Tag: forgive

Thoughts on PTSD

~ Kai Raines ~ 1 Comment

I think most people are familiar with the term PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We’re familiar with the words but maybe not the meaning or a full understanding of what’s involved with that diagnosis. I have diagnosed myself, (because it saves time) with PTSD as a result of the traumatic fall I had November 10th.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, PTSD requires exposure to an event that involved the actual, or threat of death, violence, or serious injury. The disorder develops in some people who experience a shocking, scary, or dangerous event. Either you experienced the traumatic event, you witnessed it, someone close to you experienced the event, or you are repeatedly exposed to graphic details of traumatic events, for example, first responders. The National Center for PTSD estimates that out of 100 people, 6 will experience PTSD at some point.

As I was reading this week, I was reminded that my PTSD started before last November. When I was in my 30’s I started working for the Denver Department of Human Services as a child protection caseworker. I had a caseload of families with children who had been removed from their homes because of child abuse and/or neglect. One winter morning I had gone to a school staffing at 7:00 am about 45 minutes from where I worked. When I left the school, it was snowing…more like sleeting. I was driving very slowly because the highway was icy. All of a sudden, I saw a pickup truck lose control on the other side of the highway. The truck spun into the grass median and then flipped over and over toward me. I thought I was going to die. I thought the truck would end up on top of my car…and me. I tried to stop but my car slid on the ice. I hit the pickup truck when it stopped flipping and the car behind me hit me. As the truck was landing the driver was ejected from the front seat and went sliding down the highway. He looked like he was just sleeping as he slid by. I tried to steer away from him but couldn’t because of the ice. I thought I ran him over. 

When everything stopped moving, I was really shaken up. I understand now why an “excited utterance” is an exception to the hearsay rule in court. There’s no time or ability to lie about anything. I understand this because pretty much as soon as a state patrol officer said “hi” I blurted out everything that had happened, including thinking that I ran the driver over as he slid down the highway. The officer told me I did not run him over. The “him” was a 17-year-old, who stole his grandfather’s truck. He didn’t even have a drivers license. It was so sad because he died at the scene. The officer was gentle with me and told me several times that that young man’s death was not my fault. I think because the truck was flipping down the highway at me, I knew it wasn’t my fault. 

That accident gave me PTSD and I still have it. I cannot drive in the snow or ice…well, I physically can but emotionally it’s a bad idea. I am terrified of snowy or icy roads. And you may think, “well I don’t like them either, no one does.” True…but I’m afraid I’m going to be killed at any moment. I’m terrified that a car is going to flip over and smush me…and I’ll be dead. I literally cannot be in a car, riding or driving, in those conditions. That was almost 30 years ago, and I remember it like it was yesterday. I still feel the fear of dying and I still see that young man sliding down the highway. None of those images have faded in all these years.

It is natural to feel afraid during and after a traumatic event. A diagnosis of PTSD requires symptoms that last longer than a month and that significantly interfere with aspects of daily living, like work, or relationships. Symptoms must be unrelated to medication, substance abuse, or other illness. PTSD also requires: at least 1 re-experiencing symptom, such as flashbacks, distressing thoughts, recurring memories or dreams; at least 1 avoidance symptom, like avoiding thoughts or feelings, staying away from certain people, places, or events; at least 2 arousal and reactivity symptoms, such as hyper-vigilance, being easily startled or frightened, difficulty with sleep and concentration, feeling irritable or angry, self-destructive behavior; and at least 2 cognition or mood symptoms for example, difficulty remembering key parts of the traumatic event, ongoing feelings of fear, anger, shame, or guilt, loss of interest in activities you used to enjoy, feeling isolated, difficulty feeling positive emotions, and ongoing negative emotions.

There are so many reasons for PTSD personally, as communities, as a country, as a world…9/11, school shootings, as well as shootings in churches, synagogues, movie theaters, and LGBTQ+ nightclubs. There are murders, car accidents, bad falls, assaults, and fucking Covid. And I’m just stopping there but the list of trauma inducing events goes on and on…wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods…you see my point. I wonder if there’s anyone out there who doesn’t have PTSD. After 9/11 I walked around watching the sky and waiting for the next plane to crash and the next building to fall. After Pulse Nightclub I felt, and still feel, hunted, as a member of the LGBTQ+ community. After the Columbine shooting, I questioned the wisdom of sending my kids to school. The pandemic made me want to put everyone I care about into plastic bubbles so they couldn’t get Covid…and couldn’t die.

I think we are a nation of collective PTSD, but we don’t know it. We don’t know because, instead of feeling all the pain and loss of those events, we shut down or we just get angry. It might be righteous anger but it’s still just one feeling, one reaction. It’s easier to feel anger than to feel afraid or confused, or loss, or sadness. There’s been tremendous loss and we should all feel sad, we should be heartbroken, but instead we just get angrier. We are a nation full of angry people…angry traumatized people. When we attempt to solve problems while we are angry our solutions can easily turn to violence…guns, tanks, bombs. We hurt and so we want them to hurt too…whoever “them” may be. They did this to us, so we’ll do this to them…upping the ante with every reaction. 

And we are just reacting. When we’re traumatized, when we’re scared, when we feel threatened, our reaction is fight or flight. I am either gonna beat the shit out of you or I am gonna run the fuck away and hide. Those are the physical reactions our bodies automatically produce. We have a physical reaction but what is our response? Are we able to stop a moment, take a breath, and make a decision of how we will respond? Make a conscious choice. When a traumatic event occurs, our reactions are immediate, and they need to be so that we protect ourselves. When recurring fears and feelings are stirred up because of PTSD we need to find a way to respond. We need to be able to choose an appropriate response when we aren’t in danger, but we’re triggered. When I was walking my dog and I tripped, I was not in danger. Nothing happened to me. I was safe. But for example, if my reaction was to decide to never leave my house again, that might be a bit extreme. When triggered my reactions are not to actual danger but rather a perceived danger. I see danger everywhere because the world hurt me. The beach broke me, a car flipped in front of me, a dead body slid past me on the road…I was minding my own business, and the world got me. How did it get me? It reminded me that I am not in control. I’m not in control of the world or of people or even myself sometimes. Shit happens because I can’t stop it. I can’t stop it because I can’t control it…”it” being literally everything. Well fuck. People fall, cars crash, people die…life happens. Sometimes life feels a bit relentless. 

So, let’s be real…I have physically been put back together from the fall but mentally and emotionally, I feel guarded…maybe tentative is a better word. I feel tentative in my interactions with the world around me. So, what is a lover of the beach to do, especially since I’m scared now. I’m not exactly sure but I know one thing, sitting and being still with myself can only help. Sitting as in meditation or prayer or whatever reason causes you to sit alone and in silence. So, I’m gonna sit. Then, I’ll sit…and finally, I’ll sit some more. Because in a world that feels out of control, I can control that. I can control sitting myself down and meditating…or just closing my eyes and being still. Quiet, still, and by myself. 

So that’s my plan. To sit. Yep, that’s the whole plan. Call it meditation, call it relaxing, or call it laziness.  It doesn’t matter what you call it, it matters that you do it. So, I’ll sit 20 minutes a day…maybe only 10 to start. I’m not sure what to do with all these feelings. So, I’m gonna sit. I’m going to allow my much-feared feelings to arise as they want to and I’m going to sit with them. I’m going to stay with them. I am not going to interact with them, at least not now. I’m going to notice them in my mind, recognize them, notice them in my body, and then let them go. I’m going to notice, touch, and let go. And they will go…if I let go. I’m going to allow these feelings to come to me instead of trying to orchestrate how I’ll fix them without feeling them. Nothing needs to be fixed. All I need is to be aware.

Before I end here, I want to say that I am not writing this as a mental health expert or an expert in PTSD. I am writing as a fellow traveler on this journey with trauma. I’m reading and learning and sharing. This is not intended to take the place of any therapy. Only you know if you need therapy. If you think you might then you should. Therapy can be very helpful. 

If you are going to hurt yourself, call 911. If you have suicidal thoughts, get help right away. Reach out to a friend, a spiritual advisor, or someone you trust. Make an appointment with your doctor or therapist. You can contact the Suicide Crisis Lifeline 24 hours a day. Text 988 with any message you want and have a conversation with a counselor through text or chat. You can also call 1-800-suicide 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Please reach out and get the help you need.

As a person who has experienced trauma, in relationships with people who have experienced trauma, in a nation that has experienced trauma, and as part of a massively traumatized world, be kind. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to other people. Lead with love in all your interactions. Because we need love to win. We need love to win everywhere. In the end, all that matters is how we love people. So, lead with love. Love is always the place to begin.

Floating and Falling

~ Kai Raines ~ Leave a comment

The Grammy Awards were last Sunday. I love Billie Eilish and that night she won “Song of the Year” for, “What Was I Made For?” If you haven’t heard it, you should change that…now. It’s an amazing song…in my opinion. She wrote it for the movie “Barbie” which I have not seen yet. Anyway, the beginning of the song says, “I used to float, now I just fall down. I used to know, but I’m not sure now….” As I’ve gotten older there are so many more things, I’m not sure of. Everything was so clear when I was in my 20’s…so simple…so black and white…so rigid.

When I was younger, I was an athlete. I played basketball, softball, and I swam…all competitively. I was coordinated. I could stumble and catch myself easily before I’d ever fall. I could run forward and backward…I thank basketball for that. When I went to college, the basketball coach was interested in me for the team. It was a very small school but still that was a dream come true. I ended up having knee surgery instead of trying out for the team (thank you field hockey…I should have never trusted a sport that makes you wear a skirt) and that was a big loss for me. Being an athlete was a huge part of my identity then. I think it was my identify. Everything in my life was connected to sports, all my friends played, and we spent our time together on and off the court. I had a basketball with me all the time and got really good at spinning it on my finger…I could even switch fingers and hands (my grandkids used to think that was very cool when they were little).

I wrote about my accidental fall, surgery, and ongoing recovery a couple weeks ago. I wasn’t really planning on writing anymore about it because it was done. Right? Then I was walking my dog and I tripped on my crutch and that whole accident came crashing down on me. I was back on the beach as if it was happening again right then. I saw myself fall. I heard and felt the crunch and snap of my arm breaking. My heart started racing and I felt the warmth of tears welling up in my eyes. I felt overwhelming fear and sadness, even though I was fine in that moment. I did not fall. I did not even come close to falling. I just tripped. I was so afraid.

I used to float…I’m not sure I ever floated but I didn’t fall. I wasn’t clumsy. I was coordinated. Now I just fall down, randomly and for no reason or that’s how it feels to me. And worst of all, I don’t know how to stop it. Missteps that I could have easily corrected in the past, knock me to the ground now. And I am afraid. Afraid to live in my body. Afraid to feel in my body. Afraid to fall in my body. How can I mentally feel like I’m 40 and physically move like I’m 90? That’s fucked up. I feel like everyone treats me like I’m fragile and about to break. But I’m not…okay I did break but I’ve been put back together with metal and cadaver bones. Just missing duct tape.

“I don’t know how to feel but I wanna try.” Feelings are hard for me. As a child, I was encouraged not to have them. Feelings are messy. No one wanted to know how I felt. How do I know this? No one ever asked. No one cared how I felt. If I was angry, I got in trouble, even though anger seemed like the go to emotion for my parents. And if I was sad or cried, I was teased or taunted. I felt humiliated. I decided emotions were way too much trouble for me.

Let me be real… I don’t know how to feel because I’m having difficulty being in my body right now. I was learning to be present in my body and feel my feelings and then I fell…my catastrophic fall. I feel fragile and I am not a fragile person…so that pisses me off…which I’m sure is helpful. I am not fragile. I’m fucking Superwoman. I deal with, manage, and take care of tons of shit every day. I am not fragile. Fragile feels bad to me, weak. I am not weak. I can’t be weak.

I don’t know how to feel…that’s true two ways. The “I don’t know” as in I don’t recognize the feeling, and/or the “I don’t know” as in I can’t decide, too many choices. I’m with number 2. I can identify feelings, I’m better at it with other people’s feelings but I can get to mine…it may take a minute. I have a master’s degree in counseling…I know lots of feelings…a grade 18th’s worth. But it’s not so much that I don’t know how to feel as I don’t how I can manage all these feelings. I have a fucking tsunami of feelings.

You see, it turns out I have all the feelings. So many feelings. I have spent years learning to feel my feelings…years. And convincing myself to stay present in my body, even when my body hurts. To stay with the physical pain and any feelings that arise from it. I feel afraid of all the feelings inside me. Afraid of being devoured by them. I’m afraid and sad. I feel diminished by falling. I became a fragile and weak person in other people’s eyes, and they question my capabilities…and their doubts eat away at me…and so do mine.

Now let’s be real…I might have some PTSD, just a tiny bit. I’m afraid. I’m afraid of being me and living in this body. I feel fragile and vulnerable in a predatory way…like my body is out to get me. I don’t know how to be in my body right now, it feels complicated. I’m afraid of my body, as if it’s separate from me, and can damage me on its own. I feel breakable in a new way since I fell. And it’s not so helpful that my mom tells me I need to stop falling because I’ll end up in “bad shape,” basically dead is what she means. If it was as simple as deciding not to fall, then it would never happen again. It’s not that simple. I’m careful and I fell. I’m careful and I’m afraid. 

It feels strange to say that I am scared of myself. Makes me feel a little bit like I have multiple personalities and I’m afraid of one of them…the one making me fall. I don’t know exactly what to do. I can pretend that there was no impact on me from the fall but the the slightest misstep or stumble and my insides collapse. Physically being put back together didn’t fix my fears. My bones have healed but not my heart.

 Let’s be real…I can’t outrun my feelings. I actually can’t outrun anyone, except maybe my English Bulldog. And neither of us believe in running. What’s the worst thing that can happen if I stay with my feelings? Allow myself to sit with my fear and sadness? I suppose I’ll feel way more than I want to but what else? What’s the worse thing that can happen if I feel…feel it all? And what’s the best thing that could happen if I allow myself to feel that whole tsunami of feelings? They are messy and I am messy, but would I learn to believe? Believe in myself. Believe in my ability to handle anything that comes up for me. Believe I can feel a tsunami and survive. Believe I am bigger and stronger and smarter than my fear. Believe in myself and my potential just like I promised myself I would. Perhaps practice what I preached just a month ago…there’s a whole lot of believing that’s ready to go on here…and all I have to do is stay, relax, and feel. So simple and so scary. Until you do it…until I do it.

Post traumatic stress disorder is a big topic so next week I’ll talk more about PTSD and the fear and sadness that can accompany it. In the meantime, I’m gonna practice what I preach and I’m going to love. I’m going to love myself and the people around me. I’m going to practice a loving attitude toward the world. Love will keep me a glass half full kind of person. It’s all in my perspective…so I’m keeping mine focused on love, because in the end all that matters is how we love people…including ourselves.

Does Absence Really Make the Heart Grow Fonder?

~ Kai Raines ~ Leave a comment

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder” is a well-known saying. We say it when we’re going to be away from someone, and it feels difficult. It’s going to be hard to be apart. It’s going to be scary. We say it to comfort ourselves and convince ourselves that everything will be fine. This past year, my wife has had to live between Colorado and Florida because she still has a job in Colorado. So, half of the year she was there and half of the year she was here in Florida with me. During that time, I thought a lot about absence and whether it makes the heart grow fonder. I’ve decided absence on its own doesn’t really do anything, except maybe, make us forget.

Just being absent doesn’t automatically expand our heart or deepen our connection. While my wife was gone, six to eight weeks at a time, I did things to remind her what she means to me. We FaceTimed every day, at least once, and sent texts throughout the day. I sent her cards, flowers, cinnamon bears, words of love songs, and I wrote her a love poem. I wanted her to know she was always on my mind. It occurs to me that what I did was make myself present…instead of absent. My heart grew fonder but not because of absence. My heart grew fonder because of effort and intention. I intended to remain as present as possible in her life while she was away. I made the effort to make that happen. So maybe, absence met with intention and effort makes the heart grow fonder.

On its own, I think absence, rather than making the heart grow fonder, makes us forget. Someone who has hurt you is no longer in your life, a difficult situation has ended, an abusive situation you’ve been removed from for years – years without contact with certain people or situations and we think we’re healed…the wounded part of us is all better. But is it? Not confronting something doesn’t make it healed. It makes it repressed or buried, possibly festering from lack of attention. Sometimes the absence of something doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, even though we think it does.

I have had a challenging relationship with my parents, mostly my mom, throughout my life – I sometimes think just the sight of me or the mention of my name pisses her off. It’s scary, at least to me. There was a period of time that I didn’t have contact with my family…about twelve years. I missed them. I thought of them often, especially on special occasions. I spent holidays with my own family – my wife, all of our children and grandchildren. Some holidays we went to Texas to celebrate with my wife’s extended family. And I missed mine.

After twelve years, I saw a picture of my parents on Facebook. I was startled by how much they had changed. They looked so much older and more fragile than I remembered them. I started thinking about their eventual passing. I didn’t want to have regrets about our relationship. Regrets that I hadn’t seen them at least one more time. So, I wrote a letter to my parents. I told them that Gayle and I had taken two of our grandkids to see The Harlem Globetrotters for a birthday gift and they loved it. I remembered them taking me to see them and I was thrilled…Meadowlark Lemon and Curly Neal. It was the best. I thanked them for that memory. I thanked them for taking me to see The Carpenters and John Denver. As an adult I realize that may not have been their first choice of things to do, but they did it anyway. I told them I appreciated that. That letter was the catalyst for reconnecting. 

I sent the letter when I felt like I didn’t need or expect any response. I didn’t want my letter to have an agenda. I also knew if I had expectations, I could end up hurt. My mom called me a week or so after receiving my letter. We had a nice conversation and I caught her up on my kids and grandkids. A couple months later, I drove with my daughter and her two kids to see my parents. We were in town for a few days and while we were there, we stayed in a hotel so everyone would have space for quiet and relaxation. It had been twelve years after all. Our visit went great. We talked and laughed and spent time looking at old photo albums. Remember when those were a thing? We left on great terms, and I continued contact with my parents through daily FaceTime calls.

Things with my parents were great, so great in fact that we invited them to move to Florida with us so they could be with family. We have wonderful extended family in St. Louis, and they have their own parents and families to care for. We wanted my parents with us so that we could take care of them. My hope was that they would never need a nursing home because we would have them with us, in our home. It was so perfect…in my head. My mom really wanted to be with us in Florida and convinced my dad, who acquiesced. My sister lives in New York and I had been in Colorado and my parents needed more contact than either of us could manage long distance. So, look out Florida here we come…turns out, right back where we started from.

We had so much fun when we first got here. We tried new restaurants and took drives along the Gulf. We laughed all the time. Then the honeymoon ended. Fuck. My mom was depressed and mean. We moved May first and by Mother’s Day I was sure I had asked someone who hates me to move in with me. She was verbally abusive to my dad and me. She said hateful things to both of us. I felt like she had stored up every negative thought she ever had about me, and once we were in Florida, felt like she needed to vomit all of it at me…usually while yelling it at me. I found out things she thought about me that really crushed me. I wish I could un-hear them but no such luck.

We forget. So, is this the forgive and forget type of forgiveness? I don’t think so. This is the I want the ideal in my head so much that I choose not to remember the past. I ignore what I know to be true. I ignore my perceptions and people’s warnings. This is the choice to ignore what’s real until reality smacks you with a two by four and knocks you flat on your ass…my ass. It didn’t feel like a choice. It felt real. I wanted it to be real. I wanted to belong to my parents, especially my mom. I wanted her to want me…to love me…to like me…me the person. But that’s not real. It’s not the experience of my life, especially here in Florida.

I came to realize that what I missed was the idea of my family, my mom. The mom who’s there after school with homemade cookies and milk. The mom who wants to hear all about your day. The mom who loves you as a daughter but also really likes you as a person. The mom who is proud of you just because of who you are, not because you went to law school. I had built up an ideal family in my mind and that’s what I was looking for. That’s what I thought I had gotten after a twelve-year separation. I thought I had achieved the “just moving forward” with my mom. 

Let me be real…it’s time for more therapy. I have personally assisted in the successful career of several therapists in my life. Doesn’t seem like therapy could hurt me. I’m already hurt. It’s time for me to separate myself from my mom, not physically, but emotionally. Everything she says hurts me and so I feel raw most of the time. I have to find a way to keep her messages out of me. Just because she says it doesn’t make it true. How long before I know that at my core?

I was so seduced by how well things went before we moved that I doubted myself and my memory of life with my parents. I wanted the seduction to be the truth, even though I should have known it wasn’t. I wanted to be able to just move forward. I forgot that my mom lives in the past. I forgot that she’s moody and depressed and won’t acknowledge it, let alone talk about it. I also let myself forget how volatile my parent’s relationship was…the fighting, screaming, throwing and breaking things, and name calling. My mom remembers every grievance she ever had against my dad. We lived in her reality of two or three stories that were supposed to show me that my dad was an ass. These incidences were from fifty years ago.

And here’s some reality, I didn’t really forget. I was in denial. Fuck. I didn’t want my memories and experiences to be real. I wanted to be wrong. It was easier to just blame myself. And so, I did. I blamed myself for every problem in my home. I rearranged the past to make it more comfortable for myself. It was so much easier for everything to me my fault. Simpler if I was the problem. If I was the problem before, and now I wasn’t, then everything would be good, right? Not so much. Just because it’s easier doesn’t make it true. I was thinking all sunshine and rainbows and instead got a hurricane of reality. The good news is the hurricane woke me up. The bad news is that I ignored everything I knew from my childhood and put myself right back in the center of the storm.

Absence didn’t make my heart grow fonder. It made my heart forget. I forgot. I tried to undo the past in my mind by blaming myself for all the problems. I allowed myself to be naïve about my parents, especially my mom. I wanted things to be good between us so fucking bad that I became blind and a bit deaf. I saw things as either/or instead of both/and. My mother can be kind and she can be mean. I can love my mom and still see who she is. Conflicting things can exist at the same time. It’s called cognitive dissonance. It’s holding two conflicting thoughts in your mind at the same time. Personally, I call it a mind fuck, but I’ll go with the official term. 

My thoughts about my mom are almost always conflicting. I remind myself that no one is one thing. No one is bad or good. We are all both. We are all shades of gray, and we change all the time. My history is to discount information that I don’t like and cling to what do. It’s time for me to do some rethinking and unlearning. I need to unlearn what I grew up believing was acceptable and rethink responsibility. I am not responsible for what went on in my house. My parents were the parents. And regardless of what someone else believes about me, it’s what I believe that matters. I decide who I am. I decide who I become.

Absence, on its own, is neutral. What we tell ourselves about absence is the story we create and the story we live. Instead of absence, I focus on presence. I need to remain present in my own life and in the lives of the people around me. I can be present even when I am physically absent. I can remain present in moments of cognitive dissonance. I can manage conflicting ideas and thoughts. And I can love imperfection…in others and myself. I can love humanness. I can love boundaries that allow me to be loving and safe. 

I live a life of intention and effort. I am thoughtful in my words and actions. I choose presence. I choose honesty and vulnerability. I choose moving forward. I choose love. In the end all that matters is how we love people…so I choose to love well.

Forgive and Forget…Really?

~ Kai Raines ~ Leave a comment

There was a prompt this morning in my Oprah’s “The Life You Want” calendar. Yes, I am the person who still keeps a paper calendar, two actually. I’m happy you could meet me. Check that off your bucket list. You’re welcome. Anyway, in the planner there was a question that I thought was intriguing, “How do I know when I’ve truly forgiven someone? How do I feel?” I found myself wondering how do I feel? And how do I know?

I have been thinking about the idea of forgiving and forgetting for a few months now. It started with a Brandi Carlile song in which she says that it’s harder to forgive than to forget. I got stuck on that idea and wondering if it’s true. I consider myself a forgiving person, so how do I know that I’ve forgiven someone, and do we ever really forget?

I come from a family that keeps score. And I mean a detailed accounting of everything you’ve ever done wrong. And not just that you were wrong but how you were wrong and exactly how wrong you were. There are family members who would be happy to recite your lifetime of egregious behavior and all the tragic results…usually none…only tragic to the scorekeeper. It’s Irish Alzheimer’s, you forget everything except the grudges. Do I even need to say that my grandmother was born in Ireland? Probably not.

The question Oprah asked before the knowing if you’ve truly forgiven someone, was “Is it possible to forgive and forget?” I don’t know. I believe we are capable of forgiveness. I also believe we are capable of convincing ourselves that we’ve forgiven something or someone when we haven’t. When it’s easier to believe we’re done with all that. We say we’ve forgiven, but have we? 

Forgive means, “an intentional decision to let go of resentment and anger or cancel a debt.” Now to forget means, “fail to remember, neglect to do, bring, or mention something, put something out of one’s mind.” It seems like forgiving is something you have to do. You have to try to forgive and work at it. But you can’t try to forget because then you are remembering in order to forget, and how could that possibly work? It’s confusing. To forget I must willfully ignore something but how can I forget when I am remembering in order to willfully ignore it. Maybe we can’t forget.

Forgiveness is deliberate. You make a decision to forgive, to release whatever feelings you have so they are no longer prominent in your life…or a main focus of your thoughts and feelings. Forget has many synonyms including disregard, ignore, neglect, overlook, slight…just to name a few. Passing over something without giving it due attention or willfully ignoring also describes forgetting. Those don’t seem so helpful. Forgiving takes extra attention and forgetting takes willful ignoring.

I’m not sure forgetting should be our goal. Ignoring, disregarding, neglecting, those are not activities we need to strengthen. It’s similar to repressing or denying our feelings. Trying not to feel because it’s less painful or to forget because it’s easier than dealing with your feelings or the person who hurt you. In general, repressing and denying are not the best practices for us. Those are the things we do that keep us stuck in patterns and habits we wish we would break free from. 

I know we can forgive. I don’t think we forget. We can’t erase our minds. Our memories are a part of us. All the events of our lives have shaped who we have become…and are becoming. Maybe forgetting isn’t in our best interest. If we forget, aren’t we at risk of repeating the same mistakes again and again? 

I think that the the actual memory of who or what did something bad to us is not the issue. It’s the meaning we attach to that memory, or the repetitive thought of that memory, that’s the problem. We give all of our experiences in our life meaning…we connect them to the story that we tell ourselves…it’s the story of us that we currently believe. That story makes it impossible for us to forgive, let go, and move forward in our lives. We’re stuck spinning the same story over and over again…until, maybe someday, we can do something new. Make a different choice.

About ten years ago I had a very close friendship end, and I didn’t know why. I tried to find out by calling, texting, emailing, and finally a handwritten letter.  None of which got a response from my former friend. I was left to make my own meaning out of that experience because I couldn’t get any information from the source. I have not forgotten that time in my life. When I look back on it there’s still a twinge of pain and sadness because of the end of the relationship. Have I forgiven her? Yes. Have I forgiven myself? Yes. I blamed myself for a long time, even though there no specific reason why I was to blame. After ten years I still don’t know what happened. That incident is no longer prominent in the story of my life. I have been able to file it away in a permanent “I don’t know” place and let it be. I have forgiven but I still remember…although much less often.

Now I can’t stop a thought from popping into my head. Thoughts come and go all day every day. I can’t stop a thought from arising, but I can stop myself from running wild with it. I can stop fixating on that thought and running down the rabbit hole of “you did me wrong” again…for the 4,000th time. I control my responses…always. Even when it all seems crazy, I have some shaky ass kind of control. I control the story line and I control me. I can run with the “I suck as a person” theme without any evidence to back that up or I can stop the thought in its tracks. I can relax, acknowledge the memory, feel whatever I feel, and then let it go. A thought never has to become a major motion picture in my head. I can just let it go. I can affirm to myself that I felt sad, hurt, betrayed, disappointed, traumatized…whatever all the feelings were. I can still feel those feelings, but I’m not stuck in their grip. I control me. Emotions do not control me. I control them. 

Our feelings change all the time. Sometimes it’s moment by moment. I am safe to feel all my feelings. Feelings are not a problem. Feelings are energy. Clinging to feelings or perceived wrongs is a problem. Keeping score does not help us here. Who wants to win the contest of the “most wrongs done to you?” My grandmother would have wanted to win and now my mom is up for the award. But why? How does that serve us? What does keeping score really do for us? Does it make us more compassionate or kind? Does it make us more flexible and loving? A big NO to both of those. Keeping score makes us rigid, unable to bend or to trust.

My problems arise when I make my feelings solid. When I don’t allow them to flow freely but instead, I hang on to them. I solidify my wounds and make them who I am…the most victimized person around, according to me. We might even have a false sense of righteousness…I’m better than you because you hurt me so. You done me wrong, as we say in the south, and now I will tell you all about it. Every moment of my pain described for you in excruciating detail. I have a firm grip on my pain and I’m not ever letting go. And if I can’t let it go, I’ll make sure you can’t either. 

Let’s be real…forgiveness is hard. It’s hard to let go of something or someone who caused us pain. It’s hard not to retaliate. It’s hard to go high when they go low. Forgiveness does not just happen. Forgiveness is a choice. It’s a choice to move forward. A choice to live and move and breathe. It’s a choice for freedom. Our own freedom and perhaps for the person who hurt us as well. It’s a choice to honestly assess what we lost. It’s a choice to let it go. When I choose freedom for myself, I choose it for you too. That’s the gift of forgiveness. 

Forgiveness is not earned. It’s a gift. Maybe if I had to earn forgiveness it’d be easier for me to forgive myself and easier to forgive someone else. Maybe then forgiving would make more sense, or be easier, because I earned it…you earned it. I deserve it. Really no one deserves forgiveness, do they? We give a tremendous gift when we forgive someone who has hurt us, or we forgive ourselves. We let ourselves off the hook for something wrong or hurtful that we did.  And we let other people off the hook as well. We make a choice to leave the past in the past, where it belongs.

So, let’s be real…I’m choosing forgiveness…vulnerability and forgiveness…because forgiving is a vulnerable place to be. I choose to not to forget. What I remember instructs me. I will decide who I want to be. I make the choices, and I choose not to allow bitterness and resentment to define me…to become me. I am so much more. I am not stuck unless I choose it. I am fluid and changing all the time. To be alive is to be in a constant state of change. 

We learn by loving and by forgiving. I’m not going to forget. I learn by remembering. We learn by remembering. Let’s remember that love always wins. So always choose love.

A Letter to My Dad

~ Kai Raines ~ 1 Comment

Eulogy…that’s such a funny sounding word. Merriam-Webster says it comes from the Greek and means literally “good speech” and it is a “speech or piece of writing that praises someone highly, typically someone who has just died.” So that would be my dad. My dad died Friday, August 4th at 10:25 pm. It’s interesting that 10/25 was also his birthday. I’m not sure it means anything but it’s interesting.

My dad died. He died. I keep using that word, died, because the words we usually use, “passed away,” “gone,” “lost,” seem to understate what happened. Although I have to say, I used “gone” when I told my mom. Dads gone. That’s all that needed to be said. We use those other words as a way to somehow soften the impact of death or serpentine around reality. Now I’m a serpentiner (I feel certain that’s a word) for sure. I try to be gentle with people when I’m sharing difficult information.

My sister, my wife, and I had a meeting with my dad’s hospice nurse a few weeks ago. After we finished talking the nurse suggested that we tell my dad what we had been talking about, even though we were right next to his bed. He’d always close his eyes when we were talking as if that made him invisible. So, I started telling him that we were talking about how we needed more help caring for him and that things were progressing so nurses would be coming every day and…I don’t know what else. I was stumbling around. I stopped talking and my dad’s nurse looked at him and said, “You’re coming to the end of your life. It won’t be much longer now.” Or there’s that. Sometimes direct is better…shorter for sure. There is no good way to tell someone they’re about to die. It was hard to discuss my dad’s death with him. I felt like I would offend him by thinking he was going to die. As if dying was a sign of weakness.

I feel as though I am still in shock, or maybe denial, and that my dad’s death hasn’t really sunk in for me yet. That seems weird since I was with him when he died…can’t be much more real than that. Now my dad wanted no funeral or memorial service. He wanted to be cremated and then he said he didn’t care what we did with the ashes, we could just throw them away. I told him that I would follow his wishes but that I was going to spread his ashes in the ocean. I would never just throw his ashes away. I could make some inappropriate jokes now, and my dad would laugh his ass off, but I won’t.

So then does he need a eulogy? No service so no need for a speech, right? I don’t know. Writing always helps me and my eulogy to my dad could help me face life without him now…at least that’s what I think.

Now in a eulogy, the giver of the eulogy, usually talks about the person who died, but instead of talking about my dad, I’d rather talk to him. So, instead of a eulogy, I’m writing my last letter to my dad.

Dad,

I can’t believe you’re gone. The apartment seems empty without you. I still expect to sit in the family room with you and watch old movies. I kept a list of the movies we watched and ones I still wanted to watch with you. When I’m in bed, I swear I still hear you breathing in the next room. When I wake up during the night, I have to stop myself from going to check on you. For the last couple weeks, I was always checking to see if you were breathing. I knew at some point you wouldn’t be but I’m still not sure I was ready. Maybe I was as ready as I could be. Thinking about death is a lot different than experiencing it.

You were the person I went to when I needed help. You seemed to handle any news in stride. Remember when I hurt my knee and needed surgery? I called you from college to tell you. Now I told you and I expected you to tell mom. That’s how this was supposed to work. I wanted you to tell her because she did not take news as calmly as you. My system failed because although I expected you to tell mom…sometimes you did and sometimes not so much. This time fell under the “not so much” category and boy did the shit hit the fan then…holy hell. I’m smiling at the memory now, but I sure wasn’t then.

It’s funny now to think that I went to you for help or with difficult information because I was always afraid of you growing up. In my memory you were usually pretty laid back and easy going but when you got mad watch out. You got MAD! Scary mad. Remember when you ripped a post out of the desk in our kitchen in Wisconsin? You were so tall and had such a big voice. It was intimidating. You were intimidating. As you were dying your voice became really soft and for the last week or so you couldn’t talk at all. It took too much energy, or maybe you had said everything you wanted to say. The last words I heard you say were “toast and coffee,” which you said every night when you went to bed. Only we can’t meet in the morning for toast and coffee anymore.

I think you wanted us to be afraid of you. The old school thinking of “if you’re afraid of me then you respect me.” Now pardon me but you know I have to tell you that’s total bullshit. I didn’t respect you when you scared me, I avoided you. I got mad at you, and I held on to that anger for a long time. It’s hard to share yourself or be vulnerable with someone you’re afraid of or angry at. You told Gayle, (my wife), that you had Kathy (my sister) and I bring you the brush or belt when you were going to spank us to “humiliate” us. She was pretty shocked by that, and I was too. It worked. I was humiliated and unfortunately that created an almost insurmountable distance between us. I say almost because I think we managed to bridge the gap, especially this past year in Florida.

You would never say you were sorry for anything. You’d say that stupid ass line from the movie “Love Story,” like it was ideal advice. “Love means you never have to say you’re sorry.” What kind of bullshit was that? I think there are a lot of things and relationships that would have been easier if you had never seen that movie. Even though you softened as you got older, I don’t remember you ever apologizing. A couple weeks before you died you wanted to watch “Brian’s Song” with Gayle an I. You said we could watch together and cry together. And we did.

As we’ve moved through this past year, mom’s dementia got worse. She has horrible mood swings. It was hard to listen to all her angry words and accusations. Sometimes I think she says stuff that she knows will hurt me, like something about our relationship. I think she was jealous of our relationship. She told me that you always called me the “bad seed.” I wish I had asked you if that was true, but I thought there’d be no good answer, so I didn’t. I guess I didn’t really want to know. That would be soul crushing if you did. Who wants their soul crushed? I don’t think we would have gotten along as well as we did if you thought that of me. 

I remember growing up that if mom was mad at you, she was automatically mad at me too, even if I had no idea what was going on. I think she assumed I’d take your side. Maybe that was true. I don’t really know. I think that’s part of the reason I’ve had a hard relationship with her. She was unpredictable and I was always trying to figure out what I did wrong. Usually, I couldn’t come up with anything and I believe that’s because I didn’t do anything. You know I’m still trying to figure her out. Even as an adult if she was mad at you, she was mad at me. Made for some tense times here in Florida. We were frequently in the doghouse on the island of “what the fuck did we do now?” It’s very stormy on that island…the weather changes very quickly.

I think your sense of humor was my favorite thing about you. I will always remember how much you loved to tell jokes. You told them all the time. I was going through your wallet the other day and found the notes you had made to remember all the jokes you wanted to tell. I even recognized a couple of them. You seemed the happiest when you were telling a joke and getting lots of laughs. And you made yourself laugh too. I loved listening to you and Amy (my daughter) tell jokes to each other. You two cracked each other up. There was nothing better than listening to the two of you laughing uncontrollably. It made me laugh too. I think that’s how you liked things, lighthearted and lots of laughter.

I think I get my sense of humor from you. I think Kathy does too. We’re funny people. Seriously…funny. I used to love to make you and mom laugh. Remember when I used to pretend I was a balloon? This all happened in your bedroom when you were trying to get Kathy and I to leave and go to bed. We were teenagers then. There was a comedian on tv, at the time, that did this act and I loved it. I’d put my thumb in my mouth to blow myself up. Then I’d float around the room gently bumping into things that changed my direction. The main thing was I couldn’t get out the door. When I tried, I just bounced off and floated around the room. I remember laughing really hard at that. That and Kathy and I singing “Sisters” from “White Christmas” or “Let’s Just Kiss and Say Goodbye” by The Manhattans. Sometimes it was easier to make you laugh than mom. She did not always appreciate how hysterical we are…or were. I think we’ll still be funny…or I’ll still be funny, in the future. Although I don’t know, you might be telling jokes right now wherever you are.

Mom always says that you didn’t know how to love because you were raised in a house without love. I’m not sure if that’s accurate or not. Your parents died right before I turned 8 so I have limited memories of them and their relationship. I think mom was raised in the same kind of environment. She says all the time that grandma hated her and only loved her brother. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s certainly true to her. Maybe that’s why you found each other; you were trying to heal the same wounds. Although you can’t give someone what you don’t have, and I’m not sure how much either of you had to give.

You were never big on displays of affection. An “I love you dad” received the anticipated response of “back at ya.” It’s funny now. I’m not sure about growing up. I frequently felt like you were disappointed in me, not for anything specific, just me in general. That’s sad to me. I heard you talking to Michael (my nephew) on the phone one night this past year. You were talking about his new job and when you hung up you told him you loved him. I asked you why he got the “I love you” and not “back at ya.” You said because he earned it with the new job. That also makes me sad. I’m guessing you learned that from your parents, probably your dad. Maybe that’s why I felt you were disappointed because I was never earning the I love you. 

As you were getting closer to your death, I think you’d forget, and an “I love you too” would slip out in response to being told you were loved. It was like a game wondering what your response would be. When mom fell, shortly after we moved here, and I took her to urgent care because I was worried about the lump on her head, she ended up going to the hospital by ambulance. When I called to tell you, you told me you loved me. You said it like it was a prize on a game show. You told me I did good getting her medical help and you said, “So here, I love you.” I earned it.

Mom has told me that if you guys hadn’t moved to Florida you’d still be here. I don’t think that’s true. You told me if you hadn’t come to Florida one of you would have been dead. I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m glad you came to Florida with us. I really treasure this past year with you both. I’ve reached a point in my life where my focus has become not having any regrets..any regrets about my relationship with you or my relationship with mom. And I don’t have any, especially with you. I got to spend a year with you living in the same home. I really enjoyed living with you, as long as we stayed far, far away from politics. Right!? I got to take care of you. Hopefully you could feel my love for you in all of those moments. I was happy to take care of you. Happy to be here for you, because you have been here for me, especially this past year. I know you’ve tried to intervene with mom when she’s being mean to me. And you paid an emotional price for defending me. I appreciated it more than you know. And you would ask me if I was okay and try to make sure I wasn’t taking what she said personally, but that was hard. It felt, and still feels, very personal. You understood that. 

One day when mom was yelling at you, you said, “Do you ever wonder how I feel?” I think that may be the only time I ever heard you use the word “feel” especially in reference to yourself. It’s sad to me to think of that and how much emotional pain you were in. I asked you, respectfully, one day if you ever thought about leaving mom over all these years. And you said no, and I especially remember this part…when I asked you why not you said, “because she always comes back.” You saw something at the core of her that you loved regardless of how she was treating you in a specific moment. Some core that always reappeared. That you always loved. I guess you did know how to love. It’s hard to recognize if you haven’t had it.

I was thinking about you telling me how you had changed my diapers as a baby and now I was changing yours and how you felt that was wrong. I wish I would have said the first thing that popped into my head at the time which was, “You never changed my diaper. That’s some bullshit dad.” We would have gotten a good laugh out of that, especially because I would have used the word shit.

Now dad, let’s be real…you gave me many things that are invaluable to me…my sense of humor is one of the best. My love of school and learning, always expanding my mind. To be true to my word and do the things I say I’ll do. To live without regrets, although I think you and I each take a different path to get to that point. I’m stubborn. One day mom told me I was stubborn, and I said, “how could I not be? I was born to stubborn and stubborner.” It’s in my blood. I’m a glass half full person just like you. You seemed to find the positive in situations and that was your focus.

Now some of what you gave me may have been unintentional, such as, my ability to apologize, especially to my children. The fact that I feel compelled to apologize when I have hurt someone. And I say “I love you” pretty freely. I always want people to know how much I care about them. I would never try to humiliate anyone. I care about other people’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions, including children. Children have feelings and they need to be heard. I learned to push my feelings down and appease people, so that they feel okay…regardless of how I feel or felt. I guess you seemed sort of impenetrable when I was young. I’m not sure it occurred to me that you had feelings…except anger and laughter…laughter isn’t a feeling, so maybe happiness, I’m not sure.

One of my favorite quotes is, “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” Buddha said that. In my experience that’s really true. I think you’d agree. I think I took things more personally when I was young than I do now. I can see now that a lot of things people say or do are about them not me. Even if they say it’s my fault. Just because someone says something doesn’t make it true. Even if that someone is your parent. I cannot be responsible for everyone’s feelings. I have enough trouble with my own. Maybe you know that. 

Ultimately, I knew you loved me. I knew without the words, but the words were nice too. I loved spending the last year with you, and I know you know I love you. I hope mom knows too. There’s still time for me to work on that and I’m afraid it will take a lot of work. But I know that in the end, all that matters is how we love people. I miss you dad.

In the Event of My Death

~ Kai Raines ~ Leave a comment

We have lived in Florida now for about 15 months and 12 of those months my father has been on hospice. Last week my family met with my dad’s hospice nurse and his status was changed to “imminent” as in dying any day now. When did it get so close? Since that meeting I shut my world down. Now I sit with my dad and wait for death…wait for death to take my dad away from me…imminently.

It’s a weird thing to wait for someone to die. It’s uncomfortable and peaceful at the same time. I am a person with strong propensities and under stress they pop up…or pop out. I’ve been breaking out all my coping mechanisms. Comfort food and wine were first. And always I turn to reading. Books allow me to explore and question what’s happening around me and to open up to the present moment. One of the best things reading does for me is move me out of denial in a way that I am amenable to…sometimes I don’t even know what’s happening until I realize I am actually feeling my feelings.

“Bardo” is a Buddhist term for in-between time. After death and before rebirth. A transitional time…the gap or space between what ended and what is yet to come. My teacher, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, says, “This experience of the present moment is known as bardo in Tibetan Buddhism. Bardo in a literal sense means ‘interval’; it can also be translated as an ‘intermediate’ or ‘in-between’ state. Thus, we can say that whenever we are in between two moments, we are in a bardo state. The past moment has ceased; the future moment has not yet arisen. There is a gap, a sense of newness, of pure openness, before the appearance of the next thing, whether it is our next thought or our next lifetime” (Mind Beyond Death, p. 10). So, the essence of bardo is found in the experience of nowness, the gap between the end of one moment and the arising of the next one. 

Why is death so scary for us when we experience it all day every day? Something ends and something else begins, over and over again. The reality is that death and birth happen continuously. Every day is filled with small deaths. We are continually faced with endings…transitions between the end and the beginning. Our fear comes from our desire for things to be permanent and solid. We don’t like impermanence. We like sameness. We like the predictable, consistent, and comfortable. Our desire for comfort keeps us butting our heads into reality…get a helmet.

Pema Chodron, in her book How We Live Is How We Die, says, “What everyone can agree on, however, is that during our present lifetime, thing’s definitely keep going. And as they keep going, they continually change. Things are constantly coming to an end, and things are constantly coming into being.” Change never stops. The way to live with the fear of death is to embrace it. What we resist becomes stronger. I must open myself to the inevitability of death, and the fear that arises, and live in its presence.  Live with death in mind because how we live is how we die. Death doesn’t just happen at the end of our life; it happens in every moment. Impermanence. Reality will take place whether I like it or not. My dad is going to die. Everyone will die, including me. We can be open to everything whether we like it or not, because it’s going to happen, and then it’ll change. We are always in a bardo because impermanence never takes a break. There is never a moment that we are not in transition.

It’s strange knowing death is imminent. Of course, we’ll all die but we don’t usually know when that will happen. I think I prefer the mystery. As for him, I’m not sure what he knows. His whole life has been reduced to our family room. The family room is where everything happens for him…makes it an aptly named room. He gets a bath, nurses and aides come to check on him and up until a week ago he used to eat in this room. He isn’t eating or drinking anything now. He has to be changed every day and that has been the hardest thing for him, because sometimes that responsibility is mine. One day he told me that he used to change my diapers and now I change his, and he paused a minute and said, “That’s just not right.” But in a circle of life kind of way it is right…it’s exactly right. We need to take care of each other.

It’s a strange time when someone’s death is imminent…waiting for death…waiting for the transition. I wonder if he feels like he’s waiting? Or getting ready for a big change? He sleeps most of the time but sometimes while he’s sleeping his mouth will move like he’s having a conversation with someone but there is no sound to his words. I wonder if he’s talking to his mom and dad…getting ready to see them after 55 years. I don’t know who else he might be looking to see on the other side but he’s got something going on. 

At this point the only thing I can think to do is tell him that I wouldn’t have traded a single day of this past year being with him and my mom. There have been some challenges, but I wouldn’t change anything. I hope that helps him and eases his worries. He has told me more than once this past year that this is not what I signed up for, and I tell him it’s exactly what I signed up for. I hope he believes me.

Let’s be real…when we reach the time of our death, that’s not the time to try something new, something we always thought we’d try but never did, like meditation, or prayer, or who knows what. All we have at the end of our lives is what we had a second before the end. We aren’t suddenly a spiritual guru, if we have never cared about developing our own spirituality. We won’t suddenly be relaxed if we’re always anxious, or loving if we’re cruel. We won’t be able to be present in that moment if we routinely live in the past or the future. All we have is who we are, our habits of who we are and how we think. Our propensities. We’ve had a lifetime of building our propensities, the habits of our minds.

The only way to become comfortable with death is to develop our ability to remain in the present moment. Stay present with the little deaths that happen all day every day. Learn to live in the in-between state. Become comfortable with groundlessness, the uneasy footing of continual change. Facing these fears day after day is how we become comfortable with death, and with life. After all, living a life we aren’t present for isn’t really living at all. Let’s love ourselves enough to be present and love others enough to give them the gift of our presence. Never forget love. Love always wins.

“When the appearances of this life dissolve,

May I, with ease and great happiness,

Let go of all attachments to this life

As a son or daughter returning home.”

Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

Happy New Birthday Year

~ Kai Raines ~ Leave a comment

I recently celebrated my 63rd birthday. I have been thinking for a while now that each person’s birthday should be their own personal New Years Day. Instead of some forced midnight tradition on January 1st it should be an individual occasion, shared with people of your choosing. Certainly, when we’re born that’s the original new year, new day, new moment. Every single thing is brand new. You may have a muffled recognition of some voices or sounds, like people talking under water, but everything else is new. Every thing, every person, every experience brand new…that’s exhausting. No wonder babies sleep so much. 

Seriously though, on my Happy New Birthday Year I like to think about the past year and what I’ve learned and to think about where I’m headed, what I want to learn, what I want to change, what I want to be (if I ever grow up), not so much “what” as “who” and “how” I want to be.

What did I learn? That I can’t control everything and everyone, although sometimes I really want to. I don’t know what is best for everyone in every situation, although I often think I do. Other people’s choices don’t define me or make me good or bad. Sometimes things just are how they are, and everyone is doing the best they can, even if it’s not what I want. I continue to learn about loving, forgiving, and letting go. I learned more about being honest without being mean. Sometimes the truth is painful, but it doesn’t need to be intentionally mean or hurtful. I learned that people are allowed to have their own feelings and to feel them, even if I don’t like it or am uncomfortable with it. People having feelings is not an attempt to hurt me. Turns out I really am not the center of the universe…damn it. 

Continuing on…I’m learning that I can’t force people to have relationships they don’t want or to love people just because it makes me more comfortable, and I want them to. I get to have feelings too…all of them, even if my feelings make other people uncomfortable. It’s not my job to make people feel good, although I really like to. And people make mistakes and fuck up sometimes intentionally and more often accidentally. Either way they are still good people. And I don’t think it’s so much intentionally as it is unconsciously. Most people don’t set out to intentionally cause another person pain, but we do it all the time. That doesn’t make anyone a bad person. It makes us people who lack awareness. Awareness of what we are doing, why we’re doing it, and how it may impact other people. So much of what we do is habitual, and we don’t take the time to investigate why we do what we do. Everyone wants to be happy, sometimes we look for happiness in fucked up ways.

This next year I need to continue learning all the same things, in different configurations, but the same general ideas. I need to understand and change some of my habits, for example shutting down when I experience conflict. I do not like conflict, but it happens, and I need to be present with it. I need to feel my feelings even when they scare me. I need to worry less about my own comfort and more about my ability to be honest with myself and others. I don’t like other people to be uncomfortable, but I need to be honest and then allow people to manage their own emotions. Other people’s emotions are not my responsibility, regardless of what they think, or how guilty I feel…thank you Catholicism.

I need to stop allowing other people’s needs or wants to push my needs aside. I am allowed to need. I am allowed to meet my needs. I can be a priority to myself. It isn’t selfish to take care of myself. It’s selfish to expect other people to meet my needs, especially if I haven’t voiced them. People who love me do not need to read my mind. I can be open and honest about how I feel and what I need.

Here’s something real…I have 10 tattoos. I once had someone tell me I was the last person they ever thought would have tattoos, not sure what that meant. Anyway, I love when people explain their tattoos to me…why they picked them, what they mean. Now it turns out that these tattoos of mine cover everything I’ve learned, am learning, and need to learn. I watched a movie once that talked about our bodies being primarily water. A Japanese scientist,Masaru Emoto did an experiment by taping a word on the outside of a container of water to see how that word or intention might affect the molecular structure of water. He found that positive words, like love and kindness, formed beautiful, symmetrical crystalline structures when the water was frozen. When the words were negative, like hate and anger, the molecules formed disorganized, asymmetrical molecular structures.

So, what are the messages I put on my watery body to affect my molecules? In no particular order, they are the divine feminine or ground of being, endless possibilities, wealth, fearlessness, courage, the present, a lotus, equality, and my own symbol for integrity. It turns out I’ve put permanent symbols on my body of all the things I want to learn and be. So isn’t it serendipitous that any time I need a reminder I just have to look at myself. And don’t we always need to look at ourselves? The answer is right in front of me, well in front of me, or behind me. That was clever of me, and kind of coincidental.

Now the meaning of all those messages…Prajnaparamita, the great mother or ground of being, tattooed close to my heart…my ground of being. Not a white man with a beard, as God is often depicted, but a great mother, a divine feminine energy, a spiritual grounding. The courage to be present. Fearlessness, not having no fear but moving forward regardless of fear. And I am capable of so much…there are endless possibilities for me. Integrity meaning to be intact and whole. Wealth, not just physical wealth but spiritual and relationship wealth. A lotus, because it reminds me that out of shit something beautiful can grow…it doesn’t have to, but it can. That brings me to allowing. Letting go of my desire to control everything and allowing what is to be. Not fighting reality…a frequent pastime of mine. And equality…of course equality for all people, always. We should all have equality tattoos because that should be the ground under everyone everywhere always.

Let’s be real, I need to be more courageous. I think we all need more courage. I need to be courageous enough to be present in my life and the lives of those around me. I want to live fearlessly allowing what is to be. I have two more tattoos I want to permanently be a part of me, generosity and love wins. Wealth in any area of my life means so much less if I cling to it instead of spreading it around, generously. 

Love, integrity, allowing, spiritual grounding, generosity, courage, and more love. Love should the beginning and ending of everything we do, think, and are. Now stop, rewind, pause, and repeat, repeat, repeat. For love to win it has to be on continuous repeat, forever. In the end, all that matters is how we love people. May our ability to love, growbigger and deeper each Happy New Birthday Year…because love must win…that’s what’s real.

Gay By Design

~ Kai Raines ~ 1 Comment

I was watching a tv show the other day and this question was posed, “If you met your 18-year-old self and could only say 3 words, what would they be?” Immediately I knew mine were “Yes you are.”

My kids, all adults now, often wonder, out loud, how I could have ever NOT known that I’m gay. I fit all the stereotypes…I played a lot of sports when I was young, football with the boys in our backyard, basketball wherever and whenever I could. I loved the Dallas Cowboys and the Milwaukee Bucks. I had crushes on some of my female friends and on a whole slew of actresses at the time…Kate Jackson, Veronica Hamel, Kate Mulgrew…you get the idea. At the time, I never really thought about why I had crushes on girls and not boys. It wasn’t until I was in my 30’s that I realized I had been in love with a girl in high school. We were best friends, and I liked when she kissed me, but it never occurred to me to label myself a lesbian, or to even consider that I was in love with her. I didn’t know anyone who was gay. No one talked about being gay. No one even mentioned “gay” unless it was a in a horrible, homophobic joke. As far as I knew “gay” wasn’t a thing at all…it wasn’t an option in the world I was raised in.

I knew from a young age that I was expected to go to college and that college would be where I got my “MRS.” (I hope people don’t say that anymore.) I knew marriage and children were musts in my life and I never considered any other path. The first out lesbian I ever met was my freshman year of college. I’m not sure I even knew the word lesbian until college. I thought the lesbian (I have no idea what her name was) I met in college was cool. She was so at ease and confident in herself…maybe I envied that or maybe somewhere deep inside I understood that I was gay, but I couldn’t give it a label or a voice or claim it for myself when I was 18. She was lucky, or super brave…maybe both.

I transferred my junior year from Lake Forest College in Illinois, where I grew up, to the University of Colorado in Boulder. It was there that I met my future husband. We were married two years later and had three children together. My children like this part of my story way too much. We were married in the Catholic Church because I was raised Catholic. My future husband and I were into more evangelical churches and with that came very conservative beliefs, including no sex before marriage. Apparently, at 22, I preferred someone telling me what to think rather than figuring it out on my own. On our wedding night, my brand-new husband told me that he had known all of his life that he was gay. In response, I told him I had “kind of dated a girl” in high school. That was the beginning, middle, and end of the conversation. We did not talk about it again for seven years.

It’s possible we never would have talked about being gay if my husband hadn’t developed feelings for one his friends in the church we belonged to. He was so troubled by this that he confided in the pastor of the church and began attending events and counseling through an “ex-gay” ministry. When I think back on that now, I’m so sad for him and horrified that I ever supported him being a part of an ex-gay anything. My husband began a string of affairs. When he told me he met someone he wanted to build a relationship with, I told him I was filing for divorce. He was not surprised, perhaps relieved.

Divorce was scandalous in the church we belonged to…and being gay was over the top. He was definitely going to hell, and, in short order, I’d be going with him. He was outed to the whole church and kicked out of the membership. I wasn’t very sensitive to him back then. I was hurt and afraid. We had three children, five and under, and my very helpful “friends” were telling me that he would never see the kids, never pay child support and that he’d make them gay. Just the kind of support you need from friends. He didn’t do any of those things. He is, and always has been, a great dad.

After the divorce, I went to Seminary…conservative Baptist seminary…imagine the scandal now…and earned an MA in counseling. I chose Seminary because I wanted to study the Bible and learn about Greek words and what the Bible actually said instead of blindly following what I was told to believe.

I stayed very involved with the same church that had rejected my ex-husband. I was on the staff as a therapist, and I was part of the leadership of the church. I planned events and retreats, spoke at women’s events, and built a counseling practice. During that same time, I also spent a lot of time in therapy for myself. It was through that process, and graduate school, that I came to realize I am a lesbian. I’m not sure the conservative baptist seminary would use this information as a recruiting tool. I was thrilled at this revelation because it made me make sense to myself…and my obsession with Julia Roberts and Sharon Stone. With my newfound enthusiasm, I told the two pastors of the church, at our weekly staff meeting, that I was gay. Now I didn’t expect them to cheer me on, but I did expect understanding, support, and some sense of joy for me and how the pieces of my life came together. There were no more missing pieces, and no smashing pieces into places they didn’t fit.

“Joy” is not the word I would use to describe their reaction to me…I’m gonna go with repugnance. I was fired on the spot. They immediately took the key to my office and told me they could not recommend that anyone see me for therapy anymore. I was told I could make an appointment to move my belongings out of my office. And they said that the congregation would be told at a business meeting the next Sunday night. I was horrified and dumbfounded. The crazy thing is that both of these men had called me in crisis before and asked me to counsel members of their own families. But now, with one new piece of information about me, I was no longer qualified to counsel anyone. I was also told by the pastor that he knew I was gay by my haircut and the way I dressed. Both pastors said they were concerned I “hated men” because I was divorced. No stereotypes there, WTF!?

The pastors told me I could prepare a statement to read at the church business meeting, BUT I had to meet with the elders first and get their approval in order for that to happen. I’m sure you can guess what happened. I prepared a letter to read, and the elders said, “NO.” It was a big unanimous “no” and they told me I was being divisive. So, I sat through the meeting, silently, as they outed me to a room full of people, many who knew me and some who did not. When they finalized my ex-communication, I walked out.

I went home that night and turned my rejected statement into a letter that I sent to the whole congregation. I was not trying to be divisive, but I had something to say. I told them that I had learned that day, was what I had become to them, these people I considered my family. In the instant that they found out I was a lesbian, I was no longer a friend, colleague, counselor, and the person they called when they had a crisis…all they saw was me as I was now labeled and their judgment of that label. I was a lesbian and nothing else. An abomination. They did not want to hear that I had met someone and was really happy. If I wanted to be part of the church, I had to agree to be celibate for the rest of my life or attend conversion therapy. As fun as those options sound, I was not willing to do either.

My reaction to all of this was pretty much to tell them, and God, to fuck off. If they didn’t want me then I didn’t want them either. I lost all my friends and my job. The foundation of my life crumbled. The one friend I had who didn’t care I was gay, was pressured by other members of the church to end our relationship. She told me she couldn’t support my “lifestyle.” It took me eleven years to get to a place where I could even walk into a church without cringing in fear. I completely cut the spiritual part of me out of my life, and I functioned as part of a person…but not a whole one.

I was furious at the church and at God. I realized eleven years later, including many years of therapy, that I took their rejection as God’s rejection…but they were just people. People with harmful, hateful, bigoted ideas that they hammered into everyone under their control. God hadn’t really played into it at all. Gandhi said something about liking Jesus but not liking Christians because they are so unlike him. Seems accurate.

Sadly, I had been one of those people at one time. My ex-husband had too. We held those views. I held those views. I still feel ashamed of that fact. No doubt I couldn’t come out until I was able to think for myself and accept myself as I am. I had to address my own internal homophobia. Buddhism became my home. Kindness my religion. Inclusion and acceptance foundational in my thinking. Acceptance, not tolerance. I was never loved, I was indoctrinated. I was part of the “flock” as long as I believed and acted just like them.

When I got the boot, I found freedom. I found the freedom to love and be loved, to know and accept people for who they are, and to allow them to show me who they are. People know themselves better than I do, and I have no business trying to change anyone or make them feel ashamed of who God made them to be. I found the freedom to love and accept myself. I was free to own all the parts of me and my life…no hidden shame anymore. I am gay by design. I embrace who I am. I am grateful for my ability to love deeply, without conditions, because that was never a certainty. I am grateful for the ability to forgive others, and myself. Kindness, acceptance, and love, that’s what I know.

A Lesson in Letting Go

~ Kai Raines ~ Leave a comment

When I think of what makes up who I am, a large portion of that is my memories. My memories prove that I existed…I walked in this world. And hopefully I had an impact. We often think our mind is really who we are. Our ability to think, reason, remember, hold memories, have rational conversations, communicate our feelings or ideas, or just having ideas at all. Now my Buddhist studies teach me that there is no solid, permanent self…that’s a conversation for another day.

Memories give life meaning. Memories help us to feel like we’ve lived a good life…or maybe a tragic life. Memories stitch together the fabric of our lives…the up and downs, joys and sorrows, pain and trauma. Memories, in large part, tell us who we are. I know who I was born to, where I was raised, schools I went to, friends I made, people I’ve loved, marriages, divorces. We remember the births of our own children and watching them grow and mature into adulthood, maybe even have their own children. The framework of my life holds the people and events that I possess as memories. 

And why is this on my mind, you wonder? Because there is a tremendous growth in all forms of dementia in this country. We hear about Alzheimer’s most frequently but that is only one form of dementia. Dementia scares me. Losing my memory scares me. I have told my children (they are all adults…most of the time 😏) that as I age, if I reach a time when I don’t remember them then I want them to help me die. I can’t imagine anything sadder than not remembering them, or my wife, my grandchildren, friends…all the associations that create my life as I know it. Maybe I won’t remember that I don’t remember but still I don’t want to be around…I can’t imagine life having less meaning for me than being alone even in the midst’s of people I’ve known and loved my whole life.

Sometimes as people age, they become depressed or angry…sad maybe. Full of regrets about what did or did not happen in their lives. Dreams never realized, opportunities lost, failures of one kind or another…disappointments. I think we feel those things more keenly as we move through the latter portion of our lives. I guess that can make people mad. I get that.

My own observation of people is that as they age, they become more intensely who they already were. If you were unhappy your whole life you won’t suddenly be filled with joy. If you loved your life, you’ll love it until the end. Buddha said that we are what we think and that with our minds we create the world. I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything truer in my life. We will continue to live the life we created in our minds. So, what happens when you start to lose your mind, your memory?

The movie, “The Notebook”, is a story about the romance between two young people. These characters, Noah and Allie, marry and then in their later years find themselves living through the experience of Allie’s dementia. When Allie found our she had dementia she started a notebook. In that notebook she wrote the stories of their lives together. She asked Noah to read it to her when she couldn’t remember, and she would come back to him. The movie takes place in a nursing home with flashbacks of their love affair. Noah visited Allie every day, even though she had no idea who he was, and he read to her from the notebook. She loved hearing about the love story of Noah and Allie. Noah hoped the notebook would jog her memory and that she would come back to him, even for just a moment. It’s a beautiful movie…a real tearjerker. I won’t spoil the story in case there’s anyone on the planet who hasn’t seen “The Notebook” yet.

The thing that is so difficult to believe is that she really didn’t remember. People lose their memories. They don’t remember anything. Really? That boggles my mind. How can that be? How can I still be me without any memory of who I am or how I got to where I am? How is that real? Where do all these memories go…somewhere in “the cloud,”I guess. It’s such a mystery to me and so heartbreaking.

My wife and I moved to Florida almost a year ago and we brought my parents to live with us. Our hope was that they wouldn’t ever need a nursing home because they could be with us, and we’d care for them. My mom has dementia. That’s a rough diagnosis to take in. Perhaps harder for the people in your life because frankly, you don’t remember…every time we talk about the dementia it’s new information for my mom. New information that infuriates her. She’ll tell me her memory is getting better and ask why can’t I give her good news sometime…or why does she need to know all that depressing information? Why does she? Maybe she doesn’t. There is the saying, “ignorance is bliss.” Not sure that’s true. I tell her about the dementia so she can make sense of some of her behavior and her forgetfulness. Maybe I need that more than she does…the making sense part.

Now I am disabled, so I have some understanding of loss…needing assistive devices, chronic pain, loss of abilities, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But I can only imagine the loss of my memory. I’m old enough that I get the “what did I come in here to get?” moments…but they’re moments…they come and, more importantly, they go. A couple years ago when I had an infection in my elbow replacement and had to have it removed, I had some problems. Maybe they were side effects of three surgeries in six months and months of IV antibiotics, I don’t know. All I knew was I couldn’t remember things I was told, my balance was off, and I felt like my processing of information was seriously delayed. I was so scared. I was terrified that I my mind and memory would be stuck in that awful place. Fortunately, I wasn’t stuck, but if I had dementia, I would be, and it would continue to get worse. I can only imagine what that fear would be like…panic and terror I suppose.

All of that would make for a seriously bad mood…people telling you what to do, giving you bad news repeatedly. You can’t drive, can’t go out alone…most of the freedoms we take for granted, gone. My mom wants to be dropped off at a shopping mall by herself. She wants to use Uber and be on her own for a few hours. But I can’t let her. It’s not safe. She can’t use Uber because she doesn’t know her address or the name of the apartment complex where she lives. She can’t be at a mall alone because she’ll get lost. She’s 90 and exhaustion can hit her suddenly and she needs help walking or the use of a wheelchair. All of that really pisses her off and I understand that. Even though I understand, I can’t let her do things or go places where she isn’t safe…that pisses her off too. And all of that makes for a volatile environment. 

Moods for people with dementia, for my mom, can change very quickly…and it always surprises me. In the movie “Pretty Woman” there’s a scene where Richard Gere, who plays Edward, thinks that Julia Roberts, Vivian, is doing cocaine in his bathroom. It turns out she’s flossing her teeth…strawberry seeds, go figure.  Edward shakes his head at his mistaken assumption and says, “Very few people surprise me” and Vivian replies, “You’re lucky. Most of them shock the hell out of me.” That’s me. I am frequently surprised…especially by the mood changes. Sunday was one of those days. My mom woke up fighting mad…literally. Nothing happened, she just came out of the bedroom all piss and vinegar. It was a full day of complaints, accusations, verbal assaults, name calling, and being told to “fuck off.” Needless to say, it was a long, exhausting, painful day. Now I imagine that Sunday was awful for my mom as well, except that Monday morning she didn’t remember anything. WTF!? Are you kidding me? How can anyone be a 4’10” hurricane of vitriol and not remember? I found myself wondering if it was true and how could it be true? How could you be that hurtful, go to sleep, and wake up with no memory of your behavior? No memory of how much you hurt people?

And there’s the rub…she can’t remember but can I let it go? I read a quote in a book once that said something to the effect of, “I’ve never let go of anything that didn’t have claw marks on it.” That is also me. Letting go is not my strong suit. I wish it was. I also wish being relaxed, easy going and patient were, but wishes do not always come true…even if you wish really, really hard.

Now let’s be real, letting go sounds easy…just let go. Duh! Open your clenched fist and LET IT GO…for the love of God, pry it out of your hand. I guess I’ve got movies and television on my mind today…in the television show “Reba,” her son-in-law, Van tells Reba, “I have one word for you, letitgo.” Reba says, “That’s three words.” And Van says, “Not the way I say it, Letitgo.” But how? How do I, how do we letitgo? I believe I come from a long line of grudge holders…people who remember every way you have hurt, offended or slighted them for your entire life. Letting go does not come naturally to us…my Irish Catholic people…and not to me…although I’m still wishing.

Why not let it go? What benefit would I get from hanging on? Holding on to the hurt, pain, mistreatment, abuse, nastiness? It must serve me in some way, or I’d fucking let it go already! I suppose that hanging on to the pain could make me look all noble. “Look at her? Even with all the mistreatment, she keeps caring for her mom?” A little inflating of the ego…everyone likes that at times. My sister jokes that she can’t tell if I’m a saint or really stupid taking this on. I’m gonna vote for neither. You do not have to know me well to know I am no saint. I swear to fucking much for that consideration. And I am not a stupid person, although in this instance I might have been a smidge naïve…just a smidge. I certainly did not anticipate being accused of elder abuse because I don’t make enough vegetables or taking care of them because I want their money or hating her…apparently, I brought her here with me because I hate her and want to make her miserable. She would rather “live in the gutter than in this hell” which we call Florida. I definitely did not expect all of that and it shocked the shit out of me.

So, then she forgets, and everything goes back to normal…for her. But I am slow to engage, slow to warm back up…very cautious and tentative…defended even. Perhaps slow to forgive. Definitely slow to letitgo. Letting go involves such vulnerability. Exposing my underbelly again even though it’s all ripped up. Vulnerable enough to open up again and try. Try to connect with her. Try to enjoy her and this time we have together. Try to laugh at some of the irony…or just try to laugh at all.

When something upsets our dog, Abby, she has to stop and literally shake it off before she can keep walking. Abby is the smartest dog I’ve ever known and maybe she has the answer. Perhaps the answer to letting go is taking a moment to shake it off. Recognize something scary or painful happened, acknowledge the impact, allow myself to feel it, then shake it off and let it go. Don’t hang on or wonder “what if” just let that shit go. Shake it off and keep walking…keep engaging and try again. That’s what Abby does…she keeps going. She may move more slowly or cautiously at first, but pretty soon she’s prancing along again…like nothing ever happened. She is not a grudge holder. Abby knows how to let go. Maybe I can learn a lesson about letting go from her…I’m shaking already.

Because let’s be real, all that really matters is how we love people…because love wins…always.