2007 In Review

I have been thinking about this article for a couple of days deciding exactly what I wanted to include. 2007 has been such a wonderful/difficult year full of emotions and challenges, full of new friendships and letting go of old friendships, moving forward and looking backward.

If I had to come up with one word to envelope the entire year, it would have to be compassion. I ended the year with joining a meme on Survivor Needs inspired by Marj aka Thriver over at http://survivorscanthrive.blogspot.com/ . I also wrote a recent article called Compassion, The Ultimate Act of Love as a part of the Spread the Love Now! Group Writing Project sponsored by The Three Monks. You can check out their blogs by going to my article at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/12/compassion-ultimate-act-of-love.html . You can also check out my other two articles that I wrote about compassion by clicking on the word Compassion under Categories on the right side of the blog page. For those of you who are receiving this as an email, you will need to visit my blog at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/ . If you haven't actually visited my blog, please do so.

What have I written about on my blog this year?

The categories with the most included in them are Influencial People which has six articles, each written about someone special in my life. If you haven't read any of these articles, you are missing out by not meeting these people who have played a very important part in me becoming who I am today.

Another category which has the most number of articles is that of gratitude. Again, click on the word Gratitude under Categories on the right side of the blog page. Gratitude is a very important subject to me. It is one of the things that keeps me grounded, connected and humble. There has always been something that I could find to be grateful for in my life even at the lowest points. An Attitude of Gratitude is a great way to live your life. Nothing can keep you down for long when you are in a place of feeling grateful. Why look at what you don't have, when you can be grateful for what you do have. I believe it is especially important to acknowledge the people that you are grateful to. People are the ones that make the difference. Gratitude is a much more joyful place to be than the victim role. Even when I am in the middle of emotional turmoil, as I have been for the past two months, I can still find that I am grateful for the challenges of life because their presence means that I am growing.

The most important and most difficult articles that I have written this year are those from my Incest May Be A Part Of My Life Series. There are eight articles posted in that series. Those eight plus eight others are also included under the Category Incest. These are the articles that I have used to revisit my past, my childhood with all of its emotional turmoil of fear, rage, sadness and tears.

Why would I choose to revisit and stir up all of that?
Revisiting that gives me the opportunity to share all of the ways that I have healed from the childhood of abuse. Revisiting that gives me the opportunity to open the eyes of others that might be closed to the abuse of a child that they know. I also get the opportunity to share with other survivors the hope for their own healing and a compassion that can only come from someone who has been there. When you know that someone else has shared your journey, the words of compassion and caring mean so much more. Some people will tell you to just get over it without realizing, if it were that easy, we would have done it long ago.

That brings me to my next group of articles that you will find under the Category of Forgiveness. You will find six articles listed under Forgiveness that I wrote in 2007. I am so grateful that I have reached a point in my life that I could actually do true forgiveness. Some people never reach that point. For them, they are ok with not doing forgiveness. I hope that by sharing my own journey through to forgiveness that maybe someone else can reach that step. I recently read an article written by another sexual abuse survivor that was still in that "I am too rageful to want to do anything except hurt (KILL) my abusers." I remember being in that place myself. Then I was in a place of not knowing how to forgive and beating myself up for not being able to do it. Don't abuse yourself because you aren't there yet. It took me over thiry years to get there. Hopefully by sharing my journey to forgiveness, someone else can get there in less time than I did.

My highlight of the year, you will find written about in the articles under the Category of India. I was blessed with the abundance to financially be able to take a trip to India September 24-October 15, 2007. This was my third trip to India to visit Sathya Sai Baba. Some time in 2008, I will write some more articles on my visit and some background about Sai Baba for my readers that know nothing about this great spiritual teacher. Some of you will say, but you call yourself a Christian. Yes, I do. I don't see any conflict of interest there. Being a Sai Baba devotee enhances my Christian beliefs. Sai Baba himself says for us to stay home and worship God in whatever form we are comfortable with. He says we are all God. He remembers more about being God than we do. We all have the same ability to live life to its fullest, if we just remember Who we are.

Looking back through the year that this blog has been in existence, I have decided to choose some of my favorite articles to share with you. You will find a list of your favorites listed to the right on the blog page listed under Most Popular Posts. These are my favorites from each month.

My very first article that I posted on this blog was on June 1, 2007. The title of my favorite article for June 2007 was Three Of My Past Life Experiences. You will find it posted at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/06/three-of-my-past-life-experiences.html . This one is your least favorite. I know it really stretches the beliefs of a lot of people. When I wrote the article, I knew it would. I even said as much in the article. All I ask is that you be willing to be open to the possibility of past lives and reincarnation. That is all any of us can do with new experiences. I didn't always believe in reincarnation. My views over the past ten years have changed.

During July, I built on my Favorite People series of articles with writing articles 2-5. It would be difficult for me to choose which of those is my favorite. I love them all. Your favorite was #4 which I called The Most Influencial Person---#4---Birth Of A Dream which I wrote as a tribute to my friend Slade Roberson who gave me the encouragement and know how to start this blog in the first place. The book, The Secret, was very popular at this time also because it touched on The Law Of Attraction which is still very popular on the internet. I wrote several articles on The Secret during July. The first of those articles and probably my favorite for July was The Secret---Loving Yourself which you will find at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/07/secret-loving-yourself.html .

August started with the article What Good Will You Allow God To Do Through You? which you will find at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/07/what-good-will-you-allow-god-to-do.html . This was the month that I started writing my Incest May Be A Part Of My Life Series. This series started out with a warning. Warning: Reading the following series may be injurious to your peace of mind. They are intended to be. Without knowledge, we cannot prevent child abuse from happening. Go beyond this point at your own risk. Join me for the painful, frightening, emotional, freeing journey. I am very appreciative of your response to all of these articles. Your comments have told me that my purpose in writing these is being accomplished. How many more articles will be included in this series? At this point, I don't know. You will know as soon as I do. As long as the words continue to flow, the articles will come. Of course, that is true for the whole blog, isn't it?

In August, Priscilla Palmer started a monumental task of posting the names of the personal development blogs that existed on the internet. You will find her list posted at http://www.priscillapalmer.com/priscillapalmer/ . I have found some really great blogs by going through her list.

Probably my favorite article that I wrote in August came from the inspiration of Carol Ann Meadows, a dear friend whose death on December 1, 2005, I was still grieving this December. The article is called What Other People Think About You Is None Of Your Business. You will find this article at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/08/what-other-people-think-about-you-is.html .

In September, I was up to Part 5 of my Incest May Be A Part Of My Life Series writing about the effects of Family Secrets. I wrote Part 6 which was Mixed Emotions Keep The Hurt Alive and then didn't write any thing else until a week later. I had been posting articles on Wednesdays and Sundays before September 16. I wanted the next article to be about forgiveness. Forgiven Is For You, Not The Other Person is the most difficult post that I have written so far so I will call that my favorite for September. You will find this article at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/09/forgiveness-is-for-you-not-other-person.html . The next article that I wrote practically wrote itself. I could hardly get the words typed fast enough after struggling so much with the first article on forgiveness. This article I called Prelude To Forgiveness. You can find it at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/09/prelude-to-forgiveness.html . These two articles should probably be reversed in the order that they were written but the emotions needed to be felt by me in Forgiveness Is For You, Not The Other Person before I could write either article.

September ended in pre-travel jitters which I expressed in my first four articles about India and Sathya Sai Baba.

October began with me being in India with no assess to a computer. My first article for October was posted on October 20 less than a week after I got home from India. My favorite article in October was called Expectations---India Trip found at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/10/expectations-india-trip.html . For this article, I borrowed a journal article that I wrote on the 22-hour airplane flight to Bangalore, India on September 24. I wanted to share with my readers what my expectations of the trip were before hand and how much better was what the Universe created for me during the trip. You would be amazed at how many blessings can come from the most severe sinus infection that I have ever had. You will have to read my articles listed under the India Category to find out.

November was a month of revelation after revelation for me. Most of them I wrote about in my November articles. For those articles, you can click on November 2007 under Blog Archives on the right side of the page of my blog. It is a difficult decision to decide which is my favorite from First Darshan In The Ashram---India Trip, Let's Talk About Spirit Guides Teleconference With Andrea Hess and Slade Roberson, and Compassion Begins With Me. Just click on November 2007 and you can read all three. If you haven't checked out the blogs of Slade Roberson found at http://sladeroberson.com/ and Andrea Hess at http://www.empoweredsould/blog/ , please do. They are just two of the wonderful new friends that I have made online this year through blogging.

December brought me back to writing about my incest issues and back in touch with my feelings which I talked about in Cry When You Need To and Feelings. In December I won a drawing that Paula Kawal had on her blog http://www.paulakawal.com/ . I wrote about that free session in the article Journey Within Coaching Session With Paula Kawal. That article gave me some relief from the emotional rollercoaster that I was experiencing in December. You will find that article at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/12/journey-within-coaching-session-with.html . Probably my favorite article that I wrote in December would probably be my shortest also. Are You Judging Others As Less Spiritual Than You? is found at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/12/are-you-judging-others-as-less.html . This is about a very valuable lesson that my husband and my higher self taught me several years ago.

I have completed 2007 with 3,246 views by readers of the 69 articles that I have written in the past six months of blogging. I have between 60-76 subscribers daily to my blog. I thank each and every one of you for subscribing or just visiting my blog. I know my figures are small and for the time that I have been blogging, I am pleased with the audience that I have slowly and steadily built around my blog. For me, 2007 has been a challenging year of completion. A friend of mine who is into numerology says that the year 2007 was a year of completion for everybody and that 2008 is a year of new beginnings. I look forward to 2008 with anticipation for what will come. I know that we will all have a glorious 2008. Thanks for sharing my journey.