Category: Healing From Chronic Pain And Illness

These entries focus on the spiritual side of healing for chronic pain and illnesses.

I Have A Dream With Phi Kappa Psi…

I have a dream, and I just want to place it out there today via this piece of writing, simply to claim it, knowing that even in this small action, I’m setting a ball in motion in a world where I believe anything can be possible, so long as I leave it in the hands of my Higher Power, whom I choose to refer to as God.

Look, I’ve spent much of my life trying to control my future. I’ve had many dreams and taken so many actions to make them come to fruition, except those that have, were never fulfilling, which is why I’m trying to do something different now by leaving this dream I have right now in life entirely within the control of God.

My dream is to work for the national side of my fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, with my fraternity’s headquarters in other words, where I would be sent around the country to each of our active chapters, presently there are over 83, to tell my story of addiction to recovery and all the trauma I experienced in between, a story I continue to tell here locally in the Toledo, Ohio area, day in and day out, as a volunteer.

I love what I do as a volunteer. I love helping out at detoxes, halfway houses, sober living situations, with the nursing students at the University of Toledo (UT), with UT’s Phi Kappa Psi chapter, and with those I sponsor in recovery as well, sharing my story of addiction to recovery from the depths of my heart, as it seems to truly be helping others, providing many a healing path from their own traumas of life and one that also leads them away from a life of addiction.

The idea of going from chapter to chapter, meeting with brothers around the country within my very own fraternity, who are just beginning their lives really would be a dream come true for me. My only hope in that job would be that in doing it, I could help many avert going down the long, dark, and circuitous path I went in life that took me nowhere but into the depths of despair and addiction. I honestly believe that doing this work would be invaluable with all that’s going on in our world right now.

The fact is alcohol and drug use are both rapidly on the rise throughout college campuses across the nation. Addiction continues to increase as well amongst the younger generations. Combine that with the hazing that still keeps happening in various social organizations, especially with fraternities and sororities, and terrible tragedies continue to happen. Each year it seems as if another death occurs due to this. A number of my own chapters over the years have lost their affiliations with their respective campuses due to these circumstances.

Most of my descent into addiction began during my collegiate years after I entered Greek life. There, I always felt like I had no one to talk to, no one to relate to, no one to open up to really. If I had just heard a story like mine from a fellow brother, it might have planted a necessary seed that could have sprouted far earlier in my life, preventing a lot of the pain and hardship I placed upon my life by living in so many addictions. This is precisely why I have this dream, because I’ve seen how my story has helped do this very thing within many individuals over the years and I give all that credit to God and not myself.

But a few years ago, I became overzealous and tried to control this dream by sending out 20 personal letters to 20 different Phi Kappa Psi chapters within driving distance of my home in Toledo. I was quite bold in those letters and honestly, I don’t think I was coming from a humble space at all back then. It’s probably why I never heard from a single chapter. Not one. So, I took that as a sign from my Higher Power that maybe it wasn’t the right time, or wasn’t my path, or I just needed to get humbler. Regardless, I backed off, and continued to do my volunteer work ever since, always hoping in the back of my mind, that one day I might work more closely with my fraternity I have come to love far more deeply, especially recently.

Nevertheless, I may not have a specific degree in what I’m doing right now in life by telling my story of addiction to recovery to everyone that I do. And I may not have a certificate that backs any of what I share from the depths of my heart each time either. But, what I do have is a passion and gift to speak, one I feel that comes from my Higher Power, which is why I’m leaving this with God, who knows I’m ready to go wherever and whenever it is I’m meant to go to help others. If that somehow, one day, can be with all my brothers of Phi Kappa Psi around the chapters of our nation, I truly would be finally living out a dream that I know would be 100% fulfilling…

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

How Do You Define Who You Are In This World?

In just over two months, I’ll be 50 years old, and I’ve been struggling a lot with that fact. Because honestly, as I hit that mid-life stride, I’ve really been struggling identifying who I am.

There is one school of thought that says who we are is defined by what we go out there and make happen with our own actions. There’s another school of thought that says who we are is based upon waiting upon God for guidance and direction to know precisely what that is to go do. And there’s yet another school of thought that says the answer lies somewhere between those two. So, in the process of trying to define who we are, many of us choose to base it upon what we do for a living. Others of us base it upon the status we hold in society. Some of us base it upon the titles we hold in the world around us. There are even those of us who base it upon all the awards we garner in life. And in the past decade or so, many of us are basing who we are upon how many followers we have gained on our social media. Honestly, I don’t want my life to be based upon any of these things. I want who I am to be defined by something else, something far deeper.

I guess you would say this is the very reason why I’m in the middle of having somewhat of a mid-life crisis over this. Unfortunately, most of my life I have based who I am on each of those things and more and all of it feels so very superficial. Who I am shouldn’t be based upon what I’ve seen and done, or the jobs I’ve held, or the titles I’ve gained, or the money I’ve had, or all the partners I’ve dated, or the friends I’ve friended, or any popularity I’ve ever come into, or on anything externally whatsoever, as none of that is going to matter when I die.

I realize now that I’ve consistently been basing who I am by the world’s standards all because I got so overlooked so often in my life starting back when I was a young kid. Being ignored more than not by own family and peers throughout my childhood, I eventually turned to drugs and alcohol and many other addictions to numb myself from it all. Soon I forgot about who I was entirely and began basing who I was on those around me and what they thought of me, making me completely miserable in the process. But here I am about to turn 50 in a few months, and I can at least say there is one thing I’ve come to see is necessary to defining who I am and that’s having a relationship with my inner child, something I ignored for most of my life. I nurture my inner child now and do my best every, single, day to listen to what is important to him. And if there is one genuine thing that comes from doing so, it’s deciding who I am from a much deeper perspective than what much of the world uses as a defining perspective of themselves.

At my core, who I am, is just a kid with a big open heart, who truly loves people on a very deep level, who has a great imagination, who is extremely sensitive to others, who believes in the best in everyone regardless of their past or present, and who cares about even the slightest of pain in another when he sees it. That is who I am today and while on the grand scheme of things that won’t make me very memorable on this planet when it’s my time to pass from this plane of existence, I at least feel I’m being authentic now to the real me, the me that I abandoned as a kid because the world told me I needed to be something otherwise to matter.

I matter because I exist. And who I am in existing is a really great kid who’s grown up to see the world with an unconditionally loving heart. In the world’s standards, that may not matter, but in God’s standards, maybe that’s all that matters…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew

A Relationship Won’t Take Your Emptiness Away…

As I write this, I’ve mentally and emotionally been trying to prepare myself for my trip home tomorrow after having spent an amazing week with my sister and her family. Contrary to what so many single people often believe, that if they just had a partner, they wouldn’t feel so empty and alone, I still feel that way even though I have a good relationship with someone who does care deeply for me.

Time and time again, many of my single friends over the years have told me that all would be well in their world if they just had a partner to love them. Yet, I’ve had quite a few long-term relationships in my life with individuals who have loved me immensely, but still felt more alone than not during each of them. So, how can that be?

Because I believe that all my aloneness, all my emptiness, and that huge pit of despair I’ve frequently felt within me throughout much of my life, that I’ve consistently sought to fill with addictions, with relationships, and a vast number of other things as well, has nothing to do with anything I don’t have but my own lack of unconditional love for myself.

Lately, my ego has even been trying to convince myself that maybe if I could just get out of Toledo where I reside now, and move back east, that my inner world would somehow right itself. But I know that’s a lie as well that I like to tell myself regularly. Because my emptiness has nothing to do with that either. For as much as I’m not a Midwesterner and do prefer living on the East coast, especially near the ocean, my emptiness won’t change from a geographical move either.

The simple fact is my emptiness is coming from not loving myself enough unconditionally.

While I love the volunteer work I do, my 12 Step recovery and sobriety, and the many ways I try to be a selfless individual nowadays, I really don’t love myself enough unconditionally. In fact, I place far too many conditions on loving myself. I often place many expectations around who I should be, rather than embracing me for who I am right now. I frequently judge myself as well and often become my harshest critic. The reality I see now is that there is no person, place, or thing that can ever be a part of my life that will change my emptiness, even God, if I don’t start doing a much better job loving myself unconditionally.

It is sad to say that I have spent so much of my life looking to fill my inner void with something outside of myself, when I see now that my emptiness will only ever be truly filled by having a lot more love for myself, something that I think God has been trying to show me for a very, very, long time.

Ultimately, I think that God loves each and every one of us unconditionally, but how can we ever feel that if we don’t love ourselves in the very same way. When I fail to love myself unconditionally, the more I beat myself up, the more I judge myself, and the more I place even greater unreasonable expectations and demands upon my life. The longer that goes on, the more I end up living in negativity, trying to fill all that emptiness with people, places, and things, none of which are ever successful filling.

If we can’t offer ourselves the unconditional love we deserve, we really do start becoming our harshest critics in life who are constantly looking outside of ourselves to fix that brokenness within. And there is no one, not one single person on this planet, and not even God, who can change that unless we become willing to offer it to ourselves as well. I know this is a hard task, especially when much of my life has been spent doing everything but, yet it’s something I am working on doing far more now than ever before. And it begins with removing the belief that someone or something out there can change any of my emptiness within.

I pray that I will truly love myself a lot more unconditionally in 2022 than I have in many of my years past, and I pray that in doing so, I will feel enough love within to stop falling into the belief that a relationship, or anything else, can ever fill the void within me…because only loving myself unconditionally, like I know God does, can do that…

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