Make me an Instrument of THY Peace

Think for a moment on some banners, not just Bumper Stickers from President Obama's Inaugural Address:

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this earth. And because we have tasted the bitter swill of Civil War and Segregation and emerged from that Dark Chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass. That the lines of Tribes shall soon dissolve. That as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of Peace....To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy...We will extend a hand, if you are willing to unclench your fist....To those nations, like ours, that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect...America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave the icy currents and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that, when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end; that we did not turn back, nor did we falter and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's Grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of Freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."

It may be a bit sappy to ponder these words today and I'm sure I'm one of millions that is doing so, but, it is all about me and my thoughts anyway!

Today is a significant day in many ways. As I listened to President Obama's message and chuckled through the humorous, but powerfully spiritual benediction, I had to think about how many messages were there for those of us who struggle in Recovery journeys. I will give President Bush credit for one perspective that is true for today -- history will hold the final answer. My hope is that today will truly be a time for stepping past the walls that divide and beginning to dissolve them. I sincerely hope that this is not a time for a shifting of lines of division and of power, but a time for the "lines of Tribe" to truly pass away. I do remember when people of color had a smaller sparsely furnished waiting room in my uncle's medical office while the far fewer white patients had leather couches and several times the space. I remember segregation and the first time a black kid came to my school. Now, my family is multiracial and I've lost count of how many tongues in the multilingual nature. The differences are less and less each year. And my heart is bigger for it.

I hope that the message that all of us take from this Inaugural Address is that we must move forward and we must begin to change our perspective. This is a universe of abundance and plenty. One of the most difficult challenges of Recovery is moving from the sense of deprivation to the sense of "Eternal Enough" that comes from tapping into the Abundance that is around us. The Principle of Service tells us that the more we give our Serenity away, the more we have. The more we do for others, the more peace and energy and Recovery we have for ourselves. These are age-old Principles that have always worked and always been true.

"The Promises" talk about being "happy, joyous and free." President Obama spoke of delivering the "great gift of freedom" to the future. Think of the joy we could all have in seeing the ecstasy in the eyes of a world that has enough. The true Freedom that could come from knowing that we all can have a share in this magnificent world around us and that, together, we never have to do without. We can never hoard enough to counteract the sense of emptiness that comes from entitlement and deprivation. Yet, when we share from a sense of abundance and all have enough, we all have a joyous fullness that never ends. What an amazing paradox!

Never Pass Up an Opportunity to Shut Up

This one is universal and has many therapeutic applications, one of which does not apply to the silence over the last month or so! I could blame it on holiday re-entry followed by the full moon or something, but I think I'll just say distraction by overwhelm is my only excuse.

We've all had those moments when our head was shouting at our mouth to stop talking. No, we really didn't mean that the dress made you look fat. No, we weren't laughing at you. The list goes on. There are very few comments, save those that would move people out of Harm's way, that can't wait a minute or until tomorrow! That's an important lesson.

Sam pointed out an important corollary to this one:

Never, never distrust your gut instinct!
It's a hard contradiction, but an important one. Many of us learn growing up to lie about the truth. Janet Woititz in her book "Adult Children of Alcoholics" says that one of the rules of Adult Children is that they will lie when it would be easier to tell the truth. In Recovery, one of our greatest tasks becomes learning our own truth and standing firmly on it. Learning to say "No"w when that is our truth and need is essential to believing in ourselves and beginning to change the negative core beliefs into positive, self-supporting ones. Learning to tell the truth about ourselves, even when it is painful, is also essential to the serenity that comes with this Process.

We all have that "Inner Voice" that guides us in decision making. Unfortunately, over the years, we may have been taught by parents, peers, addictions and other things that we could not trust that inner voice. That Voice is the thing that tells innocent little children that they can laugh their wonderful belly laugh when something is funny to them and to nobody else. It tells them it's okay to cry when things hurt or when they lose their first helium balloon. It tells us we are in love for the first time and that our heart is broken when it doesn't work out. In truth, sometimes, it tells us to go ahead and have one more binge, knowing that the setup is in place for us to get caught, have a consequence or whatever it takes to get us into Recovery. This whole thing of Trust is difficult. Listing to our Gut Instinct and Intuition is also difficult, mainly because we need our Brain or Mind, that great distorter of all things to listen and act. That's why these two bumper stickers need to be very close together. (It's a good thing Life has a very large bumper!) [By the way, there's a third that goes with it and it will take a whole blog -- "The Opposite is Equally True."]

Never Pass Up an Opportunity to Shut UP
Never, Never Distrust Your Gut Instinct

Just Follow Rudolph!

I have to give full credit for these thoughts to Reverend Leo Booth, who is a colleague, friend and inspiration in some of my more whimsical moments of healing, as well as one of those who manages to remind me that spirituality is at the heart of everything we do!

Yesterday, Pere Leo was working with our folks at the Residential Center and inspired them all with his interpretation of "Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer." I am taking the liberty to share it in the Christmas Spirit. So, here is my interpretation of his interpretation one of the world's favorite Christmas myths (that he reminded me was probably a Polar version of "The Ugly Duckling" and others!)

We all went to school with Dasher (the Athlete/Cheerleader) and Dancer (the Track Star/Ballet Dancer), Prancer (the "Too Good Ones" who never talked to us) and Vixen (need I say more?) , Comet (the one we never could measure up to) and Cupid (our true "first love" -- the one we never even made eye contact with), Donder (the one who would tolerate us and talk to us in class, but never sit near us on the bus) and Blitzen (the one who tortured us with taunts and pokes that hurt more in our hearts than on our arms and legs). We WERE Rudolph. We were a little bit different. Sure, they let us INTO the Reindeer games...as the water carrier or time keeper. If we were really lucky (meaning they were desperate), we got to play right field. If we told the same joke they told, nobody laughed. If we had the right answer, they convinced us it was wrong.

Many of us grew up to be different in other ways. Maybe we had a secret life. We saw ourselves as waaay too fat or waaaay too skinny and never did understand what others saw. What we saw in the mirror never matched. We starved or had surgery after surgery. We walled ourselves up in our room or on the other side of town using drugs or on the internet or shopping.

Perhaps, we found that a few drinks made us "different" or more like them. They laughed at our jokes. They let us stumble into the parties. Yet, we were still different. We didn't stop. We gave them MORE stories at which to laugh. We heard about dancing on the tables and barfing in the fountain. We made it OK because we were AT the party and, after all, we didn't remember it any way.

As the years passed, though, we still ended up on the sidelines. They ended up calling us more and different names -- "Drunk" "Druggie." "Addict." "Annie Rexic." "Pervert." The list goes on. If we were lucky, we hid in the back of the crowd and tried to stay "like" the others, even though our hidden, painful lives became more and more hidden and painful.

Then, one Special Eve, in the midst of our fog, many times lost in the woods of our secret, painful lives, a Messenger comes to call.
"Rudolph, with your Nose so bright, won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"

Perhaps, this messenger isn't exactly Santa Clause. It may be a brick wall...literally. The one the car runs into or the back wall of the jail. It may be Homeland Security knocking on the door in SWAT gear. It may be our family circling the living room with letters written in hand for our intervention. It may be the cameras and crew of "Intervention" filming our lives without us figuring out that it is about our disease and us going to treatment. It may be THAT headache or the one time the money ran out or the one time the purging didn't work or whatever. Regardless, the Messenger is that thing, person, event in our lives that invites us to wake up, find our inner calling and move to the front of the herd.

Recovery isn't an easy journey. Embracing our very "defect" as the gift that makes us who we are and using it to bring gifts to others is the heart of why there's a "We" in the whole Recovery process. The cartoon doesn't show how very, very difficult it must have been for Rudolph to walk to the front of the line, past all those "Superstars" that had laughed at him, put him down, shamed him, and invited him to feel so worthless and useless for all those years. He looks so cute and innocent and happy in the images. Could he possibly trust that he would not be criticized, jeered, taunted and laughed at again. Shouldn't he watch to make sure there were no reindeer pellets in the midst of the confetti and ticker tape in the parade? How could he just forget all those years and all those times he looked in the mirror and ONLY saw that HUGE, RED, FLASHING nose? Isn't that all they saw? What about the huge burden of leading the very crew that had thrown him under the bus so very many times? That need to do it perfectly must have been immense! Surely, he would mess it up like he had done with every high fly to right field! Would Santa forget and hail, "On, Dasher and Dancer....(You know the rest)!" and forget to mention Rudolph. (If Santa is a parent, like I am, he'll forget at least one or mess up and call "...Blonder and Ditzen..." or something else at least once a Christmas Eve!).

Regardless, like Santa, Recovery is a call for us to step to the front, be ourselves and let the gifts that are within us shine. The pain of our past, the struggle of Recovery, and the reality that life is neither fair, nor easy, are all part of the Message. Rudolph didn't have to make the toys, check the list, pack the sleigh, feed the other reindeer, map out the route and figure out the weather. He just had to let that silly red nose shine and be the littlest reindeer at the front of the team, leading the way. (He also did not get to look over his shoulder and make sure that the other reindeer were eating his dust and their "crow." That was the job of the Messenger!)

It's hard work keeping our red noses polished, our eyes on the road ahead, staying balanced in our brief landings on rooftops and mountaintops, and just getting through the nights. On top of that, like Rudolph, we never know if all the gifts go where we think they should. We just let our light shine, do our job and move on. We never really know if all the joy we hope for comes to fruition. However, the reality is that the Messenger knows the List, having checked it twice without our ever seeing it, and just calls us to do our job with our silly red noses.

If we are painstaking in keeping our noses clean, we get to play in ALL the reindeer games and more. Life becomes a joy-filled journey, free of the burdens and baggage that we collected in all those years, when we believed our own fairy tales about how defective we were. The fear that pierced us when the Messenger called us no longer plagues us and sends us running. We are called upon over and over to just be ourselves. Things we never imagined can become real!

Whether the Messenger is one of painful reality or one that would have angels sing in the night or little oil lamps burn for eight days or any of the other wonderful traditions that carry us through this time of year into the light, may the light of a little red nose burn brightly in your mirror and challenge you to move to the front of the Team and be precisely what you were created for!

Just Follow Rudolph!

Thanks, Father Leo and Happy Holidays!

The Universe Thanks You

(With apologies for the hiatus!)

I was sitting with Jared today, out on the deck, as we talked about how difficulty times have been recently. Like just about everyone in America and, possibly, The World, life has been very uncertain, finances even less predictable and the future a foggy horizon. As Jared got stuck in the middle of the litany of all the things that were going awry in his life, most of which were, for certain, the direct result of his being in residential treatment for addiction.....again. His wife was unhappy, his daughter doing poorly in school, his sister, who was also his business partner, was terrified to run the business alone, a major business deal had fallen through just that morning and the quarter would not be a "winner," and so forth. The list went on and on. About the time all the misery had been enumerated, he launched into all the things he had to worry about: the stock market, the future of his childrens' education fun, his own recovery, whether his marriage would survive, if the pipes would freeze, etc., etc., etc.
About the time I was really needing something wise to say to redirect the conversation, a hand full of Canadian Geese flew gracefully, but noisily overhead and a wonderfully colored sweet gum leaf blew onto the table. My sardonic little smirk arose, as I asked, "Did you notice all the little 'Thank You' Notes?"
His puzzled look let me know he had not gotten my point. I explained, "Don't you see all the little 'Thank you' Notes? The geese, the leaves, the beautiful sunset, the swirling pattern in the clouds? They're all little thank you notes from your Higher Power, thanking you for worrying about how to make the universe work!"
Slowly, a smile came to his face.
The Universe Thanks You!

So many times in our hectic work days, we get so lost in the "things" we "must" do and get done. We worry about what will happen and how we will finish this and that, and so many things that will end up how ever they will end up regardless of what we do. I like the definition of worry as "ingratitude in advance." Like so many of us, when Jared was wrapped up in his worry, he was losing sleep, eating erratically, acting grumpy, and missing out on so much around him.
In my mind, somewhere the Creative Force that keeps this universe in such perfect balance (remember, a matter of one digit of degrees off its axis and the earth would both fry and freeze) is both chuckling and shaking its metaphorical head. I also imagine that, in an effort to get simple-minded folks like me to see how fruitless worry is, this same Force (God, Higher Power, Spirit, whatever) sends an amazing array of "Thank You's." They are everywhere -- the swirling clouds, the magical colors in the fall leaves or the spring flowers, a butterfly, the migrating ducks and geese, the sunrise or sunset, or a rainbow. All are little "thank you's" from the universe around us and reminders that worry is you and me trying to do things that humans can't do. Things like trying to change the future or change a mind or change the past. Things like staying awake to feel more rested or not eating to feel less hungry. Things like feeling unending shame about mistakes we cannot undo so we can feel better about ourselves. Things like leaving fourteen messages with someone who told us to leave them alone so they will call us back.
We cannot make flowers out of soil and water. We cannot (yet) calculate all the parts or any theories of relativity or quantum theory or whatever theory we will come up with next to explain things we can't yet explain. That is not our talent, nor is it our job. However, when we worry and do all these things, we live in a gracious universe. We live in a universe that uses frost to make peaches and tulips. We live in a universe that uses lightning to start forest fires so that forests can change and grow stronger.
Grace is mysterious. Likewise, mystery is all around us. Check it out next time you find yourself wrapped in worry -- look for the little "Thank You's." They will be there. Trust me. They will be all around.
The Universe Thanks You!

Just Do It

In his book The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch writes this:

“Coach Graham used to ride me hard. I remember one practice in particular. “You’re doing it all wrong, Pausch. Go back! Do it again!” I tried to do what he wanted. It wasn’t enough. “You owe me. Pausch! You’re doing push-ups after practice.

When I was finally dismissed, one of the assistant coaches came over to me to reassure me. “Coach Graham rode you pretty hard, didn’t he?” he said.

I could barely muster a “yeah.”

“That’s a good thing,” the assistant told me. “When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything that means they’ve given up on you.”

That lesson has stuck with me my whole life. When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better.

There’s a lot of talk these days about giving children self-esteem. It’s not something you can give; it’s something they have to build. Coach Graham worked in a no-coddling zone. Self-esteem? He knew there was only one way to teach kids how to develop it: You have to give them something they can’t do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process.

When Coach Graham first got hold of me, I was this wimpy kid with no skills, no physical strength, and no conditioning. But he made me realize that if I work hard enough, there will be things I can do tomorrow that I can’t do today. “

The Bumper Sticker: “Nike Therapy – Just Do It!”

As I read this, I thought of how it feels to watch the process of therapy. Many times, I know that I frustrate patients because I absolutely refuse to “just give them the answer.” I also know that some people feel that I am sometimes a bit too tough on some things and too vague on most things. These paragraphs, written by a man trying to leave a legacy as he faced death, summed up the whole purpose behind much of my motivation in my daily work.

I had a great mentor or Supervisor, who once asked me what I was doing when I made a particular intervention in therapy. When I replied, “I was just trying to help,” he quickly came back with “That’s the whole problem! If you try to help all your patients, they’ll never get better.” He went on to explain that my job in therapy was to observe the struggle in which the patient was caught, use the objective viewpoint I had to give them information they might not be able to see from where they were and to be a guide as they found their own answers. If I presumed to help them, I covertly and silently declared them incompetent and incapable.

If I always had the answers, I would teach them to be helpless, dependent and uncreative. If I supported them in the struggle, I allowed them to find something they have no idea they can solve or believe is impossible, conquer it and succeed where they thought they were not capable. Stumbling through this process, they become capable, competent, and strong.

Many days, I’m sure that those painful, difficult moments in therapy or any growth process leave us feeling as though those guiding us are being mean, cruel or just plain hard on you. Like Professor Pausch, I have had to learn to entertain the notion that this is an indication that they have not given up, rather than a message that they are being mean. Some treatment modalities, TV pop therapists and “coaching” techniques teach you all the answers in simple, rote answers that fit on flash cards that are “one-size-fits-all.” I’ve never found that to be particularly effective in the long term and the research I’ve read bears that out. In fact, I’ve found that people in therapy with me often flat out reject simple answers I give them . On top of that, they miraculously come back weeks or months later with nearly the exact same answer, as though it had come to them on a stone tablet while on a journey to some great mountain top!

Like Coach Graham, I do get a bit of satisfaction out of dishing out the extra struggle on occasion. I think that’s the double edged sword of being a therapist – I get to set up the struggle, so it looks like it’s my fault, then walk away and let the patient figure out with whom they are truly struggling. The answer is usually, “Myself.” However, that’s always just too easy because it’s often that “myself” that struggled with my mother or my father or my last significant other, spouse or lover! Sure, I could just say, “I think you’re treating me just like your father” and let them go home mad because I’m talking that Freudian stuff again. However, I’d end up giving that patient something to distract about, rather than the struggle that matters. They would go home mad at me for doing “that Freudian stuff” and not stay mad at the process with their father or boyfriend or roommate or whomever they were really in struggle with.

I really do know how maddening it is when I, like most therapists, don’t give answers, but add to the struggle and seem to make it harder. Like push-ups at the end of a hard, seemingly failed football practice, therapeutic challenges don’t make life any easier and don’t appear to give any answers. They do, however, keep the process going and, hopefully, teach my patients to do something they don’t yet know they can do or to figure out something they don’t yet know they can resolve.

The other important thing about these kind of struggles is that whatever answer that the patient comes up with belongs to them. It is theirs, not mine. If you are my patient and I provide the answer and it doesn’t work, you have to stay in therapy another year! (Not really, but for thought provoking purposes…) Well, at least, you have to fire me and spend weeks with your new therapist getting over how much of a bad therapist I was. However, if you come up with your own answer, it is yours to keep. I can’t take it back and, if it doesn’t work, it can be revised, revamped or recycled. It’s yours. You are free to do with it what you like. If it works, you can use it over and over again without royalty, penalty or tax. It is attached to nobody but you. You earned it, paid for it and own it in every sense of the word. Feel free to take it with you where ever you go.

Here’s the hitch: You have to do it. There’s the Nike part. Just get out there and struggle.

I rather like Coach Grahams Rule of Thumb: …” give them something they can’t do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process.”

Bumper Sticker: Nike Therapy – “Just Do It”

(Thanks Nike Company!)

What COULD you do if you never cared if you won?

Never, Never Hug a Porcupine...No Matter How Cute They Look

Janice wanted so badly to love her brother. They were 5 years apart in age and, to listen to them talk, they grew up in not only different homes, but different neighborhoods that were in different counties on different planets. Her brother was in kindergarten before she was born (living the family's extremely high expectations!). He never saw any of their mother's manic highs and days of endless crying. He never heard the arguments that ensued when their father came home to find the endless bags from her shopping binges or no dinner on the table because she had not gotten out of bed. Her brother only knew that she was the little princess and got whatever she wanted. He accused her of lying when she spoke of a steady flow of men through the house, some of them fondling her while waiting to be "next" with "Suzy," their mother in the bedroom.
As Janice and Jerry tried to talk about their younger years, they argued as though they were both experts on different foreign lands. In reality, they had very few confluent memories of their childhood. They could remember the same house and the same family contexts, but never the same events. When they tried to describe a specific event or holiday or gathering, they would end up arguing bitterly about obvious facts, as though neither one was actually there and both were fabricating the entire history.

They did, however, agree on one major event -- their mother's precipitous death. She was a very vain woman and would not allow herself to be seen as ill, weak or frail. Therefore, real treatment for her lymphoma was out of the question. She was at church one Sunday, took to the bed on Tuesday and was buried on Saturday. Not a word was spoken. While the two children argued bitterly over whether or not their mother was a "screamer," or not, they agreed that the house after her death was deafeningly silent.
While Jerry espoused that their father was a quiet man and great father who was a ball coach, ever ready to teach and to play, a supportive teacher and a great confidant, Janice swore he was a silent, feelingless shell of a man who did what their mother said, regardless of the cost as long as it shut her up.
Though he vehemently and nearly violently denied it, as he matured, Jerry began to reveal more and more of his mother's characteristics. He could sweetly smile through a tense purchase or menu selection, while leaving no doubt that actually speaking to the sales or food service person was obviously beneath his dignity. He would interrupt anybody, friend, foe or stranger to let them know that they were obviously ill-informed and had no idea what they really thought, felt, wanted or needed. After all, it was Jerry's job to inform them of what was really best for them and what they really felt.
Janice had tried. My how she had tried to have a relationship with Jerry. She wanted a brother. She wanted a family. Over the years, she had traveled to his home. She had traveled with her brother. All had become disasters. She would end up either going away angry or feeling battered and bruised by his constant verbal barrage. Either he was correcting her, telling her what she was REALLY thinking or feeling, or outright criticizing her and describing the next impending catastrophe she was obviously going to create.
This last trip was the final blow. Janice had worked hard in therapy to face her attachment to her mother's depression as a driving force for her own depression. She had been years without hospitalization and was responding to minimal medication. She was living her life on her own terms, financially stable, surrounded by friends with whom she was comfortable, enjoying a seasonal garden every year, riding horses in the spring, hiking in the fall and dancing whenever she wanted. She CHOSE to share her trip to a family gathering with her brother. She was resolve to let his verbal diarrhea just land in the trash and pass her by. She was going to imagine a black hole between the two of them into which anything she did not elect to hold would be drawn immediately and irretrievably.
The trip was four days. She made it three before his criticism, arrogance and innuendos of incompetence cut through her armor. When a natural break in their time together came, she simply left a message with the hotel desk that she would get her own cab to the airport and leave early the next morning, rather than riding with him in the rental car. She elected not to answer his phone call as she waited in the airport.
As Janice and I discussed this event, she wanted to find some formal way of "Filing for Divorce" from her brother to gain some form or just or fair closure to their relationship. She did not want to treat him like she had been treated when she had acted like their mother had taught them to act in the past. She knew how much it hurt to have people just disappear from her life. She wanted to let him know how intolerable and unbearable he was and that she was going to sever their connection. By the time I saw her, she had obsessed about this endlessly for over four days. As we volleyed this issue back and forth, I became clear about the BS Moment aat hand.

"Never, Never Hug a Porcupine...No Matter How Cuddly They Look"

For Janice, Life had been a six decade effort to try to cuddle with a series of porcupines while trying to live comfortably on the Tundra! She had survived some of the most difficult losses in childhood, more in adulthood, and was facing more as she continued her journey. Her family, like many, wanted to deny that she was abused as a child and pretend that they lived behind the white picket fence between Ozzie and Harriet Nelson and the Brady Bunch! Nobody "saw" what happened and, therefore, it didn't happen! Nobody chose to grieve their mother's death. Rather, they chose to act as if it just was another day in their lives. Somewhere within her psyche was this screaming child that wanted someone to notice that she was hurting. However, these crazy people called her family were far too wounded to hear her.

As Janice and I talked, I was reminded of how innocent it is for all of us to want to see our families as capable and able to give us what we need (a.k.a. "Eckerds"!!). However, we are all born into frail collections of people who are, by and large, wounded throughout their own lives and struggle just to survive their own woundedness. In the fog and turmoil of all this, innocent children try to dance their innocent dances and live their innocent lives, not having a clue that they are unable to change the pain all around them.

As little children, we do some pretty magical things. If we are hungry, the world stops and food appears. If we are tired, we fall asleep and, magically, awaken in our beds. If we are frightened, we bury our faces in a grown-up's body and the scary thing goes away. All of this is the natural child-like thinking of innocence. As grown-ups, we are forced to learn that things do not go away simply because we do not look at them. Pain does not stop simply because we wish it to. People do not love simply because we need it from them.

On top of that, our families dress up well. We could all show up all dressed, smiling, laughing, saying nice things about each other, and looking just great at Christmas, Bar Mitzvah's, family reunions and other events, even funerals. However, the ruse rarely made it past the exit driveway before some fight broke out, some tacky comment erupted, or somebody got hurt. Somebody returned to the lie.

Many times, in the healing process, we want to go back to these educated, talented and apparently capable people and "teach" them. It seems so very logical. They can maintain such a good act an pull off such good shows, they must be brilliant! Certainly, they can still learn! Right? WRONG! Learning these lessons requires introspection and growth. Growth requires honesty and integrity, which requires a painful look at ourselves. Life for many family systems is primarily about the AVOIDANCE of pain. Hence, very talented, brilliant, capable people, turn into bumbling fools when it comes to healing processes.

My description to Janice and others to whom I've applied this Bumper Sticker is that her family is "just a bunch of porcupines." That's all, just a bunch of porcupines. I can't explain how a capable, competent human being was raised by a group of porcupines, but it happened. Her journey has been one of trying to figure out how to get cuddling, nurturing and warmth from them. News Bulletin: It ain't gonna happen! They're porcupines.

Over the years, Janice had tried to wrestle them to the ground and file each quill down to a nice round point. Not cuddly. She had cornered Jerry and tried to pluck every single quill from his body. Suffice it to say that his attack was only reasonable -- he would have ended up with no defenses in the wild! On many occasion, especially in her youth, she had taken a deep breath, closed her eyes and just cuddled up next to them, taking her pin-cushion treatment and trying to understand why she didn't get the warm fuzzy she thought would result.

Part of her healing would be for Janice to grieve the loss of a "Human" family and face the grief of dealing with the family she had. (Can anyone say, "Have you seen the movie, "Shrek"?) Then, she can decide if she wants to seek out training in handling Porcupines. Zoo handlers probably have special gloves and clothes and face guards just for this. There's probably all sorts of things you need to know about porcupines in general before you ever go in the cage with them , much less approach them in the wild! Then, you need to know what porcupines mean when they do this and that, since they really don't talk human! Go figure! All these years, Janice thought SHE had a problem -- She did. She was trying to do something that required precise training, exact equipment and much practice. No wonder it hurt.

Maybe, if she could see her family as simply being porcupines and grieve the losses that come with that, Janice could seek out a "family-of-choice" to help her grieve her childhood losses, figure out what those needs are in this adult world and begin to actually enjoy getting them met. She'll just have to remember:

No Matter How cuddly they look, Never, Never, Never Hug a Porcupine!