Personal, provocative, and practical information from real people with real-life stories to tell.

Meet Janet Dropping The Rock Life-Purpose: To promote individuality, self-responsibility and personal accountability. Visionary /Philosopher/ Healer Profile boss: Philosopher

Janet's voice is at once playful and authoritative, vibrant and thoughtful. And rightly so, for this PhilosopherOne has found a freedom in self actualization and self acceptance, having forever dropped the heavy rock of defensiveness, an unnecessary burden she'd been carrying around for far too long. Janet, who is well-known in the Ansir Community by her member name, Bluejay, found the Ansir site in April of 2000, during a time of "great expectancy" in her life. Unlike the many who find Ansir while on journeys of self-exploration, Janet was closing one chapter and ready to begin another. "Ansir came as a natural unfolding, a natural chapter in the next part of my life....."

To arrive at the place where she was ready for Ansir and the self-smarts it offers, Janet had a long and rocky path to travel. Raised in a strict, fundamentalist environment, she endured the painful pokes and prods of authority figures bent on demanding conformity. As is Style-typical for Philosophers, she found herSelf unable to lie, even when the consequences of truth-telling were unpleasant.

"For the life of me, I couldn't fathom why I'd continually tell the truth, even though I often got spanked and punished. All I knew is that I got sick when I lied, and I couldn't bear THAT physical pain."

A cellular commitment to honesty is but one of the personality traits that have followed Janet from childhood to the present. From earliest memories, she has known a call to ministry.

"When I was 6 years old, I would ask, "please take me to church, Mommy"....I had a concept of God since I was little....there's always been this hook in my heart to serve God."

Her call to ministry led her to studying theology in college. While a student, Janet suffered bouts of depression that eventually led to hospitalization. She questioned her faith and even her belief in God, but found that relationship to be so core to her being that it simply couldn't be abandoned, for any reason. She later married and settled down into a happy home life, pursuing her ministerial studies.

Her faith evolved from what she had been taught as a child, and much of it remained within those same rigid, fundamentalist bounds. But even within those circles, she pushed others in the direction of self-responsibility and expanding horizons.

"Throughout my ministry and church experiences, it seems that there is a cycle of embracing, and then ostracizing. People feel drawn to me, but then I challenge their thinking, and they get repelled...I would always encourage people to think for themSelves and BE themSelves....pastor after pastor has called me 'divisive' or 'a threat to stability'...."

Secure in the strictures of her belief system, Janet found not just her faith, but her entire life shaken to the core when her husband was diagnosed with leukemia in the fall of 1995. She was 25 years old.

"It shook me so badly on so many fronts — when you're serving God (with the kind of mindset I had at the time), I believed that I was going to be protected from bad things. If we just prayed hard enough, if we just believed....but not only didn't he recover, he blacked out in the shower and fell face-first on the toilet while he was on chemo....it destroyed both the bones in his mouth and his career as a professional trumpet player."

Her husband died from his battle with leukemia in 1996. Making life-and-death healthcare decision for her husband while scarcely in her mid-20's had profoundly changed Janet's life. Her faith survived the period of doubt and questioning, and she received the grace needed to deal with her young widowhood, even delivering the funeral sermon at his memorial service.

"That's when I really started to live life -- when he died. I watched him die and didn't freak out. I had a peace come over me that I can only explain as God."

Janet re-married a year later (note: her husband is the well-known Ansir denizen, Artist_by_Night), and she and her husband underwent a life-changing experience when a fellow Healer expanded some of her religious perspectives. Leaving fundamentalism behind for a more accepting, people-embracing brand of faith, Janet decided to take her newly expanded perspective online. A self-professed "personality junkie", she soon found the Ansir site. Her Profile resonated strongly and deeply, and her life was changed by what she found.

"The Healer Achilles' Heel and Life Purpose showed me my strengths and weaknesses in bright lights. I had been so used to using logic and discarding my intuition because it didn't make sense to OTHERS, and I had no explanation for what I knew. Time and time again, I became frustrated as I saw mySelf taking the path of least resistance only to get into some kind of rut or negative consequence. I would think, 'WHY didn't I listen to my inner voice!' Now I realize it was a matter of confidence, especially in the realm of trusting my intuition."

But perhaps the most important lesson came from the Philosopher In-Depths. The InDepths taught her the lesson of Rupert's Drops, an insight that changed her life.

From the Philosopher InDepth:
"In glassmaking there is a phenomena that occurs when a small glob of molten glass is rapidly cooled. The result is a solid, tadpole-shaped object with a bulbous head that tapers to a delicate curved tail. Despite their fragile look, Rupert's Drops seem indestructible. Direct sledgehammer blows glance off ineffectually. They were first introduced as toys in the 17th century to the court of King James I by his grandson, Prince Rupert of Bavaria. The real beauty of Rupert's Drops is not in their appearance or strength but in their nature. While seemingly indestructible, one clip or snip of delicate tail's tip explodes the Rupert's Drop into a powdery handful of harmless dust. It is the nature of Rupert's Drops, born of the rapid cooling of surface over warm interior, that accounts for their phenomena — an explosive disintegration of form back to particle beginning. And so it is with Philosophers.

"Accepting that others may not ever approve or understand them, because they can't, is the snip of realization that explodes and distintegrates Philosopher defensiveness."

Rupert's Drop

"One of THE biggest things Ansir has encouraged me to do is drop my defensiveness.....one day, after being extremely frustrated, I realized that I can't MAKE anyone understand, and they may not ever be able to. That gave me such an incredible peace and freedom, that I felt like a weight I carried most of my life was rolled off my back. I don't have to be understood OR accepted to confidently be me...."

"This has to be THE biggest thing that Ansir has taught me; that my strength is not in form but in NATURE. I always felt I had to explain mySelf, and force understanding, and when others DIDN'T, I would just redouble my efforts to 'be more clear'. How frustrating both for me AND the person I was communicating with! I now realize that some just can't understand me, and that's just fine with me."

Having cast aside the rock of defending, explaining, and justifying, Janet is free to live and be herSelf, expanding perspectives and encouraging individuality through both her ministry and life example. Extraneous burden aside, she is confidently walking her life path, as born and meant.

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