Delos

photo courtesy of SV Delos

About a month ago, my husband Mike was watching videos on YouTube, and he clicked on one of the suggested videos. Immediately he was hooked watching a group of people sailing towards St. Helena, a small island in the South Atlantic Ocean. He had never heard of St. Helena, and watching this group film themselves doing their ordinary activities in an extraordinary setting was the kind of escapism that drew him in. A few days later he showed me the video and I became hooked as well. Since then when we learn that the latest episode is uploaded we get excited and can’t wait to virtually go on the adventure with them, whether it’s hiking up a volcanic mountain to exploring historic landmarks to scuba diving with sharks to everyday life on their sailboat.

The YouTube channel is called Sailing SV Delos. Currently, there are six people living on the boat, two of whom are brothers, and they’ve been sailing around the world for several years. Their unconventional lifestyle is an excellent reminder that life should be about experiences and enjoying what our amazing planet has to offer. Mike and I often note that our minds seem calmer after watching an episode, which is why I recently shared one of their videos in the Peace with PTSD Facebook group as well as on my author page.

The episode that I watched today made me deeply appreciate a decision I recently made to go vegetarian. Most episodes are rather light and fun, but at times they consciously bring up important issues people need to consider. While on a fishing trip for an annual contest at Ascension Island, the crew did not catch a single fish. Afterwards they filmed a conversation with the local husband and wife team that took them fishing, and they learned that the waters where they were fishing were once (and possibly still are) ravaged by sport fishing. I consider myself a rather aware person, but I had no idea that sport fishing was even a thing. 

What is it exactly? Simply this….it’s people fishing for the biggest fish they can find for the sake of being able to say they caught and killed the biggest fish. In some cases, these fish are used for food, but many were catching these fish and killing them and tossing them back into the ocean. Sport fishing off Ascension Island became popular thanks to the large sized tuna and other fish people would catch, some of which can take twenty years to reach their size. 

If sport fishing is so popular in these waters, then why did this experienced crew have no luck? It’s hard to know why. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough experts to know exactly what’s going on and those who are experts can’t figure out if the fish migrated elsewhere or if the population has depleted, but the feeling is that the latter may be the reason.

This episode got me appreciating that I am able to live healthfully without animal protein. In this case, it made me feel good about being able to do my part to help improve the fish population that sadly people have taken for granted. I also greatly appreciate that there are others who rely on fish and animal protein to survive. An important food source for the people who live on Ascension Island is fish, and the crew of Delos rely on fishing for food while they make their long journeys over vast oceans. Their activities are hardly damaging the planet.

Though this may sound odd, but part of me wonders if maybe these fish populations were traumatized from sport fishing and in order to survive they migrated elsewhere. I’d like to hope that but I am definitely not a pollyanna to the realities of what humans are capable of doing to life on our planet. Research has shown that animals can suffer from PTSD, so perhaps these fish are suffering as well. Either way, I think we all need to be a lot kinder to life on our planet in any way that we can.

I also think that everyone should be watching Delos.

Firsts

Have you ever started something that you've never done before, and even though you have no idea what you’re doing, your actions feel right? You feel incredibly passionate and fired up about what you want to achieve and the fire inside of you outweighs the fear of being stuck in figuring out all of the ‘how’s. Always these experiences come with a lot of "firsts". The first time you do this or the first time you do that....and because there are so many firsts, many of them don't get done perfectly, but you keep going anyway because you feel so aligned and excited about what you’re looking to achieve that perfection doesn’t matter.

“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” 

~ Kurt Vonnegut

Now more than ever I have felt like a student of this lesson. My writing experience before starting my book—ZERO. My self publishing experience—even less than zero.

Kurt Vonnegut said it best, but before I ever read his quote, the image I frequently got while on this writing journey was running through fog. I kept running because I knew it would lead me to my goal, even though I’d trip on a tree root, or smack myself against a wall or stumble into a puddle.

Despite the tripping, the smacking and the stumbling, I kept running through the fog, knowing more obstacles would appear without much warning because I trusted I could still get up, fix my wounds and keep going.

And while I am so grateful my book is in readers hands and I’m receiving incredible feedback, all of which was my ultimate goal, developing my wings has been one of the greatest gifts from this lesson.

And the best part of all is they’re not even close to being done.

I remember so many firsts after my traumatic experience. First nutritious meal. First night’s sleep without nightmares. First difficult situation where I handled myself better. If you have PTSD, do you know what I’m talking about?

And if you’re still struggling, can you appreciate that you’re a work in progress and your wings are so much more developed than they’ve ever been?

With that in mind, can you make the effort to do those firsts that your gut is telling you to do knowing that they’ll lead you to a peaceful place?

What's With All the Flowers?

by Jennifer Potter, guest blogger

Ever since grade school, my mom was really cool about letting me paint on whatever I wanted to, like my bookbag and my bedroom walls. Naturally, I painted flowers.

If you looked at the margins of my school notebooks, you'd see vines and flowers and leaves.

Why flowers? I had no idea. They were just what came out of my hand. About a year ago, the significance dawned on me.

Like so many others, life has not been an easy path for me. I'm no stranger to anxiety and depression, beginning with panic attacks as an 8 year old. BUT, art has always been my way of escaping to something more beautiful.

And art usually equaled flowers, right?

About a year ago, a strand of my hair fell onto the bathroom counter and landed in a perfect spiral. It looked EXACTLY like the spirals in my loose floral paintings of late. It stopped me in my tracks - I wasn't having a great day - and I instantly saw the parallel between the spirals on my canvases and the spirals on my head.

I love flowers and nature because of their consistency, their reliability, their quiet assuredness. Flowers and nature don't lie. They don't rush. There is a divine blueprint for them.

And when that spiral of hair landed on the counter, I realized there was a divine blueprint for me, too. Maybe I was more than the lies I'd been led to believe by society and people close to me. Maybe I was a beautiful creation with a divine blueprint, too.

All this time I'd been painting flowers without knowing why - just letting them come out of my hand for years. I started crying tears of knowing. The flowers were there to tell me that I was not a hot mess. I was as beloved and perfectly created as the flowers in nature.

All the flowers. My God winks for decades, patiently waiting for me to recognize their significance. I'll keep being a cheerleader for them as long as they'd like to keep coming out of my hands. 🙏

I recognize this may sound a bit out there, a bit woo-woo. But it's the magic and spirituality of intuitive art that I love the most. Thanks for indulging me by reading this far.
Xoxo Jenn

For more about Jennifer, visit her website by clicking here!

Receiving

photo courtesy of Angela Waye

Ever have challenges receiving? You might have read that question and wondered what the heck that means, so let me ask it again in a different way. When someone says, “you look nice today,” do you say respond with a thank you or do you throw away the compliment by explaining you forgot to brush your hair or you complain about your appearance or perhaps you even go so far as to completely discredit the compliment by saying you think you look like crap today. 

It’s okay to admit you have trouble receiving. You are not alone, and though I do not have any scientific evidence to support my belief, it is my observation that most people have some level of difficulty receiving.

Receiving goes beyond compliments. Do you have challenges receiving money from someone, even if you didn’t earn it? Do you struggle with receiving gifts for no particular occasion? And probably the most important question for anyone who has PTSD—do you have trouble receiving help when it is offered?

That was absolutely me. 

When someone saw me struggling with my PTSD when it was at its worst, I would have refused help. I would not have received advice, suggestions or even an ear for listening. 

Having moved through that dark place, I can see what it now looks like when someone is struggling and help is being offered but it’s not being received. It’s like a chisel and hammer chipping away at an incredibly hard, thick surface that we don’t know how it will break open. It’s frustrating for the person who wants to give, but the person who needs to receive help is the one that misses out the most.

Receiving is a part of life and critical to the circulation of good energy throughout the planet. When you receive, you aren’t being selfish. Rather, you are continuing the movement of that energy, and if it helps you to personally develop, grow and improve your life, don’t you think that might also help others out too?

It is ok to receive. Say it to yourself if you need to. It is ok to receive. Say it until you feel aligned with those words.