The catalyst for this blog was a career counselor I met with several times this spring. I was trying to make sense of my career path in the wake of having resigned from my teaching job mid-year. She had a lot of helpful ideas and advice for me, but the greatest gift she gave me was permission to start telling my story. From early on in our working together she encouraged me to write and to look into career paths which might include writing. I told her I would like to write a blog about my experiences with mental illness in my family but that I couldn't do that because there was too much a chance that my family would read it; and that for them it would be too shocking. Her response was, "Well that's easy--use a pseudonym." Within a month of her saying that I had started my blog.
To this person I say: Thank you for helping me find the key for opening the door to my soul.
Sometimes we need another person to give us permission to do something that will be very good for us. For me, therapy has been immensely helpful, but writing about my experience, writing about my biography and the themes I can tease out of it is a tremendously powerful element of my healing.
And doing a blog is a great place to write. One benefit is that I have committed to posting every Thursday. Whether I feel like it or not, I have made a promise, to myself and to anyone who might be reading this blog, that there will be something arriving each week on that day.
Until now I have been very shy to share elements of my biography to anyone but my wife and my therapist. I felt shame that my mom has had a mental illness; that my dad killed himself. Because of the stigma surrounding mental illness, I also knew that most people would be uncomfortable about me sharing such things. There have been times when I really wanted to share some of the difficult parts of my life with someone and they were not able to hear it. They would change the subject or even pretend they didn't hear what I said. Next subject!
When I was in high school even my closest friends were unaware of some of the "shameful facts" I was dealing with, like my mom being in a mental hospital and having a diagnosis called manic depression. I never talked about my dad's suicide with others. I mean, who would want to talk about something as scary as that? Keep it as far away from our awareness as possible!
Being a teacher I was very aware that some, perhaps many, of the class parents might be freaked out by mental illness in my family. And so I kept quiet about my background around people in the school community. I was able to craft an image of myself that did not acknowledge these basic facts in my biography. What I have come to find out is that we can only keep things hidden for so long before they start pushing against the edges of the container we've put them in.
The hidden parts of us need to come out into the light of day not to haunt us, but to be redeemed. All of the pain of my childhood is inside me every day as I walk around. By giving it attention and working actively to transform that pain, I will gradually and increasingly be free of it. However much pain I am able to transform will then become something which can be in service to me and to others. The transformed suffering can become wisdom, understandings, compassion and capacities which can be put into service.
Telling my story does a number of things. First, it is a pledge I am making to myself that my story is worth spending time to think about and write down. Second, once I have written something down I often realize that I have discovered something about myself or solidified an idea which was only ephemeral until splatting onto the page as my fingers tapped the correct keys in the correct order.
It is tremendously liberating to share my story now. Even if no one else reads it, it will still be there for me to have spent the time and energy to think about, ponder and try to express as best I can. I have never given anything to myself like this. It is a gift from me to me. If anyone else finds it helpful in some way, that is just icing on the cake.
Telling my story is seeming to me more and more like a key aspect of my healing. As long as I can remember I've carried a swirling mass of murky behavior patterns all wrapped up in denial like some sort of birthday present from the Black Lagoon. This mass I've been carrying all these years seems now to be an engine which is driving my weekly blog posts. What was dragging me down is now being turned into fuel. I have been so very needful to tell my story and I never have given myself the chance to do it.
Why is biography a path to healing?
In writing down our biography we articulate the events that have brought us to who we are today. We trace our essential self as it has come into the material world, first as a child, then growing up, then as an adult. Who were our parents? Why did we come to them? Is there an intention greater than we can imagine with our smaller mind, that has directed us to be in this life, with these people?
When we look at our biography with a clear and gentle eye, we can see the patterns which have come around us, which have directed us into having a certain personality, a certain affectation, a certain sense of humor. We see something of the affects our parents and other caregivers have had on us, for good and for ill.
Stepping through the events of my childhood I have begun to address a question I started this blog with: Why am I having career challenges in my forties when both of my parents had similar struggles? How have they imprinted on me? Did they imprint this particular pattern on me, similar to having a similar speech pattern or sense of humor? If so, can I describe this/these pattern(s)? By delving into my childhood experiences, can I come to some clarity on this matter which is of great interest to me today and will have a significant influence on my future?
Writing my biography helps me to be more grounded on the earth. It helps me to see the forces that worked on me. This helps me to forgive myself for my shortcomings, and also to see where their origins lie so that I can work to transform them. For example, I am much more clear since I've begun my blog about what was behind some of the manic behavior I have exhibited in the past.
As long as I was either oblivious to or in denial about important details and themes of my biography, I could act in a manic way at times and not be able to step back and see it for what it was. I can see now that it was a learned behavior. My mom had manic episodes regularly. She was my primary model. It seems very, very simple really, but before I delved into my biography I was only vaguely aware of this fact. Putting it down in black and white, and publishing it on the internet, gives it more solidity for me.
This puts my higher consciousness more in the driver's seat relative to the retrograde patterns which are mucking about in my subconscious. I know this is a long process I'm entering into, but it sure beats being at the butt-end of the critters which are mucking about.
Finally, delving into one's own biography is a way to look at our life from a longer and higher perspective. We can see how the themes in our life at different times are shared by other human beings. There are themes from each decade, from each slice of life, which we all can relate to in some way.
I believe that each of us is a spiritual being moving through life on earth. We are not created when we're born and we're not destroyed when we die. What is eternal in each of us spans the two greatest thresholds of our life. Our biography is what our essential self is writing on the canvas of this lifetime. Each of us is given fairly different kinds of materials to bring to the canvas. Paying attention to our own biography and to those of other people, can be a very satisfying experience.
Your comments are welcome.
Warmly, Ben
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