A Review of 2014

Wednesday, December 31, 2014


To say that 2014 was an eventful year for me would be a colossal understatement.  The only other years that rank so significantly in my life are 1982 and 2013.  As I have recounted in my blog 1982 was the year I can now clearly identify as when I began to show a very distorted face to the world.  I had nearly lost both of my parents before I turned nine years old in September, 1982.  I spent much of this past summer trying to more consciously remember that summer of 1982 when the darkness of my pain, alienation and anger began to blight my sense of self and the world outside my skin.

Thankfully eighteen months of therapy has done wonders for me.  Though my professional life is only marginally more satisfying now as compared to how it was at the beginning of 2014 my health is so much better.  One of the most astounding consequences of the therapy I have done is the renewed appreciation I have for my vision and the beauty of the world my eyes bring to me.  It's as if my artist self has been reborn.

Below is a recounting of the high points I experienced in 2014:

(If you want to know about the low points you can go digging around in my blog)


January, 2014: My therapist conducted a reassessment of my health status and determined me to be sub-clinical for PTSD.  This moment, which happened in late January, was one of the best moments of my year.

March, 2014: I went back to work.  My return to the working world marked the ending of nearly nine months of not actively participating in the world of recognized work.  I add the term 'recognized' because I consider the personal work I have done in therapy to be a very important form of work.  Throughout these last eighteen months I have been laying a foundation for a new self and a new life.  It's been arduous at many points in time but I would like to think I am moving in a positive direction.

May, 2014: I assisted with the Allina Health Hospice Foundation annual fundraiser event.  I enjoyed the evening very much.  It was nice to be out and among the living and healthy people.

May, 2014: I attended the International Mister Leather event in Chicago, Illinois.  This was my first time attending this event.  I began exploring my interest in leather during the previous year upon my return from my fellowship trip to Germany.

July 2, 2014: I reached my one year anniversary in my commitment to my blog writing.

September, 2014: I celebrated my first birthday without a clinical case of PTSD.

November, 2014: I competed a second time in the local Mister Minneapolis Eagle contest.

December, 2014: I decided to apply to the Nancy Foster Scholarship Program as a means of supporting a possible course of studies I am currently exploring within the University of Hawaii system.

......

As for this day, Wednesday, December 31, 2014 I feel a mixture of joy, relief, wistfulness, anticipation, sadness and grief.  Yes, the grief is still there.  Perhaps it will always be within my heart in some form.  And yet throughout 2014 I have found myself slowly but surely emptying out my heart which had long been overflowing with grief and sadness.

I wrote in a recent post about how the Pope's attention to climate change is, in a sense, his tacit acknowledgment that the laws of physics really do apply in the realm of the atmosphere.  I had to take a lot of physics in my undergraduate education.  This is only natural considering my undergraduate major was atmospheric science.  If the laws of physics also apply to a person's emotional life (as I believe they must since we walk the planet inside bodies which are subject to physics) then it would seem to follow that emotions which exist and are never acknowledged don't actually disappear.  You can't rid yourself of grief by ignoring it.  You can't rid yourself of sadness by ignoring it.  And you can't rid your life of the problems that bedevil you...by ignoring them.


If you want personal freedom you must attend to that which haunts you.

If you want personal freedom you must attend to the wounds you carry.

If you want personal freedom you must be willing to go into the darkest recesses of your psyche.

And yet it is okay to enter the darkness.  There is no darkness stronger than the light of love.  I have to believe that this is true.  And my life experience tells me this is true.

I lived in such fear when I was a kid.  I was anxious so much of the time regarding my father and his penchant for making really poor choices.  To unlearn fear is the quintessential life project for many of us.

Healing is a process.  The reward of healing is both the journey and the destination.

Yesterday

Wednesday, December 31, 2014


Yesterday was a day of tears.

I had a few good reasons to cry:

I feel frustrated with the state of my career life.  To even call the work I am doing right now a career is quite a stretch.  I am once again doing a job that requires essentially no skills beyond that of a high school graduate.  And I keep looking for suitable opportunities.  And I keep getting job application rejections.  The frustration I feel with this alone is immense.

I was also sad because yesterday was my one and only brother’s birthday.  He is over thirteen years younger than me.  I have essentially no active relationship with him.  I haven't spoken with him by phone in quite a while.  This is not by design and it is not my preference.  He hasn’t reached out to me and acknowledged me on my birthday during the last two times my birthday has come around.  

In the summer of 2013 I began the immense process of purging my life of people and activities that demand more from me than I receive in return.  My heart was heavy and I felt very burned out at the time.  This is no longer true.  But I still have more healing to do.    After my brother failed to acknowledge me this past September I decided I would no longer bother reaching out to him.  And so I found myself facing another loss I preferred not to experience.  The occasion of his birthday reminded me of this change.  The pain of this estrangement was refreshed in my heart and mind.

I was also feeling frustrated with my financial reality.  This has been an ongoing story.

I was also feeling sad because the help I have been receiving from my care team does not seem to be really changing much of my life.  Perhaps more time is needed.  I do not know.

Thankfully today is a new day and there is always the potential to start anew with each new day.

The Pope Acknowledges The Laws Of Physics

Sunday, December 28, 2014


The title of this blog entry sounds like something you might read in The Onion.  If you have never heard of The Onion please google it and read through it.  You will most likely laugh at least a few times.

I tend to check Paul Douglas's weather blog whenever I visit the online version of the Star Tribune.  His blog is well done.  He consistently offers links to a variety of current stories connected to the topic of weather and climate change.  And today he posted a real whopper.  You can find the article here.  Given my own life history which has been influenced by Catholicism as well as my studies of atmospheric science and climate change I couldn't resist reading the article.

I will preface my writing related to the article at hand by acknowledging that the current Pope has caused me to seriously reconsider my relationship with the Catholic Church.  This Pope not only truly does care but is extremely active in raising awareness about the seminal issues of our time in the world of the twenty-first century.

For those of you just now discovering my blog I will briefly recap my own history.  I was raised Catholic by my father.  I entered the Society of Jesus and was a member of that religious order for a period of three years in the late 1990s.  I left the Jesuit order, Loyola University Chicago (where I had been studying until May, 1999) and the Catholic Church and moved to California in May, 1999.  I left the Church behind for a number of reasons.  I did not agree with the Catholic Church's formal teachings regarding homosexuality.  Secondly, I thought the Church's failure to thoroughly address the ways in which we human beings are individually and collectively trashing the planet represented a real failure of moral conscience.  I had additional reasons for leaving the Church behind. Those included institutional corruption and greed.

According to the article I have referenced above Pope Francis will be issuing an encyclical on the subject of climate change.  Papal encyclicals are not something that come out every day.  I am no expert on their history but I did have enough experience of the Catholic Church to know that the issuance of an encyclical is no small thing.  You could think of an encyclical as the religious equivalent of a massive memo on a pressing issue that needs immediate attention.  Indeed, I cannot think of climate change as anything less.

The section of the article I find most compelling appears below:

"In recent months, the pope has argued for a radical new financial and economic system to avoid human inequality and ecological devastation. In October he told a meeting of Latin American and Asian landless peasants and other social movements: 'An economic system centred on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it.

'The system continues unchanged, since what dominates are the dynamics of an economy and a finance that are lacking in ethics. It is no longer man who commands, but money. Cash commands.

'The monopolising of lands, deforestation, the appropriation of water, inadequate agro-toxics are some of the evils that tear man from the land of his birth. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness,' he said."

So the Pope is proposing a radical new financial and economic system.  I say it is about time!  In my opinion to think that our current global scenario is indefinitely sustainable represents the height of delusion.  I think the Pope is very right to speak of money as a 'god' whose power runs amok when human life occurs in an ethical vacuum.  (I wish I had been exposed to the subject matter of ethics when I was first an undergraduate student.)

The article correctly acknowledges the potential for massive resistance to the Pope's forthcoming encyclical here in the United States:

"However, Francis’s environmental radicalism is likely to attract resistance from Vatican conservatives and in rightwing church circles, particularly in the US – where Catholic climate sceptics also include John Boehner, Republican leader of the House of Representatives and Rick Santorum, the former Republican presidential candidate.

Cardinal George Pell, a former archbishop of Sydney who has been placed in charge of the Vatican’s budget, is a climate change sceptic who has been criticised for claiming that global warming has ceased and that if carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were doubled, then 'plants would love it'."

That anyone can take anything that comes from the mouths of John Boehner and Rick Santorum seriously shows just how skewed the politics in the United States have become.  In my opinion both men are virtually morally bankrupt because they are members of a party whose essential mantra during President Obama's six years in office has been "Obstruct, Avoid and Coddle The Wealthy".  I would appreciate the chance to see Cardinal George Pell's scientific credentials that would provide him a foundation from which to speak with some authority about how plants would respond if atmospheric carbon dioxide were to be doubled above that level from prior to the Industrial Revolution.

The issuance of Pope Francis' encyclical would be an ideal time to pursue an informed dialogue on the future of our world.  Anyone who believes we can indefinitely live within an economic system whose foundational assumptions defy the very laws of atmospheric physics would be wise to learn more about the science of climate change.  You cannot fundamentally change the very chemistry of the atmosphere without creating a tangible change in the heat content of the atmosphere.  To my knowledge humanity has yet to devise a way to defy the operation of the basic laws of physics.  So as much as Boehner, Santorum and other members of the political Right would like to live in a physics-free reality it is not possible to do so.

If we truly care about the fate of future generations who will call Earth home we should seriously take up the issue of climate change as well as the interconnected issues of environmental destruction, economic inequality and political inertia.  Whether we will actually do so may prove to be the biggest story of the twenty-first century.

......

I always try to bring every piece of writing back to the central focus of my blog, namely trauma.  So what does climate change and the Catholic Church have to do with trauma?  I would answer in this way:

Ignoring how unfettered capitalism may bring about economic and environmental harm has the potential to create lasting and severe consequences for future generations.  Whole nation states may suffer tremendous losses to their human and environmental resources as a result of climate change.  People who have pursued certain ways of life for generations may eventually find themselves unable to pursue what have been traditional ways of living for centuries.  The instability that may result in response to catastrophic climate change could thus ultimately produce populations of (what could be called) environmental refugees that would dwarf those populations produced by previous disruptive periods in our collective history.

Questions of trauma, environmental quality, ethics and the fate of future generations are not light questions.  It has been my observation that many people would prefer not to think about such weighty issues.  Denial and apathy are easy responses compared to engagement and cultivating a willingness to learn.

I am not convinced we humans will do much about the collective damage we are causing to our planet's manifold systems until we are very far along a path to significant disruption and destruction.  But it doesn't have to be this way.  The Pope's determination to bring awareness to this issue inspires me.  Perhaps we can still change course.

These questions sometimes make it difficult for me to sleep at night.

A New Year Is Approaching

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Now that Christmas is three days in the past I am turning my attention to what I wish to accomplish in the new year of 2015.  Some people have the mindset that making resolutions at the time of the new year is a good practice.  That can be true.  I myself believe you can make meaningful changes at any time of year.  True change is a matter of determination, focus and the application of useful resources.

Over the course of the remaining days of 2014 I will be spending some time contemplating what I wish to achieve in 2015.  I am determined to create some real change in my career life.  Creating such change may necessitate some big leaps of faith.  I will be exploring doctoral program options within the University of Hawaii system.  I also hope to follow up regarding my past interest in the Foxfire Institute based in Berlin, Germany.  I am not sure what is the best ultimate path for my future life.  I am open to a variety of possibilities.

The old grief from what did and did not happen in 2013 and 2014 is still there.  And yet I can feel my grief waning.  The darkness of my grief must ultimately pass; each new day gives us the chance to make a new beginning in our lives.  I intend to use the remaining time of my life in a good way.

I would like to feel I can ask my ancestors for help in the task of discerning my future life path.  But I feel alienated from some of them.  So I have recently changed the manner in which I pray and meditate.  I ask for help from whatever benevolent ancestors I have on the other side of the veil who are willing to listen.

I have a good feeling about 2015.  I believe it has the potential to be my best year yet.

A Joyful Christmas

Friday, December 26, 2014


I reached another milestone yesterday.  I celebrated my first Christmas without a clinical case of PTSD. My life changed immensely for the better in 2014.

The highlight of my Christmas day took place during my visit to my friend Carol's house.  I first met Carol last year when I first competed in the Mister Minneapolis Eagle contest.  Carol was one of the judges.  I put an ornament on what Carol called her Charlie Brown Christmas tree.  I plucked an ornament from a collection of them without looking at what my hand was touching.  The ornament I picked was a star with an inset picture of a dog with a bow around its beck and the word 'Joy' written in the empty space next to the dog.

I wish joy to be a primary quality of my daily life in 2015.  That might be a demanding task to accomplish but given what I have achieved in the last eighteen months I certainly believe I can continue to transform my life in such a way that I cultivate joy each day.  Mindfulness will certainly help me to create joyful moments.

I thought of my paternal family of origin yesterday.  It would have been difficult for me not to have thought of them.  And the thought did cross my mind to call some of the members of my father's family.  But I ultimately chose not to.  And looking back I am glad I did not.  Some distance was and is necessary.  Maybe one day I can approach my family again.  As for now I feel myself gradually leaving the grief behind.

I think 2015 will be my best year yet.  How could it not be given how much work I have done in the last eighteen months?

What I Am Grateful For

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Yesterday, during my session with my therapist, I was recommended to consider focusing on what I am grateful for.  This is always a wise practice.  It can be especially fruitful when you are struggling with a dark state of mind as I have been these last few days.  As I composed my list of what I am grateful for I thought back to my life this time last year.

Here is what I am grateful for:

My health – Of all the things that have noticeably changed for the better my health ranks at the top of my list.  To my knowledge this is the first Christmas I am no longer clinically diagnosable for PTSD.  My therapist first made this determination in January of this year.  It’s entirely possible that I had actually achieved this milestone by Christmas of last year since I didn’t have a reassessment of my health done until the following month.  Regardless of the details of that time in my life nearly a year ago I can celebrate the fact that I have made immense progress.

My eyesight – This could easily fall under the category of my health.  I am making a special mention of it here, however, because my eyesight has been a frequent topic in my blog.  The EMDR therapy and shamanic journey-work I did in 2013 catalyzed an amazing shift in my eyesight.  This unexpected change led me to find myself frequently noticing the beauty of the world in a way not typical of my recent life.  Though I am an artist the trauma I had experienced as a kid had literally distorted how I perceived the world.  I now have clearer vision than I have ever enjoyed as an adult.

My priorities – I am purging my life of patterns of behavior that no longer serve me.  High on my list is no longer spending time with people who do not make time for me.  This revamp of my life necessitated that I take a probing look at my longstanding and unresolved issues with my paternal family of origin.  I made the painful choice to walk away from much of this side of my family due to the fact that my hurt, fear and anger have never been satisfactorily addressed.  In 2015 and beyond I plan to refocus my attention and only spend time with people who express an appreciation of me as evidenced by their desire to spend time with me.

My health insurance – I would not be where I am at now without the valuable help of my health insurance.  When I first obtained MA (Medical Assistance) insurance here in Minnesota in the summer of 2013 I had no idea just how much I would make use of it.

My friends – Yes, I certainly do have a reputation for being pessimistic on occasion.  I see this as just one manifestation of how my life was touched by trauma at such an early age.  I am grateful for the friends I have.  A blessed life is one filled with the love and companionship of friends.

My willingness to keep trying – The last several weeks have been very difficult for me.  I have felt immensely discouraged as I continue to keep seeking out the next meaningful step in my career.  The job application rejections become wearisome after a while.  I want to believe a better future will soon materialize.  I certainly am doing everything I can humanly do.

December 23 - Going Nowhere

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

I am struggling to maintain a positive attitude lately.  I am sure my friends clearly see this.  Some of my struggle is connected to the holiday season.  This season will definitively mark my first one without a clinically diagnosable case of PTSD.  It also will be the first one in which I interact with neither my father nor his living siblings.  I have had a lifetime fill of the hypocrisy of my paternal family of origin.

Dealing with the sadness and grief I feel about this aspect of my life is difficult enough.  But I have more burdens to deal with.  My career seems to be going nowhere.  I made a promise to myself when I reentered the workforce this year that I would strive to find my way into a career that actually fulfills me.  I wish to waste no more time in my life.  I have experienced enough devastating loss to last a lifetime as well.

And yet despite my best intentions and best efforts my career seems to be stuck in neutral.  I received yet another job application rejection today.  This rejection was especially stinging; I had applied for a legislative and policy analyst position with the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy.  I didn’t even manage to get an interview.  How someone with my range of skills and experience can fail to even be called for an interview is beyond my capacity for comprehension.  But then again much of the quality of my life these days is beyond my capacity for comprehension.  How a talented, attractive, determined and still relatively young individual like myself can be merely existing on a meager income just doesn’t make sense to me.  The world at large hasn’t been comprehensible to me for quite a while.

I suppose my therapy session today was productive.  I spent much of the time venting my frustrations with my life.  Something has to change for me soon.  I cannot continue to go on living as I have been recently.  I have invested the last eighteen months of my life in the process of truly, deeply and decisively healing the trauma of my early life history.    I have approximately ten years of higher education.  I have a professional history that spans some twenty years.  I have offered my skills in volunteer capacities at numerous times in my life.  I have been a generous, kind and compassionate person despite my early life experiences in which multiple institutions failed to fulfill their most basic responsibilities in a satisfactory way.

I want a change in my life.  I need a breakthrough.  I have been working hard a long while to create a new life.  So why do the same patterns keep playing out over and over?

……

There is perhaps one noteworthy glimmer of hope I can remark on that happened since my last therapy session.  I had an interesting dream in the last week.  I dreamt that I was having a conversation with actor David Duchovny.  I had something of a serious crush on him during his tenure as Fox Mulder on ‘The X-Files’.  In my dream he told me that he was getting married.  He was planning to get married to an actress whose work I have also admired.  That actress is Maura Tierney.  Tierney is perhaps best known for her long running role on the NBC series ‘ER’ in which she played a nurse who went on to become a medical doctor.  I was especially inspired by her performance because her character had overcome some serious obstacles.  Her mother (played by Sally Fields) was bipolar.  She had a chaotic childhood (much like my own).  She struggled with alcoholism.

I find the marriage of these two actors especially unusual considering they have had no on-screen interactions at any point in their careers.  For all I know they have never even met.  In the dream Duchovny allowed me to hug him after I asked if I could.  I see this marriage of these two people as a metaphor for the synergistic union of a strong male and strong female.  In some strange way I believe the dream may mean that a time is coming (or has perhaps already arrived) in which my own internal male and female aspects will come into a harmony that will allow for a more productive and rewarding future.  I would certainly like to believe this is coming to fruition.  I feel very weary of how long I have been working to create a new and better life for myself.

When I have moments in which I feel really down and hopeless and seem to get stuck in negative thoughts I try any number of things to get myself out of such a funk.  One thing I do is remind myself that appearances do not always accurately represent realities.  My life may seem to be stuck.  But the reality may be that a major breakthrough is about to take place.  So I try to maintain my faith in better days coming in the future.

One Of My Goals In 2015

Monday, December 22, 2014

The last forty-eight hours have reminded me of an important goal I want to focus on in 2015.  I intend to purge my life of a pattern in which I make time for people who ultimately do not reciprocate and make a commensurate amount of time for me.  This pattern has been a part of my life for far too long.

I became really aware of this imbalance very early in the process of my therapeutic journey (which began some eighteen months ago).  My father’s inability to be present to me in a meaningful way in the summer of 2013 (a time in which I was both physically ill as well as weighed down by an incredible amount of grief) precipitated my deepening realization that there was a serious imbalance that would often manifest in my relationships.  And yet my awareness of my tendency to create imbalanced relationships wasn’t sufficient in and of itself to end the pattern.  No, I needed the force of my will as well.  Awareness is only the first step.

……

Throughout these last eighteen months I have come to a deeper understanding of the immense power of human denial.  I have appreciated how determined some people are to refrain from confronting the deep issues of their own lives that haunt them and manifest in any number of behaviors.

I have seen the horror of alcoholism in a number of places.  I witnessed the toll alcoholism takes on the lives of Native Americans while living and working on a Lakota reservation in 1997.  I have seen people who are virtual fixtures in bars who use alcohol as a means of self-medicating.

In my opinion the scourge of violence is another symptom of dysfunctional ways too many people seek to address problems.  Whether the violence neatly falls into the category of domestic violence or is instead associated with crime or other issues is, in one sense, irrelevant.  Americans have a penchant for ‘solving’ problems with violence. 

Avoidance and pretense are another classic means of addressing problems in a dysfunctional way.  In this scenario problems are perhaps acknowledged as being real but are nonetheless not addressed.  People may justify avoidance of addressing a problem by professing ignorance as to how to solve it.  Or rather than claim ignorance some might proclaim themselves to be helpless to do anything to change it.  And yet ignorance and helplessness are immature ways of addressing problems.  Change is indeed possible.  But to change you have to be willing to learn as well as acknowledge the power you have to change your life and the immediate world around you.

We seem to have become a nation comprised of many individuals who don’t know how to talk to one another in constructive ways.  It seems people would rather arm themselves, look at their smart phones, watch Fox ‘News’ and just hope all the problems will go away.  Unfortunately I do not see such infantile responses to the world as likely being successful in addressing the serious issues of the world today.

……

In the future I intend to continue to spend my time in a more thoughtful way.  I will make people a priority who make me a priority.  I will no longer waste my own precious resources of time, money and energy on people and situations that do not fulfill my own needs.  To do so is to live a life less than what I am capable of enjoying.

Yesterday was not an easy day.  My mood was off the entire day.  I felt very sad that yet again I had spent my precious time and energy trying to cultivate some sort of relationship with an individual who apparently never had much interest in reciprocating my attention.  I worked a full day at Macys and tried my best to be personable with my customers.  It wasn’t easy.  By the end of my shift I was eager to go home.  There were moments when I felt that I could have easily spontaneously burst into tears.

I feel the presence of a lot of tears within me still.  But I can’t get myself to cry.  Perhaps that will come later.  I keep telling myself that my life can be and will be what I want it to be one day.  But when will that happen?

One day.

What Does A Victim Consciousness Look Like?

Thursday, December 18, 2014

When last I met with my therapist he gave me some homework to do.  The homework was focused on the issue of being a victim and the associated mentality that we might find ourselves unintentionally carrying long after an experience of victimization.  My therapist asked me to ponder how I might act like a victim in my present life.

One clear way in which we can involuntarily behave like victims is to relive an experience of trauma by repeatedly recalling the memory of the event to our consciousness.  Another word that may describe this behavior is rumination.  I clearly see how my own rumination has proven to be a waste of copious amounts of time and energy.

Blaming others for the circumstances of your own life is another way a person can behave like a victim.   A better way of speaking about the issue of blame would be to introduce the words fault and responsibility.  Fault may imply guilt for those who perpetrate an unjust action.  Responsibility is a more neutral word.  Other people may prove to be at fault for allowing or deliberately making something happen that harms another person. 

An excellent example of a complicated scenario is child abuse and neglect.  Parents who abuse or neglect their children could be described as being ‘at fault’ for such behavior.  Yet when such abused children later go on to develop dysfunctional coping behaviors (either as children or also as adults) they have a responsibility to clean up the psychic mess made possible by their parents’ poor behavior.  Is it fair that children should have to fix the messiness that their parent’s shortcomings or genuine negligence caused?  No it isn’t fair.  It is unjust.  But if you want to have a rewarding life you have to find a way to take responsibility for how other people’s lives have ultimately affected your own.

Besides what I would call involuntary re-traumatization and blame a person can also act out of a victim consciousness by stubbornly clinging to an outdated identity.  People change.  People change for a variety of reasons.  To cling to that which no longer serves our highest good is to refuse to allow for the inevitable process of change that will be a constant feature in all of our lives (whether we want it to of not).  Growth takes courage and a willingness to let go.

……

I find myself feeling more and more capable of letting go lately.  There have been portions of the last eighteen months of my therapeutic odyssey (yes I think using that word is fitting) in which I felt mired in a ‘2 steps forward and 1.9 steps back’ scenario.  Other times the progress has been less halting and felt more irreversible.

As I prepared to make my way to visit with my therapist today I was able to articulate an important change in the nature of my grief.  I find myself spending less and less time grieving the actual traumas that caused me so much sorrow.  I am aware that more and more my grief is due instead to the consequences those traumas had on my sense of self and my sense of what was possible for me to create in my life.  I am thus no longer grieving discrete events that took place outside of my skin and bones but instead how these events changed who I later became. 

At first blush it might not seem this distinction in the focus of my grief is really all that meaningful.  But reflecting on it further leads me to a different conclusion.  I cannot really change events that took place years and decades ago.  But I can change the person I am now.  I can change the habits of thinking and being in the world that I developed as a way of coping with the trauma I experienced.  In my personal experience it becomes a lot easier to change your life once the traumas you have experienced lose their hold over your psyche.  Once your identity is no longer wrapped up in unhealed traumas it becomes much easier to move forward.

I suppose I have been thinking about this distinction in my grief due in part to my recent visit to Chicago.  As I recounted in recent postings in my blog I went to the Loyola University campus (where I once was a student a number of years ago) during my visit to Chicago.  I made an offering in honor of my paternal family of origin that also served as a ritual of separation and closure.

While visiting this once familiar section of Chicago I thought about this photograph taken of me from January, 1999.  I was only twenty-five years old at the time.  There was a mound of snow behind me in the picture.  Winter sunlight was falling on my face and causing me to squint.  I looked so young at the time.  I held this remembered image of my younger self in my mind as I briefly visited the property where I once lived.  For a matter of a few minutes I stood and looked at the split building and its driveway.  I remembered that day in May, 1999 when I said goodbye to my Jesuit colleague Tim Calvey, got into my rental car and began my seven day drive across the country to my new home in California.  It was strange to reflect on how it had been over fifteen years since that important day in which I redirected the future course of my life.  As I think back on that moment of departure I can now say with firm conviction that my early history of trauma was still bothering me at the age of twenty-five.  When I left Chicago to begin a new life in California the darkness of my childhood was still inside my heart and mind.  I just didn’t appreciate how much that history had affected me.

I still feel some sadness that my childhood history burdened me well into my young adulthood.  Did it have to be that way?  No it did not.  Could I have successfully attended to the psychic harm that had accumulated within me earlier in my life?  Yes I could have.  How could I have done that?  I could have listened better.  Had I really been paying better attention I could have taken the cues provided to me that something was a bit off about how I met the world each and every day.

Despite the blurred perception (and literal vision) that characterized my earlier life I nonetheless have cause for celebration.  I have excellent news.  It is possible to heal.  My life these last eighteen months is living proof of what is possible when you set your mind to heal your life.

I’m still not done with my own process of healing.  But I do feel I am starting to perceive the end of my conscious journey under the facilitation of a therapist coming in the not too distant future.

What Will By My Contribution? Recounting My Writing From Dec. 17th

Thursday, December 18, 2014

(written yesterday)

I am on my way back to Minneapolis as I write this.  My Chicago miniature vacation is now a mere memory.  Memory has been on my mind a lot during my trip.

While visiting Chicago I took some time to honor my paternal family of origin.  As I noted in a very recent posting here on my blog I went to the Madonna della Strada chapel on the Loyola University Chicago campus.  I made the chapel the location for a ritual meant to formally recognize the end of my relationship with my father and his siblings.  I am still willing to reopen my heart to my family of origin should I feel I am finally fully heard regarding the injustice I experienced as a kid.  Perhaps something will change one day in the future.  But I will no longer give my energy to entertaining this dream.  I also won’t reach out again in the hope something is different.  I must move on.

Doing this ritual in Chicago seemed to be a fitting location.  I found myself thinking back to the life I lived when I was a Jesuit scholastic attending Loyola University Chicago during the 1998-1999 academic year.  I briefly visited the Jesuit property I called my home during that time.  Over fifteen years has now passed since I left Chicago on May 18, 1999.  Yes, I still remember the day I left.  It seems a bit surreal to me that it was so many years ago now.

While on the bus this morning I found myself thinking back to another formative period in my life.  The Star Tribune has an editorial about the state of the school system available to the Lakota Sioux people.  It makes for a sobering read.  Alcoholism, poverty and the decay of infrastructure still mark the lives of the Lakota people.  Lakota children face certain barriers to a successful education not necessarily shared by their counterparts of different origins.  I remember both the beauty and the sadness of the Lakota people.  I lived among them for a period of four months in early 1997.  That time still stands out in my memory now. 

I find myself pondering what my professional legacy will be.  My memories from my life lived in Chicago and South Dakota inform my reflections on this topic.  I want to do something in my professional life that will be valued and remembered.  I want to do something significant.  I want to later be remembered as a happy and loving man who enjoyed his work, his life and his friendships.  I want to be what you might call a fully realized human being.

Making Peace With The Past

Tuesday, December 16, 2014


I find myself still in Chicago.  I accidentally missed my bus this morning by a matter of five minutes.  So now I have to come up with my Plan B.

During my visit to Chicago I decided to visit the Loyola University campus near Rogers Park.  I attended Loyola University a number of years ago.  I even looked up a former professor of mine to see if he had any time available to chat in person.

As I made my way to the Loyola campus I decided to stop and look at the building I called home during the time I was a Jesuit scholastic here in Chicago.  I recalled my bedroom featured a patio which offered a view of nearby Lake Michigan.  In the intervening years it appears new buildings went up in the neighborhood.  I could no longer see the lake from the windows of the space I once considered my home.  Time waits for no man.

During my visit to the Loyola campus I visited the Madonna Della Strada Chapel.  The chapel is essentially lakefront property.  I lit a candle in honor of my paternal family of origin.  I asked for healing for my family.  I have done this before.  I chose a simple ritual such as lighting a candle as a means of releasing the pain of my past as well as my hope of ever being truly listened to by my father and his siblings.  I needed a ritual to commemorate the ending of my relationships with these people whose behavior I have never been able to fully understand.

Fixing That Which Was Never Broken

Saturday, December 13, 2014

I am throttling along in the Megabus somewhere between Minneapolis and Chicago.  I have another six hours before the bus will arrive in Chicago.  I am traveling to Chicago to help a friend and current leather title holder with a special event to be held tonight in Chicago.  I am excited to be traveling and participating in this event.

In cleaning up my email inbox I dug up an article on the topic of suicide.  I meant to write more about this issue in my blog earlier this year than I ultimately did.  An interesting article from a source I don’t usually consider all that impressive (USA Today) noted a recent World Health Organization study which estimates there is a suicide somewhere on the planet every 40 seconds.  Yes, at least once a minute, on average, someone, somewhere commits suicide.  It is perhaps one of the most tragic and most unseen of social problems.  The article I referenced deems it a crisis.  I would say death by suicide on such a persistent scale qualifies as a crisis.  But what are we doing about it?

One of the challenges of addressing mental health issues is that the suffering of those with mental health problems is often not as easily made visible as that of physical illness.  Cuts to the skin cause bleeding.  Misaligned body parts reveal themselves in twisted gaits.  Skin conditions may manifest in the form of rashes, blisters or worse.  A woman named Sarah Clingan who was featured in the USA Today story articulates the distinction well: ‘One of the hardest things about mental illness is you can’t walk into a hospital and show them you’re broken.’  To explore the depths and contours of mental illness requires a certain skill and attentiveness that many in the general public all too often lack.

I thought about committing suicide when I was a kid.  I thought about it many times.  And I can clearly identify why I felt so desperate and alienated on occasion.  I did not feel fully listened to or respected by the members of my paternal family of origin.  My father’s siblings apparently thought it wasn’t an unwise idea for his then eight year old boy to be returned to his custody not long after his wife nearly succeeded at murdering him.  How people, especially people who claim to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, can come to a conclusion with such significant implications for a child is still something that mystifies me.  I survived my childhood though I had serious doubts that I would.  I became an adult and went on to become a productive member of society.

Decades have passed since my original experience of the traumas that so upset me.  I never committed suicide.  I am an adult man.  I have tried to be a person of integrity, kindness and compassion.  And I have tried to be such a person while living in a society that all too often lacks such values.  Indeed, I am confused and concerned by the direction the United States is headed.

The article I referenced above makes the salient point that research money focused on the issue of suicide is small in comparison to that allocated to other major health issues such as cancer.  A close examination of the mortality figures for Americans bears this out.  Despite the fact that gun violence continues to be a serious policy issue in this nation it is more likely that a person will kill himself than another person.  Suicide is currently the nation’s 10^th leading cause of death.  It ranks as the second most common cause of death for those aged 15 to 34.  Perhaps even more compelling is another statistic referenced in this same article:  ‘Each suicide costs society about $1 million in medical and lost-work expenses and emotionally victimizes an average of 10 other people.’

Speaking only from my own personal experience I can directly identify the factors that have contributed to difficult states of mind which may then serve as a foundation for eventual suicidal ideation.  I didn’t feel listened to or respected on many occasions when I was a child.  I didn’t feel my father respected me as a gay man when I first disclosed my sexuality to him.  More recently, when I was quite ill in 2013, I found it more difficult to keep dark thoughts at bay because I had no real clarity regarding how long I might possibly remain ill.  Unexplained illness can be a terrifying thing.

I do not profess to have all the pieces of the puzzle that would help us as individuals, communities and nation-states to seriously address the tragic crisis that is the phenomenon of suicide.  But I do have at least one piece I can offer.  Take time to listen to those who are suffering.  Try to imagine what it must be like to live some of the lives people live in this world.  And make an effort to understand that some people face incredible obstacles and that for some such is their daily life reality.

If you know someone in acute distress who has spoken of the possibility of suicide please consider referring them to a resource that will help them.  Here is one:

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached at 1-800-273-8255

When Frustration Consumes You

Friday, December 12, 2014

I have been feeling frustrated lately.  It's unfortunate I feel this way considering how much energy I have been devoting to my own personal growth and healing process.  Perhaps it is time for me to do the equivalent of pull off the highway and pause at a rest stop.  I feel so extraordinarily weary of not being chosen for opportunities I apply for.  And my sex life is also much less than I want it to be.  I try to be grateful for what I have but lately I struggle to not be even more aware of what I do not have.

I learned today that my application to the Nancy Foster Scholarship Program will likely be disqualified due to a minor error in which one of my recommendation letters lacks a signature of the recommender.  I haven't received confirmation that my application has been disqualified.  I would guess that might occur in the coming weeks.

I meanwhile must await the announcement of a local judge's decision regarding unemployment benefits which I received in 2013 and 2014.

It seems like my life is an immense waiting game these days.

Turning my attention to what is positive in my life is an important means of distracting myself from that which I find discouraging.  So here it what is good in my life:

• I now have a good and recent reference within the University of Minnesota system.
• My feet are generally feeling better.
• I went to see my primary care doctor this morning.  My second blood pressure reading was fairly good.
• I have resumed my active regimen at the YMCA.
• I have a good network of care providers and helpers in place.  Hopefully their assistance will help me to finally move beyond the realm of mere survival and into the desirable realm of thriving.

I am traveling to Chicago this weekend to attend a special leather event.  That is the most exciting upcoming event I have to look forward to.

In ten days the Winter Solstice will arrive.  And then the light will begin to return.

Zombie Boy

Thursday, December 11, 2014


I have managed to remain coherent in the last forty-eight hours.  I feel relieved that I managed to successfully handle two highly demanding tasks in these last two days.  Now comes a period of waiting for the results of how I chose to show up in the world these last two days.  I'll be waiting months for a response regarding the scholarship I applied to.  The results of the judicial hearing may take up to thirty days to arrive in my mailbox.

I can now turn my attention more fully to the holiday season.  Christmas is only two weeks away!  How did that happen?  The one major piece of work I have left on my proverbial plate in regards to my family of origin is following up with one of my cousins regarding aspects of my past life history which I disclosed to her a number of weeks ago.  I put off following up with her until now because I had too many other priorities which were more urgent.  I do my best to minimize unnecessary stress as much as possible.  I would not have ventured into the deep waters of the earliest years of my life history if I didn't feel it important to live a life of integrity in which I feel I can be honest and forthright with those I consider family and friends.

As I sit here and attempt to focus my mind I find myself most aware of the topic of consequences.  I want there to be consequences when people behave in ways that cause me harm.  This is a seminal issue for many people who survive preventable horrors such as abuse and neglect.  I find it especially galling when those who behave in ways that harm others simultaneously purport themselves to be people living according to the teachings of a revered figure such as Jesus Christ.  I do not abide hypocrisy well.

Once I take a nap and rest up I can begin to more fully focus on this next matter which has been awaiting my attention.

Sunday Feels Like Ancient History

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

I have already confirmed that applying to a doctoral program is a time consuming process.  Just half an hour ago I submitted my application for the Nancy Foster Scholarship Program.  I didn’t have much success using the online system to submit my application so I submitted it the old school way.  I sent the application using the U.S. Postal Service.  And I made sure to get a receipt that proves my successful submission of the application today.  Today was the deadline for applications.

I can easily remember the similar feeling of satisfaction I felt when I submitted my application to the McCloy Environmental Policy Fellowship program in March, 2012.  I wrote up my research proposal for that project in a matter of a few days.  Though I felt pleased with my success in submitting that application in a timely way I was not at all convinced my application would be perceived as sufficiently compelling to prompt an award.  I was thus quite shocked (to the point of tears actually) when I learned I had been awarded a fellowship by the American Council on Germany.  I ultimately took my research trip to Germany almost exactly a year after receiving notification of my award.  And when I came back from that journey in Europe my life suddenly, and unexpectedly, changed.  Now here I am eighteen months still later.

I’m not sure how wise it would be for me to embark on doing a doctoral program.  I love to learn and I love to do research.  In that regard I am a good candidate for such an endeavor.  But pursuing a doctorate requires a degree (no pun intended) of commitment and focus that can begin to wear on many a person after the initial enthusiasm for a chosen topic of research moderates.  If anything requires passion in life it would be a doctoral program.  I won’t know the results of my scholarship application until late May of next year.  Until then I get to continue to live my life, explore, daydream about other possibilities and wonder where my life is carrying me.

Between the process of applying for this scholarship and going through the judicial hearing I had yesterday morning I feel as if this past weekend is now something like months in the past.  It’s a bit surreal quite honestly.  But then again that is but one flavor not uncommon to the holiday season.  It seems strange that Christmas is only two weeks away.  In three weeks we will experience the beginning of 2015.

My love of Hawaii inspired my application to the Nancy Foster Scholarship Program.  I had no idea how much my life would be influenced by meeting Dr. Pamela Colorado some twelve years ago.  Meeting her and becoming a student of indigenous science profoundly altered the course of my life.  I find it difficult to even imagine who I would be today if I had not met her.

Creating Calm

Tuesday, December 9, 2014


I am feeling quite pleased with how my day has unfolded so far.  My most important achievement of my day is my success in maintaining a cool disposition during the judicial hearing I was obliged to participate in this morning.  The hearing was held in response to my appeal of a Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) decision in which it was ruled that I was overpaid unemployment benefits.

I recently wrote about this hearing here in my blog.  I had quite a visceral reaction when I first received the notice of Minnesota DEED's ruling regarding the question of past benefits I had received.  I felt very upset and irritated.  I was upset because it became apparent that I would be required to appeal the decision if I wanted to challenge the ruling.  And even if I had had the money in question to spare to give back to Minnesota DEED I still would have contested the ruling.  I was angered by the ruling because it seemed virtually no amount of suffering was seen as sufficient to justify my decision to quit a position which I have now not held in over sixteen months.  And so I found myself confronted with the unfortunate reality that I would need to dredge up a painful portion of my past.

I would like to believe that the hearing went well.  As I already noted I succeeded at maintaining a calm and cooperative demeanor.  Regardless of how the judge ultimately rules I can consider my success in remaining calm to be a significant achievement.  You could perhaps even consider it an indicator of how far I have come in my own healing process.  I did not emerge from the hearing feeling re-traumatized.  The judge has a thirty day window of time to render his decision on the matter.  It is thus entirely possible that my Christmas and New Year's Day could be a bit clouded with uncertainty if this issue is still unresolved at that time.  It is perhaps thus a blessing that I don't really have the time to think about this matter too much.

As for today I am pleased that the stressor of this hearing is now in the past.  I sincerely hope I will not have to relive any elements of the summer of 2013 again.

They Will Listen

Monday, December 8, 2014

The beginning of an especially demanding week for me arrived this morning at 5 a.m.  I was actually a little surprised I woke up before my alarm went off.  I was even more surprised that I felt relatively refreshed when I woke up.

The stress of my most recent week has been getting to me some.  I find myself wrangling a bit with feelings of frustration, futility and even what I suppose could be called despair.  I know I am going to have some sort of future but what kind of future will it be?  When will I finally find myself leave behind the world of contract work?  It’s like being in a pit in which the route of escape is almost impossibly slippery.  I keep reaching out for support and I keep feeling frustrated with my progress.  I don’t feel as if I am necessarily regressing but I do feel as if I am hitting another lull in the progress of my healing journey. 

Sometimes delays are healthy and even inevitable.  We all need pauses and breaks on occasion so we can renew our lives, refresh our focus and simply enjoy that which we are blessed with.  I have been trying to see my current and recent frustrating circumstances as a mere pause in my general forward progress.  And yet I feel quite certain I will begin to seriously lose my will to keep trying if I don’t start to experience more significant results in the near future.  What do I mean by near future?  I mean the next three months.  I want to experience discernible, solid improvement in the next three months.  I am currently beginning to conceive my goals for the calendar year of 2015.  It is my intention that 2015 be the year when my life begins to decisively grow in a magnificent way.

I have my hearing with a judge tomorrow regarding my unemployment benefits claim.  I found it very tacky that I received a statement in the mail this past weekend in which I was requested to make a payment towards the $3,400.00 the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development insists was over-payed to me. The least the Department could do is wait until after the judge’s decision before sending out such paperwork.

I called the Appeals Office of Minnesota DEED this morning to speak with a representative about documentation relevant to my case.  I expressed my frustration with a few aspects of the process.  The woman I spoke with responded at one point in the conversation (regarding the judge) with the following statement: “They’re human beings.  They’ll listen.”  I almost laughed out loud when she said that. 

I want to believe that I will be truly listened to in the course of my life.  And yet the wounded boy I carried within me for so long still has some lingering resentment and skepticism regarding the likelihood that he will be listened to.  My paternal family of origin is supposedly made up of human beings.  And yet the listening skills of several members of my family of origin are, to be blunt, quite abysmal.  A world in which people’s pain goes unacknowledged, un-honored and unhealed is a cruel world indeed.  I would rather see and be part of a world in which people are truly heard and honored for who they are.

……

I met with a researcher who works for the University of Minnesota during my lunch break.  I felt encouraged by our interaction.  I have assembled quite a team of individuals to help me fully emerge from the abyss I fell into some eighteen months ago.  I hope that my tenacity, intelligence and sheer force of will eventually lead me to a better life.  I certainly feel as if I have been giving my recovery process the full power of my very being.

Something has to eventually change.