Day 57: Violette Ruffley

November 26, 2009 at 12:01 am, Category: Featured, Inspiration

“I look around and know that there are people who are doing big things, magnificent things; however, it’s my feeling that those of us who are the little ones, who can, if nothing more, offer a smile at a moment that someone needs it or a kind word when someone needs it, can really make a very great difference.”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Violette, for joining us today on this interview and giving up your time.  Before we begin with the questions, can you please introduce yourself?

Violette Ruffley: I’m Violette Ruffley and living in Clyde, North Carolina, which is such an exquisite area.

Toni: And what do you do, Violette?

Violette: Well, I’m a retired RN.  I had worked in psychiatry and basically psychosocial problems — rape treatment center, care partner for AIDS patients — and most of my time really was in mental health.

Toni: With the work that you’ve done over your lifetime, Violette, and the work that you’re doing now, and you think about the word “inspiration”, who do you think you inspire and how do you think you might do that?

Violette: Well it comes as a surprise that I might be an inspiration to anyone.  However, at this time and point in my life, it’s sort of … I’m almost 83, and I think “Good grief, what am I here for?”  And if indeed I can be an inspiration to anyone, then it really makes one’s life worthwhile and it’s a form of validation.

Toni: When you are doing the work that you do, how do you think that that inspiration comes through you to people that you touch every day?

Violette: I would hope I come from a center of love and that this is projected out to the people I touch.  I am a chaplain with hospice ,and the niche that I have really fallen into that is the one I really love and am most comfortable with is doing vigils the last hours of life; and that has been quite a wonderful experience.

Toni: When you are doing the vigils, can you give me and also the people who are reading this blog or listening to you … can you help me understand what that means exactly, what you’re doing?

Violette: Well, these are the patients who have been diagnosed as terminal.  However, they are now really, for lack of a better word, actively dying; and they are in their last hours.  I do hands-on healing, and when I am with the patient, I put my hands on them.  And even though they are perhaps unconscious or highly medicated with morphine, they still can hear because that is the last sense to leave.  And so I’m able to speak to them, to encourage them, to tell them that this is the moment that they will have relief and that they are so loved and that they are going to be peaceful and happy and moving toward the light.

Toni: And that certainly brings a whole different level of definition to the word inspiration for this project.  With the work that you do and almost, really, with this type of work can take away two of the questions that I would ask you, but let me try to understand.  Is the family there as well when you do this type of work?

Violette: Sometimes; and sometimes it’s giving them a respite so that they can go home and eat and rest for a while and then come back.  The last experience I had, the patient’s brother was there, and I did not say very much while he was there.  And once he left the room, then I felt really comfortable being able to encourage the patient to go ahead and go to the light.

I was told afterward that his regular volunteer had told him he could go, and that his brother had told him it was alright, he could go, and yet he struggled breathing; and it is a struggle.  Their breath is very labored.  But within really minutes of when I told him he could leave, he did go.

And when the nurse came back in the room, she took my chair and she was checking to see his breath sounds, and I was standing at the end of the bed.  During that entire time I was with him, his eyes were almost closed.  At the instant that he took his last breath, his eyes just flew open, and I felt the presence of angels in the room.  It was an inspiration to me, and it always is.  I feel tremendous energy surrounding me.

Toni: Wow, that’s beautiful.  Do you train others to do this type of work that you do, and the way that you do it, Violette?

Violette: Well, I do another type of work which is based actually originally from A Course In Miracles, and this is called attitudinal healing which Dr. Jerry Jampolsky presented after he experienced reading the course; it had changed his life.  He has started centers and introduced people to attitudinal healing principles, and these are the principles that I facilitate.

Toni: Can you help us understand what that is?

Violette: Well, the lovely part of principles, first of all, it’s based on the very first principle which is the essence of your being is love and that thing goes through the 12 principles.  For instance, dealing with death.  Since love is eternal, death need not be viewed as fearful.  I like to take at least …

If I may digress … Normally I present a principle per week; however, there are two principles which really involve more time – the one which deals with forgiveness, and then the principle I just mentioned about death, because I ask people to visualize how they want their own death to be handled.  Western culture has a tendency to be very fearful of acknowledging one’s own mortality, and people step back from it.

I don’t know where this comes from, but if you think about even the process of making a person up to look proper in a coffin to really give them life appearance, and people will even comment and say “Oh, he looks just as good as he did in real life.”  So there is that fear, and my sense is that we need to learn how to die before we can live.

Toni: Wow … that’s really incredible.  And is that all part of that process and the teaching that comes with the attitudinal healing?

Violette: Yes, but there is a great deal more to it, and the principles of attitudinal healing place a responsibility of your thoughts and your actions and your beliefs squarely on your own shoulders.  There is nothing outside of us; it’s all within.  Whether it’s looking for happiness or projecting victimhood out on life situations, it draws it all back to the self.

Toni: That is so important.  So you are a facilitator and help others with these principles?

Violette: Yes.

Toni: I see.

Violette: However, believe it or not, it’s very difficult to get people to sign up for the class.  People don’t want to acknowledge that they have a problem; they’re really in denial.

Toni: Based on the experiences that you’ve had and the experiences that you are giving families with the other part of your work that you do, I can’t imagine why people wouldn’t want to learn that from you, so I’m really happy for the awareness that you’re bringing to this through the Get Inspired! Project as well.  I want to ask you, though, before we run out of time here, Violette, what inspires you?  When you’re seeking inspiration to fill yourself up, what do you seek?

Violette: Really I have to touch nature.  I have to see growing things, the sun shining, even the rain.  Birds.  Birds are very meaningful to me.  A beautiful tree, a flower … these are my joys.

Toni: Are there certain moments when you know that you’re in a state that you need to again fill yourself up to be inspired and are there — outside of what you just mentioned, nature and experiencing that and seeing the beauty in that — are there other resources that you reach for or tools that you might use to stay inspired to do the immense work that you do?

Violette: I probably play a real avoidance game in terms of I do not have a television nor a radio.  I do not read newspapers.  To me, it’s the same news with a different date and different names and different locations.  I do walk away from doom and gloom, and I seek those that are living in joy and living in the now moment.

Toni: Have you always been that way?

Violette: No.  No; in truth, I would say that probably from puberty on until I was in my 50s, I was at one level of depression greater or lesser.  And in truth, when I was introduced to A Course In Miracles, it did change my life because I always perceived myself as a victim.

Toni: And so you went through that course, and that is where the learning began for you to move out of that gloom and doom?

Violette: Yes.  The day I read the lesson that said you are not a victim of the world you see — well, it took me about a week to get through that – “What do you mean I’m not a victim, of course I’m a victim!”  Oh, it took a while to really see that I had choices but simply did not take them.

Toni: Gosh, Violette, I tell you, you really have … this has been a wonderful interview.  It’s been a very gentle interview, and it’s just been a very powerful interview, and I’m so lucky to meet people like you and to be able to share people like you with the numbers of people that are coming to the Get Inspired! Project.  And I know that you’ve given me something to think about in this interview, and I know that you will give others something to think about.

Violette: May I just add one thing?

Toni: Absolutely!

Violette: I look around and know that there are people who are doing big things, magnificent things; however, it’s my feeling that those of us who are the little ones, who can, if nothing more, offer a smile at a moment that someone needs it or a kind word when someone needs it, can really make a very great difference.

Toni: And you’ve done that today, and you will do that for the people who are reading this and listening to you.

Violette: Thank you.

Toni: Thank you so much for this today, Violette, and it was a pleasure to talk to you and thank you for your time, and take care.

Violette: Thank you for permitting me to share.

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