A Pilgrim’s Progress

Sappho was a Greek poet from the island of Lesbos, the original lesbian! She wrote “if you are squeamish, don’t turn over rocks”. She meant that if you turn over rocks, you’re gonna see creepy, crawling bugs under there, and things that you might not want to see. Well, we have stones in our minds, parts of us that we don’t want to see. My experience as a Warzone kid is that if I don’t turn over th...

Sappho was a Greek poet from the island of Lesbos, the original lesbian! She wrote “if you are squeamish, don’t turn over rocks”. She meant that if you turn over rocks, you’re gonna see creepy, crawling bugs under there, and things that you might not want to see. Well, we have stones in our minds, parts of us that we don’t want to see. My experience as a Warzone kid is that if I don’t turn over th...

This is the next obstacle for our pilgrims on the trail to the Western land. The canyons of the Furies! These ancient goddesses will chase you mercilessly with their fetid breath and their hooked beak and their talons. You think they’re chasing you, but really they’re in front of you calling you to their cave.

The Jenga tower of your psyche is the way it is because that’s how it had to be to get you out of your childhood. You may as well learn to love it, cause you are the only you you’ve got!

I did not realize that the name of this Uncle Rema story was also a racial slur until after I put it up and got some comments on TikTok. This is my response!

Sometimes the idea that no one else can understand our suffering turns out to be the stickiest baby of them all. 

What could I have been, if only all of this hadn’t happened? That’s my own private tar baby. The only answer? What happens in life is what happens in life. Nothing else happened. What happens now in this moment is all that matters. Every moment in my life lead me to now, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Some ideas are very, very sticky to your mind. Some of those move along the path, and some keep you stuck right where you are. Those are the tar babies.

Every time you escape the Grail woods in your own life, you learn a little bit more about yourself.

The only way out of the Grail woods is by learning and becoming what you are, not someone else, not what you wanted to be, or what you tell yourself you are, but what you actually are, the beautiful, never-seen-before-or-again you.

You can only lick it out of the Grail woods by following your path. You have to discover it as you make it, and make it as you discover it. If you’re lost in the Grail woods, and you see a path, stay off it! It’s someone else’s path and it will take you around in circles forever. There is only one way out of this place, Pilgrim. Your way.

Do you know what a ‘league’ is, as a unit of measure? It’s how far you can walk in an hour. On the trail to the Western Lands, all us Pilgrims can always walk exactly one league per hour. No more, no less! Just like life. All you can ever do is walk today’s miles, and you’ll always go at the right speed. One league per hour. It might be five miles or five feet, and it doesn’t matter a bit which it...

When you’re lost in the dark woods of your life and the path has disappeared completely, you’re in the Grail Woods! You only have to see the next right step, and you can always see that far, if no farther.

Life just ain’t like a laundry detergent commercial. Life is like life, and the best thing you can do for yourself is to embrace yours for whatever it actually is.

If you’re a warzone kid, I’ll wager a dollar to a donut that you’ve got…ambivalent…feelings about the holidays. You know what? That’s ok. There’s no reason for you to feel any differently than you feel. If you’re putting pressure on yourself to be different, or if you’re firing second arrows of judgment at yourself about your attitudes to holidays, do yourself a favor and take all of that out of y...

When you're working to live in reality instead of the denial and make-believe you grew up in, it can feel like the ground is sliding out from under you. That's because it is! But the ground you thought was solid never really was. It's always been like this. It's just that now you're living in reality. Not a problem!

I like the phrase “safe space” even less than I like the word “healing”, but I understand what it means. I just think of it as making a secure perimeter! That soothes my manly soul.

A lot of us have an epiphany experience when we acknowledge the reality of our lives as warzone kids...but to misquote Churchill, that moment isn't the end of healing, or even the beginning of the end of healing, but it is, perhaps, the end of the worst of the suffering.

That’s what I wanted to do when I first read the phrase restorative Justice on the Hidden Water website ( https://www.hiddenwatercircle.org/) and then I learned better! I learned that restoring myself to wholeness is the only kind of Justice there is. 

As a guy living with BPD, here’s a little video about the role Zen practice plays in my life. Enjoy! I love hearing from you! Leave a comment and let me know how it’s all going for you.

How do we live? That's the question all us warzone kids face. The Jenga Tower of our psyches put back into a solid form, not a rickety mess of coping and denial.

Recognizing the harm often feels like an epiphany. You've seen and acknowledged the reality of your life. But what happens after that?