Rasa passport photo, age 4 1/2 - Could not speak English in kindergarten, but when they saw her do a drawing, they put her into a higher grade. She was thrilled. By 6 years old her English was so good the teacher, Mrs. Baker, had her read to the class from a book until the kids exclaimed ‘Her lip is bleeding!’. She was a prodigy at art {with Dad’s encouragement} & was featured in a museum exhibit for kids – but suffering trauma when she lost her Dad’s company – she vowed never to draw again. But her last painting gasp – age 16 – a wonderful black lady teacher asks her to submit a painting for a contest for 5 NYC schools. Rasa buckles down because of this teacher’s love, & creates a watercolor called ‘Water Tower,’ seen from the view of her 6th floor B’klyn apt she shares with her Dad. She wins SECOND PLACE! The painting is exhibited in the school. Her artistic talents veer into other arenas – modeling, dancing, & in middle age, photography & movie production.
Rasa leaves home age 16 to become a model, dancer & actress in Hollywood, CA. She works for the top photographers there & later, in Vegas {Helmut Newton} for Playboy Magazine & in NYC, Irving Penn for Vogue, doing body building…
Below Rasa pictured with Aunt Dagmar & Mom, just arrived to the states, Rasa doing some kind of ‘high 5.’ Later the aunt she adores will say, ‘How dare you pray for your mom {Mom was dying} – God will not hear you because YOU SELL YOUR BODY!} Mom was in the hospital dying of cancer, the docs gave her months, Rasa asked ‘Can I pray for you’ at her bed, & did so. Mom then COMPLAINED to her sis, Aunt Ara, steaming up Ara’s wrath… These are the repercussions for being in the ‘adult trade,’ – a Patriarchal society will not let a woman live in peace, she is condemned forever.
Rasa becomes a star, featured all over newspapers & television world wide. She’s visiting Aunt & exclaims proudly, ‘They just did a story on me in the Daily News!’ Dagmar answers, ‘We use the Daily News to line the dog kennels.’
Rasa’s Grandma Luba, {Russian Cossack} Aunt Dagmar age 15, Dad Stasys, Mom
Regina Elizabeth, age 17 & Grandpa Vincas–Lithuania
Chapter 6 I Strip for God Part 4
5-28-21 Principles of Psychological Murder
What my Mom / Family Did to Me
Aunt Dagmar, Grandma Luba & Uncle Henry arrived on this boat. Henry’s in the middle in a checked shirt.
We {parents & kids} arrive as refugees on this boat, the Gen. S.S. Heintzelman, a Navy ship, June 1949 – First thing I see is Statue of Liberty, & in a song I wrote for my Broadway show I go, ‘I see an angel, I see an angel calling me – No more Stalin, no more Hitler, Hello God’!
Had this dream years ago which explains psychological murder: There was a girl age 16 who was active downtown in NYC, going out a lot. Her Mom took a knife & stabbed her so many times; she was lying in a pool of her blood on the sidewalk, dead.
I go to the Mom, who lives in a trailer, knock on her door. She opens it & I say to her,
“You killed my daughter, but I forgive you.” {End of dream}
Mom, passport photo, age 26
This is my Mom, & the daughter is my human self or flesh, & this describes what Mom did to me & how I, the God Self, reacted. Forgiveness is one of the earmarks of being a Christian, of any good religion. Revenge is one of the most heinous but sadly, common sins. I learned from saints to take the example of Jesus Christ & his Holy Mother, how they forgave those who persecuted & crucified him.
We have gone over the abuse issue in Parts 2 & 3 at length, but it bears repeating as some of the big factors of my life are restated with new perspectives. My life cannot be fully fathomed unless the abuse is explained – it’s been an integral part of my life experience. And it is not moaning & groaning or complaining, it’s explaining. I need to remember this:
Dad as a young professor in Lithuania – He was more of a caregiver for me than Mom, he was kind & sensitive, Mom was hard & mean & became cruel when I turned 10.
Jesus Christ {& all his saints, past present & future} was permitted by God Almighty to suffer tortures for the sake of others. So consider – it was God’s will that Jesus be unjustly arrested; God’s will that he be scourged with whips that contained bits of jagged metal; that He be crowned with 3” thorns on his Sacred Head; that He be humiliated, slapped in the face, mocked, & then, that He carry a Cross where the weight of it bore through the bleeding flesh of his right shoulder; that He be placed on the Cross, his Sacred Feet penetrated with huge nails; that his Sacred Arms be dislocated when the soldiers had not put the marks for the nails in the right place, they pulled his arms out to fit the marks, & nailed his Sacred Wrists there; God’s will that He be abandoned by all but one of his disciples, laughed & jeered at by crowds, etc. {Esoteric visions gotten from Anne Catherine Emmerich, who wrote the ‘Passion of Jesus Christ’.}
All these things of God’s will were anticipated by Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, where He surmised, maybe this cup should pass him by, but then He said,
“Thy Will, not mine, be done,”
How I looked from top to bottom, age 13 in 8th grade graduation dress, age 16 ready to graduate HS, & age 7, Delancy St Newark, NJ, the year my bro tried to impale me on a spear – The wound went into my thigh & halfway through the leg – Mom did not take me to the Doc for fear my bro would get into trouble – it therefore was not stitched up & took months to heal, the biggest scab imaginable
To me that wound had a connection with the wound thrust into Jesus’ side, called the Divine Stigmata – it is a symbol of martyrdom – Years later, 1982 – I received the Interior Divine Stigmata, which took 18 years of ‘dark night of the soul’ to get over. Yes, I am One with God, whatever some people may think.
Which is proof that it was the will of God that Jesus should experience these atrocities. Had Jesus not, the Holy Gospel would not be what it is – but these items were an integral part of the Gospel or Good News of Jesus Christ – that God & He so loved the world, that God gave his own Son, an innocent, most loving person, to go through this. The Passion was a NECESSARY EVIL for the salvation of billions of people – & this passion was also lived by every Saint of God, of all religions, & what they suffered for the love of God is transmitted to the human race for their benefit.
Now I join my account of abuse, for my good & that of the human race, for it brought me to where I had to be with God – by mortification, killing of the flesh & then, in that state, I was ONE with God – I could hear her voice, & I consented to her will in doing the projects spoken about. All the things I endured – even the adult trade – even being a cougar after 30 years of celibacy – were all planned to those who believed to go higher in spirituality & understanding.
Did Jesus then say, ‘OK God, I have preached the truth, now I don’t want to suffer all this that flies to me in the Passion – let’s skip that by, I gave the message, I did miracles, healings & exorcism, enough is enough, let me live my life in peace.’
Some of my formative years were spent in a ‘Displaced Persons’ Camp’ in Germany. Before going there my family ran a hotel for a nice German lady.
But He did NOT say that, & taking his example, shall I also say, in his footsteps, ‘Take away my abusive Mother, let her love me, take away the hate of my relatives, brainwashed, against me. Take away the unfairness, my being punished for all things I did not do, take away the prejudice, the judgment & condemnation of society toward me, for being in the adult trade; take away all the narrow minded gossip & defamation put on me.’
Then there were spiritual sacrifices, such as the Divine Stigmata, which I paid for with 18 years in the Dark Night of the Soul – shall that be taken away?
Indeed not. The pains of my life were necessary, the sacrifices, the persecution, unfairness, were all part & parcel of what had to be. And they are seen, in the eyes of God, the way that Jesus’ tortures were, as Jewels, Crowns, Diamonds, Rubies & Emeralds shining in all colors in the metaphysical world. Shall these Jewels for God be taken away? No, they are Precious &I shall keep them forever.
My Aunt Dagmar, Uncle Henry & Grandma lived in this mansion in Waccabuc, NY, on the third floor, in the employ of Mrs Grant, who owned Otis Elevators. I would spend some time here during summers, an unforgettable experience. My families lives were greatly enhanced by Mrs. Grant. And by an interesting karma, I found out during the writing of this book, that I own a large chunk of Otis Elevators, received from my late husband, Richard Von Werder.
One of the sons of Mrs. Grant, Danny, & I were romantic when I was 14 & he 19 – but two people in my family thwarted it. Perhaps God paid me back for this loss with the Otis stock – compensation for losing his love & wealth. {God has taken all I have lost & repaid me many times over, it’s the way She works when you ‘Put first the Kingdom of God, & all shall be added unto you.”}
I have tried to explain the BENEFIT of my trials & tribulations, & I will eventually explain how the ECONOMY of God had arranged, with all the bad stuff, the Grace coming out of it. For instance, I was deprived of money, resources, support, that was needed to sustain me & my child – it was brutal. But eventually, money, support came to me in God’s way that made up for all stolen, & more money &support was given me than I had lost.
Say, in body building, for example: I made no money & recognition as I broke down the iron door for other women. They paid me back with ridicule & contempt – ‘no good deed goes unpunished.’ Hadn’t they done the same to Jesus? For all his miracles, Healings & deliverance, what rewards did he get? Only a tiny minority loved him, believed in him & comforted him.
Eventually, a man paid me 10K to do the first book on female body building – this began my road to solvency as it was the most money I’d ever had – it was 1981 – I was 33.
Me in Waccabuc NY for the good times, age 6. Mrs. Grant owned horses, gave riding lessons, Uncle Henry took care of the grounds, horses, {even shoed them}. He was a great carpenter & in emergencies, a plumber. All the men in our family & acquaintance were skilled, everyone worked hard but knew how to have a good time & share holidays. My aunt took care of the house & two sons. Their living quarters were exquisite.
And then, in spite of giant obstacles, big men who worked against me, I was finally recognized as the beginning of female body building & gained proper recognition.
By the same token, every penny that had been denied me – the life insurance my first husband cancelled, my Mom depriving me as a child of even the permission to sustain myself – other people using me to make money but not giving me my fair share, when I danced or modeled – all this was overturned by one man, Richard Von Werder, my saint of a husband who helped & supported me while we were together, & on his death set me up for life. I would never be broke or desperate again. This was all planned by God. My celibacy is what brought Mr Von Werder to me. When I could marry no man because I was abstinent – Richard approved my vow & loved me – he said all he wanted was companionship & respected me for being a good woman–that was GOD working through him. I even saw it in a dream, he in the audience watching me dance, an angel tapping him on the shoulder & saying ‘there is your wife.’ Remember, God chose celibate Holy St. Joseph to be the husband of Mary & the foster father of Our Lord; in the same way God discovered the perfect man for me, a celibate woman, to love, honor & protect me – & he did.
At age 16 I left my Mom’s abuse & went to live with Dad in Brooklyn. Within a year I got an opportunity to be driven to California by a famous Playboy photographer, – I took the chance. Things went sour with him & he threw me out on the street. But within 4 years he saw me in Playboy, asked them for my address, went to see me in my charming house in Beverly Hills. I had become a model & dancer & supported myself. {No help from family or any man.} A hard life, sometimes not knowing where my next meal would come from, but I succeeded again & again & again, through my faith in God.
Again I say, the abuse of my family was MEANT TO BE, much of which I explained, but here again I must emphasize this point. Yes, it hurt. Yes, as a child I felt like killing myself. Yes, it destroyed my self esteem as a woman. I had no ‘self esteem’ nor any delusions of grandeur harbored by one who believes in their flesh. Lack of faith in the physical sent all of it to God, my One & Only, the trust, hope, faith & confidence was on God & God alone – for the flesh is weak, & the Spirit that quickens.
I am now 75 years old & at the end of my life, writing memoirs. Right now on Part 4 of my life story, ‘I Strip for God, Parts 1 & 2 are out, Part 3 will be out in a week or two. After Part 4 I will probably write two more books, right away, on my life, as it’s been full of adventure & experience & my memory is good. At age 63 I became a cougar, quit the celibacy of 30 years at the behest of God – God said stop suffering, go out & have fun. But it wasn’t all fun & games, I ended up having heart attacks - by the time I got to the hospital I was almost dead. They said they didn’t know how many attacks I had had, I thought they were anxiety attacks, all caused by this love affair with Bob, a troubled young man. God tells me he & I will eventually be together but I have put our relationship on hold. These memoirs of mine will be put into a major movie, I’ve been talking about it with my agent for years. The movie will be big, I am told, winning Academy Awards.
The family pic, third below, – back row is Dad holding me, a friend, my Mom. The old people in front left sponsored us to America, we lived with them, it’s 1949-1950 – calling them Grandparents, but they were distant relatives. They respected Dad a lot & were going to set us up with 5 grand {a huge amount then} but Mom foiled it. We lived with them on Ivy St, Kearny, NJ.
