An Even Darker Night Of The Soul

The previous time I wrote about 'The Dark Night of The Soul', on May 19 of this year, I was generally discussing psychic distresses. This time, I need to delve even deeper into the morass of my childhood PTSD and talk about what has occurred this summer that has sent me into the 'sulfuric acid' pool in the basement of my PTSD, the deepest, darkest recesses of pain that I have ever engaged -- and a 'part of Self' that has terrified me all of my life.

Confronting The Anger About My Abuse

In February of 2016, after a lifetime of being far too terrified to confront it, I finally summoned the courage to challenge the anger that was corrosively eating away at my soul. In my family-of-origin, only my father was 'allowed' to express anger -- and in his case, what he most often expressed was RAGE: violent, brutal, and destructive rage toward his children and spouse. If any of us got angry about being beaten or brutalized by his rage, he beat us even worse. He simply could not tolerate any challenge to his sole position of 'master of the house'. As a result of that brutally instilled learning, as an adult I found it difficult, in fact terrifyingly difficult, to express my anger openly toward anyone. At most, I engaged in destructive sarcasm, which was it's own quite negative expression of anger, and it effectively destroyed many a relationship over the years. Most of the time, when I would feel anger, it was 'inwardly directed', in intensely self-destructive substance abuse or suicidal feelings, as I unconsciously attempted to soothe the awful pain in my heart.

But in February of this year, I finally reached a point (after years of encouragement by my mental health therapist) to SHOUT OUT my anger during 'Anger Workouts'. Anger toward my abusers, anger toward my parents for having unremittingly raped and brutally terrorized me as a child, anger toward the employers who had blown me off for being 'overqualified', anger toward my eldest brother who had legally brutalized me in a nasty inheritance battle, anger toward people I had worked with in politics who promised me patronage employment if they won, and then betrayed that promise after the election, anger toward 'parts of my Self' that had wanted an alternate manifestation of my somatic being [because it felt so thoroughly unsafe to 'be me'] and I couldn't ever help them with that fulfillment. Mainly, I got ANGRY openly about being TERRORIZED the whole of my life. That was the positive side of the outflowing of that anger.

The 'Terrorizing Part of Self' Fights Back

But the 'part of Self' that had terrorized me all my life, the 'part' that had learned how to interact with the world only from the standpoint of terror, who's only reality was to be terrorized and to terrorize in return, fought back, quite in an unconscious way. For the first time in my life, I started periodically washing my underwear with my compression socks. Now, why this is a major problem is that while the compression socks are beneficial in that they control the edema in my left leg (the one that has had two embolisms), they contain a chemical which is incredibly toxic to my system. Interestingly enough, these socks are advertised as being able to be worn AS socks, and many people, apparently, have no problem with that approach. But, for whatever reason, due to my hypersensitivity to materials, which I've been suffering from for at least 6 years (I wore latex compression hose, to control the edema, until I became allergic to the latex), I can only wear the compression socks if I have knee-length athletic socks on underneath. And everytime I handle the socks, I have to immediately wash my hands, as the chemical gets into my skin and makes me quite ill, quite quickly.

Each time I would wash a compression sock with the underwear, thinking that I was NOT doing this (believing that I had properly separated the clothing so this would not occur), the underwear became horribly 'polluted' with the chemical, and the result (sorry to be so intimate, but this is the nature of my present 'dark night') was that my genitals 'burned' from the chemical. A horrible, stinging, burning, incredibly painful sensation. I would talk about it in my therapy, crying with anguish about being 'so stupid and unaware', and then did it again. I was down to 5 pairs of underwear pants and 5 t-shirts that were not 'polluted' in this manner, as I prepared for my trip to New Mexico. Then, equally unconsciously, I managed to wash a black compression sock with my regular black socks and the remaining underwear. When I realized I had done this, it truly felt like it had occurred in an alternate universe, one which I had no control over. Having done so, 'I' effectively torpedoed my planned trip to New Mexico. This was truly devastating. 

A Devastating Crisis Becomes Even More So

I was already facing a situation where I could 'tolerate' only two pairs of shoes that I owned (and kept having to repair those two to make them wearable) and only two pairs of black jeans. It's not as though I couldn't afford more clothing or shoes, nor that I didn't have multiple pairs of both that I had worn comfortably in the past. But the hypersensitivity to materials had become so thoroughly overt in the past two years that I was 'running out of clothing to wear' that didn't make me incredibly ill. To add insult to injury, this summer I began to become hypersensitive to belts. I tried to wear belts I had owned for years and got really sick, almost immediately upon putting them on -- intense nausea, heart racing, head feeling like it was going to explode. Really deeply terrifying! I thought at first it was only the fact that they were leather belts, so I saw a cloth belt advertised at Eddie Bauer and tried that. I put it on and three minutes later as I was leaving my house I literally ran into the wall from my equilibrium being messed up. I thought "this can't be because of the belt!", so I left it on and got into my car. But within 5 minutes, I was becoming so horribly nauseous that I grabbed the belt and pulled it off. Some of the nausea diminished, but only slightly. I continued to be deeply nauseous for somewhere between 24 - 36 hours after! This was an even a worse reaction than to the clothing or shoes -- with them, the nausea diminished after about 18 hours. 

So now I'm in this really weird, really bizarre world where my underwear (at least the pants that I could 'tolerate' without becoming ill) are 'polluted' in a way that is frightfully painful to me (burning genitals are not something to be rationally tolerated), I only have two pairs of jeans that I can wear without sickness, and only two pairs of shoes that don't make me intensely sick. [And even with them, I have to wear three pairs of socks to create a barrier between my feet and the glue that was used to repair them -- which is a distinct problem, in that I've already been suffering for the past 3 years with burning, searing neuropathy in my lower legs, 24 hours a day.] Luckily one of the jeans is 'tight' enough that I don't need a belt; the other one I need a belt, but have one that is almost totally shredded out, but barely functional and tolerable. On Wednesday of two weeks ago I tried a pair of underwear that I thought were not 'polluted', but which turned out to be. By the end of the day, Linda (my female partner of many years) and I were at an event at Washington University and I became intensely sick to my guts and had to go home. I laid down, sans underwear, for about an hour, when the insanity and total frightful pain of my circumstance finally, utterly and completely overwhelmed me.

For about a half hour I went into total emotional breakdown, laying on a bed screaming in anguish, holding my hands over my face, crying out in the most terrifying psychological pain I have felt in many years, with Linda holding me as best she could, trying to calm me. She had had the experience of being a 'witness' to my 'Anger Workouts' and therefore knew this wasn't 'about her', but it must have been, nonetheless, quite unnerving to her. [As she later said, "this wasn't an Anger Workout, this was the real thing".] I hadn't been that deeply pained with anguish since the nervous breakdown/breakthrough I had experienced in 1985, when as a result of an acupuncture treatment which had gone horribly awry, I experienced non-stop trembling terror for 3 months, and then intense panic attacks thereafter for another two years. [That I made it through those years was rather incredible, and a testament to the excellent guidance and work with my dearly beloved, recently passed away, therapist in Albuquerque.]

I was screaming out that I had utterly and completely sabotaged my world, that what little 'flexibility' I had left in my materials hypersensitivity had been destroyed, and I had no where to turn for relief. The bizarre and wholly weird nature of this hypersensitivity to materials over the past several years simply has had me completely flummoxed and I felt at the end of my rope. I was fully willing, at that point, to die. I saw no way out of this dilemma.

Luckily, with Linda there, she suggested we call my mental health therapist. Equally luckily, he was back in town from a conference. We talked for about 45 minutes, going over what had occurred this past summer, and what he emphasized -- and I feel this is quite accurate -- is that a 'part' of my personality which is totally focused on terrorizing me had indeed sabotaged my world, very probably as a result of my finally challenging the anger that I had been too fearful to challenge my whole life. And it was 'unconscious', in that my 'conscious' part of Self was unaware of this other part of my personality -- making the nature of my abuse even more bizarre and the degree of my PTSD even more insidious. Linda suggested taking two pairs of pajama bottoms I still had and making them underwear until we could come up with some other solution to this bizarre hypersensitivity to materials. Not much of an option, but at least a minimal option.

The Complete Landscape Of My Present Crisis

Since then, I have had surgery for a malignant melanoma. That is unnerving me, the whole cancer issue. And I strained a muscle in my groin, from bicycle riding, and that hurts mightily (my doctor gave me some exercises to slowly heal the situation). And now, as of today, I have realized that only one of the pajama bottoms is 'tolerable', since apparently I managed at some point over the summer to 'pollute' the other one. So, I'm down to one underwear pants that I can tolerate without getting sick or having my genitals burn. I have taken all the other pairs of underwear (from an older batch and new ones that I bought this year) and washed them MULTIPLE times (up to 15 - 20 times at this point), hoping that eventually they will be tolerable to me. (I tried one brand after 15 washings and got horribly ill almost immediately). Don't know if this will 'work', but I have no other options available that I'm aware of.

So, THAT is why I feel so intensely depressed and 'with my back to the wall' right now. And feeling like I'm in this really bizarre, intensely weird world where my best efforts to keep myself SAFE failed disastrously. And I'm running out of clothes to wear that don't make me sick. I've got appointments next week with a couple of allergists (one Western medical and one acupuncture-related) to find some sort of solution to all of this before I completely feel that my life is finished.

I still have a very loving intimate partner [who says she isn't going 'anywhere', that she is devoted to my healing "because we have a lot of years of joy left in our lives"], a superb and devoted mental health therapist, an excellent Medicare insurance plan, a decent and adequate income, many loving friends and family, a house I own, a religious community that respects and cares about me, etc. It's not as though I don't have 'options'; I'm not poverty-stricken, I'm not facing the likely possibility of being killed by police or other assailants (because I have white privilege and live in a relatively safe neighborhood), I have access to decent drinking water and food. Hence, I'm not unaware of the advantages I have in spite of the truly bizarre nature of this condition in which I find myself. 

My mental health therapist strongly believes much of my hypersensitivity is due to the PTSD, of being from a family where I was raped and brutally terrorized, almost without relief, for 18 years, and that my mind is still effected by that terror and my body is 'strained almost to the breaking point' due to the overtaxing of my adrenal glands and other organs from non-stop fight-or-flight syndrome.

What Is Next? Is There A Next? Is There Reason For Hope?

Will I make it through this? I don't know. I really and truly don't know. I want to say yes. I want to live and heal and live into a ripe old age, at least beyond my 65th birthday. But I'm in a state of intense fear right now. Really, really intense fear. [And it isn't solely because of the Presidential election, which is unnerving all by itself -- in my opinion, if Trump is elected, what hope is left for our democracy?] I'm NOT feeling suicidal, in the conventional sense of the term. I want it 'all to work out', but 'hope' feels like it is slipping away.

I know my female partner, who deeply loves me [and whom I feel has been an incredible gift in my later years, whom I deeply love and feel safe around], wants me to survive. I know one of my brothers, who has been a wonderful and loving support in recent years, wants to keep his brother in this world. My mental health therapist (who has been my therapist for 16 years) believes I can survive this and maybe even thrive again someday; he is working very closely with me to keep me from 'pulling the plug' on my life out of shear fright and pain. And, of course, I have many, many loving and caring friends, who would be deeply pained if I exited before a natural end of life.

Hence, while many well-meaning friends believe my only major healing crisis is recovering from the cancer surgery, actually it is all far, far more of a crisis than that alone. Which is why I am deeply and painfully struggling, day by day, sometimes hour by hour, through this 'even darker night of the soul'.

On Aging: A Personal Perspective

The following is the full text of a sermon, entitled On Aging: A Personal Perspective that I composed and presented at the First Unitarian Church of St. Louis on August 14, 2016. It includes all the elements of the church service, other than the hymns and special music.

Chalice Lighting

#502, from Singing The Living Tradition, the Unitarian Universalist hymnal:

Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season.

It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year.

It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow.

Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.

(W.E.B. Du Bois)


Prayer and Meditation

Baba Ram Dass, the author of Be Here Now, which was very influential on my early years of healing, wrote an essay entitled "How To Keep Your Perspective Along The Path". He wrote "Doing sadhana [spiritual practice] can be as much a trap as any other melodrama. It is useful to have some perspective upon the path in order to keep yourself from getting too caught up in the stage in which you are working." While there are 11 helpful pointers that he lists, for the sake of brevity I will emphasize three of them:

• At first you will think of your sadhana as a limited part of your life. In time, you will come to realize that everything you do is part of your sadhana.
• The initial euphoria that comes through the first awakening into even a little consciousness, except in a very few cases, will pass away... leaving a sense of loss, or feeling of falling-out of grace, or despair. The Dark Night of the Soul, by St. John of the Cross, deals with that state.
• Early in the journey you wonder how long the journey will take and whether you will make it in this lifetime. Later you will see that where you are going is HERE and you will arrive NOW... so you stop asking.

Let us mediate on these words as we engage in a time of silence.

1st supplemental reading

From Getting Over Getting Older: An Intimate Journey by Letty Cottin Pogrebin:

Because it is so full of paradoxes and prone to distraction, nostalgia is best defined by what it is not: It is not homesickness, although it can derive from similar feelings of yearning. It is not a substitute for fulfillment, but rather an experience recalled for itself, and it is not pathological unless we overidealize the past or repress truthful memories. Rather than "a longing for something far away or long ago" (as one dictionary defines it), nostalgia is an acknowledgement of what that long ago something once meant to us, an exercise in appreciation, and an energizing, nourishing reconnection with who we were then.

Yet, some people fight it. "I'm always looking for antidotes to my in-born nostalgia," writes Daphne Merkin about being plagued by a string of losses of objects and people -- an erring, a scarf, a friend -- and annoyed that she misses them. Though moved by her account, I take a different view, having realized long ago that my losses are as much a part of me as anything I possess. All of us are the sum of our losses and our gains, but nostalgia lessens the losses by reminding us that nothing is all gone as long as it is remembered.

Many intellectuals assume that all nostalgia is mired in the swamps of middlebrow mushiness, or that being impervious to the past is a badge of sophistication. They put down personal nostalgia in the same breath as they disdain the latest theme park, suggesting that drawing pleasure from one's private memories is as morally corrupt as the mass marketing of a distorted American past. Underlying many of the nostalgia put-downs is the implication that we reminisce when memories are all that we have. In fact, what most of us do is use the past as a cache of clues to the times that made us what we are.

Surely there is nothing silly about cleaving to the mood and manners of another decade if we find strength or comfort there, or if drawing upon those memories helps to keep us whole.

2nd supplemental reading

From The End of Innocence: Facing Life Without Illusions by Sheldon Kopp:

In the face of repeated experiences of overwhelming helplessness and bewilderment, the child must find a way to make sense of a confused and confusing world. There may be little option but to escape into the reassuring world of personal fantasies made up of variations on the disconcertingly discredited family fairy tales.

The raw sense of total vulnerability must be shielded. To survive emotionally, there may be little else such a child can do at the time. But out of such a configuration, the child gradually develops a neurotic way of life that continues into adulthood. Pseudo-innocence requires wearing the blinders of denial. By making powerlessness into a seeming virtue, such a person acts as though God watches over the weak and the naïve. Preoccupation with the past involves pretending that, if childhood is never outgrown, one will always be watched over.

Residual weakness, helplessness, and dependence prevent people from ever feeling grown up. They remain embedded in nostalgic longing. It is not a matter of retaining childlike spontaneity, but rather of holding onto the childish insistence that someone else must take care of one so frail.

For others of us the dream of righteous vengeance maintains the image of heroic virtue as we await the time when we will be able to conquer all evil, to be recognized and appreciated at last. But it matters little whether the expectation of living happily ever after is sought through needless self-sorry suffering or hazardously reckless romantic adventures. Feigned humility and pretended bravado bring the same results. The real dangers of life are obscured, the opportunities for growth overlooked, and the rewards of taking care of oneself missed.

An older child may lean that what was first believed does not always turn out to be true. Still sometimes thing work out in a way that partially validates these early expectations. In growing up, such a child can retain a realistic measure of hope and trust. Modified by outside-the-family experiences of adolescence and early adulthood, the original innocent attitude can be developed into a more complex world-view without the person being stuck with a sense of having been tricked and misled.

Sermon

"On Aging: A Personal Perspective", by Donald B. Jeffries, Credentialed Minister, Men's Wellness Ministry, First Unitarian Church of St. Louis

Several weeks ago, John Knoll asked me to consider giving a sermon for the Summer Series. I had been planning to write an article for the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute Blog on 'aging', so I decided to accept his request, modify my ideas and give this sermon on that subject.

There are four parts to this sermon this morning which express four different 'themes' about the aging process. They are only loosely connected to one another, in the sense that they are all about how aging has affected my own perspective on life.

• The first portion is about my personal perception of aging, based on how my own life has unfolded.
• In the second portion are various observations about how our perception of the meaning of aging is dependent on the chronological point that we occupy on the path of life.
• The third portion will address some of the ways in which aging is affecting the leadership development and continuity in our congregation.
• And then I will conclude with some further personal perspectives on what it might mean to 'live a life with purpose' for the remaining years of my life on this planet.

Part 1: Personal Perception of Aging

Next month, I turn 65 years of age.

In a cultural sense, that age represents a significant 'turning point' in our lives, in that we become eligible for Medicare. Since we can start accepting Social Security at 62, some of us, including myself, started those payments earlier this year. Given the profound increase in the cost of medical services in America over the past couple of decades, and the minimal reimbursement provided by the insurance companies under the so-called Affordable Care Act, having access to Medicare, which pays a minimum of 80% of medical costs, is a great advantage. In fact, given the problems that arise for many Baby Boomers who have insufficient retirement savings, many of us have looked forward to becoming 65, so that we would have access to Medicare.

Ever since I was 25 years of age, I have looked forward to growing older. I was never a great fan of 'youth' -- my own childhood and young adulthood had largely been obliterated by coming from a dysfunctionally violent and sexually abusive family-of-origin -- and so I wanted to find a way to actually enjoy adulthood by escaping from the profound depression that that brutal upbringing had bestowed upon my emotional life. I had, additionally, by my mid-20s, decided conclusively that I had no desire, whatsoever, to have children, primarily because I did not want a continuation of the kind of painful childhood I had experienced. And I was fearful that, given the terrifying modeling of my own parents, there was the potential that I would replicate that behavior with any progeny that I co-produced.

On top of that, I had no significant desire to be married, again due to coming from a family where marriage had been seen as a 'rock around one's neck'. And, since I had no desire for marriage or a family of my own, by 25 I started, in a very focused way, to date women who were 5 to 15 years my senior, in the hope that they were less likely to either want or be able to have children, due to their relatively advanced age.

Added to that perception was the concurrent painful experience I had with women my own age: that being that 90% of them were -- in a quite rational strategy that is amply supported by American culture -- looking for a partner who made a greater income than they did, and many of whom were seeking, as well, partners who will willing to assist in producing and supporting a family. I personally had a very difficult time finding decent employment in the boom/bust economy of New Mexico, where I lived from the ages of 17-48, and too many of the women I dated, even before they had taken the time to get to know me, were already stating quite openly that they wanted to have a family. Between the two demands, economic and familial, I found myself quite lacking in the eyes of women of my own age cohort.

Hence, since my focus was on older women, I wanted to 'appear' to be older, so they would 'take me seriously'.

I'm not at all sure I succeeded, in that my emotional maturity had been profoundly stunted by the overt brutality that I experienced at the hands of my father during my teenage years, and the sexual abuse that I was subjected to by both of my parents, but it was, nonetheless, my desire. At the very least, though, many of the older women whom I dated seemed to enjoy their cougar status, by having a younger man in their lives, because I had specific energetic qualities that men their own age had begun to lose.

The older I became, the greater the age of the women I dated, so that difference in 'energy levels' was maintained. Hence, my focus upon older women further encouraged my own desire to appear and 'act' older. As I aged and grew first gray, then white, hair, I liked that very much.

On top of an often forlorn attempt to manifest a long-term emotionally and sexually stable intimate relationship (which, for all my efforts, I didn't actually attain until I was 56 -- after a lifetime of serial monogamy), I had become a hippie and, in a misguided effort to soothe the emotional pain, sank into extensive substance abuse during my years of attending college, graduate school, and early attempts at professional employment. The overt depression and disorientation that I experienced as an outcome of my terrifyingly dysfunctional childhood produced, in me, periodic bouts of suicidal thoughts, and a desperate struggle to feel a stable 'sense of self'. By the age of 32, I finally had successfully achieved sobriety, but continued to be wracked by intense feelings of disorientation and dissociation.

Hence, just staying alive with a minimal degree of happiness became quite a struggle. At each chronological juncture of decades, I was AMAZED to still be alive. Upon turning 50, after having earned a second graduate degree, this time in social work, from Washington University, I was simply STUNNED that I WAS still alive!

Here I am, now, at 64, turning 65 next month, and it turns out, to my delight, that I'm in amazingly good health for a guy my age (my doctor continually assures me he is equally impressed by my positive health outcomes). Hence, heretofore, 'aging', at least as a physical manifestation, has been generally good to me, or at least it became a positive experience after I had managed to heal from my overt depression and pervasive substance abuse. That's not to say that I don't, like most people as they grow older, have very real health challenges -- in my case, I suffer from continuous burning neuropathy in my legs, multiple chemical sensitivities to a wide range of materials and foods, serious edema from having had two embolisms in my left leg, and the continuing aftereffects of my childhood PTSD -- but it is also to note that I still 'look forward to' aging, in the sense that I enjoy 'getting older and still being alive' within the mutual loving intimacy with my female partner of 8 years.

Part 2: Various perceptions of 'aging' depending on where one is in their life journey

> 'Aging' has different meanings for people living in different time periods:

• For young children, aging is a somewhat amorphous event, in that they may not have lived long enough to feel themselves 'aging': they might see it as 'growing older', but 'age' isn't 'oldness'.
• For people in the early 20s, age might mean becoming mature and having the opportunity to establish their own households, separate from their parents, as well as the opportunity to create some kind of career path.
• For people in their 40s, 'aging' starts to make some degree of 'longevity sense', in that they have now lived long enough to notice some sort of pattern and experience their existence as a 'journey' and/or if they have had children, they notice their own 'aging' in comparison to their offspring.
• For people in their 60s, 'aging' starts to have a very real and perceptive quality, since their bodies are beginning to feel the aches and pains of 'growing older', and some of their friends and colleagues around them begin to get cancer or other diseases and die.
• For people in their 70s and 80s, they notice 'aging' because by now they have outlived many of their contemporaries, their bodies are experiencing major health issues, and if they had children, their children may likely have had children of their own, making the older adults grandmothers or grandfathers.

> Then there is the old observation, from the days when people read the newspaper more often than most do presently, that:

• When people are in their teens, they read the newspaper to find out places to go to experience fun activities with their friends.
• When people are in their 20s, they begin to read about their contemporaries having marriages, starting jobs, establishing careers, and, for some, forming families.
• When people are in their 30s, they are reading the newspaper concentrating on where they fit in the 'pecking order', and how others of their age are moving forward (or stagnating, or becoming unemployed) in their careers, and what kinds of schools are a good fit for their children.
• By their 40s, people read newspapers to check out stories about how families are faring in the economy, how younger adults are forming families or fighting wars, etc.
• By their 50s, people tend to start looking at stories about their contemporaries retiring from careers, and by their 60s, they start reading the obituaries to see who has begun to die 'relatively early'.
• By their 70s and 80s and later, reading the obituaries has become a sort of force of habit, since they are outliving many of the people they grew up with.

> There is also the 'perception' of age: people in America often want to 'be older' until they are around 25, at which point they start saying they 'want to be younger'. And when they turn 30, they consider it some sort of stunning upset, like they are already 'over the hill'.

> There have been a number of studies that looked at when 'happiness' reached its highest point in people's lives. We often assume that people are happiest when they are younger and become less so as they age. In contrast, many studies have shown that 'life satisfaction' follows a U-shaped pattern. People are indeed generally happy when they are younger, then happiness falls to its lowest point among those aged 45-54, before increasing again among those in older age groups.

> We have a society which is, hence, profoundly concerned about 'midlife crisis', and it is often assumed that occurs somewhere in the 45-54 age range. But, in fact, 'midlife' all depends on actuarial outcomes for any one individual. If you finally live to be 90 or 100, then 45-54 indeed was your 'midlife'. But if you die at 22, then midlife actually occurred at 10, or if you die at 45, then midlife really occurred, for that person, at 25. In fact, you might die in the midst of your 'midlife crisis', trying to 'act younger', thereby ensuring that while you thought you were going to live into an actuarial 'old age', you in fact expired far younger and your REAL midlife occurred in what most of the populace considers 'youth'.

> As a member of the Baby Boomer generation, I, like many of my contemporaries, have always had this 'sense of youth culture' from the days of our youth continuing into our retirement years. We still think of ourselves as being 'kids' who can still 'conquer the world' and transform culture with progressive ideas. We largely got away with that illusion due simply to there being a large number of us, given how many were born post-WWII. 'Aging' has, therefore, been something we could delude ourselves into believing was only for 'those older than ourselves', that we could 'live forever'. Of course, that IS truly a delusion, and we, as a generation, are finally coming to terms with our aging processes and the health-related issues associated with growing older.

Part 3: The effects of aging on leadership continuity in our congregation

'Aging' has a particular meaning for this congregation, in that, like many religious institutions throughout the nation, we have a large preponderance of WWII-era children and Baby Boomers who are growing older, but who are not being replaced, in equal numbers, by as many younger members, especially younger members with families.

For this congregation it particularly shows up in the leadership of the committees. Many of the older, more seasoned members are retiring, moving away, burning-out, becoming infirm, or dying, and are not being replaced in those leadership roles, at a sufficient rate, by younger members, resulting in there being both an increasing number of open committee chair positions and fewer members on each committee. This is, in part, a problem caused by the shrinking size of our congregation: we have 53 committees and only about 260 members.

On the other hand, there ARE definitely some younger members who are 'stepping up to the plate', and this is a positive development. It is important that we develop methods to educate new leaders with the assistance of the more veteran leaders -- in the manner of an apprenticeship program. One of the issues that often crops up in organizations is that the older, somewhat burned-out leaders, ask for younger members to come forward and actively participate, but those leaders fail to provide a system that allows for accessibility to those leadership roles.

It would, for instance, be enormously helpful if we were to develop the Policy Manual that has been in the planning stages for the past 4 years, wherein we can have written instructions and job descriptions, so that when a member joins the Church Council, Policy Board, or a church committee, the institutional wisdom developed by previous holders of the role can be 'passed forward' to the next candidate. By being focused on that manifestation of continuity, we will be in a better position to proactively handle the problems that arise, instead of resorting to the old -- and ineffective -- fallback of having to 'reinvent the wheel' each year.

Part 4: Living the balance of my life 'with purpose'

In conclusion, I want to address the issue about living a life with purpose.

For most of my adult life, I have gone through periods where I had a sense of purpose that motivated my actions as I struggled through my life journey. First it was schooling and student activism, then it was political campaigning -- at this point in my life, I have, since 1978, worked on 68 Democratic Party campaigns.

Then there was work on earning two graduate degrees; involvement with and devotion to Unitarian Universalism since 1987; serving on over 30 community boards of directors; active involvement in community organizing, activism and advocacy; and, since 1990, the men's wellness movement, which set the stage for the formation, in 2003, of my own fledgling nonprofit, the Mariposa Men's Wellness Institute. And overall, since 1982, the primary focus of my life has been healing from the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that I have experienced since I was a child.

In 2002, I resigned from a professional position as the Statewide Program Director for the Missouri Partnership on Smoking or Health, and to my surprise and frustration, found myself in an economic quandary that resulted in my being perennially redundant thereafter. (I really love that British term 'redundant', meaning unemployed, because it means that there are too many job applicants, who have now become 'redundant' in the economy!) While I've been able to cobble together an adequate life due to a small inheritance, I haven't been able to acquire any professional employment since 2004, and therefore consider myself to have become inadvertently retired at that point in my life.

Then, last year, shortly before I was planning to travel back to New Mexico to visit friends and family, and attend the annual New Mexico Men's Wellness Conference, I found out that Shoshona Blankman, my very beloved former female therapist and friend, had died of cancer the previous spring. That simply sent me for a loop and I was thrown into an emotional state of profound grief. She had been my mental health therapist in Albuquerque for 15 of the most difficult years of my healing, and then had readily offered to continue being my 'cheerleader' when I had moved to St. Louis in 1998. I had had the expectation that we would be great friends for many, many years to come, into the advanced age of both of us.

Between her death and increasing allergies to multiple chemical sensitivities [MCS], my 'sense of purpose' has, for the past year, been thrown off balance in a significant way, and other than an overwhelming focus on healing from the fear generated by the MCS, I have often felt like I've largely run out of energy and willingness to continue the struggle for social justice and other political//advocacy issues that had motivated my life for 43 years.

The other thing that happened as a result of Shoshona's death was that the mortality of life suddenly came to me full force and in profound contrast. For a very long time, far longer than most of my chronological contemporaries, I had continued to believe that 'someday I was going to manifest a career', in contrast to the larger reality that 'manifesting a career' was rapidly becoming a forlorn potentiality, since I was moving into my late 50s and early 60s.

In other words, AGING in the sense of 'having actually grown older' suddenly caught up to me. And my 'sense of purpose', which has periodically been lost and then found again, is, for now, for the present, a bit off-kilter and 'lost'. That has been both disorienting and distressing, as well as opening the intuitive, meditative spaces in my life for new potentialities of which I've not yet become aware.

I continue to foster the Men's Wellness Ministry that I founded in our congregation last year. I have barely kept my nonprofit alive, over the past 13 years, primarily by the force of my own love for men's wellness -- since I've never found funding for it -- and continue to write periodic articles for the MMWI Blog. And, of late, I have been writing long commentaries, attached to my Facebook posing, about the current presidential race.

Hence, at this point in my own aging process I am once again struggling to contemplate how 'living a life with purpose' will manifest itself for the balance of my life on this planet and on this temporal plane of existence. It is unlikely to 'look like' the expansive world that was available to me when I was younger, and it will not likely, ever again, include professional employment.

Therefore, I conclude my sermon with a bit of existential frustration and angst. Having had a distinct sense, at many points, of what I needed to do next, I am presently 'at loose ends' trying to figure out 'what to do next in my life journey', other than the continuing work on healing from the profound abuse that I experienced as a child and learning how to cope with the severe setbacks to my current health, caused by the MCS, that continue to disrupt my daily existence.

I've always laughed that as we age, our bodies fall apart, but we also gain wisdom about how to cope with those infirmities. Maybe that simply means I've matured and come to full awareness about being an older human being.

Finally, in closing, I will mention that 13th 'helpful pointer' that Ram Dass noted in "How To Keep Your Perspective Along The Path":

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.

Absolutely awesome!

Benediction

From Getting Over Getting Older

Gabriel, the main character in James Joyce's The Dead, realizes that "we're all in the act of becoming the past." Clearly, human beings have a great capacity for self-delusion in the face of this truth. The attempt to banish the past from the present is, to coin a phrase, as waste of time, since today becomes yesterday tomorrow. Each day moves into the past as soon as we've lived it. The future is only a prayer.

A Contrary Memory of Father's Day

Today is Father's Day, celebrated around the nation, often with fond memories, by families and children, about the loving relationships they had and continue to have with their fathers. Opening my Facebook account, I see many posts by adult children warmly and lovingly bestowing fond compliments upon their fathers, whether they be biological fathers or step-fathers.

For me, with the painful relations that I had with my father, Father's Day is a mixed blessing. I know many men my own age, who have families, and those families appear to warmly embrace them and display a distinct joy in their personhood. I know of other adult children who speak fondly of their fathers who live nearby or in other states, or whom have passed on, about whom the adult children tell wonderful and loving anecdotes. And I listen and smile for them, while at the same time I feel a profound sense of numbness in my own heart about my own father, who died 5 years ago. In those moments, hearing fond reminisces from other children, for me to feel numb is a positive and necessary defense, given what I often feel about my father.

Mixed Emotions About "Loving Feelings"

One of my father's most cherished statements, about 'loving' his children, was "I only beat you because I love you". For him, that was love! As I've said in previous blogs, one of the only ways my father knew how to 'reach out and touch' his sons was with his fists, in a fit of rage. My father was filled with rage on a consistent basis, as though it was his most 'familiar' feeling.

As I stated the day he died in 2011, "my father was a sadist and a pedophile" and rather than feeling sadness upon hearing about his death, I felt incredibly delightful joy. It was one of the happiest and most liberating days of my entire life. Finally, this man who had filled my life with intense brutality and a profoundly dysfunctional concept of 'loving parenthood' was gone. Yet, in his passing, it wasn't as though all of my painful memories died with him. To this day, whenever I'm out in public and I see an older man who reminds me of my father, a distinctly searing SHOCK runs through my body, causing me to tense up my muscles in defense, before my conscious mind kicks in and reminds me that I'm only being triggered by past painful memories and that this can't actually be my father since he's now dead.

Working Through Angry Memories

In my family, it was simply "not ok" to feel anger about our father's brutality. Feeling anger and having that anger seep out in the form of resentment always resulted in being beaten even more brutally by our father. He made sure that he was the only person in the family who was allowed to express anger, and his anger all too often came in the form of seething, loudly shouting rage, followed by the use of the metal end of his belt on our buttocks, or the back of his hand on our face, or his fists ploughing into our bodies.

I was the third of three sons, the youngest member of the family. I was given the same name as my father (although he was 'Donald Ward' and I was 'Donald Bruce'), I looked the most like him, having inherited his English/German facial structures far more than my older brothers [who inherited more of our maternal Hispanic features], and from an early age I was the child who was less athletic and therefore was around the house more often, instead of departing into the outer world, like my brothers, to escape the emotionally poisonous atmosphere of the family home. Additionally, as I've come to be aware of through many years of painful and disorienting (though eventually liberating) mental health therapy, I was the child who was most subjected to his pedophile behavior, being anally raped at 9 months of age, and raped, either anally or orally, on several other occasions until the age of 11. Recently, I've come to realize that I have almost no memory of my life between the ages of 5 - 10, as though there is a 'blank slate' in my memory bank. My therapist recently termed it "traumatic amnesia", caused by being in such a state of terror, during that period of my life, that the memories are locked away in a dissociative part of the brain.

I had several instances of seizure disorders during my early childhood, which the doctors finally labeled as epilepsy, but which I've come to realize, through intense therapy and extensive reading on issues of psychology and sexual abuse, were more likely caused by traumatic mental and bodily responses to violent rape. I was placed on anti-convulsive medication at the age of 11 (through the age of 22), which paradoxically increased my feelings of often 'being numb' as I entered my teenage years, when the violent brutality of my father also increased in intensity, thereby placing me in a physical position where I was unable to adequately defend myself. Given my father's later denial of his brutality (when I finally accumulated enough courage, with the assistance of my therapists, to confront him about his beatings), it was amazing that I was able to hold onto the clarity about his behavior and actually survive that terror and continue to be alive in adulthood. "Survived", though, was for many years a mixed blessing: it took many, many years of difficult and painful mental health therapy to finally move beyond an emotional state of profound and more or less continuous dissociation, given how terrifying it was 'to be safe and comfortable within my own body'.

One of the most liberating 'exercises' my therapist has motivated me to engage in, to assist in breaking through the wall of terror which continues to be the background landscape of my life, has been anger workouts. The nature of the exercise is to express my anger in a safe environment, whereby others around me don't feel threatened by that expression and simultaneously in such a manner that I can feel safe to express that anger without being further traumatized. The point is to get in-touch with the anger and create a relationship with the anger without being the anger. Many people engage in the anger workouts as a walking meditation, expressing the angry feelings either in their minds or in an area where they can shout it out without threatening others.

My intimate partner of many years, who cares deeply about my emotional recovery and who has come to understand and have great empathy about the nature of my trauma, has agreed in the last week to be in the same room with me, to act as a witness, while I vocally express my anger about the abuse I experienced as a child at the hands of both of my parents. She knows and holds quite ably to the knowledge that the anger has nothing to do with her, and therefore she needn't feel threatened by it. I am able to engage in the anger workout more safely, because with her in the room, I can more successfully 'titrate' the anger and not feel (as I often did in the past when I tried unsuccessfully to engage in the exercise on my own) that I will be overwhelmed by the anger and be thrown into a state of terror by my own expression of anger [given, once again, how it was 'not ok' in my family-of-origin to safely express anger].

Breakthrough Generated by 'Anger Workouts'

Just this past week, following an afternoon 'anger workout' wherein I allowed myself to shout out the anger I had built up from years of traumatic abuse, I had a most significant dream that night. In the dream, my father [who was an Air Force officer] was on a stage with several other military officers. They were discussing some sort of military task, and I turned to my eldest brother and said "he's doing a fine job", in reference to the officer who was talking. For some inexplicable reason -- my father had a lot of inexplicable, completely non-rational reasons for his anger -- my father became enraged by my comment (how he heard it was not explained by the dream). A messenger came up to my brother and I and said our father wanted to 'talk' to us. I turned to my brother and, pounding my fist, said "Let's both beat the crap out of him!"

We walked down this long hallway, through what was a baroque version of my grandparent's former New Mexico hacienda, and came to the back room where my father was. He demanded that I 'apologize' for the comment I had made "or else pay the consequences". I, who in the dream am my present 64-years-of-age, angrily retorted "And what might those consequences be?" My father's eyes became even more enraged and he noted I knew what he meant. I then said "Fuck you, I'm not going to apologize for expressing my own opinion." This alone was a major breakthrough; as a child I was terrified to ever express any open resentment, knowing full-well what the consequences would be and knowing I could not adequately defend myself from his brutality.

In the dream, he proceeded to pull off his belt and wrap it around his fist, with the metal end exposed. And I pulled off my own belt and wrapped it around my fist in the same manner and shouted "So you want to brutalize me? Let's go for it, asshole, except this time there will be two of us fighting!" My father becomes over-the-top enraged and reaches for a baseball bat and says "You have no idea what I'm capable of doing to you!" [When I was in my last year of high school, after my brothers had left home for college, my father often shouted, as he was beating me unmercifully "If you ever get too big to fight back, I can always use a baseball bat!"] I, in the dream, reach for another baseball bat and shout "Again, as I said, there are two of us in this fight! You want to beat me? You're going to get the same in return!"

At that point, the dream ended and I woke up, feeling both surprised by my reactions in the dream, though truly liberated by that, and feeling disturbed by the overt brutality of the dream.

Expression of Anger in Adulthood Almost Always Emotionally "Triggered" Me

As an adult, I have always been frankly frightened by any overt display of anger or threatened brutality, given how often that was expressed, to my profound disinterest, as a child. Far too many of my short-term intimate male/female relationships came to a sudden and, for me, terrifying end when my female partner would, for any number of reasons, hit me on the shoulder with their fists (often playfully, or to make an emphatic point). I, who was overtly frightened by such displays, just stood there in terror and said "This relationship is at an end. NOBODY hits me, ever!!" I never, ever, hit a woman in anger or for any other reason, and was terrified to be hit by a woman. On top of that, whenever women would become angry at me, in any overt manner, I departed immediately, since I would become emotionally 'triggered', fearing that, just like my childhood relationship with my own mother, the woman was going to 'set me up' to be beaten by another male (who that might be was something I was unaware of, but the trigger was enough to obliterate my feeling of safety in the relationship). Needless to say, this undermined a lot of my relationships, since a lot of women are socialized to believe that guys are 'tough' and can take that kind of playful hitting without flinching. Not so in my case, given the traumatic nature of my childhood!

Here I am, at the age of 64, a man who, while having been well aware that he was quite angry about his childhood abuse by his parents, followed by what he interpreted as abusive treatment by many, though thankfully not all, of his adult female partners, was too frightened to express that anger openly. And now, with these anger workouts, I am finally allowing myself to openly shout and be intimately aware of the reservoir of anger and corrosive terror that resides within my body. This expression is truly liberating and is breaking through so very many levels of fear and resentment that have for too long worked to my emotional disinterest and somatic breakdown.

Hence, as I stated at the introduction to this article, my feelings about Father's Day are painful and mixed, to put it mildly. I want to feel loving emotions about my father, just like so many of the people around me, but the fact is that I have very few loving memories of my father and frankly the vast majority of the memories I do have are filled with terror and resentment. When I hear others talking lovingly about their fathers, I often want to cry and cry deeply, not because I once had a healthy love for my father and lost it, but because it never existed (or, if it existed at all, the few times were obliterated by that continuous overt nature of his brutality). So, to the extent I can muster such warm feelings about this event, I complement my friends and relatives and wish them well, and express my loving feelings toward them, as adult children of fathers, or as adult children who have become fathers. While my painful feelings about the subject surely influence my perspective on the cultural holiday, I try as best I can to separate the 'past' from the 'present'.

That's a difficult passage, but one that is necessary for my personal journey to emotional liberation.

For Survivors of Profound Trauma, 'The Past' Is Rarely 'In The Past'

Several days ago, I was talking with a good friend, about whom I have a wealth of respect, who said, in his observations about my most previous blog ["A Dark Night of the Soul"] "Why do you keep dwelling on the past? Why not leave it alone and move forward?" I mention this, not in any way to insult his comment [I've always appreciated his interest in my writings], but to note that it is the kind of comment that has often been made by others whose personal experience does not include post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD].

For survivors of profound trauma, they would be quite overjoyed IF 'the past' could be 'in the past'. That would be of great benefit in their healing and moving forward toward a more positive emotional life.

Were it only possible….

Unfortunately, for myself and other survivors of incest, child abuse, torture, warfare, violent assault, traffic accidents, or other equally devastating life experiences, the past is too often quite 'current', in that it keeps inserting itself into our present reality. And, just as often, even if we have sufficiently worked through the trauma and know that the current situation isn't unsafe, it can feel unsafe due to 'body memories' which arise quite beyond the control or regulation of our conscious mind.

Memories of the Past Relived in the Present

In the manner that I write my blogs -- using my own experiences to point out general themes which also affect other survivors of profound trauma -- I want to give a couple of examples of this phenomenon.

> When I was 36, recovering from a nervous breakdown that quite devastated my world for about 9 months, I was in the grocery store one day, going through the check-out line. I was suddenly 'out-of-the-blue' hit with an intense panic attack, which I realized was related to 'escape'. And so I consciously said to myself "You're not 3 years old. You're not being cornered by your father and beaten senseless. You're 36, you can defend yourself, if anyone attacks you -- which, being a 6'8" man is unlikely -- you can take care of the situation." In other words, I had to quite consciously allow myself to overcome the terrifying 'body memory' of my childhood incest and torture, and know that THAT memory was THE PAST, not the present reality. And that was sufficient to allow me to finish the check-out process, pay the bill and leave the store without shaking like a leaf.

> In recent years, I have become more and more hypersensitive to materials and foods, in a manner that is greatly compromising my ability to live my life to its fullest. Items such as those, which seem to not affect others around me in quite the same negative way, sometimes simply 'blow me out of the water' and trash my physical and emotional equilibrium for several hours.

Before I go any further with this example, let me note that I'm only too aware of similar 'odd reactions', to certain materials, which have plagued me in recent years. But I had no particular reason to assume that that would be the case this time.

Several days ago, I had to get myself a new belt, as the one I had been using was 'shredding out' and falling apart. I went to Target, bought a black belt, and took it home. I put on the belt and started driving over to Jazz at the Bistro, where I was scheduled to usher. Within 5 minutes, my stomach started to severely cramp and within 10 minutes my throat started to feel like it was closing off, like I was suffocating. I commented to Linda, my intimate partner, who was in the SUV with me, that hopefully I was only having a 'fear of a possible fear reaction to a new material', that this was purely psychosomatic and not organic. But quickly enough, I realized that was not an accurate interpretation, and I pulled the belt off (I had brought my old belt with me, just in case). But the sickness didn't go away; if anything it only got worse. At dinner, I started feeling quite nauseous; by the time I arrived at The Bistro, I was feeling distinctly dissociated.

At that point, I consciously said, to myself, "There is nothing here at The Bistro for you to fear. No one is going to attack you. You're in a safe environment." But, frankly, it's didn't help much. The 'body memory' of my childhood terror -- which never has quite left my memory, in spite of 30 years of therapy -- simply swarmed over me and made me profoundly uncomfortable. While waiting for the patrons to arrive, I tried reading -- that made me ill. I tried talking to the staff -- that made me ill. I tried turning away from looking at the patrons, intentionally 'zoning out', but that didn't help much. It took every bit of my mental focus to keep calm and to appear calm (which I apparently succeeded in doing - Linda said later I appeared quite calm).

Eventually the 'feeling of terror' did subside, though it took about 2 1/2 hours after I had taken off the belt before I felt 'stable' and 'normal' again. And it took another 24 hours for the 'short-circuiting' of my body to calm down.

The Past Is Only Too Current For Trauma Survivors

For trauma survivors, the intensity of a reaction to a specific situation depends on the severity and longevity of the original trauma. If it was a one-time event, of limited duration, therapies such as EMDR are sufficient to overcome the disruption of emotional stability. But if the trauma occurred over many, many years and was combined with a complete lack of safe outlets to 'bleed off' the terror (as was true in my life and is often the reality for many other male and female survivors of childhood abuse, incest and torture), then the memory of the trauma is locked in the mind in a manner that makes it incredibly difficult to forget and 'move forward' with ones life.

Often, when I'm describing my experience with trauma-related symptoms and outcomes, people with whom I talking will say "Oh, you're being 'grandiose'. Terror? You really don't/can't mean that. You might be feeling uncomfortable, or a bit stressed, but don't you think you're using terms that are a bit overblown for the situation?" Yet, terror is the feeling that I'm often experiencing, right then, right in the present. Ever since that torture occurred (and it continued from birth until I was 22), I've had a very difficult time 'titrating' the sensation so that I can 'go forward with my life' without being overwhelmed when that sensation arises in my present experience.

It is true that terror is often out-of-place given the current situation, that anyone who hadn't been profoundly traumatized would likely only be feeling 'stressed'. But for PTSD survivors [and as noted, this isn't only true for child abuse survivors -- I've read about this occurring for war survivors and veterans as well] terror is the sensation that is being experienced, and that terror, though quite likely related to past events rather than the present, is intensely real for the survivor, as 'real' as any experience that anyone else around could feel. That it is inappropriate given the current situation is not something a trauma survivor can 'know', at that moment. 

For them, the terror is happening right here, right now, in the immediate moment.

And once that trauma has reignited itself, it's difficult not to be caught in a mad cycle of 'being fearful of fear itself', as the famous Roosevelt expression goes. I have spent much of the time, in recent years, feeling like 'I'm walking on egg shells', afraid that the next article of clothing, or the next food, or the next chemical odor, will once again knock me off my 'stable equilibrium' and send me headlong into a state of terror. To say it 'stresses me out', as the expression goes, is to put it mildly. I've learned to cope and still find a wealth of joy and peace in my life, but that fear of 'the terror being around the corner' never quite goes away.

And, as I've noted, this is equally true for many other survivors of profound trauma.

Recovery and Healing 'From The Past' is an Ongoing Process

If only we could allow the past
to remain in the past
if only we could live our present lives
as the current reality
without the past continuing to impinge upon
and control and abuse our present

If only we could move beyond the trauma
that often strangles our ability
to feel joy and emotional warmth in the 'now'
if only we could heal from those wounds
that so deeply limited our childhoods
and continue to limit our adult years

Healing is possible, and it is the avenue 
that allows us to grow and thrive
in the present, in a manner that was unavailable
to us in our past, in our childhoods

Maturity is possible and available, if only
if only
the past could stay in the past
and not continue to periodically
strangle our current lives.

Healing is indeed possible, I have no doubt about that. I've proven it quite often in my own life. It is difficult, and anyone making the journey should know, from the start, that it ain't going to be an easy road. 

Yet, the great paradox is that the more I feel safe in my life, the more the feeling of terror invades my current existence. 

I realize this sounds quite counterintuitive. But let me explain: the more we feel safe, the more our world is 'righted' after experiencing profound trauma, the more 'emotional space' we have to feel, truly feel, the full expression of all the trauma that we have, for good reason, 'stuffed' away in a place where it wouldn't continue to hurt us.

As my therapist says, the trauma is my 'mentor', though it often feels like a tormentor. My body will only allow certain memories to reoccur 'when I'm ready to deal with them'.

Or, I should say, will only allow them to arise now that I've achieved a distinct level of healing. Unfortunately, when I was younger and had almost no healthy boundaries, the memories flooded my world in a way that was beyond my ability to cope. And my 'method of coping' was dysfunctional, to say the least -- primarily I used excessive amounts of substance abuse to deaden the feelings of terror, feelings of inadequacy, and the feeling that I was basically 'stupid', as my father had told me thousands of times as a child. Luckily for my ability to survive and be healthy, I stopped that self-abuse at 32 and have been completely sober ever since.

But, still, in the present, when I have a negative reaction to a material (wearing new clothing before washing it 10 times, the glue in shoes that I haven't sufficiently 'baked off' in solar heat over several months, or the chemicals in my compression socks) or a food (allergic reactions to proteins other than poultry or salmon, or intense sickness from some sources of water, or eating food too fast and kicking off a hyperglycemic reaction), or certain social situations (when I feel uncomfortable or out-of-place, or where there are noises that are too loud), the emotional boundaries are blown wide open and I have no control over the arising feelings of terror. At those times, my body isn't expressing a healthy titration of the memories; other 'outside' experiences are 'making choices for me', ones that aren't in my best interest.

Yet, even then, in that paradoxical way, the trauma is a 'mentor', in that it is showing me what I still need to heal from -- and what I still need to 'feel' and 'work through'. Healing is not, and rarely is likely to be, 'easy' or 'comfortable'. It often isn't 'fun' nor 'something to greet with joy', though the journey can and often does eventually lead to a place of joy and peace. 

It just often requires going through Hell in order to arrive at the other shore.

But it is possible. Healing can occur. The past can, potentially, with enough work, struggle, meditation, therapy, and belief in and love for oneself, live in the past and stay in the past. 

Or, I should note, that is my hope!

A Dark Night of the Soul

I haven't written a blog post in over 6 months, as I have been focused on other projects. In the last two months, I have been totally focused, like a laser, on cleaning & reorganizing my house, which I had allowed to fall into a state of general collapse over the last 6 years. It had become, as I joked about, "more a warehouse than a home", when I was in the midst of my 'acquisition addiction'. About two months ago, I finally 'reached my limit' of 'stuff' -- too many books, too many music CDs, too many little things that were drowning me and cutting off my ability to thrive.

Now, though, I have, in jettisoning that addiction to 'more and more stuff' (which I had used, I realize, as a means of 'building a wall of psychic defense around myself') entered into what my therapist defines as the dark night of the soul, based upon a book by St. John of the Cross. When we are in the midst of transformation, we feel 'lost' and out-of-control, and there is no way to know, objectively, where we are headed next. The transformation has a path of its own. And in the midst of that transformation, there is a sense of disorientation -- and often depression and frustration. That's where I am right now. I know that the direction I was taking has not 'worked' for me, but I don't know [can't know] what direction to head in presently.

As a good friend used to tell me, I have to "allow the Universe to have an opinion". Personal 'control' of our destiny is, in any case, largely an illusion. We can plan, and sometimes our plans work the way we intended (and, indeed, having some kind of plan makes us feel safer and more emotionally stable), but other times "stuff happens" which is completely and utterly beyond our 'control', such as economic calamities, hurricanes, getting hit by drunk drivers on the highway, illnesses, falls, and a whole host of events that we never would have [nor could have] predicted. Or sometimes very positive events occur, which equally were not in our planning package, and we benefit from those circumstances. One simply 'never knows' beforehand. As Ram Dass and other writers talk about, the only 'thing' we know about is RIGHT NOW, the present, Be Here Now, etc. The past is, at best, an interpretation and the future is not knowable. As Letty Cottin Pogrebin says in her book Getting Over Getting Older "Human beings have a great capacity for self-delusion in the face of the truth. The attempt to banish the past from the present is, to coin a phrase, a waste of time, since today becomes yesterday tomorrow. Each day moves into the past as soon as we've lived it. The future is only a prayer."

I have tried, in my stuttering manner, throughout my life, to 'find the Answer' to a question that I didn't quite know I was asking, that of "how to find fulfillment" in this plane of existence. I have tried to 'fill' my life with activities and 'things' -- electoral politics, community organizing, serving on community boards of directors, anti-racism advocacy, books, college degrees, artwork, music and a host of other endeavors -- in the vain hope that that 'filling' would lead to 'fulfillment'. But they are two different things altogether. The accumulation of stuff and of activities does not, necessarily, lead to spiritual and emotional satisfaction. It does, sometimes, satisfy me temporarily, but it doesn't give me The Answer that I keep searching for and only rarely, fleetingly, find.

My therapist pointed out this past week that the 'thing' I keep searching for but rarely find is LOVE. I have gotten enough of it from others, at various points in my life, but what I'm profoundly incompetent at is giving it to myself. Achieving self-love -- as in centered-in-self as opposed to self-centered -- is something that was not modeled for me as a child and for which I have spent a lifetime searching without much success. Alice Miller, in her book The Drama of the Gifted Child discusses how we need a certain kind of emotional support at a specific developmental period in our childhood and when we don't get that support, we spend the rest of our lives searching for it, or trying to replicate it, without much success. The problem, she notes, it that we needed it when we needed it, at that specific developmental period, and that lacking will 'set us up' for needless suffering later in life.

I've realized that, as I work through this latest transformation [I've been here before and will be here again in the future], a bit of Gratitude Exercise is in order. Hence, I was thinking several days ago that there were 7 major life surprises that I could not have known about beforehand, and which continue to either bedevil me or have brought me unexpected joy.

Panic Attacks

Due to the profound nature of the traumatic sexual and physical abuse I experienced as a child -- wherein I literally didn't know from one moment to the next if I was going to be tortured by my parents for what was mainly an outcome of their own psychotic problems -- I began experiencing very serious, often prolonged and deeply debilitating panic attacks in my early teens. As I've gotten older and have been in mental health therapy for many years, the intensity and periodicity of those panic attacks has been minimized, but to my surprise (and frustration) they haven't gone away completely. If anything, my sensitivity to the world around me has increased in recent years rather than subsided.

As my therapist pointed out, though, this is hardly surprising. Given the profound nature of the abuse, the world around me simply 'became toxic' to me. I was 'trained' by the trauma to fear, to live in the midst of profound and often debilitating fear and terror. And terror is the sensation I feel the most when in the midst of having panic attacks (which occur at a low-level about once a week, and occur at a significant, life destroying level every couple of years or so). When people say to me "Oh, you might be experiencing anxiety or discomfort, but don't you think calling it 'terror' is a bit grandiose?", that may be their hope, but the facts are that the panic I'm often feeling IS 'terror', predicated by the terror that was visited upon me continuously for the 18 years of my dependency with my parents, and replicated often in the poor relationship outcomes I had as an adult.

I still have great fears about food I eat, or the glue in the shoes I wear, or allergic reactions to the material of the clothing I wear, and I still have, periodically, an agoraphobic reaction to leaving my house. I get some of the oddest [and culturally unusual] reactions from those things, and though I know, to some degree, what to expect and therefore what to avoid (or how to mitigate the negative outcomes I've experienced in the past), at other times the 'terror' is generated out of the blue, in totally unexpected circumstances. It's simply frightening, and no amount of mental health therapy has allowed me to get beyond it. As my former therapist in Albuquerque, Shoshona Blankman (who died of cancer last year) used to say, the fight-or-flight reaction to trauma over time depletes the adrenal glans, by not having a method of 'turning off' the traumatic reaction. And the depletion of those adrenals has resultant negative effects on organs throughout the body.

Aging

Frankly, quite seriously, I'm rather amazed to be 64 years-of-age, and being old enough, of having 'lasted long enough', to 'grow old' in an actuarial sense [of being old enough to qualify for social security and Medicare]. I was so completely depressed and frightened as a young man that I ended up being suicidal and acting out those suicidal feelings with profound substance abuse. Thankfully, at the age of 32, I finally ceased that body-destroying behavior and started to take better care of myself. And somehow recovered, emotionally and physically. So here I am, 'getting older', and being alive and in relatively good physical shape at 64. That I'm thankful is to put it mildly. My suicidal feelings have, in the main, disappeared (or have been, at least, profoundly sublimated) and I'm relatively happy, even if my emotional health is not 'what I'd like it to be'.

Becoming A Leader in My Religious Congregation

For the first 21 years of my being involved in the Unitarian Universalist faith, I was 'not allowed' to be a leader within my congregations, both in Albuquerque and in St. Louis. About 2008, due to a change in the politics of the St. Louis congregation, I was finally 'allowed' to become a leader and to take an active role in the growth of the congregation. That was a major and extraordinary change in my life, and has given me a sense of emotional stability that was not available to me theretofore.

If anything, I'm now 'over-involved', as the generation in front of me burns-out, retires or dies, and the younger members have yet to 'step up' to assume leadership roles. But I'm also engaged in fostering a Men's Wellness Ministry at my church, as well as being involved, within the context of the congregation, in anti-racism advocacy work. All of that is a change that was quite unexpected for a very long time!

Accumulation of Many Years of Collegiate Education

I had assumed, from all the propaganda that the university systems produce in America, that once I had earned a college degree and then two graduate degrees and a graduate certificate, that I would be 'the most marketable guy' possible. It didn't turn out that way. I earned my initial college degree and first graduate degree [in Public Administration] in New Mexico, which has a historically horrible employment market. I was able to gain some employment in the government, but following a change in administrations, getting decent employment became increasingly difficult.

Upon moving to St. Louis and finishing an MSW, followed by earning a graduate certificate in Nonprofit Management, I thought "now I'll be able to get really great employment". It was not to be: I hit the "you're a man and most agencies are managed by females who largely only hire other females" wall, I was hit with age discrimination (I was 50 by the time I finished the MSW), and I was hit with the 'overqualified' quandary (a lie if there ever was one). Plus, the American economy turned quite sour.

It turned out that the more education I accumulated, the fewer jobs were available to me, and finally, after earning the Nonprofit certificate, I was essentially 'made redundant'. I had a chance to use my skills on community boards, but was not able to gain employment, even after sending out 2000+ resumes and having 300+ interviews. Very discouraging, to put it mildly. I've been able to survive from invested income, but survival is the issue. My wonderful hopes of 'economic advancement from having a college education' simply never came to pass. At no point in my employment history did I ever earn more than $25,000 in any taxable year, in spite of having multiple graduate degrees.

In fact, after 2002, the only employment I could secure was as a part-time usher at the St. Louis Symphony, making around $3500 a year. It was insulting in the extreme, and very depressing. So much for the value of a college education and the accumulation of multiple skills throughout life!

Male Body, Feminine Spirit, Transgender Soul

Due, in large measure, to the profound nature of the sexual abuse I was subjected to as a child, my sense of and comfort with my gender-of-origin was obliterated early in life. I am fairly certain, from a combination of a knowledge of child development, mental health therapy, and dream work, that I was first raped by my father at the age of 9 months, in July 1952. And molested several times thereafter by both my parents. Added to that was the profound and continuous nature of the physical torture visited upon me by my father (upon the encouragement and often the instigation of my mother, however much either of them were in denial of those facts). Plus, my father, on multiple occasions throughout my childhood, said "when you were born, we had hoped to have a daughter". Not a great way to have your maleness supported!

The result was that I developed a fear of my maleness, and viewed 'maleness' as being related to being violent and crazed (following the modeling of my father). As I matured, I turned to 'any gender view of myself other than maleness' as a safe harbor. While it's true that if I had been female, I would nonetheless have been tortured (due to the insanity and poor child-rearing skills of my parents), I was, in fact, a male child, and therefore, in our family, being a boy was not a safe role to manifest. 

And as I moved into adulthood, my gender confusion only increased, and was further pronounced. The females I dated often demanded a 'kind of manhood' that was suffocating, and which I was unable to manifest with any degree of comfort. Thankfully, in my mid-30s, I found the men's wellness movement. It gave me access to a 'kind of manhood' with which I could be somewhat comfortable.

What has come out of it for me is that I have always felt more comfortable with the world that many of my female friends inhabit (the cultural context that is allowed females in this society) and, further, that many of the 'standard male cultural expectations' are deeply troubling to me. I therefore, for most of my life, have manifested a kind of 'gender fluidity' (or transgender sensibility) that only becomes available to people who were not allowed comfort with standard gender outcomes. Hence, while I have become skilled in working on aspects of men's emotional wellness, it is only with personal acceptance and the knowledge that I have a strong feminine spirit that I have been able to grow and develop a stable 'sense of self' that has brought emotional comfort to my life.

A Stable and Deeply Loving Intimacy

As noted above, many (though, thank God, not all) of my adult female relations, over 40 years of dating, demanded a kind of 'maleness' that I found deeply troubling. It was only with women who allowed for 'gender fluidity' and who valued me as a human being because of that flexibility that I felt any kind of emotional comfort. But that was rare: as one could reasonably expect, given the nature of human society, most females were looking for someone who wanted a family and was willing to support them economically -- or at least provide the greater portion of familial income. I was wholly unable to do that, due to one wall after another forming in my pathway, largely due to the depression I felt for most of my life.

I ended up, from my mid-20s through my mid-50s, being in grievous fear of living and dying all alone. I did have a number of 'relationships' [essentially serial monogamy], but none of them resulted in 'a long term intimacy' until I was 56. Most of my partners wanted to be deeply cared about, but didn't feel a reciprocal need or desire to care deeply about me. That was emotionally and spiritually painful in the extreme. And when I would propose the idea of a long term intimacy [longer than the 6 months that most of my dating relationships lasted], the response was, essentially, "That's an incredibly humorous joke, Donald -- you are one hilarious guy!"

Then, at the age of 56, I met Linda, my present intimate partner. She actually wanted a long term intimacy and was willing to be emotionally and sexually reciprocal in her behavior: that was a surprise and a welcome outcome! As we now joke about, in looking back over the 8 years of your intimacy, it took me 2 years to accept that she was serious about a long term intimacy, another 2 years of just being damned appreciative that someone wanted that with me, before I was willing, at any level, to accept that she actually loved me. And to feel resonant love in return. I still struggle with being able to give myself love, instead of waiting for Linda to give it to me, but I'm growing and healing. And she has been a delightfully powerful partner with whom to heal (as I have been for her). She is my lover and friend, and now I know that I don't have to 'live and die all alone' anymore. 

The Love of A Member of My Family-of-Origin

Since 1997, when my middle brother Tony reached out to me emotionally and decided he wanted me as a friend (within a family where my two older brothers were always the 'team' and I, as the youngest, was the outcast, but which changed when my brothers had a severe falling out after Tony's second divorce), I have been able to create a mutually loving and emotionally stable friendship with my brother, that simply was unavailable before then. And which has allowed me to construct a loving warmth with a member of my family-of-origin which was not available with any other member throughout my life. That is a positive change which was simply, profoundly unexpected! Further, he has assisted me in the supplementation of my income, which as allowed me to survive financially even though I have no retirement savings. That's a profound blessing all around!!

In Summary

Hence, life has, as with anyone, provided some good outcomes and some negative ones. Some outcomes, like the panic attacks, long term redundancy, negative economic possibilities of my college education, and the lifelong gender discomfort, have 'bedeviled' me throughout my life and adulthood. Others, like the unexpected loving friendship with my intimate partner and my brother, and having enough financial security to not have to worry about shear survival, have been unexpected positive outcomes to my life: both occurred late in life, after profound struggle and sadness, but they did occur and I know that they have benefitted me greatly. And just 'being here' at 64, which is the most amazing aspect of my life of all (and the most unexpected, given the traumatic torture and rape of childhood, and my suicidal behavior, of many years, as I worked through -- and healed from -- that trauma).

Hence, even as I struggle with this latest dark night of the soul, I know there are generally positive possibilities on the horizon. I continue to grow and heal emotionally, survive economically, and prosper intimately. That gives me great hope for the future of my personal life outcomes. That the struggles will continue is guaranteed -- that's the nature of life. But I'm here and willing to face them!