Author Archives: Jeannine Vegh

Unknown's avatar

About Jeannine Vegh

I am a psychotherapist and author of both fiction and non-fiction.

Love Between Equals: An Excerpt

Posted on by
Reply

This is an excerpt from Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D. in her book “Love Between Equals Relationship as a Spiritual Path” (page 118).

Personal love becomes true love, as you recall, when you can feel at home with your beloved because you trust what you see in the mirror: it’s not too wonderful (or demanding of perfection) nor is it too awful or dispiriting. It’s important to remember, when you are on the path of true love, you both have come to trust what you see in the mirror of each other’s eyes. In order for personal love to become true love, the relationship has to have equality, reciprocity, and mutuality, and the reflections of each other need to be Whole Self to Whole Self, which includes what is ideal and what is limited in both people. Why is equality important on this path? Why do partners have to be equals in order for disillusionment to transform into intimacy and ongoing trust? Because the equality signals that both partners want primarily to be with each other in the reality of what they both are – strengths and limitations. The relationship does not feel like a prison but instead feels freely chosen on the basis of knowledge of the self and other.

Love Never Fails: Commitment Does

Posted on by
2

If love never fails, according to 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, then why does it? Why do men or women simply give up and walk away rather than choosing to work on themselves and their partnership? To say “I love you,” signifies that this other being holds value for you. That this person is significant to you.

However, just as a person says they are a Christian (or a Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, etc…) does not mean that they hold this value as sacrosanct. Someone said to me that many people hold the word “integrity” as a shield in front of them. I know this to be true because the person who said that was holding a shield in front of them about many things. The concept of being fraudulent and not having integrity is a foreign thought to me. Being mindful about what I say and do is something I hold very dear. However, I see couples in life and in my practice who fall apart because they are stubborn, egotistical, fighting to be right, or they are just not meant to be.

Continue reading →

Sunstroke: A Russian Film 2014

Posted on by
5

Yesterday, I sat down to watch nearly three hours of this historic fiction that took place between the 1900’s and 1920. From the onset, there is a clear indication of something bad that is going to happen though we have no idea what it will be until they walk onto the barge. Even then, we don’t really know what is going to happen but we can suspect. You are not watching this movie thinking there will be a happy ending as it is somewhat akin to those who watched the Titanic movie. In 1920, it was the end of the Tsar. The entire family had been assassinated; including little children. The communists were most certainly not very humane in their actions. In the aftermath of annihilating the family, they set about to destroy the lives of their soldiers as well. They did not want one single person left behind from the old regime.

Continue reading →

For Strong Women: Marge Piercy

Posted on by
Reply

A strong woman is a woman who is straining.

A strong woman is a woman standing on tiptoe and lifting a barbell

while trying to sing Boris Godunov.

A strong woman is a woman at work

cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,

and while she shovels, she talks about

how she doesn’t mind crying, it opens

the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up

develops the stomach muscles, and

she goes on shoveling with tears

in her nose.

A strong woman is a woman in whose head

a voice is repeating, I told you so,

ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,

ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,

why aren’t you feminine, why aren’t

you soft, why aren’t you quiet, why

aren’t you dead?

A strong woman is a woman determined

to do something others are determined

not be done.  She is pushing up on the bottom

of a lead coffin lid.  She is trying to raise

a manhole cover with her head, she is trying

to butt her way through a steel wall.

Her head hurts.  People waiting for the hole

to be made say, hurry, you’re so strong.

A strong woman is a woman bleeding

inside.  A strong woman is a woman making

herself strong every morning while her teeth

loosen and her back throbs.  Every baby,

a tooth, midwives used to say, and now

every battle a scar.  A strong woman

is a mass of scar tissue that aches

when it rains and wounds that bleed

when you bump them and memories that get up

in the night and pace in boots to and fro.

A strong woman is a woman who craves love

like oxygen or she turns blue choking.

A strong woman is a woman who loves

strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly

terrified and has strong needs.  A strong woman is strong

in words, action, in connection, in feeling;

she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf

suckling her young.  Strength is not in her, but she

enacts it as the wind fills a sail.

What comforts her is others loving

her equally for the strength and for the weakness

from which it issues, lighting from a cloud.

lightning stuns.  In rain, the clouds disperse.

Only water of connection remains,

flowing through us.  Strong is what we make

each other. Until we are all strong together,

a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

*This poem that is one of my favorites. I think all women who have faced trauma in one way or another should read this and feel comforted by her words. It really captures the essence and beauty of a strong woman.

Life on the Streets through a Social Worker’s Eyes

Posted on by
Reply

Today I told someone my address and gave them Oakland as my city instead of Columbus. An odd thing to come out of my mouth after eleven years have passed. From 1996-2010, I lived in Oakland, Fremont and Hayward, California. During this time, I worked for the Berkeley Head Start program and Alameda County Department of Social Services.

I “held” children from all different types of backgrounds: giving them hugs, holding their hands, providing transportation, sharing meals and listening to their stories. I read hundreds of court reports when the case was transferred over or wrote them myself. I gave them love by building trust with them through honesty and support and following through on their needs and wants. We worked a 37.5 hour week though there were times I was off the “clock” or didn’t take a lunch and a break – what was that? The best of us worked our hearts off doing due diligence for other people’s children and sometimes the quality effort, being self-assigned to a family, didn’t include looking at the clock. We were martyrs but it is easy to get lost in a life; that so desperately needs your help. Especially when those that were supposed to, had let them down so many times before – even us.

Continue reading →

Life Coach vs. Therapist with Michelle Risser

Posted on by
Reply

Michelle Risser is a licensed clinical social worker as well as being a life coach for therapists who happen to be mom’s as well. She will be talking about her new online business, as well as explaining what the differences are between a coach and a therapist. She will also discuss and explain EMDR. Her website is JoyfulHappyMom.com

What is God?

Posted on by
Reply

What is God and how does this fit into my life? Firstly, we must look at what “it” is not. God is not a man, a woman, an it or any new fangled plural you want to add here. God, Goddess, Gods are not a human being. It is interesting that I said “What” vs. “Who.” A Who would indicate a person. A What indicates a thing and object and even this is not correct. I look at God as an entity. A higher power, a supreme being, a non-mortal. So, first, I want to put it into this context as I am speaking here.

When the Bible says that Adam was made in God’s image and Eve in Adam’s, it does not mean that God looks like Adam and Eve, it means that he made them pure, honest, and true; two innocents, as they were not God but yet they were in his image. We are all God, or rather one with God and God is in us. Like Alanis Morissette’s song “What if God was one of us?” And, he is all of us as her video so aptly displays. God is also the animals, the trees, the rivers, the mountains, the grass, any object that is on Earth, even those that are man-made. This is God because he exists in all of us, our energy is in all of these things and so it is all God.

Continue reading →

The New Beginning

Posted on by
Reply

I embrace this post with all my heart as it spoke to me and where I am at in my life right now. A holy relationship is a relationship founded in mutual trust, respect, love, passion, commitment and spiritual direction – serving whomever you serve and having a relationship that embraces your beliefs. It is much more but these are just my thoughts in this moment. The special relationship is that which serves the ego.

Celia Hales's avatarMIRACLES EACH DAY

The new beginning you are called to now is a new beginning that, like all others that you have offered or attempted, will take place in relationship.  The difference is that this new beginning will take place in holy rather than special relationship.  (A Course of Love, T3:15.9)

We have arrived at a good place now. We are beginning anew, as we have in the past, but with a difference. Our new beginning will no longer be housed in special relationships that only promised us the good but did not deliver consistently. Our new beginning, this time, will come in the warmth of holy relationships. We have found the elixir, and we will not turn back from its bounty now.

How do we know that we are surrounded by holy relationships? We are not out for #1 anymore, at least not exclusively. We love others as we love ourselves, for…

View original post 315 more words