Category: Healing From Chronic Pain And Illness

In one of my recent alcohol and drug addiction presentations at the University of Toledo with a large group of fourth year nursing students, I was asked a very interesting question during the Q&A period after the main part of my speaking was complete. A student wondered if I had ever entertained the notion of sitting down with the middle-aged man who once molested me as a child to tell him that I’d forgiven him. In all the thousands of presentations I’ve done thus far, I’ve never been asked this, yet my answer to this student was swift and didn’t take much thought because I absolutely have pondered it and would meet with him if I could.

The man who molested me was arrested years ago on distribution of kiddie porn. I only know this because I looked him up one day a few years ago wondering what happened to him and thinking that very thought the student inquired of me. When I saw he was now locked up and probably would be for the rest of what years he had left, I couldn’t find any further trace of where he was incarcerated, as a pedophile’s location once they are imprisoned often isn’t public record.

Nevertheless, forgiveness is an interesting thing because when many people often say they’ve forgiven someone or something, if you really get them talking about it, quite often they’ll start getting angry about it and having that anger is probably the strongest indicator possible that says they haven’t actually fully forgiven yet.

When I speak about the man who molested me these days, a man who I can say his name now, Tom Albright, without flinching, without anger, and without any emotion other than sadness, says a lot. Sadness only in that I have compassion now for a person who remained spiritually sick their entire life and most likely will die in prison now because of it. I can’t say that sadness is how I’ve always felt surrounding this though.

For more than two decades, and maybe even close to three, I lived in so much anger about Tom Albright that I wished he would die, and painfully at that. Having had my sexuality taken from me just as I began puberty does a number on one’s mind and heart. I spent the first decade after getting molested thinking that the way this man acted upon me was the way love was supposed to be in life. I had no role models in my life when it came to what love was supposed to look like. After all this man spent six months showing me a lot of loving attention, always saying such kind words, getting me to the point of feeling safe enough with him so I could trust him. That trust that I built in him is what led to me being violated and to an incredible number of years remaining angry. But remaining angry isn’t healthy when it goes nowhere.

Being angry all the time is like swallowing a toxic chemical such as bleach and letting it sit within your stomach churning and burning away from the inside while hoping it somehow will inflict that pain upon another, except it doesn’t and only hurts the person living in anger, and severely at that. In addition, holding onto anger like this also adds layers and layers of cold walls around one’s heart, causing them to remain more closed than open to any form of giving or receiving love as they go through life. I lived this way for far too long and doing so led to living in one addiction after another to cope.

The only, and I mean ONLY, way to truly get over someone that hurts us, is to FULLY forgive them, and that process often isn’t easy whatsoever. In my case with Tom Albright, it meant going away on a spiritual retreat for a few days with a bunch of men from an organization I’ve been a member of for several decades now. There, on the retreat, I chose a man to play the role of Tom. He was given the words to say that Tom once said to me. A gauntlet of men was then placed in front of me that I had to break through with only my body, as this man kept saying Tom’s words, words that were once said to me while he molested me. When I reached the man playing him after breaking through that gauntlet, all that repressed anger and rage was at the surface. As I was safely held back from physically harming the man acting as Tom, I screamed out all my pain, all my anger, all my rage, and all my anguish, until it finally left me with a very hoarse voice that was able to say the words for the first time, “I forgive you…”, looking directly into this man’s eyes. All that remained afterwards were tears, tears of joy for finally being free of that dark energy and hold that Tom Albright had held over me for most of my life.

So yes, I would meet with Tom Albright today if I could. While I honestly don’t know whether this man is alive anymore or not, as most likely he’d be well in his 80’s by now, whether he is or isn’t, this is what I would say to him if I did meet with him.

Tom, the pain your actions caused me as a child had immeasurable damage upon my heart and soul, damage that took many years away from me connecting healthily with others and many years as well to repair. I want you to know though that I am fully healed now of this and found forgiveness for what you did to me when I was only a kid. I truly have forgiven you Tom Albright and want you to know that I love you because deep down below the sickness you remained in your entire life, is still a soul from God, one that I know started out pure, and one that I believe will be made pure again one day by God Himself…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Why do people rarely seem to see the good in me around here? This is the main question I continue to wrestle with immensely the more I face the rejection I do here in this region of the world I reside in. And with each passing year, it only seems to grow worse. My only reprieve now are the mini trips I take away from this area where I don’t seem to face this rejection.

I recently faced this rejection with a local fraternity alumni association I’m part of here, where two members of it whom I’ve only spent about 2 hours of time with overall since I first met them made blanket statements about me. Blanket statements that weren’t favorable at all and filled with judgement, enough so that I’ve been told they aren’t sure they want to sit with me again in a meeting.

I have been struggling with this type of harsh response towards me in this area repeatedly. Never did I go through this prior to moving to this part of the country. How many times this continues to happen here where I’m treated unfairly and unlovingly, I’ve honestly lost track. Why people don’t focus on the positive work I am doing, I don’t know? While I do my best to look for the good in everyone, no matter what, as I do believe there is good in everyone, for whatever the reason, far too many here focus on all the negative qualities they perceive in me.

I have worked so hard to erase my selfish past, to be more unconditionally loving, and to give the shirt off my back for people in need. Yet, time and time and time again I have had one person after another here judge me repeatedly, some even viciously directly attacking me, while others talk quite harshly about me behind my back, never once focusing on any of my positive traits, or caring about the heart I have, stomping on it incredibly in the process. Frankly, it feels like I am continuously judged, tried, and executed here by a jury who never has been willing to truly hear my case.

Every, single, day I ask God to guide my life, to be unconditionally loving, and to help me overcome all my pain and health issues and character defects. I field plenty of phone calls for recovery daily doing my best to help whomever is on the other end with love and light. I meet with tons of hurting people all the time just because I want them to know they are loved and cared about. I run meetings with faith hoping it’s helping them somehow and do countless speaking engagements simply trying to pass on my experience, strength, and hope to those in attendance. Yet, I continue to be judged in a negative light regardless. The fact is, most here in this neck of the woods have never seemed to like me from the start. Even my partner’s family has unfairly judged me from the beginning.

Whenever I’ve asked individuals around here why they think this is, I’m told maybe I should try more of “this”, and so I try to do more of “this”, and they continue to not like me. Others say I should try more of “that”, and so I try to do more of “that”, and yet they still don’t like me. It hasn’t mattered whether I try to go up, or down, or left, or right, or jump, or sit still, as no matter what I’ve done to find acceptance here in the Midwest, it just hasn’t happened.

I know I’m a good person. I know I have a good heart. And I know I care about people…A LOT, even when they don’t like me or care about me one bit. Like one of my bordering neighbors, someone I helped restore her front yard over the past six years, never asking for anything in return, who suddenly decided to scream at me at the top of her lungs the other day, for all the neighbors to hear, over an issue that I was fully willing to talk peacefully about. She too has never liked me from the start and always has believed I had some hidden agenda doing all the work I did for free, when I never had any agenda at all other than to add beauty to the world. But even with her yelling at and hating me, I still care about her.

I wasn’t always this type of person though. I used to be such a terrible and selfish person who hated everybody, including myself. 12 Step recovery changed that. And so did my relationship with God. I know my best friend Cedric would support these statements and say how much I’ve become a far more selfless and unconditionally loving individual now. Why people around here never seem to focus on that, I frankly don’t know.

So, if you happen to be someone who is judging me, or labeling me negatively, or purposely avoiding me, or has a less opinion of me, know my heart grieves surrounding this because I try so hard to be a good person on this planet. Why you don’t see that, I don’t know. I still love you unconditionally nonetheless. Why? Because God opened my heart enough to see the good in you, even when you can’t or won’t and may never will see the good in me. And I’m ok with that because God knows I am a good person. I pray one day you’ll see that too…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

There is a short parable titled “The Scorpion and the Frog” that I love greatly because it has added so much value to my spiritual journey in life, especially as of late, where I find myself revisiting its deeper meaning quite a bit. The following is that parable: 

“One day a scorpion is on a river’s edge and sees a frog sitting nearby. The scorpion asks the frog to carry him across the river on its back. The frog hesitates out of fear that the scorpion will sting him. The scorpion argues that if he stings the frog in the middle of the river, they will both drown, so it wouldn’t make sense for him to do so. The frog agrees and allows the scorpion to get on its back. Halfway across the river though, the scorpion does indeed sting the frog. As they both are about to drown, the frog demands why the scorpion still stung him, knowing very well their fates are now both sealed. The scorpion replied, ‘It’s in my nature…’”

There is one specific reason why I find myself connecting to this parable so much lately and it’s because I realize how much of my life has been spent being that frog, inviting one scorpion after another into my life who I know aren’t good for my spiritual journey. Scorpions who always say all the right things that lead me to welcome them into my life or back into it if they had been there before, where eventually, there always seems to be something I do they don’t like, that doesn’t meet what their mind says I should be doing, where I got stung by them in the process, through their words or actions, leaving me feeling wounded or worse. How many times I’ve invited and re-invited people over the years who were scorpions like this is countless. Scorpions I’ve allowed to hurt me again and again, who I consistently forgive each time, until they hurt me again, constantly leaving me feeling bruised, broken, and abandoned at some inevitable point.

Such a tragic pattern began long ago with parents who never taught me what a healthy relationship was supposed to look like. Parents are typically the first to model that sort of thing when their kid is growing up. But my parents didn’t know how to do this because they struggled so much with addiction and mental health issues. They essentially became my first scorpions in life, as time and time again, even though I was a good and honest kid, I continuously seemed to do something that got me unfairly judged and punished over. Hurt people, tend to hurt people as they say and my parents did that a lot to my sister and I. Eventually, I found myself in one relationship after another with scorpions just like them, who judged me more than loved me unconditionally. I sought addiction to cope, addiction that made me become more the scorpion than the frog, where I became the one who stung others out of my own brokenness. When I finally found true recovery from a life of addictions though, sadly, I fell back into the pattern of being that frog all over again and have been struggling with it a lot ever since.

Being that I’ve been both the scorpion and the frog in life, I know the patterns involved with each quite well. Scorpions often get angry and tend to see their own negativity and negative actions in others more than in themselves, especially with those frogs in life, judging them far more than praising. Frogs on the other hand are typically codependent types of individuals who try to find happiness by helping a scorpion, a happiness that’s always short-lived because no scorpion can ever be kept fully happy by a frog and will inevitably lash out at them at some point.

What I know now from a life of playing both the scorpion and the frog is that I don’t want to be either anymore. I’m tired of playing these roles in life, where I’ve lashed out in anger unfairly at someone else from my own places of brokenness within and where I’ve allowed people I care about to sting me repeatedly with one judgment after another, finding more fault than good. I’m ready to be something different, a dragonfly perhaps, one who will fly high above that river, soaring above all the drama that will always come in that parable of the scorpion and the frog…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson