Interview with

Life Coach and Psychotherapist Charlene Jones

Editors Note: This interview contains sensitive subject matter that may be triggering to readers. Proceed with care.

What's your name?

Charlene Jones.

Where are you from?

Toronto area Ontario Canada.

Who are you today?

Mother, Grandmother, Writer, Poet, Performer, Radio Show Host, Singer.

What do you do?

Life Coach and Psychotherapist, specializing in healing from trauma and in our nightly dreams as a path to health and well being.

What's your story?

At 16 years old while hitchhiking I got into a car driven by two escaped convicts. They held me captive for three days, murdered a man, raped and tortured me. I got away, because I am meant to be here. I had had dreams when I was a child that had told me this would happen and how to escape. Now, in my sixties I have written the first draft of my memoirs which include that story but also how I met a Canadian recognized by the Tibetans as one of their lineage teachers, and traveled the world with this Canadian, learning from him methods of psychological health, intellectual exploration, appreciation for the gift of our senses. His presence and the angels and the Great Intelligence that dreams every night through us are my guides and the reason I am healthy now.

Why is creativity important to you?

Creativity is the voice in us that sings back to that which brought us here. Our echoing in this way strengthens our connection with that Source and its Divine Wisdom.

When/how did you realize you had a creative dream or calling to fulfill?

Through much suffering; through being unable to hold my life together, i.e., keep a job, hold a direction, through my twenties. I knew something was way off and finally as the blocked memories released beginning when I was in my early thirties, and I worked hard to clear all those emotions and terrors, I began to be able to live in a way that feels good, that doesn’t require me to use substance, or try to escape by running away.

How did you embrace it?

Head on.

How did that feel?

Awful!

Where has your journey taken you?

Geographically to live in New Zealand, Australia, to visit India and Europe many times; psychologically and spiritually through PTSD, through the experience of being multiple and finally through to health as measured by a joyous, fulfilling life.

What challenges have you faced?

Healing from rape and torture and witnessing the murder which involved healing from being slightly multiple, raising my son as a single mother while going to University to attain my double degree in English/Education while maintaining the loving relationship I continue to have with him (and now also my daughter in law and two beautiful granddaughters) while my mother was dying of cancer and my ex-husband was abusive and I was the main person in a communal home in the US.

What worked for you?

Focusing on each moment, and every day praying to be a better mother, even as I worked hard with the methods my teacher had given me to clear the uprising toxic material from my emotional body and focused on my studies to help improve our lives.

What didn't work for you?

Feeling like a victim or feeling sorry for myself, outside of the weekly hour I dedicated to those feelings.

What three tips can you share to help others starting on a similar path?

1. Breathe deeply all the time.
2. Remember and focus on all the positive things in your life, starting with “I am still alive.”
3. Cultivate a sense of humor and use it as much as possible.

What are you working on now?

I want to continue to be able to help others and am working on expanding that through my writing and hopefully publication.

I am preparing to re write my memoir, My Impossible Life, (the first draft is complete) and I am learning to use SEO to help market my first novel, called The Stain. I am also learning about Book trailers, which is very exciting.

What's coming up for you in the next year?

Creating book trailers, launching my novel, finishing my memoirs, possibly retrieving my non fiction book called Medicine Buddha Medicine Mind from the desk of Shambala Publications President Nikos Odesios who has had it for over a year, and putting that book, based on a Tibetan Buddhist practice of healing called Medicine Buddha and its co-relates with neuroscience, up on epublishing.

What else do you desire/dream to do?

I’d like to create a following for several small books each outlining a method of healing I used, to make these short books (fewer than 100 page) available very cheaply or for free so others can try the methods. Also I want write another non fiction book, this one called The Story of Poo about septic systems. Septic systems are incredibly important to those of us who have them, and not much that is entertaining, enlightening and readable exists on them as far as I have searched.

How will you make that happen?

Keep going!

What one question would you like to answer that hasn't been asked?

What is the relationship between your consciousness and material form?

That’s my major question.

Where can people find you online?

Web site: www.CharleneDiane.com

Twitter: charlenejones18

7/19/14