Something that was in my mind so I just wrote it out quick. Wanted to say hello

           I stood beneath the dried flowers,

Half the beauty they once were. 

They hung in the middle of the doorway,

Like some sort of story lore. 

I walked past cracked plaster

And ceilings caving in

I heard children laughing

Parents that would sing

I heard arguing

And angry words

But more than anything

I heard the whispered promise

Of flowers above the door

A story of love

Perhaps lost

Perhaps forgotten

I didn’t know for sure

Walking up the cracked stair case

Water dripping down the walls

Stories flaking from the ceiling

And outdated wall paper tarnished brown

From years of soot and dirt

I made my way to the attic

Quietly I snuck up the stairs

In the corner of the wall

A doll lay naked and bare

The roof let in spots of sun

Made my smile broaden

I knew this house would some day fall

The memories of here would soften

Dreams that were born here

May have died here too

But my mind wandered back to the flowers

Hanging in the door

For just a moment I realized

Every place has had love

Every place has seen anger

Everyone has been loved

Everyone has seen anger

We all need to remember

Every home has a story

Every story has a plot

Every plot has a beginning

Every beginning an end

In the middle is the heart

Of who we are

The stories we have

Embrace them

Love them

And respect all those

Who have walked the streets

The land

Respect all those

Who have come before you

Who will come after

Respect the houses that still stand

The ones that will fall

Those that will be built

For their will be flowers for them all

 

Celeste Lamarre-Vernale

February 17, 2014

Poetry

A poem of mine is being published in a magazine called Bellespirit
Check them out at Bellespirit.com

Also be on the look out for some new postings.

I have been insanely busy and it's time for reflection and information.

I have been informed they have a lot to share.

Be blessed and remember:

This time of year is so hard on so many people.  Suicide rates go up before and after the holidays.  I ask that you take that moment to reach out to someone you know is having a difficult time and offer them love.  Offer them a warm place to let go of that which burdens them.  Do not let any one be alone with out offering them a chance not to be alone.  We can not save the world but we can give love when someone is lacking.  We can give hope where there is none.  Sometimes people just need to have that moment where they feel they matter to someone.

Celeste

Medium Misconceptions

I see everything

With out my eyes

I touch everything

With just my mind

Question me if you will

But I will still fly 

Celeste Lamarre-Vernale

12/2/2013

 

Medium Misconceptions

 

I write this with trepidation, not wanting to ruin the idea of being a Medium.  Here is part of my story you will rarely hear me talk about. 

            My name is Celeste; I am a person who carries a controversial title.  This title was given to me by the human population, which is limited to the confines of the human mind.  I am called a Medium.  Through my childhood I struggled to understand the human in the most basic of ways.  Since I was small I had a knowing about people.  I knew things I shouldn’t know.  I am not talking the light and happy things only, I am talking deep inside.  I could see into the depth of others souls and into the depth of others egos.  I would touch into the darkest recesses of the ego, the place in which we hide the things which we do not like to talk about.  In that way I have suffered the greatest. By suffer I simply mean experienced others pain.      

            I will tell you how my story started based on what I know and pieces I have put together.  The amazing truth is the day I died was also the day I was born.  I was born dead in many ways, yet more alive than most around me.  Some say we pick our family situations, our life lessons before we get here.  I always joke that it’s a fill in the bubble sheet and I checked off what I didn’t want as a joke.  The only problem is I didn’t erase the marks well enough.  I am pretty sure I chose to be a princess somewhere high in the mountains and to have nothing but beautiful scenery around me and beautiful people to speak with.  To be with only the highest and divine, funny as I type that I can hear that if that is what I want I would have had to stay in Heaven.

            I grew up wise beyond my years.  In a family of dysfunction I felt abnormal.  I could feel the changes coming on in my life.  I knew when shit would hit the fan.  With out divulging the secrets of my siblings and parents I am going to leave it at that.  My childhood was filled with laughter and tears.  I became the counselor at an early age for my family.  I also spent a lot of time playing with the fairy folk in our blackberry brambles.  I sang to the angels and danced in the clouds in my head.  I rarely spent much time on the earth unless I was with my family or friends.  (I call my imagination my own little world, my own universe; it is part of my heaven.)

            Being born with what I refer to as a marked soul leaves us open to a lot of drama, chaos and strange happenings.  It also creates a level of frustration remembering that at one point I could fly, my body has always felt like a heavy burden to me.  One of the many reasons I seem to mistreat it.  Hear I open my soul in the most vulnerable way to you.

I hate to even share some of this with you.  I at no point want to seem like I am not grateful for my gifts, I am.  You have to understand the three ways I get treated on a daily basis.

1. Fraud:  I scam people out of money
2. Crazy:  I have obvious mental health problems and want to seem more important than others by speaking with the dead, angels, Jesus, Buddha, etc, etc, etc
3. Gifted:  I have a God given gift but even with the acknowledgement of the fact I am gifted comes misconceptions as to what I do. 

I spent time talking with a therapist as a child.  Telling her things I knew about her, what happened on a daily basis.  The voices, the smells, the constant nightmares that I am being chased by the dead, and last but not least the heaviness I carried knowing when someone would die or something bad was going to happen.  Not just a Medium, I am a psychic, I am a clairvoyant, and I am a physical medium which means I experience the pain of those who have passed and even those who are living.  When I was a preteen and teenager the therapist said to me, “well the voices are not threatening you or tell you to kill others, you are not schizophrenic.  You have no disorders that I can see other than dealing with anxiety.”

That is not the answer I wanted! 

I wanted the doctor to make it go away.  I wanted them to tell me that there was a cure.  I wanted them to understand how awful it was to see into people and see who they really were inside and to know how pure and beautiful their soul is and wanted their ego to be.  I wanted to literally die and return to God!  MY GOD!!  Clarity would be mine.  (Just a note, there is a part I have left out when I was 8 years old I had a nightmare about being attacked by a dog, that day I was, they stopped counting stitches at 2000.  My face, my arm and my ass were torn open, all I remember was being in the arms of love, being embraced by warmth during the experience.  I watched it happen from above and I begged to stay with them that day.  I remember it vividly and I had no pain during the attack and very little blood loss.) 

I became a very serious person, I didn’t laugh much and I found humor to be annoying.  Didn’t anyone else see what I saw?  Every day I saw the destruction of human spirit, the soul suffering amongst anger and hatred.  I watched as those around me didn’t understand in the real God, didn’t have faith in anything and I suffered for them.  I was young and foolish as many of the “gifted” children are growing up.   

I have waited for years for a scientific explanation as to what this is.  Science needs to tell me what this is, this gift, this vision, this view of the world and this knowing.  How can I tell you about your Grandmother and her favorite quilt if I know NOTHING about you?  I know nothing about my clients when they first come to me.  How do I know that their brother killed himself?  How do I know these moments of pain in your life?  Why am I gifted the ability to help you to heal?  Why is it my job to take the burden of guilt, doubt or sadness off of people’s shoulders?  WHY ME GOD DAMNIT WHY ME!!!! 

Again this is not to seem ungrateful at all.  I love that I help people heal, I love that I help others find peace inside an unmerciful mind.  Before I started actually following my gift and calling I thought this way, the why me in my head.  Now, I say why not you!   

I spent most of my life hiding from who I was.  Afraid to tell people, judgment, loss of friends, and no one really wanted to know me for me.  I can’t keep being who I am in fear and hiding.  Even as an adult I still hide.  It feels like a constant witch trial in my head.  I get so tired of the “prove yourself” crap or other bogus bullshit I have to deal with.  I am not here to prove myself I am here to help those who want me to. I believe that spirit will lead them to me, that God will have them call me.  I do not advertise to make the most money possible, I wait, and I wait for them to come to me. 

Knowing that death and life coexist moment by moment can at times be maddening.  I do carry a heaviness of knowing the final fate of humanity.  I do carry a heaviness knowing that I can not get every soul to live a loving, kind, judgment free life.  To know that people look at me like I am two shades of crazy, waiting for the call I am in the psych ward.  Perhaps if I just took meds this would all go away.   

If I just took the meds to make it all go away I guess I was be normal, but where is the gift in that?  I guess, no matter how hard the process was to get to where I am at now I am blessed.  I love what I do now and even though the heaviness still hangs around, spirit brought me back around to humor.  Everything happens for a reason, neuroscientists or neuropsychologist will tell you that our mind is constantly trying to make sense of chaos so it creates these relationships and patterns.  It needs structure, part of our primitive brain.  Our primitive brain is what allows Matrixing to fool the believers and gives argument to the non believers.  I just hope one day, one day that science will name this gift I carry and give me answers.  Answers to how this happened to me and why me?  Answers to how people can find their own inner peace, find peace with others.  Perhaps someday science will teach us all of this, or perhaps physics or quantum physics will make all the connections for us.  Until then, here I am, raw, honest and showing you what the misconception is. 

Trust….

Belief….

 

I am crazy

I am a fraud

I am a Medium

I am one with GOD

Name me what you wish

I know where I go to in the end

Do you?

Oh and no, I do not talk or work with Satan.  Satan would not exist if people did not believe in him.  There is nothing Evil about what I do, not if it brings healing.

Emails

So I have so much going on and trying to figure out a mass email program to use as Yahoo thinks I am spamming folks, ready set, advise!

I LOVE YOU

I have recently heard this saying more than once,
"I love you is so over used.  It holds no meaning anymore."

Really?  I would like to hear it more.
"Hi Dad I love you, Mom, I love you."
OR how about, "You are not behaving properly child but I love you."
I love you gosh darn it why should we not throw it around. 

I remember the lovely Pastor Allen Noddin at Newington's CT said something to me.  I remember this like they were words from God.  "If you face opposition, angry people, negative experiences send them love." 

So if we should send love to all and wish them well, how is it possible to over use it?  In the end shouldn't we be focused on love. 

As I always say, we do not need to like everyone but we should always send them love.  You don't have to call your brutal enemy and say, "I LOVE YOU MAN!"  You should though take a moment and say to the universe, "I recognize that this situation is brought into my life for my betterment and thank you, I send love to (insert name) and wish them well on their journey."  Of course you do not need to write this down and quote me but we should always look at this word we use.

IS love really used enough?  Can you say, "I wish you well and blessings?" enough?  Is it possible to really over use positive words too much?  I love my friends dearly, all of them, male and female.  I get told by people that I shouldn't tell the guys I love them.  Are you kidding me?  Why?  Love shouldn't imply sex right?

My best friend back in elementary school and all through to college, KJ and I would sleep in the same bed.  We would tell each other we love each other and kiss each other on the mouth.  Did that make it sexual?  NO, we were best friends, I would do anything for her and loved her deeply and still do.  We live close by but my schedule has been crazy and I miss her all the time, because I love her.

LOVE is not a word that is thrown around too much.  We as a collective group should use it more freely.  Okay so maybe we will get some strange looks when you tell the Coffee Barista that you love her but you know, spread it as much as you can before they lock you up.  ;-)

Who am I

I think we all have struggled with identity at some point. I mean we are given so many titles and in life we try to compartmentalize things to make more sense. So I am sitting here as a Mother. My daughter is playing quietly on her own as she always does and we are spending time together laughing. You know I can list things I consider myself, writer, teacher, daycare provider, mother, sister, aunt, cousin and the list goes on. I am also hyper aware of how my presence will change others lives either for the better or worse and I have no control over that. I can just be who I am; take it or leave it.

I am also an introvert. This is a thing that people do not understand or believe about me. If you pull up the definition of an introvert you will see that I fall under the title rather peacefully. I am that way from lots of things but I have a fear of judgment for some reason and used to get sensitive if people didn’t like me. Sometimes I still get upset but only if they give me an identity I don’t like. It’s been a long road of discovery.

I did something amazing when I was like 10-12. I don’t remember the exact years but I was in a support group for teens with dysfunctional families. (Side note, I think just about every family has some sort of dysfunction there are just different variants to that.) We were trying to create skits to bring to schools about staying away from drugs and suicide prevention, etc. I don’t remember if we ever performed as this part of my life was a blur. I believe we did.

When I was a kid I was terrified of not being good enough. Again the way I was raised, dysfunction. It was my job to be the support person, the guide, the person who helps people to grow. I have always neglected my own needs to oversee the needs of others. I loved theater and the theater arts teacher had me in a class on Musicals, we would have to perform for the class and she said to me, “It amazes me how you just get lost in the scene, why don’t you try out for the plays? You can tell you believe you are there.” I never did, my own insecurities holding me back.

I spent my days locked in my room learning the words to several different musicals and trying to train my own voice. I always had a desire to be on stage, to create characters. I have written a dozen or so short plays since I was a kid and used to show them to the theater teacher. I wrote plays for my niece and son every Christmas for them to perform for the family. I have been a closet theater geek all of my life.

I don’t know who produced what play or what musical score was written by whom. I have never been very good with that sort of stuff. Now the only thing holding me back is my weight as stupid as that sounds I lost so much weight. I put it back on and this has been ridiculously frustrating and now with the injury to my leg I am limited as to what I can do. There I go again though, creating an identity based on my weight.

Anyway, there was a point to this, these identities. I do not live my life as just Celeste, I am not just a Mom or a cousin or an Aunt. I live far beyond the reaches of a sister or a daughter. In fact I far surpass worlds that most of us know and live with in my head as many different people at once. I do not have multiple personality disorder but I love to bring out other characters that I have observed in my people watching and hanging with my friends.

Since Improv I have realized that my passion of theater has not diminished and I am very much missing that part of my life. When I was a teen to young adult I was so busy trying to be normal I lost sight of my spiritual self. The part of me connected to that which is higher and better than me, and I stopped striving to be a better version of me. Man was I a whiney, insecure pain in the rear. As I reached my young adult hood I realize I missed trying to figure out the paranormal world. I am the first to discount the weird goings on, you can ask my friend. I do not believe fully that everything is spirit or something else but I do believe that there are things that science has yet to explain and I embrace those in my life and want to learn.

Then I hit 35, I realized that I had missed laughing, I was always so freaking serious. I watched Whose Line is it Anyway and laughed, a few shows on TV. I found that we had Improv in Connecticut and I laughed. I started taking classes again and realized how much I had always loved theatrics and how many classes I avoided because I was afraid I was not good enough.

When I was younger I wanted to take dance classes and be on stage in NY. I always imagined being in the Phantom or other various musicals. I have always loved to sing, although not great, I can sing sometimes. I have always loved to be a part of something bigger. There has been that emptiness for years inside because I missed that part of me. Now it feels that part of who I am can not be filled and I have to find every possible way to continue to take classes and learn. Some call that obsession but I call it the sudden need to fill apart of my soul that has been empty for so long. It is like a person who has walked through the desert and finally comes upon water. I was dry and parched and now I feel complete again and full.

I have spent so much of my life living for others and I found my spiritual community filled me up with love and hope. The ability to see the world is not a horrible place and people are by default good. We can not judge one another for what we do or how we behave. We are not sure what someone else has been through so we need to learn to accept everyone for who they are. We do not need to like them but we need to accept that they are who they are with out judgment and ridicule. I do not judge you and if you judge me shame on you.

I also learned through Improv that being other characters in make believe scenes are very liberating. Much like when I write my fictional stories, children or otherwise, I find peace with in my characters. My characters are almost a reflection of a place and time that needs to be recognized and accepted as a part of my identity or character. Almost every character you ever feel drawn to or want to be a part of has some reflection of who you feel you have been or are. Liberating to see yourself from inside out and be respectful and understanding of that part of you.

I never spell check or check my there, their or they’re when I post these things. I may have mixed up a few words but when I free write, you get what you get and you don’t get upset. ;-)

Remember, you are the only person who has the power to fill the voids in your life. When those get filled in you will find people who will compliment you and you will have balanced friendships and more kindred spirits. Whether that is a relationship of romance, bromance, or friendship, it is all about balance. As you fill your soul up with good you shine. When I see people on stage they seem to shine and sparkle to me and now I understand why.

Improv is a very interesting art form and has brought me to a new point in my life and I can never be thankful enough to my new found friends at the Improv groups. I apologize to them if I am a little over the top and say things that are shocking or perverse. There is so much to me and I am learning to uncover the layers and let others see all of me and in that is always both liberating and terrifying.

The Grey: There is controversial topics here

No I am not talking 50 Shades of Grey I am talking about the life in GREY.

We has humans want there to be a right and a wrong, a happy and a sad, a beautiful and an ugly.

We want resolution to our minds ability to categorize things into groups.  Celeste is fat, her friend is not, Celeste is a Medium, her friend is a dentist.  Whatever it is we compartmentalize everything in our lives.  We want things to have crisp clean lines because it makes our justifications easier. 

It is part of the human condition.  We all formulate agreements in our mind as to what is right and what is wrong.  When I was a kid if we got spanked this was okay, but now someone said, "this is not okay, let's see how it changes the children who were spanked."  They did all of these studied which were not as objective as we would like but now we say, "if we hit our children will hit so spanking is wrong."  I will admit right here sometimes a swift smack to the rear is what they need.  You know what all this granola parenting is doing, creating a ton of children who are not respectful, feel like they can do what they want when they want and have no respect for others.  Why?  NOT because Granola parenting is bad but because EVERY CHILD IS UNIQUE AND DIFFERENT.  Every child will respond to different parenting styles differently.  If you have a very sensitive, gentle child then reasoning with them is great.  You have a self righteous child you may need to review how you work with them.  They may need a firmer hand.  I don't believe in child abuse, that is my belief.  In some countries it is normal for the father to have sex with the daughter first, to teach them.  Gross isn't it?  The women don't end up all emotionally scarred because it is an accepted practice.  Shades of grey.

How do we continue to live in a world where people want to see only the black and white of the world.  This is right and this is wrong.  If your best friend comes to you and says, "That is it I am divorcing my asshole of a husband he cheated on me."  Your reaction is to comfort and you believe he is an asshole but do you really know what happened.  Did you stop and ask him his perspective?  Things are not just black and white, things are in the GREY and we have more than one side to every story and if we do not honor the other person and listen to both sides and then make a judgement we lose out on the truth. 

I am totally guilty of this.  Someone said, "this girl is a bitch on facebook look what she posted."  I will admit that is awful.  I will attack the person in my head at times.  Are they truly awful though?  Do I know the history between the two of them and do I know what got them to that point to say what they did?  Do I know what got them to the point of doing what they do?  I don't, I have to investigate, I have to see all of the colors in this situation before assuming I know anything about another person or the situation itself.

If people would stop judging others as good or bad I think the world would be a much more peaceful place.

So is a man who cheats good or bad?
Is a woman who cheats good or bad?
Is a man who killed a woman good or bad?
Is a woman who killed a man good or bad?
Is the person who is an abusive alcoholic good or bad?
Is the person who puts up with the abusive alcoholic good or bad?

What creates these people, situations?  What has lead them to this path?  If I say you are a jerk am I good or bad?

Sometimes we need to investigate more before we jump to conclusion about others or situations. 

DO NOT ASSume. 

People have opinions but that is okay but don't base your opinions on their opinions unless you have investigated the topic yourself.  It can save you a lot of drama and grief later on.  Be true to yourself and your beliefs, there is nothing wrong with them.  Just don't place judgements on others unless you understand all the sides of the stories they share or the way they react.  We all walk a different path and respect that, remain objective and you will find the world seems a lot less nasty.