Marilyn Murray - Golden Rule Award Acceptance 2018

Our next honoree teaches others how to create wholeness beyond trauma, abuse and neglect in the United States and abroad. Let's hear more about her empowering international work. The screens.

In 2002, I was asked to go to Russia and to do a one week long training. They were having six weeks of training about alcoholism and how to treat alcoholism and drugs, and they wanted one week of the treatment of trauma. And so when I finished, they begged me to stay. They said, we've already had a lot of training about treating addictions, but no one has touched into the treatment of trauma. And they said, we have such a huge history of trauma. Seventy years of the Soviet system, two world wars, famine, starvation, everybody has trauma, and we really need to know how to deal with this.

Tragedy and hardship have impacted us for centuries. In the past 100 years, we have endured the enormously powerful Bolshevik Revolution, which forever changed the lives of millions of persons. A disastrous civil war, two horrific world wars in which every family lost loved ones. Russia lost more people in the battle of Stalingrad in World War II than America lost in the whole war. Prussia lost 27 million years of deprivation, starvation, repression, and the enormous fear of being branded an enemy of the people, in which one could be shot or sent to spend years in gulag in Siberia or the far north, where misery and death awaited all who entered.

They came from all over Russia. I have students from probably close to 300 cities in the former USR, from top, from the north to the south, the east to the west. Traveling and everything was also very expensive. So I paid for everything myself the first two years, which meant my travel expenses, apartment there, all the expenses of the trainings, the renting of the room, the translators, everything. Plus I paid travel expenses for quite a few people that were coming long distance. And I went through all my savings in retirement. And so what I decided then, the third year, was to apply for a 501C3, which I was able to get, and started a small foundation called Health Restoration International. We never ever have been a big foundation. It's always been very small, but I don't get paid for anything that I do in Russia. All of that has been for free always. But it's been very, very, very rewarding. I talk about how I deem that each person is created. And so I use the term original child to denote the person that you were created to be. But I also know that pain happens in the world and that everybody has what I call a sobbing child, your pool of pain. Nobody had a perfect childhood. And then I Also know that we're designed with a defense mechanism, which I call your controlling child. And this defense mechanism is the part that helps you survive in the world, no matter what it is that's going on. And so how those three parts, who you are, your pool of pain and your defense, how those interact, pretty much determines everything that we do in life. I personally now have taught probably close to 3,000 people. I've lost count over the years. But we now have a staff of some really, really fine instructors from not just Russia, but from Tajikistan, from Ukraine, from Kazakhstan, different places, different parts of the former ussr.

I don't know any other woman her age that works so much. And she doesn't just do the same thing over and over. She is constantly developing her teaching. She keeps adding on things, structures them differently, polishes it, and teaches new and new levels. I really admire that and thankful to life that I met her and thankful to Marilyn herself that she worked with me as her student. That's eternal gratitude from the student to her teacher.

If you would have asked me years ago what I was going to be doing at age 80, 81, I would.

Have definitely never said that I would be living in Moscow. When we think of the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The emphasis is usually placed on what you're doing for others. And oftentimes I think we miss the idea that that has to be based upon what we feel about ourselves and.

How we think about ourselves.

When I started in Russia in 2002, I was told that during the Soviet system that they were told that they had no worth and value as an individual, that their only value was to keep the Soviet system running. So all I was teaching health professionals and clergy how to treat, as you saw, trauma, abuse, neglect, and addictions. And I found out that none of them had been trained in that because the Soviet system says, those don't exist here. And of course, none of them had done their own work. So as we started to talk about the Golden Rule, instead, they would say to me, but I am bad. I am a nothing. So every day I said to them, you have worth for one reason, because God chose to make you. And I encourage them to begin to see themselves through God's eyes as someone who is precious and valuable. And we always emphasize love and respect of God, self, and others. So gradually they began a paradigm shift and change and understood then that they could do the Golden Rule because they loved and respected themselves and could pass that on. Since that time, some miraculous things have happened and I am so grateful tonight to God. God for having arranged this because we see the most miraculous miracles happening there that only God could have created. I certainly never could have, and I would never have attempted it without knowing that he was in charge of everything. I want to especially thank tonight the people that have made my trips there possible. My family, my beautiful daughters and son in laws, my grandchildren, my sister and brother in law, my friends that are here, and my colleagues at Dr. Ralph Earl and Marcus Earl at psychological counseling service in Scottsdale. And it just so happens that Ralph and Glenda brought me to this banquet 13 years ago. And I've come with them almost every year since then and my house has grown. And I was always proud to call Paul Eppinger a friend. And Sybil, I want to accept this award tonight, not just for me, but to definitely accept it on behalf of all the people in the former ussr because as you know, if you've read the news, things are really rough there right now. They keep getting more and more difficult. And the people there that have very courageously made a paradigm shift to change in their lives and then to pass that hope and healing on to literally multitudes of others from the farthest corners of the former Soviet system. And I also want to tonight to give a special dedication. I don't know whether I can do this without crying, but my father's family came from Russia. My father was born here. But I visited my grandparents villages several times. And I found that my entire family that stayed in Russia was either killed outright by Stalin or were sent to gulags in Siberia. I have cousins from Siberia that have visited with me and shared the story of our family. So God can take any bad thing and make a good thing come from it. Because in Russia they're very suspicious of outsiders, especially Americans. So the fact that I can say I'm from America, but I'm half Russian, they go Russkaya, Russkaya. And the fact that my family suffered greatly under Stalin, that has paid for the price, that's paid the price for me to be there and to be accepted as one of them. Where now almost all the foreigners are gone. I'm one of the few people that are left there that's being allowed to stay and to work. And I leave for Moscow in two weeks and a month from now. I will be In Tajikistan, only 282 miles from Kabul, Afghanistan, where a lot of the fighting is taking place. So I would really request that you pray for me. I'll be there for the next four months. And I know that God will be working. So I dedicate this award to my Russian family. Thank you, Marilyn Murray.