When it All Falls Apart ...Again!

By Lisa Gawlas

When it All Falls Apart Again is the true story of Lisa Gawlas spiritual awakening. The story begins with her account of how her life is literally falling apart again, loosing her home, her job, and her will to live. In a deep depression, she decides to fix things once and for all by converting her car into a gas chamber, but a startling vision of her son doing drugs saves her from that fate.

No stranger to the downs that life can bring, Lisa was born into a dysfunctional and cruelly abusive family. As a parent of three, she tried to treat her kids with as much love as she could muster. But she had never learned to love herself.

She knows she needs to change, but doesn’t know how until she discovers a beautiful key to transforming the pain and turmoil that defines her life. For Lisa, that key is meditation.
It all began on a whim, when she constructed a homemade Ouija board to ask a few questions of the spirit realm. Some “strange coincidences” around the house, and a book given to her by a friend about the paranormal, has her curious enough to try too speak with spirits. When her home made Ouija planchette, an upside down empty pudding cup, leaps into action spelling answers from beyond, Lisa’s world changes forever.

The dialog that came from that first tippy toe into the world of spirit gives her the motivation to continue to seek...and seek she does! First stop for Lisa, learning more about meditation. She tries every way possible to make her connection to spirit...and finds it’s only in the bathtub that she is able to meditate. With a great deal of patience and perseverance she connects to a peaceful inner plane, where she meets her spirit guides, including the spirit of Jill Cadee, the woman who had visited her homemade Ouija board. She forms a deep bond with her guides, who give her something she had never experienced in her life; unconditional love.

Through her bathtub meditations, a new world begins opening up for Lisa. A world in stark contrast to her day to day existence, which is still ruled by depression and dysfunction. While exploring and learning about spirit in meditation, Lisa is not removed from life’s problems at all. In fact, it seems that every time she reaches a new spiritual understanding, another challenge comes along.

The next two years of Lisa’s life are a whirlwind of shuffling between rented rooms, the homeless shelter, and even an off season hotel. The characters she meets along the way range from shady to Saintly, with a few who might have been certifiably insane. The cycle of life falling apart has become more like a crazy speed dating round. But at each of these stations on her path, Lisa maintains her calm, the gift of meditation serving her well.

Lisa has finally shed the feeling that she is simply a victim. The weight she has been carrying around all her life has lifted. In her meditations, she’s met many new guides, including Sananda, who gives her lessons in a type of healing called energy healing. Lisa is in love for the first time in her life, with life itself. As she heals, the deepest darkest traumas from her past come to the surface. The molestation, abuse, and neglect, laid out for the world to see. Through her emotional processing, the old angry Lisa is dying, and she finds peace, forgiveness, and a connection with Spirit she could never have imagined.

At the end of this true life story, Lisa celebrates her triumph, bringing the darkest of places within her into a new world of light. She has overcome personal tragedy, learning to master her depression and anger with grace and humility.

Lisa’s journey of meditation and learning to trust in Spirit is not only inspirational, it is transformational. Candid and raw at times, and written in a personal unique style, it’s a mesmerizing story, openly and lovingly shared, and not to be missed!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lisa Gawlas
• Release date: Mar 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465930224

Lisa Gawlas

In 1962, Lisa (Parkhurst) Gawlas was born into a dysfunctional family fraught with neglect and abuse. Little did Lisa know that those tumultuous early years were necessary lessons guiding her toward spiritual awakening. Lisa put in a stint with the navy, had three children, married, and enjoyed excellent employment and income. But in November 2000, her world was falling apart, and she was guided to begin her spiritual healing quest. Since that joyous occasion, Lisa has deepened her spiritual awareness and earned her hypnotherapy and massage therapy certifications. In the last ten years, she has helped thousands of people around the world with their own spiritual awakening. As a spiritual/medical intuitive, Lisa is devoted to helping others illuminate their own divine paths through spiritual energy work. She has recorded numerous podcasts of her guided meditations, and written a wealth of articles on spiritual growth and raising your vibration, which are available on her website. Lisa currently resides in New Mexico, and blogs regularly about her ongoing journey.

Book preview

When it All Falls Apart … Again … Come Clean With Your Life!

A bathtub odyssey LIVED by Lisa M. Gawlas,

Smashwords Edition Copyright © 2012 by Lisa M. Gawlas

EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4659-3022-4

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

http://www.mysoulcenter.com

Copyright Lisa M. Gawlas, 2012

All Rights Reserved

Cover by Nichole Lewis

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Life Changes Suddenly

Chapter 2 - Meeting the Key Players on the Road to Change

Chapter 3 - Stepping Into the Gates of Hell: The Dark Night of the Soul

Chapter 4 - Coming Alive Within

Chapter 5 - Self Discovery and Understanding

Chapter 6 - Exploring the Depths and Understandings of Myself

Chapter 7 - Leaving the Old Life Behind

Chapter 8 - Karma Burns!

Chapter 9 - The Fulfillment of Spirits Promise

Chapter 10 - Standing at the Crossroads of My Life

Chapter 11 - The Transformation

Chapter 12 - Stepping Out of Your Old Life Into Your New One

Introduction

Ever since I opened a very sleepy eye to this crazy little thing called my spiritual awakening in 2000, I heard the term ascension  to describe the process of spiritual awakening. According to some folks, the planet was doing it, we were doing it, Christ did it... huh?  Christ?  But he died!!! 

Although I had spent most of my life (at least from age 13 forward) trying to get out of body and go back Home, after I began my own awakening journey I wasn't so sure that going home was the trip I wanted to take any longer.  My journey was centered on meditation, and moving through the levels and layers of meditation was actually making this life pretty exciting.  So I figured I would just ignore the whole ascension gig and just do my bathtub meditation journeys to renew my own life's understandings and experiences.

Believe it or not, meditation was my saving Grace.  Meditation had become my life's motivation to wake up and do another day on earth.  The days rushed forward into months like a river which just received a torrential downpour of heavenly liquid.  The months collapsed into years...and changes that began within were changing my outer world.

I think somewhere deep inside of me, I really had the DNA of a caterpillar.  I had no real clue where I was going or what I was doing.  I simply continued to move forward.  Sometimes gracefully, but most of the time, stomping my feet, waving my fists in the air and releasing fitful breaths of air from within.   But, I couldn't stop. I truly believe that the caterpillar has no real awareness of the amazing butterfly that will one day emerge from its very own lifecycle.  Nor do we humans.

You and I could and probably should be very envious of the caterpillar.  It does not sit around thinking... 'Oh but I have to give up so much.  I have to go into a sort of suspended animation (the cocoon - my Vermont) and change..."   No, the caterpillar has no self-aware consciousness.  It does what it's own heavenly inner biology tells it to do.  Us Humans, we have consciousness.  We can choose to change, or not.  We can choose to let go of one lifestyle... or not.  Free Will - treacherous!

Once my journey began, each breath of meditation I would inhale took me deeper into myself.  The first amazing change was the calming of the battlefield I used to call my mind.  As my mind calmed, the illnesses that plagued both my mind and body ceased to exist.  A connection to life started to weave its way thru the core of my heart.  I developed an amazing trust in the unseen world of spirit.

What I am sharing here in this book is what I now know is my ascension story, how I died in this lifetime without ever leaving the body and rebirth myself into a whole new life.  Although this is my story, the purpose is to clearly show you the path thru ascension and hopefully be a motivating factor in helping you stay the course in your own ascension story. One that perhaps you can wrap your heart around, and move thru your Self.

Anyone who says that awakening to your true divinity is easy and effortless... has not really been thru the journey!  The awakening is designed to pull the very fabric of your self-imposed, self-imprisoning belief systems from the core of your Being.  Letting go of the myriad of false beliefs is painful, painstaking in attempt, and incredibly freeing beyond human comprehension.  The moment you let one false reality go, there is yet another one already knocking on your door to be set free.  Each release comes with a massive test from the universe to see if you not only get it but also now live the new understanding.  It requires you give up any sense of self (small s here... the human sense of self.)  This journey requires years of programming be undone by unseen voices that assure you, YOU ARE NOT WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE, and push you even further!!  Of course, we all-ways have the choice to stop there, or go ever forward.

For my own personal journey, that meant releasing family that no longer served my higher good (of course, I really didn't know that then, I just did what felt right for me at the time).  It meant giving up every aspect I considered me right down to the furnishings of my home.... every picture I hung on the wall, every Kodak captured moment of my 3 children... just gone.  Over the course of 2 years, the only thing that remained intact in my life was my youngest child.    I wish I could tell you I let it all go with Grace and style... I assure you it was removed as I kicked and screamed and cried gallons and gallons of tears.  But... I also choose to let it go, it always must be YOUR CHOICE.  This is not a journey of forced agenda.  Spirit, God Creator, whatever word you use... loves you so much and would never ever make you go to a place you do not want to go... not even if it is filled with wonder and infinite joy.  Can you imagine loving your children so much that you would never inflict your will on them!! 

Chapter 1

Life Changes Suddenly

The Prelude

My life seemed at its peak performance in May of 2000. The socially accepted version of abundance filled it up. My employers appreciated me and elevated me through management ranks rather quickly. My income afforded everything I could buy my children to maintain their joy and status level. The sun shone down on me and life was great! June was about to change that.

My middle daughter Kristen, living in Houston Texas with her father, was turning 16 years old on June 5th, a milestone that I, living in North Carolina, was not about to miss. I planned to spend a week with her, celebrating her Sweet Sixteenth in style. I made all the travel arrangements and booked the classiest car I could. It was a brand new, gold, Chrysler Sebring Convertible. I wanted her to feel like a princess whenever we went out and we went out often, simply to show off in the car. We enjoyed a week of fun and flaunting together. The superficial joy money could buy was truly amazing.

While I was blissfully flaunting my good fortune to my daughter as well as anyone who wanted to notice us—and God knows we got noticed—someone was back in North Carolina single handedly destroying my life.

Allow me to flash back two years prior to the birthday bash to 1998 for a moment. In 1998, a man with whom I was living ripped my life apart. In theory, he was my live-in boyfriend, but in my heart, he was a pain in the ass I kept wishing would leave. This man paid my rent when I had no money. When he suggested that he move in, of course I felt that I couldn’t say no. I ignored the recurring dreams every night for a week showing me this live-in arrangement was not a good choice and my life would fall apart. Heeding those dreams would have stopped the hell that would soon unfold in my life. But dreams are nothing more than picture shows relieving stress through the night, right?

At the time, I lived in a two-bedroom apartment with my other two children, Micheal and Skyla, who each had their own bedroom. Being a single mom, I could sleep on the couch, which I had done for decades anyway. Having been locked in one for two years when I was six through eight years old, I was not a big fan of bedrooms. My new roommate was not happy with that situation, so he got us a condo on the beach. Even though this was not what I wanted and I knew that I couldn’t afford the condo on my own, I agreed. We moved into a four-bedroom, ocean front condo. Hurray?

Since we had all these bedrooms, I had lost my excuse for sleeping on the couch and not with him. Even so, I slept on the couch as often as I could. The couch felt safe. Sleeping with someone else and having sex did not. Through a childhood of being repeatedly molested by someone or another, I had learned how to escape my body during any sexual experience in which I didn’t want to participate. Because no was not part of my vocabulary, especially when it came to sex, I simply left my body each time we had sex. Since he really wasn’t a necrophiliac, sex with me was not very exciting. The fantasy of living with me had become a real life nightmare for him and he left the condo: But not without incident.

After he left, this man tried to pull the electric meter off the wall to assure that my children and I would not have electricity. That left our electricity at about 25 percent. The electric company informed me that, since I had damaged the meter, I would have to pay for it. Huh? Before too long, they turned my electricity off. This man had already given me the gift of not paying the phone bill like he said he would, and the phone had already been shut off. So what’s life without any electricity? Did I mention I didn’t have a job? We received an eviction notice as a Christmas present from the local police department.

I decided the very best thing for me to do, was to kill myself. This way, someone would take care of my children. It is funny how the mind works when it is deeply depressed. Suicide was a comforting friend to me. I had attempted it many times in my life; this would have been the genuine fourth attempt. I say genuine because often a person may try to commit suicide as a cry for help or attention, but she knows how to get just sick enough without becoming dead. There are other times, in those deep black holes of some peoples’ lives, where dead is better. This was one of those times in mine.

My method of suicide had always been pills. I am way too big of a coward to inflict any sort of pain on my body. Going into an eternal sleep had always seemed the most comforting escape route to me. But this time I was serious. I had tried and failed with pills three times previously, the first time as a thirteen-year-old. No pills this time! Carbon monoxide poisoning was my new serious choice.

Let’s talk about rational: I had $20.00 to my name, it was mid-December and I took both children with me to shop for a hose, duct tape and a cloth that I could shove into the tailpipe. I told the kids that we were getting material to make Christmas decorations.

Now that I possessed the necessary accessories, it was time to plan my escape from life. I surely didn’t want my children to find me dead, so I drove about 30 minutes from the condo, parked the car, and began writing love-letters to my children. They had to know I loved them enough to die and that it had nothing to do with them. Funny, but the more I wrote, the more I wanted to hug them one more time. I decided to do this dead thing on another day. I returned home to hug my kids one more time before falling into that eternal sleep and freeing them from this hopeless life with their mom.

For a couple more days, I clung to my kids. I told them how much I loved them. I gave them some of my prized possessions. But all the while, I dreamed of going Home to escape the pain that was my life. I felt that, if I didn’t make this move soon, I wouldn’t do it at all. My second go at it involved driving further away from the condo. Maybe then I wouldn’t turn around for another hug. I drove for an hour this time. More letter writing as I shifted into more comfortable positions in my car, tears streaming down my face at the thought of not being able to hug my children again. ‘One more time,’ I thought, ‘I will go home, hug my kids, and drive even further away next time to get my job done.’

One would think that this repetitive wanting-to-hug-the-kids-one-more-time distraction would be the internal wake up call saying, don’t do the eternal sleep, and find a way to stay in life. Oh, not in my mind! I had convinced myself that, not only was I a lousy mother and human, but also that even this loving act of killing myself so my children could have a good life was becoming lousy. I was being selfish wanting to hug my kid’s one more time while an empty Christmas and an eviction loomed closer and closer. What a waste of energy I thought I was!

I don’t remember where I got the money, but I filled my tank with gas, said my final good-byes to my children and started driving. Seven hours later I landed in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina just as dusk was settling on the horizon. I didn’t know Kitty Hawk’s layout, so I hurried to find a place before dark that would privately accommodate my final charitable act. I found a place off the road, stuck the hose and cloth into the tail pipe, duct taped it into place and secured it into the window. All was well and perfect. I was now writing a novel to each of my kids. The words and tears flowed as I wrote my love letters until night fell and I was certain not to be seen in my woman-made gas chamber.

I apologized to my oldest daughter Kristen, who was fourteen years old at the time and in a sort of jail in Texas.  Oh, the guilt I carried! Kris was living the very life I had promised I would never impose on my children. I cried even harder as I apologized for signing away my maternal legal rights to her father.  I don’t think she cared that it was the only way he would take her. My own anger issues had crept into her young life, making her uncontrollable and frightening. She began acting out when she was five years old, hitting her kindergarten peers, getting expelled from both the school bus and school for injuring her classmates.

She was diagnosed with ADHD, but at that time little help was available. Medication was not as freely given in 1989 as it is today. I imagine the psychiatric profession didn’t fully understand the complexities of an ADHD label. I know for certain that the public school professionals understood even less.

Thus, a game of toss-our-daughter began with her father and me. I would send Kris to her father in Texas, removing her from the only family she knew, and he would get so frustrated with her that he would toss her back before the year was up.

Recounting this tragedy in my love letter to my her made me cry from a depth of pain I hadn’t allowed myself to feel in a long time.

I will never forget the day she left us for good.  She was nine years old and had returned to our family from Texas for only a few months.

The night before, we were grocery shopping at one of those warehouse membership stores and she wanted a pack of felt markers.  By this time, I was divorced and raising three children on a single paycheck. Luxuries like markers were simply not in my budget.  She became enraged and targeted the only one she could in that moment; her three-year-old sister Skyla sitting happily in the shopping buggy.  I can no longer remember details of the event. It was blurred even as I was witnessing it.  I simply remember feeling that my oldest daughter was trying to kill my youngest one.  She had her hands around Skyla’s throat and I was scared to death.

I didn’t sleep at all that night, keeping vigil lest her behavior repeat itself. It did not. But my mind was already terrified by what I had witnessed and from horror stories her father relayed of her violent behavior.

The morning light didn’t bring much peace. Kris clung to her anger and acted out in ways that deepened my terror.  She was nine years old, 5’2" tall and weighed 125 pounds.  Her strength surprised me when I couldn’t move her. It was the strength of a grown man.  When I tried to ground her for disrespectful sass, she kicked in the back door.  Feeling overwhelmed and helpless, I resorted to asking for assistance from Social Services.

Social Services dispatched two male police officers to remove her from our home.  She was in a dark and violent state, deeply hurt from those years of abandonment and rejection, and she had learned anger and violence from the best of them: Her mom.

The cops could not handle her alone and had to call for backup.  In the end, five grown men struggled to place my baby girl in the back of that squad car. My heart died that day.  I was too terrified to take her back, yet I refused to let her live in the foster system. My own memories recalled very little compassion or love within the foster system.  I called her father.

His terms required me to relinquish my parental rights and waive the $5,000.00 he owed in back child support. In return, he promised to allow me unlimited visitations and phone calls. I truly believed that I was doing the very best thing by giving her to her dad instead of to the system.  I agreed.

I would not talk to Kristen again until she was sixteen years old, exiting jail, and entering a half-way house. As soon as the adoption was complete, her father banned all communications between us.

So sitting in the car at Kitty Hawk, I was on a mission. There was nothing that would stop my departure. Next I wrote my heart out to my fifteen-year-old son Michael, declaring my deep love for him, my heartfelt pride in him. My letter included a ‘how-to’ of caring for his now eight-year-old sister Skyla.

I wrote as if my life depended upon it when something crept into the flow of my words: A vision.

Please know that psychic was not a part of my world. I was a lost and non-practicing Catholic. But out of the clear blue sky, or in this case, the dead-of-night sky, I saw my son on drugs. I saw him lost and tormented because his mother had killed herself. I saw it as if I was in the midst of a wide-awake dream. The funny thing is that I didn’t question that vision. I didn’t question where it came from or why it was there. I simply undid my death chamber, started my car and drove home.

So now what? I couldn’t leave because Mike would become a drug addict and live a life in hell, but I didn’t know how to live. My version of living revolved around paying bills, buying food and purchasing stuff for comfort and fun. That is what life is all about isn’t it?

Nonetheless, I put my death items in a bag, then in a closet in case I might need them again. I surely couldn’t throw them away! The one thing I thought I knew for sure about life was that it would take just a matter of time before it crashed down around my feet. My mind always had an escape route ready.

Since death was no longer an option, I wondered how I would survive this torrid storm that had seared my life into an unrecognizable mess. Channeling my angry hopelessness the only way I knew how, I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper stating how unjust my life had been. I described how Social Services had turned me away when I asked for help reconnecting my electricity. I explained that Social Services told me that my unemployment made it not an emergency, but a problem, and that I was refused assistance. I wrote about my man and the electricity fiasco, that my children wouldn’t have a Christmas and that, on New Years Day, we wouldn’t even have a home.

I poured my heart and soul into that letter and actually felt better. After sealing it in an envelope, I drove straight to the newspaper office. It was Saturday and closed, but a mailbox marked article submissions sat outside the office. I dropped my letter into that black box and figured, ‘well, at least I vented.’ I was sure it would never see the light of day, especially anytime soon.

I lived in a small town on the East Coast of NC. Our daily paper came out three times a week; Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. I had worked in the newspaper industry for ten years and understood about ‘putting a paper to bed’, press times, and space deadlines. The submission statement in the letter to the editor stated that any article considered for print had to be verified before published. Well, unless you came to my house, you couldn’t contact me. My phones were shut off.

Imagine my surprise when a Social Worker knocked on my door Monday morning wanting to help me. She explained that she had read about me in the Sunday paper. Huh? There is no way that paper could have had the time to publish my article and they sure didn’t verify it. Surely the paper had already ‘gone to bed.’ when I put my letter in the box.

Against everything that should have happened, they published my article the very next day. The day that sells the most newspapers to boot—on Sunday!

Let me tell you, there are more angels on this earth than mean people. Donations flooded into my mailbox. Complete strangers were showing up on my doorstep to take me Christmas shopping for my kids. Food vouchers were sent to me. Someone turned my electricity on. Even the mayor of that little town, Atlantic Beach, North Carolina, sent a police officer to my house to find out what the most important items were on my children’s Christmas list and he made sure their wishes came true.

Being open to receive was the hardest thing I had to do. It is one thing to know you need extraordinary help; it is a whole different ballgame to accept it.

I had lived my whole life as a giver without asking for anything in return. I shared food stamps with a family that didn’t have enough of their own. I gave bums my last quarter. That part was so easy! When I received the first offering, a check for $100.00, I wanted to give it back. I sat at the kitchen table with my children and simply cried. I cannot accept this and I am going to mail it back to her, I told them.

Mike looked at me and said, Mom, you can’t do that, we need it. If the story in the paper was about someone else, you would have done the same thing, let them help us. He was right on all counts. How could I say no now? For now, I felt, I could catalogue and shelve my pride.

Sinking despair turned into amazement and humbleness. My children were awestruck over complete strangers’ generosity. I now cried tears of joy every day, which sure beats the tears of despair I had been drowning in. Enough money came in to fill the fridge, the area under the Christmas tree, pay the bills and go hunting for a home I could afford. The man who was to become my landlord didn’t even charge me a security deposit. One month’s rent was enough to give us a new place to call home.

I even found a new job; a job that paid me more on a weekly basis than I had made in a very long time. Of course, it was with a major pest control company, crawling under houses to find problems. But I had a job! The I-don’t-like-bugs-snakes-and-damp-dark-wet-places issues would have to be worked out later. God was finally in my corner!

Who knew there was so much money in pest, termite and moisture control? My life and attitude changed in an instant. It didn’t matter that I was working 12-hour days, because the money was great, and we could live and even thrive now. That dark time in my life was well behind me. I would work as hard and as long as it took to create that financial abundance that creates so much joy and opportunity.

My life soared quickly to comfortable ranks in this pest control company. I was hired as a sales person, within months promoted to sales manager and within a year I became branch manager. My ego was stroked every step of the way since I was the only female ever to make management within this company’s franchise. I was consistently within the top 10 percent of overall individual sales of about 120 sales people, excuse me, 120 MEN. I was confident, blissful, and spent money like I was sure there would be more tomorrow.

Right before planning my weeklong trip to Texas to celebrate Kristen’s sweet sixteen rite of passage, the company had a massive management change. I now had an area manager who harbored issues with females: Not just with me, but in general. I never worried about the arrogance within his male-dominated mind, because my numbers attested to the fact that I was great at my job. My monthly commission checks showed that I was making this pest control company a fortune. After all, my take was only 20% of what I sold. They kept the 80% of the contracts, and I knew how much it took to run my branch. We were all prospering. Isn’t that job security?

Imagine my shock when I returned from that lovely week with my daughter to find that I had been demoted. Now keep in mind, I wasn’t simply demoted from branch manager to a sales manager. Nope—I was pushed all the way down the ladder to sales person.

What happened during the week I was gone? To say I was blind sided with this news would be a tremendous understatement. There was nothing that could have forewarned me that my life was about to fall apart yet again.

The details of how it all happened don’t even matter. What really mattered was that there went my mind; sinking into the black hole again. After receiving the news, I simply went home. I took a few days off to try to figure out how, in the blink of an eye, it all went so terribly wrong.

I loved my job, I loved my position at my job, and I loved the money that came from my job. ‘Nope,’ I thought. ‘I am not going down without a fight!’ I called the EEOC and scrutinized many attorneys, making sure I hired the very best one. I found one four hours away from me in Raleigh NC. Perhaps I liked him so much because, once again, my ego was stroked. He said to me, If you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth like I was, your whole life would be different. I was sure that was his way of saying I was smart. I knew I was. If I had only known how arrogant I was as well, maybe I wouldn’t have needed that silver spoon for my life to be different. I hired him!

We filed a sexual discrimination suit against my employer. My attorney strongly advised me not to quit my job so that I could collect needed information for my law suit.

Reluctantly, I rolled up my sleeves and returned to work. I immediately got a call from the CEO of the company; of course, he had received a letter from the EEOC stating I was filing a suit against his company. Prior to that letter, he refused to talk with me and, without my asking, he agreed to restore my position to sales manager. I had to accept.

Everyone in the company was instructed not to talk to me and not to spend time with me other than in a must-do professional situation. Have I mentioned I am a Leo? Leo’s thrive in the limelight. We Leo’s need social interaction, people stroking the ego side of our nature. A Leo wants to be in the center of all the attention, but not because you have now contracted the plague and people look at you funny and whisper about you as if you cannot hear what they are saying. Nope, not the road trip a Leo wants or, perhaps better stated, needs to take, yet my attorney insisted we would win this way. ’Okay,’ I thought. ‘ I am in for as much pain and suffering as I can endure.’ The depression deepened.

I was moved from the branch that I loved and in which I thrived, to the arm pit of the company—as my CEO wonderfully put it; so I didn’t have to endure the people who created the hell that was now my life. As a 100% commissioned employee, my income was dropping dramatically day by day. Now, I was in the armpit of North Carolina and drowning in my own despair. I showed up for work, then sat and moped. The company, not wanting to stir the legal waters, let me.

My attorney insisted I go for therapeutic help. He insisted that it would be better for our case. There was no doubt I was in a massive depression,