Welcome to my journey.

Come join me, get a cup of coffee, take a break and let’s get acquainted.

I sat here thinking where do I begin, how do a put into words all the facets of my life as it stands today. I will use the About Mary-Anne page to give a historical overview of what has brought me to this place in life and my motivation for putting up this blog. What I hope to gain from sharing the intimacy of my life publically and what I hope will be an enlightening experience where you will walk away with something that makes your life more aware or more meaningful from what I am going through.

I hope you keep coming back so that I can feel that I am no longer alone on my journey. I have found since I became ill and more so since I went deaf that connecting with others and having people care is so precious.
So I thank you for coming and taking the time out of your busy day to be with me for a moment, just stopping in to care.
This is my private journal that I have been writing for years. The focus is on using the therapeutic technique of journaling which has been proven to be a great tool in working through our life issues, finding our truth and expressing all the thoughts and feelings that live inside of us. Writing down and getting out into words what is going on inside of our heads is very cathartic. I have found this process helps me sort out what is real from what comes from any knee jerk reaction I may be experiencing to what is going on inside of me or my surroundings.

I am not going for a writing award nor did I excel in grammar as I have multiple learning disabilities, so please do not judge me too harshly if I make grammatical errors. I may have disabilities but stupid is not one of them.
Focus on content not context and try to get something positive out of my words , not making critiquing one of the goals. I want to be able to relax as I write and not be focused on my grammar. I got enough of that negative feedback through many years of schooling. We all do our best with what we have to work with. Some of us have less to draw upon than others but I have found any deficits is replaced by a gift in another area so I figure it is all OK :) .
I am starting from where I am today. Everything I am and do is built on the last 19 years of my life. When I became ill in 1987 out of no where slowly my whole being changed, my whole life obviously changed and where I am today I see my life began 19 years ago. Before that, everything that I was has either changed, died or no longer fits in the world I live today. I do not go back further than 1987 other than to find memories that I use to keep me believing that I have a purpose and that it isn’t over for me yet.

I have created my own coping skills, my own therapy that I have written into a book and hope to find help in editing and getting published. It is a how to book for anyone. I have found that it works 99% of the time. The 1% is either the person didn’t stick with their program or they were not ready to move on, both are ok just know it wasn’t the therapy that didn’t work. It works, folks. I have been using it for 7 years. I call this great new therapy “The Life Process” as I have found life to be a process. I also have been using The Life Process with unheard of success teaching it to teens and young adults on line for the past 7 years. I do this for free because I believe it is so important. This is also my way of giving back and using the gift God gave to me which is being able to connect with teens and young adults like nobody’s business. I could stand on a stage and talk all day to teens or in a small group or one on one. They are my passion in life. This is the dream that keeps me fighting for my life, allowing me to finish my book and get this therapy out there for anyone who wants to find their way to their truth and how to make life work the way they want it to. I could go on about The Life Process forever because of what I have seen it do with kids who had no hope and felt they had no where to turn. That is why I keep my teen site free. The kids also give me a reason to fight and not quit. I have to be honest with them because there are times I can not write to them because of my physical state. Also I use to have kids who wanted to talk more than write call me and I would teach my Life Process over the phone. But now I am deaf and I felt I needed to tell them why I could not talk on the phone anymore. It was very sad for me to give that connection up. I just would not be able to understand what they were saying. I get kids from all over the world who write and ask me to teach them how to get their lives together. Kids sought me out on my website. It was not originally a site for kids it was a site for the ill, disabled and those in chronic pain. But they didn’t like my “can do” attitude and it totally flopped. Out of no where teens started writing me and saying they liked what they read on my site. I still get notes from kids surfing through saying “cool site.” Kids and my therapy are my life and my will to endure whatever I have to, to finish my work. I want to leave a legacy like everyone else does. I couldn’t have children so kids all over the world are my children and my book I pray will be my legacy. I feel my life and all that I have been through will have been worth it if I can leave my book. The therapy will sell itself that, I have no doubt.
Please visit my teen site at www.lookingforadvice.org and read some amazing stories that this therapeutic technique has inspired. Read an overview of The Life Process also on the site.

I brought all that up for a reason and now I can’t think of the reason other than I want you to know me a little better and what my life is about now. What motivates me, why I am even doing this and most of all what I hope to accomplish from doing this Chronicle. The kids, the therapy and the book are my life, my passion, my dream and I am going to fight to finish my work giving hope to kids who see none, to inspire, change or save any lost young person. I really do practice “leave no child behind.”

Oh I know why I brought all this up. How The Life Process came into being and has spread to being what I consider the best new therapy for helping our young people find their way in the new world of the 21st century, including how to restructure our societal methods of dealing with different, troubled and even those that are lost. We are using 20th century rules, mindsets and techniques that are not working, that is easy to prove. It is time to meet the needs that are of today not yesterday. It is a whole new ball game since technology changed everything. We have to wake up and I have the wake up cup of coffee in my therapy. Ok enough about that, I either sold you or I didn’t (smile).
I was at a crossroads back in the 90’s. I had been going down hill steadily and was literally homebound and basically bedridden for six years. I was slowly dying but yet I had used those six years to study, research and learn all I could to find a way to save my life. I finally looked at myself and woke up to the fact that nobody was going to save me, not even the medical system. Talk about a lost and scary feeling that you are going down hill and nobody can help you. I have found that to be the worst, most lost well I can’t describe it but it is surreal. So I said Mary-Anne you have all these degrees, experience, talent and all the knowledge you have learned over these past six years why aren’t you using all of this to save yourself? I then started on my quest to put together all of what I had acquired study it all and develop my own therapy and techniques to save my life. It took several years in the compiling, making it come together in a step by step process that I could follow and use in any situation to find solutions to whatever I might come up against. You have to remember everything that we are taught about life did not include any kind of knowledge or even address what happens if you lose your health, everything you know, no longer applies, all the rules and so called life skills go out the window and we become totally disoriented and lost. It is no differnt than a devastating hurricane it just never ends which if you can imagine is a horrible place to have to never leave, a constant hurricane going on. I was totally wiped out as a person and so was my whole world as I had known it. Believe me when I say there is no one to turn to for answers. There is nothing absolutely nothing that I did not try in my quest to get help. I did all the conventional methods through the medical system. I tried every known alternative method. I even tried any kind of bizarre claim from anyone who said they could help me. I had my demons cast out, my chakras balanced, you name I have had it done. I read every book I could get my hands on about how I was responsible for the situation I was in and only I could change it by following all of these New Age practitioners. I listened to motivational tapes, spiritual tapes, meditation tapes. I studied all the different religions of the world searching for the truth and a door out of my nightmare. I gained much knowledge but I also felt guilty and like a failure. I got to where I was convinced I wanted to be ill and that I didn’t have enough faith because if I did I would be well. I wasn’t one of the “chosen few” sorry some of us don’t get well no matter what we do. I wish I were one of those who after all my work, discipline and changing of my thinking I would wake up and be physically well again.
What I did wake up to was that there were lots of people like me who got ill or disabled and it isn’t our fault and we are not at fault. It is what it is so I decided to take back control over my life and my health, from there I got angry. TO me it was healthy anger and it is what motivated me from there on in.

That is when I really decided that I wasn’t going to put my faith in anyone other than me and my spiritual beliefs as I knew them. That is when “true” enlightenment for me started. I realized and proved to myself that all of my life’s answers are within me, just like yours are in you and it is true. That is wonderful now my faith is where it should be and I save alot of money not buying CD’s or books on someone else’s answers to their life.

The Life Process takes you inside yourself and teaches you how to find, use and become all that already lives within you and is just waiting for you to discover yourself. That’s why it can’t fail. It is you just being you. How simple can it get, yet we complicate our lives so much. Oh well let’s go on.

Out of all of this and much much more came “The Life Process” which has saved my life many a times. It has also given me back my power, changing me from a Victim to a Victor. This in and of itself makes The Life Process more than I could have hoped for. But for it to take on a life of its own through adolescents and young adults, has truly made it a miracle that is happening on a daily bases through my teaching it to any kid who finds there way to my site. I teach them to turn their own lives around. Basically it empowers them with all the knowledge, skills and techniques to make their live’s work. So I have named my therapy “Life-Works!” that is also the name of the book.

It is amazing how something evolves even without our help. The more I see this happen the more humble I become and realize just how our ignorance blinds us to the fact that life does work, sometimes literally in spite of our stepping in and trying to take over. Yet we take credit for it. I have never heard or seen a story where there was not unexplainable happenings that had to come into play for the person to have made it and without those unexplainable interventions the person most likely would not have made it. Think about that. All the people I have watched on Biography never fail to mention these unexplainable happenings but they know and give credit to them.

So I do not take credit for “The Life Process” I am a teacher of it. I know I couldn’t have created such a successful therapy without help or known that it could really work on adolescents. What Life Works teaches literally saves them from themselves, from their environment empowering them with all that they need to make a success out of whatever life has dealt them.

I am honored to be a small part of this miracle that is unfolding. I hope that I can get Mary-Anne on her feet to where she can introduce The Life Process through her book and if I get real lucky I will someday be standing in front of school systems, parents, kids, the Judicial system teaching what I do best and all of this will be a faint memory that comforts me as I smile and know it ended and I have just started.
Well, your coffee break is over and I must get started on my day.

My entry for today I will write later as to what I must face each day and how I am constantly making lemonade out of lemons. I mean I have an orchard (smile) and still don’t have enough lemons. Just living takes all that I am. But each day I find I am drinking my lemonade. Life does work friends it is all in how we choose to see it.

Have a wonderful day and a glass of Lemonade, Mary-Anne

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