#angry and depressed kid that just need guidance and support

[yesyourstalker]

Nurse: and you said you just found them sitting in the grass?

Lieutenant Behi: yes all by himself, he sustained an energy to his ear. I didn't have time to disinfect it so I banged it up and took him to the chopper.....*sigh*

Nurse: well he's safe..... For now at least.... Here's his file. a272245 Neta Verns he's 15. Join military at 14 just a day after his birthday........ Hm... He was a part of the troubled youth program. Seems that this was supposed to set him straight.....

Lieutenant Behi: what got him in the program

Nurse: ....... Issues with authority, fighting students, fighting teachers........... He threw a desk...... Anger management issues... Self-destructive behaviors.. Possession of drugs or appearing under the influence.....

Behi: my cod He's just a child

Nurse: It's very typical for kids like him. Absent father, mother passed away......unsafe living quarters..... He's from the sewers. He's not the first and he certainly won't be the last troubled child that we have....... He'll probably end up in jail or dead...... shame

Behi: hm.....has he had any visitors in the last couple of days or any contact with his family

Nurse: no we alerted his father but he hasn't shown up yet.

Behi: Am I allowed to talk to him?

Nurse: sure, he won't respond..... I don't think he'll know you're there

_______________________________________________

Day 1

Behi: Hello Neta.... I'm lieutenant Behi. Since we've technically colleagues you can call me Behi

Neta: ........................

Behi: do you remember me? I helped you.... I carried you to the helicopter and brought you here.

Neta:...........................

Behi: hm. Well I can see if I can visit you again sometime. You know just to check up on you. I'll bring something next time.

Neta:............................

_______________________________________________

Week 1

Behi: hey Neta. I'm back like I promised. I uh really don't know what boys your age like anymore hahaha so I got you a sweat shirt..... Some new slippers and mp3.

Neta:........ Mm

Behi: yeah I had earbuds with them but I'm not allowed to bring that in here I'll try to get headphones.

Neta:.........hm

Behi: I see you soon ok champ

_______________________________________________

Week 2

Behi: hey Neta. Good to see you again

Neta: ..........

Behi: so the nurse told me you've been refusing to eat some of your meals....... She also told me you threw a bottle at the wall.... we can't have that....

Neta:..................

Behi: I get it tho those vanilla meal replacements are disgusting.....they got a weird after taste..... and they always seem old...

Neta: *heh*..

Behi: see you get it........ I can try to get the nurse to give you more chocolate or caramel replacements next time they're a little bit better.

Neta: hmm

_______________________________________________

Month 2

Behi: Neta it's good to see you

Neta:................

Behi: hehehe I hope you're improving it's nice outside.... maybe we can open up some windows.

Neta:mmmmm

Behi: see it's nice. Good old sunlight..... Well technically it's artificial sun panels but it's still nice. Why don't we look outside for a while huh

Neta: mmmmm........ hm

Behi:...*sigh*........... When they turn on the sprinklers I'll wheel you out next time

_______________________________________________

Month 4

Behi: hey Neta! Sorry I haven't visited in a while, work and all. I heard your father came to visit.

Neta:.....................

Behi: Look what I got you.............. It's a cushion! It's shaped like an octo!

Neta: ... ...............

Behi: They only had green ones I tried to find a yellow one, they're hard to find..... It's nice you can use it as a back rest or hug it like a little companion. sleep on it. Brighten up your room a bit

Neta: hmmm.........*sigh*

Behi: I'm glad you like it.... see you in a couple weeks

_______________________________________________

Month 6

Behi: Neta..... happy birthday Neta

Neta:...........

Behi: I know this isn't the ideal place to celebrate a 16th birthday but I'll try to make it work. I got you a balloon.. don't worry it's a foil balloon. If it pops it won't be loud, I have a slice of ice cream cake and a pack of birthday cake flavor meal replacements. This one isn't half bad you'll like it ......... And I pulled some strings and look what I got....

Neta: *uhh*

Behi: yeah it's your guitar! I didn't know you were a musician... That's cool. The nurse said you're improving so you can keep the strings on it

Neta:......................

Behi: I won't ask you to play it now but I would love to see you play one day. I see you later

Neta:........thank you......

Behi:.................... You're welcome Neta

_______________________________________________

Month 9

Neta: I don't know. I want to go to college but that means they have to spend another couple years in the military...... I don't think I'm mentally ready for that

Behi: I can see what I can do... You've already finished and got enough credits for high school..... You can start college next year if you are willing.. what do you want to do?... What do you want to study?

Neta: I always wanted to own a business.....I also want to study history...... Heh... I probably won't...this thing will probably go nowhere

Behi: hey! Don't say that....You have your whole life ahead of you.... you're very talented and you're very smart and whatever you do I know you're going to succeed.....

Neta:..................ok.........

Behi:..... Hey you're a good kid. I know you'll do great things.

_______________________________________________

Month 10

Behi: hay Cora.... just here to see Neta

Nurse: he's not here anymore...

Behi: what?

Nurse: his father picked him up today... He not here anymore

Behi: oh...... oh... Ok

Nurse: you really impacted that boy...... You should be happy

Behi: I am...... I'm happy for him.....*sigh*.... He'll be ok

_______________________________________________

Several years later

Warabi: sucks that your grandpa died dude. I'm sorry

Mahi:.....*sigh*..... Yeah......... it sucks that it took my little bother to tell me he passed.... I barely know him but he gives more of shit about me than my parents......... I'll miss him.......*sigh*....... Whatever he gave me his watch so that's pretty cool

Warabi: if you tell Neta maybe he'll let you leave early...

Mahi: hay Neta... Neta... Neta!

Neta: what! What is it Mahi!

Mahi: my grandpa died........ Is that an mp3? cod how old are you?....... My grandpa died can I go home?

Neta: yeah... Yeah sure go home...... sorry for your loss.......fuck you. I'm tired of y'all kids calling me old.

_______________________________________________

Neta: Cici!! Daddy's home!...

Cirrina: hi dad! You got a package!

Neta: ooooo a package. Gimme gimme gimme!! [Kiss] hey babygirl.....

Cirrina: hehehe I'm going to turf.. see ya

Neta: bye sweetie....... Let's see this package..... . 'hello Neta. If you're reading this then I have passed away. You probably haven't heard my name in a long, long, time. You probably don't remember me but I will always remember you. I'm so proud of you Neta, I've seen you around the news and articles. You've grown up to be an upstanding young man. It feels like just yesterday I picked you up on the battlefield, now you have your own store just like you said you were. Congratulations Neta let's hope your life keeps going up from here.-Behi'

.................Behi...... oh my cod he died...*sniff*... oh man.........*sniff*............. what's in the box? ......*Sigh* ......'neta I give you my military tag and my metals. I've been holding onto your promotional pin. Congratulations captain Verns you have been promoted to major Verns. I'm sorry it took 17 years to tell you.'.............. hehehe..*sigh* ...... thank you Behi .... for everything

_______________________________________________

Mahi and their grandfather I guy belongs to @fish-at-fish-fish-resort

[cologona]

The thing about Bruce making Dick Robin is that it can be read as empathy. Bruce and Dick both lost their family in the same way, and so Bruce tries to help Dick by giving him what he wanted as a young orphan. Justice, closure, power, meaning. Something to make the world right again, some way to move forward, someone who understands.

But that same reading is not as easy to apply to Jason

If I were to read Bruce in a particularly unflattering light, I'd say Bruce fundamentally saw Jason as more expendable than Dick. He was so afraid of losing Dick that he totally sabotaged that relationship, but he's fine with this much younger kid playing the same dangerous role? Jason is a tough street kid sure sure, but is he tougher than 18 year old Dick motherfucking Grayson??? No.

If I were to read Bruce in a more sympathetic light, I'd say that in Bruce's mind orphan = craving-for-justice-that-can-only-be-satiated-with-vigilantism, and since he found out Jason's father was dead he was trying to give Jason the same guidance and empowerment Dick got. He genuinely thought it would work. He did this at the same time that he was actively hiding the death of Jason's father, because this intense self-projection is happening at the subconscious level. He simultaneously wants to comfort the orphan and prevent the orphan from becoming "real" by hiding the truth. It is not logical but it is well-meaning.

(This self-projection is also the source of Bruce's bizarre assertion that Jason has anger issues- he isn't a classist asshole he's just sensitive! 👉👈)

Either way, there is clearly an instability to the concept of Jason's Robin. Batman and Robin requires suspending one's disbelief about child soldiers to degree higher than other superheroes, but there's not quite enough to support that suspension here.

Because how exactly is being Robin supposed to help Jason? What about Jason's supposed anger issues lend themselves to being helped by vigilantism? Jason could've just been Bruce Wayne's son, so why is he also Robin?

...Would Jason have just been Bruce Wayne's son?

I.. don't think so. I don't think Bruce adopted him just to offer a good home- not really. Bruce certainly wanted Jason to have a good home, but that's what sending him to Ma Gunn's school was supposed to be. Ma Gunn didn't work out sure, but it's not like she was the only option. Bruce could've just done more research the second time around. If Jason had rejected becoming Robin, would Bruce have still adopted him? If Batman had not intended for Jason to become involved with hero work, could you see him still sending Jason off to Wayne Manor to be adopted?

Bruce didn't just want a son, or even just a Robin. He wanted something specific- he wanted the feeling of having Dick back. Bruce praises Jason for how similar he is to Dick in his head, and based on Alfred's warning and Jason's own behavior, he apparently compared Jason to Dick quite a bit during training. When Dick himself eventually comes to confront Bruce about why there's another Robin, he pretty much lays it bare: Jason is Robin because he missed Dick. That's the core of it.

Now on one hand this is flattering for Jason! It means he was chosen for the Robin mantle because he demonstrated the good qualities similar to the original. In another universe maybe Jason Todd's Robin isn't the angry one or the dead one, maybe he got to develop and he could've become the Robin that came from sharing laughter and life rather than grief. A Cinderella? A little lotus boy.

On the other hand that's not the universe we live in and this reason has absolutely fuck-all to do with Jason.

As for Tim, parentification is straight up the basis of his Robin. It’s impossible to read his “Batman needs Robin” spiel without reading it as a meta statement because in-universe it’s just an extremely frgiggi depressing scenario.

I think Dick might be the only person for whom Bruce's intense self-projection kinda worked out. Not that their relationship was good, but the core of it was okay? Cassandra comes close but Bruce sorta… lives out his dreams of being all-Batman all-the-time through her. He pushed his bad impulses onto her and she didn’t understand the value of not being Batman so it came off really creepy. He was encouraging her to rely him. Like a tool.

[destinygoldenstar]

TW: This video has a nude image. This is one of the most unapologetically real films I’ve ever watched. And this is easily the scene that spoke to me the most. I too have Asperger’s syndrome. I was diagnosed when I was thirteen after a sensory overload in school that got me in trouble. I was lucky to have parents love me and support me and take the time to understand me. But I had nothing short of a miserable school life, where I was not only pressured and stressed to tears, but I was heavily bullied and abused for my condition. It wasn’t just kids finding it funny when I was miserable, or finding me stupid for not understanding a joke, or pretending to be my friend to solidify that I was lesser than the people around me. It was also adults letting me know just how wrong and broken I was, screaming at me for having questions, denying to help me, punishing me for not doing something fast enough, or even punishing me for looking at something weird. And when quarantine started and I attempted to break free from my horrible school life, I was grounded for an entire season, and my mom told me that the problem was always me for not being able to do what normal kids could do. I grew very hostile towards my peers as a result of betrayals and abuse, finding solitude in being a part of nothing for the longest time, and if you knew me back then, you’d know me as an odd kid who paced around for no reason, didn’t need glasses but wore them anyway, and was sarcastic, snarky, and hot tempered to be unpleasant to be around. If you knew me back then, you would hate me. I didn’t gain friends until my senior year in high school.

Im one of those autistic people who don’t struggle too much with showing their emotions. For a long time, I had to bottle up my anxiety attacks because whenever I had them, people found it funny or punished me for having them. My guidance lessons were ‘don’t be angry’ ‘don’t be anxious’ ‘just ignore it all’. And I tried to cry at night, alone, hoping no one noticed. Sometimes they didn’t. And around my sophomore year I got heavily sick from it, seemingly for dumb reasons, I felt like I was the problem and was a garbage human being. I had moved away from that abusive environment and taken to a much more comforting state and home life, and I felt like I didn’t deserve any of it because ‘I was a problem’. It was only then that my mom understood and got me the help I needed. And then in my final year of school, I could begin a healing process. I could find much more positive ways to fit into society and see the benefits in myself. Like my writing, and my skills in the theater. I excelled at stuff like that in ways other people didn’t. My habit of need for constant movement really helped my health physically, and I could be a runner if I wanted to.

I have a partner in my life now and we’ve been dating for over two years now. She was autistic, like me. It actually started out as a childhood friendship nearly eight years before we fell in love. Talk about slow burn. She moved away to another country, but we made a promise to never lose contact. And we never did. She became my own Mary over the time we were apart. Our communication was about stuff we found enjoyment in, like our own writing, or media we liked, and the people around us never understood it, found it ‘not chemistry’. We grew to ignore them because it made us happy and that’s all that mattered. She was there for me in my lowest points, and I was there for hers. She’s chronically ill. She was hospitalized just a year after our separation, and only now is she starting to recover and get better. Back then it just got worse and worse for her and she became depressed to suicidal thoughts. She claimed I was the one who saved her life. Then a year before we would finally see each other again, I noticed her feeling more for me. But I didn’t let it surface because I didn’t know how I felt at the time. I was always someone who very openly rejected love with no hesitation, and it was one of the things I was bullied for. Then half a year before we would see each other again, she accidentally told me she was in love with me. So I guess she confessed first?? Or, I was the first one to do it on purpose, because I called it out, and returned it. And so I begged my family to move down the country, where she was, to see her again, and we did. And that vacation was where we had our first kiss. After I had come out to my parents for being an asexual lesbian, (I didn’t realize the asexual part until I was in my senior year where someone pointed it out.) we officially moved a few months later, and we could proceed with a healing process and a happier life. And not only for me, but for her, as now she is beginning to heal from her many illnesses and form a healthier lifestyle since we got together.

A life where I could see the positives in myself and see that my Asperger’s was never the problem, it was how people treated me. I was not lesser then. People might not understand me, but how I communicated and what I felt was valid. And I could do great things with that I could do.

So when people say your functioning of your brain is wrong or less than an average person,

“I do not like it when they say that. I do not feel disabled, defective, or a need to be cured. I like being an aspie. It would be like trying to change the color of my eyes.”

Please, watch Mary & Max. This movie is so uncomfortably real, especially for people like us. It’s not an easy watch, but I feel like it’s a necessary watch. I wish I saw this movie sooner than I did, when I needed it the most.

[justcourttee]

And They Were Roommates-Pt 8

Marinette didn’t know what to think. The Damian she met two weeks ago had disappeared, and in his place was the charming man she had grown to love over the past three years. It made her doubt everything she thought she knew about their relationship.

The first night had been hard. She woke several times in tears to the point that her pillowcase was soaked through. She could hear his level breathing from outside her door, but she wasn’t sure if she was ready to face him.

The second night was worse. Night terrors began to set in and she found herself reaching out for company, even if it was his. She met him on the couch and curled into his side like she did a hundred times before with Chloe and Adrien. He seemed to understand as he didn’t push her to talk, only let her use him for comfort.

By the third night, she was able to have a conversation with him, longer than the awkward five minutes they had managed the other day. He finally opened up about his family, even telling her his real last name, Wayne.

“Why go by Al Ghul then?”

“Most people here Wayne and think money and favors, it’s unpleasant and draining. If I want a fresh start, I use my mother’s name, but it eventually falls through and I have to move all over again.”

“But why run from your family so often? I’d do anything to see mine one more time.”

Her eyes teared up, but she shook her head quickly, trying to stop before they really started. Damian studied her for a moment before offering her a small smile.

“They’ve always been very overwhelming. I went from high expectations with my mother to even higher expectations from my father. He wanted me to unlearn everything she had taught me and became angry and disappointed when I didn’t head in his every direction.”

He paused, noticing the tears still lingering on her eyelashes. Gently, he reached forward, brushing them away.

“Mother was to obey or be killed, which sounds terrible, but someone I liked better in a sense. At least I knew that any disappointment would be dealt with directly, nothing less. Father was angry, taking his anger out indirectly through comments and tough training, but the disappointment was worse. He’d compare me to his other kids, all adopted nonetheless, but it didn’t matter. He held them with high respect and praised them often.”

“That-” Marinette paused, unsure if she wanted to continue, but his smile was inviting her to speak her mind. “That sounds awful. Expectations are supposed to be set by yourself, not your parents. They’re just supposed to be there for support and the occasional guidance.”

“Is that how your parents were?”

Marinette bit her lip, trying to swallow the lump in her throat.

“I’m sorry Angel, I wasn’t sure if you were ready to talk yet. I won’t bring it up again until you say you’re ready.”

“No,”she shook her head, much to his surprise. “I need this.”

Taking a deep breath, Marinette dove in, taking several small pauses to wipe away her tears.

“My parents were so supportive of everything I ever did. I tried sports when I was younger and while I wasn’t bad, it wasn’t my passion. My mother bought me an art set when I turned nine and it was like magic. All of a sudden, the world was whatever I wanted it to be. When I turned eleven, I discovered designing. I mentioned it once to them and when I came home from school, there was a dressing mannequin and a sewing machine sitting in my room.”

Her eyes glazed over as she stared at her hands in her lap. It seemed like such a distant memory at this point. His hand reached into her sight, moving toward her’s.

“May I?”

She nodded as she watched him intertwine their fingers. He waited patiently for her to continue, rubbing small circles into the back of her hand using his thumb.

“I was so happy with them. When I first was given the scholarship offer for Metropolis University, I didn’t know what to think. Chloe’s mother offered me a mentee spot if I traveled overseas, seeing as the flight to New York was only an hour from here. My parents knew what it meant for my possible future in the fashion industry, and to them, it was a no brainer. It was hard seeing them only for the breaks and then even harder when Professor Brookes offered me a spot in her workfield.”

“Your parents sound amazing. The way I grew up was- unconventional to say the least. I can’t even imagine where I would be today if I had that kind of support.”

A small smile stretched across Marinette’s face as her eyes rose to meet his.

“You sound like Chloe and Adrien.”

“They were close to your parents as well?”

“Adrien grew up in a very unconventional lifestyle as well. His mother disappeared when he was 12, leaving his father a broken man. He distanced himself from Adrien, only communicating with him when business was involved. Adrien tried to come out to him when we turned 16, but he scorned him, telling him he was confused and that he either dropped the subject or Gabriel would deal with it himself.”

Damian frowned, his eyebrow furrowing at her words.

“That’s ridiculous, his father could be runner up to my mother for worst parent of the year.”

“Yeah, Gabriel sucks. He still does. My parents allowed him to crash at my house that night, and every night after that they insisted he came over for dinner. They talked him through his teenage years, offering him advice and unconditional love. It was exactly what he needed to go public about his sexuality, my parents on either side of him at the press conference, offering support where they could. There was nothing his father could do at the point; if he spoke out, he would be seen as homophobic. Adrien held my parents on such a high pedestal after that.”

“And what about Chloe?”

Marinette shook her head, a small laugh escaping, shocking the two of them.

“Chloe used to be a terror when we were younger, but to be fair, she was being enabled at every turn. Her mother was a workaholic, never around and her father was a corrupt politician. She bullied me alot.”

Damina raised his eyebrow, but Marinette simply waved him off.

“I know what you’re thinking. It’s what everyone said when I offered to be her roommate in college. ‘How can I be her friend after that?’ It’s simple. When we were 14, she really fell off the deep end. She helped Gabriel do some very terrible things out of her feelings of anger and loneliness. Everyone resented her for it, and even her own parents turned their backs on her. Instead of offering her help, they left her even lonelier than before.”

Marinette leaned forward, picking up a picture frame from the table. Leaning over, she allowed Damian to take a closer look. The picture depicted a happy family. Marinette’s parents in the back with Marinette and the two blondes in front of them. The moment frozen as everyone was caught mid laugh at some unseen humor.

“Chloe fell into a depressive state and one night, my mother found her on our doorstep, tears pouring down her eyes. My parents brought her inside, wrapped her in a large blanket and offered her a mug of hot cocoa. They knew who she was, they knew what she had done, but they could never leave her outside, they could never leave a child alone. She apologized for everything, telling me how her therapy helped her realize how terrible she was when we were younger. She was genuine.”

“How could you tell?”

Marinette pulled the picture close to her chest, a tear slipping from her eye.

“Chloe was a lot of things, but she never lied to me. She always believed in what she was saying, no matter how crazy it was. That night was a new beginning. It was rocky at first, but between myself and Adrien, we helped her back onto her feet. Pretty soon, she joined family dinners too. We did it every night for two years and I can’t tell you how much joy it brought to everyone, especially my parents. The one thing they loved more than each other, was loving others.”

A few more tears slipped out before she could stop them. It felt like she ripped off a bandaid she forgot was there. She knew her friends needed to know, Damian’s grim stare confirmed he was thinking the same thing. But it was too much. It was still too raw and the emotions swimming in her head from their deaths and from Damian’s confession. She couldn’t help them through their grief. Not yet.

“Marinette, I could tell them if you would like.”

She shook her head as she closed her eyes, trying to steady her breathing again.

“It’s something I should do. I just need one more night.”

He nodded in understanding, not pushing the matter anymore, something she was grateful for. Marinette sat down the picture and picked up the pen beside it. She handed it to Damian before settling back into the couch.

“Could you draw me something?”

“What would you like me to draw?”

Marinette shook her head, leaning in his direction.

“Anything.”

And so he began, sketching on his wrist, his eyes occasionally glancing over at hers as she watched her own wrist intently. He watched her eyes start to flutter shut only to fly open as she fought the exhaustion. But it was a losing battle as she finally fell into his side, soft breaths escaping her parted lips. He placed the finishing touches before capping the pen, tossing it gently to the coffee table.

“Goodnight Angel.”

He reached over to the lamp, pulling the string hard, plunging them into darkness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   Marinette sat up abruptly to the sound of the banging on her door. Her first instinct was to reach into the drawer under the coffee table, pulling out a small pink container. She stood to move closer as a second round of banging commenced. Her eyes darted back to the couch where Damian had sat last night.  

It was empty, a small piece of paper on the coffee table promised her that he would return soon. Creeping towards the peephole, Marinette took a cautious look, only to find it covered by whoever was outside. With a deep breath, Marinette flung open the door, raising the pink container to her defense.

Her would be assailant fell to the ground, grabbing his eyes as he let out a string of curses that would’ve expelled him from any school he could’ve ever attended. She looked up to find two more startled figures, both had their hands held in a surrender position. Marinette lowered her defense, her eyes narrowing at the two men.

“Who are you?”

“She really pepper sprayed me! You guys promised it would just aggravate Demon Spawn, you didn’t tell me I would be assaulted!”

The man on the ground sat up, still rubbing his bloodshot eyes, tears pouring down his face.

“I’ll ask you one more time, and just to be clear, you give me anything other than an answer to my question and I don’t need the pepper spray to kick your sorry asses. Who. Are. You?”

Two of them shared a panicked look, neither daring to move to help the third man up.

“Well you see sunshine, you are not who we were expecting either, in fact-”

The man with the bloodshot eyes rose only to be slammed into the wall by the girl. Marinette gripped his arm tightly behind his back, pushing his front side further into the concrete wall. Leaning all of her weight into him, she ignored his cries to ‘tap out’, her glare demanding a better answer from the remaining two.

The smaller one nudged the taller guy forward, neither looking eager to talk.

“Well you see, it’s a funny story really-”

“I’m losing my patience.” Marinette pulled her hostage’s arm further back, causing another string of curses.

“It’s just that-”

“They’re my idiot brothers.”

Marinette turned her head to see Damian standing behind them, an amused expression evident on his face. He was holding a tray with two coffees in them, a bag from Marinette’s favorite bakery in his other hand.

Horrified, Marinette let go of the man, allowing him to drop to the ground, rubbing his shoulder as he scooted away from her.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry. It’s just between the banging on the door and then covering the peephole, I just assumed the worst. Please, come in, I’m so sorry.”

Marinette repeatedly apologized as she moved to help her poor victim up off the ground. 

“Don’t offer him help habibti, you’re too generous. Leave him on the ground.”

She shook her head, gently gripping the man’s good arm as she helped him to his feet. He moved quickly out of her grasp, his expression a mixture between weary and respect.

Damian stepped in front of her, his glare causing each man to fold in on themselves, none expect the man from the ground even dared to meet his eyes.

“Besides, you were asking the wrong question. It doesn��t matter who they are, it only matters what they’re doing here and how soon can they leave?”

Tag List:

@damianette-is-life @ladybug-182 @fusser90 @thestressmademedoit @dast218 @thezestywalru @jardimazul @olynix @dorkus-minimus @xahriia @kris-pines04 @urbanpineapplefarmer @moonlightstar64 @itsmeevie01 @little-lady-bird @alexandriamw @lozzybowe @emmdaenovice @loysydark @toodaloo-kangaroo @jessigurl-design @aegyobutpsycho2 @stark-morgoona @tis-i-beanbandit @rebecarojas07 @abrx2002 @ash-amg @loveswifi @heaven428 @dreamykitty25 @marinettepotterandplagg @smolplantmum @clumsy-owl-4178 @books-and-left-behind-journals @joejoejodee @iloontjeboontje @maybemanymuffins @zalladane @mysupporthyperfixations 

[one-abuse-survivor]

reporting from the milky way again :)

yes, i did get the exams and project out of the way (the main reason i worked on the project so much last weekend was because i had to turn it in until sunday night) but right now were in the process of getting all the grades back and tbh i'm less than happy about it. So far i'm not happy about math, physics and chemistry and there'll be even worse grades in geography, german and music.

and my dad did not realize the extent of my struggles and seems to think that i'm just a rebellious teenager or something

i know that my mom will be around tomorrow afternoon and i am planning to talk with her then but that'd be a one-on-one conversation and i'm not sure if i can handle that at the moment but we'll see. i can tell you how it went afterwards.

and i'm really excited for friday bc it's the last day of school this year and afterwards we have a 7 week break and i'll be able to go out for lunch with a friend whom I haven't seen in two years because they moved to the US.

okay so this is milky way again and i wanted to let you know how trying to talk to my mom went

spoiler alert: it was worse than disappointing

i didn't start talking about my suspicions of being neurodivergent because i wanted to see how helpful she'd be first so i just kinda started with how i struggle with concentrating and not getting distracted at school and my sleep issues and that's about as far as i got before i got a feeling of how pointless this was.

the only thing she did was telling me that others have it worse (since i still have above-average grades), that everyone has this kind of existential crisis at some point during their teenager years, that the sleeping and concentration issues are just teenager issues that everyone has and that everyone feels like their struggles are worse than everyone else's even tho most of the time they actually aren't and finally that she can't help me

i of course quickly got the hell out of the room and went to bed (so i can be by myself in my room in the dark with my door closed). on one hand i'm absolutely furious and on the other hand i am disappointed, sad and dejected and i don't really believe myself anymore. seriously, what if she's right? she's had about 40 years more life experience and she was a teenager too at some point so she'd know this kinda thing, wouldn't she? what if i'm just complaining too much and talking over the ones that are actually struggling and can actually prove it with grades and stuff?

i feel a lot worse than i did one hour ago and i should've just not started talking in the first place and i regret it so much because i know this conversation will haunt me for the next week if not more.

i'm just angry angry angry

at myself, at her, at the way she compared me with literally everyone else at my age, at how i'm not sure of myself and at everything

i haven't felt this bad since last november and that was when things got really really bad (suicidal thoughts and self-harm included) and i'm so so scared of being there again because i'm on a 7 month 2 week streak with self-harm and i don't want to have to break it

sorry that this is just me venting and that this is so long

tl;dr i tried talking to my mom, now i'm angry at myself and her and i'm terrified of myself

Hi again ❤ I'm really sorry your grades aren't as good as you wanted them to be and that your dad keeps acting like your struggles are just a teenage rebellious phase and not taking you seriously :( I hope you have a good time with your friend, at least!

I'm so so sorry talking to your mom went so badly. I hope you're feeling slightly better now, but if not, I'm sending you the biggest virtual hug. I know how hard it can be to believe you're actually struggling at first, especially mentally, and I can't even imagine how horrible it must feel to have those fears "proven" by the very people meant to help you and support you when you reach out for help.

She is not right, nonnie, no matter how much she insists she is. First of all, I think there's at least some truth to the idea that teenagers tend to think the world revolves around themselves, and to feel uncomprehended at times. But I also think that's completely understandable. I mean, you're experiencing what it's like not to be a kid anymore for the very first time; you're facing many grown-up problems and feelings for the first time. And all of that while hormones wreak havoc in your system. How are you not meant to be at least a little bit angsty at times? But you know what? That doesn't mean you don't deserve help and guidance from your parents! It is a part of parenting to guide your kids through their teenage problems and to help them deal with emotions and issues they'd never had to face before. So even if she was right, and all you were going through right now was a typical teen existential crisis, you would still need and deserve her guidance and support. And you would still deserve to see a doctor about your struggles with sleep and concentration even if it turned out it was a teenage thing. There is no scenario where you deserve to suffer and push through your struggles alone just because your problems don't come from a serious enough source.

Second of all, grades are not indicative of how much you're struggling. I got some of the best grades in my school during years where I was going through abuse. I know a person who managed to get into a medicine degree with undiagnosed ADHD (and you have to get some really high grades to study medicine here). I also know a person who passed 3/4ths of her uni subjects and graduated university while in a depression so severe she could barely walk. Your grades do not dictate whether you need help.

And third of all, she might be older than you, and I'm sure she had a lot of learning experiences as a teenager herself, but that doesn't mean she knows you better than you know yourself. No one knows you better than you know yourself. No one has experienced all life experiences and gets to decide what other people are or aren't going through. And most importantly, there's always going to be someone who has it "worse" than everyone in this world, but that doesn't mean everyone else doesn't deserve help to manage their struggles. There's no such thing as not struggling enough to deserve help. Either you're not struggling at all, whatsoever, or you are to some extent—and no matter what that extent is, if you feel like you need help with it, then you need help with it. No one gets to tell you you don't.

From what I know, it's not unheard of for neurodivergent people to get told by their parents that their experiences are universal and therfore "not a big deal", and for it to turn out that their parents have some signs of neurodivergence themselves and just never got diagnosed. I of course don't know if that's the case here, but I want you to know that regardless of her reasons to tell you your experiences are universal—whether she also went through that and never had it acknowledged or she's saying it to gaslight you and make you question yourself—her behaviour is still neglectful. And you deserved so much better than to be made to feel like you're making things up, exaggerating and talking over others when all you did was ask for help with your personal struggles.

Sending a giant hug your way ❤️

[katsukikitten]

Something Immortal

You lie awake on the eve of your sixteenth birthday. Left arm held up, illuminated in the soft moonlight revealing nothing but a bare forearm.

A forearm that will soon be marred with a hint to whom you are destined to search for until the end of time.

Rising, falling and rising again just to find this special person until you're lucky enough to both be living at the same time.

Least we forget the same region and even then what of the same age?

Surely a forty year old with a fifteen year old would be frowned upon no matter their label.

It would be much more acceptable to reset yourself should your marking show up black or even worse not at all.

But even so each lifetime the two of you were meant to grow to support one another. No matter your age, time or region, and especially so if you've never met.

Your forearm held the key to find your soulmate.

The word in of itself gave you mixed feelings, especially so when many people had died young, wanting to reset in hopes of being born closer to their mate.

But did one really *need* someone else to complete them?

Did the universe really need to unveil the mystery of the fated red string by placing it on everyone's forearm for all to see?

By an ever changing line acting more as an eerie mood ring than anything else.

Showing you through a thick line what the current emotional state of your soulmate was.

Golden like the sun for happiness. Sky blue for calm, content, deep blue for sadness/depression. Burning red for anger, orange for pain, grey for apathetic and black.

Well black was either they were in deep sleep, unable to present an emotion to you or they just passed or died in the past decade.

All changing in intensity the closer or further you got from them. Brighter and more vibrant the closer one got to their destined other half.

And that was if by some fucking chance your soulmate was even living at the exact moment you turned sixteen. Some appeared much later in life and some never appeared at all. Bare skin leaving those people broken, with little hope for love.

Or for them to cling to one another in a desperate attempt at SOMETHING, often leading to toxic, damning relationships doomed from the beginning.

Hell there were even horror stories of finding your soulmate. Of the two of you being born out of tune or during a period in which you both must learn a hard lesson putting the two of you through a toxic dynamic even if it was destined.

But that wouldn't be you as you counted down the seconds.

Praying to Kamisama above that no line would ever appear on your forearm. Leaving it a blank canvas, hinting at the freedom you so wished for.

Because to be a slave to a what if sounded worse than a lifetime of solitude.

Kamisama does not bless you as an angry red line slashes across your skin, raising it into a welt before it settles back in.

As if it had always belonged there. The color was of average intensity hinting you were either in the same city or the same country as no one was really sure of the math involved.

You heaved heavy breathes as rage poured into your veins like molten lava before you steel yourself. Turning to your side table where a flathead screwdriver sat over a three wick candle. The metal a bright orange as you pick it up, with it the power to put fate into your own hands.

Or so you hoped as you pressed the hot metal over the banded skin grinding your teeth as you did.

Pressing until it bubbled up beneath the heat, trundles of smoke wafting a putrid smell of burning flesh into the air until you could take the sear no more.

You move the screwdriver away, satisfied to see the band overshadowed by a bright red burn.

Your pained yet satisfied smile falters when your forearm begins to glow again, healing itself as once burnt flesh scars a ghastly pink over your indicator.

Leaving a faint glow that struggles to show deep blue and burning red at the same time.

You swallow thickly, settling for the fact that you have some semblance of control over your fate.

At least now that your fate bound tattoo is veiled beneath a thick pink scar that desperately tries to distort and disguise that damned band.

××××××××××××

"Transfer?!" Exasperation leaks from you like a dam threatening to burst, "What do you mean transfer?!"

"Transfer. You know move from one place to another?" He flicks an agitated wrist allowing a holographic dictionary page appear in the air. You swat at the knowledge gnat angrily.

"Yea I know what that fucking means!"

"Language." He growls but as always it dies on deaf ears. The room hums, electricity, wind and sun light all thurming through your veins. Pleading to be absorbed and reformed.

Instead you clench your fists harder.

"So what does that mean for me?" You slam your open palm against your chest a bit dramatically. He rolls his eyes as smooth hands begin to pack your things too.

"It means you're coming with me. You're a minor. Musutafu has more qualified and diverse hero schools just as it has a more diverse job market for my own quirk. What did you plan to do here? Monopolize the hero market and demand a high wage?"

"That's *exactly* what I was going to do!" Nails gnaw into callused palms, "I'm already in demand here."

"Against what? An occasional drunk? Y/N, there is no future for us here. We need to succeed for...." He clears his throat as you watch his fragile shoulders dip with the weight of it all. Of endless knowledge and still having no way to bring them back.

"I haven't even put in any transfer papers or taken any exams. The semester starts soon."

"I've done the transfer papers for you. Your exam is at the end of the week. I've applied you to UA. You're a shoe in for sure. That viral video that kid shot of you already had over 1,463,890 views and counting." The very video he speaks of appears as the definition of transfer did before. You swat this away as well with burning cheeks just before you pull the lighting from the storm and reform it into several different shapes before allowing it to escape in the form of a cat.

"You're just gonna transfer me at the end of my second year?!"

"Yes, now is the perfect time. They will get you all caught up there. A provisional license, an internship. Real guidance on your quirk." He says it all nonchalant. As if he weren't packing away the baby pictures of you and himself from the wall.

Or delicately wrapping up the shrine set our for what was supposed to be the two biggest supporters of your life.

As if he wasn't packing up your entire life in under the span of three hours.

You watch your dream of living a low profile with high pay in some almost off the grid town get stuffed into another grimy cardboard box.

"You're my big brother. You're supposed to support my dreams!" A scream rips up your throat as the lights flicker in the room.

"Well I'm not just your big brother any more Y/N, I'm your guardian. Whether you like it or not we ARE leaving and that's final. So go blow off some steam before the house implodes and when you come back. Pack. Your. Stuff."

You had never slammed a door harder in your life. Rushing towards the river as a summer storm begins to roll in. Lightening crackling on it's own across the sky as you run your left hand through your hair.

Eyes catching that fucking line peaking out beneath the burn, hardly ever changing from that damned red.

You were sure your mark reflected that of your soulmate's own, hinting that the both of you may be suspended in your own personal hells.

Good let them suffer as deeply as you do. Nails pick at the old scar subconsciously reopening just for it to close again long before the blood beneath your nails has a chance to harden.

The pain gives you focus as you close your eyes, breathing slowly and deeply.

Exhaling as the storm brings itself to a head.

Time seems to slow, almost freeze as you see with your minds eye the energy converting into something else all together.

Of the weight of the water finally to heavy from the clouds. Giving in to the call of gravity as if it were the song of a siren.

Of the negative charge calling to the positive, demanding, begging for it to come down to kiss if even for the fleeting moment of a second.

Nature calls to nature much like the undeniable bond that throbs on your arm.

Particles reach out towards the heavens as your hair slowly begins to stand on your goosed skin.

Your eyes snap open as your blood thrums through your veins, the lightening above targeted straight on your now out reached hand.

Power flows through you freely, overwhelmingly slow, threatening to fray every nerve you have should you not give this all of your focus.

Should you not release it, reshape it before you lose the battle.

Your left comes to meet your right before you make a fluid step, bringing your left down and straight out.

Lightening surges from your finger tips across the wide as it is ancient river. Branching out to kiss the heads of white rafts.

With each strike you bend the lightening to your will as if it were a simple dance. Reshaping the blinding blue and golden strikes into forest creatures that dart around the ground until they meet their end.

The movements take a lot of focus and brain power, sweat beads along your brow as your mind finally is numbed to your worries.

Still one gnawed at the back of your mind, clawing at the obsidian walls you thought you placed up. Whispering in a voice so distorted it was if they were speaking with gravel in their throat.

More people meant more chances of finding your souls mate.

Or worse yet your soul mate finding you.

The thought shakes you to your core, bringing down your wall as all of the possibilities flood the forefront of your mind.

Lightening strikes before you can sense it, you barely have enough time to react redirecting it into a deadly, much over powered strike across the river hitting a large electrical elk you created.

The sound it makes is just the composition of energy, still it echoes in your head as more of a scream then anything.

Before your own nerves on your right hand demand attention.

Having been struck without your mind in the proper place to absorb, your fingertips the only thing damaged but still the scars are there.

Foreign purple veins branch out in jagged directions, like a lightening strike just beneath your skin.

Giving a deadly reminder as to why you can never avoid to lose focus over something as trivial as a soulmate.

[juniaships]

Vanessa Marble-Whittaker Bio **redux**

I had to delete the old post due to spelling mistakes and to add more info, but here is the official character bio for my AIO OC....possibly the only one in existence 😅 Contains spoilers and subject matter of abuse & postpartum depression; if you're curious you might have to do look into the main story arcs of AIO for easier understanding.

Full Name: Vanessa Crystal Marble Whittaker (nee Marble;)

Age: Unspecified but around late 20s to mid 30s

Birthday: May 15th

Race: African American (with European ancestry on both sides)

Fandom: Adventures in Odyssey

Voice Claim: Cree Summer; Vivica A. Fox is also a good alternate

Character Role: Heroine & love interest/spouse of Jason Whittaker

Items: Cross necklace, Midnight Manor (formerly Blackgaard's Castle)

Relationships

Family: Robienne Marble (mother), Regis Blackgaard (father), Edwin Blackgaard (uncle), Jerry Jr. (son, infant), John Whittaker (father in law), Monty (nephew in law), Jana (sister in Law)

Friends at Whit's End: Whit, Eugene, Connie, Katrina, Angel (pet doberman)

Acquaintances: Nuns, denizens of Odyssey

Love Interest: Her primary love interest and eventual husband is Jason Whittaker. They began as tensse & awkward relationship during the Blackgaard Saga duento their contrasting personalities, before becoming close friends and allies. They do not become completely official until after Novacom. Their relationship is regarded as the bonafide example of "Opposites Attract" in Odyssey.

Enemies: While enemies are far and few, she considers her own father as the major obstacle between her and a peaceful life. She was a major player against Novacom. She had a brief yey tense rivalry with Monica Stone (partly for Jason's affections) but the two made peace at the end.

Appearance

- Average height (say, 5'7)

-Brown skin, light brown eyes, and wavy-curly black hair

-Has an average body type (pear shaped) and seemed to gain a few pounds since giving birth

-Typically were darker shades of purple, blue, with the occasional maroon

-Sense of fashion is put together, professional even if casual

- Still has her nun fatigues

Personality

Vanessa is a composed and reserved lady with a deep connection to God, while respecting other religions (and non religious). While seen as a cold person at first glance, she is actually very kind and open-minded, though she isn't immune to making sardonic comments once in a while. While not really great around kids, she has moments of being supportive. After becoming a mother she is rather clueless, though well-meaning and tries her hardest to be the parent her father wasn't.

One of her biggest obstacle is overcoming her aloof demeanor. She needed to learn to open up to others and to out faith in her new friends. Even now she still has her moments of keeping her true emotions, though she has a wide circle of friends and a spouse to talk to. Vanessa was also ashamed of her Blackgaard blood, though she learns to come to terms with her past in order to create a brighter future for herself and the rest of her family. Sometimes she is prone to feeling inadequate and jealous, especially during brief periods of romantic rivalry.

There is a fierce protective side that comes out when loved ones are threatened, as seen with the Blackgaard and Novacom Sagas. She dislikes staying on the sidelines and does whatever she can to help out. She even broke her vows to protect her mother Robienne when Regis came into town, and later inspired her uncle Edwin to stay and fight her father to help save Odyssey.

While studious snd intelligent, Vanessa is not very tech savvy, naturally preferring traditional mediums such as writing letters and books. While she learns how to use computers and cellphones, don't expect her to be a technophile anytime soon. She expresses curiosity and concerns over the next invention hubby makes.

Abilities

Vanessa can memorize a lot a bible verses which she uses as prayer, or as a quip. She also has taken self defense classes to hold her her own.

- Strengths: In her early years she proved to be surprisingly strong and fast when need be. She can adapt to certain situations and keep her cool. Clever and resourceful, Vanessa often thinks and plans her actions. She can speak three languages (Spanish, French, and Mandarin Chinese) and plans om studying more.

- Weaknesses: After pregnancy she isn't as physically strong and has to limit herself to recover, and can be overpowered by much stronger foes. Vanessa is not very good at advanced technology, and she is a bad cook (Jason keeps her away from the stove as much as possible).

Backstory Vanessa was the only child of Regis and Robienne Blackgaard. Their marriage had be a short and rocky one marred by neglect, emotional manipulation and mental abuse. Finally, on the guidance of Edwin (Regis's brother) Robienne decided she had enough and divorced Regis when Vanessa was two years old. Robienne moved her daughter to New England to be with family, and the two lived peacefully after that. After graduating high school, Vanessa went to the nunnery and stayed there for a few years, while Robienne moved to the Midwest to pursue a career in teaching.

However Vanessa soon grew discontent, feeling as though she was missing out on normal young adult life. Should she stay as a nun or forge her own path?

She would find clues to her answer in the form of receiving news about her father moving to Odyssey - the same town her mother lived. Fearing for her mother's life, Vanessa requested a temporary break in vows, family business, she had said. Settling in Odyssey (under the surname Newman) she got a job working at Whit's End and as a private tutor.

Following major and minor events including the Blackgaard, Novacom, and Green Ring Conspiracy drama, Jason proposed to Vanessa, and they had a summer wedding (but not before overcoming premarital jitters and a threat from Jason's past). Two years after their union (or as of current Odyssey storyline) they had a little boy named Jerry Jr. (named after Jason's deceased brother). Vanessa continues to work at Whit's End as a curator and artist.

Major Storylines: If she was canon she would've been a major player in some of Odyssey's biggest stories including:

- Blackgaard Saga: Her debut, she came to town to take care of her mother & to confront her father on troubled past. She was hired to work at Whit's End where she met then-owner Jack Allen & the previous owner's son Jason for the first time. The townsfolk were.mesmerized by the seemingly mysterious woman and rumors started to abound. Near the climax, Vanessa revealed to Connie and Eugene that came to Odyssey to protect her mother from Regis. Towards the end of the saga, she, her uncle Edwin, and a few townsfolk helped to set up a trap for her father to save Odyssey.

Novacom Saga: She was a big player in taking down Novacom, using her skills writing letters to raise awareness on Novacom's shady actions. This is where her rivalry with Monica Stone began as Vanessa feelings for Jason turn romantic. After Novacom, she would be involved in more stories.

Green Ring Conspiracy: Following Jason's supposed "death" she briefly left Odyssey in mourning. Her uncle and mother managed to convince her to come back to Odyssey. She was unaware of Jason's secret of being alive and working as the Stiletto, and had several encounters with the Stiletto where the mysterious man left her roses and notes of endearment. The two would later reunite after Jason retuned to town, but Vanessa was angry with him for keeping secrets from her. After a long time (and counsel from Whit) she forgave him, and the two reconciled with the promise of being more open with each other.

Courtship Of Jason & Vanessa: An original storyline where the romance between her and Jason comes full circle, leading to their engagement! If only they could overcome personal inhibitions, a hateful doberman, past rivals and a threat from Jason's spy work!

Junior's Birth & Beyond: A couple of years into their marriage Vanessa became pregnant. She was anxious over multiple scenarios, her growing appetite and mood swings. After her son was born she developed symptoms of postpartum depression and sought medications and therapy. Slowly but surely, her mental health improved, & her anxieties faded away. As of now she has gotten involved with the current Rydell Saga.

Trivia

Vanessa won several awards for her artwork and has them on display everywhere in Odyssey

She is one of my most complex characters, but also one starting to really grow on me mostly out of nostalgia for the series

- Characters that inspired Vanessa's creation are Megara (Disney Hercules), Rei/Sailor Mars (Sailor Moon), Esther (biblical stories), Tzipporah (biblical stories esp. Dreamworks The King of Egypt), Talia Al Ghul, and Elisa Maza (Gargoyles). Other inspos include Maria Von Trapp and Marian Ravenwood.

- Vanessa was made to have a unique female character to contrast Connie and Katrina. Also because I have a soft spot for the Forbidden Love trope (if done right).

- She is the only main character OC of mine that is explicitly religious. She was Catholic and while she converted to Protestant, she still holds on to Catholic values. She is also the only main OC to be a parent as of current.

- Vanessa still visits her old nunnery when she and Jason goes to New England.

- She has bouts of postpartum depression, and takes medication to regulate.

- Her favorite things are the color blue, making her own pigments, and coffee flavored ice cream

Quotes

"Blackgaard already made our lives miserable uncle Edwin! If you leave now you're only giving him more power! You helped mama and I so many times, so it's my turn to return the favor!"

"Connie I'm a nun not a miracle worker."

"If my mother superior saw what I'm doing right now I would've had an early meeting with the Lord!"

"No more secrets. From now on it's just truth and nothing but the truth. Except for my age, don't ask me how old I am."

"Sheesh with all these buttons I'm surprised we didn't destroy Odyssey yet!"

"Jason I know you're worried about the baby but did you have to baby proof the doghouse too?"

"My little Angel! Who's a good girl? Who's a good girl!"

"I can't believe I can still wear this after all these years!?"

"Jason Whittaker you have got to be the most stubborn, reckless, foolhardy man I have ever met, and I wouldn't have it any other way."

"You call it junk I call it avant garde."

"I'm not responsible for my father's sins but I am responsible for mine. But my mother and uncle are in trouble. If not for me then please, do it for them!"

"She doesn't hate you Jason, she hates everyone equally."

"I guess God had a plan in store for me after all. I would've never met such wonderful people."

"Are you going to keep talking or should I start the kissing?"

Pictures

I haven't drawn any references for her yet, so that's going to be on a separate post

[judedeluca]

Last Friday I Tried To Kill Myself: My Rant On Why Heroes In Crisis Is Destructive Garbage And Why Stories Like This Need To Stop Being Made

TW: Suicide, rape, abuse

I’ve made it no secret I’ve been in therapy since 2012, and I’ve especially been vocal about my dislike for DC Comics’ latest event book, “Heroes in Crisis,” which just released its last issue on May 29th 2019.

I tried to write something the other night but I didn’t like how it sounded so I deleted it. After my session with my therapist earlier in the day, she convinced me to simply write down what I feel regardless. And so I did. I typed and typed. This is pretty long under the cut. I don’t know if I got carried away. I think I did.

I need to be clear I did NOT just try to commit suicide because of how much I hated a comic book. I’d like to believe even I’m not that pathetic. I tried to kill myself because of a number of reasons which sort of snowballed together this previous Friday.

Look this is angry and long and it sounds ridiculous but I just wanted to write and get my feelings out and I’m sorry okay? I’m, just, I’m sorry. For being pathetic and a disappointment to my friends and letting this bother me so much.

But I’m talking about “Heroes in Crisis” because this book has been negatively affecting me since it began publication, and the state that it left me in this past week only served to exacerbate the negative thoughts I had to endure, and I briefly reached a point where I had a knife to my wrist.

I’ve been attending therapy for the past seven years in order to address trauma and abuse I suffered through in my adolescence. In grade school I was bullied, and from 6th to 12th grade I was sexually abused on two separate occasions in two separate schools from four different people. In middle school I was assaulted by three boys who weren’t much older than me on the bus ride home, where they grabbed my head and shoved my face into their crotches as all the other kids laughed. In high school a classmate molested me twice during art class, and spent the rest of that time trying to make me apologize after I smacked him in self defense.

In 2009 my family dissolved when my parents unhappily split apart, which placed me as the unwilling recipient of my father’s, mother’s, and sibling’s emotional baggage while my own problems were ignored. During the loss of my support system I juggled two jobs along with graduating from college, I came out of the closet and have been struggling to figure out both my sexual and gender identities, I made my first suicide attempt in 2013, and my best friend died in 2016 along with four other people I cared about or who saw me as a friend.

Seeking therapy was something I had to do on my own. I tried counseling sessions with the people at my college but despite their best efforts it didn’t do much to help. I never received counseling in middle school for my sexual assault and my parents weren’t of much help either despite it was clear I developed some significant behavior problems. In 10th Grade I did spend some time with a guidance counselor because they feared I was suicidal due to my depression around my bad grades in Chemistry, but again this didn’t really help.

God I realize how analytical and detached this is sounding and I don’t know why. I feel like I’m just listing everything. Ugh.

Aside from my suicidal thoughts I suffer from depression and PTSD. I think I’m a genuinely bad person and I’ve often thought I brought the abuse I suffered as a kid onto myself because I was a weird boy. I’ve wondered if I have a right to feel ashamed of what happened to me because it wasn’t as bad as what other people have gone through. I frequently think of myself as a shameless, greedy, manipulative person who doesn’t deserve to be happy because I use people. I’ve truly said some awful things to people and I know I’ve been blocked by a couple of people online and not without good cause. You need to understand that. My own sibling once said I was a wicked, blackhearted person.

I have trouble not assuming the worst of my parents and sibling because of how often I would find myself stuck in the middle of their arguing, which got me labeled a martyr whenever I tried to play peacemaker which I only wanted because I hate seeing them unhappy. I assume the worst about situations and I’ve spent countless nights lying awake thinking over and over again about past mistakes and how much I wish I was dead, or that I had died instead of one of my friends because they made the world a better place and I don’t. It’s easy for me to believe the world would be a better place if I died.

Often my problems had been ignored by the people I turned to for help. Ignored, looked down upon, or just belittled. It became hard for me to talk to people because it felt like no one really cared about what I was going through or that I wanted help. Or they misunderstood and their attempts to help failed because they didn’t really know what was wrong.

Despite all this I want to believe therapy has helped me deal with problems better than I had before, and helped me to take pride in what I have accomplished. I graduated cum laude with no student debt, I’ve held onto at least one job for over a decade, and I’m currently writing for three websites that have let me change my perspective on things and given me space to grow as a writer. I believe I’m better able to recognize boundaries and to let my feelings be known, and to know when not to engage in stressful situations. I’ve been trying, TRYING, not to let me depression and negative thoughts affect me too badly.

It’s not easy, but it’s better than not doing anything at all.

So, where does “Heroes in Crisis” fit into this.

Well.

Through middle and high school, comics were pretty much the only thing that managed to keep me going without having a complete breakdown. Well I did have other interests and I still do. I could never survive on comic books alone.

I didn’t really have any friends I could rely on or talk to about my problems, not in real life or online. I got lucky in high school since there was a comic store one block away, which meant I was now able to regularly buy comics instead of the odd issue here or there. It was after I graduated high school I finally began to make some friends through online message boards and by meeting people at comic conventions. So comics didn’t just keep me going, they helped me find the people who HAVE been able to help me and see me as an individual worth knowing. My very first best friend in the whole world (NOT the one who died) is a professional comic artist I met through DeviantArt. “Stuck Rubber Baby” helped me realize and be honest about the fact I’m queer, and it was through commissioning comic artists I’ve felt more comfortable about exploring my sexuality.

As cheesy as it sounds the presence of comics in my life has indeed helped me a great deal, and I want to professionally write comics someday as a way to repay some of that back and try to make the world a better place.

I’ve always bought a little bit of everything but I’m mainly focused on DC Comics. My favorite teams are the Titans, the Legion of Super-Heroes, the Doom Patrol, and the Justice Society. Ask me my favorite Flash, I’ll pick Jay Garrick or Wally West. My favorite Green Lantern, I’d pick Alan Scott and Kyle Rayner.

Suffice it to say I really haven’t been happy with most of what DC’s published in the past ten years. I’ve been especially vocal about my dislike for books such as “Rise of Arsenal,” “Titans” by Eric Wallace, and pretty much everything Scott Lobdell’s worked on. Like a lot of people, I thought “DC Rebirth” back in 2016 was a step in the right direction, that they were finally cleaning the mess they made with the New 52 initiative.

“Heroes in Crisis” proved me and a lot of other people wrong.

But as a person struggling with depression and PTSD, this book offended me on a whole different level compared to anything those other books have done.

So you’ve got a place, Sanctuary, where heroes and villains can receive counseling for their respective problems and possibly get help. That sounds like a great idea. And then the first issue opens with the reveal every patient has been gruesomely murdered save for two who believe the other is guilty. And it gets worse from there.

FIRST: It turns out Sanctuary has no actual doctors or therapists. It relies instead on a computer programmed with the supposed best traits of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.

SECOND: The patients are put in virtual reality chambers where they relive their respective traumas over and over again as a way to confront them.

THIRD: There doesn’t seem to be any real security except for a couple of robots, and anyone can just walk in. Which means Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman haven’t been monitoring the place until AFTER the massacre.

What followed was than eight issues of a supposed mystery that wasn’t a mystery at all. Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman do almost nothing to figure who was responsible for this, while Lois Lane is given files of all the Sanctuary interviews which she PUBLISHES, leaking hundreds of secrets that were meant to be private even if she obscures the real names. The investigation falls to Booster Gold and Harley Quinn, who both believe the other is the killer.

It eventually turns out the killer was Wally West, who accidentally unleashed a burst of energy that killed those around him and in a fit of extreme suicidal despair violated the corpses to look like a mystery so he would have enough time to release the Sanctuary files and then kill himself believing it was the only way to make things right. He doesn’t die but turns himself in at the end.

I-I don’t have the energy to give a complete rundown, I really don’t. Suffice to say the book has problems. Racist problems, homophobic problems, and ableist problems. The series IS a problem.

Since the first issue was released I hated, I HATED, this comic with every fiber of my being. I hated the stilted writing and I hated the gross, overly sexualized artwork. I hated it was another event series built around cheap shock value deaths meant to drive up sales and garner controversy to make more sales. And I especially hated the premise, that this Sanctuary was supposed to be a place of healing but was anything BUT. The DC Trinity make no attempt to get real doctors to help them provide help for their comrades and friends, delegating everything to a computer that’s supposed to have their best qualities and assuming THAT is a decent substitute for qualified psychiatrists and therapists.

The very IDEA that Superman and Wonder Woman could be so arrogant and conceited to believe they could substitute for licensed medical professionals is appaling. Even Batman on his worst days would never be so inconsiderate.

And then there are the VR chambers, where the heroes relive their traumas over and over and over again until they can get over them. THIS IS NOT HEALTHY. To experience such pain over and over again. The comic even demonstrated through characters Lagoon Boy and Wally West that going through their trauma again and again clearly wasn’t helping. Lagoon Boy relieved the Titans East massacre HUNDREDS of times. And this seems to be the only real option Sanctuary allows besides the confessionals.

This, this NEGLECT. Sanctuary isn’t a place for healing, it’s a dumping ground! These people are secluded and essentially kept in solitary confinement where they have almost no one but a computer to talk to. A computer that does absolutely nothing to help them.

I spoke to my own doctor about this and she agreed with me none of this was healthy and that the book itself was extremely damaging and poorly thought out.

And I have spoken to her about this a LOT over the last nine months, because with each issue that came out I felt myself getting more and more worn down. I would dread the last Wednesday of the month knowing the next issue would arrive. And let me tell you this wasn’t the only thing I was talking about in my sessions, but it figured a lot into my past discussions and my therapist respected that. I’m glad I have her in my life, she’s a consummate professional. 

I’m not talking about simple fan boy hate. This comic DRAINED me and struck more than a number of nerves. The apathy and insensitivity that went into crafting this book reminded me far too much of what I’ve gone through in life and not for the better.

For starters, the way Tom King portrays the problems the characters go through is nothing but a joke. We’re treated to multiple confessional sequences where different characters talk about their issues in a nine-panel grid layout featuring some of the most stilted dialog I’ve ever read. King shows absolutely no research or care in the characters he talks about, ignoring their backstories to make up nonsense and present it as deep when in reality he’s gutted them from the inside out.

The one that bothered me most was Roy Harper from the first issue, in a confessional sequence one page AFTER his corpse is found.

Tom King took nine issues to completely destroy and misunderstand Wally West’s character, even though he only needed one page for Roy Harper.

Of course Scott Lobdell spent eight years destroying the character, so King didn’t need to do much.

Roy and his daughter Lian have been two of my favorite DC characters for years. I’ve been able to relate to Roy’s issues a lot over the years. Not his past drug addiction, but his struggles with depression and abandonment issues and his fight to try and be a better person despite everything he’s gone through. He was raised in a Native American community and probably has a better understand of racism than most white people could dream of. He’s a devoted father who tries to be the best dad he can be for his daughter. But most importantly, he knows he can screw up and he knows he’s not perfect. He just wants to be good. He’s a complex and multifaceted person who is more than his trauma, and I’ve long admired that. I’ve wished I could stop beating myself up over my past mistakes and just focus on doing good instead of hating myself for not being perfect. As someone who never really had much support from my parents growing up and that feeling of being totally alone despite being surrounded by people, I empathized with the neglect he suffered form Green Arrow and the way he was essentially abandoned in “Rise of Arsenal” when he needed help the most.

But is any of that discussed in “Heroes in Crisis?”

No.

Roy’s abandonment and depression are ignored so Tom King can churn out some nonsense about abusing prescription meds given to him by doctors for his superhero injuries before he switched to heroin because it was cheaper and safer. Not because of his depression. He only started taking the meds because of his injuries and he got addicted, which I’ve seen a number of fans who suffer from chronic pain complain that this is ableist for presenting them as drug addicts.

God I hope I’m remembering that right, I’m sorry guys.

“So you go to a needle. To save your kidneys. And some money. But really, isn’t that what superheroes do? Save things?”

Objectively one of the worst things I have ever read in ANYTHING.

But it doesn’t stop there. Pretty much every character given a confessional more or less has the problems they truly did survive ignored for nonsense that never occurred or is completely out of character to the point it feels like these are SUPPOSED to be jokes. Firestorm talks about his head being on fire. Green Lantern Hal Jordan doesn’t know what “Will” is. Raven says her father, an inter dimensional monster who has tried to turn her evil over and over again and whom she hates, loves her. Minor character the Protector is revealed to be addicted to multiple drugs and was only an anti-drug crusader because he thought it was funny. That was just CRUEL.

I... I have spent so long being ashamed of a lot of the abuse I went through and it is still hard for me to talk about. Do you have any idea how disgusted I am with myself whenever I try to tell someone about what happened to me in high school? When I have to figure out a way to say that “He tried to stick his finger in my ass” and not think about how the people reading or hearing this must be laughing at me it’s so pathetic? Or when I think about the crying fit after my first day of high school begging my mom to take me out of this school and she tells me to suck it up?

And so this bothers me, because I frequently fear that my problems are just a joke. And I see the characters whom I resonate with have their problems degraded and treated as poorly thought out jokes.

Why were some of these characters even here in the first place? To deal with their problems? Even though some of them WERE ALREADY TRYING TO GET HELP. Roy in particular had his Titans teammate Lilith Clay as his substance abuse counselor, but none of that is mentioned in the lead-up to “Heroes in Crisis.” The help that Roy was already getting was ignored. His efforts at self improvement were ignored by those around him.

But it’s not as bad as the reason Wally West was in Sanctuary. In “Flash War” Wally regains memories of his twin children Jai and Iris and is told they’re not in the Speed Force but SOMEWHERE. And Wally tries to find them and can’t. So instead of Barry Allen getting the Justice League to help with the search, knowing the disappearance of these children are one example of how the universe has been damaged, Barry and Iris West allow Wally to be taken to Sanctuary to essentially get him to shut up about his missing kids. He is abandoned by the people he viewed as parents. And this is what leads to Wally’s breakdown. Despite knowing his children are out there somewhere, “Heroes in Crisis” tries to demonize Wally for wanting his family back and it’s used to make him into a suicidal mass murderer. Wally’s problems make him into a villain. He’s driven mad with grief when he hacks the Sanctuary computer thinking no one has gone through what he has, and is broken when he experiences all that trauma at once. All this because he wanted something that was perfectly rational for him to want.

Wally’s trauma is used to dehumanize him.

The dehumanization doesn’t stop there, especially in the case of Poison Ivy who is turned into a plot device for Harley Quinn’s sake.

Never forget this was a thing that Clay Mann drew and DC would’ve used before it got leaked.

This was supposed to be the cover for the seventh issue, Ivy’s bloody corpse done like a pin-up.

After being treated as Harley’s motivation for most of the series, Ivy’s revived but in such a way she’s lost most of her humanity. She gets turned into a rip off of Swamp Thing and her body is more plant than human, no longer having nipples or a vagina. She’s been murdered and brought back in a way that will let DC sexualize her as much as they want now that she’s not human anymore. But this is supposed to be treated as GOOD because she’s supposedly more powerful now and she’s alive. Like that doesn’t change the shameful way she was killed, and how she came to Sanctuary hoping to get help for the awful things that haunt her and it got her killed.

Ivy’s long been a very complex character herself and many people have looked at her as a strong, interesting, intelligent queer woman who ultimately only wants to save the Earth and be with the woman she loves. But she’s frequently the villain in her stories and often told she doesn’t understand what real love is. Instead of being recognized for the complex character and inspiration she is, Ivy also has her trauma used against her as an excuse for to be sent to die and LITERALLY be dehumanized. So what does that say to the women who resonate with her? The queer readers? What does that say?

The leaking of the Sanctuary files is also supposed to be seen as good. Wally claims he did it because he thought if people saw someone like him could make a mistake, they’d get help before he did something bad like him. That if they saw their heroes had problems, they’d get help too.

IT’S TRYING TO VALIDATE THIS VIOLATION OF PRIVACY AND HOW ALL THESE PROBLEMS ARE TURNED INTO A MEDIA SIDESHOW THANKS TO LOIS LANE AND SUPERMAN.

And Wally turns himself in he’s left to rot in jail, more alone than ever. Where’s the supposed help now?

But Booster Gold gets to hang with Blue Beetle and Harley’s with Ivy and it’s supposed to be about hope by showing no matter what mistakes you make it’s not too late and blah blah whatever that last issue was. It tries to pretend all this suffering and misery was worth it because now Wally really can represent hope by being an example!

Bros before heroes!

These people went to get help or were sent to get help, and instead they were ignored. They were killed. Their problems turned into jokes. They had their problems used against them after they died when all they wanted was to be better.

WANTING TO GET BETTER IS NOT A REASON WHY ANYONE SHOULD HAVE TO DIE. NO ONE DESERVES TO BE TREATED LIKE AN AFTERTHOUGHT LIKE THIS.

One of the worst thing out of all this is knowing NONE OF THE CHARACTERS USUALLY ACT LIKE THIS. The reason why Wally accidentally killed everyone is because King makes up a retcon involving the Speed Force that was never, EVER mentioned in any Flash comic before. He makes up things on the fly to justify why any of the characters are there at all. Someone once said how, and I’m paraphrasing, “A story should be made to fit the characters, the characters shouldn’t be made to fit the story.” It’s been clear to a lot of people this book was blatant character assassination and Dan Didio’s latest attempt to finally get rid of Wally West because he hates him and all the other legacy characters so much. A story about PTSD that could’ve been meaningful and helped people got hijacked to destroy a character. To use their trauma as a tool to make them do something horrible. To exploit trauma for shock value and dehumanize not just the characters but the people who read these books and identified with the struggles and I

HATE IT!!!!!!! 

It hurts because so many people care about these characters, and Didio would use a story that could’ve been uplifting to carry out his petty hatred.

This has been it, month after month for me. I’d get mad, and I would try to take my mind off it. I’d write fan fiction and commission artwork making fun of “Heroes in Crisis,” I’d try to vent on the internet and explain why I hate this comic. I’d connect with friends and other fans who’re equally unhappy, and I’d just feel myself getting worse and worse. I’ve had trouble sleeping thinking about this comic, stress dreams and laying awake at night before I’d start to think about how I’m a bad person too and wishing over and over again to die and end everything. To stop being a blight on the world and give it to someone who deserves to live. More importantly, that crushing sense of not being able to do anything to make this better. This powerlessness to try and change things for the better. Wishing I could do something to make it better and thinking about all the other ways I’ve failed in life. The loved ones and friends who died and I couldn’t help them. The unhappiness in my family. The state of the world. And then I’d think about how much I hate myself even more because there are more important things to worry about in the world, like what that rapist monster in the White House is doing to this country and to anyone who’s not a straight white man.

The week the final issue came out I knew right off it was going to be a train wreck and I was right. A disappointing ending to a disappointing story. More feelings of anxiety and self loathing and a feeling that my problems are nothing but a joke to mocked and exploited.

While all this was going on I had other things to worry about. In March my grandfather was hospitalized with a number of health problems due to a urinary tract infection. He spent a week gradually becoming confused and losing energy before he was taken to the emergency room when he said he was having trouble breathing. It turned out he also had a cyst, a clot, and bleeding in his brain. As me, my mom and sibling worried about his health we also had to worry about our house because my grandfather pays most of the rent and if his pension had to go towards a nursing home, we would have to move. So while worrying about my 92 year old grandfather’s health I also had to worry about possibly losing my house. And while he was recovering at the rehab hospital he had to go back to the ER again on Easter when we were told he fell during the night. He’s in another nursing home and he’s doing better thankfully, but he’s also the last grandparent I have and I’m not ready to lose him when he’s held onto his mind for so long.

So what exactly happened when the ninth issue came out that pushed me?

This past Thursday while I was at work, I get a call from my mother saying she thinks someone might be in our house because she went downstairs into my grandpa’s apartment and all the doors were open. I don’t know why she didn’t call the police or what she thought I could do since I wasn’t even in the Bronx. *Sigh* I tried to get my dad to come pick me up sooner so I could check out what was wrong and I was trying not to panic even when my mom texts me saying she’s okay but she locked her bedroom door and she’s got a blunt object. Then she says maybe it was nothing after all...

And then I get home and I see the garage door is wide open and it’s a disaster, as if someone trashed the place. I can’t get my dad out of the car and he just says “Call the police” as if he doesn’t care. I run into the house and begin checking the rooms in my grandpa’s apartment before grabbing a kitchen knife and going back to the garage. I then tell my mom what’s happened to the garage and it’s like I’m invisible. I can’t even get her outside to look and she’s more concerned about getting her dinner from around the corner. She tells me “It’s not like no one’s gotten in the garage before.”

AFTER SHE GETS ME WORKED UP THINKING SOMEONE WAS IN OUR HOUSE. AND I COME HOME AND THEY MIGHT’VE TRASHED THE GARAGE.

I literally can’t understand what was going through her head when she gave me this runaround. And I call her on it the next day, telling her how scared she got me and how it felt when she acted like I was making a big deal of nothing. I was frightened she could’ve been alone in the house with an intruder, because obviously she felt the same way if she wanted to lock herself in her bedroom. She STILL acted like it was no big deal and it’s like 2010 all over again and I’m being expected to drop everything to help her and she won’t give me any courtesy or empathy.

And then not even an hour later that Friday I get an email from my boss about a secret shopper thing and I rush to get my phone seeing he’s tried to call me. And he’s saying he’s mad at me because of something I did on Tuesday that might get our distribution license suspended or taken away completely. I’m thinking this is because of me. Because I screwed up. And I’ve had this job since I graduated high school and I might’ve ruined it completely.

And that mixed with how it’s like my mother has played fucking mindgames with me and all the other feelings and the general anger and hopelessness and thinking over and over it’s not going to get better I picked up that knife again and held it to my wrist while my boss was still on the phone.

I had it pressed against my skin and wanted to dig it in deeper.

I kept thinking “I CAN’T DO THIS I CAN’T DO THIS” seeing everything all at once, over and over again and...

I-I don’t know. Maybe just a part of me that said not to do it or something. Maybe because despite all my talk of wanted to die I don’t.

I don’t want to die.

So I put the knife down before I cut myself.

I went to work at my second job and I scheduled an emergency session with my therapist, and I tried to write.

So it’s Monday morning and I’m typing this and wondering now, if anyone actually reads this what kind of shit will I expect if people actually bother to read it.

I’m a loser who needs to get a life

I read the story wrong

I didn’t understand the story

I need to get laid

I’m just mad my favorite character died

I hate it because Tom King’s a good writer

I’m a contrarian who hates it because it’s popular

I don’t know what I’m talking about

I’m a whiny f****t

I’m conceited enough to think Tom King may ever actually read this and have him say “I’m sorry you reacted this way”

This isn’t the story King wanted to tell and he had good intentions

OH SCREW YOUR FUCKING “GOOD INTENTIONS”

My teachers had “Good intentions”

My parents had “Good intentions”

AND I AM STILL FUCKING PAYING FOR IT

I am so sick of hearing about “Good intentions.” Just because a person had good intentions doesn’t absolve them of messing up! King apparently handed in a basic outline and let editorial pick the characters. If King had good intentions, he would’ve bothered to do research on the characters instead of turning them into jokes. If he had good intentions he would’ve done a better job of showing how therapy actually CAN help people. He wouldn’t have given us a story all about death and suffering and say it’s about hope. If he had good intentions he wouldn���t have let Didio use this to get rid of Wally West.

You want to talk about people with ACTUAL good intentions? How about we talk about the people out there who’ve written about abuse and trauma and suicidal thoughts and how to address those things in ways that MATTER. In ways that don’t alienate people and can grant a better understanding of ways to act.

In ways that say “I see you. I understand you and know what you’ve gone through. You’re stronger than you think.”

Let’s talk about Jeremy Whitley writing “The Unstoppable Wasp” where Nadia Pym has a manic episode and attacks her friends, and has to be talked down from killing herself by her friend Priya because her own brother committed suicide.

Let’s talk about how Priya describes the world Nadia would create if she killed herself and convinces her she deserves to live because she makes everyone happy and she is a good person no matter what she is thinking right now.

Let’s talk about Magdalene Visaggio’s “Eternity Girl” where Caroline Sharp is a suicidal immortal superhero who wants to destroy reality because she thinks it’s the only way she can die, and her girlfriend Dani convinces her that she can build a new world for herself instead of destroying this one because Caroline’s stronger than her misery and has the power to choose what she wants.

Let’s talk about Chris Claremont’s disgust at how Carol Danvers had been brainwashed and raped and sent off to live with her rapist while her friends did nothing to help her and thought this was a HAPPY ENDING

Let’s talk about how he had Carol dress down the Avengers for the shameless way they treated her and abandoned her when she needed them

Let’s talk about Jim Salicrup and Louise Simonson working on the “Spider-Man and Power Pack” special which showed the right ways to address child abuse.

How Salicrup was able to make Spider-Man into a sexual abuse survivor without it being a joke and how his story helped a little boy tell his parents what happened to him. And how this helped Spider-Man accept what happened to him was not his fault.

How Simonson wrote about the Power Pack supporting a friend being sexually abused by her father and how they convince her she did nothing to deserve this.

Let’s talk about Rachel Pollack’s Doom Patrol run which showed that trauma is not the end of someone’s existence and that people can be happy despite what’s happened to them

Let’s talk about George and Marion who despite the trauma of having lost their bodies and being used as slaves they still choose to smile and enjoy life and love each other

Let’s talk about Kate Godwin, a transgender woman who changed her body to match the person she was inside despite what people said about her and treated her, and found a community that supported her and loved her and is a strong, good woman with the power and the empathy to help others

A woman who was outraged when a person tried to make her believe she’d been gang raped and needed trauma to make her life more meaningful.

SO TALK ABOUT ALL OF THEM AND TELL ME ABOUT KING’S “GOOD INTENTIONS”

NO ONE NEEDS TRAUMA IN THEIR LIFE TO MAKE IT MEANINGFUL. FINDING HAPPINESS AFTER YOU’VE SURVIVED SOMETHING HORRIBLE DOESN’T MAKE THAT SOMETHING HORRIBLE JUSTIFIED.

You can’t look at stories like “Heroes in Crisis” and say “Oh it’s okay because in the end it was worth it because it taught us something” and NO. IT IS NOT OKAY. HAVING YOUR PROBLEMS LAUGHED AT AND MOCKED AND DEGRADED AND TRIVIALIZED IS NEVER OKAY. NOT FROM THE PEOPLE YOU CARE ABOUT. NOT TOTAL STRANGERS. NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO DO THAT.

So yeah, maybe I am fucking pathetic for ranting about this and I should get a life and talk about more important things but I don’t fucking care! I’m angry about this and I’m gonna be angry for a long time! I’m angry about this story and I’m angry about how it affected me and the people I care about and people I don’t know and I will always be angry with myself that I tried to kill myself because of how this book made me feel and affected what I was going through.

Because stories are important to our lives. They can help us get through every day and they can make our problems not seem so bad. They can give us the strength to look at the bad parts of our life and think maybe they can change. That WE can change. We read about these people and we connect with them. We see things in them we wish to be like or things that are already in us and it can make us feel like we aren’t alone.

And even when stories aren’t enough they can help us find the people who can tell us these things. To help us find people who would care about us, and to care about them so maybe WE can help them. They’re a gateway.

So no, it’s not just a fucking comic book. And no, I don’t care what the intentions were. And I don’t care how pathetic this all sounds.

This, this was a bad story. This was a harmful story. And people deserve better. We don’t deserve to keep living in an age where stories like this, that can make us feel like we’re nothing, keep happening. We deserve stories that show us our lives are not defined by our trauma, we are NOT jokes, we are strong, and we deserve to live. That is not what “Heroes in Crisis” was and you will never convince me otherwise.

I had problems long before this story came out. I do not blame it for things that happened to me before. I do not blame it for my assault and abuse. I blame it for making me feel more like I don’t deserve to live and that what I’ve gone through doesn’t matter. I blame it for making me feel like my hard work and attempts to make my life better are meaningless.

This is not okay.

You wanna fucking blast me for this, go right ahead.

[ofreggie]

[ aron piper, twenty two, male, he/him ] ━  did y'all see [ reginald “reggie” ponce ] walkin’ into [ fox & hare ? ] don’t think i’ve seen ‘em too much around here, they must’ve gotten here about [ two years ], but i think you can catch ‘em around town working as a [ waiter . ] I reckon they’re pretty [ vehement & adaptable ] but I hear they can also be kinda [ zany & explosive ]. best make ‘em feel welcome. ━ [ ooc: cosmo, 24, est, they/them ] [ drugs/alcohol tw / verbal abuse tw ]

inspiration.

david rose. schitt’s creek.

carl gallagher. shameless.

harry bingham. the society.

nate jacobs. euphoria.

stats.

full name. reginald “reggie” arthur ponce.

birth-place. bronx, new york.

age. twenty-two.

dob. 12/21/1996.

zodiac. capricorn.

orientation. homosexual.

spanish / english.

about.

       the son of a frostford native father and a new york mother, reggie was born into immediate chaos. his mother gave reggie her last name and refused to leave new york, the city life being made for her. she originally was born in mexico and moved to new york as a child with her family -- - a large family that reggie grew up with. his father, however, was a southern man through and through, and while up in new york for business, happened to create reginald before departing back to alabama. 

        growing up with a single mother, reggie immediately began violently acting out once he started elementary school. no one was sure if it was because of the lack of parental guidance in his life, because the young boy needed some attention, ( tw violence ) or if he was just suffering from undiagnosed mental issues. in elementary school, he was stabbing peers with pencils, throwing chairs, playing pranks on teachers, cutting off girls’ ponytails, and a whole list of other things.  ( end tw violence ) there were multiple occasions in which reggie was almost expelled from school, but pity was more powerful. eventually, however, reggie began to appreciate everything his mother did for him to excel in life and he went on to clean up his act to try and lessen his mom’s burden.

       his father would often come up to visit when he was young, but soon began to realize that reggie was nothing like the son he wanted. reggie was very animated, loved make-up, dressing up, watching soap operas with his mom, and all-around was not very physically active or into any sports. his father pushed sports on him, though, and reggie started to play baseball once he entered middle school. this was where he made most of his friends, but where he began to lose himself. reggie no longer felt comfortable wearing make-up or gossiping with his mom about cute boys, so he dove head first into sports and excelled at that too.

        he was never in the closet around his mother’s side of the family or anyone in his city at home - new york was more accepting of that - , but when he flew down to alabama to visit his dad ( which happened often once he was in his teen years ) , reggie threw on a football t-shirt or a basketball hat and became the perfect son to an athletic father. it all changed one night when reggie was at his dad’s in frostford when he was about sixteen years old. reggie was at a party, some party with kids he didn’t know in a town he wasn’t extremely familiar with, when he was hooking up with a boy in one of the spare bedrooms. he wasn’t sure what happened or how it happened, but his dad tracked his location and barged in on him in a compromising situation. ( tw verbal abuse ) he very calmly asked reggie to get into the car so the male did just that. his dad told him he was worthless, he was useless, he was a mistake -- everything under the stars a son couldn’t bear to hear -- and was immediately sent back to new york on a red eye. ( end tw verbal abuse ).

       getting back to life in new york was busy, yet amazing. he forgot about his father’s existence because it was clear that his father had forgotten about him. he stopped paying child support so reggie decided to get a job at a little boutique in order to help his mother out. he became more so withdrawn and angry after that, but still the same reggie beneath everything.

       so when his father passed away while reggie was twenty years old, he received a letter stating that he was now the owner of a beautiful apartment that his dad had left in frostford, alabama. little to nothing keeping him tied to the southern town, reginald decided he’d fly down to try and sell the place quickly. he kissed his mother goodbye, kissed his grandparents goodbye, and kissed all of his cousins goodbye, before departing for what was supposed to be a few weeks.

           two years later, reggie is still living in frostford where he now calls home. he has a few close friends, a decent job waiting tables at fox & hare, and skypes his mother on a weekly basis. he’s content with the life he has built for himself in alabama ; now all he needs is to find that love he so desperately craves.

wanted connections.

his few close friends !!!

sometimes reggie can be very strange and introverted. basically this person would have to be bubbly and help him really become more confident and happy with himself. kind of like a harold and maude relationship without the romance ( or with ) .

some familial connections, his dad’s side, prob cousins or another child that his father had and reggie didn’t know about bc he lived in ny.

apartment neighbors

a possible love interest in the form of two stumbling over their words, goofy, yet adorable messes around each other. could definitely blossom into something!

the person he slept with as a teenager that his dad caught them !!!

maybe someone that charms/annoys him on his way home from work every late night at 1/2 am. lol he’s probably super grumpy and this person has to be like.. super bubbly ?? walking their dog ?? idk.

maybe some m/m bros that are actually into each other, but they’re too good of friends to say anything to each other, etc.

i also have more located at this wanted connections tag and i love brainstorming ! angst.

head canons.

animated. very zany. loud and brash at times. 

VERY TOUCHY and affectionate to those he loves

probably has fallen in love x300.

speaks fluent spanish

would definitely storm area 51.

low-key ashamed of himself

often tipsy or high or both

isn’t exactly mean, but he’s not rly the nicest person in the world and he prob wouldn’t go out of his way to do anything decent for someone he didn’t know.

deals drugs as a side hustle

has never been in a real relationship before, but definitely has hooked u p a lot ( i mean look at him ??? ) now he just wants to be loved tbh.

he LOVES love. he believes being in love is the meaning of life and is getting depressed about never having been loved.

he’s a video gamer, a basketball lover, and a chain smoker.

could be a lovable dumbass once he’s comfortable around someone.

does lack common sense at times.

does not have any social media platforms.

leaves clean laundry on his bedroom floor for a week

prob doesn’t drink enough water

constantly wears dr. martens

will always be found with taco bell bags in his car.

[kannagimikazukioracles]

Aquarius Full Moon Energetic Forecast, August 16 2019 (can also be timeless)

Hi everyone, thank you for waiting for my short energy forecast. I didn't get to upload it right away, I was drained during the reading, it was crazy. But other than that, the messages got through. Please enjoy. 😀

Present Spread - J♣ 2♠ A♦ 6♠

Things are getting even tougher now, and for many this can force one to focus on moving on from a painful past. These are due to the energies that clash, creating conflicts between what has been and what can happen in the future, and these are rushing in right now. In order to navigate such contrasts, a balance between letting down one's guard while living through higher vibrations (unconditional love) and using some logic to make better choices is recommended. Vulnerability is a great asset for this, since knowing how one works at their weakest can create better bridges within one's broken self as well as with others who are also on the spiritual path. But for this to really come full circle, everything that has been holding one back must be recognized, identified, and released back to Source, God, the Creator, the Universe, whatever you call the higher power we are all connected to. It is also time to make peace with the past, because whether it was great or it sucked, at some point, the pastmade us who we are right now. Also, it is easier to release the past if we can be OK with it. Sometimes it's just like a kid that only wants our short attention before leaving us to do our own thing. Lastly, think deliberately on what matters the most to you. If you have been feeling dead inside, or if a large part of you died because you felt that you kept forsaking the really important for something else and that pretty much killed your Soul slowly, then now is the best time to revive that part of you, bit by bit, inch by inch. You don't have to go full blast on it, just take it one step, one day, one small goal at a time. It can be anything that makes you feel alive. Even something as simple as planning something or imagining or reenacting the entire process in your head and feeling how wonderful that would be is a great way to heal. Never underestimate the power of imagination. If used wisely, it helps make miracles, so go forth with it.

5 Card Spread - 8♣ K♥ K♦ Q♥ 5♦

Expect more triggers and stirrings from the etheric realms, especially over the next 3 years. Just don't let yourself get too emotionally fixated on so many things beyond your physical control. Yes I sound like a heartless bitch but hear me out: If you can't directly influence the end-results (i.e. Delays due to other people, or uncontrollable events from nature, etc. ) then just cry it out and let things happen the way they should be. It's not worth the effort to be angry or mad at things that you can't even influence so just blow out thr fuse, relax, and just be. Be ok with whatever happens, and accept things fully. The more neutral we can be towards the shocking things (especially with the negative stuff, because we tend to welcome the positive shocks lol), the less emotions we invest outwards and the more energies we can keep. Remember, sucky things get even more suckier if we get affected greatly by external events.* Stay grounded and release as much painful emotions as you could possibly can. In time, your energy will have shifted to accommodate higher realm energies as well as becoming less reactive not just to events but to daily interactions with people in general. Such energetic shifts will only occur more frequently so might as well start living with them right now.

Celtic Cross Message

Have you been feeling really shackled and chained for the past n-years? Feelings locked, powerless, hopeless, ready to give up? Well, despite how horrible the past may have been, there is still some light. Being in a trap doesn't lock one forever.Eventually, the divine realms open up for us, and that is the chance we have to take. If the divine realms can take a large stride towards us, it is alsopart of our co-creation process that we move forward too. We need to make choices to move forward, and that is what brings in miracles and results. Any forward movement will do, whether something as small as just cleaning up old things or something a bit bigger like moving to a new place, things like these add up. Float above the cold sea that is causing depression. Be with people who can help and manage your needs. Do your best in your fight to live one day at a time.

Aside from doing physical stuff, healing the intangible self is also important, get in touch with your intuition, lose all fears, just feel the warm hands of the divine realms and know that you are not alone, you are doing great, and you are loved. This is also a great time to reevaluate your core values, what really makes you keep going, and what you can do to embody those things. Even if this means letting go of a lot of excess baggage, people, stuff that makes you feel anger and hatred towards yourself. These may be recent or old baggages, but as long as they're unneeded anymore, release them all. Even if it hurts. It will hurt, but after the pain heals, it's going to feel like a rebirth. The start of a brand new day. Let go of the pain, but hold on to the lessons for growth. Such details are just as important as the overall end results, and as with all things, balancing detail-orientedness with being overly-generalizing things are important in mapping your future. Dream, then build this dream bit by bit, and remember the important details so that everything goes on smoothly as planned.

Oracle's Guidance

Changes are coming, which are sent to you by your higher self, for you to evolve spiritually and personally. Changes can be annoying, these can derail our plans, even hurt us and break us. Pain is the best lesson, but after the pain comes healing. Let this healing come to us like clear flowing waters, ever moving but letting go of things along the way. Never attaching and resting or staying in one place, but always going forward towards the vast oceans, where everything becomes one. Let the universe support you, and I hope you feel that support. Even if it feels like you feel forsaken by the divine realms. Just release the need to control the external results. Give the universe the chance to give you a nice surprise.

Well I hope these messages serve you well. May Source be with you always, and be always cloaked in eternal love.

In love and hugs,

神凪🌟織姫

Kan-nagi Orihime M.

P.S. If this message helped you in any way, I would love to hear from you.😁Please drop a comment below!

[mpxkrystal]

the story of why 🍃

severe trigger warnings; physical abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse, suicidal thoughts, scars, alcoholism, depression, insomnia, death and loss

this is the story of why krystal jung became a doctor and why she’s here

As a child, the only thing Krystal ever yearned for was a warm embrace. Someone to hold her and make her feel safe. She was quick to latch onto anyone who treated her with a speck of kindness. Teachers, nurses, guidance counselors, older kids and, younger kids. Any time she experienced something opposite from home she became a different kid. More lively and excitable, happy and care-free. Krystal was always a pretty stoic child, she never cried or asked for anything. She had impeccable manners and was incredibly well-behaved. Every parent’s dream child. Well, except for her father’s. Simply because she reminded him too much of her mother.

She overheard someone once say that the only reason her father was the way he was, was because he was drinking away a broken heart. Krystal had a hard time taking that as an excuse for what he did to her when he was drunk. When he would beat her, she was silent. When he would burn her, she didn’t dare cry. When he would smash bottles over her back and make her kneel on the broken glass until she passed out, she wouldn’t fight back. She never told anyone. When she made new clothes out of her old ones and bought new clothes, she simply stopped making and buying short dresses and knee-length skirts. Hiding her scars the best way she could, she started wearing long sleeves in the summertime, long skirts, long socks and, no shorts of any kind.

During gym class, she would change in a toilet stall and wore leggings under the uniform shorts. Telling her teachers that she needed them for a knee injury. Which wasn’t a lie. Just not the full truth. She always wondered how her dad was capable of remembering not to hit her anywhere a bruise could be seen when he was so belligerently drunk. Yet, he did. Never leaving a bruise, cut or burn where she couldn’t hide it. Krystal could only assume that was him attempting to cover his own ass in the only way he could think of. 

When you’re a kid, you get asked what you want to be when you grow up - a lot. For Krystal, she was always making things up that she knew adults would approve of. “Oh, I want to be a veterinarian.” or “Yeah, maybe an astronaut?”. When what she really wanted to say was; “Maybe I’ll figure it out if I live long enough to decide.”. Every afternoon, she would come home from school, get her homework done, clean the house and fix dinner for her dad. All before he came home at seven o’clock every night. Then he would eat, have a drink, then a beer, then another drink and another beer. It was a routine and eventually when he got drunk enough, he would get angry. When he would get angry he would drag Krystal from her room to the living room, and their nightly routine would begin.

Eventually, Krystal began to accept the fact that she would die in that house. Die at the hands of her father, die with no friends or anyone who loved her. She would die and no one would remember her or care that she was gone. There were times she contemplated finishing the job herself but decided not to give her father the satisfaction of knowing he ruined her enough that she would commit suicide. At around eight-years-old, she began to lose sleep. Insomnia began to set in. Then her anxiety worsened. She refused to be touched by anyone, even her doctor. Who would have called child protective services when she was three had her father’s law firm not paid off the hospital to keep quiet. Apparently, their lawyers were known for sending loved ones to the hospital. She always did her best when he was sober, hoping with everything she had that if she proved to him she was worth keeping maybe we would stop hurting her. Krystal was one of the smartest and most mature kids in her class every year, a straight-A student with very little complaints from teachers in her report cards.

Yet, it was never enough.

***

 Nothing could have prepared her for what happened when she hit puberty. He still beat her and more daily but was a little nicer when he was sober. He would take her to sports bars to watch soccer or football, he would take her to get ice cream and they would take trips to Vancouver for the weekend. Krystal thought he was changing, that he was getting better because over about a year’s time the beatings became less. Even at fourteen, she had a little voice in the back of her head that told her it was not what it seemed.

The little voice was proven right when he stopped dragging her to the living room at night after drinking and instead of beating her, we would touch her. She preferred the beatings. She preferred the broken glass and cigarette burns over what her nights held now. Krystal feared the touch of others before but now? At fourteen her few friends were starting to try dating and were having their first kisses at fifteen. Krystal was crying herself to sleep at night, clenching her pillows and wishing to die. Wishing that he would hit her again instead. Wishing that one night he would just pass out instead of coming upstairs. Wishing that one morning she could go to school with a new bruise rather than an ache in her thighs.

***

That childhood question of what she wanted to be when she grew up, felt more daunting through highschool. She was on her way to Valedictorian, teachers wanted her to run for student council, friends wanted her to join the show choir and some wanted to take her on dates. Yet, all she could think about was surviving that night at home.

It wasn’t until she was sixteen that she finally found her answer to that dreamy question. The night of her sixteenth birthday, she ended up in the hospital. She had no tears in her eyes, refused to say a single word as the nurses did what they had to. Pictures were taken, swabs were tucked into tubes, measurements of bruises were logged, her wrist was set, she was given emergency contraception and STD testing. As far as the hospital knew or cared, she’d been sexually assaulted by a family friend. She had a new doctor at that time. A new doctor to the hospital that wasn’t on the firm’s payroll yet. One that actually showed her care and empathy.

This doctor was the cause of the first single tear to be shed since she was a baby. This doctor showed her how it felt to be cared about, and loved. She spoke to her kindly and touched her with grace. Spoke to her sweetly and made her feel safe for the first time in sixteen years. It was that next morning, where she woke in her childhood bed in Seattle, Washington that she decided she wanted to be that for other people. Krystal now knew she wanted to be the one that gave care and love and hopes to those who were in their weakest moments and darkest times. Someone that people could look to as she did with her doctor the night before.

After that, she put on her brave face and did her best. She continued to have the best grades in her school, she joined the student council and was excelling as a student and teen. All while the same abuse continued at home.

At seventeen her father died. He wrapped his car around a tree while wasted one night after he left her room. She didn’t find out until she limped down the stairs to meet the police at her front door with the news. Again, she did not cry or mourn him. She went numb. Everyone said it was the shock of it all. Family members, she never met or knew anything about flew into Seattle to help her pack up her things. She was to move to Seoul to live with her grandmother. Krystal went about the motions of his funeral, she did not cry. Said family members knew what he’d done to her. They all knew what he was like when he was drunk. Yet they did nothing. They did not stop him or save her from the abuse, they were too wrapped up in the money he made.

It was an adjustment after that. Krystal didn’t speak unless absolutely necessary for almost eight months. Her first night in Seoul was the first time she was able to lay in bed, unharmed - yet she did not sleep. She did not sleep for her first eight days in Seoul. Terrified that it was all a lie and he would be back to hurt her again. At that point, her grandmother noticed the difference and immediately had her taken to a therapist. It took a few months but she began to open up about her childhood - if you could even call it that - and she was given medication to help. She finally started to sleep then but, not without consequences. The nightmares and sleep paralysis were and still are a constant in her life. Without sleeping pills, they are much worse.

Despite all of this, she graduated top of her class in Seoul and moved on to start University there as well. She excelled in a learning environment and was finally beginning to feel more at peace with her life. Krystal grew closer to her grandmother, opening up a little bit about her father and letting the older woman in. Allowing her to love her as she deserved to be loved.

University was where Krystal began to find out who she was and who she had to be to work through her past. She had to discover what parts of her were actually her and what parts were created to help her survive. Her group of friends were very supportive, caring and patient with her. She even moved in with a group of roommates when she was twenty-two. They were all beginning their careers and she was finally beginning the final stretch for her medical degree. She fell in love and was loved back, she even learned she was bisexual. 

When she finally began to work in the University clinic, and work with real people she was over the moon. She got to use the things she’d been learning for the past few years and put it to good use. To her, nothing was better than helping her peers. 

Her life went on, she learned about her powers and ended her first serious relationship. Started going to therapy regularly again, and continued trying to find out who she was. Who she was as a person, a doctor, a demigod, a woman, and a survivor.

***

Krystal doesn’t like the term survivor, she doesn’t think she deserves such a title. She never fought back, or told him to stop, she never cried or told anyone. The term survivor in her opinion should be given to those who get out on their own, not her since she got the easy way out because her abuser died. 

Things were going well until her grandmother died when she was twenty-four. Her grandmother had developed an inoperable brain tumor and was taken quickly. The first time she shed real tears in her twenty-four years of life were as she embraced the frail body of the only person who ever loved her, as she passed on. Her grandmother passing broke a dam inside of her. Suddenly she was a mess. That night when she went home after doing all of the paperwork at the hospital she was hysterical. It took all four of her housemates to calm her down, coaxing her into taking her medication and getting some sleep.

It was after her funeral, where she had to see the fake tears of the same family that came to her father’s, that she made a decision. With only three months left before graduation, she began looking for residency openings in hospitals out of the city or even the country. She needed to be focused on something else as she processed her loss again. This was also when she began deciphering who her mother was, where her gifts came from and what she could do with them.

Krystal worked as a resident at a small hospital in Busan for about a year after graduation. When she was approached by someone offering her a more prestigious position on an island, meant just for demi-gods and gods. With no one left to care about her whereabouts or well being, she packed up and took the job.

Now, after having lived in Mount Phoenix for almost eight-months. She feels safe enough to call it her home. To call it her family. Despite not actually having met any of her kin yet.

[storiesofwildfire]

Random Headcanon ask spam because I love Loki

{ @incrediblewithin } || random asks – status; always accepting

This is actually a headcanon I’ve been meaning to write for a long time and since Heimdall has popped up on my blog quite a few times this evening, I thought I’d take this random headcanon prompt as an excuse to finally crack down on write this.

By now, it’s not a shock to anyone that I 100% ship Loki and Heimdall. I support them, they’re doing their best while screaming gayly at the top of their lungs, and in modern threads where Loki and Heimdall’s relationship has developed into a romantic one, it’s easy for some to forget that Heimdall has literally been in Loki’s life since Loki was a newborn brought against their will to Asgard.

Which raises the questions, what was their relationship like in earlier years? How did Loki view Heimdall throughout the course of their lifetime? And why did their relationship go through so many changes?

Well, we’ll start with when Loki was young. Based on your headcanon ( @bifrostgold ), Heimdall was ordered to look away from Jotunheim when Odin took Loki. Running with that because, to me, it makes the most logical sense that Heimdall would be aware that Loki was not actually Aesir or Odin’s child, but unaware of the details of the second prince’s true origins, and also being forced by Odin to never speak of the matter, it would make so much sense that Heimdall would feel a certain… bond with Loki and a desire to look after Loki where Odin would no doubt fail.

Heimdall, after all, is not of Asgard, and he, too, is forced to be there by Odin’s control. While Loki’s situation was never the same as Heimdall’s, the similarities speak for themselves and the truth is, Odin uses and controls them for different purposes and by different means, but does so all the same.

So I’ve always felt like Heimdall had a strong presence in Loki’s younger years, especially when Loki’s magic began to flare up so violently and at such a young age. While yes, Loki had Frigga and a few other people to turn to who were well versed in magic (like Asmund, Loki’s healer, and Sigurd, Odin’s advisor who favored him from an early age), Loki’s abilities and reach quickly outgrew them, which left the youngest prince with fewer and fewer options and outlets to turn to. 

Heimdall, however, was always a strong presence with such inherently powerful magic that Loki often felt safe going to him, and safer still to show their fear, pain, and aggression. Heimdall, in Loki’s youngest years, was something of a caregiver. Not a parent, per se, but an influence in Loki’s life that helped bring some of Loki’s more positive traits to the surface.

Because Heimdall stood as a symbol to all of Asgard of someone who was always watching and always wanted to keep them safe, Loki sort of fell into a bit of a trap of idolizing him too. Heimdall was someone to look up to for his strength, his optimism, his kindness, and his impressive range on ancient magic that would make even the most powerful sorcerer tremble at the idea of. So much power and yet, Heimdall never sought to harm others with it, never seemed to think himself better than those around him, and always treated everyone with some level of respect or kindness. 

Loki didn’t necessarily want to be just like Heimdall, but the little prince always hoped some of Heimdall’s better qualities might rub off on them.

Heimdall’s gentle guidance and support at such an early age really did help keep Loki grounded. It helped Loki keep a solid grasp on the ever-growing power they possessed and it helped Loki from growing angry or resentful or so frustrated they might completely give up on learning to properly wield their magic. 

As Loki grew older and their perception of the world shifted more and more violently, Heimdall seemed like the one weight that would never change and Loki took comfort in the Watcher’s presence, in his teachings, and even in those moments when Loki found themselves sitting at the end of the Bifrost, talking to Heimdall because they felt as if they had no one else to talk to. 

To say Loki formed a very strong attachment to Heimdall would be an understatement and the older Loki got, the more fascinated with Heimdall they became.

Loki did, however, drift away from Heimdall eventually. As Loki’s rebellious tendencies picked up, often bringing Odin’s anger in their wake, Loki came to a heartbreaking realization that Heimdall would always be a link to Odin. No matter how much they loved the Watcher and no matter how much that love was reciprocated, Heimdall’s loyalty remained with Odin. It seemed almost impossible for the elder God to disobey the All-father and for many, many years, Loki believed it was genuine loyalty. 

They did, however, begin to question that, as the way Heimdall interacted with Loki one-on-one often suggested his views and desires did not align with that of the throne. Loki always questioned why Heimdall would be so loyal to someone he did not seem to believe in. Heimdall would never give Loki those answers, quite possibly because he was not allowed to, but Loki grew frustrated in their attempts to balance their own need to pull out from Odin’s thumb and Heimdall’s sight being the one thing that would always allow Odin to know where the mischief-maker had gone. 

It broke the storyteller’s heart to have to put any distance between themselves and a person they loved and admired so much, but Heimdall’s sight and Odin’s control over him would always act as a direct line to them and as Odin’s treatment of Loki grew more and more severe, Loki didn’t have much of a choice but to pull away.

Developing a method to successfully hide from Heimdall hadn’t been an easy feat and, as far as Loki was aware, they were the only one to ever successfully accomplish it. Something to be proud of, they supposed, but it felt almost like a betrayal to have to resort to such things. As much as they genuinely loved Heimdall, though, they realized that Odin’s control over him would always mean being close to the Watcher would be dangerous.

Loki only prayed that one day it would not be necessary and that Heimdall would understand the precaution, whenever his loyalty to Odin was brought to an end.

In truth, the divide did put a strain on their relationship. They went from close, from Heimdall acting as a sort of guardian and a mentor to the young prince to only interacting when Loki believed it was safe or when their individual duties forced them to. This portion of their relationship often reflected in scenes like the one in the original Thor film, when Thor, Loki, and their friends were attempting to go to Jotunheim. Loki and Heimdall had a rather uncomfortable exchange, one that didn’t seem particularly friendly, but one that also didn’t seem vindictive. It also, if anyone took notice, left Loki looking rather depressed, almost looking and Heimdall for a moment with longing in their eyes.

It was not a separation Loki wanted and, in fact, had a rather negative impact on the prince because of how much they missed Heimdall, but it was something Loki believed necessary to keep themselves safe from their growingly controlling and abusive father. 

Loki still regarded Heimdall as one of the few people they could turn to in a huge pinch, however (as demonstrated by the thread where Loki goes to Heimdall for help after Odin’s kidnapped their children and forced them into various forms of exile and/or prison).

As much as that rift hurt, though, I do believe it was a sort of necessary split for Heimdall and Loki to mature into anything other than the almost familial bond that they had in Loki’s youth, though. The rift allowed Loki and Heimdall to meet again for the first time, in a sense. Not exactly a completely fresh start, but one that allowed Loki to come back to Heimdall on their own terms as a matured adult and a person Heimdall was not 100% familiar with.

They were allowed to relearn one another, develop a new friendship and a new dynamic, and Loki was finally able to not only get the answers they wanted from Heimdall for so long but help Heimdall break the chains that kept him tethered to his captor. 

In Loki’s youth, Loki always saw Heimdall as someone to aspire to be like, to idolize in a way, and turn to when they needed help. In their reunion, Loki came to Heimdall as an equal, someone who no longer looked up to Heimdall, but someone who looked at Heimdall with love, respect, and mutual understanding.

That transition is what I think allowed them to form such a strong, romantic bond, in the end, because their remeeting changed everything for both of them.

At the end of the day, Heimdall has always been someone extremely special to Loki, someone Loki loves endlessly, and someone Loki could never truly think or speak negatively of, but Loki has gone through a lot of shifts over the course of their lives. A kid learning from Heimdall. A “teenager” turning to Heimdall in times of crisis and questioning why Heimdall did so much he didn’t want to do. A young adult who broke their own heart to break off from someone they loved and attached themselves to so heavily. 

When Loki finally came back to Heimdall, a fear definitely existed that Heimdall would be resentful, that he’d be unwilling to let Loki back in, and that he wouldn’t listen to how sorry Loki was, not only for their own actions but for the pain Odin had caused Heimdall for thousands of years. Loki felt a certain pressing weight of guilt for not realizing sooner that Heimdall was, quite literally, Odin’s prisoner, forced to do as he was told.

Heimdall’s understanding of Loki’s position and why they’d done what they’d done came as a surprise but Loki knew it shouldn’t have. That was just Heimdall being Heimdall, but the biggest shock to Loki’s system?

The fact that Heimdall, despite knowing some of the worst things Loki had done, had never given up on them, had never believed them evil or inherently wrong, and still believed them to be a good person capable of great things. 

Loki almost convinced themselves that Heimdall could never think of them in such a manner purely to make their split easier and, really, it was an easy thing to believe given the fact that so many others thought so poor of the mischief-maker. But Heimdall’s resilient belief in Loki and the love the Watcher always seemed to have for his prince? Was likely why Loki so quickly fell for him in turn and why their relationship made a drastic change in such a short amount of time after them reuniting. 

Heimdall was the one to always treat Loki with kindness. Even in their years of not really communicating, Heimdall was always in Loki’s court. We even see examples of this in MCU all the damn time. He never condemns Loki, never speaks poorly of Loki, and even in moments when he’s supposed to stand against Loki, he almost always lets Loki best him in some way so he doesn’t have to fight Loki (like when Loki literally froze him in Thor, for example, or how about the time Heimdall–the man who can see literally everything–lied to Thor about Loki being the only one who knew the passageways that led out of Asgard so Thor would be forced to break Loki out of prison in The Dark World?). 

He even welcomes Loki home in the most cheeky fashion ever when Loki arrived back on Asgard in Ragnarök and the fact that Loki let Heimdall see them coming proves that Loki trusted Heimdall just as much as Heimdall trusted Loki.

Obviously, Loki and Heimdall aren’t in a romantic relationship in every single verse, but I do believe, with the transition they’ve gone through over the course of literally more than a thousand (Asgardian) years, the potential is almost always there and even if romance doesn’t happen? The bond Loki and Heimdall share is one of the strongest and purest that Loki’s ever had the pleasure of experiencing. 

[radioactive-synth]

I’m curious, did Vaughn fall for Nick or Hancock first? or was he immediately taken with both of them? They have such a cute dynamic I love it

havent expected this kind of ask, im tryin to answer in best way, thank you @dovahqun !

per short, Vaughn didnt actually realised he fallen for them, but it was so obvious for others in Sanctuary, especially that they also started to live together in his house?

per long: (under read more, its an essay, forgive me)

first impressions werent the best with Nick, given that Vaughn was still angry and thirsty for revenge, but Nick still believed he is actually a good person, he just needs some guidance. after Nick saved his life in Glowing Sea, Vaughn realised that he must do a change, which what Nick all needed to hear, so he finally took his General role.

Nick stayed with Vaughn for like 3 weeks, watching him how he tries to earn the people’s trust and changed in a better person, but then he went back to his detective work, and not seeing Vaughn for weeks (which in that time Vaughn and Debbie joined the BOS and Danse joined them in Sanctuary)

but a few weeks later, Vaughn got hurt badly during a solo mission (was knocked out and tied and had his mouth cut by a raider) and felt so shocked by that, plus all the thoughts and feelings he had just crashed into his head, and had a bad relapse, being so depressed he basically needed help to do simple things. Debbie used Preston’s radio to contact Nick and get to Sanctuary, thinking that he was the one to deal with Vaughn in a bad time, maybe he could do it again.

Nick had a lot of patience with Vaughn, feeling so sorry how he felt, and even during a night when Vaughn had a nightmare, Nick relunctantly accepted his asking for sleeping with him. since then, they sleep together, as Vaughn really can get a better sleep for the first time since he is out of Vault, and Nick think it feels nice. do i need to mention that Vaughn got high once cause of painkillers and kissed Nick and none talked about it but thought about it a lot.

since then, Nick started to get more often in Sanctuary, their relationship got stronger in that time. they both have a lot of common and just enjoy each other’s company.

with Hancock, neither the first impression was so fine, and they didnt seen each other for a long time, only Hancock knew about the vault dweller from others. second time when they met, it was when Vaughn and the Minutemen took the Castle, and he offered to go in Goodneighbor to buy parts for the radio, so he took Dogmeat and went there, then heard that Bobbi No Nose can offer what he needs, so he agreed to help her out. Now, i changed the canon here too, as i know Vaughn wont accept to break into DC’s strongroom, as he knew that 1. Nick and Piper would hate to hear that and 2. how its like to hear that the General of Minutemen broke into the strongroom of DC? so i think Bobbi says she knew about a pre war bunker that has untouched supplies, so the event goes, then Vaughn basically gets scared seeing Fahrenheit, and even more hearing that its Hancock’s warehouse. he immediatly turned against Bobbi and told her to go. after that, Fahrenheit dragged Vaughn to Goodneighbor to go talk and explain to Hancock about this. Hancock wasnt even mad about this, he appreciated the sincerity, and made fun on how him and the dog stains his carpets with the mud and blood into his clothes and the dog’s fur. after talking, Hancock explains that he should not feel comfortable in his position and should go out, and Vaughn offered him the chance to help him in his Minutemen job.

they also bonded fast, having same bad humor, same sense of justice and Vaughn really loves Hancock’s spirit of adventure. he also gave Hancock a newly renovated home in Sanctuary, which later he shared with MacCready.

a while later, weeks?? one night, Hancock gets out the house cause he cant sleep, and sees Vaughn on the steps of his own house, and goes to talk with him. after a while, Vaughn stated that he cant sleep well cause Nick isnt with him, and Hancock said more in joke that he could be his cuddle buddy, but didnt expected to get a positive answer so....they just slept together. both had a better rest. when Nick was in Sanctuary, Vaughn just thought that they could just try to sleep together, which the other two thought its a bit crowded but didnt refused. a while later, Vaughn started to have sexual relationship with Hancock, and with Nick he occasionally make out.

over the months, between Minutemen work, and dealing with other duties for BOS and RR, and even Institute, Vaughn became overstressed about everything, and Nick and Hancock helped him out, by supporting him, taking decisions in his name for Minutemen or just being there for him. after the battle of Bunker Hill, when he helped the Institute (and didnt said anything to anyone, not even them two), he was banished from RR as an agent recognized him and Desdemona thought of him as a traitor, despite that Deacon and Debbie tried to explain his reasons. being so stressed, he even snapped at a scientist and nearly strangled them, earning him banishment from Institute and Shaun’s threat that he will kill him if he ever gets in the Institute’s way, and other hurtful things he said.

Vaughn fell in depression as he thought he failed everyone, even that Nick and Hancock tried to explain isnt his fault, he tried his best, but still not much result.

2 weeks later, the Sanctuary was attacked by the Institute, and even if a few ended up with just a few scratches, Vaughn was furious about, and he declared he must destroy the Institute, as other settlements are now in danger.

for getting in the Institute, there must be accessed in the sewers, which Nick and Hancock offered, as they said they dont need much air and wont be affected by the rads in the water. Vaughn was hesitating, but he had no other choice but to let them there. while he and some other companions and a few elite Minutemen waited, he couldnt stop thinkin of worst cases, but when they got in Institute, he was so relieved to see them ok and held them in his arms, forgetting for a few seconds for what they were there. they also needed to drag him from Shaun, as Vaughn tried to reason with him, but all he got back was just more insults and reasons how disappointed he was in his father, and wished he never had to release him from the Vault.

after the Institute, Vaughn basically needed days to sleep, as he was so exhausted, and only woke up to eat and go to bathroom, but he needed like 3 days of resting.

but then on 4th morning, he could hear laughter of the kid and the other two, so he got up and seen a image he never thought he will see: Nick and Hancock on the couch, with Oliver onto Nick’s lap, playing a board game with Codsworth, while Dogmeat and Hera watched them.while Vaughn was resting, they two took care of Oliver, already acting like dads to him.

and now, to get to your question (if you got reading this so far ily) and answer it: it felt in that moment that he really loves them so much, and its clear he cant choose between them, as both were so perfect for him. but when he confessed, you might ask?

Oliver asked his dad if he can call the other two ‘dads’, and also asked if he should call them differently, like Hancock is ‘papa’ and Nick ‘pops’ and Vaughn finally realised that he should talk with them about their relationship. he was too busy with everything, and forgot about his own self.

when he asked them if its ok to be lovers and to be together a family, they answered that they are already a family, and its kinda obvious their relationship is closer. also Nick and Hancock agreed that they both love Vaughn, he loves them equally, there is no reason to be jealous, and both can have a good life together as a family.

[star-anise]

So. I’m currently reading Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey, since it was finally released on audiobook this year. Re-reading, in fact; reading these books as a 31-year-old therapist instead of a starry-eyed 13-year-old. 

I ranted the other night about the book's depiction of Elspeth as "spoiled" instead of "abused", and @feathersescapism (as part of the post's excellent and thoughtful contributions) said this about Mercedes Lackey:

It’s so effing messy for me because like on the one hand she saved my life. She was the VERY first place I saw loving, validated, celebrated queer relationships and ironically Vanyel was the first time I saw an example of someone who was angry and hurt and messy and bad at people and bullied but not a passive victim be portrayed as fundamentally loveable. As in fact valuable enough, worthy enough to be PURSUED, even, to have someone make the effort to get past his hostile defense behaviors. That was priceless to me. Unfortunately it’s like….it was water when I was dying of thirst but it turns out it was water laced with heavy metals that then did a lot of long term damage.

Which is partly just a concentration thing; if you are drinking from many wells, having one be poisoned won't damage you as much overall. But if it's your only source of water, even trace amounts get dangerous. And, well, we were Eighties babies, mentally ill queer kids with access to small-town libraries who ducked guidance counsellors who pushed conformity as the path to happiness.

So I just found a scene that I think really shows that Lackey was writing from a specifically 80s understanding of psychology, before we knew almost anything about trauma; as considered today, it's bad practice on multiple levels, and can point to some of the underlying problems with the Valdemar worldview.

TW child abuse, child neglect

So in this part of the book, 13-year-old Talia, who was rescued from her awful abusive life among the Holderkin by a giant magical horse, is settling into her new life as a Herald-trainee. She attends classes during the day, and then sleeps in her own room in a dormitory wing of her fellow trainees. Her teachers know that she displays all the symptoms of an abused child, and that she's from an extremely insular and rigid culture.

Her teacher, Teren, asks her to stay after class, and she does, wary and panicked because she doesn't know what's going on. He explains that the Heralds sent a letter back to her family to explain that her disappearance was because of the magical horse choosing her as a future Herald, and they get half-taxes that year and she's going to be very important. Her family, however, replies to say only, "Sensholding has no daughter Talia." Because she ran away instead of staying and getting married, she is disobedient and bad, and therefore totally shunned by her entire community.

She didn't realize she was weeping until a single hot tear splashed on the paper, blurring the ink. She regained control of herself immediately, swallowing down the tears. [...] It was odd, but when she'd chosen to run away, their certain excommunication hadn't seemed so great a price to pay for freedom; but somehow now, after all her hopes for forgiveness had been raised only to be destroyed by this one note-- Never mind; once again she was on her own--and Herald Teren would hardly approve of her sniveling over the situation. "It's all right," she said, handing back the note to the Herald. "I should have expected it." She was proud that her voice only trembled a little, and that she was able to meet his eyes squarely. Teren was startled and slightly alarmed; not at her reaction to the note, but by her immediate iron-willed suppression of it. This was not a healthy response. She should have allowed herself the weakness of tears; any child her age should have. Instead, she was holding back, turning further into herself. He tried, tentatively, to call those tears back to the surface where they belonged. Such suppression of natural feelings could only mean deep emotional turmoil later--and would only serve as one more brick in the wall the child had placed between herself and the others around her. "I wish there was something I could do to help." Teren was exceedingly distressed and tried to show that he was as much distressed at the child's denial of her own grief as with the situation itself. "I can't understand why they should have replied like this." If he could just get her to at least admit that the situation made her unhappy, he would have an opening wedge in getting her to trust him. [...] "I'm going to be late--" Talia winced away from the outheld hand and ran, wishing Teren had been less sympathetic. He'd brought her tears perilously close to the surface again. She'd wanted, above all other things, to break down and cry on his shoulder. But--no. She didn't dare. When kith and kin could deny her so completely, what might not strangers do, especially if she exposed her weaknesses? And Heralds were supposed to be self-sufficient, self-reliant. She would not show that she was unworthy and weak.

What I took away from this book, at 13 and during most successive readings, was that the fault in this situation is Talia's unwillingness to trust Teren and break down. It is her inability to open up emotionally to her deep, vulnerable feelings that causes problems. I suspect that my reading is not terribly far off the narrative's own perception of the central problem. In the 1980s, psychology was very based around the individual, the dance of the id, ego, and superego. Talia's problem is that she has an overactive superego, which prevents her from expressing her natural feelings in a healthy way. She uses unhealthy coping mechanisms, which must be overcome to achieve health and full congruence with her feelings. This runs very much on the catharsis model, where emotions build up like a boil, and must be lanced; once someone "vents", they feel better.

Now, at 31, and trained to help vulnerable 13-year-olds, I can see a lot of differences in how I'd assess the problem now. The trauma field especially has come to understand that humans are essentially relational beings; our brains are born in relationships. We function best in relationships. We need, more than anything else, to feel connected and understood. And then, above that: we are beings in brains and bodies. Our consciousness is limited by the hardware it runs on. If our body is dedicating all its resources to fight-or-flight, we cannot be rational, logical thinkers. We need to understand how to regulate our own emotions, both by personal actions and through relationships with others, to achieve health. It takes repeated, patterned practice to master the skills of understanding and moderating those emotions. Coping mechanisms may be unhealthy, but as I was taught in grad school, "All psychopathology was adaptive once." If you're going to take away someone's unhealthy coping mechanism, you need to have first replaced it with something healthier.

So looking at this scene now, I can point out that Talia represses her emotions instantly because in her family of origin, she got beaten up for crying. Her teachers have already observed that she has the defensive and startle-reactions of an abused child. It should not be very hard for Teren to put two and two together and think: She has been systematically trained to view emotion as unsafe. 

He could, at this point, make the rules of their current situation clear: "It's all right to cry. You don't have to put on a brave face for me." This would let Talia know that she won't lose support or status if she cries. But that assumes, frankly, that she can cry; that the experience of being vulnerable in front of another human being wouldn't be too overwhelming, perhaps terrifying, for her to bear. He could also validate that, and let Talia know he sees her and understands. "It'd be all right if you let that guard down, but it looks like you've got a lot of experience with dealing with hard knocks. If you ever do want to talk about it, I'm here."

It's important for him not to try to force her to show feeling the way he thinks she should. He doesn't actually know that it's safe, or that he's safe. Traumatized people need, more than almost anything else, to achieve a measure of control over their own emotions and bodies. They need to be able to make themselves calm when they need to be calm, and not to be ambushed with sadness or fear out of the blue. It should be, more than anything, Talia's decision of when and where to express her emotions. Is bottling it all up unhealthy for her? Oh, probably. She might get depression later this month, or heart disease in 40 years. But being forced to cry when she's not ready to can leave her feeling violated and retraumatized, right here, right now.

The thing that makes crying comforting for most people is that they have a very deep pattern etched on their brains: They cry, someone comforts them, their pain recedes, they feel calmer. It's the pattern of a thousand hungry wakeups as a baby where someone was gentle and kind and fed them. It's skinned knees kissed and broken toys mended. But Talia probably doesn't have that; her experience of crying has been that she's punished and abused for it, and as an infant whose mother died in childbirth, she probably wasn't adequately nurtured either to build those good associations in the first place. Crying just takes her into a deeper place of loneliness and self-hatred. So for her to soothe herself, she might need to be taught very basic ways of doing that--to take a break, to do something she loves, to get a hug from a friend. Her traditional reaction has been to mask her emotions, and to self-isolate and let those feelings of pain and alienation swamp her.

What he could even do, as I sometimes do as a therapist, is respect that repression as a way of coping and roll with it. If someone can only bear the most glancing reference to their trauma? Then glance. Use black humour or obvious irony to acknowledge the situation without engaging with its emotional depth. “So, you know, no big deal. I bet that’s what you’ve always wanted.” So long as it’s paired with other kinds of real caring--especially useful, immediate help and close emotional attunement--that’s not out of place.

One thing he seems to have assumed is that of course, if your family is awful and devastating, you get to take the morning off to cry. I can only assume that's why he's pushing her to cry at the end of class, when she has another one to go to right after. But she might not know that. Certainly her familyexpected that if they did something awful and devastating, Talia needed to get back to work as soon as possible. Teren doesn't discuss this, and I think it's important; Talia goes to something like four other classes, has lunch, and reads for an hour before she finally gets to do anything relevant to taking care of her emotions. Implicitly, the idea that schedule and routine supercede emotions, and that emotional work takes second place, gets reinforced by the system that thinks it's "saving" her.

The other thing traumatized people struggle with, next to control, is connection. Trauma is hugely isolating; it reroutes resources away from the parts of the brain that foster social connection, so people literally lose track of anyone who might be loving and supportive, and it's hard to make ordinary people understand what you're going through. This is part of why Teren showing Talia all his distress isn't really good for her; he's overloading her still further with natural empathy for his emotions, increasing the weight she has to carry mentally, but not reinforcing her connections. He doesn't remind her that other Heralds are her family now, nor does he give her help in how to reach out to anyone.

Who might Teren remind her of? As much as he's taking on the role of The Person She Can Be Emotional To, he's hardly ever in her life; this is the last day of their week-long class where he met her for one hour a morning. He could encourage her to talk to one of her regular teachers, including his twin Keren, who teaches her equitation, or the cook, in whose kitchen Talia is most confident and in her element. If her dormitory had older Heralds who lived there in a kind of supervisory or mentoring role, spending hours of unstructured free time with the trainees, he could direct her to one of them. He could even direct her to her age-peers, with whom she lives, who might not be the most emotionally attuned but certainly seem to be the group with whom the Heralds expect her to do most of her emotional bonding.

Or he could--now here's a thought--suggest she spend the rest of the morning with the magical psychic horse who can beam rays of love and devotion directly into her brain.

But he doesn't. It is only after Talia has attended classes on history, geography, mathematics, etiquette, and archery, eaten lunch, read for an hour, and cried in the back of the sewing room, that she finally sees her magic horse. And she does feel a bit better! But by then, her major adrenaline has worn off, and with it the ability to etch memories deeply into her brain; the first hours after her shock were spent ignoring her feelings and being disconnected from people who didn't notice she was in pain, thus reinforcing all her old traumatic impressions.

So the book sets up a recurring number of incidents where Talia's loneliness and isolation is reinforced by the world around her; where no one provides her the necessary scaffolding to help her build bridges with other people and develop the skills to be healthier; and then, as happens throughout the series, when something bad happens to her, she is blamed for being so isolated and repressed. 

When I was 13, I had no framework to understand any of this. On the schoolyard, I'd been taught many of Talia's lessons about the dangers of showing weakness, and in the classroom, about the importance of repressing emotions; I used her as an emotional model. (Later in the books, Talia lbecomes an Empath and Mind-Healer, which hugely impacted my decision to become a therapist.) But then, when her loneliness turned into defencelessness and her lack of emotional control turned into instability, the narrative said it was her fault for not being healthier. And so I thought: Yes. It is completely reasonable to provide a young person with no emotional support at all, and then get mad at them for being fucked up.

And so there's lead in the water.

[insightexploration]

Being Myself

Introduction

I am a story teller.  As a teacher, a therapist and friend I have always used stories to make a point, illustrate a principle or just to entertain. For the last 49 years people have been encouraging me to write them down. Here are some of them.  Make of them what you wish. After writing them I am filled with an overwhelming gratitude for the people who have crossed my path in this life. The most important is Susan Riley, my partner of 59 years to whom I dedicate this effort. None of this would have happened without her.  

How I found my calling

“To be nobody but yourself in a world that’s doing its best to make you somebody else, is to fight the hardest battle you are ever going to fight. Never stop fighting.”  e.e. cummings

Doors

One of the most obvious truths I have encountered in my work with students and clients over the last fifty years is that many people are unhappy with who they are and how they are living life. Some have no idea of who they would like to be or they know who they want to be but the road to a meaningful and satisfying life is blocked by anxiety, fear, confusion or crippling depression.  Many times their ideas about who they should have become have come from their family and the disparity between this ideal and the reality of their lives is creating great sadness. I would like to posit that many times in life doors appear offering us a way out of this dilemma.  We then have a choice to ignore the door and continue on a less than satisfying path or we can walk through it onto the unknown path to a more fulfilling life. 

I would like to illustrate this by sharing a bit of my own story with you. Let’s start at the beginning. My parents gave me the name Lawrence because they thought it would look good with “Doctor” before it.  It does.  After my grandfather died during the depression, my father left premedical studies to support his mother and three siblings by doing physical labor.  In the 1930’s he began his own company and for fifty years was a successful, if not affluent, businessman.  It was my parents’ intention that I would be the first member of my family to finish college and that I would fulfill my father’s dream by becoming a physician.  Even though my “Doctor” looks good, I am not the right kind of doctor.  Unfortunately for them, I was a child of the sixties and “do your own thing” was our mantra.

Joseph Campbell said, “Follow your bliss.”  My journey to my bliss was not direct but was determined by several doors that at first were ignored and then recognized as messages from something larger than me.

After the Russians became the first country to send a satellite into space, I was seduced by the national passion and set my sights on becoming a scientist. This was a mistake but it was a mistake sanctioned by my family and the culture. Although it was not as good as becoming a physician, it was good enough for my parents.  

In my senior year of high school, with the idea of becoming a key player in the race to the moon, I visited a counselor at Pasadena City College and expressed my desire to become a nuclear physicist. She looked at my transcripts and shook her head.  I was not the most motivated student in high school but my dad said if I wanted the car (necessary for dating) and if I wanted to play sports (necessary for impressing potential dates), I had to maintain a B average.  Since grades were reported on my transcripts every semester, I knew I had to maintain a B average between two quarters.  So if I got an A in one quarter I would allow myself to get a C the next.  If I got a C, I would work to get an A the next quarter. Therefore, my high school transcripts show 6 semesters of 5 courses each, all of which are Bs. So, my counselor was looking at 30 Bs.  

Her response to me voicing my aspiration was, “You are not bright enough to be a nuclear physicist.”  “However,” she added, “you are not bad at anything.  Why don’t you become a teacher?”  Looking back, this was a door.  One I completely ignored and, in fact, felt angry about. 

So I gave up on PCC and began college as a physics student at Cal State, L.A. in 1960.  In retrospect, I would have saved myself a lot of grief if I had paid attention to her.  While science and math did not come easily to me, I did well enough to be able to transfer to the University of California at Berkeley, home of one of the world’s premier physics departments.  After two years there I received my degree with a major in physics and a minor in math.  When I showed my mother my diploma, her response was, “Take good care of that, it is worth just as much as the ones they gave the students who got good grades.”  Alas, I was well on the road to parental disappointment. 

Several things happened at Berkeley which were pivotal in guiding me to the path I still follow.  In my first semester at Cal, I was required to take a course in which we read several of Shakespeare’s plays.  Reading Shakespeare revealed a new world to me in which there was more to human behavior than met the eye.  I loved this course but could not afford to spend much time on it while taking advanced courses in physics and calculus as well as two other electives. If I had paid attention to the joy and excitement I felt reading and writing about the human psyche as Shakespeare saw it, I would have known where my life needed to go at that time. However, I was, as James Hollis says, in the midst of my first adulthood, an attempt to live out the life one is expected to live by one’s family and culture.  At the end of the Shakespeare course my instructor, a wonderful teacher, said, “You are the smartest C+ student I’ve ever had.”  I think it was a compliment.  But again, I had ignored an important sign.  After I finished my Ph.D. in child psychology I returned to thank him for opening the doors of the human psyche to me. Surprisingly, he remembered me.  I have contacted him again recently and he remembered my name and told me he has focused much of his work since then on children’s literature and fairy tales. 

In my second semester at Cal, I began volunteering at an elementary school in the West Berkeley ghetto where I tutored some of the worst students in the school.  For a middle-class white boy from the suburbs of Southern California this was a real awakening.  To my surprise, I found that individual attention could turn some of the worst students into academic successes.  Witnessing the wasted potential of children in the sixth grade already consigned to the garbage heap of American life changed me.  It was the sixties.  I was young and idealistic and it became my personal mission to save as many kids as I could.  I wanted to help children that others considered unreachable. A door had appeared.

Although I realized that my life was turning away from hard science, I found employment during the summer between my junior and senior years in the Apollo program at the Research & Development center at Aerojet General in Azusa, California.  My assignment was to design a monochromatic light source to simulate the effect of unfiltered sunlight on metal which would simulate the environment on the moon.  While this brief experience as an engineer was enjoyable, I realized that I was much more interested in pure theory than I was in the practical application of scientific principles.  Also I wasn’t a very good engineer.  I blew so many circuits they nicknamed me “Sparky.” I also realized that I was quite a few brain cells short of theoretical physicist material.  It occurred to me that I could combine my interests by becoming a teacher of physics, math and English literature in high school.

Being confused, I once again visited a guidance counselor when I returned to Berkeley in the fall.  After a battery of tests were scored and interpreted, I returned to find out just what I was supposed to do. I had spent an inordinate amount of energy purging my life of Christian Fundamentalism so imagine my surprise when I discovered that my number one, absolutely no fail, born to be occupation was “Minister.”  I was even further incensed when I found out “Psychologist” was a close second.  I happened to be taking Psych 1A as an elective in my senior year in order to graduate and had the book with me.  I raised it up and said defiantly, “You mean this bullshit?” and walked out of his office.  I finished my last year of university somewhat unenthusiastically, married my high school sweetheart (we are still married) and moved to San Francisco where she took a secretarial job and I enrolled in education classes at San Francisco State College.

It is with some humor that I reflect on my professional career and see that I have spent most of it teaching psychology and practicing as a therapist trying to bring spirituality and psychology together.  I should have listened to both of those counselors but knowing the expectations my parents and I both had of me, I did not.  Doors had appeared and I ignored them.

After four years of rigorous physics and math courses, the education courses at State left me nonplussed.  I lasted two weeks.  I started looking for work and fell into the most defining moment of my professional life.  You can call it grace, coincidence or synchronicity but it has happened so many times in my life, I know it is real.  This time I walked through the door.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do so I looked for part time work.  I found three jobs: gardening for a psychologist, driving an autistic child to and from his psychiatrist and tutoring a supposedly “minimally brain damaged” eight-year-old boy whose mother was a psychologist.  In a matter of days, a whole new world opened up to me.  It was less exact and predictable than the world of formulae and numbers, but fascinating in its complexity and ambiguity.

Alan

The most important of these experiences was tutoring a boy I shall call Alan. His mother was desperate.  One after another, a series of tutors had failed miserably in their attempts to teach him to read. He was repeating third grade and his psychologist (who was very well known in his field) had told Alan’s mother that her son would be lucky to finish elementary school.  From the first moment I met him, I knew Alan was smart; he had a great vocabulary, a wonderful sense of humor and a keen interest in the world of science.  He just couldn’t read.

Rather than tackling his reading problems head on as his other tutors had done, I decided to approach them indirectly through a subject which interested him. We began to do chemistry and optical experiments under the suspicious eyes of his mother.  Alan really liked the experiments, especially the ones involving explosions or really bad smells.  Every so often I would be reading an experiment and I would ask him to read a short word.  After a while, he was reading more and more of the experiments and starting to read books with me.

Since Alan was Jewish, I thought it would be important for him to know some of the heroic stories of the holocaust.  I learned one of my first lessons on the workings of a child’s mind when we started to read a child’s version of The Diaries of Anne Frank.  When we had finished about three pages he said, “I don’t like girl stories.”  So we returned to science, where a 21-year-old WASP in an identity crisis and an eight-year old Jewish boy with a learning disability could find true happiness. 

My work with Alan encouraged me to start reading about psychology, learning disabilities and children in general.  Since I had very little experience in this area, I decided to visit his psychologist for direction.  His office was in a very posh area of San Francisco and filled with fine art and beautiful furnishings.  It effused monetary success.  He said that it was wonderful that Alan had a friend like me, but that I should give up hoping for a normal life for him.  I looked around his office at the plush furnishings and thought, “If someone this stupid can be this rich, this is the career for me.”  I re-entered San Francisco State where, with the financial and emotional support of my wonderful wife and the enthusiasm engendered by the discovery of my life’s work, I achieved a straight “A” average.

My wife, who had been interested in psychology long before me, also began taking psychology classes and realized it was her life’s passion too (second to her passion for me of course).  I was mentored by several members of the psychology department and, in 1966, I enrolled at the University of Minnesota in what may have been the best program in clinical child psychology in the United States.

Alan finished elementary school, junior high, high school and college, and is a happy husband and father who, along with his wife, runs his own very successful communications business.  He told me several years ago that he continued to be interested in science after I moved away but gave up chemistry when he realized he would never be able to use it for his true purpose, to blow up his school. 

Some important influences in my life

“If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.”  Muhammad Ali

My Last Name

Dettweiler is a fairly unusual name.  Things happen to me that wouldn’t happen if my name was Smith or Jones.  For example, upon meeting me for the first time, a person often will say, “I knew a Dettweiler (not necessarily spelled like this) in Pocatello.  Is that a relative?”.   “Probably,” I always answer.  My branch of the family settled in Ontario, Canada so when we moved to Victoria, British Columbia I was often asked about my family. The doctor who set up the British Columbia health plan was a Detweiler (different spelling) and people used to say things to me like, “If you are half the man your father was you will be a fine person.”  His son was a lawyer in Victoria who did a lot of pro bono work for legal aid.  I used to get calls in the middle of the night from guys proclaiming, “I was framed” or “You gotta help me.”  Very seldom does anyone spell it correctly and often people mispronounce it.  For reservations at restaurants I always use my wife’s name which is Irish and much easier to spell for the person taking the reservation.  There is some irony in this as I will explain later.  

The Dettweilers, who were Swiss German, came to Pennsylvania from Germany in the early 1700s.  About 20 years ago when my son visited Switzerland, he found the Dettweiler homestead which, until recently, had remained in the family.  Over the fireplace were tiles inscribed with the words, “Detwiler, 1513.” My dad had recently died and he buried my dad’s favorite pipe behind this building.

It is thought that since they were Mennonites, they were escaping religious persecution in Europe and fled with other Mennonites to the community in Lancaster County.  My branch left Pennsylvania for Canada in 1810.  After arriving, the patriarch of the family lost his wife and remarried within the church but did not register the marriage with the government.  Eventually a huge tract of farm land near Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario was seized by the government since the children who inherited it were not legal heirs.  

When I first moved to Canada it was a fairly fractured country.  The French wanted out and the West felt like the neglected child in a large family.  So when people would refer to the government as “Those bastards in Ontario,” I thought maybe they were talking about my relatives.  

My name has caused me to have some interesting interactions.  One client came to me because he was Swiss and he knew my village. He said, “I used to drive through it every day on my way to the airport in Zurich.”  Once he said to me, “Larry, your ancestors may have come here 250 years ago but you are still very Swiss German.” Curiously, I asked what he meant by that.  “Well, the French and Italian Swiss work to live.  The Swiss Germans live to work.”  

I had another client come to me because he recognized the Mennonite name. He had left the Ontario community and was feeling lost.  They shunned him and he felt completely out of touch with mainstream Canadian culture.  He was neither here nor there and it was very difficult for him.  

I once went to a panel discussion about death and as I listened to Elizabeth Kubler Ross I grasped a whole new understanding of the meaning of life.  I was delighted by her statement, “But what do I know?  I am just a Swiss hillbilly who has sat with thousands of dying people.”  After the talk, I walked up to her and told her what an inspiration she had been to me.  She looked at my name tag and said, “Oh look!  You are a Swiss hillbilly too.  I know your village.”

One of my students, originally from Switzerland, asked me if I knew the difference between European heaven and European hell.  I said I did not. She said, “In European heaven, the cooks are all French, the lovers are all Italian, the cops are all British, the mechanics are all German and everything is organized by the Swiss.  In European hell, the cooks are all English, the lovers are all Swiss, the cops are all German, the mechanics are all French and everything is organized by the Italians.”

Back to the family history.  After losing the land my disenfranchised great grandfather moved the family to Michigan in the late 1800s where, during the First World War, the locals blew up their house because they spoke German. But they persevered and my Grandfather left the Mennonites and became a preacher in the Evangelical United Brethren church, eventually settling in L.A. where I was born and spent my early years.  Hollywood to be exact.  

I have always taken great pride in being the descendent of Swiss German Mennonites and my wife has felt the same about being Irish. All our lives we have chided each other on the stereotypical traits of these cultures.  Recently we did genetic testing and were shocked to find out that my proud European heritage accounts for only 9% of my genetics and her Irish heritage is about the same.  Surprisingly my number one heritage is Irish and hers is English/Scottish. No more Irish jokes for me and no more superior race jokes for her.  I now refer to her as the Limey oppressor and constantly ask her when she is going to let my people go.  I believe most of that Irish heritage comes from my Grandfather Mooney.  His family considered themselves Scottish but I think they originally came from Ireland.

My Grandfather

It is a sad truth that many of the men I have seen in my work have had very little contact with positive male role models while growing up. I was fortunate to have two. They were not perfect but they taught me about being a responsible husband and father and gave me the belief that I would be able to traverse this life successfully.

Soon after I was born my dad left to fight in the war in Europe.  My mother and I moved in with her parents, Nana and Grandad, who lived next door to our house in Hollywood. My father was gone for three years and during that time my grandfather was really the only father figure in my life.  The closeness of this relationship was reflected in an event that occurred three years after my father came home. At age 6 I was selected to be a participant on the Art Linkletter radio show, Kids Say the Darndest Things. When Art asked me if I looked like my father I replied, “NO, I look like my granddad.”  

He was a first-generation American son of Scottish grocers who settled in Danville Illinois.  He had three obsessions, money, religion and baseball.   When my cousin researched the family history she discovered that when his parents arrived at Ellis Island their name was Muney. The immigration officer said, “This is America. You can’t have the name Money.” So at that point their name was changed to Mooney. Apparently, the name went deeper than the spelling.  When my grandparents were in their 70s my grandfather would send my elderly grandmother back to the store if he thought she had been shortchanged by even a penny. I remember watching her leave the house in tears having to go back and haggle with the store manager.

The major accomplishment in his life had been to bring Fritos to Los Angeles. He worked for this company his entire life but was always quite happy to remain a salesman driving his truck around Southern California.  Although he was obsessed with money and loved to buy and sell property he never made a lot of money.  At one point in the 20s he owned a square block of Wilshire Boulevard but sold it shortly after he bought it because he said it would never amount to anything. 

Although my grandparents were very kind to me, shaming was definitely the response of choice to what they considered to be bad decisions about money. Once, when I was about ten, we were visiting them on a Saturday afternoon.  I had a crisp five dollar bill in my pocket and there was a corner store at the bottom of the hill on which they lived calling to me the whole afternoon.  I walked down to the store and bought a dollar toy for me and a little tin bank for my brother that cost four dollars.  Looking back, I think, what ten year old spends one dollar on himself and four dollars on his five year old brother?  It would seem to me that this act should have been seen as an act of generosity and commented on as such.  However, when I returned, my grandfather said, “You bought the bank for the wrong person.”  

He never wanted to waste anything.  When he and my grandmother were in their mid-nineties they lived in an assisted living/end-of-life care facility for members of the church. My grandmother had been taking hormones and stopped taking them because of problems with bleeding.  My grandfather decided that it would be a waste of money to just throw them out and since they were so helpful to her he would take them.  Several months later he asked my mother to take him to the doctor because he was suffering pain in his chest.  It turned out he was growing breasts. Later, my grandmother decided that she just didn’t want to live any longer and she stopped taking nitroglycerin for angina. Again my grandfather didn’t want to waste the money so he started taking the pills, passed out and suffered a concussion and went into a coma. While he was in the coma my grandmother died.

When he came to my mother played a recording of the funeral for him but he just couldn’t get it into his head that his wife had died. One day when my mother was visiting him he told her that Stella had left him and had run off with another man. My mother, after trying uselessly to convince him that she had died, asked him how he knew she had run off of another man.  He told her he had an invisible radio under his pillow and every night it played the Stella and Alan show and on this show Stella had run off with another man. He then told my mother, “I know why she left.”  My mother asked, “Why?”  He said, “I wasn’t giving her enough sex!”  This was too much for my mother, the daughter of these devoutly religious people, and she ran crying from the room.

I’m not sure how his obsession with religion began. I know he was raised in a severe Scottish Presbyterian household.  He told me once that his father had beaten him for whistling on Sunday. I do know that as a young man he smoked and drank and was not terribly religious. At some point he found Jesus, stopped smoking and drinking and joined the Evangelical United Brethren church. The minister in this church was my other grandfather, Elden Dettweiler.  

He was what we called in those days, a character.  Some of the funniest stories about my grandfather concern his poor vision. In his later life he developed cataracts and at that time cataract surgery was very serious.  When they removed the cataracts the patient had to stay in bed motionless for an extended period of time so often the surgery was postponed until it was absolutely necessary.  I remember that he would take me on his rounds in his Frito truck.  We would place a wooden chair in the stairwell on the right-hand side of the truck and I would ride around telling him when the lights turned green when the lights turned red, what lane to be in and generally help him complete his route. When I think back on this it is absolutely terrifying and I would never have allowed my children to do this.  But back then nobody thought twice about it.  On another occasion we were driving in the mountains and he pulled up behind a parked police car to ask directions.  He went up to the car window started asking the officer where we were only to get no response.  He soon was yelling at the officer demanding to know why he wouldn’t talk to him.  My grandmother got out of the car walked up to calm him down and realized that that the car was parked with a dummy in the front seat in order to slow people down as they traveled down this mountain.

Although he fancied himself somewhat of a handyman, his inability to negotiate the physical world was often a humorous topic of conversation when the family was together and he was out of earshot.  Even though we lived in Southern California, he would wear long underwear all winter long.  In the summer, when temperatures rose to the 80’s and 90’s, he would cut the sleeves off but still wear the underwear.  I remember one year I was staying at their house in Glendale when the annual cutting ritual was being performed.  He would fold the underwear in half and cut both sleeves at once.  On this occasion, I watched as he carefully folded the garment and proceeded to cut one arm and one leg off.  I could tell he was angry but he put it aside, carefully folded the next garment and again, cut off one leg and one sleeve.  Under his breath I heard him mutter, “Shit.”  It was the only time I ever heard him swear.

He was obsessed with baseball all his life.  I remember that we would go to games played by the L. A. Angels minor league team on a regular basis.  It was especially fun to go to the games when they played the hated Hollywood Stars, another minor league team. When the Dodgers moved to L. A. he would spend hours next to his radio or in front of the TV transfixed by the slow, deliberate pace of major league baseball.  Afterwards, if I was around, he would relate all the funny things Vin Scully had said and give me a summary of the game and the glorious or miserable play of the Dodgers.  

All in all, I feel very fortunate to have had a grandfather who was so present in my life and at one time told me, “You are going to be very special and make us all proud.”  Certainly in my early life my grandparents were as much my parents as my mother and father and as I grew older we remained close.  As different as they were from who I consider myself to be, the feeling of being cared for and nested in matrix of relatives who would be there if needed gave me a sense of security and well-being that has never left me.  For that I am grateful.  However, he was a character.

My Dad

When she was about 12, my mother was standing on the steps of her church in Los Angeles as a car driven by the new preacher’s son pulled up to the curb. Her brothers always teased and frightened her so when she saw the boy get out and run around to open the car door for his sister (my aunt Irene), she said to herself, “That’s the boy I am going to marry.”  She had never seen a boy act so politely with his sister so she figured he must be something special.  Later, on their first date, she waited anxiously when they pulled up to their destination.  “Don’t open that door,” he said, “It is broken and I have to come around and open it for you.”  Well, he wasn’t such a gentleman after all but she married him anyway.  She said my dad never opened another door for her, but I know he did because I learned to do that from him.

My dad had a hard life as a young man.  He was the son of a preacher during the depression and told tales of working the orchards of the California central valley, driving unsafe trucks and polishing cars at a parking lot. (When he answered the ad he did so even though he wasn’t from Poland.  The ad was for a polish boy). They lived off the hand me downs and food supplied by parishioners. There was no money.  He got his first pair of new shoes when he was in high school after his father had landed a fairly lucrative position at the church in downtown LA.  Just as it seemed they had turned a corner, his dad died suddenly and he and his sister had to quit college and get jobs to support his mother and two younger siblings.  

He managed, along with some partners, to start a wholesale florist business which did well, if not spectacularly, for 50 years until he retired.  He worked long hours six days a week but I think he loved it. My mother was not so crazy about it.  Shortly after I was born he was called up for WW2 and after my brother was born, he was called up to Korea for a year.  So between the wars and the long work hours I didn’t have a lot of contact with him. 

When my dad knew he was going to be drafted for WW2 he tried to enlist in the Navy.  He was told, “Mr. Dettweiler, you are almost legally blind, we can’t take you.”  So he tried the Air Force and they said the same.  Then the Army drafted him and made him an artillery spotter.  A clear example of military intelligence.

After the invasion of Germany he was driving a truck into a town one day and saw a big sign saying, “DITTWEILER” which was the name of the town.  He said to his friend beside him, “Hey, this is my town. Too bad they misspelled my name!”  They were laughing when around the corner came a German Panzer tank that began to shoot a machine gun at them.  They pulled a quick U turn and raced back to base camp, happy to be alive.  When they got out of the truck they noticed bullet holes in the back of the cab right above their heads. After a moment of shock and relief my dad said, “I guess they didn’t know who I was.” That’s the way he was.  No matter how bad things got in our house or with his business, my dad could always come up with a story or a joke that would get us all laughing.

After he returned from Korea he recognized my mother’s overprotective nature and thought I was becoming a “mommy’s boy.” So he started taking me to work with him on Saturdays when I was 11 and on the rest of the days during the summer when I was 12.   On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we would get up at 2am and get home about 4pm.  On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday we would get up at 5am and get home about 2pm.  Since holidays were the busiest times for him, my friends would be spending their Easter and Christmas vacations at the beach while I was putting in 70 hour weeks with my dad.   I loved it.  Unlike my friends, I had money to spend and was learning about the world of men, a world I had been shielded from by my mother.  I learned the value of hard work and all the guys encouraged me to stay in school so I wouldn’t have to work like this for the rest of my life.  It was a valuable lesson.

When I was in Boy Scouts I asked my Dad why we never went camping.  He said son, “I camped all the way through France and Germany and up and down the Korean peninsula and I will never spend another night in a tent.”  Returning home after one campout I explained enthusiastically how we had eaten this great stuff called Spam and that we should get some for the house.  He looked at me disapprovingly and stated, “There will be no Spam in this house.”  I think his experience in the army really shaped his attitude toward life in other ways too and has helped me understand some of the reasons he and I differed so much as adults.  But he was a good man and a good father.

My dad was pretty tolerant but my grandfather was a confirmed anti-Semite.  We lived in Hollywood which was heavily populated by Jewish folks and he would often make denigrating remarks about them.  One day, at my dad’s workplace, I went to lunch but did not have enough money for the bill.  After a short conversation with the elderly Japanese owner, we settled on a price that equaled the money I had on hand. When I returned to the shop, my dad asked me if I had enough money for lunch. I said, “No, but I Jewed him down.”

This was a phrase I had heard my grandfather use on many occasions and had also heard my friends use.  He looked at me the way he always did when he was displeased, tilting his head down and looking over his glasses, and said, “I want to talk to you when we get home.”

When we got home he sat me down and brought out about twenty 8 by 10 glossies of pictures he took on the day his unit liberated Dachau.  He had me look through the sickening photos of nude, emaciated bodies stacked in huge piles, bodies hanging on barb wire, bodies in mass graves and then, the ovens.  

“This is where talk like that ends up.  I never want to hear you talk like that again.”  

My dad said that occasionally when he was directing the shelling of German positions he would realize that he was killing men who, had his ancestors not left Germany, might be friends or relatives.  After Dachau, he said he didn’t feel so bad about it.

I never did talk like that again and it is fitting that when I have been in really bad places in my life, it has almost always been Jewish men and women who have taken me under their wings.  At one point in my life I was so impressed by all the Jews I knew I considered converting which led to my brief flirtation with Judaism. Dettweiler, however, is not a great last name if you want to be Jewish.

My brief flirtation with Judaism

During my second year of grad school I got very interested in working with autistic kids.  A visiting expert put a Jewish family in touch with me regarding their 8 year old son who was autistic.  The father had been a lawyer in Romania before the war but when the Nazis came his gentile friends smuggled him and his wife into the Ukraine where they hid from the Nazis and their collaborators for the remainder of the war.  I never had the courage to ask them about that experience but from films I have seen and books I have read, it must have been horrific.

They were so grateful for the work I was doing with their son Sammy they sort of adopted us. They insisted on paying me and we occasionally were invited to the house for dinner.  I was doing behavior modification with Sammy and one of the things behaviorists are known for is keeping excellent records of time and behavior.  I would be in the middle of tracking Sammy’s behavior carefully when the door would fly open and Miriam would appear with a tray full of baked goods, coffee and sweets.  “Eat, Eat,” she would say.  “You are so skinny.  Your wife needs to feed you more.”  So much for that data collection.

Sammy made such great progress that his parents decided to enroll him in Hebrew school with the ultimate goal of a Bar Mitzvah.  I had him on a token economy in which he bought things with the chips he earned for speaking and reading.  One of the things he bought with his chips was a TV guide.  He would then memorize the whole thing and be able to tell you when and on what station every program was broadcast during the week.  I thought, “How hard can it be to memorize a little Hebrew?”

Well the Rabbi at the school thought different.  He said Sammy was retarded and couldn’t learn anything.  So I asked for the best student in the school to help me and by using M and Ms as rewards I taught Sammy the Hebrew alphabet in about 30 minutes.  The Rabbi was ecstatic.  He said I had performed a Mitzvah and asked me what my last name was.  Oh Lord, all my credibility was about to go out the window as I prepared to tell him my Teutonic title.  

Immediately Miriam said, “This is almost Doctor Dettweiler.”  “Ahhh,” said the Rabbi with a smile. Next week when I returned all the kids were getting M and Ms. Apparently the Rabbi thought that was why Sammy was learning so quickly. 

At one point, a young rabbi came to Victoria to take over the Synagogue and we ended up in the same tai chi class as Danny and his wife Hannah.  He took on the job of refurbishing the Synagogue which had fallen into disrepair.  As a fundraiser he invited Shlomo Karlbach, a singing Hassidic rabbi and a friend to Hanna’s family, to come and give a concert.  I had listened to Schlomo on the radio when I was a student in San Francisco so I was excited to attend.   “Bring your guitar,” Danny said, “we are going to get together and sing after the concert.”

I took my guitar and left it behind the coats in the cloak room before we entered the Synagogue proper.  Danny and Shlomo were working their way through the audience and when they came to me. Danny said to Shlomo, “This is the guy.”

Shlomo said, “Get your guitar you are going to accompany me.”  

A lump formed in my throat and I said, “But I don’t know your songs.”

“No matter,” he said, “God will help you.”

So I got my guitar and accompanied him all night long.  When it was over, people approached me and said things like, “I didn’t know you were Jewish” and “So now you are out of the closet.”

“I’m not Jewish,” I would say.

“How did you know the chords to the songs?”

“God helped me and he only plays three chords so it wasn’t that hard.”

One fellow actually asked me if I wanted to join his Jazz band.  I demurred saying I only played simple folksongs.

“Nonsense,” he said.  “I heard those arpeggios you were playing.”

I thought to myself, “What’s an arpeggio?”

After, a bunch of us went to a house where we sang Yiddish and Hebrew songs for a long time. Then the moment that I was dreading came.  He asked us our names.  As we went around the circle everyone gave their first and last names. When my turn came, I only gave my first name.  He asked me what my last name was.  When I told him he asked, “Dettweiler, what kind of name is that?”

“Swiss,” I answered.  “But my father fought the Germans and liberated Dachau,” I blurted out. This seemed to please him and we sang a few more songs on that most memorable night.

The next morning my wife and I went out to breakfast at a local restaurant and who should walk out the door as we are walking in? Shlomo.  Racing out he said, “Pray for me brother, I am late for the ferry!”

Later, telling Hannah how much I enjoyed the evening, I said I had been entertained and moved by his stories.  She replied, “Yes, and some of them may even be true.”

I told this story to a client recently and she told me a quote from Rabbi Akiva Tatz.  “All my stories are true.  Some happened and some did not, but they are all true.”  I love this quote. 

Perhaps the thing I love most about Jewish culture, aside from the philosophy of saving the world, is the humor.  

I had a colleague who had twin boys that were coming to the point in their lives when they should start studying for their Bar Mitzvahs.  He told me that he had no connection to the religion in which he was raised and his wife was not Jewish.  I said, “You know Jerry, it is a part of their heritage and they don’t have to do it if they don’t want to. Why not give it a shot?”

“Well,” he said, “I might but I really don’t like the rabbi here in Victoria.”

I took this problem to my friend Louis who was president of the Synagogue.  In typical fashion he told me a story.

Once there was a shipwrecked rabbi.  His parishioners looked for him long and hard and finally found him.  When they went on the island they saw a beautiful little structure made of driftwood and palm leaves.  He explained he had built a synagogue in which to worship. They looked up the beach and saw there was an identical building. “Is that a synagogue you built also?”  “Yes, and I wouldn’t set foot in it.”   I don’t think Jerry’s boys ever did their Bar Mitzvahs.  

I don’t know why Judaism has always fascinated and impressed me so but it probably had something to do with all that bible reading I did as a kid and the fact that Jewish people have played such a large and positive role in my life.  At one point I felt such an affinity for the culture and religion I considered converting but somehow it just didn’t seem right for me.  There was a culture and a history that I did not feel a part of.  When I was discussing this with my good friend Bernice who had been a great help in establishing my parenting courses, she said, “Larry you are welcome to become a member of our Synagogue and our religion, but really, you are such a Baptist. Why don’t you just stick with your roots?”  I am not sure what she meant but somehow it made complete sense to me.  So next I need to talk about my roots.

Jesus is Watching

At the time of my birth my parents were members of the Evangelical United Brethren Church.  This was an amalgamation of two churches that had spun off from the Mennonite Church. It was fundamentalist and during my early years our lives pretty much revolved around the church.  My dad’s father had been the minister before his untimely death.  My other grandfather was a deacon.  My grandmother played the organ.  My dad was the choir director.  My mom taught Sunday school and both she and my uncle were the soloists in the church choir. My cousin and I were the youth duet and we can still do a pretty mean “Old Rugged Cross.”

My first recollection of a reference to Jesus was when I was very young. I was in the back yard and apparently I had my hand down my pants because my mother said, “Don’t touch yourself there, Jesus is watching!”  Sage advice, no?  A couple of years ago my friend and fellow psychotherapist Ralph got very interested in men’s sexual health.  He wanted us to do a workshop on the topic. Ralph is a former Mennonite minister so I said we could do a short workshop entitled, “Don’t touch yourself there, Jesus is watching.”  Later he sent me a photo from Farmington, NM of a big porn warehouse and a billboard across the street with a picture of Jesus and the warning, “Jesus is watching.”  I didn’t know my mother had ever been to Farmington.  

I used to lie in my grandmother’s lap in church staring up and the glass skylight of Jesus carrying a lamb.  She would tickle me to keep me quiet and I thought this must me what heaven is like.  Those moments are stuck in my memory and the peace I felt is still salient in my mind.  Even after all these years and the rejection of fundamentalist Christianity if not Christianity in general, I love to sing along with the old gospel songs while speeding down the highway. Somehow it still touches me at a deep level.  

They tore that church down to make a freeway and moved it some distance away.  Eventually we moved so my parents started going to a Methodist church, primarily for the choir, I believe.  That ended my experience with the EUB church and ironically, they merged with the Methodists at some later date.

Although my mother remained religious all her life, I think my dad had lost his religious beliefs after fighting in Germany and Korea. The battle of the bulge and the liberation of Dachau caused him to seriously doubt the existence of a beneficent and loving God.

One experience that I remember clearly is an interchange between my father and my grandfather after my dad returned from fighting in the Korean War.  He was quite bitter about being called back to war after serving in Europe and I think what he saw in both conflicts led him to question all the beliefs that had been instilled in him as a child. We were sitting in my grandparents’ den and granddad asked my dad, “Art, when you were in the foxholes and the Koreans were shooting at you did you pray to God?”  My dad answered, “Mr. Mooney, I figured any God that would send me to the hell I experienced in Europe and then send me to Korea to experience it all over again at the ripe old age of 35 wasn’t worth praying to.”  All I remember after that was a deadly silence that settled over the room.

As they grew older, my grandparents could not travel to the new church so they started going to a store front mission EUB church nearer their house in Glendale.  As a young teenager I loved going to that church.  It was fire and brimstone and stand on the third verse. Every week the minister would ask for people to come forward and testify.  I remember one ancient old man who stood up on his canes and said, “I used to be a Lutheran but now I am a Christian!”  

I started having my doubts in college and attending UC Berkeley in the early 60s put an end to any religious aspirations I might have had. Also, the rigorous scientific training I received while completing my degree in physics caused me to doubt anything one could not see or validate scientifically.  

As I said earlier, between my third and fourth year I worked on the Apollo program for NASA at Aerojet General.  There was another intern from Cal Tech and we were talking about religion and discussing the fact that in those days they made you fill out a form designating a religious preference when you registered for classes. He was from Idaho and lived in a town with a lot of Mormons.  He stated that Mormon girls would go to great lengths to convince you to convert to Mormonism.  I doubt this was true but when asked for a religious preference he answered jokingly, “Mormons.”  But the joke was on him. For four years he was bombarded by letters, calls and visits from Mormon missionaries trying to convince him to rejoin the flock. 

My wife and I married in 1964 in a high episcopal church that her mother attended.  Before the wedding with had to meet with the priest and he asked us, “What do you think makes a good marriage?”

Being fresh out of Berkeley and full of myself I answered, “Intellectual compatibility.” 

He frowned and said, “I was thinking more of the love of Christ.”

“Oh yeah, that too.”  I said.

During the rehearsal, we were told we could not have the wedding march because it was from A Midsummer Night’s dream and celebrated the marriage of Titania to an ass.

Susan said, “If the shoe fits….”

Also, two of my best friends, Iranian Jewish brothers, wanted to throw rice and the priest said no because it was a Pagan ritual.  Really?  Sometimes religion just seems so silly. 

When I was working at Camosun College in Victoria, B.C., the departmental secretary was a born again Christian.  I made the mistake of sharing my childhood history with her and she assumed we were cut from the same cloth.  One day I could not get the duplicating machine to work and I asked her for help.  She came over and laid her hands on the machine, closed her eyes and intoned, “Lord Jesus, help Larry to do his work and repair this machine.”

Somewhat stunned, I pushed the start button and, you guessed it, it worked. She winked at me and said, “You and I know the power of prayer, don’t we?”

My last experience with Jesus came in 1986 when my wife asked me if I remembered the last time we had spent more than a weekend alone without our kids.  “Well,” she said, “it was in 1967, before our oldest was born.”

“Ok,” I said, knowing something was coming.

“We are going to take a two week trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico.” Our oldest was to stay at home and the younger was to go to a basketball camp.

“Why Santa Fe?” I asked.

“I don’t know, we just are.”

When we were first married I used to scoff at these decisions based on her intuitions but over the years I have learned that she is almost always right about what we need to do.  She has said on the ship of life she is the rudder and I am the motor although I sometimes feel like the bilge pump.  So we flew to Albuquerque and landed at night. The next morning I got up and looked out on the west mesa and thought, “My God, this is where I belong.”

As we drove north toward Santa Fe the feeling got stronger.  The next day we were downtown when my back started to hurt. I had injured my back seriously playing Rugby in College and every so often it would flare up and I would be incapacitated.  As the pain intensified I told my wife, “I am going back to the motel to lie down. Call me when you want to come back.”

On the way to the car I passed the Cathedral of St. Francis.  I don’t know what came over me but I said to myself, “You are 43 and you have never sat in a Catholic church.” 

Growing up in the Evangelical United Brethren church we were taught that these were havens of evil and not places to enter so deciding to challenge this absurdity, I went in and sat in a pew.  As I sat there I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the saints, the architecture and the knowledge that this lineage had been around for almost 2000 years.  I sat there and soaked it up for about 30 minutes and when I stood up the pain was gone.  And I never even saw the Devil – disappointing.

The next day we went to the Sanctuario in Chimayo and the same thing happened.  Afterword we went to a small shop where my wife bought me a small milagro shaped in the form of a human back.  I have never had a serious problem with my back since that trip.  

We had been trying to buy the house we were renting for years but the landlady kept changing her mind and we had given up.  My wife suggested we also buy a house milagro to help us find another house to buy.  

When we returned to Canada I immediately went to the local bank and was getting cash out of the machine when I heard a familiar voice call my name.  It was the landlady.  Nervously I touched the house milagro in my pocket.

“Larry, I want to sell you the house.”

I said, “I don’t think I have enough money for a decent down payment.”

“I don’t care,” she said.

So we bought it.

At that point we decided, “Someday we are going to move to Santa Fe.  We are both going to be in private practice in a little adobe office with a portal out front.”

We started going to Seattle for Jungian training and analysis in the early 90s.  At some point we decided we wanted to live there and my wife moved to Seattle in 1995.  I spent 3 more years at the College where I was teaching until I was ready for early retirement.  We tried to get things moving in Seattle but it never really came together.  So we said, “Let’s just go to Santa Fe. That is where we belong.”  

It was very interesting to watch the responses of our friends and colleagues.  Most could not understand why I would leave a secure teaching position with a good salary and great benefits as well as a nice little private practice for a place with no prospects in sight.  I would reply, “I don’t know.  I just have to.”

I added one caveat.  “We have to begin in Albuquerque because that is where the jobs are.”  She agreed, sort of.  She went down and found us a great place up in the hills outside of Albuquerque. Then, because fate likes to play tricks, I got a job in Santa Fe and had to commute every day.  A little over a year later we moved to Santa Fe.

I eventually quit that job and we are both in private practice in a little adobe with a portal out front.  I guess Jesus was watching on that first trip.

The last remnant of my Christian heritage sits in my garage covered by a blue tarp.  On one of my aunt’s trips to visit relatives in Michigan, a cousin took her to a vacated church where her father had preached.  As she looked around, her cousin said, “That is the pulpit from which your father preached his first sermon.” Overcome with emotion she asked if he would ship it to her.  When she moved from her home she gave it to me.  My wife does not want it inside the house but I told her we’d better not get rid of it because, you guessed it, Jesus is watching.

As I left Christianity behind I longed for some philosophy that would fill the need I had for something bigger than myself.  The first was Yoga.

A Hopeless Case

In the early 70’s I was working as the treatment director of a small residential center for preadolescent children on Vancouver Island. I had recently graduated with a Ph.D. in Child Psychology and was a firm believer in the behaviorist school of psychology.  As you may know, behaviorism holds that we are shaped by our environment and anything invisible to the human eye is not worth talking about.  My wife, Susan Riley, who had a great respect for the mysteries of life, would sometimes recount tales of extraordinary events to me and my favorite response was, “That’s not physically possible.”

In addition to working at the center, I was teaching at the University of Victoria and running around North America giving talks and doing my best to become well known in the behaviorist community.  Fueled by copious amounts of caffeine and putting work before my family, my health and the activities that brought me joy, I seemed to be achieving my goal. I felt quite full of myself.  

The first warning I received regarding the folly of this adventure came from the nurse at the center who said to me, “If you don’t slow down, you will be dead by the time you are forty.”  I was thirty at the time.  I remember one of the teachers at the center giving her class the assignment of writing a short book in the form of “Dick and Jane.” One of the kids entitled his, “See Larry Run.”  In the book were several pages of stick figures. One was pictured with a coffee cup in his hand and the words at the bottom of the page said, “See Larry Drink Coffee. See Larry Run.  Run Larry, Run.”

One morning while I was sitting at home grading papers, drinking coffee and preparing to dash off to work, I was instantly incapacitated by a blinding pain in my chest.  I crawled to the phone, contacted my doctor’s office and was told to immediately drive to the hospital which was about a half-mile away.  When I got there I was put in a bed and connected to a heart monitor.  I, as well as everyone else, thought I was having a heart attack.  As I lay there suffering from excruciating pain, I had a thought that I previously would not have believed I was capable of considering.  I thought, “If I am going to be in this kind of pain for very long, I want to die.”  At the moment I finished this thought, a voice inside my head said, “Stop drinking coffee, spend more time with your family and study Jung, Yoga and mysticism.”  

“Of course,” I answered.

After numerous tests, it was discovered that I did not have a heart condition but that I was suffering from gallstones and a jaundiced gall bladder.  Rather than a traditionally masculine condition caused by overwork, dedication to achievement and general disregard for my own body in service of some greater calling, I was suffering from a condition, according to my nurse, that usually was associated with the words fat, forty, fertile and female.  

Being the rational, masculine achiever that I was, I soon dismissed the voice inside my head as part of a delusional thought process caused by the pain.  The next evening I was again visited by the excruciating pain associated with a stone passing through the bile duct. Uncharacteristically, and with great prodding from Susan, I decided this was a sign and that I needed to pay attention.  In this experience, as in many other significant changes in my life, she has had the wisdom to know what was best for me when I did not.

So I gave up coffee, stopped traveling and began to study Jung and Yoga.  After surgery to remove the gall bladder I also began to experience extraordinary events.  I began to practice astral traveling, experienced precognitive dreaming and generally saw myself as a rather extraordinary fellow.  

One my favorite things to do was to attend yoga workshops on Saltspring Island led by John Robbins.  John was a great hatha yoga teacher and had spent some time at Yashodhara Ashram studying with Swami Radha.  I always left these workshops feeling very healthy, happy and centered.  This feeling would usually last until I had to face the realities of marriage, children, work or a ride back to Victoria on the B.C. Ferries.  

It was at one of these weekends that I had an experience that would change my life.  John asked us to sit in a meditative pose and then played a record of a woman chanting.  I later learned the woman was Swami Radha.  As she chanted, I began to see myself sitting on a large round circle on top of a hill overlooking a lake.  Across the lake was a snow covered mountain.  Later, I was transported to the other side of the lake and looking back, saw a beach with an A frame and other smaller buildings.  When I recounted this vision to Susan she gasped and said, “I had a dream about that same place!”  

Wanting to make sense of this, we discussed our respective experiences with Elaine Griff, our hatha yoga teacher in Victoria.  We drew a picture for her and as she examined it she began to smile and said, “That’s Yasodhara Ashram. The circle is the foundation for the temple.”  Knowing that this was an important sign in our lives we decided to attend an upcoming workshop with Swami Radha, Life Seals.  Little did I know what was in store for me.  

We arrived at the workshop and at some level I knew that something big was going to happen for me.  In a nutshell, Swami Radha cut right to the quick.  What was exposed would be called, in psychoanalytic terms, a raging phallic narcissist.  I won’t go into the details, but the key words here would be, “It’s all about me.”  At the end of the workshop, I approached Swami Radha and asked her, “Would you work with me?”  Her response was one of the most painful but truthful pieces of information I have ever received. 

In her lovely German accent she said to me, “I think you have been lying for so long, you no longer know the truth.  I think perhaps you are a hopeless case.” These words were not music to a narcissistic ear.  I was shattered.  I lost about ten pounds over the next two weeks and began the process of manufacturing all the rationale necessary to convince myself, and anyone else who would listen, that she was a charlatan.  In retrospect, everything I have accomplished in my life since then probably began at that moment. Most importantly, I believe my 60 year relationship with Susan would have never survived me had Swami Radha not uttered those words.  

One of my favorite concepts from Jungian psychology is the “wisdom of the psyche.”  Over the next year my psyche worked overtime and forced me to see more and more how correct her assessment of me had been.  At the end of that year Susan and I went to the ashram for a visit and all I could say to Swami Radha when I met her was, “We’re doing really well.”  It was as though I had to make a report to my probation officer before I could even say hello or offer up the customary box of Black Magic Chocolates.   

In the following years I had many experiences with Swami Radha but I feel it is only now as I am in my eighth decade on the planet that I grasp their significance.  Looking back, I think I wasn’t ready for her teachings the way Susan was.  I believe that following a spiritual path requires complete surrender. I was not ready to surrender.  I still needed to hold onto the illusion that I was in charge of my life.  Even though my experiences with her were limited, I would like to share some of them with you.  They were profound for me, have influenced me greatly and, I hope, exemplify her ability to be amazingly insightful, brutally honest, incredibly caring and delightfully funny, sometimes all in the same moment.  

I remember being at a Straight Walk workshop listening to Swami Radha when she looked into my eyes.  At that moment I felt an incredible stirring in my heart and a wonderful feeling of well-being.  I asked her if she had done that to me. She replied, “Ja, I give you a little light.  Most times people don’t notice it.  You know, the only things that are really important here are the light and the mantra.”

Stunned, I asked, “But what about all the stǖrm und drang, the tears, the confessions and so on?”

“Oh Ja,” she said.  “That is the entertainment. If I don’t do that, you don’t come and pay the money for the workshop.”  

I never really knew if she meant it or was just having some fun with us. 

On another occasion I decided to ask her about the experiences I was having. As I told her about astral traveling, visiting other people’s dreams, precognitions and other paranormal events, she listened attentively and then asked, “Do you ever forget to take out the garbage?”

Taken aback, I responded, “Uh….yes.”

“Are you ever unpleasant with your children?”

“Yes,” I replied sheepishly.

“Do you ever fight with your wife?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “Why don’t you work on those things and let these other things go?  Anyone can do those things you talk about but very few can be really good husbands and fathers.”

So I did.  I have never missed a garbage day since.  As for my relationships with my wife and children, it has taken a lot longer to reach the point where I believe I have successfully integrated Swami Radha’s advice.  

From the beginning, I noticed that she treated people differently.  In workshops I sometimes felt like she had it in for me.  Other people who would whine, complain and generally demonstrate what I, in my wisdom, considered a low level of consciousness were not confronted at all.  After one particularly painful encounter I was feeling aggrieved so I decided to ask her about this.   “Swami Radha,” I asked, “why are you so tough on me while at the same time you let some people in the group off easy?”  

“Ja, I only give you what you can take.”

The incredible gift behind this statement only became clear to me later in my studies of Aikido. My instructor, after being asked why he never praised us but only approached us to correct, replied that in the East, to be corrected by one’s teacher is a great honor.  If the teacher does not think you are worthy, you will be ignored.  When Swami Radha said she gave me only what I could take, she was paying me a great compliment, offering me a great gift and, I hope, was telling me that I was not such a hopeless case after all.  

After fifty years of working in the helping profession, the value of this gift has become clear.  As a helper, I must have a high standard of self-awareness or else I will project my own unconscious complexes and insecurities onto those who I am supposed to be helping.  I must be willing to take all that is given me by my teachers. In essence, those of us who consider ourselves “helpers” must first clear our own psyches before meddling in the psyches of others.  Leo Buscaglia captured this concept perfectly in one of his videos by quoting a Zen monk who said to him, “Don’t walk through my mind with your dirty feet.”  Those of us who want to help others walk through this world with joy and purpose must first cleanse our own feet.  

Swami Radha loved to point out the symbolic meaning of one’s actions and appearance.  Once, when giving a talk with David Bohm at the Victoria YMCA, she was talking about the ways in which we communicate who we are without even knowing.  She was talking about clothes and asked, “What is the symbolic meaning, for example, of someone whose clothes are all brown?” Pondering this, I casually looked down and saw brown shoes, brown socks, brown pants, brown belt and a brown shirt.  I don’t know if she meant this for me but it certainly had an effect and perhaps explains my annual purchase of at least one Tommy Bahama Hawaiian shirt.  

On another occasion Susan and I were sitting in the ashram dining room eating with her and a friend of ours.  At the end of the meal, our friend casually cupped his hand and collected the crumbs on the table in front of him and brushed them onto the floor. 

“Look!” she exclaimed.  “Look how you have just created work for someone else with your thoughtlessness.”  She never pulled punches if she thought you could take it.

I think it was very hard for her to carry all the projections and expectations that were laid upon her by all of us.  She once told me this was the hardest part of her work and actually revealed that she wasn’t sure how long she could continue to do her work since it took such a toll on her.  I remember one particularly frustrating moment at a workshop when she sighed and said, “When are you boys going to stop projecting your mother complexes all over me?”

I think this burden weighed heavily upon her and at one point she told Susan, who was planning to go to graduate school in order to become a counselor, “Do you really want to spend your life sitting in a room with someone who is projecting all over you?” 

Fortunately, Susan’s answer was yes and she has had a very successful career and has many grateful clients to show for it. This question reveals the difficulty Swami Radha experienced while helping us travel further down the road of awareness and enlightenment. 

On another occasion she talked about the ridiculous expectations of many of her followers and students.  It was particularly curious to her that many could not reconcile the fact that an enlightened being could have a jones for Black Magic chocolates.  It also baffled her that people in workshops would be upset by the fact that this guru would have to take breaks in order to attend to bodily functions. Apparently she should have been above such mundane needs.   Fortunately for us, she never stopped her work and, I believe, is working still, even after her passing.

I can give one example of this.  Over the 80s and 90s our contact with the Ashram diminished but our appreciation for Swami Radha and the Ashram did not.  After Swami Radha passed and in the year of the Ashram’s 40th Anniversary, we returned.  I decided to do a weekend program at the Ashram which I translated as “What am I going to do with the rest of my life.”  At the time I was working at a job I did not particularly like and wanted a change but was unclear what that change should be.  

Although we were in a location where cell phones should not have worked, on the day before I was to begin the workshop I received a hostile, angry message from one of the administrators at my work. So I began my workshop at this peaceful, loving Ashram with hatred and anger in my heart. 

We began on Friday night and I hardly slept.  In the morning I went to the temple and sat in seiza as we began to chant.  About ten minutes into the chanting, with my thoughts churning about the phone call, I started to heat up.  Soon I was sweating profusely and feeling light headed.  At some point I lost consciousness and my head fell to floor. I awoke suddenly to Swami Radha’s voice saying loudly, “You can’t evolve spiritually and change your life while you are angry at the same time!”  Stunned, I moved to a chair and recovered my senses and began chanting again.  

When the chanting was finished I approached the leader and recounted my experiences.  He advised me to do the workshop but let the focus be finding the meaning of that experience.  So I did and the workshop changed from “What am I going to do” to “Who am I going to be” for the rest of my life.  Many changes came about as a result of that workshop and, once again, they began on the foundation of the Temple.

When the temple that Swami Radha worked so hard to build burned to the ground a few years ago, I was struck with horror but also realized that nothing is permanent and the experiences I had involving the temple are still with me.  All of us who have been blessed by Swami Radha and the Ashram now have to help in our own way to rebuild the temple.  Swami Radha always trusted the divine to provide for her in times of need and it never failed her.  I trust that the same will be true for the temple rebuild and for all of us who have been touched by her. 

Swami Radha is gone now and I regret that I was not more mature when I knew her.  I am sorry that in many ways I was a little boy and not the man I am today. Looking back, I believe she was the most enlightened person I have ever met and she may have saved my life both figuratively and actually.  In the years I knew her, I heard many of her students referring to her respectfully and endearingly as Mataji.  I never used this term because I never really felt I deserved to use it.  I had never really surrendered to her. 

I don’t know what happens after death.  Are we are reborn?  Do we move to another plane?  Does Saint Peter meet us at the Pearly Gates?  All I know is that I want to meet her again.  I will be ready this time.  Thank you Mataji.  

During the time we were involved with Swami Radha, we were so enthralled by the practice of Yoga we began to train as yoga instructors at the local YMCA.  I felt somewhat out of place in this endeavor as I was the only man in the training program and I am very inflexible (in so many ways).  On one occasion we were doing a posture and the instructor said, “Where do you feel the effect of this posture?”  No one answered and she said, “In your ovaries.” I said, “I don’t feel a thing.” She said, “I have a special asana for you.  It is called the Steer.”  If you know how a bull becomes a steer, you know the meaning of this communication. No more funny comments from me.

But I persevered and one day I was approached by the program director.  She said that there was a class, Yoga for Teenage Girls that needed an instructor. Apparently several teachers had tried to lead this class but had become so frustrated by the girls they had left in tears.  The director said she had heard I was a child psychologist and would really appreciate it if I would try to teach it. So I did.

The course was taught in the small chapel and the first day I walked in I was greeted by six very attractive young women who probably saw me as their next victim.  As I began teaching the class they would talk to each other and generally act out.  After the second class I was so frustrated I sat down and said, “I am volunteering to teach this class.  I am not getting paid.  Do you want to do Yoga or not?”

In Aikido we talk about and practice getting into harmony with your attacker.  I had not experienced Aikido yet but I decided to follow this path with the girls. They said they wanted to do Yoga so I told them to bring their favorite music the next week and we would do Yoga to the music.  So the next week we did Yoga to heavy metal, Jesus music and crappy pop. They loved it.  They started to warm up to me and fortunately whenever I started to feel sexually attracted to one of them I could look up to the picture on the wall and be reminded that Jesus was watching, even in the Yoga class.

Eventually we started having a little discussion group at the end of the class and they would share hopes and fears and problems they were having.  All in all it was a wonderful experience and for years after, some of the girls would come to my office at the College just to talk.

Japanese Culture and Aikido

At some point I realized that Yoga was not the path for me.  I was drawn to Japanese culture and began to investigate Zen.  My first encounter with Japanese culture came when I was 11 years old and I started working for my father.  My father was a wholesale florist whose business was located in the middle of two square blocks known as the L.A. Flower market.  As I said earlier, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday he would get up at about 2 in the morning, eat breakfast and go to work.  On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday he would not get up until 5.  I would go with him and work at the shop doing menial tasks on Saturdays. Later, during holidays and summer vacation I would work full time at the shop. The main thoroughfare was Wall St so I can say I grew up working on Wall St.!

There were many other wholesale florists on the street as well as two large open markets where wholesalers and growers would bring their flowers to sell to retailers and route runners who would call on retailers who did not come in to the markets.  About half of the wholesalers and a lot of growers were Japanese Americans.  My dad was very highly respected by them.  During the war, when the Japanese were moved off the coast into internment camps, his company took over the running of the Japanese American flower market.  Many Japanese Americans were robbed of their businesses and possessions during the war by unscrupulous individuals and companies but when the Japanese Americans returned, my father’s company returned all property and material to them.  

After the war there were two Markets, one almost completely peopled by Japanese Americans and one almost completely peopled by European Americans.  When they amalgamated, the Japanese would only accept one person as the director, my father.  So I had a lot of contact with people of Japanese ancestry and came to love the culture and the food.  However, when I went away to University, I lost touch with that culture.  

In the early 70s while still involved in Yoga, I realized that I really wanted to learn a martial art.  I had been a pretty wimpy kid and relied mostly on my wits to avoid fights with other kids.  I also made sure that every year I had a really big, tough kid as a friend.  Heaven help the kid that picked on me. So I figured it was time to get a handle on male violence and to be able to fight my own battles.  At one point in this search I had a dream that seemed really strange to me.  I was in a basement fighting the guys who had picked on me in high school.  For some reason I was wearing a black skirt, which seemed very strange.

I visited many martial arts schools and dojos but it seemed to me there was a lot of ego involved and that a lot of the people teaching were pretty nasty guys obsessed with competition and bravado.  In 1975 I attended the Transpersonal Psychology conference in Asilomar and saw that there was a morning workshop in Aikido, a martial art I had never heard of.  The instructor was Bob Frager, a psychologist and head of the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology. I later learned he had studied Aikido in Japan with the founder himself.  He has written humorously and informatively about this experience.  And, he was wearing a black skirt.

After two mornings of practice, I was hooked.  I returned to Victoria and at my first day back at the University of Victoria, I opened the campus newspaper and was surprised to see an article about a young man from Hawaii who was going to begin teaching Aikido on the following Monday.  This could be seen as an occurrence of what Carl Jung refers to as “Synchronicity,” two or more seemingly unrelated events that occur simultaneously and are perceived by the observer as carrying a message that would only have meaning in the psyche of that person.

I began studying with Gary Mols Sensei and he did a great job of teaching us physical Aikido as well as presenting Aikido philosophy in an understandable and useful manner.  I had been practicing Aikido for about a year when Gary Sensei announced that we were going to Vancouver to participate in a demonstration that the new Japanese sensei there was giving.  We arrived at the gym and all went into the change room together.  After changing into our dogis we proceeded upstairs and the demonstration began.  We all demonstrated but Kawahara sensei’s demonstration was the most amazing and terrifying.  I had never seen such power and precision. After the demonstration we went back to the change room, changed into our street clothes and were preparing to leave for lunch together. As Kawahara sensei was getting dressed I noticed he was looking around and saying something in Japanese to one of his students.  I realized that he was looking for his socks and I looked down to my feet I realized I had put on his black socks and not my own. Terrified, I left the gym and even after many years together as student and teacher, never told him about this.

Kawahara sensei made many visits to Victoria and I consider him one of my best teachers ever.  I wanted so much to learn from him that I even studied Japanese so I would better understand him.  On one occasion, he, my friend Gary Anderson and I sat in the wheelhouse of Gary’s fishing boat drinking scotch and carrying on a conversation about life itself.  At one point I asked, “Sensei, you drink, you smoke and you like to consort with women. Is this good for you?”

He replied, “Not good for body, but good for spirit!” Gary and I both erupted in raucous laughter.

After our first summer camp with Kawahara sensei he gave a little speech. As we were sitting in seiza completely exhausted but filled with the joy seven days of intense practice had brought us, Kawahara sensei began to speak in Japanese. Ishiyama Sensei translated.

“You Canadians are the worst Aikido students I’ve ever seen in the world. I thought Americans were bad but you are worse.”  Imagine the shock we all felt as we were being ruthlessly criticized after a long week of intense practice. What we didn’t realize was that this is a traditional Asian practice used when training students.  It keeps one from becoming inflated and in fact is a compliment.  If he did not have hope for us as students he would not criticize us.  So every year after practice Kawahara sensei would rip us up one side and down the other and we got used to it. In fact, we sort of looked forward to it.  So imagine our surprise when after four or five years we sat down at the end of the practice and waited for Kawahara sensei to tell us how terrible we were.  On this occasion all he said was, “Your Aikido is getting better.”  It was like the heavens had opened up and God himself had blessed our Aikido.

Aikido has given me many gifts. One of these is body awareness. One form is awareness of my own body and a sense of where it is in space and perhaps more importantly, where it is in relation to others and the effect my presence has on others.  The lack of this ability in others is painfully obvious every time I am negotiating the aisles at Whole Foods.  Another important lesson is that my Ki, or life energy, must flow out ahead of me, even if I am moving backwards.  This is true in both a physical and psychological sense.

The most dangerous person in an Aikido dojo is a beginner. There are two reasons this is true. First, a beginner is often so determined to do a technique correctly and with force that they may ignore the limitations of a partner who will be injured if a technique is applied too forcefully or rapidly.  One of the major lessons in Aikido is to be aware of partner’s ability.   Secondly, beginners are so focused on technique that they lose awareness of their own body and bang into others and also sometimes throw partner into other practitioners. According to Ishiyama sensei, this is not a problem in Japan.  Even beginners have the well-being of those around them in mind when practicing.  Growing up in close proximity to others and in a culture that stresses awareness of how one’s behavior affects others leads to a sensitivity many of us here in North America lack. 

Ishiyama sensei, a practitioner and teacher of Morita therapy, says this also has its disadvantages. While we are focused on self-development and individuation but often fall short in our assessment of our effect on others, according to him, the Japanese are likely to avoid individual achievement and individuation in favor of conformity and group identification.  In his mind, the middle path involves development of self and a development of our recognition of our effect on others.  This is very similar to the basic tenets of Naikan, a school of Japanese psychology.

One of the most difficult aspects of aging is the limitations that my body is experiencing.  I gave up physical Aikido several years ago when my arthritic joints just refused to cooperate.  I notice that I sometimes lose balance or bump into doors, something I never would have done in the past.  I hope I am still doing mental and spiritual Aikido in spite of my body limitations.  What good is a martial practice if it does not transfer to daily life?  Really, how many times in a day is someone with a wooden sword going to attack me?  And yet I can be sure that every day will bring interpersonal and psychological challenges.

When I was first studying Aikido, I began to look into the martial philosophy of Budo.  I realized that for the Samurai, an honorable life meant serving one’s lord faithfully and without question. Dying in the service of the lord in battle was the most honorable act one could perform.  As a young professional with a wife and two children in modern Canadian culture, this didn’t seem very practical so I set about trying to translate this philosophy of ancient Japan into a way of life that was applicable to me, now.  I realized that if I considered integrity and truth as my “lord” then my ego, not me, would have serve those concepts and, in fact, may have to die in their service. This approach to life turned out to be a lot harder than I imagined but I hope it still guides my behavior today.

One of the greatest gifts I was given in Aikido was the opportunity to confront my own fear and to finish something to which I had committed myself regardless of my fear.  On one occasion a Japanese Zen monk stopped by our dojo in Victoria and gave a talk after practice.  He asked the question, “What are the three things you must do to become proficient in Aikido?”  Some of us answered, “Practice.”   He said, “Yes, that is one.”  Students then offered numerous other suggestions to which he answered “No” repeatedly. When no more answers were forthcoming he said, “The answers are practice, practice, practice.”

I did not always want to go to practice and sometimes I would have to drag myself to the dojo. Sometimes fear and anxiety would stalk me as I stepped onto the mats and I would want to make an excuse and leave.  But I almost always went and I always stayed.  Five minutes into practice my spirit would be soaring and often at the end of class, soaking wet with sweat and joints aching I would think, “My God, it is good to be alive!”

I used to be a very anxious person.  I think I come by it naturally since my mother, Virginia, was extremely anxious.  I think her philosophy was that if you worry about it enough it won’t happen or if does you will be ready.  Since most of what she worried about didn’t happen she was reinforced for her worry.  See, it works.  I worry and it doesn’t happen.  

I once asked my supervisor why I was seeing so many clients with anxiety.  He answered, "The world is a scary place.”  I said, “For this I am paying $170.00/hr?”  I remember hearing Chuck Yeager being interviewed about a scene in the movie “The Right Stuff.”  He was asked if he was afraid when the plane he was testing went into a death spiral.  He answered, “No, fear just gets in the way of the job to be done.”  

Once, when I was feeling anxious about a high-school math test I asked my dad the same question about the battles he fought in Germany and Korea.  He had a similar response.  He said that no anxiety means you are not paying attention, too much anxiety is crippling but some anxiety is good because it forces you to focus on the job to be done.  Although, he did say that the one thing that really scared him was seeing the Germans advancing across snow covered fields in their white camouflage outfits.  He said on one occasion he thought he was watching ghosts advance against his position.  

I knew I finally had a pretty good handle on anxiety and fear after an experience I had a few years ago at the local hospital.  I started feeling a pain in my chest one evening and after it became quite intense I drove to the hospital and was admitted to the ER immediately.  I was given an EKG, administered nitroglycerine and put through the tests given to heart attack victims.  I was informed I had suffered a heart attack and my life was going to change.

Everyone left the room eventually except one male nurse.  We began to talk and he said he and his wife, also a nurse, wanted to move to Vancouver, Canada.  I proceeded to tell him the best way to do that and we had a long discussion about the Canadian medical system. At some point he asked, “Do you have a spiritual practice?” Surprised, I said, “Sort of.  I have studied Aikido for many years and it is the basis of how I live my life.  Why do you ask?”

He replied, “this is not how people who have suffered a heart attack usually behave.  You are not depressed, not upset, not angry and you don’t even seem worried.”  I answered, “What good would that do?”  

Eventually, after three days of tests it was discovered that my heart was perfectly healthy but had somewhat of an unusual but not dangerous rhythm.  My favorite experience was the treadmill.  As we reached the final stages and I was gasping for breath wondering if I would be able to finish it, the tech said, “Keep going Larry.  Keep going.”  The she exclaimed, “Don’t follow the light, don’t follow the light Larry.”  After, she said, “You have the most boring normal heart I have ever seen.”

Pondering what the nurse had said, I tried to understand why anxiety no longer seemed to be a real issue for me.  I decided it was Aikido that had helped me lose that burden.  A side effect of this experience was that it brought my mortality to the forefront and I had to decide what I needed to complete before I leave the planet.  This book is one of those things.  

I believe the discipline required for conscientious practice taught me to face my fears, overcome my own laziness and anxiety and complete tasks because I had committed to completing them.  Striving to live with integrity was the greatest gift Aikido gave to me.  It has become the foundation of how I try to respond to every challenge I face in life.  I do not always succeed and fear, laziness and negativity are always lurking.

A funny example of the difficulty of translating ideas across cultures was told to my wife by Dr. Hugh Keenleyside who was a member of the Canadian delegation to Japan before WW2 began. Apparently the Japanese had just begun to celebrate Christmas and as Dr. K. entered a Japanese department store he beheld a large, beautifully decorated Christmas tree.  At the top was a large replica of Santa - nailed to a cross.

I studied Japanese for two years at the University of Victoria.  The two people I practiced with most often were my sensei and friend, Ishu Ishiyama and my colleague, Michiko. Japanese is very different from English and I remember some humorous experiences.

Michiko told me she was once discussing American politics with a class when she first began teaching in Canada.  At some point the class broke into raucous laughter and she asked them why.  They told her she had just said she wanted to discuss the difference between Canadian parliamentary elections and the American plesidential erection.  I will forever be grateful to her for teaching me a response to, “O genki deska?” a greeting roughly translated as, “How are you?” She told me a good response would be, “O kage sama de.”  “Fine, because of you.”  How much richer than, “OK”.

On another occasion I climbed the stairs to Ishu’s house and asked politely, “May I come up into your house?”  He laughed and said, “You just asked if you could throw up in my house.”  He once told me that I could study for years and I would never completely understand Japanese.  One reason is that they leave a lot out that you have to fill in with cultural content, much of which is unknown to westerners. Sometimes the subject or object is left out of a sentence.  Verbs are sometimes omitted and can be negated at the end of a sentence if the speaker senses discomfort in the listener regarding the content of the sentence.  So a sentence might be, “As for Johnny, a good boy he is….not.”  The other reason Ishu said it would be difficult to ever understand Japanese completely is that the language, by its very structure, serves the purpose of hiding meaning from foreigners. There is also the problem that there are really two Japanese languages, one for men and one for women.

The importance of syllabic stress and context in the language was demonstrated by one of my teachers who gave this example.  Mr. Yamada visits Mr. Tanaka.  Ms. Tanaka answers the door and says, “Mr. Tanaka is not home. Would you like to come in and wait for him?”   He said this in three ways, all of which sounded exactly the same to me.  Apparently the first phrasing meant indeed he would be home soon.  The second meant he was away and you shouldn’t really come in but politeness requires me to ask you to come in.  The third meant either he was dead or was never coming back. Japanese people interpret these differences with ease. We, of the literal English language, do not.

This teacher also told a story about arriving in San Diego from Japan.  He said that in Japan when you are first asked if you want something to eat or drink you refuse it and say something to the effect of, “No I couldn’t possibly eat a bite.” You refuse a second time then grudgingly accept and eat every morsel or you insult your host. So, arriving at his host residence looking haggard and thirsty in the California heat, he was asked, “Would you like a drink?”  “No thank you,” he said.  His host said “Ok” and began to orient him to his new home.  He thought, “What is wrong with this person?  Why does he not ask me again?  Who are these impolite barbarians?”

This penchant for politeness and indirectness often confuses us westerners and our missing the hidden meaning in the communication makes us seem stupid or rude.  Soon after Ishiyama Sensei began teaching Aikido he realized we did not have the same standard of cleanliness that he did.  One night after class he asked us, “Would you like to wash the mats now?”  We had already opened the fridge in the dojo and started to drink beer so we decided we wanted to do it at another time.  He later told me he was astounded at this response as it was not a request but a command.  A Japanese person would know that.  We did not.  When I arrived for the next practice, the fridge was gone and buckets and rags were set out so we could clean the mats before practice.  He never had to ask again.

All in all, the influence of Aikido, Japanese culture and Japanese people in my life cannot be overestimated and I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to experience the insights and kindness those experiences afforded me.  Domo Arigato. 

Ishiyama Sensei, Kawawara Sensei and Me

Buddhism

Our annual Aikido summer camp would start on Saturday and by Wednesday we were so exhausted we would only practice for half a day. Full-time practice would resume on Thursday.  One year we were told that a Zen monk from Japan was present in the camp and would lead a meditation at noon on Wednesday.  Those of us who were interested arrived and lined up in two rows kneeling in seiza while Kongo Sensei began the meditation with a loud cry of “Mokso!” which can be roughly translated as “clear your mind.”  He would then walk up and down the lines carrying a large stick (Jo) and if you felt you needed to focus your attention you could bend forward crossing your arms and he would give you a good whack on the shoulders. Kongo sensei, his head shaved and dressed in the flowing robes of the Zen priest was most impressive.

After the meditation we all made our traditional journey to the local pub for lunch, beer and perhaps some pool. When I walked in the door Kongo sensei was bent over the pool table, cigarette hanging from his mouth, pool cue in hand, whiskey glass on the edge of the pool table and a tall blonde hanging from his arm.  I thought, “Now this is a religion I can get into.”

When we returned to Victoria Kongo sensei moved into the home of the Tibetan Lama who lived two houses away from our house. Unfortunately, the Tibetans ate almost all meat and he was getting sick because he was a strict vegetarian. Seeing this, we gave him a portion of our garden and in that small portion he raised the most amazing vegetables in precise lines and perfect symmetry that made our gardening attempts look haphazard and amateurish.  Our neighbors were a bit upset, however, as he liked to fertilize the garden by urinating on it.

Kongo sensei further demolished my preconceived notions about Buddhist priests by showing up one day at our front door in a white leisure suit and a white hat that made him look like the Japanese version of Roddy McDowell’s character in A Clockwork Orange. Susan said, “Kongo sensei, you like Canada don’t you?”  He replied, “I like Canadian women. I have date at disco.”

Kongo sensei gave many lectures in Victoria, usually translated by my friend and Aikido teacher Ishu Ishiyama.  On one occasion he gave a lecture on the Buddhist approach to anger at the University of Victoria.  At the time, my wife and I were separated and I was very angry so I decided to go to the talk to see if the Buddhist approach to anger management could help me. After the two hour talk I was quite sure my anger was under control and I walked peacefully across the campus to my car.  On the way home I started thinking about my situation, conveniently overlooking the fact that I was the person most responsible for being in this place, and started to become angry.  Eventually, I became furious, drove home in a rage and spent an hour yelling and pounding my boken (wooden sword) into my mattress.  It appeared that I hadn’t quite integrated the Buddhist approach to anger management at that time.

My most interesting conversation with Kongo sensei was regarding reincarnation and the effect it had on one’s life. It was a very interesting conversation conducted in his halting English and my halting Japanese.  He maintained that believing in reincarnation very much changed how you lived your life.  His main point was that if one believes that the results of one’s behavior in this life will be carried forward into the next life, one will be more careful and more considerate of others.  Although I’m not convinced reincarnation exists, this still seems like a pretty good way to live.

My wife and I were quite involved in Jungian studies and analysis in Seattle in the 90s.  On one occasion we went to a panel discussion by several practitioners who described how they worked from a Jungian perspective.  The panel included a minister, a catholic priest, a counselor, a Jungian analyst and a Buddhist teacher who was also a psychotherapist. Each of the panelists spoke for about ten minutes describing their work.  The last teacher was the Buddhist and all he said was, “Yes, all of that is true. But in Buddhism we just call it paying attention.” I was smitten and soon began to explore Buddhist philosophy and practices.

I have always been drawn to Zen Buddhism because of its simplicity and its similarity to the philosophy of Aikido. I think I dabble in Buddhism but do not really practice it.  By the end of my life I would like to become a more serious student.  It just seems to be so practical and clean.  My one concern with Buddhism is that I am not sure it deals with what Jung would call the human shadow, our dark side. Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”  Perhaps my thought that this is somewhat contradictory to many of the forms of mindfulness is due to my own lack of understanding but I have had experiences with practitioners of Buddhism who seem to not have a very clear view of their own dark side.  However, it is a wonderful philosophy and a very useful tool.  I wonder why I still cringe when someone tells me their approach to therapy focuses on mindfulness.  I need to look at this. 

One of my most entertaining experiences with Buddhists took place many years ago. When my wife finished her MA we decided to celebrate by spending a week at Rio Caliente outside of Guadalajara.  It was a great place with pools of varying warmth for soaking. The water sprang from underground and at the source was so hot you could burn yourself seriously if you were to step into it. One day a few of the guys decided to hike through the desert and over a hill to a town known as Tala.

We set off early in the morning following the river until, we were told, would see a path that would lead up into the hills and eventually to Tala.  As we trekked on, occasionally we would run into a vaquero on a horse and I, being the only person who spoke Spanish, would ask directions.  After about three hours we were hopelessly lost and one of the guys, a serious student of Buddhism and somewhat of a proselytizer asked me, “Do you really speak Spanish?”  I said that I did but that I had forgotten so much that I could only speak in the present tense.  He said, “In Buddhism we call that enlightenment.”  Unfortunately, when we moved to New Mexico I took courses in Spanish and now I can use the past tenses.  I guess I am no longer enlightened in English or Spanish. 

We finally came upon a huge house in the middle of the desert surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by unsavory looking men with automatic weapons. From a great distance I yelled, “Donde esta Tala?” to one of them.  He raised his hand and pointed in the very direction from which we had come.  "Aya!“ he yelled (There). So we followed the river until we came to a park and I asked a nice young man in Spanish if he would give us a ride in the back of his pickup to Tala.  He said, “Sure man.  I am from San Francisco. No need to speak Spanish.” 

We ate in Tala and then took a taxi back to Rio Caliente.  It was a great day but they never let me forget my inability go get us to Tala.  At the restaurant the Buddhist kept trying to find out what was in the food because he was worried that there might be lard or some other meat product.  Lard in Mexican food?  Are you kidding me?  I was embarrassed that this rich guy from New York was grilling the waitress from a poor Mexican village about her food.  It seemed to me that true mindfulness and loving kindness would require one to eat the food no matter what was in it.  Is it going to kill you to eat some lard and treat the Mexicans with respect rather than grilling them on the purity of their food?  It seemed very insulting to me.

The food at the spa was good but all vegetarian and a lot of the people there were pretty sanctimonious about what they ate.  About 5 days into our stay the Feral Cats were looking pretty tasty so my wife and I jumped into a taxi and rode to Tlaquepaque, an artists’ center not far from Guadalajara.  There we feasted on chicken and beer for lunch and steak and wine for dinner before returning late at night and stumbling to our room.  The next morning the breakfast room was surprisingly empty and the soaking pools were unusually vacant.  We later found out that something had gone wrong with the food and everybody had food poisoning and all were sick in their cabins with the full range of glorious symptoms associated with this disorder.

When people recovered, they asked how we had managed to avoid the plague. I responded, “When you have reached the level of spiritual enlightenment we have, bacteria have no effect on your body.”

Actually it was a wonderful place and the staff were magnificent. One of the visitors who was an English Prof at UBC said he was going to write a novel, “One Hundred Years of Massage.”  I suggested he follow it up with a sequel, “One Hundred Years of Diarrhea.”

A lot of the visitors were Texans and their unabashed extroversion and outspoken manner prompted my wife, a true introvert, to say, “In my next life I am going to be a Texan.” 

It is a sad fact that Guadalajara has become a major battleground for drug cartels and I believe the Spa has now closed.  I hope the wonderful people who worked there are surviving and that perhaps it will open again.  We loved it.

Buddhism still interests me and perhaps I will get off my Butt (or onto it) and find the deeper meaning in this wonderful tradition.

My first great therapy experience

When my wife and I reunited after a 4 month separation in the early eighties I was quite confused. I wanted to see a therapist but being really well known in town I didn’t know who I trusted enough to see. She suggested Alice, a woman she had met in a women’s consciousness raising group.  Alice was sort of the Grand Dame of the lesbian community in town and practiced psychotherapy even though she had very little formal education.  My wife said she was brilliant and that I would like her for that and her keen sense of irreverence.  So I went to see Alice.  Here is our first conversation:

A: Hello Larry.  I must ask you why you came to see me.  I don’t see many men in my practice. Actually, none.

L.  Well, I know every therapist in town and quite frankly I think I could bullshit them all.  My wife doesn’t think I can bullshit you.  

A. Ah.  Tell me, what is your worst fear?

L.  My worst fear is that I might be ordinary.

A.  I have bad news for you.  

We worked together and she was wonderful.  Even though she became a close friend of my wife, she was always objective and helped me realize many insights.  After I stopped seeing her we became friends and colleagues and eventually shared an office. We are still good friends and my wife always stays with her when we are in Victoria.  I am so grateful to have had her in my life.  

Forever Jung

When I was teaching at Camosun College in Victoria, B.C. I was head of the union negotiating committee for one year.  I typed up a proposal for the administration concerning Professional Development.  Not being a good speller I ran a spell check on it. However, in the early days of computers, spell check would run from your cursor forward to the end of the document and my cursor was sitting in front of the first word in the paper.  When we met, the president said he liked the proposal but that for my professional development I would have to go to spelling class.  I had not spell checked the title of the paper and had misspelled “Proffessional.”

But all ended well as I myself was eventually awarded a large PD grant in the early 90s which allowed me to travel to Seattle where I studied Jungian psychology and underwent 5 years of Jungian analysis.  It changed my life forever and I will always be grateful for that grant that had resulted from a paper with a misspelled title. 

My wife, who is a psychotherapist, has always been interested in the ideas of C.G. Jung.  In 1990 when I was looking for a new direction in my life she invited me to accompany her to a program at the University of British Columbia built around a series of 20 half-hour filmed interviews with mythologist Joseph Campbell done by Fraser Boa, a Toronto analyst.  Campbell discussed the meaning of the great myths within Jung’s theoretical formulation.  I was smitten.  At the conclusion of the films I told my wife, “I want to spend the rest of my life doing this work.”  I wasn’t sure what I meant by this comment but I felt something powerful was stirring within me.

The introduction and end of each film was accompanied by a Bach Concerto. So I must have heard the beginning of this piece about 40 times.  After leaving the auditorium, we got into our car, turned on the classical station and lo and behold, the Bach concerto began.  I knew this was a sign that my life was to change forever.

I began a search for mentors which ultimately led me to Seattle where I found a wonderful Jungian analyst, Ladson Hinton.  My wife and I joined an association of Jungian oriented therapists and traveled to Seattle for therapy, supervision and study groups.  All of my work with clients today has its roots in those years in Seattle.  

My therapist and my supervisor in Seattle probably taught me more about doing therapy than any other person, book or course I have ever taken.  One of the best sessions I ever had with Ladson (I still talk to him once each month) involved my guilt about not committing myself to my full time job at the college in Victoria.  I was heading toward early retirement and I was trying to establish myself as a therapist in Seattle.  I was in transition.  

I told my therapist I was feeling guilty about not putting in my hours at the college and the following conversation occurred.

LD:  I am feeling guilty about not spending the whole week at the college during this attempted transition.

T: Do your students mind?

LD:  No, they are fine with it and can get me on the phone or by email.

T:  Do your colleagues mind?

LD:  No, my department operates on a system of seniority and since I am the most senior member, they will all move up when I leave.

T:  What about your dean?

LD:  She is completely supportive.  She is happy that I am following my true calling.

T:  So what you are telling me is that no one really cares about the issue about which you feel guilty.

LD:  Yes.

T:  That is Completely F***ing Nuts!

LD:  I have just finished studying the DSM and I had never seen that diagnosis.

T:  Well there is a new version coming out and they have included this diagnosis.  There is a page just for you.

When I was trying to formulate my future I kept vacillating between moving into adventure and what I considered to be my true calling on the one hand and security and stability on the other.  I had a dream that I was in the Safeway store near our house and the hands on the clock on the wall were spinning madly.  We worked on the dream and the next week he brought in a quote from Jung in German. I read it and it translated to, “Whoever takes the safe way is as good as dead.”  After that I set about changing the direction of my life.  I would not be here doing what I do if it were not for him.

My other mentor in Seattle taught me so many things about therapy it would be hard to put them all down here. The most important was the idea of induction. He said that intuitive, empathic people often experience strong feelings when encountering another person.  He maintained that a field exists between two people and that the unconscious emotions in one person can induce the same feelings in the other person’s unconscious. Therapists can use this tool to notice what they are feeling and use it as an insight into the unconscious feelings of the client.  I find this concept really helpful to clients that are empathic and often have strong feelings they don’t understand when they are around certain people. They are feeling what the other does not or cannot bring up from the unconscious.

On another occasion he drove home the importance of relying on one’s intuition when practicing as a psychotherapist.  He described an experience he had had years earlier.  As he was sitting listening to a young women talk about her difficulties with her father, he became aware of a presence in the corner of the room.  Eventually he realized it was a native American beating on a drum.  Out of nowhere he asked her, “Tell me about the drum.”

Shocked at first, she related a story about her favorite toy as a child, a drum.  At one point her father became enraged and destroyed her drum.  This conversation evolved into a search for the meaning of the drum and eventually led to her becoming an ethnologist who roamed around North America recording the drum songs of different tribes.   

All in all, these two men radically altered my life and the wonderful life I live now is in many ways, a testimony to their skill and caring.  

My Work

“Life is change, how it differs from the rocks.”  The Chrysalids, John Wyndham

My First Real Job

In 1966 I entered graduate school at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota as a student in the Clinical Child Psychology program. This program was primarily test oriented and this did not seem right to me.  I was less interested in how a child was performing or acting and more interested in why. One event in particular sealed my fate in this program.

I was asked to go to a school in Minneapolis to administer a Wechsler Intelligence test.  I arrived at the school and found most of the students were black and poor.  The teacher involved told me the child I was to test had scored below normal on the intelligence tests administered by the school but that she thought the girl was more intelligent than the scores indicated.  

I sat down with Felicia and began to ask her the questions on the exam.  One of the cardinal rules of this sort of testing is that you don’t ask a child why she answered as she did, you just record the answer.  Some questions have general answers that give you full marks.  If you offer a specific answer, you lose points. So when I asked “Where do you get groceries?” and she answered, “Albertsons,” she lost a point.  I couldn’t help myself.  I broke the rule.

“Why Albertson’s?”

“That’s where they take the food stamps.”

Poverty had just lost this girl IQ points.

Then when I showed her a picture of a coat, she identified it as a sweater.  More lost IQ points.  Again, I broke the rule.  We were in the beginning of a Minnesota winter and this little girl was wearing a tattered sweater.  So I asked, “Do you have a coat?”

“No,” she replied looking down.  

When I tallied up the points she indeed had an IQ below normal. When I told the teacher, she said, “I guess I was wrong.”  She put more faith in the test than her own judgement.  Discrimination and poverty had consigned this girl to a limited future and I really wanted no part of this.  

As much as I wanted to work with children, I did not want to do it this way.  I drove back to the Institute and found Harold Stevenson, the chair of the department, and told him I wanted to change programs from Child Clinical to Child Development, a research based program, a program focused on “Why?” Fortunately, there was another student who wanted to move in the other direction so we swapped fellowships and I became a student of developmental psychology and he became a student in the clinical program.  We also became good friends.  

I am particularly thankful to Harold because without his prodding, I would never have heard many of these stories.  At the end of four years of graduate school and after 10 years of university studies I was sick of it all.  I told him I would do my research and finish my Ph.D. after I left Minnesota.  He reached into his drawer and pulled out a sheet with the names of every one of the students who had left without finishing. Next to those who did finish later was a check.  It was a paltry number.  

“But I don’t have time,” I said.

He said, “There are two kinds of theses.  There is the Magnum Opus, a masterpiece of research and a real contribution to the field.  Then there is the kind you are going to do.”  I will ever be grateful for that. That degree opened many doors for me and allowed me the privilege of being a part of so many lives and to have had such rich and instructive experiences.

As I recount the stories I am writing here I feel such gratitude to the students, clients, teachers and children who have shared their lives with me in such a rich manner and to all the people who said to me, “You have got to write these stories down.”  The first time this happened was in 1970.  I had returned to Minneapolis to take my final Ph.D. orals.  We never even talked about the thesis. They just asked to hear more stories about the wild kids at the treatment center where I was serving as treatment director.  Harold, a prolific writer himself said, “You have got to get these stories recorded."  That same year my sister-in-law, Melba Riley told me the same thing on several occasions.  If two people from such different backgrounds found my stories interesting and funny, I thought they must be worth writing down. So here I am all these years later finally getting it together.    

As my graduate school days came to an end, I began to receive inquiries from a number of prestigious universities in the United States, Canada and Europe.  In those heady days of unfettered expansion, graduation from a first class program in child development ensured numerous offers from departments desperate for qualified people.  I had over a dozen offers of employment, but I wanted to work with children as well as teach at a university. Unfortunately, by switching from clinical to developmental psychology, I had eliminated my chances of achieving certification in most states.

Through a series of coincidences, word about my search reached a psychiatrist in Victoria, B.C., Canada who invited me to visit him at the Pacific Centre for Human Development, a residential school for "emotionally disturbed” children. He offered me a job as treatment director and put me in contact with the chair of the University of Victoria Psychology Department who was delighted to have someone from the Minnesota Institute of Child Development in his department as a part-time instructor.  I took the jobs, flew home to finish my degree, and in the fall of 1970 my wife, my two-year-old son and I emigrated to Canada with plans to stay for two years, gather some experience and then return to California.

What I found when I arrived at the Centre was shocking.  The kids were running the place and the staff was barely surviving in an environment of fear and chaos. Bribery and physical force were the two main methods of control.  I wanted to establish a very tight program of behavior modification with strong incentives for academic success and reasonable conduct.  The staff were very resistant and undermining of this program and something drastic had to happen. So one morning I came in and I told the staff, “I am going to demonstrate that this program will work.  I want you to all take the day off and come back at three.”  

They were shocked and I could tell they were expecting to find the building burned down and me dead when they did return.  But I had a devious plan that had nothing to do with Behavior Modification.  After they left I found the two most violent and powerful kids in the school and offered them a deal.  I pulled out two twenty dollar bills and said, “If there are no incidents at the school today, each of you will get one of these at three o’clock.  The kids can do anything they want but there can be no destruction or violence and you can’t tell anyone about this.” 

They agreed and we had a peaceful day.  No other child at that facility would dare to challenge these two.  When the teachers arrived they were stunned to find a school functioning quite well with no violence or destruction.  They bought in and we began a behavior modification program immediately.

It took about six months, but the place began to run smoothly.  It also became evident to me that, while we could affect major change in some children, we were sending them back into the same environment which had produced their behavior in the first place.  I initiated a parent training program and found that education and some introspection helped many of them to become adequate, if not perfect, parents.  I will never forget the gratitude of some of the parents when they were finally able to take their children home.  It was working with the staff and parents that led me to the conclusion that I liked teaching adults as much as working with children.  

After two years at the Centre I was asked to be the Canadian representative at the First International Conference on Behavior Modification in Minneapolis.  In preparation, I distilled all the data we had collected over the previous two years and wrote it up in a report which was eventually published as a chapter in a book summarizing the proceedings.  Among the many fascinating aspects of the data was the fact that children who had been considered unteachable had covered two or three years of math and English in the space of one year.  

How were we able to do this?  As Jean Piaget has said, learning is a fundamental human drive.  If you create an environment in which inquisitiveness is nurtured and rewarded, learning is inevitable. We made education a positive experience for these children by allowing them to work at the level at which they were competent and we rewarded progress, no matter how small.  We also focused considerable attention on their interests.  Every person alive, unless he or she has been completely beaten down in life, has a passion for something.  If you can discover that passion, you can unlock the motivation for learning.  For Alan it was science.  For many of my adult students it has been the desire to raise healthy, happy children, or perhaps to understand their own childhood.  

At the end of my three-year tenure at the Pacific Centre, I had the background I needed to become licensed as a Clinical Psychologist and did so.  I left the Centre, opened a private practice and eventually was offered a job at Camosun College where I taught for 23 years while continuing to carry a light load of clients in private practice.  The two-year commitment became a 28 year commitment until my wife and I moved to Santa Fe, NM in 1998.

I learned so much at the Centre and I realized that a true understanding of developmental psychology can be a powerful clinical tool.  I also had a lot of humorous experiences, some of which I would like to share.

Shortly after I arrived one of the teachers told me the five boys she had in her class were paying no attention to her, physically assaulting her and that she was going to quit if things didn’t change. I had not implemented the program yet so I tried something desperate.  I hauled the kids out about 15 minutes before lunch one day and took them to the activity room.  I said, “We have about 10 minutes before lunch and I am going to challenge you. I am going to take on all five of you and if I am still standing at the end of 10 minutes I want you to promise not to bother your teacher anymore and to be good students.”  

Their eyes widened as they relished the thought of pummeling a senior staff member to death and were a little disappointed when I told them there would be no punches, no nasty stuff below the belt and no biting.  But they agreed.  So I said, “Go!” and they did.  

We went at it for ten minutes and at the end I was still standing, barely.  They were elated and promised to behave as agreed and they did.  I made five good friends that day and we never told anyone.    

The nurse at the school was a wonderful Scottish woman who had seen it all. She had learned her nursing skills in the worst neighborhoods of Glasgow and described herself as a spinster.  She told me that if she was going to have to take care of someone she wanted to get paid for it and marriage salaries were not that great. She was a prankster of the highest order.  I remember showing up to camp and her approaching me with a “special sandwich I made just for you.”  Peanut Butter and cotton balls.  Yuk.  

She used to put pills out on the kitchen counter in the morning and one morning she was going to do a dental inspection so she laid out about 30 pink pills that were intended to highlight dental issues when chewed.  There was one incredibly difficult boy at the center at that time, Donny, and as he entered the kitchen he gathered up all the pills and downed them.  She went ballistic.  She often lectured the kids on the dangers of taking drugs so this was a major affront to her warnings. She grabbed him, hauled him up the stairs, castigating him all the way and then locked him in his room and screamed, “You could die from doing that.”

He took full advantage of this opportunity, yelling, “Helen put me in here to die, Helen put me in here to die!”  

She paid no attention and her parting shot was, “Don’t be surprised if your urine is red!”

The next morning she was doing bed checks and when she came to his bed he smiled and proclaimed, “It was pink!  And, I am not dead!”

She replied, “How do you know you are not in heaven?”

Stunned, he blurted out, “You’re here!”  

She relished talking about one experience she had with Donny who had an undescended testicle. She maintained that was why he was so ornery.  She was examining him one morning and asked him to move his penis to a position that would not hinder her from examining the offending testicle.  

He said, “It doesn’t move that way.”

“Yes it does,” she replied.

“Helen,” he proclaimed, “You know a lot about pills but you don’t know anything about penises.”

On another occasion we took the children from the treatment center to a beach campground for a summer camp experience.  One of the boys in my tent was wetting his sleeping bag every night and we were pretty sure he was doing it on purpose.  So I told him, “If you pee in your sleeping bag again, we will take you home to the Centre.”

That night I was awakened by the sensation of warm liquid spreading in my sleeping bag.  Startled I awoke to find him urinating into my bag.  “What are you doing?”

“You told me you would take me home if I peed in my bag so I decided to pee in yours.”

He had me.  

Another child taught me that using power over a child can often lead to resentment and retaliation on the part of the child.  This boy had a terrible learning disability which caused him to see written material backwards.  He wanted to go home to Yellowknife for Christmas so I told him he had to learn five letters before December if he wanted to go home.  When the time came to show me his work he said, “I actually learned six.”  He then wrote the following message for me.

U O Y K C U F.  

This was a powerful lesson for me about the misuse of power and authority.  I sent him home for Christmas, a trip he deserved just for being a child, regardless of his disability.

I got into another bad situation with ultimatums when I was showing a new boy around the school.  He was yelling and cursing me, the school and his parents and said he would never stay at this “F…ing S…hole of a school.”  Exhausted and fed up, I turned to him and said, “You can stay here or go to jail!”

“I’ll take jail,” he replied.  

Once again I had backed myself into a corner.  Just then I remembered a story a professor of mine had told me.  At the end of the war he was drafted and asked, “Europe or Asia?”  Since the war was over in Europe he answered enthusiastically, “Europe.”

“Europe’s full,” the officer replied.  And he was off to Asia.

So I said, “Jail’s full.”

Although he was one of the most difficult kids to deal with, he eventually came around and became a model for other boys to emulate.  When it was time for him to leave we gave him the choice of returning to his dysfunctional family or a foster home.  He chose the foster home.

Bobby was a developmentally disabled boy who had suffered some kind of abuse as a young child and had formed an attachment to Dinky Toy cars and would walk around for hours making car noises as he pushed the cars through the air.  At one point a new boy, Alex, arrived.  Alex claimed to be a vampire and after a few weeks I was convinced he was right.  More than one staff member had bite marks on their necks.  He took a fancy to Bobby and manipulated him into a very exploitative homosexual relationship.  We decided to use behavior modification to try and convince Bobby to avoid Alex.

My friend Barney and I brought Bobby into Barney’s office and explained a program in which Bobby could earn points by staying away from Alex.  When Barney asked him “What do you like that you could earn with these points?”

Bobby replied, “Well, I really like it when Alex sticks his tongue in my mouth and goes lubalubado.”

Barney calmly replied, “That is not on the list.”

Having worked with several autistic children I considered myself somewhat of an expert in behavior modification with this challenging group.  So when a young autistic girl showed up at the center I decided to record a teaching video for staff to watch in order to learn how to use such skills as shaping and prompting to teach behavior.  One of the things that made Jeanne special was that she had an ileostomy collection bag on her side.  It would fill with urine and have to be emptied often.  What I didn’t know was that when angry, she would pull the bag off and empty it on the floor.  

I sat down with a simple reader and her lunch.  I would point to letters and prompt her to repeat them as I was being filmed through a one-way mirror.  She began to get agitated as she did not like her lunch to be contingent on completing the tasks I set out for her and when I turned to look at the clock, she whipped off the bag and emptied it on my head.  This video became extremely popular and was hauled out every time there was a staff party.  

Several years later, after Jeanne was released, I went to visit her in Vancouver. When she came to the door, she gave me a big hug and said, “Remember Larry. You teach me to read.  I dump PeePee bag on your head.”  Then she laughed uncontrollably for a few minutes.

I had many other memorable experiences but these are some of my favorites. 

Some stories about change

I am in the business of change.  People generally want their lives to change and are looking to me for help.  Ironically, I find change difficult.

My wife likes to ask, how many Dettweilers does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer 1:  Change?  Change? Answer 2:  1 but I liked the old one better. Answer 3:  2.  One to change the bulb and one to administer CPR after he accidentally electrocutes himself.  

Often change occurs slowly in incremental steps.  Sometimes it is rapid.  Here are some stories about change.

In the spring of 1968 I was sitting on the lawn in front of the athletic center at the University of Minnesota with my friend Tom after an enthusiastic afternoon of handball.  Tom’s dad was head of the Presbyterian Church in the US.  He had told Tom that he and other religious leaders in the US were trying to convince Dr. King to cancel his tour of the South as they felt his life was in danger.  Between the war in Vietnam, the killing of the Kennedys, the civil rights killings, the assassination of Malcolm X and the specter of Richard Nixon on the horizon, I said, “If he is killed I am going to Canada.” Dr. King went on the tour and was assassinated in April in Memphis.  My wife and I, not wanting to raise our children in a country so racked with hate and violence moved to Victoria, B. C. Canada after I finished my Ph.D. in 1970.

Like many Americans I think I assumed Canadians were a lot more like Americans than they really were.  Also we were not prepared for the hostility toward Americans that many Canadians felt.  I began to get an inkling of this when I was told a joke by a co-worker during my first week as treatment director at the Pacific Centre for Human Development.  It went like this.

There were three Canadian surgeons who each went to study in different countries.  When they returned they sat down over coffee to compare notes. The first said that in Japan all internal organs are color coded so to do a replacement you just replaced yellow with yellow and so on. The second said that in Germany all organs were numbered so you just replaced a one with a one and so on.  The third said surgery in the US was really simple. American bodies only have two moving parts, a mouth and an asshole and they were interchangeable.  

I don’t think a day ever went by when I didn’t hear what was wrong with America from a person, the radio or a newspaper. This didn’t bother me too much since I probably agreed with their assessment of American foreign policy. What did bother me was the way in which the anger and hostility was directed not so much at the politics and government but rather at the American people.  

And with my loud, extraverted personality and American accent I was often targeted as a typical American.  And, like most stereotypes, there is some truth there.  Canadians often describe Americans as brash, rude and arrogant.  When I first went to Canada in 1970, I think I was living proof of this stereotype. Here is an example.

In the early seventies I was teaching at the University of Victoria and they were putting on Saturday courses at a College up-island.  I was asked to teach one and the University thought it would be easier to send the three of us who were doing this up in a limo rather than pay for us to drive up individually.

So the first day the three of us met.  Here is the conversation I had with Cary, one of the other teachers.

L: Hi, I am Larry.

C: Hi I am Cary.  What department do you teach in?

L: Education this year.  But I hate that department.  It is terrible. What about you?

C: Education.  (Dead Silence)

L: Boy I am tired.  My son plays hockey on Saturday at 5 in the morning.  What a stupid sport.

C: I coach youth Hockey.

I had dug a deep hole but if there is one way to connect with a Canadian it is to criticize America or Americans.  It is the second most enjoyed sport by Canadians after Hockey and it runs all year.  Not to mention that there is an endless supply of material for them to work with. 

L: I came here from Minnesota but I really was glad to leave.  The weather was horrible and I didn’t like the people very much.

C: My mother is from Minnesota. 

Sometimes I shudder when I look back at the person I was then, a truly ugly American, but Cary was extremely forgiving and we became close friends on those rides up and down the Island.  He and Judy and I, a Canadian, a Brit and an American, were a bit embarrassed by the fact that we were riding in a limo on that first day.  The next week it was a little easier and on the third Saturday we asked him to wash it during the time we were teaching because we thought it was dirty.  Eventually we began bringing wine and food and we would eat, drink, tell stories and laugh all the way home.  And, more importantly, I began to realize that the Canadian character, emphasizing self-effacement, politeness and interpersonal restraint (a lot like Minnesotans actually) might be something I would want to emulate, eh.  

I soon took it upon myself to be a little less outgoing and developed a Canadian accent, dropped “huh”, added “eh” and began to try to assimilate.  This must have happened somewhat unconsciously because I took my kids to Disneyland in the early 80s and after talking to a woman in line for a few minutes she asked me, “Where in Canada are you from?”  

This led to a lot of funny situations, especially in my private practice. I had become Canadian enough that people couldn’t tell I was a Yank. So clients would come in and rant and rave about Americans and at some point I would have to say, “You know, I am an American.” Often they were shocked as I had become so good at passing as a Canadian.

The truth is that Canada did change me.  It was there that I learned so much about myself from many wonderful friends, teachers and students.  However, as early retirement loomed, we decided to cast our fate to the south.  America, with all its faults was our home and we just felt more at ease there among people from our own culture. This is really hard for Canadians to understand.  On paper Canada seems such a better place to live.  But we are Americans and we feel more at home here.

I spent the first 27 ½ years of my life as an American.  I spent the next 27 ½ years as a Canadian.  I have spent the last 20 as a New Mexican, in a state that is an entity unto itself.  I love it here but when I die I want my ashes spread on the west coast of Canada because that is where I learned how to live life. 

My experience with the Victoria Family Violence Project required me to learn quickly on the job. When the director, Alayne Hamilton, first asked me to consider the position of consulting psychologist, I dismissed it out of hand as I had no experience with abusive men or group therapy.  She persevered and eventually I went to Ahimsa House, home of the Project to talk to her and Mike, one of the men working there.  I demurred but Mike said, well we need a licensed Psychologist working here or they won’t fund our program.  You are the only psychologist in town we are willing to let in this building so we are not letting you out of the building until you agree.  

In order to learn more about the program, I apprenticed myself to a lay leader in what they called Phase I, the entry level to the program. The idea of a Ph.D. Psychologist apprenticing with a lay group leader who installed cable during the day and had never finished high school raised some eyebrows but we worked well together and I learned the basics of the program during my twelve weeks with this group.  At the end of the group I told him I thought he was gifted in this area and I hope I had some influence over his eventual enrollment in and graduation from the Social Work program at the University.  Concurrently, I was accepted into the therapeutic group which was being run for the lay leaders, all of whom had been through the program.

The leader of that group was a professional therapist who had never received a degree but was gifted in his work.  I learned more about leading groups from him than anyone else I have ever known.  After ten weeks I was ready to start my own group.  My partner Wendy and I became so good at sharing this role it often seemed as though we were two heads on the same body.  

We led groups of 6 to 8 men who were attempting to change their lives for the better and to stop the violence that had so dominated their lives in the past.  One of the things we tried to teach them was to change their communication patterns by expressing their feelings to their partners rather than expressing judgments or controlling statements. One night the following conversation took place between two of the guys. I will refer to them as Tom and Jerry.

Tom said, “My wife won’t let me express my feelings.”

Jerry said, “What do you mean?”

“Well I told her I feel she’s a slut and she got mad and told me to shut up.”

“That’s not a feeling.”

“Yes it is,” he said somewhat agitated.”

“No, that’s a judgement and an insulting one as well.”

“No it’s a feeling.”

By this time both guys were getting pretty mad.  As the banter continued and tempers begin to flare I found myself splitting into three people.  First there was fearful Larry who was looking for the fastest way to the door.  Second there was Aikido Larry who was thinking about which technique he would use when one of these guys came after the other. Lastly there was adult psychologist Larry who said, “Let’s examine this interaction.”  I managed to put my fear and distracting thoughts aside in order to focus on the job to be done.  This is a core concept in the Japanese approach to problems known as Morita Therapy.

I asked Jerry to demonstrate a feeling statement to Tom.  With a malicious grin and a gleam in his eye he said to Tom, "I feel you’re an asshole.”  I thought, uh oh, here we go.  

After a brief pause Tom said, “Okay I get it."  That was the closest I ever saw anybody get to coming to blows during my five years working there.  But he did get it and became one of the best communicators in the group.  An unusual way to facilitate change but it worked.

There was one guy in the group who was particularly difficult to deal with but we all really liked him.  In his case, change was slow.  He had a pretty good handle on his anger at this time after having been through the program twice but he really got upset when he thought something was happening to his daughters, both of whom often found themselves in dire straits.

On the last night of these groups that ran for six months, we would meet and discuss how we all had changed and improved over the period of the group. When his turn came he told a story about how he had dealt with a man who was harassing his daughters.  It had angered him so much that he went up to the man’s third-floor apartment, grabbed him by the feet and hung him over the side of the railing and told him to stop bothering his girls.  This was the last night and I didn’t want to open this up, process it and show that, in fact, that it was not completely congruent with the non-violent philosophy of the family violence project.  So I just asked a simple question.

"How is this an example of the improvement and change you’ve experienced as a result of this program?”

“Oh hell, before this program I would’ve dropped him.”

I once had a student we will call Julie whose parents had come from Greece. After she had left for college, her grandmother moved from Greece to Canada when her husband died.  She stayed with my student’s parents and didn’t do much of anything except wander around the house in her black garb, watch television and cook.  After about six months she called Julie and asked her if she would take her out to buy some different clothes. This was quite a surprise to Julie.  Also grandma wanted to know if she would help her enroll in English classes at a local college.  A bit stunned she did both.  Over the next few months she noticed a radical change in her grandmother.  In addition to changing her clothes and going to school she began taking driving lessons.  When Julie asked her grandmother one day why she had made such a big changes, she replied, “Oprah.”

Years ago I owned a house in Victoria B.C. that had been built in 1910.  It constantly needed repairs and I had a fantastic handyman named Burt who would do the work.  He always asked me to help, mostly because he liked the company and not for my skills at home repair.  One time he and his wife were with me and my wife at a friend’s house.  I asked him how much it would cost to repair my front porch. He replied, “400 dollars.”  I said, “What if I help?”  His wife answered quickly, “600 dollars.”

Anyway, Burt liked to drink.  He never drank on the job but his binges were legendary.  I called him one day to tell him I was getting new gutters on the house and I just couldn’t get the old ones off.  He said they were going out to dinner and he would stop by afterward to look at it.  Around nine that night Burt and his wife showed up and he was three sheets to the wind.  It was windy, dark and pouring rain but he said, “Bring a flashlight, hammer and ladder.”  He climbed up, looked at the gutter and asked for the hammer. 

I said, “I have been thinking about all the ways to get this down and I just can’t figure it out.”

He reared back, swung the hammer and the whole gutter flew off into the yard. He said, “That’s the trouble with you f…ing intellectuals, you think too much.” No one has ever confused me with an intellectual before or after that incident but it was definitely an example of the superiority of action over thinking, at least in this case.  In Japanese psychology, thoughts and feelings are seen as fleeting and not under your control and the fastest way out of a bad state is to do something.  This is very different than western psychology.

Burt taught me a lot about home repair but that night he was definitely my action guru.

On another occasion I was talking to my mentor in Seattle when he told me he had been to the 100th birthday party of a famous Jungian analyst.  He asked the birthday boy what he had been up to.  After hearing a long list of projects, plans and activities he said, “Joe, how do you do all of that at your age?  I get tired just thinking about it.”

Joe answered, “I don’t think about it.”

So now when I really need to do something I try not think a lot about it.  If I can just get started, it usually takes care of itself. 

A dramatic and fascinating example of change being inspired by a complete stranger was described to me by a former student.  This woman, who we shall call Eleanor, was at a major decision point in her life when this event occurred. She told me about it in a career and life development course I was teaching in which she was a student.  The students had completed several inventories designed to indicate appropriate career paths they might follow.  She had the most interesting test results I’ve ever seen.  I said to her somewhat jokingly, “It looks like you could either be a CPA or a counselor.”  She told me that, in fact, before coming to graduate school in counseling she had been debating whether to become an accountant or counselor.  She clearly had a wide range of abilities. 

One day while she was in the process of trying to figure out which path to follow she was leaving the grocery store with her hands full when a stranger opened the door for her.  She smiled and said thank you, and he said, "You should become a counselor.”  She stood there stunned and when she turned around he was gone.

She went back to school, completed the prerequisites for graduate school and counseling, and enrolled in a graduate program with a specialty in grief counseling.  Today she works as a grief counselor and is known in hospice circles as the "angel of death.”  She seems to have the ability to walk into a room, sit down next to person who is dying but can’t let go, place her hand on the person and within a half an hour the person has let go and is gone.  She has found her calling thanks to a stranger’s comment.

This is a most remarkable woman.  She suffers from a serious disease but never talks about it or uses it as an excuse to avoid difficult situations.  She has now finished her Ph.D. and will continue with her life’s work, helping the dying and the grieving.  She works a lot with immigrant families and told me she always takes her shoes off when she enters a trailer or small home.  I assumed this was a sign of respect.  She said, "No, I am often the tallest person in the house and I don’t want them to feel small.”

After reading about the importance of action in Japanese Psychology and the importance of starting small I was reminded of a story I heard Bill O’Hanlon tell about Milton Erickson, the famous psychiatrist who was best known for his work in Hypnosis and his somewhat unconventional (at least for his time) approach to clinical problems.

When one of his students heard he would be visiting a large U.S. city where his depressed aunt lived, he asked Erickson if he would stop in on her.  He agreed and when the aunt opened the door he found himself in a musty, dark house with all the curtains pulled confronting a woman who appeared to have nothing to live for and who only left the house to attend church on Sundays.

After speaking to her he found there were two things that gave her life meaning, going to church and growing African Violets.  In his own inimical way he said, “You know I don’t think you are a very good Christian and I don’t think your flowers serve much of a purpose either.”

Stunned, the woman asked, “What do you mean?”

“Well, a fundamental tenet of Christianity is caring for others.  You don’t do anything for anyone else and you are the only person who gets joy from these flowers.  I am going to give you a task but I seriously doubt you can do it.  I want you to look into the church bulletin and see if there is anyone who is suffering or grieving and send them one of your plants.  Again, I doubt you will do this.”

I guess the challenge was too much to resist so she did it.  The response from the recipients and the pastor were so positive she did it again.  Soon she was sending violets to anyone she heard of who was in need.  When she died, hundreds of mourners showed up to honor “The African Violet Lady”, a person they saw as a caring and generous woman.  

And it all began with a challenge and one small act of kindness.

Except for one semester, I was a student in University from the fall of 1960 to the fall of 1970.  I saw many changes during that period, one of which was the introduction of drugs to student life. By the end of the decade I was a pretty heavy user of Marijuana and dabbled in other drugs. After I moved to Victoria and took my first job I continued to use drugs recreationally.  

Shortly after Ishiyama Sensei arrived in the mid-seventies and became our Aikido Sensei, he announced we were going to do a demonstration at the university.  We arrived, changed and went onto the mats to warm up.  He approached me and told me I was going to do the knife attacks.  This was fine with me because we had always used wooden knives in practice.  He then went to a small box on the edge of the mats and extracted a long, very pointed metal knife.  As he handed it to me I asked, “How do you want me to attack you?”

“Any way you like,” he responded.

I realized at that point that if either of us made a mistake, I could die. So I did my best to attack at full speed and with lethal intent and he countered every attack.  It seemed like it went on for hours. That night it was broadcast on the local TV station and I realized it was only about three minutes.  But I knew at that time that I wanted to experience every moment of my life with that same awareness and intensity.  I never used drugs again.  

In 1981 I was approached by my Dean regarding a pilot project in Infant Day Care.  In Victoria, B.C. there were no infant day care centers (centres!) and the government was about to initiate a program designed to encourage the establishment of infant day care. The College Day Care Centre was going to be one of the first and he planned to expand our Day Care Worker training program to include infant care.  He wanted me to head up the creation of the program.

I said I would do it but I hadn’t read any research on the subject in 10 years since my graduation from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota.  I asked him if he would send me to Stanford for a month where the author of the textbook I used in my Child Development class was a professor. He agreed.

I contacted the professor and she agreed to mentor me in this endeavor if I would keep a record of my findings and give a copy to her so she could use the information for her next book.  This sounded like a good trade to me.  Summer came and I was off to Palo Alto while my wife stayed in Victoria with our two sons.  Our trade was that she would fly them down at the end of a month and the boys and I would visit relatives and generally enjoy California, Oregon and Washington while she had time alone.  So the time came and I drove down to Palo Alto where I would stay with my good friend Carol for a month. 

When I got there I was suddenly overwhelmed by the immensity of the commitment I had made.  I had not done anything like this in 10 years and I didn’t like doing it back then.  Also, it was the hottest summer in Northern California history and the first time I walked into the Stanford library I felt smothered by the oppressive heat as there was no air conditioning.  Additionally, I was not in the best emotional state as my wife and I had recently reunited after a separation that had really knocked the wind out of my sails.  And, most importantly, being a Cal graduate, I was feeling guilty for consorting with the enemy, Stanford. 

My first visit to the library lasted about an hour and I left frustrated and angry that I had put myself into this situation without really assessing how difficult it would be for me.  I missed my wife and boys, was not really that excited about the research and remembered that after finishing four years of graduate school, I never wanted to see another journal article as long as I lived.

But I had a job to do so the next day I promised to stay until noon. Reading about infant perception in the morning, I found myself beginning to get interested in the amazing things researchers had discovered about infants over the last 10 years.  The next day I stayed all day and soon I was going in at night and on the weekends. I was amassing reams of note cards and when I met with the prof at the halfway point she was delighted to see my work and said I had saved her many hours of work that she could now spend with her three young children. 

This is a good example of some of the principles of Kaizen, another form of Japanese psychology.  I started small, gradually increased my time on the project, kept with it and the project overcame my emotional state.  It really became my life. More importantly, it proved to me that I could do a very good job on a project that had to be its own reward.  There was no prize, no money or pat on the head when I was done.  Finishing the task with thoroughness and integrity was the only reward.

My clinical supervisor in Seattle once said to me, don’t think of the Psyche as part of you, think of yourself as part of the Psyche.  In the same way, this project was not part of my life, I was part of it.  I was an employee of the project.  It had a life of its own.

There were other benefits as well.  I got to know Carol really well and we remained good friends, exchanging letters at Christmas and at our Birthdays.  One of the first things she told me, having been born on December 25th, was, “I will not accept one card.  You have to send two.” We were on a pretty tight budget but occasionally we would go out to dinner.  Her boyfriend had recently left her and she would offer to pay if I promised to walk by his house with my arm around her feigning mad love and affection.  Also, I joined the Stanford Aikido Club and practiced every day there was a practice.  When I finished the project, the boys came down and we had a great vacation together.  

When I returned we set up the program and the Day Care became a fantastic resource for the community.  The people who actually made this happen were the wonderful teachers in the training program and the exceptional day care supervisors at the centre.  Also, I had a lot of new material for my course in Child Development.  I will always be grateful for the experience this project afforded me.  

Sometimes life wakes you up and change is immediate.  My friend Ron is a great example of this.  Ron’s family owned a very profitable furniture store. From an early age Ron showed great ability in art and design and was a genius working with his hands.  He once showed me a report card from a prestigious private boy’s school which he attended.  All the grades were rather mediocre except art. He excelled at art. He also showed me a picture of a beautiful boat he had built while still in elementary school.  It was a work of art. However, Ron’s parents had other plans for him.  They wanted him to become an architect and a professional of whom they could be proud.  So even though his academic record was not astounding, off he went to study architecture at University.  Not surprisingly, he flunked out.

Ron may have been the most introverted and shy person I have ever met in my life.  Upon returning home after failing in University, his parents took him into the business and made him the director of personnel.  There could not be a job on earth for which Ron was more poorly suited.  Fortunately, he married a woman who was very supportive and realized he could not survive in this job. One day, after waking from a terrible nightmare, he resigned his job, sold his stock and begin a business building wooden toys for children.  He would isolate himself in his garage while doing his woodwork and his wife would handle all sales from the kitchen of her house.  She served as the business manager, doorkeeper and was a welcoming presence who always seemed to have something delicious to offer you while you were picking up toys.    At some point they began to build a boat.  After years of work it was a beautiful sight to see. Eventually they divorced and Ron moved to a local island where he now builds boats that have been commissioned by people who value his unique ability.  What would his life have been like if his parents had seen this gift and nurtured it?

If you were to walk into the office that my wife and I use for our psychotherapy practice, you would see lots of turtles.  Turtles on the desks, turtles on the tables, a turtle candle holder, turtles in the windows and turtles on the floor.  Not live turtles but every kind of turtle you could imagine. You would even see a turtle painted on a drum on the wall and a turtle night light.  There used to be more turtles but my wife said, “Enough is enough.  We are taking some of these home.”   She has replaced them with shells and stones in the same places.  She has her magic and I have mine.

When I taught and worked with the First Nations Salish people of Vancouver Island they told me the turtle clan was the healing clan and that I belonged to that clan.  This was an incredible honor so I started collecting turtles.  People saw my turtles and starting giving me turtles so I have a lot. People have brought them from all over the world.

I have turtles everywhere to remind me to slow down.  My nature is to go fast, to want to finish everything before I need to and come to closure too early.  There is also a practical issue here.  I do not have the physical abilities I had when I was younger and when I get ahead of myself I tend to break things, harm my person and otherwise cause havoc.  

My mother was the same way.  She fell many times in her 80s because this previously active and athletic woman just could not slow down.  She would stand up from her easy chair, set off at breakneck speed only to trip and fall.  On one Super bowl Sunday I got a call from her residence just as the game was going to start.  She had fallen and they could not stop her nosebleed due to her use of blood thinners.  The woman said that my mother had asked her not to call me because she knew I was watching the game but that they were really worried.  

I drove rapidly to the residence where I found my mother covered in blood and rapidly swelling and darkening around the eyes.  I did not feel adequate to deal with this so I called 911 for an ambulance to take her to the hospital.  When the first responder walked in he looked at the game on the TV, then my mother, then me.  "I gather you are rooting for different teams,” he said.  

We all went to the hospital and she sent me home and said, “Don’t come get me until the game is over.”

At the beginning of the final quarter, the hospital called and the nurse told me I had to come get her NOW.  They needed the bed.  I guess Super bowl Sunday is a high volume day in the ER.   The next week I bought a TiVo box.

I used to take her to the Coumadin (blood thinner) clinic to get her blood tested. One time she registered very high blood pressure.  “I am a nervous Nelly and I always will be,” she said.  “And I gave it to him.”  Then looking at me pensively she said, “He doesn’t seem to be like that anymore.”  

I looked at the nurse and said, “Thousands of dollars in therapy.” She said, “Me too.”

One last story about change.  My brother and I were extremely close. I was five years his senior and from the day he was born I felt responsibility for his safety and well-being.  In 1965 my wife and I were living in San Francisco taking courses at S.F. State and preparing to move to Minnesota where I was to begin my Ph.D. studies.  He was still at home in L.A. with my parents.  Shortly before Christmas my father called to tell me that my brother had acute Leukemia and that although he was undergoing new treatment (a variation of which saves children today), he was not expected to live.  Over the next six months he was in and out of hospital, suffering intensely through repeated relapses and remissions.  My life vacillated between the hubris of entering graduate school and the depression resulting from the impending loss of my best friend.  I think I engaged in a lot of denial.  Susan says we visited him once in hospital while he was sick but I have no recollection of that.  The day finally came when my father called to tell us to come to L.A. to say goodbye. 

It was the sixties in San Francisco and compared to my friends at home and my father’s contemporaries, I had long hair.  Today it probably would not even qualify as long hair but it did at that time and it identified me as belonging to a certain cohort that was not popular with my parents’ generation.  Whenever I would go home my dad would offer me money to get it cut and I always refused. I think that although this was a version of what Erikson calls a negative identity (identity through opposition) it also was symbolic of the emergence of my own identity, separate from my family and the dominant culture.  

As my wife and I were getting ready to go to the hospital to say goodbye to Steve my dad said, “I want you to get a haircut before you see him. I want him to remember you as you were.” 

I was completely paralyzed.  I had to choose between being who I was at the time and pleasing my father, who I knew was in a state of total despair.  So I agreed.  After the haircut, as I drove up the driveway to pick up my wife on the way to the hospital she came out of the house with tears running down her face. “Steve is dead,” she said.  I never got to say goodbye to the second most important person in my life.  Tears form in my eyes as I write this fifty years later.

I was psychologically sophisticated enough at the time to know that the real reason I was sent to the barber was so that I would not embarrass my parents. Although not being able to say goodbye to my brother and my best friend was a result of parental narcissism, in some ways it was a powerful experience in the activation of what is called in Psychosynthesis, my own internal unifying center. 

I vowed that day that no matter how my future children presented themselves to the world and no matter what choices they made in life, I would support them for themselves and not how they reflected on me.  Being my parents’ child, I couldn’t always do that but the two fine men I see today are proof that my wife and I, nutty as we were in those early years, got that part right.  I remember when my youngest son was about eight, my wife said to him, “You really like yourself don’t you?”  He looked at her like she was the dumbest person on earth. 

“Of course,” he replied.  She looked at me, smiled and said, “If he only knew what we have had to go through to get to that place that he takes for granted.”

Although I held this against my father for years, when he was dying my mother asked us to come to L.A. to say goodbye to him.  She said she didn’t want the experience with Steve to be repeated and that she was the one who wanted me to get a haircut and had regretted it ever since.  She knew I blamed my Dad and that she didn’t want him going to his grave with that between us.

I think that my wife and I, coming out of very different but equally dysfunctional families, have been our own best parents.  Even during our worst times together we often have been able to sidestep our own narcissism and support what is best for the other.  My wife sometimes says that I saved her from her family but I often wonder about it when I see the humane society bumper sticker, “Who rescued who?”

Psychosynthesis

In the early 70s my friend John gave me some information on Psychosynthesis. After reading a few articles, I became fascinated by the approach to psychotherapy and life in general.  Let me lay out some of the theory.

Think about how you act in different situations.  For example, at work are you one person and at home someone completely different? When you are with your parents or other authority figures do you behave differently again, perhaps like a compliant child or an obstinate rebel?  Are you the outgoing leader with some friends and the passive follower with others?  Like the famous Dr. Jekyll, on some days are you the perfect mate or parent and on other days the diabolical Mr. Hyde?  Do you sometimes wonder, “Why did I do that?” Do you find yourself joyful one moment and in the depths of sadness in the next with no idea of why you experience such intense fluctuations?  In Psychosynthesis we call the people you become in these different situations subpersonalities.  In other words, you assume a different identity in each situation, often without even being aware of it.  

Unfortunately, the beliefs, thoughts, feelings and expectations that motivate our behavior when we are “in” one of these subpersonalities are often unconscious and unexamined and can be completely different for each subpersonality.  This leads to splitting and internal conflict between the different parts of ourselves and we seem to be in a state of war with ourselves and others.  These subpersonalities have formed as a result of early experience and probably served us well in our attempt to survive and even prosper in our families and culture. However, in adulthood these patterns that reflect our adaptation to what and how others wanted us to be do not reflect our true nature nor are they effective in the world we now inhabit. In fact, they may be quite destructive and counterproductive.  For example, someone who complied and was always nice in order to avoid physical abuse from an alcoholic father may find herself constantly bending to the whims of others and not looking after her own welfare. This kind of person often asks, “Why do I keep doing this.”

Although this is not a healthy or happy existence, in our culture it is “normal.” Many of us live in a trance as we follow the dictates of these parts of ourselves that do not reflect our basic nature or our deeper desire to live in harmony within ourselves and with others. While in this trance we can experience addictions, compulsions, poor interpersonal relationships and a general unhappiness that can appear as depression, anxiety or as other psychological symptoms.

Psychosynthesis is a process that carefully opens the doors to the unconscious realms and shines a light on the dark secrets that keep us prisoners of our past. As we examine the genesis of these subpersonalities and discern which aspects of each subpersonality are congruent with our true nature and which are not, it becomes possible to reconstruct ourselves in harmony with our true selves so that we can become whole people who interact in a healthy manner with both the world around us and the world within.  

We all come into this world potentially whole.  By this I mean that we have the possibility of living out a destiny that is congruent with the gifts that reflect our own unique being. If you are comfortable with a spiritual perspective, you might conceptualize this as following your soul’s journey.  If you are not comfortable with this approach, you might look at this way of being as living in harmony with your own intrinsic nature or even your own genetic code.  

If you have observed very young children you probably have noticed how unique each child is, even shortly after birth.  Some are very wary and observant of the world around them and others are virtually oblivious to their environment.  You may have noticed that some are “people oriented” and some are “object oriented.”  As a parent, it was a shock to me that this uniqueness surfaced very early in my children and seemed totally independent of and resistant to environmental factors. One would wake if a pin dropped and the other would not be awakened by a train barreling through the front room. One has always been fascinated by ideas and the other by concrete problems to be solved.  Effective parents see these unique traits and abilities in their children and engage in mirroring their children.  In other words, they see that their children have certain abilities and dispositions and they actively recognize and foster, or at least accept, these aspects. When this happens we say that there is an empathic response from the parent to the child’s authentic self.  This does not mean we cannot set limits or teach our children good social skills. It just means that good parents have a basic respect for who the child is as they engage in the difficult process of preparing children for adult life.

Unfortunately, most of us do not experience perfect parenting nor are we perfect parents ourselves.  When, as children, our abilities and feelings are not recognized or actually are demeaned or punished and we are dismissed, shamed or otherwise experience an empathic failure, we learn very quickly what is acceptable and what is not.  For a child, rejection by a parent is terrifying and, in the child’s mind, can be experienced as life threatening.  In Psychosynthesis we call this the fear of nonbeing.  As a response to this and other fears we develop subpersonalities that help us cope with the world around us and insure our survival.  This is why we call these adaptations survival subpersonalities.

A common example is the subpersonality of “The Pleaser.”  If parents only mirror and shine on their child when he or she is compliant and helpful and meets the parents’ expectations, the child may develop a subpersonality that as an adult requires the person to be helpful and giving in order to feel any self-worth.  The person may also experience an inability to form boundaries, say “no” or know what he or she actually wants in life.  Another child might respond to this expectation by developing “The Rebel,” whose identity and self-esteem is dependent upon constantly being in opposition to authority and others’ expectations.   In fact, both of these subpersonalities could exist in one person. The important factor here is that we, as adults, often are not aware of the unconscious motivations and feelings behind the behavior we exhibit when we are “in” these subpersonalities.

Each subpersonality has its own way of interacting consciously with the world but there are two unconscious aspects of each that are very important.  The painful, shaming experiences of childhood are pushed out of our conscious awareness and into what we call the lower unconscious.  Outside of our awareness, these unconscious memories and experiences often drive the behavior we exhibit when we are acting out of that subpersonality.  In fact, at its most extreme, the main goal of the subpersonality is to avoid all feelings and memories that resurface in situations that resemble the original wounding experience and, in the mind of the inner child, activate the threat of nonbeing. On the other hand, those gifts and unique aspects of our being that were not accepted and for which we were shamed are also repressed into what we call the higher unconscious. In this realm such denigrated characteristics as intuition, sensitivity, creativity and artistic ability may reside completely hidden.

The initial work of Psychosynthesis involves examining each of the subpersonalities while delving into the repressed unconscious experiences that led to their creation.  The process of uncovering the painful experiences as well as our true gifts can be lengthy and intense but very rewarding as we discover the motivation behind outmoded, destructive and maladaptive behavior, thoughts and feelings contained in the farther reaches of the subpersonalities.  

As we examine how the subpersonalities were formed, how they have evolved into adult subpersonalities, how they form alliances between each other and how they experience conflict with each other we see that some aspects of each subpersonality may be helpful to us in our journey to wholeness and happiness. It also becomes clear that other aspects, useful in surviving our youthful fears, are no longer helpful, limit our ability to function and are downright destructive.

Most importantly, we want to integrate the positive aspects of each subpersonality into our everyday life.  This process is called synthesis.  We want to synthesize the many subpersonalities into one whole personality which, although it may behave differently in different situations, always reflects the true wholeness of the person we really are and helps us to reach our individual destiny.  Our behavior becomes a product of conscious thought and feeling rather than being driven by unconscious shame and guilt and the avoidance of nonbeing.  We refer to this ultimate state as functioning from the authentic self.  

As memories surface and the unconscious material becomes conscious, a sense of “I” begins to evolve.  In other words, an observer that is independent of childhood or cultural conditioning begins to surface and we begin to see who we really are, how we actually experienced early life and how we want to live life now, in harmony with but not bound by the expectations of others.  As Psychosynthesis progresses, it becomes clear that the “I” is a reflection of a deeper aspect of you, your self. The self is the ultimate expression of who you are and, if you have a spiritual approach to life, a representation of your soul.  If you are not comfortable with this concept, think of the self as the totality of all of your potential and experiences which possesses the innate knowledge of exactly how you should lead your life.  

In Psychosynthesis we speak of the will, which provides the impetus for our behavior. The will of the survival personality drives you to respond to life in a way that avoids re-experiencing the wounding of your childhood and the fear of nonbeing.  As we age, these responses become less and less satisfying and eventually become counterproductive.  Their ineffectiveness and the unhappiness that accompanies them is often the reason we end up in psychotherapy. The “I” has its own will and as it becomes stronger during the process of Psychosynthesis, it is able to direct your behavior in a way that is more congruent with your nature than the dictates of survival personalities. Ultimately, you may experience the will of the self which can appear as a calling or a motivation to action that you cannot possibly ignore regardless of how foolish it may seem to others.

As the “I” strengthens and the self becomes clearer, it becomes possible to disidentify from each subpersonality.  In other words, we can still inhabit the subpersonality but the behavior we associate with the subpersonality is now serving the healthy needs of the self rather than keeping unconscious fears at bay.  For example, one may begin to parent in a way that serves the needs and healthy authentic development of your children rather than serving your own primitive need to feel safe by being in control or serving the need for your children’s culturally sanctioned accomplishments to augment your own self-image. You may begin to do your job in a way that makes the most sense to you and allows you accomplish more than when you were working primarily for the approval and adulation of your coworkers and superiors.  On the other hand, you may find that as the need for the approval of others wanes you feel a desperate need to explore a career that reflects your basic nature and not the expectation of parents, spouses or the culture in general.  Be warned that such major transformations, although personally healthy, can be very disturbing to the others in your life.  This is not a process to be taken lightly.

Although dredging up the past and recovering memories and feelings that are painful can be very unpleasant, the freedom from unconscious control allows one to fully function in the present without the need for validation from others or the need to meet unrealistic expectations of yourself and others contained within the unconscious areas of unexamined subpersonalities.  It becomes possible for you to be a happy, satisfied and whole person just being who you really are.

I have been asked, “Isn’t this all about me? Is this not a selfish, self-absorbed and narcissistic process in which I am involved?”  My experience has been quite the opposite.  When we are operating from the needs of survival subpersonalities, our motivation is unconscious, driven by unrealistic demands and fundamentally designed to keep us safe from our fear of nonbeing.  We behave with hidden agendas (often hidden from ourselves), we blame others, project our feelings and motivations onto others and are generally unhappy whenever the world doesn’t live up to our expectations.  Living from the self allows us to moderate the need for external validation, relate to others in an authentic, altruistic and empathic manner and to be fundamentally satisfied and happy with life.  This is the beauty of Psychosynthesis, a path to self-acceptance and harmony in both the internal and external world.  

Some Useful Psychological Concepts

The Guilt-Resentment-Persecution Triangle describes the dynamic of many relationships.  The idea here is that if you use guilt to convince someone to do what you want them to do they will do it but feel resentment.  Sometimes the resentment is conscious and sometimes unconscious. Resentment then morphs into persecution. This can take many forms.  One of the most common is passive aggressive behavior. Forgetting, postponing, or just plain not doing are examples of this behavior.  I knew someone once who was a master at this. His wife kept on asking him to put in skylights that they had bought and he kept agreeing but never did it.  Finally, she erupted, showed him where to put them in and demanded that he do it, shaming him in the process.  He finally did it but he “accidentally” put them in the wrong places.  The example of the boy I forced to learn letters earlier was also exhibiting passive aggressive behavior when he learned his letters and them presented them to me in an insulting way.  

The Victim-Rescuer-Persecutor drama is also a useful way of seeing some relationships.  When one sees oneself as a victim it is often assumed others fall into one of two categories, rescuer or persecutor.  And if you are not a rescuer you are definitely a persecutor.  Although there are real victims out there, someone who continually takes the victim stance often is not willing to take responsibility for his or her behavior and blames others for the consequences of that behavior. Heaven help the person that points out that this person is often responsible for his or her own predicament.  A common pattern seen in narcissistic individuals begins with the narcissist feeling like a victim because others are not giving him the constant validation he needs and feels he deserves.  This validation actually serves the purpose of fending off unconscious feelings of inferiority and inadequacy.  Usually, when validation is not forthcoming the narcissist then feels justified in becoming the persecutor and will attack those who hold him responsible for his attitudes and behaviors.  Unfortunately, there is usually someone out there who, for his or her own conscious or unconscious reasons, will step up and rescue the narcissist.  This can be called collusion.  One need only read the entertainment or political news sections to see this drama replayed over and over.  

Unconscious empathy is a skill that some people possess without even knowing it. It involves unconsciously picking up what another person is feeling even though the other person may not be expressing it. The feeling is then perceived as coming from the receiver. Have you noticed that sometimes after speaking with or spending time with a particular person you feel angry or depressed or inadequate?  While this feeling may belong to you, sometimes you are unconsciously picking up what the other is not willing to recognize in him- or herself.  While this is a great tool, especially if you are a therapist, it is also a curse.  People with this skill, often called “sensitives”, need to learn how to discriminate between their own feelings and the feelings of others not being expressed. Psychological boundaries that protect us from unconscious assault are also important to develop.  

Much has been written about the concepts “Masculine” and “Feminine” and the differences between them.  I do not think these are particularly helpful concepts in the 21st century. They often suffer from overgeneralization or stereotyping and tend to be used in a pejorative manner.  I think the concepts of Eros and Logos are more useful.  Eros is the domain of feelings, connection, empathy and intuition.  Logos is the domain of thought, logic and rational analysis. Both are necessary but in the past the former has been ascribed to women and the latter to men.  Traditionally, men who live in the world of Eros are seen as sissies and women who live in the world of Logos are seen as unfeeling and cold.  Although everyone usually favors one of these approaches to life over the other, it is a balance that is necessary, both in men and women. Different situations require different solutions.

A third principle that is neither Eros or Logos is the Power principle. The Power principle is neither relational or logical.  The fundamental axiom is “might makes right.”  I am bigger and more powerful so you will do as I say.  History is replete with examples of this principle and it usually doesn’t end well for the powerful, even if it takes generations to overcome the oppressor.  It is particularly destructive in relationships between people and especially damaging to children.  Also, like guilt, it engenders resentment and eventually retaliation, if possible.  

The Inflation Deflation cycle is a useful concept to understand mood swings and such concepts as narcissism, depression and anxiety.  A simple analogy my supervisor once used is helpful understanding this cycle.  Think of your personality as a balloon.  A balloon that is underinflated will not support itself.  It just lays there.  A balloon that is overinflated is very large but very thin and can be popped easily. The key to a healthy personality is to have a balloon that is just the right size to support itself but not so big that it pops easily when life does not support your self-concept or inflated ideas you have about yourself. Many people oscillate between these two states depending on the feedback the world around them provides. 

Good parenting is about helping a child develop a personality that can support itself and be content in the world and at the same time not be so big that it ignores the needs of others and is self-absorbed or narcissistic.  Narcissism is the psyche’s way of blowing up a big balloon to cover the unconscious little, flaccid balloon that is the true nature of the narcissist.  

How do we encourage and support our children in their quest to be themselves and be effective in the world without creating a narcissistic monster?  Here are some ideas.

Parenting

Parenting is a very difficult task.  This statement will, of course, surprise no-one who has actually tried it.  In the fifty years my wife and I have shared the title of parent, we have, like everyone else, learned gradually through trial and error what it means to be good parents.  We are still learning.  I sometimes wonder how parents cope with the number of books, courses and "experts” who are willing to tell them how to raise children.  It must be very frustrating, especially since many of the experts seem to disagree with each other.  My daughter-in-law said than when she expressed her fears about parenting to her grandmother she replied, “There are probably 100 ways to raise children and 99 of them are ok.”  I spent a lot of time working with parents both as a teacher and a therapist. Here are some of the ideas I thought were important.

There are two things you can do to begin becoming a better parent. First, find some way to rediscover the memories of your own childhood. When did you feel good about yourself? When did you feel bad?  What would you change about your parents and what would you leave untouched if you had your childhood to do over again?  Parents who remain naive about this part of their lives are likely to re-enact the negative aspects of their own childhood in some way with their own children.  Through reading, reflection, discussion or therapy you can re-parent yourself and break the cycle of abusive or ineffectual parenting that is often passed from generation to generation.  Secondly, familiarize yourself with developmental psychology. Find out what needs and behaviors are normal for children in your child’s age group.  Often, what may seem strange or unruly to parents is normal for children in a particular age group.  In addition to these two fundamental tasks, there are a variety of parenting techniques and ideas that I have found to be very helpful which I will present in the following pages.

It seems to me that the most important thing you can do as a parent is to recognize who your child is.  What is his temperament? What are her interests? What are his strengths and what are his challenges?  Above all else it is important to recognize that this is her life and not yours.  Children should not have to live out their parents unrealized dreams and aspirations. My previous story about Ron is a good example of this.  Given this assumption, there are some useful tools for helping children to develop within a family and culture while still maintaining their own identity.  Let’s look at the four strokes first.

A stroke is something you experience from the environment around you.  A positive stroke such as a smile or praise feels good, while a negative stroke, such as criticism or a spanking, feels bad.  A stroke is said to be conditional if something has to be done by the child to receive it.  On the other hand, unconditional strokes are not related to the child’s behavior.  For example, if the child takes out the garbage and mother says, “Thanks a lot,” this is a conditional positive stroke.  Sending a child to her room after she teased her sister is a conditional negative stroke.  In both cases, the stroke was a result of some specific act.  In one case the consequence, or stroke, was positive and in the other it was negative.  "I love you” is an unconditional positive stroke since your love, which feels good, is not connected to anything the child has done.  If you are in a lousy mood and you say to a child, “Get lost,” this is an unconditional negative stroke.  This remark feels bad and is in no way related to anything she has done.  What are the effects of these different strokes?

The receipt of unconditional positive strokes is absolutely essential to the formation of positive self-esteem in a child.  The message conveyed is, “you are o.k. for who you are; no matter what you do I will still love you.”  Many parents who were abused or neglected as children have never experienced this kind of stroke and, as a result, don’t understand the importance of letting their own child know how much they care for her.  For many parents, their own unhappiness may be so great that they cannot express love or appreciation to anyone.  For these kinds of parents, repairing their own self-esteem through therapy is the first step towards being able to give positive strokes to their child.

One of the most meaningful ways you can deliver unconditional positive strokes to your child is to spend time doing what she likes to do.  This may be swimming, reading a book, going for bike rides, preparing a meal together or just hanging out.  Children invest their parents with a lot of power.  You are very important to your child. Spending time with a child doing what she likes to do gives the child the message that you consider her needs important and that you like her. This is a message that enhances her self-esteem.  Of the four strokes, this is the most important for children to receive from their parents and is, unfortunately, the least common.  Unconditional positive strokes by themselves are not enough however. This does not prepare a child for a world in which there are limits and can lead to an inflated sense of self, sometimes termed omnipotence or narcissism.

Conditional positive strokes, while they also enhance self-esteem in the child, act as reinforcement of behavior that is considered acceptable, appropriate or pleasing by the parents.  For example, when you say to your child, “You did a good job,” or “I really appreciate you taking your dishes to the sink,” or “Thank you for picking up your clothes,” it not only gives her a feeling of accomplishment and self-worth, but also serves to increase the behavior that earned the stroke. We will talk more about this later.

The conditional negative stroke, or punishment, as it is more commonly known, is, unfortunately, the most common tool parents use to try to influence their children’s behavior. Parents tend to use punishment because it is fast and easy and often puts an immediate end to an unacceptable behavior.  However, in the long run, punishment often does not work.  While punishment teaches a child what kind of behavior is considered inappropriate, it does not necessarily teach her what is appropriate.  For instance, if you punish a child for whining, she doesn’t really learn another more constructive way to ask for things she wants. In the end she probably will whine because it occasionally pays off, making the punishment worth suffering.  Punishment also has the effect of arousing a child emotionally and she may get upset, angry, or fearful.  Stirring up these intense negative emotions does nothing to help a child learn appropriate behavior and, when the child begins to associate these feelings with the punisher, she may form a negative image of the parent in her mind.  The child learns to fear, avoid and lie to her parent. Furthermore, punishment, especially physical punishment (e.g., hitting or spanking), models negative behavior. If a child is hit every time she does something a parent doesn’t like, the message is: “If you don’t like what someone is doing, hit her.”  Punishment is also likely to result in revenge.  The punished child may see herself at the losing end of a power struggle and try to find a way of getting even, often by repeating the behavior she was punished for in the first place.  Prolonged or severe punishment will result in the formation of a negative self-image as the child incorporates the belief that she is bad. Punishment may sometimes be deemed necessary by a parent, but is often overused in our culture.  We will discuss some alternatives later.

Because of our own inability to deal with a child or because of problems in our own lives, we may feel compelled to deal out unconditional negative strokes to our children. Sarcasm, critical remarks about a child’s character (“You are a bad child.”) or the use of undeserved negative strokes of any kind is abuse.  This is devastating to the self-esteem of the child who receives it.  Since the negative stroke is in no way related to the child’s behavior, the message to the child is “you are not worthwhile no matter what you do.”  Many parents will recognize this kind of stroke from their own childhood, and should eliminate it from their own parenting. Unlike punishment, which may be unavoidable, abuse is never appropriate.

Knowing that negative strokes are to be avoided, how can we as parents deal with misbehavior? There are essentially three options we have open to us in these situations.  

The first option is for a parent to change herself or her attitudes toward her child’s behavior. It is important for parents to realize that their thoughts about how children should behave are based mostly on their own specific experience in a family and in a culture. Sometimes, these expectations are not realistic and behavior that you consider inappropriate may be entirely normal for a child of a given age.  This is why it is important to have some knowledge of developmental psychology. Find out what is normal for children the same age as your own.  For example, if your two year old daughter is constantly saying “no!” is getting into everything and is generally driving you crazy, you may have to give up trying to control her every move through constant punishment and accept this as normal for a child of her age.  This doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be consequences for her behavior, but it is extremely important to remember that, in most cases, what you are seeing is not deviant nor aimed at you personally.  This is particularly important to keep in mind when dealing with adolescents who have a natural bent toward independence and question all forms of authority.  I have found pediatricians, day-care supervisors, parenting courses and other parents to be helpful sources of information about normal, age-appropriate behavior.

Changing yourself or your attitudes will not always be the right choice and may lead the child to an unrealistic belief that the world will change to meet her demands.  If this is the case, one of the other two options will be more appropriate.  However, examining your own behavior and attitudes is always a good place to start.

The second option involves changing the environment.  To return to the example of the two year old, this approach would involve accepting her curiosity as normal and moving everything breakable or dangerous in the house above the child’s reach.  Eventually she will lose interest in these objects and also learn what she can and can’t touch.  Sometimes children are in classrooms or schools that are not suited to them. This is another situation in which you might like to change the environment.  Again, this may not be the best approach.  In some cases it may be best for her to learn to cope with less than perfect situations and realize that the world will not always accommodate to her.

The final option, the one which parents most frequently turn to, is to try to change the child, usually in the form of punishment.  While this particular response is relatively easy and quick, it is not very effective and has, as we have already seen, many negative side effects.  As an alternative to punishment, there are several ways we can modify behavior.  Let’s look at them.

As a preventative measure, I would suggest that the most important thing a parent can do is to provide a good role model for the child. Behave as you would like the child to behave.  Children learn best by modeling.  If they see violent, negative behavior, that is what they will model. All the parenting skills combined cannot undo bad models.  

It is also important to state limits clearly.  Often children will misbehave just to find out what the limits are, their thinking being, “How far can I go before she will react?”  Limits must also be consistent.  If, for example, it is o.k. to throw toys on one day, but a punishable offence on the next, the child learns that the world is an unsafe and unpredictable place and will probably act out her anxiety in some way that you will find unpleasant.  This is not to say that limits can’t change. When you realize that a limit is unrealistic or unfair, it is time to change it. When dealing with older children, for example, good parents will listen and try to come to some mutual agreement about fair limits.  

The most effective way of changing behavior is through conditional positive strokes or positive reinforcement.  Many children misbehave in order to get attention. The theory behind positive reinforcement is to grant children the attention they desire when they are behaving appropriately and to deny it when they are misbehaving.  In other words, reinforce appropriate behavior, ignore negative behavior.  A former student of mine who taught dance to school-age children told me about a child who was a constant source of disruption in her class,  He would stand in the back row of the class gyrating and making strange sounds.  At first, she would stop the class and admonish him, but this had no effect.  This behavior became more frequent and disruptive as the class progressed.  Finally, at the end of her wits and having turned into a screaming banshee, she decided he had to go.  As a last resort, however, she decided to try positive reinforcement.  She completely ignored him when he acted up in class and paid attention to him only when he was acting appropriately. Amazingly, within about two weeks he was one of the best members of her class.  The secret to her success was a process called shaping.  When we shape a behavior, we begin by reinforcing any small approach to the expected behavior.  In this case, she began by reinforcing him when he was standing still and paying attention.  When the initial task is learned, the child is reinforced for gradual improvements and failure or negative behavior is ignored until the final goal is reached. Thus the child experiences positive strokes for attempting to change rather than experiencing punishment and failure.

Changing a child’s behavior is seldom as easy as was described in the above example.  One of the problems with children who misbehave for attention is that they have learned that the only way they will get attention is to misbehave. Often, a child will decide that a negative stroke is better than no stroke at all. In these cases, the continued negative responses she receives lead to the development of low self-esteem. Furthermore, children with very poor self-esteem sometimes reach the point where negative responses from others take on the role of positive reinforcements.  In other words, the child’s attitude is, “I only feel good when someone is treating me badly.”  Life for these children becomes one attempt after another to get someone to yell at them, hit them or otherwise respond negatively.  Parents, not knowing any other response, deliver negative strokes thinking they are punishing the child when they are, in fact, reinforcing negative behavior and solidifying low self-esteem.

People with poor self-esteem are destructive to themselves and to others. When I worked in a residential treatment center in the early 70’s, we admitted a boy who was the angriest, meanest six-year-old I had ever met.  His favorite pastimes were setting cats on fire and smearing dog feces inside little girl’s mouths.  He was the product of a violent and alcoholic home and his whole life seemed to be dedicated to enraging adults to the point where they would become abusive with him. I decided to implement a plan which consisted of completely ignoring him until he did something positive.  This plan was to be carried out by all staff members at the center.  About five minutes into the plan, he broke a window.  He was ignored and, to his amazement, no one responded. Realizing something was amiss, he found the smallest, most defenseless girl in the center and began pounding her mercilessly in the face. Obviously we had to immediately stop him and find some consequence for his behavior. I’ll never forget the grin on his face as I marched him away to his room. He had won.

There are two factors which contributed to this boy’s behavior.  The first is the need for attention which we have already discussed. Children must feel they can affect the people around them.  If they cannot affect you in a way that results in you giving them positive strokes, they will find out how to produce negative strokes.  The second is the need for power.  Children who feel powerless in their lives will attempt to gain power by acting in ways that are destructive to themselves and to others. How can we as parents ensure that our children have a feeling of power over their lives?  With young children, this can be as simple as letting them pick out their own clothes, or which bedtime story to read.  As they get older, you might let them set their own bedtime and decide which TV shows they want to watch.  Responsible parenting allows you to gradually give a child more and more control over her own life.  Children who know you respect and trust them will respond in kind.  A child who receives your trust will be trustworthy herself.  

Parents sometimes allow children too much power.  Children should not be allowed the freedom to decide to stop brushing their teeth, eat unhealthily, verbally or physically abuse others, miss sleep or participate in dangerous activities.  This is neglect and can result in omnipotent children who have little regard for others and believe life should meet all of their expectations.  The proper balance of autonomy allowed and limits imposed is something we all have struggled with as parents.  Children need power over some aspects of their lives, but they also need to feel safe in the hands of a parent who is in control of herself and the welfare of the child.

I would like to make one last comment about power.  Beware of power struggles. Try to avoid them by planning ahead and seeing what difficulties will arise in situations you face.  Don’t get into battles you can’t win.  Decide what rules and limits are really important.  Be really clear about them and don’t back down. Everything else should be negotiable or flexible, depending on the situation. Although children understand and respect strength in parents, they also place great value on fairness.  It is wise to avoid power struggles but we all eventually find ourselves in these battles which constitute the worst (and sometimes the funniest) memories of our parenting lives.  Try to have a sense of humor.  

Another alternative to punishment is the use of consequences. Consequences can be natural or logical.  A natural consequence is a consequence that occurs directly as a result of a child’s behavior and without the parent’s intervention.  If you go out in the rain without rain gear you will get wet and cold. If you do not eat dinner you get hungry. I do not recommend the following technique but it was an interesting example of learning as a result of natural consequences. When my son was about nine or ten months old, I was trying to teach him to stay away from hot things.  I would point to the stove and say, “Hot!”  He would put his hand on a cold burner and say “Hot!” very pleased with himself.  I used lots of different objects to try and teach this, all to no avail, since nothing was ever really hot. One day I was sitting drinking a cup of coffee and he walked up to me.  I pointed to the coffee and said “Hot!” Before I could stop him he stuck his finger into the coffee, immediately withdrew it and yelled, “HOT!” From that point on he always avoided anything I told him was hot. Again, I do not recommend this procedure, but it does exemplify the principle of natural consequences.

Often behaviors do not have natural consequences, or the consequences are so awful you cannot let a child experience them. For example, you do not teach children about not going in the street by allowing them to be hit by cars.  You can, however, apply logical consequences in these situations.  Logical consequences are consequences which make sense to the child and are linked in some logical way to the behavior.  Spanking, for example, is not logically related to any behavior, nor is being sent to your room without dinner because you swore.  Not getting desert because you did not eat your meal, however, is a logical consequence because the consequence is related to the behavior, eating your meal.  When I was trying to teach my one-year-old son not to go in the street I used logical consequences.  I would hold his hand, walk with him to the curb and say, “No street.”  He would look at me like I was crazy and say “No street.”  I would then let go and if he walked into the street I would pick him up, say “No!” firmly and take him into the house.  He would protest but we would stay inside for a while just to make the point. Going inside is a logical consequence to not behaving safely outside. I repeated this each day, each time moving farther away as he reached the curb, turned around, smiled and said “No street.”  When I felt that he had learned not to go in the street, I let him wander while I sat on the porch and watched.  One day he began to walk toward the corner about a half a block away.  My wife started after him but I said, “Let’s see what happens.”  When he got to the corner he turned his head, smiled, said “No,no,no!” and came back.  Needless to say, he got a lot of positive strokes for that decision.  

In the end, you may have to resort to punishment, but it should be your last option.  If you do resort to punishment, make sure it is being carried out for the child’s good and not yours.  In other words, the punishment should teach the child about limits or consequences and not be just the result of your frustration or anger. Avoid physical punishment.  This is bad modeling and is not necessary. Lastly, it is important to separate the behavior from the child; make sure the child understands that, though you may not like what she is doing, you still love her. Improving a child’s behavior at the expense of her self-esteem is a hollow victory.

It is important to not confuse reinforcement or positive strokes with bribery or natural and logical consequences with threatening. Reinforcement is spontaneous or part of a contract.  For example, we may reinforce a child who has just brought home a great report card or a child may earn a certain amount of money by completing tasks for which she is responsible.  We may spontaneously reinforce a child because she has done something that we have decided is appropriate or more mature than we previously accepted.  For example, a child may begin to baby-sit her younger sister when you go out. These are all things that are good for the child.  On the other hand, bribery is a calculated way to get a child to do something for you, usually after the child has started misbehaving.  For example, a child starts to scream in the store and we say, “Be quiet and I’ll get you a chocolate bar.”  The child learns, “If I misbehave long enough I will eventually get what I want.”  If we are going to reward a child for good behavior, it should be spontaneous or agreed upon before you go in the store. If the child misbehaves, no reward will be forthcoming.  

Threats are not very effective because, like bribes, they are usually made after the negative behavior begins.  In addition, threats are often seen as a challenge by the child, who may think to herself, “Let’s just see if she means this.”  Also, parents often threaten consequences that cannot be carried out, or that hurt the parent more than the child.  If I want to go shopping and tell my toddler that she will be taken home if she misbehaves, I am actually giving her a wonderful way to avoid shopping and setting myself up for a disappointing day or an opportunity to go back on my word.  Before getting into potentially troublesome situations, be really clear with your children what you expect of them and what will happen if they do or do not meet your expectations.  Do not make the child wait too long for positive consequences and if you resort to a negative consequence, it should be clear why this is happening.  

This reminds me of an experience I had with my youngest son. Threats are almost always a bad idea with children.  Threats you can’t carry out are even worse.  It was Halloween and we were going to take the boys to a party at our oldest son’s school after dinner.  We were having shrimp salad and my youngest son refused to eat any. So at first I told him we wouldn’t go until he ate two bites.  He refused.  Now I had really set myself up here in a power struggle I could not win.  We were going no matter what.  So I backed down to one bite. Still no agreement.  So I picked up a shrimp, stuffed it in his mouth, picked him up and loaded him into the car.  At the party he ate candy, bobbed for apples, played games and generally had a great time.  When we came home we put them to bed and he was so exhausted he was sound asleep before I could even kiss him goodnight.  As I leaned over to kiss him, his mouth opened and there on his lower gum was the shrimp.  

Parents ask a lot of questions about discipline.  Instead of thinking of discipline as punishment, it is helpful to think of it as teaching children how to govern their own behavior.  The child who has experienced unconditional love, conditional positive strokes, limits, good models and a minimum of negativity is not going to need to misbehave for attention or to prove her own power.  However, all children (and adults) misbehave.  What is important is our reaction to that behavior.

We said earlier that there were three ways to respond to misbehavior: Change yourself, change the environment or change the child.  All three approaches are appropriate in different situations. It is important to decide which one is best in the particular situation in which you find yourself.  Elizabeth Creary, in her book Beyond Spanking and Spoiling, says that the best way to answer the question, “What should I do?” is to ask yourself another question: “How can the needs of the child and my(our) needs get satisfied in this situation?”  Considering only your own needs produces a child who feels unloved and unseen, while considering only the child’s produces a spoiled child who does not understand how to get along with others.  The goal is to work toward a compromise which will lead to a situation in which both your needs and the child’s needs can be met.  To do this you may have to change yourself or your expectations, change the child’s environment, or you may have to change the child.

Children are not machines–you cannot learn how to “fix” them in courses or books. Although these sources of information are helpful, you cannot apply pat, simple solutions to complex problems. Bruno Bettleheim, in his book, The Good Enough Parent, says the key to being a good enough parent is to first understand why the child is doing what she is doing.  He maintains that, based on the child’s experience and level of understanding, everything a child does makes sense to her at the time.  According to Bettleheim, the first step in dealing with a problem is to understand the child’s perspective.  Why is the child doing what she is doing?  Is she scared?  Is she desperate for attention or power in her life?  Is she just acting like a normal four-year-old?  This approach requires us to listen to children. Although I have not addressed this topic here, it is extremely important and entire books have been written on the subject.  I enthusiastically recommend learning how to listen to your children if you have trouble in this area.  Secondly, he advises us to try and remember what it was like to be a child, to try to imagine what our own responses might have to the situations that cause problems for our children.  

Closely related to this idea is the concept of mirroring.  Mirroring entails recognizing what your child is feeling or thinking and reflecting it back.  This process begins with comforting an unhappy baby, returning her smiles and gazes and engaging in loving conversations with the cooing and babbling infant. Later we can show children that we understand why they are unhappy or angry even though we may not alter our limits or environment to satisfy the child’s desires.  A friend of mine once told me of an experience with her two-year-old granddaughter who was staying with her while her mother was delivering her second child. At one point during the week the toddler picked up a doll and started banging its head against the table while repeating over and over, “No want baby!”  My friend said, “I know you are angry and it is ok to be angry about having to share mommy, but it is not ok to hit the baby. Mommy and Grandma will love you just as much now as we did before the baby came.”  This process of mirroring tells the child her feelings and perceptions are valid even if her behavior is not acceptable.  It tells the child she matters and is worthy of existence in this world.  Mirroring helps to form a sense of self which will help a child to make healthy decisions later in life.

If we are able to do these two things, understand the child’s motives and feel what the child feels, we will most likely make the right decisions. Trust in your own intuition and your ability to become better at this very difficult task of childrearing. Integrate the information you feel is helpful with what you know in your heart is right for you and your child. Remember that, no matter what else happens, if your child leaves childhood knowing you love her and will always love her and has been given the tools necessary to negotiate the perils of life, you have been successful.  She will accept herself, will be able to love others and pass this gift to her own children.

White Seal Speaks

On March 12, 1862 the steamship Brother Jonathan arrived in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada from San Francisco.  It brought with it a most unwelcome guest, Smallpox.  When the disease began to appear in the locals, the government moved to inoculate as many people as possible. As many white people as possible, that is.  When native people camping near Victoria became ill, they were forced to leave and return to their villages.  There was no attempt to vaccinate them.  Between April and December of 1862, half of the indigenous population between Victoria and Alaska perished.  Later, more died.

Around the same time, the government started sending boats into the inlets where native villages lay.  They would tell the inhabitants that they had one hour to get their children ready to leave for residential schools run by the Catholic and Anglican churches. There the children lost their families, their names, their language, their culture, their religion and in many cases, their innocence and virginity.  All of this in the name of “civilizing the Indians” and bringing them to Jesus.  After my wife read this she said, “They didn’t lose it. It was stolen.”  A moving story was told to me by a man whose grandmother experienced this travesty.  When I said, “You should write down her stories,” he replied, “She says you have stolen everything else from us, you can’t steal our stories too.”

This history, and many more injustices, were on my mind when I first arrived at the Red Lion Inn in Victoria on a crisp fall morning to begin teaching a basic counseling skills course to some of the Salish people of Vancouver Island. Never in my life have I met a kinder, more welcoming group of students.  After all we had done to them, they still made me feel welcome.

The tribes, or bands, had horrible social issues.  Drug and alcohol abuse, family violence, sexual abuse and suicide were rampant. Each band had a social worker who had to deal with these problems.  Often the workers had no training and few resources and were overwhelmed and desperate for help.  From this need sprang the Camosun College Native Band Social Worker program.  I was chosen to teach several of the courses, beginning with Basic Counseling Skills, a week long all day program of instruction.

I remember unloading my station wagon that was packed with boxes of reprints and then carefully reviewing my presentation schedule complete with exercises and role plays before arriving at the classroom promptly at 9:00am.  No one was there.  Around 9:30 people began to straggle in and at 10 I began.  At lunchtime I carried all my boxes back to the car unopened and returned them to the college.  It was clear to me this was nothing like any group I had ever taught before.  What did I have to offer these people?  The problems were horrendous and I was lost as to how to approach the topic in a way that made sense.  I should have known then that I would learn much more from them than they would learn from me.  In retrospect, teaching in that program was one of the highlights of my life.

The indigenous people of Canada like to be referred to as First Nations people and they do have their own nations.  Nothing was more moving than watching some of my former students graduating from University with degrees in social work wearing the beautiful beaded and buttoned capes of their people.  While other students were introduced by their name only, the names of First Nation students were followed by phases like, “From the Salish Nation” or “From the Haida Nation.”  It seems to me this communicates that, “Yes we are part of Canada but we are our own people.”  This, in spite of all we have done to try to destroy that identity.

My first lesson was about the First Nations concept of time.  At the end of the day I asked if we could start on time the next day.  

“What time?” one student asked.  

I said, “How about 9:30?”  

He said, “9:30 white man time or Indian time?”  

“What is the difference?” I asked curiously.  

“White man time, 9:30.  Indian time, see you for lunch.”

Everybody laughed and we decided that 10:00 white man time would suffice. One wonderful elderly lady said, “Yeah we got to go to the Bingo tonight so we can’t get up too early.” Everybody laughed again and then let me in on that well known First Nations disorder, Bingo Addiction.

The older lady then said, “Larry, you hear about the two Indian boys lost in the woods?” “Nope,” I replied. One says, “We are lost, do you think we should pray?” The other says, “Sure but I never been to church.” The first one says, “I have lots of times and I know what they say.” “OK then, pray.” The first one screws up his face and in the loudest voice says, “Under the B!”

For my first exercise I chose reflective listening, a style of listening that shows the other person that you hear them, understand them and have empathy.  My first attempt went something like this:

Ernie (a chief):  “You know about 5 years ago I quit drinkin’.  Me and my friend Paul was out on my fishin’ boat one night and we drunk up a storm.  Then next day I woke up and Paul was gone. Overboard in the night.  I still cry about it.”

Frankie (a wonderful young man who I will talk about later): “Ernie it sounds like you come here with a heavy heart.”

Never in all my years of teaching counseling skills had I seen people so naturally listen and speak from the heart.  I had nothing to teach them about this.

After a long discussion about what was troubling them most, I realized they were frustrated by their inability to stand up to the white bureaucrats who controlled their lives.  Assertiveness and outspokenness are not valued traits in their culture but are essential when dealing with government agencies and what they would call “European culture.”  They found the course useful and I will never forget the stories they shared with me as I learned who they were and what they needed from me.  Their kindness to and tolerance of me, a representative of a race of people who had treated them so badly and knew so little of their culture moved me deeply.  They invited me back to teach Child Development, the next course.  

One of the funniest stories was told by a woman from a village so remote you had to fly in or travel by boat to get there.  She said as the plane flew in it would pass over hot springs frequented by “white hippies” bathing nude in the pools. The people of her band called them the white seals and it was a local custom to report on any white seal sightings after landing.  Hence the title of this piece.

One of the reasons direct communication and assertive behavior was difficult was that much of the communication between them was indirect or spoken in metaphor.  Assertiveness, confrontation and in some cases even eye contact were considered rude.  This left them vulnerable to being steamrolled by the white authorities and was often confusing to a culture as direct as ours.  One of the best examples of this was the avoidance of eye contact as a sign of respect. Many of my students remembered being beaten because they would not look a nun or a teacher in the eyes for fear of appearing disrespectful.

Once we had to make an important decision.  We sat in a circle and I laid out the problem.  One of the students started by telling a story about his sister.  The next described a fishing trip. This went on as each told a story.  I became more and more confused and frustrated and was about to demand that we deal with the issue at hand when Chief Josephine said, “Well, I guess we have arrived at a decision.”

Stunned, I asked, “When did that happen and what was the decision?”  They all laughed and one of them said playfully, “Oh, you white people are so stupid.”

Somewhere in all that metaphor was a discussion and decision about the topic but I’ll be damned if I had any idea what it was.  

On another occasion I was teaching a course at the College and there was one First Nations student in the course.  I assigned a paper that required the students to describe how their parents had disciplined them as children and the effect it had on them.  The lone Salish student came to me and told me she couldn’t do the paper because she was not raised like that.  She explained that if a child misbehaved some adult or elder would take them aside and tell them a story, most likely with that pesky trickster Raven at the center.  It was up to the child to realize the meaning of the story and apply the moral to his or her own behavior.  So she wrote a beautiful paper relating stories she was told and how her behavior changed in response to the stories.

At the end of one course I taught, the students asked me when I would have their papers finished and grades submitted.  I said, “Well, you know, I have to go fishin’ with my brother up in Uclulet and then I have to go huntin’ with my dad. Also, my cousin wants me to help him clear some pasture….”

Amid howls of laughter, one of them said, “You really understand us don’t you?” I hoped I did.

Those courses and the education I received from those people prepared me for one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. After I had taught the courses, I received a phone call from one of the First Nations employees at the College.  She had relatives in the course and said to me, “Larry, my sister’s son is in terrible trouble and I know you understand our people. Could you help him?”

I agreed and soon met with the boy.  He was about 17 and what transpired between us is confidential but let me tell you he was in about as much trouble as you could imagine.  I can also say that my attempts to help him failed miserably. The rest of the story I can tell because it appeared in the local newspaper.  

At some point he got loaded up on drugs and alcohol and robbed a convenience store at a gas station.  He beat the attendant so badly he was in hospital for weeks.  After his arrest it looked as though he was on his way to adult prison. Soon after this happened I received a call from the chief of his mother’s tribe who asked me if I would write a letter to the judge pleading with him not to send the boy to prison but rather to turn him over the elders of the tribe.  The judge agreed.

One of the issues he faced was the fact that his father was white and his mother was First Nations.  As a child he was beaten by the white kids for being First Nations and beaten by the First Nations kids for being white.  So this action by the elders solidified his identity as a First Nations person.  They told him, “You are one of us.”  

The boy was taken into the tribe and they began teaching him the old religion and the respect for nature and life in general that were so central to the culture. Then they placed him on a rural trap line for the winter where he had to practice the skills they had taught him and to survive on his own, completely sober.  At the end of this experience they held a Potlatch, a ceremony in the long house or big house in which gifts are given by the host to others in the tribe.  These were outlawed by the early white government as part of a heathen culture and only recently have been allowed as part of First Nations heritage.  Really, what good capitalist gives away what he owns to his neighbors?

In this case, however, the recipient of the gifts was the young man beaten by my client.  Each member of the tribe donated money to cover expenses and lost wages.  Then each member stood up and expressed the shame they felt after hearing of the treatment he had received from one of their own.  Then the young man who had beaten him stood up and expressed his shame and they embraced. The last I heard of this fine young man thirty years ago was that he was helping First Nations youth around the province in a program aimed at preventing drug and alcohol abuse.  

We often talk about shame as a bad thing.  In this case it served to solidify this boy’s identity as a member of the tribe and emphasized the fact that he belonged and was truly a member of a race and culture with values and expectations.  It gave him an identity not as a “half breed,” but as a proud First Nations young man whose behavior reflected on his brothers and sisters in the tribe. That may have been the most important letter I have ever written.  

Another moving experience happened during the first course I taught.  On Wednesday one of the younger members of the group, Frankie, approached me and said, “I like you Larry.  I want to explain to you what it is like to be an Indian.” 

He suggested we go over to the shopping center and buy a couple of hot dogs then he would tell me what he wanted to tell me.  There, in the midst of middle class white people going about their daily business I had one of the most moving experiences of my life.  

He began by saying, “I used to hate myself for being Indian.  Then I hated white people.  Now I don’t hate anybody.”

He talked about his life as a child and the difficulties of growing up First Nations in white culture.  At some point in his adolescence he entered a program that had the purpose of teaching young First Nations boys the old culture and the values that were so central to his people before we showed up.  It transformed him and he became the proud young man he was at that time with a purpose in life based on love and respect and not on hate.  I will be forever grateful for that experience. Sadly, Frankie died young but his memory lives on as an inspiration to those who want to live a purposeful life.  

At the end of that first week, I was overwhelmed with gratitude and aware that somehow these people had changed me.  But I was wondering if I had achieved anything of substance when Chief Ernie walked up to me, grabbed my hand and said, “Thank you Larry.  I think what you have taught me will really help me help my people.”  I only hoped the same was true for me.  

 One last thought

Anthony Sutich, along with Abraham Maslow, founded the Transpersonal Psychology movement.  While in graduate school training to become a psychotherapist, he was diagnosed with an arthritic condition so severe he was given the choice to spend the rest of his life either sitting or lying down as his joints were well into the process of becoming completely immobile.  He chose to lie down.  I met him at a conference in the early 70s and you would sit behind him and he would talk to you through his frozen jaw while looking at you in a mirror mounted to the side of his gurney.  He worked as a therapist and helped many people, probably as much by inspiration as by psychotherapy.   

Later in life he decided to return to school and finish his Ph.D.  He finished the work but became very sick and was not present when his committee met for the last time and granted him his degree.  That night the chair of the committee had a dream in which Anthony came to his bedside walking.  “Anthony, you’re walking” he said in the Dream.  “Yes,” Anthony replied.  “I have died but I want to know if I passed the final review of my thesis.“  "Yes Dr. Sutich,” replied the chair.  "Good and goodbye” answered Anthony.  The chair was then awakened by the phone.  It was Anthony’s wife saying, “Anthony has just died.”

Whenever I am having a bad day or the world is not behaving in the way I want it to (this seems to happen a lot) or I feel frustrated, angry or hard done by I think about Anthony Sutich who gave so much to so many people and will be remembered for his kindness, indomitable spirit and for accomplishing so much in spite of probably having a lot of bad days.

[love-takes-work]

Steven Universe Podcast: Volume 2, Episode 3: Peridot

In the new season of the Steven Universe Podcast launched January 25, 2018, episode 3, released February 8, 2018, is about Peridot! The official description:

Why does Peridot call everyone a "clod?" Find out on this episode of the Steven Universe Podcast as creator Rebecca Sugar and former Executive Producer Ian Jones-Quartey return to discuss Peridot! Discover what inspired her design and personality traits, and how Rebecca's real life experiences shaped Peridot's development and storyline. Plus, Shelby Rabara, the voice of Peridot, and storyboard artist Amber Cragg join to share their favorite Peridot moments and episodes, and speculate on how Peridot is spending her free time away from the Gems! And Peridot herself answers some fan questions about best pets, earth fashion, and the Crystal Temps!

This is very long because the podcasts are getting long, and I don’t want to skimp on the detail but I also don’t want to overwhelm anyone with too much text. Therefore, I will open with bulleted highlights and include a more detailed narrative under the read-more.

Highlights:

Shelby Rabara thinks Peridot letting Steven and Amethyst help her in the episode “Back to the Kindergarten” was a real turning point for her as an expression of trust.

Amber Cragg thinks Peridot is a fantastic “icebreaker” character who is functioning these days as a Crystal Gems mascot.

Peridot’s free time on the weekends, according to Amber, would probably be occupied playing video games like Farmville and trying to make vlogs but failing to edit properly. Shelby thinks she does random art installations.

Peridot’s “clod” catch phrases originated with Ian Jones-Quartey doing an alien impression in the writers’ room, combined with an interpretation of science bros being condescending about concepts like evolution when they could have easily been more gentle and welcoming. 

“Marble Madness” combined story elements of discovering the Gems’ pasts with the Gems themselves learning something new about the present.

Rebecca feels that Peridot’s evolution from being a Homeworld flunky to discovering what happens when the system does NOT work for someone is a very important aspect of her character.

Peridot truly believed Homeworld’s philosophy was good for everyone and was not shy about being cruel to those who defied it; Rebecca related this to her experience being a Jewish kid getting shamed for her assumed beliefs by people who honestly thought they were doing her a favor.

Do Gems emerge from the ground with their indoctrination to Homeworld already embedded, or is it taught to them through propaganda? Some of both.

Shelby Rabara, in character as Peridot, suggests the Crystal Temps’ next adventure should involve baking an ube roll with Lars; that she’d like to learn eating so she can make noises; that she’d like to make vinyl pants that can have music embedded in them; and that dogs are the Best Earth Animal.

The detailed summary, including Shelby and Amber discussing Peridot's evolution, Rebecca and Ian discussing Peridot’s origin, and fan questions answered in character . . .

Read it all below!

McKenzie opens by asking storyboard artist Amber Cragg and Peridot's voice actor Shelby Rabara to discuss the episodes "Raising the Barn" and "Back to the Kindergarten." Shelby feels very in suspense when she watches new episodes because it's been so long between when she recorded and when she gets to see it. She loves when Peridot is so depressed lying in the bathroom, with that awful face Paul Villeco drew on her, and how she wants to bring her music to the kindergarten.

Shelby points out that Peridot lets her friends Amethyst and Steven cheer her up, and says it's an act of trust, which is a bit of a turning point for her. Even though Peridot ends up having an outburst and unloading, it's important to know that hope can sometimes come in the form of other people inspiring it in you.

Amber thinks an important aspect is Peridot's energy; she has a ton of it, and she can end up investing it in the wrong place. She was so careful with Lapis that she never wanted to say anything to rock the boat, and Lapis didn't talk back much, so neither really communicated, and it became a disaster of misunderstanding. But sometimes even if you invest energy into what ends up being a wasted effort, it's okay. You have to know when to move on. Amber mentions loving the scene that Katie drew looking at the sunflowers and riding in the train.

McKenzie clarifies that sometimes the issue is it being the wrong person you invest your time and effort into, and sometimes it's the wrong time. You can't fixate too much on ONE thing that has to be perfect or it's all over, or you could end up with nothing. She brings up Peridot's changing love for the Earth and its inhabitants, and asks what they think about that. Shelby thinks Peridot's love has developed partly because of how others there have treated her. Peridot's no longer just a "space Dorito"; she has empathy now. Amber says the Crystal Gems helped her find her roots, and now whether she likes it or not, Earth is home.

McKenzie leads into discussing Peridot's relationships and sense of self. Does Peridot put Amethyst down as defective as a way of increasing her own sense of self-worth? Amber says Peridot first noticed how all the Gems on Earth ignore the rules she's lived her life by forever, and how she's incensed by this at first, only to find she can develop her own personality through ignoring what she was told to be as well. Shelby runs through some interpretations of Peridot's perceptions of the other Gems, seeing Pearl as beneath her, Amethyst as cool despite her flaws, and Garnet as requiring compartmentalization. Shelby brings up Peridot's willingness to let the others show her who they are, and highlights the scene with Peridot being willing to try dancing with Garnet. (Her interpretation is that Peridot's response is to feel dirty and resolve never to try again.) 

Still, the Crystal Gems being full of surprises parallels her experience with Earth itself. Peridot herself got to be a complete ham, take herself in whatever direction she wanted and be encouraged by the others. No one will ever stifle her attempts to grow. We can take the message home that we can change even if we're past childhood or adolescence; we can reinvent ourselves and still access support.

McKenzie asks what the other Gems may have learned from Peridot, and Amber says they may have been inspired to see someone new coming into the fold as someone who needed their guidance and help. Amber thinks Peridot almost functions as a mascot--as a source of energy and morale. Everyone loves her, and she's a great "icebreaker" character, inspiring the others to be less blocked in and cautious.

And for her last question to them, McKenzie brings up how Lamar and Rebecca suggested Garnet and Greg play tennis on the weekends; in that light, what do Amber and Shelby think Peridot does? Amber thinks she argues with people on the Internet and is a pro gamer on Farmville (handle: ClodFarmer3000). She probably also tries to make vlogs but can't edit. Maybe she's taking a class in Adobe After Effects. Shelby thinks she does random art installations. Maybe blending in with a tree, not blinking. Or trying to be a mannequin in a clothing store. Or eating french fries and messing with people using her metal powers. She wouldn't let anyone in during her art creation process.

Ian and Rebecca talk origins and concepts:

Peridot was conceived pretty early on. Ian used to bust out with an alien impression in the writers' room, with generic not-understanding-humans statements, and he really wanted to put a similar alien in the show. 

The origin of Peridot's favorite word "clod" began with Rebecca and Ian watching the Cosmos remake, which sort of makes you fall in love with science--but then there's another side of it, with people who get mad at religion and are angry with those who don't understand evolution. Ian would do a voice of a "frustrated liberal": "But the Earth was created in seven days!" "No it wasn't, you CLOD." "Evolution is real, CLOD!" They point out that evolution is such a beautiful concept, but some of its proponents want to win you to their side by being mean about it. They believe more in being gentle.

They connected this with Peridot eventually, first starting with Elle Michalka wanting to include a Gem named Peridot combined with Rebecca's inkling that she wanted to handle Steven getting cyberbullied on the show. That didn't exactly come to fruition, but the idea of the person doing it--harassing someone and threatening someone from far away--became Peridot. This worked well with their desire to include discovery of the Gems' pasts and mix that with them learning something new about the present. Rebecca loved the episode "Marble Madness" because they'd written everything referenced in that episode to all be tied in together, dependent on information that had been revealed carefully in previous episodes.

Rebecca enjoyed bringing Peridot in as an example of a Gem who really toes the line and buys Homeworld propaganda; she relates it to her experience growing up Jewish and having other kids tell her they know she's categorically wrong about all of reality based on what box they believed she belonged in. The kids were never shy about telling her what punishment awaited people who don't pick the right religion, and honestly believed they're helping her out by saying these things; Peridot is similar, having never met a Gem for whom the order of the Diamonds was not beneficial, and she is not worried about whether the Crystal Gems' feelings will be hurt if she says so. 

Rebecca says Peridot may seem conceited, but she isn't; she knows she's a grunt, a maintenance worker, and is only proud because she knows her place. She believes the others she's meeting are just as not-special as she is, but then she comes to find out there are Gems who were failed by the system, and that changes her outlook. Always before, she thought the Homeworld philosophy really was the best for everyone, but when she finds out it isn't, she also realizes she herself is outside the system. You have to change your thinking when you learn the way things are is bad for some people.

McKenzie then asks about Gem indoctrination; do they pop out of the ground with these beliefs intact, or is it drilled into them? Ian acknowledges this is a big question about the nature of Gems, and they agree it's some of both. Peridot, as a maintenance worker, didn't think about questioning the system because she was just too busy working within it, going to a bunch of different places and learning about them, and also unknowingly absorbing revised history created to edit out what made Homeworld look unsuccessful or imperfect.

Peridot answers questions:

Peridot perks up at the mention of questions sent through Twitter and demonstrates recognition of the medium, and claims she has only taken over the CN Twitter when she's had PERMISSION.

McKenzie: I've heard rumors that you forcibly took over Cartoon Network's social media channels?

Peridot: I wouldn't call it forcibly. I basically did it because I felt like it, but who needs permission these days? I'm Peridot, hello.

McKenzie: That's fair. You are the #1 cartoon character according to that post.

Peridot: Did you see Shelby Rabara congratulated me? I got to talk to SHELBY RABARA. Oh my god. I don't think she knew that I self-proclaimed that I was the #1 cartoon character.

McKenzie: Would you ever consider leading another adventure as the Crystal Temps?

Peridot: I love being the Crystal Temps. I mean, everybody knows that I am The Garnet, the best one. I'm not as good as THE Garnet, but I think Lapis and Connie and myself, I think we would be really really great at baking cakes, specifically ube cakes with Lars.

McKenzie: Interesting! So would Pumpkin accompany you on that one, or would Lars take the place of Pearl?

Peridot: Oh no, Pumpkin definitely would be by my side, who's gonna lick up the extra ube cake when it--I don't wash floors, that's what Pearls do.

McKenzie: Speaking of food, if you could eat anything, what would you want to try first? Cookie Cats, Fry Bits, or something else?

Peridot: I would definitely try fry bits, because there's something about the oil bubbling really violently that makes it really really neat to watch. And apparently when I watch Steven eat the fry bits, he makes this loud noise, so I'm interested in how many loud noises I can make all at the same time.

McKenzie: What is objectively the best Earth pet? There's dogs, cats, hamsters, are you familiar with those?

Peridot: What is the difference between a hamster and--cats?

McKenzie: Cats are larger and they would probably eat a hamster.

Peridot: Oh my god, they eat a hamster? Cats eat hamsters?

McKenzie: They eat mice, which are related to hamsters I'm pretty sure.

Peridot: I ate a Cookie Cat. Was I eating a real cat?

McKenzie: That is a separate thing.

Peridot: Are dogs loyal?

McKenzie: They are. That is their main feature.

Peridot: Okay. Well, Pumpkin is super loyal to me, so if Pumpkin's anything like an Earth dog, I would have to say my final answer would be the best Earth pet is a dog, if it's remotely anywhere near Pumpkin.

McKenzie: What is a piece of Earth fashion that you've always wanted to try on?

Peridot: Is there something called vinyl on Earth? I would like to try on some vinyl pants. Very shiny. I don't know if they're easy to walk in, but something about the vinyl, the scratchy sound it makes. Don't Earth people put music on vinyl? Or am I getting that mixed up with the round thing?

McKenzie: Yeah, they're both called vinyl. They're not on the pants. There's no music in the pants.

Peridot: There should be music in the pants.

McKenzie: Maybe that should be the next step.

Peridot: Is that something that I can contribute to Earth? Making vinyl music pants that can play music while you walk?

McKenzie: I think that that's definitely something you should look into.

Peridot: Peridot, Peridot, Peridot, Peridot is going to own vinyl music pants!

McKenzie: I look forward to getting a pair.

Peridot: Me too. Me too. Me too McKenzie.

McKenzie: What is your favorite part about being a farmer?

Peridot: It is just so amazing to have my hands in the dirt. I love the smell of dirt, I love those white little rock thingies that supposedly help with water drainage. I really enjoy that something like soil has striations in it, just like rock. You have to put the bottom layer with rocks and you have to put some mulch on top, and then on top of that more dirt, and more rocks on top. So there is definitely a way to create soil that has good drainage, has all the yummy stuff for all these flowers and fruits and vegetables to grow in. So I really do believe being a farmer is something that is just ingrained in me.

McKenzie: You take it seriously.

Peridot: I take it very seriously. I am mulching every other day McKenzie. I am getting bags of mulch. Pumpkin likes to eat the mulch, and that's a problem.

McKenzie: If you had a podcast, what would you make yours about?

Peridot: This is a great question. I'm gonna need a moment. Now, what we're doing right now, a podcast, where people listen to us in our podcast, would I be able to have guests come on my podcast?

McKenzie: You can have guests on the podcast.

Peridot: I watched an episode of Mr. Rogers one time. Steven was watching it, so I got to watch it as well. And other than Camp Pining Hearts, that's still my number one show. Mr. Rogers has all these people come on the show and talk about how they make things, like mozzarella cheese. One time this man came on the show and showed how they made mozzarella cheese, and stretched it with their hands and put it in the water after molding it into little balls. I would really like to have maybe the inventor of yellow Post-It sticky pads. I would just wanna know people's thought processes? Like, what makes that glue on the top of the Post-It note? How does a microphone work? Who invented the button? I don't have any buttons on my clothes, obviously, but Steven one time wore a polo shirt with a button. And I was fixated with this little tiny round thing with four holes. I would like to know who made that button. Who are the great minds behind Earthling things?

McKenzie: Buttons have probably been around for a while. I don't know that the person who made buttons is still with us, if you know what I'm getting at.

Peridot: Oh that's a shame.

McKenzie: But I think that the mozzarella cheese thing sounds great!

Peridot: Where do people go?

McKenzie: Um....

Peridot: Is that for the next podcast?

McKenzie: Yeah we'll talk about that next time.

Peridot: Okay.

An episode about Pearl is next week!

[Archive of Steven Universe Podcast Summaries]