When I was in my mid-twenties, I woke up one morning to recall that I had checked myself into the psychiatric ward the night before. I opened my eyes to the harsh glow of fluorescent lights. I’ve always disliked fluorescent lights, the way that they taint everything with artificial blue-green. I was freezing too, wearing nothing but a faded, open-backed gown, the color of a dusty teardrop, with a single white sheet tucked up around my neck. I had decided from previous hospitalizations due to bouts with pneumonia, an inguinal hernia, and a broken ankle, that I hated everything about hospitals: the chatter from the nurses’ station that was inevitably just outside my door; the threat of people invading my personal space without invitation; the way some nurses spoke to me like I was a child and others regarded me more like a potted plant.
“Good morning…ur, Penny?” A robust woman, forty-something, burst into my room while studying a clipboard. “I’m Sheila. I’m the Charge Nurse. I see that your parents brought you in last night.” She hadn’t looked at me yet.
“Actually, my parents drove me here, but I brought myself in. I can leave anytime I want.”
“Hmmm,” she muttered, as if to say, “Are you sure about that?”
So, do you want to know how I ended up in the what I affectionately call the loony bin, because I was there and so I can? I was on a ten-year bender of what started as fear and loss and was now clinical depression. At this point of my life I had been resonating in dark emotion and low energy for far too long. It’s a viral energy story if you’ve ever heard one: a negative virality collision, the perfect storm of violence meets empathy, the aligning of destiny’s burnout stars. And it was the first year that I started noticing and journaling about the contagious properties of creation energy and humanity’s primal thirst for power. And most significantly, how the former impacts the latter.
I recall it was 2000 or early 2001. I was driving in my slick new silver Chevy Malibu with light grey leather seats, a leased vehicle that would be repossessed in the dark of night in about two months or so, but I didn’t know it then. A talk radio station was on and they were running the news. “A five-month-old German Shepard puppy was dragged behind a pickup truck on a Toronto highway yesterday. The owner, who tied the dog behind the vehicle, says that he was angry with the puppy for chewing the man’s shoes. Other motorists saw the incident and numerous calls were placed to authorities. The puppy suffers severe injuries and the county Humane Society is considering a risky two leg amputation, yet sources report that euthanasia is most likely, due to the extent of the wounds. Per Ontario law, no criminal charges have been filed against the owner and he has been given a $500 fine,” the news voice said, and then moved to the next story. I was emotionally leveled and had to pull over.
Some time later, a petition was circulated by the Society For Cruelty To Animals and the laws were strengthened to provide Ontario judges with increased maximum penalties for the crime of ‘cruelty to animals’ providing for up to a ten-thousand dollar fine and up to ten years in prison. I participated in the petition, gathering signatures, and searching the depths of my soul to try to understand why anyone would want to hurt an innocent animal, and what could possibly deter them from doing it again in the future. I knew that stronger penalties was not the real fix and it wouldn’t stop someone if they were inclined to abuse. I soon got an education on abuse, and I think that in the end I got my answer.
I had been dating a guy, Brad, who I loved more than he loved me, or was able to. I desperately wanted him to love me back and I made excuses for much of his bad behavior. He was adopted and he feared rejection from women, a wound that he reminded me of each time that I threatened to break up with him. But I didn’t want to lose him, all that I really wanted was to love the brokenness from him. That is, until I found him in bed with his nineteen year old neighbor. Yes, I actually walked into his house and caught them in the act. I ended it with him on the spot. This time I had no choice. I had gone to his house that night to tell him that I was pregnant. Instead, on my way out I left an ultrasound image on his table in the kitchen that I helped him paint, sky blue, like his eyes.
Over the next two months, Brad broke into my ground floor apartment three times, drunk, and each time his violence escalated. It was the second time that I managed to dial 911 while Brad had my phone cord wrapped around my neck, choking the breath from me. “You’re such a fucking bitch! Were you with another guy tonight? Who dropped you off? Do you think I’m fucking stupid!?” he yelled in my ear with the force of a lion, “If the police come you’ll be fucking sorry, Penny.”
The police did come, and I was sorry.
After that, I spent the better part of a month interned in a psychiatric hospital. It didn’t cure my depression, but it gave me a break from months of trauma. It was a solitary experience, patients mostly kept to themselves and stared blankly as thought their spirits were traversing some other land, maybe they were replaying their memories, or maybe they were just thoroughly dosed with Diazepam, Zoloft and Paxil so that they couldn’t think at all, and that was the point. For me, it was like a good long meditation. I wanted to know why some people hurt others. What kind of person would harm an animal? What benefit did Brad get from asserting his force over me? I believed with every cell of my body that there was more to it than what the psych ward doctors had explained to me. And I could see it in their eyes too, they knew that they didn’t have the answers. I wrote my thoughts in my journal. I sketched diagrams of a great struggle for power where the energetically depleted person sucks energy from the less physically powerful. A cycle was emerging.
Sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, animal abuse, it’s all about power: somebody doesn’t have power and they want to take yours. Some people are pinched off from life’s magical force due to a massive energy interference like a past hurt, overwhelming insecurities, and their fears. Their unconscious self is a monster, an energy-empty monster and it wants to survive. To do this it needs to find energy outside of itself. It’s a predator and it seeks vulnerable and easy targets. These people are thirsty for personal power and they want yours.
The pitfall for individuals like Brad and the man in Toronto with the puppy tied to the back of his pickup truck, is that the abuser has not learned a better way to gain good energy. For them, accessing low and heavy viral energy is learned and habitual. And so a chronic depletion of power will manifest in sexual assault, animal abuse, then child and spousal abuse. It’s humanity’s great thirst for power. We see it in our world leaders, moguls in the entertainment industry, religious establishments, industries, on Wall Street, in the slums, in the suburbs, and at our kitchen tables.
Our higher selves do not hurt each other, harm animals, cause war, or discord with nature of any kind. It’s time to find another way to get fueled. It’s time to lift the curtain between wanting and awareness. This is a wake up call.
“I’m telling my story and going public on abuse and what I’ve learned about abusers.”
This article is an excerpt from my book, The Magic Of Viral Energy (M.O.V.E.). M.O.V.E. is about the contagious and palpable nature of energy, transferable through our environment and the people and things around us. Currently, I’m working on my next book, The Law Of Viral Energy (L.O.V.E.), about viral energy masses, like energetic tumors, that we as a people have created and continue to create through war, discord with nature, the mass violence of factory farming, and other negativity created in mass through industries, our widely and long held beliefs, and other energies sponsored by humanity. The book also speaks to large pockets of love and positivity created in mass, and it sets forth a clear vision of where humanity’s spiritual evolution is going, and how we need to evolve or become extinct.
When people ask me what I do, it can be a mouthful to answer. To summarize what my journey has made of me—so far—I am a writer, speaker, and advocate for compassion towards animals. I have contributed as an expert guest on the Dr. Phil Show, speaking to the pressures brought to bear by society; the relationship between personal energy and happiness; and tips for living in purpose and joy. Over the years I have been blessed with numerous adventures and opportunities from creating and pitching television show concepts to networks like Discovery, Animal Planet, and Oprah’s OWN; to spending a few days alongside the very humble and deeply inspiring Dr. Jane Goodall, and later meeting my favorite actor, Robert Redford—who is in person just as handsome, confident, and gentlemanly as he appears on the silver screen. For success and true happiness in life, I believe in the power of setting a foundational intention—like a personal mission statement. From this all that is meant for my life is born. As we do in the entertainment business, I will boil it down to a single logline: My intention is to make a positive difference in the lives of others by inspiring the higher self in all of us.