A Gift from the Cook-The Mother Son Dynamic.
Sitting here tonight I have been enjoying reading The Mother
–Son Dynamic by John Lee. By enjoying I mean I am identifying with the premises
of the book, and grateful that over the many years I have been in recovery I
have made some mighty progress in becoming the man that I wanted to be.
A major part of this journey has been healing the wounds I received
in child hood, and I found it necessary to work through my Father –Son wound
and my Mother –Son wound. To cut a very long story short, in my case, the end
result of the work was a compassionate accepting loving relationship with both
my mother and father. After one of my conversations about the past with my
mother, my initial questions regarding my past with mother, led her to pulling
out old photo albums, and sharing with me stories of her youth. Some hours
passed, and when she was packing away the albums she said, “I’m not sure you
got what you came for”. I replied, your right mum, but I got what I needed! I
meant it to. Recovery had taught me to be spontaneous, live in the moment. When
I started that moment with her, I had an agenda, but I let that go once we
started talking, something bigger and better for me emerged in that
conversation.
By the time my father passed I felt closer to him, and I
know he felt closer to me. With my mother, I don’t feel resentment any more,
That was a major gift, as I resented her enormously, and unconsciously it was
playing itself out in every relationship I had, with the women I loved, and
with any women that was angry and controlling that I came into contact with. I
was never able to protect or contain my reality. It was exhausting. These days
, with my wife, and women in my life, its nearly a dream, to not be driven by
fear, shame, anger (Rage) and resentment.
In the book, John outlines some of the tasks a man can do
to discharge his anger in a safe and appropriate way. I first heard these
techniques in one of John’s workshops, and from his book, Facing the Fire.
Towel squeezing, walking briskly, punching bags. All tools I have used and taught.
But he mentions getting out into the wilderness, allowing yourself to get “Wild”
I remember when I had got to my moment in recovery, where I had to make that
decision, to head to the wilderness.
I had been asked to write an opening song for a 12 step convention.
I of course said yes, but as the convention got closer, I had to admit, that I
had not written a song or poem for a long time. I was stuck. My energy flow was
trapped. I didn’t fully understand what was happening, and these books and
tools I mentioned, had not been written. My therapist was taking me through my
Family of Origin work and all this emotion was coming up, but I had nowhere to
put it. I decided that I needed some time alone, so I went down to my parent’s
caravan at on the South Coast of N.S.W, a beautiful spot called Gerroa. Early Saturday
morning, I hired a canoe, and went up river, I found a very quiet spot, then
proceeded to gather branches off the ground and put them near a fallen tree
trunk. I sat then for awhile and allowed all the anger that I felt about my
mother to come to the surface. It was dark, monstrous, and black and rage full.
When I bear it no longer, I stood, and started to break the branches over the
trunk. I screamed all the abuse I could muster,
unedited, unashamedly, furiously. I screamed and bashed branches till I had absolutely
nothing left.
I sat there for sometime. I felt different. I felt weird.
Time seemed different. Eventually, I got in the canoe, and paddled gently, up
the stream. I was barely in reality. But I was really present. Like I was
looking at things through new eyes. I had gotten the canoe so far up the stream
that it narrowed so much I could not turn it around, and I looked into the
trees, it was early morning, and there was 1000’s of spiders in webs in all the
trees. It was mesmerizing. Breathtaking, and I was fully in my body, in the
moment. This felt really new. Strange. I took a moment, but eventually it
frightened me a bit, and I backed out of there, and then paddled back to the
site. It was beautiful on the river, I took everything in. That night I
dreamed, and I realized I had not dreamed like that for along time, and then
the next day I wrote two poems. One was about the spiders,and another about the
Pelicans on the river. I could feel that the energy was unblocked. I went
home,and not only did I write the song for the convention, I wrote over the
next five years, The Window to the Journey 1,2 & 3. Songs, Poems and stories
about the journey of recovery. That first album came out in 1996, and next year
I will be releasing the albums together with a new album as I will be celebrating
30 years since I have been travelling on
the recovery road, all going well, a day at a time.
The words that John writes in the Mother Son Dynamic will be
a compass for a whole other generation of men starting on their own road to
masculinity and I want to honor John Herald Lee for his courage, integrity and
commitment to speaking his truth, a truth spoken so well and clearly it has
been a calling to many men to stand up, and grow into the men that we want to
be, that our families and community need us to be.
Following is a poem from that series that I wrote many years
ago, as I confronted the enmeshment that I experienced from my own mother, and
the impact of the avoidance of my father.
It’s titled a Gift from the Cook, and I dedicate it to John
Herald Lee.
A Gift from the Cook.
How long has my worth been determined by others?
My need to be needed,
Reflects my self perception.
It seems to be the only substance to fill this hole.
To make me complete.
Yet I have always been empty.
The approval have always been an illusionary filler,
For I remain always trying to fill the same hole.
Showing people I was worthy of their need.
And keeping them needy.
For if they grew beyond that place,
What would become of me?
To my mother I was a possession.
She needed me to need her,
So she could feel special,
Whole and complete.
And I grew to need her love, approval and protection.
Yet, there was something wrong.
An anger or resentment,
At my acquired need.
Like it sucked at some life blood that did not exist.
A hunger that was induced,
But no food could be supplied.
And as the years have past,
I have lived with this constant hunger.
To be needed or not feel complete.
And for the women of my life,
They served the same meal,
And for a while I enjoyed.
But somewhere the food soured,
And the hole inside grew to the size of a cavern.
My wife found she needed herself more and left.
My mother just grew tired,
And occasionally just turned off the stove.
And now I am alone,
Me and my need to be needed.
And for my father,
Who sat for my entire life
A spectator to this feast,
Resented me.
For I ate his food, from his wife,
And many times he went hungry.
And now we live many universes apart,
And speak very different tongues,
Both with a hole,
A gift from the cook.
S.J.S
