The rumors are true. I am leaving SPP, with a grateful heart.

Well, by now most have heard already but I will make it official. I am leaving South Pacific Private , and heading off into the wild blue yonder of life and recovery. I have enjoyed my time immensely, but the demanding tasks and time being the Program Director of Australia’s leading treatment centre were in conflict with being a father of now three beautiful boys, and I have decided to make my family the central focus of my life. You cannot teach Pia Mellody’s wonderful model and then not be there for your own children. So the decisions made, I imagine I will always be around in some way, just not as Program Director

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I can't remember when I really started working about SPP, but it sure has been a ride! Here are my ruminations on the journey.

 It all started when I joined the 12 step fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous in 1986, after being lost in drug addiction, and even though I was clean, and doing all the suggested things I was not happy. It was a relationship issue that led me to the co-dependent model of Pia Mellody through a counsellor I sought to help me. This counsellor as well as doing Family of Origin work with me, sent me to Codependants Anonymous. NA was where I got my life back. CoDA was where I found my Soul. Both gave me a Spiritual Awakening as a result of working the steps.

 It was at CoDA that I first met Bill and Lorraine Wood. We were from the different side of the tracks. They the silver tails from the north Shore, and me the rough diamond from the western Suburbs. But we had a common language, the language of Recovery. I loved the 12 step fellowships. Right from my first NA meeting, I heard people telling the truth. It was so heart-warming. Words can never convey when what it’s like when you first start hearing he truth after so long a time experiencing the old family rules of Don’t Trust, Don’t Talk and Don’t Feel. It was in CoDA that I started to hear people talk honestly about the abuse and trauma of growing up in less than nurturing and abusive homes. Also around this time started to read and listen to Pia Mellody, John Bradshaw, Bob Earl, Terry Gorski, Claudia Black and my mind was blown. Healing the Shame that Binds you, book and especially the audio version, was killer. John Bradshaw’s the Family series was an epiphany! Around this time Bill and Lorraine let go of the Chairperson role of Coda nationally to start SPP, and I took it over. I loved to give back to the fellowship that gave so much to me. I attended the International service conference in Arizona. Memories I cherish.

When South Pacific Private Hospital opened, a friend of mine started work there, and I visited, and I was very jealous! I knew it was a good place and I loved the model. I had been working as a drug and alcohol counsellor after graduating University in early recovery, and started to put together my story in workshops titled   Window to a Journey, which was Music, Poetry and Storytelling about my recovery journey. It was inspired by the men’s workers Robert Bly, John Lee, Sam Keen James Hill with Michael Meade. Robert Bly’s Iron John was majestic, and opened a doorway in me creatively as a man that has not closed. John Lee’s Flying Boy, At My Fathers Wedding and Facing the Fire healed my heart as a wounded man and helped me deal with my rage, to know him and call him friend now is an Honour. 

Window to the Journey workshops were the first thing I started to run at SPP. On a Saturday I would roll in, Guitar, Poetry book and my story. For a few hours I would pour my heart out. I recorded three albums over 5 years, and when I listen back to these I am amazed at how open my heart was. I shared everything!

 It was opening an event that SPP hosted for John Lee, a Texan in recovery and bestselling author for recovery literature. I introduced John, with drumming and a prayer and that bought me to the attention of Bill Woods. He invited me to attend a Mens Group at SPP with him and a handful on men, some Americans they had bought over to teach the Pia Mellody model to us Aussies. At the end of that meeting in the foyer of the Hospital, he shook my hand and offered me a job. I was excited and scared, I always wanted to work there, but I knew It was a tough job. I rang my mentor, John Falcon and asked him what to do. He said treat it as three months training, and the rest will be cream. Well all I can say as I look back now I received a hell of a lot of cream!

I was excited to accept the position as Primary Therapist, and that was the beginning of what's been along an amazing journey.

 My first day on the job started in true SPP fashion. I was sitting waiting in the then small staff room, for the therapist who I was to sit with for the week. I was starting in Changes, then called Survivors. I was sitting there waiting in the first day for my orientation begin when your Joanne Hanson, one of the Wood’s daughters came in and asked me” do you know anything about co-dependency?” I said “yes I do”.  She said “could you do a lecture on it right now?” I said “I could but it might not be the lecture you would usually do.” Joanne stated it did not matter, the therapist is running late, and the group needs to start. So I lectured for the first time on co-dependency as a therapist at SPP.  Over the years I have certainly learnt that you need to be ready and willing and able to do any job and anytime, anywhere and I must say that suited my nature. Not only have I jumped in to run Family or Changes at a moments notice , I have chased clients down the street, done therapy in the gutter, been called out to local pubs and clubs looking for clients that have been booked in, but just couldn’t make it past that last pub!

Once in the mountains a young man that I knew was struggling with depression as well as addiction, wasn’t turning up to group. One day I went around to his unit before group. Rang the buzzer at the front door, but he didn’t answer. He lived on the first floor, and I could see I could climb up to his lounge room window, so I did. I knocked on the window, he eventually came to see who it was, and as he opened it, I jumped through, said good morning, groups about to start, and before he knew it he was sitting in my car heading back to the rehab! It’s not a magical power. It’s just as Narcotics Anonymous states, “The therapeutic value of one addict helping another is without Parallel!

 As my understanding of the Model grew, I was able to share more and more. With the incredible burst of knowledge from the new ability to track the effects of attachment trauma and just how the brain has been damaged as described in the Polyvagal Theory of Dr Stephen Porges, and the work of Dr Allan Schore giving us clarity of the early damage to the brain, has changed the way we treat the trauma work, but this early work of Pia’s paved the way. Her concept of the wounded child reflects Schore’s work directly, and the Adult Adapted Child is well described at the extreme with the Polyvagal Theory. I had the pleasure to finally meet and talk with Pia last year. It was a dream come true and she was everything that I had hoped a hero would be. I have listened to her tapes over and over for 25 years. I was inspired by her sharp mind, and she shared with me about her new book, and its focus being on the disconnection from your soul that happens form the spiritual nature of developmental abuse. I can’t wait to read it.

The therapist that was running late that first day was American Wes Taylor. He had worked at the Meadows with Pia Mellody. I have since had the pleasure of facilitating Survivors/Changes , and training quite a few therapists myself over the years to run it. What Wes showed me that very first time though, I had never seen anything like it. It was back when trauma work involved Cathartic emotional release and shame reduction. Batarka work, and it would get loud and physical. Over the years that I have worked with the trauma, that first experience will still remain with me. I can see it now for the archaic old-fashioned way that was, but at the time it was cutting edge. The deep way people processed toxic fear and shame and pain, dealing with the carried feelings and share their stories that they had kept secret for a lifetime.

People thought it was a magic then, but they came to know and I came to teach others that this is just what happens when you unlocked all that pain within the body, trapped inside. All the talk therapy we know now cannot come close to the healing that happens when the body gets involved in this way. Changing the narrative and the paradigm. Giving back shame not only released trauma from the body and feeling states, but it opened the door for clients to be accountable for their own recovery. Healing was their responsibility, the abuse was not!

To me and the others experiencing it, it was a revelation.

Earl Cass, another American and a Primary therapist, who was to become a Clinical Director   was to orientate me in my Primary Therapist role. I was in awe as I watched him run group. He had also come over form the Meadows. Watching him keep all those plates spinning, keeping the clients busy, working on their two recoveries at the same time. Recovery from their history, and recovery from the addictions and mental health issues that bought them to SPP. As they say an addict alone is in bad company and I believe that's true for the co-dependent because co-dependency is a core result of all the complex trauma. The inability to regulate, and the need to rely on survival skills which Pia had identified as Primary Symptoms in her Model. There is a call of these days to build practice that is developmentally trauma focused when working with individuals or in group, and not just address their health issues and addiction issues but to look underneath and to invite people in that relationship themselves.

 The Meadows driven by Pia were leading the field in this approach and after Bill went there in recovery to address his history, and Lorraine went and experienced Family Program, and then the full program, they wanted Australians to have access to this way of recovery. It was not popular in the beginning and they worked very hard to make SPP as reputable as it is today. It was that kooky little rehab on the beaches that use to be criticized for when you walked in with one addiction, you walked out with three! And we always talked about your childhood! Addiction and Trauma Specialist Dr Patrick Carnes has the conclusive research now that states due to addiction being a brain reward system disorder, that if have one addiction you have an 86% chance of having 2 or more. Also the research of Centre for Healthy Sex in Los Angeles Alex Katehakis states that 100 percent of sexaddicts have developmental trauma. This information just proved what we already knew, the program of Pia Mellody’s, that Bill and Lorraine bought downunder was ahead of its time and our practices are seen as best practice now.

 Joanna Mills was the Program Director at the time of my orientation, and partner of Wes Taylor. She had also worked closely with Pia Mellody. Joanna led with compassion and generosity. It is something that I'll always remember. I think I tried to carry a piece of her into my leadership roles in the hospital. I'm not the sort of person that has the ability to strategize away from a person, then devise some scheme that will motivate them, carrot and stick style. In sport I played soccer, and was the goalkeeper. You stand at the back and you have a perspective that others don't have. From here you see the big picture and give the team encouragement and advice along the way. I always felt more comfortable leading it this way. Also, to be able to do anything that you were asking others to do. I have loved being taught to do every clinical role at SPP. To be able to facilitate, every group, present every lecture, give any presentation to professionals. This has been invaluable to me as a clinician. Same with staff supervision and Module training. What an opportunity to grow and learn.

With Joanna Mills you could just go in her office and tell her anything and I did! (sometimes directly out of my group room in the office and put myself down and tell her exactly how I was struggling with the group, and seek her advice, returning to group and put it into practice, only to then return and debrief it all.) I was grateful for her ruthless support. I felt so given to by that style. To be able to be so honest and feel safe at work, knowing you had her trust to go and put it into practice. What a gift.

With Wes Taylor, and John Falcon, who was to become my next Clinical Director and mentor, the other side project that came as a result of knowing and working with these men, was that we started to practice indigenous spiritual practices. John Falcon, who is Hopi Indian had taught us the pipe ceremony and we were also sweat lodging regularly. Wes joined us on these practices. He played an American Indian flute. When he returned to the USA, he gave me his flute as a gift, I still have it. Exploring this world took me to Arizona and under the instruction of Annie Whitefeather, and it was a wonderful time.

Also over the years I had continued to facilitated weekend retreats. I had initially started these with Merrick Baily, whose daughter Christina Towler (Bailey) was one of the first Primary Therapists at SPP. Her husband, Robert was the first handymen that worked there. SPP has had some wonderful men look after the place. Robert certainly started that tradition. He was also a pipe carrier and sweated at the lodges regularly. Long term recovering addict now, and still surfing! I then had the pleasure to run retreats with Earl Cass and John Falcon and then for many years solo. Mens retreats, spirituality retreats, sweat lodges, Co-dependency retreats. I have incredibly fond memories of this time and still carry the talking stick staff form the Men's retreats. I am committed to carry it for my lifetime.

My second major tour of duty at SPP came when I came across John Falcon walking down the King street in Newtown, he asked me what am I doing. I had been back in Sydney after working in a treatment centre in the Blue Mountains.  I had job at another treatment centre for adolescents, in Sydney, but I did really fit their philosophy. He said “I need you at SPP” and before I knew I was back there running group and then was promoted to Clinical Coordinator. I enjoyed supporting the staff as I had been supported. Also, it was the beginning of the newest science coming through in regards to the effects on the brain and the limbic system from Developmental trauma and it changed everything. Also as part of this tour I started to present on Television and radio and write articles for the press, and I enjoyed this addition to the role. It seemed that wherever I could spread the message of recovery, I was there.

John  showed me a resource by Thomas Hedland on Healthy versus non Healthy Communication. I remember watching it and thinking, my God , I need to learn this for me first before I can take it and teach it to the clients! This happens a lot with therapists and Nurses at SPP. You cannot teach our Model and have ghosts of trauma, addictions and mental issues in your closet brought to life. They will get triggered and start haunting you. It was going deeper in my own recovery, as this new information that has grown into the Interpersonal Neurobiologist school of thinking. Shifting the focus from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to Body Focused Therapy for Complex PTSD. We are not there yet, as was shown when Bessel Van Der Kolk led the proposal to the DSM 5 committee for Developmental Trauma Disorder to be added to the tool. But the DSM is a slow mover, (They only just added Gambling as a disorder!) Fortunate while they argue it out, clinicians have an enormous amount of options at our disposal now to work with the symptoms of trauma.

I did get humbled though. I thought I was invincible, I was young had energy, and little did I know it then but my first child hero, worked himself to burnout after John Falcon left. I couldn’t see it then but I was in my co-dependency, and it made me sick. I ended up going part time, then had to step out and have a break.

I was sad to see the passing of John Bradshaw. He was such a powerful force in recovery. John Bradshaw said he stood on the shoulders of Giants. He truly was to become a Giant in his own right.

Recently I was I was talking to a colleague and she said it's a shame a lot of the recovery heroes are getting old and there is no one coming through to replace. I said, no, that’s not the case. There are many that are coming through, all working with Trauma in a magnificently efficient way. Thank God though for the pioneers. They had the courage to save themselves and then make a map for the rest of us to follow. Dr Patrick Carnes and all his work in the sex addiction field is Nobel prize winning worthy in its outcomes. I cannot wait till the Certified Sex Addiction Training coming up in August at SPP.

The new school of thought which has been called the Interpersonal Neurobiology, has some amazing people attached to it. Dan Siegel, Allan Schore, Bessel Van der Kolk,  Ed Tronick, Peter Levine, Pat Ogden, Stephen Porges are giving us evidence based research that has been a major game changer. I have been overwhelmed myself with the quality if information that is at our finger tips.

I feel as though my work is just beginning as I bid SPP goodbye. My passion to work with Trauma and Addiction is at an all-time high. I am excited to be working with Brainspotting, and Radical Exposure Therapy. Two techniques that got directly to the mid-brain, and create relief for Complex Trauma sufferers. 

I have been divinely inspired by so many and my recovery is strong and I am as passionate about Narcotics Anonymous as I have ever been.

I would like to thank the board and Lorraine Wood for the faith they showed in me to lead the Clinical Therapy Team Also getting the opportunity to train every staff member at SPP, what a privilege. Before I got into recovery and started in this field I use to be a boilermaker. I did not love that that job, I got it because I got kicked out of school for a prank I pulled to get a carton of beer. Alcoholics do this sort of thing. As a boiler maker I would be welding, which is done in isolation and I would fantasise I was packing groceries so I could have a conversation with anyone. Little did I know that I would have the privilege for many years to the lecture and train, clients and staff. Most people these days know I just can’t shut up about recovery, especially Pia’s model.

 In my role this time around I have loved developing Webinars and presenting them, as well as presenting at for conferences about the good works that were going at SPP. Most of all though it was walking and talking with my colleagues as we grew together. There will always be therapists and nurses lining up to work at SPP. I am grateful for the friendships I have found there that have inspired not just my work, but my life.  South Pacific, God bless you and the statement expect a miracle, well I certainly got one and more.

See you all on the Recovery Road.


Regards,

Steve Stokes

Recovery Icon John Bradshaw passes away.

Well I am just l learning this news. God rest his soul and support the hearts of Family and close friends . 

The loss must be indescribable .

To the rest of the recovery community we have lost an icon. A man who humbly stated that he stood on the shoulders of giants, only to become a true giant himself. His illumination on the damage of dysfunction to child development was ahead of its time. 

The interpersonal neurobiologists of today's fame owe an enormous amount to Bradshaw. He was at the coalface, and his concept of Toxic Shame and Healing the Shame that Binds You reconnected many souls.

His acknowledgment of the Shame core and the passionate healing that comes through his work in Homecoming restored hope to generations to come that they could interrupt the pattern of generational abuse.

 The Family series was ground breaking and life saving, always impressed me that it was shown in prison throughout the USA to all those second child scapegoats.

 

I have his voice regularly in my head and as a survivor of childhood trauma  and being in recovery from many addictions, some for over 30 years now, I am in debt to Bradshaw for my life. He will always be one of the voices within me that leads me to my true north.

You will be missed you beautiful man. 

http://m.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/John-Bradshaw-self-help-guru-dead-at-82-7424137.php

30 years in Recovery-Written 14th April 2016

Well today is my 30^th Birthday in Narcotics Anonymous. I could tell over this week as the morning air got cold. It reminds my body it’s time. It seems like a dream now that 30 years ago on this morning I told my mother I was using again and couldn’t stop. She went to book me into the family doctor and I went to get on one last time, but could get anything, and I was defeated and just went home. The doctor sent me straight to a detox. McKinnon unit. I have been to Psychiatrist/Doctors/Social workers, but never detox. Getting clean in addiction was always just stopping drugs and keeping drinking, or stopping drinking and keeping drugs, but never abstinence! It was a Monday night and that evening they sent us to the McKinnon Monday Night NA meeting. I was terrified, but I was alive and feeling. What I saw and heard there that night gave me hope, when I had been feeling hopeless for so long. Hearing people sharing honestly, appearing really happy, was something that moved me. No one was honest in my family especially about how they felt. Mother was mentally ill, and father was absent and had one motto, don’t upset your mother. As a first child I was enmeshed with her madness and it has been a legacy I have had to work hard on all my life. Being enmeshed with madness gave me know regulation tools, so living inside my own skin was torture. Till I found alcohol, drugs, Rock and Roll and sex. The rest failed into insignificance. I loved the new world I had found, was obsessed with it, and it doesn’t take long when you’re a glutton for drugs and alcohol to be insane yourself. I tried to cut done and control use, but always failed miserably! Do throwing in the towel and winning made sense.

I was only in the detox 51/2 days, the rest I did in the meetings, working the steps, with a sponsor, and forming great peers (go the Cabramatta Grunters!)

They told me in detox to do 90 meetings in 90 days, and I had no idea how you fit that in, until I got home and realised I was a full time drug addict before detox, and all I had was time. I did two meeting a day and three on Sundays. It was very lonely leaving all your playmates and playgrounds and playthings behind, but I knew I had to do it. I hung on to a crazy Lithuanian Crass Punk vegetarian animal Liberationist girlfriend till 28 days, and the madness that was creating allowed me to finally let go of that to. For four and half months I did meetings. Got my first sponsor and started to get numbers and ring them. I stayed for the second half on meetings, which was excruciating in the beginning, like asking someone out on a date. I bought the NA Basic Text and read the first three steps every day. That book I carried everywhere. I was amazed how you could live on sickness benefits money. I would make a sandwich, and carry the Basic Text in a little bag, and ride my skateboard to meetings. (First recovery name was Skateboard Steve!) I would go bowling on Friday

nights after the meetings, joined an NA indoor cricket team, The Shot Ducks! It was crazy fun. I rode a moot bike after I got my first job, and back riding again is brining all sorts of memories back. I joined groups and some of those friendships from that first year have all turned 30 this year to. We have grown older and wiser together. I could never have imagined where I would be in 30 years when I started out. If you told me I was going to be a country singer, work as a therapist and wear a suit to my day job and like it, I might not have even stayed. But I have matured. My Family is my focus now.

I have quit my Directors job to make my Family and being a Husband and Father the priority, not my work. That’s been a huge decision for a first child Hero that’s supposed to be there for everyone else so I am ok. That first year taught me recovery was about relationships and connection. I know now that is the new buzz word for addiction treatment, but all those years ago, we found that in the deep loving that comes from holding hands and sticking together to save your own life. The Spiritual awakening that has come as a result of these steps is to big a story to convey for here right now. I will one day write that book. I will say though that I am eternally grateful for the Members that came before me, that created the space, maintained their recovery and opened their arms and hearts to newcomers like me. It taught me to do the same. The therapeutic value of one addict helping another is without parallel. Thank God

This week I am sharing at the Glebe Friday night meeting. It was the last meeting I got taken to before I left treatment. Carol H picked me up and took me. Thank you Carol. Wayne Hennessy looked after me there, gave me his number, and then I called it the next Day-It saved me. Saturday night I will share at the Saturday Liverpool Meeting. The first meeting I went to straight out of detox. Still going strong, and many folks from my generation of clean time still going strong. It was give what I have away with gratitude and ease, because it was so freely given to me. Thank you God

Gabor Mate and other men and women of greatness

I was listening to this on the way home , and was just hit by how special this man is. I have this feeling with music to. I remember hearing Neil Young's Live at Massey Hall 71, and I felt what Pia Mellody calls joy/pain. Joy at how wonderful it was, how brilliant he was at 23, and pain knowing I would never do that with the guitar. I feel the same way when I hear Gabor Mate, Dan Seigel, Bessel, Pat Ogden, Alexandra Katehakis, Allan Schore , Porges, Pia Mellody, John Bradshaw, John Lee and Patrick Carmes ( to name a few!)

One thing I will say about the resilience that can come out of early childhood trauma, I never have given up playing guitar and writing songs, and I will never give up the belief in holistic Physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual approaches to healing.

http://youtu.be/qlHIWXWDuF0

Older Now- Fathers and Sons.

Well, with Father’s Day tomorrow, I have been thinking of my own Father. Many years ago I found poetry a huge release as a way of writing out and contemplating the inner world. Robert Bly, John Lee, Sam Keen, James Hillman were all men that used story and poetry and that inspired me enormously to be courageous and go within, and write my own. To go inside, under the earth, to some dark and light places. It can be just as hard to confront your shadow, as it is to confront your heart.

My Fathers inner world was something he was quiet about. He was an Englishman. There was a time I even wondered whether he had one. I know now he certainly did. He just did not have the language to share it. I wished he had shared something with me about his inner life, and how important it is as a man to take time out so you can take time in, and just how important that is in becoming aware. To read something reflective, poetry, spiritual literature, stories of men, Earth, Love and Faith. That this time makes a man deeper, stronger, a better Warrior, Lover, Magician and King!

My father found his peace in the vegetable garden, fixing things in his garage, and brewing beer. He was peaceful when I remember him doing these things. He had energy for the family when he spent some time in those places. I know that feeling these days. It’s important to know when you need to take that sort of time for yourself.

My mother use to send him bush when he was retired when he starting getting antsy around the house.  He would go to metal detect for Gold. It was a hobby he picked up when we had all got older and left to start our own lives. He would usually pack up his things the next day and head off for a few days. Searching streams for gold, sitting around a camp fire on his own at night, it was his special place. When he came from England with his father on a boat, a six week journey back then, his first experience in Australia was jackarooing out west. I always thought these times in his retirement reminded him of the time he was free, horse backing riding, living with the energy and dreams of a young man. He made some of his gold into some jewellery for my mother. Now that’s a family heirloom.

The first part of my life I spent running away from myself with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I didn’t start the journey within as a man that until in my recovery, after I had been clean a few years, dealing with relationships and Rage in particular that got me attending men meetings and weekend Gatherings. I changed from a female therapist to a male. Started reading men’s literature. Listening to Iron John by Robert Bly, John Lee’s healing the Father-Son wound. It changed everything. My life changed over a fifteen year period. I used to feel like a boy in a man’s body. These days I feel like a man in a man’s body. It does not mean I don’t have fun and hang loose and be a goose. It just means I have a better sense of when to be in the different spaces of being a man.

Tomorrow there will be two little boys waking me up with my Father’s Day gift. I already have an idea what it is, because they have “told me a secret”. They are four and two. Now we have a secret cause I told them not to tell their mother. (of course she already knows). I am looking forward to it.

Being a Father has been the greatest change of experiencing life on this planet I have ever under gone. Now I live for others. They rely on me, and my wife,  she focuses on their care. It’s a decision we have made. Our Priority. I take this role serious, more than any other role I have, and as a son I made a commitment to my Father two days before he passed that I will always look after Mother to.

This Poem I wrote when we had hugged for the first time that I remember. My Father told me once when we talked about that Hug, that he remembered being picked up once by his Father. He recounted his father picking him up and placing him on a bike. It was only in reflection that I thought that he would have been facing away from his father even then. That always stayed with me.

These days one of my greatest delights is playing with my two boys. Every time I do yoga after walking they climb all over me. Quiet moments at the end of the day when they lay on me and we watch cartoons. Touching them, wrestling, hugging them, being close I think is so important for boys. If we learn it when we are young, then we can get the need met for touch in more appropriate ways as an adult too. I want my boys to grow knowing that it is ok to be affectionate, loving, and supportive to both men and woman. That this is being a man.

So on the eve of my own Father’s Day, and in memory of my Dad, Alan Stokes here is Older Now.

Older Now.

We are older now.

My lines are beginning to match his.

We have talked of prostates, and old mates

Like it was not possible before.

He hugged me at Christmas.

We had talked about it,

And although it was not requested,

Just gestured.

I felt it melt something in my heart.

It was uncomfortable for two though,

For we did not know what do.

For both our Fathers

Had never done this before.

Since then, when we meet,

It is with uncertainty.

My one hand goes out to meet his two spread wide,

And quickly we reverse the positions

Only to fumble into each other’s arms

Friendly strangers,

Who share the same history.

Although mine is much shorter than his.

He asked me to go bush soon,

Just me and him.

I’m excited,

 but I don’t know where to begin.

So many questions.

Yet I have been fed silence for so long

That I am scared of the consequences of truth.

We are older now,

His hairs gone grey,

Some fallen away.

To his surprise I got my cut the other day.

Look more like a man he did say.

Everything changes to our dismay.

So we are going Bush, and who would think

My heart would long to be in sync

With a man I had run from as fast as I could

Away to adulthood, to prove that I could.

Now I know I share mistakes I’ve made,

From plans a wreckless youth outlaid.

He understood for he made the same,

He only tried to shield my pain.

So here we are, older now.

Each facing off a sacred cow.

His life is coming to an end.

Mine is taking another bend.

And we’re going Bush to find some Gold.

He’s going to teach me some things he knows.

And I am finally willing to learn instead,

Of thinking that I know it all.

S.J.S.

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

Saturday Night, Home and Family

Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels

I don't know how to tell you all just how crazy this life feels

I look around for the friends that I used to turn to to pull me through

Looking into their eyes I see them running too

Jackson Brown

Its Saturday Night, been a big week,all peeps asleep, been a big day of important sand castles, cartoons and Super Mario.The week , well opportunities to learn with kindred spirits, inspired by others turning from Shame to Grace, and a bright flame extinguished, way to soon .

No text books right now, just YouTube trawling great songs of my youth. I have loved so many great bands. I gave up early worrying about what others thought about what I liked. If it moved me , I couldn't help it. That was a big thing to , the not worrying, it rarely happened in any other area of my life.I loved everything from The C;ash To Kiss. To many in between to mention here. I found this song tonight. Always loved the bridge, the last two lines of it. The fear, if you look , you can see, but keep breathing, loving, living, praying like its up to God, and working like its up to you.

Today I was walking with my son Maverick, he was holding my hand, walking and talking. My heart could have exploded . He is so beautiful. He is from me, in me now always.He has come through me from a universe I am humble to admit I know so little about. What a gift, I cant think of a greater gift, a child's love.

I am glad for recovery. It tells me I am not perfect, that it is human to need support, love, care, all the way through, daily. I rang a good friend through the week, a father himself, asking him fathering questions. He is an initiated man in recovery. He was loving, straight, clear and honest with me. I am grateful to know that no matter how long you are on this planet, it is ok to reach out.

So , Tonight, I sit home, grateful for the rest , grateful for this home, grateful for the recovery that is the foundation of my life, grateful for all that have answered the phone to me, that have had cups of tea after meetings, gone for those long walks, weekend retreats, spent days at conventions, nights after the meetings, hanging to the wee hours, well tonight, I thank you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnnL8wEDNJM

It's my Birthday!, no not my Belly Button, my recovery Birthday. 29 today!

Well, this morning 29 years ago, I woke up at my mother’s house, hung over, from a day before of using everything I could get my hands on, Alcohol, Pot, Biker speed, but on this morning I was once again out of all drugs due to the binge the night before. I could never save anything for the next day.

 I had just started a job, it was day three. I had left the first two days early on a lie, because I had run out of drugs and alcohol, and needed to go get more. I was in the habit of taking alcohol disguised to work in a soft drink bottle, and would use drugs in the toilet. On this morning though, I was out of drugs, and I was already late for work. Mum was at the end of the bed trying to wake me up, because she was of the belief that if I just could get a job, I would get back on my feet. I thought that once, but not anymore. I didn’t know it yet, but addiction is cunning baffling and powerful, and I broke every promise I ever made to myself to stop, cut down, control my use. 

On this morning though, I was at a special sort of rock bottom. I didn’t know what it was called at the time, but I come to understand that it was a spiritual rock bottom. I just knew I could not go to work and lie to the bosses one more time. I had lied to leave work early to get drugs. I had been lying for as long as I remember to cover up who I really was, and what I was really doing. I for some reason this morning could not lie again to these two middle aged European gents who owned this small factory, that I had been hired as a Boilermaker.

So, as I lay in bed looking up at the familiar distressed look of my mums face, I told her the truth. That I was using again, everything, that I could not stop, and that I needed help. Help to her meant our family Doctor. So as she jumped in the car and headed to the Surgery to book me in. I, jumped in my dad’s car, (as mine had been repossessed by the Sherriff!) to go and try and get on. I went to my friends (drug associates) house, to try and get a shot, but they had nothing ( meaning only enough for them) usually I would haggle till I got something, but the spiritual rock bottom had finally kicked in, and I had little fight left. So I drove home, and of course pretended like nothing had happened when mum returned.

We headed to the Doctors, and I told him the truth, for the first time, no bullshit. What I was using, how much, exactly. He gave me a letter to a place and said head straight there. As we were walking through reception, he came out, with another letter, and said to go here. I have always wondered about that. What would have happened if I went to the other place? Would I still be here?

So we picked up some cloths, and then my mother drove me there. I was angry all the way. I didn’t know it then, but I have since learnt I was just raging to keep all my fear, pain and shame pushed down. But it got me there. I remember walking into that Detox, feeling frightened of the unknown. I knew I needed to be there. I had no idea what “there” was.

 I just knew I needed to stop using Drugs and Alcohol, and that I could not. I had already tried everything I knew. When they asked me why I was there I was confused, because I thought everyone would go to detox to stop. But I soon learnt people go there for a variety of reasons. To get people of your back, husbands, wives, mums and dads, police, bosses. People go there to escape, for a warm bed and some food, to get their habit down. I am glad when I look back that I went to get well, to get help to stop.

That day is a blur in treatment. I do know we were not allowed to have contact with others outside, and those we were not allowed to talk to each other. I found that one the hardest. When I was caught talking to another client, the worker even asked me “What have you really got to offer this person trying to get well?” I must say, at the time, I was frustrated, but I did think they had a point, I felt I had nothing to offer someone that was trying to get clean.

That night though, I was taken to my first N.A meeting, McKinnon Monday night. I still remember it. The meeting was big. We walked down from the detox. There were Harleys out the front and anybody who I had ever been was there. Bikers, punks, new romantics, westie’s, Inner city all in black types ( Pre Hipsters!) even those normal looking folks, I even tried that. It felt strange when I did, but I tried it all the same.

 In the meeting, as people stood up and shared, it was great to hear people talk out loud, what I always kept locked inside. From the meeting though, the moment I remember the most was the countdown. When I think back I would have stood up and said I was one day clean. I know now the big deal that gets made when that happens, and maybe it happened that night. I do not remember is the truth. But I do remember two people coming up to me and saying things like hang in there. That they had been through the same detox, and that they are now going to meetings, and staying clean, working the Narcotics Anonymous Program.

When I walked back to the detox that night I know I felt hope, that just maybe I can make it. Just maybe, I had found my tribe.I described it to my mother months latter that I felt like I had found the place that I could talk, and that people could understand me. As I tried to get some sleep I knew I wanted to go to another meeting, even though it freaked me out. I am grateful on that day, when I reached out for help, firstly there was a detox, and secondly there was NA.

Now, 29 years later, I drove off towards a Detox and treatment centre, one I have been working at on and off for many years. Today I facilitated a Staff and Community meeting, that was all about connection, communication, being real, and change and hope through genuine connection to self and others. I have fought working here at different times in my life. I do not anymore. I belong here, holding out my hand, as so many people held there’s out for me to hold, in those moments, that even though you are afraid, you trust and reach out.

Recently, I finally got to meet Pia Mellody, at the Meadows. The Treatment Centre that South Pacific Private is based on. It was everything I could have hoped for. Over two days, I spent 2 1/2 hours that I will never forget. I have taught Pia’s Model, and lived my recovery by it for over 25 years now. It gave me back my connection with my soul. Hearing her talk about this model, in answering questions I have harbored for many years, was like nectar from the Gods. I have always been impressed with this model, by its salvation at depth that it offers the suffering Codependant, with all our secondary symptoms. I will be going back for training with Pia latter this year. This will be a week that will last a lifetime.

I have thought for a while that stopping using is hard, but it’s the easiest part of recovery. It’s the staying stopped that is the hardest. Doing whatever it takes in your recovery to not pick up, and work the program instead. I am grateful for all those early recovering addicts that answered the phone, spoke to me after meetings, and invited me to coffee shops. I am grateful to Peter G and Michael B and Steve for being my early sponsors, and for Mark A for being my Co-sponsor for over 20 years. Grateful to friends like Alan H , Croc, who has been ringing me for support for 25 years. Bonds that now can never be broken.

I am grateful to all my friends that have sat in Men’s groups with me, Dave R, Roger B ,  Peter J. Parramatta Coda Meeting. Brookvale Men’s NA, Trevor, Simon, Black Phil, Vanilla Phil, Kev, Hookey, Pete G and H, Marco, Simon, Tom C and Lance. All who have sat in those chairs, all that are not still with us.

 Also, I am grateful for the Dinosaurs, past and present, Wayne H, Aeroplane Bob (RIP) , Derek, Mario, Greg H, Carol, Anna , Warragamba Pete, Paul and Gary and Lucinda. Kevin from Heaven, Tony W, Mark and Kay S. Big Lindsay, Damien, Tim B. My partner in Crime Morry! Piano Tony and Tony G to name a few, that keep walking that ground up ahead, showing me that true recovery is for life.

I know I will have forgotten people, forgive me please.

Next its mentors, met and unmet. John Falcon, Shaman, June Lake, Spiritual Grandmother, Lorraine Wood, Visionary and Steward of Recovery for many, Wes Taylor, teacher and friend, Rex McCann and Vivian Hutchinson, Magicians. Gary Williams, spiritual Father. Earl Cass, Group work master. Michael Le Page, Supervisor extraordinaire.

Pia Mellody-Saviour, Patrick Carnes, Robert Bly, John Bradshaw, and my friend John Lee. Bob Earl, Terry Gorski, Michael Meade, James Hillman, Dan Millman, Deepak Chopra, the list is long .

Bessel Van Der Kolk, Stephen Porges, Dan Siegel, Dr Alan Shore, Alex Katehakis, Claudia Black, Peter Levine , Pat Odgen and Ed Tronick. Masters one and all.

       

To all my colleagues past and present at SPP and beyond, that work at the coalface with grace of the human spirit . What a privilege it has been to be beside you. I have learnt so much. Thankyou to Dr Teoh, Dr Gutkin and Bill and Lorraine Wood for the opportunity to serve at such a wonderful place of healing.

  Lastly, my family. My mother, Joan, and my beautiful wife Jen and sons Marshall and Maverick. I am grateful that my father passed on , seeing me in long term recovery. Without the gift of recovery, these gifts I would never have received.

Now I am certain I have forgotten more and more people, and will feel awful after I press send, but I am perfectly imperfect, and have at my centre the 12 steps, and can keep taking inventory, and make amends when I need to.

I have been grateful to have been around long enough, and had accessed great sponsors who led me through the steps, and to have then experienced the Spiritual Awakening which Step 12 talks about, that we get as a Result of working the steps.

I understand that awakening better now. To me it simply means I am alive, aware, conscious and in my reality, having access to my Body, My thinking , beliefs and values, to be able to feel, and be aware of my actions.

 Not killing myself anymore, not  numbing myself, distracting myself into submission. Recovery and the 12 Steps lead us into relationship with a God of our own choosing, of our own Understanding. In talking with Pia, one of the beautiful messages she shared with me was her belief around the results of growing yourself up in recovery, and developing a Functional Adult, that it is actually connecting yourself with your own soul, and therefore the God within.

It has been my experience in recovery, that as I worked the Steps in this program, that I got the sanity needed to pray only for the knowledge of Gods will and the power to carry that out. The sanity to know that just running on your own will might get you what you want, but sometimes getting what you want, means having to now deal with the consequences of something that we did not really need. Growing up, maturing in recovery, gives us access to that mature understanding of delaying gratification as M. Scott Peck talks about, and choosing our needs over just our wants. I cannot say I live by this all the time, but I am grateful that I am not ignorant of this anymore. Carl Jung’s quote, “”We have to make the unconscious conscious, otherwise it will direct our life and we will call it fate” has stayed with me for a long time.

It’s the becoming aware, therefore being conscious , that Pia tells us in the Developmental Immaturity Model is so essential for our success.

The program itself has given me the tools to on a daily basis bring what’s in the shadows in my life, out into the light. Sometimes it has taken me a lot longer than I have thought. Sometimes I have prayed, even though I feel as though I am an atheist or agnostic. There is a lot to be said for “faking it till you make it , and acting as if!”

So , today, 29 years clean, I have work to do, programs to write, staff to speak to, and more importantly, new people to meet, who have just walked into treatment today, reaching their hand out for the first time. Out of desperation. The pain of remaining the same, finally getting more unbearable than the fear of change.  I remember that feeling well. I am so grateful that we addicts and codependants do not have to suffer alone anymore.

The first tape I ever heard in recovery was by a fellow called Dean G. I have never met him, but I will never forget him. That tape got me through many a hard night. He said when he first got to recovery he felt as though he was being dragged behind a bus, and now years later, he feels as though he has learnt to smile while he is being dragged.

I must say in 29 years, I have been dragged some, but I have done a lot more smiling, even in hard times, than I did when I was lost in the Darkness of active addiction.