Musings

“I CAN’T” is NOT Allowed at My House

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This is MY STORY that I never thought I’d write, because I didn’t think it was all that inspirational. It flew off the keyboard! Thanks Sharla Jacobs! I never expected this to happen because I had given up long long ago of ever finding a man (or anyone for that matter) who could challenge me to never say the word “cant”!

We all are taught to TRY but we are not taught to “not think” that trying is what it takes or that trying or making an effort will result in the outcome you want.

I spent most of my life feeling handicapped by my height (I’m 5’1”) or astigmatism, or fear of heights, etc. As I got older, I developed the dreaded bunions that plagued my mom’s side of the family, along with osteoarthritis which deformed my mom’s hands, my grandmother’s, and the rest of the women on that side of the family.

A lumbar 5 operation for a blown disc that would have paralyzed me in three weeks had I not had emergency surgery, amplified the word “CAN’T”. I can’t get up the stairs, I can’t bend down and get back up off the floor, I can’t reach the top shelf, hell, I can barely reach the middle shelf. I can’t get up on the step ladder, I can’t get up in the truck, and eventually, I can’t leave the house in bad weather.

All that changed when the woman who was working for me in May 2023 asked if she could bring her friend to paint the front and back decks because he really needed the money. Sure, why not. I CAN’T do it and I needed someone to work for $15.00 because I was on a tight budget.

And that’s how I met a former championship bull rider, former professional baseball pitcher, finishing carpenter, and a life coach hard ass, tobacco chewing, foul-mouth, relentless trainer who mercilessly mocks me if the word “can’t” comes out of my mouth. A drop dead gorgeous man who had been injured so many times and yet because his rodeo star father never let him complain about pain, forced him to heal himself. A man who ranted on at me that I needed to start taking Moringa or Ashwagandha and to get off the computer and force myself to start walking. A man who bombed my phone or TikTok with videos about how to fight for yourself in the court system. Who forbade me to eat anything that had a word on a label I couldn’t pronounce or define. Who forced me to quit eating processed meats, cookies, and GOD FORBID, frozen food. A man who baked us cakes at midnight because store bought have preservatives and made ice cream until the machine broke.

Considering I was married to a gay man up until November 8, 2021 when he committed suicide and had to take care of his partner who had heart disease who I found dead face down on the floor on September 11, 2018, finding an alpha male so late in life has been an eye opener. I didn’t think toxic masculinity could be so refreshing. I also didn’t realize how often I let “CAN’T” ruin my life.

Tom said when I got sued by Armstrong Steel “YOU DO NOT NEED A LAWYER”! You do not have the money to hire one and being a genius, you can learn the law so get your ass upstairs, file a counterclaim, and get to work. Do NOT come into the garage (Workshop) and cry to me! Use your brain WOMAN, and fight and never give up no matter what.

Everyone needs a relentless personal coach. Not someone who validates your feelings. You could do shadow work and self-reflection, but what you REALLY need is someone who minces no words and tells you EXACTLY what your soul needs to hear, NOT, definitely NOT what you want to hear!

So, today, I found the box of disposal Swiffer Refill Pads, loaded the mop spray, and dusted the living room and hall. My feet felt like the bones were being crushed and my ankles felt like I had broken both of them. I took a break (pun intended). Tried again. Unloaded the dishwasher. Got that stabbing pain in my flank which is probably from the herniated discs in my back or another kidney stone – could be both. Sat down again. Walked around a bit. Watched Sharla Jacobs in one of the Thrive Academy videos, then tried to resume dusting.

I’d like to utter the words and go lie down on a heating pad, but Tom said there’s no mercy in the bull ring or on the rodeo circuit. You cannot lie there in the dirt and expect to live for very long. You have to pick yourself up no matter what’s broken. Your body can heal itself because it HAS to.

The dishwasher is unloaded. I got the steam cleaner out to sanitize everything in the kitchen. I got one section done, 8 more to go. It’s a large kitchen. It’s not storming. I emptied the vacuum outside. I got three bags of kitty litter up the handicap ramp and into the house.

Once the stabbing in my flank eases up, I’ll resume housework.

The incentive to keep trying to do stuff that last week I wanted to say “I CAN’T” is Tom’s prediction that if I do NOT keep moving and try to do basic tasks that used to be easy five years ago, is that I WILL end up in a wheelchair feeling sorry for myself and I WILL end up being that old lady that talks about nothing but her aches and pains. I’ve met way too many of those old women taking care of my relatives as they got sick and ended up in nursing homes.

I CAN’T let THAT happen to me!

Silence is NOT Golden When You’re Afraid to Speak

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When It comes to speaking up for yourself, what is your biggest fear? Mine used to be that my late husband would haul off and start hitting me. The Late Harry Leo Duran, MD, PH.D., MPH never really tried to stifle a rage attack. They’d come on, so he claimed, by INTRUSIVE thoughts. I can’t say if I believe that. He’d be in his room (We NEVER shared one or I’d be dead by now) and out of the blue come charging into whatever space (outside even) that I was in and start punching, kicking, screaming, ranting, etc.

BUT he’s dead. And now I can stand up for myself and speak out and not let anyone ever bully me again.

BUT WHY did you let him do that, you ask?

Because he had vowed to track me down and kill our dogs, cats, my late aunt, our friend Mart, burn the house down, and torture me to death.

BUT why didn’t you get a restraining order, run away?

There’s an author friend I made back in 2002 who fled Washington, D.C. for California. Her husband murdered several people in her old neighborhood searching for her.

THE survivors and relatives BLAMED HER for fleeing.

YOU should have just let him KILL you they said.

Yeah, restraining orders don’t work and when someone goes on a rampage, you can’t stop it. Ask Mildred Muhammad, there’s an entire documentary about what happened when she ran.

Watch the last video about my two time international best selling author who is just happens to be my editor and someone who I call friend! Then ask me more questions so before the book comes, out I can make sure readers aren’t left hanging.

FURTHER READING:

https://nypost.com/2025/10/31/us-news/dc-sniper-john-allen-muhammads-ex-wife-reveals-his-chilling-threat-before-killing-spree/

Peyote, a Drunken Sioux Medicine Man, a Snake Museum, and a Scottish Drug Dealer

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For the month of May 2002, with the blessings of the then Assistant University Librarian at UTEP who just happened to be a fifth generation curandero from southern Mexico, I left El Paso to attend a Medical Librarian Conference in Dallas.  My task was to travel around Texas giving presentations on a proposal for implementing bibliographic instruction in the UT libraries.  That effort failed but I got to tour the Crystal Caves with just the guide – no one else showed up – in Sonora, Texas.  Same thing happened at the White Shaman Cave, near Comstock.  I was the only visitor so I got a personal tour.  I was searching for sacred plants in the wild.  Toured the botanical gardens in Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin searching for the plants by “feel”. 

I almost left the gardens in San Antonio without finding Sophora secundiflora.  So I stood at a fork in the trails pondering what to do when I felt like something behind me was trying to get my attention.  I turned around and saw this GIANT tree.  Then I looked at the little tiny marker.  Sophora Secundiflora aka Texas Mountain Laurel! 

I had checked into a motel in Terlingua. I was one of the only guests so the owner, a middle aged lady and I struck up a friendship. She drove us out into the desert to teach me how to find ariocarpi. Harry was growing them, but this fascinating lady said she had a friend who owned a ranch and on the top of hill I’d be able to photograph dozens of them growing wild. It was quite a sight I must say.

At the gas station in Terlingua, I was babbling on about WHY I was on the border searching the parking lot edges and the people “hanging out” there said I needed to call this Sioux Medicine Man who lived nearby. He had moved there from North or South Dakota and was very knowlegable about such things. They warned me he was a heavy drinker.

I was able to call him from the office at the motel. Here’s where it gets weird. I was willing to drive to wherever he was to interview him. NOPE barely got what I was trying to do out of my mouth when he cut me off in mid sentence. WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE DINOSAUR AS A KID?

He did sound a bit drunk but I didn’t skip a beat and said “Tricerotops”. Not a T-Rex. No no I have always love the tricerotops. Still do. I got a toy model at the New York World’s Fair in 1964 and kept it until I had to move in 1998. When I got to Nevada, the store downtown called Cal Ranch sold very realistic full colored ones and well I bought two because Harry, believe it or not, was also a Tricertops fan.

What he said next has puzzled me for all these years.

YOU DO NOT NEED AN INDIAN to help you find ANYTHING. You will meet up with another Scot,, you’re Scottish, right? Campbell? Uh, great grandparents were. Don’t need to meet me. You do not know what you are. You will find a Scot and when you do, you will find peyote and he abruptly hung up.

After a very pleasant stay and a swim in the pool the next day, I left and headed towards the MacDonald Observatory in Alpine where I planned on attending a night time astronomy lesson. But first I had to get to the next motel and driving in the middle of nothing for hours is deadly.

I was getting bored silly when I saw a sign for a SNAKE Museum. Mmm. Well, it will get me out of the car and although I had no interest in a going IN a SNAKE museum, I felt compelled to go in.

A rather interesting fellow welcomed me, took my entrance fee of all of $3.00, and heard my story about why I was driving all over Texas alone. Turned out the late “Buzz” was of Scottish decent! And he was, the article fails to mention this, a drug dealer who had a greenhouse with several HUGE peyote in the back.

Buzz was so excited to hear about what I was doing that he said I could not leave at all UNTIL I could find every snake in every terrarium and learn how to communicate with snakes because if I was going to be walking in the desert, I needed to sense a snake and see it or get bit. The lesson was pretty intense. I had to find each snake and if I couldn’t, I had to project my mind through the glass to get it to come out. Let’s just say that was a trip and a half. HE HAD DOZENS of them.

When I “passed the test”, Buzz said I had to meet his wife who was born in Korea. Okay, I knew a little Korean so I followed him out the back door and across some dirt and up into a trailer. A trailer filled with furniture that was torn and tattered and in a few places covered in parrot poop. Mrs. Buzz was thrilled to have a guest. I think I made some excuse not to sit down. It was a long time ago.

I do remember accepting a glass of ice tea. Buzz then said he wanted to show me his greenhouses so we left the trailer and went further out back. And sure enough he goes to the back of the largest greenhouse and brings out a medium size Jack O’Lantern size peyote and a couple of smaller ones. I had been introduced to two tiny ones and a HUGE giant before which is two more stories to tell at some point.

I then was invited to drive back the VERY next day to attend a picnic with his friends who were all veterans who well, were all drug dealers of some sort. DO NOT ask when invited to meet people what the DO for a living. Seriously DON’T.

I left thinking, damn, that was trippy, and went on to the coolest motel/hotel I’ve ever stayed at bottom of the hill below the observatory. When it was time to attend the lecture, I just had to drive up the hill. I slept in a hand hewn log bed – one like it that Harry would eventually buy and which I sold and that’s the story about the haunted bedroom set.

The night sky was cloudless and the lecture was fantastic. The next day I drove back to El Paso with a lot of stories to tell. Harry heard that he had been invited to meet this guy I had spent hours with who had a large collection of exotic cacti, so he said we needed to get to the picnic. Mind you I had been driving all over the state for over three weeks, but I drove us 3.5 hours back to the museum cause well, you don’t get invitations like that every day. On the way there were dead javalinas on a hair pin turn in the road with turkey vultures having a feast.

For all the bad things you can say about the late Harry Leo Duran, he was a fierce animal lover. We had to stop regardless or hit the birds, but he insisted I stay put and he got out and moved the carcasses so the birds could continue what scavengers do and they wouldn’t get hit by whatever car or truck would come by. He also rescued a rattler, a nest of baby barn swallows, mice, foxes, turtles, stray cats and dogs, and he fed the road runner that used to visit. I hated him, but that was the one thing about him that held whatever bond we had together.

Buzz and his wife and his rough around the edges friends were ecstatic that a Ph.D. and a Ph.D./M.D. would honor them by coming to their picnic. We sat a standard wooden picnic table that looked 30 years old at least and ate hot dogs while being swarmed with more flies than I think I’ve ever seen in my life. Anthropologists are trained to fit in so I ate my hotdog swatting the flies like everyone else. Harry grew up in Aztec, NM and although he said on the way home that was the most flies he had ever seen as well, we weren’t going to die from the food despite the fact that well, most of it had already had a fly or two land on it.

They all asked us a lot of questions and kept saying – DAMN you two are ED U Cated – insert accents. And YOU are willing to treat us like equals! And they proceeded to tell us all their medical problems which everyone does if they figure out you are a doctor or know medicine etc.

Buzz grilled Harry about cacti and after we ate took us to tour the greenhouses. He said he was so glad to make friends with us he gifted Harry several rare hallucinogenic Peruvian cacti! I always felt bad that we never went back. It was a long miserable drive but still, 3.5 hours one way in Texas is nothing considering El Paso is about 4 hours to Albuquerque and almost 8 to San Antonio with nothing but Ciudad Juarez to the south and Las Cruces an hour north.

My task was to find FOUR sacred plants – peyote, the Mountain Laurel, datura – which was easy = we had datura in our own yard because it grows like a weed in Texas, and Salvia Divinorum which we had growing in a pot in our kitchen.  The arioocarpus was a bonus.

I arrived back home having photographed pictographs at the White Shaman, gone on the tour of the crystal caves – that’s another story as well because it a paranormal twist to it – stayed at motel in Comstock with an old lady who raised parrots, stayed a motel in Terilingua with a fascinating lady, met drug dealers, stuffy librarians, a Sikh who warned me NOT to go driving around Dallas and to DEFINITELY not go to the botanical gardens because it wasn’t safe, a security guard in a Mexican seafood restaurant who stood over me the whole time I ate and who walked me to my car because the restaurant, he said was in the HOOD despite being within walking distance of Baylor University, ranchers who took me on a tour in an ancient pick up truck with no shock absorbers to see metates dug into ancient rock, and seeing dead people in the river on the Riverwalk boat trip in San Antonio. Just your typical road trip, right?

FURTHERING READING:

I found this sad note: Buzz’s museum is now permanently closed as of 11/7/2024. Owner had placed a sign in the door stating the museum has been closed due to personal reasons after 24 years of business.

The boat tour I took was one of the more traditional ones but this is along video if you want to see what the tourists see.

The Egyptian Goddess

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Jahannah James is one of my FAVORITE ancient history “geeks”. Her videos are entertaining, perfectly paced, short enough to watch and digest while trying to herd your cat out the door while the dogs are distracted. I LOVE her videos filmed in Egypt. Far superior to the old TV documentaries. I used to be obsessed with ancient Egypt. All started in 4th grade when I read A Camel for a Throne.

Do NOT let me digress! Jahannah did a video about the goddess Sekhmet Statue Anomalies which is dated March 22, 2023. I watched it a couple weeks ago. This evening, on TikTok, this video popped up and that triggered my need to dig up everything I could find.

Click on the image. It took a few tries to capture JUST this slide.

I don’t see a Facebook page but Emily Dexter is on Instagram and YouTube.

While watching Jahannah, I’m guessing it was about two weeks ago, I asked out loud to my cat, Mr. Higgston, who was watching it with me, why Jahannah had not brought alone a psychic. So this evening while the dogs were fussing and Mr. Greystone had just listened to this video about a cat who basically sounded like he was an advanced practitioner of Kashmir Saivism, when Emily Dexter’s video started playing, I wanted to do the Smurf’s Dance! AH HA! So the goddess Sekhmet does reside in or at least shows up in the statute when someone enters the chamber! KNEW IT!

@loricowen_

This cat was a lot. If anyone knows Neil Degrasse Tyson (@StarTalk) can you have him call me. #animalcommunicator #animalcommunication #neildegrassetyson #thematrix #telepathiccommunication

♬ original sound – Lori Cowen

So back to TikTok I went. As a librarian, I’m miffed that Daniel Delby does NOT credit Miss Jahannah. It took me a few tries to even figure out WHO was even talking in the video below, but it’s definitely Delby. Click on the video below the PURPLE (I have GOT to do another Purple post) promo.

In this next video, we hear from someone else who FELT the energy.

And now for this last video where the guide feels like he stepped right out of an old movie!

So WHO is Sekhmet?

And NOW I can talk about myself! You KNEW this was coming, right?

On the Full Moon in Taurus, I did a reading using Benbell Wen’s Spirit Tarot Keeper deck.

And TWO of the cards had a message from, not Sekhmet the lion headed goddess but, in some accounts, her scorpion headed sister, Serket! Serket, the goddess of healing and a protector deity – the perfect deity for what was troubling me when I shuffled the deck.

The messages, symbolism, “transmission”, etc is unmistakable. I could explain it all, but I’ll stop here and hope you watch the videos and ponder it all. Thanks to cheap airline tickets and affordable tour packages, people are flying all over the planet. Encounters with the supernatural are now as common place as meeting movie stars in the 1950s at fancy restaurants. The star struck movie fan walked away either impressed and giddy clutching an autograph, or deeply disappointed to discover the star wasn’t very pleasant.

The visitor to the various ancient “ruins” and temples are either prepared on an a karmic level for a transmission and a teaching or a warm embrace or kick in the pants, or they will feel nothing at all. But one thing is for certain, the “old” deities are real and it’s time to acknowledge that fact. Spirits are real and no, they are not all “demons” or “jinn”.

And If I’m right, they are waking up the planet because there is going to be a LOT of destruction, before or while healing is taking place.

Samhain 2025

Gateway2Manifesting Musings

I made three videos to keep my mind off being Sued By Armstrong Steel! Click on the photo. Sometimes WordPress embeds the video and sometimes it doesn’t, sigh.

This the story I wrote in 2020 for June’s Journey’s Halloween Contest. I was one of the winners!

Pat Brook is a Facebook friend and fellow creator. She doesn’t have a YouTube Channel so I asked her if I could share her work and she said “please do”!