ABOUT ME

Aloha! So you’d like to know who I am, would you? I know have some unique philosophies on things; but that is because of what I have experienced in my life. I am keenly aware that I am a nerd and sometimes critic within just about any movement or belief system I am a part of, especially if I find hypocrisy. 

Why is this? Call it being born as an empath, then having three extra scoops of idealism thrown on top of that. Call it the shock of discovering, in my middle-age, that my ENFJ personality is not static, but somehow changing into INFJ.  Call it the painful, yes sometimes bitter irony of being a survivor of over three decades of just about every form of abuse that exists WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY experiencing life as a Highly Sensitive Person, or HSP.   In any case, what you see is what you get. I have found my voice, and I am using it.

I began this blog as a place to talk about Young Living essential oils, because I was an independent distributor at that time.  Soon after, I began to add my thoughts on the School of Natural Healing originally founded by Master Herbalist, Dr. John R. Christopher. However, over the years, my writings have changed from their original focus on hypothyroidism and health. I stuck my toe in the water cautiously at first, and observing no dramatic  increase in audience – or any perceivable blowback – I just kept scrawling my thoughts away, ever more boldly, on the wide, blank and obviously anonymous wall of my apparent dead-end street in Internetville. 

Therefore, as a result of what I suppose one could call my personal growth, my blog slowly morphed from it’s original focus into a conservative-apologist-LDS commentary on issues of personal concern to me. The world got to watch or ignore as I tried over and over again to finally find that golden mean; that ultimate satisfying answer; that clear separating line which would at last perfectly delineate which part was mine and which part was the Church’s.  I continued my public exploration of women’s issues (especially the struggle with how to deal with the seemingly constant unrighteous dominion extant within the LDS patriarchy) until about the middle of 2018. 

On July 5, 2019, I openly confessed the following on this About Me page: I was “in the midst of a bona-fide faith crisis, but one which has been simmering and cycling in the fires of my mind since early childhood. Until last year, I always answered my questions and doubts with some variety self-reproof unless I could find some comfort, justification or validation amid the teachings of Church apostles and prophets. Until last year it never dawned on me that my relationship with my Church and it’s leaders was neither a relationship of equals as co-spirit-children of God nor completely and genuinely reciprocal in expectations, loyalty or honesty. Especially honesty.  I decided to create a chronological list of my posts to demonstrate my metamorphosis. I don’t know where I’m going, either, except toward what actual truth and real light I can still find.”

‘A‘ohe pau ka ‘ike i ka hālau ho‘okahi.
All knowledge is not learned in just one school.

As of today, September 8, 2020, my cup of information, knowledge and truth has overflowed and overwhelmed everything so completely that my Mormon condition has advanced to a post-terminal state. In other words, I consider myself to be a recovering member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or PostMormon. As the direct descendant of three martyrs of the Salem Witch Trial’s ecclesiastically-supported and advanced hysteria, I now join hands in solidary with my paternal grandfather. He was raised miserably Christian Scientist. Increasingly, I see great wisdom in the aversion he held to any and all organized religion; especially to its authority figures.

 He ‘onipa’a ka ‘oiā’i’o
Truth is not changeable

C’est moi – 2019

My apologies in advance if I surprise, shock or hurt you, but I am a truth seeker and try to be a truth speaker.  I honestly try to be kind. Be informed, however, that I come from a long and royal maternal lineage of opinionated women, stretching back to the ninau-pio High Chiefess of Maui, Kalanikauiokikilo… and beyond.

Though, in the past, I tried mightily not to turn into “one of those meanies”, I have now accepted that I am my mother’s daughter.  I have discovered that if I had spoken my truth earlier, more often, more forcefully and without wavering because of fear, I could have spared myself and the ones I love most a lot of heartache.

The Truth-Speaking Girl-With-A-Brain legacy ain’t stoppin’ with me. I, too, am one of those mothers who know.

 

Song: Mama Was Always Tellin’ Her Truth by Iris Dement

In the process of my journey toward true health: physical and spiritual wholeness, I’ve learned a lot and keep on learning more.  It is my hope that this blog will be of help to other seeking individuals and their families.

Aloha and welcome to OilStories!

My husband and I in 2016

This is blog is dedicated to my children.
May you be wiser than I have been,
and if not,
may you be honest and loving enough
to admit it to your own children.

There’s a literary form I haven’t mentioned yet: The literature of witness. [The protagonist] records her story as best she can; then she hides it, trusting that it may be discovered later, by someone who is free to understand it and share it. This is an act of hope: every recorded story implies a future reader. Robinson Crusoe keeps a journal. So did Samuel Pepys, in which he chronicled the Great Fire of London. So did many who lived during the Black Death, although the accounts often stop abruptly. So did Romeo Dallaire, who chronicled both the Rwandan genocide and the world’s indifference to it. So did Anne Frank, hidden in her secret annex.

There are two reading audiences for [the protagonist’s] account: [the scholars at their] academic conference in the future, who are free to read but not always as empathetic as one might wish; and the individual reader of the [protagonist’s writings] at any given time. That is the “real” reader, the Dear Reader for whom every writer writes. And many Dear Readers will become writers in their turn. That is how we writers all started: by reading. We heard the voice of [an author] speaking to us.

– Margaret Atwood, from the forward to The Handmaid’s Tale