A Quarter Century in St. Louis: Grow Where You Are Planted

Recently I wrote a post for my Facebook account wherein I noted that I have, as of 2023, lived in St. Louis, Missouri for nearly 25 years. That is, for me, quite significant. For much of the time I lived here, I have felt like a New Mexico semi-native 'transplant'; but now, after all these years, I also feel [it's about time!] like a semi-native Missourian. 

Heretofore, I had been raised in a military family which moved often; we had lived in Dayton, Ohio [where I was born]; Guam; Biloxi, Mississippi; the Azores; El Segundo, California; Belleville, Illinois; Tokyo, Japan; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Wichita, Kansas. And then I had lived for 29 years of my adult life in Albuquerque again. 

As a military brat, I had had no 'hometown', in the sense that many people have, where I had spent the majority of my childhood. As a result, I've never had a strong 'sense of place' that is a specific geographical location I think of as 'home'. In contrast, Linda, my significant partner of 16 years [pictured with me in the attached photo], was born in St. Louis and has lived here all of her life -- and though she has traveled around the US and to Europe, she has never had the desire to live anywhere else. This is, for her, 'home' and it always has been. 

I arrived in St. Louis in August, 1998 for the purpose of completing my graduate social work education at Washington University [WU], after having attended New Mexico Highlands University for the first year of social work graduate studies. I graduated from the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at WU in May, 1999 with an MSW [to add to the MPA (Master of Public Administration) that I had earned at the University of New Mexico in 1978]. I figured that since I had made some connections in St. Louis, I may as well stay here and see if any of those connections would lead to employment. I had the idea [which turned out to be misguided] that with both a MPA & MSW, I would be a very marketable employee.

Hitting An Economic Wall

I was able to secure a couple of short-term contracts, including serving for 8 months as the Project Director of the statewide anti-tobacco smoking coalition. After that, during two years of a fruitless job search, I survived on some basic economic supplement from my family, and on my credit cards [not a very sustainable situation]. In the spring of 2004, my mother died, and I inherited her estate. It was sufficient to allow me to pay off my credit cards and graduate school student loans, and provide me with a modest income. Mainly, I had sufficient funds that I no longer had to worry how I could pay my bills, feed myself or put a roof over my head. In fact, shortly thereafter I bought an older [circa 1920] 3-bedroom house in South St. Louis, which I've owned ever since.

After another 4 years of an equally frustrating search for professional employment, I realized -- given my 'redundant' employment situation -- I had 'enough' income that, with careful planning, I didn't 'have to' get another job to survive. In fact, I now tell people, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that I 'retired' at age 52. 

I had 'hit that economic wall' because I was over 50; I was a male social worker in a female-dominated field where most of the nonprofit agencies were directed by women and they appeared to only hire other females; and I had a somewhat sketchy professional employment history [having lived for many years in New Mexico, which even in good financial times has an anemic economy]. In fact, between my childhood-derived PTSD, spending 12 years in post-secondary education, and being only able to aquire part-time temporary employment for many of the years I lived in NM, I only had been 'professionally employed' for 11 years between the ages of 18-52. I had spent many years 'in preparation' for a professional career which never actually materialized. 

From an objective perspective, the old adage, "wherever you go, there you are" has applied in my life. I had had a quite difficult time gaining satisfying professional employment in Albuquerque, and continued to have a difficult time finding professional positions in St. Louis. As a result, for quite a large variety of reasons, I have never been particularly successful in the financial acquisition arena.

In Spite of Graduate Degrees Which Turned Out to be Minimally Valuable...

To the extent that I ever had a 'professional career', it had been as a volunteer community organizer and electoral campaign manager. Between 1978-2012, I had worked on 68 Democratic Party electoral campaigns, and had served on over 30 community boards, both in Albuquerque and St. Louis. In fact, since my professional employment WAS so 'sketchy', I often attached a full page of volunteer work to my professional resumes. In was in those positions where I gained most of my organizing and management skills -- a 'boots on the ground' career, as my brother terms it.

I was also, in New Mexico, from 1990-1998, involved in the New Mexico Men's Wellness Movement, and it was as a result of that experience that I founded, in 2001, the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute [MMWI] here in St. Louis [to which this blog is attached]. Following the acquisition of my MSW in 1999, I had completed a Graduate Certificate in Nonprofit Management at the University of Missouri-St. Louis [UMSL], which taught me how to set up my own nonprofit organization. Though I had great hopes that I could bring the perspective of men's wellness to this city, the nonprofit has never actually been particularly solvent; staffing it all alone, and failing in spite of great effort to find funding for MMWI, it has largely continued, as a fledgling nonprofit, to 'marginally exist' as an online website, this Blog, and the MMWI Facebook page. The many services which I had hoped to fund and staff have never materialized. Such is life...

On the other hand, when I returned to Albuquerque in the spring of 2004 to attend my mother's funeral, several of my close personal, professional, and political friends noted that I had never been particularly satisfied in New Mexico, and hence they encouraged me to remain in St. Louis, where I had so many more activities to engage with [cultural events, universities, 'a larger playground'] and which, being in the center of the nation, allowed me more opportunity to travel. Upon that well-meaning advice, I returned to St. Louis, and decided to 'put down some roots' [which is when I purchased a house here].

In Comparison to Albuquerque, St. Louis is Bursting with Cultural Activity

Having been a member of the First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque from 1986-1998, as soon as I arrived in St. Louis in 1998 I become a member of the First Unitarian Church of St. Louis, whose founding minister had started Washington University in 1870. I have, in the 25 years I've been a member there, served in many different capacities, on multiple church committees, as well as being a co-founder of the Holy Ground Collaborative, a 7-congregation interfaith organization based in the Central West End.

Beginning in 2000, after completing my MSW at WU, I started ushering at The Sheldon Concert Hall. Soon thereafter, I also became a volunteer usher for the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, the Edison Theater at WU, Jazz at the Bistro, The Black Rep, and the Touhill Performing Arts Center at UMSL. It was a great way to engage in community service and see a wealth of cultural events for free, which, given my modest income, was helpful to my financial bottomline! Within the first couple of years, I had seen vastly more concerts and theatrical productions in St. Louis then all of the 29 years I had lived in Albuquerque. As a close friend, from the men's movement in New Mexico, said to me, "moving to St. Louis was critical for you, since you were starving for cultural stimulation in Albuquerque."

Emotionally St. Louis Has Been 'Just What I Needed'

I had been in mental health psychotherapy since 1982, in an effort to cope with, and recover from, the traumatic sexual, physical, and emotional abuse perpetrated by my parents. A major result of that abuse was that, until my late 30s, I didn't feel like I had any value, to myself or in any of my intimate relationships, unless I was being sexual. In 2015, I took a Video Editing Class at KETC, PBS Channel 9 here in St. Louis, and produced a short video, entitled "Achieving Intimacy After the Devastation of Male Sexual Child Abuse", which spoke to that traumatic outcome

I've addressed that abuse in quite a number of the articles posted, over many years, on this MMWI Blog, so I've already spoken to much of the background of that abuse and its PTSD results. The aspect that I want to address here is that, until the age of 56, I had never manifested an intimate heterosexual relationship that lasted more than 10 months. I kept encountering one female after another [with a notable few exceptions] who wanted to share their emotional pain, which I was more than willing to listen and empathize with, but when I 'took my turn' and started to tell them about my trauma, they simply would not allow me to share that with them. As Mark Robinson, my therapist of 20 years in St. Louis, whom I interviewed for the KETC video, noted "Most women want to have emotionally accessible relationships with their male partners. The problem is if he has experienced any kind of significant emotional trauma where she sees him as not being strong, capable or competent, that's going to damage her sense of who she needs or wants him to be." Therefore, the question becomes, for her 'is she more attached to who he is authentically, or what projection of maleness she wants to engage with'.

I was also, from the age of 25 forward, very motivated by the feminist movement. In fact, I was thrilled about the perspective of many feminists who stated that they very much desired an equal, mutual relationship with their male partners. However, much to my profound dismay, in too many of the dating relationships that I was engaged, there was, if anything, a very UNEQUAL balance in the interaction, and I found myself, often, the partner who was subjected to an excessively unequal expectation by the women I was dating. When I would post singles ads in the local publications, I would always stress that I was seeking a feminist partner. And I would, indeed, meet a lot of women who 'said' they were feminists...but who, in fact, expected their male partners to pay for the relationship, unilaterally protect them, be the primary lover, and make and take responsibility for most of the decisions. That surely didn't feel like equality to me! 

Finally, though, in 2008 I met and began dating Linda here in St. Louis. Though she didn't call herself a feminist, she was the most devotedly feminist woman I had ever met. She, like myself, was very focused on having a friend and [eventual] lover, and was quite willing to equally share all the expenses of dating. I was in seventh heaven! And we've been together, in a mutually respectful intimacy, since then. After the first year of dating, the relationship 'surpassed' a record I'd never achieved before. We've now been together for 16 years -- and both of us are invested in manifesting the intimacy till the end of our days. We have achieved, and continue to manifest, a "co-creation of mutually shared intimacies". I often laugh with her that I had to not only engage in many years of psychotherapy to be ready for a long-term relationship, but move to a different state to find the kind of woman who also desired the kind of mutually equitable, respectful relationship that I had wanted all of my life. We have been and continue to be very emotionally healing for each other.

Hence, While the MSW Didn't Result in Employment...

Coming to St. Louis has turned out to be, for reasons that I could not have imagined when seeking to leave New Mexico in 1998, a most positive endeavor. While, as noted above, the social work graduate degree turned out to be of minimal value [I was only able to earn as much in income as the degree cost me in tuition and related expenses], many other quite positive outcomes, for the betterment of my life, were manifested.

• I have matured, emotionally, quite a bit. I had access to excellent psychotherapy. 

• I have had a very rich cultural life. 

• I've owned a home for the past 19 years. 

• I found and manifested a very stable, mutually loving relationship with an intelligent, vivacious, female artist partner. 

• I've had, for the past 19 years, a stable income which allows me to have an adequately comfortable life, wherein I can pay all my bills on time, and have an excellent health plan. 

• I have access to excellent doctors and a first-class healthcare delivery system. 

• I've been in a city what allowed me to easily add to my philatelic and media collection.

• Via my Unitarian congregation, ushering, political campaigning, serving on community boards, engaging in antiracism work, and 2 years of informational interviewing, I have made quite a number of connections in the metropolitan area. Via Linda, I've had access to many great friendships with other St. Louis residents. Which, in itself, is quite an accomplishment -- people who aren't 'from' St. Louis largely know other people who are not from here, while locals mainly know locals who have lived here since childhood. Being able to bridge that gap has allowed me to get to know others locally..

Finally, I Realize, I Am 'Home'

At the age of 71, St. Louis is now, after a quarter century, 'home' for me. Unlike many transplants, though, I haven't remained here due to being employed, but rather out of choice. When I visit New Mexico, as I attempt to do every couple of years, I feel a bit 'out-of-place', as well as having to fight off the 'old feeling' that I had, when living there, of 'disabling frustration'. But I know that I'm only a visitor now, and have another 'home' in St. Louis. 

As Linda often reminds me "home is where the heart is", and my heart is here in River City.

Striving For The Kind Of Deeply Held, Cherished, and Yearned For Authenticity That Has Been Meaningful To Me My Whole Life

 If it's not time for those of us who are senior citizens to come to grips with our true authenticity, when IS the 'correct moment'? The clock is ticking and the hour glass of years is slipping away. It's 'more than time' to BE, with a whole heart, who we have known ourselves to be all our lives...but have often been so filled with shame or foreboding to adequately fulfill the 'destiny' that we knew, in our heart of hearts, is 'our truth'.

Forlorn has logical limits, and frankly has only ever brought most of us traumatic grief. The 'time is right' to move beyond our doubts and BE A HUMAN, with all its problems, challenges, and joys on full display. I know that well as a Two-Spirit being who has struggled my whole life with the comfortable expression of my complete Self. The moment of sincere courage is upon me.

Clearing Questionable Materials Out of My House As I Recover From Terror/Depression Crisis of 2020

The movers for one of the local homeless service organizations, that provide low-cost furniture for families who are transferring to a more stable living situation, came by yesterday and picked up my 'toxin-infused' couch. I had decided to donate it to them.

Now, in case you're thinking "What the holy Hell, Donald!", and are concerned that I've lost my moral and ethical compass, and that I'm being nasty toward poor folks, Linda pointed out that ONLY I find it to be 'toxin-infused'. She sat on it, at various points, for months, without any undue negative reaction at all. For her, it was just a regular, everyday couch. And she notes that almost no one else on the planet would find it to be 'toxin-infused'. It became that way, in my bodily perception, when I was suffering from the terror/depression crisis of 2020. Whatever this 'toxin' was in my house [and I only use that term because I had no earthly idea WHAT IT WAS, only that it produced a toxic reaction in my  skin] also got into my shorts and made them 'feel like' they had some sort of 'burning salve' spread all over them.

So, objectively, there MAY have been UTTERLY NOTHING there at all. My neurologist theorized that the 'toxic' sensation I felt was 100% related to my peripheral neuropathy. While it was an interesting theory, I didn't quite buy it. I had covered the couch in a thick mylar AND a cloth covering, both of which I had purchased from Amazon, and for a few months I was doing 'ok', but then the 'toxic perception' started to 'bleed through' those coverings. Again, Linda would sit on the couch, with the coverings on it, and FEEL NOTHING AT ALL. So, either her nerves are dead [which I doubt] or mine are at a super hyper level [which is far more likely].

The trouble is that -- as with so many other issues in my less-than-normal world -- there is no 'standard' by which to measure ANYTHING at all. At least there is no objectively verifiable standard, none of which I'm aware. When I was in the depths of the crisis, and my terror/depression was jumping off the chart -- and I was actively contemplating suicide 10-15 times a day [this went on for 7 months, making it absolutely horrible for me and for Linda] -- I had posted the issue on Facebook; I had considered hiring an environmental engineer to come to my house and test the materials [though I had no idea whom to ask for this service, and probably could not have afforded their services in any case]; but no one who responded to my post had an 'answer' to my 'toxin fears' that sounded sufficiently appropriate to the circumstances.

As I've recovered from the crisis over the past 8 months -- with the life-saving assistance of psychiatric medication [which I no longer have to ingest, since my body eventually reached a fair level of homeostasis] and with the help of 17 critically important friends, colleagues, and medical personnel -- I have chose to 'change the circumstances' in order to minimize the 'negative impact' of the 'toxin'. [My friends Alvin, from my Unitarian Universalist congregation, suggested I call it a 'negative neurological experience' or NNE, and Pamela, my yoga therapist, suggested terming it "a box of unknown reactions", which helped to place the 'negative reaction' I was having in a more acceptable perspective.]

I've discarded the shorts that became 'infused' with the 'burning sensation'; the same with the underwear and boot socks that produced that sensation; and now this couch. And I have two stainless steel-lined LG washing machines which I need to sell [purchased new, in 2020, for $650 each], because, in the depths of my confused ability to protect myself, I inadvertently washed some of the 'infused' clothing in them, and now don't 'trust' the machines for washing my clothing. In fact, due to what kicked off the whole crisis in the first place -- using far too much laundry detergent in a washer in which I had washed some Wrangler boot socks, that turned out to have a chemical in them that I was violently allergic to -- I now 'wash' all my clothes in a Lavorio hand washer and ONLY use a small amount of vinegar with each load, NO detergent at all. Cleans the clothes quite sufficiently, actually -- though I may need to set aside some of the clothing that became 'truly soiled' for a small load that contains detergent.

I paid $600 for the couch, from Carol House, just 5 years ago, and it was in great shape OTHER THAN the reaction I had gotten from it during the crisis, and in the months following the crisis as well. We had first considered advertising it on Craig's List for sale, but I decided I didn't want just any Tom, Dick, or Susan coming through my house to check it out [from a 'safety of my home' perspective]. So, donating it seemed like a better choice [and a poor family will therefore be getting a great deal]. I do plan to put the two LG washers on Craig's List, since I've kept them in my garage, and no potential buyer has to come into my house to see them. The proceeds from the washer sales will be used for purchasing a new couch and a new porcelain-lined washer [similar to the one I had owned, for years, before traumatically 'polluting' it in March 2020].

Hence, as of yesterday, the removal of the couch 'feel like' an EMOTIONAL VICTORY. The 'toxin', or NNE, has finally left my living space -- which allows me to feel a seriously diminished amount of stress. I have a larger wardrobe of clothing [primarily purchased from Lands' End, which I discovered to have clothing that are not toxic to me] that don't generate a negative skin reaction -- once, that is, I've washed them several times to diminish the chemicals originally used in manufacturing the clothing.

I feel 'stronger' emotionally than I've felt in the past decade, and I sense that I have come out of this past year's nightmare more resilient, and more psychologically and physically healthy. The neuropathy still produces a burning sensation in my calves and I continue to feel like I'm 'walking on wire mesh and/or broken glass' due to the pain in my feet [not the least bit pleasant]. But the Cymbalta anti-depression medication that had been prescribed for the peripheral neuropathy wasn't really minimizing either of those sensations. Further, and most disturbingly, the medications were starting to case 'brain fog', and frankly the neuropathy is no longer as bad as it was during the 2020 crisis. I can take low doses of Tylenol to control the negative sensations, when they do flare up, and generally the pain is at a 'low tolerable level' of burn. Additionally, the pool water, when I'm swimming at the YMCA [which I resumed last week after a year of the pool being closed due to the pandemic] serves to cool and soothe my skin. The greatest benefit, it has turned out, was adding a daily dose of 1000 mcg. of timed-release B-12 [generally recommended for adults past 60 years of age] to my diet.

Ahhh...the struggles of life's challenges. And reaching a 'tolerable enough' point of health again!

Unitarian Universalist Chalice/Mandala

 

Linda Fiehler, the love of my life, made this stained glass for me. We talked about it beforehand, about the manner in which to construct it, and, by mutual agreement, it incorporates 4 elements which are important to my life:

 

- The UU Chalice, with it's vibrant flames of sumptuous energy, reaching out to the world around, spreading our religious message. As a Credentialed Minister in our congregation, I have thrown myself into being an evangelical Unitarian Universalist -- which from a UU perspective means promoting the vision of our denomination as widely as possible, while reframing from 'shoving it down your throat' proselytizing, which we view as being rude and demeaning. Our encouragement is for people to move toward the goal of critical reasoning and thinking for oneself. 

 

- The winding path at the bottom, which is an artistic interpretation of the slogan I proposed, as Chair of the Public Relations & Marketing Committee, to the First Unitarian of St. Louis (my congregation), and which has been our church's slogan since 2008: "The Search is The Answer". My reasoning behind the slogan is that it is both a response to the Christian statement that "Jesus is the Answer" and a notation, given the spiritual journey each of us is on, that the 'answer' is found in the continual, life-long Search. And that if one comes to a point of finding an 'answer' for wherever they are in life, that 'answer' is, inherently, transitory, since Truth is only found in the constant search. The Truth in any moment eventually changes (change, paradoxically, being the one true constant in life that never changes) as we emotionally and spiritually evolve.

 

- The rainbow on either side of the Chalice, with the winding clouds above, is to honor the LGB & Transgender community that our UU denomination actively supports, and to lovingly honor the Two-Spirit identity that I have personally embraced my whole life.

 

- The round frame is a vision of the Mandala of Life, the infinite nature of our existence, the cosmic statement of always searching and always developing and never ceasing to grow, as we gradually find our own authenticity and express that, as fearlessly as possible. 

 

Linda and her late husband Hank Griffith owned and managed Mithra Glassworks for 30 years, where they produced many stained glass windows and panels for clients in St. Louis and the surrounding area. Their stunningly beautiful artistic output is still in many buildings all these years later. Hank passed in 1999, and Linda gradually wound down the business, finally closing it four years later. She and I began our intimate relationship in 2008, and have mutually invested in that loving partnership for the past 13 years.

Struggling To Manifest A Life Of Purpose

Once again, I realized, upon coming back to the MMWI Blog after a long period of not looking at it, that I had not written an article for the site since December 2018. When I first started writing the blog in 2010, I often wrote 6-10+ blogs a year, but as the years have passed -- and I have developed other avenues of discourse -- I have written fewer articles for this blog. Yet, it remains an important outlet for my recovery work.

Manifesting A Life Of Purpose

The 'life issue' that has been bothering me the most, for the past year, has been determining another version of my journey that would feel emotionally satisfying. In that regard, as has happened at various stages of my life journey, I've had to 're-invent and re-configure' what a Life of Purpose looked like for me. And it has not been easy (not much in the life of an incest and torture survivor is).

I had tried, in the early 2000s through 2010 or so, to manifest the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute [MMWI] as a 'going concern', as a nonprofit with a mission, funding and paid staff. For a while, in 2005, it appeared as though the Missouri Foundation for Health was going to be willing to fund my nonprofit -- they initially emphasized that "you are the only professional in Missouri who is working on these issues" -- but, after stringing me along for about a year, they informed me that their board had changed membership, and the new members were no longer interested in my project, no matter how rare or needed it was. To say that that rejection was devastating is an understatement; I had been researching foundations which could possibly fund MMWI and had not found another potential source. So, the shutting down of their initial interest left me with few, if any, options.

Further, while a cohort of my colleagues, many of whom managed other nonprofit organizations, were willing to 'brainstorm' with me on ideas and approaches to MMWI, none were able to assist in its organizing nor funding. And so I was left 'high and dry', without anyone else who was willing to invest the time and energy, along with my own devotion, to manifesting the Institute. And, frankly, doing it all alone was just too damned lonely. I simply did not have the emotional stability to manifest it all by myself. [I have, though, 'as a love of the issue', maintained the MMWI website, this blog, and a MMWI Facebook page in the years since. Hence, MMWI 'exists online'. Additionally, I am attempting to regenerate my Men's Wellness Ministry, at the First Unitarian Church of St. Louis, of which I have been a member for the past 21 years.]

I needed, though, to find some kind of outlet for the wealth of aptitudes and skills that I had developed over the years, primarily in political organizing and community advocacy activism. Paid employment was increasingly unlikely. After resigning under protest from what turned out to be my last full-time salaried position in 2002 (when I was 52 years of age), I spent 6 achingly painful years searching for employment. Even though by this time I had earned two graduate degrees, in public administration and social work, and a graduate certificate in nonprofit management, and believing that acquisition of a substantial educational foundation would ensure that I would find decent employment, if anything all that education began to work against rather than for me. I was perennially hit with the 'overqualified' obstacle, and with the illegal but subtly obvious age discrimination dilemma. And, further, I was seeking employment in the field of social work and nonprofit management, which was overwhelmingly dominated by female professionals, as a male social worker. Hence, no matter how much I took my feminism seriously, I was, rather depressingly, also the victim of sex discrimination. I've covered much of this territory in previous blogs and therefore there is no need to re-hash it here.

Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute has been my 'professional love' for many years and it had provided me with a 'life of purpose' since the early 1990s, when I became involved with the New Mexico men's wellness movement. And yet, for all my solitary efforts, I could not manifest it on the level that would have been emotionally, financially and mentally satisfying. Further, for all my education and acquisition of skills, by 2008 it was obvious that, with the depressing state of the national economy, many people, especially males of my age, were becoming unemployed, with little chance of ever finding decent employment again for the balance of their lives.

Time To Look Elsewhere

For a while, I served on other nonprofit boards of directors (comprising, since 1978, more than 30 community boards in Albuquerque and St. Louis) and immersed myself in the organizational life of my Unitarian Universalist congregation. For employment, except for a few minimal professional services contracts, I was left, in a most disorienting way, with only a part-time job as a staff usher at the St. Louis Symphony. I had, though, upon the death of my mother, quite luckily gained a small inheritance from my family, and with diligent care and good advice from my tax attorney brother, had learned how to construct a modest lifestyle with those funds. After 2008, when my brother had convinced me that I had enough income to not have to work if I didn't want to -- and to pursue activities that interested me, I ceased all efforts at seeking salaried employment.

At this point in life I tongue-in-cheek joke that I 'retired at 52', though the objective reality was that I 'become redundant' at that point in my life, and couldn't find other employment thereafter. The long and short of it is that I've been able, with care, over the past 17 years, to live a life that, while economically minimal, provides me with many options not available to much of the population.

Then I went through the whole period of materials hypersensitivity allergic reactions, neuropathy, multiple embolisms, and PTSD trauma/panic attacks, from 2015 to the present, though I had managed to 'start having an emotionally and mentally stable life again' by the summer of 2018. I joined Women's Voices Raised for Social Justice, and began serving on their Advocacy Committee, Racial Justice Committee, and attending the Racial Justice Book Club. I was the sole male member of their committees, but that was perfectly fine with me. I have worked with many advocacy groups in my life where I was 'the only person in the room who looked like me [racially, ethnically and/or gender]' and rather enjoy that assertive position of difference, plus the group appealed to my strong feminist sentiments. This past April, Linda and I joined the League of Women Voters, with the intent to serve on some of their advocacy committees. I am an active member of the Policing Committee [thereby bringing to bear my experience as the former Chair of the Albuquerque Police Advisory Board, 1980-81] , and Linda and I serve with the City-County Government Merger Committee.

I have, though, resigned from the Women's Voices Advocacy Committee, largely because I realized, after serving with them for a year, that though the women in the group were tolerant and even somewhat accommodating of my being on the committee, I was never going to be 'accepted' as a full partner on the otherwise total-female committee. Nonetheless, I appreciated the opportunity to serve with the group while I was there, and intend to continue with the other WV committees.

However, from my activist perspective, the work on these committees takes up too little of my excess time and energy. I have always had the dilemma of 'figuring out what to do with my single life' and all the boundless energy I have available to me [which, albeit, has somewhat subsided in recent years, due to various medical setbacks]. It's not as though I 'don't have a life' nor that I have too little to do: between the fostering and cultivation of my relationship with Linda Fiehler, my significant partner for the past 11 years, and my continuing recovery from PTSD/terror trauma, as well as having a very active mental life [reading a wide range of subjects, writing posts on Facebook primarily on political issues, continuing the development of lifelong education via Teaching Company DVDs, TED talks, and other media, periodically writing these blog posts, continuing to usher at a few concert venues, collecting and cataloging those collected items, pursuing my philatelic collection, attending educational forums at the Missouri History Museum, St. Louis Art Museum, and St. Louis Science Center, as well as maintaining three websites and serving on four First Unitarian Church committees], I stay relatively busy. But...and here's 'the rub'...other than 'being in the world', I need to have a more stable 'sense of purpose' in my life.

Time and Energy To Spare

Ok, my readers may say, sounds like you're damned busy right now, especially for a guy who's 68 and has been 'retired' for the past 17 years. And it's not as though I am 'unusual' in my discomfort: when I read the news and hear about many countries in the world where there is 25-40% unemployment for young to middle-age adults, and their having to immigrate to other countries to find credible employment, I am well aware that I 'have a wealth of major advantages' in my present position. Yet...I feel a strong sense of "not being adequately made use of", of having acquired a wealth of aptitudes and a great education, and yet not having the opportunity to make adequate use of my energy in a world that seems, from what I read, to need assistance in a wide range of areas. Over the past year:

• I signed up at the United Way Board Bank, but have seen very few community boards that interested me [or have applied to serve on several with no reply from them]. 
• I've offered my assistance, as a volunteer consultant, to the Metro Trans Umbrella Group [given my study, over the past 40 years, of transgender issues, as well as gender issues generally], but as yet that offer has not been pursued by the organization. 
• I offered to serve on the Board of Freeholders, that is going to work on city-county merger issues, but never heard back from the St. Louis City mayor [actually, the whole application process turned out, for many applicants, to be a fiasco]. 
• I offered to help with cooking meals for at a homeless shelter, but have not heard back concerning that offer. Linda has suggested that I contact the organization and seek out their volunteer coordinator, since -- apparently -- going through their director has heretofore been unsuccessful. 
• Last week, I offered to assist with the Rally St. Louis effort (another approach to fostering city-county merger conversations) and may yet hear positive news, though it appears like I may not hear from them for at least a couple of months, while they solidify the organization.

It all reminds me of something my late much beloved therapist Shoshona Blankman, in New Mexico, told me 30 years ago: "while it's painful to have someone ask us for help and we don't have the time to give, it is especially painful when you offer assistance to someone [or an organization] and your offer is ignored or rejected". Since my mid-20s, I've had this notion of 'paying forward', of helping others because I received help, of 'passing on the warm fluffies' and making the world a more humane place in the effort.

There's no guarantee how long any of us will be on this planet or in this plane of existence, but while I'm around, I want to feel like I can contribute something positive "to make the world a better place in which to live". I tried doing that via political action when I was younger, but while that still has value, I feel, too often, that all my veteran years of campaigning are now sidelined by political campaigns that only want to hire younger less-experienced adults. I tried to do that via community boards of directors, but none, of recent, have expressed an interest in my serving -- and I have offered a number of times --  in spite of the fact that I have a wealth of board experience. I've offered to serve as a volunteer consultant to assist organizations with organizing, management, or fundraising, yet none, in a very long time, has taken me up on the offer. Most importantly, while it would be nice to be paid for my skills, I long ago gave up on pursuing that route, given the large number of rejections I encountered. At this point, I'm willing to offer my services for FREE and yet finding a group that is willing to take me up on that offer is...well, like pulling teeth.

It's important to note, though, that in offering volunteer assistance I do have some basic requirements:

• First, I need a minimal amount of professional respect. One thing I've learned, from a lifetime of experience with community organizing and boards, is that the person who volunteers to take on a task is far too often burdened with 90% of the work, with others refusing to take responsibility for any task fulfillment, and therefore the volunteer ends up being rapidly burned out. As I've aged and gained more wisdom about the 'volunteer process', when groups ask for volunteers I often remain silent, initially, to see whom else is willing to jump forward, and then offer to assist them -- rather than volunteering and just hoping someone will offer to assist me.

• Second, I need some basic, and clear, recognition for my efforts. I've worked with too many groups who are inward-focused, who will make use of outside assistance and then ignore the value that person has brought to the table.

• Third, the project has to be of interest to me, and has to be something I emotionally and/or ethically support. I'm no longer, as I too often was when I was trying to establish my credentials as a younger man, willing to be 'a political whore', supporting almost any liberal cause just because it needs someone to support it. If my heart is not invested in the outcome, my willingness to put in volunteer time and energy just feels poisonous.

Retirement Does Not Mean, For Me, Doing Nothing

I know that many people my age, at least people who had a modestly decent income in their working years, use their 'retired' time to travel -- which, god only knows, I'd do in a heartbeat if I could afford it and/or my medical conditions allowed it -- and have learned to 'kick back' after years of hard work. I guess, for me, since I didn't have a lot of years of professional employment, followed by far-too-early 'retirement', I still have this admittedly rather myopic notion that I'll 'someday' manifest a 'career' [though, objectively, it's a bit late in life for that] and have 'the opportunity' to make good use of my multifaceted skills.

Hence, in summation, finding and manifesting a "life of purpose" has been a lifelong struggle and remains so. Given my work on my PTSD recovery and my devotion, since the age of 32, on living a reasonably healthy life, I assume I have another 10-20 years to be alive. But simply 'being alive' is wholly insufficient. I am a doer, an activist, an intellectual and an organizer. And I want to have, for the balance of my time on this planet, a distinct 'sense' that I am contributing to my society, by striving for solutions instead of being part of the problem.

The Continuing Saga of Traumatic Body Memories

I realized, recently, that I hadn't written an article for the MMWI Blog since my return from a one month visit to New Mexico over Christmas, 2017-18. When I was in New Mexico, visiting a wealth of friends and colleagues that I hadn't had a chance to connect with in a very long time (some not for 30+ years), I found out, much to both my surprise and joy, that many of them had been keeping track of me via the MMWI Blog [which they knew about from my posts on Facebook about the blog]. Since almost no one (except a few very close supportive friends) ever posts a 'comment' on the blog, I'm never clear who, if anyone, is actually reading the articles I write. What keeps me going, even in the face of that non-clarity of readership, is both a resonant love of writing and an opportunity to talk about my 'life experience', as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and physical torture, in the hope that it may be of benefit to someone else, either who experienced a similar trauma or who knows someone who has and wants to be an 'enlightened witness' for them. Additionally, as it turns out, many people I've known over the years are 'keeping up with me' via the blog. And that is, frankly, quite satisfying.

I have been wanting, over the past year, to write a blog about 'my Vietnam War years', and have, indeed, begun such an article, but decided that, right now, a more 'immediate' pressing need was to write an article about the continuing 'blowback' from the horrific trauma I experienced as a child due to the abuse of my parents, and the way in which my body memories are continuing to cause very real ongoing trauma in the present.

The Lingering Effects of Trauma

Recently, I finally had access to an updated version of my media databases (after a consultant friend, who specializes in FileMaker databases, returned them to me). And I've been engaging in adding several hundred books, movies and documentaries, and music CDs to those databases.

In the process of adding books (which had been piled in boxes, awaiting cataloguing, and therefore I wasn't quite aware of what was in them) to the database, I came across a book by Alice Miller, who is a favorite author of mine (The Drama of the Gifted Child had been one of my early forays into the study of childhood abuse). The book is entitled The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel Parenting. It is a great read, though given the subject matter and my direct personal experience with the trauma she is describing, it is also disturbing.

I have been aware, for several years, that 'memories' are of at least two varieties: mental and somatic. There are memories that we remember in our brain, or that are locked away in our subconscious mind, only slowly revealing their secrets over time (if ever). Those are memories which arise in dreams, or in mental health therapy, or are evoked by a specific further trauma or even by a piece of music. But the other locale of memories is in the body. Deepak Chopra talked about these in a video I saw, and he referred to them as neuropeptides, which are essentially 'brain cells' that live in locations throughout the body and communicate with the brain in our heads. They manifest as 'body memories', as compared to 'mind memories', yet they are all, interestingly, in the same genus of memory. Last year, I had read The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body In The Healing Of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk. That book both displayed the ways in which the body 'remembers' trauma, and gave suggestions on how to access those memories.

I've been reading these books, and ones with similar subjects, because I have, for the past 53 years, been having periodic panic attacks, which are often so thoroughly devastating that my nerves feel like they have been 'fried' afterward. And in the midst of the panic attacks, I feel like I'm dying, quite literally. When I first started experiencing them, at the age of 14, when I was living in Tokyo, Japan (my father, who was an U.S. Air Force communications maintenance officer, was stationed there), the 'cause' was quite obvious: I was being quite openly beaten by my father on a regular basis. It wasn't that I was 'misbehaving', nor that I was some kind of delinquent, but rather because my father was psychotic. He beat us (myself and my two brothers) just because he felt anxious about his own life and took out his discomfort on his children. I had episodic panic attacks until I entered college, at which time I turned to substance abuse to 'numb' my consciousness and dull the traumatic pain.

During those years of extensive substance abuse (largely from the age of 17 to 32), I had instances when I took too many psychedelics or narcotics, and my heart raced so fast that it was slamming against my chest. I very nearly died a number of times, but I suspect (looking back) that my large frame allowed the drugs to be somewhat diluted, and so I didn't die. Now, understand, I often thought that I wanted to die. And I had attempted to commit suicide in the freshman year in college, by taking an overdose of the tranquilizers my neurologist had prescribed. I had 'failed' in that attempt (I slept for 36 hours and woke up with an absolutely torturous headache), and was so intensely depressed that I berated myself for many years afterward, with a self-talk that I was "such a profound failure that I couldn't even successfully kill myself". In fact, I continued to often be suicidally depressed until I was in my early 50s. I realized a couple of days ago, after reading more of Alice Miller's The Body Never Lies that it wasn't that I wanted to die -- it was that the pain of living was so profound that I wanted that pain to end. Death is the great unknown and quite frankly we all arrive there eventually, whether with effort or old age; hence, it wasn't that I wanted to fall into the unknown, as that I desperately wanted to depart from the far too well-known, which was the traumatic PTSD outcomes of the childhood incest and torture that I had experienced.

The second period of my life when I experienced a large number of panic attacks was when, at the age of 34, I had a profound nervous breakdown (or 'breakthrough, as my late much beloved therapist, Shoshona Blankman, reframed it for me after I had recovered from the initial bodily devastation). For three months, I had a non-stop panic attack (literally, all day long, with disturbed sleep cycles). The only way I survived at all was due to having access to daily acupuncture treatments, which calmed me enough to minimally function. I continued to have panic attacks two or three times a week for the next two years [until around 1989].

Then, they started up again, in earnest, about 6 years ago. My mental health therapist here in St. Louis has speculated that the 'parts' of my Self [based on Internal Family Systems theory] that represent the 'exiles', that I had for damned good reason not previously accessed in my therapy finally felt 'safe' enough to reemerge and become accessible to my mind and body. As he stated it "they were, all those years, locked away in the salt minds of the lowest depths of your psyche", hidden away because, until I was healthy enough for them to reemerge, they were the most traumatic elements of my childhood rape and torture [which had, I now know, begun when I was an infant]. As an example of those subsumed parts, I have almost no conscious memory of my childhood between the age of 6 and 12. My therapist refers to that period as 'traumatic amnesia'. In other words, the level of abuse was so intense that my mind blanked out the vast majority of those memories. The traumatic incidences that I do remember, quite clearly, from the age of 12 onward, I often feel I would just as well wish to forget. But since they are accessible to me, I can work with and on them, for better or worse.

The Manifestation of Those Traumatic Body Memories

Six years ago [2012], I began having 'burning scalp' [neuropathy] sensations. No matter what shampoo I used, my scalp literally felt like it was 'on fire'. I ended up, for several years, only washing my hair about once a week, since each time I washed my head, it burned intensely. Eventually, this past year, I found a shampoo at Trader Joe's [the only one they sell] that allows me to wash my head every two days without significant discomfort.

Then, starting around 2014, I began to have problems with mattresses. The mattress that I had had for many years wore out and, not realizing that mattress materials had profoundly changed since my 1999 purchase of the previous model, I bought a memory foam mattress [pretty much the only material available by then]. I had a severe allergic reaction to the material. I tried 'cool gel' mattresses, and others as well [I've addressed this issue in previous blogs]. The long and short was that one of the mattresses evoked neuropathy in my ankles, which I've had ever since [my ankles 'burn' almost all the time]. Eventually I found a mattress at IKEA with minimal foam in it. That mattress sort of solved the dilemma, but frankly I don't really obtain much of a solid sleep on it. It doesn't make me sick, but I can't sleep for more than 5 1/2 hours each night on it. Last year, Linda [my intimate partner for the past decade] and I stayed at a B&B in Taylorville, Illinois, and slept on a mattress which was 'tolerable'. We removed the sheets to see the manufacturing label. They are made in Springfield, IL, so I hope, in the next couple of months, to drive to their factory and see if I can purchase one and have it delivered to St. Louis [or find out if a local supplier has them in stock].

Around the same time I began having difficulties with mattresses, I began having even more intense reactions to a host of other materials, namely shoes, clothing, belts, etc. that I had worn for many years. Over a period of about a year those materials became allergic to me. And when I would put them on, I was having an intense allergic reaction -- major headaches, intense GI tract distress, and rapidly increasing feelings of overt TERROR. What I now realize, when I was reading Alice Miller's book last week, was that what I've been experiencing for the past six years is a 'version' of the panic attacks that I had in the past.

When I was younger, given the intense nature of the mental health work that I was engaging in, I often said that "I ate risk for breakfast". It was a quite conscious challenge to the trauma, knowing that I had to 'move though the pain in order to get beyond it'. For the past four years, as I have worked to overcome the pernicious effects of the 'materials hypersensitivity' reactions, I have periodically, in a clearly planned approach, 'challenged' my potential reactions to materials, knowing that I would potentially have a negative reaction [often I would meditate either before wearing the material or after first putting it on], but being willing to 'try to challenge the reaction'. It has never been 'easy' and I often end up having a more or less controlled panic attack. In those situations, I know exactly what to do if the reaction becomes too intense: take off the offending clothing or shoes, quite quickly, and often wash that area of my body with soap to remove, as best I can, any chemicals that are causing the body memory to be evoked.

Part of the 'problem' is that there are few 'mental images' associated with the body memory reactions. Occasionally I've had, the first time I tried a material, images of being raped as an infant, or beaten severely as a youth, but more often than not, the only sensation [I say 'only' not to minimize the pain but to note the singular 'known' reaction] that I feel is SHEAR TERROR. My throat feels like it is closing off, my lungs feel like an elephant is sitting on my chest, my intercostal muscles, on either side of my chest, feel like I'm having heart attack [which I learned, years ago, was not a heart attack, but a muscle spasm], my GI tract goes into a hyper-spasmodic cramp, my legs freeze up and I know I need to, as quickly as possible, remove the offending garment and do whatever I can to calm my nerves. Those are all the bodily sensations of an overt panic attack. 

But what is even worse is that, periodically, as best I know I've done all the things I need to do to make a material 'safe' for me to wear it [including, as I've learned, to wash new clothing at least 6 times before wearing them, to minimize any chemicals that will evoke this terror] and 'out of the blue' I have a major panic attack. In this situation, I'm not consciously trying to challenge the material or the reactions I suspect it will provoke; quite to the contrary, as best I know I've taken care of removing offending allergic chemicals and yet I am SLAMMED, full force, with a panic attack of formidable proportions.

The trouble is that this happens at least several times each month, and has been occurring with that frequency for four years now. The other issue that evokes a panic attack is food. Sometimes I'll eat a food which either contains some sort of preservative or ingredient that I'm sensitive to, that I'm unaware it contains, and 'out of the blue' I'm hit with a profoundly intense panic attack. The 'totally random nature' of such an attack reminds me [maybe subconsciously it's the trigger] of the manner in which my father would 'out of the blue' turn and beat me with his fists for no apparent reason. Or torture me in some other manner just because his psychosis evoked such a reaction at that particular moment.

Yet, Progress HAS Been Accomplished

As I say, I have finally found a shampoo that only 'burns' my scalp at an acceptable level (a complete lack of pain is no longer a probable outcome when neuropathy is present). I have a mattress that doesn't make me sick, but also doesn't allow a good night's sleep (luckily, though, I sleep most evenings at Linda's house, and her mattress is tolerable to me). And I know where I can purchase a mattress that I can likely tolerate and get a solid night's sleep again at my own house.

Since the overt crisis of the autumn of 2016, when I reached a point of total depression, believing that I had almost no clothes to wear that didn't make me intensely ill [compounded shortly thereafter with a 4th blood clot in my left leg], I have had the benefits of yoga therapy, offered by a close female friend who is quite knowledgeable in that modality, and have slowly dragged myself out of what seemed at the time to be a bottomless pit of anguish and hopelessness. I now know I can wear jeans without a significant negative reaction, and I can wear shirts and socks which I can tolerate after I've washed them for 6 - 10 times to remove offensive chemicals.

I am still having MAJOR problems with shoes, though. The white New Balance cross-trainer shoes that I've worn for the past 4 years, which are by this point almost dilapidated [I joke that they look like 3rd-world retreads] have been continuously glued together and I've had them resoled several times. It's not that I can't 'afford' other shoes [I have probably 20 pairs of shoes I used to be able to wear in my closet], but foam material has become something to which I have a serious allergy and which, upon trying to wear, I have an overt panic attack after wearing for more than an hour. I'm researching other materials [some newer shoes are now made with a cloth-like materials other than leather or foam which might be tolerable] -- Xero or Nike Epic React or Skechers are a possibility which I plan to try soon.

I'm still having bad reactions to leather belts. A couple of years ago I found a Nautilus brand belt that was made with man-made materials that wasn't allergic to my body, but it wore out and I've found no other one since. I've searched online for another one, but thus far haven't found what I was looking for. So I wear jeans which are tight around the waist and need no belt to be held up.

Each time I accidentally wear an offending material or eat an offending food and have a significant panic attack, I feel as though my nerve endings have been fried. And my emotional reaction is to not attempt to challenge any materials for several more weeks, so thoroughly devastating are the attacks. Last week, for instance, I wore a pair of cargo pants that I hadn't tried to wear for the past four years and, apparently, the pants had last been washed when I was going through my 'compression socks chemical pollution' period [I had to discard a large number of clothes after that, since the chemical in the compression socks is intensely sickening to me -- washing them with my other clothes had been a major inadvertent mistake]. After about two hours of wearing them, I clearly determined I was having a panic attack not as a result of anxiety, but due to a chemical allergy. I took off the pants, washed my skin, and put on a pair of jeans, but it still took 6 - 8 hours to fully recover from the panic attack. I have to 'schedule' times when I'm going to 'challenge' a material, to make sure that for at least several hours afterward [in case I have a negative outcome] I can recover from the allergic reaction without having to be anywhere for a meeting or scheduled appointment.

Everytime I wash any of my clothing, I always run them through an additional rinse cycle, to clear out the maximum soap residual. I use Seventh Generation 'free and clear' laundry detergent, to minimize allergic reactions in the first place. Though I bought a used dryer last year, I've not made use of it since because of an overt fear of being 'polluted' with fabric softener chemicals, since I had such a crisis with a previous used dryer. I know it's paranoia, but since I have the option of drying my clothes are an indoor clothesline, I've been able to avoid my fear without a major alternate problem.

When I was in New Mexico over Christmas, my schizophrenic nephew, unbeknownst to me until I had returned from a visit to Santa Fe, had discarded four white compression socks that I had left behind at the casita that I was staying in at my brother and sister-in-law's property. That provoked a major crisis for me, since getting used to new compression socks is its own significant physically traumatic problem. I have to wash new compression socks 15-20 times [at a commercial laundromat, so as not to pollute my own washing machine with chemicals I can't tolerate] to make them 'tolerable' to me, and even after that, I wear them over ankle-high socks, so that the compression sock material doesn't come in direct contact with my skin. For six months after returning to St. Louis, I had only two tattered compression socks to alternate on a daily basis, which felt both emotionally and traumatically constricting. Finally, about 3 months ago, I finally gathered enough courage to try to wear some older black compression socks, that I hadn't used in several years, to see if they were 'tolerable' to my body. Lo and behold, to my joyous surprise, they did not cause an allergic reaction! Hence, I now have access to 20 compression socks that are in generally good condition, which with proper care should last for several more years [before I have to face the fear getting used to the chemical reactions of new compression socks].

In Summation

I guess I'd say, in concluding this article, that it's particularly depressing to continue, at the age of 67, to be subjected to intense body memory reactions to the rape and torture that I experienced as a child. I was terrified of my father right up until his death in 2011, so on a chronological level, it hasn't been that long since the 'terror provoking perpetrator' was in my world [even though I hadn't been around my father much at all since 1990]. As my therapist often says "you come by it honestly", which while reassuring that I'm not insane, is still quite bothersome.

Anyone who thinks that a person who experienced significant PTSD can 'just get over it' quickly is living in a fog of denial. Trauma of the kind and duration that I experienced simply does not 'clear out' quickly. I've been engaged in the most difficult work of mental health therapy for 40 years, with quite excellent mental health and bodywork/yoga therapists, and yet I continue to be plagued by profound emotionally and physically traumatic memories of that abuse.

It is important to remember that "you don't have to do it all alone". I have had the intimate love and respect of Linda, my significant partner of 10 years, who has been a wonderful support in my healing, the friendship and great working relationships I've developed in my Unitarian Universalist congregation, the emotional support of my New Mexico men's wellness community [even at a distance, here in St. Louis], and my own intense devotion to my personal recovery.

I know that I have to 'go through it to get beyond it' and I know that may continue until my dying day, but it doesn't make it any easier to know that. Recovery is no easy or simple journey.

Healthy Enough To Travel

I just finished reading my most recent blog, "Paradoxical Success", that I wrote in May of 2017. That makes it quite a while since my last post, and not surprisingly, a lot of 'water under the bridge' has flowed since then.

Downward Spiral

From October 2015 to November 2017, I experienced a rash of quite serious and what at least 'felt like' life-threatening health crises. First, there was the death of my much beloved and greatly respected former therapist, Shoshona Blankman, in New Mexico, in April 2015 -- which I didn't hear about until shortly before being scheduled to attend the 2015 New Mexico Men's Wellness Conference [6 months after her passing]. Between that and some accumulating health challenges, I had to cancel my trip to the Conference, literally on the way to the airport, and ended up in the ER for 24 hours, due to a major anxiety attack. [I have suffered from such emotional challenges quite a number of times in my life, and each time they result in significant setbacks, at least for a period of time.]

That was followed by greatly increased 'toxic' reactions to clothing, shoes, belts, and pants, many of which I'd worn for many years, but which now produced deeply uncomfortable heart palpitations and feelings of overt terror [a condition I term "materials hypersensitivity", though I'm now clear that the cause has a far more to do with emotional trauma than with any toxins organic to the materials, though I don't, in the least, rule out environmental toxins as complicating factors]. I had already been suffering, for 4 years previous to October 2015, with 'burning scalp' and 'burning leg' neuropathy [both of which continue to plague me].

By the summer of 2016, the "materials hypersensitivity" had become so pronounced that I was reading every article I could find on the Internet and talking to multiple medical personnel about how to resolve the issue, but unfortunately to no avail. No one seemed to have any answers which 'worked' for me. I couldn't take nutritional or herbal supplements -- I was far too hypersensitive to those as well -- and my mental health therapy, though quite effective for a wide range of my traumatic challenges, was not 'working' for becoming more tolerant of the clothing I used to be able to wear. Then, I made the horrendous mistake of inadvertently washing several different loads of clothes, with the compression socks that I was required to wear to minimize the chronic edema that I suffered from due to multiple embolisms over the years. The problem was that the compression socks had, embedded within them, chemicals that made me intensely nauseous if they made direct contact with my skin [I have had to wear thick over-the-calf gym socks underneath them to keep the chemicals from touching my exposed skin]. In doing so, I 'polluted' several loads of clothing, including almost all the underwear that I had been 'tolerant' of up to that point.

I reached the point, by September 2016, where I had NO clothing that didn't make me extraordinarily ill. I literally ran out of clothing to wear! On top of that, the last avenues of potential solution to my hypersensitivity had run out. No physician knew how to resolve my condition, not even allergists. I was down to wearing only a pair of long legged gym pants, and some old shirts. I felt at my wits' end and was extraordinarily anxious and depressed about life.

I had wanted to attend the 2016 New Mexico Men's Wellness Conference, having had to cancel the previous year's attendance, but in the midst of that clothing crisis, I additionally learned that I had melanoma cancer on my left arm. At that point, I had to cancel my desire to attend the Conference for a 2nd year in a row. The recovery from the cancer surgery was long and painful. And then, two weeks after the surgery, I had another blood clot in my left leg [the 3rd or 4th -- it's not entirely clear how many -- since 1997]. After spending several days in the hospital, I was given anticoagulant medication, but quickly ran into the problem of being able to adequately tolerate the dosage level prescribed by my physician. That crisis went on for almost 3 months, even while I was recovering from the cancer surgery, before I finally had an nerve-wracking appointment with the physician who was treating me for the blood clot. The result of that appointment, though -- thankfully -- was mutually deciding upon a dosage level I could tolerate without becoming profoundly sick.

In October 2016, I had the good fortune of finding out that a female friend, Pamela Todd, whom Linda [my intimate partner] and I usher with at The Sheldon Concert Hall, was skilled in 'yoga therapy', and Pamela noted that she was working with a couple of war trauma survivors of the Bosnian genocide. Slowly, with great effort and care, her yoga therapy began to have a positive effect upon my 'emotional trauma' reactions to my clothing, and I figured out some clothing [through trial and error] that I could tolerate without becoming frightfully sick. Her yoga therapy positions, which I continue to engage in on a daily basis, quite literally have saved my life. 

By the spring of 2017, I felt like I was 'on the mend'. But I kept ending up in the ER with various aliments, including a very nasty flu, and in the summer of 2017, with a kidney stone. When I have, in the past, had dental root canals, I have never taken pain medication, not due to any 'macho' desire to 'tough it out', but because the pain medication made me intensely sick, worse than the pain of the dental work. But when I was hit with the kidney stone, I quite willingly ingested the 'narco' that was prescribed [hydrocodon-acetaminophen combination] and often took a second tablet within an hour of the first -- because the pain was stunningly and profoundly intense! Luckily, although I was unable to 'pass' the stone on my own, within 4 days of being hit with the kidney stone I was put in the hospital and given surgery, which broke up the stone with a laser beam. Another week with a catheter followed [which was no less painful than the kidney stone and far more disruptive of my physical comfort and functionality], but finally, upon the removal of the catheter, I was 'cured' [though I continue to have some periodic residual pain].

On My Feet Again After Two Years of Continual Crisis

By November 2017, I felt 'healthy enough to travel' again. That was the first time in over two years that I felt I had reached an adequate point of physical and mental health that would allow me to travel without excessive pain or anxiety. Having attempted to travel to my home state of New Mexico in 2015 and then again in 2016, and having had to cancel the excursions each time, I wanted to visit family and friends, for an extended time, so I decided to spend a month in New Mexico [from late December through mid-January]. I wanted Linda, my intimate partner, to travel with me, but she has a part-time position at the Missouri Botanical Gardens [a customer services role she has enjoyed for almost a decade] and could not be away during the Christmas season. She encouraged me, though, to take the trip, feeling that such a trip would engender greater self-confidence, given that I'd be traveling alone. And it would give me the opportunity to engage in extended visits with my family and long-term friends.

I had hoped to take the train to Albuquerque, but the planning for such was foreshortened by the recovery from the kidney stone. Hence, I chose instead to drive to New Mexico. I was concerned about such a method of travel, in that, with multiple blood clots, driving long distances was a potential problem. But I decided to more leisurely drive to New Mexico over 3 days, with multiple stops to get out and stretch my legs, keeping the blood flowing adequately. Plus, with cruise control, it would be tolerable.

I spent Christmas with my brother and sister-in-law in Albuquerque [they own an adobe apartment complex and willingly had lodgings for me], and had the chance to visit friends for a week and a half there. Then I drove up to Santa Fe, for a week, staying in a casita that my brother owns, to visit the museums there and have the opportunity to visit with friends in northern New Mexico. I spoke nightly with Linda [we have a mutually loving, decade-long intimacy, and we enjoy sharing our daily activities with each other], and by early January, she was able to join me in New Mexico, for the balance of my trip there. We spent another week back in Albuquerque and three more days in Santa Fe, visiting more of my friends and seeing parts of New Mexico that we both enjoy greatly.

A Different and More Refreshing Perspective Upon New Mexico

As I have enunciated in many previous posts, I've always had mixed feelings about my years in New Mexico. I often write about Albuquerque and St. Louis [between which I've spent 49 of my 66 years] as the 'tale of two cities'. My years in New Mexico were often quite frustrating to me, in that the economy there is 'challenging' even in good years, and 'devastating' in 'bust' years. And, on top of all of the financial and employment challenges, I have been, throughout my life, engaged in a long-term, very emotionally painful, recovery from profound childhood sexual abuse incest/rape and physical & mental torture. Those subjects have been covered, extensively, in many of my past posts.

For this trip, though, I wanted to approach my visit to New Mexico in a very different -- and more refreshing -- light, with 'recovery' and 'connection' as the watchwords and 'minimal frustration' as the focus. And, by and large, I was successful in that effort.

In addition to visiting with my brother & sister-in-law and their families, and spending quality time with friends whom I often see when I visit New Mexico, I made a special point of contacting people who I hadn't met with in a very long time. I had, in all cases, been communicating with them via social media for the past 5 or more years [and made use of Facebook Messenger to arrange times to get together while I was in town], but in finally sitting down for extensive conversations, often for the first time in over a quarter of a century (!), I afforded myself the opportunity to 'get to know them' in a far deeper way that I'd known them when I was younger. I noted to many of the people I met with that "we've now lived long enough on this planet that a distinct 'arc' of our lives has manifested itself, and we can now view our lives -- and the value of our friendship -- with greater clarity". I learned things about people I'd known well, most often from political and social advocacy activities, that I found quite intriguing and intensely educational. On some levels, we discovered that, while we had worked together and had shared many endeavors over the years, we didn't REALLY 'know' one another very well at all. The depth of those conversations was both powerful and mutually empowering. It was, as though, now that we are 'retired' and in our advanced years, we can drop many of the 'cultural facades' that are constructed in our society, that block true emotional intimacy, and 'know one other for the first time'.

There were, no doubt, several points during the trip, when setting up appointments was sketchy or I had periods when I couldn't quite figure out what next to do with my time, that the 'overarching frustration' that I had felt when living in New Mexico began to take hold. But, being well aware that I did not desire to "go there" on this trip, I 'talked myself through' those moments and decided to not allow myself to become captured by those old and emotionally vacant feelings. It took a 'force of will' to continually maintain a positive and vibrant perspective, but once I had another appointment with an old friend, the energy and connection between us quickly and effectively dissipated such frustrating feelings.

One of the 'old feelings' I had, that cropped up even in the midst of my meetings, was "Why had friends, who were successful in their own employment opportunities, not assisted me, all the years when I lived in New Mexico and was 'hitting the wall' due to minimal decent employment, with some suggestions on where to look for jobs or people to connect with?" But, frankly, I had to step back from that frustration and see how many of my missed opportunities had to do with my own mental health challenges [due to the intense PTSD evoked by the incest & terror I had experienced in my childhood] and that others around me were either unaware of the challenges I had faced, or not at all clear on how to assist me, even if they had been willing to do so. It surely didn't help that I was deeply constricted by serious substance abuse until I was in my early 30s [due to the profound depression and suicidal feelings I wallowed in for years after the childhood torture], nor that I was effectively 'out of the picture' for 7 years between the ages of 35-43, due to recovery from a major nervous breakdown in 1985. [Shoshona, to her wonderful credit, reinterpreted the 'breakdown' as a  'breakthrough', stressing the recovery from the PTSD and encouraging me to rise above the often horrific feelings of self-victimization.]

Additionally, we were all 'victims' of a relentlessly crummy economy in New Mexico. Finding decent employment, for anyone, no matter how many graduate degrees they had acquired or professional connections they could muster, was difficult, and while people 'cared', the competition for good jobs was often brutal. (Many highly skilled and well-educated people in New Mexico, at least in the larger cities, are willing to compromise on employment just to live in an area that is topography stunning and which has pleasant, temperate weather most of the year.) And I knew many of the people I met with on this visit via politics, which is its own cutthroat business. While many of my visits were with very good and greatly respected political allies, many of whom I had worked with on multiple campaigns, all of us knew candidates who treated you like 'the best thing since sliced bread' while a campaign was being waged, and then often acted like they couldn't remember your name after winning [or losing]. If you were 'of value' to their own future, you were still welcome in their camp; otherwise, you quickly become so much flotsam. Given the Public Administration graduate degree I had acquired in 1978, politics was one of the few avenues of social and economic advancement in an economy that heavily depended on government funding [being a poor border state], but if your candidate had lost or was no longer in power, your 'value' in the overall economic standing was questionable at best. Even if the Democratic Party [of which I was a well-known activist and for which I was a seasoned campaigner] had won a subsequent election, if the candidate was not your man or woman, then you were subject to the same kind of [figuratively speaking] 'political bloodbath' as someone from the 'other' party.

 Feeling Greater Comfort With The Choices I Made - Or Which Were Made For Me

But I tried to not 'go there', not go to the 'what if's', not wallow in the 'if only this had been true', when in fact something quite different had been the actual reality, on this trip and in my visits with old political allies. As one of many examples, after the Clinton-Gore Campaign in 1992, during which I was the Statewide Volunteer Coordinator for the general election and had, by the conclusion of the campaign, over 1700 volunteers throughout the state under my auspices, almost all of the campaign staff had been given patronage employment in Washington, D.C. or with the Arkansas Democratic Party. Except for me, that is. I had been caught in the unenviable position of being paid by the New Mexico Democratic Party, but working for the national staff. The Clinton-Gore staff felt no obligation to me [since I was not on their payroll], and the state party felt no obligation either [since I worked for the national staff]. I was cut out on both sides. No one felt any obligation to assist me with employment. But as a colleague later darkly joked, at least I didn't get indicted and have to obtain legal counsel, unlike many of the Clinton staffers who got caught up in the 'Travel-gate' and 'Whitewater' witch hunts.

After having worked on 50 Democratic Party campaigns by that point, I finally learned that it was not in my best interests to be a 'political whore', offering my services to almost any candidate just because I thought they were going to adequately serve the public, but whom I didn't know at all well. From that point forward, I only offered my campaign services to people who I personally knew and trusted, and even then had no expectation that any kind of post-election employment would be manifested due to such assistance.

As I noted in my previous "Paradoxical Success" post, as it turned out, having finally 'hit the wall of total frustration' with the employment and educational climate of New Mexico, I was motivated to actively seek admission to graduate programs beyond NM, and to seek employment in states where such possibilities were greater. That such employment was ultimately unsuccessful even in Missouri was surely depressing, but somehow life has worked itself out, and I'm in far better shape now than I'd been in my younger years.

My mental health is now more flexible, my emotional trauma more recovered, and though I still have many challenges to overcome in relation to the 'materials hypersensitivity' -- it is an ongoing challenge and one not easily scaled -- this most recent trip to New Mexico let me know, in a deep and comforting way, that the choices I have made in my life have managed to be fairly healthy and emotionally productive, and have allowed me to continue to 'fight the demons of my childhood' from a competent perspective. The very nature of life assures us that 'it ain't an easy journey', but I've managed to live far longer than I ever expected when I was younger and with a greater ability to bounce back from health challenges.

And finally, as both Shoshona said back in 1998, when I moved to St. Louis, and a very close friend reiterated on this visit, "Albuquerque works well enough for many people, it just didn't work for you. You needed a bigger playground, to spread your wings, and you've found it." I still very much enjoy visiting my former home, and will hopefully always enjoy the company of my many good friends and allies [as well as the love of my family and relatives], but St. Louis is now 'home', in a very clear and distinct way. I've been here almost 20 years and, other than from an employment standpoint, it has 'worked well for me'. I have a most enjoyable and loving decade-long intimacy with my partner and a wonderful religious community where I feel respected and appreciated. Life is good.