Nurture — Day 1

Day 1 prompt: “Share a personal story about a time when you overcame a major obstacle in your life. What did you learn from the experience?”

This is a tough one as I have faced many major obstacles over my 57(ish) years on this globe. I find myself needing to balance my brutal honesty (which can be a failing of mine), with my desire to share my journey, with my need to maintain a sense of privacy. I’m still a tad iffy on this whole “parasocial relationships” phenomenon that posits that individuals form “friendships” with complete strangers they only know online. I’m very choosey with whom I call friend, but I’m willing to accept that any visitor to my site and I have the potential to develop some kind of relationship—one that I would label an acquaintance, rather than a friend. (I also don’t want to scare off any visitor with sharing something that may be too personal straight out of the gate.)

With that in mind…

Back in 1993, I was at a major cross-roads in my life. I had recently suffered the ending of several relationships—personal, romantic, and professional—in fairly short order. Over the course of a few months bridging ‘92-93, I ended a romance that was almost a year old, experienced worsening overall health, lost the two full-time jobs I had been in (one over four years) due to my worsening health, and cut off ties with my friend-group. I isolated, developed an addiction to street drugs, and only later realized said addiction had been my first attempt at suicide. It was Spring of ‘93 when I realized I couldn’t continue the non-life I had been living, so I moved over 4000 km to the last place I had felt “safe”…my childhood home. It turned out to be neither “safe”, nor my home (then or in the past). I returned to where I had grown up an absolute shell of the young man I had been when I’d left seven years prior.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but even with my slim frame (I used to joke I had bird bones) weighing 58 kg (125 lb) at 1.8 m (6’) was not, by any stretch of the imagination, healthy. I had always been lean, but I had lost a good 7 kg (15 lb) over the years. You can likely imagine how haggard, drawn, skeletal, [fill in appropriate adjective here] I looked. I didn’t begin to regain the lost weight—and respect my physical self—until some years later…but that’s a story for another day. I did know that I couldn’t continue feeling the way I had been, suffering from sleepless nights followed by chaotic days, and never knowing where my emotions would take me. I also knew that nothing I had tried had been working; it was time for something new.

Keep in mind, this was 1993, long before #MentalHealthAwareness and related hashtags were common, when only “those people” or Stars sought help (followed by public shame when it became common knowledge), and men were expected to eat their feelings—assuming they were allowed to admit they had any. My upbringing had also taught me very mixed messages about emotions: Marm was the absolute epitome of what one would expect of a nurturer, while her husband was what one would expect of a “man’s man”. I knew I wasn’t going to get any useful help from either of him; I also didn’t want to burden them with the knowledge of having a disappointment for a son (another well-learned lesson). I needed Professional Help—to Hell with societal expectations of what men were expected to do.

I spent the next two years actively engaged in a variety of therapies: private, group, and in-patient. I learned many hard lessons about myself, my family-of-origin (vs the family-of-choice that I know have), my upbringing, and my lived experience. I learned to distinguish those choices I had made from those that had been made for me; I also learned how to take greater control over choices in my future. I (eventually) developed new relationships, from scratch, that had clear foundations, boundaries, and expectations; I learned how to be a friend to myself before accepting friendship from others. I learned new skills, excavated memories and sources of my traumas, and developed methods for integrating these new tools into my daily life. It was raw…but ultimately led to healing that I continue to this day.

What was the most important thing I learned back then?

It wasn’t the memories…

It wasn’t making friends…

It wasn’t sharing my story…

It wasn’t journaling…

It wasn’t being the most important person in my life (a lesson I wasn’t ready for yet)…

It wasn’t assigning “responsibility” for the harms I’d suffered…

It was…LEARNING TO STAND IN “NO”

It took me an awfully long time to understand, then practice, then appreciate the power of that simple word.

I remember starting with—what was to me—the “small things” in my life at the time:

• When asked, repeatedly, by various agents “Are you able to return to work?”, I answered with a trembling (but vocal) “NO! I am unwell…here’s the 500 pg report supporting my position.”

• When new persons would ask me to go out and “live a little”, when I knew that doing so would be unsafe for me, I answered with a stronger “NO! I’m just going to stay in.” I may have lost a fair number of future friends, but I knew that I had to put myself first.

• When I was an in-patient, I very firmly let other residents know when they were asking more than I could safely give. We were encouraged to stand in NO at the beginning of our healing process. Doing so also allowed me to see when I was using “NO” as an excuse to step outside my comfort zone.

Later, as 1994 turned into 1995, I finally began to practice standing in “NO!” when confronting my own inner saboteurs. I learned that saying NO to them actually opened many conversations with myself about how to proceed in my healing. I re-learned to trust my instincts, listen to my doubts and fears, and then offer myself solutions to them. I learned how to put permanent NOs into a mental box, marked “Important”, that I could revisit any time I needed—something that has become part of my daily process. I do a daily inventory to see if the contents of my many mental boxes have changed; my “archive” is quite full now.

Learning this one lesson was the most important lesson I’ve learned over the past 30 years. While it may close certain opportunities for me, I have accepted that this is what may happen. Overall, I’ve found that the power of NO shows me those doors that are worth opening. The rest stay closed until the answer changes.

I sometimes wonder if I’m alone in this experience. What about you Gentle Reader? Do you stand in NO? How do you balance the current trend to “being open to opportunities” while retaining your right to stand in NO? Let me know in the comments below.

As always, be well.

Gryph