Bambú Producciones – Spain

This is a Spanish production company created by Ramón Campos and Teresa Fernández-Valdés. I have come to love the romantic storylines that they put together in TV Series such as High Seas/Alta Mar, Morocco Love in Times of War/Tiempos de Guerra, Grand Hotel/Gran Hotel, Velvet and Velvet Colección, and Cable Girls/Las Chicas del Cable – the ones I have loved. These are period pieces with the most beautiful costumes of those era’s stemming from the late 1800’s to 1950’s and 60’s. The screenwriters they have chosen for these pieces create stories that stay in your head forever. These are nail biters that almost force you to “binge” watch as you are mesmerized from one minute to the last. A step above the “soap opera” style that I grew up with, I would even say that Grand Hotel far surpasses Downton Abbey with a more provocative and less dependable outcome. Downton Abbey plays more to the American audience, whereas Grand Hotel doesn’t care or even need to. When you have created a masterpiece, your work will embrace the audience it is intended for. Cerebral minds that are seduced by outstanding performances from actors that stimulate your senses.

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L’Art Du Crime: France TV Series

The Art of Crime, (2017 – present) stars Nicolas Gob (A French Village) and Éléonore Bernheim.

Murderers in Paris think about art before committing a crime – right? They have the Louvre, and so many famous French artists: Degas, Manet, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Rodin for starters. Aren’t all Parisians cerebral junkies who feast on literature, opera, art, fashion, wine, and jazz from the time they are born till the time they die? It is only natural to assume that they murder sometimes too. The average detective in France is probably not an art connoisseur,(probably brought into the city), and as a result, an art historian has to be brought in. She along with the occasional support from her father, who shares her knowledge and pedigrees, must work side by side with homicide to find the culprit behind each heinous crime. In the meantime, one learns more about art and the other about crime.

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The Survivor of the Narcissistic Parent Meets the Narcissistic Partner

I write what I am learning. I teach as I grow. I make the same mistakes as anyone else, only my skills show me how to coach people based on what I have uncovered. I am not right, I just write what becomes aware to me as it happens. When I have been in relationship to men, I have hidden behind them and not been my true self. I have been afraid, just as my clients have been afraid, because we were taught to be. When it is over, I reflect and feel the guilt and shame of not having said what I should have said. Of not standing up for myself. Of not really being the partner to them because I was too busy trying to make them love me. This is what happens when you are the survivor of the narcissistic parent. You meet the narcissistic partner and dance with them using the same song you were taught as a child. I will make you love me, no matter what it takes. When you do, I will finally succeed in having the love I have always wanted. Because, if I can make you love me, I will have finally turned this wrong into a right. Jeannine Vegh, M.A., I.M.F.T.

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Contemplative Prayer brings Persistence to Faith; Integrity to Self

Merry Christmas, Joyeux Noel, Feliz Navidad and Boldog Karacsonyt

I love saying merry Christmas in different languages but these cultures represent a different part of my heart. I have used my blog to create a new format this year as I begin to transform into this new person that I am on a creative and spiritual level. If you look back at my blog post from December 24, 2020, called “The Dawn of a New Era,” you will see the astrological meaning in the transformation that was to begin in 2021, for all of us. It started with the Christmas Star that hadn’t been seen since the Age of the Renaissance and I reflected on what this meant in that post as I talked to people about this then. Now, I would like to read a piece of scripture that I think is poignant for this year and this post.

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Preparations to be Together… A Hungarian Film

This is a Hungarian film, with a very very long name: Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time (2021). It is a film that many women can relate to. The man who isn’t who he says he is. The man who cons us into his disguise. The man who is avoidant and we take on the challenge of falling in love with him and gaining his trust and love. Then he turns into another person. He lies. We try to win him back by being persistent and devout. In the movie, this goes in an interesting direction. A very artistic path. Yes, she does get him back in the end. Only, in real life, this rarely happens.

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Staying True to the Self in a Relationship – Ellen’s Story

My first two videos (part 1 and 2) in a series I am creating called Staying True to the Self in a Healthy Relationship. These first two videos are of a couple who have been married for 50 years and had a six year break in between. They have one adult child and a grandchild. Subscribe to my Youtube channel after watching one of these and you will be able to watch all the videos I have created there.

Part I Ellen’s Story

Part 2 Ellen’s Story

Love in Any Language

Four months ago, I created my first video for DiscerningGal.com, where I interviewed award winning author, Evelyn Kohl LaTorre, for her first book “Between Inca Walls.” The second book entitled “Love in Any Language,” is the part two. In fact, when you begin to read this book – should you have read the first one, you will feel as if this books starts where the last one left off. And, this is the point. Many people were curious what happened to Antonio and Evelyn; once they left Peru. We are indulged with this beautiful story about a couple who’s marriage spans five and a half decades, as we speak. The book ends about three decades later and we are on our seats for the entire roller coaster ride.

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Pain and Suffering Toward Enlightenment

For the past seven months, I have been numb…as I walked in the desert alone – in silence and prayer or meditation. I have come to know God in a renewed way; as I took this path on a contemplative journey. The pain and suffering of losing yet one more relationship at 59, took a hold of me and wouldn’t let go. Realizing, that once again, I had given up on myself while trying to please them and one more time being blamed. This time something completely made up and fabricated to get rid of me. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back and yet, while I hoped to get an apology and for the nightmare to be over, I began to realize, month by month, this was just not going to come.

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One U2 Revised

One

Is it getting better?
Or do you feel the same?
Will it make it easier on you now?
You got someone to blame

Did I disappoint you?
Or leave a bad taste in your mouth?
You act like you never had love
And you want me to go without

Did I ask too much? More than a lot
You gave me nothin’ now it’s all I got
We’re one but we’re not the same
Well we hurt each other then we do it again

One love, one blood
One life, you got to do what you should
One life, with each other

One life but we’re not the same
We get to carry each other


All I want is you and I still love you. An apology is all it takes to say hello.

An Impossible Love: Un Amour Impossible

I will not put this movie (French 2018), in “The Arts” section because it is a psychological drama that hits on the topic of sexual abuse, narcissism and women being left alone for several generations; much like Antonia’s Line (Netherlands, 1995). The film starts out in the 1950’s post WWII France. If you are a great film lover, as I am, you will know when you see the cover and the title, it just hits you – I must watch this film. What really piqued my interest was the title “An Impossible Love,” which hit home for me. I saw other things in the description that I ignored at first until it came up on the screen. I love the way Catherine Corsini handles abuse of a child in this film. Extremely subtle. The topic does not even come up until much later in the film. The child’s older lover tells the mother, not to let her daughter visit the father anymore. The shock on the mother’s face, to realize a man she has loved for 16 years, but who has rejected her all the same, is now sexually abusing their daughter. The shock to finally take in the missing pieces of this puzzle “Rachel” has created, her fantasy that he was a great lover, that they had something special together, suddenly unravels before her eyes. Virginie Efira (with the help of the cameraman), gives a somatic demonstration of soul searching, confusion, awareness and reality in just a few seconds of this film.

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