The Most Important

I began studying philosophy in 1972 not because it was my intention. I went to college to find another path for my life because working for a lawyer on Wall Street, even though it offered excitement, wasn't working for me. I was good at my skills but taking shorthand at 110 words a minute, typing at 90 words a minute, and organizing an office for someone else only made me wonder what I could be capable of for my own life. I decided I should get educated and thus my search began. I was twenty-two when I took my first step on this journey. At the time, my friends were getting married, having babies, or graduating from college. I felt like the lone ranger.

I set out to Santa Cruz, Ca. for a summer session at the University to see if college was even what I wanted. I never saw myself as smart because I was a girl, and as far as I was told, smart was for men. Times have changed.

I chose to study philosophy for one reason: it allowed me to understand my own mind and made me aware that I actually had one. Thanks to my recently deceased professor, Dr. Carlos Norena, who inspired me with such passion for the thinking process, and to study philosophy,I matriculated in it. I ate it up. I absorbed it. I studied it ravenously.

Then I moved on to the psychologists, Carl Rogers, Ram Dass, the new agers, as they were soon referred except in those days they were just the thinkers of my time.

I moved on to become a psychotherapist and loved being a counselor. And here's the most amazing thing I discovered. People don't live by psychologies. No! Psychology is just the study of how people behave which does not a single bit of good when you are sitting in front of someone in great distress. Remembering a theory has little effect and anyone who has been in that position knows that the first emotion they feel when someone treats them like a 'theory' is anger. Rightfully so. No one wants to be reduced to a research finding.

Here's my enlightened realization: people live by their philosophies. That's what holds their lives together. That's what helps them build a series of actions, reactions, and decisions.

Listening to Oprah as much as I have over 25 years, the one human experience that has been on her show dozens of times is the concept of forgiveness. When it came to forgiveness in my own life with significant figures, I found it difficult to apply the easy and neat theories expressed on her show.
How do you forgive? What is your philosophy about forgiveness? Who have you not forgiven simply because you didn't know how?

Writing about these deep needs and the wounds that usually accompany them is quite powerful. In The Basket Weaver, www.createspace.com/3553668 I resolved, through forgiveness, a sharply painful wound I carried for decades. I tried and tried and could not work through it until I took pen to paper, gave the experience to a fictitious character and worked it through. Once the manuscript was completed by me, edited by createspace.com, and printed, something in me released, let go, forgave, and healed.

Writing is a way to healing. I have experienced a path to healing in each of my books. I have written a book to offer guidance for those suffering the way I used to. It is titled, Write to Heal. It can only be purchased through my site: www.JanMarquart.com.
I do hope you check it out.

I write a great many things for enjoyment but the most powerful aspect of my own experience of healing has been through the act of writing. Writing is a powerful act. Need help with this? I'd love to be there for you.

Until next time,