Introduction: I like telling people that I am a professional weirdo, because of the line of work that I have chosen, not only as an ordained minister but also as Kahuna. I write daily, blogs, books and as part of the Yahoo! Contributor Network, and of course, The Mana'o Blog, which is sort of an online "school" for those of us who just need things spiritual and weird brought to them in an easier than "guru" manner.
I am an advocate for victims and survivors of domestic abuse, and in that manner, again, I write, I reach out, I offer support and advice when asked for. An expert about how victims and survivors can heal from the pain of their lives, I also speak publicly, not only to groups of people within my community, but also to the community of practicing clergy who need dearly to impart the wisdom to the young people who they marry that abuse, while we hope it never happens, is a possibility. As well, I am starting this year to speak to groups at the high school level, and eventually I hope to speak to more and varied audiences about this ugliness called domestic violence. My thought is that if I can help just one person understand what the real reality is of being someone's victim, that I have done my job well enough to help that one person change their lives. It just takes one person who has been there, who has gone through what they have, and who ultimately survived it all.
In that same manner, and while it is that I teach hula in the traditional sense, my main reason for it these days is to teach other abuse survivors whose own level of self-awareness, of self-love, and whose own thought about their own beauty is not what it should be. I teach other survivors, mostly women ranging in age from 25 and up, how to show themselves how beautiful they really are, all through this dance which has served me with so much for the majority of my 44 years on this planet that one dance is hula. There is nothing quite more awesome to me than to see women who believe themselves to be broken see before their own eyes the metamorphosis not only of who they are in the eyes of the world, but more of who they are in the eyes of the most important person in their lives their very selves.
I also teach and am available to teach classes for young adults and teens for the purposes of teaching them, through hula, how to keep their own level of self where it needs to be which is really that we all need to know how beautiful we really all are, and that no matter who says what, our own opinion of our own selves is what is most important, because other people tune into that energy and read and trust that it is the truth of us.
My job, essentially, is to help other people, mainly women, to know the truth about who they are and who we all are the most beautiful set of people on the planet. All we really need to do is believe it.
