Tuesday, September 30, 2014

What Horrors May Come When We Keep Secrets

Tuesday, September 30, 2014


The ebb and flow of being a writer is something I still find myself adjusting to even now.  I have been diligently writing my blog for fifteen months now.  I have kept a journal of some sort off and on for about fifteen years.  And yet I still find myself learning each and every day.  To learn and to be willing to embrace life changing new habits is a strong recipe for health and continued personal growth.  The opposite of openness and the acceptance of inevitable change leads, inevitably I often think, to stasis, isolation and eventually pain.  But changing isn't always easy.

I embarked on a big change last week.  I decided to be more transparent regarding the cause of my past health issues with my employer.  I chose the path of improved transparency after coming to the conclusion that defaulting to a more familiar way of being (being very circumspect and almost secretive) would not serve me.  But learning this has not been easy.

I grew up in a family that strikes me as pathologically determined to be secretive...even to the point of willingly allowing such behavior to alienate others.  I walked away from any sort of 'real' relationship with my paternal family of origin over the course of the last twelve months.  I felt profoundly alienated.  And, to a certain extent, I believe I might always feel that way.  I came to a point in the trajectory of my own development in which I chose to no longer tolerate the immense anxiety, fear and dread I had long endured as a child and younger adult.  What gave rise to my anxiety, fear and dread?  I felt an abiding anxiety that there might be a lot more darkness within the story of my father's life history that I might never know.  I felt anxiety wondering if he has lied to me in ways that I have still have never learned about.  I felt anxiety wondering if perhaps my father has a serious mental illness that he has somehow managed to avoid dealing with for about five decades.

It has required an immense amount of maturity on my part to move beyond a temptation to blame my father for his poor choices in regards to how they ultimately affected me.  He did what he did and chose what he chose.  I cannot necessarily change him any more easily than I could the first stranger I encounter out in the world later today.  But choices always have consequences.  And his choice to avoid engaging in an authentic conversation last year about longstanding and deep-seated unresolved issues was all I could handle.  I chose to walk away from him and his dysfunctional life.  And yet the legacy of being his son still influences me to this day...for better and worse.  And one obvious manifestation of the way it influences me is revealed in the difficulties I still sometimes experience in engaging in the art of creating, building and sustaining relationships.

When fear finds it way into your heart and mind it so often colors so much of how you see the world.  I know this to be true from my own personal life history.  As I journey onwards without any sustained and sustaining relationship with my paternal family of origin I am doing the challenging work of how to live an authentic life and allow people into my life in a healthy way.  Healthy boundaries are vital to the daily experience of healthy relationships.

I see clearly that I often find the experience of cultivating healthy relationships to be a challenging endeavor.  And it's no wonder this is so given my own life history.  But I can nonetheless become a healthy man.  I can seek out healthy examples of individuals who model healthy relationships well.  I have the ability to choose to do that.  Again, as I have noted, it isn't necessarily an easy journey.  But with sufficient dedication and support anything is indeed possible.

It is also clear to me that the distress I too frequently feel regarding the state of our world today is due in part to my perception that we humans aren't really learning very well from our collective history.  I see some of the same mistakes being made over and over again.  I am thus left wondering what will become of us if we, like an individual addict whose life is often a journey dominated by a fixation on surviving from one fix to the next, do not genuinely address the collective issues of our time.  And keeping secrets that ultimately harm ourselves, our families, our communities and even our world is certainly a practice we need to examine.

I am a walking poster boy for what may happen when a person is repeatedly mistreated by his own family of origin.  Though the wounds I experienced in my childhood are by and large healing the process of attending to them is not a small one.  As I have noted over and over again: Change takes time.

It saddens me immensely that I felt the healthiest choice I could make in regards to my relationship with my father was to have nothing to do with him anymore.  When people become so dedicated to avoiding pain that they will willingly risk their most significant relationships to protect themselves I cannot help but find that so very sad.  And I think it is also true that such behavior is an indicator of potentially deep-seated narcissism.  If the only pain you can be present to is your own then what does that say about you as a person?  If your pain, your life, your wishes, your desires and your dreams are the only ones you will consider especially worthy of your attention how can you possibly be a social being capable of healthy relationships?  In my opinion you cannot really engage the world at large if you are that obsessed with yourself.

Despite what I have endured I am moving forward.  I am committed to healing and a good, future life.  And I am committed to sharing the wisdom I gain through this blog.


One Day You Will Wake Up...

Tuesday, September 30, 2014


"When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."
- Samuel Johnson, Comment on September 19, 1777 about the execution of Dr. William Dodd

"One day you will wake up and there won't be any more time to do the things you've always wanted to do.  Do it NOW."
- Paulo Coelho

What would you do if it was your last night alive on planet Earth?  One day this will in fact be true.  And unlike the other side of life when doctors can offer a forecasted due date for a baby soon to come into the world with some degree of accuracy it is the moment that marks the end of our lives that can prove elusive...much like a fog enshrouded landscape at the time of dusk.  And yet the prospect of death can, as noted above, help a person to wonderfully concentrate his thoughts.  Indeed, if you knew for a fact that you had a terminal illness and you also knew for a fact that your illness would take you in three months' time you would quite possibly radically change your way of living those last ninety days.

Getting trapped in the ever present now with no sense of the reality that our lives will one day end can be painful.  I sense it isn't unusual for people to get trapped in the illusion that we will all have plenty of time to do all the things we wish to do in life.  It can thus be especially painful when tragedy strikes and cuts off apparent access to the dreams of our future lives.  When long hoped for dreams we have labored deeply and faithfully to achieve nonetheless do not come to fruition it's quite possible to descend into a deep grief whose power is so immense as to feel suffocating.  When dreams we have long held no longer seem achievable the disappointment and sadness of releasing them can feel positively crushing.

Throughout the first few months of my active journey to recovery in 2013 I felt consumed with such a hodgepodge of feelings.  My initial foray into the realm of making writing a daily discipline was thus designed more to help me to cope than to inspire anyone else.  I felt immense confusion.  I didn't know how long it might take me to recover fully from the legacy of my early life history.  And my therapist could not give me a decisive answer either.  Notice that I stated 'could not' rather than 'would not'.  My therapist is a kind man; I have no doubt he would have willingly offered an educated guess-answer to my question if 1) he felt it was possible and 2) he felt it was an ethical and responsible way for him to proceed in working with me.  Fifteen months have passed.  And I still find myself asking some of the same questions: When will I be fully healed?  When will the influence of my earliest life history finally not have such an impact on me?  When....?  And I still do not really know.  I can say I am much happier, much healthier and much more confident that my future life will be a good one.

It still hasn't even been one full calendar year of time since I was determined to be sub-clinical for PTSD.  The determination that I was no longer clinically diagnosable for PTSD was made in January, 2014.  As of today that was only nine months ago.  This is thus only my first autumn living without the trauma of my early life history still impacting me in a significant way.  The holidays this year will be my first round of holidays with my new take on the world!  Rome wasn't built in a day.  And people do not overcome significant trauma histories in a single day either.  Change takes time.

I have been deeply aware of my own mortality since I began another (and I truly hope the last big one) foray into the realm of conscious personal healing work.  When I returned to work earlier this calendar year I decided that if I was ever to work again I would only be willing to do something I truly wanted to do.  Ideally I would like to utilize a variety of the skills I currently have in my future work.  I most enjoy applying the following skills: research, community engagement, outdoor wilderness travel, cultural and environmental conservation projects, education and the visual and creative arts.

I have been open to achieving my long term goals by taking any number of paths in the short term.  And yet recent events convince me that it would be wise to be a bit more discerning than I have previously been.  You might call it being choosy or picky.  I simply want to minimize as much as possible the risk of wasting precious time.  After all, one day I will wake up and it will be my last day alive on Earth.  A day will come when I see my last sunrise.  I want to enjoy the life that still extends before me.

If you knew you had only a month, three months, six months or even a full year left to live how would you choose to live?  What would you make a priority?


Post Script

Fifty Day Challenge, Day #5

My healthy activities for today:

  • I am cultivating space and conscious awareness in my interactions with others
  • I pay attention to any discomfort I may experience; I allow my breath to both energize and relax me
  • I cultivate optimism 






Monday, September 29, 2014

The Time of Skittering Leaves

Monday, September 29, 2014


The notable warmth of yesterday afternoon has been replaced by a fresh wind with a northerly component.  Summer is now passing away.  The time of skittering leaves (aka Autumn) is now upon us.  And I feel excited about this new season!  I often liked Autumn when I was a kid.  Growing up in Texas as a kid who did not enjoy the heat I embraced the change of seasons away from summer with immense enthusiasm.  The warm climate of Texas was one reason (among many) that I eventually left the state.

The change of seasons is always a good time to pause and take note of the changes that have occurred in our own lives since the previous season began.  The summer of 2014 now essentially stands in the past.  I did a lot of work this past summer.  I not only had paying work that met my basic daily needs but I also continued the work of personal recovery which I began documenting in this blog in July, 2013.  It was a busy, productive time.

It appears it has come time for me to finally become much better about saying 'No' and setting clear boundaries to define what I want to experience and what I do not want to experience.  Some events from the last couple of weeks have confirmed the necessity of taking this step forward.

Courage is always a necessary ingredient in making purposeful, powerful and needed changes.  I would not be where I am today without an immense amount of courage.  And yet courage does us no good if we do not actually make use of our storehouse of it.  Change often happens one of two ways.  We either are compelled to change by outside circumstances or we make an 'interior choice' to change and then proceed to alter our external reality to match our needs and desires.

The week beginning today feels a bit like walking a gauntlet.  I'm doing a fair bit of conscious prayer and breathing to welcome in the changes I need to create.  The present moment often contains more possibilities than we might be aware of.  An important tool of living an effective, productive and fulfilling life is to carry this awareness of your personal power with you...and not forget it!


Post Script 

Fifty Day Challenge, Day #4

My healthy activities for today:
  • I attended a core conditioning class at the Blaisdell YMCA this morning.  I chatted briefly with the teacher of the class at the end and enjoyed reconnecting with her.  I first attended this class last year
  • I am going to meet a friend for lunch at The Aliveness Project
  • I am focusing my attention on consciously breathing and noting when my mind begins to wander



Sunday, September 28, 2014

You Can Grow At Any Age

Sunday, September 28, 2014


"At any age we grow by the enlarging of consciousness, by learning…. That implies a new way of looking at the universe." ~ May Sarton



In the fifteen months I have been writing my blog I occasionally like to use the medium as a means to highlight the work of a very talented and kind person whom I have been fortunate to cross paths with.  The words of May Sarton quoted above remind me of the encouragement and wisdom I have received from a local health-care practitioner who practices at the Parkside Alternative Medicine Clinic.  The name of the physical therapist I am referencing is Carol Michalicek.


Carol has practiced as a physical therapist for a number of years.  You can find her professional online profile here.  I was first referred to Carol at the end of last year.  I received a referral to her to treat low back pain.  By the time I began working with her I had already been diligently following a gym regimen for about five months.  Carol possesses a skill, attentiveness and thoughtfulness you do not necessarily find in every physical therapist out there.  Her competence is quite naturally a result of the length of her experience.  But she offers other qualities that experience alone doesn't necessarily guarantee a person will develop over time.


I have found the brief time Carol and I speak at the beginning of a session to always be a very enjoyable time.  Carol has a strong capacity to be present.  I have never had the slightest sense that she was preoccupied during any of the sessions I have had with her.  Active presence (which could perhaps loosely be translated as active witnessing) is not exactly something many people in a harried society like the United States practice on a regular basis. 


[Slight tangent: Indeed, I think we are becoming a distracted society.  To live with a relatively uncluttered mind and be present to the present moment (and your surroundings beyond your phone) seems to be almost counter-cultural at this point.  I occasionally joke that the day will one day come when children have a microchip implanted in their heads at birth so they will no longer need a device separate from their bodies to reach out to the world at large.  The technology would be embedded.  It may sound far-fetched but I believe some would actually embrace such an idea.]


And now back to my main subject...


I have come away feeling personally inspired when Carol and I have spoken about people of all backgrounds doing deep personal growth-work.  I recall her once saying that eighty-year old people are doing the work (of engaging in the personal inquiry and related dedication necessary to grow).  I find her sharing of her experience so inspiring and consoling because it reminds me that people of any circumstance can reach for the stars...and one day find themselves among them.  


In the darker moments of the last fifteen months of my life history it was sometimes quite difficult to imagine that my efforts would eventually bear the fruit I wanted.  Feeling disheartened by how the members of my father's generation (he and his siblings) have behaved as they have aged left me sometimes feeling quite disenchanted and alienated.  I have gradually learned to let that disappointment go.  I have come to understand that it is a healthy and necessary choice for me to seek out fun and aliveness among the six billion people of the planet outside of my own family of origin.  In other words a person must eventually stop going to dry wells in search of water and look elsewhere.


The issue of the importance of elders as mentors to the younger generation cannot be understated.  Richard Rohr often references his perspective that the United States is very much a "first half of life culture".  This is indeed true.  Elders typically do not hold an esteemed position in this society as compared to many other cultures throughout the world.  I count myself lucky that I have crossed paths with amazing people including elders whom I have referenced elsewhere in this blog.  I had lost all four of my grandparents before my twenty-first birthday.  Between these losses fairly early in my own life history and the trauma and loss I experienced (which I have already extensively documented here in this medium) in even earlier years of my life I have often marveled that I became as productive and responsible as an adult as I did.


The bottom line is that healing and health is possible at most any age.  You get to decide how you will define yourself and how you will live your life.  You do not have to succumb to the circumstances of your current life reality.  Some circumstances and challenges may take years to outgrow.  But change and abiding health is possible.


We need more people like Carol in the world!






Post Script

Fifty Day Challenge, Day #3

Today I did the following nurturing things for myself:

  • I ate a healthy breakfast
  • I spent time with three friends at the 2014 Minnesota Renaissance Festival
  • While outside at the Festival I enjoyed the valuable benefit of managed sun exposure (for metabolism of Vitamin D)
  • I gave myself some quiet time in the evening to relax and not engage with any sort of technology to connect with the larger world






Saturday, September 27, 2014

Another Step Forward: Addressing Institutional Weakness

Saturday, September 27, 2014


Early this morning (quite early for a Saturday really) I took another courageous step forward.

For some time now I had been receiving email requests from the school district in Texas where I attended public school.  I had not replied to the emails because I found them irksome.  But there was another reason.  I wanted to take the opportunity to engage with the school district regarding my past history and bring some awareness to the issue of trauma.

This morning I wrote the following message.  I submitted it to the lead counselor of the high school I attended.  I also copied the one (and apparently only) crisis counselor listed on the high school's website.  (The high school did not have a website when I was in high school because websites themselves didn't really exist.  The Internet was not publicly accessible at that time.)



September 27, 2014



To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing in regards to the numerous emails I have received requesting current biographical information for a directory of alumni of former students whose school history includes a portion of the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex.

I receive a lot of email so I have not been able to reply promptly.

I also have hesitated to reply because I feel ambivalent about doing so.  And here is why: I am in recovery from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  And I quite honestly do not enjoy being reminded of my past history in Texas because I developed PTSD in part due to my dysfunctional family of origin.  I further do not like to be reminded of my school history there because, even though I was a stellar student (for example I scored a 5 on a 1 to 5 point scale on the AP Calculus test when I was a high school senior), I was not growing up in the best circumstances.  And I believe if the school district staff had been better trained they would have perhaps spotted what I believe were very clear signs that something was off about me.

My mother developed schizophrenia when I was a very little boy.  My father was later nearly murdered by my stepmother.  I effectively nearly lost both of my parents by the age of nine!

Despite the trauma I endured no major institution really did a superb job of helping to ensure my basic safety and needs were met.  My family of origin failed me.  My church failed me.  The local police department failed me.  And I feel my school district also failed me.


Rather than place my current information in a directory I would welcome high school staff [I have deleted reference to my school's exact name as such information could prove damaging to the school's reputation...and many of the people who were there at the time have likely since retired and maybe have even died] to contact me and engage in a conversation about what I have shared.  Perhaps my experience can be used to improve school staff training in the future so that other students affected by significant trauma do not have to endure what I went through.

[I have deleted my name and contact information to provide relative protection for my privacy]



If you would like to see how much I was affected by what I experienced you can read my recovery blog at http://bcwellkamp.blogspot.com

Fear of Failure and Fear of Success

Saturday, September 27, 2014


When making a journey of healing it is a wise practice to take a break and rest every so often much as you would do when making a long distance trip across the country.  The fifteen month anniversary of the beginning of my blog will take place next week.  I am going to take the occasion of that milestone to inspire some reassessment of where I am at now.

There is a persistent thread in the rich journey of my own healing that is a more recent feature of my life.  I wish to elaborate on this thread today.  Once a person in recovery from trauma achieves a certain degree of improved functionality I believe it only natural to begin asking the following question: 'What are the possibilities for my life?'  I have been pondering this question a lot in the last three to five months.  What can I do with the life I have yet to live?

In a recent blog piece from this last week I shared the wisdom of Richard Rohr.  Rohr has made the exploration and embodiment of healthy masculine spirituality a central piece of his career.  His use of the metaphor of two halves of life (a first half defined by constructing your ego container and focusing on defining who you are in the world and a second half defined by moving beyond what I would call the 'Project of the Self') has been especially compelling for me.

I feel I personally entered the second half of my own life last year when I reentered therapy and discovered how much more healing was possible as well as desirable.  It is my opinion that a severe trauma can serve as an initiation (perhaps often desired but yet simultaneously also often feared and not consciously recognized) into the second half of life.  We can experience an intense desire for healing and growth that will lead us to an immense realm of possibility previously unknown.  And yet we can also find ourselves fearing that very growth.  Why?  I think there are a number of reasons we can feel such conflicting desires within ourselves.  Here are some of my own reflections.  Journeying into a new world can be scary because:


We may have few guides and minimal support

For some it might seem as if there is no real choice in choosing to journey in the direction of a better life.  Some people reach a point of crisis where the choice to heal doesn't really seem to be a choice.  The consequences of failing to change can be stark: Either deal with your problems or face persistent misery and even certain death.  And it has been my impression that sometimes crisis is indeed the only way that individual and collective issues will finally be addressed.  In less glowing terms this reality can be described in this way: Sometimes you have to hit bottom before you can begin to ascend.

Some individuals, despite their desire to heal, may hesitate due to a perceived lack of support.  They may not know how to access quality resources.  Or they may feel ashamed by how much their troubles consume their own lives and not want others to see them in their darkness, weakness, confusion and chaos.  Those living in rural areas or developing nations may face the added burden of living in communities with few resources available to help them in a time of immense need.


A new life may seem inaccessible or scary

If you have suffered over a long period of time due to issues such as addiction, chronic unemployment or under-employment, unhealthy relationships and the like taking a journey to heal and create something better for yourself may seem a momentous and terrifying project.  Why?  For a person who has endured suffering for a protracted time it seems very possible, at least in my opinion, that the familiarity of the pattern takes on a comforting quality.  If you grew up in a household that featured a persistent pattern of chaotic relationships it might seem that an adult life of functional, healthy, balanced relationships is a foreign, radical, almost completely inaccessible possibility.  I would further venture that for some successfully transcending a family of origin filled with immense and systemic dysfunction may seem tantamount to betraying that family.  When we become deeply invested in certain identities it can be very difficult to move beyond them.


A new life may make demands of us we don't even anticipate

Closely related to my previous point is this one.  When we start moving in the direction of the Unknown it is wise to create a strategy for how to get there.  Whether it is seeking out a new job, relocating to a different part of the world, returning to school or getting married big life decisions such as these require that we bring the very best of ourselves to the ventures we give our 'Yes' to.

If we are journeying in the direction of a new reality we have never really previously experienced it follows that some serious preparation would be advisable.  Consider this: would you take a vacation to a foreign country you have never visited before without some minimal amount of preparation?  You would be unwise to not do so.  Just as taking such a trip requires any number of actions to prepare (getting or updating a passport, checking to ensure your immunization record is current, developing some basic skill in the language and customs of your destination if they are initially foreign to you, packing appropriate clothing, crafting a list of emergency contacts, etc) so does following through on a steadfast commitment to open up new vistas of possibility for yourself.


If you are reading this piece and just starting out in your own journey to recovery consider the points I have made above to be wisdom distilled from my own 'journey through the trenches' made possible by my own tenacity as well as the wisdom of teachers, mentors and guides who have made similar journeys before I chose to take my own.


......


This past summer I attended a writing workshop offered through a collaboration between a local group called LGBT in recovery and All God's Children Metropolitan Community Church located at Park Avenue and E. 31st Street.  During the workshop we spent some time exploring experiences often common to those in recovery from any number of challenges.  Below are some jewels of wisdom I noted down:

"More often than not, fear doesn't emerge as nail-biting, cold-feet terror, but surfaces instead as anger, perfectionism, pessimism, low-level anxiety, depression and feelings of isolation.  In these many disguises, fear can permeate life, leaving room for little else.  It morphs from one pseudo-emotion to another, rarely declaring itself, poisoning each moment it touches."

"People stuck in fear fixate on destructive language."

"Happiness is a way of life - it is nothing less than cherishing every day."

"Optimism gives you power over fear of the future and over regret from the past."


Of all the jewels of wisdom that were shared that day I thought the following positive affirmation was the most poignant:

"I deserve to give myself the chance to try"


If you are starting out in your own recovery ask yourself this question: Do you believe you deserve to give yourself the chance to try?  If you do not then you would be wise to ask yourself why you feel that way.  If you do wish to try ask yourself what might stop you from trying.  Or what might you blame as the supposed cause of your failure to even attempt to make the journey?

It has been my observation that we do not fail to try new things because we do not want to.  We often fail to try because we do not perceive there to be sufficient value in the potential outcomes of our effort to inspire us to try.

I am going to close my writing for today by providing a link to a wonderful website full of resources.  Earlier this year I remotely befriended Michele Rosenthal.  Michele is a passionate advocate for healing PTSD.  I have not (yet) met her in person but I hope to do so one day.  Visit a page of her website here for answers to questions often asked by those in recovery from trauma.

Have a wonderful Saturday...and be good to yourself!



Post Script

Fifty Day Challenge, Day #2

These are the healthy actions I am taking today

  • Writing my blog
  • Reaching out to friends via social media 
  • Not going to the gym.  Yes, some days we need to rest!
  • Pondering the beautiful memories from my professional life history to inspire my future vision
  • Noting my eating choices in my dietary journal








Friday, September 26, 2014

A Fifty Day Challenge

Friday, September 26, 2014


Nearly two weeks ago I announced my intention to compete in a local leather title contest.  The formal title that will be granted to the winner of the competition is 'Mister Minneapolis Eagle'.  I competed last year and had an amazing time.  I didn't win the title but I felt that I came away a winner.  Any time you express your authentic self you are quite likely being a healthy person.  I say 'quite likely' because there is a time and place for everything.  In some settings expressing your authentic self can be answered with abuse, retribution, death threats or even worse.  Such has been the experience of many minority groups for years, decades and centuries.

I just wrote an announcement on the Facebook page associated with the contest weekend that I am engaging in a Fifty Day Challenge.  The contest weekend is now fifty days away.  As a means of preparing myself I am going to reference at least one healthy thing I do each of the next fifty days.  I will document my healthy activities at the end of each blog piece I write.  And by the time the contest weekend arrives I will have written five hundred entries in my blog!


Fifty Day Challenge, Day #1

Here are the healthy activities I have engaged in today:

  • I met with my personal trainer at the YMCA for a thirty minute training session.
  • I ate a healthy breakfast.
  • I spoke with friends via social media.
  • I took a moment to enjoy how the sunlight is falling on the world.





Thursday, September 25, 2014

Navigating The World


Thursday, September 25, 2014


Fair Warning:

This post is not designed to inspire or serve as a resource to others - this is therapeutic, purgative writing at its finest.

Once again I have been reminded about how accurate my intuition is.  When I made a faux pas at work yesterday I felt mortified.  I tried as best as I could to address my error thereafter.  I couldn’t think of any way to be more conciliatory in my actions during the remainder of the day.  I left work hoping that my error would not cost me my job.  But my intuition was telling me I had made a major mistake and it might have cost me my job.

Today I learned that my intuition was correct.  So now here I am back at square one…again.  I am tired of living in a world that sometimes feels incredibly unforgiving.  And some days I am especially tired of living in this world because I feel that I have nonetheless been quite retiring, flexible and kind…even with people whose conduct did not merit such a gentle, magnanimous approach.  When I experience disappointments like what I experienced today I feel very inclined to hide from the world for a period of time as a means of coping.  I have experienced enough unjust treatment in the world (abuse as a kid) to last me a lifetime.  I do not need nor desire to be at the receiving end of the unkindness of both strangers and those I call friends, acquaintances or otherwise.

So today I get to go home and yet again cope with the unfortunate reality that I do not have a family of origin I can go to when my shoulders feel weighed down by the demands and stress of the world.  It’s an all too familiar feeling.  This reality was my life reality for much of my childhood.  Abuse, neglect and deceit caused me a lot of harm.  The legacy of that early time in my life still acts something like an undertow of water that an undiscerning diver might get caught in near close to shore.  I have worked with great diligence to overcome how the harm in my early history distorted my view of the world around me.  I walked away…far away…from my family of origin because I have come to conclude they are fundamentally incapable of or unwilling (or both?) to truly listen to me. 

I want the people I include in my life to actually listen to and care about me.  I want their actions and their words to align.  I have met enough people whose words and actions do not align.  I have become quite astute at recognizing such people.  Indeed, I am so good at it now that a red flag will usually rise up in my mind if I sense I am in the company of a person who lacks integrity.  I just still need to learn how to attentively pay attention to my intuition.

For the remainder of this day I am setting one and only one goal for myself.  My goal is to decompress, feel better and refrain from engaging in the very unhealthy behavior of engaging in catastrophic thinking.  I have survived far worse than what this day has offered to me thus far.


…….


I’m on my way home from a session with my therapist.  I was at least fortunate to have scheduled a session with him today.  I had no idea how much I would need it.  I basically spent the majority of it speaking about what happened in the last week.  My eyes misted up a bit but not as much as earlier in the day shortly after my day at the Foundation ended.

My therapist expressed sympathy for my sentiment that the communication that occurred within my work environment could have been better.  I spoke at length about how the experience of losing my job re-triggered old memories and associated thoughts and feelings from my childhood.  As I noted above I didn’t really feel I had anyone all that available to me to fulfill my needs when I was a kid.  My father was emotionally aloof and I didn’t have a stable mother who played an immediate role in my life.  I felt isolated and lonely.  Such experience over a protracted period of time is not healthy.  And it’s especially not healthy for a child to experience.  Sometimes I feel as if I am going to be ‘attending’ to the harm such loneliness caused me for a very large part of my adult life.  But then again I recognize I am not in the best frame of mind at the moment.  The reality of the goodness of my life will undoubtedly appear more clearly to me when I awaken tomorrow.

I suppose what disappoints me most about the loss of my current role is the fact that I was really enjoying the opportunity to further develop my skills in the arena of relationship cultivation.  Working for a major foundation was an excellent opportunity for me to further hone such skills.

As the light of day wanes away and night arrives within a few hours I am going to do my best to maintain a detached perspective about the developments of today.  For all I know a much better opportunity might enter my life as soon as tomorrow.  I think a true freedom for the mind comes when, at the end of each day, we release all that we experienced of the day, both the joy and the pain, and go to sleep knowing that tomorrow (when it arrives) will offer us yet another chance to create anew.





The Inevitability of Making Mistakes: Take It One Breath At A Time

Thursday, September 25, 2014


This was the mantra I whispered to myself this past Tuesday as I made my way to my dietician appointment: "One bite at a time, one breath at a time, one day at a time"

Every so often I find myself needing to remind myself to pace myself.  I try to pay attention to what happens around me throughout the day.  And by that I mean I attempt to pay attention to the environment beyond my immediate sphere of influence and concern.  Why?  I do so because I believe little clues applicable to how I would be wise to be living my life can come to me at both expected and unexpected times.  If I keep hearing the same theme in conversations among complete strangers sitting close to me on the bus or in other places I tend to perk up and ponder whether that theme might be important for me to ponder.  Some might imagine I should mind my own business.  I am inclined to take a broader perspective on such a phenomenon.  I believe it's rarely a wrong practice to be dedicated to paying attention.

Yesterday provided me an excellent opportunity to consciously practice paying attention.  At one point I felt I could have easily descended into a state of genuine panic.  As I walked across the campus of Abbott Northwestern Hospital I repeatedly said to myself 'just breathe'.  I attempted to calm myself with this mantra shortly after I made a mistake during the course of my workday.  The mistake could have ballooned into something bigger had I not been mindful and managed the issue appropriately.  For a short while I felt very upset.  A very brief conversation I had with my boss regarding the issue initially left me feeling no more assured that my error wouldn't somehow grow into a bigger problem later.

Nothing in my supervisor's response actually pushed me to the brink of such deep upset.  Instead the mistake and subsequent emotional response I had led me to take a step back and ponder what was really going on.  In taking a step back I recalled a predominant theme of my life growing up.  As a kid I lived in a persistent state of low-grade anxiety due to the trauma I experienced very early in my life.  I often felt I was inappropriately and excessively disciplined on a number of occasions.  Unkind words and gestures were used on too many occasions when kind words and gestures would have sufficed.  It became easy for me to feel inclined to hide.  That inclination to hide (as a means of coping) came back to me yesterday.  I felt a desire to hide...as a fully grown man.

I have learned an extraordinary amount these last fifteen months.  I have learned how the trauma of my early life history had still not properly healed despite the past treatment I sought out years ago.  I have learned the incredible importance of patience.  And I have learned more and more to saturate my own life with the compassion and kindness I did not receive often enough when I was a child.  I have learned to enhance my self-care skills.  I have also developed a greater mindfulness such that I am less reactive than I once was.  This practice of mindfulness was vital to me yesterday.

If anything good came of what happened yesterday it was the insight I had, yet again, about how emotionally impoverished and impoverishing my developmental years often were.  There were bright moments but they were too often punctuated by long periods in which I felt lonely and isolated.  I didn't feel I really had an understanding person I could go to with my sadness, fear or tears because I really didn't have anyone.  I didn't have a stable, consistent and present mother throughout my earliest years.  I always had the same father but he often wasn't emotionally healthy and, from what I can tell, he never really changed.

As I noted in my blog this past summer I nearly lost both of my parents by the age of nine!  It's not wise to underestimate the significant impact that such early life trauma had on me.  I am such a very different person as compared to who I was a year ago.  I long ago moved beyond crisis management and the related primary focus on stabilizing my life that defined much of the second half of 2013.  Earlier this calendar year I entered a significant phase I suspect will last much longer.  I entered the phase of consciously building a new, enjoyable life for myself.

When you feel stressed it always helps to consciously focus on breathing.








Why I Write My Blog


Thursday, September 25, 2014


The fifteen month anniversary of my blog is approaching.  When I began writing this blog in July, 2013 I set myself a challenge that, at the time, I thought would be quite immense.  I challenged myself to write virtually every day.  Though I do take Sundays off from my writing on occasion and I do also occasionally take a different day of the week off here and there I am proud to say I have nonetheless consistently risen to the challenge I set myself last year. 

Earlier this year I began to own my identity as a writer.  Prior to my creation of this blog I had kept a journal off and on over the course of somewhere between fifteen and twenty years.  Despite such relative dedication to setting pen to paper or, in its more recent incarnation, fingers to keyboard, I never allowed myself to claim an identity as a writer.  I suppose this was due in part to my feeling that it isn’t possible to make a ‘real’ living as a writer.  And I am still not technically really earning any money from my blog.  I can nonetheless imagine a day in the future when this will change.  My blog may have earned me no money but it is opening doors of opportunity and helping me to regularly engage in another activity that I want to be a core part of my future work life.  This blog is helping me to build and cultivate relationships.  I want my future work to include a focus on relationship building.

When I first began writing this blog I set myself the important task of defining what the objective of my blog is.  This blog documents my personal journey of healing from trauma.  I welcome you to follow my documentary of my own healing journey.  I write this blog to:

  • Provide a venue for me to express my thoughts, feelings, experiences and ideas.
  • Facilitate dialogue and supportive interactions among those seeking resources for their own personal healing.
  • Inspire people to deeply understand they are not alone.
  • Provide a sample of my written work to those who wish to read it.  In providing an evolving writing sample I intend to document my capacity for productivity as I simultaneously work to create a new career path for myself.


I am excited about the future possibilities of my life and how this blog may play a role in what opens to me in the future.  Who knows what doors it may open and where it may ultimately lead me.

If you are seeking an outlet for fun, healing or to make new connections with others consider the power of writing.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Roads Not Taken

Wednesday, September 24, 2014



I have shared many threads of inquiry and topics in my blog these last fifteen months.  One thread that appears consistently in my steadily growing documentary is my grief regarding what I endured in my earlier life history.  And deeply connected to my grief is my ‘journey down memory lane’. 

My journey through the inner realm of my memories is quite voluntary on occasion.  Other times the journey will feel quite involuntary.  In these latter instances the memories may intrude into my waking consciousness with such force that I am reminded of one symptom often seen in those suffering from PTSD.  That symptom is intrusive memories.  These may also be termed flashbacks.  Recalling and dwelling in some memories causes me profound joy.  Others cause old pain to well up inside me.  I know I am continuing to become healthier as time passes.  But the journey can be arduous and lonely on occasion. 

One particular fork in the road now in the relatively distant past appeared in my life in 1999.  In May of that year I departed the Society of Jesus after living as a member of the order for nearly three years.  My reasons for leaving the order were many.  I didn’t feel a life of celibacy was compatible with my wants and needs.  I also had come to accept my sexuality as a gay man during my time in the order.  I left the order because I disagreed with Catholic teaching regarding gay and lesbian people.   I found the Church’s official position to be narrow, outdated and even quite irresponsible.  The intervening years have only more deeply confirmed how wise it was for me to choose as I did.  When I left the Jesuit order I also left Chicago.  I lived there for a period of approximately nine months while attending Loyola University Chicago.

At the time of my separation from the order I spent a lot of time contemplating what I wanted to do with my life.  During the time I lived in Chicago I had developed a keen interest in the Art Institute of Chicago.  I had even contemplated going to graduate school to become an art therapist.  I ultimately chose a different route.  I moved to California in search of the adventure I imagined I could have as a consequence of living in one of the gayest cities in the world.  I enjoyed much of the time I lived in California.

I have lately been thinking of that man I could have become had I taken a different course of action in 1999.  Who would I have become had I stayed in Chicago, found a job there and simultaneously enrolled in studies at the Art Institute?  Today, had I chosen differently back then, I might perhaps be an art therapist with a long established practice.  Perhaps I would be much happier than I am now.  But perhaps this would never have come to pass.  Maybe I needed to take the seemingly circuitous path I have journeyed down to ultimately find myself where I am. 

At different moments throughout my life I have sought comfort, inspiration and encouragement through prayer.  On occasion my prayer could be easily encapsulated in the following statement: “May I be led to live the best life I can possibly live.”  In darker periods of my life it has been difficult to believe I was journeying along the ‘right’ path.  And yet somehow all my successes and failures have led me to this present moment which now appears to offer some very real and rewarding possibilities for my future life.  As I noted in my post on Monday one important indicator of being a mature adult is the ability and willingness to dance with the light as well as the darkness.  Both are vital aspects of the human experience.

And yet I still feel the need to take some time and ponder upon that man I was fifteen years ago.  I was a different man at the time.  I was so young.  I was still ruled too much by my fears and early history of trauma.  I was a man yearning for so much more than I had previously lived.  I was a man both fearful of deep intimacy and yet very much yearning for it.  I was at a crossroads in May, 1999 when I left the Jesuit order as well as Chicago.  I am now a man at another crossroads.

……

Being an artist is something that has long been a natural identity for me.  I didn’t pursue a formal education in arts fifteen years ago but it is still possible for me to incorporate my love of and skill in the arts now.  As I play with and explore the realm of archetypes that offer a special resonance to me it’s clear I need to express my artist self more and more.

As a means of reentering the arts world in a more powerful way I recently chose to offer some of my time as a volunteer mentor to a local organization called Free Arts Minnesota.  I attended an orientation session last night.  I left the session feeling inspired and excited.  I have no doubt my collaboration with this organization will feature in forthcoming blog posts.

Have an awesome Wednesday!







Tuesday, September 23, 2014

The Complexity of PTSD

Tuesday, September 23, 2014


Earlier this summer I consulted another mental health care practitioner.  I sought out a second opinion in part because I believe getting a second opinion can be a very wise thing to do.  This practitioner, Dr. Valtinson, introduced me to the idea of Complex PTSD.  This yet to be created diagnostic term has been advanced by Judith Herman of Harvard University as a way to describe a constellation of symptoms that may be present in individuals who have been subjected to prolonged and/or repeated trauma.

I did some research on the topic of creating the new diagnostic term 'Complex PTSD'.  I found it a bit eerie when I came to feel myself being described in the six different criteria that may distinguish a person as having Complex PTSD rather than 'garden-variety' PTSD.  You can find more information on this subject and the six criterion I referenced by looking here.

My consultation with Dr. Valtinson took place near the one year anniversary of the PTSD diagnosis I received from my current therapist, Jeffry Jeanetta-Wark, in June, 2013.  Jeffry is a good therapist.  If you want to learn more about him visit his website.

As my healing journey has unfolded and deepened I have gained a measure of hindsight and wisdom which I could not easily come to fifteen months ago.  Whether you or anyone you care about has 'basic' PTSD or a more advanced case that could meet the criteria for Complex PTSD is, in one sense, irrelevant.  Regardless of whether you are clinically diagnosable for PTSD or not I believe it is true that the journey of healing is often not a simple one.  It can be quite a complex one.  Healing can be something like assembling a giant jigsaw puzzle filled with a dazzling variety of colors.  Why would healing be something like a time consuming puzzle?  Healing is like a puzzle because there are so many elements to consider.  Think about how many elements there are which are vital to a healthy, productive life.  Major factors that will contribute to, or work against, your health include (but are not limited to) your diet, professional life, network of friends and family, level of education, openness to continued education and growth and your past health history.

Today I made a visit to a dietician on the Abbott Northwestern Hospital campus.  I sought out assistance with my diet because it is another piece in my own 'puzzle of healing' that I need to give some significant attention to.  I began keeping a dietary journal eight days ago.  Considering the fact that I maintain this daily blog taking the additional step of documenting what I eat, when I eat it and so on should be relatively easy.

The results of my consultation were encouraging.  Even though my cholesterol has become a bit high (and certainly increased markedly in the last fifteen months) I am confident that some adjustment to my diet will start to bring my level of bad cholesterol back down.  Eating well and consciously is just another important piece in my journey of healing.  One major habit I need to break is my tendency to eat out too much.  It's not the type of food I consume when eating out that is problematic but rather the cost I incur when doing so.  Eating out can become quite expensive.

Between my dietary consultation, my early arrival at work today and the two hour volunteer orientation I completed this evening I can easily say I had a very full day.  And tomorrow is going to be quite a full day as well.  Among other important skills to cultivate in the journey of restoring your health is the ability to pace yourself.  I need to be mindful not to 'burn my candle at both ends'.

I do not feel the deep sadness that temporarily consumed my awareness yesterday evening.  Perhaps I am too tired in this moment to even feel much of my sadness.  But it is still there.  There is still more work to do.  I have done enough for today.









Monday, September 22, 2014

A New Season, A New Experience of Grief


Monday, September 22, 2014


It’s no wonder so many people are medicated.


That was a thought I had while eating a bit of dinner immediately after work today.  The television screens never seem to rest in the Abbott Northwestern Hospital cafeteria.  And they often seem to be tuned to channels sharing a voluminous amount of discouraging news.  I caught a few snippets of coverage regarding ISIS in the Middle East.  I am not sure what I consider the bigger crisis in the world right now.  Is it geopolitical instability in the Middle East and the threat of inflamed tensions and religion inspired violence in Europe and the United States?  Or is it the fact that we continue to release prodigious amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere year after year?  There is certainly plenty of crisis to spread around the world.  Is it any wonder my thoughts drifted to the topic of the highly medicated society that is the United States of America?

I personally had a good day.  Work was not exceedingly demanding of me.  I enjoyed working a partial day after arriving at work later in the morning than I usually would.  It was another gorgeous September day filled with brilliant sunshine.  It’s difficult to be sad during the bright, clear, temperate days of early autumn.  And yet I felt a tremendous sadness come over me near the end of my workday.  I know some of the sadness is inextricably bound up in the grief I am still working through.

A new season is announcing itself.  And yet I continue to hammer away at the same ancient grief.  This new season offers me the chance to look upon my ‘old’ grief in a new way.  I believe our ability to heal is very much connected to our ability to see our own lives, and the world at large, in a new way that is unencumbered by our earlier life experience.  It’s certainly not necessarily easily done.  It can be so very easy to get caught up in our egos.  Conscious healing takes conscious choice.

My current sadness and grief is very different from what I experienced this time a year ago.  I feel within myself a growing strength.  I am collecting all the disparate pieces of myself through the process of therapeutic inquiry. 

As I end this piece of spontaneous writing (I had planned my piece from this morning to be my only piece of the day) I can’t help but look at a little girl riding in front of the bus I am on.  An imprint of lipstick on her cheek shows the memory of a kiss.  I wonder who kissed her.  Perhaps it is the woman sitting next to her who I assume is her mother.

Before the Sun passes out of the sign of Virgo this evening and thereby marks the official beginning of Autumn I feel like shouting out to the sky above me how much I want kisses and love.  I need love.  And I want a man who knows how to kiss…a lot.  It would be a wonderful surprise to have such a man in my life.

……
My weekly German language class that meets on Monday evenings provided me some good fodder for reflection.  At one point in the class we listened to a DVD featuring a interview on the topic of luxury.  I have previously written about what some might assume is the opposite of luxury, namely poverty.

Luxury is something of a strange subject due in part to the fact that what people conceive luxury to be is so very subjective.  If you grow up as a pauper then you may imagine a single night stay in a five star hotel just once in your life would be the very defining experience of incredible luxury.  If you grow up poor and surrounded by polluted land and water living in a community surrounded by healthy land and water could appear to be a luxury.  If I recall correctly having clean water to drink is something beyond the reach of about one billion people currently living in the world.  Even the poorest Americans are relatively wealthy compared to the rest of the world.

During the last twelve to fifteen months I have given a lot of thought to what I want to ultimately do with the remainder of my life.  I have been reminded of the preciousness of the time I have already lived.  I now have a renewed sense of the urgency of living each day of my life in a deliberate and thoughtful way.

I came to an important conclusion just yesterday.  I want my future work to feature giving people experiences they value which will ultimately become memories that they will cherish for a lifetime.  So the industry I want to find my way into is one that offers people meaningful experiences. 

I have also (recently) discerned that I want my future work to also include a focus on cultivating meaningful relationships.  In some way I can trace the origin of my desire to do such work to my relationship with my own father.  I do not know that I ever really truly knew the man my father was…and now is.  It is my impression that the use of deceit as a means of coping with ambiguity, uncomfortable questions and difficult social problems is something he still might be all too inclined to engage in even now.  It is so very sad when I ponder how my decision to sever my relationship with my father for the foreseeable future (if not permanently) is something I chose after coming to the sobering conclusion that my father still cannot fully comprehend the full consequences of how he chose to live his life throughout the past many, many years.

Perhaps I can draw something of immense value from the painful grief I have been (consciously) wading through these last fifteen months.  Perhaps somehow I can transmute my disappointment in my relationship with my father into a determination to live a life of integrity that will include conscious focus on cultivating healthy relationships.  In this way I may be able to create light from darkness.


I will be meeting with my placement specialist from Rise, Inc. this Wednesday.  Before I meet with her I plan to spend some additional time contemplating and visualizing the work I wish to do in the future.




The Second Half of My Life: Mining The Wisdom of Richard Rohr

Monday, September 22, 2014


Earlier this year I learned of the work of Richard Rohr.  As I recall it now his name came up when I was speaking of the issues I have long had with how the masculine has been embodied and presented to me throughout my life.  In my younger adulthood I focused a lot of my attention on addressing the wounds I had developed as a result of the presence of dysfunctional women in my life.  More recently, when I returned to therapy in 2013, it became clear quite quickly that I needed to attend to other wounds from my personal history.  It was time for me to explore my sense of my masculinity and what it means to be a man in the world of the twenty-first century.

There are many men out there who are doing excellent work to support people in their health and development.  Tomorrow I will briefly profile my own therapist, Jeffry Jeanetta-Wark, LICSW.  Other men who have deeply touched my own life include Ilarion Merculieff (formerly of the Alaska Native Science Commission), Matthew Fox (advocate of creation spirituality), Christian de la Huerta (breathwork practitioner and conscious personal development proponent), Michael Sigmann (Executive Director of the Men's Inner Journey) and James Gillon, SJ (Jesuit priest whose ministerial experience has included working with the people of Africa).

To be a healthy, balanced man of the early twenty-first century who is truly attuned to the world around him is, in my opinion, to be deeply aware of the deep imbalances around us.  Whether you describe these imbalances in economic, political, spiritual, cultural or environmental terms is, in one sense, irrelevant.  To be even slightly aware of the many issues pressing for our attention is a challenging matter.  Why?  I believe it is difficult to be fully present because there is indeed so much that is out of balance.  My overarching goal that informs going to therapy is the same one that motivates me to sit down almost every day and write in this blog.  I want to experience my own fundamental wholeness by living and breathing in the world as a conscious person deeply aware of the gifts I have to offer.

......

According to the video I cite below Fr. Richard Rohr is an 'internationally renown speaker and conference leader'.  He has written extensively (he has published at least thirty books) on the topics of community building, peace and justice and masculine spirituality.  Rohr has conducted much of his work in New Mexico.

Father Richard Rohr gave an engaging presentation at Texas Lutheran University on "Falling Upward" on Sunday, September 25, 2011.  A YouTube video of his presentation can be found here.  The contents of his presentation on that day serve as inspiration for my words which follow below.


Entitling one of his books Falling Upward was a sure way for Rohr to pique my curiosity.  Though I do not know whether Rohr personally identifies with the trickster archetype I am inclined to see him and the work he does in the world as befitting a trickster partly due to the fact that he offers a timely critique of institutional Christianity while standing within the institution itself.  Who but someone who at least appreciates the trickster archetype would entitle one of his books Falling Upward?

There are several topics Rohr elucidates in his presentation that I find especially compelling.  They are:

  • Defining the Self
  • Necessary Suffering
  • Dualistic Thinking
  • Enlightenment at Gunpoint
  • The First and Second Halves of Life


Defining the Self

Rohr notes that the first half of life is typically defined by the personal work of defining who you are.
Defining your identity can manifest in a number of ways including seeking to belong to groups of like minded and like identifying people, seeking out knowledge to help us define our worldview and experimenting with a variety of ways of living.


Necessary Suffering

Rohr astutely notes the unfortunate reality that attempting to avoid your suffering will almost inevitably bring about much more.  In his work as a jail chaplain Rohr has encountered countless individuals who have deeply complicated their future lives and possibilities by getting caught up in destructive behaviors and impulses in their earliest years of life.  I think it accurate to say that mature adults are those who recognize that pain and suffering is inevitable but recognize we can nonetheless exert our wills and choose the relationship we will have with our suffering.


Dualistic Thinking

I also find Rohr to be wise because he notes the ubiquitous presence of dualistic thinking and the limiting and destructive consequences living ensconced in such a way of thinking and being can have.  Dualistic thinking can also be described as black and white thinking or either-or thinking.  I have come to a greater appreciation of the damage that can result from consistently applying dualistic thinking.  When making a journey of renewing the self, and especially when healing from life changing trauma, it is critical to reach the developmental milestone where you will accept and celebrate the large and the small victories you achieve.  Healing an individual life is a grand project.  Such a project takes time, diligence and a willingness to embrace new ways of living and being.  The light and darkness of human experience will always be there.  I believe it is a measure of genuine maturity to recognize this truth.

Rohr asserts that dualistic thinking is not a measure of wisdom.  Wisdom is defined by mature thinking that is 'both-and thinking'.  In other words, mature thinking recognizes the abiding presence of the light and the darkness.  The darkness and the light both have value.  Can you imagine a world in which the cloaking darkness of night never came and gave us pause to sleep such that our bodies and minds can renew themselves?

I also believe that maturity (as exemplified by an individual who generally practices non dualistic-thinking) would not argue with the following observation (noted by Rohr) made by Carl Jung: "The greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally unsolvable.  They can never be solved.  They are only outgrown (my emphasis)."


Enlightenment at Gunpoint

Of Rohr's varied terminology I find this term especially compelling.  He doesn't use the phrase to expound at great length on his material.  And yet I find the imagery very rich.  It seems to me that many do not experience enlightenment until they experience an event that is as threatening to the continued existence of the self as being mugged at gunpoint would be.

It's been my observation that many people will not necessarily enter the second half of their lives (and recognize they have done so!) until a truly shattering experience upends their comfortable and comforting daily routines.  In other words, crisis often seems to be necessary to inspire people to finally make enduring and healthy changes in their lives.


The First and Second Halves of Life

Though I haven't read any of Rohr's books (yet) I believe I have a good understanding of some of what he devotes himself to sharing with others.  A person who has entered the second half of life will reflect deeply on what he can do with the special gift of his life.  A 'second half of life person' savors the light and the darkness and can live with the realities of ambiguity, uncertainty and the virtual inevitability that he will make mistakes and not always clearly know how to respond to both expected and unexpected challenges.

I entered the second half of my own life last year.


And so I will leave you today with a few not insignificant questions for a Monday morning:

Are you living in the first or second half of life?  Can you dance with the light and the darkness?