Epiphany

Nearly three months since my last post and I am much, much farther ahead than I thought I could be.  I’ve dabbled in art and am currently working on a few pieces for a friend’s gallery. Although my work is quite amateur and I view it as a fun project rather than a means to any sort of monetary gain. My true focus since my last post has been about self-development through joy. Finding happiness amongst a sea of misunderstood thoughts is no easy feat. Surely I have work to do, but I know that bliss is a continuum. One must accept it and remember it in order to truly harness its power.

I’ll share my epiphany, but first I want to explain how it came to fruition. Honestly, there are many things and people who have aided in this discovery and listing all of them will surely interrupt my train of thought and possibly bore you, so I’ll keep the time lapse current. This week I had the honor of attending a live recording on Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) covering the topic: A Beautiful World, The Gift of Failure. A friend, and blog reader, invited me to the sold out show and it turned out to be the best gift and I have ever

received. A Beautiful World was a 90-minute pilot program performed in front of a live audience, “in a faced-paced, mixed-media format with storytellers and newsmakers adventuring and finding solutions in today’s complicated world” MPR. Guests of the show included Dessa, a very well known and respected spoken word artist and musician, and bestselling author Sarah Lewis, who discussed her recently published book: The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery. Throughout this mixed-media exploration I kept hearing a familiar echo: failure isn’t the end, it’s a means to discovery.

What if all our failures are stones paving the way to our destiny? If you believe in destiny, as I do, you know that it’s not a destination but a home where everything comes together to create harmony. Harmony within ourselves that where we have been and where we are going are only as important as where we are now. After the MPR event I couldn’t put this to rest. Thoughts of my not so privileged life, law school, and the time I dedicated to the military have always felt as failures or lost love and hope. Yet when I think of what I learned from each undertaking the same thing keeps repeating, compassion and empathy. During each event I struggled because I felt so deeply that I let hurt over power love. I guess I always figured people are relatively wired the same way. We all have hope, faith, honor, compassion, courage, empathy, etc. While that might be so, we don’t all share the deep power of each, we feel some more powerful than others. I had so much hurt in my heart because of my intensely empathetic personality that I let it drive me. Why it’s taken me 33 years to figure this out is a thought I need to ignore. Accepting this as a freshly paved road is my epiphany.

As a child I had endless love and empathy in my heart but no place to grasp it from. I saw love in my dad and grandfathers heart, but the hate in my birth mothers subjugated any love around me. Striving to obtain a law degree pushed me into a dark place where all I saw was greed. I envisioned working in environmental law or family court where I could really make a difference in the world. Rather than learning the tools to help people, I saw sadness and a greedy overcast. I wasn’t able to see past the hurt people throw at each other to gain unnecessary commodities. The pride and sense of belonging I gained in the military became something out of a fairytale book after having gone to war. I was a stranger in a place I no longer belonged and felt shame and confusion where pride once was. The gift of my military career coming to an end was the awakening of my empathetic nature. I mean, it was my empathy that tore apart the seams of my military career. I was ostracized because of my PTSD, but also because of my strong empathic nature, which was strongly frowned upon in the military culture.

Each of these events revealed darkness and lured me to act in punitive ways.  While I’ve been on the road to overcome, I couldn’t see past it. The reason is the same as being unable to see past our failures. If we can’t find the good, we only see the bad. Throughout all this time I never reflected on “why” this all kept me from stepping out of the darkness or seeing past my failures. Now that I’ve dissected the “why” the picture is clear. I’ve felt like a stranger in my own mind because I let the pain of the world drive me. If we view our failures as a product of who we are, rather than as tools to see a clearer picture, we’ll be stuck. Understanding all this and being able to use it as a strategy to move forward is the key to it all. The epiphany is that I realized I was stuck in the darkness and now know the road ahead is filled with love and empathy. My experiences didn’t encourage my empathetic and compassionate nature, but they taught me to truly harness them as a definition of who I really am.

The past, present, and future have never felt so beautiful.

Moving on

A lot has happened in the past month, but I’m going to make this brief.

The Journey’s program didn’t work out. I got the boot because I was “too busy”. Still, the knowledge I gained in the program was worth all the effort. The main principle I learned is: Something happened that changed who I was, searching to get that person back is only going to waste my precious time.

Realizing I’ll never be that person again was hard to understand. Then an elephant jumped off my shoulders when I started to understand the new me and began learning the tools to adjust. I question if I’ll continue to climb similar hills and hope that what I learn reduces how much sweat I drop while climbing.

Best of all, I feel Free. I am home and am ready to move on with my life.  I started up graduate courses again and for the first time have the opportunity to focus on school without having to also focus on work. I feel truly blessed. I have endless things to be thankful for. Reminding myself this everyday is the key to my bliss and I hope to always keep it close to my heart.

I am working on a book and am leaning toward calling it a memoir. The focus will be my life as a Soldier and the objective is to give others hope. Whether a homeless teen or veteran, I hope that what I have to say helps someone, even if just a little. No idea “when” it will get published but I’ll be sure all of my blog readers get a copy ;-)

My posts on here will be limited as I focus on school and the book. Please feel free to contact me anytime. Never forget to love and give because it is the essence of life.

Peace.Love.Unity.Respect - oh yes I did ;)

Never Stop Dancing

Today marks the halfway point of my 12-week PTSD/trauma focused program. I’ve written less in my blog than I’d prefer but my mind has been everywhere else. The tools and skills I’ve learned cannot be measured. The one thing that sticks out the most is avoidance. I can’t count the times I nearly quit the program. Not because I thought it was too hard, but because I was afraid to face what I couldn’t see. Funny thing is, the more I stopped avoiding, the less afraid and more confident I’ve become.

Last Friday I threw my hands in the air and walked out the door. The struggles I’ve been enduring were weighing me down so much that I had convinced myself the program was a joke. Thinking that everything I was learning was just making me worse off and the time and effort was meaningless. Why go through all this pain just to make the pain worse, I thought. I mean, I was indeed getting worse and the exhaustion alone was enough for me to call it quits. All I wanted to do was sleep. Who knew mental work could be so draining? Wait – law school comes pretty close.

I took the weekend to make up my mind and consulted with a couple friends. Regardless how many worries I have, none of them compare to living a life lacking the necessary tools to cope. Today I went in giving 110 percent. To my surprise, it was the best day I’ve had so far. Holding back judgments and invalidating thoughts, I began to mend differences with another group member I thought I would despise to the end. More significantly, I made it through my trauma exposure exercise and was able to recall pleasant memories from Iraq. Most notably, the singing and dancing camel adorned with a military shirt.

This camel has a name but I can’t recall it now. It’s one of those toys where you push a button on its foot and it starts dancing and singing. He grooved to Vanilla Ice, “Ice Ice Baby”. He was shipped to Iraq by my co-worker’s mom. We had him in the office chilling on top of a bookshelf just outside the boss’s door. Some days the boss would walk out of the office and push the camel’s foot as he busted a move while exiting the office. Rarely, he’d yell at us to “shut the damn thing off”. This camel survived through the harshest of conditions. My co-workers decided to strap the little guy on the back of an MRAP for a seven-day mission up and down Iraq. Whenever we stopped at a base someone would run to see if the little guy was still dancing and singing, he always did. The MRAP suffered some serious injuries but the little camel never stopped dancing. After the mission he was completely covered in mud and needed a bath. I fought, whined and argued but lucked out and ended up taking him home. To this day, he’s still singing and dancing. He doesn’t have the spunk he once did, but he’s still got it nonetheless.

Though just a stuffed animal, Mr. Camel never lost hope. Although he’s been through quite a lot and suffered some pretty bad injuries, he has never given up. Today I pushed his foot while reminding myself that no matter how beaten and wore down I am, I’ll never stop dancing.

 

Love To All,

Jamie

What Defines You?

These past weeks have been quite challenging and most days have left me too exhausted to update my blog. I’ve been testing my psychological limits in every way imaginable by facing past traumas I didn’t realize were haunting me. My mind has become completely exhausted.  

I asked a friend about their experience during war and whether they suffer from the same symptoms. Their response was no, and their feedback was that I shouldn’t let PTSD define who I am. Slightly taken back by this response, I decided to really examine my motivations and whether I am in fact letting the diagnosis define who I am. I don’t believe I am.

People tend to avoid things that cause them pain. Without realizing it, this avoidance only deepens the agony. Adopting an avoidant life allows more avoidance and sooner or later the avoidance defines who you are. Afraid to face pain because the immediate avoidant relief is easier to handle, will continue to haunt your soul until it is dealt with.  The longer you avoid dealing, the more you’ll suffer.  People can’t find happiness or move on with their life if a part of their soul is locked away or ignored. If a part of you is locked away, who are you, really?

I’ve learned that once you deal with your pain you’ll be able to move past it and have a stronger sense of self than those who elect not to overcome such adversity. Dealing with your pain increases your self-confidence and decreases your emotional sensitivity, which expands and enriches your life. Thus, I don’t feel I’m letting my diagnoses define me, I’m overcoming the avoidant part of who I am. In doing so I’m climbing the steepest mountain of my life and am proud that I’m not letting PTSD or “baggage” keep parts of me hidden, because these parts deserve to thrive.

Love and Happiness,

Jamie