In 1988 in my fifth year clean and sober, and about a year and a half into my conscious codependency recovery, I reached a point where I could not keep my grief suppressed any more.  I was working as a Primary Therapist at a Outpatient Chemical Dependency Treatment Center in Van Nuys California when I had an emotional breakthrough - what society calls a breakdown.  The Universe gave me the incredible gift of being able to go through a 30 day treatment program for codependence at a place called Sierra Tucson in Arizona.  It was there that I learned how to release the grief and rage that I had been trying to repress my whole life.  In April 1988, the day before I left Sierra Tucson, one of the counselors I was saying good-bye to said to me, "You know, what you really are is a mystic."  I wasn't even sure what the word meant.  That was the prelude to the incredible 15 year adventure I refer to above - the "awesome, terribly solitary, gloriously amazing adventure for me.  An incredibly painful, transcendently Joyous, intermittently terrifying, unbelievably fulfilling journey."

In the Joy2MeU Journal, I tell the story of my recovery and Spiritual path in a series of articles entitled The Path of one Recovering Codependent ~ the dance of one wounded soul.  In the fall of 1999 I published the first installment of a 5 part web article about my experience of breaking through and going to treatment - and published the short story below in conjunction with part one of that story, which I call 30 Days in the Desert - Falling Apart and Breaking Through.  This is taken from that short story page in my Journal. 

"Working in the treatment center put my issues in my face every day.  The program included both an adult section and an adolescent unit.  It was the adolescents that tore me up.  Kids from horribly abusive homes that would lie to the social workers to keep from being taken out of their homes because their fear of the unknown was greater than their fear of the known.  And I couldn't in good conscious tell them that going into a foster home would be better for them because the system was so screwed up and dysfunctional." - 30 Days in the Desert - Falling Apart and Breaking Through Part I

Writing the last installment of The Recovery of one Codependent - the dance of one wounded soul took me back to the days when I was working in a Chemical Dependence Treatment Unit in Pasadena, California.  As I mentioned in the quote from that article above, working with the kids was very hard.  It still is not easy.  I am working with a 16 year old right now that is out of control behaviorally - drinking, drugging, having indiscriminate sexual experiences.  She is a magnificent being, very intelligent and obviously an old soul with great wisdom - but she is trapped in a dynamic with her parent that keeps her acting out.  And the parent will not grow up and be a responsible adult - so it is very hard.  It is much harder to let go of kids than it is to let go of adults.

Back in those days in the Treatment Center (1986 and 87) there were many kids that it broke my heart to watch.  One was this amazing girl, about 15 when I knew her, who had actually tape recorded her mother beating her when she was 12 and turned her into the cops - incredible.  Yet, she was still fighting to be allowed to go back home to that same mother when it came time to get out of treatment.

Another was a kid named Johnny.  I do not have any idea what happened to Johnny.  I expected that he would be dead before he was 21 - if he was not it was probably because he was in prison.  Johnny was in such incredible pain.

I wrote a short story about an experience I had with Johnny back in late 1986, or early 87.  In writing my last article, I was reminded of that short story - so I dug it out.  It seems appropriate to add it to the Journal here, in conjunction with the story of my falling apart and breaking through, because those kids were certainly a part of my process of getting in touch with my pain.  I wrote this story while processing my feelings about what Johnny said to me that day.  It is not very good as a short story, but I think it conveys some emotional notes that are meaningful.  I cry today, as I read it and remember that skinny kid.

He was sixteen.  He sat with his hands trapped between his knees as if he couldn't trust them to be free of restraint.  He sat slumped forward with his eyes on the floor, only chancing an occasional furtive glance when trying to gauge my reaction, or when he was surprised at something I said.

"I love you Johnny."

His eyes stabbed upward toward my face and then back down immediately to the floor.  There was anger in those eyes.  And palpable pain.  And confusion.

"Do you believe that I love you Johnny?"

His head slumped forward farther and his thin body began to move, twisting and jerking as if a series of explosions were going off in rapid succession somewhere deep inside him.

"What are you feeling Johnny?"

"Nothing!"  It was almost a scream or rather the very beginning of a scream that was choked off immediately.

His hands popped out from between his legs as if some huge force of suction had been released.  He started bringing his hands down on his knees, slowly at first and then rapidly accelerating until his whole body was rocking forward in the violence of the action.  The cast on his right hand made a dull thud as it struck his knee.

I had been sitting on the other bed in his room no more than five feet from him when he started hitting himself.  It took me only seconds to get to him, yet he had probably hit himself a dozen times by the time I got a hold of him.

Cradling his shoulders with my left arm and holding his cast in my right hand, I immobilized him in a way that he wouldn't feel pinned down or trapped.

"I'm such an asshole."  The first time he said it there was vehement hatred in his voice.  The second time his voice dripped with tears.  "I'm such an asshole."

"Sometimes you act like one, but that doesn't mean you are one,"  I said, rubbing his shoulders with my left hand.  "And you know what - I love you even when you act like an asshole."

He threw himself down on his pillow and his whole body shuddered as the tears came flooding forth.  The sobs that wracked his body were coming from deep, deep inside of him.

I sat quietly on his bedside, watching him cry.  His broken hand lay at an awkward angle to his head because of the clumsiness of the cast.

He had broken his hand earlier in the day by slamming it into a brick wall in rage.  Underneath that rage was incredible pain.  He had been on the adolescent chemical dependency unit of our hospital for 45 days.  During that time he had no drugs or alcohol to mask his pain.  During that time he had received love and support from the staff and from the other patients.   The love and support confused and angered Johnny.  He had never received any at home, and he didn't think he deserved it.  Being clean and sober allowed the feelings he had been suppressing to start to come up.  There was only one other outlet Johnny knew for his feelings - violence.

His words were muffled in the pillow so I laid my hand on his back and asked him what he said.

He raised himself slightly, propping his head on his cast.  "Why won't you just hit me?"

"We don't hit people, Johnny.  I've told you that."  I was having trouble talking because of the knot in my throat.  "It's wrong for grown-ups to hit kids - I've told you that.  It's always wrong."

"My dad only hits me because I deserve it."  He was wallowing in his self-hatred now.  He swung between incredible self-hatred and defying everyone.  He had become addicted to being beaten regularly by his father.  He was trapped in a cycle of violence - as his feelings built up he acted out and pushed limits until he got the release of the punishment he felt he deserved.  Since we wouldn't punish him he finally became so frustrated he punished himself by breaking his hand.

"You told me that he beats you with his fists."

"Only because I deserve it."  He looked so thin and fragile laying there on his bed.

"If you deserve it, why have you thought about killing him?"

"I only thought about that sometimes, when I was smoking Kools."

Kools were cigarettes dipped in PCP.  Animal tranquilizer.  A boy treated like an animal needed all the tranquilizing he could get.

"You lied to the social worker about the beatings."

"I had to, or they wouldn't let me go home."  His voice was pitifully small as he spoke.  A little boy terrified of going home, but even more terrified of not going home.

"What will happen when the feelings get all built up again?"

"I won't use drugs, that's for sure."  He laid his head back down on the pillow.  "I'd like to be alone for awhile now, please."

I rubbed his back for another minute and then walked to the door.  After turning out the light I stood looking at him for a moment.  Johnny was going home in ten days.  Home to a father who beat his son because his father beat him and he knew of no other way.  Home to a mother who was too terrified to protect him.

He was going back to the neighborhood that would see him doing drugs again within a couple of weeks.  He would use drugs again because the pain was too great.  The beatings wouldn't stop it.  His torture and killing of animals wouldn't stop it.  He would probably kill or be killed before he was much older.  And there was nothing I could do except tell him as I closed the door, "I love you Johnny."

I also took some time out to experience some life and Love - as I alluded to in the first extra Newsletter page of my June Update and mentioned in the second.

"In my personal process, my terror of intimacy was so huge that it has taken years of pealing away layers to discover pockets of black and white thinking that were blocking me from being available to explore a romantic relationship.  One of the gifts to me of this web site - and especially the processing I have done in my Joy2MeU Journal - is that it has brought me to the point where recently I have been getting to play with the magical energy of "in love" while learning about giving and receiving Love in relating to a woman in recovery.  The processing that I did in those May 2001 Newsletter pages peeled off a huge layer - as did subsequent processing first in July of 2002 and then in October and November of last year.  More will be revealed about whether this relationship opportunity will continue and/or where it will take me, but it has led to breakthrough after breakthrough in my process of learning to open up to Love.  It has been / is a magnificent gift in my life." - Joy2MeU June 2003 Update Newsletter 3 Discernment 2 - Love and Romance

It has been a wonderful experience that has helped me work through many blocks in my defenses against intimacy and Love.  It was wonderful to be able to experience a romance after 4 years of not even coming close to one.  I was able to be in the moment, and be Loving in the moment, while letting go of fear and projection to an amazing extent.  The Loving and being Loved was wonderful - and the laughter together was delicious.  That is the very good news.  The bad news is that codependent reactions intruded and a couple of weeks ago I got to experience the feeling of having my heart broken one more time.

The relationship is not necessarily over - but there are some large stumbling blocks.  My recovery voice tells me that right now it is best for me to let go of the outcome and accept that it could continue as a friendship only - because letting go of the outcome helps me to stay out of trying to force my will on the future. 

"They say that God made the world round so we can't see too far over the horizon.  The details about how those events over the horizon are going to work out are not my business today.  If I am putting all my energy into figuring out how I am going to cross the mountain way off in the distance, then I am liable to step into a hole that is directly in front of me on my path today. . . . . . . I need to keep an eye on the horizon so that I can make any adjustments to my heading that I need to make - but most of my attention and energy needs to be focused on what is in front of me to do and experience in my life today.  I want to be present for my life today and be able to enjoy the scenery that is part of the texture of my journey today.  In my codependency, my fear and shame driven relationship with life caused me to be incapable of being present in the moment because I was focused on the future or the past.  One of the gifts of my recovery is the ability to be here today, to be available for moments of happiness and Joy no matter how many frightening unknowns are looming on the horizon - no matter how impossible it looks to me for me to ever get there." - Joy2MeU Update November 2002

This relationship experience was made possible because I was able get past my fear of intimacy by staying in - and pulling myself back into - the moment, the great majority of the time.  That is what I need to keep doing - that is what will work best.  My disease wants me to focus on negative fantasy outcomes and be afraid.  Investing time and energy in fear will cause me to be miserable and sabotage the relationship through controlling and/or reacting from a victim place.  The magical thinking romantic within me wants me to focus on positive fantasy outcomes where we ride off into the sunset together.  Happily ever after is not how reality works - and indulging myself by investing too much energy in that fantasy (though it is fun) will keep me from seeing the situation clearly and taking care of myself so I don't set myself up to feel like a victim.  Staying in the moment, being Loving in the moment, enjoying the moment when that is possible, being emotionally honest in the moment when that is necessary, processing through any grief from the past that is being triggered - these are the things that are going to help me stay clear and keep fear from defining the experience.  A wonderful opportunity for growth.  We shall see how the future unfolds. 

What I do know is that, it is better to Love and lose than not to be available for Love.  And though that aching pain that can only be described as a broken heart is not at all a fun experience - it is the risk one takes when opening to Love.  It is a risk well worth taking.  As I shared in An Adventure in Romance - Loving and Losing Successfully, the article about my last romantic experience (which was over 4 1/2 years ago now), being able to experience an intimate romantic relationship dance without my self worth being at risk is a wonderful freedom - a great benefit of being willing to do the inner child healing work. 

I believe that in my Update for last November, I planted some seeds that were causal in manifesting this romantic relationship experience in my life.  The processing in my journal helped me to be open to experiencing a relationship in a very different way that I have in the past, and the seeds I planted in that Update helped manifest it.

The November 1998 Newsletter Joy to You & Me Newsletter IV from my original silcom.com web site that I talk about in my November 2002 Update, is one where I originally threw out a challenge to the Universe.  Basically, what I did in the 1998 Newsletter, was send a message out to the Universe that I was willing to do whatever it takes, willing to go through any experience I needed to, in order to learn how to live life in alignment with Love instead of in reaction to fear.  Immediately - the next day - after that Update was broadcast to the Universe through the internet, my Adventure in Romance where I Loved and lost successfully began.

Last November I repeated my commitment and my challenge to the Universe.  (I used some of the same wording I had used the first time - and hope that no one is so offended by this wording that they will let their codependency cause them to throw the baby out with the bathwater.)

"I wrote the above on November 21st 1998.  The next day at that church service, I started the relationship with the woman who gave me the opportunity to see that my worst fears in a relationship could come true and I could be okay with it.  The reason I was okay with it, is because it is the first time I did a romantic relationship without my self worth being enmeshed with my emotional reactions - the very thing I talk about in Emotional Anorexia.

I am writing this on November 19th 2002.  And I am going to now repeat the affirmation that I wrote almost 4 years ago to the day.  What I am seeing clearly - and feeling in my gut - as I write this, is that my son coming to live with me is going to be an opportunity to learn about Love in ways that would probably not be possible in any other way. 

So, I once again reaffirm my commitment to being an ally with the Spirit where Love lives instead of with the disease where fear rules.  I Joyously, with tears running down my cheeks and sobs of Joy bubbling up my throat, proclaim and declare to you;  to the Universe;  to my Higher Power;  to The God-Force, Goddess Energy, Great Spirit, Holy Mother Source Energy;  to all that is blessed and holy; Fuck the fear I say - full speed ahead in the direction of Love.

I trumpet and broadcast proudly out into the Universe:  my commitment to my recovery journey;  to my Karmic mission;  to speaking my Truth;  and say: "Bring it on Bubba baby!"  Because it is so worth it!  Every second of suffering and pain, terror and loneliness, is worth being able to access the Truth of Unconditional Love.  Amen.  So be it.  So it is.  Blessed be.

Should be interesting to see what happens now, don't you think. ;-) - Joy2MeU Update November 2002

"I haven't reached a point in my journey from which it is possible to see the details of how this transition is going to unfold.  My part as a co-creator in this life experience means that I am responsible for planting seeds and gathering information and doing the footwork to prepare myself for those events on and over the horizon - but the details will not become clear until I have reached the point in my journey when I need to see them clearly. . . . . . .

. . . . . I am not writing the script, am not in control of this human experience, so I need to do what I am led to do when I am led to do it - with faith that a Loving plan is unfolding.  Worry is negative fantasy.  Fear of the future does not serve me on my path today - takes away my ability to be here now.   The fear will come up certainly - just as it did when I wrote the paragraph above - but that is normal and human.  I can use my recovery tools to let go of that fear of the unknown - and have boundaries with the critical parent voice in my head which wants me to project a fantasy of impending doom, a horror movie in my mind, that will cause me to create artificial fear in my life today.  As I talked about in my August 2002 Update, I learned that 90% of the stress in my life before codependency recovery was my responsibility, something I had some control over - and I do not have to create that kind of stress in my life any more, thanks to recovery and my faith in the Great Spirit." -  Joy2MeU Update November 2002

I specifically focused on accepting the challenging opportunity to learn about Love that my son living with me would bring - but I was also thinking in terms of a romantic relationship.  What happened was that I got to experience a romantic adventure. 

If the relationship adventure that is in my life now continues as one of the ways I am getting to learn about Love - that will be great.  If it doesn't, then I hope I do not have to wait 4 years for my next opportunity.  If my book goes out of print and I have to let go of this web site - it will be very painful and sad to me, but I am willing to accept my path as it unfolds with faith in a Loving Higher Power. Whatever it takes, however it unfolds - I Know a Loving Divine Plan is unfolding.  So I will paraphrase again what I said in those two November Updates:

Screw the fear, bring on the Love.  I once again reaffirm my commitment to being an ally with the Spirit where Love lives instead of with the disease where fear rules.  Whatever is in store for me on my path that will help me learn about - and reconnect with - Love, I welcome.  Bring it on Universe! 

So, this Update - and my Donations page - is my way of planting some seeds.  More will be revealed about what grows.

"It is also a reminder for me of how absolutely perfectly this writing and my healing process have unfolded in relationship to this web site over the past 4 years.  The Recovery Process for inner child healing - finding emotional balance series of articles followed the True Nature of Love series.  The True Nature of Love series is something I started writing in 1999 - shortly after I started my Joy2MeU Journal, and the personal journal I share in it.  I started writing both of those bodies of work while I was homeless - shortly after the end of My Adventure in Romance - Loving and losing successfully. 

The Emotional Honesty and Emotional Responsibility series led directly into the processing that I did about my fear of intimacy issues in the Newsletters of the May 2001 Update.  That processing led to a major breakthrough in my personal recovery process.

"One of the things that I am realizing in the processing that was set off by this latest breakthrough in my process, is that I seem to just now be reaching - on a personal level - the level of consciousness that my book was written out of.  It has been over 10 years now, since I wrote the core of what was to become Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls - over a period of 48 frenzied hours of writing, to be able to give a talk that I had scheduled months before." - Joy to You & Me and Joy2MeU Update - August -2001

That breakthrough in consciousness on a personal level prepared me to take the risk of sharing my Truth and my beliefs with the world in a way that I had never envisioned putting my Truth out to the general public.  When the events of September 11, 2001 occurred, I almost immediately started writing and publishing Attack on America - A Spiritual Healing Perspective & Call for Higher Consciousness.  My decision in January of 2002 (Update January 2002 & 2 Newsletters) to move the bulk of that online book to the Joy2MeU Journal is what provided the spark for writing The codependency movement is NOT ruining marriages!

Are you seeing the pattern here?  And the thoughts (messages from my intuition) that caused me to write this PS, also caused me to look for something I remember writing about how learning to let go of the future has allowed me the freedom to be happy today no matter what my circumstances - even if I never had any money or another relationship or whatever.  I never did find the quote I was looking for - although I found something close to it on my Future Publications page.  In looking however, I came across this page from my Newsletter of November 1998 for my Joy to You & Me silcom site - something that I had written several months before Joy2MeU.com was born.  It was finding this quote and realizing the message the Universe was sending me today while I am writing this Update, that caused the explosion of Joy and Gratitude within me." -  Joy2MeU Update November 2002

"In the spring of 1991, Robert Burney was asked to speak in several different venues on the subject of Codependence. In the course of those speaking engagements he heard himself making statements to a general audience that he had never considered saying in public because of their controversial nature. . . . . Although he experienced a great deal of fear about making such controversial statements in public, he was compelled to further explore this message that he felt coming through him. He arranged dates in June of 1991 to give a talk in Cambria and Morro Bay, California. He then found he was unable to write the talk. The message that he was formulating was multileveled and nonlinear so that he found it impossible to organize his thoughts into a coherent presentation. His anxiety mounted as the date for his talk approached until in a burst of inspiration born out of desperation he wrote almost continuously for the last 48 hours prior to the talk. The presentation was scrawled on yellow legal pages that first time he presented the talk. . . . . . That talk formed the basis for the book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls. The message evolved and expanded over the years as he refined the techniques he was developing to facilitate Codependence recovery, but the basic structure of the book was essentially born in those two days of desperation. - Biographical information page

Writing for this web site has changed that completely.  It has helped me to learn self discipline - and to utilize and develop a Goddess given gift for communication.  In the Update for last November I mention in the first part that I had not added a great deal of content to the site since that last Update.  Later on, I catch that subtle judgment that my critical parent voice had slipped in on me.

"(As I am writing this, I was realizing that 4 chapters of the online book, plus the 5 pages in my journal - given that my average web article pages are in the range of 7,000 to 8,000 words - means that I only added about 60,000 or 70,000 words of new writing to the site since the beginning of August.  Only!?!  Those old tapes about not being productive enough sure don't have as much power as they used to - but they are still there running subtly in the background.)" -  Joy2MeU Update November 2002

At this point, I don't have any idea what the future holds.  My experience in recovery is that my Higher Power usually waits until what feels to me as the last second to reveal things to me.

I happen to believe - and I have shared my belief and my feelings with my Higher Power on many occasions - that my Higher Power works very slowly.  I am not at all crazy about my Higher Power's sense of timing. - Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

In the years since my book was published I have gained great faith in my path - and a level of acceptance that allows me to let go of complaining to my Higher Power about the Cosmic timing of things.  (I share someplace in my writing about a really good analogy one of my phone clients came up with.   That was, that the annoying habit children have of saying "Are we there yet?" every few minutes on a long road trip, must be how it feels to our Higher Power when we are continuously nagging for information about the future.:-)

Last year, the money to publish more books came at a perfect time.

"The primary news about Joy2MeU and Joy to You & Me is that - with the help of a couple of angels out there in cyberspace who believe in my work - I was able to pay for a second printing of 1500 copies of my book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls.  Very cool.  When the first cases of the second printing arrived I had 4 copies of the first printing left and an order waiting to be filled from Amazon.com.  Perfect timing in the Cosmic scheme of things." -  Joy2MeU Update November 2002

"My situation financially forced me to keep asking for help, to keep working my program, to keep writing for this web site.  My book is not a best seller yet because it was not part of the Divine Plan.  It was a gift to me to be forced to keep writing for this web site.  A Divine gift to my self/Self because of the enormous growth it has sparked in my personal recovery process, and a gift to the thousands - probably tens of thousands - of people around the world whose lives have been changed by reading my book or my words on the internet.

I am very blessed and enormously grateful for my recovery - and for the internet.  This website has been an incredible tool and catalyst for my recovery and Spiritual growth.  I really don't want to let go of this web site, of being able to have the information out there for anyone who can benefit from it.  But I have learned in my recovery that I need to be willing to let go of anything and everything." - Donations / Love Offerings