Of Mental Illness, Accountability, and Adoption

Hello My Dear One,

How are you?  I am busy, and not in that good way when you feel productive after finishing a project.  No, I'm just busy, flitting from task to task, chore to chore, and wondering why everyone thinks that educators have summers "off."  The truth is we continue to work all summer long, prepping, studying, shopping, planning, raising our own kids who have the summer off, and a majority of us take 2nd and 3rd jobs to supplement our incomes.  As an hourly worker, this is especially true for me.  But even the salaried employees frequently take on extra work to support their families.  And, "summer" is not June, July, and August - three glorious months of fun and sun, but really the last 2 weeks of June through the first 3 weeks in August.  If we're lucky that's 10 weeks total.  

At any rate, in the hectic pace of my summer I have been writing a lot, in my head, which although valuable in its own right, fails to share my thoughts as effectively as when I actually write them down.  As I have continued my work in providing parenting for my 2 sons and "sitting" for 2 other boys, while dispersing contents of my mother's home, I have found myself less and less motivated to write.  Which ultimately means that I need to spend even more time writing if I am to save my sanity.  So, here I am, present to the true needs of my life, having survived another brutal heatwave, questioning my often self-defeating behaviors.

I've had many therapy sessions this summer, most of which have been delving into my learned patterns of sacrifice and martyrdom.  It is a vicious cycle that was modeled for me throughout my entire childhood and continues to be utilized by both of my parents to this day.

1) Feeling unworthy of love and/or generalized unworthiness.
2) Attention seeking words and behaviors.
3) Offering myself and my resources to others in unhealthy ways due to fears of rejection.
4) Resentment for being treated poorly or underselling myself.
5) Self inflicted sacrifice of my needs and wants because of feeling unworthy of love.
6) Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.

Intellectually I can fully understand this crazy loop and that I ought to be able to find ways to prevent it, stop it mid-cycle, or at the very least stop the sacrificing of my needs and wants when I realize what I've done.  If only it were that simple.  The patterns of these thinking and behavior have been seared into my very being.  It reminds me of trying to merge on or off of a roundabout in Paris, France or Augusta, ME, either you go full bore into it and make the loops until you can actually get off or you freeze before entering and decide that abandoning your car is the safer and easier choice.

All of this has its roots in my family of origin and my upbringing.  I could spend pages upon pages concerning incidents that cemented the behaviors I have nurtured and used to torture myself and others, detailing each wrong or hurt that I experienced.  Instead, I will attempt to pull the meaning out of the minutiae, leaving the disturbances behind, in the past where they belong.  And this is what I have spent the most time working on during the past few months, learning to sift through the muck of my past and see where the real accountability needs to be placed.  I am learning to separate my parents' accountability for their actions from their mental illnesses, and subsequently my own negative patterns and the choices I have made and sometimes still make in my daily life.

My parents' influence on me and the molding and shaping that they did from before my birth is the starting place. From the beginning of their marriage they were an unlikely pairing.  They had known each other since the 1st grade, from sunday school and church, and from living in a really small town. The two families were actually related, and my parents' are indeed 5th cousins.  Having gone their separate ways after high school graduation, mom and dad re-met at a Christmas Eve service, both having recently ended relationships.  They were engaged less than a year later.  The wedding itself occurred mostly because my aunt had decided not to marry her fiance at the last minute, and my grandmother was bound and determined that there would be a wedding come hell or high water.  So, my parents married and began a miserable life together, each sacrificing their own wants and needs for the "happiness" of the other.  My mother relinquished her New York City operatic career, and my father left his friends, family, and academic career to move to a tiny beach town next door to his in-laws so that his wife might act "less crazy."  I think that from the outside most anyone could have seen the disaster that was already underway, but from the inside, it must have been harder to visualize.  My father resented the fact he had sacrificed, as did my mother, the marriage itself was a sacrifice for both parties, and my birth was the ultimate sacrifice for both of them.  But one must remember that they both made choices.  This concept has become very important to me as I have dealt with my own struggles.

In the end, I found that I had to ask and then answer some difficult questions.  Does all of their sacrifice mean that they were not accountable for their thoughts, behaviors, and actions?  Because they both suffered from mental illness are they exempt from culpability when it comes to the suffering and pain that I endured?  Do their life choices, because they were made through lenses of borderline personality disorder, anxiety, PTSD, undiagnosed autism spectrum differences, ADD/ADHD, and their own learned behaviors from their parents, grandparents, and other family members excuse what they did to me?  Do their lives trump mine?  Are their beasts of mental illness stronger than mine?  Are their beasts allowed a greater freedom than mine?

In order to answer those questions I realized that I had to turn to my own learned behaviors and how I have enacted them throughout my life journey so far.  Up until recently my preferred method of dealing with emotional conflicts was through passive-aggressive mutters, whines, and rants along with physical isolation, hiding, running away, driving at unsafe speeds, and putting my loved ones and myself in danger.  I reenacted almost all the scenes from my childhood with minor adjustments to fit the situations.  I got stuck in that loop of ugliness and just kept going around and around it until people around me moved farther and father away from my reckless spinning through life.

These frightening revolutions have been devastating to my personal and professional life over the years.  Much the same way as they were for my parents.  That cycle of unworthiness that sometimes seems to ooze right out of my skin has been at the foundation of my sense of self.  I loathe myself, and then I loathe others, and then back to loathing myself.  It is like a tire stuck spinning in mud, sinking deeper with each revolution.  The more you try to gun the engine to move in any direction, the more you are sucked into the mire below you.

It is an ugly truth of my life, the mud I have spun myself around in has led me to abandon those I love for selfish and self-centered reasons.  And in the end it comes down to a single word that I fear more than most, choice.  If I have choices to make and I make poor ones, and I have mental illness, am I accountable for the consequences, and to what degree? Some of my choices have indeed been driven by my beast of mental illness when it was untreated.  But many of my choices have been driven by me.  The hard fact is that I am the one who is ultimately accountable for my beast's actions, because I am the one who can choose to let it run boundless in through my world.  I am also accountable because I can choose to go to therapy, take medications, make healthy living decisions, have a spiritual life, and pay attention to myself and others when my beast tries to raise its wild and flailing self in the middle of my life.  Whether I like it or not,  I have the choice to let the madness take over, or I can choose to keep the madness in check.

And this is where I choose, I choose accountability as a husband and a father, as well as the numerous other titles I use throughout my travels.  Instead of blaming my mental illness for the mistakes I've made, I am learning to own them, to claim them, to grieve the harm I've caused, and to celebrate the ways in which I have helped and can help others in the future because of my experiences.  I am beginning to see that I am responsible for what was, and for how I acted in many situations, and that each one is in the past and I no longer need to dwell there.  I am learning that I can make different choices whenever I want to, in word, in thought, in deed, and even in my perceptions of what is happening around me.  I can be that man, that father, un homme de dieu - a man of G-d - in heart and in vocation.  As I make choices, rather than believing that I have made sacrifices, I am granted control of myself and my beast.  I am finally the one telling my beast what to do rather than allowing it to tell me what to do.   

So, what am I telling my beast to do?  I am telling it that it doesn't need to fear being a father to my sons.  Now, I have been their parent since the day each one was conceived, albeit through extra measures that did not include my DNA.  And when each beautiful, wonderful, and miraculous son was born I was there, laughing, crying, present to the moments of becoming for all of us.  What I wasn't was able to be listed on their birth certificates, because at that point in time my own birth certificate still had the wrong sex listed on it.  I was also not legally married to my wife because gay marriage wasn't legal yet.  When we did legally marry as man and woman, after my birth certificate and driver's license were corrected to say Male, the State of Maine recognized me as my own children's step father.  In the legal analysis we determined that I would have to adopt my sons in order to correct my status as their father and to get new birth certificates for them.  

Now, what does my beast have to do with all of this?  It turns out, that the answer is, everything.  I/it was afraid that my wife would leave me, and take our boys away from me because of my mental illness.  My beast was trying to convince me that it would be less painful if that happened, if I was never legally their father anyway.  My beast and I were terrified of losing two of the greatest joys in my life.  And after much therapy, I saw this for what it was.  It was an excuse to stay in that cycle of unworthiness.  By allowing myself to believe that the worst would happen I was perpetuating the model that I had learned and lived - I am not worthy of love - and would punish myself and others because of this.  

As I cried in therapy, literally for the first time after 2 years with my therapist, I realized how much I do love my sons and that I am accountable for my role as their father.  I saw that I must show them that they are truly worthy of love by my choice to adopt them.  That I am choosing them over my own anxiety, fear, feelings of unworthiness, and my beast.  I can model that they deserve to be people who can receive G-d's love and shine it back out into the world.  That their worth is more valuable and precious than anything else to me.  I can give them exactly what I was not given, unconditional, affirming love from a parent who had to make a conscious effort to do so.  I am stronger than my beast and want them to feel that right down to their very cores.  That is what I am accountable for.


So, as I enter the legal and financial process of making our family whole on paper, I am committed to making our family whole in love.  As I break that vicious cycle of pain, suffering, and deconstruction, I find that I can grow as a man, and that I can then help my sons grow into men as well.  Perhaps this is the greatest gift, to be the father I am called to be and choose to be that man, no matter what.  I thank G-d for being a G-d of second, third, fourth, and even hundredth chances.  I thank G-d for the chance to be a part of a real family, created on a foundation of dignity, respect, and worth.  I thank G-d for calling me into choice.

Thank you for being present to my accountability.

Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself and remember to actually love yourself.

-Ari

Of Sandwich Baggies Filled with Pennies, Glitter, and Angel Wings

Hello My Dear One,

My apologies for not writing sooner.  With the beginning of summer and the end of the school year it has taken a few weeks to adjust to my new routine.  It has been an evolving one and given my usual resistance to such things I believe I'm doing as well as can be expected.  

So, I've wanted to write about Borderline Personality Disorder from a slightly more academic perspective for some time, but somehow I just can't seem to do it.  I simply cannot wade through millions of words telling me what I already know.  

Still, I know that I need to explore what this illness has done to me from a different vantage point. I need to find my own answers, to bring a spiritual voice to the scientific one, to know that there is an inherent gift within the madness that balances the destruction of the fury.  Simply put, I need to see G-d within the storm.

So, the other day, as I delved even more deeply into the memories of my past, during a therapy session, I saw the core place of brokenness within myself.  I've long dealt with a crippling belief that in order to keep the peace I must sacrifice my own wants, needs, and desires to be happy so that the other person(s) I am in relationship with will love me.  It is a debilitating condition that has led to hurt feelings, mistrust, anger, resentment, depression, and a host of other complications.  It has always been my job to make others happy, and throughout my life it has usually been at the expense of my own happiness.  One of the most devastating memories resurfaced during the EMDR session and I saw that it was still playing out in my day to day life even though the event occured nearly 25 years ago. 

I was a young 14 year old, a freshman in high school, awkward, and with massive underlying mental, physical, and emotional disturbances that were yet to be diagnosed and my family had just undergone a radical upheaval.  My grandfather had passed away less than 4 months before and that summer I had been biking around town and found my father embracing a woman, who was not my mother, at my special beach.  There in plain view it was obvious what was happening, and after getting his attention I pedaled home as fast as I could to tell my mother what I'd seen.  They soon arrived at the house and the lies began.  Everyone knew they were lies.  But they continued anyway.  Within a month, this interloper was living in the apartment above our home along with her son who was only 8 months older than I.  Suddenly I was living in an obviously polygamous home that no one dared claim for what it was.  

Within a few months my mother finally garnered the courage to confront my father and his mistress about the truth.  I had gone to my grandmother's house next door, and was working in the basement shop to feel connected to the grandfather who had died too soon.  I was sad, but also hopeful and expectant that this hell I had been plunged into would be over.  Once the truth was out, there was no going back, and I would be free from the nightmare of this love triangle.

As I sat and fiddled with the tools in my grandfather's workshop, I heard my mother come in and she sat down on a wooden stool next to me.  "So?" I said, and she stated the truth of the affair, all the gory details of the confrontation, ad nauseam.  "So when is he leaving?" I asked 15 minutes later as her ramble had slowed to a dull roar.  "He's not."  she said.  "WHAT?!?!?!?" I screamed?  And in her Borderline Personality Disorder reality she explained why he was staying, that she had been unwilling to force him to make a choice between the two of them.  In fact, I remember the comparison that he gave to her, saying that having to choose between his wife and his mistress would be like having to choose between vanilla or chocolate ice cream.  

Seriously.  Even at 14 years old I knew that this was a blatantly ridiculous and infantile response to being caught breaking your wedding vows and that any damn fool who believed it was as pitiful as the one who said it to them.  Yep, my 48 year old parents had reverted to being 4 year olds, unable, unwilling, and irrational toddlers who along with a 40 something year old mistress had decided to throw a collective temper tantrum in the sandbox of my already horrifying life.  

I was put into an untenable position, informed that my happiness was not important and that if I wanted any attention at all I had to play along and sacrifice what I knew was what I wanted and needed in exchange for "love."  This message was the one I incorporated into myself and have continued to play out all these years later.  The why of it all became clear as I saw the "adult" players in the drama.

My mother was incapable of facing the truth that her marriage was over and that despite the financial hardships that were possible, she actually had monetary and emotional support from her extended family.  But the beast of BPD stood its ground and bellowed and hollered at the prospect of being abandoned one more time.  It was in that moment that the person whose only job was to protect me from harm had decided to abandon ship and save her own warped security over mine.

My father's mistress, a woman who had her own traumatic past and mental illness was driven to believe that this arrangement was a perfectly viable option.

My father, the adult alpha male of the pack, not wanting to lose out on the attention and sexual rewards of finally having 2 women fighting for him chose to hide within the perverted gratification of his new life.  Having grown up knowing he was unplanned, that his mother wasn't supposed to be able to have more children, that his older sister was the golden child, and going through puberty at the age of 8, led him to crave the all of the encompassing insanity that passed as "love."  Now, at long last, he had 2 women, the madonna and the whore, the replacements for the mother and sister who treated him as less than, and he held onto it for 6 long years clinging to belief that he deserved this reward for all that he had suffered and sacrificed.  My father once confessed to me that he had moved away from his academic opportunities, friends, colleagues, and his own parents, because a doctor had told him the only way to manage my mother's instabilities was to move her as close to her parents as possible.  He bought a house 1/8 of a mile from them and regretted it until the day he sold it more than 25 years later.  

But here is where I can start to see G-d in the storm.  In all of this madness there was a home, next door to me, the very one I was sitting in that day, where my grandparents moved when I was 3 years old.  It was my refuge.  It was my sanctuary.  It was my safety.  And there was G-d enfolding me with the love that I needed through my grandfather and grandmother.  Although Grampa had just died, the love and caring he gave me still filled my heart.  And my Grama, who was literally right above me at that moment, continued to support me for the next 3 1/2 years before her own death.  I was loved, and it was in part because my father had taken the advice of random physician so many years prior.  Were it not for that act of Divine Intervention, would I have known the grace that my grandparents gave me?  I don't have an answer to that question, but I am grateful and grace-filled regardless.   

So why now?  Why am I revisiting all of this now? Why did it come up in therapy when I felt that I was nearly done with this mess?  Probably because I have almost finished emptying out the house that my mother drove away from nearly 6 months ago.  I've been packing, cleaning, hauling, dragging, loading, selling furniture, planning several yard sales, online sales, and picking up the pieces of rubble that surrounded her home.  I have literally collected the broken shards of glass, seashells, plastics, etc. that were spewed around the building, one by one, and I have thrown them away.  Discovery During one of the last times I was there, I was cleaning out a dresser and found a sandwich baggie filled with pennies and glitter wedged behind one of the drawers.  Inside were maybe a dozen coins and over a hundred beads, and multicolored stars, doves, and angels made of shiny plastic and metal.  It was the perfect metaphor for my mother's life.  This see through plastic bag, tied off with a weird knot, full of valueless items mixed with sand, grime, and who knows what else stuck in an obscure location, almost lost and forgotten had someone not chosen to clean up the mess.  This discovery said it all.  Her life has always been in full view for everyone to see, and it is filled with things that a child reveres, but an adult knows to be too little to support a life.  It is shiny and filthy all at the same time and the painful emptiness of it is hidden away from the outside world.  Her beast had stashed it away from the peering eyes that could have seen the truth of who she really is.  And it was I who found it, just as I always have, and always will. And this is where I truly find G-d at the eye of this storm.  It is my nearly 40 years of living on the edges and often in the middle of the whipping winds of her hurricane that I have learned compassion for others with mental illness.  I have struggled through my own beast's madness, and I have absorbed the only gifts my mother was truly able to give to me.  Her crazy has made me tolerant and accepting of individuals who have fallen victim to their own beasts' sadistic ways.  More importantly though, it has given me the compassion and love for myself and my own beast that she could not.  I can finally see the crazy in myself, accept it, tolerate it, love it, and manage it because I know that G-d is present. As I reprocessed the traumatic event in therapy, my therapist asked me what the 14 year old me needed to know to help deal with the event and the subsequent pain.  I said aloud "Little One, you are already loved, and you will make it, you have made it, you are surviving the madness, and you are choosing to live in spite of the deconstruction of your life around you."  I continued on, "You are so loved, you will be able to show and give this love to others who need the compassion that no one else will give them.  This is a gift.  You will spread out your grand white wings, surround yourself with G-d's love, and then be able to enfold others with the graceful feathers that will soothe and comfort each and every person you meet."  I told that 14 year old kid to know that the 38 year old was ok, and that in time those horrible years would be relegated to the past.   "Hold fast, Little One, you are loved." And those are the words I say in my heart each day when I meet grown and little ones who don't yet know that there is hope for them.  That is my gift.  I thank G-d for being in that storm of my life and in the lives of others, letting us find our own wings to prevent more damage to our fragile selves.  I thank G-d for the chance to embrace each person I meet with my wings, and to attempt to help them find their own in the process. Pennies, Glitter, and Angel Wings And so, as I looked over the baggie filled with pennies and glitter again, I finally saw the angel wings gently surrounding it.  I saw that my mother's uncontrollable beast had left behind a secret hope, that one day someone would love it too, that someone could see the value and the worth of its seemingly meaningless and disconnected contents.  This tiny capsule of madness was a reminder to look beyond the obvious, to search for meaning in chaos, and to remember that G-d  is always in the storm.   And with that I begin the process of freeing myself from the madness that was only surrounding me.  And I can finally unpack my own sandwich baggies of mental illness and search for the gifts my beast and G-d have hidden away for me.          Thank you for sorting through the pennies, glitter, and angel wings on the journey. Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself. -Ari

Of Progress, of Call, and of Footwashing

Hello Dear One,

As the end of my work year approaches, I am faced with being assessed and of assessing my own performance over the past months of my employment.  Needless to say this is not really my idea of a good time, however I understand it's importance, and that there are incredibly valuable life lessons to be processed and absorbed from the positive and negative experiences I've had.  I'd rather treat my supervisor and myself to ice cream and talk about the crazy stuff that happened, but that's not how public education actually works.  Rather, I must rehash the last six months of my work life, in too often painful ways, and hope that I will do better next time around.  That said, I will continue to repeat my mantra "water off a duck's back" as my "growth points" are highlighted for me.  And I will do my best to hear and incorporate the positive words and reinforcements that I know I will receive as well.

So, what have I experienced over the past six months?  As a student replied to me not long ago, when asked how many monkeys were dangling above the plastic barrel, "A lot."  And although the answer was correct, I happened to be going for a specific number value, and I suspect that my supervisor will be doing the same thing.  And yet, I also suspect that my supervisor will be looking at the "a lot" just as much as at the numbers.  You see, in public education, specifically special education, there is much that we cannot quantify with numbers or letter grades, despite the efforts of legislators, governors, and other elected officials.  The fact that I have been able to foster a relationship built upon trust, consistency, and genuine concern for the well-being of another person who desperately needed and desired this, simply cannot be summed up by any written symbol.  This remarkable evolution between two people is beyond the scope of ratings systems.  It is quite frankly beyond a great many people's comprehension.

More importantly, it is something that neither individual in this situation is expected to be able to do, based upon medical and/or psychological diagnoses.  Though I will never violate the confidentiality of my students, I can discuss my own struggles with making friends and forming appropriate relationships with other people.  I can and have discussed some of my past trials in education and the traumatic ways that it shaped me.  I was bullied as a child because of my "differentness" and I continue to work to build my self esteem and believe people when they compliment my efforts and my work.  Having learning disabilities, being on the autism spectrum, having a mental illness, having a parent with mental illness, living with the secret of gender identity issues, living with the secrets of intersex condition symptoms, and just plain being quirky have all shaped the man I am today.  And they were all reasons to bully, separate, harm, ostracize, exclude, and hurt me as well, most often by peers.  I did not have many friends growing up and my students rarely do either.  We are often just a little too different to be able to make, keep, and sustain traditional friendships, largely because our brains are not wired that way.  

So, the dorky, nerdy, geeky, dweeby, etc. kids eventually become friends with each other and find kindred spirits.  Sometimes they go on to wreak havoc in the world, committing crimes, seemingly senseless acts of violence, endangering others, and not "living up to their potential."  Sometimes, though, they turn out to be Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Dr. Temple Grandin, Albert Einstein, or an Ed Tech in an elementary school working with kids diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.  As the old joke goes, "It's either Jail or Yale..."

It is a great irony that is not lost on me that I hated, truly hated, going to school as a child.  And now, I get up every day excited and enthusiastic about going to work, in a school.  Yep, I have chosen to go to the very place that had a stranglehold on my young psyche, a place that I believed that I would never succeed in, no matter how hard I tried.  And G-d knows I tried.  By the time I was in high school I spent 3 times as long on homework and reading assignments as my classmates did, and although I was considered "smart" I struggled with written exams and being able to express my thoughts on paper.  My only real successes came in playing tuba in the marching band and being involved with the behind-the-scenes work of theater.  School was simply a nightmare for me.  I never imagined that someday I would find myself right in the middle of that environment by choice.  And yet, here I am, loving every minute of the educational team and practices that I am in.

And as I look back over the past 6 months I see other things that I have learned and incorporated into my life as well.  First and foremost I have learned to remove myself, or more specifically, my ego, from many situations.  I have learned that when something is bothering someone it is better to find out what is going on with them, rather than assuming that it has something to do with me.  Because as it turns out, very little of what the people around me are concerned with has to do with me in any shape, form, or matter.  Most people are focused on themselves and spend far more time and energy thinking about what they are doing and almost no time on the people around them.  So, I've learned to step back, breathe, repeat my mantra "Water off a duck's back," and wait.  Just wait, and find out what that person needs, if anything at all, from me.  I don't have to have all the answers.  I don't have to have any of the answers.  My job is to wait, to listen, and to do what is asked of me.  I have learned how to do that more successfully over the past 6 months than in any other setting in my life.

Second on the list is that I have learned to let things play out, to unfold as they will without my intervention, and if necessary to let the system itself fail.  Sometimes in life we believe that we know the answer, or we have the best solution, or that we are right and the other person is wrong when it comes to a particular challenge.  And in fact, sometimes we do.  Sometimes we are right about an outcome and could have altered the result to something more productive.  At the same time we cannot deny someone else the opportunity to fail, or the system that this individual is working within to fail.  Rarely do we learn from our successes that came without trial and many errors.  It is a vital life lesson to learn how to fail and be able to recover.  Each time I do not accomplish a certain goal I am able to reflect on why it didn't happen and what I can do differently in the future.  So for all those individuals who say that "failure is not an option" I believe that sometimes failure is the best option and it will lead us into greater triumphs if we are willing to follow the new direction we are offered.

The last major item on the list of what I have learned is that I have at last found my calling, and have been granted the human and the Divine approval that I need and deserve for reaching this place on the journey.  It has come in many forms to me that I am called to a life of behavioral and mental health ministry within the context of public education.  I am acutely aware and in support of the separation of church and state, particularly in the elementary schools of the United States of America, as ours is a pluralistic nation that has not been able to embrace a universal moral code of ethics to truly guide it.  There are a multitude of religious options available to the people who choose to live in the U.S., yet there is a distinct lack of tolerance and acceptance for the many options and for those who choose options that are not what is considered to be the "right" one(s).  Yet all of that does not alter my own understanding of a call to ministry within a secular setting.  

I have heard the words that came from Dr. Temple Grandin after I had shared with her about my choice to work rather than collect disability payments.  She replied, "That made my day.  Even if I have to miss my plane, that made my day."  She asked me what I did for work and I told her that I teach young children who have been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.  "And I bet you love it," she stated.  Yes, I answered emphatically, I love my job. "Good." spoke Dr. Grandin.  That was the Divine approval I had needed.  I was able to hear that I was following G-d's call for me.

I later found myself in the middle of a Mother's Day project in school.  The classroom teacher painted the hands and feet of the 19 children who then pressed them on to large sheets of paper to make flowers with great leaves surrounding them as pictures for their mothers.  As she applied the green paint with a brush that tickled their feet, she would then place them on the paper, imprints of fleeting childhood preserved as a reminder of the impermanence of these precious years.  And as I knelt beside her I washed each child's feet in the bucket of soapy water in front of me.  I was on my knees, cleaning away the paint, the dirt, and whatever else was on those little feet and toes, and I felt that Divine approval again.  I knew that I was serving.  It was my job to help these children do something they couldn't physically do themselves yet, particularly in a classroom setting.  Yes, the metaphor, the christian imagery, the religious nature of the experience was blatant, but the meaning was far deeper.  I knelt there smiling, happy, relaxed, comfortable, and comforted that I was able to do this and be myself at the same time.  Mr. Hilton was washing kindergarteners' feet.  I was there for them and not myself.   

Awhile ago I had a conversation about faith and religion with a colleague of mine.  She ascribes to a far more fundamentalist and evangelical brand of faith than I do, still she made an excellent point in stating that she didn't have to talk about G-d in school to keep G-d in her heart and share that love with her students.  

And recently while in a room with her during an incident I was reminded of her belief, and consequently my own.  I sat in a room watching another human being, a very young one at that, suffering from the sometimes beast of autism, learned behaviors, quirky wiring, confusion, fear, frustration, and pain that was physically spilling out of this little body and permeating all of us as well.  I sat feeling discouraged that I had not been able to intervene in a meaningful way.  I felt sad that it had come to this point.  I was unsure of my own abilities and what I was feeling as I witnessed it all.  And then I saw my colleague kneeling as she held the child's feet to prevent kicking, and I knew that my role at that moment was to pray.  And I prayed deeply from within myself.  I prayed from within my heart, the room already too crowded with distress, my prayers were silent to all except G-d.  I asked G-d to show all the love, comfort, support, and mercy that is G-d, to this child.  I prayed for safety for the child.  I prayed that the child would feel the love and support from G-d and from us.  I prayed for this child of G-d.  And in what felt like a few heartbeats, the calm, still, small voice of G-d breathed fresh air into that tiny room.  In a matter of moments the meltdown was over and it took less than 4 minutes.  It was a moment of true grace.

All of these things and so many more have been the beacon lights in my journey over the past 6 months and I know within myself how important, valid, and real my call to teaching is.  

21st century java!

And as for the human approval, well, I was nominated multiple times for "Making A Difference" Awards, and I recently "won" and got to choose a prize out of the goody bag.  It's a travel coffee mug with a warming base that plugs into a laptop.  Coffee and geeky.  Great combination.  




In fact, that very differentness, weirdness, otherness that set me apart from peers when I was young, now sets me apart from my peers in a brilliant, rather than in a tragic way.  I understand what my students are living through and I can help them all the more because of it.  I know what the hell feels like.  I understand being on the outside.  I understand being disliked.  I understand not being understood.  I don't have to try to put myself in their shoes, I already am.  And just knowing that is the best progress I can ask for from myself or my students.

Thank you for continuing to journey with me as we walk with the feet we've been given.

Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.

-Ari

Listening for the Call

Of Motherhood, of True Blessings, and of Light

My Dearest One,

It was recently Mother's Day here in the U.S., and I find myself torn about what I need to write, especially given the other parts of my life that have been tugging at me.  My call to teaching and how that is translating in my life.  My growing confidence in my own abilities and strengths.  My deepened understandings of how to be a good employee, colleague, subordinate, and friend.  But the importance of motherhood, particularly in my own life, is a subject that aches to be explored.  So, here we go.

As most people know my mother was decidedly not the maternal figured I needed, wanted, or desired.  She was and is a woman unto herself whose vision is limited to that which magnifies her own worth and existence.  She is an eccentric, crazy, narcissistic, and neurotic ball of self centered agony, waiting to burst open like a cyst of infection.  Her moods, words, and actions are like a poison that will slowly reach toxic levels for those around her.  This may sound harsh, I realize, but for those who have lived within her sphere of destruction this description is all too real.

Yet, my own life partner, my heart's desire, my wife, is the complete and total opposite of the tragedy of my youth.  She is a selfless giver of time, passion, exuberance, radiance, forgiveness, and unconditional love for her two children and for me.  She is a blessing to all who meet her and who know her.  She works to provide the maternal gifts of hope, peace, and joy not only to her own family, but also to each person she encounters.  She is a gifted woman and I could not be the man I am today were it not for her.  And I mean that in absolutely every sense possible.  I could not be the man I am today without her in my life.  I would not have had the courage to become who I am were it not for her love and support.

As a transgender/intersex individual my wife chose to support me through a change that threatened to dissolve our marriage by an 80% margin.  She wants me to be happy.  As a man with severe mental illness she has chosen to uplift and uphold me through each psychotic episode.  She believes in me.  As a man who has struggled with self worth, and an upbringing that has nearly broken my spirit more times than I can count she has chosen to live with this darkness.  She shows me a light that I cannot see on my own.  As a man living with a beast deep within his soul she has chosen to stand her ground in the face of its hateful, spiteful, and hideous outbursts that have emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically attacked her and her children.  She wants the real husband and father I am called to be.

For all this and more I simply cannot find the words that would ever say what her gifts have meant to me throughout the nearly 15 years of marriage we have shared.  Through every wrenching heartbreak and every elated delight she has been present to the man I am, the one I was, and the one I can only pray that I will someday be.

She has shown me what a mother can be.  She has shown me the tasks that a mother is charged with when she enters into that most sacred bond of bringing a child into the world.  She has shown me what love is.

And she has shown me when a mother must let go and give her child the room to grow and become who he or she is called to be.  She has shown me the truest form of grace when she has allowed our sons to fail and then comforted them in their grief.  She has shown me the depths of her soul as she has cried each time our boys board the bus for the first day of school, year, after year, after year.

It is her determination, will, and strength that make her who she is.  And it was in the loss of her own mother over 9 years ago that I saw this the most.  She cared for her mother, a woman who had lost much in her life, who finally came to live with us in a converted barn so that she could be close to her children and her first grandchild.  My mother-in-law was a study in perseverance and she passed this gift on to her daughter with love, laughter, and humility.

Linda was a woman dedicated to providing a life for her children no matter the personal cost.  I remember vividly the early years or my wife's and my courtship as we would eat together at her mom's diningroom table.  There would be warm comforting food spread out for all of us, even after she had worked all day as a nurse in a geriatric facility.  She commuted a half an hour each way, driving from one state to another to work in that nursing home.  She would come back home, make coffee, take care of her beloved hound dogs, and then prepare a meal.  She would wash, dry, and hang up her one uniform by the time the food was ready, and we would gather at the table, talking, laughing, and trying to find both the money and an excuse to go buy "carrots" from the local store.  Despite the pain, anger, and disappointment Linda experienced throughout her life, she still managed to keep a sense of family for her kids.

When she died at the agonizingly young age of 57 from lung cancer on Christmas day, there was a tear, a rip, a gash really in the fabric of our family quilt, one that has taken years to carefully stitch back together.  Of course, as with any wound, if you look closely enough you will see where the delicate sutures have been placed, a puckering at an edge, an uneasy tightness, or a slackening where once it was taught.  Thankfully, my wife is a master quilter, both literally and figuratively, when it comes to our family.  We are all kept physically warm by her beautiful fabric creations.  We are also kept emotionally warm by her creations of love that sparkle in each of my sons' eyes and in the way we walk through this world together.  

Losing her Mom just 5 months after becoming a mother herself was one of the cruelest fates I can imagine, and though many people have given greatly of their time, their love, and their support there will never be another Linda for my wife.  And I see this most as she wishes that her mother could have been here for the births of her other grandchildren, and shared in the magical delight of being a grandparent.  Though my mother-in-law and I rarely saw eye to eye, I would give anything to have her back for the sake of my own wife's happiness.  And that is something that I can only say because of the love that my wife has given to me.  I am not the man I once was.  I am not the man I will be one day.  Rather, I am the man who can be present to the love of his life and want her happiness more than his own.  It is only when you have been loved unconditionally that you can do that.

There are so many memories and stories about the past that I could tell, but most of them are not mine to share, not really.  I will only tell tales about myself and so there is just one that I want to disclose for now.  It's about the love and hate for one's own mother that deep down Linda and I shared.  Though her mother was by no means anything even close to mine, the parent/child dynamic is universal and our own interpretations of our upbringings are personal memories that defy historical truths.  But the fact of the matter was that she had a tough time dealing with her own mother.  As a young woman she moved out of the house, got an apartment, and didn't call for 3 weeks.  I understood.  

"Retro Chic"

And yet, sitting in her diningroom one night looking around at the plate shelf that encircled the room above our heads, I saw a set of porcelain canisters.  They were brown on the bottoms, with white rims and bright flowers wrapping around them.  They were what would now be called "Retro Chic," but nearly 20 years ago they were more "Dated" and "Ugly."  So, I asked the lingering question in my mind, "Where did you get those?" figuring that they might have been an unasked for wedding, housewarming, or birthday gift.  The answer came as a crazy surprise, but one that I completely understood as well.  She replied "I bought those for my mother with money from my first paycheck after I moved out."  Because, after 3 weeks she felt badly about her break for freedom and wanted to apologize in a tangible way, proof that her independence was working out.  I knew exactly what she was talking about.  

Later, when she moved out of her house and into mine, she called her daughter and her son, and myself to come and divy up the items from the house that she no longer wanted.  I was the only one who wanted that "ugly" set.  I plan on keeping it and passing it on to my children and/or grandchildren along with the story of a strong, independent, and caring woman.  

So, this Mother's Day I celebrated my wife with a special cake she's always wanted, got a card, and made some tasty meals.  We ate one of the meals we always had at her Mom's house and we watched my wife's favorite Disney movie, and then one of the boys' favorite Disney movies.  Nothing fancy.  All family.  

"I love you Linda Mom"

And that's what I finally, finally, understood when it came right down to it.  Having the family you want will never be the family you get, because nothing in life works that way.  But having the family you need is precisely what you will get, because that's exactly how life works.  And when you realize that what you need is making you into something better than you could have ever imagined, then you don't really want for anything.  It is a puzzle that I suspect I will struggle with for the rest of my life.  And I am truly blessed to have that opportunity.


Thank you for helping me to put the pieces of this puzzle where they belong.

Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.

-Ari      

Of Helpers and Helping

My Dear One,

It has been a few weeks since I have written, and I apologize for my lapse.  I was involved in my sons very active lives, school vacation, baseball practices, homework, theater, and breaking up the inherent fights that occur when two brothers are in close proximity to one another.  I also needed awhile to process the acts of violence perpetrated on a city that is not so very far away from me.   

I have been reflecting on the recent attack(s) in Boston and I am reminded of the wise and kind words of Mr. Fred Rogers.  It's a quote from The Mister Rogers Parenting Book that went viral after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School and was particularly comforting to children and adults alike.  He said:

 

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."

No one is born into this world to cause the death of innocent people.  Neither is anyone born into this world to spread malicious pain and suffering like a cancer through a community.  Rather, we are all born into this world with an opportunity to live and experience all that we encounter on the journey.  

In the disasters of recent months most people of faith, and those who believe in an inherently good way to treat others, have responded to what has happened in largely similar ways.  We have been stunned and shocked by the violence itself, we have been saddened by the losses, we have questioned how and why people act the way they do, and we have prayed for comfort and presence for those affected.  We have sought help for those we perceive as helpless, and we have sought answers for ourselves so that we might not have to deal with such tragedies in our own futures.  We have been afraid even when our theological teachings tell us not to fear.  The unknown frightens us.  These past weeks have decidedly contained vast amounts of "unknown," of unknowable futures, of fear.

But I have to admit, I have a hard time reconciling the gut reactions to tragedies and the outpouring of help during these tragedies, with the day to day pain and suffering that I witness in my own life, my clients' lives.  Too often the responses I hear from people who are closest to the problems involve negative stereotypes and ignorance, the never ending barrage about welfare dollars, cigarettes, booze, and laziness that permeates our American culture is somehow perfectly allowable.  But when a disenfranchised individual acts out, the response to this will put blame on the "system" and then demonize the offending individual for their actions.  It is horrifying how quickly we will rationalize senselessness with rhetoric that shames and dishonors a person, who most needed access to support systems to prevent the slip into madness, and subsequent devastation.  

As we now "know," two brothers were behind the horrors that unfolded over five days on Boston, but we may never know what motivated their thoughts or actions.  What drove their own forms of madness?  I have no idea.  But I understand the madness part itself.  Grace-filled, I've never felt called to viciously attack hundreds of strangers, however I have lived through the horrors of being attacked, and of attacking loved ones.  I know that I will spend the rest of my life making sure that my beast doesn't come roaring out of submission, ready to attack whatever incorrect perceptions are feeding its insatiable hunger.  

And that's the crux of my difficulty with all of this.  I suffer from madness.  I have Bipolar Disorder I, yes, the full blown model that is exacerbated by mind altering medications.  I also have a history of trauma, Asperger's, ADD, and am an intersex/transgender/transexual individual.  As a man with mental illness I am acutely aware of the fragility of life.  And it is scary.   That I am not a stark raving lunatic is lucky at the least, though I personally consider it Divine Intervention that is often represented in very human forms.  My helpers.

My helpers come in a multitude of colors, shapes, and sizes and I am thankful for each and every one of them.  I am well medicated.  I have incredible therapists.  I have a loving and supportive family.  I have the most understanding, patient, and loving wife on the planet.  I have friends.  I take care of myself.  I have a faith life.  I have a job.  I love my job.  I love my family.  I can cook.  I bake delicious and beautiful desserts.  I go to conferences.  I am a respected member of my community.  I am largely respected by colleagues and supervisors.  I have incredible teaching relationships with extraordinarily challenging students.  All of these things are my helpers and they are just the tip of that iceberg.

I have beaten most of the odds.  And yet, I know that if a chemical imbalance gets the better of me, I may say or do things that are completely insane and potentially hazardous to myself or others.  So I am beyond grateful that I have these resources to know when I might be slipping.  I am upheld by a myriad of services and supports so that I don't slip.  And less than 7 months ago I did slip.  Actually, I fell at a tremendous rate of speed, and I needed a lot of helpers to pull me out and prevent me from creating havoc for everyone around me.  And I know that if I ever need to return to an inpatient facility for treatment, I will not hesitate this time, and I will seek out those helpers again.

So, I am saddened, just as most people are for the victims and the families of the tragedies in Boston.  There was no good reason for 4 beautiful people to lose their lives.  There was no good reason for 180 more to lose not only flesh, blood, and bone, but a basic sense of security and trust that will take years to regain.  There is never a good reason for violence.  But there is always a reason, and I am all too familiar with its many incarnations.

It is the sadness and pain that I have felt in my life and I believe that it is very similar for the people who lost their battles with their beasts of mental illnesses.  I, we, they have harmed so many, including ourselves, out of fear, pain, sickness, and rejection.  To be terrorized from within one's own self by an uncontrolled, unaltered, unmedicated beast is the most unmanageable set of feelings I have ever lived through.  Knowing that the beast is on the inside and no one can make it stop, stop, stop right at that moment of total descent into your own personal hell, is the darkest place I have been.  It is a matter of life and death, and when you are unable to look for those helpers, death becomes an answer that is about relief, because living with this monstrous illness within you is simply too much to bear.     

So where were the helpers during all of the madness that went on in Boston?  Obviously there were the traditional helpers, the medical professionals, the law enforcement officials, the political leaders, the good samaritans, and the instinctive helpers who simply did what had to be done.  But what nags at me, is the question of where were the helpers before the madness?  How did these two very young individuals slip through every crack and crevice of two societies and "succeed" in their goal of causing pain and devastation?  Why didn't anyone notice?  How did this option become the "right" one for them?  Who led them into this?  What darkness within themselves allowed them to fall so far, so fast, into this hell?

Where was G-d in all of this?

Although I believe that "G-d is Still Speaking," I'm not sure that G-d is going to write out an explanatory note in the newspaper, or go on tv, or facebook, or twitter to spell it all out.  Then again, maybe G-d already has and we just haven't noticed.  Maybe each time someone helps another person that's the message.  G-d is acting acting through social justice, rather than social media.  Each time that every one of us shows the unconditional love that G-d has shown to us, we are hearing and seeing the answers to all the questions that we ask about hatred, violence, and fear.  G-d has not abandoned us, rather G-d has empowered us to act in a world of pain and fear so that when senseless things happen, we can respond with love, caring, and respect for each one's dignity, so that we can all be helpers.

And just maybe, when I write the words that are thousands of years old every time I end my missives, maybe G-d is speaking through me.  

Thank you for being on the journey with me as one of my helpers.

Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.

- Ari

Of Silence and Presence

Hello My Dear One,

It has been more than a week since I returned from my all too quick trip for the burial of my uncle in New York, and the subsequent visit with my newly widowed aunt.  It was a whirlwind of travel, emotions, conversations, and hastily eaten "food" as I covered more territory in less than 48 hours than I have ever done in my life.  I set up a "base camp," a hotel room in Massachusetts, on Tuesday night around 9:00pm and was back in my hometown by 2:45pm on Thursday afternoon.  In that period of time I drove for more than 15 hours, buried my uncle, visited with my aunt for 4 hours, slept, exercised, shopped, bathed, ate, and prayed.  I'm certain I did much more, but my memory of the events has become a bit blurry.

It was a long and hard trip despite its brevity.  In all of it I tried to remain present to my own grief, my own connection to G-d, and my purpose in being wherever I was at the time.  I attempted to see the darkness of the loss as a shadow under the illuminations of the love that remained.  I contemplated my parents who are now entering their 70's and who are increasingly aware of their own mortality.  I contemplated my own mortality as well, and the many times I had suffered so greatly under the weight of the beast of my mental illness that I had believed suicide to be my only answer.  That perspective, that insight, that vulnerability within myself allowed me to see how far I had come and how much I had to live for.  Honestly, it showed me how much I wanted to live, and I was surprised at the revelation.  For most of my life I have wanted to die.  But now, I want to live.  The transformations within myself didn't end there.    

Another change came as I discerned my purpose and role within my aunt's life at that moment.  I initially thought that I would have little to no role, as we have often been at odds over many, many things.  But this was not the case.  No, she needed me.  She needed my presence.  And so, I was present.  I was a presence for my aunt, who was able to let out her true emotions with the only relative on my uncle's side of the family who attended.

I must note that her brother did come up with his wife, however during the luncheon at the nursing home after the burial, he spoke mostly of himself, boasted of things, and complained about his daughter.  Despite sitting directly next to his sister, he appeared completely oblivious to the fact that she had just lost her husband/partner of 52 years.  I was less than impressed, and I learned why this was the first time I'd ever met the man, my aunt had been sparing me and herself the embarrassment.

Largely though I was there, and that was my purpose, and for once, I allowed myself to be that.  The words I have always tried to fill the silences with no longer poured from my lips.  My need to control the emotions, the surroundings, myself, was not there.  My needs were not what were important at all in that moment, and for once I was able to see and honor that.

So this is what I did instead, I sat silently in her tiny nursing home room.  I sat silently as she talked.  I sat silently as she nodded off.  I held her with muted, nearly silent words of love as her whole body shook with the grief of her loss.  I was silent as she wept in a way that she had never before allowed herself to emotionally be with me.  I was for a brief time, the strength and the courage that she needed.  And it required me to be silently present.

As most of my friends and family will attest I am at heart a "talker" and I like to talk.  I like, no, I love to give talks, lectures, performances in front of any size audience I can get.  I tap into the funnier side of myself, the less Aspie me, who is appreciated and lauded for whatever I have made people fill.  Having grown up in chaos and pain I became a comedian to deal with it, which is common for many of us.  I regularly believe myself to be doing stand-up comedy wherever I am, and I am on pins and needles waiting for the next laugh.  It has an almost addictive quality to it as I absorb the positive reinforcement of people's responses, since this was often the only way I could get positive reinforcement in my family.

An irony to this is one of the conversations my aunt and I had during our visit.  As a small child, and honestly as an adult, I have never really liked talking on the phone.  Perhaps it is the Aspie part of me that doesn't like the phone because I can't rely on what little body language I can pick up on.  It's true that I misinterpret a lot of what is communicated when speaking face to face with someone, but somehow the phone is even worse for me, and I dread answering it.  So, the irony is that my aunt was the only person I would talk to on the phone when I was little.  I would sit at the top of our basement stairs where our rotary phone was mounted on an adjoining kitchen wall and talk to my aunt.  Our conversations were limited when I was 3 and 4, but she had an ability to get me to talk even when I was scared to death of it.  How you might ask?  She would do hand rhymes with me.  Yep, hand rhymes.  Like, "Here's the church, here's the steeple, open the doors, where are the people?" and others.  Hard to even imagine isn't it?  A 40+ year old woman with no children of her own would talk on the phone all the way from her Manhattan condo on the Upper East Side with a little 4 year old who was too shy to talk by repeating hand rhymes while I giggled and joined in.  That takes a  level of patience and dedication that I believe is unmatched in most areas of any of our lives.

So, I sat there reminiscing with my aunt when we were not crying, or waiting, or being, and we talked about the past and how much she and Unc had influenced my life.  She spoke of her heartbreak and of how she now looked back and wondered what it would have been like to have had a family of her own.  I had never once heard her speak of such a thing in my life.  And I realized that deep down that the need to leave a legacy of some sort is truly in all of us.

And it was this legacy issue that could have torn our relationship apart right then and there had I not been able to be silent within myself in the hours and days to come.  It began when I had spoken about how my younger son looks more like me and my older son looks more like his mother with one of the nurses who saw their picture.  My aunt decided to address this issue with me long after the nurse had left.  She spoke about how it bothered her that I had done that.  She went on to say that she knew that all the transitions and changes I had made were important, and that I had needed to do them.  She validated my life choices, yet she was troubled by my comments about my sons.  She wished that I could just say they were my sons and leave it at that.  That I didn't need to say anything else.  That they were my sons, period.  And in response I had a momentary physical response of anger, fear, and disappointment.  My stomach churned and I felt as though I had just been sucker-punched.  I took a deep breath and I tried to explain my feelings on the matter, though neither one of us was particularly convinced, and we moved on to other topics.

I left her room an hour or so later, feeling as though I had just been through something amazing and horrible all at the same time.  I thought about her deep need for me to pray with her at the burial.  I thought about her sobs.  I felt the pain of losing my uncle and the sadness that wrapped around my shoulders like a well worn sweater.  I was shaken and I was tired.  I was hungry.  I was lonely.  Looking back I suspect that my aunt and I were feeling the exact same things at those exact same moments.  I drove back to the cemetery, said a final goodbye to my uncle, and drove back to my hotel my mind running through the hours I'd just lived through.     

I tried to make peace with my aunt's comment, but it stayed with me, this one negative concern, just stung.  I was taken off guard and I ended up calling my wife later that night to ask if my youngest son really did look like me, which by the way he does, even though genetically there is no reason for him to.  She affirmed my belief and reassured me that the comment was a generational issue for a woman who was nearly 80.  Still, I couldn't get past the nagging feeling that there was more to it than that.  Perhaps my aunt's own personal, emotional, or theological beliefs were excluding me somehow and I didn't want to feel rejected by family one more time.  I wasn't sure how to handle my feelings and when I returned to the hotel that night I worked out for over an hour in the gym.  I sweated off the frustration and anger, but the words still persisted in my mind.

I returned to my room and I began repeating a mantra I had heard from a drag queen named Jinkx Monsoon on RuPaul's Drag Race, Season 5, "water off a duck's back...water off a duck's back..." a phrase that she repeats every time she is about to be critiqued.  It is a phrase that means that you should let other people's negative comments about you not affect you.  It is obviously something that easier said than done, however, as I repeated it the dialogue in my mind changed.  The dialogue actually shut off.  Realizing that I had to let the words roll off of me rather than absorb into me made me feel even calmer.  I felt the presence of G-d with me and within me as I drew deeper into the silence.  Eventually, I was able to be completely silent and process the words so that I understood what she meant rather than what I heard.  

And I realized that she was right.  I realized that I needed to stop trying to justify that my sons are really mine.  I needed to accept that they are my boys regardless of biology or anything else.  They are my sons, period.

It was in the silence within myself that I could finally hear what another person was saying and I thanked G-d for the gift of what my aunt had given me, a way to communicate when I was scared to death of it.  Just as I had been silent as a child on the phone and listened to her love, I was able to finally hear her love as an adult.  I was present to her, I was present to her love, and I was at last present to myself.

So, my purpose on that trip, was the lesson I've been needing to learn for a very long time, one that was offered so long ago, and not long ago at all, by my aunt.  That it's ok to be silent, it's ok to let the other person talk, it's ok to be scared, and it's ok to just be present to the moment.  More than 35 years have passed since those phone calls, and less than 2 weeks have passed since I sat in that room, and both have come together to help me be the man I am called into being here and now.  Those are gifts that no money can ever purchase and that can never be taken from you once you've received them.

So, I will continue to listen for the silences in my life, and seek to be present and a presence when and where I am needed.      

Thank you for being present on my journey.

Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.

-Ari