Category: Words To Live By

If there is one thing that definitely seems to irk me every time it happens during the holiday season over all the years I’ve been with my partner Chris, it’s whenever we receive a Christmas card addressed to us as: “Christopher Falbo & Andrew”.

Why does this irk me so much? Well, aside from the fact that I’ve been with Chris for almost nine years now, where one might think it be important to address a card to us with our full names after all these years of being together, those who continue to omit my last name are always family members and friends of his who have either met me many times before or have received cards back from us with my full name on them multiple times already. And even at the very minimum, it’s not too hard to locate my last name on social media these days because all of them have ties to either him or I on Facebook where my last name is clearly present.

While I know this may appear to you as something that shouldn’t be that big of deal, my last name is so very important to me today. I’ve worked hard to accept my biological name over the years, as I used to be so ashamed of it due to all the craziness that stemmed from my childhood. Having once gone by only my initials “A.D.” for almost two full decades, it was quite freeing to finally find enough healing and acceptance to start going by my full name again. Today, I am quite proud of my name and often refer to myself by my full biological name as “Andrew Arthur Dawson”, especially when I do public speaking or whenever I finish any of these blog articles. That’s why it hurts so much each time we receive holiday cards year after year after year from the same people who already know my last name but never take the time to place it on their envelopes. It honestly makes me feel like I don’t matter. But that indeed is the deeper issue.

Having been in my partner’s life for as long as I have now, most of his family have never really taken to me no matter how hard I’ve tried to connect with them. I came to acceptance of this a number of years back, but it still hurts nonetheless receiving cards from many of them where some have even put my first name in parentheses, “Christopher Falbo (& Andrew)”, almost as if it was an afterthought.

This distinctly triggers painful memories from my childhood where I never felt like I mattered to anyone and instead felt invisible everywhere I went, even in my own family home. Living here in Toledo has brought much of that pain to the surface for me to face and is presently what I’m working on now more times than not with my therapist, Linda Smith (who’s an excellent therapist for difficulties like this by the way!)

Thankfully, I do know deep down I do matter and that it ultimately doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things when my last name is forgotten or excluded by another on things like a holiday greeting card. But, having spent so much of my life defining myself by what others do to or think of me, I see now that there’s still plenty of work ahead of me to do in accepting others, even when they don’t remember for whatever their reasons, that my last name is Dawson.

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

Have you ever had that feeling inside like something bad, possibly even really bad, is about to happen? I’ve been having that very feeling a lot lately and I can’t seem to shake it no matter what I do.

I’m not sure whether it has to do with our country being so completely divided right now and hearing constant talks of civil wars and states seceding, or whether it’s knowing that guns have been selling out everywhere and the fact that many I know who’ve never owned a gun and been anti-gun now own several or more, or whether it’s related to these COVID vaccines that have been so completely rushed to approval that it doesn’t seem like they’ve had enough time to get fully tested to know their true impact upon the masses, or whether it’s connected to the countless abnormal weather patterns that have been happening and all the oddities I’ve observed in how nature is responding to them, or dare I even say this last one, could it be related to the growing reports of possible sightings of UFO’s that even seem to be making our headline news now, along with all those strange monoliths appearing in random places across the globe? 2020 really has been such an exceptionally unexplainable year, so who knows, maybe why I’m feeling this impending sense of doom is related to all of this or maybe it’s related to something else altogether. Frankly, I don’t know.

What I do know is that I don’t feel any sense of peace or normalcy in life anymore and I also feel like everyone is acting out of sorts, doing out of sorts type behaviors that don’t make any bit of sense to me. And given how I’ve always been a person extremely capable of understanding people and why they act certain ways, I find myself second guessing why anyone is acting the way they are now.

Truth be told, I just feel generally afraid of our future now and what it holds for all of us and I really don’t want to be. I feel like I should have a greater sense of faith in my Higher Power currently, but I’m definitely feeling like I’m falling quite short in that department lately. Prior to this pandemic though, I most assuredly didn’t feel that way, but here I am, ten months later, feeling like I’m living in an alternate reality, like somehow, I was transferred into a multiverse, to say Earth-2 for example. Of course, I’m joking about the multiverse part, but really, I feel completely at odds with our present reality.

Having spent the better part of a decade accepting incredible physical limitations due to health conditions out of my control, what’s been happening in 2020 seems like icing on a cake that doesn’t taste good at all. Sometimes lately, I even wonder if we’re suddenly going to see a headline hit our airwaves that says a huge asteroid is hurtling towards the earth, i.e. Deep Impact or Armageddon! I know, I know, maybe I’ve just watched too many doomsday movies over the years that filled my mind with plenty of post-apocalyptic visions, or maybe the absurdness of 2020 has simply got to me to too much and made them all appear far too real in the sense that anything crazy could happen now.

I most assuredly don’t know though what the future holds for my health, for our country, or for our planet, and although I wish I did, I know the only thing I can do in the midst of feeling like this, like something bad is about to happen, is trust that God has it all under control. Ultimately, that’s what’s kept me going for the past decade as I’ve suffered from one painful ailment after another with no end in sight. So, I guess it is time to totally apply that to this fearful feeling of our imminent future and trust that the same Source that’s guided me safely thus far, will continue to guide me safely through whatever else is meant to happen.

Peace, love, light and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

When a close friend of mine opted to not stop over on Thanksgiving evening after his own family celebration had ended, I was really disappointed and got totally down about it. But I eventually realized my sadness really wasn’t about him at all. The truth is, it was more about wishing I still had a family to celebrate a season that’s always meant to be so festive.

While I do have a partner and consider him family after almost nine years of being together, there remains a profound emptiness within me this season I can’t seem to shake. Thankfully, we did manage to festively decorate both the outside and inside of our home this year, yet even in all this brightly lit cheer, my spirits remain down. Whether that’s due to this pandemic continuing to rage on so viciously, or all the division and doubt that arose from this presidential election, or simply from the fact that having chronic physical pain with no answers and no relief for so long now has taken its final toll upon me I don’t know.

Truth be told, this was my very first Thanksgiving holiday weekend ever in my life where I didn’t go see any movie in one of the local theaters, tune into some part of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, go out to any stores for some Christmas shopping, or dine out at a restaurant for a Thanksgiving Day feast. Not experiencing any of that ultimately left me pondering the many Thanksgiving celebrations I enjoyed as a kid.

Thanksgiving weekends growing up were always one of my most favorite times of the year. I spent the majority of them at my Grandma Dawson’s home in Glen Cove on Long Island in New York. I have plenty of fond memories there where those holiday weekends always seemed to be rare times where my family came together with no drama whatsoever.

Our several hour drive there with holiday music playing in the car, eating lunch along the way at the same shiny silver diner once we crossed onto Long Island where I’d consistently order a delicious greasy breakfast or a turkey club and fries, finishing either with a huge piece of cake, then playing hours of ping-pong in my Grandmother’s basement upon arrival, smelling her homemade popovers baking in the oven early the next morning, watching every single moment of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade while eating them loaded with butter, dining on a huge turkey feast later that afternoon, pigging out on tasty desserts several hours after that, then playing board games and cards late into the holiday night, excitedly standing in a very long line at a jewelry store with my father the next morning where we always attempted to win a real diamond in a large bowl of mostly cubic zirconia, catching a blockbuster at the Galleria multiplex later that day, eating out at this fancy restaurant on the waterfront when it was over where I’d always get the most incredible slice of ricotta cheesecake, having awesome turkey leftover sandwiches the next day where I’d load stuffing and cranberries in between my slices of toast, taking walks and drives around the area to see all the holiday lights, then finally heading home on Sunday with gifts in tow to put under our tree, these are just some of the many tender memories I have of Thanksgiving weekends with my family growing up.

So yes, I miss that childhood family, even with all those addictions and mental health issues that plagued us. I consistently felt loved by them during each of these holiday seasons when they came around. While my parents may have had their serious shortcomings, it was this time of the year that I always felt loved and cared for. I only wish I felt that in my present life.

So, if you happen to have a family that you get to spend this holiday season with, please do your best to treasure and love them unconditionally. Cherish every moment you have with them, as there will come a time where you don’t have a holiday season with them anymore and are left with nothing but your beautiful memories of them. Memories that many of us in the world are holding onto dearly right now, especially during these trying times, and especially when a festive season isn’t feeling so very festive.

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