I write because it's Therapeutic, I write because I am Vulnerable, I write because it frees ME from my psychological storm that I have graciously been blessed to survive 🙏. I write because of you, DAD!
When I am not writing I feel stagnant, complacent, and emotionally dead. My lifelong sobriety is being infiltrated with my unhealthy learned behaviors and distorted thought patterns. The family disease of addiction and mental health disorders have infiltrated and paralyzed me. I am an adult child of an alcoholic (ACOA) who happens to be a WWII veteran, my father’s illness forced me into my recovery. Therefore, to overcome being dysfunctional on arrival will require respect, reflections, resilience, resistance, reciprocity, responsibilities, and relationships. Personally, the family disease of addiction and or mental health has emotionally disconnected me from myself. So, the eighth child from a family of ten would have to live with feeling oppressed, suppressed, and depressed for five decades (Who Am I)?
Coincidentally, my pen along with my paper became my healthy relationship, the two are attracted to one another. Ironically, it continues to be unhealthy relationships and behaviors that motivates me to journal and bring the two together. My thinking patterns have been an unwelcome inheritance that I now realize contributed to my distorted thoughts. So, being complacent or still has kept me ill and with compulsive tendencies. The initial pain when my pen hits the paper allows me to (heal and reveal) have an authentic relationship. An experience that I never had with myself or eye-witnessed in the family dynamics of which I was raised.
As my recovery process continues to educate, equip, and empower me. My years of silence have provided me an opportunity to focus on a solution to leave my home of complacency and grow through my uncomfortability. So, assessing moments that I have displaced and suppressed for decades has motivated me to turn on my (TV) Trauma Vision and Breaking my Silence. The Silence of a Man who was left for dead for three generations, watched in disbelief, lived in grief and with no signs of relief. However, “No Weapon Formed Against Me Shall Prosper. “ A.M.E.N.
So, now through my writing I continue to be courageously comfortable being uncomfortable, emotionally empathetic, and most importantly I want to live and teach my son to be FREE. Therefore, my attitude of gratitude has transformed a boy who survived being emotionally scarred. My feeling of being neglected from a boy to a man has now motivated the husband and father to continue to emotionally nurture my son Isaiah and thank my father for showing me how to be a husband, dad, and a responsible MAN.
A Male Emotionally Neglected + A Male Emotionally Nurtured =
A 🙏 M🙏 E🙏 N🙏
Donald Gunther
RCP, RCPF, CPS-MH