ Kimberley: Thank you. Thank you so much. Shala, can you share any final words about your experience or what you want the listeners to hear? Shala: One thing I'd like to share is a mistake that I made as part of my recovery that I would love for other people not to make. I'd like to talk a little bit about that, because I think it could be helpful. The mistake that I made in trying to be a good client, a good therapy client, is I was micro-monitoring my recovery. “How many PTSD symptoms am I having? Well, I'm still having symptoms.” I woke up in the middle of the night in a panic, or I had a bad dream, or I had a flash forward. “Why am I having this? I must not be doing things right.” And then I took it a step further and said, “It would be great if I could track the physiological markers of my PTSD so I can make sure I'm keeping them under control.” I got a piece of tracking technology that enabled me to track heart rate and heart rate variability and sleep and all this stuff. At first, it was okay, but then the technology that I was using changed their algorithm, and all of a sudden my stats weren't good anymore, and I started freaking out. “Oh my gosh, my sleep is bad. My atrophy is going down. This is bad. What am I doing?” I was trying with the best of intentions to quantify, make sure I'm doing things right, focus on recovery. But what I was doing was focusing on the remaining symptoms that were there, and I was making them worse.  What I have learned is that eventually, things got so bad—in fact, with my sleep—that I got so frustrated with the tracking technology. I said, “I'm not wearing it anymore.” That's one of the things that helped me realize what I was doing. When I stopped tracking my sleep, when I let go of all of this and said, “You know what? I'm going to have symptoms,” things got better.  I would encourage people not to overthink their recovery, not to be in their heads and wake up in the morning and ask, “How much PTSD am I having? How much OCD am I having? If I could just get rid of these last little symptoms, life would be great,” because that's just going to keep everything going.  I'll say this year, two has been a challenging one for me. I've been involved in three car accidents this year; none of them my fault. One of my neighbors, whom I don't know, called the police on me, thinking I was breaking into my own house, which meant that a whole army of police officers ended up at my house at nine o'clock at night. That's four pretty hard trauma triggers for me in 2023.  Those kinds of things are going to happen to all of us every now and then. I had a lot of symptoms. I had a lot of PTSD symptoms and a lot of OCD symptoms in the wake of those events, and that's okay. It's not that I want them to be there, but that's just my brain reacting. That's my brain trying to come to terms with what happened and how safe we are and trying to get back to a level playing field.  I think it's really important for anybody else out there who's suffering from one or the other, or both of these disorders to recognize we're going to have symptoms sometimes. Just like with OCD, you're going to have symptoms sometimes. It's okay. It's the pushing away. It's the rejecting of the symptoms. It's the shaming yourself for having the symptoms that causes the symptoms to get worse.  Really, there is an element of self-compassion for OCD here. I like having bracelets to remind me. This is the self-compassion bracelet that I've had for years that I wear. By the way, this is not the tracking technology. I'm not using tracking technology anymore. But remembering self-compassion and telling yourself, “I'm having symptoms right now, and this is really hard. I'm anxious; I feel a little bit hypervigilant, but this is part of recovery from PTOCD. Most people with PTOCD experience this at some point. So I'm going to give myself a break, give myself permission to feel what I'm feeling, recognize how much progress I've made, and, when I feel ready, do some of my therapy homework to help me move past this, but in a nonhypervigilant, nonmicro monitoring way.” As I have dropped down into acceptance of these symptoms, my symptoms have gotten a lot better. I think that's a really important takeaway. Yes, we want to work hard in our therapy, yes, we want to do the homework, but we also want to work on accepting because, in the acceptance, we learn that having these symptoms sometimes is just a part of life, and it's okay.  I would echo what Caitlin said in that you can have a ton of hope if you have these disorders, in that we have good treatment. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer than working on either one or the other, but that makes sense because you're working on two. But we have good treatment, and you can get back to living a joyful life.  Always have hope and don't give up, because sometimes it can be a long road, especially when you have a combined presentation. But you can tame both of these disorders and reclaim your life. Kimberle: You guys are so good. I'm so grateful we got to do this. I feel like it's such an important conversation, and both of you bring such wonderful expertise and lived experience. I'm so grateful. Thank you both for coming on and talking about this with me today. I'm so grateful. Shala: Thank you for having us. Caitlin: Yes, thank you. This was wonderful. Kimberley: Thank you so much, guys. RESOURCES:  The two studies CAITLIN referenced are: OCD/Trauma Overlap Study: An anonymous online survey for any adult who has ever experienced trauma, and can be accessed at https://bcmpsych.sjc1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0j4ULJv3DxUaKtE or by emailing OCDTraumaStudy@bcm.edu National OCD Survey: An anonymous 10-minute online survey for any U.S. adult who has ever had OCD, and can be accessed at https://bcmpsych.sjc1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9LdbaR2yrj0oV7g or by emailing NationalOCDSurvey@bcm.edu

The Shala in Huntington 11/16/23

"I think that if we are aware. We'll save ourselves and our clients our audience a whole lot of heartache if we just know where our boundaries are." In this episode, Lisa sits down with photographer and entrepreneur, Shala Graham. They'll talk about vision, branding & how boundaries help you find (and keep) the audiences you want to serve.https://www.shalaphotography.com/https://www.callingqualified.org/The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: https://johnmarkcomer.com/newFor more Be. Make. Do. follow now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. https://tr.ee/Oi5UdgE702

Jerry, Shala and Don all joined the Monday morning good vibe tribe!

Want to learn how you can start Using ChatGPT to Earn? Shala Warner is co-host of vBrownBag & a DevOps engineer for WWT. In this episode she walks through her process of using ChatGPT as a "Content Coach" to help her create her social media content as GiftedLane! Resources: https://events.giftedlane.com/links https://www.twitch.tv/giftedlane https://chat.openai.com/ https://excalidraw.com/ https://www.mediakits.com/ #chatgpt #ai #content #coach Intro music attribution: Artist - MaxKoMusic

In today's episode, you'll hear a devotion written by Shala W. Graham based on Luke 6:10, which says, “And after looking around at them all he said to him, ‘Stretch out your hand.' And he did so, and his hand was restored” (ESV).We hope today's devotion reminds you that God is trustworthy and He wants to work in your life through your small steps of obedience. Related Resources: For more from Proverbs 31 Ministries, head to our website at proverbs31.org, where you can subscribe to Encouragement for Today Devotions in written format, delivered to your inbox each weekday.To give you the direction you need to take your first small step of obedience, download the free resource, “What If the Next Big Step God Wants You To Take Is Actually Small? A Guide to Stepping Out in Faith.”If these short devotions are helpful to you, we'd love to know! Please consider leaving a written review on Apple Podcasts.Click here to read the transcript for this episode.We want to hear how this podcast has impacted you! Share your story with us here.

No explaining needed here folks. One of my best buds and lead singer of Colour Design just hanging out and promoting a very important show One for Shala. Also See why I don't drink whiskey anymore . Have a good laugh with us get a shot ready and cheers to one of the best people we ever knew. Links down below for all the goods. If you want behind the scenes and episodes 2 days early sign up for our Patreon it helps support the show in many ways.   As always thank you for listening. Patreon https://www.patreon.com/crashcast   YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/crashcast   Instagram https://www.instagram.com/crashcastpod/   Facebook https://www.facebook.com/crashcastpod   Twitter https://twitter.com/crashcastpod1   Colour Design https://www.instagram.com/colourdesign501/ https://www.facebook.com/colourdesignar #music #podcast #crashcast

We've all seen depictions of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in pop culture: characters like Sheldon Cooper from “The Big Bang Theory” or Detective Adrian Monk from “Monk.” Their compulsions are portrayed as annoying, but ultimately it just makes people with OCD appear quirky. However, those depictions don't even scratch the surface of what OCD really is. Imagine being obsessed with images of violence or death or being worried that you might actually be a bad person and are doomed to hell. Often, there is nothing cute or quirky about OCD in the real world. Join us as Shala Nicely, a woman who lives with OCD, explains the truth about OCD and shares the challenges it has caused in her life. To learn more -- or read the transcript -- please visit the episode page. Our guest, Shala Nicely, LPC, is the author of Is Fred in the Refrigerator? Taming OCD and Reclaiming My Life and coauthor with Jon Hershfield, MFT of Everyday Mindfulness for OCD: Tips, Tricks & Skills for Living Joyfully. She is a counselor and cognitive behavioral therapist in metro Atlanta, specializing in the treatment of OCD & related disorders and anxiety disorders. Shala produces the Shoulders Back! Tips & Resources for Taming OCD newsletter and blogs for Psychology Today, offering an inside perspective on life with OCD. She is currently working on her third book, a murder mystery called In Neptune's Orbit, about the true price of secrets we keep from ourselves. Our host, Gabe Howard, is an award-winning writer and speaker who lives with bipolar disorder. He is the author of the popular book, "Mental Illness is an Asshole and other Observations," available from Amazon; signed copies are also available directly from the author. Gabe makes his home in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio. He lives with his supportive wife, Kendall, and a Miniature Schnauzer dog that he never wanted, but now can't imagine life without. To book Gabe for your next event or learn more about him, please visit gabehoward.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the R3 Coordinator for South Dakota, Shala Larson is tasked with in Recruit, Retain and Reactivate initiatives for the state's outdoors.  She joined Scott and Kyle to share some insight into an upcoming "Becoming An Outdoor Woman" event that focuses on these goals.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today we are talking all about ERP Scripting with Shala Nicely. Welcome back, everybody. We are on Week 2 of the Imaginals and Script Series. This week, we have the amazing Shala Nicely on the show. She's been on before. She's one of my closest friends and I'm so honored to have her on.  For those of you who are listening to this and haven't listened to any of the previous episodes, I do encourage you to go back to last week's episode because that is where we introduce the incredible Krista Reed and she talks about how to use scripts and imaginals. I give a more detailed intro to what we're here talking about if this is new for you. This will be a little bit of a steep learning curve if you're new to exposure and response prevention. Let me just quickly explain. I myself, I'm an ERP-trained therapist, I am an OCD Specialist, and a part of the treatment of OCD and OCD-related disorders involve exposing yourself to your fear and then practicing response prevention, which is reducing any of the safety behaviors or compulsions you do in effort to reduce or remove whatever discomfort or uncertainty that you feel. Now, often when we go to expose ourselves to certain things, we can't because they're not something we can face on a daily basis or they're often very creative things in our mind. This is where imaginals and scripts can come in and can be incredibly helpful.  If you want a more detailed understanding of the steps that we take regarding ERP, you can go to CBTSchool.com, which is where we have all our online courses. There is a course called ERP School that will really do a lot of the back work in you really understanding today's session. You don't have to have taken the course to get the benefits of today's session because a lot of you I know already have had ERP or are in ERP as we speak, or your clinicians learning about ERP and I love that you're here. Honestly, it brings me so much joy. But that is there for you if you're completely lost on what's going on today, and that will help fill you in on the gold standard treatment for OCD and the evidence-based treatment for OCD and OCD-related disorders.  That being said, let's get on with the good stuff. We have the amazing Shala Nicely. I am so honored again to have you on. You are going to love how applicable and useful her skills and tools are. Let's just get straight over to Shala.  Kimberley: Welcome, Shala. I am so happy to have you back. I know we have a pretty direct agenda today to talk about imaginals versus scripting in your way in which you do it. I'd love to hear a little bit about, first, do you call it imaginals or do you call it scripting? Can you give me an example or a definition of what you consider them to be? SHALA'S STORY OF ERP SCRIPTING  Shala: Sure. Well, thank you very much for having me on. Love to be here as always. I'll go back to how I learned about exposure when I first became a therapist. I learned about exposure being two different things. It was either in vivo exposure, so in life. Meaning, you go out and do the thing that your OCD is afraid of that you want to do, or it was imaginals where you imagine doing the thing that you want to do that your OCD is afraid to do. Research shows us that the in vivo is more effective, but sometimes imaginals is necessary because you can't go do the thing for whatever reason. But I don't think about it like that anymore. That's how I learned it, but it's not how I practice it.  To help describe what I do, I'll take you back to when I had untreated OCD or when I was just learning how to do ERP for myself because I think that would help it make sense what I do. When I was doing ERP, I would obviously go out and do all the things that I wanted to do and my OCD didn't want me to do. What I found was that I could do those things, but my OCD was still in my head, getting me to have a conversation about what we were doing in my mind. I might go pick up a discarded Coke can on the side of the road because it's “contaminated,” and I would then go either put it in the trash, which would be another exposure because that would be not recycling. There are layers of exposures here. But my OCD could be in my head going, “Well, I don't think that one is contaminated. It doesn't look all that contaminated because it's pretty clean and this looks like a clean area so I'm sure it's not contaminated. What do you think, Shala?”  “Oh, I agree with you.” “Well, we threw it away, but I bet you, these people, they're going to get wherever we threw it. They're actually going to sort it out and it's going to get recycled anyway.” There was this carnival in my head of information about what was going on.  I determined what I was doing because I was doing the exposure, but I wasn't really getting all that much better. I was getting somewhat better but not all that much better. What I realized I was doing is that I'm having these conversations in my head, which are compulsive. In my recovery journey, what I was doing was I was going to a lot of trainings, I was reading a ton of books, and I talk about this in Is Fred in the Refrigerator?, my memoir, because this was a pretty pivotal moment for me when I read Dr. Jonathan Grayson's book, Freedom from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I know you're having him on this series as well. I read his book and he talks so much in there about writing scripts to deal with the OCD—writing scripts about what might happen, the worst-case scenario, living with uncertainty, and all that kind of stuff. That really resonated with me and I thought, “Aha, this is what I need to be doing. I need to be doing ERP scripting instead of having that conversation in my head with the OCD. Because when I'm doing exposure and I'm having a conversation with OCD in my head, I'm doing exposure and partial response prevention. I am preventing the physical response, but I'm not at all preventing the mental response, and this was slowing down my recovery.” The way I like to think of imaginals—you think about imagine like imagination—is that the way I do imaginal exposures, which I just call ERP scripting, is that I'm dealing with OCD's imagination. People with OCD are exceptionally creative. If you're listening to this and you think, “Well, not me,” for proof, all you have to do is look at what your OCD comes up with and look how creative it is. You guys share the same brain, therefore, you are creative too. All that creativity. When you have untreated OCD, it goes into coming up with these monstrous scenarios of how you're harming others or harming yourself. You're not ever going to be able to handle this anxiety or uncertainty or icky feeling or whatever, and it builds these scary stories that get us stuck.  WHAT IS ERP SCRIPTING?  What I'm trying to do with imaginal exposure or scripting is I'm trying to deal with OCD's imagination because in the example I gave, I was picking up the Coke can and my OCD was using its imagination to try to reassure me all the ways this Coke can was going to be okay or all the ways this Coke can was going to eventually get recycled. I needed to deal with that. Really, the way I do ERP Scripting for myself and for my clients is I'm helping people deal with OCD's imagination in a non-compulsive way. For me, it is not a choice of in vivo or imaginal; it is in vivo with imaginal, almost always, because most people that I see anyway are doing what I did. They are doing physical compulsions or avoidance and they're up in their head having a conversation with their OCD about it. I'm almost always doing in vivo and imaginals together because I'm having people approach the thing that they want to do that OCD doesn't want them to do, and I'm having them do scripts. The Coke can may or may not be contaminated. The fact that it's sitting here and it looks pretty clean may or may not mean that it's got invisible germs on it. I don't know. The Coke can may or may not get recycled, it may or may not end up in recycling, but somehow contaminate the whole recycling thing that has to throw all that other recycling away because it touched it. I'm trying to use my imagination to make it even worse for the OCD so that we're really facing these fears.  That's how I conceptualize imaginal exposure. It's not an AND/OR it's an AND for me. Some people don't need it and if they don't need it, fine. But I find it's very helpful to make sure that people are doing full response prevention in that they're permitting both the physical and the mental compulsive response. DOES EVERYONE NEED ERP SCRIPTING?  Kimberley: Does everyone need ERP scripting? When you say some people don't need it, what would the presentation of those people be? Shala: That for whatever reason, they are good at not having the conversation with OCD in their heads. This is the minority of people anyway that I work with. Most people are pretty good at having compulsive conversations with OCD because the longer you have untreated OCD, the more you end up taking your physical compulsions and pulling them inward and making the mental compulsion so that you can survive. If you can't really do all that physical checking at your office because people are going to see you, you do mental checking. That's certainly what I did. People become good at doing this stuff in their head and it becomes second nature. It can be going on. I talk about this a lot in Fred, I could do compulsions while I was doing anything else because I could do them in my head. Most people are doing that and most people have been doing that for long enough by the time they see somebody like me that if I just say, “Well, stop doing that,” I mean I'm never going to see them again. They're not going to come back because they can't stop doing that. That's the whole reason they called me.  I'm giving them something else to do instead. It's a competing response to the mental compulsions because they don't know how to stop that. They're not aware of what they're doing, they don't know how to stop the process, so I'm giving them something to do instead of that until they build the mental muscles to be able to recognize OCD trying to get them to have a conversation and just not answer that question in their head. But it takes a long time to develop that skill. It took me a long time anyway.  Some people, for whatever reason though, are good at that. If they don't need to do the scripting, great. I think that's wonderful. They don't have to do it. The strongest response you can ever have to OCD is to ignore it completely, both physically and mentally. If you can truly ignore it in your head, you don't even need to do the scripting. It's a stronger response to just do what you want to do that upsets OCD and just go on with your day. HOW TO DO ERP SCRIPTING?  Kimberley: Amazing. So How do you do ERP Scripting? If you're not one of those people and OCD loves to come up with creative ideas of all the things, what would be your approach? You talked about imaginals versus scripting. Can you play out and show us how you do it? Shala: I mean, I guess imaginals in the traditional way that it is defined versus scripting. The way I would do it is we would design the client and I would design whatever their first exposure is going to be. Let's say that it would be touching doorknobs. They're going to be in their location and I'm going to be in my location. They're going to be wherever we've decided they're going to touch the doorknobs. Maybe it's to the outside of their house, for instance. I'm there on video with them and we have them touch the doorknob.  And then I asked them, “Well, what is OCD saying about that?”  “Well, OCD says that I need to go wash my hands.”  I will say, “Well, are you going to go do that?”  “No.”  I'm like, “Well, let's tell OCD that.”  “Okay, OCD, I'm not going to wash my hands.”  “Now what's OCD saying?”  “Well, OCD is saying that I'm contaminated.”  “Well, let's say I may or may not be contaminated.”  So far, we've got, “I'm not washing my hands and I may or may not be contaminated.” Okay, now I'll ask them their anxiety level. When they say, “Gosh, I'm at a four,” I'll say, “Is that good?” They'll often say, “No, I wish it were zero.” I'll be like, “I'm sorry, what? What did you say? You want your anxiety to be zero? I must have misheard that. Is four good?” Finally, they understand, “Oh, well, four is not good because we could be higher.”  “What would be better than four?”  “Anything above a four.”  I'm working with them on that. We might start to throw some things in the script. I want to be anxious because this is how I beat my OCD, so bring it on.  I'll ask again, “What's your OCD saying?”  “Well, it's saying that I'm going to get some terrible disease.”  “Well, you may not get a terrible disease.” I'm questioning back and forth the client as we're working on this, until we've got enough of a dialogue about what's going on in their head that we can then create a script. A script might look something like, “Well, I may or may not be contaminated. I may or may not get a dread disease, but I'm not washing my hands and I'm going to do this because I want my life back. It makes me anxious and I may or may not get a dread disease.” And then we'll focus in on what's bothering OCD most. Maybe it's, at the beginning, the dread disease. “Well, I may or may not get a drug disease. I may or may not get a dread disease. I may or may not get a dread disease. I may or may not get a dread disease.” We might sing it, we say it over and over and over and over and over again, and look for what the reaction from the OCD is. If the OCD is still upset, then we still go after that. If it starts moving, “Well, what's OCD saying now?” “Well, OCD is saying now that if I get a dread disease, then I won't be able to do this thing that I have coming up that I really want to do.” “Well, okay, I may or may not get a dread disease and I may or may not miss this important event as a result.” We add that in.  We do that and do that and do that and do that for whatever the period is that we've decided is going to be our exposure period. And then we stop and then we talk about it. What did we learn? What was that like and what did you learn? Really focusing on how we did more than we thought we could do. We withstood more anxiety than we thought we could withstand. What did we learn about what the OCD is doing? I'm not so concerned about what the anxiety is doing. I mean, I want it to go up. That's my concern. I'm not all that concerned about whether it comes down or not. I do want it to go up. We talk about what we learned about the anxiety that gosh, you can push it up enough and you can handle a lot more than you thought you did. That would be our exposure.  And then we would plan homework and then they would do that daily, hopefully. I have forms on my website that people can then send me their daily experience doing these exposures and I send them feedback on it, and that's what we're working on. We're working on doing the thing that OCD doesn't want you to do that you want to do, and then working on getting better and better at addressing all of the mental gymnastics in your head.  Now, if somebody touches the doorknob and they're like, “Okay, I can do this,” and then their anxiety comes up and comes back down and they can do it without saying anything, great, go touch doorknobs. You don't need to do scripting. Often, I don't know if somebody needs to do that until we start working on it. If they don't need to do the scripting, great. We don't do the scripting. Makes things easier. But often people do need to. That's generally how I do it. Obviously, lots of variations on that based on what the client is experiencing.  Kimberley: This is all thing, you're not writing it down. Again, when you go back to our original training, for me, it was a worksheet and you print it out, you'd fill out the prompts. Are you doing any of this written or is this a counter to the mental compulsions in your head? Shala: None of this is written. The only time I would write it out is after that first session. When you're really anxious, your prefrontal cortex isn't working all that well, so you may have trouble remembering what we did, remembering the specific things that we said, or pulling it up for yourself. When you're doing your exposure, you're so anxious. I might type out some of what we said, the main things, send it to the clients, and have that. But really to me, scripting is an interactive exercise and I want my clients to be listening to what the OCD is saying for the sole purpose of knowing what we're going to say. Because when we start doing exposure, what we're often trying to do is keep pace with the OCD because it's got a little imagination engine running and it's going to go crazy with all the things that it's going to come up with. We're trying to stay on that level and make sure we're meeting all its imagination with our own imagination. As we get better and better at this, then I'm teaching people how to one-up the OCD and how to get better than the OCD as it goes along. But it's a dynamic process. I don't have people read scripts because the script that we wrote was for what was going on whenever we wrote the script. Different things might be going on this time. What we're trying to do is listen to the OCD in a different way. I don't want people listening to it in a compulsive way. I want people listening to it in a, “I've got to understand my foe here and what my foe is upset about so I can use it against it.” That's what we're doing. There might be key things, little pieces we write down, but I'm not having people write and read it over and over. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just not what I do. Everybody has a different way to approach this. This is just my way.  Kimberley: Right. I was thinking as you were talking, in ERP School, I talk about the game of one-up and I actually do that game with clients before I do any scripting or imaginals or exposures too. They tell me what their fear is, I try and make it worse. And then I ask them to make it even worse, then I make it even worse, because I'm trying to model to them like, we're going here. We're going to go all the way and even beyond. If we can get ahead of OCD and get even more creative, that's better.  Let's play it back and forward. You talked about touching a doorknob and all of the catastrophic things that can happen there. What about if someone were to say their thoughts are about harming somebody and they have this feeling of like, I've been trained, society has trained me not to have thoughts about harming people or sexual thoughts and so forth? There's this societal OCD stigmatizing like we don't think those things. We should be practicing not thinking those things. What would you give as advice to somebody in that situation?  Shala: I would talk a lot about the science about our thoughts, that the more that you try to push a thought away, the more it's going to be there. Because every time you push a thought away, your brain puts a post-it note on it that says, “Ooh, she pushed this thought away. This must be dangerous. Therefore, I need to bring it up again to make sure we solve it.” Because humans' competitive advantage—we don't have fur, we don't have fangs, we don't have claws, we don't run very fast—our competitive advantage is problem-solving. The way we stay alive is for cave people looking out onto savannah and we can see that there are berries here, there, and yawn. But that one berry patch over there, gosh, you saw something waving in the grass by it and you're like, “I'm going to notice that and I'm going to remember that because that was different, but I also don't want to go over there.” Your brain is going to remember that like, “Hmm, there was something about that berry patch over there. Grass waving could be a tiger. We need to remember that. Remember that thing, we're not going to go over there.” We're interacting with thoughts in that way because that's what kept us alive.  When we get an intrusive thought nowadays and we go, “Ooh, that was a bad thought. I don't know. I should stay away from that,” our brain is like, “Oh, post a note on that one. That one is like the scary tiger thought. We're going to bring that up again just to make sure.” Every time we try to push a thought away, we're going to make it come back. We talk a lot about that. We talk a lot about society's norms are whatever they are, but a lot of society's norms are great in principle, not that awesome in practice. We don't have any control over what we think about. The TV is filled with sex and gore, and violence. Of course, you're thinking those things. You can't get away from those images. I think society has very paradoxically conflicting rules about this stuff. Don't think about it but also watch our TV show about it.  I would talk about that to try to help people recognize that these standards and rules that we put on ourselves as humans are often unrealistic and shame-inducing and to help people recognize that everybody has these thoughts. We have 40, 60, 80,000 thoughts a day. I got that number at some conference somewhere years ago. We don't have control over those. I would really help them understand the process of what's going on in their brain to destigmatize it by helping them understand really thoughts are chemical, neuronal, whatever impulses in our brain. We don't have a lot of control over that and we need to deal with them in a way that our brain understands and recognizes. We need to have those thoughts be present and have a different reaction to those thoughts so your brain eventually takes the post-it note off of them and just lets them cycle through like all the other thoughts because it recognizes it's not dangerous.  HOW FAR CAN YOU GO IN ER SCRIPTING?  Kimberley: Right. I agree. But how far can you go in ERP Scripting? Let's push a little harder then. This just happened recently actually. I was doing a session with a client and he was having some sexual pedophilia OCD obsessions playing up, “I'll do this to this person,” as you were doing like I may or may not statements and so forth. And then we played with the idea of doing one up. I actually went to use some very graphic words and his face dropped. It wasn't a drop of shock in terms of like, “Oh my gosh, Kimberley used that naughty word.” It was more of like, “Oh, you are in my brain, you know what I'm thinking.” And then I had to slow down and ask him, “Are there any thoughts you actually aren't admitting to having?” Because I could see he was going at 80% of where OCD took him, but he was really holding back with the really graphic, very sexual words—words that societally we may actually encourage our children and our men and women not to say. Do you encourage them to be using the graphic language that their OCD is coming up with? Shala: Absolutely. I'm personally a big swearer.  That's another thing I talk about in-- Kimberley: Potty mouth. Shala: I'll ask clients, “What's your favorite swear word? Let's throw swear words in here.” I want to use the language that their OCD is using. If I can tell that's the language their OCD is using, well, let's use that language. Let's not be afraid of it.  The other thing I do before I start ERP with anyone is I go through what I consider the three risks of ERP so they understand that what happens during our experience together is normal. I explain that it's likely we're going to make their anxiety worse in the weeks following exposure because we're taking away the compulsions bit by bit, and the compulsions are artificially holding back the anxiety. I explained that their OCD is not going to roll over because they're doing ERP therapy now. Nobody's OCD is going to go, “Oh gosh, Shala is in ERP. I think I'll just leave her alone now.” No, the OCD is going to ratchet it up. You're not doing what you're supposed to do, you're not doing your compulsions, so let's make things scarier. Let's make things more compelling. Let me be louder. Your OCD can get quite a bit worse once you start doing ERP because it's trying to get you back in line. When somebody is in an exposure session and their OCD is actually going places, they never even expected them to go, and I'll say that's what we're talking about, “That's just the OCD getting worse, that's what we wanted. This is what we knew was going to happen.” We're going to use that against the OCD to help normalize it. Then I also explain to people that people with OCD don't like negative emotions more than your average bear, and we tend to press all the negative emotions down under the anxiety. When you start letting the anxiety out and not doing compulsions, then you can also get a lot more emotions than you're used to experiencing so that people recognize if they cry during the exposures, if it's a lot scarier than they thought, if they have regret or guilt or other feelings, that's just a normal part of it. I explain all that. When things inevitably go places where the client isn't anticipating they're going to go like in a first exposure, then they feel this is just part of the process. I think it makes it so that it's easier to go those graphic places because you're like, “Yeah, we expected OCD to go the graphic place because it's mad at you.” Kimberley: It normalizes it, doesn't it?  Shala: Yeah. Then we go to the graphic place too. I tell clients that specifically because this is a game and I really want them to understand this is what your opponent is likely to do so that they feel empowered so we can go there too and trying some to take the shame out of it. When you said the graphic word and your client had a look on their face and it was because how did you even know that was in my head, because you were validating that it's okay to have this thought because you knew it was going to be there. I think that's a really important part of exposure too. HOW LONG DO YOU USE ERP SCRIPTING FOR?  Kimberley: So, how long do you do ERP Scripting for? Let's say they're doing this in your session or they're at home doing their assigned homework. Let's say they do it for a certain amount of time and then they have to get back to work or they're going to do something. But those voices, the OCD comes back with a vengeance. What would you have them do after that period of time? Would they continue with this action or is there a transition action or activity you would have them do? Shala: That's a great question. It depends a lot on really the stage of therapy that somebody is in and what is available to them based on what they're going to be doing. Oftentimes, what I will ask people to do is to try to do the exposure for long enough that you've done enough response prevention that you can then leave the exposure environment and not be up in your head compulsively ruminating. Because if you were doing exposure for 20 minutes, you've done a great job, but then you leave that exposure and you are at a high enough anxiety level where it feels compelling. Now you have to fix the problem in your head even though you just did this great exposure. Then we're just going to undo the work you just did. I try to help people plan as much as they can to not get themselves in a situation where they're going to end up compulsively ruminating or doing other compulsions after they finish. But obviously, we can't be perfect. Life happens.  I think some of the ways you can deal with that, if you know it's going to happen, sometimes they'll ask people to make recordings on their phone and they just put in their earpieces or their earbuds or whatever and they can just listen to a script while they're doing whatever they're doing. Nobody has to know what they're doing because so many people walk around with EarPods in their ears all the time anyway. That's one way to deal with it.  Another way to deal with it is to try to do the murmuring out in your head as best as you can. That's really hard because they're likely to just get mixed up with compulsive thoughts. You can try to focus your attention as much as you possibly can on what you're doing. That's going to be the strongest response. It's hard for people though when they get started to do that. But if you can do that, I think that's fine, and I think just being compassionate with yourself. “Okay, so I am now sitting here doing some rituals in my head. I'm doing the best I can.” If you're not in a situation where you can fully implement response prevention in your head because you're in a meeting and you got to do other stuff and you've got this compulsive stuff running in the background, just do the best you can. And then when you're at a place where you can do some scripting, some more exposure to get yourself back on top of the OCD, then do that. But be really compassionate.  I try to stress this to all my clients. We are not trying to do ERP perfectly because if you try to do it perfectly, you're doing ERP in an OCD way, which isn't going to work. Just be kind to yourself and recognize this is hard and nobody is going to do it perfectly. If you end up in a situation where you end up doing some compulsions afterwards, well, that's good information for us. We'll try to do it differently or better next time, but don't beat yourself up.   Kimberley: It's funny you brought that up because I was just about to ask you that question. Often clients will do their scripting or their imaginal and then they have an obsession, “What if I keep doing compulsions and it's not good to do compulsions?” Would you do scripting for that? Shala: Oh yeah. I may or may not do more compulsions than I used to be doing. I may or may not get really worse doing this. I may or may not have double the OCD that I had when I started seeing trauma. This may or may not become so bad that they have to create a hospital just to help me all by myself. We try to just create stuff to deal with that. But also, I'm injecting one up in the OCD, I'm injecting some humor, how outlandish can we make these things? I try to have “fun” with it. Now I say “fun” in quotes because I know it's not necessarily fun when you're trying to do this, but we're trying to make this content that OCD is turning into a scary story. We're trying to make it into a weapon to use against the OCD and to make this into a game as much as we can. Kimberley: I love it. I'm so grateful for you coming on. Is there anything that you want the listeners to know as a final piece for this work that you're doing? Shala: Sure. I think that there are so many different ways to do exposure therapy. This is the way that I do it. It's not the only way, it's not necessarily the right way; it's just the way I do it and it's changed over the years. If we were to record this podcast in five years or 10 years, I probably will be doing something slightly different. If your therapist is doing something differently or you're doing something differently, it's totally fine. I think that finding ERP in a way that works for you, like finding how it works for you and what works best for you is the most important thing. It's not going to be the same for everybody. Everybody has a slightly different approach and that's okay.  One thing that people with OCD can get stuck on, and I know this because I have OCD too, is we can be black and white and say there's one right way. Well, she does it this way and he does it that way and this is wrong and this is right. No, if you're doing ERP, there are all sorts of ways to do it, so don't let your OCD get into the, “Well, I don't think you're doing this right because you're not doing this, that, or the other.” Just work with your therapist to find out what works best for you. If what I've described works well for you, great. And if it doesn't, you don't have to do it. These are just ideas. Being really kind and being really open to figuring out what works best for you and being very kind to yourself I think is most important. Kimberley: Amazing. Tell us where people can get more information about you. Tell us about your book. I know you've been on the podcast before, but tell us where they can get hold of you. Shala: Sure. They can get a hold of me on my website, ShalaNicely.com. I have a newsletter I send out once a month that they can sign up for called Shoulders Back! Tips & Resources for Taming OCD. In it, I feature blogs that I write or podcast episodes, other things that I'm doing. It's all free where I'm talking about tips and resources for taming OCD. I have two books: Everyday Mindfulness for OCD that I co-wrote with Jon Hershfield and Is Fred in the Refrigerator? Taming OCD and Reclaiming My Life, which is my memoir. It is written somewhat like a suspense novel because as all of you know who have OCD, living with untreated OCD is a bit like living in a suspense novel. My OCD is actually a character in the book. It is the villain, so to speak. The whole book is about me trying to understand exactly what is this villain I'm working against. Then once I figure out what it is, well, how am I going to beat it? And then how am I going to live with it long term? Because it's not like you're going to kill the villain in this book. The OCD is going to be there. How do I learn to live in a world of uncertainty and be happy anyway, which is something that I stole from Jon Grayson years ago. I stole a lot from him. That's what the book is about. Kimberley: It's a beautiful book and it's so inspiring. It's a handbook as much as it is a memoir, so I'm so grateful that you wrote it. It's such a great resource for people with OCD and for family members I think who don't really get what it's like to be in the head of someone with OCD. A lot of my client's family members said how it was actually the first time it clicked for them of like, “Oh, I get it now. That's what they're going through.” I just wanted to share that. Thank you so much for being on the show. I'm so grateful to have you on again. Shala: Thank you so much for having me. It was fun.

New podcast with Christina Martini of Shala Santosha Ashtanga & Ayurveda Yoga Holistic Practice available now!Senior Teacher and Owner, Founder  of  Shala Santosha Ashtanga Yoga & Ayurveda Wellness .  A direct student of Manju Jois, the oldest son of K. Pattabhi Jois, recognised worldwide as the foremost authority on Ashtanga yoga.  Christina has devoted her healing journey to trusting the Traditional Lineage of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga and Ayurveda from her mid 20's to present as not only a way of living but her medicine for optimal health and healing. Visit her on her website: https://www.shalasantoshayoga.comFollow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shalasantoshayogamaui/Topics we speak about during this conversation:Teaching yoga and working as a nurse. The power of suggestion in teaching. Looking out for the best interest of your students.How did you get started with Ayurveda and yoga? Working in palliative care. Thanks for listening to this episode. Check out:

Welcome to the Your Saltwater Guide LIVE Show every weekday at 12pm Pacific Time with a new special guest every Friday! Listen to the audio version of my podcast: Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/your-saltwater-guide-fishing-show/id1642377784 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6WTZzGKgQFyOgMkwUk8aHL Official Your Saltwater Guide Merchandise: https://store.yoursaltwaterguide.com/ Are you tired at sucking at fishing and want to learn and get more comfortable on the water? I Captain Dave created a mobile app "Your Saltwater Guide" with 400+ videos showing and teaching you the ways of Saltwater Fishing. Available Now on the Apple App Store & Google Play Store! Search "Your Saltwater Guide" Apple App Store Link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1666659346 Android Google Play Store Link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tv.uscreen.yoursaltwaterguide Follow my SoCal Hot Spots and combine them with my Weekly Fishing Game Plans and you will be successful out fishing in Southern California using Your Saltwater Guide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, we are joined by Shala, aka @GiftedLane.  Shala is currently a Cloud Associate Architect and has held multiple cloud positions over the last 12 months. We dive into the nitty gritty about her transition from network engineering into DevOps and learn about what her day-to-day looks like in her current and past cloud roles. We also explore the importance of salary negotiation within the industry and how she used certain methods to assure she was getting paid properly.  This was a great roundtable discussion, suitable for anyone wondering about or currently working in the cloud! FYI: Unfortunately in the middle of this episode Alex got hit with a nasty power outage and he was not able to return. Don't worry, he'll be back on in full swing on the next episode. How to connect with Shala:Twitter: [https://twitter.com/giftedlane]Twitch: [https://www.twitch.tv/giftedlane]YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/@giftedlane]Instagram: [https://www.instagram.com/giftedlane/]Topics:Shala's AONE Episode (Ep11): [https://podcast.artofnetworkengineering.com/2127872/12179006-ep-11-gifted-lane]AONE Salary Negotiation Episode (Ep83): [https://podcast.artofnetworkengineering.com/2127872/12178934-ep-83-salary-negotiation]Free AWS Cloud Project Bootcamp: [https://aws.cloudprojectbootcamp.com/] Check out the Fortnightly Cloud Networking NewsVisit our website and subscribe: https://www.cables2clouds.com/Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cables2cloudsFollow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cables2clouds/Follow us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cables2cloudsMerch Store: https://store.cables2clouds.com/Join the Discord Study group: https://artofneteng.com/iaatjArt of Network Engineering (AONE): https://artofnetworkengineering.com

In today's episode, you'll hear a devotion written by Shala W. Graham based on Hebrews 4:16, which says, “So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most” (NLT).We hope today's devotion encourages you to approach God's throne to find grace upon grace waiting for you there. Related Resources: For more from Proverbs 31 Ministries, head to our website at proverbs31.org, where you can subscribe to Encouragement for Today devotions in written format, delivered to your inbox each weekday.Want more bite-sized nuggets of truth to carry with you throughout the day? Find snippets of hope and wisdom when you follow Proverbs 31 Ministries on Twitter. Click here to read the transcript for this episode.We want to get to know you! Will you tell us a little bit about yourself by filling out this survey? 

What's the connection between your confidence level and your intuition? Find out in this episode with our guest, Shala! She's a confidence coach and is here to give us general confidence tips, and we also chat about how our confidence and intuition are deeply connected. This episode will motivate you to be your most authentic self and give you a deeper understanding of why it's important to love ourselves and be as confident as possible so we can hear our intuition better Today we're welcoming Shala to the Opening the door. Shala is a confidence coach helping you connect to your most authentic and confident self! You can find her on instagram @shalamarie.confidence busting out dance moves on reels and giving you the tools to grow and expand into your highest potential. Shala's instagram: https://instagram.com/shalamarie.confidence

#73 - The Four Corners of Your Mat - Yoga in Antigua with Ros Langer Welcome to Episode #73 of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast! My conversation with Ros Langer, a yoga teacher in Antigua, was so fun as we talked about her immense and immediate love for the practice, and how the four corners of your mat can teach you more than any yoga teacher training can teach you. We also talked about yoga and aging, and what it was like to come to the practice later in life. If you're looking to tune into a podcast episode that is all about yoga in Antigua then this is the conversation for you. Support the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/wildyogatribe Tell me more about Ros Langer Ros Langer has been studying and practicing yoga for over 15 years. Ashtanga vinyasa yoga remains her central reference and informs all of her teachings. According to Ros, “the mat is just the beginning.” She teaches yoga at Energie in English Harbour, Antigua. Ros's main residence is in Antigua but she spends a few months of the year in Cape Town, South Africa. She is the mother of two young men who continually inspire her to rise to her fullest potential. What to expect in the Yoga In Antigua episode of the Wild Yoga Tribe Podcast Ros Langer was first introduced to yoga through a friend, who had a yoga teacher come to Antigua to teach her and train her in yoga. Ros bought a John Scott Ashtanga DVD, and after practicing for a few years she moved to Capetown, which Ros calls the Rishikesh of South Africa. She was trained in Capetown and was delighted to be able to teach at The Shala in Capetown, which she deems one of the best yoga studios in the world. We also talked about how Ros's practice changed through menopause, surgery, and generally as she has gotten older. Ros came to yoga at 45, and was trained at age 50, she shared with us what happened with her practice over the years, and with a cancer scare and after surgery. Asana is not an exercise. This is something Ros firmly stands behind, and it was great to talk to her more about her thoughts on it. That being said, she thinks it's completely fine if people want to come to the yoga practice for the sake of exercise. Come and be welcome! For Ros, yoga is about finding balance and equanimity and spaciousness. Curious? Tune into the whole podcast episode! For the skimmers - What's in the yoga in Antigua episode? Immense and immediate love for the practice Began doing yoga at 40 and did her yoga teacher training at age 50 The love of teaching yoga: lifting vibration and supporting each other You cannot teach yoga unless you practice yoga The four corners of your mat will teach you more than any yoga teacher training can teach Why is asana not an exercise? Yoga is about finding balance and equanimity and spaciousness Connect with Rosalind Langer https://www.ros-yoga.com https://www.instagram.com/Ros.Yoga.Antigua Want more? Head on over to my website https://wildyogatribe.com/thepodcast/ Everything you need is just one click away! Check out all the resources here: https://linktr.ee/wildyogatribe --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/wildyogatribe/message

We were very honored to have both of the authors of “Between Now and Dreams” join us to discuss their new book for parents of autistic children. We chat about the different perspectives both Dr. Ala'i-Rosales and Ms. Heinkel-Wolfe bring to the topic, their goals in writing a book for parents (but also for clinicians), and taking the “how” out of “how-to” to create something very different and sorely needed in the promotion of joy, collaboration, and grace in raising a family. We'll have a full discussion and review of the “Between Now and Dreams” releasing this Friday for patrons (free preview on the main feed). Content discussed in this episode Ala'i-Rosales, S. & Heinkel-Wolfe, P. (2022). Reponsible and responsive parenting in autism: Between now and dreams. Different Roads to Learning. Ala'i-Rosales, S. & Heinkel-Wolfe, P. (n.d.). Resource Page. Responsible and Responsive Parenting in Autism: Between Now and Dreams. https://peggyheinkelwolfe.com/ways-to-buy-responsible-and-responsive-parenting-between-now-and-dreams/clinicians-book-club/

On this episode of the 15-Minute Matrix podcast we'll focus on polycystic ovarian syndrome or PCOS. Dr. Shala Salem's approach to addressing PCOS in her clinic and with fertility patients is both refreshing and “outside the box.” She combines physiological understanding, bioindividuality, and compassion with practical next steps in working with her patients suffering with […] The post Mapping Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome with Dr. Shala Salem #362 appeared first on Functional Nutrition Alliance.

On this episode of the 15-Minute Matrix podcast we'll focus on polycystic ovarian syndrome or PCOS. Dr. Shala Salem's approach to addressing PCOS in her clinic and with fertility patients is both refreshing and “outside the box.” She combines physiological understanding, bioindividuality, and compassion with practical next steps in working with her patients suffering with […] The post Mapping Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome with Dr. Shala Salem #362 appeared first on Functional Nutrition Alliance.

SUMMARY:  Today, I share what to do when you get “bad” news.  This episode will share a recent situation I got into where I had to use all of my mindfulness and self-compassion tools.  Check it out! Episode Sponsor: This episode of Your Anxiety Toolkit is brought to you by CBTschool.com.  CBTschool.com is a psychoeducation platform that provides courses and other online resources for people with anxiety, OCD, and Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors.  Go to cbtschool.com to learn more.  Spread the love! Everyone needs tools for anxiety... If you like Your Anxiety Toolkit Podcast, visit YOUR ANXIETY TOOLKIT PODCAST to subscribe free and you'll never miss an episode. And if you really like Your Anxiety Toolkit, I'd appreciate you telling a friend (maybe even two).   EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION  This is Your Anxiety Toolkit - Episode 288.  Welcome back, everybody. We literally just finished the six-week series on managing mental compulsions. My heart is full, as full as full can be. I am sitting here looking into my microphone and I just have a big, fat smile on my face. I'm just so excited for what we did together, and I felt like it was so huge. I have so many ideas of how I want to do something similar in the future with different areas. And I will. Thank you so much for your feedback and your reviews. I hope it was as helpful as it was for me, even as a clinician. I found it to be incredibly helpful, even as a supervisor, supervising my staff. I have nine incredible staff who are therapists, who help treat my clients and we constantly keep referring back during supervision of like, “Do you remember what Lisa said? Do you remember what Reid said? Listen, let's consider what Jon said or Jon Hershfield said, or Shala Nicely said.” It was just so beautiful. I'm so grateful. If you haven't listened, go back and listen to it. It's a six-week series and ugh, it was just so wonderful. I keep saying it was just so wonderful. So, if you go back, I did an introduction, Episode 282. And then from there, it was these amazing, amazing experts who just dropped amazing truth bomb after amazing truth bomb. So, that's that. Today, I am going back to the roots of this podcast. And I'm sharing with you-- for those of you who have been listening for a while, we usually start the episode with a segment called the “I did a hard thing” segment. This is where people write in and tell me a hard thing that they've done. If you go to my website, which is KimberleyQuinlan-lmft.com. There on the podcast page is a place to submit your “I did a hard thing.” And today's “I did a hard thing” is from yours truly. I just had to share this story with you. I feel like it's an important story to tell you guys, and I wanted to share with you that I'm not just talking the talk over here, I'm walking the walk. So, today's episode is called When You Get Bad News. I'm just going to leave it at that. Before we get started, I would love to leave you and share with you the review of the week. This is from hannabanana3131, and they said: “Fantastic mental health podcast. Such an amazing podcast. I have learned so many useful tools for dealing with my anxiety and OCD. And Kimberley is such a loving, compassionate coach - I feel like she's rooting for me every step of my healing journey,” and she's left a heart emoji. Thank you so much, hannabanana. I love, love, love getting your reviews. It does help me so much. So, if you have a moment of time and the podcasts are helpful for you, that is the most helpful thing you can do back. When we get reviews, then when people who are new come over and see it, it actually makes them feel like they can trust the information we're giving. And in today's world, trust is important. There is so much noise and so many people talking about OCD and anxiety, and it's easy to get caught up in nonsense stuff. And so, I really want to build a trust factor with the listeners that I have. So, thank you so much for doing that. Okay. It's funny that hannabanana says, “I feel like she's rooting for me,” because the “I did hard thing” is me talking about my recent experience of having a root canal. Worse than a root canal. So, let me tell you a story now. I'm not just telling you this story to tell you a story. I'm telling you this story because I want to sometimes-- when we do the “I did a hard thing” segment, it's usually very, very short and to the point, but I'd actually like to walk you through how I got through getting some really bad news. So, let's talk about it. And I'll share. I'm not perfect. So, there were times when I was doing well and there was times when I won't. So, for those of you who don't know, which I'm guessing is all of you, I have very bad gums. My gums, I inherited bad gums. It comes in my family. I go in every three months for a gum routine where they do a deep cleaning or they really check my gums to make sure there's not receding too much. And because of that, I take really good care of my teeth. And because of that, I usually have very little dental issues. I never had a cavity. I've never had any cracks or any terrible swollen problems. That just isn't my problem. My problem is gums and it's an ongoing issue that I have to keep handling. So this time, I go in, I get my x-rays, and the doctor comes in. And I have this really hilarious dentist who has not got the best bedside manner, but I do love him and he has been with me through some really tough times that when I found out I have a lesion on my brain, I fully broke down in front of him and he was so kind and gave me his cell phone number. He was just so lovely. But he comes in and he rubs his hands together and says, “What are we doing here today, Kimberley?” And he looks at the x-rays and I kid you not, he says, “Holy crap!” Literally, that was his response, which is pretty funny, I think. From there, I proceed to go into some version of a panic attack. I'm like, “What? What's wrong? What do you see? What happened?” And I think that was pretty appropriate for me to do that. So, I want to validate you. When you get big news, it's normal to go into a fight or flight, like what's going on, you're hypervigilant, you're looking around. Now, he waited about 45 seconds to answer my question. I just sat there in a state of panic while he stared at the x-rays on the wall. And these 45 seconds, I think, was the longest 45 seconds of my life because he wouldn't answer me. And I was just like, “Tell me what's wrong. What's wrong?” So, he turns around and he says, “Kimberley, you have a dead tooth.” And I'm like, “What? A dead tooth? What does that even mean?” And he says, “You have a tooth infection that is dormant. Do you have any pain? Do you have a headache? What's going on?” And I'm like, “Nothing, nothing. I'm fine. Everything is fine.” And so, he proceeds to immediately in this urgent, panicky way, call in his nurses, “Bring me this, bring me that, bring me this, bring me that. Bring me this tool, bring me this chemical or medicine or whatever.” And they're all poking at me and prodding at me and they're trying to figure it out. And he's like, “I cannot figure out what this is and why it's here.” So, bad news. Just straight-up bad news. Now, the interesting thing about this is, it's hard to be in communication with someone, particularly when they're your doctor and they appear to be confused and panicking. Not that he was panicking, but he was acting in this urgent way. That's a hard position to be in. And if you've ever been in a position like that, I want to first validate you. That's scary. It is a scary moment that your trusted person is also panicking. Just like when you're on an airplane and it's really bumpy. But if you see that the air hostesses are giggling and laughing, you're like, “Okay, it's all good.” But when you see their faces looking a little nervous, that's a scary moment. So, first of all, if you've been in that position, that's really, really hard. What he then proceeded to tell me is, “Kimberley, this tooth has to come out. It has to come out immediately. We cannot wait. It's going to cost a god-awful amount of money. And this has to happen right away.” Now in my mind, you guys know me, I am really, really strict about scheduling. I have a schedule. I'm not compulsive about it, but I run two businesses. I have a podcast, I have two children. I have a medical illness. I have to manage my mental illnesses all the time. So, I have to be really intentional with my calendar. So, this idea that immediately, everything has to change was a little alarming to me. But what I remember thinking, and this is one of the tools I want to offer you for today, is being emotionally flexible is a skill. And what we want to do in those moments, and this is what I practiced was, “Okay, Kimberley, this is one of those moments where your skills come in handy. Thank God for them.” How can you be flexible here? Because my mind wanted to go, “You got to pick up the kids and you've got to do this and you've got to a meeting tomorrow and you've got clients and you can't do this. This can't happen this week.” But my mind was like, “I'm going to practice flexibility.” In addition to that, when things change really quickly, we tend to beat ourselves up like, “Such and such is going to hate me. They're going to be mad at me. They're going to think I'm a loser for having to change the schedule.” And I just gently said to myself, “Kimberley, we're going to be emotionally flexible here and we're going to let everybody have their emotions about it.” So, the kids get to have their emotions about everything changing and my clients get to have their emotions about it too. And having to cancel the meetings, they get to have their emotions. Everyone's allowed to have their emotions about the fact that many, many things are going to be canceled in the next few days. And that has been such a work of art for me, but it has been so beautiful for me to say, instead of me going, “No, no, no, I can't do this,” because I don't want them to have feelings and I don't want them to think this about me, now I'm just like, everyone gets to have their feelings. They get to feel disappointed. They get to feel angry. They get to feel annoyed. They get to feel irritated. They get to feel sad. Everybody gets to feel their feelings about it because that's a part of being a human. That's one of the tools I want you to think about. Just play with these ideas. You've just come off the six-week series. These are some more ideas to play with. But then from there, I had about 36 hours where I had to wait for this surgery. And during that time, I had to have an x-ray where I was told, and this is the real bad news, is this infection, actually, this is gross. So, trigger warning, guys. The infection actually ate through a part of my jaw bone. I know. Isn't that crazy? The infection was so bad and it was right at this area where I guess nerves come out of your jaw. There's this tiny hole right at the front, around the sides where the nerves come out of your jaw and up into your lips and the infection spread and was all over that area. I know that is gross, but it's also really scary. So, not only did I have to think about all of the changes, but he, the doctor, the dentist had made me very aware that this surgery has to go really well, and that if he pushes too hard or he pulls too hard with a tooth or he had to put in a-- there's these words I don't even know, but like a canal, like some kind of fixture so that he can create a new tooth because I had to have a tooth completely pulled out. He was like, “If I push it in too far, I actually may hit this nerve, which could be very, very bad.” So, this uncertainty felt horrible to me. And of course, I'm going to have these intrusive thoughts like, “What if I never get to speak again? What if I lose a feeling in my gums and what if he pushes hard and this is terminal? What if, what if, what if, what if?” And so, my skill here, and we've learnt this from managing mental compulsions, is bring it back to the present. Until there's a problem, we don't solve them. So, that's what I kept doing. “It's not happening now. Kimberley, it's not happening now. It's not happening now,” even though it's a real threat, even though it's going to be something I have to face, because sometimes our fears are like, “What if something happens?” But it's just a what-if. There's no actual event that you know for certain is going to happen. This was like, “Yeah, you're going to do this in literally 30 hours and all of these risks are here.” You guys have probably got stories like this, where you've gone in for some brain surgery or any surgery where there's a risk, but this risk was pretty huge. He was very concerned. I think appropriately concerned. So, here I am for 30 hours, managing this stuff where I'm like, “Okay, this could go really well or this could go really bad, like really, really bad.” I giggle just because it makes me nervous just to think about it. That's a nervous giggle that you just heard me. I don't know. I often giggle when I'm nervous. But it's a big deal. So, I, in these moments, had to weigh up, go back to what Lisa Coyne was talking about. I was like, “Okay, values versus fear. Which one do I consult with?” I had reached out to the dentist to say, “You know what, let's just not do this. I'm not in any pain. Let's just keep it there. Let's just not.” And his response was like, “That's not even an option. If you've already got this much damage, this could get worse and be very, very problematic.” So, I didn't even have the option to back out. I had to do this. And so, as I proceeded forward, I had to keep being aware like what Jon Hershfield talked about and Dr. Grayson and Dr. Reid Wilson, and Shala. I had to really allow all the intrusive thoughts to come like, “Yup. Possible. Yup, that's possible too. Yup, that's possible too. Maybe it does. Maybe it will. Not going to give it my attention right now. I see you're back again. Good one, bro. Hi there, I see you. I fully accept the uncertainty.” That was me for l30 hours, literally bringing in every tool I have. The cool thing is it was a hugely busy week. And because I have been really doubling down on my mindfulness skills over the last few months, that actually really helped. Every time I noticed that I was getting anxious, I was like, “Okay, what does the keyboard feel under my fingers?” I have these fiddles that I play with and I'm like, “Okay, what does this feel like? This rubber feel like, or this metal feel like, and so forth?” So, that was really helpful. The day of the surgery, I go in and I'm fully anxious. I'm going to the bathroom. I'm needing to pee. I feel dizzy. I'm not allowed to be on my medication. Oh, and that's the other thing, is this maybe the-- what do you call it? The silver lining. Just a little update for you guys, is there is a small chance, because this infection has been here for a long time and we haven't actually detected it yet, that it may be the reason for all my POTS symptoms. As some of you may know, I have postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. It is a chronic illness related to dysautonomia. It causes me to faint and have headaches and nausea and dizziness and blood pooling and it's the worst. And there is a chance that that might be why. So, I'm half scared and half excited all day, which is a lot to handle. But as the day is moving forward, I'm getting more and more nervous and I start to feel the urge to start to seek reassurance. I start to observe the urge to Google. I start to observe the urge to ask the doctors many, many, many, many questions. And when I say it, I'm saying that very intentionally. I observed the urge, which is I didn't do those behaviors. I just noticed the urge that kept showing up. “Ooh, let's try and get this anxiety to go away. Ooh, let's try and get that anxiety to go away.” Knowing that when it's my turn to sit in that chair, I will ask specific questions. So, I'm not saying you can't ask your doctors questions, but that was key for me, was to observe the urge to seek reassurance, observe the urge to go into avoidance. I'm not going to make this story too much longer, but what I will say, I want to tell you the funniest part of this story. I'm in the doctor's office because I had to go in for this very fancy x-ray that does all your nerves because he was afraid he was going to hit one. He's showing me the x-ray and I'm literally looking at it. He's showing me cross-sections of my jaw. And you guys, it was so scary. You can see the hole that it's created. You can see the infection and how it's deteriorated the bone. It was so scary. And so, he puts his hand on my-- and I'm like, at that point, “Is there any way we could get away with not doing this? Because this is really scary.” He puts his hand on my hand, he says, “I'm going to go and take care of all of these last patients I have so I can give you 100% of my attention and I will be back.” You guys, this is the funniest thing ever. So, the dental nurse is there watching me. My heart is through the roof. My blood pressure is all over the place. She stands in front of me and she says, “Miss Kimberley, don't be worried. We've watched all the YouTube videos.” And I swear to you, every piece of panic that I had went out the window for that small second and I laughed so hard. She said, “In fact, that's where the doctor is right now. He's just going to watch the YouTube video one more time.” And I just died laughing. Now for some of you, that may have actually been really anxiety-provoking. But for me, it was exactly what I needed. I needed someone to make this so funny. And it was so funny. I swear to you, every time I think of it, the way she says it in her accent was the most hilarious thing ever. It was so perfectly timed. The delivery was perfect and I burst out laughing. He comes back in-- this is the end of the story. I'm not going to drag it out for too much longer. I promise. But he comes back in, and I just wanted to share with you, because I know last week with Lisa, I had a really emotional moment, and I think it was really tied to this. As he was putting in the IV – because I had to be knocked out. He said he couldn't take a risk of me moving. So, he knocked me out for the surgery – tears just rolled out of my eyes. And I wasn't going to be ashamed of it. And what came up for me was, I said, “Please, sir.” I said “Sir,” which I think is so funny, because I know him by his first name. “Please, sir. Please just take care of me.” And for me, tears were rolling down my face, but that was an act of compassion for myself. Instead of me saying-- because I know two years ago, or even six months ago, I probably would've said, “Please, don't kill me,” or “Promise me nothing bad would happen.” But there was this act of compassion that just flowed out of me, which was like, “Please, sir. Please take care of me.” And it was coming from this deep place of finally in my life, being able to ask to be taken care of. And I've been working on this, you guys, for about a year, is having the ability to actually ask for help has been something I've really sucked at and it's something I've worked so hard at. And for me, that was groundbreaking, to ask for help. Now you could say it was me pleading with him, but it wasn't. It was me. It was an act of compassion. It was an act of saying, “I'm scared. I'm not asking you to take my fear away. I'm just asking you to hold me in a place of kindness and compassion and nurturing and care.” And that for me was profound. So, I just wanted to share that with you. I know that it might not be as skills-based as some of the other episodes, but I love sharing with you hard things and I love sharing with you that I'm a human, messy human who's doing the best they can and is imperfect too. But I just wanted to give you a step-by-step one. It's okay if it's hard and there are skills that you can use and we can get through hard things. It's a beautiful day to do hard things, I always say that. And so, I wanted to just record this and share with you the ups and the downs of my week and help you maybe if there's a time where you've gotten bad news on ways that you might manage it. Now, what I do want to end here with is, I understand my privilege here. I understand my privilege of getting bad news and being able to get medical care and have a lovely dentist and a lovely nurse who makes funny jokes. And sometimes the news doesn't end well, and I get that. I want to honor you that there is no right way to get bad news. And the grief process of getting bad news is different for everybody. This was more of an anxiety process, but I want to honor to you that if you're going through some hard thing in your life where you've gotten bad news, I want to also offer you the opportunity to grieve that and I want to honor that this is really, really a hard thing to go through. So, I really want to make sure I make space for you with that because my experience is not your experience, I'm sure. So, that's it, guys. That's what to do when you get bad news. That's my experience of getting bad news and I hope it's been helpful. We are embarking on some shifts here with the podcast. I am so inspired to be more focused on just delivering the tools to you and being a safe place for you and being a bright, shiny light for you. And so, I'm doing a lot of exploring on how I can do that. So, if you ever-- again, please do feel-- if you want to give some thoughts, please do reach out, send me an email. If you're not on my newsletter list, please do go and sign up. I'll leave you a link in the show notes, or you can go to CBTSchool.com and sign up for the newsletter and you can reply there as well or you can leave a review. All right. I love you guys. Have a wonderful day. It is a beautiful day to get bad news and do the hard thing. I love you. Have a great day.

Tonight, we'll read from the opening to the 1923 travel memoir “Peaks of Shala” by Rose Wilder Lane. It is about a walking tour of mountainous Albania.The daughter of writer Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lane was an American journalist, travel writer, novelist, and political theorist.— read by N — Listen Ad-Free on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.