Sexuality pt 4: Am I a Body or a Spirit?

I've been reading a great memoir lately by Jacki Lyden,  an NPR anchor.  It's called "Daughter of the Queen of Sheba" and tells of the author's childhood with a mentally ill mother and physically/verbally abusive step-father.    It was published in 1997 when she was forty three years old.     One piece in the book I've been thinking about relates to the physical abuse she began to receive from the step-dad when she was seven years old.   He had been verbally abusing her and her sisters and one day he snuck up behind her,   punched her in the back of the head,  slamming her face on the sink and bloodying her teeth,  all for not putting the cap back on the toothpaste tube.   

Some sentences which I found fascinating:

"In this country there were fists.  Coming at me always from behind,  the fists,  like snowballs,  were random and impossible to predict,  hitting the base of my skull where a blow would leave no bruise...Try again,  I silently told him.  Go ahead and do it again.  He could not resist me,  I was certain of that.  We had formed a relationship at last.  A blow.  The absorption of a blow.  A symmetry,  he and I together....Only recently have I realized that not all men view pain as a part of love,  the hardest blows a kind of bond,  deeper and more intense than ordinary love."   (p79)

As I read her words I thought of how the abuse she suffered at the hands of her step-dad includes principles of abuse patterns.   These patterns translate to the molestation I endured at age seven.    And as she strongly  infers, childhood abuse often sends the victim into situations later in life which echo the initial trauma.    Through being abused sexually,  I too was in a "relationship" with the perpetrator long after the abuse occured.   The baby-sitter who abused me regularly over several months time still haunts me in different ways.   Her signature is a part of my sexuality.   It is part of who I am.   What she did to me when I was seven set me up to re-live the dynamic over and over until I could transform it.   Whether I will completely transform the abuse or not I cannot say at this point.     It could be that I will carry her signature with me in some way all the way through to the end of my life.

As I continue to read Jacki Lyden's memoir what I am fascinated to learn more about is what the author does to overcome the wounds she describes.   What resources does she find in herself  which show her the way through the pain and into a life which is not haunted by the painful experiences she describes?    Has she found her way into relationships which are loving,  satisfying and without any abusive edge?   These are questions I am asking myself as I read on.

I have friends in the town where I grew up who were still going to strip clubs on a regular basis well into their 30s.   They were on a first-name basis with several of the strippers when I went with them to their favorite club once about fifteen years ago.   My life even then had already diverged so much from where it was heading in high school that I felt very awkward and out of place.   

So what was in me that refused to go down the road of strip joints and porno flicks?   Why do I have friends from my childhood who (at least ten years ago) were going to strip bars every weekend when I recoil from the thought?    Why am I different?   Perhaps a better question is "Why was I hanging out with friends in high school who were so different from who I am inside?"   That's may be where my mom's mental illness plays in.   If she had never had a mental illness she might have helped me to clarify my values at an earlier time.   That may have led me to friendships with different kinds of people.   Don't get me wrong--my friends from high school are not bad people.   It's just that as time goes on the differences between us seem to be ever greater.   We don't  keep in touch.   

As I finished high school my values were pretty confused.  I didn't know what I stood for,  if anything.    By the time I was in my mid-twenties my values were beginning to become clearer to me.    I imagine that my particular time-line with that is not so unusual.

I've found over time that I value monogamy as one of the pillars of a healthy long-term relationship.   I have had to decide this, not as a given,  but as a real choice.   Our close family friend,  a man who was like an uncle to me,  very actively questioned the value of monogamy and,  I believe,  wanted to start a sexual relationship with me even though he was married and I was in a long-term relationship.     When I felt his interest and saw signs that he was actively grooming me for a partner I strongly distanced myself from him and have been out of contact for several years now.   

In my opinion,  a big problem with my "uncle's" approach is that people end up seeing each other as physical beings and lose sight of the spirit which animates our bodies.  My baby-sitter saw me as a "body",  a thing which she could use at her will without any thought to the spirit which was trying,  at age six,  to inhabit the body.   She just perceived me as physical matter,   putty to play with,   a dildo to pleasure herself with and then toss aside.

After she molested me she also did things to humiliate me or harm me.   One time she pinned me down and farted right in my face.   Another time I showed her a piece of art I had done and she responded,  "You didn't do that--you're not good enough to do that."   Now,  a kid who had a positive self image might have heard a person say such a mean thing and say to himself,  "Well,  as a matter of fact I did do it,  she clearly thinks it's well done,  and so clearly she's just an asshole for saying such a mean thing."   But my self image was so low at that time that I took what she in as "You're not good enough".   

"You're not good at art and you're probably a failure as a person"  is the message that slithered off of her tongue and crept into my psyche.   I still carry that message as a voice inside of me even though I have done a great deal to counter it over the years.   I still feel wounded by what she did to me and what she said to me.   If you've read previous posts,  you may remember that the molestation came at a time in my life with many other stressors.   A few months later I would see my dad for the last time.   And my mom,  with untreated bipolar,  was diving full-bore into a professional career and a workaholic lifestyle.   After having about four years of "good enough parenting",  ages five and six were telling me that I was,  in many ways,   on my own.  And that the world,  even inside my own home,   was a very dangerous and unpredictable  place.   

Now,  one might ask,  "what's wrong with your "uncle's" approach?  Why be such a prude and insist on monogamy?    My answer is that,  in my experience of observing such things,  that the approach my "uncle" has taken has the very real potential of wreaking devastation in human lives.    Treating others like they're only a body can easily have that outcome whether it is molestation or extra-marital affair.     Obviously having an affair is not a criminal act,  whereas molesting a child is.   Nevertheless,  tremendous damage can and does come out of both scenarios.

I see sexuality as a very powerful force.  It's really a shame that we don't take it more seriously than we do.   Honoring ourselves and our loved-ones by being monogamous allows us to build healthy families.   Not doing so puts the well-being of our families at risk.    When we see ourselves and  each other essentially as spiritual beings,  it seems to me that the conversation changes.   There is a higher voice which shows us that the path of sexual discretion and honoring our partners is of infinitely greater value than sexual release with a person outside the primary relationship.     If one has an intractable issue in the primary relationship,  it should be resolved or the relationship ended,  before taking up with a new partner.

A wonderful book my wife told me about many years ago is called "Embracing the Beloved:  Relationship as a Path of Awakening"  by Steven and Ondrea Levine.    The authors lay out a possible path of what relationship can be when it is deeply in tune with one's spiritual life.     Though I see myself as fairly challenged in the area of sexuality and relationships,  this book was a help to me to see what is possible when our higher Mind is sitting in the director's chair.    My hope is that as I continue to heal the wounds I still carry with me every day,  that my re-reading of this terrific book will help me to take further steps in deepening my relationship with my wife.

What I have learned is that by setting an intention,  an ideal,  as a goal to strive for can be very helpful.   I have only been able to achieve small elements of the path the Levines describe.  And yet,   taking small steps over a period of time can yield very real results.    Even though the road ahead of me has plenty of stuff for me to work out,   I can nevertheless be proud of the work I have done so far.   

A key aspect of my spiritual path is looking at process,   my own and that of others.   I believe we are all in a process which gradually unfolds over time and that each step is usually influenced by the voice of our higher nature as well as that of our lower nature.   Each choice we make can lead us a little toward one or the other.     I can safely say that my trend in choices over the past fifteen years is leading me to a much happier life today than had I listened to my "uncle" who was encouraging me to "play the field".   

For me, in my life,   it really couldn't be any clearer.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben

Sexuality pt 3: Overcoming Pornographic Thoughts

As I have written in the last few posts,  my relationship to my own sexuality got a pretty rough start when I was a child and teenager.    I am sure that a number of people have it a lot worse than me,  but mine was no cake-walk.   

Both of my parents were having affairs when I was a baby.   I was molested when I was six.   My mom had a fair amount of free-floating sexuality.    My dad did inappropriate things like mooning the camera when I was at his house at age five and six.    I also frequently saw my dad naked when I was at his house.    Now nakedness is probably fine in cases when the adults are clear about what they're doing.   My dad was pickled a lot of the time and was not exactly thinking through his parenting philosophy.    He took me to see "The Exorcist" when I was five.   He was not vying for any parenting awards.

As I grew older I had started having sex in junior high school and watched porno-flicks with my friends on a fairly regular basis from the time I was twelve years old.   We had access to print pornography as well.   My friend's older brother had essentially papered his bedroom's walls with Playboy centerfolds.    All of these inputs in my early life meant that by the time I graduated from high school I was very confused about sexuality.   I had a sense that I was a good person and had the potential to be a good partner to someone,   but my childhood experiences had led me to have some pretty serious issues regarding sex and relationships.

My saving grace was the year I spent overseas.   As I noted in a recent post,  my host-mother,  a high school teacher,  talked to me one time about "saving it for marriage" and the satisfaction and joy which can come from that choice.   Much more than that,  the example that her words were grounded in showed me another way.   Her words,  and her way of living moved me.   I did not decide then to "save it for marriage" (too late for that!)   but I did gain a strong sense of the value of monogamy,  commitment to family and how wonderful a stable and loving family can be.   When I returned home I was still mostly clueless but I had a new direction.   

Something that has dogged me since I was in high school is pornographic ideation.   I know that I am not alone in this.  This is not something that I want to have roosting in my sub-conscious and it has taken time to take hold of it.      Although I occasionally consumed pornography as a young adult I increasingly had the sense that my urge to do so was connected with a very confused and damaged part of me.

When I was in high school I had a friend who would freely peruse Hustler magazine while in a public place.   I saw him do that and thought it was very inappropriate,  though I couldn't explain why.   Now that I have some distance from that time I have come to some realizations about how I view pornography philosophically.

I believe that pornography,  prostitution,  exotic dancing and other related industries are basically about slavery.     I know this because my childhood experiences were setting me up to perhaps become a sexual slave myself.   

Because I was sexually dominated by a babysitter when I was six years old,   I have a very strong experience of what it means to be a sexual slave.   That experience of mine could have led me in a number of directions.    I might have developed a sex addiction.   I might have found myself in relationships where I was either the sex slave or the slave-master.    I could have found my way into prostitution.     

Luckily,  none of these possible outcomes became reality for me.     My urges would have loved to have dragged me into one of those above-named places.   But my intention for myself was looking for another way.    One huge help for me was that my grandparents were able to pay for my college.     For me,  college was a place where I could focus on my studies and be in a relatively healthy environment.    It was a free-space where I didn't have to worry about money or how to earn it.    It was probably about the safest place I could have been in.

I was in a long-term relationship during my first year of college as well as my junior year.   In my second year a friend took me to a strip club.   I was certainly aroused but I also had a strong feeling that it just wasn't right.   It wasn't healthy.  My mind gravitated to the young woman who was giving me a "lap-dance".   What kind of life was this for her?     I felt this empathy because I knew inside what it means to be a slave to my own sexual urges and those of others.    As far I am concerned,  making one's living in the sex trade is living in hell.   I don't believe in the old-fashioned fire-and-brimstone pictures of hell.   Human beings seem tragically capable of creating hell on earth,  and sex commerce is a clear example of that sad fact.

I don't believe the urges I've had to consume pornography are "wrong" or make me "bad".   I simply do not want them to be part of my regular thought diet.  Pornography enslaves my thoughts to a very base level of my physical body.   It encourages me to identify myself with my lower self, my most materialistic level.    "I don't give a shit about you--I just want a fuck"  is what my babysitter was doing to me when I was six.   Prostitution and pornography carry the same message to the person who is offering up her/his body in exchange for money.   Both the subject of the photo and the guy ogling it are debased,  in my opinion.

My higher nature tells me that I am essentially spirit;  that my body is a suit of clothing which I am wearing for a while,  and which will wear out after a certain amount of wearing it.   I have gradually and steadily been trying to identify with my spirit,  and not to think of myself essentially as "my body"  "my personality" "my issues".   There is a greater Self which is standing behind those parts of me.   That Self takes on the clothing of those worldly expressions but it knows that it is infinitely greater than any and all of them.

The thing is,  consuming pornography yanks me out of my connection with that higher part of myself.   It brings me into a place which is more animal in nature,  though without the nobility that most animals possess.    There is a sultry fog which comes over me and makes me feel degraded and weak.   I take in the images just at the physical level and do not try to imagine what life is like for the people who are displaying themselves.     I heard once that the majority of porn film stars are addicted to heroin.   Based on my own experience of sexual slavery and what I imagine the life of a porn star to be like,  that wouldn't surprise me at all.   Heroin removes one's ability to empathize or have any feelings at all.   Your loved one dies of overdose and all you can think of is how you're going to get your next hit.   The fog of sexual slavery has,  in my experience,  similar elements to that kind of thinking.  You lose yourself in the fog and nothing else matters other than giving that urge a hit.    One who lives their life that way truly is a slave,  in my opinion,  whether or not they are under the thumb of a pimp.

Over the past twenty years I have bought pornography on occasion.   It has been a few years since I did the last time.   Until recently,  I felt a compulsion to buy a magazine once a year or so and hold on to it for a few days.   In recent years I would buy the magazine while telling myself that it wasn't healthy for me,  but buy it nevertheless.   In a counseling session I told my therapist about consuming pornography on occasion and talked about it with him.   Since then I have lost the compulsion.    I think I was close enough to letting it go that just letting out "the secret" was the final straw that let me relinquish the urge.

Beyond the consumption of pornography is having pornographic thoughts.   Imagining people pornographically is a way of seeing them in the most material way.   We ignore their spirit and see only the body.   We forget their soul and focus on our own animal urges.   We remove their humanity and see them as a fuck-doll.   My own thinking could reach these unpleasant places because I had myself been treated like a fuck-doll when I was at a very formative age.   My wound was not healed and so my ideation swarmed around the wound,  lighting it up and pointing to it.    

Luckily,  we do not need to be slaves.   We can be free.   We have to see the direction where our freedom lies and do everything in our power to go that way.   Each step may not seem at all earth shattering.  But over time,  if we choose to gradually go towards our freedom,  we will come more and more into it.

My path of freedom has had several steps to it.   One was,  when I was eighteen,  deciding that I wasn't going to watch the horror movies I had found entertaining as a high schooler.   I decided that I wanted to "re-sensitize myself" (those were the words I used at the time)  I realized that I had become insensitive in many ways and that my habits were not helping.   I decided that I wanted to see movies which had some redeeming virtue to them;  that I would avoid the trashy ones and those with gratuitous violence.

Another step I took was to quit smoking.   When I was in high school I chewed tobacco.  By the time I reached college I realized that chewing was really pretty  gross so I took up smoking instead.   As a smoker in my early twenties I realized that the smoke was harmful to me but I did it anyway.   When I finally got up the will to quit I started to feel differently about myself.  In a subtle way  I began to respect myself more.

But far and away the best thing I did for my own freedom was to begin a spiritual path.   Studying spirituality has given me a completely different frame of reference than I had previously.     It is really clear to me that I have a "higher self" and a "lower self".   As I learned more and more about spirituality I began to identify myself with the former and to be aware that the latter is active in me but does not represent my essential nature.   My freedom lies in my taking this path up and continuing to take intentional steps to develop it.    My ability to write unflinchingly about myself,  and through that process grow and evolve,   is based on the fact that I see myself as a spiritual being.

I don't think that true freedom comes from anything else.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,  Ben

Sexuality pt 2: Are You Sure You're not Gay?

The issue of people wondering if I were gay has been with me for a while.   When I was nineteen the older brother of a friend of mine floated a rumor that I was gay.   I was mad, called him up and gave him a piece of my mind.   Within a few years of my being mad about such insinuation I began to wonder myself if I might be gay or bi.   In spite of being a very sexual person,  I had never fantasized about guys before.  But maybe other people were seeing something that I didn't.      

When I was a senior in high school there was that football coach I've spoken of in previous posts who was attracted to me and made passes at me.     I have since realized that I was extremely eager for the attention and care of a man (father figure) and he was masquerading as a healthy version of that,  when in fact he was more interested in having me as a sexual partner.    Because I was so wounded and needy I was a pretty easy mark.

My mom was really hoping that her husband would be like a father to me but that didn't work out.    A month after they were married she became psychotic,  spent two weeks in a mental hospital,  received her diagnosis,   and started taking lithium.   Pretty bumpy start to the marriage.   And it stayed bumpy all the way through the eight years they were married.   They yelled at each other so frequently that I would just expect it to be happening if they were both in the house.   And even if it hadn't been so bumpy I seriously doubt he and I would have been close.   We are very different people and have very different values.

By the time I was in my third year of college I had several friends who were were either gay or lesbian and being around them felt comfortable to me.    I didn't like other men making passes at me,   but I was perfectly happy to be friends with a number of gay men.    At the time I considered myself something of a "SNAG" (sensitive new age guy) and so hanging out with other guys like that seemed just normal.   Not that all gay men are SNAGS (by any means!).   I really liked hanging out with lesbians because I felt like I could be purely friends with them,  and not have any sexual tension between us.   

When I was a senior in college I kissed a man and soon after even went on a few dates with another man.   I didn't really think I was particularly attracted to either of them (way less compared to how I respond to women)  but I wanted to "just see,  dammit!"   What I learned from those two experiences,  and just thinking about whether I were gay or straight or bi,  (and any of the three options was going to be OK),    is that I really like women.   A lot.   In fact,  since that time in college it's not something that has even crossed my mind in twenty years.   Except that occasionally people still ask me,  "Are you sure you're not gay?"  

So why is that?   Am I deluded?   Have all these years of happy hetero life been a smokescreen?   As I have pondered this reaction other people have to me and have come to some insights about why they are wondering.   

In my previous post I talked about how there was a fair amount of sexuality in my life early on,  much of it either damaging to me (being molested) or at least not healthy (regularly watching porno flicks with my friends from age 13).   My mom's bipolar has a symptom of hyper-sexuality,  which she did display.   We also had a close family friend who thought nothing of undressing in front of a group of pubescent boys.   I had my first post-puberty sexual experience with an inebriated teenage girl I had met on a city bus when I was thirteen years old.   I never knew her name or saw her again after we had had sex.     In high school I fairly regularly had sex with girls in my own house for the simple reason that my mom and her husband weren't around.

By age sixteen I was a bit of a loose cannon as far as sexuality was concerned.   That was when I was treated for an STD.   I consider myself very, very lucky that I didn't get a girl pregnant.  Or that I had caught something that you can't clear up with a visit to the free clinic.

Going back to the initial question of the post,   why DO I come across to some people as perhaps being gay?

I think a lot of it goes back to three things:  being molested,   my mom's lack of boundaries in regards to her own sexuality,  and the simple fact of being raised by a woman.

I need to make very clear here that my mom never molested me or did anything overtly inappropriate towards me in a sexual way.   Nevertheless,   her own boundaries,  both generally and in relation to sexuality, have been quite permeable.   

I also need to make very clear that I do not believe that being gay is due to some kind of damage to a person in childhood.    I was damaged as a child in the area of sexuality.   And I'm not gay.    But seeming gay to some people is,  I believe,  due in part to my childhood traumas.

I believe the molestation opened me up to others' sexual advances in an unhealthy way.     It made my "field" of sexuality confused and  permeable,  and set me up in somewhat of a victim's stance.   I have been very fortunate that I have not been victimized sexually by others since the time I was molested (though the situation with the football coach was pretty close).     Nor have I become a perpetrator.   I think it's really good to acknowledge these things because they are places where I can express gratitude and pat myself on the back.    Things could have been a lot worse.   

As I grew up and became an adult someone could show me sexual attention and I would be essentially unable to resist mirroring it back.   Just as the babysitter forced me to her deviant will,  I would be compelled to return sexual attention whether I wanted to or not.    Someone who was not hurt in the way that I was could more easily have friends who were "just friends".   With me,  the wiring is a bit off and I can easily send messages that I do not wish to send.    This miscommunication has gotten better over time but is still active to some degree.   

The babysitter surrounded me with her energy and then assaulted me.   I have read about the difference between the male abuse pattern versus the female abuse pattern.   Due to the nature of the biology and soul differences between males and females,  there are real differences in what the victim experiences,  physically,  emotionally and mentally.   The male pattern is more about being invaded by a foreign body,  which punches through one's boundaries.   The way to heal this after the fact can be using anger to repel the feeling of the attack.  One can,  in one's imagination,  fight back against the assault and beat the shit out of him.

When it's by a female perpetrator,  the abuse pattern can be more of being encircled,  surrounded by a soft and enveloping presence.   Sounds nice,  right?  Except that you're being raped.   Being assaulted by a female can,  in some ways,  be more difficult to heal from,  because the abuse pattern is less clear and more diffuse.     "Didn't I kinda like it?"    "She was nice,  some of the time."    The violation of being raped by a man is likely to be much clearer than it is when being raped by a woman.   

And so it is pretty challenging for me to sort out what is my natural behavior and what is a pathology based on being molested.   A lot of times it feels much easier to isolate myself than to feel the jumble of issues under the surface of my consciousness when I am interacting with a friend.   If I keep people at a distance then I don't have to feel like I'm on that wobbly ground.   If I am more distant I feel like I am stronger.   But I also know that the feeling of strength is an illusion.   What will actually make me stronger is to deal with the issues and have friends I become  close to.

So,  friendships in general are pretty challenging for me.    And beyond the issues of sexual abuse,  there is also the issue of my dad abandoning me just a few months after the molestation had ceased.     So,  the sexual abuse plays in,  as does the lack of boundaries which comes from my mom.   And then the icing on the cake is that I have a deep and intense fear of being abandoned and so I will distance myself from another person rather than risk having that person "abandon" me.   Whoohoo--the lonely guy trifecta!

I don't really have many friends I spend much time with.    I am a likable person but I clearly have major roadblocks to anyone getting closer to me.    My wife is a very notable exception.    Having friends I am close to is something that I'll just have to work at over time.   

Now,   if I had had family members who carried clear boundaries themselves I might have gotten a head-start on healing the boundary issues that came with the molestation..   But my mom,  apparently as do many people with mental illness,   has poor boundaries.   When I was a kid I did not have any kind of direct model of a person who could hold their own sexual "field" back based on their intention.   Now that I am in my forties,  I've been working on creating a healthy boundary between mom and I.   This has been extremely helpful for me,  and for her as well.    It has also been very slow-going.   I believe that a part of my mom would very much like to feel as if she and I were one person.    Fortunately,  that part of her has been steadily decreasing its hold over her.

The other reason that sometimes people wonder if I'm gay is pretty simple,  really.   I was,  for the most part,  raised by my mom.    Dad was out of the picture pretty early and even though mom remarried,  it was when I was fifteen and I didn't really think much of her husband.   So basically my model of adult behavior was a woman.     And so,  some of my mannerisms are more feminine at times.   So sue me.

When you put that and the sexual boundary issues together it is pretty easy to see how someone might wonder about my sexual orientation.   When it comes to gay men telling me they think I'm gay,   I also, at times,   have to take it with a grain of salt.     I've had men (when I was in college)  tell me they thought I was gay and also tell me that they'd be happy to have sex with me to help me figure everything out.  Uh,  yeah.    Thanks.

I think that I am really the most objective person to make this determination,  even though my thoughts are by definition,  subjective.   And I am really quite clear on the matter.   But it's helpful to go over the issue and sort out the various pieces.   

Life is not simple.   But it is interesting.  No doubt.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly,   Ben

Sexuality pt 1: Overview

In ancient times, near the temple of Apollo at Delphi a sign stated "Know Thyself". To me, the sign means, in part, that in order to ascend to higher levels of knowledge we must first unflinchingly look at our own "stuff". We must examine with a cold eye those parts of us which we share with other mammals: our drives, instincts and so on. Additionally, we must look at what has shaped our personality; the grist, good and bad, which we are trying to mill into fine flour.

We are each a puzzle even to ourselves, to say nothing of how others view us. This blog is about me gradually putting into place some of the pieces which make up who I am in this lifetime. I figure that if I am as clear and honest as I can be about each of the little pieces, that over time I will begin to see myself more clearly.

I will not be able to approach "knowing myself" without delving into the issue of sexuality. I think that the mental illness of my parents plays a part in both the context and the events of my childhood which relate to sexuality. One of the symptoms of bipolar is hyper-sexuality. Clearly the main model I had (mom) was capable of high charged sexuality and, at times, indiscretion. She never molested me or was blatantly inappropriate with me in a sexual way. Nevertheless, she had a strong sexual field and I was modeling it 24/7.

In addition to the modeling aspect, there is also the fact that mental illness made both of my parents less able to be good parents. They were not very tuned into me, what I was doing, what my feeling life was like. They both suffered from fairly acute narcissism.

As near as I can tell, both of my parents were sexually robust individuals. By the time I was born their marriage was on the rocks. In the first four years of my life both of my parents had affairs, according to my mom.

About a year after my parents divorced and soon before my dad moved away, I was regularly molested by a female babysitter over a period of several months. At the same time I had a "girlfriend" in my second grade class with whom I would walk around the school yard, my arm around her shoulders.

Later, after my folks were divorced and dad had left, we had a close family friend who would undress in front of me and other kids. His philosophy apparently was that our culture was too prudish and nakedness should be seen as normal and nothing to hide. He also had frequent relationships outside of his marriage, though I didn't know that until later. Years later, when I was a young adult, I started to get the picture that he wanted to have a sexual relationship with me. He was in a long term marriage then (as he is now) but frequently had sexual relationships outside the marriage. When I was in my early to mid-twenties and sensed he was trying to groom me as a sexual partner, I began steadily distancing myself from him.

But going back to when I was a kid....So, due to the molestation, by the time I was seven years old the door of sexuality had been opened wide to me. My introduction to sexuality was to be the sex toy of a messed up fifteen year-old girl who did not give a shit about me. She happily dominated me and didn't give my welfare the slightest thought.

For several years after that experience my sexuality was, for the most part, outwardly dormant. There just isn't the outlet for most elementary-age kids. At age nine I "touched tinkles" one day with a girl my age who lived across the street but it seems like a fairly typical childhood kind of thing.

Another experience I distinctly remember at about age nine is going to a man's house who was a friend of my mom. She introduced me to him and he directed me to a wood pile where there were tools for building (he was a carpenter) before they both went inside. I spent a half hour or so playing with the tools and wood and built something I thought was pretty cool (I forget now what it was, exactly). I went into the house to share my project with them and looked around for where they were. I finally found them on the back deck, having sex. I was shocked and backed away. Even though I was close to them they did not notice me. I went back to the woodpile feeling a bit odd. Mom came out a bit later and we left. I never said anything to her about what I saw. Nor did I ever see the guy again.

Though I remained fairly innocent in my behavior as a child, by the time I hit puberty things began to change in a hurry.

In middle school there was a girl whose butt my friends and I would regularly pinch. She told us to stop but we didn't. Today it would be clearly called sexual harassment or perhaps worse. The teacher either never saw what we were doing or overlooked it. Whenever I think of what we did to her I feel a huge sense of remorse.

When I was twelve I encountered a girl, a few years older than me, who was very drunk. We were riding the city bus and got off at the same stop. As we walked along the road she began strongly coming onto me and invited me into her home. We had sex and afterwards she passed out. I walked home. I never knew her name or saw her again.

My friends and I began also watching pornography on a fairly regular basis. There was a pay-tv station that most families had at the time which aired "porno flicks" every Saturday night after midnight. I could watch them at my house or at my friends' houses, either way. I don't remember parental oversight ever being much of a concern of ours. I am sure that at least some of the parents knew we were watching them, but just didn't say anything. I don't think my mom was aware that we were even watching them.

A man visited us one summer who was distantly related to us and a bit of a wild guy. In his mid-twenties, he drank heavily, had some wacky ideas about how to get rich quick, and would buy my friends and I both alcohol and expensive porn books. Mom apparently had no idea he was doing any of this. He was staying with us for a while and regularly would hang out with my friends and I away from parental oversight. He even took me, age thirteen, on a two-week trek into the woods to go gold dredging. He had worked as a diver before and one of his get-rich-quick schemes was to dredge gold in a place near where there were other mines. We hiked into the spot and he had the dredging equipment he had recently bought flown in. We worked at dredging for several days and only got a few, small flakes of gold worth maybe a dollar total. My mom was only too happy to let me go with him, a good example of mom's judgement being a bit lax. This relative is currently serving a fairly long prison sentence for assault and battery.

By age thirteen I was having sex occasionally with girls from school. We'd just come to my house after school and do whatever we wanted. My mom wouldn't be home for hours. By the time I was thirteen I was smoking pot, drinking, and having sex. Then I had pneumonia. I was sick in bed for two weeks and lost twenty pounds. Whereas before I had been a little chunky, now I was trim and good looking. I got a lot of attention from girls. I loved it.

Luckily, I also dated girls who were not ready to have sex and that was fine with me too. I suppose like a lot of males (especially of that age) I was ready to have sex at a moment's notice. But if a girl was not into it, that was ok with me too. Ironically, I could be somewhat of a moralizer at times as well. I had a friend who cheated on his girlfriend. I told her about it and wagged my finger at him. I guess I was lucky to keep him as a friend. Especially since a few years later I would be cheating on my girlfriend as well.

Part of me wanted to have a stable relationship with a girl and part of me was just interested in having sex. As a junior I dated a girl for almost a year, then had sex with her sister soon after we broke up. As a senior I had a steady girlfriend and another girl I was dating on the side.

I suppose I can understand my poor judgement, to some degree, in light of my dad's suicide and mom's psychotic episode and newly named mental illness: manic depression. I was very freaked out and confused and had no one to talk to about the cause of my upset. I had to play the role of "The Responsible One" and could not count on anyone from my family being tuned into what my life was like. I did not share the fact of my mom's mental issues or my dad's suicide with any of my friends or girlfriends. Or anyone. I was in denial and there was no one who could "ground" the issues with me in a healthy way. So I just dealt with it all myself, internally. The fact that I was not consciously processing any of these traumas meant that I was capable of unpredictable and self-defeating behavior.

Men were also attracted to me from the time I was a teenager. My high school's head football coach had guys come over to his house and made them coffee and irish cream. I went with a friend a few times and we both had our Tarot cards read by the bachelor coach. A few times I started going by myself and he began to come on to me. One time I let him kiss me though I never went back to his house after that.

By the time I was seventeen and graduating high school I was very, very confused.

The year after high school I lived overseas with a family and went to one more year of high school. The family was politically quite liberal but conservative in other ways. As I was dating during this year abroad my confusion no doubt showed itself. I wasn't sexually active for most of the year but I am sure confusion in the area of sexuality was written all over me. The mother of the family was a high school teacher and used to mentoring young people. She talked to me one time about how she and her husband had been married a long time and had a wonderful sexual relationship. She emphasized that the place for sex is rightly in a long-term committed relationship.

I remember her words clearly and that they had deep meaning for me at the time and in the years afterwards. She only said it once but I took her words seriously. No one had ever spoken to me about what a healthy, monogamous relationship was like. Certainly the movies and TV shows I was watching had few, if any, good examples. Perhaps her words rang in my ears all the more due to the paucity of such models in my life up to that point.

As I returned to the States I was in a different frame of mind. I could definitely feel the power of my sexual urges but I became more discerning. I had more sexual partners in four years of high school than I have in the twenty four years since high school.

Soon after I returned from being overseas, age eighteen, my new attitude was tested with an echo of my first post-puberty sexual experience. An attractive young woman, very drunk, approached me and asked me for a ride home. I let her in the car as I could see she could be getting in a lot of trouble if she didn't get to a safe place to sleep it off. When in the car she began strongly coming on to me. I rebuffed her and let her gently off where I found her, as she wouldn't tell me where she lived. It felt, even at the time, like I was being tested to see if I had grown since the previous experience at age twelve. I patted myself on the back, happy that I had passed that test.

I dated a few girls in college. I was still very confused about the relationship part of dating. I could feel my sex drive but had almost no idea of how to sustain a healthy relationship that had a sexual component. The molestation and the general context of sexuality in my childhood meant that my sexual boundaries were extremely permeable. If someone was attracted to me it was very difficult for me to contain mirroring back the vibe.

As I look back at the past fifteen years I feel tremendously fortunate to have come as far as I have in regards to my sexuality. I declared my intention to overcome my deep, deep confusion around sexuality when I was in my mid-twenties. I have taken steady steps to heal myself since then. And my wife has played a crucial role in helping me to develop myself in this area. Her love for me and background as a counselor was a great mix in her helping me to strengthen my sexual boundaries and clarify my thinking. I feel that I have come steadily towards achieving the intention that was born in me as I listened to my host-mom's words on the matter during my year abroad.

It seems likely I will always be swimming upstream in regards to the sexual boundaries which were breached when I was six years old. I can continue to make incremental progress with the wounds I carry from that experience, but I doubt I will ever be totally healed from it. As I move forward, the intention I carry in regards to my sexuality sets up and strengthens the boundaries which would be significantly more solid had I not been molested.

It has also become clear to me that I am a naturally monogamous person. Monogamy just makes sense to me based on honoring the person one is with. I would not feel safe if I were married to a person who was having sex with other people. It's just not something I could ever feel remotely comfortable with. Likewise, I honor my partner and myself through a strong commitment to monogamy. For me this is a core value.

More to come in subsequent posts.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly, Ben

A Blow to the Head

So I've been taking beginning sailing lessons over the past two weeks. I've really enjoyed them and last Friday decided to take my wife out on a boat during "Family Night" at the sailing club. My wife has sailed before and she's the one who got me the lessons as a Christmas present. The boats we are learning on are two-passenger, fourteen footers.

We were out on the water and things were going well. The wind was up and we were moving along pretty well. I had turned the rudder to face the boat downwind and put the sail out to ninety degrees to catch the wind. I looked back to check to see if the rudder was positioned right [foreshadow] and when I was looking back up WHAM--The boom had come across quickly with a change of wind direction and smacked me right in the face. I was thrown out of the boat as it, in turn capsized.

Luckily, the sailing club has some really great and capable people. Before long some of them came out in an outboard and helped us out. They towed the boat back to the dock and made sure we were alright. My wife is a great sport. She was unharmed and acting very sensibly. I was doing ok as well. Except for a bit of a gash right above my left eye.

Off we went to change clothes and pay a visit to the ER to get a few (3) stitches. The whole scene unfolded in a calm and safe environment. I was never particularly freaked out, except perhaps when I looked in the mirror and saw the vivid color and ghoulish quality of the wound.

But it was very interesting to watch where my thinking and mood went over the next few days. See, this is not the first time I have gone into the drink while in a boat. It has happened three times before, which turns out to be a pretty high proportion of the times that I've been a "skipper" of a boat. The first time was in a small sail-boat when I was in high school. And the other two times were in sea kayaks. What I started to realize in the days after this recent accident, is that the theme seems to relate to my childhood.

When I was growing up my family went along steady state for periods of time. My first four years were relatively stable, then parents divorced and dad disappeared. After that I was the only child of a single-mom who was battling to succeed in a professional job with untreated bipolar disorder. From then on life could be relatively steady for periods of time, but with the constant threat of disruption.

Mom's moods went up and down much more than the average person. Was she going to crash on the couch when she got home or go running? Was she going to be talkative or irritable? Was she going to take us out to dinner or yell at me for not doing a chore correctly? I was highly tuned into her mood, which formed a great deal of my mental environment as a child.

Mom's judgment could often be questionable. She was not a particularly good judge of character, which meant there were a number of folks I was exposed to over the years that she later railed against as being terrible people. There was a major car accident we were involved when I was about nine years old in that was her responsibility.

Simply put, there were enough wild-cards coming towards our family that I was likely always somewhat on edge. "What's next?" My body was always prepared for the next impact, though what was coming was unknown. I carry the stress of that "bracing for impact" gesture every day. I'm not really ever free of it. I believe it affects my life quite a lot, though at a subtle level.

Which brings us back to sailing and boating. When I went to the next class after the accident and got into the boat I could feel my whole body tense. Whereas I had been feeling more relaxed and at ease navigating the boat prior to my accident, now I could feel fear rise up in me. I felt the most tense when I came around into the same kind of turn where the boom had hit me four days before. Physical memory. My body remembered the trauma and began to tense and brace for impact.

It seems to me that my body, my organism, my being remembers also the traumas of my childhood. Physical memory of a more diffuse nature. Something in me flinches and opens to fear when there's a trigger. In my adult life I have consistently gone into "rescue mode" when I am around my mom. Something in my basic make-up assumes that something will go wrong and that the consequences will be bad for me. So I go on alert.

One way this has come out is waiting by the phone (before I had a cell phone) while she was driving to our house for a visit. I assumed she was going to have troubles and so I was ready to get in my car and go rescue her at a moment's notice. Deep down I just knew something was going to go wrong. The shoe was going to drop. Brace for impact. And be ready to help out during the aftermath.

This same pattern has repeated countless times over the years. For the most part I think she has been unaware of the level at which I do this. Scanning what she says constantly for clues about possible traumas in the making.

The thing is, my mom has been doing better and better in recent years. She is more able to get around successfully now than ever, in my opinion. I am holding that pattern with her even though she needs it less. It seems very helpful to my mom for me to check in with her regularly (which I do, more or less weekly). But my "rescue mode" isn't really needed. It's from the past. It doesn't serve the present for me or her.

So how do I break (or is it adjust?) this pattern of mine? And how do I get over the part of me that assumes that the boat I am in is going to capsize (and which can make it a self-fulfilling prophecy)?

One piece my wife offered me this week was the idea of my being called to competency too early. She wondered if my sense of competency was affected by two things: First, being called by the situation of my family to take responsibility before I was ready. And second, that my parents were not able to effectively show me how to do things. I really had to guess at a lot of what I what I needed to do to become a functioning member of our culture. I didn't have a steady model for how to be a competent person in our world. I think I have done ok with what I have been given, but there are definitely gaps. Often the main issue is not that I am not able to do something. It's that I haven't been oriented in how to do it. And this has happened so often that I have a habit of low confidence when it comes to mastering a given activity. I wasn't given the model of a person excelling at something to know what that looks/feels/smells/tastes like. I have gifts but many of them still live in potential even though I am in middle age.

So basically I got a hit from at least two directions. From one side is the fact that I was never educated by my family to become competent and confident in activities, whatever they may be. And second, the "boat" of my family-life as a child frequently felt like it could capsize at any moment. The overall affect is that I can feel a bit tenuous about life, at a base-line level.

The good news is that I have resources at hand which can help me (and have helped me) in re-patterning myself: I want to evolve. I am willing to work at it. I am willing to look dumb and/or weak at times if it helps me grow. I have a tremendous support from my wife and family. I want to serve the world and find the way that helps me to do that.

I'm not sure this blow to the head has had the affect of making me think more clearly or not. But it sure has begged the question "Why did this happen?" on two levels. First, what sailing technique or awareness do I need in order to avoid this kind of accident in the future? And second, what deeper pattern of mine is this pointing to, and am I getting the message!? Will I learn from this experience or not?

If I get the message I will both be a better sailor and know myself at a deeper layer.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly, Ben

The Phone Call

The last few days I've been feeling depressed. I started feeling burdened and sleepy and cranky and like I wanted to cry every twenty minutes or so. I can get lost there if I don't do things to pull myself out. Sometimes I go to the gym. Sometimes it just passes after a few days. My wife has been trying to help me see what the trigger was, if any. It seems like this time there was definitely a trigger.

My mood started to drop very soon after my mom called. I was sitting at our dining room table talking to a colleague when the phone rang several times in a row. I had turned the answering machine down. It seemed like there was an urgency of someone trying to contact us, so the next time the phone rang I picked up. It was my mom. She was speaking in an urgent voice. I asked if I could call her back in ten minutes as the person I was talking to was about to leave. She said yes but also had pressure in her tone.

When I called her back I was fully expecting her to tell me about some kind of family emergency. Basically, mom was just in a manic state and was spinning around a relatively minor family issue. She was also projecting fantasy thoughts around a friend of hers. I spoke with her for about fifteen minutes and made a number of points which she found to be very reasonable and calming for her. Her mood began to wind down. She was still caught up in the fantasy thinking but the elevated mood was coming back down to a stable place.

The whole thing was really not that big of a deal. It's something I have done countless times. It has been a fairly regular part of my life since I can remember. I had to be the adult because, in that moment, she was not able. My adult thinking had to replace the manic and fantasy thinking she was in the midst of. I've been doing this since I was a child.

That conversation seemed to be the trigger which made me sullen and cranky for about 48 hours. My wife wondered aloud if I was suffering from "learned helplessness". What often happens for ACMIs is that, as children, we see our parent in a state of chaos and try to take control in some way. They way we do this depends on where the deficit is for the adult.

In my case, I tried to take control in a few places.

First, I tried to calm my mom and offer a rational view-point. Over time this dialogue evolved into a situation where she and I had quasi adult conversations and even presented as "peers" in public rather than parent-adult. An example of this is that from the time I was 13 or 14 waiters would often bring me the check in restaurants rather than her.

I also tried to be very capable at all the aspects of running a household. I knew how to cook, clean, mow the lawn, etc so that daily life could keep moving along. I took on a lot of mental responsibility for the running of things. I would remind her to get the oil changed in the car. I got my driver's license on my sixteenth birthday because driving with my mom was often very stressful.

A big problem with "taking control" however, is that children really aren't able to save their parents from the symptoms of their illness. So at some level we take responsibility for our parent's well-being and then circumstances unfold which show us how powerless we are over the situation. No amount of my cleaning the house, cooking meals or speaking to her in a calm tone was going to keep my mom from having a manic swing or becoming psychotic.

That's how I learned that no matter what I do, it won't be enough to keep the train wreck from happening, if that's where the train is going. Since I was experiencing this from a child's viewpoint, it just seemed like all my efforts were for naught. I was powerless in a world which could swing quickly from intense boredom (my being neglected) to an emergency which mom's mental state was causing or contributing to.

For some reason, another piece of my story has also been bothering me as I loll about in my crappy mood.

When I was fourteen and my mom's future husband moved in I felt like I received no credit at all for all of the adult responsibility I had taken on up to that point. Boyfriend asserted his dominance over me by repeatedly slapping me down when I cursed at him under my breath one time. My mom sat there looking on and let him do that. This was about four months after my dad killed himself.

You'd think she would have had me in counseling or something. But my mom was less than a year from having a psychotic break which would have her in the psych hospital for several weeks, when she first received a diagnosis. She was focussed on her new relationship and was also becoming less and less grounded.

The manic state apparently is able to take in a lot of impressions and sort of "forget" the ethical context around them. My mom had a very strong philosophy of "no spanking" with me. She talked about this often. It was a badge she wore proudly. But somehow she was able to let her boyfriend smack me down right in front of her and not say a peep. Mania was able to come around that and justify it. "It's the kid's fault. He's unruly. He deserved it." That's still what she says to this day.

Mom and her boyfriend went on to get married and have a mutually abusive relationship (mostly verbal) for eight years. Mom still speaks poorly of him even though they've been divorced now for almost twenty years.

But she didn't stand up for me then. She just sucked up all the energy I had to give and then was perfectly willing to have her boyfriend use violence on me to "help me learn my new place in the pecking order". She had no idea what I was doing for her all of those years. She was completely oblivious to what my feelings were during my entire childhood. And how could she understand my feelings today if she was chronically unaware of them during the time I was growing up? I do not share my feeling life with my mom. I never have. Today she will ask me about my life in a perfunctory way. I share as little as I can. There is a force inside me that will not allow me to share my feelings and true aspects of my life with my mom. I just bottle right up.

This is why I find it extremely difficult to even know myself what my own feelings are. I am often stoic because no one ever acknowledged my feelings when I was a kid. Mom often shared with me what her feelings were but she never asked me what I was feeling. So we built up a pattern where I was the one listening and empathizing and she could go on and on about what she felt and what she needed to process. I am able to be very tuned in to the feelings of others. But not my own.

So after I spoke to her on the phone yesterday, deep layers of frustration, anger and despair came up for me. First was the despair from my past when I sacrificed a lot of my childhood in order to help keep her afloat. Second was my deep resentment that I still play the role today of helping her maintain a more or less even keel. And third, because I will never be entirely free of this burden until she dies, and probably not then either.

And, of course, I share none of this with her. In fact, I hide it from her. She has no idea I've been in a mood these past two days and that she was the catalyst. In my mind I have to be the strong one and suck it up. She is the weak one and needs my support.

So my mood skulks around in the basement. It ranges from wanting to cry to wanting to punch someone to wanting to go back to bed two hours after I woke up. I know it will pass. My wife asks me when the group counseling is going to start.

I am hoping to start that soon. The group I am slated to join (facilitated by my counselor) is supposed to have an opening within the next several weeks. I wouldn't mind starting sooner rather than later. I have a huge amount of anger and sadness which I need to process on my path of healing. The group counseling seems like a good next step for me.

If I do this work maybe the next time my mom calls needing me to talk her out of a state I won't need 48 hours to recover from it.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly, Ben

Reflections on the Visit

Coming back from visiting mom I am awash with mixed feelings. I acknowledge my real love for my mom and simultaneously feel fairly intense anger towards her. I think she's doing great and I worry about her welfare. I perceive she is as high-functioning as I've ever known her to be while I am regularly disturbed by the perceptions she has/ comments she makes/ fantasies which often play a large role in her every day life.

It's a good thing my wife came with me this time because it was hard for me to be friendly toward my mom for the first few days. I just sat there quietly with a serious look on my face while she talked. She could tell I was mad at her. Very mad. Cellular mad.

On day one of the visit she told me a few things I had not previously been aware of. And I still don't know whether to fully believe them or not because her memory has been poor in the past. Can I trust her memory now? I really can't say. Anyway, she told me that my dad had been fired from his teaching post at a University soon before he packed his bags and drove out of my life.

Second, mom said that some months before dad left she asked six-year-old me if I still wanted to go to his house on weekends. According to her memory I said, "No" and she relayed the message to him. My saying so was a key part of his decision to move out of state, according to her memory. Quite a bit of responsibility for a little guy. I mean, aren't adults the ones who are supposed to step up and take responsibility. Children learn to make good decisions themselves by modeling their parents' healthy decision making processes. If the six year old is playing the role of the adult in the family, we've got a big problem. And we did.

She also told me that I came home from dad's one time with a photo of him mooning the camera. Naturally, she wondered if my being at his house was all that healthy for me.

When I put myself in her shoes it's easy to see that she had been dealt a pretty challenging hand. In my adult life I have never faced a situation as difficult as the one she faced then. I honestly don't know what I would have done in her shoes.

On day two of the visit mom and I were on a walk and I was able to share some aspects of my process which I had not yet brought to her. I told her that my personality had built up around supporting her. I told her that when I was six years old and experiencing several months of molestation by a babysitter, dad abandoning me, her undiagnosed mental illness and her workaholism that I created a survival mechanism. The mechanism involved reducing my needs to as close to zero as I could and focusing my child's mental energy toward helping her to survive. And that I maintained that particular mechanism, greasing the cogs on a regular basis until just recently.

Right now, anyway, my mom's answer to me and my pain is to refer back to how difficult her childhood was, to her pain. How she did not receive nurturing from her parents. How her parents worked all the time and used shame as a child-rearing tool. How she had nannies who took care of her and her sister and how weird some of them were. She wants me to see that she was really hurt during her upbringing and that she's not to blame if she didn't have the parenting knowledge and skills that would have made such a difference to me when I was growing up.

I can definitely see her point. And yet, she and I are going to have to come to some new understandings about things. I have no intention of unleashing my anger on her. But she does see my anger, not something I've shown much to anyone. I am physically incapable, at this point, of continuing to suck it up for her benefit. That's what I've done since I was six years old.

At the same time I know from my counseling experience that my anger is something I have to own. I have to work with it and transform it. It's my work. It is most definitely not her, or anyone else's job. Still, I wish she would say she's sorry.

So I'm glad I brought this new level of my process to her. She is beginning to get the picture of what I have hidden from her all these years because I did not want to burden her. She is starting to see how difficult my childhood was and how I feel deeply wounded at a level which comes across in my basic gesture. And she gets that I am deeply angry at her.

Up until recently my mom was projecting fantasy over much of my upbringing, creating a myth of how things must have gone. I seemed to be doing well in life; was a successful teacher with a happy family. She could rest secure on her laurels as a parent while she held up the picture: "super-human single mom beats all odds and raises a well adjusted child into successful adulthood." The persona I was projecting as a teacher could have easily led her to buy into that myth.

The problem with all of that is that I was not able to hold that persona up long term. The weight of my childhood experiences were pulling down on me to the point where I burned out of my teaching job and am now looking at a few years of intense soul searching, counseling and less demanding work-life to be able to move forward in a positive way. It's not that the picture I was holding up as a teacher was false. It's just that it was not the whole picture.

Now I am beginning to come around the whole picture. To see my strengths as well as some of the places where I was very deeply wounded. Places where rage within me lives. Places I am not proud of.

So it appears to me that mom and I are in a transitional stage. When I was a kid my personality built up as an extension of her. She and I did not have healthy boundaries. Up until recently I did not have a clear sense of where my mom ended and where I began. She could play me, at times, like a puppet on a string. Neither she nor I had a clear sense of our own individual core.

There is a part of her which does not respect me and which would have me do her bidding without feeling the need to say thank you. Part of her would be perfectly happy controlling me like she might control her hand when she wants to make the turn indicator in her car signal "left". Part of her sees me as a child with no individual self, eager to serve her will.

Luckily, that is a part of my mom, namely her lower nature projected through the lens of mental illness, which has been steadily losing power. Now that I am more empowered I will stand for that shit less and less. These days I let slide only a fraction of what I would put up with even ten years ago. And I have zero intention of letting any of that backslide.

So progress is visible, especially if one looks at things from the perspective of several years. Mom is committed to her meds. Every day, twice per day and she says she rarely misses a dose. Her quality of life is better than it has ever been.

Mom has acknowledged to my wife and me that she has been looking to our example as a model. The health of the family I am lucky enough to be a part of is likely something my mother has never before seen up close, let alone been a part of. The relative stability of my life is a huge gift to her, as well as to me, and she acknowledges the truth of that.

So we have plenty to be thankful for. Nevertheless, it is a long process and one which takes boat-loads of patience.

I am willing to be grateful for what is there and continue to work hard over the years to come to gradually transform both the relationship and the pain I feel in her presence. I don't see any other viable options.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly, Ben