Blog 96 Endnote: The Gift (Gary)
ENDNOTE: The Gift (Gary)
We had completed the account of our journeys. We were satisfied with the work. And then something happened that broke me open once again.
I lost my dog. My Cedar.
Sue gave Cedar to me as a fiftieth birthday present. Sue picked him out of his litter and thus chose one of the loves of my life. My own puppy: It was like being handed a sacred gift of love.
Cedar was a lab-retriever mix. He was my little brother. I took him to play ball and walked him every day. He was ninety-six pounds of blond fur. My spirit animal, I guess. At fourteen years of age Cedar was struggling to walk and I knew I couldn’t ask any more of him.
We had a family gathering and put him to sleep on the back deck on an Indian blanket. He was my bear, my friend, my loyal companion. Cedar was safe to open my heart to. I became very depressed. Sue pushed me to go to the VA for help.
I had a PTSD assessment in Oakland in 2015. I asked Sue to go with me. It was what seemed like a long drive to an isolated area I had never been to before. It ended at a funky old building on the baylands not far from Oakland. It was a long wait to see the psychologist that was doing the assessments. While waiting for the psychologist to do my assessment I chatted with other waiting vets and it was just like being back in the military.
I was anxious about the interview but felt a sense of relief and support when I found out Sue could join me. My anxiety increased as we waited over an hour and a half but was relieved when I was finally greeted by a woman psychologist who was a seasoned Navy veteran.
She questioned me for an hour and a half about my experience in Vietnam and when our time was almost up she asked how I felt about what I had shared. I told her I didn't know. I was frozen on the spot. I couldn't talk but my chest hurt. I thought I might be having a heart attack. She asked me again. I couldn't answer. I just knew my chest hurt. She finally asked Sue, “What do you think he is feeling?”
She volunteered, "Heartbroken." I lost it and broke down sobbing. She nailed it.
It wasn't fear it was heartbreak. I wasn't scared, I was horribly disappointed and humiliated that I was left alone, abandoned to die in a pathetic, isolated situation with nowhere to go. Needless to say it was a horribly painful experience, but a therapeutic breakthrough to a depth of feeling I had never felt before.
It brought me home to all I have written but hadn’t felt before—MY HEART.
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Blog 95 Epilogue
The Journey (Gary)
I never had a home. It seems a little strange to look back on the seven years of writing this journey, walking The Hill. It has been an unwinding that has taken me through my whole life.
For a while I thought it was about loss, grief, and gratitude. Then I thought it was about abandonment. Then I thought it was about Vietnam. Now I realize it was all about finding a home for my neglected three-year-old who had to deny the depth of his aloneness, and fear. He was a scared little boy, and I didn't know that till now. He was so scared he shut down all his feelings so he could take care of people so maybe they would take care of him. The little old man had a little kid inside. Well, he is now out and looking for his toys. I have to father him in such a way that he values feelings more than pictures. That was all I had then, but now I can fully feel—Vitality.
Vitality (Webster’s II): 1. The characteristic that distinguishes the living from the nonliving. 2. The capacity to grow or develop. 3. Physical or intellectual vigor and energy.
My realizations had come together one early morning shortly after waking. The image is like that of a dark helium balloon bouncing around amongst other dark helium balloons way up in the sky. But the gas that had filled them is not helium but fear fed by absence of human contact. Fantasy balloons. Now the gas has seeped out and my balloon has fallen to earth and my feet now touch the ground. It's more than an Aha! moment. I feel I have let go of something big. In absence of fear I find myself.
It's funny to me how answers or perhaps tips come to me from the Universe. I am realizing so much of my life's void has been filled up with fantasy because of an absence of touch and feelings. As I begin to realize this and write about it, I notice that one of my wife's clients dropped off a book and left it on our desk at the office. I couldn't help but notice it even before I reached this place within myself in the last couple weeks. Then, when I understood the subtle message I grabbed it, and now can't put it down: Feelings, Buried Alive Never Die by Karol Truman. I don't know if it will address my new reality, but it certainly seems like another helper from the other side giving me a hot tip. I again remember my mother's typical response to any negative feelings I had: "Oh Gary, don't feel that way." In other words, don't feel. Also, don't hug. I don't remember ever getting hugs or kisses from my mother. I do remember asking her to tuck me in. She would do that. That I liked. There was no affection or soothing in my family unless there was drinking. The only time I remember my relatives fawning over me was when they had been drinking. It felt, as a child would say, “icky.”
I recently discovered the word vitality as though for the first time. I thought it captured what I was looking for. I wanted a vital life and relationships. Now the word was just a stopover to the core need for feeling. I feel a different harmony in my body, and today, Valentine's Day, I woke with a feeling of enthusiasm for this new world of feeling. I no longer need to go further than my own back yard, as I feel the joy of watching my dog chase his ball, and I watch his big blond ears go up and down. I used to feel my feelings for others. Now I can have what I need for myself.
I believe I have put it all together now for this journey. My wanderings on The Hill have taken me on a circuitous path of unwinding, not just my life but my ability to feel. Being with myself and my friend for four to six hours a week on the mountain has taken me through a whole range of feelings. It has only been through these feelings that I now understand my life-long hunger for connection, my fantasy life, my loneliness, my need for excitement, and my grief.
Vietnam highlighted my wound. The search for home was to find a home in me, a place where I could be at home with my feelings. It wasn't because of an ex-wife or a war. It was that I couldn't be at home while all that was stirring on the inside. Yet I had been taught that it was all about the world outside of myself. Six months of a daily grief meditation (thanks for that, Roberta) brought me closer to it, but it hadn't been enough. Eighteen years of therapy off and on had not been enough. Fantasy and material things have been a life-long substitution for feelings, touch, and love. I startle at this a bit now when I think about how much of our world believes that life is about how much excitement something can bring to you rather than just being where you are. The simplest sport gets amped to its highest potential of technology. The unspoken message is that you and yours are not enough.
I am tired of wandering and looking outside myself. I am happy, even a little blissful to realize that I have it all right here. Oh, I might get distracted from time to time, everyone does. But I know that when I stop a moment and go inside, I'm good. My long journey is done. My hands and nose are no longer pressed on the glass window. There will be other places that also have meaning for me, but I now have a sense of peace I have never had before. Big sigh here.
In the book I just mentioned, Feelings Buried Alive Never Die, Karol Truman says it well:
Many people have a difficult time identifying their feelings and their thoughts. This was my problem, also. Too many of us have been taught—or perhaps not allowed—to be cognizant of what's going on inside our mind or our body. Perhaps, due to overwhelming pain or abuse, our early conditioning kept us from being consciously aware of our feelings and thoughts. Consequently, it's impossible for us to be sensitive or mindful of them today. Or, we could simply be so accustomed to turning our pain and hurt over to something (i.e., drugs/food) or someone else to fix, that our ability to be consciously aware of what is taking place inside ourselves has turned off. It's usually for these reasons we haven't been schooled in how to resolve our feelings for ourselves. Sadly, the majority of the human family's consciousness is either fragmented or missing entirely. You may be asking, "So what do I do about it?" Your first challenge will be to get in touch with your external and internal dialogue. That is, what you are saying out loud and what you are saying to yourself. What you say—out loud and silently—leads you to what you are thinking inside your head. This then leads you to what you are feeling inside. One way to help yourself become more aware is be sensitive to what is happening around you. Take yourself outside any situations and just be an observer . . . .
Great sex doesn't come from having the coolest car. Nor from connecting with images and symbols of things instead of what is real. Nor from creating fantasies, or ritualizing things rather than substance and sustenance. Great sex involves touching and making it real.
Emotional markers, that’s what this is all about.
I think when we started these walks we were two disappointed, adult, abandoned children who tried desperately to be good enough to be validated by the world, a world that will never give our inner child the validation and love we have so desperately been seeking. Whether it is through physical fitness or the presentation of the well-intended therapist, we carry an edge. It is an edge of disappointment. The blame, if you will, belongs to our parents who could not give it to us, and not to the world or our relationships. However, blame could actually be placed back many generations, so what purpose does it serve? None. It would be a waste of energy to blame anyone.
What I am certain of now is that my need to come home to something, to belong after Vietnam, is only part of the deeper wound of abandonment. The walks have helped me unwind it all, and Mark and I are twins in grief who were not given the validation we needed from our childhood gods. The love we have been so desperately seeking is here in Nature, and here within us. It has been a circular walk that unwound our histories, our wounds, our struggles, and anxieties. It took us away from ourselves for the purpose of the telling. It gave us a mirror to see ourselves, and a witness for validation. In essence it has cleansed and re-birthed us. Mother Earth has nurtured and guided us into becoming adult men who are deep, full, and present. The journey has been a long one but worth every step.
Thank you Great Spirit that moves in all of us.
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Blog 94 October 2, 2014 Gary
The journey continued. Just when you think you have closure, you don’t.
Sue convinced me to sign up for VA medical care. I have resisted for a short time, only forty-seven years or so. I didn’t want to use something that I didn’t feel worthy of. Walking in the door made me nervous, but all was good. Nice facility and nice people. I signed up for a physical and told the doctor about my fatigue. Then I was off on a series of scans and MRIs, treadmill, and such. All good, except I was low in vitamin D, had a large kidney stone (dormant for over ten years) and some deterioration of the lower spine and lungs simply due to age. So basically it was all good. However, I didn’t feel any better, and I noticed every time I went to the VA for anything I teared up.
I was on to another chapter. My wife connected me with Lori Carter, LCSW, and I did a 14-hour Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Intensive. The EMDR cleared most of my trauma from Vietnam. After another individual session the tearing stopped. I walked around the hospital to my spots where I would sit and cry, and I was good. It was now just a hospital. I could breathe.
However, I always seem to find another door to the dark. One of my recent clients turns out to be the daughter of a Marine and a Vietnamese woman from Nha Trang where I was stationed. In other words, she was one of the children left behind during the war, half white and half Vietnamese. She had divorced her American husband and now they were back together working with me in therapy. I disclosed that I had been stationed in Nha Trang. They told me Nha Trang had changed. Later on they emailed me a picture they had taken of the old air base.
The picture triggered emotions for me. They explained that they couldn’t get on the base, but the picture taken through the fence around the hanger gripped me. I called Lori for more EMDR. I was able to shrink that picture and close the screen so to speak. Then it triggered the images of my office on the base, and the people I worked with. More EMDR.
It was astonishing to me what happened next. I felt this dark energy. I remember feeling somewhat harassed by my sergeant and the first sergeant. They wanted to take me downtown and get me laid. They offered to pay. I was engaged, and always had my girl’s picture on my desk. I was studying my catechism, and was baptized at the Cathedral in Nha Trang. I was a good, Catholic boy.
In the process of doing the EMDR I realized that they may have been addicted to alcohol and sex, but I was just as addicted to my fantasy way of being with the woman who was my fiancé. I was probably a pain in the ass with my obsessing about the mail and about her. They were just trying to break the spell, and connect with me. It really wasn’t so much about getting laid or drunk. That was a WOW moment. The darkness with which I held them and that office went away. I wanted to thank them for caring or at least attempting to wake me up.
In my work with the couple mentioned above, and hearing about the woman’s trauma as an outcast in Vietnam for being half white, I realized that I wanted to do further research on the men I served with. I went back to the journal I kept in Vietnam, and made a list of the names of men I had mentioned. I had looked for the first sergeant and my sergeant in the past without any luck. I had noticed the armorer’s name before, and realized he had to be the one who issued me my M16, my pot (helmet), and one hundred rounds the night of the grey alert when we prepared for an attack.
“We” sounds strange as it actually felt like Sam F. and I where the only ones on base, and Sam was in a separate room. Yes, somewhere out there were some guards on the fence a distance apart. But talk about feeling alone and disconnected. More like abandoned. This was my post, and in the military to leave your post is an offense meriting court martial. What was I supposed to do? Turn my desk over and fire from there through a shuttered window? Open the shuttered window and then turn over my desk? Wait in the scant light for directions? WTF big time. All the time, in the NOW, I still live there part-time.
Sam F. seemed more scared than I. All our senior staff and most of the base personnel lived downtown. We were on our own. The last intelligence report I heard said there were 5,000 NVA (North Vietnamese Regular Army) in the mountains preparing to attack us, but we didn’t know when.
I smirked and half laughed. It had to be a joke. If we were attacked we had no defensive perimeter. Command had ordered that the sand bag bunkers be dismantled. They were replaced during a base beautification project with little white fences and freshly planted palm tree saplings. My windows were shuttered to keep the heat out but the walls were thin boards with Styrofoam gun boxes inserted between the studs for insulation. We had no firing positions. We were dead if we were attacked. I had put a lot of faith and allegiance into duty, honor and country, my training, the Air Force and my superiors, and it was immediately shattered.
My journal provided no contact information for Sam F. I had to search the Internet. I found his name along with Airman D.’s, and a couple others on a web site, and my first reaction was that they had been killed. I was really upset, to say the least. Then I realized they were listed as the honor guard for someone else who had been killed in Nha Trang.
That brought up the memory before our situation, or after. I can’t remember. One of our guys from Security Police was left in the bush while protecting the repair of a downed chopper. Our lieutenant forgot him. Our guys were not trained to fight and survive in the jungle. Shit! Fortunately, he ran into some of our Special Forces and was brought in. Talk about abandoned. No doubt he will have that one to remember. He complained to his Congressman. He and his family were just a tad pissed, and rightly so. I have to call both incidences incompetence and arrogance on the part of command. It somehow feels good to say that. There you go. That is the truth.
I found Sam F. in two different places, but it was obvious the addresses were old. I only had a phone number, so I called. A machine answered. I left a message, and the next day I received a message that just said, “Call me back.” I did, and it was Sam F. He said he didn’t remember much, but he would try to recall some names. We exchanged email addresses.
He sent me an email, and said he had lived with my sergeant and his girlfriend. I wrote back asking if he had any contact information for Bobby R. S. It turns out they both left a girlfriend and a child behind. Sam said his girlfriend’s family was from the north and at the end of the war they probably went back north to join the rest of her family where they would have been killed. So terribly sad. He didn’t answer me regarding Sgt. S.
As I come to rest on the subject now I feel like I am bringing home that twenty-two-year-old I had been in Vietnam. It has taken years of work to bring him home. Maybe because there was nothing anyone else could do that would have done it anyway. I realize now that a brass band, or a hero’s welcome, or a girlfriend’s embrace would probably not have done it. No matter how many “welcome homes” I might receive, I was the only one who could bring that twenty-two-year-old home. I now have a sense of him, that part of me, being here.
I shared this feeling with my psychologist friend, Barry. He said when in his forties, he had burned out in his private practice, became sick, and took five years off in Mexico. On an evening when he was returning to his villa in Yelapa he found himself being followed. Someone was walking on the trail behind him. He felt scared. He stopped and reflected back to the sense of being his eighteen-year-old self. It was perhaps a healing moment for him as well.
I now no longer feel so desperately alone. I went to a former client’s wedding reception during this time, and Roberta, a Native American shaman friend of mine I’ve known for years, was there. We chatted and we took the only two places left at the table. I was then sitting across from another Vietnam vet, and we had a brief conversation about our experiences. He denied any PTSD, but he said maybe it was because he was deployed from Germany where he was having a great time, and returned to Germany. I still thought it was interesting to land there.
I left that party and went to Los Altos for my High School Reunion. I found my old friend Dean and his wife. Dean and I had worked together for PG&E, so it was always great to see him. I mingled and chatted. Somehow Vietnam came up, and I realized several of my classmates had been there. Dave C. was suffering from severe PTSD; he has a one hundred percent disability due to the effects of Agent Orange.
I brought up the name of Robert Burns, and a woman said he was in terrible shape after Nam and would smoke and let the cigarette burn down through his fingers. He had died two years after his return from Nam. That would make him twenty-three years old. That was hard to hear. It left me with a new sense of pain. Why couldn’t anyone help him? I had seen him in San Francisco while I was on leave before I had gone to Vietnam. I saw him on Broadway as a buddy and I were going to a Dave Brubeck concert. I had to yell at him. “Hey Burns! It’s me man from San Mateo High.” He didn’t recognize me, and it seemed to take a bit of effort before I could connect with him. He said he was in the Marines. He said he couldn’t join us because he was waiting for a friend. That was the last time I ever saw him. I was plagued with the story of Burns. The red-headed kid from San Mateo High who was a good athlete. “Don’t mean nothin’” they used to say in Nam. Pain.
Two days later as I am running my trail, trying to put my earphones on, I’m thinking about Robert B., and I almost run two women off the trail. Almost two years later, at almost the same spot on this two-mile trail, whom do I run into? It’s Roberta and her sister. We exchange “I love you” and “déjà vu,” and I go back to running. It’s very strange to have this running all together. The trail I now run is relatively flat, and it provides a challenge in weather, but it is not The Hill, and I no longer need it.
Not long after I received a call from a Vietnamese woman who wanted to say “thank you” for helping her country. This I was not expecting. As I am on the phone with this stranger a helicopter just happens to whop-whop-whop above my car while I am on my phone. I chuckle about this perfect little test of my usual triggers, and find that it is no longer a trigger. The woman and I agree that the hardships in Vietnam have made both of us wiser and stronger. I appreciate her “thank you” and am taken by the call.
Maybe in a way it’s all coming together. My position attached to the Air National Guard as a volunteer may be running its course. The colonel who was supposed to take command changed his mind. He would have been a key player to move our unit forward. Now we are like a three-legged horse, and the new wing commander may not find a need for us. Now my colleague for the last two years, and senior to me, is leaving. I am again left to command alone. A two-legged horse, no, just a two-legged person, how perfect. I am very aware, and believe, that we create or are given exactly what we need to learn or what we need to get over.
Maybe our walk is complete. A necessary walk of healing that we were destined to do. But right now it’s time for us to stop all of this writing. Time to climb The Hill again. Time to gear up and gather up my brother. What is next for us I don’t know, and we are always grateful for a walk up The Hill to help us find out.
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Blog 93 Finally, I Land at Moffett Field (Gary)
Finally, I Land at Moffett Field (Gary)
So to speak.
The California Guard has become an important part of my life, and has a new set of responsibilities attached to it.
My Colonel has set me up to be Liaison Officer to the Air National Guard (ANG) at Moffett Field, and I am encouraged by the Vice Commander to drill there. I ask for a transfer, which is up to my Colonel, and I assume he says yes, as I find myself not only trying to make things happen there, but I am introduced everywhere on base by the Wing Commander. Quickly, I find myself as Acting Commander responsible for building a new unit. I am shortly joined by an ex-cop, Chief of Police, and retired ANG noncommissioned officer (NCO). Joint Reception Staging and Onward Movement Integration (JRSOI) is our primary mission, which is to establish an operating area for first responders. This was made clear by the Wing Commander on our tour of the base. They need help on many different fronts to support this little city.
Since I have a great working relationship and friendship with Captain Albright, the A Company Commander, I, of course, want my old company, and a company commander to be in on the action, as well as be a supply of necessary soldiers to accomplish the mission. We set up our first training of twenty-one soldiers. The classroom is the “high bay” where they brought in bodies in body bags from Vietnam. A lot of the classroom is around Air Force Instructions, we used to call them Regulations, but okay. In the field portion of the training the soldiers learn when to use lethal force. I realized in watching that I had no desire to point a gun at anyone. Danger and excitement no longer filled a need the way they used to and there is the reality of pain and dying. Getting shot at meant nothing when I was young. Movies and video games can do that to you.
Just before lunch one of the younger trainers told us about his cross-fit training, and invited the soldiers to come out and participate. He said he was intensely involved in cross-fit, and not weight lifting, because it was the best form of training to allow him to carry a buddy out if he needed to. Somehow that was the contrast to the “body bag” image I had in my mind, and the higher order of why I was there. It was somehow healing to hear. I guess because it was about living and loving your brothers. We have a mission to protect our citizens but also a passion to protect our brothers and sisters in combat. I am all over that. Not enough was or is done to take care of those who are willing to give their life for their country. We are a rescue unit after all.
I am clearly here to Rescue others and My Self. I have landed. I am home.
I am here to cut the cords of others, and honor my wholeness and light and connection to the universe. I am no longer alone. My old way of being was to connect to others’ needs, and thus not feel alone. I found a way not to feel alone by identifying with others’ needs. I then didn’t feel alone but at the same time it cost me a portion of myself, my light, my personal power. From here on I am of a spirit of light connected to the universe and all its power. I don’t give up myself to have it. It was a way not to feel alone. But the cost was high.
I no longer need others’ needs to not feel alone. I am whole unto myself. I can help myself and others far better as a whole spiritual person than one who needs the injuries of others to not feel alone and in control of my fear.
How much and in what ways do you cover up your needs?
BUY THE BOOK: walkingthehill.com
Blog 92 The Home That is and The Home That Was (Gary)
Why am I resisting my good wife? Why am I afraid of partnering with her? She is like the good mom I have never had, and she keeps patiently waiting for me to show up. Well, time is running out.
I did enough therapy around this to finally get that I had to kill my mother. No, she was already dead. I’m not suggesting that anyone actually kill his or her parents. It's about killing the power they have inside of you. That took a lot of work, but I realized that I could not love myself until I had ended the wrath I had for my mistreatment. It became my critic and my shadow. The secondary effect is that no matter how much my wife displayed her love for me, I couldn't fully accept it. No matter what I accomplished in the world, it was not enough. It took remembrance and making note of every little way I felt abused and abandoned by my mother. I had to constantly uncover, reinvigorate, and spit it out over and over until I was able to put it aside. Otherwise I could never be myself or be available for anyone else.
All of this has to do with the pain of the world I created to deal with being alone. I have a home in my mind that no longer exists. It's that little house outside of Coos Bay, Oregon, in the suburb of Englewood. My little kid holds on to it like it is still there when in fact it is not. My dog’s not there, my swing is no longer there, and the front yard has been taken over by a large house. No more apple trees. Get it, Gary. The only "home" I can now make for myself is here. That creates an internal fight for me to accept.
BUY THE BOOK: walkingthehill.com
Blog 91 Lessons from Clients (Gary)
Maybe this book should be retitled "Coming Home." My recent reflections and past writing help me to see how much I have been controlled by my little kid who grew up with scattered rewards, and now, today, in my practice I find people very scattered primarily due to the economy, but it makes me a little angry and frustrated, mirroring my own internal anger and frustration. I am realizing there is nothing out there.
I especially witnessed it with two clients. One was raging about giving so much of himself (and his money) and not getting anything back. We talked about his hurt little kid. I could so join with him and laugh. It's about the adult taking charge, and not deferring to his history of being the hurt child.
The other was a seventy-three-year-old man in one of my groups. I have known him for over ten years. He has been presenting more and more of his wisdom as he ages, most especially in the last two years. It started happening as he began to lose his wife to Alzheimer's disease, and he had to manage everything. He is now decompensating rapidly, and is in danger of losing his physical and mental functioning. He has helped me feel the heart-wrenching agony of an adult wise man going away, gradually disappearing.
Therapy at $250 an hour is speeding my recovery along with the mirrors that are reflecting back all of the above.
How much do you resist seeing yourself? What tools or rituals do you have to avoid seeing and feeling?
BUY THE BOOK: walkingthehill.com
Blog 90 The Wisdom Hidden in Abandonment (Gary)
My wife and I provided a two-hour therapy session to a couple. Both husband and wife had been abandoned as children. Now they were facing their pain in relationship, and were not able to give each other what they needed. It helped me to see another part of myself. I saw another’s sheer terror.
The man was desperately trying to convey to his wife and us how she was not there for him, and how sheThe had broken their agreement by seeking other men. I yelled at him that it was the sex, meaning that he was so focused on the sex in his relationship for his sense of meaning. What I saw was a little kid who was angry that this person, who had so fulfilled his need to be validated, could no longer keep it up. It was never enough. I saw the abandoned child whose mother had left, and he was angry and scared.
Then I saw her reaction to his unwillingness to validate her abandoned child. We couldn’t get him to see it. She had been abandoned by her father as a child, and was clearly seeking validation from this older man, and other older men. He had stopped adoring her, and sex had become less important to him after they had married. Instead he became obsessed with work. And when she became pregnant he distanced himself even further. She had become desperate to regain his attention, and acted out by drinking, and getting the attention of other older men.
He simply saw her breaking the agreement he had formulated. What she re-experienced was abandonment. He couldn’t see it. She was just wrong for her reactions, and they were two different people. Ironically they were twins in their bond of pain. Divorce became the next subject.
Children who are abandoned by either or both parents become fearful as they have nothing to attach to, no ground, no stability. These children then search for an attachment that will satisfy the need. Often they will make themselves desirable by manifesting traits that they perceive will be attractive to others and deserving of love. They will sacrifice their own internal needs, and often go to extremes in work, sacrifice, and presentation in order to be worthy of the bond they were missing. They will find a similar partner to bond to and complement with the task of achieving the perfection of the imaginary, lovable child. When in relationship they appear to have found the love they so desperately needed. However, when one or the other becomes human, and displays qualities that are not perfect, the relationship starts to unravel. They feel then that this person cannot be the one. Then there is resentment and a realization of an ancient fear, because their partner could not hold up their end of an unspoken agreement, and the anger comes from realizing they are back where they started. The unspoken agreement was that their partner would love and validate them perfectly, and give them the kind of love and validation that only a parent can give to a child. This will not happen. They divorce, and start their search again, but they are more angry and cynical this time.
The longing for belonging was the theme that came home to me from this session. I saw that The Hill gave Mark and me an opportunity to heal the wound of abandonment. The healing that’s revealing, the mirror that helps me to see myself, a brother who walks the path with me; I could not have done this alone.
I bring this story up because I see it as an element of our walks. It helps me to see who we are uncovering. I see the abandoned child in each of us who is seeking achievement as a way of ensuring value. Or doing nothing as a way of giving up, because the idea of being of value is too daunting. Sooo common.
If you shine enough you will be validated, valued, and never abandoned. Each of us has excelled in many areas seeking some form of security of self that will never ultimately be achieved. I had an attachment disorder of my own. I would attach to anything that I thought could help me feel better. Only by surrendering to our limitations, and accepting ourselves can we be at peace. It is belonging in its deepest meaning.
So what am I saying? I am saying that the child who is abandoned by either or both parents needs at some point to turn to the wisdom of the adult within.
Fathering yourself is an option. How would a good father “father” you? I find this to be a very helpful tool when stuck. The wisdom is available in most of us.
Instead of judging myself (actually swearing at myself) like I was used to, one day I stopped myself and asked how it was working. I laughed, of course, realizing it was just another way of shaming myself, and it certainly wasn’t motivating. I took a couple minutes to simply ask myself, “What would a good father say to me right now?” It brought me to sanity, relief, and gave me a mature direction. I continue to use it as needed. Shame and judgment no longer serve me.
BUY THE BOOK: walkingthehill.com
Blog 89 The Argument (Gary)
The Argument (Gary)
I awoke this morning facing my little kid who is disappointed and always waiting for a better day, and realized how often it happens. I need to negotiate something different or I will forever be in that state of being. I cannot afford to live my life this way any longer. I find my fantasies are less active, but now more in the shadows, yet still very much there. So what is it? What is my movie?
My movie is my hot wife (Sue, not someone else) greeting me in the early morning wearing a nice wrap. She is lovely with her makeup on and wearing a smile. The backyard is large, and includes quiet, a pool, and my Cedar (dog) and Spunky (the cat). The air is fresh and clean. My Porsche is in the garage, we have two or three million in the bank (investments), our children are happy and engaged in good things in the world, I work two days a week.
Wait, I am starting to feel something is missing.
It’s the play. I want to travel to fun places and do fun things with my wife, and adventure travel with my buddies. I want to do road trips, backpack, and roam the planet.
So let’s redefine this.
“Are you looking for something beyond fun? Is this longing again for belonging?”
“I know I belong in Nature, and I miss it. I want the cabin at Lake Tahoe, as well as the home in Carmel Valley, and my wife hot and sexy, travel where and when I want, have friends all over the world, serve the Air Rescue Teams, be a hero, serve my country, serve my patients, write books, invest well, be physically fit and attractive, well dressed and groomed. Once a year I would do an adventure trip with my buddies. Sue and I would be traveling for a month in August, my brother and I for ten days in March, Sue and I for two weeks in December/January, I would backpack or road travel for three days a month in July, August, September and October. I would cross-country ski and snowshoe in the months of January through April.”
This is what my little kid wants, as well as my adult. (Oh wait, don’t forget dancing to rock and roll once a month.)
The problem is my little kid keeps waiting and wanting, and feeling cheated. He is not sitting by the window waiting but resentfully tolerating in his head (room) for it all to come together. That is the truth. So now I am HOME but part of me (my little kid) continues to wait for something to complete me, to make me whole.
My wife is tired and frustrated with this “forever unhappy kid.” She wants and deserves an adult partner. I need to negotiate a plan based on reality. I don’t like that. I don’t like the reality. My kid says, “Me and Mark have to make a million dollars on this book!” I will wait, then I will be happy. I can’t be happy now. My little kid says he is deprived, cheated, and “Look what everyone else has.”
Laugh: How many people do I know have the lifestyle I just described? Hello—no one. Is it possible? Yes, but no. This could happen in a movie (where my kid grew up), but not here. So here is the negotiation:
“I can’t give you a replacement for the large happy family that you created in your mind. I can’t be in Carmel Valley and here, too. I don’t have the wealth you saw and idealized in Playboy. You made life up based on movies, catalogs, comics, and magazines. That is all you had. You picked the best pictures. Only the best. You picked perfection. Those pictures are possibilities, but you cannot have it all.”
“So what can I have?”
I have started to feel cheated here. Those were fantasy caricatures of reality that were not reality.
“Get over it. Create a new reality. Let it go. Quit drugging yourself!”
I feel part of me being anxious and resentful.
“Are you telling me I can’t ever have all that?”
“That is right. It helped you survive as an emotionally hungry child, a starving (that is a better word) child, but the best was having a lover—my wife, and playing together: Together, fun, friends, the outdoors, sex, and a little money. That was exciting, fun, and happy. That was a reality that was achievable, and low budget.”
As soon as I clouded it with the movie background of desire I blew it up. In the movie version I had to have more and more and more and more rather than delivering my passion and playing.
“Does that mean moving back to a small apartment?”
“No, but it means being in relationship. Being present.”
“What about having excitement?”
“That can be good or it can mean being addicted to a drug.”
So let’s put something together here that works so the little kid is off my back and in my lap. No fits of the sullen child please.
“So here is the deal. I will give you fun and excitement in exchange for you giving up your illusions through pictures and movies that were your source of security, safety, and comfort. This won’t be a movie or pictures outside of you. It will be real and NOW, and you will feel it emotionally and physically.”
I will do it by slowing down, planning, scheduling.
“I will give you a world without illusion where we play every day, explore, feel our freedom, spirit, and creativity. Breathe it in. I will no longer have shoulder, gall bladder, liver, and muscle problems because I will breathe. No longer pursue more perfection of fantasy but the freedom and exploration of a free spirit playing in everything he does. It will require responsibilities, jobs, and work.”
I am a little anxious but I know this can be done. Be here; play now. I no longer choose the past; rather I play here and now. The dreams that held me together no longer serve me. I am here. I am home. I am me. Illusions be gone and I belong.
“What can I do today that makes this real, to ask this of every day? I have an unyielding need to prove the fantasy is not worth its effort.”
“It is an exchange of energy. You are already here. You have manifested most of your desires. Now, to give back, to generate for others, not by giving up the dreams, but by putting the energy out, and trusting that I will get all I desire.”
The rules have simply changed.
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Blog 88 The Wall (Gary)
I recently visited THE WALL in Washington DC. I found some of the cabbies interesting and would occasionally strike up a conversation. An obviously older black gentleman told my wife and me about being wounded in WWII. He was at the Battle of the Bulge. When I told him I was a Vietnam vet he chuckled and said, “That was a junior war.” There it was again. I let it go this time, and just decided to respect and honor this elder man for his sacrifices, and accepted that he would never understand my own. Somehow I was okay.
I made my way to the Vietnam Memorial. I placed my hand on THE WALL, cried, and dragged my hand along the length of THE WALL. I found not only tears but my body wanting to touch each person. It was like I was trying to gather all of them and do something with them. I wanted to take all of them with me and touch every one of them. They are with me, and although Vietnam scarred me, it also brought me into consciousness, or better yet my grief has kept me awake. Now much more fully awake, as I am in touch with the depth of my feelings, and gives me full permission to be where I am.
Home.
What does that really mean? Two stories from my groups come to mind.
In my 4:00 p.m. men's group last Monday a man shared that he visited his friend in the hospital who is dying of a brain tumor. He saw his friend in an oxygen tent with tubes in him just lying there immobilized. He asked his friend how he was doing, and his friend simply said, "I am here." To me that is a partial definition of home. He had surrendered to just being where he was. Sometimes it takes a near death experience to get us here. Something similar to my mother saying, “What does it matter?” You are right, mother, it matters not.
That certainly was true for me when I returned from Vietnam. Like many of us I just wanted to kiss the ground when I returned. I felt I had already faced death, and had a life again when I hit the ground at Travis Air Force Base.
The second story is from the group that followed at 6:30 p.m. We were talking about "home" and a man, just off the cuff, as he was leaving group that evening, happened to share this statement: "Home is just a place. Being there is what matters.” Yes, same lesson repeated twice within one evening. Spirit is talking to me once again.
Do you listen? I mean really listen to what is available to you as a teaching? I find I am being informed constantly if I am quiet and listening.
The Great Mystery again: Home is defined by my presence, not by the place. By my kissing the ground, if you will. I need to walk the grounds of my one-third acre and be present to where I am in order to make it "home." The bottom line of course is to be present wherever you are. I knew that, and preached it, but I knew it only on paper.
My childhood fears have kept me wandering, fearful, defensive in some ways and protective in others. It was what made me rip my classmate’s drawing to pieces. I became a little animal, nose to the ground, sensing and rejecting, defending, protecting, evaluating and searching for someone or something to provide for me what my parents could not.
It has only been through my walks on The Hill that I have been brought full circle, home to myself, free from fear, fantasy, and to being present. Maybe it brought me back to being an animal, and the assurance of finding my own way, and my own home. The more I sniffed the trail the more I found my own scent, and the more I felt secure, much like an animal claiming his territory.
But wait. There is yet another piece.
I ask my friend Walt at Friday Coffee, which is what I call the men’s group that Mark and I started by meeting at 10:00 a.m. every Friday, how his last trip was. He says, “It was completely different this time.” I ask him what he means. Walt says that every trip has been an adventure for him but this time he was aware that he was looking for something. What he profoundly realized on this trip (and I can witness the emotion in his eyes) is that he had traveled the world looking to “belong,” and that he now knows, “I belong here.” “Here?” I ask. “Yes, here in Los Gatos.”
I am moved to emotion as I share that mine has been the same journey, and I had just concluded it, but I had used the word “home,” yet he has helped me see that it is not home I have sought as much as it is “belonging.” I, also, belong here. This is my home, but most importantly I belong, as the dictionary describes: in position, place, group, person. My story is the long journey of longing for belonging. Sigh, “Here.”
What does that word “belonging” mean to you?
This has been my impetus in leading men’s groups. To provide a safe place (home) where a man can do his work (express his feelings) find acceptance (a place without shame) receive confrontation (direction), and, most importantly, the welcoming hug of belonging (confirmation and validation).
The vital feelings I received from The Hill brought me here. Now, truly now, the cat sits on my lap, I write, I nap, I write: I am home. Peace, love, and "Welcome Home" to me. I write to be free from an old pattern. No longer CONTAINED and invisible. Gary Hal Plep, LOVE the Men, Love Yourself, Be Seen, Acknowledge the Wisdom of the Mountain.
You’ll see.
Walk till you find your way home.
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Blog 87 Fear (Gary)
Fear (Gary)
My core wound is abandonment. That I knew. I learned how to model that well. I learned how to abandon myself by not being seen. My wife recently complained that when I came home from work I was depleted because I hadn't taken care of myself. I believe that if I sacrifice enough my heroic gesture will be rewarded someday. (One of my mother's words: "Someday.")
I see now that I want to do things for others in a way to get what I need without being seen, more accurately without any need. Just like I had as a child. “Invisible” means to neglect myself as I was neglected. Ignore my needs as my needs were ignored. I can’t write a book because then I would be seen. Being seen scares me as much as going back to Vietnam.
I don't know how to be seen except in small venues. I just don't have the experience yet. If I want to make a more significant difference in the world I will have to be seen. In order to do what I want to do, which is write a book, I will have to become visible. It's time that I allowed myself to be seen and not abandon my Self and my dreams to old fears and a role of suffering my abandonment.
Old habits die hard or never do if you medicate yourself. Mark and I chose the pain and pleasure of being awake and we hope this inspires the same in you.
I vaguely remember my parents arguing around me and the job I took on must have been to be invisible or at least quiet. That’s it. Now I remember my mother saying that she had to keep me quiet because we lived in a small apartment, and she didn’t want to upset our neighbors (and the landlord). That must have included restricting my breathing, thus causing frequent colds and respiratory ailments. It is now easier to breathe. Thanks for another day, different mountain, same spirit. Ah-HO.
It's an interesting shift for me. I am at an age where I will soon qualify for Medicare. There is the confrontation with getter older, but there is also the positive side of being able to save about $300 a month on medical insurance. I was getting to like that idea and what I might do with the money until my wife brought up the fact that I didn't really carry enough life insurance to care for her if something happened to me. The needed increase would be about $300 a month.
I got angry, felt many feelings including feeling cheated, resentful, confused. I ruminated for several days. Then suddenly all those feelings went away. On my walk I asked myself what happened. I unwound the process. I came to a place of feeling wise. The $300 held no energy for me.
I had surrendered to my adult partner’s needs. I was in relationship with her. I no longer had to fight for me. I trusted she would be there for me as a partner. I had come a step closer to home. I was no longer in survival from childhood dislocation. I had let go of FEAR of being abandoned. Actually I had let go of FEAR.
I used to think of myself as highly sensitive and some saw me that way. My first wife called me her "baby doll" because of it. There are books written about highly sensitive people. Now I see the deeper truth for me. I was a highly scared person, which made me highly sensitive.
You see, through all this the most important thing that was revealed to me in my miles and years of walking, and trying to come home, was my fear. Only in absence of fear could I come home. Only in absence of fear could I find my home, and claim it by being present to the moment without fear, and old pictures coloring my catalog.
I had to walk away my fears and grieve in order to find my place. Presence is being in a place without the cloud of fear. I visited a lot of pictures on The Hill until they distilled into a common cauldron. Vietnam wasn't the first place I had visited fear. It was only a reminder. It brought me back to where I had come from. From there I had to go back to my first fears. And I knew those fears were about absentee parents and my attempts to control my inner toddler’s reality.
What might you be afraid of facing?
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Recent Review: Walking The Hill The Art of Accidental Transformation:
"As someone who has more than once done his own hard walking, through ADHD, fatherhood, and reinvention, this book hit me where it counts. If you've ever felt alone in your head or stuck in your story, these two guys walking up a mountain will remind you you're still moving forward, even if you think you're not."
Peter Shankman
Author: Faster Than Normal: Turbocharge Your Focus, Productivity, and Success with the Secrets of the ADHD Brain
Thanks Peter, Gary
Blog 86 Being Home (Gary)
Now, after a lifetime journey of fantasy I am feeling what it's like to be home. I am going through some withdrawal, and hence some mild depression, but that's okay. The Hill has brought me back to myself.
As Joan Halifax offers a poem by Nancy Wood (1979, p. 107):
Here on the mountain I am not alone;
For all the lives I used to be are here with me;
All the lives tell me now I have come home.
And, typing her in, I write: “Sweet sorrow, I am here.”
Note: the best thing you can do for me on Memorial Day is to say: “Welcome Home”
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Blog 85 Being Here (Gary)
In absence of myself I go somewhere else. Can I not just be here? What is a more compatible way? I see desirable objects now, but I have attained an emotional distance. I am detached and relaxed. There are definite benefits to being without desire, enjoying what I have and where I am, who I am when I have cut out the critic, the evaluator, assessor, comparer. I am enjoying being in a relaxed state. Now I need to let go of money. Approximately $3,000 till the truck is paid off, $10,000 to pay off the Volvo, $2,000 more to pay the Keogh. I need to let that craziness go, too.
I get out of the car at the stable where my daughter keeps her horse. Next to us is a beautiful black Jaguar sedan with an almost perfect front that is creased under the grill. I am distracted by its beauty, but I assess the flaw, and see the deceit of design much like what I discover about the beautiful woman who owns it. I share my impression with my daughter who discloses that all is not well within the woman. Illusion or truth? A friend now deceased used to love to ask, “Do you want the truth, or do you want me to bullshit you?” I love that.
What kind of a bullshitter are you? Most importantly how do you bullshit yourself? It’s a common male trait so don’t judge yourself for it. Just know it, because the knowing helps preserve your integrity.
I walk through the barn and am greeted by horses’ heads. My daughter's horse is beautiful and unflinching as I talk to him and stroke his jaw line. Finally he pulls back just a little and wants my shirt buttons.
I have left my money distractions for the illusions of beauty. Yet beauty quickly shows me its shadow side. Perhaps what is ugly could be the shadow side of beauty. So the comfort comes in not caring, as I move on the dirt floor through the barn, and say hello to more horses. I am in the moment, enjoying myself, and I've forgotten the beauty of the automobile and the woman I just passed. I am free. “Free of what?” you may ask. Free of any attachment other than to the moment.
Now, later in the evening, a more difficult task: can I close my eyes and detach? Tomorrow there will be another hike and a new moment of truth. Awe: the beauty of being in the moment. Time to sleep.
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Blog 84 All the Pieces Fit (Gary)
I am supposed to walk The Hill today. However, I have just come from a recruitment meeting at the California Army National Guard Armory. Now it's fair to spend some time with my wife, so I am home with her.
Friday I had a meeting with Sgt. Mike Frankadakis, who is a real estate broker here in Los Gatos, and we shared old war stories from Vietnam. I had called in response to a newspaper ad for the National Guard and Homeland Security. The ad said the opportunity was open to people up to age sixty. I was frustrated and disappointed for weeks (I was sixty-three) then decided to call anyway. I was determined to serve. Mike said the limit is extended up to age sixty-three with prior military experience, and so we set up a time at his office.
He said he had a calling to serve after 9/11, but the local recruiter laughed at him. It was three years ago that he learned about the California Guard from another realtor who had recently retired from the Guard at age seventy. I agreed to meet him on Sunday for a further briefing. So a couple hours ago I was inside the California Army National Guard Armory, which incidentally is across the street from the probation department where I worked as a juvenile hall counselor and a probation officer for twelve years.
Mike showed me around until another man came in for recruitment from Sacramento. I could look up to see the window of my old office on the fourth floor (the executive offices) at the Juvenile Probation Department where I was Assistant Coordinator of the Juvenile Court Work Program. I remember looking down and across the street at the Armory and wondering what was in there. Now here I stand looking back. Seems very déjà vu. While we were waiting a man came in from the Air National Guard. He is based out of Moffett Field with the 129th Air Rescue Wing. Of course I was interested since I was former Air Force. He supports communication for air rescue of downed airman. Wow to me! My inner kid wants to play! Where's the choppers? Sometimes I wonder, is this life I’m leading already scripted?
Mike gives me a tour of the building, and tells me that this building could be available to me for an event in the future if I wished, and he showed me the kitchen. Oh yes, this would work.
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Blog 83 Time to Stop: Time to Climb the Hill Again (Gary)
I have seen cloud formations that come out of the beauty of a severe storm blowing in, rabbits that come out of hiding to take advantage of a warm morning search for food, coyotes that move when few humans are willing. I love those days when Mark and I have The Hill to ourselves. When the mountain bikers decide to stay home. Then animals roam. I see deer and fox running together. What a treat. My spirit loves it. I feel a connection with their wild spirit. I am one with them.
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Blog 82 Coming Home (Gary)
This is a section I have just added after a period of time away. First it was a trip with my brother to Panama City. Why "Coming Home?" Because all of this, all of my writing, I now truly realize, is part of my journey of coming back home. Coming back to myself. It's not out there. It's in here, as many know. Oh, I knew that too, but only intellectually. You see, the way I learned to survive my dislocation was to look out there. It must be better out there.
For me this journey started almost sixty years ago. Sixty years ago. Sorry I have to look at that twice in print to get it, and I am still not sure I "get it."
I find myself returning to the experience that took place when I was just four or maybe five years old. You may think I am repeating myself, but it is even more significant now. An older boy came up to me on the corner near my home and said there was going to be a fight and we would all need something to help us win. He gave me a Three Musketeers bar and implied we were together in this just like the Three Musketeers. The only thing I understood was that he wanted to be my friend, there was some danger, we were going to be together in this, and he gave me something. That felt good. There was no fight, and I never saw the boy again, but he delivered something to me in that little package. I can still see the illustration on the wrapper, The Three Musketeers.
The symbolic gift, an element of fear, the invitation to join, joining, bonding, feeling safety and power in being part of something bigger than myself set a tone and a mission for my life. I didn’t really understand just how powerful that was until our walks and downloading my story with a witness such as Mark.
What part of your story have you buried that might benefit you as a valuable lesson and guide for your direction?
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Blog 81 Alone (Gary)
Alone (Gary)
Ah, a walk by myself again. I pass two ladies and wish them a "Good morning, ladies," and get a very pleasant "Good morning" back. I appreciate their warm response but as I get a distance past them I can hear their continued talking and wished they weren't here. I love the feeling of being alone. It is part of me. I spent so much time alone as a child that today I love it. I have done well in other parts of my life to ensure that I never feel alone.
Today I take in how much I owe to Essie and Alan Nichols. They were my caretakers when my mother worked and I would stay with them for a week at a time. They had about four acres, five apple trees, a hammock in the summer, a dog (Skeeter would excitedly run in circles when I came to stay), berry bushes, a small forest, a wood pile to build forts, a place to shoot my BB gun, an awesome swing (you could go so high you could feel the rush in your balls), homemade tapioca pudding and date nut bread, chickens, my toy box, and so on.
I realize now that this memory of Essie and Alan's home has been a power source for me, a reference for me to return to again and again as a source of solace and grounding. I now realize I use the trail on The Hill as a resource for some of those same feelings, or maybe I have always known this. I am aware today that I need to transfer that power place to something here now, and my little kid is resistant to letting it go. I am getting closer to doing that. I tell the child within, “You need to find your home here, little kid.”
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Blog 80 The Great Mystery (Gary)
I reflect back to my deceased friend and me working together at the probation department before Rick eventually went to another job. We shared many ideas spiritually and creatively. We talked about doing workshops and how we might put something together.
We took our sons, both named Chris, to fish at my secret spot on the Stanislaus River. He showed me how to prepare a fish. We promised to repeat the experience or reconnect, but we got too busy with work. I was at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View by then and kept telling myself I should call.
It was almost the end of the summer, as I remember. I was working the evening shift at the Trimble Road and First Street hospital office in San Jose. I was sitting at my desk, and I suddenly felt a warm tingling running up my left arm akin to a low voltage electrical charge. I thought it strange and turned to see if I was feeling the setting sun behind me, cast upon my shoulder, but the sunlight on the floor was a distance away. I thought, “I need to tell someone.” I wanted a witness to my experience. Maybe this was the sign of a heart attack, but it seemed too electric and without pain. I opened the door and realized that no one was there. It was about 6:20 p.m. and I was the last person on duty. I took in the feeling, and within three or four minutes it was gone.
I went home and found out that Rick had been badly mangled in an auto accident, his left arm almost torn off, but that he had amazingly lived a short time in emergency care. The accident had occurred about the same time as my experience. My wife told me that a book Rick had loaned me—Seven Arrows by Native American writer Hyemeyohsts Storm—had fallen off the bookshelf at home at about the same time. I was stunned, shocked.
I had witnessed my friend in love and dating his wife, I had been at their wedding, we had fished with our sons, and I was at his grave. It was all back, on the mountain today. I relived those moments, and grieved not just for him, but this time, for her as well.
We had a deep connection, deeper than I had been aware of. We had spun dreams together over lunch but we were too busy and too driven to create together what we could have.
What friends have you lost track of because you or they were too busy? Lead, make the call, or wait until . . . what?
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Grief/Relief (Gary)
I am by myself again today. It's a warm afternoon, with a light shade of smog over the valley. That means it looks pretty good. I have yet to see the smog so bad this summer that I can't witness the east foothills. Part of me wants to believe that the air quality is actually improving.
I leave from the parking spot that is closer to the trailhead. It just means about ten minutes less of black asphalt and fewer cars on the narrow road. It also means a longer hike on the mountain in order to get in a one-hour hike. I’ll end on a steeper grade beyond the Tree of Healing in what Mark describes as “the desert” because it consists of the dry road traversing a portion of the mountainside that is all rock above and below the road without a trace of green. I like the flavor of that challenge. At the highest point is an overlook with a round, brass marker that identifies the name of The Hill and declares that it is a preserved wilderness.
It is definitely harder to hike when it's hot, and I feel the burden of the hot air hitting my lungs. I persist and the hike is going well. Well, that is, until I get just about to the beginning of the Hill of Cruelty. Deep sighs, more sensitive, cry. Feeling grief at a depth I never felt before. I find myself suddenly feeling emotions, and reflecting on the loss of one of my close friends some years ago.
I find myself choking on my breath, and I keep pushing despite the emotions trying to take away my air. Tears come. It's ancient grief, but it is back to visit today from a very deep place. I go further into the feelings, and find not my grief, but the grief of my friend's wife.
An event a long time ago: my friend, Rick, has died.
My wife and I go to his wake at their home. The bar is open and everyone is having a drink. My friend’s wife, now his widow, who is a very pretty woman, pulls me into a side room that is partially curtained off. She sits me down. I am simply following because I am here to honor and respect my friend, and I do what she wants without hesitation or thought. She surprises me by kissing me. Simple me, I think it is just a simple kiss, until I realize she wants to keep kissing me. I feel her lips now. They are not seductive or sexual. They are lips that want connection, and here on the mountain I now feel the grief those lips carried.
My friend and I looked alike in many ways, fair skin, Nordic type I guess you would say. I would also say we had a gentle and happy presentation. People could have thought we were brothers. I am crying now as I let in this ancient memory, and really get the depth of her grief and the depth of her need to reconnect with her man, her lover, her friend.
I stamp forward and eventually catch my breath without ever giving up a moment toward the top. Only then can I let go. I promise myself I will allow relief at the top even though part of me wants to throw up. Ah, the top. I made it in only one second behind my last time. And I found relief from an old grief that I have carried since 1986.
The mountain has done it again. It seems each step is a page, and every climb is a deep process of unwinding and releasing feelings long held. The return is but a re-entry and a release from what I carried up the mountain.
How do you release the tension you carry in your body? How do you process your grief, and does it provide you with relief? You may want to take a moment and put words to it. We all need to grieve to have a tomorrow.
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Blog 78 Empathy for My Friend (Gary)
It's August and the leaves are just starting to dry and fall this morning. It's about 9:00 a.m., and the air is very cool and crisp. We begin to see the fog that rolled over a distant mountain range from the coast. It's refreshing, and a reminder that summer is waning: a time of change, another transition.
We are like the environment in which we live. This is why man has survived for so many thousands of years, because we adapt so well. However, as we get older it becomes harder and harder to adapt.
Today we start out fast. Mark is not talking. Usually he talks, and I fill in the blank spots here and there. Today Mark is silent. This is a first.
We make it to The Tree in a great time. A time we haven't hit in a couple years: fifty-six minutes and forty-four seconds. I know my best ever time was fifty-six-something. Today was good. We are cleansed again and we turn back down The Hill.
Last night we went to see his new house, which is a down-size from his more upscale neighborhood, but it's a cute house in a quaint neighborhood. His wife is sick from what I call “executive toxic smelt.” The corporate world can begin to smell, and the person affected by it perceives that smell. She melded into it, and it’s making her sick. Like putting metal in a forge. I remember that from high school, and the welding of pipe when I worked for the gas utility. There are toxic fumes that come from the intensely heated metal. Spend enough time in the heat and you become one with it, or smelt. Melt and mold into another shape. However, some can't mold; they just burn up or out. The cultural changes that have to be made by the individual have become repulsive.
Mark is also looking for a job now that he has his PhD. He has another obstacle: finding a job to fulfill his hours for licensing. He is preparing one house to sell, buying another house and planning its refurbishment, has a smelted wife, and no job. Add the usual man-woman relationship stuff in your late 50s, and aw shit. It's a truck full. I feel for him. He's my brother and we walk, just walk together. Our pace is not only quick, but also like two men marching. We are a machine: two wheels on a two-wheel tractor, if there was such a thing, climbing The Hill.
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