I Need An After-School Program

Wednesday, January 21, 2015


The therapist who runs the group therapy portion of the outpatient program I have been attending this past week made a comment to me today in regards to something I said to her yesterday.  Sometimes I like to hang out in places for some time after my business in that place is done.  I suppose I sometimes do this as a coping mechanism if I am feeling especially lonely or needy.  I have felt a bit low lately so my inclination to engage in this means of coping has been a bit elevated.

As I departed yesterday I commented that "I need an after-school program".  I was actually referencing that time period in my life when I was still living at home.  My after-school program on many, many days was to go home, watch television and do my homework...alone.  Even after my younger brother was born I still felt a certain gross measure of loneliness.  This was partly due to the fact that my younger brother was never old enough to play with in a way that was age appropriate for either of us while I was still living at home.

Watching television wasn't exactly a healthy after-school program.  Engaging in this activity didn't really enhance certain skills that would prove vital to me later in my life.  Watching television isn't really an active activity.  Yes, there are programs that still exist that are truly educational in nature.  But much of television thirty years ago as well as now does little to really enhance the skills and quality of life of many people.  I probably would have been better served if I had engaged in more social activities.  But I lacked a good measure of self-esteem by the time I entered high school.  This lack of confidence led me to frequently isolate.  It wasn't healthy for me to be as alone as I often was.

Here I am thirty years later and I am continuing to disassemble aspects of the person I have become.  I have more anger and sadness than I want to have.  I need more love and kindness in my life.  I became burned out some time ago because I was not giving enough love and care to myself.  And this was partly due to the fact that I didn't have good role models for the development and practice of self-care skills.  So now I get to do it.  I could choose to hide and mourn and feel pity for myself for what I never experienced.  Or I can choose to go out into the world each day, reach out, meet new people, take risks, dream and keep trying.  I would prefer to apply the latter approach.

All the instability of my childhood profoundly affected my sense of self and my sense of what was possible in my future life.  I still wrestle with how the chaos impacted me.  But I do believe that I am gradually transmuting my personal darkness into something else.  It will take some additional time for this process to unfold.  But I feel I am gradually moving in the direction of an enjoyable and love filled future.

I feel immense gratitude for how far I have come.  I look forward to the flowering of the coming spring.  I believe it will be a spring unlike any other I have experienced.

Sitting With Sadness

Tuesday, January 20, 2015


On this chilly and gray late afternoon I made the commitment to sit with myself and reflect on the element of sadness in my life.  As the anger I carried for too long continues to fade I am finding myself more able to access the layers of other 'material' underneath it.  And I recognize that underneath my anger is a ponderous amount of sadness.  I still sometimes find myself becoming confused as to what the real distinction between sadness and grief is.  According to some brief surfing around sadness may be seen as a synonym for unhappiness as well as grief.

In my opinion sadness is not identical to grief.  I have long understood sadness to be something more transient in nature.  Grief seems to be something that can persist for a much longer period of time.  Lately I feel more and more aware of both my sadness and my grief.  Sadness may be something you feel when a close friend moves far away or when you lose a job you deeply loved doing.  I associate grief with changes that might be irreversible.  Whereas you might feel sad when a good friend moves away you might instead feel grief if that person actually dies.  It seems sadness and grief are related but are not identical.

I have been contemplating sadness a lot lately.  It seems to be what I predominantly feel right now.  I feel sad due to the many elements of my life that once were a part of my life but no longer are.  My sadness feels persistent.  To experience persistent sadness can be construed as indicative of having 'Complex PTSD'.  I first wrote about Complex PTSD last summer after learning about the concept from a mental health practitioner (whom I sought out to obtain a second opinion regarding my mental health).
It was a rather sobering experience when I first read about Complex PTSD.  I could see within myself elements of all six of the criteria described on the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs website found here.  I won't elaborate upon all six of these criteria here.  I have done so in other postings.  I want to focus on my sadness alone.

I suppose it would be a correct assertion to state I have felt some amount of sadness throughout much of my life.  I know I felt sad throughout the summer immediately after my father was nearly murdered.  Such a response would, according to the opinion I now have as an increasingly healthy adult, be a healthy and predictable response to a trauma as horrible as nearly losing a parent to murder.  But then something still worse began to happen.  My sadness went 'underground'.  I buried my sadness because I felt compelled to as a way of coping with the family I was growing up in.  I didn't feel comfortable fully  expressing how I felt.  I felt being so fully expressive could make me a target for more unjust, unkind treatment.  So my sadness festered in my psyche.  And this went on for a long time.

Very early in the evolution of this blog I wrote an entry entitled Parents of Murdered Children.  As I think back on this entry I wrote nearly eighteen months ago I see a lot of meaning loaded into these four  words.  When my father was nearly murdered a piece of my own child self did actually seem to die.  I became a 'child of a nearly murdered parent'.

I don't know if completely eliminating the sadness I feel is a realistic goal or not.  Perhaps I will find that time, therapy and living well eventually leads to the healing of so much of my pain that the sadness no longer feels so ponderous.  But I find myself often asking how long that will take.  And I cannot provide myself a clear or accurate answer.  And the professionals I work with cannot provide a clear answer either.  Why?  Because they can't possibly know either.

Sometimes we can feel pained by the simple fact that life is filled with countless unknowns and unknowable things.  And yet somehow, if we want to live, we must continue to breathe through the difficulties of life.  Such is life.

I wish I felt better than I do now.  But I am grateful to feel so much better than I once did.

Where Was The Boundary?

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” - Leo Tolstoy

As I continue to do my grieving regarding my family of origin that often did not give me the proper attention and care I needed I find myself more and more able to retrospectively define what the seminal issues were.  And one of them was the issue of boundaries.

Unhealthy families are distinct from healthy ones according to a number of indicators.  And one of those is boundaries.  In an unhealthy family boundaries are either too rigid and dense or weak and diffuse.  A family with rigid boundaries may express a form of authoritarianism in which the children of this family are given limited access to the world beyond the home.  Friends might not be able to come visit the children of the household with any ease.  Privileges may be restricted.  Access to opportunities for fun and play may be limited.

Meanwhile, families with poor or loose boundaries may exhibit quite opposite issues.  Parents may fail to monitor children's activities and progress in school.  They may fail to provide proper guidance, not be proactive regarding their children's health and even disclose their own struggles with their children in cases where their primary relationships do not offer the support they need.  Parents in such families may also have trouble pursuing healthy relationships of their own.  These issues may adversely affect their own children.  My father's family fits easily into this category.

When I have attempted to confront some of my father's siblings regarding the abuse and chaos I experienced I have rather consistently experienced avoidance or silence.  Self-righteous indignation has been another response.  The responses I have received have led me to make my own conclusions regarding where the boundaries actually are and were within my family of origin.  It seems to me that the abuse I experienced would have continued (in the event my father had not actually been nearly murdered...which led to the end of his relationship with my stepmother and the end of the abuse) up to the point of my own tragic and preventable death.  The issues in my father's second marriage were that bad.  Tolerance of such severe abuse to the point of physical harm, permanent injury and even death is a great example of a very poor boundary.  Is it any wonder I fantasized about running away?

It's my impression that children who grow up in families with poor boundaries will become adults who often face the challenge of learning what healthy boundaries actually are.  When parents do poorly in parenting their children those children will ultimately have to find good role models in other people.  This has been my experience.  I am still learning how to create healthy boundaries for myself.  It has  certainly been a process.

Given what I experienced and what I know of my father's childhood I can only surmise that there is a lot more to the story of my paternal family of origin than I have ever had access to.  And I suspect this will always be so.  I feel immense sadness when I contemplate the boundary issues and seeming 'unspoken agreement to be silent' of my father and his siblings.  Such silence can ultimately prove deeply alienating.  It certainly was for me.

......

And now it is time for a hopeful counterpoint to what I have already written.  I may be effectively and permanently estranged from my father's family but that doesn't mean I cannot go out into the world and create my own family and abiding friendships.  This is what I want to be about.  But as I do this I need to continue to attend to my grief.  Each day is often just a bit better than the last.  I have my difficult and demoralizing days but I am happy to say the trajectory continues to be upward.

Wrestling With Fear

Monday, January 19, 2015

Each day when I sit myself down to write I am performing an act of faith and hope that one day my life will resemble my grandest dreams.  I still feel myself to be making forward progress.  I feel more hopeful about this coming week than I did last week.  And yet I also feel some very real fear.

In my opinion fear is not an easy subject to explore.  From what I have seen and heard all human beings have the capacity for fear.  If we didn’t feel fear we might not take actions to protect ourselves in the face of potential harm.  Fear seems to have an evolutionary purpose.  If we respond to our fear in a healthy way we can keep ourselves safe.  And yet if we live our whole lives in a state of fear we might not take the risks that will help us achieve what we dream of experiencing.  Fear can be both life saving and life withering.

As my Monday morning begins to unfold I find myself recalling how I lived in a state of fear for much of my childhood.  There were times when the fear was genuinely debilitating.  The months immediately after my father was nearly murdered are but one example.  I exhibited a very obvious symptom of recent trauma by going throughout the interior of my home and double and triple checking the locks on the doors were functional and engaged.  This behavior apparently didn’t concern my father.  He was too tuned out to pay much attention to the clear signs that I felt deeply traumatized.

The trauma of my earlier life history deeply affected my adolescence.  I did not have self-confidence befitting an individual of my intelligence and appearance.  To other high school kids I came off shy and unsure of myself.  With my father’s attention riveted primarily upon my new half-brother I felt myself fairly invisible during that important time in my life.  I became a wallflower.  I became a very good wallflower.

I am writing about fear today because fear is something many men do not easily acknowledge.  Many men are not taught to acknowledge their fears in any way that might cause them to lose the respect of their peers, suffer career setbacks and the like.  And yet to ignore our individual and collective fears is, in my opinion, very unwise.  To do so is the equivalent of playing a game of pretend that children play.

I want to acknowledge my fears and continue to move forward.  I believe this is one way I can be an authentic man.

......

Grief: The normal process of reacting to a loss. The loss may be physical (such as a death), social (such as divorce), or occupational (such as a job). Emotional reactions of grief can include anger, guilt, anxiety, sadness, and despair. Physical reactions of grief can include sleeping problems, changes in appetite, physical problems, or illness.

During my outpatient program today I acknowledged the pain I experienced when my first boyfriend broke up with me, moved away and then later attempted to commit suicide.  In reflecting on how I felt yesterday and today I realize the pain and grief of this experience was larger than I acknowledged it to be when I first began working with my therapist.

I feel some sense of relief that I am finally really beginning to own the magnitude of the grief I carried around for too much of my life.  Just verbalizing this truth is freeing.  I still do not feel great but at least I am becoming a more authentic person.

I have taken another small step in my journey.

Unexpected Remembrance

Sunday, January 18, 2015

As sometimes happens in the process of healing I found myself a bit thunderstruck by insight today.  It happened while I was sitting in the Basilica of St. Mary.  Perhaps the soothing church music or beautiful surroundings helped me to suddenly find myself aware of the pain I experienced due to the circumstances of a significant relationship that ended some twenty years ago.  Who knows what exactly caused it to happen.  Maybe it was something like grace.

As I was sitting near the back of the Basilica I unexpectedly found myself remembering how my relationship with my first boyfriend (Scott) ended.  It was 1994.  I was attending Texas A&M University as an undergraduate student.  I first met Scott through an event held by the Department of Atmospheric Science in 1993.  I shared an apartment with him in the autumn of 1993.  Our relationship was often marked by turbulence.  Looking back it is clear to me this was due to two primary issues.  One was the fact that it was my first gay relationship (I was still not able to accept myself as a gay man at that time).  Secondly, Scott had his own difficult past history.  I would learn about this history later on as our own relationship began to disintegrate.

Scott and I parted ways early in 1994.  The separation was a painful one.  I was left with a bewildering array of feelings including confusion, anger and sadness.  My pain was compounded when I received a letter from him some time after he had moved away.  He informed me that he had attempted to commit suicide.  Worse still was his attempt to lay the blame for his suicide attempt on me.  I was appalled and deeply hurt by this.

As I sat in the Basilica this morning some twenty years after that time in my life I found myself unexpectedly and vividly remembering that painful time.  But what I found myself most clearly remembering now was how I did not bother to seek out counseling to help me deal with the incredible pain I experienced for a lengthy time.  I instead attempted to find consolation and guidance by disclosing to my father the true nature of my relationship with Scott.  My decision to disclose the details to my father unfortunately had the opposite effect.  As per his usual way of living my father advised me not to let my stepmother know of what had been happening.  In other words, secrecy was my father’s answer.  Hiding my pain from others who were a part of my so-called family was his solution.  To my knowledge he has never changed in that regard.

Remembering that time in my life on a January morning over twenty years later was quite painful.  I felt sad to recall that very, very young man that I was and how that young man that I was did not reach out and seek resources to help himself through a very dark time.  Thankfully I would never do that to myself now.  My choice to address pain in my life in a different way is an indicator of how much I have grown as a person.

I am going to speak about this time from long ago when I meet with my therapist this week.  Applying EMDR therapy to this remembered pain might prove to be a suitable response to my unplanned recollection of this time.  Whatever happens I feel hopeful that this unexpected intrusion of my past history into my present life is actually an indicator that I am becoming healthier with each passing day.  One can only hope!

10,000 Days Of Distorted Perception

Saturday, January 17, 2015


I feel much better than I did yesterday.  This is the good news for today.  I slept in until almost 10 a.m.  I had thought to go to a Saturday morning yoga class at the YMCA which I enjoy attending.  But last night I made a promise to myself that I would get up when I was ready to get up.  It's important that I keep the promises I make to myself.

The 'bad' news of the day is that I still do not feel that great.  I know it's my sadness and grief.  Hearing the song Runaway Train yesterday morning triggered a torrent of tears to rise up behind my eyes.  Having a restful night of sleep certainly helped me.  But the sadness I felt as a teenager is more omnipresent in my conscious awareness than it has perhaps ever been.  There were many days in which I wanted to run away from home.

Grieving is no small process.  I feel the need to find better resources so I can complete the grieving process.  Looking back it is clear to me that it was my dormant grief that awoke back in June, 2013.  I first had to purge out the anger and rage I was carrying around; they were covering up my grief.  My healing has thus been something like a diving expedition.  As I journey deeper and deeper the nature of what I am discovering is changing.

It would be dishonest of me to claim that I have no anger left to work through.  But what anger I have is a small remnant of what I began working through back in 2013.  My progress has been immense.

I referenced distorted perception in the title of my post today because this distorted perception is part of what I am still grieving.  I didn't completely appreciate just how much the trauma in my early life history had distorted my way of perceiving and relating to the world beyond my own skin and bones until 2013.  Once the horror of what I had long been (unknowingly) enduring began to dawn on me the grief set in virtually immediately.  I initially felt swamped by the grief.  It seems fitting that the physical health issues I had back in the summer of 2013 were specifically focused in my lungs.  It's as if I was drowning in my own sorrow.

It is my impression that a person does not ordinarily work through an immense amount of trauma, pain or grief in a short amount of time.  Healing takes time.  I have repeatedly noted this as I continue to write.  I feel immensely better compared to a year ago.  In fact, last January seems like a strange blur in my psyche.  I remember it was cold, that I was still coping with my immense grief, confusion and sadness and that I was very gradually feeling more and more capable of addressing the entirety of what I was going through.  The shining highlight of that month was my therapist's determination that I was no longer clinically diagnosable for PTSD as of January 28, 2014.  My one year anniversary is approaching!  It's an exciting time to be alive!

There are many times when I catch myself pausing to marvel at the beauty of the world around me.  Wonder, curiosity and an appreciation of beauty are hallmarks of a healthy person.  When these are completely lacking it can be an indicator that something is amiss in a person.  I feel sad to be able to honestly say that curiosity was rarely something I witnessed in my father and his siblings.  I suspect their own life histories would explain why this has essentially always been the case.  It's my impression there is much more trauma in my biological father's family than has ever been consciously and openly acknowledged.  I find that very sad.  But I can choose to leave the sadness behind me.  It is not an easy choice but I can choose nonetheless.

I am grateful to acknowledge that it doesn't necessarily take as long to heal from something as the amount of time you suffered with it.  I carried some amount of unhealed trauma around in my psyche for about thirty years.  There is still more work to do.  But I feel confident I won't still be hammering away at my issues when I am seventy!

Practicing The Art Of Courage

Friday, January 16, 2015


The last twenty-four hours have been quite interesting.  I feel as if I have been on a roller coaster.

I had a productive session with my therapist last night.  We worked on creating a written set of parameters of what I am and am not willing to do for work in the future.  This project will be a primary focus of my attention in the next few weeks.

My trip home from seeing my therapist was equally interesting.  The world appeared quite vivid.  I found myself noticing the smallest details of the world as it flew by my taxi.

I have felt strange all day today.  I woke up quite sleep deprived due to an ongoing issue with the radiator in my apartment.  This issue is still not resolved.  While at the downtown Walgreens this morning I unexpectedly began hearing the song "Runaway Train" by Soul Asylum.  And then the tears  were crowding my eyes so suddenly that I felt as if my knees could have easily buckled underneath me.  I had to walk outside and deeply inhale the chilly winter air as a means of getting some relief.  A good music video of the song can be found on YouTube here.

The song felt like a broadside across my face and chest because of the lyrics focused on topics like running away, remembering how to smile and 'getting somewhere'.  Suddenly those many, many, many times I unconsciously fantasized about running away when I was a kid all appeared as an immense crowd of pseudo-memories in my waking consciousness.  Somehow I managed to ignore my persistent fantasies of running away.  I suppose I managed to do this because I had become a virtual master of dissociation as a child.  It was my unconscious way of coping with the stressful circumstances around me which I had no easy way to escape.  It's no wonder my knees almost buckled another me.

In the last eighteen months I have asked many questions of myself.  One question among the lot of them has been this one: 'Why didn't I run away?'  I have gradually found an answer to this question.  I didn't run away because I feared the world beyond the house I called home might be more difficult than what I already knew.  I suppose you could call it a case of 'staying with the devil you know rather than one you don't'.  The Known can be more comfortable than the Unknown.

Just being able to acknowledge the depth of the sadness and fear I so persistently felt is but one way to mark the immense progress I have made in the last eighteen months.    My psychic repair work is still obviously underway.  I am thankfully long beyond the stage of my initial and thorough assessment of the depth and contours of my sorrow.  I suppose I finished that some time in early 2014.

I recently felt the time had come for me to take a deeper step into practicing the art of courage.  I want to leave behind the unsatisfying work world that I have found myself dipping into a bit too much as of late.  I need to leave this world behind.  I need to find my way down the path of healing to the fullness of the man I can be.

I'll be sharing more details of this new leg of my voyage in the coming days and weeks.

Learning To Have More Patience

Thursday, January 15, 2015


I continue to find myself feeling better and better as I take advantage of my excellent health insurance by attending a program at Abbott Northwestern Hospital.

I am learning still more about myself and my own needs through some of the work I am doing in my current program.  One thing I am learning is that I would benefit from being more patient with myself.  I tend to have high expectations of myself and others.  When my expectations are not met I inevitably feel disappointed and demoralized.  If I could just learn to trust the process of my own evolution more I might find myself feeling happier, more grounded and more motivated.

My declining motivation in recent weeks was a red flag that something was amiss.  I was beginning to feel more and more overwhelmed.  I had been struggling with some physical health issues since last October.  These issues combined with the necessity of maintaining a pleasant demeanor while working as a seasonal employee for Macys and continuing to do my own psychotherapy eventually began to leave me feeling increasingly overwhelmed.  And so it became clear that I needed to step away from my current life for a bit of time to refocus and refresh myself.

I wrote yesterday about how the nature of my grief is changing.  I am less and less aware of the grief I felt in the months immediately after my father was nearly murdered in 1982.  The pain of that time period in my life has receded and lessened in response to my focus on this period of my childhood in my weekly therapy sessions.  Yesterday marked something of a turning point for me.  I could better identify the contours of the grief I still carry.  Clarity was one of a number of gifts of the day.  I could sense the sadness and grief of my adolescence rising up within my conscious awareness.  I had needed my father to be a present witness as I became a man.  But he wasn't sufficiently emotionally present to attend to this very vital transition.  I didn't experience any significant initiation into being a man.

So it seems that I now need to focus my attention on the wounds and disappointment of my adolescence.  Thankfully I have a skilled therapist and care team to assist me in this process.  I am a much healthier person than I was eighteen months ago.  I still have more work to do.  But I am confident that I can eventually realize the biggest dreams I have for myself.  It's a matter of time, effort and persistence.

Now Featuring One Forty Something Adolescent

Wednesday, January 14, 2015


I clearly recognized something today.  I more clearly discerned the contours of another important piece of my immense grief.  Throughout much of the last eighteen months my therapeutic odyssey has focused on the harm I experienced within the first ten years of my life.  And that harm was quite significant.  I have recounted previously in this blog how I became consciously aware of my thought that I would not live to the age of nine since I began treatment in June, 2013.  And I didn't have that thought in my mind on just one moment of one day.  That thought was a persistent one that contributed to my distress.  Thankfully my thought was not correct.

I feel fairly prepared to move on beyond the wounding I experienced at the age of eight.  As I begin to feel comfortable with moving beyond focusing on this time period in my life (as well as even earlier moments in my development such as when my birthmother was experiencing her schizophrenic breakdown) I feel I can now see more clearly what remains to be done.  What comes after the age of eight?  Nine.  And what comes after nine?  Ten.  And eventually a child enters the developmental phase known as adolescence.  I feel very much like an adolescent now.  And I realize that much as I did not have a healthy emotional life in the final months of my ninth year of life I also did not have a very healthy adolescence.  My physical health was good.  But my emotional health was not so good.  Inside I was smoldering.

The sadness I felt throughout my adolescence became clearer in my conscious awareness than it ever has been.  This clarity came to me during a break in the outpatient treatment program I decided to once again voluntarily take part in.  And perhaps somehow this clarity was made possible by virtue of the fact that I am the only man taking part in this program.  Yes, once again I find myself to be the single male in a room that is otherwise exclusively full of women.  Throughout the day I felt myself aware of the old wounds I carried due to the expectation placed upon me (throughout much of my childhood really) that I tolerate being around sick women.  In essence I was asked to bear a burden that ideally should never be placed upon any child.  I was expected to tolerate illness as if it were normal and healthy for such a child to endure such a thing.

Today I found myself appreciating how this burden impacted my development in my adolescence.  I didn't have a lot of willingness to resist the unreasonable expectations still being placed upon me as I entered this phase of my development.  I was simply too tired of dealing with my dysfunctional father by that point.  I was worn down by years of putting up with my father's dysfunctional behavior.  I would only resist and raise a fuss if I felt deeply violated.  And there were certainly instances in which this happened.  But the consistent and more subtle aspects of the neglect I experienced were something I had learned to look past.  This was an adaptation on my part.  I couldn't raise a fuss each and every time I wasn't treated properly.  To do so would have been exhausting as well as potentially threatening to what attention I was given.

Somehow today I could feel the grief rise up in me that came to be in specific response to what did not happen in my adolescence.  I felt the grief of never receiving a proper initiation into becoming a man.  The lack of proper initiation into manhood is not an uncommon problem in the industrialized West.  I have previously read about this issue.  I have read about the sad consequences that can result when people do not experience a proper acknowledgment of significant rites of passage such as becoming a man.  But I have never really sat with the feelings I carry about how I was never properly initiated by my own family of origin.

It is clear to me that it is now time for me to attend to this additional portion of my grief.

When Despair Comes Knocking On Your Heart

Tuesday, January 13, 2015


Throughout the most recent few hours of this day I have been wondering if despair is too large and scary a term to use in a blog posting.  Is despair really part of what I am feeling?  I think I would rather imagine despair knocking on some exterior door and trying to find a way into my heart and mind but failing to do so.  Regardless of the technicalities of my situation I feel quite low at the moment.  I suppose this is only natural considering I am once again doing an outpatient treatment program.

Quite honestly I feel very weary at the moment.  I have been thinking of this movie that has always held a special power in my psyche.  The movie is Castaway with Tom Hanks.  In this movie Hanks plays a FedEx engineer, Chuck Noland, whose unexpected trip to the South Pacific around the time of Christmas permanently detours the course of his life.  His plane crashes in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean.  He is the only survivor of the crash.  He somehow manages to wash ashore on an uninhabited island.  Four years pass.  His fiancee and friends assume he died in the crash and move on without him.  He is ultimately unable to escape the island.  Then one day a piece of a port-a-potty washes ashore on his little island (thousands of miles from the location of a city it is labeled with, namely the city of Bakersfield, California).  Noland uses the piece of debris to fashion a sail.  He finally finds himself able to escape the island but then is confronted with violent storms, hunger and the immense vastness of the Pacific Ocean.

In my opinion the most heart wrenching scene of the movie takes place once Noland is adrift both literally and psychologically.  An empathetic viewer will feel immense sorrow for him as he weeps  underneath a tropical sun.  He later casts his oars away.  It is clear all hope of ever being found has left him.  His grief and hopelessness is as immense as the ocean surrounding him as he resigns himself to a fate of never being found.  One cannot help but feel his heart has filled with despair.  Then, unexpectedly, and long after he has given up hope, he is found.  He eventually finds his way back to Memphis where he had once lived.  Everyone had moved on without him.  His former fiancee grieved his supposed death, moved on and married.  Time did not wait for him.

Lately I have been feeling a bit like Noland felt after he found himself seemingly endlessly adrift and beyond hope of ever being found.  I feel myself tempted to be consumed with despair.  Just like Noland's character I have found myself reaching a point in which I do not want to keep trying anymore.  I just want to give up and stop trying.  I cannot force the Cosmos to pay attention to me.  I cannot force someone to give me a job of any sort.  I cannot force my life circumstances to change.  I am incredibly bone weary of trying to create a new beginning for myself.

Tomorrow is another day.  But in this moment I find myself not at all savoring the idea of getting up to greet a new day.  If nothing changes despite all your efforts it can become difficult to remain motivated to keep trying.  Eventually it might feel as if life is a farce.  I have reached that point.

The Natural Decay of Grief

Monday, January 12, 2015

In the first months of my recovery process I often felt skeptical that I would eventually reach the point I am now beginning to reach.  I am starting to feel that grief has at least one thing in common with, of all things, radioactive materials.  Grief has something like a half-life.  In other words, grief doesn't last forever.  I never thought that my grief would indeed last forever but many months ago I thought it would continue to feel truly burdensome for a very long time.  I am now just beginning to feel very differently.

It was a bitterly cold day today.  The temperature barely climbed above 0F.  The temperature is predicted to drop to -11F tonight.  But the sky was filled with brilliant sunshine all day long.  At one point near the noon hour I allowed myself to get a sun-bath.  I was inside the whole time I enjoyed my sun-bath so I didn't feel the cold nipping at my skin.  That was a relief.  I feel better than I did in January of 2014.

Yes, I think it is indeed true that grief naturally shrinks over time.  Perhaps it is the power of the human spirit.  Who among us wants to be caught in an unending cycle of grief and sadness?  Eventually we must find a way to release that which pains us.  Sometimes releasing our pain requires us to give up something immense.  In my case I am giving up on the idea of ever having a healthy relationship with the members of my paternal family of origin.  In particular I am focusing my attention on letting go of my father.  I have wondered (sometimes 'aloud' here in this blog) if my father is actually a psychopath.  I may never know the answer to that.  And somehow I am going to have to find a way to get past it such that it doesn't consume my heart and mind.  It's a very sad thing to contemplate such an idea about your own father.  And yet when people are pathologically averse to telling the truth what can you possibly do to compel the person to change?  You can't!  You cannot force another person to change.

I decided to reach out and create some additional support for myself in the next few days.  I needed it.  I feel weary of being involuntarily required to endure the drama and dysfunction of others.  That was the story of my childhood.  It will not be the story of my remaining adulthood.

"Being A Child Of Domestic Violence Is Like A Death In Itself"

Sunday, January 11, 2015


It's quite obvious that how we respond to trauma is very much a factor of both the nature of the trauma and our own state of development.  Children can be especially vulnerable to trauma.  Consider a March, 2014 Washington Post article focused on the impact of domestic violence.

The article references a U.S. Justice Department sponsored study known as the National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence.  The survey, completed in 2011, found that one in twelve children have witnessed a family assault.  Perhaps more compelling are the words of Dorothy Lennig quoted in the article: "Thirty years ago, we had to really convince the community that domestic violence was not  a private matter but a crime.  The next iteration of that was we had to convince people not to victim blame.  And now I feel we're moving into the next phase of really understanding the impact on the kids."  When you subtract approximately thirty years from the year 2011 you reach the year in which I nearly lost my own father to domestic violence.

The redefinition of domestic violence as something larger than a private matter will most assuredly change how it is dealt with now and how the children of the present will fare as they entire their adulthood in the coming years.  Yet it will likely be difficult to know the full consequences of such a significant change in policy for decades.  As of the time of this article's appearance in 2011 five states considered the commission of domestic violence in front of children to be a separate crime. Unfortunately the quantification of the effectiveness of such laws to provide additional protections to children is still a very new thing.  It will take some time to understand the consequences of this change in policy.

I find the article I have referenced above a fairly well balanced one.  It presents both the horror of the impacts of domestic violence as well as evidence that healing is nonetheless possible.  Trauma and catastrophic loss do not have to define our future lives.

......

I spent part of my day preparing for an intake appointment I have tomorrow morning.  I will be traveling to Abbott Northwestern Hospital to meet with a nurse regarding the possibility of entering the adult partial hospitalization program.  I completed this program in late 2013.  It might be time for me to experience a reprise of it.

Recalling that important time in my life from over fourteen months ago prompted me to ponder just how much my health has improved in the intervening time.  For those of you who have followed my writings over time you might remember that I focused on the idea of Complex PTSD this past summer.  I decided to use six criteria associated with this version of PTSD to review my progress.  My assessment of my progress appears below.  I first list the exact words noted with each criteria as they appear on a section of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs website.  Underneath these words appear my own commentary regarding my own progression.  I was pleased to note that I see improvement as measured by all six criteria.

Emotional Regulation. May include persistent sadness, suicidal thoughts, explosive anger, or inhibited anger. – My anger issues have waned.  The anger I once carried is no longer inhibited.  My primary challenge now is dealing with the sadness I feel.  Sadness, in my experience, is a much less volatile affective state to be caught in.

Consciousness. Includes forgetting traumatic events, reliving traumatic events, or having episodes in which one feels detached from one's mental processes or body (dissociation). – My deeply learned coping skill of dissociation is not something I regularly engage in any more.  The new focus I now have is cultivating awareness and paying attention to when my intuition tells me I may be entering an undermining or harmful environment.

Self-Perception. May include helplessness, shame, guilt, stigma, and a sense of being completely different from other human beings. – My self-perception is much healthier than it was.  Of the types of experience listed I can most identify with some measure of feeling helpless.  I feel disappointment that my career is not really developing as I had first hoped and planned.

Distorted Perceptions of the Perpetrator. Examples include attributing total power to the perpetrator, becoming preoccupied with the relationship to the perpetrator, or preoccupied with revenge. – I no longer frequently engage in disempowering thoughts in which I give away my power to past perpetrators.  The best example of that is my decision to cut my paternal family of origin out of my life.  I no longer project a lot of responsibility onto my father.  I see him quite clearly as the flawed man that he is.

Relations with Others. Examples include isolation, distrust, or a repeated search for a rescuer. – I still have challenges with cultivating trust but it’s better than it once was.  I don’t self-isolate as much as I once did.  And I don’t seek out someone to rescue me from my troubles…I learned that lesson the hard way!

One's System of Meanings. May include a loss of sustaining faith or a sense of hopelessness and despair. – I am still struggling with my sense of what the possibilities for my future are but my faith that there are good people out there who will help me remains strong.

Trauma need not ruin our lives.

The Dark Question

Saturday, January 10, 2015


I decided to review past writings contained within my blog this morning.  I did so partly for the purpose of preparing myself for an intake appointment I have scheduled for this coming Monday, January 12th. I am considering doing a second plunge into the adult partial hospitalization program offered at Abbott Northwestern Hospital.  Why?  I feel I have been slipping a bit lately.  I have worked very hard to restore my health.  I have no intention of losing all the progress I have made.

As I prepare myself for this intake appointment this coming week I have been reflecting on what still bothers me now.  I am asking myself what my core struggles are now.  And one of them is the sadness and confusion I feel regarding who my father was and is now.  I wrote in March of last year how I have  wondered if my father might be a psychopath.  I did some research on the subject.  As I continue to move through the grief I feel as a result of my terminated relationship with much of my paternal family of origin the question of my father's identity continues to be a central unresolved question.  And I do not believe I will ever get any real healthy resolution to my lingering question.  So I have to find some way to move on and accept this.

I have been frustrated by my search for grief resources here in the Twin Cities.  I often discover said resources are only focused upon people who have experienced the biological death of a person dear to them.  And yet this narrow manner of defining loss does an immense disservice to those who have experienced significant loss that falls outside of the reality of biological death.  At least that is my opinion.  I am one such person who has experienced significant loss other than biological death.  To experience, as I have, an utter and complete alienation and estrangement from nearly your entire paternal family of origin is no small matter.  And such unfortunate pain is not uncommon in the human experience.  I suspect there are many people here in the Twin Cities who are experiencing estrangement and related issues of loss who also feel a bit bereft of the support they need.

When I go to my intake appointment on Monday I am going to have my laundry list of challenges ready for exposition.  Continuing to work on the longstanding issues that caused me pain for so long gives me some measure of satisfaction and consolation.  In continuing to work on myself I continue to essentially say to the world at large the following: 'I believe my life can be bigger and brighter than it appears to be now.  I believe lasting healing is possible.'

I wish to express my gratitude to those of you who continue to follow my blog. I intend to keep writing.  This process is often something of a salve for my soul.

A Renewed Feeling Of Crisis

Thursday, January 8, 2015


I spoke with one of my aunts yesterday.  It was a very, very brief conversation.  I called to inquire about the copy of my masters thesis that I last saw inside the house that my father once grew up in.  My aunt Carol didn't seem to know where it was.  More concerning was the fact that her voice was a few octaves off.  Yes, she was sick once again.  This is not uncommon for her.  I still do not understand why she gets sick so often.  I suspect her less than optimal self-care skills are one important factor.

Today was not an easy day either.  The lingering feeling of sadness I had yesterday (in response to my aunt's obvious illness) seemed to infect my mood today.  During my lunch break I went to Abbott Hospital to see a physician in the Emergency Department.  I did so because I was feeling a certain distress I could not easily identify.  Initial assessment in triage revealed my blood pressure was a bit high compared to what it typically is.  I later was seen by a nurse and a physician.  My final encounter was with someone who works in mental health.  The conversation in that last encounter was a bit helpful in putting my mind at a little greater ease.

I feel as if I have hit another rough patch; my ongoing recovery process feels a bit sideswiped.  I have written before about how the journey of recovery is never a straight, unswerving line.  We all have highs and lows in our lives.  That is just part of life.  I feel that I am plateauing a bit because I continue to experience immense frustration in my vocational rehabilitation process.  I am not experiencing the results that I want to see manifest.  Is this an issue of patience or is it an issue of me needing to adjust how I am going about the process?  Perhaps both are true.  What I feel clearly is that I am quite frustrated right now.

Some of my current distress is quite obviously a result of the very brief interaction I had with my aunt.  After getting off the phone I had this almost instantaneous and deeply visceral feeling that I was very wise to sever all interactions with my paternal family of origin.  Being unwitting witness to the drama, suffering and avoidance techniques of my father and his siblings was a very painful experience to endure as a child.  I am convinced my father will never really understand just how psychically harmful it was for me to witness what I did when I was a little boy.  It is my belief that my father has a deep ego need to believe his own version of events.  To understand the full extent of what his first son suffered as a result of his own poor choices is something he can't really handle.  And I think this is partly due to the fact that my father has a minimal capacity to be present to other people's pain.  And why this should be so is something I can't fully make sense of.  I suspect his own childhood has something to do with his poor capacity to be present to the pain of others.

As for me I recognize I have my own pain to deal with.  There is still more for me to work through.  I would like to believe this current expanse of psychic darkness will ultimately pass.  This too shall pass.

A Leap Of Faith

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

I was recently observing how much differently I feel now as compared to this time last year.  The coldest air of the winter arrived last night.  The temperature is not forecast to reach 0 F today.  And yet it doesn’t phase me to the extent it did when these types of days dawned last winter.  When you finally begin to successfully address the issues that pain you the quality of your life can improve and the possibilities that begin to seem genuinely real may significantly expand.

Having reached such a pinnacle of healing as I have found in the last few months it’s only natural that I should begin to start seriously contemplating the question of what I can expect to achieve in my life in the future.  What is possible?  What can I achieve?

In contemplating these questions I find myself aware of my remaining fears.  Yes, I still have fear.  It doesn’t seem possible that there are people who do not have the ability to feel fear.  But it’s another matter entirely when fear rules your life.  It’s my impression there is a lot of fear in this country I was born in.  Fear is peddled in the media.  It is peddled in certain churches.  Some people learn to fear early in their lives when they are still children.  I was one such child.  And now, decades later, I recognize that the best project I could consider undertaking in therapy is the unlearning of fear. 

I felt a lot of fear when I was a kid.  I feared my birthmother once she began to suffer her schizophrenic breakdown.  I feared my first stepmother once it became clear to me that she had some serious issues of character.  And I began to fear being around my father after he survived repeated attempts on his own life…but did not fundamentally change as a result of this horror.  I may never understand who my father truly was.  And somehow I find myself finally beginning to come to terms with this sad truth.  I am finally, finally beginning to let go and visualize a future in which I no longer repeat old patterns of seeking to meet my basic needs from people who have consistently demonstrated their inability to meet them.  Yes, I am moving on.  It’s a wondrous feeling to witness such a profound transformation occurring inside me.  I suppose all the psychotherapy is working!

……

I am writing about fear today because something that appears to be a fear is appearing as I contemplate the very real possibility of pursuing a doctoral degree in Hawaii.  I have had this thought go through my mind that making such a choice would somehow seal my fate as a person destined to be forever single.  I have taken notice of this extraordinarily pessimistic thought.  The capacity to consciously notice our thoughts is an important skill.  At least as important is the ability to choose whether or not we will be dominated by the thoughts that go through our minds.  Do I have to believe such a pessimistic thought?  No, I do not.

My greatest fear in pursuing a doctorate is not that doing so will be a project beyond my abilities.  I am a capable and intelligent person.  I do not fear some epic storm sweeping down upon the Hawaiian Islands and carrying me away to a watery death among the vastness of the Pacific Ocean (though that could certainly happen).  No, my greatest fear is that choosing such a path will somehow necessarily prevent me from discovering and cultivating the types of rewarding relationships that I deeply yearn to experience.  But again I have to ask myself: why do I think that?  Is there any evidence to justify my pessimistic mindset?  No, not really.

Some of you who read my blog may scoff at the intellectual jumping jacks I may be perceived to be performing.  Afterall, am I not just using my mind to talk myself out of a problem that I have allowed my mind to convince me is actually real.  Am I not just living trapped in my head?  Possibly.  I have been known to do that.   Unlearning this tendency has been a work in progress as well.

……

In a previous blog post I wrote about the reality that to live and breathe and move about in the world is to be subject to the reality of risk.  Risk is everywhere.  There is no safe decision.  I invite my dear readers to consider the statement I just wrote: ‘There is no safe decision’.

What A Difference A Year Can Make

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

I have recently been frequently noticing how different it feels to be me this winter as compared to last winter.  I went to the YMCA this evening to swim a few laps in the pool.  Afterwards I walked the short two blocks to where I tend to catch buses to take me back home.  It’s about 0 F outside currently.  A light snow is falling.  And yet what I most noticed during the very short time I waited for my bus was the beauty of the very fine snow falling on the miniature evergreens that line the planters on Nicollet Mall.  I was captivated by the beauty of winter.  What a difference a year has made.

Time has been on my mind a lot lately.  As I progress forward I find myself wondering what is possible and by when.  I have decided to apply for a doctoral program at the University of Hawaii.  I want to give myself the gift of genuine options.  I owe it to myself to do this considering how hard I have worked in the distant and more recent past.  And as I contemplate the possibility of still more schooling the question of time is but one of many questions I am grappling with.  How soon could I realistically complete such a rigorous project as earning a PhD?  Four years appears to be the standard amount of time that students are expected to take to complete such an undertaking.  But then there are those who take longer.  And there are those who never finish.  If I began as soon as this coming autumn and completed a PhD in four years I would be essentially forty-six years old when I completed it.

My journey of healing from trauma has led me to a new relationship with time.  I feel time is my most precious resource.  I suppose I feel this way in part because time is different from money, houses and tangible goods.  Why?  Once time is gone you cannot replace or recreate it.   Money can be earned, houses can be rebuilt and lost possessions can be replaced.  But time cannot be recreated.  You can’t wrest time from the past.  Once it’s gone it is gone for good.

Once I had regained much of my health last year and began to feel the time of disruptive crisis (ergo 2013 and early 2014) decisively receding into the past I found myself able to start contemplating less pressing matters than the necessities of food and shelter.  I began to start wondering what I would want to do with the rest of my life.  What do I ultimately want to do?  With whom do I want to spend my time?  How do I want to use my time?

 A year has made such a difference in my life.  Even my grief (which I have written extensively about in past months) seems to be continuing to wither.  Aspects of my life that once really bothered me no longer inspire the same depth of angst.  For example, my apartment is still very much devoid of furniture.  And yet this doesn’t much bother me.  I have the most vital aspects of my life covered.  I am safe.  I have food.  I have clothing sufficient to protect me from the bitter cold.  I have a source of income.  I have connections.  I have the possibility of a meaningful future due to the foundation provided by my past and recent successes. 

I do still feel the sadness of the loss of any living connection to my paternal family of origin.  But even the sadness is diminishing now.  I am finally learning how to not buy into the caretaker archetype that I (needlessly) carried on my shoulders for so much of my life.  My life will go on with or without the parents who brought me into this world.  I might not feel I belong to a particular blood related family.  But I do and always have belonged to the world and in the world.

Though the power of winter darkness and cold is at its peak I know that spring will come one day.  The cycle of seasons is inevitable.  Darkness shall never rule.

……

One small project I gave myself during the month of January is a survey of individuals who have pursued (either completed or are currently working towards one) a PhD.  I spoke with a woman today who works for the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C.  I had an enjoyable conversation with her and felt inspired afterwards to continue exploring the possibility of pursuing a PhD.  As we concluded our conversation she called me ‘kiddo’.  I didn’t take any offense to that but it left me pondering where I am in my life.  The term was a bit apropos really.  I am a man who is still coming to terms with the psychic harm I experienced when I was an eight-year old boy.  Some wounds take a while to heal.

A Bright January Day

Sunday, January 4, 2015


Despite all the times I still find myself inclined to doubt the real magnitude of my personal healing I find myself experience moments like today that reassure me that I am truly moving in a good direction.

Today is a bitterly cold day here in the Twin Cities.  The cold announced itself with keening winds that buffeted my kitchen skylight throughout the night.  Yet even though it is so cold today I find my mood is surprisingly bright.  The sky is clear and the sun is thus visible.  And the days are growing longer.  Perhaps I feel better simply because this winter has proven more manageable than the last one.  I succeeded in surviving last winter while simultaneously working through the (then still) early stages of my shock of being diagnosed with PTSD the summer prior to last winter.  My greater ease in handling winter is also probably a matter of acclimation.  After a while you can grow accustomed to most anything.

......

Over thirteen years ago I began studying astrology as a hobby.  As I delved deeper and deeper into this art I found myself fascinated by it.  Eventually I found myself discovering the best online resources available to help me to make some sense (from an astrological perspective of course) of the influences that were shaping my life.  In more recent years I began to make a regular practice of surveying 'the astrological winds' as a new year would begin.

As I review what will be our planetary features of 2015 it is clear there will be both new and old elements to contend with.  One ongoing influence that has been with us for some time is the Uranus-Pluto square.  As I have noted elsewhere in my blog this influence has been particularly powerful for me given its interaction with my natal Moon placed in Aries.

A significant new development for this year is the movement of Saturn into the sign of Sagittarius.  With Saturn's visit to the sign of Sagittarius people born at the time that Neptune was in Sagittarius (the 1960s and 1970s) will be experiencing Saturn in conjunction to their natal Neptune.  Seasoned astrologers would likely contend that this transit isn't exactly an easy one to bear.  Saturn and Neptune represent such different archetypes.  It is for this reason that the synthesis of their two realms can prove to be so difficult to manage.

Saturn represents form and substance.  Neptune, associated with the god Poseidon, rules over the element of water.  Saturn's realm is the creation and maintenance of structures and boundaries.  Saturn supports definition.  Neptune is virtually antithetical to this.  Neptune dissolves what Saturn would build. Neptune supports the dissolution of boundaries.  Neptune seeks to fuse together while Saturn supports the opposite process of differentiation.  So how do these two seemingly contrary energies ultimately work together?  That is a good question.  Those of my own generation will be navigating this question for a while.  To read an interesting take on this transit consider reading an article available here.  I will write more on the topic of this transit this coming week.  As for now you can rest assured it will be an 'interesting' time to be alive.

......

As for my own life I am maintaining my focus on my own healing process.  I do feel optimistic that the New Year of 2015 will be a bigger, brighter and more rewarding one than 2014 was.

Moving On Beyond Old Pain

Saturday, January 3, 2015


I am hoping that this month will mark the beginning of my desired transition down to fewer medications.  I have more current open prescriptions for medication now than I can recall ever having as an adult.  But I am nonetheless hopeful that 2015 will mark my decisive step forward into a promising and fulfilling future.

It's a gray day here in Minneapolis.  And the Arctic is about to offer us a very painful kiss in the form of  subzero apparent temperatures and subzero real temperatures!  And yet despite the brutal weather whose leading edge is nearly here I feel fairly good.  Taking Vitamin D throughout the dark and cold season here in Minnesota is a virtually necessary ingredient to maintaining good health.  I don't know how long it took for my vitamin D level to reach a healthy level (after I was first put on a prescription for it in 2013) but I suspect my level may still have been recovering in early January of last year.  In other words, it feels very different to be me this winter as opposed to last winter.

I don't find myself feeling full of any immense wisdom to share today.  The darkest days of winter (the first ones) are already behind us.  But the most difficult days of winter are still ahead of us.  This is the season of hibernation and rest.

......

This coming week I will be speaking to a lot of people about the possibilities of 2015.  One person I will speak with is my therapist.  At this time my goal is to do weekly psychotherapy until at least June 30th.  I believe I will be finding myself in a very good psychic space by then.  At least that is my plan right now.

I'm Not The Man I Once Was

Friday, January 2, 2015


The New Year of 2015 is in full swing.  I feel excited about the possibilities of this new year.  I just completed my first day of work in 2015.  It was boring.  It was tedious.  And I suppose it was necessary.  But I feel myself on my way to better things.

I began writing up my goals for this new year last night once I arrived home.  Prior to that I had great fun with my friend Carol Watson, Thomas and a number of others.  There was even some unexpected eye candy for me to resist openly drooling over.  Yesterday was yet another reminder that laughter is something I need more of in my life.  I have appreciated this truth for some time now.  I suppose it really became clear how much my life lacked a needed element of pleasure and lightheartedness last year once I was in the depths of psychotherapy.

Speaking of psychotherapy it seems I can quite clearly imagine its eventual end at some point in this new calendar year.  I feel quite confident I could stop now and survive if it was necessary for me to do so.  But this is the year I want to finally succeed at moving beyond mere survival to the better state of thriving.  It's about time that I did so actually.  I have worked plenty hard to transcend the limiting circumstances of my early life history.  So I plan to continue with therapy for at least another six months.

As for my blog I am not sure exactly what will unfold as I continue to write.  I know that I do intend to continue writing something.  But I clearly see that my need for the outlet I have found in this blog is changing.  Though I still have my bad days and difficult moments (who doesn't?) it is clear that my need to vent is nothing compared to what it was during those truly depressing days of July and August in the summer of 2013 when I first was back on the conscious journey of therapy supported self-inquiry.

I intend to continue to do my best to be an ethical person in 2015.  I have one shining moment from earlier today I will share.  It is an anecdote I shared on Facebook earlier today.

I called Macys today and disclosed how I was feeling uncomfortable about how the Mall of America store in Bloomington displays some of its products in the Housewares section where I worked. I specifically referenced how the department allows full cutlery sets to be displayed on shelving that could be reached by small children. All it would take is a small child breaking away from his/her distracted parent, dashing into that section of Macys and climbing on some very accessible shelves for a preventable tragedy to happen. The thought of a child accidentally getting stabbed because of a poor store policy is not something I wanted to entertain. But the thought was in my mind after I discovered how the cutlery was presented in the store.

I don't want to work for a company or organization that isn't more proactive about the safety of its smallest customers.

I know my own childhood informs how I see the world now. I'm often one of the first people to notice potential safety hazards. In a way I think this is a good thing.

I intend to spend this weekend letting the second course of antibiotics I am now taking continue to work their expected magic.  And I will be actively visualizing what I wish to experience this year.

That Precious Gift of Time

Thursday, January 1, 2015


Time is on the minds of many people as we witness the beginning of a new year.  It's certainly been on my mind.  I have some diverse feelings about the fact that it's a New Year.

Joy - 2014 was a transformative year.  It was perhaps one of the most important years of my life.  I did a lot of deep work on my psyche.  I feel joy that a new year has begun.  The fresh vista of a brand new year inspires me to reach out in the direction of my grandest and most amazing dreams.

Sadness - I feel sad that my purging of so much that was outdated and useless in my life left me realizing how much of my life was filled with it.  There is now an immense empty space available for me to bring forth a better version of my life.

Confusion - I honestly feel a bit perplexed by how the time has passed by so fast.  I watched a few shows on television last night and realized how shows made in the 1990s are now at least fifteen years in the past!

Excitement - Yes, I am genuinely excited to begin a new year.  The foundation of my new self I have been creating these last eighteen months feels pregnant with possibility.  I believe great things can happen in 2015.


As I gradually awaken on this first day of 2015 I find myself aware of what I believe is the most precious gift I have.  That gift is time.

How will you spend your 2015?