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| The Heroic Journal
Living A Heroic Life In 2009 and Beyond | |
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You may have received this brochure because you have attended a speech or training (The Psychology of Resilience: A Multi-Modal Approach to Thriving Using the Heroic Journey, Three Stages of Healing: Counseling Victims of Trauma or The Economy of Resilience - The Thriving Workplace) by Missy Bradley in the past eight years. If you prefer not to receive these once a month journals, you may opt out below.
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Tao of the Road Warrior - Nature's Symphony |
| Finding Life Lessons in an Ordinary Day |
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During the work as a road warrior, I found it necessary (and not easy) to get grounded in the present in order to calm down, to shift perspectives and to find gratitude. Being in a place of mindfulness and stillness is an essential part of the Heroic Journey. Perhaps this story will be a reminder of taking time to smell the roses and to listen to nature's symphony.
Tao of the Road Warrior
Nature's Symphony
May 14, 2004 - Melissa (Missy) Bradley
My most recent travels have brought me to an extraordinary retreat center near Asheville, called Kanuga. Nestled in the mountains of western North Carolina, there were many opportunities to be still and to be grateful...IF I chose to do so. This was from my journal one morning.
It is now 7am and I have three hours before I teach a class here. With a steaming cup of coffee, I sit on this huge porch at the lodge, preparing for my day. At my feet I have a book, two highlighters (a yellow and an orange one), my lessons and this journal.
As I work on my presentation, I look up as I think and each time I look up, my eyes linger longer and longer on the beauty of my surroundings. Here, in front of me, is a beautiful lake - Lake Kanuga, I believe. The water is calm and the surface holds patches of pollen. Ducks and geese swim on the lake, leave a tiny wake, while some feed and groom themselves along the shore.
Since this is an Episcopal retreat center, a huge white cross is tucked among the trees across the lake. The cross can be a focal point from the porch or lower deck. I notice a person silently standing at the lower deck, apparently in meditation facing the cross.
Rodedendrums, azaleas and oak trees are plentiful. The thick forest of trees shade the porch where I sit. A ray of sunlight is beginning to peek through the trees, backlighting a scampering squirrel and a patchwork of colors - hot pink, white and lavender dance in the dark green foliage.
I attempt my prep work, but am distracted. As I sit here in the silence, I begin to recog-nize it isn't silent at all. There is a symphony playing. Rather than woodwinds, brass, percussions and strings, all the instruments of nature are making beautiful music.
The most prevalent sounds is a duet between a soprano tree frog and a baritone bullfrog. At first, the bird and cricket sounds seemed random until I listened to the voice of each. There are trills and peeps and chirps. What were they saying to one another? "Good morning!" "Hello world, I'm here!" or "Thank you, God for another day?" It certainly didn't sound like grousing. But there was a pattern. My earliest college training was a musician. It's been a long time since I had to write composi-tions, but I begin to notate the sound of the rhythms and pitches
If I had the talent to create a symphony, I would write that every 16 beats, an owl would call from offstage. One bird, with a two-note call, would come in every 8th beat, to be quickly answered by a bird singing five notes. There are two birds singing three different notes, when they sing in every 16 beats. The syncopated bassoon-like honking of geese fly overhead, adding a touch of interest.
Every couple of minutes the sound of a fish breaking the surface of the water on the lake, leaving a mark on the surface until the rings fade away. I notice my breathing has slowed and the cobwebs in my head have cleared as I become fully present in the middle of this symphony. I inhale and close my eyes to savor the music of the day until a new sound appears. A retreatant is walking the path near the porch, with a steady, moderate beat coming from the crunching sound of the gravel. Soon, a second person approached, walking twice as fast. If I were a composer I would write a note for the percussionist to play "impatiently."
The activity is picking up. More instruments are beginning to play. Sh...sh...sh...goes the broom as one of the staff begins to sweep the large porch where I sit. At first I am irritated by the interruption, and then I notice the rhythm and the changing pitch as she sweeps in two directions, first one direction, around furniture in long strokes and then another direction with short strokes: sh...sh...sh...sh..sh.sh.sh.sh....shhhhhhhhhhhh.... Shhhhhhhhhhh.... shhhhh... sh..sh..sh... sh...clunk - as she hit the chair leg...sh....sh.... clop...clop... goes the sound of another retreatant with clogs crossing the porch. Clop..sh...sh...clop...clop... shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ...shhhhhhhhhhhhh.... Squeeeeak... squeak...(What's that?) It was the sound of staff cleaning the inside of the picture window. "Ahhhhh..."... clunk... clunk...as another retreatant relaxes in the rocking chair and the chair rails clunk over the bricks. Hooooooot! Hooooot! goes the owl...all while the birds continued their ostinati [pattern]. "Achoo!"..."Bless you Becky!" someone answers from out-of-sight. Ssniff... shh... shh...shh...scrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaape... the wrought-iron chair says as it is moved by the person sweeping.
The birds are now silent and there is a stillness and peacefulness surrounding me. It doesn't matter that my work is still untouched on my lap. I continue to sit in the music "hall" for more than an hour and am transformed. My trip to the symphony has me in a serene frame of mind. I am filled with gratitude for all the talented "musicians" and oh...that Divine composer? Masterful! |
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Recovery As A Heroic Journey |
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The Heroic Journal is happy to feature a recovery story from J.C. Smith. |
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My journey, an AA twelve step, more resistant than heroic, had a crossroad that to me could only be miraculous. I had done everything in recovery my way, but somehow up to nine months I had abstained from using. The advice from many meetings and recovery was no major changes in the first year, work the steps and don't drink, go to meetings. I pretty much just did the latter.
I had just completed my fourth step, (remember nine months) and had received approval for transfer from Nashville, Tn. to Cheyenne, Wy. With the U.S.G.S., (remember no major changes). I anxiously prepared for my impending cowboy experience when I got a call from my sister, five years into recovery herself, who gave me a list of contacts to call when I arrived in Cheyenne, how she knew anyone in Wyoming was a mystery to me, but I jotted down the numbers and promised to call as soon as I settled in.
This would be the first time in my adult life that I had ever flown sober; it had been a ritual to knock down a few before I entered the Airport and then have a couple as we got underway. I found my seat by the window, got a magazine out of the seatback and tried desperately to act comfortable...as my hands shook like a man in his final steps to the gallows, just then a middle aged woman takes the seat next to mine, introduces herself as Ms. Donna, a "born again" Christian... Jesus, this is going to be a long flight.
I held the armrest tightly as the jet accelerated down the runway. Ms. Donna noticed the death grip and put her hand on mine and said, it's ok, just "let go and let God", hmmmm, I have heard that before. Moments past as she spoke about God's grace in her life, how she maintained a conscious contact and lived her life "one day at a time"...jeez, where did that come from. What should have been a two hour flight seemed inexplicably shortened, we were descending into Denver and I wasn't finished listening to my airborne angel.
Once I found the Motel in Cheyenne, conveniently located on West Lincolnway, the U.S.G.S. office was 5600 East Lincolnway, I secured my stuff, fourth step locked tight in my attaché case, away from prying eyes who might discover dark secrets from my past, I unpacked, checked the city map and made the call my sister had directed me to do. First call, disconnected, second call, not living here anymore, third and final number...Jack answers, What can I help you with? I was told to ask where I could get a meeting; I just arrived from Nashville, Tn. and will be here for a week. Oh yeah, you must be Jackie J's brother, no problem man, there's a meeting tonight, 5601 East Lincolnway, I'll meet you there at 8:00.
Up to now I have chalked this all up to a series of coincidences, but as I pull up to the meeting place...I notice it is a large Methodist Church, right across the street from the U.S.G.S. office I am supposed to check in at tomorrow morning...again, hmmmm.
A few people mull around outside, Jack pulls up, gets out of his car and walks directly up to me, welcome to the Happy destiny group, we meet every night at 8:00, but while you're here in Cheyenne I'll show you around, nuttin' wrong with a little variety in your sobriety! Ok Jack sounds good to me, let's go in and see what sobriety is like in cowboy land.
Jack introduces me to everyone there, not a huge feat, only six people, the meeting opens with the usual serenity prayer, the Chair then asked for a topic and this hard, ruddy, seventy year old Clint Eastwood lookalike speaks up and starts sharing his fifth step...Whoa Doggie!!! This is supposed to be private info. I am shocked, embarrassed to almost cringing at the details of this manly man's account of childhood abuse, damaged relationships, violence, jails, institutions and misery, he is mercifully finishing up when he says, you know this is still difficult to say, but every time I do it, it loses some of it's power in my life and it always seems to help others continue on with their journey through the steps...of course he is looking at me, fourth step locked securely away in my motel room, I am awed by this feeling of connection, knowing, none of what has happened is coincidence.
When I arrived back home that Friday night, I meet up with a friend in recovery, we shared our fifth steps with each other. I am grateful for my new found inspiration, there is no turning back, what was an obstacle is now the catalyst.
There are no mistakes in God's world, only lessons and blessings.
J. C. Smith, ADACI, CM - Nashville, TN
From, "The Pink and Green type of Sobriety" |
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Heroic Resources for March |
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Learning More From Heroic Life Stories
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Quotes
Now the alternative to despair is courage. And human life can be viewed as a continuous struggle between these two options. Courage is the capacity to affirm one's life in spite of the elements which threaten it. The fact that courage usually predominates over despair in itself tells us something important about life. It tells you that the forces that affirm life are stronger than those that negate it. (Paul E. Pfuetze Philosopher)
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours. (Ayn Rand)
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. (Seneca)
Pay no attention to what the critics say; no statue has ever been erected to a critic. (Jean Sibelius - Finnish Composer)
Literature
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Yearning to Belong - John O'Donohue
Anam Cara - John O'Donohue
Beowulf (unknown)
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Music
"Win" - performed by Brian McKnight (from the movie, "Men of Honor")
"I Hear A Call" - performed by Emmylou Harris
"Many Rivers to Cross" - performed by Linda Ronstadt
"The Voice" - performed by Celtic Women
"Sing Me A Song" - performed by Celtic Women
"The Impossible Dream" - from Man of LaMancha
Movies
The Mission
Taking Chance (True story airing on HBO)
Kung Fu Panda
Curley Sue
Mona Lisa Smile
Man of LaMancha
The Color Purple
Slumdog Millionaire
The Wrestler
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Journeys Past - "My Father's Things" |
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Sometimes we may not be as intimately aware of a person's internal journey, but when we look at the fruits of their life and the important symbols which they carried in that life, we can begin to build a better understanding of who they were. This story was sent in by G.S. Wright of East Brady, PA.
I'm going through a box of my father's things. He doesn't know, but he wouldn't care. Dad isn't dead, but he's gone in the only way that would matter where this invasion of his privacy is concerned. Dad had a stroke several years ago, or at least I think that's what happened to him. He was already in the tightening grip of demen-tia, so it's hard to say, and nothing in this box answers my questions about it.
My father's Navy records, Bible, wallet, birth certificate, school records and photo-graphs are in the box given to me by the social worker yesterday when we visited Dad in the out-of-state nursing home where he now lives. Dad's brother, his wife and I went to see that Dad is still well. He is. In fact, he looked better than he had at our last visit. The Charge Nurse told my uncle that Dad is no trouble beyond his compromised mobility. "He's always pleasant," she said. Dad kept saying, "Thank you" for anything that was done for him while we were there. He stopped smiling only long enough to nod off momentarily at times.
Dad had been walking and driving until the day he suddenly fell in his apartment a few years ago. Unable to get to a phone to call for help, he'd lain for an unknow-able number of days or weeks in the spot where he'd fallen until found by his land-lord who'd become aware that something might be wrong when the rent went un-paid beyond the due date. At one time, Dad had cried as discussing that event with me, but now he has no memory of it. He also no longer remembers me, his brother, my brother, or anyone else. He still responds to his own name, but perhaps only because we are looking at him when we speak it.
"Your father doesn't relate to any of these things anymore," the pleasant woman had said as showing us the box. "We store it for him, but it should all be with you."
The small box is less than filled with what is left of my father's most precious former memories. Although it isn't easy to go through his things, it is surprisingly fulfilling.
I hadn't seen Dad very often after my parents divorced when I was eleven. My mother, eight-year-old brother and I actually had less stressful lives after that divorce, even though Mom literally counted every penny to make ends meet as raising two children alone on what was then "women's wages." Although ordered by the court to pay support for his children, Dad had long before stopped reacting well to being given orders. He'd moved to somewhere unknown to us to show Mother that if she were determined to get rid of his angry self, then she could just manage to do so without any assistance from him. Although it was never easy, that is what she had done.
There are two copies of Dad's Naval Training School graduation class program with Dad's name misspelled. There are six glossy eight-by-tens of the class photo. On the back of one photograph are the names of all of the men in the picture. Dad had been proud of that graduation -- his only one ever. He had quit public school in the eighth grade.
Several of Dad's early school papers, and all of his report cards from first grade on are here. The cards show school years interrupted by his family's having moved -- usually under stressful circumstances. With each move, Dad's grades show greater decline, with the worst grades occurring just after his father took the four children and left the family home to live with another woman at a time when abandoned mothers had little means and few avenues for getting their children back, or sometimes even just to see them again. It had been my mother who had told us of how difficult childhood had been for our father. He never spoke of it with us.
Several grade-school class photos are in the box. Dad's big smile with his modest overbite -- the kind that always looks so cute on a very young child -- is more evi-dence to support the claims of those report cards that Dad had started out liking school and doing well. Toward the end of his school years, he started getting bad grades even in Citizenship, having it reported that he was no longer always willing to follow the rules. In the later group photos he isn't smiling.
Dad's sadness, disappointment, and his frustrated attitude had followed him into the Navy. In the Naval Training School photo, he is gently smiling again, but all was not well. Dad had gotten his father to sign permission for the teenager to enlist at age seventeen during wartime. In the photo, Dad is lanky and thin, and looks every bit the boy he still was at that moment. His immaturity and the chip he carried on his shoulder don't show, but they had been there with him, too.
At first, everything had gone okay. He'd loved the Navy, and had probably been kept too busy for it to go otherwise. But out at sea, Dad's ship happened never to have had any encounters with a hostile force. Boredom became the enemy to be battled. Dad's coping mechanism of choice became marathon card games. I'm told that he'd gone seven days without sleep at one such game until it was his turn to go get food for the group. His feet hit the deck, he stood and instantly passed out cold. Then he hit the deck again in a different way -- with his face.
For as much as my father loved card games, there could never have been enough of them to keep him from getting himself into trouble. No one knows what Dad's fight with a superior officer had been about, only that there had been one. It was proba-bly a final straw, because Dad was cordially invited to exit the Navy with a General Discharge. He accepted it, but when he got home, his father did not accept it, and took his son's case to the Department of the Navy so vigorously that the discharge was changed to Honorable. Yellowing, and becoming brittle, that document is in the box.
Once home from the Navy, Dad engaged in such interests and pursuits as obtain-ing his pilot's license. It's in here, but so old that it is difficult to open from it's folded condition. There are also snapshots Dad took of model airplanes he'd built to enter in area meets for enthusiasts. These pictures may allow me at some point to recover one or more of those planes. They'd been among things stolen during a break-in of Dad's home several years before his stroke. Surely someone had understood their value to collectors. It had been hard for Dad to get over being robbed, adding to his frustrations and his sadness.
Dad's Bible shows signs of having been more used than I'd expected that it would. Showing signs of age, too, are the photos in Dad's wallet, including of my brother and me -- our graduation portraits and a sweet snapshot of the two of us as tiny children that I don't recall having ever seen before. There's a picture of my uncle, Dad's grandparents, and two photos of my mother. Dad's behavior choices had led to increasing fear and frustration for Mom, and after years of working to save their marriage, she had finally ended it. In spite of his having been divorced, Dad would say that he'd made a commitment before God when he married. That we know of, he never dated again. He never stopped wearing his wedding ring, though now I have no idea where it may be and he has no recollection of having been married at all.
I'd surprised one of my father's nursing-home roommates once by introducing myself as Dad's daughter.
"You had children, Ken?" he'd asked my father in shock. Dad had smiled and replied to the man, "No. I never did."
I am comforted by the fact that Dad smiles again. At one time, I'd wanted nothing to do with my father for reasons of my own. Over time, I grew to look beyond those hurts. Finally, I forgave. Whenever memories of Dad's various wrongs to his family members would re-surface, I would have to forgive again. Eventually, the forgive-ness just seemed to stick.
I'll give Dad's wallet and Bible to my brother. I've moved my brother's graduation picture to the front of the photos in the wallet so that it will be the first thing he'll see when he opens it. Maybe I'll put in some money and suggest that he take his won-derful wife out to dinner "on Dad." I think that the person my father started out to become, and in some ways finally has become, would have liked that.
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Do you want to inspire others? Send us your story! |
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by YOU
The Heroic Journal is looking for real life stories (or poems or lyrics) of individuals, families, commmunities, organizations or businesses that are examples of heroic stories. You may choose to be interviewed or to submit your own writing.
For more information on how to submit your story, please contact heroicjourney@comcast.net
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| Seminars on the Heroic Journey coming to... |
| Get Your Clinical CEU's - Social workers, psychologists, nurses, psychiatrists, drug and alcohol counselors, pastoral counselors, marriage and family therapists, case managers, teachers, recoverying individuals and more... |
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The Psychology of Resilience:
A Multi-Modal Framework for Thriving
Using the Heroic Journey
is coming to:
March 11, 2009 - Oakland, CA
March 12, 2009 - Sacramento, CA
March 13, 2009 - Santa Rosa, CA
March 16, 2009 - Fresno, CA
March 17, 2009 - San Jose, CA
March 18, 2009 - San Francisco, CA
April 6, 2009 - Sherman Oaks, CA
April 7, 2009 - Ontario, CA
April 8, 2009 - Las Vegas, NV
April 29, 2009 - Torrance/Redondo Beach, CA
April 30, 2009 - Anaheim, CA
May 1, 2009 - San Diego, CA
May 2009 - Canada (cities and dates to be announced)
More dates in the US and Canada are scheduled in Spring 2009. If you would like to see a brochure, you may find them at www.theomnibuscenter.com (under schedule 2009) or to sign up, call Cross Country Education 1-800-397-0180 or www.crosscountryeducation.com Seminars will be posted 60 days before the event.
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For more information or to explore the aspects of your Heroic Journey:
Melissa (Missy) Bradley, MS, NCC, BCETS, FAAETS
The Omnibus Center
P.O. Box 3641
Brentwood, TN 37024-3641
615-377-6002
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