Irritable Brain

The Wedding

Went to my son's wedding last week. It was really nice. I was proud. He's grown into a good man and I'm just tickled pink(if you can imagine me pink) with my daughter in-law. It made me reflect a little. Actually, it made me reflect a lot.

The first thing I reflected on was both his mother and my daughter's mother have almost the same name. Kathy and Cathy respectively. Go figure. I didn't even realize it until my son and daughter were arguing about it when they were 4 and 5.

I heard a commotion and upon investigation I heard my son say "My Momma's name is Kathy!". This was followed by my daughter yelling "My Momma's name is Cathy!". "SHIT" I thought. All this time and I never thought about this fact before. I had running relationships with 2 C/Kathys.  An Eskimo Cathy in Alaska and an African-American Kathy in Baltimore giving birth to my daughter and son one year apart. OMG! I can't even begin to explain how I managed to tell them they both were right and why.

The next thing I reflected on was both their mothers started going to church and became very religious after they broke up with me. Go figure again. I don't know what I do to women that makes them run straight to Jesus after they break up with me. I don't worry about it too much. I'm just glad I do good work for the Lord.

I then reflected on the fact that both of their mother's had a child by me and married someone else. I guess I'm just a great sparring partner, but not good enough for the main event. Go figure one more time.

All that reflecting started to give me a headache. If my daughter ever gets married, I think I'm going to take about 6 Excedrin before I go to the wedding!    

My Spiritual Iditarod

The Iditarod is a thousand mile dog sled race between Anchorage and Nome in Alaska. In the spring of 1978, my first year in Nome, I was a volunteer coordinator at the end of the trail. It ranks up there as one of the most exciting things I ever participated in in my life. I was bitten by Iditarod Fever.

During my second year working the race, a local Eskimo from a village called Shishnaref decided to run the race. About 3/4 way through the race he disappeared. As a coordinator, part of my job was keeping track of the racers and their teams. This guy left one village check point and never arrived at the next village. This had never happened before.

We were frantic for about five or six days. Bush pilots and military rescue aircraft combed the desolate landscape searching for him. He finally showed up at the end of the race. He was the last musher in. When questioned about his sudden disappearance, he said he knew he wasn't going to win the race so he went hunting. Nothing to worry about. He found himself in an area that intrigued him and decided to explore it.

I can identify. I did the same thing recently on a different level. Some of you may recall me writing about my spiritual/recovery journey ( Archives-November 2009-Tao and My Three Warriors ). That spiritual journey for me is very akin to the Iditarod. It's long and challenging. Sometimes there's a trail to follow, sometimes I have to break my own trail. I have to be careful of my choices. The wrong choice in this harsh spiritual and emotional environment could be very hazardous.

Happily going down my spiritual trail I suddenly saw something very clearly that intrigued me. It was The Edge. Not just any edge. THE EDGE. The Edge of The Abyss. All my life I have had a mortal fear of The Edge. Suddenly  I saw it clearer than ever before. Historically I would head straight to the emergency room if I got within 10 miles of The Edge. Now it was so close I could reach out and touch it. I happened to look and there It was.

Seeing it up close wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. I walked right up to It and looked in. Then I took a flying leap and.....NOTHING! No closing my eyes and leaning forward. No laying down and rolling over. A FLYING LEAP! I just hung there. Got a good look in.

I really don't know what my expectations were but it definitely wasn't NOTHING. I just slid back on old terra firma, shrugged my shoulders, shook my head, and slowly walked back to the trail. NOTHING! I walked back slowly so that I could process what had just happened.

I realized that although I had just taken the Mother Of All Nestle' Plunges, I would have to take the long way down into The Abyss. Like the old tourists at the Grand Canyon riding their rental mules down the long winding dusty trails. No short cut for me.

At this stage of my spiritual Iditarod it's mostly breaking trail. Hard but satisfying work. You can look back and feel good about the progress you've made. The end of my Iditarod isn't Nome. Kabbalistically speaking, my destination is ME.

Cancer-Why I Am Grateful

I have a Black Hole in my life. It is populated with bad credit, debt, chronic pancreatitis, constant pain, and an Irish born nurse and African born doctor who also populate the late night shift of the emergency room of the Baltimore veterans hospital.

As gnawing as this Black Hole can be at times it is but a tiny speck in comparison to the enormous bright light of gratitude I have for everything else in my life, including cancer. GRATEFUL FOR CANCER? You bet!

Everyone who knows me knows I love to laugh. If you lived my life you would have to laugh too. Loud and often. I seem to go from one crisis to another. Financial crisis, medical crisis, emotional crisis, family crisis, etc,, etc. . It's like living in a never ending Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton movie with me in the lead role. If I were standing on the outside looking in I would be in a constant tickle instead of constant pain, so I continually look at my life in that way and forever amuse myself.

As I grew older I also discovered the awesome power of gratitude. It really doesn't take much to realize, at least in my case, I have way much more to be grateful for than to be negative about.

I have probably done more in my life than most men could do in two. I survived growing up in a block that some cab drivers will not take you to to this day. By the time I was 15 I was playing music professionally and had opened a show for Motown by the time I was old enough to get a drivers license.

I made it through the toughest boot camp in the United States military (Parris Island) and survived a war. I completed a counselor training program at one of the finest schools in the country (Johns Hopkins) having never finished high school (I have a GED).

I honed my new craft in one of the harshest environments on Earth, the Alaskan bush. I spent 3 years traveling to the 17 Eskimo villages of the Bering Strait region where I had to communicate with people speaking 3 different languages and 11 dialects.

I fathered a baby girl there who I brought back to the lower 48 and raised as a single parent, all while living with 3 mental illnesses. I also have a son here in Baltimore. I deeply feel my mental illnesses prevented me from being the father I would have liked to have been, but in spite of that, I have 2 children who love me very much.

I am very proud of the adults my children have grown into. They are both fantastic parents in their own right despite their paternal role model. That alone fills me with enough gratitude to make me burst. The 5 grandchildren they have produced are so loving it almost brings me to tears just writing about them.

I have 5 living sisters whom I adore dearly and who reciprocate that feeling ten fold. Their children and grandchildren are just as loving towards me as my own. Gratitude here is a no brainer.

I work with the best group of individuals on the planet. My work with NAMI (National Alliance in Mental Illness) has exposed me to some of the most giving, loving, nourishing relationships anyone could ask for. The clinicians I work with at the Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Recovery Center in the VA hospital in Baltimore are a dream team of coworkers. They were unconditionally welcoming to me from day one and have always treated me as an equal. They all have respected my input and have each had at some point added a mentoring aspect to our relationships.

My first fight with cancer was as a result of exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam war. Initially the doctors at the VA hospital told me it was so aggressive I pretty much had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel (not quite in those words). I agreed shortly thereafter to participate in a research project and 2 1/2 years later I went into remission. I've been in remission 6 years now.

That experience made me stronger in character, in spirit, mentally, and in many of my relationships. For that I am eternally grateful. Now you can understand why I am grateful to learn I have cancer again. A new cancer. A rare cancer. New opportunities for things to be grateful for. Hey, maybe even rare opportunities.

The worst that can happen is that I will lose this fight. In that case, I will be grateful to have a chance to get rid of that gnawing little Black Hole. A win-win situation. I will probably gratefully transition into my next stage of existence. Laughing all the way!

BP Money For Mental Health

Last week an Alabama fisherman was found dead on one of his boats. He had committed suicide. Sad. This week Alabama officials made the link between his suicide and the BP oil spill. Duh! This should be a wake up call for the Departments of Mental Health throughout the whole gulf region. What do they expect will happen when people have their livelihoods and whole ways of lives suddenly vanish under an oil slick? They still have rent to pay, mortgages, utility bills, car payments, food, and everything else that doesn't come free. Anxiety, depression, substance abuse, trauma, and a cast of plenty will populate this latest gulf drama.

I think either the federal government or the gulf states should make BP pony up some bucks (millions) for mental health care and support, both to the state mental health agencies as well as the community nonprofits that support them. What do you think?

I believe if the states track this we will see a surprising number of people impacted per mental illness.

Scary Movie

I just viewed the scariest movie I have ever seen. It was called Jesus Camp. Now, I don't have anything against religion or religious schools, but this place looked like the Evangelical Christian version of the fundamentalist Islamic madrassas in Pakistan.

The madrassas are fundamentalist Islamic schools for children that produce future clerics. They are also the breeding grounds for extremist violent terrorists. I'm not saying that Jesus Camp is producing violent terrorists, but there are some disturbing similarities.

Good or bad, the religious zeal is very apparent in both the madrassas and Jesus Camp. Madrassas would like to see a world dominated by Islamic fundamentalism, ruled by their version of Islamic law in the name of Allah. Jesus Camp envisions a United States dominated by Evangelical Christian fundamentalism, with a political system ruled by their version of Christian laws, in the name of God. Both make me shiver.

In the documentary the woman who runs the camp states the United States was created as one nation under God. She is referring to THEIR version of God. She forgets that this country was created as a place of religious freedom and plurality, not the tunnel visioned adaptation of one religious sect.

The children at Jesus Camp are not being educated, they are being indoctrinated! The people that run the camp have an "in your face" political agenda. This is a child version of a Pol Pot reeducation center with songs and games. The children are being programmed to grow up to be lawyers, judges, and politicians to hijack the political system.

Don't take my word for it. Get this documentary from Netflix or buy it on Amazon and watch it for yourself. Form your own opinion and discuss it with someone else.

The Birthday Party

Yesterday I was visiting my sister Jackie and she reminded me that my sister Pam, who lives across the street from Jackie, was having a birthday party for her 10 year old grandson. At 59 and 57 respectively, we are the patriarch and matriarch of the family. I am the oldest and only boy. She is the oldest girl. Our parents have passed away. We are obligated to attend family functions. I think my parents must have named me Royal because they knew this day was coming. I'm the king of the family!

Every family has that certain uncle everyone talks about. You know what I mean. You probably have one in your family.It's boring being the only uncle, so in my family I'm known as the Crazy Uncle. Not the mentally ill uncle. In my family it's a term of endearment. I'm the uncle that's a rascal. I'm the one that loves all little children and will say and do anything outrageous to get a laugh.

I go across the street and sit with my sister Pam at her kitchen table. I begin to survey the playing field. A number of relatives from my family. An older woman, a fiftyish looking woman, and a teenager who are representing my great-nephew's father's side of the family. (They are really there to be nosy.) A number of teens. The usual career criminals, both inside the family and friends of the family. Time to go to work.

I start with the 3-6 year olds first. One little girl about four is with one of my nieces. I ask the little girl her name. She tells me her name is Muffin. I tell her my name is Biscuit. She laughs and tells me my name isn't Biscuit. I tell her if she can be a muffin I can be a biscuit. I ask if I can have a hug and kiss and she shakes her head yes. She gives me a hug and I tell her how great a hug it is. She then plants a little kiss on my cheek. I grimace and shake my head wildly. "Wow" I exclaim. "I've never had a blueberry -pineapple tart kiss before!" She explodes with laughter and gives me another kiss. "A rainbow strawberry swirl kiss!" I yell. She was in little girl heaven and I made me a new friend for life. I did that with all the little ones and moved on to the 8-12 set.

The 8-12 set fear me like the Swine Flu. I hunted them down. Each one I encountered I gave a big hug and kissed them on the forehead in front of their friends. Even the boys. Especially the boys! I then asked each one loudly if they were still sitting in the Dummy Row of the classroom, totally horrifying them. On to the teens.I like the teens almost as much as the little ones. I always have great fun with them. First the girls.

My two youngest nieces are in high school and were at the party with some of their friends. I gave my nieces a hug and kiss and they began to introduce me to their girlfriends. When they got to the last girl, I said "Wait. I know you". She looked puzzled. I asked her what high school she went to and she told me. "That's it " I said. "I saw you in the Girls Gone Wild at Southwest High video. You were the one with the thong that kept flashing on and off and the bra with the exploding firecrackers". She was mortified. The other girls couldn't stop laughing. I continued with different girls. They all made pretend they were shocked and embarrassed, but they were all having a ball. I heard "Oh my God!" so many times I thought I was in church. I gave them enough material to keep them on Facebook for a month. On to the boys.

I have two 16 year old twin great-nephews. I"m always joking with them. I found them in the backyard smoking weed with their friends. "Hey!" I yelled at them. "I've got a bone to pick with you". I acted as if I was going to scold them about something. Their friends looked nervous. I said " I heard that during the blizzard we had a couple of weeks ago, you two were running around the neighborhood showing girls your snowballs." They burst out laughing and their friends breathed a sigh of relief. Time to harass the ladies.

First I had the obligatory conversation with the in-laws. It was civil and quaint. As I was leaving I leaned in and softly told the old lady her wig was on crooked. Her granddaughter almost fell off the chair laughing and the other lady was almost in tears trying not to laugh. Grandma was not amused.As I left the room I turned to a woman I knew and said "Diane, it's not polite to sit with your tits on the table". She yelled to my sister that I was crazy. I say things like that to her all the time so if I didn't say something to her she would have thought something was wrong with me.

I continued to flirt and make suggestive statements to get laughs and have fun. Then a friend of one of my nieces told me that I have been flirting with her since she was 15. She said she was 27 now and was ready to show me some moves Beyonce' hadn't thought up. I told her I'd see her at the club. She said she wasn't talking about dancing. Being the Crazy Uncle can get risky at times, or should I say risque.

Let's see. Strange little children kept interrupting me all night asking if they could give me a hug and kiss. I have completely embarrassed every 8-12 year old child at the party. The teens have been totally scandalized. The in-laws have something to talk about when they go home. I've got an invitation for sex. Yep. My work is done! Time to go home. As the Crazy Uncle you just can't leave a party any old kind of way. Hmmm. I have to pick an exit target. I spot a woman across the room I've never met. Nice looking lady. Fortyish maybe. I zero in.

I ask her from across the room who she is. She tells me she just moved down the street. I ask "In a house?" She says"Of course silly". I tell her that houses aren't the only things down the street. There's an empty lot with an old abandoned truck on it. She could be living in the truck for all I knew. The room was pregnant with anticipation. I ask her if she is one of those kind Christian types who give to the poor and helps the needy. She tells me that she is. I tell her that I need a good looking woman to keep me cozy and give me something to dream about tonight and ask if I could go home with her. She says that is not the Christian thing to do. I tell her it may not be the Christian thing to do but, because of the way she's blushing, it's probably the right thing for her to do and add that she most likely needs some one to  give her something to dream about but it won't be me because since she's so righteous, I'm going to keep my goodies to myself and go home. Then I walk out the door listening to everyone hoot and howl.

As I was driving home I noticed how tired I was. It's a lot of work being the Crazy Uncle!

Daddy Warbucks Wins Again

daddy warbucks
Originally uploaded by inmyjammiesintx

Recently the Supreme Court made a ruling that basically put our political process up for auction to the highest bidder. It gives big corporations the green light to flood political campaigns with money unrestricted.

It says big corporations have the same rights as individual people as far as campaign funding goes. Financially that's like pitting a gnat against a rhino!

Corporations can now literally bankroll candidates and control the airways, hijacking the political system. In theory, foreign companies that own American corporations can influence our elections.

Years ago, I spent three years traveling to the 17 Eskimo villages of the Bering Strait region of Alaska working with young people as a career counselor. It broke my heart recently to learn that one of those villages, Shismaref, is now being overrun by the sea because of global warming.

Reducing harmful emissions would cut into corporate profits. The big corporations say they have a responsibility to their shareholders. What about the planet? What about the human race?

They begin to strangle our planet. Then they screw our economy up. Now our political process is going to be violated. What's next?

Death Parity

The Ride Home
Originally uploaded by **Dan**

The military and Congress have begun to recognize mental illnesses as "invisible wounds". That's a great step forward, but when you scratch the surface it appears to be superficial.

It is no secret that military suicides are rising at an alarming rate. I recently read an AFP article that stated the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff appealed to senior officers to encourage the people under their commands to seek mental health treatment without worrying about risk to their careers.

These are the same senior officers charged with maintaining combat ready troop strength. If too many people in their commands are diagnosed with PTSD or other mental illnesses their troop strength will go down, because people diagnosed with mental illnesses cannot be sent into combat areas. There is a built in incentive not to diagnose people with mental illnesses.

There is another big problem for families of service men and women. If someone in the military is killed in action the President sends their families a letter of condolence. Not so for the families of military personnel who commit suicide.

Where is the compassion for these families? Suicide from "invisible wounds" are just as lethal as death from an IED explosion! Where is the parity? The suicide victims are just as dead from the same combat experiences.

Fortunately the Obama administration has been made aware of this disparity and they are reviewing the policy to consider changing it. Let's hope that they do.

Royal's Rules

Old scroll
Originally uploaded by pas le matin

Today is the last day of a two week training I've been participating in in Pittsburgh. I've learned a lot, made new friends, saw some of the city, and hopefully will leave a Certified Peer Specialist.

My classmates and I have learned the two peer specialist competencies, at least three principles that peer support were founded upon, four stages in a group, five key ingredients of engagement, six stages of change, seven parts of WRAP, and eight core ethical principles.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg. Oh yeah, we learned about icebergs too!

I'm no eastern philosophical master, or some guru who just came down from spending 14 years meditating in a cave near the mountaintop, but I am Royal.

That being said, I do my greatest, deepest, and most profound thinking on a throne. A porcelain throne. That's right, the toilet! You would be surprised at what comes out of my head on the toilet. I know what you're thinking and it's not that!

I have come up with seven rules for living a fairly good life if you can follow them.

Royal's Seven Rules For Living

1. Today is a gift. That's why they call it the present! Live in it. The past is gone. The next day is just that, the next day. Stay in today where you really are.

2. Make someone smile everyday. Try to make them laugh if you can. I don't care what ails them at the time, a smile or good laugh will make them feel good temporarily, and it's free.

3. If you play with little children, play with them as if you're their age. They will have more fun, you will have more fun, and they'll love you for it.

4. Give an elderly person a hug whenever you can. Make them feel like the treasures they are.

5. Love like there's no tomorrow. Your children, your grandchildren, your family members, your friends, and that significant other. If there's love involved, do it with reckless abandon. Hey, you may be hit by a bus at 2:15!

6. Dance as if no one is looking. If the music makes me want to get up and shake my booty, I'm going to enjoy myself. If someone does not like my moves, they can just laugh. I know if I saw me dance, I would laugh.

7. Laugh like you mean it!

Miracle In The Courtroom

Courtroom Drama
Originally uploaded by Erin Nealey

The Birmingham News reported today that a woman showed up for jury duty this week in one of that Alabama city's courtrooms. What made her stand out was she had legally changed her name to Jesus Christ. Monday she was sent to Judge Clyde Jones's courtroom to hear a criminal case.

People were shocked when she insisted her name was Jesus Christ and some potential jurors laughed out loud when her name was called. She was eventually excused because she was disruptive and kept asking questions instead of answering them.

I don't know about you, but if it was me, I would have had my lawyer to request to have my case dismissed on the grounds of mental illness. I would have explained that I have dissociative episodes that can last as long as a day.

I would have further explained that, although I did not feel a thing, if Jesus had just been kicked off of my jury, I must have just been screwed.

Mental Illness In Art

Katherine Brower Signing a Painting
Originally uploaded by Lloyd N Phillips (formerly Green Lantern2008)

Annie Kevans began her career with a series called Boys. A group of paintings of dictators as children. Hitler, Franco, and Pol Pot.

She has painted a series called Girls which consisted of a group of sexualized portraits of child starlets such as Shirley Temple, Brooke Shields, and Brittany Spears.

She even took a shot at Presidential mistresses with a series called All The Presidents' Girls including the more famous such as Monica Lewinsky and Marilyn Monroe to the not so famous such as Sally Hemings, the 15 year old slave girl who was the maid of Thomas Jefferson's daughter who became pregnant by the President and bore his child.

Her latest series is called Ship Of Fools. It features famous men and women who had mental disorders, eating disorders, or addictions. It includes portraits of Michael Jackson, Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, Drew Barrymore, Princess Diana, and artists Van Gogh, Jackson Pollack, and Georgia O'Keeffe.

The show is open in London until December 23rd.