Planning the First @ReclaimYourVoice Event || For our first event, I decided to invite three speakers to share their stories. I planned to share my own story as well because I couldn’t ask anyone to do anything that I myself was unwilling to do. I approached three incredible women I knew who had each experienced some form of abuse. Although I strongly believed in this idea, my nerves began to kick in when it came time to ask if they’d be willing to share their stories publicly. I was worried that my proposition might come across as intrusive or insensitive, but all three of them caught me off guard by immediately agreeing to share their stories.⁣
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@cher.bear8 was one of the women I invited to speak. I knew her through my photography work and had photographed her many times over the course of 10 years. Her excitement about speaking at this event surprised me completely. When I asked her why she seemed so eager to share something so deeply personal with a room full of people, she said that the only opportunity she’d ever had to share her story was within the cold and unfeeling confines of a courtroom while a defense attorney picked apart every detail of her disclosure and did everything he could to make her doubt herself. At our event she would have the opportunity to share her story―her truth―in a room full of supportive people without being interrupted, questioned or contested. I had a lack of knowledge and experience in this field, but Cher’s enthusiastic response to this opportunity strengthened my confidence in this idea, and started to give me a sense of how complex and multifaceted trauma and healing was.⁣
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I recalled a quote from Mother Teresa that said, “I will never attend an anti-war rally; if you have a peace rally, invite me.” I’d been learning more and more about the importance of choosing words that focus on the outcome one hoped to achieve instead of on what one did not want, so I made the decision that this event was to be held not in the name of the war against abuse, but in the name of peace and healing for all.

Wisdom from Russell Conwell:

Your diamonds are not in far distant mountains or in yonder seas; they are in your own backyard, if you but dig for them.

You can journey to the ends of the earth in search of success, but if you’re lucky, you will discover happiness in your own backyard.

When a man has done all he can do, still there is a mighty, mysterious agency over which he needs influence to secure success. The one way he can reach it is by prayer.

Let every man or woman here remember this, that if you wish to be great at all, you must begin where you are and with what you are. He who would be great anywhere must first be great in his own Philadelphia.

Money is power. Every good man and woman ought to strive for power, to do good with it when obtained. I say, get rich, get rich!

I ask not for a larger garden, but for finer seeds.

Greatness really consists in doing some great deed with little means.

There is wealth within the sound of your voice.

Many of us spend our lives searching for success when it is usually so close that we can reach out and touch it.

So, if you feel a smile begin, don’t leave it undetected, let’s start an epidemic quick, and get the world infected!

My son, do not lose sight of this: preserve sound judgment and discernment. - Proverbs 3:21

Bow down thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply thine heart unto my knowledge. - Proverbs 22:17

For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, because he is the messenger of the LORD of Hosts. - Malachi 2:7

You crown the year with Your bounty, and Your paths overflow with plenty. - Psalm 65:11

You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you. - Isaiah 26:3

Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything in love. - 1 Corinthians 16:13-14

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. - Psalm 16:6

Faith is a luminous star that leads the honest seeker into the mysteries of nature. You must seek your point of Gravity in God, and put your trust into an honest, divine, sincere, pure and strong faith and cling to it with your whole heart, soul, sense, and thought, full of love and confidence. If you possess such a faith, God (wisdom) will not withhold his truth from you, but will reveal his works to you, credibly, visibly, and consolingly. - Paracelsus

The operation of anything follows the mode of its being. - St. Thomas Aquinas (“Summa Theologica”)

I shall dwell in the House of God all the days of my life; to behold the beauty of God and to meditate in His sanctuary. - Psalms 27: 4

The human soul possesses from the fact of its being of the same essence of all creation, a marvelous power. One who possesses the secret is enabled to rise as high as his imagination will carry him; but he does that only on the condition of becoming closely united to this universal force. - J.B. Craven (on Cornelius Agrippa in “Doctor Robert Fludd, the English Rosicrucian”)

Every “substantial form” proceeds from the first cause, God, and participates in His divine nature according to its nobility. - Dante Alighieri (“Convivio”, Book 3, citing  "Liber de Causis" )

A potency without the possibility of actuality destroys nature. - Aristotle

Fourthly, out of the Element there proceeds forth a watery Property; and yet it is only to be understood spiritually : This is the Water of which Christ said he would give us to drink : And whosoever should drink thereof it should spring up in him to a Fountain of Eternal Life: It is the Water above the Firmament of which Moses speaks, that God has separated from the external Waters under the Firmament: This watery and elemental Property proceeds from the Essence of the Free Lubet, which is consumed in the Fire and the Word of the Understanding (which has now manifested itself in the Fire) does express these Powers from itself, as a living and moving Essence; and herein the Angelical World is understood. - Jacob Boehme (“Mysterium Magnum”)

I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power. Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence. - Ephesians 3: 7-12

Wisdom from Neville Goddard:

Your attention must be developed, controlled, and concentrated in order to change your concept of yourself successfully and thereby change your future.

An awakened imagination works with a purpose. It creates and conserves the desirable, and transforms or destroys the undesirable.

When you attain the control of the internal direction of your attention, you will no longer stand in shallow water but will launch out into the deep of life.

The undisciplined man’s attention is the servant of his vision rather than its master. It is captured by the pressing rather than the important.

If we do not like what is happening to us, it is a sure sign that we are in need of a change of mental diet.

If you judge after appearances, you will continue to be enslaved by the evidence of your senses.

All things are possible to God, and you found who he is. It is your own wonderful human imagination that’s God.

You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you. - Isaiah 26:3

Those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. - Isaiah 40:31

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. - Matthew 11:28

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. - Romans 12:2

Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. - Matthew 17:20

The name of the LORD is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe. - Proverbs 18:10

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers. - Psalm 1:1-3

If you listen carefully to the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, who heals you. - Exodus 15:26

Worship the LORD your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you. - Exodus 23:25

Remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today. - Deuteronomy 8:18

I start early and I stay late, day after day, year after year, it took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success. - Lionel Messi

May the best day of your past be the worst day of your future. - Anonymous

Somewhere in the world someone is training when you are not. When you race him, he will win. - Tom Fleming

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus. - Bruce Lee

If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door. - Milton Berle

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. - W.B. Yeats

If you want happiness for an hour — take a nap. If you want happiness for a day — go fishing. If you want happiness for a year — inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a life time — help someone else. - Chinese proverb

Wisdom from Robert Fludd (aka Robertus de Fluctibus) (1574 - 1637):

Particulars are frequently fallible, but universals never. Occult philosophy lays bare Nature in her complete nakedness, and alone contemplates the wisdom of universals by the eyes of intelligence. Accustomed to partake of the rivers which flow from the Fountain of Life, it is unacquainted with grossness and with clouded waters.

Which of us has, at this day, the ability to discover those true and vivific numbers whereby the elements are united and bound to one another?

But, good God, what is this when compared with that deep and true music of the wise, whereby the proportions of natural things are investigated, the harmonical concord and the qualities of the whole world are revealed, by which also connected things are bound together, peace established between conflicting elements, and whereby each star is perpetually suspended in its appointed place by its weight and strength, and by the harmony of its lucent spirit.

In Elementary Music The Relation Of Earth To The Sphere of Water is 4 to 3, As There Are In The Earth Four Quarters of Frigidity to Three of Water.

Geomancy was a natural art, drawing on the inborn powers of the human soul to glean information from the larger soul of the world.

Marvelous is the love and fellowship of the flesh and the soul, of the spirit of life and the mud of the earth: for the whole man may be said to be formed from these two conjoined. For thus it is written: “God made man from the mud of the earth, and breathed the breath of life into his face ”[Genesis 2:7], giving him sense and intellect, so that through sense he might vivify the clay associated with him, and through intellect rule it; that likewise he might enter inwardly through the intellect and contemplate the wisdom of God, and outwardly through the sense behold the works of his wisdom. God illuminated the intellect from within but adorned the sense without, so that the whole man might find recreation in both, namely felicity within and enjoyment without. But since outward things cannot last long, man is bidden to turn from the things without to the things within and to ascend from the things within to the things above, that is to say from sense to imagination, from imagination to reason, from reason to intellect, thence to mind or intelligence and thus to God.

I was whilest I did sojourne in Rome, acquainted with a very learned and skillful personage, called Master Gruther. Hee was by birth of Swisserland, and for his excellency in the Mathematick, and in the Art of Motions and inventions of Machines, he was much esteemed by the Cardinall of Saint George. This gentleman taught mee the best of my skill in those practices: and amongst the rest, he delivered this magneticall experiment unto me, as a great secret, assuring me that it was tried in his Country, upon many with good successe…