Tea Stories: Firm-tea ☕🫖🇵🇸🍉🐿️🕊️🦋👶🏻

**DM me if you want the link for the Healing Circle taking place tonight at 9pm UK time.**

Tea Stories: Firm-tea ☕🫖🇵🇸🍉🐿️🕊️🦋👶🏻

There was a Gazan Father telling his children who had just been bombed that they have to be strong. This is not the time to be sad, he said. They were little tiny boys, babies and they were crying and nodding. He held firm and when questioned he said that now wasn't the time to become weak as their survival depended on it.

30:36 'And when We cause the people to taste some mercy, they rejoice in it. But should an evil befall them because of that which their hands have sent forth, behold they despair.'

What we are witnessing today will necessarily have triggered PTSD and trauma responses in those who are engaged. Symptoms include -

- Being easily startled.
- Feeling tense, on guard, or on edge.
- Having difficulty concentrating.
- Having difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep.
- Changes in eating patterns.
- Feeling irritable and having angry or aggressive outbursts.
- Engaging in risky, reckless, or destructive behavior.
- Bodily pains and changes - heart rate, digestion, sweating.
- Nightmares and flashbacks, feelings of isolation, and guilt and shame.
- Negative thoughts patterns, negative self and world view.
- Disconnection and disassociation and despair.

It really is our responsibility to address these for ourselves. When we are having a great time we are joyous, regulated and relaxed. Then the difficulty befalls us and often we have had a hand in creating that for ourselves through poor decision making or poor judgement and then we despair due to poor self management.

If we do not pay attention the exhaustion and frustration can cause us to become detached from our faith, from God. To keep our faith strong we have to go within. We have to walk straight into the eye of the storm and be with it. Jeremy Wayne Tate tells us - Bison are the only animal that turn into a snowstorm rather than away from it because they instinctively know that walking into the storm will get them out of the weather quicker.  😬

So, what shall we do now?

- Dive in.
*Grab a piece of paper and write down all the thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, spiritual indication and social implications that come to mind.
*Scan the inner workings of your mind and notice patterns and themes.
*Respond to this activity by giving thanks to yourself for engaging and offer compassion to yourself as though you would comfort a dear friend.

- Learn from our mistakes.
*Assess the mistakes we may have made along the way and assess our responsibility in the creation of those mistakes so they do not happen again. Consider how we may avoid a repetition.

- Connect with others.
*Despite the strong temptation to, do not isolate yourself because we need comfort from those around us to stay strong. We may isolate by avoiding the phone, being mean to those around us, projecting pain on to them so we can qualify the need to isolate.

- Consider misfortune as a cleansing.
*If we have earned our misfortune then better it is exorcised in this life than the next so go with it and try to stay 'awake'. Wisdom of Tao - Taoism teaches us to align ourselves with natural flow, rather than resisting it. It encourages us to embrace simplicity, humility, and spontaneity, allowing us to live in harmony with the up and down rhythms of the universe.

- Learn to give yourself time and compassion.
*Destructive shame and guilt are dysfunctional and get in the way of giving oneself time and compassion during hard times. To be able to make the long haul we have to be present to our experience so we do not disassociate. This means that each time you come up against difficulty to simply acknowledge it and give yourself some reassurance that you're there for yourself.

- Get in action.
*Negative energy can be turned into positive energy. Much like many famous writers and painters who describe taking their pain and turning it into art; we can take the pain and create something beautiful - write, draw, paint, fundraise, build, share. We don't have to harbour negativity and be confused as to how to expel it. We have the answer.

- Study Quran page 993
'Those who do not succumb to the tendency to turn away from God when evil befalls them are the patient 'who, when affliction befalls them, say, "Truly we are God's, and unto Him we return" (2:156)

ٱلَّذِينَ إِذَآ أَصَـٰبَتْهُم مُّصِيبَةٌۭ قَالُوٓا۟ إِنَّا لِلَّهِ وَإِنَّآ إِلَيْهِ رَٰجِعُونَ

❤️🍉🇵🇸