The End Of A Particularly Terrifying Era

(1)

My father died early last month (on the 7th of November).

Please - no tears. I didn't shed any. There was none of the usual sadness at the passing of a parent. In point of fact, upon receiving the email from my brother that our father had died, I turned to my significant female partner and broke into a wide smile, leaped up and danced joyfully around the room.

I had been looking forward to his death for many years. I promised myself that, upon hearing of his demise, I would 'break open a bottle of bubbly'. When I first said that, I still drank fruit juice (I had stopped drinking alcohol -- and therefore champagne -- 25 years ago) and I thought that would be a bottle of sparkling cider. But now I live on an even more restricted diet and the only liquid I drink is water; hence, I shared sparkling water with friends, to celebrate his death. A close friend in my congregation, though, suggested that a more appropriate toast would be, not about his death, but about my being given my freedom from the potentiality of his physical attack. That felt much more appropriate to me as well.

(2)

You see, in my case, my father and I had had, throughout my life, a most problematic relationship. I wanted, my whole life, to love my father -- and yearned to feel that he loved me, in the nurturing way that love is most positively expressed -- but that just wasn't possible.

My father was a violent man, shut down emotionally, who only knew how to connect emotionally with his sons by beating them with his fists. I spent the whole of my life -- from infancy forward -- in abject fright that, at any moment, with no relation to much of anything, I might be subjected to his violence.

My father was a sadist and a pedophile, at least with his own children. I'm quite sure, from years of therapy and dream and conscious memory, that he raped me, either anally or orally (or both) at the age of 9 months, and periodically several more times until I was 10 years-of-age. And he beat me savagely for the most minor of infractions, and often for no infraction at all -- only motivated by his personal psychic discomfort of the moment and his ability to lash out at his sons whenever he felt like it.

I was one of three sons [no sisters], but as the youngest, I was the one most subjected to his violent outbursts (an observation that even my brothers have acknowledged was true). By the time I reached high school, I was taller than our father (he was 6'2", and by the time I was 16 years-of-age, I had reached 6'8") and therefore was potentially in a position to defend myself. But, by then, my brothers had headed off to college and I was the only one left at home, for my senior year.

You must understand: I was like the elephant with the chain around its leg as an infant, who later, when he is bigger and stronger, only has a flimsy rope to hold him, who doesn't break away because he's been trained to obey. I was absolutely terrified of my father. That last year of high school, when he savagely beat me 3 - 4 times a week [during our 'talks' in the basement], he let me know, on many an occasion, that "if you ever get to thinking you're big enough to fight back, I can always use a baseball bat." And I knew he was insane enough to do it, so I never did fight back.

What was amazing is that he thought that his frightful violence toward his sons constituted love. He often said "I wouldn't beat you if I didn't love you." I would have been quite willing to have been loved a whole lot less, based upon that definition of love!!

(3)

He was a man of complex inner emotional conflicts, low self-esteem, and his own internalized gender confusion. My brothers and I were subjected to continual tirades about 'being stupid', no matter what we did or accomplished. When my brothers later became quite successful attorneys, our father continued to tell them they would never amount to anything. He told me, literally thousands of times, that I was "just plain stupid", which drove my already low self-esteem into the gutter and left me, for many years thereafter, with a craving to learn as much as I could about every possible subject, so deeply frightened was I that other people would think I was stupid. (Generally, I managed to overcompensate, to the point that I ended up intimidating almost everyone with my breadth of academic knowledge.)

As he was savagely beating me with his fists -- and the metal end of his belt, a favorite weapon for him to use -- he would often be screaming at the top of his lungs "Be a man! Be a man! Be a man!" like some sort of mantra. What occurred to me, in clear tones in my mind, was that if that behavior constituted 'being a man', then I wanted to have nothing to do with being a man. Which, of course, placed me in a quite confusing gender quandary: I was, biologically, a man, and yet the primary modeling, for me, of masculinity, was this frightfully violent and insane man who was my father. I was left, for many, many years thereafter, with a quite deep questioning about my own maleness, which only began to be healed when I discovered the men's wellness movement in the mid-1980's.

My mother did little to intervene in these outbursts, and in fact, often motivated them by coming up with equally illogical infractions that "your father will hear about when he comes home." Quite different from being a protector, my mother, in her own fear and chronic dissociation, ended up being an enabler for his violence. (So deep was her denial that for many years after our father divorced her, every time I would talk about the frightful degree of his physical violence, she would exclaim "Why have you never told me this before!" Every time! As though she had never heard it before that time.)

(4)

By the time I was in my senior year of high school, even in the midst of all these beatings, I was taking psychology courses and becoming quite clear that my father was profoundly insane and a sadist. Why didn't I fight back? Other than the 'baseball bat' threats, he was also a military officer (U.S. Air Force) and I knew that if I were to call the police [the military police, since that last year of high school we lived in military housing], they might arrest him, but that upon his being released [there were few, if any, laws against parents beating their children back in the '60's], he would have come home and literally have beaten me to death, since his military career would have been toast due to such an arrest. So, as painful as the beatings were, I didn't fight back or call the police out of a paradoxical sense of self-defense. The other point I would note, as well, is that all the other boys I knew whose fathers were military officers were being regularly beaten by their fathers -- that was just the 'ethic' among many military personnel for 'disciplining' their children.

An article I read recently on The Good Man Project noted that the behavior of my father was undoubtedly criminal. In this more enlightened era, he would have been arrested for child abuse (or at least should have been). But, such laws were few and far between back then, and generally not enforced even if they were on the books. Plus, as noted, he was in the military, which has its own 'code of justice', separate from the civilian courts.

(5)

My father, gripped as he was by the tumult of his own inner psychological conflicts, probably often felt out-of-control in his professional military career. He never got along well with his superiors (he remained a Captain for 13 years -- when the standard term-of-service in that rank was, by his own reckoning, 7 years -- before finally being promoted to and retiring as a Lt. Colonel). The one place where he had complete control was in his family, and there he devotedly practiced a form of out-of-control sadistic terror. My earliest conscious memory was at the age of 4 and it was of one of his terrifying beatings. As a child, I had no choice, out of shear personal defense, but to 'crawl up into myself' and believe, with all of my heart, that somehow, someday, this terror would eventually come to an end. And that I would still be alive when it happened.

Hence, upon hearing that my father had died, it was similar to someone who had been incarcerated in the Soviet Union gulags hearing that Joseph Stalin had died in his sleep.

The analogy is not inappropriate. Living in our home often felt like living in a concentration camp, where terror was meted out based on a wholly irrational random basis. If I had been a juvenile delinquent, some of the rage could have been understood [though definitely not excused]. But I was the most meek and toe-the-line kind of kid, so the violence vastly outweighed the nature of the infractions. And frankly, as noted earlier, the 'infractions' were often manufactured whole-cloth in the moment. It wasn't simply a matter of 'a crazy-making rule structure' where today 'X' was okay, and tomorrow 'X' was not-okay; rather, each day a totally irrational 'event' was created to be the basis for my [and my brothers'] 'having done something that portrayed my/our stupidness' and therefore needed to be subjected to 'discipline' by our father. Objectively, it was about his internalized conflicts, not our behavior, but such objectivity is hard to maintain when one is being subjected to continual, life-long irrational random terror.

(6)

Did I learn nothing of importance from my father? Did he give me no positive messages? Of course, saying such would be a misrepresentation. My father often asked us, at the dinner table, what we had learned in school each day. There was a pro-intellectual emphasis on learning in our household. My father was a history buff and a stamp collector, and I became a history buff and stamp collector (I still enjoy both immensely). My parents encouraged religious exploration and early in our childhoods encouraged us to come to our own conclusions about religion. And I, in response, largely rejected religion until my mid-30's, when I became of Unitarian Universalist, a faith tradition which I have whole-heartedly accepted and continue to rejoice within.

But whatever positive influences my father had on me were negated, in fact so thunderously drowned by the irrational random terror that he exhibited, that I have few positive memories of him nor ever felt much respect for him as a person.

(7)

I have never wanted to have children of my own, given the painful memories I had of my own childhood (and, in fact, have always been and remain quite uncomfortable around children). And though I am "my father's son", am almost a spitting-image of my father, and share his first name, I have never, unlike my father, beaten or raped children, nor have I ever been physically violent toward anyone else.

Frankly, I'm profoundly terrified of violence. Whenever I'm in a situation that even has the barest inkling of possibility of turning physically violent, or whenever I'm around someone, the nature of whose behavior is meant to provoke a strong negative reaction from me, I search for the nearest exit and depart as quickly as I can before the situation gets anywhere near that. Further, to this day, I prefer to avoid 'horror' or violent 'action' films, because they remind me so much of my own childhood, and therefore I get too easily 'triggered' by them.

Whenever I see a movie or theatrical production where a positive father-son relationship is portrayed, or whenever I see that kind of relationship among my peers with their children, it brings tears to my eyes -- not because I had such a relationship and lost it, but because I never had such a nurturing relationship with my father and always wanted one. Every time I foolishly reached out emotionally to my father in hopes of fostering such a relationship, I was subjected to even more abuse, so conflicted was he with masculinity and warm loving feelings.

(8)

Hence, as I said at the start, upon hearing of my father's death, I felt quite relieved. Though I have been taller and stronger than him for many years (and have not had much of a connection with him since 1987, having last seen him at my mother's funeral in 2004), I continued to be, at a deep psychic level, in a state of terror about potentially being attacked by him, for whatever irrational reason, every day of my adult life.

I can finally release that fear. I can finally know, in my 'heart-of-hearts', that I am no longer potentially subject to the violence of my tormentor.

Therefore.... Please -- no tears. No condolences. No "I'm sorry that your father has died." You'd be wasting your breath. And you would be [albeit with no intended malice] trying to demand that I feel a 'cultural expectation' about the death of a parent which has nothing to do with the reality of my life.

Instead, warmly hug me, praise me for my work with adult male sexual abuse survivors and men's emotional wellness, and wish me well on my continued emotional healing.

My father's death is my ticket out of the hall of crazy mirrors. It's time to move forward as a free soul, with a more positive and accurate reflection of myself as a man who is seeking to achieve positive mental health for himself and other men in our culture.

Worsening Unemployment Statistics Deepen Social Unrest

We've temporarily survived the 2011 debt ceiling extortion of the Tea Party Republicans. At least President Obama doesn't have to face that tactic again until after the 2012 election. Now we can get back to the most important issue at hand: jobs and the economy. As Robert Reich and others have pointed out, a 'jobs agenda' is the most important 'next step' to tackle, and the result spawned by the debt ceiling extortion wrangled by the Republicans has created a worse atmosphere for job creation than before that battle.

The corporations are sitting on billions of dollars in profits. Many of them have paid little or no taxes on those earnings, either due to tax credits or because, due to the antiquated tax structure, they aren't taxed if they've moved their businesses off-shore (either physically to a foreign country or to a mailbox address in a tax-haven location like the Cayman Islands). What is most important is that the corporations are not hiring new workers in substantial numbers. On top of this, due to the federal cuts in subsidies for state government services, many state and local government workers are losing their jobs.

The result has been that more and more Americans are becoming unemployed. The 'official' unemployment statistic is 9.1%, which means that around 14 million Americans are out of work. But what that statistic doesn't include -- as many commentators have discussed -- are the increasingly large number of former workers who have joined the ranks of 'discouraged workers' and simply stopped looking for work. And who can blame them: the latest jobs available vs. number of applicants ratio is around 1 to 6. Millions of Americans have now been unemployed for 9 months or more, with many, many Americans having been unemployed for 2 years or more. (This writer, for one, has been without a full-time professional position that equated to his academic credentials, training and experience for more than 9 years, in spite of thousands of resumes sent out.)

An article that I read recently pegged the 'real' unemployment statistic at 16% (or more than 25 million Americans) and, frankly, I believe that is even too low; the more likely unemployment statistic is around 20% or more. Teen unemployment is around 40%, unemployment for African Americans and other minority groups is far greater than for whites (which has historically been the case, but it's even worse now), and about the only 'job' that many people can acquire consistently is to join the volunteer military (which is hardly 'volunteer' when it is one of the few choices available, even for people who have no desire to risk dying in warfare for the doubtful chance at career stability). We may not currently have an official military draft, but when a job in the military is one of the few choices available to many applicants, it becomes a 'military draft' by default.

Many articles have been written pointing out that, in the best possible scenario, the 'official' unemployment statistic won't drop to 5% until 2016 or later. Millions more Americans are being born and millions are 'coming of age' and want to join the workforce; yet, there weren't enough jobs available for those already looking for work, much less for new applicants 'coming on line' into the nation's workforce. I read a statistic in the Harper's Index last month that 85% of current college graduates are returning home to live following graduation because they can't find work with their college degrees and can't survive economically on their own.

Robert Reich and other writers have suggested that the country engage in 1930's style Civilian Conservation Corps programs, to help rebuild the crumbling infrastructure of the nation and provide jobs to millions of the unemployed in the meantime. But with all the cuts demanded by the debt ceiling 'deal', that is an unlikely possibility -- there is simply no funding available for it. Added to this dilemma, there have been numerous articles in the media of late about how corporations are furthering the pain by refusing to hire people who are currently unemployed, and are only being willing to hire workers who currently have jobs and are looking to transfer. While this tactic is clearly a violation of existing federal laws, legally proving that this has occurred in any particular employment situation is difficult, and clearly beyond the financial ability of most unemployed workers.

I keep being brought back to a somewhat 'pathetic good news/bad news joke' that I tell my friends (which I believe I coined): "The Good News -- and mind you this IS the good news -- is that it's only going to get worse before it gets better. And the Bad News is that it may not get better." Yes, a rather depressing attempt at humor, but though I began telling that joke when the recession started in 2007, it has become more and more true this past year as the number of layoffs and corporate downsizing has increased. The other cliché that I feel applies here is: "It's a recession when your friend loses his job, but a depression when you've lost yours." And more and more Americans are facing that daunting prospect.

Added to the pain is the demand from Tea Party Republicans that no new revenues be added. They want to reduce the federal deficit solely by slashing Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and other social safety net entitlement programs, while increasing the military budget (or at least not cutting it down concurrently). The result is that the pain for individual Americans has increased, the wealthy are paying a lower rate than most middle-class citizens, and the economic disparity between the top 1% super-rich and most Americans is increasing. Warren Buffet's recent article, wherein he points out that he's paying a smaller percentage of his income in taxes than his own staff, reveals much about this insanity. As he noted in the article, he wants to pay more, because it's the only fair thing to do.

In most countries, in past historical time periods, and even currently in many nations, this kind of deepening unemployment combined with increasing economic disparity between the social classes has resulted in profound social unrest. I don't wish that upon America. I am a liberal reformer, not a revolutionary, and want us, as a caring nation, to help those least able to help themselves. But the trend in our country, currently, is moving in the opposite direction, toward ensuring that the social unrest is magnified due to increasing economic disparity. We need a caring and cooperative bipartisan government that can reach out and care for and about its citizens, not one that casts its citizens further into the gutter, from which extraction will be more difficult to achieve, even when the economy 'turns around', whenever and if ever that occurs.

The Tale Of Two Cities

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." So begins Charles Dickens' A Tale Of Two Cities about London and Paris on the verge of the French Revolution. I'm not actually writing a review of that book, nor discussing revolutionary ideas; I simply like the title and it fits my discussion today. I've written about this subject once before, last December, in my article You Can Never Really Go Home Again, but it's an issue that keeps coming back, again and again, as I search, in my heart-of-hearts, for that 'sense of home'.

For me, the 'two cities' are Albuquerque, New Mexico and St. Louis, Missouri. They are my two cities, the two that have factored most prominently in my life journey. I lived in Albuquerque at various times as a child, and then as an adult, from 1970 - 1998. At that point, in an effort to complete social work graduate school, I moved to St. Louis, where I've lived since 1998. Having grown up in a military family (as an Air Force 'brat') I never actually had a 'hometown', at least not in the sense the term is normally used, as a place where one grew up as a child. Though I was born in Dayton, Ohio, in actuality I was born at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, at the base hospital; it just circumstantially happened to be where my father was stationed at the time [and, coincidentally, Dayton was where he had been born]. We lived there for 3 months after my birth, and I've never lived there since. (Hence, saying I was born in Ohio is, while true, not the least indicative of where I grew up.)

As a child, I lived on Guam; at Lajes Field in the Azores; El Segundo, California; Scott USAF base in Belleville, Illinois; Tokyo, Japan; McConnell USAF base in Wichita, Kansas; and at various times in Albuquerque, New Mexico. For a military dependent, it was a relatively 'normal' amount of moving about, nationally and internationally. I felt fairly stable in that regard. I once met a fellow whose father had been in the Air Force real estate agency [before meeting him, I didn't realize there even was such a unit in the USAF] who had lived in 20 different places before the age of 18. After hearing that story, I felt rather lucky by comparison!

What motivated me to write further about this subject was a casual comment a close friend made yesterday when we were talking about an upcoming trip of mine to New Mexico, upon my noting that it had been 2 1/2 years since my last visit. He said "You don't have to come back to Albuquerque every year -- you now have a home in St. Louis." Arriving at that 'sense of home' has been difficult. I have not, since 2002, had any 'salaried professional employment' locally, nor anything other than casual part-time work, so the usual 'connection due to work' just hasn't applied to developing that 'sense of home' here. (Although my friend says "You're not unemployed, Donald; you actually work quite hard, you just don't have anyone who is willing to pay you for that work.")

On the other hand, I have been dating a woman for the last 3 1/2 years who is a St. Louisian to-the-bone, and via her, I've met a lot of 'local natives'. Plus, for the past seven years, I've owned a home here; I'm deeply connected to my Unitarian Universalist congregation and, as of May 2011, am now a member of their Board of Trustees; and I have been an usher at 7 different entertainment venues in St. Louis for the past 8 years, and have developed a 'sense of family' with many of the other ushers.

My friend's comment motivated one of those periodic 'sit back on your heels and re-vision an inaccurate mantra that has run around in your head' moments. When I describe myself to St. Louis citizens, I usually say that I'm a transplanted New Mexican [which is accurate, in that I lived there half of my life]. But I usually say that, not simply because of my longevity in New Mexico -- and because I've always related far more to my maternal New Mexican Hispanic roots than to my paternal Ohioan German-English roots, but because, as noted in my previous article, people in St. Louis don't believe someone is from here unless they were born in St. Louis and graduated from one of the local high schools. On the other hand, when I'm traveling in the Midwest, I generally tell people who ask that I'm a St. Louisian, since folks outside of St. Louis aren't ruled by that limited parochial perception that is true locally [though they probably have it about whatever town they are from!].

Wherever You Go, There You Are is another great book title, this one about mindfulness, by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It sums up my dilemma nicely. Wherever you live, that becomes your 'world'. While I primarily have friends both in Albuquerque and St. Louis (and others scattered around the nation), for quite simply 'daily contact' reasons my friends here have more of my attention, though email and social networking have minimized the dislocation of friendships. With those media, I'm able to keep contact with my family and many good friends in New Mexico, as well as those locally. Yet, like everyone else, I tend to keep close to home. Even though the Illinois border is only about 10 miles to the east, I only on rare occasions actually cross it; one needs to have a reason for traveling and I seem to rarely have a rationale for making the trip. All of my needs are taken care of here on the Missouri side, and so when I'm traveling, I tend to travel west or south, but rarely east.

I'm hardly saying that my pattern of travel is unusual; quite the contrary, it is the 'normal' or 'average' pattern. I remember what Bill Bryson wrote in Made in America: that until 1820, most people rarely traveled more than 5 miles outside their town during their whole lives, both from lack of curiosity and because the roads were so heavily rutted, not to mention quite unsafe. I read another article several years ago in Parade, about how even though 20% of the American population is highly mobile, the other 80% continue to be fairly provincial in their travel patterns. Alternately, America tends to be a nation of immigrants, and St. Louis is very much in that vein. There are many foreign nationals in St. Louis who have become citizens (we have, for example, the largest Bosnian population in the country, of around 60,000 immigrants). And for those first generation immigrants, traveling quite far is the norm, but second generation Americans tend to be more sedentary.

When I ask many St. Louis-born people if they've traveled much outside of St. Louis, the ones who do travel tend to mention other Midwest points-of-interest. That was true in New Mexico: many people there might have gone to Arizona, Colorado or Texas, or had grown up in New Mexico, moved to California for work, and then come home to New Mexico to retire. Of course, in part that is because of economics; it is simply less expensive to travel in your local area than further afield. But what puts that economic limitation in perspective is that many people note they've never really had an interest in traveling elsewhere in the nation - or outside the United States. Their attitude is "I've got everything I need, including my extended family, right here; why go anywhere else?"

That lack of curiosity about the 'outside world' is, paradoxically, pretty 'foreign' to me. Having grown up in a globe-trotting military family, I'm used to the idea of extensive travel. While I've done painfully little international travel as an adult [primarily because I couldn't find someone else, like the military when I was a dependent, to pay the ticket], I have a profound interest in the world around me. As such, I read books about other countries, watch travel and news programs on PBS, and subscribe to The Economist, to keep 'in touch' with developments in other nations and areas of the planet.

But then there are other people I know -- many [though not all] of whom were not born in St. Louis, but rather are transplants like myself -- who do a lot of traveling, taking several international trips each year. They are 'rooted', in the sense that they don't particularly want to live anywhere else, but that doesn't stop them from traveling often. I envy them, since I haven't figured out how to afford that myself, but at the same time, I take pleasure in the vicarious enjoyment of hearing about their travels.

In summation, I guess I could say that I'm home now, right here, where I am at this point in my life. I still very much want to travel, to visit the national parks in the United States, and to visit foreign countries, if I can ever figure out how to afford such. And, if I can find a substantial scholarship, I might eventually move to Boston to attend divinity school at Harvard. But for now, this is 'home'. And while I will always have the tale of two cities [and maybe more cities someday] to contend with in my heart, I can allow myself to settle into a sense of place right here, right now, and be content with that acceptance.

Acquisition Addiction

Last December, I wrote an article for the MMWI Blog entitled Filling The Bottomless Pit of 'Not Enough' about how sexual abuse survivors end up feeling like they are never 'good enough' and how all the struggles they go through in their lives in an effort to fill in that 'empty hole' in their hearts often feel like they are for naught. This week's article, written after an almost two-month hiatus, discusses some further aspects of that primal fear and how I, as a sexual abuse survivor, have tried, with a variety of different paths, to overcome those wrenching anxieties.

When I was wracked by deep insecurities as a younger man, I turned to substance abuse to 'kill' the emotional pain that resulted from being a survivor of physical beatings and torture, and from being sexually molested by both of my parents. Like many sexual abuse survivors, I spent much of my life, at least until I was 40, in a state of dissociation, sufficiently coping with my daily life such that I 'functioned adequately' in professional employment, but felt emotionally conflicted about my gender, or at least conflicted about the gender that I both felt that I really was and/or wanted to be. More on that in a later article.

My point is that substance abuse became my 'addiction of choice' until I was 32. Shortly before I 'hit bottom' and 'cleaned up', I had started mental health work and group therapy. I have had, in the course of my life, the wonderful 'blessing' of having many really skilled and caring mental health therapists, who have been very thoughtful guides. (When one first enters therapy there is, often, the mistaken belief that the therapist will 'cure' the patient; but, in fact, the best therapists are guides who encourage the client to find the pathway that is most effective for themselves.) After going through a very stressful nervous breakthrough that lasted about 7 years, with the assistance of my guides I managed to come out into the light of greater clarity on the other side.

However, like many sexual abuse survivors, I merely traded one very destructive addiction (substance abuse) for a less destructive one (acquisition of 'stuff', or 'collecting'). [Addictions are used, often unconsciously, by individuals to avoid feeling their personal emotional pain.] So while my new addiction was healthier than the life I had lived before, it wasn't healthy. In the process, I acquired a lot of nice 'stuff', in addition to several graduate degrees, but the primary point here was that each new item (or bit of academic education) failed to 'fill that empty space in my heart' and failed to make me feel any more safe.

Now, I should note that acquisition addiction isn't particular solely to sexual and/or physical abuse survivors. Many people in American society have this addiction, and the credit industry in our country does everything it can think of to deepen the society's addiction to the acquisition of 'more stuff'. Two excellent books (and associated documentaries) on the subject have been written in recent years. Affluenza is a tongue-in-cheek documentary about the addiction to buying far more 'stuff' than anyone really needs, and in the process destroying the ecosystem with our 'American Way of Life'; and Maxed Out discusses, in great detail (with its own humorous explanation of quite serious subjects) how the credit industry has convinced Americans that 'debt is good', and in the process has destroyed many people's lives by offering them far-too-easy-to-use credit cards. Further, the banks and credit industry have encouraged them to use additional loans and credit cards to pay off the previous ones, driving people into often endless rounds of debt that have, eventually, lead some people into poverty and/or spending the rest of their lives paying on credit bills which only get worse over time.

Hence, many people in America suffer from acquisition addiction, and if the credit industry, mortgage and loan brokers, check cashing services, and banks have their way, most of the population will end up like putty in their hands, to be manipulated and abused by this most pernicious addiction. For sexual and physical abuse survivors, though, the addiction is magnified. They are enticed by the offer of images of security on the outside (which turn out to be anything but security) and wracked by profound emotional insecurities on the inside, in their heart and souls. We tend to use 'stuff' that we purchase to wall the world off, to create a sense of security by purchasing yet another item that we hope will fill that empty hole in our hearts. But the 'fix' of purchasing is only temporary -- and in fact extremely transitory -- to be replaced in short order by a deepening sense of emptiness and a further need for another 'purchasing fix'.

Abraham Maslow talked about this sense of transitory fulfillment in his Hierarchy of Needs study: that giving an employee a higher salary only temporarily 'satisfied' him, but as soon as his life 'acclimated' to the greater income, his dissatisfaction returned. What employees needed was to be psychologically, rather than materially, valued. Over time, that kind of real, emotionally healthy, and sustained difference in their lives tends to lead to a far greater degree of personal satisfaction.

The media would have us believe -- and much of the populace drinks this elixir with tremendous enthusiasm -- that by having the 'right' kind of vehicle, or using the 'right' kind of deodorant, or purchasing a house which has more space than you'll ever need in your lifetime, or filling our lives with this or that purchase, the individual will be more satisfied and content. But, in fact, the results are just the opposite: the more we acquire, the more we want to purchase and accumulate. It becomes a vicious never-ending cycle -- and it is that 'cycle of consumer spending' upon which our economy, at least since the 1880's, has depended for growth and prosperity. [Well, at least prosperity for some, and poverty for many others.]

For a sexual abuse survivor, who was 'taught' [by the abuse] that his or her primary value was sexual, gaining a sense of personal value is far more stable and leads to a greater degree of contentment than all the 'stuff' which the culture around us tries to convince us to purchase. What I have learned over the years of mental health therapy and working on my spiritual quest was that if I couldn't figure out how to love and care for myself, then all the 'stuff' from the outside wasn't going to make me feel any more safe or content. And it isn't going to 'substitute' for my need to learn how to manifest a personal sense of gender comfort.


I plan to write more about this subject in the future, as this is a very deep and pernicious addiction that, lacking care and concern, could lead me into penury, and a total lack of contentment and emotional and physical safety.

Doing vs. Being: An American Cultural Dilemma

I have been wracked in recent days with the old question "Am I accomplishing 'enough' in my life?" that has plagued me throughout my adult years, or at least my adult years since I kicked the substance abuse habit of my early, quite depressed adulthood. In part it is due to what I wrote about several months ago -- about "am I 'enough', do I have the right to be alive if I'm not doing more", without 'more' being very well-defined. That's a product of the frightfully abusive childhood I experienced in my parent's home, of being told (as are many abused children) that I was 'stupid' and 'wrong' no matter what I did. But what I'm discussing today is a further aspect of that issue, and one that I realize may be a product of our American cultural assumptions, just as much as it is about my own psychological issues.

We live in a culture that is always wanting to know "what you've accomplished today". What you accomplished last year, or last month, or even yesterday is fine, and might even be quite laudable, but the question in the American psyche is "what are you going to do next?" We have an intensely future-oriented society, or at least have had such a society for the past 100 years or so. (Before 1900, or at least before 1800, the world was pretty stable, with cultural change being rather glacial. But technology and mass production of material goods has speeded up our perception of 'what can be accomplished'.) We are focused, as Robert Bly once observed about what women were looking for in male partners, with whether we are "human-doings vs. human beings". In our society, one is lauded and honored far more for economic output than for spiritual and inner emotional health. If an individual can be both a human-doing and a human being, that is viewed as 'icing on the cake'; but manifesting 'human-doing-ness' is considered sufficient, even if that same individual is a jerk or is shut down emotionally.

That is indeed regrettable, and represents a cultural blindsight that is profoundly contemptuous of the spiritual struggle for emotional health. I am a man who has never been very successful as a human-doing, as an economic unit that could adequately support a spouse, family, or even myself. This has been due, in the main, to the PTSD that I experienced as an adult, due to the child abuse, rape, and physical torture of which I was subject as a child. Surely I have done what it was 'supposed' to take to gain the implements of success: I earned a college degree and then went on to acquire two graduate degrees, in Public Administration and Social Work, and a graduate certificate in Nonprofit Management. Yet that education, and the corresponding skill sets learned in the process of employment, have not translated into acquisition of a reasonable amount of economic resources. Quite to the contrary: upon the completion of each degree, for a short amount of time my income rose, then precipitously fell once funding for the positions ran out. Each time, I ended up once again making the kind of wages that I had been subject to as a high school graduate, if that much!

As a result of this inability to gain long-term financial stability -- and because I have been focused upon my recovery from the PTSD-related issues -- I have spent most of my energy on trying to become a competent, emotionally healthy human being. I'm not sure how successful I have been even in this arena, but my life has improved immeasurably in the emotional department over the past 30 years, whether or not I have reached the 'sufficient mental health' goal that I feel I should have achieved (however grandiose that may be given 'where I stated from'). Yet, even here, I'm never sure whether I've 'accomplished enough' in the emotional realm, or if my life has been or will ever be 'enough'.

The question is almost a spiritual one. Enough for what? For whom? By what criteria? According to what formulation or cultural expectation? Yet, it nags me constantly, like an itch that refuses to heal.

Ultimately, it is we alone who must define and decide if we are 'enough' or if we are 'accomplishing enough'. We can (and often do) try to meet other people's expectations, but those expectations are about their perceptions of this life, not ours and it is us who must live our own lives. We can (and again, often do) compare ourselves and our accomplishments to others around us, especially those in our educational and self-perceived economic 'class', but our lives are shaped by the conditions under which we have survived and prospered. And, as I noted in my previous article on success, it is us alone who must define 'success'. If we focus solely upon economic success, the acquisition of the 'economic goodies' of this society, then many, probably most of us will come up short (not just sexual abuse survivors, but frankly most of the society, other than the wealthy, business owners, or upper-level managers). Those 'goodies' are indeed nice to have. As Philip Slater pointed out years ago in Earthwalk, having money is just fine -- it allows us to have some great things in life and pays for delightful experiences, but the problem is with a lack of money. In this society, that lacking can cause immense psychological pain and economic misery.

So, am I doing 'enough'? Am I accomplishing enough? Well, probably not, but more importantly, I'm doing the best I can, which is the best any of us can do. If it's not enough, if in the long run I end up in a flop house motel (unlikely, but possible), if I live out my waning social security years in relative poverty, the larger questions will be -- for me, anyway -- what kind of person have I become? Am I emotionally fulfilled, even if my belly is sometimes empty? Have I gained a degree of self-satisfaction and recovery from the PTSD of my childhood? Am I helping others as best I can? Am I continuing to take positive steps toward my healing? Am I continuing to live my life in the most ethical manner that I know how to manifest? If those answers are 'yes', then I'm accomplishing enough, or at least accomplishing the most that I can. If not, then I need to continue the work -- which, in the larger picture, I have to do anyway. There's no release from the Journey of Life, except death. And Elizabeth Kubler-Ross called even that 'the final stage of growth'.

I am and will always be a 'student of life'. That's the best I can do. If it's not 'enough', then it won't ever be 'enough'. And I will go to my grave with a heavy heart. But I must note, in closing, that I have less of a heavy heart than I did 20 years ago, and far less of a heavy heart that I had 40 years ago. I've 'made emotional recovery progress' and, for me, that's the right direction to be headed, whatever the outcome.

'Success': Defining It In A Way That Feels Satisfying

It has become increasingly difficult, in this 'down economy', to define 'success'. It seems that many of the traditional 'markers' for success simply are not functional anymore. What it takes to achieve success, at least in the economic sustainable sense of the word, has been brought into stark relief against a background of broken dreams.

Companies no longer provide stable jobs for workers, and even if an employee displays sincere loyalty to an employer, there is no guarantee that they will not be laid off along with employees who are just around 'for a paycheck'. Employers provide fewer and fewer benefits to employees, including lesser amounts for pensions and often no health insurance (or minimal health insurance at exorbitant premiums). Skills that only a few years ago garnered good paychecks and stable employment now are meaningless as the jobs are moved overseas to labor markets where employees are willing to work more hours for considerably less pay. College students matriculate through educational systems, even 'top notch schools', with little or no chance of being employed upon graduation. Even if jobs are available upon graduation, the pay scales are often insufficient to allow the former students to live an adequate life and still pay off the student loans that allowed them to gain such supposedly 'marketable' degrees.

And those of us in our later years of employment run up against a profound paradox when seeking employment: that the person who is hired has less education and experience and profoundly fewer skills than the older, far more experienced worker. What is the criteria for seeking employment when the accumulation of one's education, experience, skills, aptitudes, and willingness to work are eviscerated by the hiring of a younger worker with far fewer skills, considerably less employment history, and half one's educational attainment (as well as half of one's age)? The excuse is that older workers will leave a job that pays a lower salary, whereas a younger worker will stay around -- but quite often the younger less experienced hire will be paid a salary that is larger than the most lucrative salary the older worker has ever made. Upon what criteria does one even seek employment when that lifetime accumulation of knowledge is treated as a 'problem' by employers, rather than as an 'advantage'?

It seems to me that since I haven't been able to find success via full-time employment (or at least not since 2002), I need to redefine success so that I can find it in my world and gain a distinct sense of pride in my life. Hence, what are the other possible indices of success?

Emotional

Like many sexual abuse survivors, who've worked long and hard on recovery via psychotherapy, I have successfully been able to achieve a significant degree of emotional health in my life. After a lifetime of being ignored or rejected by women (or at least having the 'authentic parts of Self that are different from the culturally expected' ignored by many of my intimate female partners), I have, in the past 3 1/2 years, manifested a very loving, egalitarian, equitable, sexually fulfilling and emotionally satisfying relationship with a woman. And I'm quite proud of that (as well as continue to be amazed that it finally happened, albeit late in life).

Plus, I've achieved success in terms of 'moving beyond' many of the sexual abuse, incest, and physical torture messages I received as a child. I have never abused children like my parents did and I have slowly, but gradually, become more comfortable with my 'inner Self', and all the manifestations of that Self.

Social/Political

I am successful in the social and political spheres. I have recently been told I will be nominated for my church Board of Trustees (after 23 years of being ignored by both of the churches I attended, in spite of my continual assertive statements of interest in serving). I have worked on around 65 Democratic Party campaigns since 1978 and though some have been contentious, I have a good 'success record' of getting candidates elected. I have a good number of deeply connected friends, both male and female, and I have been able to maintain friendships with several of the women I've dated over the years. Given that for many males emotionally-invested friendships are a most problematic issue, I feel quite 'successful' in this arena.

Skill and Education Acquisition

I have earned two graduate degrees and a graduate certificate, as well as have gained knowledge of a wide range of skills and aptitudes. I always assumed that education would assist me to gain employment (and for a while it did), but I can nonetheless be proud of my attainment of that education and my manifestation of those skills. The difficult part has been separating my pride of accomplishment from the results of that acquisition -- or more to the point, the downside of the expected results. I am proud of being a straight-A student when I worked on my second graduate degree, and though I'm extremely frustrated by how that degree turned out to be economically worthless (or at least employment-generating worthless), I can still take pride in the success of having gained that advanced education.

I guess my point here is that while economically I've had a lifetime of difficulty in manifesting 'success' (even when the economy was supposedly in good shape, I often had a difficult time gaining employment, in part because of my profound discomfort with the interview process), I have a lot to be grateful for concerning success in other areas of my life.

And that's important.

If I focus solely upon 'financial success' [or at least wage-generated financial success], I would be deeply depressed. And frankly depression doesn't do me a lot of good; it surely doesn't help me move on with my life. If, rather, I focus upon the other areas of my life in which I've been able to manifest 'success', then I find that I have much for which to be grateful. I have been able to survive economically in spite of a lack of wage-generated success due to having 'other income' generated on my behalf by my larger family. Given how, in this economy, many of the people who previously had success in that arena are now struggling to survive, I'm doing alright. Not economically wealthy, but surviving. And surviving to a reasonable degree.

And that's surely, at the age of 59, a distinct measure of success. Gratitude for 'what I have', rather than frustration about 'what I don't have' is an important spiritual and emotional realization. And one that will serve me well in the coming years, as I move toward an age when any ability to generate wages will be greatly diminished (due both to age discrimination and the physical inability to work).

The Mystery of Illness

Illness can be a most mysterious thing at times. Sometimes it's simply difficult to ascertain what is going on in ones body, what is causing the disease, and how to solve it. Or, how to solve it in a way that doesn't make the issue ever worse.

I've been on an Allergy Elimination Diet, that was prescribed by my doctor, for the past 3 weeks. I started on the diet because I suffer from eczema on my chest, in my ears, and on my scalp. So, I know what the problem is, but I am intolerant of most topical medications that my doctor could prescribe to resolve the issue. Hence, his suggestion that I search for a 'food solution' to the problem. (He also noted that if this doesn't work, it might do me good to look into homeopathy or acupuncture. He doesn't usually suggest these options to his patients, but both of us know I'm an unusual subject.)

At this point, the symptoms haven't subsided at all -- or at least not by appearance or symptomatic result (my chest and ears still itch and my scalp continues to 'burn' each time I wash or rinse it). The only 'overt' result has been that I've lost 15 - 20 pounds of weight (down from around 225 to 205), which is weight that I can't lose easily. I'm a fairly thin guy to begin with, so losing this weight, while it makes my stomach flatter, also lessens my energy levels. And my stomach is upset a good deal of the time, so I am using antacids more often.

I guess in the larger scheme of things, I'm not doing that badly. I don't have cancer or arthritis or some fatal disease. The eczema isn't likely to kill me, directly anyway, though it is making my life pretty miserable. I wake up with itchy ears every morning [and then tend to scratch them until my 'smarter Self' stops me, knowing it isn't going to help in the long run] and I scratch my chest more often than is even slightly healthy. And my scalp has that 'burning sensation' almost all the time, even when I haven't washed or rinsed it. Plus, my stomach upset literally 'sets me back on my heels' periodically, especially when it results in an allergic food problem, or when the stomach acid just gets to be too much. Not pleasant, but not deadly either.

Whenever I get sick for some reason or other, I become more hyperaware of 'that condition' and notice it around me in other people. There are a lot of people who are sick in my community, with conditions far worse than my own, and I become hyperaware of their conditions only when I'm feeling pretty awful myself. My intimate partner says "Welcome to the club. You've got a chronic condition, which many people have. You're a special 'case' in that you have to use alternative medicine to treat it, because you can't tolerate conventional medical solutions. But it's not likely to kill you." And my good friend in New Mexico, whom I know from the men's wellness movement, says "All the guys in my men's group talk about the ways in which their bodies are falling apart as they age. They can't urinate or defecate without pain, their bones and muscles hurt, and generally they are experiencing the whole panoply of symptoms related to getting older. Get used to it - you're getting older and your body is falling apart. Surrender to the facts while searching for temporary solutions."

I attended a performance last year by Clark Terry, the jazz trumpeter [he was 89 at the time]. On the stage, he was joking about the aging process and he barked, somewhere between laughter and pathos, that "anyone who says the Golden Years are wonderful is fooling themselves - they really suck!" That surely put it in perspective.

Frankly, I'm a bit amazed to even be alive at this point of my life (I'm 59). I was so thoroughly depressed as a younger man, due to the incest, physical torture, and emotional abuse I had experienced, as a child, in my parents' home. I spent many years deeply involved in substance abuse and alcohol dependency, which I luckily 'kicked' around the age of 32 (hence, I've been sober for 27 years now). There's no doubt in my mind that that was a great obstacle to overcome, and I did it successfully (with the help of mental health therapists and supportive friends). Which doesn't mean -- no matter how much I hope it would mean this -- that everything else in my life would work out wonderfully.

I've now been professionally unemployed since 2002 (with small short-term and part-time jobs in the interim), though I still have my 'official' status as Executive Director of the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute, which is my nonprofit, of which I'm the only employee (and an unpaid one at that). It's not that life hasn't been more positive since being sober; indeed, for the past three and a half years I had the first long term intimate relationship with a woman in the whole of my life -- a situation that I never thought would actually come to fruition. That alone tells me how much I've healed emotionally. It's just that I had hoped that sobriety would bring more 'benefits'. But as a good friend noted recently, at least I'm a 'late bloomer'. I'm happy that I've bloomed at all!!

So, back to this diet. Losing more weight (and not really trying to lose any weight) and trying to keep a positive attitude about my life in the midst of the lightheadedness. Growing older and falling apart, but trying to keep what I can 'together' in the meantime. As the saying goes, growing old isn't great, but it's better than the alternative. The 'solution' to this condition isn't readily obvious, and isn't likely to become so, but I keep plugging away, doing the best I can. Which, of course, is the best any of us can do.

Note To Readers Of This Blog

Readers of the MMWI Blog may be wondering what happened to this blog, since I had been posting regular weekly entries since August 2010. I wanted you to know that I'm still writing, but have been experiencing some physical maladies of late which have limited my ability to write weekly entries. Hopefully, those will resolve themselves in the next couple of months, but in the meantime, I do plan to write blog entries as often as I can, when I'm not feeling overtly ill.

The other point I want to note is that I'm also now a Contributing Editor [CE] for WomensRadio.com. You can view my CE profile at:

http://www.womensradio.com/users/Donald-Jeffries%2C-MPA%2C-MSW/994.html

If you want to read my column, click the 'column' tab; if you want to see my videos, click the 'video' tab. This forum should allow me greater access to readers throughout the Internet. For the present, I'm largely reprinting the blogs that have been posted here on this site, that I've written up to now, though (as noted above) I do write new ones when my health permits it.

Thank you for being active readers of this blog. Hopefully you'll access the WomensRadio.com site to follow my work. Comments are always welcome.

Discussing Trauma With A Large Audience: The Advantage of Built-in Public Relations

This past Sunday, on 60 Minutes, Sen. Scott Brown (R. - MA) openly discussed the sexual molestation he had experienced at the hands of a camp counselor when he was a youth. He said that the act 'hadn't been consummated', by which I assume he meant that penetration hadn't occurred. But clearly the senator had been emotionally scarred by the event. This, along with a very chaotic family life, made his statement that he was more open to the trauma experienced by other people quite credible.

Of course, part of the reason for the interview was that he was promoting his new book Against All Odds. He said he just wanted to 'tell people who I really am' and that's commendable, no matter whether or not the viewers were in agreement with his other political views. From a men's wellness standpoint, I felt that his willingness to talk so openly about his own sexual trauma and the sexual abuse of males was a 'step in the right direction'. It's just the kind of message that I've been trying to discuss for the last seven years via the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute. But the advantage the senator has is that, as a result of being a 'public figure', he has built-in public relations, since the citizens want to know more about the people for whom they've voted.

Indeed, it is this kind of public relations advantage that allows for the raising of public awareness about critical mental health and medical issues. I remember the way Betty Ford discussed her alcoholism and how that raised the public consciousness about that issue. Or how Bob Dole had raised the issue of erectile dysfunction and focused public attention on that medical issue. The fact that both of these individuals were already 'in the public's awareness' made their willingness to openly discuss subjects that are usually only talked about 'behind closed doors' very empowering for members of the public. It allowed other people a 'greater public space' to talk about their personal struggles with similar issues.

The one public figure who could have made good use of the 'bully pulpit' to discuss a very widespread problem in the society (but didn't) was President Bill Clinton. When the Monica Lewinsky scandal hit the press -- and, in spite of President Clinton's original denial that any 'sex' had occurred, it was later proved to have happened -- it would have been a wonderful opportunity to openly talk about the issue of sexual addiction. Apparently, from the series of articles in the Washington Post around that time, Bill Clinton's philandering was 'legendary' long before he met Hillary and continued after they were married. I remember a line from the article that "Bill's Arkansas girlfriend would be going out the backdoor when Hillary was coming in the front." The articles noted that she was willing to love him in spite of his faults [at least in part because he was one of the few men who wasn't intimidated by her intelligence], though the inference was that she could tolerate his indiscretions (regardless of whether she was emotionally hurt by those behaviors) as long as he kept them out of the public limelight.

Apparently due to possible legal problems, and the eventual close impeachment vote, though, President Clinton did not use the scandal as an opportunity to bring the issue of sexual addiction 'to the forefront of public consciousness'. Of course, it may also have been because he was unable to come to grips with his own problematic behavior and admit that he had a problem -- one that many in the public and media realized was a major concern. It was one of those 'great missed opportunities' to raise public awareness about an issue that plagues many people in our society, both men and women. While there are quite a number of reasons for this dysfunctional variety of sexual behavior, many studies point to an individual having been sexually traumatized as a child as one of the more prevalent precursor events. We know, from stories President Clinton told, that he had come from a chaotic family, but whether he had experienced sexual trauma as a child was never revealed, if it even had occurred. So, it is not clear why he was motivated to act unfaithful in his marriage, other than simply because he may have felt that, as a powerful male public figure, he 'could get away with it'.

In that regard, I remember reading a review of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson. Though I can't remember the exact wording, there as a reference to President Johnson bragging that John Kennedy 'had nothing over him in the sex department'. Apparently when Lyndon Johnson was in the Senate, he maintained an office across the hall from his official Senate office where he regularly had sex with female staffers, making ample use of the 'sexual attraction of power' that he possessed. That he was also being unfaithful to his marriage is a fact that is often overlooked and avoided.

From a men's emotional wellness perspective, I'm in no way saying this behavior is positive nor 'macho'; quite the contrary. Abuse of political and/or economic power to obtain sexual favors is simply abuse of other people. And sexual addiction is that - addiction. It is behavior that fails to honor sincere intimacy between two individuals. Often, in fact, the sexual addict 'uses' the cultural assumptions regarding intimacy for their own advantage -- getting their sexual desires met at someone else's emotional expense. In the long run, it is abusive toward the addict's mental health as well, but that realization can only arise later, when the addict engages in their own healing journey.

"Where've You Been All My Life?": Externalizing the Necessary Search for One's Self

Given all the 'sweet nothings' that we enjoy saying to each other on Valentine's Day, "where've you been all my life" is one of the most endearing of all. Deep in the midst of a current intimate connection, it speaks of a sentiment that one has toward a loved one who seems like a person whom one should have had in their lives far before now. Yet, of course, you didn't meet them before because circumstances were different, you were different, they were in a different space in their lives and, more importantly, the two of you were likely not ready for each other before now -- assuming you're ready for each other even now!

I remember a talk I heard years ago in New Mexico by Baba Ram Dass. He was talking about the complexity involved in 'falling in love'. To illustrate his point, he told a story [from his male perspective] of how a man meets a woman and they deeply connect and 'fall in love'. Several weeks later, the man is in line at the grocery store and he sees another woman and falls in love with her. And somehow, through delicate negotiation, he convinces both women to agree to a ménage a trois. But several months later the man is at a festival and he sees another woman and falls in love with her. Now, he hasn't fallen 'out of love' with the first two, he just keeps falling in love with more women. So, Ram Dass said "what one realizes is that love doesn't have to be possessive, that one can love without controlling others." He pointed out that what 'falling in love' is really about is that each of us has a 'template of love' in our mind's eye, and we're going around the world looking for someone who fits our mold for love. And when we find them, we 'fall in love' with them.

His point was that often we don't 'fall in love' due to the behavior of the other person, rather we have defined what love is for us and this other person simply fits our preconceived formulation. They haven't done anything, in particular, to motivate our 'love picture' except to tickle our self-defined imagery. This isn't to say that one's preconceived formulation can't change over time (often it does, especially with time to heal from past psychic and emotional injury or grief), but rather to note that 'love' is a self-defined, self-conceived construct, and that a large measure of 'emotional projection' [we see what we hope and expect to see] is involved in the pursuit of intimacy.

Of course, in fact our preconceived formulations of 'love' will be, to some extent, influenced by the behavior of 'the other'. The other person may have an approach to intimacy that we simply have not considered or even imagined, since it is beyond our socialization or previous experience. It is that interaction between two persons who are working on a 'mutual shared experience' [as it is in the best of circumstances] that changes our 'love vision' and may modify our understanding of intimacy. Yet, it is our experience, as we personally interpret it, that most clearly defines how each person reacts to 'being in love' with another person.

Externalizing the Inner Search for Self

We live in a consumer culture that tries to convince us that if we buy this product -- face cream, cologne, vehicle, jewelry, clothing, etc. -- or have this kind of job, or invest in this spiritual program, we will then have the wherewithal to manifest "the (other) one" in our lives. The message is that we will, with this particular product, job, or program, be able to attract another person into our lives who will 'fulfill' us.

Hence, "where've you been all my life" is a statement that, culturally, externalizes a personal experience onto 'the other' when the larger, more important and necessary journey is the search for one's Self. I would argue that the "you" in "where've you been" is more reasonably oneself and that the larger and more reasonable question needs to be directed toward oneself, i.e. "where have you (Self) been all my life?" Because if we don't have a deep enough love for our Self, we won't have enough energy -- or clarity of vision -- to 'be in love' with someone else.

My point is that the one who will truly fulfill us, in fact the only one who has any realistic possibility to fulfill us is ourselves. If we feel empty inside our hearts, all the externalizing of that emptiness isn't going to 'fill up' the vacant space.

Centered in the Self

My therapist here in St. Louis often talks about that difference between being 'self-centered' and being 'centered in the Self'. The first concept is about vanity, about getting others to satisfy your desires at their expense. The second is about caring and mutual love, about being centered enough in your heart that assisting others is more important than solely taking care of yourself. But it is critical that you know who the Self is, what it looks like, and what constitutes its many aspects, in order to have a 'sense' of what 'being centered' entails.

I remember the phrase "if you want to attract a certain kind of person in your life, you have to first be that kind of person yourself." We can't simply want someone else and have that person instantaneously appear. Wanting, alone, isn't going to satisfy the criteria. Attracting other people into your orbit will only occur if there is a solid enough 'center' in your soul. It operates much like the law of gravity: the larger the object, the greater its gravitational pull. If your 'center' is either nonexistent or fairly minimal, you won't attract much of anyone else into your orbit. On the other hand, the more you create a solid, significant and emotionally healthy Self, the more your gravitational 'pull' increases and therefore the more you can draw others into the circle of your life.

The journey to becoming 'centered in the Self' is especially difficult for trauma survivors. It often takes a very long time to understand this concept of attraction. For many years, I was so frightened of my Self -- my inner experience had been so terrifying that I couldn't get a good 'fix' on who I was -- that I couldn't attract anyone of the kind that I desired [longingly and forlornly dreamed about] because I did not have a solid center. Due to healing and recovery, as time passed my sense of Self gained more firm grounding and I was able to start attracting emotionally healthy people into my orbit. The more I became emotionally healthy (the more I became the kind of person whom I wanted), the more people appeared in my life who were themselves on the road to emotional health.

In the process of 'becoming the very person whom we want to have in our lives', we become more intimately in touch with a deeper understanding and tender relationship with ourselves. And hopefully, a willingness and ability to love [and forgive] ourselves. Having achieved that critical step -- of self-love and self-care -- we can then reach out 'into the world' and attract 'others' into our lives who we can then 'be in love with' with a greater clarity of vision. We're no longer fixated on finding people to 'fulfill our inner lives' because we've already successfully filled that life with our love of ourselves. We can begin the search for partners to walk alongside us, with whom we can "manifest a co-created shared intimacy."

Telling Our Stories Is Critical To The Journey of Healing

I attended a lecture this last week given by Tim Wise, who is an incredibly knowledgeable antiracism/diversity trainer. His talks tend to bounce around from subject to subject in a catch-all sort of way -- a style he terms as "similar to jazz improvisation." An individual leaves his presentations with their head swimming with new ideas and concepts and different ways to view the world around; simply stated, it's a pleasure and joy to hear him speak.

There were two things in particular that he discussed (among, as noted, a wide range of subjects related to diversity) that resonated with some thoughts that had been swirling around inside my head for several days since I had seen the 'new version' of the Cinema Paradiso DVD. I had seen the shorter version of the movie several years ago when it was first issued and had greatly enjoyed the story, which is why I had wanted to see it again. The story is a cross between a tribute to the joy of movie-making and the pain and frustration caused by unrequited love. For a long time, I've considered Cinema Paradiso to be one of the great (recent) movies about the love of cinema, in the same way that I've considered Babette's Feast to be one of my very favorite movies about the joy of cooking. Both, interestingly, are also about intimate love, the first a focus upon a heterosexual couple and the second about the love of friends.

Before I lose the 'thread', let me get back to the connection between Tim Wise and the movie. When I was watching Cinema Paradiso, I was struck with how the 'smitten love' between Salvatore and Elena was a kind of infatuation that I had always wanted to have when I was a younger man. I had always wanted to have a 'special girl' who considered me to be 'her special man' and who wanted to 'build a life with me.' But that story, while quite beautiful in the movie, wasn't my story no matter how much I had wanted it to be. And so, I had been thinking about how one tells their story in a way that 'makes sense of one's life' and 'gives one hope for the future'.

Tim Wise, in his lecture, talked about how "it is important that people tell their stories." In particular, he was talking about stories of discrimination and racial profiling, but he was also telling the audience how the method of telling one's story is important to the process of healing. Additionally, Tim took note of a favorite quote of his from the writer James Baldwin -- that each of us has to "earn our death" -- and what the writer meant by that. He said James Baldwin was referring to the process of living one's life in such a manner that, upon leaving this life, one had made a positive difference in the world, i.e. that an individual had 'earned their death' by living an ethical life that, in large part, involved struggling with the negative aspects of human interaction.

I've been 'sitting' with those two concepts -- the importance of 'telling one's story' and the importance of 'earning one's death' -- since his presentation last week. They strike me as critical issues in the journey of healing from sexual trauma, as well as healing from -- and moving beyond -- racial discrimination. The 'process of healing and recovery' is both about healing the wound caused by the trauma and then doing what one needs to do to move beyond the trauma. I'm reminded of a favorite quote by Margaret Young that I attach to my 'signature' when I send out email:

Often people attempt to live their lives backward: they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.

As a young man who was trying to heal from the ravages of the physical torture and sexual trauma that I experienced as a child, I always wanted to be involved in a story that was more 'normal', more 'mainstream' in terms of the American Dream -- you know, dating a woman with whom I had a mutually loving and caring relationship, having it evolve into a long-term intimacy, then possibly having it lead to marriage. But it wasn't to be (or at least, it didn't happen to me, not at all in the way I had envisioned). And without going into particulars, let me say that what is important 'in the telling of my story' is being able to have a degree of personal emotional comfort with the way the narrative [of my life] did play itself out.

Indeed, in my late 30's, I did meet a woman with whom I had a very long-term unrequited infatuation [we were and remain platonic friends], and in the last several years, in my late 50's, I have met a woman with whom I've finally been able to manifest the kind of intimate, equitable, long-term, mutually loving and supportive relationship that I have desired for most of my life. In other words, as one of the characters in Cinema Paradiso notes "life isn't like the movies", no matter how one hopes that we can 'spin out' such a narrative in 'real life'.

As in the Margaret Young quote above, I, like all survivors of trauma, have had to go through the journey of discovering how to be who I really am, then doing what needs to be done, in order to have what I have desired and wanted throughout my life. Not that the point of 'having what you want' comes all at once or quite in the manner that you theorized or dreamt that it would. Life has a way of producing the story in the manner that it deems fit -- incorporating, among many others, the 'stuff happens' and 'actions often lead to unintended consequences' scenarios.

The first step -- discovering who one really is -- is probably the most difficult. Beyond the torture and sexual trauma, who is one's self? Parents often say to their children "just be yourself", but who is that!! As John Bradshaw pointed out in Bradshaw On: The Family, most Americans have no 'independent' sense of themselves, separate from the imprint of their parents, until around the age of 35. But it's also critical to make that 'discovery', to 'know thyself'. Or, as a close therapist friend of mine says "be yourself -- everyone else is taken". We're all unique, good, bad or indifferent, so it's important to manifest the best we can be.

The next step is 'doing what needs to be done', and that's where the Baldwin quote about 'earning one's death' comes into play. While it is important to heal one's own life (and often that alone consumes an egregious amount of time and energy), it is also important, if at all possible, to 'heal the wound of the world' around oneself. For me, that's where my work with the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute is manifested. It took many years of arduous and painful work to progress in my own healing (and that process will not stop until I pass from this life); simply making use of that work for myself is, for me, insufficient. I feel a strong desire to help others who have had a similar painful journey to 'move forward to the next steps' of a healing path. Other very dedicated people have assisted me in my healing. I want to 'pass forward' those lessons learned in such a way that I can help others and 'earn my death'.

We all pass from this life eventually (as is said "there's only one ticket in and one ticket out"). When I was a younger man in the pit of my victimization, I, like many sexual trauma survivors, often contemplated suicide as the 'only way out' of the malaise of my life. As my healing has progressed and become clearer and more mature, I now realize that I must 'earn my own process of dying' by living my life to the fullest, as best I can manifest that. Which doesn't mean that I will "have everything I want" [far from it] -- even if I am who I am and do what I need to do -- but it does mean that I am the master of my own narrative, of how I tell my story, even if the details of the story are beyond my control. I can't 'know' where my story will go, but as is true of all trauma survivors I am in a better position, as I continue to heal, to impact the journey that I'm taking. We were, indeed, 'out of control' as children; with recovery, that doesn't have to be true for the remainder of our story.

Environmentalism: Instead of Aiming for 'More Is Less', Let's Aim for 'Less Is Less'

Last week, I attended the St. Louis Green Confluence which was held at St. Louis University. Advertised as an event that "connects employers, educators, public policy makers and citizens for the future of our region's green economy", throughout the morning the speakers talked about bringing 'green jobs' (i.e. employment that is environmentally friendly) to the St. Louis metropolitan area that could boost the local economy and make St. Louis the 'national center for the green economy'. The information was quite educational and illuminating. Just knowing who the 'local players' are in the expanding green jobs economy was, alone, worth the effort to attend the conference, and the methodologies that are being proposed for achieving lower costs and less energy use will be extremely helpful to know for future reference.

But all day long, the speakers kept emphasizing the concept of 'more is less': that we can have 'more' commodities, more jobs, a better lifestyle, for 'less' cost in resource use and 'less' pollution of the environment by engaging in more efficient use of those resources. Which, by itself, was very positive. Yet, the nagging question in the back of my mind, all during the symposium, was "When are we, as a society, going to stop wanting more stuff?" Because if we keep acquiring more stuff, we are going to use more energy, not less!

I've been reading a number of articles lately about the 'environmental cost' to our planet of the capitalist economic model that encourages people in the United States and western Europe to continue buying more items of production. In the last decade, China and India have jumped on that bandwagon as well, and now energy use -- and environmental pollution -- are reaching record levels around the world. One report I read noted that, in order for the 'rest of the world' to have the kind of lifestyle that Americans maintain, we would have to have another 2.5 Earths available for resource depletion.

The continual 'stuff acquisition' of First World and developing economies is simply unsustainable. And the other countries, which have been poor relative to the First World economies for at least the past three hundred years, are simply not going to back away from their desire to have the kind of lifestyle enjoyed by Americans since at least 1900 and definitely since the end of WWII.

Hence, Americans are going to have to learn to live on less, not more. We can't continue to burn up the resources of the planet to support our profligate lifestyle, even if we engage in more efficient use of the resources that are available. Under present circumstances, Americans are 6% of the world's populations and we use 50% of it's natural resources; western Europe constitutes another 6% of the world's population and uses [more efficiently] another 30% of the planet's natural resources. Which leaves 20% of the resources for the remaining 88% of the world's population. That is clearly unsustainable, as well as being frightfully unfair to everyone else on the planet. And whether or not one worries about 'fairness', that inequitable distribution and use of resources creates a security concern, since the rest of the people on our planet are increasingly aware of and angry about the level and extent of the inequity. The critical question, though, is: Can we restructure our economy in such a way that it is sustainable without continually growing larger?

Our 'more is less' mentality reminds me of something my intimate partner recently told me about an article she had read. Apparently, the obesity epidemic in America has not been much affected by the expansion in the availability of low-fat foods. Americans appear to believe that since many foods are lower in fat content, they can simply eat more food, rather than eating the same amount for less caloric intake. Additionally, many of the fast food outlets offer bigger portions for less money, since they are supplementing the meat content with low-cost soy-based substitutes and using greater quantities of factory-raised cows, pigs, and chickens, thereby giving the customers the ability to purchase even more food than they ate before. This isn't helping to counteract the obesity epidemic -- clearly, it's making it worse. It is also negatively impacting our healthcare costs.

Of course, in many ways, eating more food, or buying more stuff, or using more resources is avoiding the more important issue. We live in a culture where people feel empty in their souls, and they are trying to fill that emotional emptiness with external commodities. It won't work, it is unsustainable, and it is destroying the world in which we live. There is no point in trying to fill the empty place in your heart if the world in which your heart thrives is being polluted to the point of causing your heart (and the planet's heart) to fail.

It's all an addictive cycle -- a concept that many authors have written about, none more persuasively than Anne Wilson Schaef in When Society Becomes An Addict. As she notes, we as a society have become addicted to our 'stuff', to having more 'stuff'. As a society, we have reached a point whereby conspicuous consumption is an end, in and of itself. This is not to ignore the fact that many people really don't even have the basic survival needs covered, but rather to point out that survival, once achieved, is insufficient to satisfy the craving. It's sort of like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs gone berserk. As an American society, we are addicted to more and more and more 'things', bigger houses, more land, more substances, more food, more power.

For the last several millennium, the focus has been on "man's conquest and control of nature" -- supposedly, that's what the rise of civilizations is all about. But, with global warming causing melting polar caps, rising sea levels, hotter summers and colder winters, more tornadoes, hurricanes and typhoons, and generally more freakish weather patterns, nature is clearly fighting back. Unless we, as a society, can learn to live on less and be satisfied with less, we are going to have more problems, including more environmental crises.

Hence, I propose that instead of focusing our efficient use of resources on 'more is less', we begin aiming for 'less is less'. Use less resources more efficiently and be satisfied with 'less' -- and construct an economic model based on those changed realities that, indeed, is sustainable.

Growing Up and Healing from Sexual Trauma

Last night, I watched the HBO documentary Twist of Faith. It is a very powerful and intensely painful story about the sexual abuse of children (primarily boys) by Catholic priests, with a specific emphasis on Tony Comes, an individual sexual trauma survivor, and the effects that the abuse has had on his life. Tony had the courage (with the support of his family) to challenge the Diocese of Toledo, Ohio in a lawsuit. He was willing to go through the pain of forcing the Catholic Church officials to publicly admit to the abuse and start the process of manifesting a policy which will hopefully stop the abuse of other children by priests. As the documentary portrays, his courageous action very nearly tore his family apart and it surely challenged his faith and that of his community.

Several statements made in the documentary deeply resonated with my own trauma experiences. Tony's wife, Wendy, talked about how there was encouragement (and not-so-veiled criticism) by people who have not been similarly abused to "just grow up and get over it"; and how the abuse affected 'cycles of relationships' within their family, among their friends, and in the wider community. What struck me as particularly poignant about those statements was that, while sexual abuse survivors often desire to 'have it all go away', it simply doesn't. And even if it somehow miraculously could, the survivor wouldn't be able to help others who have experienced (or are presently experiencing) the same kind of sexual trauma.

It truly isn't that 'simple'. The memory of the trauma just doesn't, and can't, evaporate and allow the survivors to 'move on' in their life. Unfortunately, in order to move beyond the trauma, it is necessary to go through it, to heal from the pain. Stuffing the memory simply does not work and is quite counterproductive. Tony Comes at one point talks about how every time he's making love to his wife the specter of his perpetrator walks across his mental picture. Telling a survivor to 'wake up' and 'grow up', without working through the trauma, ignores the very nature of the original trauma. As he relates, the teenage boys would be encouraged to become intoxicated at the priest's country cottage and then the next day, as he was waking up, the priest was engaging in oral and anal copulation with him. And then an hour later the priest was conducting Mass for the area congregants -- as though nothing had happened, as though the two events were entirely unconnected.

A person would have a difficult time safely falling asleep for the rest of their lives, in fear that upon waking they would be sexually violated and raped by someone they had respected and trusted. How can one 'wake up', in a literal sense, when their experience of 'waking up' was rape?

Wendy Comes' point about how the abuse continued to affect the 'cycles of relationships' around Tony is most illuminating. Sexual abuse survivors can't simply walk away from the memories and 'move on' in their life. Surely they must eventually learn how to 'cope' with the trauma enough to function and love and live a more or less 'normal' life, but until they have the ability (with ample assistance and intervention from a competent therapist, caring friends, and intimate partners) to confront the deep sense of betrayal that they experienced, and time to heal that wound, the trauma is going to continue to affect all the relationships, personal and professional, they have in their lives.

Learning to 'trust again' is a very slow process and one that involves a multiplicity of layers of healing. The healing process reminds me of what one of my therapists mentioned years ago, that "it's like peeling the layers of an onion: you peel one layer at a time and often it provokes tears." And it seems like an infinite onion, like the layers will simply go on forever. But it also reminds me of Baba Ram Dass' observation in Remember, Be Here Now, in his discussion of the 'thirteen pointers to help you keep your perspective along the path of your spiritual journey' (a document which I often re-read and which represents a major 'touchstone' for me in my own healing journey):

As you further purify yourself, your impurities will seem grosser and larger. Understand that it's not that you are getting more caught in the illusion, it's just that you are seeing more clearly. The lions guarding the gates of the temples [of truth] get fiercer as you proceed toward each inner temple. But of course the light is brighter also. It all become more intense because of the additional energy involved at each stage of 'sadhana' [spiritual practice].

Trust is such a deeply integral aspect of human emotion that, without it, living one's life with grace is almost impossible. Wrapped up in trust is also the need for safety. If you can't trust people around you, especially [in Tony Comes' case] people to whom your family and community have delegated so much authority due to their faith tradition, then having a sufficient sense of personal safety is also undermined. An individual in that bind literally has no one to turn to, no one they can depend upon not to hurt them. Such a dilemma tears away at the foundation of one's personal 'sense of emotional solidity' and negatively impacts all the relationships one has, especially those that an individual attempts to construct on an intimate level in the years following the sexual abuse. You have to know, at a deep emotional level, that you can safely 'move beyond the fear of the lion's roar' and continue your journey toward your emotional and spiritual healing.

Each time you peel back another layer and heal from that level of trauma, yet another layer lays before you to be peeled back. First it's necessary to move beyond a sense that others around you will, for truly the slightest minor altercation, betray you with impunity. Then you are amazed that your intimate partner finds you worthy of their love and caring and you start to trust (rather feebly at first, growing stronger over time) that the love they are investing won't be pulled from under your feet without a moment's notice. All the time, you are fighting with your inner voices which tell you that what you are experiencing is only an illusion, nothing more, and that you'll wake up from this dream at any moment. Yet, if the connection is resonant for both parties, the love grows stronger and deeper, rather than fleeting like your past relationships. And the 'new normal' is that this intimate connection (between yourself and your lover, or between yourself and your close friends) won't instantly evaporate.

Of course, each individual sexual trauma survivor's healing journey will look different. The nature of the trauma is different, each survivor has a different 'personal constitution', the personalities of the perpetrators are different. But expecting a sexual trauma survivor to simply 'grow up and get on with life', without extensive and often painful healing, is to ignore the extensive destruction the trauma has wrought in that individual's life. It is possible to heal and have a happy life, but the memories will never go away [short of amnesia], nor will the low level fear that all of one's years of hard emotional work will be obliterated by a 'triggering event', resurfacing the dynamics of the original trauma in later years.

To sum up this discussion, I end with Ram Dass' 13th pointer:

What is happening to you is nothing less than death and rebirth. What is dying is the entire way in which you understood "who you are" and "how it all is". What is being reborn is the child of the Spirit for whom all things are new. This process of attending an ego that is dying at the same time as you are going through a birth process is awesome. Be gentle and honor him/her (self) who is dying, as well as him/her (Self) who is being born.