Thriving In A Less Than Ideal Environment

Sunday, May 22, 2016


"The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens. As Americans, we are blessed with circumstances that protect our human rights and our religious freedom, but for many people around the world, deprivation and persecution have become a way of life." - Jimmy Carter, Jr.


As I have continued forward on the path of my healing journey I have come to more and more appreciate the reality of how bad some policies are here in the United States. Childcare policy could certainly stand improvement.

The broader social and economic reality of a nation and its associated array of policies have significant relevance to the quality of life for individuals and individual families. People do not live out their lives in a vacuum. And the same is true of families and entire communities. The context of what is happening at the local, state and national level can play a huge (if not decisive) role in the choices individual citizens will make. I was reminded of the significance of the macro-level reality as I read a recent piece by columnist Paul Krugman.

Whole nations of people don't necessarily do well without some intentional focus being placed on creating policies that will support such an end result. Krugman gives a nod to this reality in the title of his piece: it takes a policy. Yes indeed it certainly takes a policy. And unfortunately the United States does continue to do quite poorly by its children when referenced against the performance of other nations throughout the world. Krugman minces no words near the end of his column: "The state of child care in America is cruel and shameful - and even more shameful because we could make things much better without radical change or huge spending."

So what does this one column focused on the lives of children have to do with my own individual journey of healing from trauma? One painful aspect of my process of coming to terms with my own experience of trauma has been my realization that individual families alone may be able to do so very little when powerful institutions pay little heed to their cares and worries. When priorities at the level of an entire state or even nation are misplaced it can be very difficult to do anything substantive to improve your own life or that of your family.

Krugman's words help me to further appreciate the multiple factors that may act to influence the direction of a person's life. If children experience catastrophic failure in the institutions - family of origin, law enforcement, education, places of worship, etc - we are taught to believe will serve and mold us (something I personally experienced) is it any wonder that some of those same children will later grow up to become angry, disillusioned and even violent individuals? One need only google "toxicity of childhood poverty" to find a wealth of information regarding how this one particular adverse environmental factor alone can leave developing children coming up shorter than their peers later in life.

I believe the United States as a nation could be doing so much better by its children. We need thoughtful policy-making and implementation to replace the rancor and finger pointing that has characterized so much of the political process here in the United States for the last several years. We do not need theatrics and wedge issues capturing and distracting the attention of the public. What is one good example of harnessing the public's time and energy for a completely frivolous purpose? Consider the recent story out of Oklahoma in which a group of Oklahoma Republicans are asking Congress to impeach President Obama over the administration's recommendations that public schools accommodate transgender students in bathrooms. It seems a little strange to me that misleading a nation into a disastrous war in Iraq (former President George W. Bush) was not considered an impeachment worthy offense but somehow improving equity by moving to meet the needs of all students somehow apparently is.

I often want to exclaim "It's the priorities, stupid!"

School of Hard Knocks

Saturday, May 21, 2016


The School of Hard Knocks gave me an involuntary assignment yesterday. I am resting this weekend due to acute pain in my left shoulder. Given the issues I have had with my left shoulder in the past I have been wondering if I may need to do something more aggressive to successfully heal my shoulder. Physical therapy alone has apparently not been sufficient.

It's a measure of how good my mental health is now that I haven't been getting caught up in really dark, pessimistic thoughts concerning worst case scenarios regarding my shoulder and future capacity to work. I have been keeping myself sufficiently distracted such that I don't make time to get caught in negative thinking.

Transcending Limited Ideas

Wednesday, May 18, 2016


Though I continue to see my therapist these days I find myself feeling more and more worn out from the journey of discussing, exploring, plumbing and healing from the sadness and grief I carried around for so long. In essence I feel I am discovering a certain important reality that many ultimately will discover on their own when they do their own personal healing. That reality is that it eventually becomes incredibly boring to talk about how we have been victimized. Eventually an obsessive lingering in the darkness of our own personal wounds begins to feel profoundly suffocating. Eventually we simply must seek the light in our lives and dwell there because the darkness is so trite, barren and uninteresting.

Indeed, how often can we go on and on about our wounds? How many times can we relive the incidents that we found so devastating? Such an obsessive fixation on the darkness becomes something akin to a dog who keeps chewing on the same bone over and over and over again in the hope of finding some small morsel that makes all his effort worthwhile. Once the morsels have all been chewed and digested it's time to move on to something else.

I feel relieved to be moving on in my own way. It is time for me to move on. I feel big changes will be occurring in my life very soon.

You Are Not Alone; You Have Friends

Monday, May 16, 2016

Something profoundly shifted within me in the last week. I felt as if this huge door swung closed inside me. It seems like it’s the door on my past. Having my sadness witnessed by other men of the local ManKind Project community was very freeing…and liberating. Having men present to me in this way counteracted a very deeply ingrained negative belief I had developed in my childhood. That belief was “I am alone” in my suffering.

I now feel a growing urgency to move on with my life. With my early life history no longer burdening me as it once did I can look to the future with a renewed sense of hope and faith in the reality of immense possibilities.

Nearly three years have passed since I first experienced the wondrous power of EMDR therapy. I continue to relish the gift of my eyesight each and every day. I never would have expected that such a sense of wonder would characterize my life at this stage of my life. As I have noted in past sessions with my therapist it seems I am now experiencing the joy and wonder children whose lives are relatively carefree experience when they are children. It seems not at all unusual to therefore sometimes feel as if my life today is very backwards and upside down. The evolution of my personal development did not unfold in the way it does for many people.

The Type of People I Want In My Life

Thursday, May 12, 2016


I had a conversation with two different friends yesterday. These conversations led me to reflect on the type of people I wish to have in my life.

A little over a year ago I became involved in a local community of men after participating in the New Warrior Training Adventure offered by the ManKind Project. I first heard of the ManKind Project a number of years ago. I recently received an email that enumerated "principles" of the ManKind Project. I am sharing these below as well as offering some of my own commentary (in italics) on them.

Principles of the ManKind Project

MKP didn't invent these - initiated men became aware of them, and choose to live by them. These principles are unchanging and absolute. The intention is to follow these principles always, and to be aware of, acknowledge and learn from those times when these principles are forgotten.

Responsibility -- I am responsible for my life--my feelings, my choices, and my actions. I choose my reactions. I use "I" statements.

To be fully responsible for your life on a consistent basis is, as I understand it, to choose each and every day to live in and from your personal power. Being a fully responsible person is the antithesis of living out of a victim identity. Just following this one major principle alone can seem quite daunting. I myself have previously struggled with feelings of victimization. We may indeed experience horrific victimization in our lives. But the choice to seek to transcend undesired circumstances is always ours to make.

Integrity -- My choices and actions are consistent with my intentions, mission and commitments. I keep my promises. I do what I say I will. I walk the talk.

Another word for integrity could be alignment. A daily practice of examining our actions and how they do or do not align with our core values can help us to live lives of integrity. A current primary focus of my own healing journey is my intention to clear out my heart space of psychic "debris" such as sadness that took up residence in my heart as a child.

Self-awareness -- I examine my thoughts, feelings and behaviors. I am aware of "shadows", patterns, and limiting beliefs that compromise my integrity with these principles.

Self-awareness can be a difficult one to cultivate. I am aware that I have had a pattern of thinking in my own past that was filled with cynicism, anger and a sense of victimization. Though I have healed from the anger and rage I once carried I still am attending to more subtle emotional states that are also unfortunate to carry around.

Accountability -- I "own it" when I am out of integrity with another person. I acknowledge the consequences of my actions, and the choices and intentions behind them. I learn and grow from these lessons.

Accountability is a big one for me. One of my primary issues in my own life was being very genuinely victimized by a number of individuals and institutions when I was a child. It became easy for me to be cynical. I often struggled with what I often interpreted to be some very adolescent sounding interior monologue: "Why should I be a person of integrity willing to be held accountable for my own actions when so many individuals who were influential adults when I was a kid were very dysfunctional and even dangerous?" Becoming, and wanting to be, a responsible adult can be very difficult when you had few positive examples close to you as a child.

Clarity -- I seek understanding. I know what I want. I know who I am.

I sometimes think that clarity is a lifelong process of discovery. I am finally starting to become very clear on what I want and need. If we want to be effective people in the world who use our energy and skills wisely we would be wise to continually seek clarity about who we are and what we need and want.

Mission -- I seek to discover my true mission of service and choose to live in integrity with it.

Mission is what serves as the guiding director of our lives. If we were to imagine our individual life as symbolized by a boat our personal mission would be the steering mechanism. Without a clear mission we can end up living aimless lives marked by confusion, loneliness and ineffectiveness.

Action -- I take action to live my mission and fulfill my commitments. I ask for help when I need it. I ask for what I want. I move through my fear. I take risks.

Moving through fear can be a real challenge. Every day we are presented with any number of opportunities to say 'yes' or 'no' to many things. How much of our lives is dictated by fear? Taking concerted action reminds me of another big issue from my own life. Some of my deepest wounds I carried were due to the inaction of others. I made up a deeply painful narrative that people from my family of origin that supposedly care about me would do more than they did to protect and nurture me.

Authenticity -- I am sincere and honest in all my dealings. I am aware of and own my feelings. I speak my truth. I come from my heart. I am genuine and real.

Authenticity seems to be at a low ebb here in the United States of America. I look around and find myself craving more honest people. I believe the deep seated problems confronting the nation of my citizenry cannot and will not be resolved until we honestly examine the issues at hand. Such honest exploration requires we do not avoid issues, minimize them, deflect our own responsibility in them and so on.

Directness -- I speak clearly to others of my perceptions, feelings and judgments towards them. I neither practice nor tolerate sideways comments and gossip. I am loyal to myself and my brothers and sisters.

I have become a much more direct person as a result of my own personal growth journey. As time has become more precious to me I have come to feel I have no time for the mind games and drama that others get involved in.

Trust -- I trust the process. I am worthy of trust. As I live these principles and values, I learn to trust and respect myself.

I sometimes wonder if there is a person alive who doesn't experience some degree of difficulty in trusting. If we have been wounded I think it's only natural that we will develop some reticence in fully trusting in the future. So how do we trust? That's a good question. I live with that question every day.

Unconditional Love -- I love and accept all others, without reservation. I value and celebrate our differences. I love and accept myself as I am, right now. I achieve a life of love by raising my consciousness to the level from which all love flows.

As I understand it the practice of unconditional love requires that we do not try to change other people. By definition loving someone in an unconditional way means we do not place requirements on them to be or behave in a certain way. Love is not the same as approval. Valuing and celebrating all people is, in my estimation, a central piece in the possibility of creating an enlightened planetary civilization. Is such a world possible? I believe that it is. Some people might consider me a fool to believe in such a possibility. But hasn't that been the way many people have viewed those whose beliefs were ahead of their own time?

Compassion -- I see all behavior as a statement of love or a cry for help. I see and seek to heal the wounds behind "negative" behaviors. I look for the positive intent behind all behavior and strive to forgive of myself and others.

Compassion has always been important to me. If there is one gift I have received (or did I have it inside and simply cultivate it myself?) due to the extensive wounding I experienced it is my capacity to appreciate and empathize with the pain of others. 

I intend to be a better man. I am well on my way.

Leaving Behind A Muted World

Wednesday, May 11, 2016


"The collective denial of our underlying emotional life has contributed to an array of troubles and symptoms. What is often diagnosed as depression is actually low-grade chronic grief locked into the psyche, complete with the ancillary ingredients of shame and despair. Martin Prechtel calls this the gray-sky culture, one in which we do not choose to live an exuberant life, filled with the wonder of the world and the beauty of day-to-day existence, one in which we do not welcome the sorrow that comes with the inevitable losses that accompany us on our walk here. This refusal to enter the depths has shrunk the visible horizon for many of us, dimmed our participation in the joys and sorrows of the world. We suffer from what I call premature death - we turn away from life and are ambivalent toward the world, neither in it nor out of it, lacking a commitment to fully say yes to life."

- The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller

Fully saying yes to life can be a very scary even daunting proposition. I am still learning to do it. I believe many of us human beings spend a lot of our lives learning to say yes in a resounding and full body way.

It has been nearly three years since I discovered a world outside of the gray-sky world I had been (unknowingly) living in for so many years. Even now I still have days where I look at the world around me and wonder how I didn't notice so much more of the vibrance and vividness of the world. It's not uncommon for tears to burst from my eyes when I find myself deeply enjoying a very simple pleasure such as a beautiful flower or a street so beautifully lined with green, leafy trees that I suddenly feel as if I am walking through a cathedral. The world outside our windows is suffused with such incredible energy, variety and color.

And yet so many of us are so preoccupied that we scarcely see what is around us let alone participate with that world beyond our skin. Unhealed, unacknowledged, unattended grief was my overarching preoccupation for so many years. And the grief was so close to me, so thick inside me, that it somehow blinded me to the beautiful world that does in fact exist. Paying no heed to our grief seems a virtual guarantee of cementing it in place within ourselves. Psychotherapist Francis Weller's words I have quoted above strike me as very wise. These words are the fruits of many years spent witnessing and exploring the wounded, dark aspects of humanity.

Spring came to Minnesota several weeks ago. I suppose there are several definitions the local population uses to demarcate the definitive end of winter and beginning of spring. Some might consider the full ice out of area lakes to indicate spring has arrived. Others might say spring begins when the last frost has come and gone. I personally think of spring as being "officially" here when the world has so greened up that your memory of barren trees populating a monochromatic world of browns, grays and whites begins to sufficiently fade such that you wonder how the world could look anything other than green.

Minnesota is an interesting place to have serve as a backdrop for a personal awakening. Seasonal variation is so intense here. Subtlety is not synonymous with Minnesota physical climatology.

I am grateful to enjoy the many blessings I have in my life.

Nearly All Clear

Tuesday, May 10, 2016


Today was an excellent day.

I have been proactive about my health for what feels like a very long time now. In reality it's been nearly three years since I became so rigorously responsible about my health. The shock of getting diagnosed with PTSD back in 2013 shook me up quite a bit. I honestly don't know who I would be today if I hadn't gone through what I did in 2013.

I had my annual physical exam today. I will get the results of my blood work tomorrow. I feel confident that the remaining results will be good. My blood pressure was basically the lowest it has been these last three years I have been getting regular health care. I feel myself finally able to be relatively calm much of the time. This is such a blessing. There are many, many very anxious people out there in the world.

I met with my therapist today. We spoke of something I have previously referenced in other psychotherapeutic contexts. I spoke of the people who were directly and tangentially involved with my father's near murder in 1982. I decided to do an activity that focuses specifically on the teenage boy I understand was responsible for pulling the trigger that marked the last attempt on my father's life.

How do you obtain closure on something that can never have true closure?

This question has lived inside me for several decades. When you have been victimized by someone whom you can identify it is possible to seek out some form of accountability or justice. But what happens when you have been harmed by people you have never personally met? How do you come to terms with an experience of victimization in which you can never realistically expect that individual or group of individuals responsible for harm done to you to be held accountable for their actions? How do you go on? I have "gone on" for decades. So I suppose I should reframe the above question.

What is within my power to do now, in this present moment, to let go of something that caused me such immense pain so long ago?

When we have been harmed by some individual or institution what can we do to move on when there is no real hope of ever holding those directly involved accountable?

A Clear Mind

Friday May 6, 2016


Spring in Minnesota is...a revelation. After enduring months of dormancy I virtually want to sing entire songs of praise that the trees, shrubs and animals awaken once again to celebrate a new year of green...and life. I have felt this way each of the four springs I have lived in Minnesota. But this year is different in a profound way. This year, unlike recent years, I find myself feeling fairly good most of the time.

I am getting a lot of exercise in my current job. It's a seasonal position. There are some great aspects about it. I am improving my physical fitness whilst I work. Many people cannot say that about their jobs. I also get to spend time out in fresh air. It's a delight.

I have been thinking about my father today. It's his birthday. My thoughts about him on this day of his birth are also different than they were in recent years. I doubt that we will ever see eye to eye. Perhaps we even have irreconcilable differences. But I finally feel I am coming to some abiding measure of inner peace about this reality. It is not my responsibility to change him. And it never was my responsibility. I can use all the energy I once spent trying to cajole and change other people on much more worthy adventures.

I feel very optimistic about my own life now. I still go to therapy but it's for "maintenance care" rather than to explore profound, deeply entrenched issues. I have never been so proactive about my own health in my entire life. And I have been living in this way for nearly three years now.

Life is good!

Honoring My Mother

Sunday, May 1, 2016


I prepared a mother's day card for my mother today. I doubt she will receive it on time in Germany. But it will arrive soon enough. I try my best to be a thoughtful son to my two parents by remembering them on special occasions.

It has always been easier to be such a person for my mother. Some of her less than stellar decisions were somewhat entangled in the illness that effectively invaded her life when she was a very young woman. When I think of her it's still difficult on occasion to not think about the time she spent living and working as a nurse in El Paso, Texas. To this day I still do not fully understand what motivated her to make the choice to do that. She lived in a town where she basically knew nobody and was thousands of miles away from her own siblings in Germany. And she wasn't exactly next door to me in Texas at that time either.

My father is a different matter. He made some poor choices in his life as well. But he never could point to schizophrenia as a complicating factor in the direction he took his own life. What motivated him to make certain choices in his own life also still remains a mystery to me.

Some of us will never understand much about who are parents were and are.

Please Hold My Hand

Thursday, April 28, 2016


Is dying completely alone something you would dread to have happen to you? I suspect many people would rank such an experience very high on their list of Things I Never Want To Go Through.

I had a really good session with my therapist on Tuesday. We have transitioned to a new format; I meet with him once a week for approximately two hours. I find I am enjoying this new format; I do not feel rushed now when I sit down and do my work. I reference this issue of dying alone because I focused on this particular topic while meeting with him on Tuesday.

We did some visualization work that allowed me to create a place I can imagine myself in each night when I am falling asleep. While co-creating this imaginal realm my therapist held my hand. It's just one of many aspects of his particular approach to working with clients that I enjoy. We all need the beauty of human touch.

While co-creating a beautiful scene I can slip into each night I told myself to remember his touch should it ever happen that I find myself dying alone. I feel that such a fate would be particularly difficult for me given how often I felt (and was) alone when I was a kid. Children should not be left unattended for long periods of time. I experienced such aloneness too often. Part of the grief I carried for so long developed in response to this sense of isolation.

I am reminded of one piece of beauty amidst the tragedy of the 1972 Andean airplane crash I wrote about earlier this week. Nando Parrado lost his mother and sister in that disaster. Nando was with his sister as she passed away. Amidst the life threatening circumstances that surrounded him in the remote Andes he was at least able to be present to his sister as she died. She had someone to hold her as she made that transition that we all will make one day.

I yearn for authentic human presence.

......

I generally feel fairly good these days. When I begin to feel I am perhaps pushing myself too hard I remind myself that it still has not been a full calendar year of time since I completely titrated off the SSRI that I took for approximately two years. Change takes time. And long lasting, deep change most definitely takes time.

I have recently been appreciating that this very blog represents a profound transformation in who I am. As I look back I see that my personal and professional values have significantly changed. I see that one of my implicit intentions in the journey I have documented here was to help educate others. If my blog has inspired or educated just one person then I can easily see it as a success. It is clear to me now that I want to educate people as part of my future work.

The Broken Village: The Five Year Old American Psyche

Wednesday, April 27, 2016


I have recently been reading a book by Francis Weller. The book is titled The Wild Edge of Sorrow. Weller is a psychotherapist who lives in California. I met Weller a few years ago at an annual event of the Minnesota Men's Conference. Chapter Three, entitled The Five Gates of Grief, recounts the following story:

"While I was in Malidoma's village, I met a young woman, about seventeen years old, with an extensive burn scar across her face. This did not seem to make her self-conscious; quite the contrary, she was ebullient, happy and outgoing. One day I asked Malidoma about the scar. He said, 'It was terrible. Her mother threw boiling water on her in a fit of rage.' I asked what happened after that. He said, 'The village responded immediately and let this young girl know that what happened had nothing to do with her, that her mother was wrong to do this, and that she was loved and cherished by the people.'

At that point I understood something critical about belonging and shame. Many of us have had experiences of violation and injury, not unlike this young woman. The difference between her experience and ours is that she had a village that immediately responded and dissipated the pain of a shameful act. In other words, what occurred to her remained superficial; it did not penetrate beyond the skin and become a part of her story (my emphasis). She carries a scar, but her soul is intact. Her village could see her value and helped her to remember her essence.

Without a village to reflect back to us that we are valued, these ruptures are interpreted in silence, in a vacuum, and the conclusion we often come to is 'I must have deserved this treatment' or 'I was somehow responsible for this.'"

I have been reflecting on the value of a village in my own life. I have been fortunate to never experience boiling water scarring my face. But I have experienced severe injury nonetheless. I experienced psychic injury due to what I have recounted elsewhere here in my blog. I have described such psychic injury using the words of the field of mental health, namely trauma. The "village" I had access to as a child was not all that functional. After my father was nearly murdered I internalized a lot of shame. Though I did not realize it I subconsciously thought that others in my neighborhood thought of me as "that kid whose father made such poor choices that he couldn't even keep himself alive." I thought of myself in that way. I didn't have a healthy village of my own to mirror back to me my own value.

Healing your own individual life can be quite a journey. I know the experience of this. Healing an entire community or nation is an even greater endeavor. I believe Weller touches upon some immense wisdom in his book about grief. We need a healthy 'village' to help create healthy adults. When such a community is lacking the long-term consequences can be extremely devastating.

...

I have been considering the village metaphor in a different way as well. I have thought about the relevance of this village metaphor to the current socio-political reality here in the United States. When I spend the smallest bit of time bearing witness to news from the unfolding 2016 presidential race I seriously want to throw up. I think much of America has lost its collective mind. I interpret the appeal so many find in Donald Trump as evidence of a collective American psyche that is deeply wounded...and deeply afraid.

The long row of televisions so common in some gyms these days was hard to look away from today. But I did avert my eyes when I saw CNN's coverage of Trump's so called foreign policy speech. I couldn't hear his speech but instead gathered the gist of what he was saying by the sound bites that would appear in text on the screen. Trump would have us believe that he will put American interests first. It would seem Trump is determined to appeal to the xenophobia and wounded feelings so visible in the American psyche today.

There is at least one big problem with Trump's perspective: it doesn't embrace the rest of the world as somehow being of equal value. The Trump doctrine (if you can call it that without bursting into laughter) would appear to have us believe that the United States is the world. I suppose Trump thinks it best to help Americans forget about the other five billion plus other people outside our borders. By demonizing or ignoring the rest of the world it would appear Trump has discovered a path to victory.

Have Americans become so paranoid, cruel and stupid that Trump might actually win in November?

...

I think I will be reflecting on the metaphor of the village for a while. Weller's writings make for great material to ponder.

"Appreciate the astonishing fact of being alive..."

Tuesday, April 26, 2016


Yesterday I wrote about a bolt of lightning that struck a tree very close to my home. The varied metaphors associated with lightning flickered through my mind as I sat and took up my keyboard.
One saying would have us believe that lightning never strikes twice in the same place. Regardless of whether that is true or not what I implicitly hear when I think of that saying is the notion of predictability. Some things that happen in life will never happen twice.  Opportunities we may imagine will come our way again might not. It seems best that we find a way to "appreciate the astonishing fact of being alive...every day...every single breath."

The above words are those of Nando Parrado taken from a documentary of the October, 1972 Andes plane crash. I watched this documentary yesterday. The plane crash thrust approximately four dozen people into the harsh conditions that prevail in the Andes Mountains; the plane crashed at an elevation of approximately 3,600 meters. It was miraculous that anyone survived the plane crash let alone the severe conditions to be found in that part of the world.

If there is something good that can come from trauma perhaps it is a newfound appreciation for all that we have in our lives. Trauma, quite simply, sucks. But on the other side of trauma (for those who survive whatever ordeal they endure) we can find a vividness of life that has perhaps previously eluded us. Through the painful darkness and horror of a period of trauma we can emerge, seemingly ironically, more aware and appreciative of the beauty that surrounds us and the possibilities within our reach. We can find ourselves appreciating every day and every breath.

I find myself now dancing on a fine line. I long ago completed the trauma resolution work in my own journey of conscious healing. I still experience sadness and grief regarding how what I went through impacted by early development. My "village" throughout an important phase of my childhood development was not all that functional. But I am still here! I have never survived a plane crash but I have survived a number of harrowing experiences. And I now find myself appreciating, more than ever before, what I can still do in my life. I appreciate the astonishing fact of being alive today, Tuesday, April 26, 2016.

If you knew that you could not fail what would you do?

When Lightning Strikes

Monday, April 25, 2016


Today I was awoken by a bolt of lightning that struck a tree just across the alley from where I live. The thunder that accompanied the lightning was virtually simultaneous to the lightning bolt itself. I virtually levitated above my bed when the thunder struck the house. It was very jarring to be awoken by such a fierce noise!

Lightning fascinates me for a number of reasons. One reason I like lightning is related to the fact that my initial academic training was in the field of atmospheric science. I grew up in a place (Texas) where each spring season regularly features very strong thunderstorms. I found that my pulse quickened on those days when thunder was seemingly tearing apart the sky above me.

One of my mentors, Dr. Pamela Colorado, connected with me via Facebook today after she noticed a posting I made in reference to the lightning of this morning. I was reminded of her interest in thunder-dreamers. I'll plan to write more about this topic later.

Hearing from my former professor reminded me of a dream I had many years ago. I had the dream while I was visiting my mother's family in Borken, Germany. I dreamt that I was struck by lightning. I made my way to a hospital and waited for medical care. I was somehow resilient or strong enough to survive being struck by lightning. I was charred black all over my body. In remembering that past dream today I am reminded of the reality that we create our own reality by the words we speak and the fantasies we entertain.

The lightning from this morning also reminded me of another snippet from my life related to lightning. Not so long ago I told my therapist that I was willing to do most anything to heal my life. I told him that I was even willing to be struck my lightning if that would produce a healed state of being. The lightning from this morning thus seems especially appropriate. Perhaps my full healing is now as close to me as the alley behind my home.

As for my own present day life I am currently doing outreach in the hope of finding a suitable employment opportunity in Hawai'i. I will be spending time actively imagining what I want in the coming weeks and months. At this time I hope to relocate to Hawai'i some time between August 1st and October 1st.

My heart is full of Hawai'i. I feel I belong in Hawai'i.

Tomorrow

Saturday, April 23, 2016


It's so nice to see that spring has finally won its annual battle with winter here in Minnesota. We shall get another swipe of chilly weather this coming week but the days of harsh, brittle winds blowing directly from the North Pole are over for another season.

I began reading a great book written by Francis Weller. The book takes up the dense topic of grief. I found it comforting to read what I have thus far. I actually met Weller a few years ago when I attended a Minnesota Men's Conference event in September, 2013.

I continue to look at opportunities in Hawai'i. I am pleased that I am following my heart. If you had no tomorrow to be alive for what would you do today?

That Moment When You Feel...Amazing

Sunday, April 17, 2016


Many positive developments took place in the last week. The biggest highlight was the decisive shift in the work I have been doing with my therapist during the last few years. We have shifted to meeting just once a week now. I am now focused on preventative care rather than actively plumbing the recesses of my earlier life history. In other words I am basically done with therapy now.

When I look back on past forays into the world of psychotherapy I feel I can describe those times in this way: my earlier efforts undertaken with the guidance of a mental health professional were something like an amateur gardener who, not appreciating the reality of roots, goes into his garden and clears out weeds without actually taking the roots of those weeds out. So what happens? The weeds inevitably grow back. I think the impact of trauma on our lives, both as individuals as well as in society at large, can all too easily persist if we don't apply the correct tools to heal trauma. We must address the roots of trauma if we wish to experience lasting healing.

It's so nice to be me now. I feel much safer and happier in my own skin. When I consider how early in my own life I experienced significant trauma an investment of three years of therapy is a very reasonable investment to make to heal the harm I experienced.

This could be a much better world if we all would take the journey of healing our individual and collective wounds.

Writing To My (Still Living) Parents

Thursday, April 14, 2016


Spring is finally breaking through here in Minnesota. The lakes in the southern part of Minnesota iced out weeks ago. The buds on countless trees and bushes are bursting forth. Whatever hesitation the plants of the area had in blooming out will surely disappear over the course of the next several days as temperatures flirt with 70F. I feel relieved that winter is melting away. I have been feeling ready for a new season for several weeks now.

I am still going to therapy. Sometimes I feel it's a bit boring. Other times I still find it a great source of insight. I still feel some sadness within my heart. I still have grief work that I am doing. But the weight of what I feel continues to lighten up day after day, week after week, month after month. A person cannot live in grief indefinitely. Eventually we must conclude mourning that which we have lost and move forward.

I wrote a letter to my father this morning. I am not planning on sending it to him. I will probably reference this writing when I see my therapist this evening. I expressed some thoughts and feelings I have never been allowed the opportunity to express within my family of origin. My thoughts focused on that chain of manhood that stretches back to the faint reaches of ancient history. I wrote about my thoughts about what may or may not have happened when my father was nearly murdered. I do not know how my father's father dealt with the news of one of his own children being nearly murdered...and by his own wife no less. Based on what I know of my grandfather I would guess he was not emotionally available to my own father in a way that would have been of value to my father. It's difficult to know what exactly happened. My paternal grandfather has been dead twenty-five years now. And my own father has long followed a policy of sharing as little information as possible. I suspect that whatever response my grandfather made to my own father at the time of his near death only further compounded my father's suffering. I find it difficult not to believe that my grandfather would have been aloof.

The way men raise their sons is so important. When men fail their sons the consequences can be so important. Those consequences can be very long lasting too. It seems trauma that goes unhealed in one generation virtually automatically gets inherited by the next generation.

I decided to take a stand in my own family. I decided to say "Enough" several years ago and no longer participate in the culture of silence that caused me so much pain, confusion and anxiety. The cost of my decision to no longer participate has been immense. But the cost of going along with the way my paternal family of origin deals with deep pain and dysfunction was even greater. I made a painful choice. I am still saddened by what I have lost. But I also take comfort in the choice I made. I am now the healthiest person I have ever been in my life.

Painful, difficult decisions can be so arduous. But they are a part of life.

I am looking forward to seeing the green returning to the world when I drive to see my therapist this evening.

When There Is Nothing Left To Do...But Live

Sunday, April 3, 2016


I have been at this blog writing journey for a bit of time now. It's been nearly three years since I started writing about my journey of recovery from trauma. I never expected I would be doing this.

I haven't written much in recent months. Quite honestly there is very little for me to say compared to what I had to share in the first months I was writing. I still visit with my therapist. I still have days when I feel deep sadness. I still have days when memories of the horrible time that was June, 2013 float through my conscious awareness. But I don't experience myself being triggered into a state of deep upset as I once experienced all too often. I have managed to excise myself from the situations that contributed to my immense distress.

It's been a bit strange for me to realize that the stressful journey out of that dark time was so anxiety provoking in itself on many occasions that it took me quite a while to adjust to feeling...normal. Living in an environment that creates minimal stress was not something I had the fortune of enjoying rather quickly after my life essentially fell apart in June, 2013. It took me a while to gradually move into a much healthier way of living. But here I am!

Spring is coming to Minnesota. It's the last spring that I want to witness here. As the buds on the trees and bushes swell and blossom forth I feel myself breathing a deep...an incredibly deep...sigh of relief. That storm of pain, shock and chaos I was caught in for so long is long gone now. I now experience the quiet after the storm.

The relative spaciousness within my own psyche is something still quite unusual for me. I had carried around unhealed grief and sorrow for so long that the openness within me is still something novel for me...despite the passage of thirty-three months. Deep trauma can take a long time to heal. But it can indeed be healed. My life journey is proof of that truth.

I want to live in a way I never have before!

What Will Endure?

Saturday, March 26, 2016


I went to a grief ritual last Saturday. It was quite a rich experience. Acknowledging my grief before my ancestors (my blood family of origin) is something I have done before. The necessity of cultivating a close relationship with those who have passed beyond the veil and into the world beyond this ordinary reality feels more urgent to me than ever. It seems likely that the world as I and we know it is going to radically change in the coming years and decades. It doesn't seem possible that it won't. The evidence of tremendous change is all around us.

I am feeling that very human fear of the unknown. I often feel a chaotic future is awaiting humanity. How could it not when we seem virtually destined to overshoot the carrying capacity of the planet? Are there already too many human beings living in the world? That is a good question. I would prefer to believe there could be no such thing. Couldn't we interpret a larger human population to mean there are more hearts beating in the world and therefore more love in the world? Wouldn't that be a nice equivalency to believe in! But then again more people can also be equated with more environmental degradation.  As someone originally trained as an atmospheric scientist I know all too well the arc of our species' impact on the atmosphere. We are unleashing a Pandora's Box of change upon the world given the power of approximately seven billion of us moving about the world. A new epoch is upon us. Some call it the Anthropocene. I suspect it will be the most eventful period yet for the human species.

So perhaps you may be wondering what is happening in my own personal world.

I am still on my own healing odyssey. It's been quite a journey. But I feel much better now. The grief I feel related to the deprivation and trauma I experienced in my own childhood is still inside me. But the weight of it is lighter. Will I always have some measure of sadness in my heart? It seems so. But my heart has a lot of room in it. I have space for many people, memories and dreams in my heart.

What is imperishable among all that humans have created? I would say it must be love.

The Deepening Journey

Saturday, March 12, 2016


My "archeological dig" of the last thirty-three months has produced some amazing results. What I am most aware of now is the immense grief and sadness I was carrying around for so long. The source of my grief is, in large measure, the persistent experience of feeling unseen and having my most basic needs go unmet for so much of my childhood. Put simply, I didn't get enough attention. I was left alone a lot. And when I was in the company of others it was often a stressful experience. Such is often the early life experience of many people who grow up in dysfunctional families of origin.

Lately I have been reflecting on the notions of being selfish and selfless. I realize I had a very unhealthy habit of being selfless for much of my earlier life. But when you are selfless what exactly do you have? Who are you if you have no real self? It seems you become something like a phantom. Being selfless seems a sure path to eventual burnout, resentment and illness.

Realizing how I lived such an incredibly imbalanced life earlier in my life has been rather horrifying. Pulling myself back and seeing in such a clear way just how "selfless" I was has, in some way, intensified my grief at times. But it seems this is just a natural part of the process of healing. To become truly healthy individuals capable of loving relationships, meaningful work and stable living we must learn to look at our own personal wounds and darkness.

I plan to continue writing about my journey here. And I appreciate those who are sharing my journey by following my blog.

Bearing Witness With My Mature Adult Self

Monday, March 7, 2016


I've been at work on this whole healing thing for quite a while. I finally feel that I am starting to leave behind a plateau I was on the last several months. I know the change of seasons is certainly helping me to feel that my progress continues. When the backdrop of the seasons changes in the midst of a long term healing process it can be easier to look back and feel a greater distance separates us from a particularly dark time in our own lives.

I met with my therapist this evening. I was given some homework to do. I'm tasked with the activity of imagining my mature adult self looking at the course of my life through a wall of glass. The glass wall is a metaphor. It symbolizes a separation between me and the life I had previously lived. You could think of it as the equivalent of the protective gear doctors use when following universal precautions.

I feel much better now because I have acknowledged myself for doing so well in my life despite all the challenges and hardship I experienced.

I am not exactly beaming with happiness these days. But I feel a growing capacity for enduring contentment.

The Light Returns

Tuesday, March 1, 2016


I am deep in the grieving process now. It's been a bit difficult lately considering some of the stress I was experiencing in February. I am grateful that those turbulent daily waters are now behind me. And it helps that the light is returning.

I never imagined I would virtually exult at the return of the light this time of year. But that was before I lived through four Minnesota winters. Four of them are enough for my taste. I am looking forward to a very different life by the end of this calendar year. The trees are still barren and it will be a cold night tonight but I know the inevitable end of winter is coming.

Grief is a strange and wondrous beast. Sometimes I feel positively tackled by it. Other moments I find myself feeling my grief is quite subtle. There are moments when I feel I cannot breathe. And then there are other times when deep racking sobs steal upon me so suddenly I feel positively broadsided. Dancing with grief is an unfolding education.

Looking Inside

Saturday, February 27, 2016

"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes." – Carl Jung

I experienced a tremendous shift in my own growth in the last few months. I shifted the focus of my exploration. I no longer spend any time in therapy speaking about my feelings about the people from my family of origin. I was consumed with that about two years ago. Instead I am looking inside myself and exploring how I feel about myself. And I clearly see that I can be very hard on myself.

As I shifted my gaze I began to feel mortified by what I was discovering. I began feeling that my own behavior in regards to my family of origin resembled that of a battered spouse who repeatedly goes back to an abusive partner - and then experiences yet another dose of abuse and horror. I found myself understanding that my own behavior for so long had resembled such a cycle of ongoing harm.

I felt really horrible as it dawned on me how much my desire to be loved and cared for was prompting me to tolerate the inappropriate, unkind and abusive behavior of people from my family of origin.

For far too long I have lived a life with a very coarse voice inside my own head. I feel I see an aspect of the imbalance in my own earliest years of life very clearly now. My upbringing led me to internalize a much too stern, authoritarian voice inside my head. I developed a capacity to be extremely critical and harsh. Though I did experience some genuine nurturing in my childhood that influence was relatively weak. And so I have come to realize that I need more...gentleness.

A therapist I once worked with articulated the following wisdom to me: We often treat our bodies in a manner quite identical to how our family of origin treated us. People who treat themselves in harsh and abusive ways thus tend to have grown up in harsh and abusive environments. It's quite sobering to ponder really. This wisdom suggests that early life conditioning is indeed a very powerful influence on who we later become.

I feel fortunate to have developed the insight I have developed over these last few years. As I continue to transform my life I feel more and more optimistic that I can create a good future for myself.

Watching Life No More

Friday, February 26, 2016


I see beautiful sunlight falling upon my hands as I type yet another entry to chronicle my unfolding odyssey.

Outside it's winter but not really winter. It's almost spring but not quite spring. We are moving into that between time of the year. I am in between as well. I do not feel fully healed. But I am not in a deep abyss either. I am moving. I am moving forward. I am breathing. I am relaxing. I am relieved.

It seemed as if I was slipping back into an immense darkness earlier this month. And so I decided to do something kind for myself. I sought out some resources from some familiar places here in my local community. And now, due to my own diligence as well as the kindness of my friends, I find myself feeling much better.

My sadness is still with me. But it is no longer an immense, nearly suffocating cloud. It is much smaller and lighter now. Rather than needing a full size suitcase which I would have to check onto an airplane I can "fit" my sadness into a carry-on bag. My body and the feelings I carry is much more...portable.

I can't watch life any more. I can't be someone who witnesses life rather than actually lives it. I can't be a vicarious dweller of shadows whose pain lingers and smothers. I see myself taking myself to a new realm. I see a new place and a new possibility. I see healing and wholeness in my future life. And I see love and friendship as well. These are the things I dream of for myself.

...

When we feel deeply victimized, demoralized, frightened or confused it is a very natural response to withdraw from the world to protect ourselves. We may find we need a significant amount of time to regroup and recover. If we truly love and care about ourselves we can, to the best of our abilities, give ourselves the time we need to restore ourselves.

...

I have heard grief described as a sort of high praise for that which we have lost. This feels true to me. One of the greatest honors we can bestow upon our losses is our tears.

Being Willing to Learn

Sunday, February 21, 2016


I would not be where I am today had I not been willing to learn throughout my life.

In June, 2013, when my life felt as if it was in free-fall, I opened myself to the possibility of doing still more personal growth work. But I certainly was not enthusiastic about it at the time. I felt I had already done enough work on myself. Why did I need to do more? Hadn't I already done enough self-inquiry to heal from the deep wounding I experienced as a child? It soon became clear there was a whole new level of functionality I could attain through application of the proper treatment.

Thirty-two months have passed since that eventful June. I now feel very grateful that I took the plunge and allowed myself to learn still more. A piece in the New York Times Sunday Review from July, 2015 speaks to the significant value of research. I invite you to read it and then consider how open you are to learning new things. Are you willing to change your life in the short-term so you can enjoy a higher quality of life in the long term? Are you willing to truly listen to observations and recommendations you might initially find unpalatable?

Being willing to cultivate an attitude of curiosity about the world around us is, in my opinion, vital to our well-being. What would you be willing to do today to foster such an attitude?

The Inexplicable

Saturday, February 20, 2016


My first foray into the world of higher education provided me with the training to understand (to the degree that science currently can) the behavior of the atmosphere. Using the term 'behavior' is perhaps not the most apt term considering that many are likely to associate such a word with a sentient being. People display a wide variety of behaviors. Animals behave in certain manners - we notice certain behaviors in our domesticated pets and describe them as variously adorable or irksome. But the atmosphere? Can we describe the never-ending motion of the atmosphere as a behavior?

When something (a behavior, an unanticipated event) defies our explanation we may call it inexplicable. I have experienced a number of things in my life which have strongly defied explanation - easy or otherwise. I have recently been reflecting on one such event as I continue to explore who I am.

In 1997 I lived among the Lakota people of South Dakota for approximately four months. I was sent there as a novice of the New England province of the Society of Jesus. The Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits, is a well known Roman Catholic religious order known for its preferential option for the poor as well as the mantra of everything "for the greater glory of God".
My four month period of life among one of the many indigenous peoples of North America was profoundly transformative.

One day I found myself driving back to the Rosebud reservation after making a trip in the direction of Rapid City. You can drive for many, many miles in certain stretches of South Dakota and not encounter another car on the highway. I had no company with me in my car. I suddenly found myself feeling overcome with tears. It seemed my body had suddenly become the locus for something far bigger than my own self. My tears, at least at the time, seemed...inexplicable.

In a New York Times Sunday piece from April, 2014 Barbara Ehrenreich talks of a mystical moment she experienced at the age of 17 in Lone Pine, California. She saw the world "suddenly flame into life." She goes on to recount that she was left with only one explanation as to what had occurred:

"I had had a mental breakdown, ultimately explainable as a matter of chemical imbalances, overloaded circuits or identifiable psychological forces. There had been some sort of brief equipment failure, that was all, and I determined to pull myself together and put it behind me, going on to finish my formal education as a cellular immunologist and become a responsible, productive citizen."

Like Barbara and her experience of a flaming world I was similarly perplexed by what I experienced on that day amidst the frozen badlands of South Dakota. Years later as I recall this experience I offer an explanation for what occurred which many all too rational individuals might believe to be absurd. I could feel the grief of the Lakota people in the landscape of South Dakota. It was as if the grief of a whole group of people had, albeit briefly, inhabited my own body and mind. The vessel of my one body could not hold such heaviness. So I found myself crying out in a state of overwhelm. I believe that memory is something that lives not only in our own brains and bodies but also in the very places we inhabit and mark as our own.

There is something else I have also found inexplicable. How did I survive what I did growing up? A friend recently described it as unsurvivable.

The anger and rage I once carried regarding what I endured is long gone. The grief is settling out now as well. I find myself mourning what seems to be the last layer of my layer cake of emotions. I find myself grieving how I endured so much of what I did alone as a child among many dysfunctional adults.

Moving Onward To...?

Friday, February 19, 2016


It's been a relatively long time since I last wrote in my blog.

Winter has grown very old here in Minnesota. And I don't just mean this one particular iteration of winter. I speak of the season of winter in general. My eyes crave the beauty of lush life beyond the windows that separate me from winter's chill. I find the barren trees and snow covered ground such bleak imagery that I avert my eyes from such images whenever possible.

I have been doing some intensive work on myself again lately. It's comforting to be able to report that the anger and outrage I once carried around for so long is now a feature of my distant past. I actually drew up a diagram the other day and then shared it with my therapist. You could call it the layer cake of feelings. I had a lot of feelings to disentangle back in 2013. At the time I first embarked on yet another (and final) leg of my psychic healing journey my anger was quite palpable. It took some time for that to dissipate. My anger masked an immense amount of fear, sadness and grief. I am still working through the sadness. But it is nothing like it once was either.

I recently came to an additional insight; there was still something more underneath the fear, sadness and grief. There was a deep feeling of loneliness. I am leaning into the weight of that feeling of aloneness now. It's a heavy feeling indeed.

But that's it! There's nothing left which I can sense living underneath the loneliness. My loneliness represents the bottom of the bucket.

I'm planning to move on from Minnesota later this year. I feel the time is coming for me to leave this place and embark on a truly new and powerful beginning.

I feel a growing capacity for happiness burgeoning inside me.

When The Healing Is Deep

Thursday, January 14, 2016


My life is so relatively uneventful now that I feel I have little to share in my blog. Naturally this isn't true. I could try writing some poetry or make time sharing my impressions of a singular piece of the world beyond my windows during this darkest and coldest time of the year.

I am excited that the shortest days of the year are now behind us. Spring will inevitably come. And when this spring comes I feel certain I will experience it in a profoundly different way.

I have been having this sensation in my body quite a bit lately that is exceedingly unfamiliar. I feel like I am calming down into a state of being I have rarely known in my life. I am learning how to relax and stretch into my life again. I am learning how to trust again.

I still go to therapy and plan to keep going until I relocate out of Minnesota later this year. There is a whole world of possibilities out there.

Frozen

Friday, January 8, 2016


Yes, I am indeed still alive.

I have written my blog for such a long period of time that I sometimes found myself feeling almost guilty this last week that I had not written a single entry for 2016 until now.

The brutal, cutting winds of winter are sweeping through the streets outside. This winter has been nothing like the one I experienced two years ago. But it is winter nonetheless. The world outside my windows is quiet. It is the time of dormancy. And I realize how much I want to live in another part of the world where dormancy does not define the outer world for essentially half the year.

My life felt dormant for far too long. Though I have been alive for decades the grief, fear and anger I experienced in my childhood did not completely thaw and melt away during my past forays into the realm of medicine. These last two and a half years have been a different story.

Grief. Fear. Anger. These and others were too long my guests. And they were frozen inside my very being. They lay as dormant as the fields of Minnesota on a long January night. But now they have finally melted.

I have been coping with nausea and reflux for several weeks now. I obviously need to make some modifications to my diet. I also feel the need to develop a new relationship with the diet of information I take in each day.

...

I feel fairly good much of the time now.

I long for a time where I will enjoy a place not defined by a long dormancy in the outer world.

This will be a year of significant change in my life.

When The Fog Clears

Tuesday, December 29, 2015


There is a sharpness about my life that was lacking for so long. Clarity is my companion at unexpected moments. I could feel this truth within the fiber of my being as I drove home tonight.

I finally feel as if I will soon be moving beyond a certain plateau I have felt stuck at the last several months. My grief, though nothing like it was in 2013, continues to occupy a portion of my heart and mind. But it is finally and consistently beginning to feel manageable.

There are still days when I wonder what my life could have been if only I had found powerful treatment for my unsuccessfully (fully) treated case of PTSD many years ago. What person could I have become had such a powerful intervention into the course of my life occurred years before it actually did?

I might have stayed in Monterey, California upon completing my graduate studies there.

I might never have traveled to Portland, Oregon where I spent a year of my life and accomplished what I now feel in hindsight was relatively little and quite insignificant to my career evolution.

But then again different circumstances in 2012 might have steered me away from ultimately applying to the McCloy Fellowship Program offered by the American Council on Germany.

There are so many directions my life could have gone. Now I finally feel interested in steering my life in a consistent way and in a singular direction.

I feel good about what I can create in 2016.

Americana

Saturday, December 19, 2015


So I finally decided what I am going to do in the future in regards to my blog. In 2016 my goal will be to write once a week. Given the deep work I did the last 2 1/2 years I do not anticipate I will write extensively about my own personal journey in 2016.  I am largely complete with the psychotherapeutic odyssey I have undergone these last thirty months.

The holidays are often not an easy time of year for me. This year seems similar in that regard. And yet I feel much better than I did a year ago. I am still swimming through my grief. But at least I am able to swim through it. And I am fortunate to have friends and a therapist to accompany me on my journey.

American culture at large continues to dismay me these days. I feel deep concern regarding the political discourse related to the 2016 presidential election. Bullying and machismo seem to be as firmly rooted in the American psyche as they ever have been. We continue to witness gun violence at an appalling rate in this country. And we continue to collectively fail to do anything substantive about this scourge that, in my opinion, makes us a pariah state in the international community.

I am not proud to be an American citizen these days.