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Dancing Through Your Why & How

1/20/2015

There is a part inside each and every one of us that just doesn’t seem to sit right. We find a disequilibrium that given enough time and circumstance, can derail us, demobilize us, and at worst, if allowed free dominion—destroy us. We are so preoccupied with the trials and tribulations of life that we feel almost incapacitated at the prospect of tearing into that space inside that we have been so careful to anesthetize, bury, and ignore. But what if we really did take ownership of everything inside us, not just the face we show the world, but the darkness, inadequacy, and fear residing in that place of disequilibrium?

I’m reminded of a quote by Frederick Nietzsche, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” As I sit here writing this, two very conflicting emotions are running through me. There is a deep sadness for giving free reign to a fear in my soul that allowed so many years of an unfilled life to pass by. And at the same time, I have an immense sense of gratitude and optimism for finally realizing the truth in Nietzsche’s words—knowing my “why” in this life makes me superior to any temporary circumstance I may find myself in.

Two years ago I dug into that space of disequilibrium inside me and I began unpacking all the darkness that comes with being a survivor of child sexual abuse and rape. As I pealed back layer upon layer, all I found was fear in all its manifestations. I’d been traveling this geography of numbing and avoiding for decades, and my not so subtle companion this entire time was fear, something that had been lying on the surface like an oil slick—thick, claustrophobic, and dark. We walk around telling our stories to ourselves, and in so doing, not only do we bear witness to these stories but also we internalize these stories as our reality.

The only thing more heartbreaking than living a life of fear, is living a life of regret. I’ve gotten old with fear, and to be honest, it’s overstayed its welcome. Before I can jettison fear from my life, I need to figure out what "fear" really is, and what it isn’t? On one hand, fear is discomfort, anxiety, and disquiet, all of which are feelings that by their very nature are unpalatable, but not crippling.

On the other hand, fear is entwined in expectation—My projection of what might happen, but most certainly hasn’t come to pass. Therefore, if I approach fear with an absence of expectation and simply deal with what’s in front of me and not what I envision might unfold, it becomes much easier to wade through the disquiet and anxiety. By having the fortitude and reliance to wade through these tumultuous moments, it allows us to transform the disequilibrium inside us into personal growth and beauty.

Where I am apt to get hung up is in feeling that the growth and change within me is not moving as fast as I’d like it to move. And once again, I can sabotage my wellbeing by relying on outcomes and desires as my metrics for personal growth. Often we limit our potential, by lowering the bar we set for ourselves, when we allow our fear of not reaching our goals in a timely manner to govern our actions. My way around this mind trap is by aligning myself with a broader vision of feeling whole and of service to my community. It’s an extension of my faith, not in any religious sense, but in a deep communion with an understanding of my true purpose, vision, or what Nietzsche referred to as my “why”.

If the proliferation of self-help books that top the bestseller lists is any indication, selling people on the idea of personal growth and transformation is not really an issue. I think the real question comes down to whether or not it is reasonable to expect to bring anyone along with you, be it your partner or friends and family? Any change that comes from within you is bound to disrupt the homeostasis of the relationships that you’re involved in. Even a recognizable positive change can leave those around you feeling threatened and insecure, both of which are deeply rooted in their own fear of abandonment.

A dance that my wife Mary-Anne and I have had to navigate in our 28-year marriage is learning how to coexist in various periods of extensive personal growth when one partner is in flux while the other has yet to adapt and respond. If I interpret change in my partner as an assault to my contentment, I run the risk of trying to interrupt, and disrupt, that growth in order to hold my partner where she is. I try to comfort myself in that what I may perceive to be an act of rebellion may in fact be an act of creation. Ultimately, it questions the notion of “I love you for who you ARE not who you WILL BE.

The more I delve into that space of disequilibrium inside and begin to acknowledge and transform the fear I uncover there, the more I realize that the most beautiful parts of me, and those around me, are contained within the darkness of that disequilibrium. There is indeed a wholeness in knowing that each of us in his or her own way is incomplete. Like shaking the dead leaves out of tree, it’s by inviting those around us to witness the transformation inside us, that we come to realize and acknowledge who amongst that group allows us the space to grow. Just as there is a deep disquiet in a life left unfulfilled so to is there immense sadness in relationships that never grow. I’ll leave you with the haunting words of Nelson Mandela: “There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”

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I came in looking for a way out

1/13/2015

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No one, and mean no one, walks through the doors of their first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting feeling “happy, joyous, and free.” The prospect of spending countless hours in damp church basements and community centers, in the company of other twitching, coffee-swilling addicts doesn’t do much to warm the soul.

By the time I found my way to the rooms of AA, I was desperate to try anything, but truth be told, I came in looking for a way out. There was no denying I had a drinking problem, but like most people in recovery rooms, my addiction was merely a symptom of a much more deeply rooted problem. Alcoholism is cunning in that it is an illness that continually whispers and enchants by trying to convince the addict that you are different; you can have just one, and this time you’ll be able to control yourself. The irony is that the alcohol never solves anything—It just buries problems and feelings that invariably bubble their way to the surface like a festering boil.

And here in lies the problem—every alcoholic is an unwitting player acting out his or her part not in a tragic comedy, but in a comic tragedy. The best description I’ve ever read about the insanity of alcoholism comes from Dr. Vincent Felitti, who said: “It is hard to get enough of something that almost works.” That is certainly how it played out for me. From the first drink to my last alcoholic binge, I was chasing a solution that never quite worked. It is in this space of “not quite working” that the greatest devastation unfolds in the alcoholic’s personal and professional life. There is not an active alcoholic on the planet who doesn’t cause collateral damage. Like ripples in a pond, the chaotic dissonance is far-reaching.

When I finally reached that point of being sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, I grudgingly agreed to give Alcoholics Anonymous a try. Although I was willing to go to any lengths to get my drink or drug, the same could not be said for my foray into recovery. I’m an addict, so naturally I want the quickest fix possible. I called the 1-800 number in the phone book, and asked the polite lady on the other end of the phone if she could send out some AA pamphlets to me in the mail. At that point, I was still convinced I could get sober simply by reading the “How To Guide”. Surprise… It doesn’t work that way. The volunteer on the phone asked me where I lived, and she told me that there was a meeting just down the street from me starting in a couple of hours.

When the time came, I walked down the street towards a group of men and women smoking and laughing on the sidewalk near the side entrance to the church basement. Careful not to make any eye contact whatsoever, I slipped past the group and made my way to the door, where I was greeted by a guy, who must have been a bouncer in his former life, who said: “Welcome to the Friendly Group. Grab a coffee and grab a seat.”

Many of you may be wondering what an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting looks like, so let me give you a quick AA primer. I’ve been to meetings throughout North America and some in Europe, and generally, they all follow the same format. There are two types of AA meetings: closed meetings and open meetings. Open meetings are exactly what they sound like—They are open to alcoholics and to anyone else who wants to attend. Typically, after the initial announcements, and the reading of the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous, one alcoholic will come up to the front and share his or her story of strength, hope, and recovery. On the other hand, closed meetings are for alcoholics and for those who think they may have a problem with alcohol. These meetings also begin with the reading of the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, and are followed by a group reading or discussion based on one of the steps or traditions, or a topic related to recovery.

I’ve been attending AA meetings for almost 18 years now, and in that entire time, I’ve managed to stay clean and sober one day at a time. After the thousands of hours I’ve spent in recovery meetings, I can say I’m certain of only a few things. First, despite what many people believe, AA is not a cult. It’s just a group of alcoholics trying to figure out how to stay sober by helping the next guy or gal stay sober. Two, no matter how shitty I feel before walking into a meeting, I always feel a little better after it’s over. Three, going to meetings is like holding up a mirror to your sobriety. It’s impossible to see the changes in me since I’ve stopped drinking, but by looking around the room at others with different amounts of sobriety and encountering varying struggles and joys, I’m able to see myself in each and every other person in the room. And finally, having to sit in a chair for 60 or 90 minutes and listen to other alcoholics as they listen to me, is a much needed lesson in patience.

18 years later, I still have days where I desperately want a drink, but I remind myself that no matter how bad I’m feeling and no matter what problem I have, if I pick up that first drink, I’ll still have that problem, but now I’ll be right back in the caustic belly of my addiction. Today I consider myself a grateful alcoholic, and I now realize that I don’t have a drinking problem—I have a living problem.

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Margins & Wordless Wonder

1/7/2015

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For most of my life, I numbed, ran away, and avoided, always hiding on the margins, too afraid to confront my demons and too ashamed to reach out for the help I so desperately needed. But through all that time, I was a seeker—longing to find a way back into a place where I didn’t loathe the feel of my own skin, a place where I could simply disappear because I was normal. I know it’s ironic that I wanted to fit in, yet disappear at the same time, but I knew that unlike the soul-destroying self exile that had governed my life for so long, this form of disappearance came hinged with a warm enveloping feeling of acceptance and communion.

My story has been one of fighting my way back from the margins of society—one in which I never had a clear picture or understanding of what I was doing, what I was moving towards, or more accurately, what was moving through me. One of the champions of the marginalized was Thomas Merton, the American Catholic writer and Trappist monk. I’ve always admired his poetic voice and his strong social conscience that appeared to walk the tightrope of contradiction.

There’s a passage from Merton’s The Asian Journal that I find particularly illuminating in what I’ve come to believe as the purpose of everything I’ve battled through in my life.   "I stand among you as one who offers a small message of hope, that first, there are always people who dare to seek on the margin of society, who are not dependent on social acceptance, not dependent on social routine, and prefer a kind of free-floating existence under a state of risk. And among these people, if they are faithful to their own calling, to their own vocation, and to their own message from God, communication on the deepest level is possible. And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech and beyond concept."

What I’ve had to accept is that I can’t expect “social acceptance” as a precondition to my recovery, be it from the sexual abuse in my past, my battles with depression and suicide, or my continuing struggles with addiction. Somewhere along the way the bruises I tried to conceal by pushing everyone away, became battle scars I am proud of. In rescuing myself, I began to build bridges to others who trust in my path, and it was in this wordless dialogue, that others began to see hope in my story.

This transition has in no way been graceful, or in any sense self-aware or scripted. Much of the time I’ve spent trying to figure out what I should be like, and sound like. I’ve felt like an actor trying to find a way into his part—trying on this voice or that voice, experimenting with different mannerisms. It wasn’t until I threw away everything I thought a survivor should be, and embraced everything I naturally am, blemishes, missteps and all, that I finally found the voice of hope inside that I wanted to display to the world.

Subtly has never been my strong suit, and I wear the mantle of being a slow learner proudly. For me, substantive change has only come on the heals of repeated roadblocks and a lot of vain attempts trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. In biblical terms, I’m waiting for the lighting bolt or burning bush to signal something demands change.

One such burning bush arrived in my life a little over a year-and-half ago, and like most biblical parables, mine appeared in the beauty of nature through the eyes of an innocent child. I had recently begun an extended medical leave from my job as a teacher in order to deal with some recurring issues related to post traumatic stress. Not only was I unable to function in my normal duties in the classroom but also my complete inability to maintain any form of attention span meant that reading and watching television were frustratingly impossible. My only solace was an Adirondack chair on our front porch that offered a sheltered view of the comings and goings in front of our house. Anyone who has lived in a big city is well aware of the frenetic hum and busyness of urban living. But for the first time, I was now so disconnected from my plugged-in, super-charged life that I became a casual observer, an interloper.

We live in a quaint little pocket of Toronto just north of the eastern beach. It’s a community known for its postage-sized front gardens—a natural oasis amidst the tarmac and concrete. Like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, I sat transfixed to the intricate tableau unfolding in front of me. My cool mornings and warm afternoons were spent sitting on the porch watching the world continue on without me, neighbours heading off to work, dog walkers pounding the pavement, and parents walking their children to and from school.

One sunny morning a father and his young daughter walked by on their way to the elementary school down the street. As is typically the case when parents are in a hurry to hustle their children to school, those little minds are in a world of their own, and are easily distracted by everything and anything along the way. The impatient father decided to try to speed things up, so he walked on ahead. It was at that point, that the little girl stopped on the sidewalk in front of our house, and she reached into a makeshift concrete birdbath that we had at the edge of our garden. Living in an area literally overrun with cats, there was not a hope in hell that any bird in its right mind would venture down to what would more than likely be certain death in our birdbath. As a result, the birdbath became a de facto repository for decorative stones we picked up at the beach and various fallen twigs and leaves that I was forever picking out.

As I heard the father’s increasingly frustrated pleas for his daughter to hurry up, the little girl reached into the concrete birdbath and took out one of the more colourful stones. By that point, her father had walked back to grab her, and then, he saw me sitting quietly on our porch. I knew exactly what was going through his mind, as he was embarrassed because his daughter had climbed in amongst our flowers. He immediately scolded her, and told her “she should stay out of people’s gardens." The little girl turned to her father and said: “Mommy lets me do this every day. It’s my wishing bowl. Every day I take a stone out and make a wish.” The father looked like he just wanted to crawl into a hole and die. I’m sure he felt like crap for ripping into the little girl, who didn’t understand why her father didn’t grasp the magic in what she was doing.

After they had walked away, I felt as though I had been jolted awake—It was my burning bush moment. The words uttered by that little girl kept echoing in my head, and the more I thought about it, the more I believed they were the most beautiful words I’d ever heard.

You have to realize that I’d spent the past few weeks feeling completely lost, purposeless, and alone, but in the simple actions of that little girl, I began to realize the simplicity and power of hope and faith in our world. All I needed to do was to figure out a way of silencing all the noise around and inside of me, and begin to focus on the beauty of a moment, the belief in the wonderful.

I decided to latch onto this idea, so I got up from my chair and I searched around the basement for some old wood to use to make a sign, but all I could find was an abandoned wooden cheeseboard, cracked and warped sitting dusty on a shelf. I grabbed the board and a Sharpie marker and fashioned a little sign to place beside our concrete birdbath. In my squiggly penmanship, the sign read:

     “WISHING BOWL”
    Take a stone out to make a wish….
     Place a stone in to let go of a problem.

As I look back on this, my only motivation for going through all this effort was to see the expression on the little girl’s face the next time she walked by our garden. What I didn’t expect was the reaction our wishing bowl would have on our entire community. The reaction was immediate; as people were rushing by on their way to work, school, or the store, they would stop and read the little sign, and then they would smile, reach down, and take a stone out of the bowl or place one in. Within a week, people were carting stones from God knows where to place into the bowl to “let go of a problem”. Our little wishing bowl that had started its life as only a few decorative stones was now overflowing with pebbles and rocks from the community.

To this day, if you sit on our front porch or catch a furtive glance through the living room window, you are bound to see people stopping at the now famous wishing bowl. I have to say the most surprising thing for me has been the reaction of the groups of teenagers who parade past our house every day on the way to and from the high school down the street. Teenagers seem to unabashedly love the wishing bowl, and it doesn’t appear to matter that they are doing it in front of their friends. We have one elderly man who stops by every morning and takes a rock out and carries it with him for the day. On his way home, he drops another rock off to our wishing bowl. I’ve had countless parents stop and tell me that their kids love the wishing bowl, and how it reminds the hurried adults to slow down for a bit and appreciate the world through the wonder of a child’s eyes.

I believe that there are angels who come into our world to teach us the lessons we are too blind to take notice of. That little girl was one such angel. She opened up a part of me that had been closed for far too long. She reminded me that underneath all of the noise and trappings of our adult life, lies the one thing that so many of us spend our lives desperately seeking out--the glimmer of hope. As I sit down to write this, I began thinking about the difference between the words wish and hope. Most of us use these words interchangeably, but there is indeed a subtle difference. A “hope” refers to a person’s desires, and it is attached to strong emotion with the expectation that something is doable with a little effort. For instance, I “hope I get the promotion at work,” whereas a “wish” is often associated with magic, sorcery, or a strong yearning. You wish when you blow out birthday candles, or when you hold your breath and silently dream of good fortune. When you think about it, wishes are boundless, and they are magic in that they are not steeped in, nor weighted down by typical adult pessimism.

As I become more comfortable sitting with that voice inside that whispers to my soul, I’m learning that serenity can be found in the midst of adversity by “wishing” more and “hoping” less. If this means going against the grain and continuing to reside in what Thomas Merton lovingly referred to as the “margin of society”, I choose to live a life steeped in magic and optimism, and if that borders on blind naivety at times, then so be it. Our little wishing bowl is not just a neighbourhood novelty; it’s become a metaphor for a more joyous way of life.

I’m not going to lie to you; there are definitely times when I feel that my new way of life is counter to everything that the mainstream world operates on. There are times I feel frustrated, lonely, and utterly despondent, but it’s in these moments that I remind myself that I found my voice and my passion on the margins of society. Once again, I can seek solace in the words of Thomas Merton: "Do not depend on the hope of results. …You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself."

And it is here, in this space of endlessly falling but never hitting ground, where I need the most faith in my direction. When I quiet myself long enough to hear that whispering in my soul, I’m resolute. I intuitively accept that despite wherever we are now in our lives, in the face of what might appear to be insurmountable pain and struggle, deep down we are all worthy of love, and are without a doubt, superior to circumstance.

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Coming Apart & Falling Together

1/5/2015

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With the holidays behind us, overindulgence leaving our clothes feeling a little tighter, and a new year underway, we eagerly await what lies ahead. This year I have chosen to forgo the customary list of resolutions for one guiding principle instead—I will work towards removing the word blame from my vocabulary, and hopefully, my actions. Blame, by its very nature, is a dysfunctional word because it implies that we can in some way control the behavior and actions of others. It’s a powerless word that more often than not, traps us in a state of victimization.

2014 was by far the most difficult, but ironically, best year of my life—A tumultuous year in which I finally sought professional help for the physical and sexual abuse from my childhood, and for a violent rape that occurred during my adolescence. After almost four decades of blaming others, and asking why did this happen to me, I realized that I had been asking the wrong question all along. What I should be asking is what can I learn from pain and tragedy? In essence, I was stuck in what was no longer, and as a result, it was impossible for me to entertain what might be. I think Marilyn Monroe, whose beauty often overshadowed her business acumen and her way with words, said it best: “Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”

We are all dealt our cards in this life, but what we often fail to acknowledge is that our trump card is only revealed to us when we stand knee deep in chaotic turmoil, in those times when it feels like our world is crumbling around us. Instinctively, we put our head down and do whatever we can to bury, deny, and avoid the discomfort we are in. It’s a timing thing—we can’t force it to run its course; it just has to run its course. The discomfort of the disequilibrium can feel unbearable, and it can arrive at the least opportune times in our life. As Alan Watts says, “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

If I’ve learned anything this past year, it’s about learning to do the opposite to what my comfort zone brain is whispering to me. Instead of turning away when things appear to be coming apart in my life, this is the time when I need to be extra attentive, a time to be present and seriously take stock of what this undoing has opened in me. We typically look at pain as something to be suppressed; when in fact, it is a direct channel to something that does not sit right with us in our soul. By adopting this new way of looking at pain and sadness, instead of a tragedy, it becomes an opportunity, or even a gift that has unearthed a lesson inside me.

As it’s been said, “Wherever you go, there you are,” so the sooner you make peace with the fact that you are not just the “driver” but also the “passenger”, the sooner you’ll be spending less time escaping from your life and more time living it. My life has become less about distancing myself from painful memories, and more about making space for those memories to ride beside me like wise and faithful passengers. Our pain comes from wanting and expecting things to be different than they are. By acknowledging, “what is”, I am given a choice. I can learn to make space for it, thereby lessening the friction in my life, or invite something else into my life to take its place—Either way, I am fully present to where I am right now.

As the playwright George Bernard Shaw pointed out: “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” I can’t imagine a more beautiful, life-affirming way to begin not just the New Year, but every day of my life. So, in the absence of any resolutions for the year ahead, I will remind myself of these three questions to help govern my actions.

1. How can I make space in my life?
In this, I begin to let go of any negativity I might have about possessions, even people, or myself. If I really believe, as George Bernard Shaw said that I can “create” the life I want, then that means I have permission to leave more space for the people and things that nourish my soul.

2. How can I live in solutions not in complaints?
It was Shannon Alder who said, “The art of being wise is the art of knowing that solutions don’t come from individuals, but rather experiences.” I believe that complaining is the lowest form of communication, and it inevitably fosters more complaining. Far too often I look to others for the solution that lies within the experience inside me.

3. How can I build bridges and tear down walls?
Compassion lies in connection because it reminds us that deep down, all every person longs for is to be seen, to be heard. No matter where I am, commuting on the subway, passing a homeless person on the corner, or even standing in line waiting for my coffee, I have the opportunity to reach out and connect with somebody.

I’d like to leave you with the words of Albert Schweitzer. “In everybody’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle our inner fire.”

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Darkness Illuminated

12/22/2014

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With the winter solstice come and gone, those of us who live in the northern hemisphere can now expect increasingly longer days and shorter nights. I can fondly remember how much I looked forward to this time of the year as child—a prolonged escape from the confining classroom, a vast swath of unstructured time, and of course, the prospect of presents to unwrap.

But something happened along the way—I grew up, and more importantly, grew away from myself. As an adult, I have come to associate the month of December with scheduling commitments, commercialized-induced angst, and frazzled families. December demands our attention, so it’s bitterly ironic that this is the time of year we are least attentive. When we were children, we lived in the moment and seemed to roll with whatever came our way, the scraped knees, unicorns, and sugar highs. But now that I’m an adult, December has become a time when I look back and survey the year that was, and anticipate, sometimes with dread, but usually with blind optimism, what lies ahead. Overall, the one thing I seem hell bent on not doing is keeping as busy as possible so as not to focus on the now.

This year, more than ever before, I’m fighting my natural inclination that whispers to me to step out of the now for the endorphin rush of expectation around the corner.   I’m reminding myself that renewal, growth, and serenity are the gifts that are found when I slow down long enough to let my life catch up with me. There is an invigorating sense of peace that comes whenever I learn to be comfortable with where I am now, especially when every nerve ending in me is screaming to turn away.   As the poet Mary Oliver has said: “Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”

Mary Oliver's words awaken me, as they attune me to the idea that being attentive even in the darkest time of the year, fortifies my soul. The darkness of these winter months is not something to retreat from, but rather, something to be embraced. Even amidst the darkness, our silent companion—the moon—illuminates hope is ever present.   Metaphorically, darkness envelops us and dulls our visual sense. But as one sense is dulled, the others are heightened, and with distractions removed, clarity arrives.

I’m learning to accept that by staying present in the periods of darkness in my life, I in fact am blessed to see what really lies around, and inside of me. Darkness shrouds and isolates us from much of the pain in our lives, a byproduct of our interactions with others gone astray. Our jealousy, resentment, anger, and irritation cannot thrive when we sit alone and endure our darkness. All we are left with is our truth, and our truth is that we are governed by our fear—our fear of abandonment, worthiness, and forgiveness.

By disentangling all the ancillary emotions and seeing my fear for what it actually is, I step into my present and get a glimpse of how this is the doorway to my future. When I no longer turn away from the discomfort of my own darkness, I take ownership of my life, and in so doing, clear a passage for authentic connection with others. We are reminded by the American Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön, that darkness is what opens us. “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It's a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.”

So as this year draws to a close, I invite you to spend less time looking at the year behind you and composing the New Year’s resolutions that lie ahead. Instead, look around, and inside where you are right now. By really seeing yourself, you open the possibility to see others for what they really are too. I’ll leave the last word to Elizabeth Gilbert. “To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow - this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.”

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Insatiable Seduction

12/17/2014

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Whether I attribute it to something gone haywire in my orbitofrontal cortex, misaligned or misfiring opiate and dopamine receptors, or even the sexual violence incurred in my childhood, the answer always comes out the same--I am an addict. Being ensnared in an active addiction is a tortuous death spiral, a soul-sucking spiritual thirst, a cantankerous craving, an insatiable seduction, but most of, an anxiety-fueled obsession that’s all about self-negation.

I’m coming up on 18 years of being clean and sober, yet I’m ever so vigilant of how tenuous my sobriety can be. The longer I go without a drink or a drug, the more susceptible I am to getting lulled into complacency. It’s a daily reminder that while I’m going about rebuilding my life after drugs and alcohol, that snake called addiction is just off in the distance, slithering and snarling, waiting for me to take those first steps into the doorway of denial.

How can I describe what addiction is to someone who isn’t an addict? In my mind, the closest anyone has ever come to capturing the entrancing enticement of addiction is Dr. Vincent Felitti when he said: “It is hard to get enough of something that almost works.”

I used to think my struggles with addiction were all about my craving to fill an insatiable void inside me. I’m only beginning to understand how mistaken that thinking was. Addiction has more to do with what I’m trying to avoid than it does with any void inside me. In fact, I no longer subscribe to the belief that, like the hole in a doughnut, we all have an empty space inside of us that desires to be filled. It’s self-defeating going about your life thinking you’re in some way broken, or walking around with this aching cavern in your soul that screams out to be filled.

We are indeed all “whole”—The real issue lies in what, and whom, we permit to fill those crevices inside us. We’ve all been given limited space to work with, so if you want to welcome more joy, love, and forgiveness into your life, you’ll need to make space for it by purging some of the anger, hate, and self-pity from your life.

For years, I’ve wrestled with what recovery is supposed to look like. Are we ever really recovered from an addiction, or are we treading a path of recovering, of which we are given a daily, and sometimes hourly reprieve? Alcoholics Anonymous has held dominion over the recovery field and its 12-step offshoots for decades. And if you follow their direction, there is no such thing as cutting down, only cutting out. It feels almost blasphemous to second guess such a rigid direction that has managed to keep me sober this long, but I wonder if given the resources, support, and self-knowledge, if more addicts would internalize less shame, and thus have a better hope of recovery were a less stringent program in place.

This brings me back to the idea that addiction, a universal human condition, is simply a matter of not making space for other people and things in your life. Sometimes the volume is just turned up too high, and we fail to see the need to purge toxins from our soul. And these can take many forms—friends, family, substances, and behaviors. So how do we go about burrowing into our addictions and making room for goodness to enter our lives? It starts with getting honest with yourself and admitting that someone or something is standing in the way of you feeling whole. Next, you come to the realization that the addiction is merely a symptom to a much deeper problem in your soul. All the alcohol, drugs, shopping, work, and sex you use to numb your problem, in time, will no longer soothe the discomfort in you that can’t be silenced, only unearthed. At this point, you’ll need all the help you can get to fortify yourself to keep pushing through when its ever so easy to slide back into numbing and denying. Here’s when you’ll have to rely on the easiest “most difficult” thing in the world--forgiveness. You don’t have to be the person you were, but if you want any hope of wedging that addiction out of its foothold in your soul, you’ll need to find forgiveness for yourself and those who may have hurt you. And finally, once you’ve cleared that toxic space inside you and you’ve allowed joy and love to take its place, you’ll have to take responsibility to fight like hell to keep that addiction from slithering back in.

I’d like to leave you with beautiful words of Naguib Mahfouz: “The problem is not that the truth is harsh but that the liberation from the ignorance is as painful as being born. Run after truth until you’re breathless. Accept the pain involved in re-creating yourself afresh. These ideas will take a life to comprehend, a hard one interspersed with drunken moments.”

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Zen & The Art Of An Obituary

12/10/2014

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Like so many other people I know, the holiday season is by far, the most difficult time of the year for me. Seeing the stores and promenades decked and hollied, a shopping frenzy all around, and mountains of candy and baked goods, doesn’t fill me with Bing Crosby-esque joy, but instead, taps into all my insecurities, inferiority, and stirs up memories of troubled childhood Christmases.

I intuitively know that these feelings are not really “rational” in that it’s been many years since I’ve left that dysfunctional birth family behind, and since then, have crafted a beautiful family with my loving and supportive wife. But every year, I can feel myself tumbling back into that dark place in my heart yet again.

I decided to try something different this year—Instead of obsessing over the holidays that lay ahead, I would look back on all the growth that’s come to me this past year. Just like Mick Jagger intones: “You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, well you might find, you get what you need.”

I’m no Zen master sitting on remote mountaintop emptying his mind so that there is nothing there, but the present moment. But, I do aspire to live a simpler life—one in which my motto is to “get out of my own way, and let what falls in front of me be the way.” This is much easier to profess than to procure, but it’s a path that always welcomes me back. As with every change you want to see in your life, you must first start with a change in your mind. Simply “wanting” the change is not enough—you birth the change in your life by consciously rewiring your mindset, and by believing that just because it’s always been, doesn’t mean it always has to be.

I came across a really helpful exercise that I invite you to try by Roz Savage, the inspirational writer and speaker, who just happens to be the first woman to ever row solo across three oceans! While in her early thirties, and to all outward appearance having everything going for her, Roz was living a life of internal disquiet—feeling claustrophobic and somewhat rudderless. She knew she needed a change, but she was uncertain what that change should look like. Sound familiar? I think we can all relate to having that empty hole in our core at some point of our life.

So, in the words of Roz Savage, here’s what she did. “Everything changed on the day that I wrote two versions of my own obituary. I imagined that I was at the end of my life, looking back and thinking about what I did with my time here on Earth. I wrote two versions – the one I wanted, and the one I was heading for if I carried on as I was.”

The second I read that, something in me shifted. For one, I was terrified because I could see myself lying on my deathbed surrounded by those dearest to me, but all the while secretly knowing that there was an ache in me that I would take to the grave unfulfilled. But more importantly, I was shaken awake by a sense of hope that I, alone, still have the chance to write that life that I want. The only thing in my way is fear—and when it comes to living in fear, I consider myself an expert.

The thing about fear is that once you voice it—let it out of you—it immediately loosens its control of you. Does it go away? No, but that knot in your stomach begins to recede. Something else that I’ve come to realize is that I can start to unpack, and eventually overcome, any fear that I have when there is something out there I’m even more afraid of. Now ask yourself, is there anything more terrifying than lying on your deathbed having lived a life of unfulfilled dreams and expression?

So now that I sit here and survey the year that was, I know that I haven’t necessarily received the life I wanted, but I have faith that I have received the life I needed. I have confidence in what lies ahead because I trust that screaming feeling inside me that I can no longer silence or ignore. When you discover that passion inside of you, the reason you were put on this earth, you feel as though you’ve uncovered something that’s always been your faithful companion. It’s like the cloud you don’t notice until suddenly it blocks the sun. Find that cloud inside of you, and allow yourself to shine. You’re worth it.

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Touching the veil of thin places

12/2/2014

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I have been places where I feel that my heart is being cleaved open so that pain can escape and joy flood in. The sensation can come to me on a long walk in the mountains or in the forest, or standing on a deserted beach and feeling the tide roll over my feet, and can even appear under the harsh lights of a hospital room watching someone dear stoically take his last breath.   I was reading an article yesterday, when I came across a Celtic expression that beautifully encapsulates what I’ve always thought to be true.

The Celtic Christians believed that there were mystical spaces, called “thin places”, where the veil between the holy and the human is traversed—A place in which the physical and spiritual worlds are knit together, and if we are so attuned, we can transcend the ordinary for a glimpse of the infinite.   I’m sure you’ve been in such places jarring with kinetic energy, and simply by your presence, you are in someway changed.

Thin Places are not necessarily sacred places, or peaceful places. I consider them to be places of dissonance, or transformational plateaus. The energy that flows through me is an experience that leaves my heart open—more grateful, more empathetic, and less alone. It’s a disarming feeling of being brought to your own attention, knowing that you are forever changed by the experience.

The moment you walk into any hospital, it is hard not to be reminded of how thin the veil is that separates the physical from the holy. I’ll never forget spending the night sleeping beside my father as he lay in a palliative care hospital—The once stocky frame, now wasted away from the cancer consuming him. At 22, I had little space in my life for religion or thoughts of the hereafter, but holding on to his frail hand, I felt something enter me, and it has stayed with me all these years. Ironically, just three short months later, I would find myself in a delivery room at the hospital holding onto to my wife’s hand as we looked into the squinty eyes of our newborn son laying across her chest. Something flooded into my heart that early morning too—a simultaneous flutter of unquenchable joy tempered by a sense of powerlessness in the midst of the frailty of this innocent newborn.

Barely twenty years old, my wife and I went over to England to get married, and while we were there, we had the opportunity to go for lots of daylong hikes through the rolling fields of Devon and along the cliffs of Cornwall. On one of these walks, we had just finished descending a long embankment, when we came across this magical field of bluebells as far as the eye could see. It was just the two of us out there, but if you asked either one of us, we would tell you something else was present that field. Looking across that vast radiant meadow, I was struck by how big my world had become, but at the same time, I felt completely enveloped by the presence of my new bride’s unconditional love.

As a long distance runner, I spend countless hours crisscrossing the dark deserted city streets and dodging rocks and roots on off-road trails. On a four-hour training run, my mind often wanders to places deep within my soul, and I tap into a deep reserve of strength I believe lingers in all of us. I’ve encountered the mysticism of thin places on a few occasions when I’ve been alone on a run, but for me, the most memorable took place two years ago in the cool morning darkness of rural South Africa. I was taking part in the prestigious Comrades Marathon, an 89km race up and down some of the most unforgiving terrain through the pastoral province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.    The atmosphere at the starting corrals was electric, and unlike every North American race I’ve competed in, the mood was relaxed, as runners seemed to be soaking up every gorgeous second. Fifteen minutes before the start, the entire field of 18,000 runners started singing the national anthem followed by the most moving rendition of Shosholoza, the iconic folk song that speaks to the hardships endured by the native South Africans and the migrant peoples. Standing in the darkness, and feeling the vibration inside of me brought on by the haunting melody of 18,000 singers, I was moved to tears. I was overwhelmed by a sense of community, an impassioned plea of hope, and the resiliency of the human spirit. The veil separating the mundane and the transcendent had been pushed aside for the briefest of moments—And I will be forever changed by that glimpse of the divine.

Here is the poem I wrote for my wife about our mystical field of bluebells

“Bluebells”
by: JP Bédard

On your way, a road
You must walk all alone
But the road you’re on
You are not
On your own

Today I awoke in a world
All in enchanted
Looking for the place
Always taken for granted

Content with being lost
Not having all the answers
Guided by the singers,
Poets, and the dancers

The part that lay dormant
All these many years
Now suddenly awake
Brought to life with these tears

Like a teddy bear ragged
And missing one eye
Being hugged and dragged
Feeling love,
In great supply

Being perfect, or recovered
Is no longer my goal
I’ve discovered instead
The art to feeling whole

Walking through a valley,
Bluebells as far as the eye can see
I’ve discovered in myself
What I always knew to be

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A Place Neither Here Nor There

11/27/2014

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We are all moving towards something, or away from something. It’s a journey that can take us out of ourselves, or bring us back to a place of peace within us. All of this toing and froing is the geography of life. And as is the case with traversing any terrain, the secret lies in knowing when to climb and when to simply stand steadfast waist-high in a rushing stream.

The one constant in all of this is choice. We make the choice to take action, and equally, the decision not to act is also our choice. It’s in this space of doing and not doing that we confront our greatest fears. American author and Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön suggests that we draw on “compassionate action” when we come upon this point of uncertainty. “Compassionate action starts with seeing yourself when you start to make yourself right and when you start to make yourself wrong. At that point you could just contemplate the fact that there is a larger alternative to either of those, a more tender, shaky kind of place where you could live.”

This “tender, shaky” place that Pema refers to is a threshold—appearing as either a tangible entryway to a new beginning, or as something less tangible, a point at which something changes inside us. Unlike the trite expression, “When one door closes, another opens”, we view thresholds as less definitive. They hold promise, and all the while haunt us with the temptation of doing nothing. It’s an unknown territory where the old is not yet old, and the new has yet to arrive. It is a place of contradiction—a quiet place of disquiet in our soul.

We can look kindly upon a threshold as an invitation—an opportunity to step out of our comfort zone and walk upon, what to us, feels like unsteady ground. Having faith in a life without limits means letting go of the illusion of predictability. You arrive at a place where the edges are soft and the footing uncertain. It’s leaving the nest of your family home; it’s embarking on a new career path; or even the quivering fear of trusting your broken heart to another.

Our arrival to a threshold can also be a much-needed time to pause and take inventory. Rollo May, one of the leading voices on humanistic psychology, describes this beautifully. “Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness.” Thresholds remind us that we are not subjugated to our instincts, and that the space within this pause is the canvas on which we decide how to craft our life.

And finally, a threshold is a timely reminder of the impermanence of everything and everyone. The choice is ours whether or not we view the fleeting nature of life as a fear of loss within our heart, or as a fragile gift that has come into our life for only short while. That which we cannot possess but only care for, exposes us to a place of vulnerability where love can blossom. As the writer Stephen Levine reminds us, “That which is impermanent attracts compassion. That which is not provides wisdom.”

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Healing By Degrees

11/25/2014

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I hate to sound jaded, but with age, most of us come to expect sadness, loss, and disappointment. From our newspapers to our Hollywood blockbusters, we are inundated with stories of pain and emotional scars, and if we’re lucky, we will get to witness the sweet taste of retribution for all that hurt. There is definitely a societal price to be paid for our addiction to catastrophe—and one that I believe vacillates between a callous disregard for suffering to a hyped-up endorphin-fueled rage.

Maybe that’s why I’m always pleasantly surprised when I stumble upon love and forgiveness in the most unlikely of places. In my work as an advocate for survivors of child sexual abuse, I have the opportunity to share my experience and strength through various talks and panels. This past week, I participated on a panel with four other survivors of sexual violence, for a lecture series at York University. Before the first speaker got up, the anxiety in the room was palpable, as those in attendance expected to be decimated by stories of lost innocence and unimaginable transgressions. But with the telling of each survivor’s story, a surprising theme began to take shape—one of resiliency borne of forgiveness.

Language is power, and the language we use not only defines what we say but also who we are. You’ll notice that I’ve chosen not to label myself as a “victim”, but as a “survivor”. What many may say is only a subtle shift in vocabulary is in fact, predicated on a seismic shift in thinking, one to which I believe forgiveness is the key. Before I enter into a discussion on forgiveness, I’d like to state unequivocally that I am by no means a “saint” when it comes to the art of forgiveness—There are many times I stubbornly choose to hang on to toxic, self-destructive resentments.

When I think about what lies at the heart of forgiveness, I’m reminded of a poem I studied in undergrad by the 18th century English writer Alexander Pope.

True Wit is Nature to advantage dress’d
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d;
Something whose truth convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.

There’s nothing magical or ethereal about forgiveness. In fact, it’s staring us directly in the face, yet so often we refuse to reach out and unveil its beauty. On those rare occasions when we do, we discover the truth of “what often was thought, but never so well expressed.”

For me, truth lies in the faith of forgiveness, and when I surrender to this “faith of forgiveness”, a newfound freedom enters my life. I don’t believe that forgiveness is a one-time act, but rather, an unfolding process. We often get hung up on the “other party” when it comes to forgiveness, as we struggle with whether or not this individual warrants our compassion. And it’s at this point, that I need to remind myself that forgiveness is not something I bestow on someone else—It’s a gift that is mine alone.

You may be asking yourself, “What does forgiveness look like?”, and “Can we honestly expect anything from the person we forgive?” These are indeed valid questions, so I’d like to turn to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks who expressed this philosophy so beautifully. When asked how he copes with pain, anger, and grief in his life, he responded: “I say to the bad times, I will not let you go until you bless me.” And this to me is why I see forgiveness as a lifelong process of connection. Like it or not, we are all connected, so it is impossible to live a life in silos, in which we let the good in and keep the bad out.

When it comes to forgiveness, we are well served to let go of our anger, yet hold on to the lesson. By inviting this lesson into our lives every day, we maintain that connection with those we choose to no longer have contact with. There is a general misconception that “forgiveness” is somehow tied to “reconciliation”, and it is within this misconception, that we often deny ourselves the permission to forgive. Forgiveness is an inside job—a coming to terms with our own anger and hate. When I forgive, I give myself the permission, and freedom, not to expect to rewrite my past. When I forgive, it does not mean I “condone” something that happened to me, and thus—forgiveness—a shift in my own thinking, does not entail an apology from someone else.

Author and ethicist Lewis B. Smedes describes the process in this way: “Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.” If we are able to continue further down this path of forgiveness, one day we might reach a point of “reconciliation”—seeking common ground and understanding to move forward with another.

In the end, the choice is ours whether or not we have faith in forgiveness. When I’m asked how I can possibly forgive the individuals who sexually abused me, I respond by saying, “How could I not?” Faced with the choice of indefinitely hanging on to the anger and fear nestled in self-pity and resentment, or the choice of releasing myself of those toxic feelings, I choose the path of freedom. Have I been released of all the hurt from my past? No, but I do have faith in the process. In the words of the immortal William Shakespeare: “How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?”

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