Soulshine

Everyone has multiple opportunities to become the hero of their own life story. In Disney’s Maleficent , we focus primarily on the character who is portrayed as the evil fairy in the traditional story of Sleeping Beauty. We learn her complete story: The fact that she began life as a good fairy who was the champion of her people against an evil king, who was then betrayed by her close friend and the future heir to the evil king’s throne, Stefan. We thus learn why Maleficent became so bitter and why she cast an evil spell upon her betrayer’s first born child, Aurora. Maleficent, like all of us, was not born evil. Redemption was always within her grasp. And, although we are addicts, redemption is always within our grasp as well. It’s completely up to our being willing to choose to redeem ourselves from addiction. That’s the first step: admitting we have a problem and that we are now willing to do something to help ourselves. And how is Maleficent redeemed? She is redeemed throug...

Sometimes we fill-up our codependent emptiness by being obsessed with something other than a particular person. Looking back over my life it’s easy to see that I’ve consistently had something or someone to be obsessed over. In those times when my radar wasn’t glued to one particular person, I’d easily find other things to be wildly crazy about. For example, last year I was mesmerized by the new Great Gatsby movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. I saw the movie five times in the theater and I wanted every piece of Gatsby merchandise I could get my hands on: posters, soundtracks, press kits, photos, etc. That obsession lasted about a month before I started wondering why I was so hyped over Gatsby. Then, I was watching The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn and suddenly I was interested in everything about Errol Flynn. After a couple of weeks, I was over Errol Flynn in the same way I was over Gatsby. Next I rediscovered singer Donna Summer and I was on Ebay looking ...