The Daily G.I.F.T. from The GratiDude

Everything in the Universe changes when YOU change. Want Change? Be Change.

Me and The GratiDude had a very unusual weekend that entailed a great deal of entertaining in my Bachelor Bungalow.  This type of hustle and bustle would’ve been much more common at the bigger house with the mother of my children and my kids back in the day, however it felt great in this new chapter to host and cook for people, which are two of my favorite things.

This weekend was a particularly interesting one from an energy and dynamic perspective as a dear old friend from NorCal that goes back to my very earliest days out there circa 1990.

For the sake of this story will call him Sequoia.

Sequoia is a brilliant man, incredible father, global citizen, an intellect, a mench, entrepreneur, and deep down a really sad, traumatized child.

His health is deteriorating his relationships are toxic.

His struggles are real, and he feels to a certain degree at the crossroads as to what to do.

It was fascinating when he showed up and I had to remind him again as he pulled liquor bottles out of his suitcase that I had not drank any alcohol in over five years.  His question to me was “not not at all not even a little bit?”

No Sequoia, not at all.

It didn’t take long for Sequoia to admit that subconsciously, and maybe even consciously, he knew he was visiting me because emotionally and spiritually we have always been very very connected since the first day we met.

Our early years together in Santa Cruz in Junior College were spent philosophizing, hiking, mountain biking, surfing, reading, really healthy and expansive endeavors, sharing information and lots of high energy experiences.

We traveled the country together with his mother of his children in a VW van in our early 20s and we looked like a circus combined with the Grateful Dead, rolling across America. 

It was one of the greatest weeks of my life.

We stayed close across all these different periods of our life however, obviously we’ve not hung out in person extensively since I quit drinking and this was an entirely different experience for my brother Sequoia.  I congratulated him for being on his path to self-love and taking care of himself and pointing out that his trip to Sarasota was a conscious or subconscious step towards healing and moving in the right direction.  In other words, you’re already on the path to healing and getting better when you’re making decisions like this.

What my friend’s situation really elucidates is that non-integrated trauma, or burying difficult memories and experiences from your childhood, clearly does not make them go away, and in fact, just exacerbates those traumas.  The challenge is to realize that the pain you were experiencing that’s manifesting in unhealthy behaviors and decisions/self-destructive actions, are much worse than what you could or would encounter when you tackle some of these long-standing traumas.

You have to eat the elephant one bite at a time and the reality is that’s the path to healing and to getting better is to understanding how things like your breath and thought awareness contribute to your ability to come into the present moment of now. 

Healing can take place by thinking of future thoughts that generate anxiety or delving into past thoughts that stir up regret.