A Poem, A Sunday Sermon & Flow

Hola Everybody,
Sssssssh -- listen: it's quiet around here right now....





I had the opportunity to attend a very special wedding yesterday (I won't post pics). Fortunately, it wasn't mine! Image LOL!

Seriously, a former client/ participant was married yesterday and she invited me. I had reservations at first. Once The Work is over it's not fair for me to hang around people. Closure is important. But Jackie (note: names/ descriptions have been changed in the interest of confidentiality), has made it her business to keep in touch with me over the six years since she first walked into my workshop and I made her cry (many, many times LOL!).

She has no family – death and other factors left her alone when she was a mere girl of thirteen. When other girls were still hugging their teddy bears and talking about boys, Jackie was fending for herself mostly alone. When other girls were worried about making it as a cheerleader, Jackie was being used by an older lady to lure men to her home. Before Jackie was fourteen, Jackie had been turned into a whore -- selling her body as a means for survival.

Before she was a teeneager, Jackie learned about a lot of fucked up shit some people reading this will never be able to even begin to understand.

There was a time that people said that I was hopeless, that I would never change. Think of the worst, or most humiliating thing, that could happen to someone and I can say I’ve been there: jails, institutions, humiliation, death wishes, attempts at suicide, all the good stuff. Eventually, I would become one of the many faceless “homeless” we all avoid and step over on our way through the daily rounds of activities of daily living. I was that person. Dirty, hungry, unkempt (well, I’m so vain, I think I looked good even as a homeless person! LOL!), “hopelessly” addicted – all of that and more.

I have done things, despicable things, and been places very few people can claim. A part of my humiliation was not being allowed to a shooting gallery, for example. For those that don’t know, try to imagine the dirtiest, most disgusting apartment, where all you see is the blood of intravenous drug abusers, where all you smell is shit and urine, and other body fluids, where the worst of the worst come to congregate, and you might get an idea of what a shooting gallery is. I was banned from some of these places! LMAO!!

Furthermore, those that have been where I have ventured, for the most part never come back. My theories on human behavior change are primarily grounded on my personal experiences and transformation. For me no one is helpless, no one is forsaken – if I can do this, anyone can. Finally, this isn’t just about me. There are millions of men and women, many who were worse off than I was, who have managed to return and achieve some measure of true happiness. Life doesn’t suck, we do – and we can choose to stop sucking. Life is the greatest gift and what we do with it is what makes it fucked up. Sure, there’s suffering, but that’s not the whole story. There’s also boundless beauty, love, and truth in life. It’s not enough to suffer, you have to smell the fucking flowers too. There’s suffering, but there’s always our response to suffering, which has the potential to transform our suffering.

It’s a simple message for complicated people.

At first I refused to work with Jackie, begged my supervisor to transfer her to another workshop, but he refused, saying it would be good for my professional growth. Actually, his intention was to get me fired. But it worked out in the end. Sure, in my mind, I fucked Jackie in all kinds of ways! LOL! And her MO was seduction – the only way she knew how to relate to men was through her body – the exploitation of her body. So, it was “hectic” in the beginning. She was twenty-three and beaten when she walked into my workshop, but she walked out three weeks later a woman beginning to take possession of herself and seeing her true beauty. Oh yeah, there was one more thing that really threw me for a loop about Jackie: she was even more beautiful inside than she was on the outside.

Jackie is gorgeous. I mean she’s drop-dead gorgeous. Full, ripe lips, creamy white skin, large hazel eyes framed by Brooke Shields-like eyebrows and long, curly, light brown hair. Impertinently large breasts, seemingly unaware of the laws of physics, on a body with an impossibly narrow waist (I swear I can wrap my around her waist and my fingertips will meet!). In addition, the greatest fuckin' ass! But to top it off, she was blessed with a sharp intellect.

Gawd!

Over the years, I’ve been something of a mentor for Jackie. Someone she could call whenever, for whatever. Perhaps, in some sense, I was the only one she could trust implicitly. Under other conditions, I think I would’ve fallen under Jackie’s spell, but eventually I would push her out, encourage her to develop her own network, explore, and create her own world. Yes there was a mutual attraction, but I knew that crossing that boundary with Jackie ("I'm not your client anymore!" she would say in exaspration), would've done more harm than good. The sexual tension between us has never been a secret; it has been grist for the mill in our work together. In learning to relate to me in new ways, she was able to extend that to other areas of her life.

I was taken completely by surprise when she requested that I give her away. She told me she really had no one else, at least no one that mattered that way, and that in a sense, I earned that right because I helped usher her into this new world. I resisted– hard. I just didn’t think it appropriate and suggested that her uncle would be a more suitable choice. Then one day I got a phone call from her husband-to-be and we had a conversation that just opened my eyes. I finally agreed and Jackie was beside herself.

She looked absolutely transcendent yesterday. She was beyond beautiful and I was so proud of her -- of the woman she had become. I try to explain to all my clients that I don't do anything and this is true. I’m not trying to be modest. “I” don’t do The Work “It” does the work – sometimes through me, or in spite of me. The Work takes place outside of my ego identity. My job is to be part of the process, or facilitate that process, and to take credit for something like that is like taking credit for the rain or the sunshine: it just doesn’t make sense. Nevertheless, yesterday, both Jackie and her husband managed to embarrass me totally by doing some kind of testimonial on me. They actually made me cry.

F*@k!

In a way, this all came at just the right time. I’ve been on the front lines for so long -- I’ve grown tired. I want to step away from actually running groups and do more of the academic side of informing how groups should be run. I would rather be training trainers because I think I would have more of an impact that way. That’s why this upcoming series of workshops in the women’s prison is key for me. You get tired doing this work, sometimes. Moreover, I look at the system, a criminal justice system that’s racist and unequal, for example, and I wonder if I’m making a dent in all this crap. And I’ve come to the realization that, while I am making a difference in some individual lives, the system is still fucked up and that’s where I need to focus my energies at this stage of my evolution. Yesterday Jackie came back into my life to remind me of why I’m here and that, in the end, it’s all about The Work.

Thanks Sweetie, may you know true happiness.

Love,

Eddie