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Jan's Blog, Recapitulation

How to Heal

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I begin with the premise that all pain and illness, mental and physical, stem from psychological disharmony. If the psyche, the energetic manifestation of the spirit in the human mind, becomes disrupted, or infected, the result is disharmony, dis-ease, disturbance within the entire self: the body, the mind, and the spirit.

There is always a light at the end of the tunnel of darkness…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

A Path of Recapitulation

There are many paths to healing. I took the path of recapitulation to heal from Complex PTSD, which stemmed from 16 years of sexual abuse that first occurred in early childhood and ended when I was 18. Those were my formative years and during that time I was inundated with not only the brutal sexual abuse but also the intense psychological repercussions of that abuse.

The human capacity to endure and survive, however, is incredible, but at what expense?

What my child self could not handle, either physically or mentally, my psyche and spirit handled, offering several pathways of protection so that life could continue. This is common in cases of abuse, where the body and the mind work in conjunction to hide from the fragile ego that which is harmful, painful, confusing, or damaging. In my case, all memory of what happened to me was wiped clean. At the time, it saved me, but later it came back to haunt me.

Hints of what had happened, though deeply buried within the person I became, began to arise, bringing with it the pain and discordancy that had been long buried. That’s when I realized I needed to find out, at the deepest of levels, why I had so much disharmony within myself, why I had so much physical pain and mental anguish, why I was so afraid of life, to the point of destroying all I had worked so hard for, all the paths of potential success that I refused to embark upon. Why was I so self-sabotaging, so self-negating, so self-deprecating? Why couldn’t I just be normal?

That was when recapitulation, as a path to healing, came into my life, a path of not only remembering, but of reliving, releasing, and resolving—a path to freedom.

An Adult Self

The first step before beginning a recapitulation is to shore up the adult self. A strong adult self in the house, in you, will help keep you focused and steady as you begin to walk the path of recapitulation.

During recapitulation you will often be in two worlds at once, in the present and in the past, and your adult self will keep you balanced, keeping one foot in each world so that you can continue to be fully functional and present in your everyday life.

Even if recapitulation proves not to be your path in this lifetime, it’s best to shore up that adult self anyway, it will make for a life that is more tolerable and steadier. And that adult self will help keep your pain at bay with good suggestions and tactics rather than those that further damage.

I had a good mature adult self already well established when I began my recapitulation. So that was not going to be a problem for me. And once I was given the opportunity to find out what was so wrong with me, I dove in, wanting more than anything to get to the bottom of things.

Shining a Light

The next step is to bring the light into the darkness of the self. This is scary because you may not know what you are going to find. Just be open. For once you begin to walk the path of recapitulation that light is going to be very important. Things will come to you, challenging you to take a closer look, showing you where you need to go, and the only way you will be able to fully know them is by bringing in the light.

When you bring the light into the darkness, things change. For the first time you begin to see the truth, and the truth is what matters. The light reveals the truth and the darkness disappears.

Trusting the Journey

As things arise, trusting in the journey becomes the next step.

Keep in mind that recapitulation is a healing journey. Keep in mind also that you are well protected and guided as you recapitulate, for, as an ancient practice, all those who have gone before you and carved the path are energetically supporting you on your journey. That’s a lot of positive energy!

Letting Go

As you walk the path of recapitulation you will be challenged to let things go, to let go of the comforts that you once used to protect yourself. This is a crucial step, for what once saved you in an old way becomes a blockage to a new path of healing.

Letting go means being free to embrace the fullness of your true self, the self that is waiting for you at the end of the tunnel of darkness.

As you let go of old ideas of the self, as you let go of shame and blame, of the pain and the anguish, as you shed all that once meant so much to you, you might feel as if you are disintegrating, but this is good disintegration, like a snake shedding its old skin and finding that it still exists in its wholeness, though the shedding of that old skin took quite an effort. It’s the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis, the chick from the egg, the seventeen-year locust emerging from the ground, having climbed through the dark earth to emerge into the light, against all odds.

Healing

I believe that we can all heal, from the deepest and most traumatic events and illnesses, those that physically challenge us and those that mentally challenge us.

If and when we are ready, our healing path will show up and ask us to take the journey toward healing. If we are not ready, that’s okay. It might not be the work of this lifetime. In the meantime, work on shoring up that adult self previously mentioned.

But, I suggest, that if you are hit over the head with something about yourself that knocks you off your feet, grab a light and take a look at it, and see where it leads. It might just be what you’ve always been looking for, your true self and the truth of yourself!

Sometimes the best way to heal is to stop seeking, to stop looking so hard, running to this path and that, thinking that this new cure will be the one, and to instead just sit down and wait to see what your spirit brings you. For the truth is that your spirit is with you always, has always been with you and knows you better than anyone. Your spirit has all the answers you seek. Ask you spirit to guide you.

The Recapitulation Diaries

I wrote The Recapitulation Diaries to show that full healing from Complex PTSD is possible, that even though you suffered greatly—more than I did, I’m sure—you too can heal.

It’s not an easy journey, but what journey is? You’ve already taken the hardest part of it, now you just have to remember so that you can clear your energy of all that infects you, for to go back to my beginning premise, all pain and illness, mental and physical, stems from psychological disharmony, from infection that has intercepted our energy field and contaminated us. Once we heal ourselves of those infections of energy a life of wonder awaits.

I won’t say any more today, though there is so much more to the healing path of recapitulation. My books tell the story. I would not be here today had I not taken that journey. That I am pretty sure of, or at least I would not be here writing this to you today, from the bottom of my heart, hoping that you too may heal.

Sending you love and healing energy,

Jan

The Recapitulation Diaries

Jan's Blog

The Execution of Lisa Montgomery: Contemplation of a Soul’s Journey

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I woke up at 1:11 AM. I wondered at the significance of the time, often described as a divine sign. What did it mean? Something must be going on in the world, I thought. I am often struck by how something as simple as waking up and looking at the clock in the middle of the night has deeper meaning.

I was not surprised to read the news this morning that between the hour of 1 and 1:38 AM a woman was being executed on death row, and not just any woman but a woman who had suffered debilitating sexual abuse that had led her on a sadly devolving journey. She had committed a horrendous murder and was serving time in prison for that murder, but her story is an example of so many stories, stories that are never told, never exposed and never contemplated. Many people, women especially, have been sexually abused, but you would never know it because they will never mention it. In polite society, we prefer not to talk about sexual abuse.

One of the reasons I wrote The Recapitulation Diaries was to bring the topic to the table, in explicit detail, for how can we ever heal as a society if we do not talk about the dark side of society? How can we leave the children of sexual abuse to carry the dark secret but not deal with it ourselves?

As a child of sexual abuse, I know intimately some of the things that Lisa Montgomery endured and suffered. I have personally heard the stories of other people who have been sexually abused. There are as many stories as there are people, one story worse than the next. As a spiritual person, and after many years of work on myself to heal from the trauma of sexual abuse, I look for deeper meaning, in both a person’s life and a person’s soul journey.

We are all on a journey of the soul. I didn’t know this myself until I recapitulated what had happened to me in childhood and began to see a bigger picture, to understand that my journey through life was a learning process so that my soul could evolve. Some of us have come into this world with great challenges to face because we are prepared to take them on, because our soul decided that it could handle it. There is a part of me that always says, “I can handle anything!” I believe it’s that part of me that decided it could take on the life I am now living. Had I failed at the task I set for myself this time around, I’m sure I’d give it another go in the next life.

Perhaps Lisa Montgomery’s soul decided it could handle the life she lived too. Perhaps she learned great things in her lifetime that have advanced her on her soul’s journey; only she will know for sure. But if Lisa Montgomery’s life is to be an example for the rest of us, we have to ask the question: What are we to learn from the life of Lisa Montgomery?

Her story brings us back to the subject of sexual abuse. Her life story points out to us all that we have forgotten something, that we have let too many people suffer the consequences of a society that won’t face its dark side. We let others carry the burden of the dark secrets of our collective soul.

The tragic unfolding of Lisa Montgomery’s life spread a wide net, for it also had tragic repercussions for other’s, especially for the family of the young woman she murdered, the child she kidnapped, and all the members of that extended family. If we are to make sense of this tragedy we must look to ourselves for answers.

If we are to learn anything from Lisa Montgomery’s life it is that the subject of sexual abuse must not be put back under the table. Is her story even still news today? How many more children must suffer a lifetime of traumatic repercussions because their stories are not stories suitable to talk about?

Are we going to let the children of sexual abuse continue to bear the burden of the dark side of humanity? Are we going to face our own life challenges head on, with a bigger picture in mind, so that we may become contributing members of a society that refuses to sweep the disturbing parts of being human under the table?

May Lisa Montgomery’s journey show us a new path to healing, for all of us, but especially for those like her, the children of sexual abuse.

Sending love,

J. E. Ketchel, Author of The Recapitulation Diaries

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Terror of Woman

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Shed light upon the fog of projection… stay with the truth…
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

My intentions for this blog are: (1) to offer knowledge that might be helpful to those working through PTSD, and (2) to provide a greater context to a core problem of humanity that is of particular relevance to understanding and resolving our current Earth crisis. This crisis has reached a point where none should hold back their piece of the puzzle, as all pieces of that puzzle are needed to solve our current woes and launch us into health.

The TV show Grey’s Anatomy offered a boldly graphic and accurate presentation of Acute Stress Disorder, experienced by a woman immediately after a rape (Season 15, Episode 19). This blog is a contribution toward the complete healing of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the typical clinical progression of such a trauma, due to violence inflicted by another. At a certain point in that healing journey, understanding the objective reasons for the perpetrator’s actions is helpful in clarifying the truth that it really wasn’t my fault.

My Irish biological father was a violent alcoholic who beat my mother throughout her three pregnancies. When mother and I were as one, in symbiotic union in our journey through uterine space, we both absorbed the shocks of my father’s rapes and many physical blows. I was born with PTSD locked in the marrow of my bones, as well as in the subtlest dimensions of my Soul.

It would be my destiny, my karma, to locate the cure for PTSD in this lifetime, a deeply personal affair. PTSD would prove to be my worthy opponent in this lifetime. A worthy opponent, in the shamanic world, is that which most forces one to wakeup. Outwardly, in my chosen career as a psychotherapist, many have trusted me with their own frozen selves, the legacies of their own abuse. Within the shaman’s world I was led to recapitulation, the tool central to the complete healing of PTSD.

But beyond healing, what is the true etiology of man’s violence—in its many forms—toward woman? Today it is discovered that mass murderers hate women. Jeffrey Epstein clearly had an absolute need to completely control teenage girls. What was he so afraid of?

In my personal case, my biological father hailed from deep Irish culture, whose perennial ally has been alcohol to dream beyond the felt tyranny of the Mothership, England. An ally, in the shaman’s world, is a spirit that grants access to other worlds but also exacts a high toll in exchange. That same ally also gives license to the shadow’s rage at its impotence to rise above its child prison. Many a ‘good’ Irish woman hides the true deeds of absorbing the rage unleashed by the drink.

My biological father’s mother suffered from migraines and insisted my father be the one delivered, as priest, from the family to the Church. He opposed her will with the help of his ally, alcohol, and displaced his rage upon my mother, the intimate mother replacement in his life, his wife. His ally eventually tricked him into early death. Such is the fate of the refusal to reconcile the forces within the psyche with consciousness.

My adoptive Russian Jewish father, my one true father in this lifetime, venerated my mother, to a fault. Both Mother Russia, which had been his family’s home until the pogroms, and his Jewish matrilineal heritage sanctified Mother, regardless of their patriarchal dominance in practice.

Freud recognized the overarching power of Mother for son. He little understood woman, but he knew of the primal attachment and attraction between mother and son. Freud also never really valued the world beyond the nuclear family. For a son, the oedipal complex, the wish to fully unite with mother, was the single most important fact of life.

A wife, like civilization itself, was but a sublimated second best for mother. Man can erect towers, but even they limply compare to union with mother. For Freud, the confirmed atheist, Mother truly was god, and her power, he believed, was transferred by man onto all subsequent permutations of her, especially in his relationships with women.

When Freud met Jung, he crowned him his prince successor and desperately begged him to promise to uphold, as dogma, what he was convinced was the eternal truth of the oedipal complex. Jung’s  mother had had long psychiatric hospitalizations in his youth. Though she was an object of mystery for Jung, she was primarily an object of fear. Jung’s psychology was transcendent, reaching beyond the foundation of the family nursery. He saw a son’s primal journey to individuation as the hero’s battle for deliverance from dependence upon the mother, and the mother’s world.

For Jung, the psyche deepened beyond the nuclear family, into the depths of the collective unconscious. Ironically, both he and Freud remained chained to tortured relationships with their wives in their lives. Freud indulged in a hidden affair with his wife’s unmarried sister, who lived in their home. Jung indulged in a blatant polygamous life, with two wives (only one actually legitimate), which he publicly displayed and foisted upon his family at Sunday meals. Neither man could bear the tension of their projections upon woman without splitting themselves in two.

Freud’s theories of woman’s psychology dominated clinical practice for decades, forestalling the validation of women’s recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse, relegating them instead to mere childhood sexual fantasy. Jung never publicly explored the impact of having been sexually assaulted in his youth. Nonetheless, their personal journeys into the depths of their own psyches, and the theories they generated, shed invaluable light upon the psychology of man and his core terror of woman.

Freud captured the omnipotent power mother possesses over her infant and growing son. She is the source of life, source of nurturance, source of need gratification, source of love, source of desire, source of pleasure, source of ultimate security, source of soothing, source of entitlement, and yet, source of ultimate frustration via the oedipal complex.

Mother is the most important and most desired person in the world to son. Though his oedipal crush will not be fulfilled, his longing and rage toward her for disappointing him, or toward the power he feels she wields, is often defended against through violence toward all women, who represent subsequent molds of mother, throughout life.

Jung traced the roots of the archetype of mother to matter itself; the primal substance of all things physical in the world. All human life issues from the womb of mother. Mother is the only one who can give life. Mother is nature herself, who both giveth and taketh life. Man can never conceive or deliver life. Mother’s power is primary.

Men, from primitive times, have been fascinated with but terrified by woman’s primal power. Taboos restricting women and protecting men from contact with menstrual blood or menstruating women still survive in modern India. Menstruation, with all its emotional variabilities, threatens man with nature’s destructive, uncontrollable, and unpredictable power.

The true reason for the Inquisition was man’s attempt to control the creative primal power of woman that threatened the controlling patriarchal dogma of the Church. That same terror was the true reason for Hillary Clinton’s surprise 2016 defeat: Man’s terror of being dominated by the primal power of woman.

Man’s relation to his own primal power of sexuality, and its urgency for contact with woman, confronts him with his own nature. Mastering the irrational power and energy of the body’s sexual instinct requires a deep soulful journey; it’s not a simple business transaction.

Gaining control of and building a mature relationship with the sexual instinct is often forfeited, in exchange for demanding and expecting a woman/girl to perform to immature male fantasy. Here, control rules the roost á la Jeffrey Epstein.

Desire for, yet terror of woman—who is experienced as both a goddess who quickly overwhelms his potency, as well as a mother prototype who embodies his oedipal residue—often prompts a man to violence to overcome the supreme power projected onto woman.

Violence castrates a woman’s imagined power, making her  touchable, and it titrates oedipal intimacy down to manageable proportions. This is often the reason for preference of teenage girls and children to adult women, who can only be encountered with full-out violence.

Most women have no clue of the supernatural powers ascribed to them. The mystery, for most girls and women, is why they are targeted.  The truth lies almost completely in the projected imagination of the perpetrator. Her body is a blank slate for the man to act out his superimposed inner drama. That’s what it means to be an object. You really don’t exist at all. Not because you don’t have value, it’s simply that your person has been typecast in another person’s play, and you have no say.

Our current Earth crisis is man’s absolute patriarchal holdout to control, exploit, and fully dominate Mother Nature. Obvious to many, however, is nature’s growing impatience with such hubris. Young people have begun their own alchemical processes to free gender ship of its archetypal bindings, with the reconfiguration of gender assignments into he, she, and they, and beyond. Oh, what androgynous beings we are and may be!

Individually, all are empowered to reconcile their spirits with their human bodies. All bodies are composed of matter. All genders contain father mind and mother body. Mind over matter simply doesn’t work anymore. Nor does projecting one’s inner confusion onto others. All must grant matter the respect and place it is due, as well as be guided by its leadership.

Mother Nature is shifting the balance of power by forcing us into true respect and valuation of each other as the only course for survival. Begin with the self; love and care for the body. Get to know its true powers, needs, and wisdom and let them co-lead the way. It’s the only way to go.

Rather than imbue woman with the supernatural powers of an ally and subdue her with violence, may man accept woman, like matter itself, as his worthy opponent who offers him his greatest opportunity to wakeup.

With gratitude,

Chuck

Chuck's Blog

Chuck’s Place: Sexual Abuse and The New New Deal

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What’s missing? Relatedness!
-Art by Jan Ketchel

Poised as we are for the juggernaut of The New New Deal we are simultaneously treated to the greatest exposure of aberrant male sexual behavior the world has ever known.

The New Deal was really Eleanor Roosevelt’s baby, the caring, warmly related mother who insured the health and well being of her progeny. The New New Deal is the return of Kronos, Zeus’s father, who ate all his offspring, except Zeus, to insure his unimpeded rule.

The seeming contradiction of these synchronistic events, the rise of divisive egotism and the downfall of the abuser, deserves careful scrutiny. What both events share in common is the absence of  relatedness.

Human relatedness is born of the feminine in both women and men. The feminine underscores the interconnectedness of all life: wholeness. The feminine is eros, the glue that congeals a relationship, a family, a nation, a world.

In its purest form the masculine is pneuma, the imperceptible breath of wind that shows its effect by breaking up clusters of coagulated debris upon a lake, for instance, home to ecosystems in transition. In this image the masculine can be seen as aggressive, though I think more accurately as active. In its purest form the masculine is the active principle, yang, that spreads its seed far and wide creating ever new permutations of life.

This dispersion, however gentle the breeze may be, is destructive to what is. The dismantling of the social welfare caring state marks a radical breakdown of the inclusiveness and maternal supports that have served as the governing principles of the world for many decades.

The takedown of sexually abusive male icons and idols is its own dismantling of the status quo, largely fueled by the active yang energy in women. All are being emboldened by the bright light of consciousness to shine the light on hidden truths that have allowed an unrelated sexual instinct, housed in the dark recesses of the human shadow, to dominate with impunity.

What is currently lacking in both The New New Deal and our modern inquisition into abuse is the feminine principle of yin, relatedness. Perhaps it was time for a world restructuring. Perhaps care for all was becoming too inclusive, but clearly a push to completely shift resource into the hands of the least in need is missing something essential.

Similarly, to destroy careers without trial, to lump all male sexual behavior into the same category is lacking in a feminine relatedness that can feel its way to the differentiated truths in these many abusive vignettes revealed daily.

The truth is that any sexual contact that is not related, meaning not mutually agreed upon and desired by each person, is an abuse of human power.  A purely instinctual sexual encounter that lacks any real human connection, if  mutually agreed upon, is not abuse. However, the quality of such an unrelated encounter is not fully human, as it lacks the inclusion of the highest human potential, the ability to love. Sex without love is not related. The deepest human challenge is to reconcile animal and spirit in true union.

As we move forward from the disintegrative stage of our current world transformation we do well to realize that both action and connection are the yang and yin of our world. All new deals, wherever they may lead, require an equal participation and inclusion of both masculine and feminine principles.

Sexual abuse, as well as the New New Deal, reflects a preponderance of yang and a paucity of yin. Structures that lack balance will have limited life.

May we find our way to love,

Chuck

Jan's Blog

Why Do People Do The Things They Do?

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Who’s rocking the boat?
– Photo by Jan Ketchel

We’ve all been taught to be nice girls and boys, to not rock the boat, not make anyone uncomfortable by bringing up disturbing issues. Who among us grew up in a household where things were really discussed, addressed, and resolved by coming to a deeper understanding of why we do the things we do? Not me.

In my house you kept quiet. You didn’t rock the boat, make anyone uncomfortable, or even talk about what bothered you the most. You held everything in and hoped for the best. If you got caught doing something bad you were blamed, shamed, and punished, but no one ever asked if you needed something. No one ever asked if you were in pain, in need, or suffering. No one wanted to know if something was disturbing you or confusing you. No one wanted to deal with feelings or emotions. They wanted it simple. You followed the rules so everything went according to plan, or else. You were told to act like a lady, get good grades, and stop being an embarrassment to your parents. In the end you just ended up feeling guilty, ashamed, and bad.

But growing up where nothing is ever discussed, where you are supposed to figure out some of the most frightening and complicated experiences in your life on your own is a daunting task, especially for a small child who just shuts up and shuts down, finds ways to self-soothe and somehow makes it through childhood and into adulthood. Having been sexually abused, I empathize with others who also had a bad time of it, but I also know that we must move beyond our traumas, not only entertain a new vision for ourselves and the world but embrace it as well. We must all dare to change.

In spite of my background I have always been able to see the good in others, no matter how bad they appear to be. Perhaps it’s just part of my personality, the part of me that somehow knew how to survive and thrive in spite of what happened to me. Suffice it to say, I’m an optimist. I’ve always been able to weigh all sides of an issue. Often this makes it impossible to take sides. I was never good at debating. I’m much better at taking in the whole picture and seeing how all the pieces fit together. This is a Buddhist perspective, the middle way, all things in harmony and balance. In the end, I tend to be okay with the way things are because I know that things have a way of resolving, often in the most unexpected of ways, but often in the most simple of ways.

For most of my life I felt like I was living in a daze. I didn’t really wake up, except occasionally, until I was 50. It was then that I started to gain clarity on what had actually transpired in my childhood, why I had lived in that daze for most of my life (because I was only half in this world, the other half still back in the past), but once all that insight about my past started to flood into me all I wanted to do was stay awake. I got interested in life in a new and different way.

I wanted to know why and how things happen, and how to change myself and the things in my life that I could change. I saw the bigger picture of what had been, but I also wanted to intend a new bigger picture for the future. I wanted to be actively involved in planning my future life in a different way, consciously aware of myself as part of the process. I didn’t want life to lead me; I wanted to meet life and take a new journey with all that it offered me. It meant I had to be prepared to really change. I had to learn how to let change work for me in positive and good ways, with intent and purpose, rather than just because it happened anyway.

I have since learned that not everyone wants to change, not everyone is ready to change, and in fact many people don’t care about changing at all, they just care about themselves. This seems to be what we are being confronted with now, just how many people really only care about themselves, how caught up they are in their own hubris, their own greed, and how little they care about others. We must all be accountable for what is happening now and we all have a responsibility to try and figure out how to resolve the chaos of our times. There are many forums, and many people are taking the opportunity to finally speak out, but for most of us perhaps the best forum is quietly within.

To truly know ourselves as human beings must be the first step in changing our world. Why did my abuser rape, torture, and assault me? Why did he sell me to others like himself? Why do people do the things they do?

I have discovered that if I am to understand others I must try to understand myself. The first step in doing that, I learned, is to give up all preconceived ideas of how things should be, all preconceived notions of what is right and what is wrong, of what is supposed to be. I learned that I have to empty my mind of everything and be open to understanding life at a totally different level and from many different perspectives, be open to new concepts, new twists, new notions of possibility never before imagined. I have to be totally nonjudgmental, abundantly curious, and insatiably interested in learning new things.

In being open in this manner I come back to myself, to that young girl who could always empathize, who could always see the good in others, who could always see all sides of an issue or a problem. That little Buddhist girl is still in me and she still presents me with her open mind, and every day I am grateful for her. I had to work very hard to find my way back to her, wading through the muck of years of duty and adherence to principles and ideas I did not really believe in but followed blindly because I did not want to rock the boat, get into trouble, or be misunderstood. Then I decided it was high time for a different approach. I recapitulated. In so doing I had to break down the world I knew into dust and debris and pick from it only what was important and leave the rest of it behind, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Sometimes that’s all it is, just something to leave behind.

Now, as I said, I am awake, and in being awake I have to look at myself from all different angles all the time. How am I like those men who abuse? How am I like my own abuser? How do I abuse others? How can I judge another when I know I am not perfect?

When I accept that I have deviant behaviors inside myself, perhaps even to the same extent as some of the worst offenders, then I begin to know why people do the things they do. I do the things I do because I act impulsively or greedily or selfishly. I might be fearful, sad or lonely. I might lash out. I might take. I might overdo. I might be greedy today and selfless tomorrow. I might be hostile now and loving later. I might be inflated in the morning and by nightfall totally deflated and depressed. I might hate one minute and feel bad about it the next. I might get angry and vent, knowing that it’s important to state what is bothering me, but then I can also be the kindest person in the room, wanting the people around me only to feel comfortable and happy. I am all of these things because I’m human.

I have written about my demons, I accept them as part of me. Even if I don’t act on all my impulses, even if I don’t let all my demons out of the bag, I have to accept that they exist inside me. I too am culpable, fallible, weak, and sometimes I fail. That’s what it means to be human. And that’s why I cannot hate, even those who do bad things to me. I can only love. Love is what I always come back to. It is the glue that holds us all together and it is the glue that must keep us together as we address the current climate of change, as people in power get sacked for their indiscretions, as others suffer the shock of knowing that people they love did bad things. What do you do with all that? You just keep loving them.

Love is powerful and hopefully it will get us through this to a deeper understanding of all that we are, the human animals as well as the loving spirits. We accept the loving spirit part of ourselves so easily, but it’s much harder to deal with the other side that we are too, the instinctual animal that we have yet to fully confront and accept into our lives and our world. We all need to work at it, within ourselves first and foremost. Only then will we understand why people do the things they do, because we do them too and we know why. Then we can truly be empathic, nonjudgmental, loving, total humans. Then we will be able to not just accept the bigger picture but embrace our wholeness as well.

Some things just have to be accepted as we wade our way through the chaos we now find ourselves in. Some people just won’t get it, will refuse to change no matter how much they are confronted with how badly their behavior harms others. Some people just aren’t that evolved yet and we have to let them be where they are, for the truth is they are part of what creates balance, they are part of that bigger picture. The Buddhists know that you can’t have the light without the dark, the good without the evil, the day without the night.

At the same time that I accept all that, I do have expectations of everyone I know and everyone I don’t know. I expect to be treated as a fellow human being. I expect to be given the same opportunities as everyone else. I expect the same fairness I grant others. I expect the same kindness and compassion I extend to others. I expect to be allowed to live in a safe world, free from violence, war, nuclear disaster, free of angry people with guns. I expect the same for others.

I want us all to live in a world where we make room for others, where we share what we have with others, where we embrace everyone as human beings just like us, where color and race and gender are not issues of divisiveness but what bring us together. I want the bigger picture to be bigger in love and kindness and compassion.

At the same time, I see how we are all rushing to the same side of the boat now, tipping it too far in our exposing, in our rooting out the evil in others in our need for validation. We have gone from never tipping the boat to nearly capsizing it! The truth does matter, but it can be taken too far, doing more harm than good in our eagerness for a quick solution. There is no quick solution. We might just tip that boat over and then where would we be but all awash in the same stuff we dredged up.

Somehow we have to get back into the middle of the boat again, back on the middle way, where everyone is given the opportunity to work on their issues with support and help, because the beautiful outcome of this process could be that we have finally exposed that we all have issues that need to be addressed without judgment, without blame, and without shame. We all know what judgment, blame, and shame do to us, how devastating they can be, sending us deeper into our traumas and deeper into hiding. We are all just human after all.

We’ve already rocked the boat. Now let’s get it back into calmer waters and meet in the middle, bringing with us all that what we’ve learned about others and ourselves. Let’s offer the same support to others that we expect to receive ourselves. Let’s not be the family that refuses to accept feelings and emotions. Let’s be the family that sits down together and talks at a deeper level and tries to understand each other. Let’s be the family that talks about all that uncomfortable stuff that has left a lot of people feeling confused and frightened, perhaps resorting to acting out because they don’t know what to do with it all.

Let’s try to figure out what we’ve been missing in our personal and workplace relationships, and what’s really needed for us all to heal and finally live peaceably together, as one, in the middle of the boat.

A blog by J. E. Ketchel, Author of The Recapitulation Diaries