Interior Silence?

I have been working basically full-time on my healing for a couple years now. I have come to believe that interior silence is the fast track. Not that the fast track is comfortable, mind you, given the Dark Nights and everything. But I don’t feel that I have time to waste.

I may have had an epiphany today. How do I learn to let go of thoughts, like in Centering Prayer or the Daily Practice, throughout the day? I have felt barraged by thoughts lately. So, of course, I was on You Tube. I saw a thumbnail of a video about where trauma is stored in the brain. I clicked play. What this somatic-focused doctor talked about was how to get out of your head and into your body.

What she talked about was basically grounding exercises and then she led me through a couple. This is the kind of thing the Crappy Childhood Fairy talks about: emergency measures to regulate your nervous system.

Wait a minute. Is this a means of interior silence? A means of getting out of my head? And therefore into my body? This may be the key I have been looking for for months. I’ve watched every imaginable Thomas Keating video. One thing he says is that Centering Prayer is for interior silence and nothing else. I think I just found a way to do this outside of prayer time. I have had the tools for past few years without even knowing it.

This is a lot to process. If you combine modern trauma-based medicine with the Christian contemplative tradition, you just might have the healing combination we have all been looking for.

Learning to Trust Intuition

I have been in a very strange space lately. It’s hard to describe, but I feel I must because few people have mapped this out. Of course, I have found some guidance from Thomas Keating, the dead monk who has been so helpful on this journey.

Today was odd. I did not have to work or go anywhere. However, I got the urge to go get my license plate tab. I was getting ready to go when the power went out. So I went out to eat at Chipotle and got my tab. Then I went and had cheesecake at Barnes and Noble. While at the mall, I had the inspiration to go to the steakhouse in the parking lot and get the gift card for my best friend’s birthday. Then I wondered if I should go across the street to Meijer and pick up a card for her. My visceral reaction was, “No!” I thought, “That’s weird.” Such a clear negative response. Later, this evening, she stops by unannounced. If I had purchased the card, she would have seen it.

Keating would call some of this the “Gift of Counsel” as described in Isaiah. It’s about allowing the Holy Spirit to guide you in absolutely everything. You don’t have to be a Christian to have access to this. My friends Sherri and Tamara are far more intuitive than I am. They are accustomed to strange coincidences. They know how to follow guidance. For me, however, this is new, real new.

How did I gain access to this divine information? You can call it whatever you want: the Daily Practice (a la the Crappy Childhood Fairy), Centering Prayer, TM, or even Zazen. Any form of non-conceptual meditation done regularly will create the conditions for this. This opens up a realm beyond the logical, rational mind.

I have lived my whole life in the logical world. It has been a blessing and a curse all at once. The blessing has been having the ability to predict things that others in my life have been unnecessarily surprised by. The curse has been that logic is not meaning or purpose. Still working on that. Praying for it.

Uncharted Waters

I am so in-between everything right now.

I am sure that some, if not all of this, comes from the Dark Night of the Soul. The lights of reason, logic, fascination with the outside world, distractions of all kinds, and superficial relationships all get turned off. I feel like my brain only kind of, sort of, works. I can’t get involved in that stuff anymore because I just don’t care. I feel like my operating system has gone offline.

The problem is that I do not yet have a new operating system. The old motivation is gone and nothing is replacing it.

Now imagine that you are on a walk in the city or in your house and the power goes out. Is it perfectly dark? No. But it does take time for your eyes to adjust and when they do, you notice things that had completely eluded you for your entire life. “How did I not notice that all these years?” you wonder.

I am starting to think that the Dark Night is not something you come out of, but rather something that permanently shifts one’s consciousness in directions that one does not control.

What do I want? How would I know? What does God want from me?

All I know at this point is that none of the old answers strike me as relevant.

No Skipping Steps

I am realizing that priorities are everything. And most of the time, we don’t realize what our priorities even are. I wonder if everyone is like that.

My friend that plans on moving to the east coast told me that she is purchasing a car in Maryland. She lives in Michigan’s “thumb,” Port Huron, to be exact. (Yeah, we really do call it that.) She said she cannot get insurance because she needs a Maryland address to do that. In my mind, her ownership of the car is more theoretical than real. She cannot use the vehicle to go searching for housing because she needs the housing first. I think of it as having the frosting and sprinkles, but no eggs, flour, and butter for the cake. So, the vehicle sits in a Maryland dealership while she makes payments. They are probably thrilled. They make money and when it is time to repossess it, they already have it. I doubt they will have to refund her a penny. She is trying to skip steps. I can tell you from personal experience that that never works in the long run. My life is proof.

I have skipped many steps in my life. I have been sufficiently intellectually gifted that I have been allowed to skip final exams and various other things my peers have had to deal with. My logic has been perfect and my reason unassailable. But, frankly, so what? I have always been miserable, depressed, having no will to live. Logic and purpose are unrelated.

The result for me has been that I am now, pushing sixty, doing the emotional work of an adolescent. I am having to go back and complete these steps I got to skip forty years ago. This is not pretty. I would not recommend my path to anyone ever.

My favorite author, Thomas Keating, talks about developmental archetypes and nails it in his book Consenting to God as God Is (page 125), “If we skip over one of the archetypes, the Divine Therapist may take us back to complete it,” the Divine Therapist being God, of course. This is not a judgment, but a statement of the natural, inevitable order of things. No skipping steps. They are there for a reason. You will simply keep tripping over what you attempted to ignore. It’s like the dirty dishes in the sink. Do you have to do them right now, this very minute? Not at all, but neither are they going anywhere, and they may start to attract their own vermin.

I think I might have twenty different parts, all at different developmental stages. My last shrink told me that she thought my earliest trauma might have been in utero. That cleared up why she kept pressing me for details about my mother’s stress levels before I was born. I kept wondering what that had to do with anything, but, like all things historical, history is simply context for today. Current events make zero sense without knowing what happened back in the day.

I love the word “priority” because it contains the word “prior” right in it. This thing comes before that thing, out of necessity or logic. I think my friend’s priorities are jumbled, at best. She was telling me that taking care of her dogs was a high priority for her. That explains a big part of why her life is going nowhere fast. She has a full-time remote job and a “zoo,” two dogs and three or four birds. She spent six months unemployed after her last contractor job ended and did not spend any of it studying for the bar. Apparently, she had higher priorities. She has less than a month to leave where she is before she is homeless. Can she find housing in Maryland and make everything work? Absolutely, if she puts her search as a higher priority than caring for the zoo. I believe she could do it in a few days if need be. She graduated law school. She is extremely intelligent. Her abilities are exceptional.

My friend accuses me of living in my head too much. And she is correct. Being obsessive has been my only tool in my tool box to process my emotions. Until I discovered the Daily Practice (a la the Fairy)/Centering Prayer. I am now doing the hard emotional work that I skipped when I was younger. And I am doing the Welcoming Practice, created by Mary Mrozowski, a follower of Thomas Keating, also known as “consent on the go.” This is spiritual development on fast-forward. I have no time to waste. My work is internal. I started doing the Daily Practice to heal my nervous system. I believe to this day that I have no ability to hold down a job or be useful to anyone if I am dysregulated.

It’s so funny. My priorities are crystal clear. And yet, I still have no idea what I am doing. But the how is in my face. I need to increase my healing and level of consciousness. I think it was Einstein that said that a problem cannot be solved on the level of consciousness that created it in the first place. I believe that. The world needs healed people. I am doing everything in my power to heal myself as quickly as possible. My priorities are clear. I just wish I didn’t have to go back and do all those steps I skipped.

Sudden Shift

I am trying to survey the terrain I have been thrown into. The closest roadmap I have found is from Thomas Keating. And I feel lucky to have found him.

Last July, I was thrown into the Dark Night of Sense. My TV died and my attitude was, “Good one, God.” I lost the ability to distract myself with anything. Nothing was enjoyable anymore. I had been doing the Crappy Childhood Fairy’s Daily Practice, a specific writing and non-conceptual meditation technique twice a day for almost exactly a year. When my TV died, I felt strongly that God was saying, “You want to heal? Let’s just eliminate all the distractions.” In Keating’s Open Mind, Open Heart, he says that any non-conceptual form of meditation will prompt the subconscious purification process, also known by John of The Cross as the Dark Night of Sense. Any means the Daily Practice, Transcendental Meditation, Zen, you name it. AND NOBODY TALKS ABOUT THIS. This is universal and our secular culture has no language anymore for this.

I have been praying for several things. First and foremost, I desperately need healing from my shame and fears. Shame has ruled my life. I am so tired of it I could throw up. That seems to be a theme for me: when I can’t stand something one more minute, my instinct is to vomit. I have been praying for a clear vision for my life, a sense of direction. Lately, I have been praying for love, to love God or someone to the point where I would be willing to make sacrifices for them. I had Barry for 29 years and taking care of him gave me purpose. I don’t seem to be as willing to do the same things for myself as I routinely did for him. I have also been praying to forgive my parents for their neglect of me and their total lack of concern for my welfare. Words are meaningless unless backed up by action. I really don’t care what they say. They showed their true colors after the accident. Their sentimental feelings for me are sickening because of their emptiness.

A couple Sundays ago was Father’s Day. I reached out and texted my dad wishing him a good one. He responded enthusiastically. But not so much that he would be willing to get together without Ma. When I explained why, he said they were “sorry you feel that way.” Ewwwwww. He apologized for my feelings. They treat me like crap and when I say no, they are sorry I feel that way. No apology for their unconscionable behavior. No apology for their total lack of empathy. The problem is my feelings. It is no mystery to me as to why they don’t have a lot of friends.

What my father does not realize is that I reached out for his sake, not mine. I don’t need to see him. He is in his eighties and likely coming to the end of his earthly road. I thought he might want to make things right with his only child before he passes. Never mind. My conscience is clear now. Good luck wherever you are going.

Anyhow, I was at work, grieving my relationship with my father. I was upset but busy and productive. I was literally walking from one department to another when it felt like the plug got pulled from my emotions. It stopped me dead in my tracks. The energy behind my thoughts abruptly vanished. Whoa. It was as if my thought hung in the air, easily swatted away like an annoying fly or mosquito. What just happened?

I have dropped, I believe, into a more intuitive level. I don’t know my way around. And this was not voluntary. It was jarring. But it could be freedom. The whole point for the Dark Night of the Soul (a two-part process of the Dark Night of Sense and then of Spirit) is to help you let go of everything in you impeding your spiritual progress. St. John of the Cross (the author of Dark Night and explicator of it to the Western world) thinks of it as an earthbound purgatory. Your ego and addictions would be very uncomfortable in heaven. So out they go. It is best if you make as much consent as possible, but if not, it could happen anyway. It usually happens to people that have been on the spiritual path for a while (he does not define time periods), so some level of consent has been given to God.

But what if you are not a Christian? What if you, like me, have been doing the Daily Practice and then suddenly the bottom falls out?

This stuff applies to everyone. My friend who would like to move to Washington, DC is having a very rough time. I believe it is because she has refused to make certain choices and sacrifices. Now the choices are being made without her input. Her parrot actually flew the coop. One of her dogs is having serious digestive issues. “The zoo”, in my opinion, may not make it to the east coast. I saw her a few days ago and told her about what happened to me at work. I warned her that this letting go stuff is not always voluntary. The end result may be freedom, but it’s grief in the meantime.

I am having fewer thoughts. Is this clarity? Is this the healing of my shame? Meanwhile, I am leaning on the teachings of a dead monk for what little understanding I do have. Thank you, Father Thomas Keating.

A Decision Made by a Parrot

My friend is traumatized. I can only listen to her. I can’t make her choices for her.

She has to move at the beginning of August. She wants to move to the Washington, DC, area. I think this nation needs her. She has a creative legal mind and a high level of integrity, a rare combination. I believe that people like her will be necessary for the picking up of the pieces of our government when Trump dies. He will not live forever.

So what’s the problem? The “zoo.” She has two dogs and five or six birds. She is competing for affordable housing against people with no pets that can move in immediately.

Right before the pandemic, she got a cute little puppy. Work went remote. The puppy grew into a hundred-pound dog. Her lease in Maryland ran out. She moved back to Michigan. I told her that, if she wanted to move back to Maryland, the dog would need to go. She had told me that most apartment complexes out there have a 75-lb limit, meaning one large dog or two smaller ones. She told me he was non-negotiable. I dropped it. Not my problem. She started accumulating birds, little parakeets and one larger parrot. However, I don’t think they impact her housing.

Fast forward to now, six years later. Political chaos. Her lease ends soon. She has nowhere to move to, either in Michigan or on the East Coast. And now her parrot threw a tantrum and ran away from home. It sort of flew away. It cannot fly long distances. But it can meow. Like a cat. It is likely somewhere in the nearby woods. She has looked hard for it for the past few days, listening for meowing. I doubt it can live much longer on its own. It has a very special diet.

The pandemic was hard on everyone. She bonded with the dog. She was isolated. In some ways, he saved her sanity. But he also eliminated her housing options.

A couple years ago, she got another dog, a mate for the first one. Now, she is thinking about eventually breeding them.

These are all choices. But they are not the choices she needs to be making. I knew that if she ever wanted to move back east, the dog would likely need to be given back to her daughter. Now she has two. She refused to make the necessary decisions.

So now the animals are making them for her. The parrot ran away from home. And the girl dog is acting out, pooping inside after taking long walks. Why? My friend’s stress level is through the roof and they are reacting to it. And things are not getting better any time soon. If and when she moves back east, she will likely have less square footage than now. The trauma continues.

We are all like this, refusing to make decisions that must be made. I see it in myself and in my friends. Not making necessary decisions can literally kill you.

Thomas Keating talks about the spiritual journey as doing what we all must do before we die anyway. Everything is all about letting go. You can’t take it with you.

Unmade decisions are like dirty dishes sitting in the sink. Do you have to do them right now? No, but they are not going anywhere and will eventually attract their own vermin. At some point, the decisions will be made without your input. Even if it is the parrot that has to make them.

New Levels of Stability

I don’t know what’s going on, but that is nothing new. I feel more emotionally and physically stable while my brain still has some of the same old dysfunctional (and panicked) thoughts. The disconnect is quite amusing. Parts of me seem to be moving forward, but not taking everything with them.

A few weeks ago, the battery on my computer died. I had already done my Daily Practice/Centering Prayer twice that day. My brain said, “Oh crap. Why do these things always happen to me?” So, I went to Staples and got the problem instantly diagnosed. The sun was setting and my sense of beauty was still intact. “What a pretty sunset,” I thought. My body was chill even as my mind was spinning around.

And this is how I’ve been doing for the last few weeks. But I still don’t trust it.

Thomas Keating, in Intimacy with God, talks about a spiral staircase going up and down at the same time. As you descend into the subconscious and it is evacuated of the dysfunctional memories and trauma of a lifetime, you rise higher in union with God and deeper into the intuitive level. Even as it feels as if you are falling apart on one level, you are being knit together more strongly on a different level. You feel both stronger and weaker simultaneously.

Another example. I had a rough day on Sunday. It felt like the bad old days. Hating life. My friend Tamara and I talked about our mothers (mine was dysfunctional while hers was evil). I hadn’t talked about my mother in a while. I did a peer-led Daily Practice. Then I discovered my mother had attempted to leave me a voicemail. (Her number has been blocked since the accident in 2021.) Part of me panicked. OMG. What if my father had died? What do I do?

So, I talked it through with Tamara. Reality check required. I texted my father a couple years ago and informed him that I had unblocked his number. I am not unreachable. In other words, mother is not smart enough to reach across the table and use his phone to contact me in case of emergency. Also, they know where I live, having driven me home after the accident (after my having to beg them for a ride). In other words, absolutely nothing whatsoever has changed. I am now assuming that one or both of my alcoholic brothers is/are dead. The system is collapsing exactly as I envisioned it inevitably would. I was born to be the scapegoat and now there is zero way to blame me for anything. My mother’s need to scapegoat me is unmet and I am highly gratified.

I realized quickly that the day’s malaise was actually my intuition. I was sensing something, but I am not familiar enough with the intuitive terrain to understand what was happening at the time.

After talking it out, I felt a million times better. Something fundamental had been resolved. And I was completely exhausted. This kind of exhaustion is familiar to people that have just had a deep therapy session where some huge breakthrough has occurred. Afterward, you feel like you could sleep for three days straight.

And this is how things have been going lately. Things are surfacing and it is very disturbing and dramatic. Then I meditate, sleep, and re-regulate myself, and—lo and behold—I have a breakthrough. I did it yesterday at work. I told a manager some of what I thought about the weird way they have been scheduling everyone. It was awkward and imperfect. And then I felt like some huge thing had just been resolved and like I doubt I will ever feel that exact way again.

Keating talks about the humiliation of the false self and inner resurrection all being part of the same purifying process. That man was absolutely brilliant.

At some point, I feel the need to tell the Crappy Childhood Fairy team about the Dark Night of the Soul I fell into last year and how normal this is when doing non-conceptual meditation. Whether you call it the Daily Practice, Centering Prayer, Transcendental Meditation, or Zen is irrelevant. How many people in the Fairy community are dealing with this without the language that would explain and help so much?  I really may need to write a book about this because it is completely unavoidable.

Here’s how it goes, as far as I can tell. First, you start meditating twice a day, every day. You start to regulate your nervous system. As the nervous system is rested, the subconscious finally has that sense of safety it has desperately been seeking from the beginning of time and starts to evacuate the trauma of a lifetime. It feels awful, briefly. And then, way better suddenly. This is a rocky path.

I am still unsteady. I am looking for the healing of my fears and shame and feel as if I am making great progress, but can I trust it? How long do I wait to see if my fundamental feeling has permanently shifted?

Clear Vision of How

I suspected some of this, but other parts are extremely new to me.

My goal in life is healing, first for myself and then helping others. Sounds simple, right? I have found the method: Centering Prayer (from Thomas Keating) or give it another name (the Daily Practice from the Fairy, or zazen, or even Transcendental Meditation). Some form of non-conceptual meditation, which pitched me into the Dark Night of the Soul last July when my TV died. Keating says, “Any form of meditation or prayer that intentionally transcends thinking sets off the dynamic of interior purification.” (Open Mind, Open Heart, p. 125) Nobody warned me. Still a little pissed about that. I truly feel that someone, somewhere, should give people a heads-up, but we live in a “spiritual but not religious” culture that lacks even the vocabulary to talk about such things.

My adventure continues. One of my friends asked me how I meditated and I can’t remember if I directed her to the Crappy Childhood Fairy or Open Mind, Open Heart. I only offer others that which has worked for me. Another friend, Greek Orthodox, started talking about figuring out the will of God and I referred her to Keating and his gazillion YouTube videos. She is now a fan of his. I also Amazoned her Open Mind, Open Heart and Invitation to Love; that way she and I could literally be on the same page. Keating has explained everything in depth so much better than I ever could.

Now I have computer problems. It needs a new battery, which Staples just got in. This post is the last online thing I will do for the next few days. Remember, I have no TV. The silence is deep. I really think of myself as living like a nun. I am sure I must be the best neighbor ever. No noise comes from my apartment, except when I do my duolingo and have to speak. Me speaking awkward Spanish must be interesting to hear. I don’t talk a ton on the phone.

I wanted interior silence. I am now getting it. It is weird. I have always lived in my head and that has been extraordinarily painful. The shame and internal ass-kicking has been exhausting. But I’m not doing it so much anymore. And my brain doesn’t seem to be able to string together more than a few coherent thoughts at a time. Living at a more intuitive level is fascinating but hard. My perceptions are even clearer. I now evaluate things very differently. I am trying to do God’s will and have been seeking a clear vision as to what to do with my life. The question is, “Is this activity worthy of my time? Will I wish I had done something else?” Living in interior silence is like a fish swimming in a different ocean. I’m only guessing.

Plus, I am running into cultural pushback. One of my friends almost seemed to get her feelings hurt when I did not replace my TV. It was as if we suddenly had nothing in common. We weren’t drinking from the same well anymore. Another friend, the Keating fan, has signed me up for pet adoption alerts because she wants me to get a cat. She has two dogs and four or five birds and the dogs have made finding housing a challenge for her. So her solution is for me to get a cat? After taking care of Barry all those years, I am not eager to care for anything. But I know I will probably get a cat in a year or two. Barry has been gone eight years. I wouldn’t mind having something furry to cuddle up with, some loveable dufus. Still, why does everyone want me to validate their lifestyle? Living in silence in today’s world seems profoundly unnatural. It is as if people do not know what to do with me. I know how they feel. I don’t always know what to do with myself, either.

But I do know that I feel better and wish to help others feel better as well. Not exactly a goal, but I’ll take it. Thank you, Anna Runkle (the Fairy) and Thomas Keating, OCSO.

How Can I Help?

“How can I help” That is my real question. I don’t just ask it of other people; I am pushing God about it, too.

My last post was about C (my best friend), S (friend-ish that that I have known since high school), and the M’s (two daughters and a son by S). C doesn’t agree with me that I saw serious neglect of S’s children back in the 90s. I saw and understood perfectly back then. Nothing has changed. If anything, things have turned out worse than even I predicted. S is diabetic, asthmatic, and has fatty liver disease. I’m not saying S is a bad person. She is chronically overwhelmed, was married to a major jerk, and is doing the best she can. Here’s the thing: sometimes our best sucks and is not good enough. That is the human experience.

Because of the level of chaos I saw in S’s life back in the 90s, I have spent the past thirty years trying to avoid her. Easier said than done, especially with our mutual friend C. God keeps putting this woman back in my life.

Less than a week after my last post, who walks into the store I work in? S. This is a God thing. No coincidence here, for four reasons. 1) I wasn’t originally scheduled to work that day. A co-worker had begged me to take her shift, so I acquiesced. 2) It was a little closing shift. If she had arrived any earlier, I wouldn’t have been there. 3) She walked in the western door. Most customers go in the eastern door, near the cash registers. 4) She vocally called out my name! She didn’t pretend that she didn’t know me. She wanted help with some item her oldest daughter had purchased online. God had to move around a lot of chess pieces to get her there, in my face, at that moment.

I asked her how she was. She said something about her diabetes. (Remember, I am walking to the pick-up area and trying to locate her item.) I told her that I am pre-diabetic and trying to eat better myself. I have the suspicion that she thinks everyone else eats whatever they want while she is expected to “be good” and only eat salad and drink water. I wanted to make sure she understood that we are all getting older and having to change our diets and that she is not alone in that.

I was trying not to freak out. I almost idiotically asked her, “What’s wrong with your face?” Her face was huge. Not round, like mine. Very abnormally enlarged. And her hair seemed to be coming out in sections, not generalized overall thinning. She did not look right. I would not say she looked “bad.” “Bizarre” is my word of choice.

Upon arriving home from work, I instantly looked up possible causes of extreme, generalized facial swelling. Most sounded ridiculous. She was not in anaphylaxis nor did she get punched in the nose. She was out and about and acting normal. But one explanation made me gasp: kidney failure. I bet that’s it. I am not a doctor, but the pieces fit.

I have spent the past couple weeks arguing with God. I lose every time, of course, but my arguments are still valid, like Job’s. Why, why, why, o Lord? Why bring her to the store? Why make absolutely certain that I see exactly how bad she looks? What am I to do with this information?

That last question is the theme of my entire life. I do not believe that knowledge is necessarily power. In fact, I feel that whomever came up with “knowledge is power” should be shot because it is not. Watching the train wreck does not make you the conductor nor engineer. But here’s the catch: I strongly know that knowledge is always responsibility. One hundred percent of the time. We are fully responsible for what we do with what we know. It is a big part of why I am more than a little anti-social. I don’t need any more moral dilemmas than what I already deal with.

So far, my solution is not to tell C what I have seen. But when the topic of S comes up again, I might suggest that she contact S’s children and tell them to start preparing for S’s demise. I don’t think S has the awareness to understand what she needs to do to take care of herself. It may be time to have the “what to do with mom” conversation. I did research on kidney failure, dialysis, that kind of thing. Once on dialysis, S will not do well. She will be overwhelmed, miss appointments, etc. Things could go quickly.

Also, it may be time for the M’s (S’s adult children) to make their peace with mom. Healing is always the goal. There is healing unto recovery, where you (re)gain skills and abilities. And there is also healing unto death, where you cross your t’s and dot your i’s and put a nice bow on it before you or the other person transitions.

I only want to help. Not create chaos for anyone. Not hurt anyone’s feelings. I am not a doctor. I could be wrong about the kidney failure. All I know is that something is very wrong. And God made sure I saw it.

Fading Dots

I am frustrated and excited. A situation I am aware of (perhaps none of my business) is spinning out of control. But it has always been out of control, maybe for generations. I play no role, but my best friend seems currently entangled in it.

My friend, C, and I have both known a friend, S, since high school. S is widowed with three adult children, two girls and then a boy, all of whom share the same initials, first one M. S’s husband was a real jerk. He was so selfish that I tried to avoid him. When he passed, their children canonized him as a saint. Suddenly S was responsible for everything bad and wrong. C and I know better.

I knew S in the 1980s. I did not know her parents well, but I got the impression that S’s mom drank sometimes. Not like an alcoholic or anything severe, but, keep in mind, I have alcoholic brothers. My antennae were up. It occurred to me in my twenties that S’s mom may have drank a little when pregnant with S. Back then, in the mid-1960’s, a whole lot less was known about drinking and pregnancy. I believe S has just a touch of fetal alcohol effect (not the full-blown syndrome). Just enough to ensure her inability to learn from mistakes as she ages. Sometimes I cannot talk to her because she is infuriatingly close to normal. She works and does the best she can, but she does not learn.

S and her husband raised those kids in chaos in the 1990s. I could not talk more than ten minutes on the phone with her because all of them were yelling at each other continually. Even back then, I thought, “These kids are screwed.” Combining a selfish father with a perpetually overwhelmed mother was not a recipe for good outcomes.

Fast forward to today’s outcomes. The oldest daughter has serious OCD. The middle daughter is a cauldron of bubbling rage. The son still lives with the mother and does not provide rent or food, even though he works. Knowing what I knew back in the day, my attitude is, “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

The disagreement between me and my friend C was about the middle daughter, the one with simmering rage. I will call her M even though both her older and younger siblings share that first initial. M is rude, nasty, and manipulative toward their mom. She would demand babysitting duties from S, knowing that S had to get up in the morning and go to work. She cannot do this now because she and her husband moved to the east coast. C is furious with M. C identifies with S. I identify with M. I only realized a few years ago the underlying fury I possessed. Neglect will do that.

I am a little excited for M. Her feelings are right at the surface. Feelings do not rise to the surface until the subconscious feels sufficiently safe to start unloading the subterranean garbage. From my perspective, this is the best news ever. I believe she needs to talk to a licensed mental health professional. She could be the trailblazer of healing for her family. She would not have to spend decades trying to decipher what her feelings are, like I have had to. And, living far away from S, there is a limit as to how much chaos she can create anymore. I feel like God is preventing M from doing more damage. Now is the opportunity for M to heal and then she can take her newfound sanity to her siblings as they all age.

But time is of the essence. Where did the problems begin? With S’s mom’s drinking. Then S’s parents pressured her to marry the cruel loser. Now, S’s health is declining fast. She is diabetic, with fatty liver disease and asthma. If she so much as catches a cold, it could be the end of her. She does not seem capable of changing her diet, which is laden with carb-heavy foods and beverages like sweet tea.

I believe that truth is the foundation of all healing. Today, M’s behavior is unacceptable. She is so disrespectful to S. But is it any worse than the chaos she grew up in? I am ambivalent. C is not. To C, M’s disrespect of S is something M needs to apologize for. Did S ever apologize to her children? I doubt it.

I think all the Ms and their children (both daughters have kids) need to have some down-and-dirty conversations. S’s parents must be in their mid-eighties by now. It may be time to open up about the drinking, so assumed to be normal back in the 1960s. S may not have a lot of time left. And her working days may be ending soon. She and I are both pushing sixty, but my health is far better than hers. Will she live with the eldest daughter when working stops being an option? Where will the little brother live? Trying not to offend anyone, at this point, is a waste of time. These young adults are majorly messed up. The light of truth needs to shine brightly upon this family. The people with the dots of knowledge and context of what really happened are dying off and taking their secrets to their graves. The dots may fade soon and then today’s reality will make no sense.

The goal is always healing. This stuff reminds me of Thomas Huebl. He talks about the frozen lake of trauma and the poisoned well of a town. What happens when the lake starts to thaw? That may not be pretty. That is what it is like when the subconscious starts releasing repressed trauma. What about the poisoned well everyone drinks from and nobody seems aware how toxic it is? Having bad attitudes towards entire groups of people is like drinking poison.

Imagine it is 2046, twenty years from now. M’s two kids, now adults, look at each other and one says, “Do you have any idea why Mom was so furious with Grandma all those years?” “Nope, not a clue. Grandma always was nice to me.” “Me too. Don’t you just hate that group of people we saw yesterday?” “Sure do. Let’s protest them next time they come to town.” The anger has to go somewhere.

I sure hope M gets help. I am praying for her to do so. Maybe I will tell C that.