Category: The Healing Journey

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Don’t Lie to Yourself

“We didn’t even have a lockdown, and the impact of Covid is very minimal compared to other countries … but still we see this big increase in the number of suicides,” said Michiko Ueda, an associate professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, and an expert on suicides.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/28/asia/japan-suicide-women-covid-dst-intl-hnk/index.html

Japan has the data on suicides that must be occuring all over the world. Harsher Lockdowns, arbitrary measures, and hypocritical politicians and virtue police are driving deaths of despair to unconscionable heights.

My 30 days of gratitudes has been a rocky path. I started later than most, missed a day or two, and have been side tracked by my own rough goings.

Today I’m grateful that CNN doesn’t have a Biden foreign intervention to sell yet and is reporting on a critical story that may sway some of the Doomers.

Yep, my lamest gratitude of the month.

I’m also grateful that I’ve gone through intellectual, spiritual, and physical transformations. I’ve changed my perspective on major aspects of life and still love and respect that old Jason who was wrong as shit. I also love myself now, even though I may still be totally full of crap. I’m not afraid to see the truth and repeat it. That’s the only way to grow into harmony with existence. Lies separate you from reality. They twist it into an unknowable thing. Reality is dangerous. Existence is suffering. If you don’t see those facts clearly, they will level you and you won’t know where you are.

I don’t have a lock on truth, but I’m heading in the right direction.

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Grateful for Time to Build

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

We’ve been hosting unschoolers for a weekly Lego club called Time to Build and I’m going to start documenting their creations and our experiences.

Below is a fun scene I found after club that involved the LEGO Marvel Spider-Man Far From Home: Molten Man Battle set.

This challenge was equal parts fun and dangerous and produced a laser canon that my son was happy with.

I got in on the building when one of our younger guests requested a giraffe. I grabbed The Lego Ideas Book and copied this design as closely as I could.

I love this time with friends. The home education community is incredibly diverse and I love getting to know other parents and how they go about facilitating their children’s education.

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Most Grateful For…

Love.

On the night my wife went to Heaven I was connected to God’s transformational love. Mary and I had recently accepted Jesus into our lives and lived our lives with a focus on love for each other and our sons. I feared losing her love in death. When it came time for her soul to leave this world, a cascade of love poured over me. A rainbow followed her to Heaven and I was filled with light and love. I’ve stood imperfectly on that rainbow bridge ever since.

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. 

It was a super power. I felt like Green Lantern with a ring that could cover the world in love. I said as much at her memorial and lived like that for months, loving on everyone I knew and met.

But there was another comic book character that inhabited me when no one was looking. Frank Castle, The Punisher, had been a favorite of mine as a boy. Now I was watching the TV show and wondering why the darkness of this man who lost his wife and children to violence was speaking to me. I chalked it up to the vagaries of grief. Mary’s death hadn’t felt like heartbreak (I was far too afraid to admit that to anyone), it was a psychological break (didn’t share that either). My ego was scaffolding bolted to a wall that read HUSBAND AND FATHER. When most of that was smashed, there wasn’t enough to hold onto. My mind slowly shattered and I lost a sense of Self as I fell.

I was drinking and hating myself like Castle at night (or morning, or whenever I could). I put on Green Lantern’s ring for the world to see, to cover up a brokeness I could only partly see. For a full year I acted the Jeckyl and Hyde routine. Even after sobering up, I was addicted to the power of the ring, exploiting my imagination to fill the world around me with love.

A heartbreak shook me from the cover up game. I had been showering love on a woman and her children and that was taken away. The hollowness of it left me confused, “I’m better at loss than this.”

I don’t know why I picked up Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life. I had carried it around for more than 20 years, a gift from my father. Maybe it was the rainbow heart on the cover.

Rereading the dedication now gives me all the answers. Self-worth, pure love, and self-acceptance were missing from my heart. I saw God’s infinite love as something external. A force or tool to wield, perhaps a weapon at times. I hadn’t personally accepted His love for me. I hadn’t seen the folly in trying to reciprocate a love that I wouldn’t accept for myself.

Through the reading, mostly done in early mornings on my kitchen floor, I turned my gaze inward and began to love the parts of myself that I had been hiding away. I didn’t need Green Lantern’s ring or The Punisher’s toughness to thrive, I needed to accept my own special place in an infinite love that flowed through, from, and around me.

It’s all still imperfect. I’m only a guru to myself. The self work is the thing.

As Hay would say, “All is well in my world.”

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The Lockdown is Inhumane

My sons and I were supposed to go on a hike today with other families who have lost loved ones. Delaware’s governor imposed regulations this week that forced its cancellation.

This is not okay. These children and parents are facing crushing loneliness. Some of them lost a mother, father, sibling, child, or other close family member during the Lockdown and have had little contact with others.

My children have made friends in this group and meet new, wonderful children each time we get together.

After having met outside several times this fall and summer, there have been no reported cases of Covid-19 within the group.

This group is invaluable to families who have had much of their support structure taken away during the hardest time in their lives.

This is not okay. Children have been kept away from their schoolmates and all of us have had our grief groups and therapists reduced to Zoom, at best.

It’s very difficult for me to connect with someone through an image. In person, I have anxiety and detachment when one, or both, of us are in masks.

I’m concentrating on gratitudes this month, but today is hard. I’m grateful for this outlet. I’m grateful for my widow friends who will meet in person. I’m grateful for the many connections we made before Lockdown and have been able to maintain through it. I’m grateful that I’ve got a lot of fight in me. I’m grateful for my health.

I have an infinite number of things to be grateful for, but today is still hard.

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Grateful for 2020

I got dumped last night and this is one of those posts that I hope no one reads.

I met my now-ex-girlfriend days before 2020 began. We had an instant connection and our romance bloomed quickly. She had met my children and we were in a pretty great place when the Lockdowns hit.

I’m radically full of Love and not inclined to fear death. I lost my wife to complications arising from respiratory infections, so this wasn’t a new threat in my life. I feel like a minority in this view and I was pleased that my girlfriend was accepting of my perspective. There’s no way that two people can have the same risk assessments, but we were pretty close.

We each wrestled with the anxieties and confusions of the mainstream narrative and the Lockdowns. We stayed together through tough times and supported each others lows.

That romance has come to an end, but I don’t have animosity. I am filled with gratitude that I had a supportive and loving partner through most of this year.

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Grateful for Soccer

An old Italian dude once nicknamed me Maradona. I don’t know, maybe it was because in my twenties I played like I was high on cocaine. Come to think on it, I did everything like I was skiing the Mexican alps. I guess that’s why I can be thankful I never tried the stuff, I was terrified my head would explode.

So we lost that great player today and I got to hit the pitch and feel like the world wasn’t upside down for 50 minutes.

It’s getting harder to find soccer without arbitrary rules imposed by losers who couldn’t keep up with the slowest players I know. I’m blessed to still get chances to play normally and improve my health while having more fun than most people allow themselves.

Thank you to all my teammates and those special individuals who keep hitting me up to play.

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Grateful for Rebel Friends

On the first day of increased Lockdown restrictions I was able to host home educating and distance learning families for a few hours of Lego building and fellowship. We didn’t treat each other as if we were diseased threats, nor did we observe government mandated gathering limits.

These friends are all new. The variety of perspectives and backgrounds in our small group is astounding. I could talk with any of these moms for hours and I love listening to their journeys.

None of them knew Mary. I love hosting people in the home we built together. She would have it no other way. Well, she wouldn’t be okay with the level of clutter that I am.

I’m grateful for the people in my life who will not bow down to nonsensical restrictions on our rights of assembly, movement, and speech.