A Gift from the Cook. The Mother Son Dynamic. John lee and more

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