It Really Is Ok To Cry!

Did you ever have anyone tell you when you were growing up that you shouldn’t cry? Or if you happen to be a guy who’s reading this, were you taught that grown men don’t cry? If you answered yes to either of these questions, then you’re not alone as I did as well. But I’m here to tell you that I sobbed in a parking lot at the mall a couple of days ago and I’m not ashamed of it either because I’ve learned on my spiritual journey that it really is ok to cry.

It’s truly sad how many people grow up believing that it’s not ok to show this type of emotional response. In my case, I can remember being bullied by some kids in the neighborhood so much so that I came home one day gushing in tears. When my mother saw me in that state of duress, she told me to stop crying and that I needed to toughen up. It wasn’t too long after this that she enrolled me in Tae Kwon Do classes mostly because she didn’t want me to be a big baby. So can you guess what happened to me the next time I was bullied? I got angry and punched a kid in the face instead, breaking my hand in the process. And from that point forward anger started becoming my go to emotion instead of tears.

Over the years it became harder and harder for me to get in touch with those tears the more I lived in that anger. Sure I got weepy during many drunken binges for all the years I was an active alcoholic. But after becoming clean and sober, it took an incredible amount of pain for me to get in touch with the emotions that produced my tears. Often, it just seemed like my eyes were a dried up well.

Take for example when my father died from suicide. I remember my sister asking me at his funeral if I was ok because I wasn’t expressing myself through any tears. In fact, almost three years went by after his death before I even opened up about it and cried and that actually took me going away on a spiritual retreat for it to happen. The same thing held true when my mother tragically died, except in her case I stayed angry for almost double the time I did over my father’s death until I was able to cry.

There have been many other painful moments in my life as well where I haven’t been able to elicit even a single tear. But thankfully, my 12 Step recovery work helped me to draw much closer to God who in turn showed me that it really is ok to cry, especially given how beneficial crying is in the healing process. I always feel so much better after my tears are shed and I believe the reason for that relates to the energy that’s released when it happens. When I finally found the tears over my father’s passing after all those years, it was as if each one was a release of the anger I had held onto for so long. That’s why I became so grateful when I found recovery because I started to find the waterworks on a regular basis and I know that helped me to heal much of my past anger. But lately though I seem to be struggling again with being able to cry with any regularity and that’s been frustrating me quite a bit. With all the heightened physical pains I’ve been enduring for as long as I have, I’ve desperately wanted to cry on more days than not hoping it might help ease some of my discomfort. Alas, that hasn’t been able to happen at all in the past six months or so, at least not until the other day that is.

I honestly don’t know why my tears were finally able to manifest after so many months of absence, but I’m extremely thankful they did. There is something I noticed though as I sat there in my front seat bawling my eyes out. I kept on looking out my window wondering if anyone was going to walk by and see me in shambles. I know that action alone says there’s still a part of me afraid to show my tears, especially in front of others.

So it’s obvious I still have a little more work to do to counteract some negative childhood programming that relates to me showing my tears. Hopefully over time though God will continue to help me become less and less afraid to display this emotional response because I know how crucial that is to my health and healing. In the meantime, I will continue to remind myself what I’ve learned on my spiritual journey so far in life, which is that it really is ok for me to cry, even if I may be one of those grown men…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Looking Beneath The Surface In Bill Murray’s “St. Vincent”

Are you the type of individual who normally judges someone at face value? Normally I’m not these days, but when I think of Bill Murray as an actor, my first thoughts usually aren’t of someone who takes on an overly dramatic role in a movie. Oddly enough, that’s exactly the type of part he played in his latest venture, “St. Vincent”, which proved to be quite a rewarding departure from all the other iconic characters he’s played over the years. And ironically, this movie became a great reminder of why I should never judge someone at face value, because often there’s so much more depth hiding beneath every person’s surface.

My truth is that I used to judge most people at face value for years instead of looking for any depth beneath their surface. In Bill Murray’s case, I always pegged him as a hysterically humorous actor and not much more because of the roles he frequently played in movies such as Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, What About Bob, and Caddyshack, the first three of which are actually personal favorites. But like most actors and actresses attempt to do as their careers evolve, Murray slowly began taking on slightly more serious parts over the years. Maybe all of them have been leading up to his role in St. Vincent, as it’s this movie that truly portrays his depth is far deeper than just a comedian on screen, much like Tom Hanks and Robin Williams were able to demonstrate along the way in their own acting careers.

In Murray’s latest film, he plays a man named Vincent who by all appearances is a completely disheveled, selfish, conniving drunkard and nothing more. And that’s precisely what his new neighbors (Maggie, played by Melissa McCarthy, and Oliver, played by Jaeden Lieberher) see right off the bat when their moving company accidentally damages Vincent’s old convertible upon arrival. We soon learn after this that Maggie has to work long hours to support her son, which in turn leaves Oliver to figure out life much on his own. As fate normally seems to intertwine two people together who are meant to learn lessons from each other, Oliver is brought into Vincent’s life the very next day when a bully at school ends up stealing some of his possessions, which included the keys to his home. Forced to babysit someone who’s obviously not a baby at all, Vincent does his most dysfunctional best to take care of Oliver until his mother can come home from work. From the very moment Oliver walks into Vincent’s home that afternoon, he does as many children would regularly do. He starts looking for the best in Vincent regardless of the first impression he made the prior day. And while Maggie and the rest of the world throughout most of the movie fail to see Vincent for anything more than what he shows at face value, Oliver is the only one who takes the time to see the gold that truly lies beneath Vincent’s very surface.

Being in recovery from addiction, I frequently have come across a wide variety of personalities, some very much like Vincent himself. But through my spiritual work, I’ve come to embrace the childlike side of me enough so that I can look at others just like Oliver was able to do with Vincent in this film. This in turn has helped me to look beneath the surface time and time again with various individuals who are often passed over and ignored because of how they usually present themselves at face value. In every case when I have, I’ve always found the treasure of one’s heart and soul present in some fashion or another.

The real irony here though is that at one point in time, I was actually no different than Vincent in how the rest of the world perceived me. I was a selfish, self-centered, dry drunk who did everything possible to keep everyone as far away as I could from my heart. But God always saw fit to bring individuals with the personality of Oliver into my life exactly when I needed it, to show me the gold that was waiting to be seen just beneath my own surface.

So I want to offer my sincere gratitude to Bill Murray for starring in the movie St. Vincent, as he reminded me not once, but twice on why I should always look beneath the surface and never take anyone at face value. Not only did he show his incredible aptitude to handle an overly dramatic role such as this, his role as Vincent clearly demonstrated the depth that’s usually hiding beneath every person’s surface, including my own…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

 

 

When It Becomes Necessary To Sever A Friendship…

I had to make a difficult decision recently to sever a friendship with someone and it definitely was far from easy. I’ve honestly never been the kind of guy to part ways with any type of friend, but I’ve realized that sometimes this becomes necessary to do so when it’s putting my recovery in serious jeopardy.

My recovery from addiction is by far the most important thing in my life today, next to my relationship with God of course. Years ago this wasn’t the case though and when it wasn’t, I was usually known to maintain friendships with those who regularly triggered me back into a relapse with any one of my former addictions. In almost every case, how this happened always began with me befriending someone I was attracted to who was overly codependent, mentally imbalanced, or still engaging in some form of an unhealthy addiction.

The reason why I always befriended people such as this was simply for my desire to constantly play the rescuer (thinking I could save someone), as well as to avoid looking at my own day-to-day character defects (not looking in the mirror). Thankfully, I’ve done enough recovery work in recent years to work through this character defect quite a bit, but unfortunately I haven’t been perfect in it either.

About a year ago when I came to Toledo, I met someone in a recovery meeting that followed the path of this character defect pretty well. I initially believed I was truly strong enough to handle this friendship with healthy boundaries, but over time I started to see I couldn’t. Arguments and great moments of stress often consumed me in this friendship along with an increased sense of resentment, none of which was healthy on any level for my spirituality or my recovery. Yet, I continued to maintain this connection for close to an entire year until I saw the only thing it was doing was leading me right back into a hard relapse with my sex and love addiction and codependency.

I always say that when the pain of doing something again and again becomes greater than not doing it ever again, that’s when the healthiest changes are usually made in life. In my case, this principle proved to be true when I clearly saw how unhealthy I was becoming by remaining in this unbalanced friendship.

Saying goodbye to this friend and increasing the distance between them and me was not an easy thing for me to do at all. I really felt this person’s pain and sense of being rejected in doing so, which caused my heart to hurt in the process. But, I know that if I was to remain friends with this person and fully relapse into any of my former addictions, my heart and a whole heck of a lot more of my life will end up suffering far greater.

Like my Massachusetts recovery friends once said with great frequency, while I may have another relapse waiting to happen within me, there’s no guarantee I’ll ever have another recovery. With that being said, sometimes it truly does become necessary in a life of recovery from addiction to sever ties with a friend, especially when it’s putting all of that in serious jeopardy. I just thank God I was able to recognize this before it got too late…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson