Sydän saaliina. Romanssihuijarit verkossa. My new book will be published in Finland early in 2018

  Here it is folks! Tässä se on!
The cover for my new book, an extened and in my mind much improved Finnish translation of my first book LOVE ON THE LINE. How to Recover from Romance Scams Gracefully and without Victimisation,

  SYDÄN SAALIINA. Romanssihuijarit verkossa. (Heart as Pray. Romance Scammers Online). I certainly like the title. We pondered about it for a while. Everyone in my family got involved and voted, like they all voted for the best cover. Docendo then decided what was the best one from the marketing point of view. Sydän saaliina has been translated in the wonderful cooperation with my ex-husband Arto. It was a great experience working through Skype and the whole thing worked quite well. What was really, really exchausting was the rereading and correcting my spelling mistakes.

 Working on different systems can be a hardship since the Word works in different ways depending on the environment. Learning to do tracking changes and colour words. It certainly thought me a lot.

  In Sydän saaliina my audience in Finland can learn about my story. How I became a victim of a Romance Scammer and how I recovered by writing and changing the storyline to my own love story, complete with a happy ending..

 It is recommended that people who have gone through a traumatic experience write their story anew. I learned it a long time ago through the Internsive Journaling practice. During the writing of my book I heared it from the 2015 Sydney Peace Prize winner George Gittoes. And just this week I heard it from Dr Sharad P. Paul, when he was discussing his book The Genetics of Health with Matt Wells on his Slacking Ambition radio program. He also said that writing your own story will give you a larger view and context to your own life situation. This will help you to understand your traumatic situation better and help you to look for recovery methods. Seeing the bigger picture shifts your perspective and enables action.

  It worked for me and to help others in the same situation or those who want to educate themselves about fraud, I wrote my book. In fact my second book is almost there. I am very exited about writing my next HEARTS BETRAYED book. It is getting along as planned and expected to come out in 2018 as well .

  Watch this space for more information or go to my website.

Learning about Fraud Recovery through Translating My Love on the Line Book to Finnish

Docendo, my Finnish publisher asked if I would be willing to translate my own book to Finnish.

‘It would be published early next year (2018)’, they said. 

I was really hesitant to do it.

‘You could work on it and improve on it’, the editor suggested. ‘Some chapters could be extended and so on. It would be a new extended edition, just for Finland’.

So, I got excited about this possibility, but was still very uncertain to begin on my own. 

‘I need a good editor’, I counted. 
‘Well, you have one, right here’, the editor said.

What a relief! Finally, I could rely on someone to brush up my spelling and grammar. If you have been corrected all your life, it truly leaves you with low self-confidence. But I am determined to help others recover from the trauma of fraud, especially romance scams, so I had to overcome my fear.

Despite that, my mind was somehow permeated with dread. How could I cope? Would it take ages and ages to fit my two language boxed side by side, in my head? I saw my dyslexia as a barrier, once again, in accomplishing the task. It seemed like an endless highway of doubts and anxieties. I was depressed – again. A low moment. Luckily, my ex-husband came to my rescue.

‘I will help you’, he said through Skype from other side of the world.

I knew his language skills were perfect. I am so grateful. And so we have been working on it for about two months now and getting better at it.

Skype is such a great working tool, I have learned. It enables you to really be in the same room with your team despite the distance of half the world. And translating something I had worked really hard on my second language to my mother’s tongue has given me a whole new perspective to my own writing. I am even getting to appreciate my own thinking patterns. Sometimes I go like WoW! Did I really write that? And there are new words I have learned, as well.

Language is such a wonderful thing. There are words that are trendy, and translations that seem to get lost between languages. Sometimes there are excitement with finding new words that have been created and learning about them give you some delighted moments in time. You can really appreciate the meaning behind the words. And your understanding had expanded a bit, once again. Besides, you can learn a lot about yourself and about the subject matter at hand. Mine is fraud, by the way.

The book I am translating is called Love on the Line. How to Recover from Romance Scams Gracefully and without Victimisation, if you haven’t read my blogs before. I have gotten a new kind of depth to my writing and I am understanding myself better now. My ex, there on the other side of the world is really supportive and without his skills and language competency I would be in trouble in remembering every expression, after living in Australia for the last twenty odd years. How great is it to remember! And how great is it to finally get an equivalent meaning to a word like empowerment. (It is voimaantuminen, by the way). I had never even really realised that before a couple of years ago, there was not a word for this expression. Now, it is used very often in many situations. Some have even commented that they are sick of it. It is such a positive word and used too often, they complain. Does it go with the more downtrodden Finnish mind set? I feel it does, and I am delighted to finally be able to freely use it.  

Other things I have learned is that now, after two years from writing my first book, I am still feeling the same. But I have evolved. My recovery has truly moved to another level. I am eagerly writing my second book Love on the Line 2. How to Empower Yourself after Recovery from Trauma. And it is coming along very well. I am so very excited about it as well. And extending some chapters for my Finnish readers feels like this book is evolving with me. Now I know much more. Now I have contacts and a whole community that is working for the same cause. I am a member of trauma and fraud prevention support groups and know other people who are there and that helps, not only me but others as well. Great development!

I am trying to keep my Website up to date with information. Sometimes it is lacking behinds some, due to my enthusiasm to get these books on the go by the deadlines I have. So, thanks for being patient with me and supportive and everything. Especially I am thanking my ex for he is a great fellow and we are having such fun doing the translation.

What I am saying is: Watch this space! More will be coming, soon.

How to Get Educated about Internet Fraud?

Going back one year of my life and it feels like a lot has changed. My book Love on the Line. How to Recover from Romance Scams Gracefully and without Victimisation was just published and here we stood, my friends Chris, Fiona and I posing with the new printed information. It was the definite start to my education on romance fraud, scamming and people who have been affected by this ever increasing global crime scene.

I definitely loved the colour of my book, pink. Little did I know that one year from the publication of my book, fusain pink would be a new colour of the women activism of the world. Cheers for that! I am just about to knit my own hat. I feel this year I need one to upgrade my efforts to educate people about internet fraud and activism. For me, last year on the road, talking at 20 events, mostly libraries was an eye opener. And I started writing my second book as well. It will be about empowerment after surviving fraud.

For me, it is important to continue the recovery from the traumatic experience and why? Because, it will never go away! It will always be there as an experience, nagging me to awareness. In one year, I have gone through such a learning curve that I never thought possible. I have totally re-evaluated my whole life from start to finish, from birth to this present moment in time, in relation to my experience as a survivor of Internet fraud.

It has made me stronger. It has given me a new purpose. It has reconnected me with my own sources of strength. This years theme for the Women's Day #BeBoldForChange truly applies to me. This year I have elevated from humbly starting to call myself an author, to Author, Speaker and Professional Anti-Scamming Activist. How great is that! You can see the upgrade on my Website. I feel so proud. I am proud of myself, proud of all the people, friends, family and supporting networks that have contributed to my change. It has been profound.

Yesterday, I was excited about my new ventures. Soon I will be going to Europe: Finland, Sweden and the UK. I cannot wait to talk about my book, and how to avoid Internet fraud and start the process of recovery and continue with the process of empowerment from thereafter.

Here is a cheer to my new challenges, to my new adventures. I will report back. For now I am just so grateful. I recommend: get on with the program and get educated, buy a copy of my book, for example, Read it to start with your own journey to recovery and further to empowerment and to a great life that is void of fraud, Become observant and aware of the hazards of the modern digital world. Be safe. Be an activist. Have a life.

Love is an Online Battlefield

             

Picture is taken by Aila Peteri at the 'Sydney Sister's Event, Feb. 2016

For a few months now, I have been traveling around the South East Queensland visiting libraries and giving talks titled: Love in an Online Battlefield. Meeting so many people who have been interested in my book Love on the Line, How to Recover from Romance Scams Gracefully and without Victimisation has truly been an inspiring and an exciting experience. Sharing the story of  my recovery as a victim and a survivor of a romance scam has opened my eyes to a much wider understanding of how our new digital world works in relation to adapting itself to the old and already well established social and cultural though patterns that have already been built into the structures of our society.

The included picture depicts perfectly my surprise and my feelings of devastation after relising that I had been targeted by a fraudster, who not only had used identity theft in obtaining pictures for his already false profile and made up storylines but who also expected me to part from my money in order for him to come and see me face-to-face. Turned out that I was a victim of false promises by a false profile with a false picture to boot. As an after thought, it is quite horrifying to think about how vulnerable and foolish I did feel myself after finally realising that what I had thought to be a wonderful and trusting experience had tuned out to be fake and a huge mistake.

Luckily, I had my elder son to lean on when he told me to concentrate on my positive feelings instead of the negative and hateful ones. That suggestion became my Muse helping me to write my book about the experience. Since my book was published in January 2016, I have learned that my experience and my recovery has been quite a miracle, statistically speaking, as there are so few people who actually recover and this being indifferent to the amount of money they lose as a survivor. It is only the general perception of scamming that equates the money lost to the scammers with the worth of the experienced grief as more valuable that just losing a lover. The victims and survivors themselves, at least those who have since shared their stories with me feel that it is the loss of the relationship that is more important and longer lasting than the loss of the money, however much that may be.

 

The report card from SCARS (The Society of Citizens against Romance Scams) gives its grim statistic that is only 'the tip of the ice-berg' about the state of the romance fraud in the word today. Some of my QLD Police Fraud Prevention and Support Group's discussions have revealed that up to estimated $7-13 billion has been lost to fraud, including the financial and romance fraud only in 2015 alone. It is huge numbers. And not only that but I have found that my speculations about the connection of scamming with the messages imbedded in the idea of pornography that gave impetus to me starting to write my book have now become even more direct. I have found through the stories that have been shared that there is a true connection with violence and scamming.

This RomanceScamsNow.com picture says it all. In my experience romance scams are not only violence against women but are thoroughly based on the violent behavior patterns inbuilt in our society in many levels, starting from violence against women and continuing permeating every possible sociocultural paradigm that can be found through the ideas that are implicit in pornography and prostitution as an example. But why not come and listen to my talk, if you happen to be  near Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia or Logan, in the Brisbane area. This week is my SUPER LIBRARY WEEK, seven libraries in four days between Wednesday the 5th  and Saturday the 8th of October, 2016. Go to my Website to learn more.

Next week, starting from Tuesday the 11th of October, at five libraries at Sunshine Coast, you can follow my thirty-five year journey as a researcher and feminist and hear how my career has shaped my desire to make a difference titled: Modern Sexual Exploitation. You find all the information from my Website as well.

But most of all I recommend you to read my book. Ask for it at your library or at your bookstore. Or just order it online through my publisher Xlibris. Mostly, see you at the library talks at the library near you. You can also find out more by visiting my Media page.

  

Welcomome to LOVE ON THE LINE TV CONVERSATIONS: Episode 1. Behind the Book

Finally, I get to welcome you to my new venture: LOVE ON THE LINE TV CONVERSATIONS on YouTube. I have been planning to start a YouTube project for quite some time.

This has been one of those things that has been nagging at me but due to some unidentified fear factor has only manifested itself after some help from good friends and friendly professionals.

The final impulse to getting my new channel out was a 7 day video Facebook challenge I took part in just a few of weeks ago with Rachel Dunn and Michael Hole and their Girl Director Company. It is just  little things that make all the difference. My friend Janet Blake has been a marvel in supporting and helping me to get over the live. She has promised to make conversation videos with me on regular basis which means that there is much to look forward to. There are also lots of other wonderful people who have said yes to conversing with me about many issues concerning us today in relation to LOVE ON THE LINE.

There are many topics that come under this flag, so to say. There are also other subjects in the planning. One of them being my SAGA HEALING JOURNALING AND RECREATING YOUR STORY FOR RECOVERY eCourses that are in development. My head is just spinning with all the new things I need to learn.

It is all for the good cause, I say. The goal is to highlight HOPE, RECOVERY and HAPPY ENDINGS possibilities for trauma recovery. Of course, all this stems from me becoming a target of a romance scam and writing a book about it. It has developed into a lot more that I thought possible.

So, now it is over to you. Please enjoy Episode 1 of the LOVE ON THE LINE TV CONVERSATIONS with Janet Blake and I. It is the so called behind the scenes approach. I have included the full script here so that you may also read the conversation if you so prefer.

Thank you for reading, listening and watching.

FULL SCRIPT OF THE CONVERSATION Episode 1 LOVE ON THE LINE TV CONVERSATIONS: Behind the Book.

This be our trial one, taking about where we are at and talking about book launches and LOVE ON THE LINE, even if it is in the tree.

Welcome to the LOVE ON THE LINE TV Conversations with Janet Blake and Elina Juusola

Janet: And Elina is the author, in case you haven’t heard about it somewhere along the line. In the, shall we say, momentum, leading up to this, of Love on the Line
Elina: Here’s the book
J: Her first book.  Before we just have a bit of a chat. You have just written a book
E; I have, and it’s actually been published
J: And you know what, from listening to you. Congratulations on that. This book, you are welcome, has been what twenty something, maybe longer in the making or incubating?
J: And this whole process has been nurtured by a number of people?
E: Yes

J: Including, perhaps, finally, coming to terms with yourself and honouring and respecting that deep inner sacredness of what was deep inside of you, what would come out.

E: Yes, it was. It was like.

Well, this book, particularly, LOVE ON THE LINE is about Internet Romance Scams and because I was a victim of one, although I don’t call myself a victim. I call myself a survivor, or I was involved in one of these scams as a target. So, that woke me up to that I needed to do what I needed to do
And so, I mean, the shock of being a victim, or a target of this kind of scam when I was not even able to believe that it would be happening to me, because I am pretty knowledgeable about things. Or, I mean, as I said before, I’ve researched pornography, prostitution, violence against women for over 35 years. You would think that, you know how these things go, but they don’t, you don’t.
J: Listening to you and you know, the time we share before, life perhaps has positioned you as an expert in this field and with the hindsight. Do, you think that that has actually created a huge blind spot
E: Yes. I think because, as a person I am still, even though that I have been doing a lot of research for a number of years, I still look at the world with a very, very blue eyes, maybe. And I still think the best of all the people. So, I am not suspicious, so I am probably exately one of these people who would fall into a scam. Because, I would read an email and say, OK this is a nice person. I wouldn’t go on expecting this person to be a scammer. There are a lot of people who do, but I don’t. So, I mean. It can take you unaware.
J: Remember, I think, it was Albert Einstein who said that one of the fundamental questions we have to come to terms with, and this isn’t the exact quote whether the Universe is a friendly place or not.
E: Right, and in my mind Universe is a friendly place and in my mind, humanity is better that what we think.
I look at it as a lesson and I look at it as if this is probably why I was able to feel that now I have to look into this scamming, I have to research and see the bigger picture and see what was my relationship to the scam and how it came about and that’s why, for example, I started journaling and I started writing down my experience in the way. And then, like you know, the book became a narrative healing experience and from there on it has developed even more, because I am now writing the sequel.
J: So, when you dream, do you dream in different languages
E: Yes. People speak the language I know them from.
J: So, when you write your narratives. What language you write them in?
E: English
J: Because?
E: Because, that’s the language they will be published in.
J: Haa
E: And then I need to have somebody who is a skilled person, who understands me. Like I had Chris Henderson, from Women Howling at the Moon
J: And she is fantastic
E: Yes, and she took me in, and she has interpreted and she changed the structure because I might be writing in English, but it still might have a Finnish syntax. And not only her, but before the book was published, I still had the context editing.
First I write. Sometimes, I plan in Finnish, whatever happens. And then I plan and I write and it comes, quite a lot from my, automatically, what I write and I write very much as I speak. And then I have a person who looks at my language and changes it and maybe come out with some words which I think I knew but I didn’t remember
And then the second tie, is the context editing and then there is the product. Perfect product.
J: Which just happen like that! J
E: Exactly! It did take nearly one and half years.
J: Yes, and all that time leading up to it, incubating.
The word scamming is used a lot. So, here is a question for you. And maybe it’s in another language, I am not sure. What would be another word or a string of words that you would use to describe the picture of scamming?
E: I would say, when you are thinking in the bigger picture. And that we live in… First of all we live in a society where we don’t always know what’s happening where the thought forms and the thought patterns of this society, they have been ingrained in our brain, so that that we, actually, automatically, behave in a certain way.
J: Like Pavlovian dog
E: Yeah, we are very, very predictable as people
So, we have our culture, we got our language. We have our environment, where we are.
And some people can also use these kind of thought patterns and though forms against us. And so the scammers do that. People who are trying to, trying to get something from us for their own behalf.
J: Do you think there is also an aspect or, in terms of scammers and us, that they see the wound that is crying out to be healed?
E: Yes, the scamming is all about emotions and it is about catching that weak, vulnerable moment of the target.
J: Aha
E: So, let’s say that in my case, I was really ill, already, because my mom had died,
E: and I had developed fibromyalgia, so I was so ill that I even thought that my life is going to end at 60 instead of 110 which I had already predicted that I would be.
J: uhyy J
E: Thank you, that’s my plan
J: Part of your ongoing bigger narrative
E: Yes, exactly. So, I was caught in that very, very vulnerable moment and what happens in your brain is that you then go from this rational thinking into your emotions and I was having, just marvellous time. I tell you.
It’s incredible to have this kind of emotional high. And I had not, honestly, felt like that in a long time. And what I realised with this scamming experience is that I could change myself. I could live in my emotions. Deeply. I could go, without any drugs, like enhancing it. That I could do it myself. I could make myself happy and the oxytocin and the, what else, the hormones just start flowing your brain. And I realised that this is the kind of thing what happens with scammers. They want you to be in that moment so that you automatically work in that way. And then they ask for money and when they ask for money, at least the first couple of times, it comes unaware and you automatically help because it’s in your nature. But what happened with me was that the moment I pushed the button, when I sent my first money, I knew that there was something fishy about it.
J: Ah, did you, but you still did it.
E: Well, after I sent it, I went like, ah this is something I’ve done. What did I do! J And then I went and I sent an email to my son and he found that it was a Ghana scam and then he said to me. Well this is what he said: well here are all the links but do not click on these links because you don’t need to read all that crap that there has been about this person. Just keep the good memories and particularly the romantic memories. And this is how writing this book came about
J: Yes. So, for me, just watching the process unfold, in terms of launching your book and what you have been talking about the editing and pulling together. And the story actually has evolved even during that process and it has evolved even earlier as were talking earlier over tea and coffee
E: Yeah
J: One of the keys or, if you like, the highlight of the book was when your son told you, just to hang on to, hold on to. It was a bit more than just a good bits, but the bits where he made you feel alive, awake, and fantastic and it was even a bit more than that, because it was enhanced awareness and those things. So hold on to that state and you didn’t say it in so many worlds but remember that the messenger is not the message.
E: What happened there was that J we actually started making, having ideas of what kind of documentary we would do. Like you know a documentary about the scammers who are working in Ghana, in their call centers pretending to be the military in Afghanistan as a militant. And then you have this person, this this person, who is actually the target, the romantic person that is there and we had so much fun. Not only with my elder son but also with my younger son. You know. So, it became like a sort of an inspiration and a muse.
J: M-U-S-E so the essence of that whole, what shall we say, event.
E: Exactly!
E: Exactly, and from there we can go into storytelling and If you would be looking at your life from the deep dept. You could be tracing your emotions from one place to the other. You could be journaling. How could I say it? At this stage, we have this new kind of consciousness coming in, where. we are now being able to create our own world.
J: AHA
E: like the quantum theory says.  And the quantum thought patterns, they now are telling us that we are not stuck in our own ways, we are not stuck into these thought models. We can actually create our own life. So, this is like my storytelling that we could create a happy ending
J: Yes.
E: to our story.
J: And we could create lots of endings
E: Exactly. That it’s not the same. The happy ending is as likely as a bad ending. So, like you now, we can be part of the creation of our own story.
J: cool
E: And in that way we can break this generational victim idea.
J: And we can rewrite our scrips in terms of our life story, can’t we? (The book falls)
And that might be the end of it because the book fell off our wonderful bookshelf.
E: Yes, and thank you very much for listening to us. This was the episode one of our conversations with Janet and Elina and we aim to do more. So, just keep up, subscribe
J: Once a week. The subscribe button might be down there.
E: Yeah, do it. Once a week, we will have a new conversation about
J: Life, the Universe and everything
E: Yes, and about Love on the Line. And it is called LOVE ON THE LINE TV CONVERSATIONS
J: OK, so magic week for all of you in your life and explorations of
E: LOVE ON THE LINE
J & E Goodbye

Launch of Author Elina Juusola Book Tour of Libraries

                                          Picture by Aila Peteri


The year 2016 has been very exciting for me as many people know. Firstly, my book Love on the Line. How to Recover from Romance Scams Gracefully and without Victimisation was published in January with the hugely successful book launch at the Avid Reader Bookshop in Brisbane. There was another launch at my local Gympie Library in February. I was also able to speak about the book in my mother tongue Finnish a few times, at some of our community events, the largest being the Suomipäivät (The Finnish Festivall This was not only in Queensland but also in Sydney with the Sydney siskot (Sydney sisters).We know that romance scams are the top #1 fraud crime in the world. It is a huge issue and we need to talk about it as much as possible.

I am really proud to say that my book has gotten a wider audience lately. All the reviews have been very positive. I am now launching a Library Tour first in Queensland and then interstate to further fraud prevention and specifically to help the people who have been targeted by romance scams.

My tour will start on the 6th of May at the Hervey Bay Library at 10 am. Everybody is welcome. Just remember to register. In June I will be at the Victoria Point Library on Friday the 24th of June and then at the Logan North Library on Friday the 15th of July, both at 10 am. Then after an overseas trip, we start again in September in Logan and Gold Coast. The schedule will be on my Website. I am also planning on new ways to spread the word about love and fraud prevention and recovery from targeted through LOVE ON THE LINE TV on YouTube and online eCourses on Narrative Healing Journaling. So, look for them on my website as well. For now here are some very interesting resent links about me and my book:

ABC Wide Bay Radio interview with Trudie Leigo aired on the 3rd of May at 10.13 am. It was also aired on 612 Brisbane State-wide later in the Drive program and there was a very nice article included in the ABC Local Top stories as well. Please, enjoy them and comment on them. Links are also posted on my Facebook page.

I wish you all the best. Especially I want to thank a Sydney artist Aila Peteri for the lovely picture.
Looking forwards to seeing you around in the library near you.

Embarrassing or Empowering: Choice is Yours to Speak Out and Recover

Lately, I have been talking to a lot to people about my book Love on the Line, How to Recover from Romance Scams Gracefully and without Victimisation, It has been a huge learning curve for me about how to best advocate to my audience the importance of recovery as a surviving method from romance scams. My method has been writing through healing narrative. I have been surprised to find how hard the recovery really is because so many people feel embarrassed by their own experience. 

There are many reasons for embarrassment from loosing money to not really believing that such a thing could happen to me. Sometimes it is hard to face yourself and admit to the vulnerability that is within everyone of us. Sometimes it is hard to be confident to know that it was never your fault, even though the victims are often blamed for the crime, What is certain is that anyone can become a target of a scammer. Dr Cassandra Cross from the Queensland University of Technology, while talking at my book launch in January 2016, put it as it is:

   "The reality is that anyone could become a victim of scammers. We all have vulnerability. We have to respect that the offenders know exactly how to find that vulnerability and weakness. That is their profession."

She also said that people like me who come forward and speak out are rare. I was not really aware how rare, before I started to really engage with my readers and interested audience. I also found that many websites or groups that take on the issue of scamming have to work in secrecy or very privately to keep their members protected from treats. It was a schock to understand how many people are affected by scamming.

Wouldn't it be the ideal that our world would support the victims of scams. Instead, many feel isolated and afraid. Many feel devastated and disillusioned with the world. Luckily, there is hope, healing and recovery to consider. There are those who have spoken out about it, like Sharron Armstrong with her #standup2scams community. There are people like John with his Website and Facebook group who want to help. There are bloggers like Jas who write about inequality and how to engage yourself in making the world a better place, Last, but not least, there e people like Chris and Glenda who have made it their primary purpose to help others, in business and in person to get over it and act on it. I feel it my duty to spread the word of hope and positivity through writing.

So, join me in empowering yourself by using hashtags like #stanup2scams and my new one #speakoutandheal in your social media postings. Also tags like #empowerment #endviolence #positiveaction and #recoveryispossible would be good. And you can make up your own as you go. Blogging is also an effective and easy way to get your meaning accross to a wider audience. Sometimes, there might not be a huge readership, at first but we are working towards a long time result so every little action is a welcome addition to the movement. And if you have some good ones, please feel free to comment and and suggest down below, 

I am currently developing writing workshops and also a newsletter. My new Website for Love on the Line Book is alive and there is a blog that is all about those important question that has come fort during my book signing and event tours. Feel free to get involved. My main Website should get you everywhere. The book can be bought through Xlibris or any other main distributor like Amazon. Ah, and do like my Facebook Author page, too.

I wish you all a great Holiday Break from Australia.

Imaginary or Real Life Relationships? That is the Quiestion.

  Why is it so hard to build a relationship in real life? What happens when we meet someone and feel the attraction? Does it go both ways and if it does, how long does it last? What is the attraction of Apps like Tinder? And what does Twitter and texting has to do with our rewards system in the brain? To start to answer these questions here is a picture I found from Scammer Mimes Facebook page that got me thinking. It states:

    “You were much more interesting when you were online.” Does that sound about right?

   I recently met a man through an online dating site. He was perfect. His picture was perfect. His profile was perfect and in our messaging and texting, he insinuated that he was truly interested in the same things that I am. He was also very supportive to my writing career. I had written about scamming and he thought that it was appropriate. He said that he did not want losers, he wanted for us to support each other in whatever we wanted to achieve in life. It all sounded wonderful and I allowed myself to think and imagine what we could do together. And that in its turn was a great turn on for me. It was as if I had actually met him and as if we had already built our relationship. My dopamine hormone got me high just thinking about it. I am good at that. We messaged for a good two weeks and then decided to meet in person. We would meet at a popular café, about half way from each other. And that we did.

   When we met, it was like instant connection. It was as if my expectations were thoroughly met by this man walking down the street to meet me. He was handsome, and he walked in a manner a confident man walks. The moment he said hi and smiled produced a high in my brain. Wow, this was going somewhere and fast. Instant attraction, instant connection and I knew it was mutual. And we had not met through Tinder, so I thought that it was not about sex, at least not entirely. So, we talked and walked and cuddled and after I left, I crashed. I got stressed, depressed and anxious and felt like running away and very quickly at that. So what happened?

   My brain suddenly reacted by increased production of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline, which caused a mental fog. I got thoroughly confused about what I should do. My decision-making capabilities were at cero. So, I went home and soothed my brain by checking on Facebook and then on Twitter. I checked all my emails and deleted most of them, so that I would feel like I had done something worth mentioning. And then I saw that someone had posted an article about what happens in your brain when you multitask. And it all clicked into place. Once again, I had used my literary, imaginary capabilities to make my dream date perfect and could not see the forest from the fog afterwards.

This article explains it:
                    “[By] asking the brain to shift attention from one activity to another causes the prefrontal cortex and striatum to burn up oxygenated glucose, the same fuel they need to stay on task. And the kind of rapid, continual shifting we do with multitasking causes the brain to burn through fuel so quickly that we feel exhausted and disoriented after even a short time. We’ve literally depleted the nutrients in our brain.”

   But what happened, I ask. Why did I react the way I did in the first place?
Well, I wrote that pink book called Love on the Line. How to Recover from Romance Scams Gracefully and without Victimisation. And my rational mind recognised the signs although my emotional brain went on producing the high and enjoying the ride as well. So, I sort of baked the cake and ate it as well.

  It is good to know that I have learned something from my own mistakes and experience. However, that has not yet resulted in my brain building all new neural pathways that would immediately prevent me from making bad decisions. I still do make them and afterwards I regret. The man I met wanted just sex, after all and when he got only reluctant kisses and cuddles during our walk, he turned nasty. He insulted me and my mother, my daughter and couple of other well-chosen words came out of the same mouth that had previously told me how beautiful I looked and how attractive he found me. Luckily, the situation ended there and he did not follow when I turned around and walked to my car and left. So, what should I do?

   Should I stop looking for love and believing in the good in everyone or maybe just keep reading romance books, like I have always done? It is a hard question and in this new instant digital world we live in, a valid question as well. Building real relationships in the instant gratification real life is hard. Particularly, when the other party only wants what he thinks he is entitled to get after pretending to be nice online. That is why he is more interesting there. And I might leave him there, at least just for now, while I gather my positivity after the crash and find the things that I should be grateful about, like that I once again survived, not an online dating scam but a real life personal treat.

   I recon we should think about that for a while and just stay on course to see what could be done to somewhat heal this broken world and the broken dreams it carries and offers to those who like to always think the best of everything.

What PornHarmsKids Symposium Thought Me about Pornography and Harm in the New Millennium

It has been 21-years since I attended a conference on Human Trafficking, Prostitution or Pornography. I quit for a while because after 15-years of researching these topics, traveling the world and talking about it, I had become disillusioned about the world. I actually related to just about anything through my research on pornography. I saw the patterns of power-over and subjugation everywhere.

Now, I realise that it is because our memory is built through patterns and anything outside these patterns we notice and remember. For me, there was nothing outside the patterns of violence I detected around me. My brain had been collecting material since a very young age and at that time I could relate everything, including children's play and dolls through the dichotomy of power over and subjugation that can be found at the heart of the idea of the pornographic message. I felt I had to get out and save myself from too much harm. Luckily, moving to Australia was the solution and a new career in age care and community building was the salvation. But how long can it last before the universe provides new impetus for thought for someone who is trying to ignore it the best she could? Not long. Somewhere in my subconsiousness, I did keep up with the issues and the connections kept adding up. Then I found myself a target of a romance scam and wham, the world made sense again. 

My book Love on the Line. How to Recover from Romance Scams Gracefully and without Victimisation is a result of that shock of becoming a victim of a scam. Through it I explain the bigger picture that I see through the patterns built in my brain about power over and subjugation through pornography, romance book reading and scamming. Now I am detecting scams in everything, especially in how we relate to each other as human beings. I am already in the process of writing a sequel. But before it my mission was to update my knowledge about pornography and harm it brings to us in the new Millenium.

Luckily, I saw the online add for the PornHarmsKids Symposium. It was held at the University of NSW on the 9th of February. I got my plane ticket and donated in my fee as advised and all and all, I was a little late but got there anyway. And this is what I learned on one day listening to very professional speakers and discussing the topics with other concerned attendees:

Unfortunately, I learned that nothing much has changed in 20-years I have not been active in this field. Or maybe everything has changed, depending on your view of things. I now, hold a personal 35-year historian view based on my own research about how the message of pornography harms human beings; women, men and children; those that are vulnerable and being used as pawns to earn money for those others with callous minds or otherwise disruptive behavior thought patterns about the matter of power-over and subjugation. I'll be frank. 

The most profound change is visibility. Or maybe not! Remember the billboards? We drive past them with the family everywhere. Well, during the 1980's porn was plastered directly on them. It's message was interfering with our lives most anywhere, I remember those sexualised women sitting on some fancy cars on billboard and I remember having to explain all of it to my son and my daughter. Even porn magazines were advertised along with alcohol and tobacco. We fought them down in Europe, USA and Scandinavia and the world followed through. The argument was: porn is everywhere. And it was. Unfortunately, just as the solutions for those times were put in place, Internet appeared and the visibility shifted to homes and anywhere with access to it. The message remained unchanged. Though, now we could view it from the comfort of our own space and more of us could find and watch porn without interruptions.

The other profound difference has come through brain research, actually. For now we KNOW, what we only had an inkling about during the 1980's. Our brain is affected by what we see. It builds patterns and our actions follow through, if we let them. And, now we also know that it take around 25-years to grow a fully functioning frontal cortex with the ability to rationalise. So, we know that young brains are affected and harmed the most by what they pick up along the growing process. PornHarmsKids Symposium was all about how to tackle that huge problem we are faced with by free access to online pornography. There are some alarming sign detected about our behaviour as human adults and kids in relation to how we see the world and act on impulses of the ideas that are presented to us. This can be really bad news for women and girls as our lives are heavily affected through vulnerability and conditioning. I am not saying that the men and boys are not affected. They are but the power-over and subjucation clause of pornography clearly points to the victim as female. It is hard to detect, I know. 

In fact, one of the speakers at PornHarmsKids Symposium, Dr Tucci, actually theorised that the different way the boys and the girls react to pornography points to inequality. He said that he could not understand what it was in that in boys, porn trickers their arousal response, while this does not happen in girls. Conditioning perhaps, he suggested. Well, I know! After all we live in a patriarchy and the messages in porn are molded to mirror the power-over and subjugation clauses inbuilt in the very structures of our society. Not a very hard thing to draw a conclusion from there. 

For me the rest of the symposium was about finding what practical advice, each and every speaker could give in order to best tackle the problems at hand. Three big ones come to mind:

Melinda Thankard Reist forwarded the messages that young girls want to say to boys about relationships:

And the @Cypercop1 Susan McLean gave advice to parents who are struggling to cope with the ever expanding world of pornography and how to explain and guide their children to avoid abuse and hate.

And lastly, Collett Smart gave us the 10 Body Safety Rules that can help a child to recognise where the boundaries lie:

There is an excellent PornHarmsKids website to go to for more information. From there you can get the videos and the articles that keep coming about the symposium and about the issue. I am really pleased that I went. Meeting all these brave and courageous people has given me hope. Also look up the Twitter handles @PornHarmsKids and @CollectiveShout. I know that young people themselves are very concerned and they will come up with some solutions of their own, once they are educated about this issue in an open and nonjudgmental atmosphere. 

Until that time, it is our responsibility to keep working at it. It is our responsibility to insert hope, recovery and happy endings positivity to the world. Hopefully you'll follow along and take action for the betterment of the situation and the world. Every era needs their own solutions. Let's find the ones that work now in the new Millennium. 

Riding My Book Home: Thank You for Reading and Spreading the Word about Romance Scams

What is the most exciting thing about book writing is that it is an adventurous journey to get your book out there to the world. What a very satisfying feeling it is, to be standing there on the podium at the Avid Reader Bookshop reading from my book to the audience of attentive  listeners. It is worth looking back one year and summing up my experience.

One year ago, I had moved to Gympie in order to live near my grandchildren. I am utterly grateful to my wonderful son-in-law for suggesting that move. It gave me the creative space I needed for writing. I would never have thought of it myself. I was sort of stuck in the idea of staying in my own ecological house for the rest of my life. But no, instead, the move proved to be one of the best decisions I have ever made. About that time I had also attended  Chris Henderson's coaching first ever intensive two day retreat with a few other eager women looking for real and valuable change in their lives. This all prompted me to really start developing the depth to my Love in the Line book storyline. I had been thinking the issue important enough to share with the world but had been unsure about how to truly confront my fears of putting words on paper. The retreat was the catalyst that prompted me to really start writing. My biggest challenge was my language barrier. Writing a book in my second language came to fruition with great support from my coach. I learned that everyone needs a guiding hand and a support group.

I found my support group in the Howling at the Moon women's community in Brisbane. It is great to have a healthy support system that strengthens your aspirations and lets you be yourself with no judgement. At the meetings on every full moon, it is a wonderful feeling to be able to share my thoughts with others who care about taking action for change. I can full heartedly recommend for every woman to take on a challenge of finding their own network of achievers who actively support you and your goals. Rest was just writing.

I would not say that it was a ride in the park. Having a dear friend and my long time feminist legend mentor  Dr Gloria F Orenstein as a conversation partner in some difficult situations of deciding where to take my storyline helped me to keep on course with the right message I wanted to convey to the audience. It is a blessing to have good company when you ponder on the burning world issues like the internet romance scamming with its roots deep in the world of pornography and violence against women mentality.

It is very peculiar how I had stopped my researcher career in the middle of 1990's, when the global discussion about prostitution, pornography and violence against women sort of went underground just to publish my book in time when the world is truly recognising the need to understand and take action against violence against women, romance scamming being the top #1 fraud crime in the world. That is where my book can help.

A huge thanks to getting things done in the right way goes to my son Nillo Halonen in Finland and his Spartacus team. They designed my personal author Website and the smart branding of my profile. Without Nillo's cheerful and focused prompting, the book might even now have been some time from being published.

Luckily, I had already decided on the Publisher Xlibris right at the start. Originally, I did it to encourage myself with the pressure of investing in myself and my self-publishing venture, but it turns out that it was a good deal. I have learned a lot about publishing during the gone year. Now I know what to do with the second book that I have already started writing.

So, you see that standing on that podium talking about my book to the book loving friends and listening to Chris, Fiona and Dr Cassandra Cross talking about me and my book was a culmination of a long work process on several fields, just like my book is interdisciplinary work of non-fiction combined with personal narrative and a couple of fictional short stories.

Previously I was interviewed about why I wrote the book and  just yesterday Jas Rawlinson posted a brilliant review about my book in her Thoughts from Jas blog. I am truly blessed because all the reviews and articles, so far, have been very encouraging and wonderful to me. Thank you all and everyone for reading and talking about my book and so highlighting the issue of romance scams and the source where is leads to, namely violence culture in our society.

I want to write some more and I will. The future looks like there is so much more to say. Stay tuned for the sequel. It is in the writing. For now I urge you to take action and share the story of Love on the Line. How to Recover form Romance Scams Gracefully and without Victimisation.

Time to Celebrate 'LOVE ON THE LINE' Book Launch

It is a special day for me today. It is the first of the firsts I have ever imagined. And I have imagined. 

It is a celebration of the publishing of my first book Love on the Line. How to Recover from Romance Scams Gracefully and without Victimisation. I am totally, totally stoked. 

This morning I went to the Xlibris.com.au and opened the bookstore and witnessed in realtime how my book appeared online. First it wasn't there, and then a minute later, it was. Both the hardcover and the softcover are now available. It was an incredible experience for me and a blatant display on how international we are in the publishing business. 

Very soon I can also celebrate my next milestone which is the website that has been designed by the Spartacus team and should be online any time now. That will be the second time I am able to witness something that I will always remember. The year 2016 will be such a huge year in my books, that it will stop the clocks and blow the horns loudly in my mind. It will also mean a lot of work for me. 

Self-publishing is actually not a ride in the park as everything that leads to the success of the book and the message depends on you. That means that even though there are so many people and so many tools that can help with the outcome of the message getting to the audience, it is still your responsibility as an author to make it happen. It is a huge learning curve, to say the least. And it starts now, after the book is online and can be purchased and read by those people who find it interesting. 

It is the eye catching pink book there online, with the attention catching title and the cool cover. Or so my marketing specialist says. And it should be out there because the message is very important. It is topical and it is transformative, It is about one of the top ranking issues on everybody's toungue right now, namely scamming and love. But most of all it is about recovery and a way forwards with dignity. It is something we all should know to talk about. Lastly it is challenging. 

Every book needs to be challenging the reader. It has to deliver on the promise it gives. I really hope that my book does just that, I urge you to give it a change, get it, read it and give me your feedback. I would want to travel everywhere talking about this important issue. Surprisingly, this issue is age old in a new suit. And we need to find a way to change it. We need to find a way to deal with it and recover from the trauma. Already, I am writing the second installment. 

But first, let's all celebrate! I have done it! My book is out. My world has changed. Let's open the champagne bottle and have a toast to new beginnings. Let's toast to friendship and kindness because if there was not such deep rooted friendships and kindness, my book would never have been written. Because, despite the hard work I put into it, if there were not friends, family and compassion, I wouldn't be here saying THANK YOU, thank you everybody for listening to my story.

THE BOOK LAUNCH will be at the Avid Reader Bookstore in Brisbane at West End on Friday the 22nd of January at 6 pm. You are all warmly welcome!

How to Stretch Your Limits and Write Your Dream Book

There is a promise of very exciting times ahead in the year of 2016. Namely, I finally finished my book LOVE ON THE LINE. How to Recover from Romance Scams with Dignity and without Victimisation. It is the first book in the series of critically analyzing scamming in the modern world with its roots firmly in the world of pornography and romance book industry that I have planned on writing after becoming a victim of an online scam. The book is my ode to the new quantum paradigm and the possibility of happy endings through social change.  I have great ambitions to helping people to overcome their limits by understanding the bigger picture.

How was I able to achieve my goal, you might ask. On hind site there were a few things that contributed to the successfull execution of the plan. Namely, I was inspired into stretching my limits, overcoming a seeming language skills barrier with the help of a wonderful women's community connection, personal editor and some determination from my part. Finally, and I write it with gratitude, I was able to get my act together and finalise a long term dream of writing a book in the English language.

What I am saying here is that people should dream, set goals, make plans and work on achieving their desired happiness. They should seek to stretching their capabilities and overcoming their limits. It is worth all the angst and trouble. I should know. I was shocked enough to start writing. 

After having researched pornography, prostitution and violence against women for decades, I suddenly found myself in the clutches of an online scammer. It was a huge wake up call for me. How could I have fallen into a scam like that? Certainly, I am a savvy and intelligent woman. I would think so, at least. But the new digital world can fool anybody. It was a really low point in my life.  I felt devastated and disillusioned with the whole world. How could I have fallen so low? Luckily, I had my son to lean on to.

He inspired me, with his words of encouragement. He advised me not to dwell on the negative but keep in mind the positive memories of the romancing. So, I took his advise to heart and used it as a muse to write my best happy ending to the story in ordear to help others to avoid similar situations. My book is about to come out any day now. The launch date is already locked in. I am very excited. It is a new high for me. I am inviting everybody to participate. 

It is a new year for me, literally and symbolically. Having had huge anxiety attacks about how on earth could I write in a fluent English, I finally have had professional help to make me get my message through in a language I love but sometimes cannot express myself in. I thank my lucky stars and the community of wonderful Unstoppable Women who have encouraged me to stretch my limits and believe in myself. As a non-English speaking person, I often get corrected in my use of the English language. Sometimes, I feel like an idiot for not being able to express my thoughts in a way that deliveries the message the way I want it to be. It is frustrating!  Luckily, there are those friends that understand my blight and encourage me to expand on it and further explain my thoughts. I am blessed with good friends. I am grateful for that as well. A personal editor will make all the difference to a budding author's confidence. 

I really hope you will enjoy the results of my year of labour. I am inviting you all to the launch at the Avid Reader Bookstore in Bribane on Friday the 22nd of January at 6pm. You can register already on the website at 

http://avidreader.com.au/events/elina-juusola-love-on-the-line

My book will be online next week at

http://bookstore.xlibris.com

More information on my website at

www.elinajuusola.com