Love- The only Mental Health

Working from home. Movemeber is fully underway, I am passionate today, about healing, about Spirit, mostly about LOVE. The best thing about recovery, is LOVE, deep loving, feeling it, living it, living in it. God I am grateful for the grace that saved a wreck like me, giving me back my connection to my heart. Its a painful road to make your way back home, and the anxiety at times literally is breathe taking, but I cannot stop trying to live in the essence of life itself, I will not run from it anymore Springsteen inspiring me today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOPDhoZH91g

Mothers

Well tonight, Movember Day One, just finished a Country wide Skype mens meeting. The house is quiet here, I'm exhausted after staying up for the Wallabies. However, the value of deep sharing from grown man to grown man, from the heart, is a currency of Kings! My mental Health and well being has been stabilized and foundationalized by fostering relationships with men, in a way that my fathers generation was not able to . Viva the Evolution!

Tonight's topic Mothers, I shared about my alcoholic birth Mother , my adopted mother and her challenges of dealing with mental illness, and my wife, who has health challenges now, but is one of the most deeply loving spirit-filled beings I have ever met. Our two beautiful boys have an anchor in them created by her commitment, every minute of everyday to this family.

She is my Queen Scout.

I am grateful to have met with and stayed in contact with my birth mother. I am grateful to recovery that I stayed through the grief process of growing up with my adopted mother and the impact of the trauma of mental illness, to now have healed from both our pasts and I have a loving relationship with my mum. She did the best with what she had, and he was given a rough start to. We have that in common, but we have both changed the family legacy.

I have a poem I will sign off on tonight , I wrote about being the surrogate spouse as the eldest to my mother, here it is. I was written years ago, but it is still important, that work and the wound.

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

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.