So when you have the need to tell survivors or anyone else what they HAVE to do, please remember that life is about choices. Just as there are many luxuries in life, there are also many choices that can be good, when faced with the unexpected. Or, to put it another way, when faced with the chaos that life throws us. Rather than the chaos we purposely create when we take risks and find that we have new twists that require some further management.

One of the surest ways to increase creativity is to make small changes in your environment or daily routine.  Things that really don't make a bit of difference in the big picture.  Moving things around on your desk, for instance.  Or just rotating some pictures in your home.  Or trying out a different grocery.  Or simply going around the store the opposite way than you normally do. 

Have fun as you develop flexibility. In your structure AND your chaos.

Now, life is filled with unplanned chaos. Certainly violence and abuse fall into that, along with job losses, death of loved ones, hurricanes, starvation, war, etc.

If we expect something to happen, we can prepare for it to some extent. Or we can do what a lot of people do--just hope it doesn’t happen. Like so many churches deal with abuse by clergy.

Well, this one totally threw me. It was something that I’d always known could happen. In fact, I’d followed all of the medical recommendations--that was the first thing my shocked doctor told me when she called to say, just days before Christmas, that she was almost certain that I had breast cancer.

“First You Cry” is the title of a well-known book by Nancy Reagan. I did.

Next thing you do is search for resources. For me, that was starting with a very good friend, who had already gone down the dreaded road and even written some about it, as a professional writer.

Right after the first set of horrible decisions, I got back to the structure, thanks to my son and his sweetheart, (now my daughter-in-law). They gave me the gift of changing their own plans to stay and support me, doing all of the routine structural things of housekeeping so that I could meet the expectations of the editors of three publications, each asking for articles on clergy sexual abuse. The editors would have patiently waited until I had recovered, I knew. Yet I couldn’t wait. This was my passion, and I needed to get it done “just in case” something else, worse than the cancer itself, occurred during the course of the 4-hour surgery ahead and whatever treatment might be entailed.

Along with the surgeon and the oncologist, I turned to recent co-workers who were therapists or psychiatric nurses. Talk about luxuries, having these people as friends!

“Here comes another book!” one therapist said, providing a bit of comic relief. I smiled, yet didn’t tell her that I’d already thought about this.

Thought, but didn’t pursue.  It wasn't where my heart led.  Those of you who know me well have often heard me say that survivors have choices with how to respond to what has happened.  This goes for cancer survivors, as well as any other kind.  Nothing gets me furious any faster than for a survivor to tell me that another survivor HAS to do such and such, as if there is a set of absolute rules.

I did write an article for a nursing magazine after I discovered a unique slant that nobody had yet tackled much, yet was being studied out in California (ie. Chronic pain that plagues 20% of survivors following surgery, due to neurological damage).  Once that was done, I was finished with using my writing skills for the purpose of the fight against breast cancer and all of the problems it creates.

Not that this wasn’t a worthy project--it was. Thankfully, many writers DO pursue, one that has made many quite successful in monetary terms and more. 

It’s just that this wasn’t for me. That’s because I was most angry about the fact that breast cancer had interrupted my life of writing already. Writing that was already moving the way I wanted it to go, in finding many people even in those pre-Web days and knowing that I had blazed trails because I had chosen to write about a massive problem that was just starting to make the news. Not the problem of abuse, though that was the more popular. The problem of Collusion WITH abuse, a subject that I continue to find much more intriguing.

So I have not done what many activists do--taking those Race for the Cure runs. I’m glad others have.  It's an honor that my daughter-in-law and dear male survivor-friend do the race every year and often report this to me.  I just haven’t had the time nor the interest in doing that.  I want to stay focused on doing what I love to do most, what I loved to do before this unplanned chaos came along--writing to make changes in my world, in areas where few others dare to tread.

That’s the missionary spirit in me, I suppose. It’s what makes me unique and allows me to encourage others to find their own paths, making unique choices that are fine. Not the choices that I would make, necessarily. Heaven forbid! What a boring life it would be if we all made the same choices! Yet choices that work well and contribute to our changing world in the most effective and fulfilling way that each individual can find. 

Even if it wasn't what you had planned in those pre-disastrous days.

Some time ago, I suggested to a survivor that having one friend to whom she could talk about her survival journey each day is a luxury. She was offended, initially. She considered it to be a curse that she only had one. Especially since that one was also a survivor wounded by the same perpetrator.

While it would be nice to have many more, the truth is that most survivors until very recently have not had one. Many still do not. Because the vast majority of survivors have never known where to turn and the majority of people, whether survivors or not, still cannot really hear the deepest sorrows that survivors of abuse and violence and collusion have endured.  

So please put your situation in perspective--in our larger world.  Today. In history. I believe you may find many things, both tangible and intangible, to count as luxuries.

In so doing, you’ll realize that we are all in this together, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses even though some choose to remain silent.  You may find, as I have, that it's not necessarily bad company.  In fact, it's filled with a diverse bunch of people, many who are truly miracles of transformation!

There are just so many choices for most of us who have time to even think about the richer things in life. It is by realizing this that we learn to shake up our own lives in creative ways in order to produce a controlled chaos that allows us to take risks, being unsure of the outcomes. And yet not needing the outcomes to go a certain way every time. In other words, not needing to be in control. Sounds like a paradox? It is.

One of the secrets in finding balance in our lives has to do with finding ways not to be so needy. This doesn’t mean we deny our needs. We just shorten our list of real needs, deleting a lot of things that our limited circle of acquaintances, even though that includes most in our culture, consider as necessary. An example I gave a few days ago was the automatic washer.

So much of our lives are devoted to building bigger houses or buying luxuries that we put on the “necessity” list.

It’s fine to put some luxuries on that list, but not okay when we fail to realize that they are indeed luxuries. Children need to hear often that we consider many things in our lives to be luxuries. We need to hear ourselves say this, too. Sometimes right out loud.

One thing I’ve noticed about people who stay stuck or depressed: They tend to have small circles of acquaintances that are void of the rich strata of people who make up our world. Same goes for institutions.

When a parent tells me “everybody I know is doing it this way” and it’s a way that is totally off-the-wall, sometimes even by today’s standards in mainstream, I figure this parent has a very limited strata of support. Same goes for how someone manages finances or a hundred other of life’s challenges.

When a family or institution tries to make corruption within itself out to be normal, we know that they are living in a small “neighborhood,” even though they may be a huge mega-church or denomination.

Bold action doesn’t happen suddenly. Even when it appears to be an impulsive act. Effective, bold action comes because the actor has found ways to re-write the scripts of life creatively, in ways that work for individual fulfillment, happiness, and often just plain fun. That re-writing hasn’t come without much internal work, however.

Some of that work may be done with a therapist. Often much of it is. It may also come through being fortunate in finding other people who can infuse into our minds and hearts radical ideas that are born out of their own history of re-writing.

What few outsiders know is that the hardest part of writing is the re-write work.  Often I've done it over and over again.  Not always for the same reasons.  Editors may ask for a total re-write.  One editor asked me to re-write a manuscript to say things I knew I couldn't say--blaming the victim statements, in fact.  I refused.  Therapists may ask clients to do the same thing, sometimes failing to respect the belief systems that are firmly planted, whether those are solidly grounded or not.

Re-writes that require me to summarize complex ideas or put them simpler can be so gruelling.  Yet I am much more ready to undertake them and to learn from that process.

Most annoying are the re-writes I cause myself, the ones that happen because I still haven't always been careful to save my material as I go.  It's such a sick feeling to find the mouse suddenly not working.  It's an omen that I've learned to recognize before the sinking feeling that comes with the "fatal error" message that I've had on so many manuscripts over the years.  Why is it that they seem to come just as I'm wrapping things up in the last paragraph! Ready to shift gears to something else in the structure of my life.

Suddenly, it seems I have to start all over after I have a reasonable time for ranting and raving and "kicking" myself, swearing this will be the last time I ever forget, yet knowing it probably won't be. 

What I've really learned from those "fatal errors," though, is that they aren't really fatal.  Not only do I survive them.  My article is often twice as nice.  It seems to flow better the second time--well, it may be the fifteenth time I've actually re-written parts of it!  Plus, I am able to reconstruct it, in new form, much faster when I just stop, calm myself down, and realize that it's going to be okay. 

Oh, that I could learn that about many other things in my life!

Change happens, whether we plan for it or not. Try getting a rigid person (or institution) to make a change or try a new approach to a problem, and the first thing you’ll hear is: “Well, we can’t do that because we don’t know what is going to happen!” Like we MUST know in order to move?

So, I’m suggesting that we have the most fun and see the most productivity in our lives when we have a healthy dose of chaos, along with the structure. That healthy dose isn’t very much, though. This is where I believe so many activists divert from an effective course of action to bring about change.

Chaos comes when we dare to take risks and ask others to do the same. It throws the status quo into unknown territory!

My concern is that we often jump into creating chaos before we have, as individuals, a healthy personal structure. It never works.  Teens do it all the time, often with disastrous results!

When I ask our society or an institution or an individual to change very quickly, we forget that we ourselves have slowly evolved into the person that we are, especially if we have lived according to healthy principles, nurturing the structure and allowing for careful thought and planning in how we proceed to make change.

We are deceived if we believe in the magic of quick change.  We are frustrated with unrealistic expectations.  We must stop thinking that the way out of the current mess we see is going to happen in an instant.  Whether the change, or anticipated change, is in ourselves or others. 

True change starts with a change in the belief system.  In all of us!  That means we have to accept that old things we cling to really HAVE passed away.  Without that, there is no hope.  No place for the new.