Malachi Stewart Talks About Healing from Sexual Abuse

Malachi's sexual abuse began when he was a mere first grader and continued to the end of his second grade year of school. His abuser was a young man that his mother had entrusted to walk him home from school since she could not afford the luxury of being a stay at home mom. They lived in an urban apartment building filled with single mothers who often left their children home alone. To them, it was better to leave your child alone while you go “win the bread” than to stay at home with them and live limited by the confines of public assistance. His mother would never have left him with a baby sitter because you simple couldn’t trust people to hold your child’s best interest as paramount. There are a lot of sick people in the world, so keeping Malachi home alone was her way of protecting him from those people. After meeting another single mother with a son in middle school, she found a solution to her problem. Surely, she felt she could trust him to be a companion for Malachi and keep him safe everyday as they made the block and a half journey home from school. Malachi begin to form a deep relationship with the young man and a brotherly bond. He trusted him, because that is what small children do; they trust the world around them and idolize the people they look up to. The naivety of a child is what makes them precious to many members of society but for a predator the scent of an innocent child without proper protection oozes like blood in shark filled waters. The ‘blood’ of Malachi's innocence was seeping into the waters of danger in great quantities as each day my trust grew stronger and the opportunities to capitalize on them multiplied. Finally, on a day where both their parents were just in the next room, the molestation began. It began with games and strange touches that lead to sexual acts. No one ever forgets the first time. The images never leave your mind of a first sexual experience stolen years before sexuality should be awakened and turned into something perverted. So what did Malachi do? He kept silent.

The abuse eventually stopped as his abuser replaced him with another victim. He never told another living soul; he tucked the memory of abuse away in his mind and hid them deeply into the sanctum of his soul where not even he would dare go to visit its archives. He wouldn't realize how much the abuse affected his life until he was almost an adult. It changed the way he valued himself as a person and framed the way he treated others and expected to be treated. It made Malachi very distrustful of others and very cold in relation. It defined his sexuality and caused him to equate intimacy with immorality and shame.

One of Malachi's favorite moments in the movie (based on the play/book) “For Colored Girls” is when one of the characters breaks into a soliloquy about how somebody almost walked away with all of her stuff. The character opens saying: “…stealing my [stuff] from me don’t make it yours, makes it stolen.
Somebody almost run off with all of my stuff & I was standing there looking at myself the whole time
& it wasn’t a spirit that took my stuff…. it was a man whose ego walked around like Rodan’s shadow…it was a man faster
 than my innocence…” This was exactly how he felt. Like somebody had come at the very start of his life, before the first crush and school dance, and walked away with all of 'his stuff'. They walked away with his self-image and left him self-aware. They walked away with his sexual freedom and left him sexually confused. They walked away with his innocence and left him corrupted. They walked away with the twinkle in his eyes and left deep sadness and a desire to be protected from an invisible monster. They walked away with his decision to give my body to someone one day by just just taking his body! They took his legs, thighs, his smile, his bruises and birth marks and left a little boy that he didn’t recognize; the thief left a boy who who was angry, afraid and insecure.

The WORSE part is that his abuser walked away with all of Malachi and no one even noticed! He had to get himself back. It was many years later, and after a lot of downward spirals and negative attempts to ‘self- medicate’, he finally realized what had happened to him wasn’t his fault. He finally realized he was a victim and not a participant. Malachi found himself a survivor that desperately wanted, no needed, to be an over-comer. So he started by taking back the first thing the abuser stole from him, HIS VOICE.

Malachi's first book, 'Journey to Malachi' is a result of that decision to take back his voice!  The follwing list is provided to help others regain their won voices as well.

For Male Survivors Support: http://www.malesurvivor.org/
To Contact a Help Hotline: http://www.rainn.org/
For Christian Counseling: http://www.miraculumcounsellingservices.com/
For Counseling on SSA: http://exodusinternational.org/

Craig Sim Webb Talks About Dreaming

Dreaming for Fun, Adventure, and Personal Transformation by Craig Sim Webb Dreams provide what star trek fans might call a nightly holodeck experience or what hi-tech buffs might see as the ultimate virtual reality, where there is no limit to graphics resolution, computing power or on-line storage. In dreams and in lucid dreams especially, where the world somewhat avails itself to the suggestions of the dreamer, adventure and intrigue are almost guaranteed because the usual laws of physics and of society no longer apply, and many of the apparent blocks set by age, sex, race or religion simply fall away. In dreams we can be the hero of our own adventure, find romance, fly, travel through "solid" objects, breathe underwater, and perform feats free from embarrassment, peer pressure, monetary limits, and even physical handicaps. The boundaries of imagination are the only limits. One can even follow in the footsteps of Tibetan monks who master lucid dreaming as a spiritual illumination stepping stone on the path to enlightenment. Watch upcoming columns for a further description of lucid dreams and tips on how to have them. "All my life I've taken wondrous adventures upon the wings of my imagination while dreaming. I have flown many nights, talked to bears, dogs, raccoons, and owls; I have swum with dolphins and whales, breathing underwater as if I had gills" (L.G. Chico, CA) “Heading up this passage to get refreshments ahead of a crowd of friends, I fill up this large glass with milk and notice a head of lettuce floating in it. This is odd and I wonder if I’m dreaming. To check, I catch someone's eye nearby, and he smiles and nods without me having to say anything. I consider taking off to fly, but the dream seems to be tugging at my chest with quite some force. It doesn't hurt, but it feels as if I should follow, so I give my mental okay and let it take me. I begin zooming horizontally and then down to the left, in some kind of dark void, accelerating until I'm really, really moving – faster than I've ever flown before. I hesitate, afraid that if I go any faster I won’t survive. But remembering again that it's just a dream, I urge myself past this fear. Immediately, my arms sort of ‘snap’ outwards a bit and I instantly accelerate to some tremendous velocity such that I seem to become nothing less than the quality of pure speed itself. After a short while, I slow and feel myself being "brought back together” to view where I have just been. There's an RCA electronic component in a small circuit of some kind and I realize I was just an electron! Very slowly, I awaken buzzing with energy, and my hands tingle for quite some time afterwards.” (C.W., Montreal, Qc) "I suddenly realize I'm dreaming from surprise and excitement, recognizing that I've become a salmon swimming upstream! Leaping high into the air, I climb a series of chutes. Then I flip onto the shore and the flipping sensation feels so odd that I awaken." (W.D., Palo Alto, CA) "Falling asleep, I remember wondering what truly 'knowing myself' would be like. Dreaming, I become aware of this incredible, indescribably powerful 'Love Light'. The thought comes that there is no power like it - it's absolutely non-judgmental, and dwarfs every worry or desire I've ever had. It is peace and simplicity and well-being. It includes sexuality but encompasses far more. Basking in what feels like 'an ocean of grace', I soon realize that I'm not looking at it, but rather that I AM it, recognizing myself." (C.W., Palo Alto, CA) Craig Sim Webb, Executive Director of the DREAMS Foundation (www.dreams.ca), is a dream analyst/author/ researcher, as well as physicist/inventor, and performing/recording musical artist, who has done pioneering dream and lucid dream research at California’s Stanford University and at Montreal’s Sacré-Coeur Hospital. He has had the privilege to be an invited expert for major motion pictures, Fortune 500 corporations, and well over a thousand international TV, radio, print, and online media. To learn about the Dream Interpretation Mastery and Lucid Dreaming interactive online teleclass adventures Craig leads, please visit www.dreams.ca/teleclass.pdf, or email: training@dreams.ca

Richard Barnes Talks About Luzon

Richard Whitten Barnes is a native Chicagoan, graduating as a chemist from Michigan State University. He is now retired from a career in international chemical sales and marketing, which has taken him all over the world. Barnes is a veteran of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division and an avid sailor. He lives in Lake Wylie, S.C., but spends summers with his wife Marg and dog Sparty at their cottage on St. Joseph Island, Ontario, on the shores of Lake Huron. Barnes is the author of The FAIRCLOTH REACTION, The CORYDON SNOW, BRINK, and BAD MEDICINE. LUZON is his second historical novel set in WWII and has just published from Wings Press this month. America has broken Japan’s “Purple” code, and a captured U.S. Navy officer knows it. Someone has to make sure the Japanese don’t find out. It’s 1941, and Riza Manceda, a beautiful American intelligence officer, needs someone to impersonate a Japanese officer for a dangerous mission to her homeland of the Philippines. Her search uncovers the ideal man in Daniel Suhiro, a first generation Nisei with perfect credentials for the job…but maybe not so perfect. The mission is to prevent the Japanese from discovering the Allies have broken their “unbreakable” Purple code. This secret could shorten – or lengthen – the war by years, and is known by an officer captured in Luzon. Riza and Daniel train to either rescue the officer or, if necessary, assassinate him. The compelling story of their harrowing venture meticulously comes to life as the pair becomes drawn closer to each other and then thrown headlong into incredible peril. Richard Whitten Barnes is meticulous in getting the historical details of the WWII years right. "Luzon" is sprinkled freely with nonfictional characters saying and doing things relevant to the times.