The Adventures of Our Lifetimes

I stopped drinking on October 8, 2007. Life has by no means been a breeze since that day. In fact, the winds of change have quite aggressively tossed me around these past 15 years.

Recovery is much more complex than just putting down the drink. Recovery for me has led to unearthing so many things once buried, mostly the blissful soul that was placed on this earth 58 years ago. It indeed has been a challenging self-examination that has had many moments of discomfort. But with all its rigors and ruggedness, I know I am not alone.

I believe that many people are in recovery from something. Physical, emotional, and spiritual pain do not discriminate. And so, I wish for you, in whatever healing journey you might find yourself on, the same that I wish for me as we walk home together on this planet in the middle of everywhere.

I wish …

To nurture the unhealed wounds in your heart, so you can begin to feel relief from suppressed pain.

To forgive yourself for mistakes made, so you can release any lingering shame you might still be holding on to.

To accept yourself, so you can begin to accept others. We are many and varied and interdependent.

To have deep introspection and soul-seeking. And if you do see your soul, sit awhile with it. And if you see a shadow that makes you uncomfortable, stay even longer with it. We can learn great things from all our parts. Especially when in the belly of the whale.

I wish for you to intentionally pause with a smirk when you spot a cloud shaped like a fish. Or an angel. Or whatever your wonderful imagination might see.

To move when you don’t want to. And most definitely to move just a tiny bit when you feel as if you absolutely cannot.

To look at your toes and fingers and count them. Slowly. One by one. Like someone did when you were born.  And to listen to your breath. Like someone first did when you became incarnate.

I wish for you to purposefully listen to those inhales and exhales, the long and life-giving breaths. Your body needs them. Your soul will love them.

And I wish for you to cry. To cry hard. Very, very, very hard. Tears of vulnerability have miraculous cleansing power. Trust me.

I wish for you to occasionally sleep just a few minutes longer some mornings so you can get a better look at the soul you are starting to befriend. To offer peace to that soul and then wish the same for another.

I wish for you to laugh. Form those wrinkles around your eyes and lips. Earn that face. You deserve it. And don’t forget to touch that face. Yours. Gently but with meaning.

I wish for you to hold space for grief. For yourself. For others. And to let yourself deeply mourn so you can heal and grow as the Universe wants you to.

I wish for you to love yourself. And dare to love someone back. To understand that nothing is more powerful than the light and love in our souls. Absolutely nothing.

And mostly, on this day and every day after, I wish for you to realize the power of your essence. The soothing stillness within the core of your being. The goodness that lives beneath the clutter that life piles on top of us, so you can find and feel Hope. Profound Hope. 

Because Hope is a wish that often transforms into Faith. And Faith, my friends, is an unwavering certainty of the Magnificent You. I wish for you to ease into a rebirth you may never have imagined possible. There are places yet unseen that await us with unexplainable but believable awe once we loosen our grip on tired expectations.

We deserve to reside and thrive in that wonder. We have always been worthy of such Grace. 

Magnificent You. 

Magnificent Me. 

Magnificent We.

Glad to Be a Dad

The photos.

The tributes.

The oft-fond remembrances.

Pasted all over social media as a sharp reminder of a childhood — a lifetime actually — void of what I always wanted but never had. And never will.

I learned no life lessons from a father with whom I didn’t have a single moment to sit and chat with after a long day. And I certainly received no loving guidance from a stepfather whose menace I wish I’d never seen in the middle of the night.

That lack devastated me way back when, and it sometimes still pains me today. The sudden pinches of fear that occasionally grip me are quick to remind me that the body definitely keeps the score. And the soul pays the price.

I am not without fault in my transgressions in the time I’ve spent on this earth. I’ve made choices and mistakes that I wish I could undo and erase with the snap of my fingers. And I don’t blame any of those missteps on the things that happened to me or didn’t happen for me growing up. But I do know that the absence of a loving and mirroring father wreaked havoc with my heart and consequently my life. I accept that.

As such I am not without a taste of grief over a fatherless existence, especially on a day like this one. Contrarily, I also most certainly have a heart full of joy and appreciation for the life I do have today as a Father, especially on a day like this one.

Lack and pain are strange companions. They bring with them a depression that will either break you or make you. Mine made me. At least in the journey called Fatherhood.

And so today, Father’s Day 2021, I celebrate being a Dad, and I celebrate my three sons.

I celebrate that I’ve not once laid a harmful hand on any one of them.

I celebrate that they have a deeply embedded confidence and security that I helped instill with my profound love for them.

I celebrate that they love me and care for me the same way I do for them.

I celebrate that they can sit with me after a long day.  And that they have never seen a midnight menace.

I celebrate that they are kind and loving and open-minded and most definitely open-hearted.

On this day, while I can’t celebrate a father of my own I can celebrate being a Father myself. And I cherish this role.

It’s the air that I breathe. It’s the ointment that heals. It’s the man who I am.

I’m so happy to be a Dad. Every single day.

The Power of 12. In Years.

The number 12. It’s a couple of simple digits, right? One, two buckle your shoe. Just a number.

Wrong.

Please bear with me for a few minutes while I go a little deeper into this.

1. Twelve is associated with the heavens (12 zodiac signs, 12 stations of the moon and the sun).
2. It's widely used in the Bible (the 12 apostles, the 12 Tribes of Israel).
3. In Greek religion and mythology, the Twelve Olympians are the principal gods of the pantheon. They were preceded by 12 Titans. Hercules carries out 12 labors.
4. There are 12 hours for both the ante meridiem (a.m.) and the post meridiem (p.m.). Thus, 12 a.m. and 12 p.m.
5. Twelve jurors sit on jury trials.
6. The lunar year is 12 months.
7. The 12 Days of Christmas.
8. Twelve minutes in an NBA quarter.
9. In music theory, 12 is the number of pitch classes in an octave.
10. In art theory, there are 12 basic hues in the color wheel.
11. Twelve is a sublime number, a number that has a perfect number of divisors, and the sum of its divisors is also a perfect number.
12. Alcoholics Anonymous has 12 steps, 12 traditions and 12 concepts for world service.

See how I listed exactly 12 interesting tidbits related to the number 12? That’s some serious linguistic originality, huh? Perhaps not, but it does offer a quick peek at a number that has so many varied meanings to so many different people. It’s a number that is quite significant to me at this moment, so without further delay here is the meat of this expressive meal I’m offering up.

Today, I celebrate 12 years of sobriety. That’s 144 months since I had a drink. It equates to 4,380 days since I quit seeking escape from reality. It has been 105,120 hours since I stopped running away from my soul.

Earlier this afternoon I made my way downtown to a dank church basement, a place where I attended my very first AA meeting 12 years ago. Hope was still there. Its vibration filled the air and was seated in various human forms in the black plastic chairs. Elbows and Big Books were propped up on the worn and creaky folding tables in the center of the room. The nostalgia of the space was tangible, and it welcomed today’s soul-seekers just as it did me back in 2007. My God, I love that dank basement.

Twelve years ago, I had reached a breaking point of emotional distress and had no answers about how to find my way out of the painful funk that was pounding the life out of me. I ached physically. I suffered even worse mentally and spiritually. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t smell. I couldn’t taste food. I heard someone once say that irrelevance is a fate worse than death. I had become irrelevant in so many ways. The pain was such that I didn’t care if I died.

So, I found my way into that church basement. To see those people. To search for the hope they spoke of. To try to escape death and attempt to become relevant again. To start a journey. I had no idea of the pilgrimage that was set before me, but I welcomed it. I had no other options. The kind souls there repeatedly told me to lean into the discomfort. I often sat crying in meetings, and the angels around me would whisper and reassure me that it would get better. They embraced me tightly afterward and told me to keep coming back.

I did. For 12 straight years.

That pilgrimage hasn’t always been easy. Not at all. There’s a stigma that is as real as ever and we must battle it every day. The word “alcoholic” creates tension when spoken, or even written, especially among those with whom alcohol was once regularly consumed. What many don’t understand, however, is the underlying depth in all of this. It’s difficult for people to comprehend how the substance being abused is just a symptom of something so much greater, so much worse. They simply don’t see that the core of it all actually is a big bad ball of pain that suffocates the soul.

My ball of pain had been firmly planted around my soul in early childhood by the abuse and neglect received at the hands of an alcoholic stepfather. That pain hijacked my entire life, even into and during sobriety. The post-traumatic stress weaved its way into all facets of my life. It had conditioned me to be fearful, to be anxious, and to feel shameful and unworthy. As such, it controlled my actions and my reactions. That, my friends, is no way to live.

This past year I lost my job of 15 years in a corporate restructuring. My marriage of 26 years ended. My life was turned upside down and that familiar ball of pain began rolling around again. But I fought. I fought hard! I grabbed the hands of others around me. I sought help. I cried on shoulders. I welcomed warm embraces and comforting words. Mostly, I talked to myself. I sought salve for my soul through extensive psychotherapy, and through self-care and profound reflection. It’s necessary work, but not easy work. It really is an inside job, and I was finally discovering that. Process the trauma, release the soul. Heal.

And therein is what my journey, my pilgrimage, has become. I continue on this perilous journey that includes many deaths, but also many subsequent rebirths. The journey of facing myself. My pain. Healing it and growing stronger from the experience. Reconditioning my body, mind and soul. Living as the energy of my soul. The soul that my God gave me for all of eternity.

I strongly urge you to pick up a copy of James Hollis’ What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life. Hollis provides life-changing insight about what he labels the perilous journeys we all must take if we are to experience life at its most intimate and fulfilling levels.

As he notes, “We do not serve our children, our friends and partners, our society by living partial lives, and being secretly depressed and resentful. We serve the world by finding what feeds us, and, having been fed, then share our gift with others.”

I’m learning every moment what feeds me. I’m learning every moment that what aches me helps make me. I’m learning every moment to evolve and live in expectancy, as a verb in action. Today, I share the gift of my story with you. I offer you my trials, my pain, and mostly my joy and my life. My gift to you today, on this celebration of 12 years of sobriety, is a living and intimate testament that we do overcome. We do recover. From so many things.

My heart is open. I hope you’ll join me in making our way together in expectancy. In peace. And love.