>Colonies Become an Independent Nation

Posted by Jessica Jewett No Comments »

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IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

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>Purging Poisons from Your Life

Posted by Jessica Jewett 1 Comment »

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(I wrote this blog back in May 2008 and I think it’s still relevant. I’ve edited it slightly and reposted it.)

A big part of growing and changing as a person is recognizing the poisonous presences in your life and having the courage to eliminate them. No one is immune to poisons. Not even mediums and psychics who should really know better. It all boils down to the fact that we are all human and we are going to make mistakes, but what allows you to advance as a soul is the ability to leave poisons behind with the genuine desire never to return to them again. This is the basis of Confession to Catholics and a desire to grow in all other forms of spirituality as well.

What are these poisons and how do we identify them? They can be people in your life who are not good for you, they can be the little demons in you that make you drink too much, do drugs, starve yourself, stick your finger down your throat, eat like a glutton, throw your pride and health away on hard partying and promiscuous unprotected sex. Poisons to your soul are anything that make you feel less than your worth, or that you have to compromise your convictions to prove your worth to others. These poisons cause you to fall off your life path and eventually you become addicted to misery because it’s all you know. Until you purge your soul of these poisons, you will continue to feel lost and like everything bad is happening TO you. Most of the time it is our own decisions that CAUSE bad things to happen. Personal responsibility is one of the most important steps in ridding yourself of poisons.

Even being honest and sticking to a good moral code has its pitfalls because there are always people willing to make you into a scapegoat or make you look bad for their own devices. It becomes a poison in your life when you allow people to make you feel less than worthy of all the love and happiness that the universe can bestow on you. I have learned the hard way that instead of asking, “Why did this happen to me?” we should instead be asking ourselves, “What inside of me attracts dishonest people?” To quote a friend of mine: “What I have tried to do is to look at what it is in me that has attracted these people into my life. This is really hard and involves quite a bit of internal struggle. Thinking of the law of attraction consider that what I am putting out for a vibration or an energetic pattern, whether I am doing so consciously or not, is what will come back to me. It is what I will attract. … The underlying belief is ‘I don’t feel good enough so I am sending that out’ and getting a bunch of people in my life who don’t feel good enough…mix that with life experiences and you get a circle of people who are insecure and jealous amongst other things.”

Read about the Law of Attraction: http://healing.about.com/cs/selfactualization/a/lawofattraction.htm

Eliminating negative thoughts and feelings about yourself is the same as taking responsibility for who you allow into your life. Allowing other people to make you feel inferior is the same as allowing those people to have power over you and that has to stop, otherwise the pattern will perpetuate itself with future people coming into your life.

I have a friend of a friend who has, for lack of a better term, been addicted to a man for twenty years. It is plain to everyone that he has never loved her. He uses her for his own gain, he gets her pregnant and does nothing for his children, he lies, he’s a criminal, he cheats, and everything else under the sun. This woman has never been able to kick her addiction to him and it has made her into not such a great friend. She still holds out hope that he will fall totally in love with her, be a husband and a father, and she is pretty much focusing all of her energy on the pipe dream of a knight in shining armor. The poison has infected her so badly that she can no longer see him for what he really is. The poison creates an illusion for her that everything will be all right if SHE does this or that to make him love her, when it was never HER at all who was the problem. The man is the poison ruining the rest of her life in a great ripple effect, and the poison has become of her own cause because she refuses to purge her system of him.

I have another friend of a friend who grew up in a horribly abusive home. The initial poisons were his parents and they nearly succeeded at infecting him with their own poisons until, at the age of 14, he reached an epiphany that he was not going to let them win. He took an active role at that young age to correct the poisons in his life, but those poisons left such open wounds on him that it left him extremely succeptible to further poisons later in his life. His first wife took advantage of him in every possible way and like the woman I talked about in the paragraph above, he took the poison into himself and refused to believe the warnings of others about his wife. He was drowning in it until it became his own poison and it took him twelve years to leave her. Now he is in another unhappy relationship. He moves from one poison to another because misery is all he knows and all he expects for himself. The poison has become an internal disease within himself because most people feel that deep down he doesn’t feel he deserves any better.

Another woman I know followed the same pattern for most of her life. The poison of abuse and addiction came from her father and she grew up believing it was the only life she was designed to live. Her own addictions and lack of self-worth pushed her onto a hard road, constantly struggling to make ends meet. She allowed more poisons to come into her life by marrying men who were replicas of her father because, again, she didn’t feel she deserved any better. She gave up one of her children for adoption because she was on the verge of homelessness. It took the realization that her fourth husband was sexually molesting her daughter to make her realize that she alone was responsible for correcting the poisons in her life so her soul could advance. Since then, she has worked every day to remove poisons from her soul and since then, she finally has a man in her life that is not cruel or abusive. Positive changes happened to her because she took responsibility for her own misery. This woman is my mother.

I use this analogy for people who don’t understand that they need to be taking a proactive role in their own life path: Getting punched is someone else projecting their own poisons onto you. Coming back to get punched again and again creates your own poisonous misery and is your own fault for not taking active steps to rid yourself of the misery. People who do nothing to change the misery in their lives are as much at fault as the people who they say are causing the misery.

What do you do about it?

– Recognize that there is poison in your soul.
– Look at every aspect of your life and pinpoint what you think is causing it.
– Ask yourself if this person, habit or thing is really worth the misery.
– Think about what path your life might take once the poison is removed.
– Eliminate the person, habit or thing from your life.
– Take an active role in personal responsibility and realize that you are responsible for your own happiness.

The biggest problem I see in people out there is a lot of people in love with their poisons and misery will point the finger at everyone for the cause. Do me a favor and act like you’re pointing your finger right now. Look at your hand. Do you see your other fingers? You point the finger at someone else but there are four more fingers pointing back at you. Poison and misery are a two way street. It takes someone or something else to infect you but it takes your own decisions to perpetuate the cycle. People who live for years in miserable situations are stalled. They are stagnate. Their souls are not growing and will not grow until they learn to cast off the shackles holding them back from advancing on to the correct life path. You will know you’re on the right life path because you will feel satisfaction broken up by occasional unhappiness, rather than misery broken up by occasional satisfaction.

That man or woman who treats you like a toy or punching bag is never going to change. His or her personal poisons cannot be allowed to become your own. Smoking that joint, sucking down that bottle or refusing to let yourself eat is not going to fix the poison causing your pain. It takes enormous reserves of strength to purge our souls of negativity and misery but once you do, it’s like entering the world with all the wonder and peace of a newborn child. It is worth the tears and agony of coming face to face with your poisons. You must face them head on and do battle to rid yourself of them.

I wrote this blog because I’m dealing with a poison in my own soul. I’m not above these things just because I am extremely sensitive to the spiritual side of life. Sometimes writing out my own advice forces me to follow it. God willing, my soul will be totally purged of this damn poison. I work at it every day but I do struggle just like everybody else.

Do yourselves a favor and look at what’s causing unhappiness in your life. What will you do about it?

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>Defining self-worth: a look into my heart

Posted by Jessica Jewett 4 Comments »

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When I was a little girl, I was painfully shy. I hated meeting new people because I was so sensitive, easily hurt, self-conscious and I was always afraid of when the next panic attack would strike. Around the age of twelve, my mother sat me down and said, “If you don’t learn to open your mouth and stand up for yourself, people will walk all over you for the rest of your life.” That scared me into forcing myself to be more willing to be out there amongst my peers. At first, I treated it like being an actress. If I acted like I was comfortable around people, eventually maybe I could trick myself into believing it.

In a way, being an actress in the sense of trying to fit in with people backfired because my sensitivity to what they thought of me intensified. That sensitivity is something that I still struggle with today. I still find myself very concerned with pleasing people even at my own expense so they are sure to enjoy my company. The truth is I have some deep-rooted problem with thinking subconsciously that I’m not interesting and I’m not worth keeping as a friend, so if I work extra hard at pleasing people, they won’t want to cast me aside. If you want to get all psychologist on the situation, it probably has a lot to do with my father abandoning me as a child. Everybody tends to blame themselves when they are seemingly dumped at the wayside for no good reason. Approaching my friendships and relationships with fierce loyalty has become my way of ensuring that I won’t get abandoned for no reason again. It still happens occasionally, though, and it wounds me so badly that I put the mask of an actress back on so nobody guesses that I suffer so much. I don’t want to look weak but deep inside, I feel like I am weak if I express hurt or disillusionment over the loss of a friendship or a relationship.

As I’ve gotten older, and now pushing thirty, I have seen the big quandary. I could revert back to my childhood shyness, never stick my neck out there for people and live the rest of my life hiding in the shadows, alone yet safe from being hurt. Or I could put myself out there as I have since my mother’s advice and continue getting hurt by people who don’t take friendships and relationships as seriously as I do. It takes a lot for me to really invest in people and I feel like it’s probably my mistake for thinking people will reciprocate. The rate at which people will lie, stab each other in the back, use each other, gossip, and so forth, makes my head spin and I find it to almost be crippling when I unknowingly let wolves in sheep’s clothing into my life. People close to me make comments sometimes that I’m too sensitive for this world and I expect too much out of humanity. In my mind, qualities like honesty, loyalty, tolerance and generosity should be required in this world or we are all doomed to live selfishly and superficially forever. This is not to say I think I’m perfect. Far from it. I slip and fall at times, but I do try to be the best person I can be. There is a lot to be said for people who try in anything in life.

I notice that in tight-knit communities, whether it’s the living history (reenacting) community, the New Kids on the Block fan community, the paranormal studies community, or whatever, people tend to get more bloodthirsty and cutthroat the closer they are to each other. I don’t quite know why that is, but if someone has any sort of reputation at all — good or bad — they become a target of people who wish they had notoriety of their own or envy something they have or simply beat up on them because of their own insecurities. I see it happen every day and it baffles me at how people can speak so hatefully and throw daggers at people’s hearts.

In my case, I’m well aware of the things people say about me. That’s the thing about gossip and negativity — it eventually gets back to the person you least want to hear about it. The things that do get back to me are so hurtful that I can’t imagine what hateful things don’t get back to me. I don’t even know where people get the things said and assumed about me because 99% of it is absolutely not true and the gossip typically originates with people who don’t know me and never bothered to know me. It used to be so upsetting that I would cry and lose sleep over it because I couldn’t understand why people would do that and I thought I had to find a way to erase it. I thought it was up to me to make sure people knew what were lies and what was truth but I didn’t know how. Once lies are out there, it’s like throwing a stone in a pond. It ripples and ripples and nobody can control it anymore — not even the people who threw the stones. A lie, a piece of gossip, is a very powerful thing. It’s not a game. It messes with people’s lives and causes more anguish than anybody realizes, except maybe the target.

Sometimes I still get upset when I hear about this or that person talking about me. I’m not made of stone. I may act like things don’t bother me but I do feel pain and I’m not an ice queen. Sometimes I want to go on my Twitter account or on my blog and say, “So-and-so is saying such-and-such about me but it’s not true!!!” What good would that do? I would exhaust myself trying to clear my name in these cases and it wouldn’t help anything because at the end of the day, people are going to believe what they want to believe. Unfortunately truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. People are happy living in their distorted worlds. Those of us who are easily hurt and extra sensitive simply have to grin and bear it.

I have spent the whole of my life trying to find a way to be myself while living in a world populated by those who try to get ahead by stomping on and climbing over people like me. There is no easy answer. Nothing really clicked until a friend gave me this piece of advice:

Negativity is none of your business.

Basically, that means the way you react to negativity is a choice. You can lose sleep and cry when people try to tear you down or prove that they don’t value your friendship as much as you thought they did, or you can release it into the universe, remind yourself that it’s not your doing and you are not responsible for the actions of others. My need to be validated, loved and accepted by other people is a flaw that I work on every day. The cold hard truth is not all of my friends will have good intentions. Some will abandon me when they think something better comes along. People I don’t know are going to spread lies and try to make me look bad and I can’t control that. I’m not the only one. Anybody who sticks their neck out there is going to get the same treatment whether it’s right or wrong.

Defining my self-worth has to stop with what other people think of me. I’ve known this for years. Even if my best friends, or people like John Deppen (a living historian I admire), Jonathan Knight (a singer I admire), Diane Monroe Smith (an author I admire), anyone else who inspires me, or any random people on the street all came up to me and said, “Jessica, we hate you. You’re a terrible person,” it doesn’t define my worth as a human being. It would be their hang-up and the negative energy they created. Where does that lead?

Negativity is none of my business.

People who listen to gossip and devalue friendship for the next best thing? They’re making negativity their business, inviting it into their lives and devaluing themselves as human beings. Take my advice and work on eliminating bad energy from your lives. Life is a flicker of time and if you are treating people badly, it’s going to eat at you and reflect back on you when their lives are over or maybe sooner. Being more thoughtful and receptive to the idea that what you put out into the universe comes back to you because one day it will all be over and you don’t want to regret things. I promise you that loving each other and investing positive energy into lifting each other up rather than tearing each other down will bring you more rewards in the end. If people just put a little more energy into things beyond me, me, me, we would all be much better off and happier.

So if I’m working on not defining myself by what other people think of me, how do I define myself?

I’m a woman with a big heart.
I’m a daughter.
I’m a granddaughter.
I’m a niece.
I’m a sister.
I’m a child of God.
I’m a staunch proponent of reincarnation and life after death.
I’m Cherokee, Choctaw and Lakota, and proud of it.
I’m descended from royal families of England, France and Spain.
I’m a loyal and true friend.
I’m a lifelong historian and reenactor of the Civil War.
I’m a Blockhead for life.
I’m an award-winning fine artist.
I’m an author of three books and multiple short stories.
I’m a spiritual intuitive who has helped hundreds of people.
I experience psychic visions when people touch me.
I probably know more about you than you think.
I sing really loud when no one can hear me.
I hate objectifying men but sometimes I can’t help it.
I love laughing about stupid things because life is hard.
I’m fighting my anxiety disorder and winning.
I would never change my quadriplegia.
I’m emotional but good at hiding it.
I feel pain for other people.

Those things define me. No matter what people say about me or what friends might ditch me for empty things, I am all of those things and much more. So are you. We are all beautiful, complex people and it shouldn’t matter what other people think as long as you know what’s true. I lie down at night and I do pray for the grace to forgive people who assume and judge me without knowing me but I never wish harm on them. I know who I am. I know what’s true and what’s not. The distortion of other people’s needs and insecurities can’t hurt me so long as I know I am doing the best I can with my life. I do mourn the loss of people who I thought were close to me though. That can’t be helped.

The next time anyone feels the urge to tear someone else down to pull themselves up, I hope they will one day look in the mirror and ask, “What defines my self-worth?” It’s a harder question to answer than people think.

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