Ode to My Sisters

Ode to my sisters

I’m so sorry for any words that may have hurt you unnecessarily or unfairly. But this is not just an apology.
This letter is a reckoning.  This is not a letter of blame. Blame does nothing but foster resentment and allow wounds to fester forever.

I think a complete reckoning includes thorough discussion of circumstances, apologies, gratitudes, and intentions and commitments for the future.

Given that there are decades of Past and contentions over what is acceptable words & behavior, I want to speak my gratitude and acknowledge my responsibility first.

I own my imperfections of memory, lack of timeliness, at times being sanctimonious about my intelligence, politics. I acknowledge that I broke with tradition by resisting and often challenging Mom’s authority while expecting her financial support.  Although I’ve received much less financial support than many others in our extended family, some of whom you befriend and value.
I acknowledge that instead of just working my ass off and suppressing or transferring the shame that I was taught, I chose to wrestle myself away from patterns of abuse toward acceptance and healthiness, even if it meant living inside my resentment for too long, hesitating at job and academic opportunities, and working on healing myself and my confidence instead of just powering through life by sheer force of will and emotional denial.

I also own that until 20019 I held out hope that I could play and win at the game of being a successful and valued child and sibling.  I didn’t think I was still playing that game, but it’s so firmly programmed and lurks in undiscovered corners of our minds.  If I had realized years ago that I still held a secret hope of our family being supportive and loving in a healthy way, and that this was a remnant of my learned codependence, I would not be in my current state of wavering dependent self esteem.  It’s crazy to me that I’m just now getting the opportunity to learn that a healthy person knows and feels that they are the source of their own goodness.

sidenote on healing from shame:  [I see Coaching as social re-learning, receiving the permission to locate my value solely within myself instead of giving that power to others.  As well as reinforcing daily practice of healthy and nurturing habits.

You guys had to go through so much crap and struggle that I did not.  from all the stories from everyone it sounds like there was a lot of survival/existential struggle, & emotionally abusive fighting.
I admire your career tenacity, and determination and even being excellent mothers.
For all that I admire about you, is one issue I wonder if you've ever considered, because I don't recall you ever saying or behaving in a way that would suggest you get it. Despite all the disadvantages, (body) shaming, shit you had to endure, you had one huge developmental &; emotional windfall that outranks any material advantage I may have had: YOU HAD EACH OTHER .  Do you know if there are studies that confirm how emotionally beneficial having siblings you're close to , even if you don't always get along?

It would make a difference if I could hear you acknowledge your blessing, & you're still close to this day. Who do I have?  Did I ever have anyone to assuage my loneliness or feeling that I had no one on my side? That no one understood me, to at least verbally talk through the abuse I went through or the constant bullying I received at school?

For a brief moments Mom was on my side, Mar was often emotionally supportive, Dad was always supportive.  But the relationship of having someone in your peer/age group involves a level of understanding that you can't get anywhere else in the world, except maybe in a rare friendship.    I hope you're grateful for that exceptional advantage you had. Gratitude is paramount in healing and happiness.  

I AM GRATEFUL that I was spared all those emotionally abusive parental arguments and the torturous divorce that our parents went through.  Although mom and dad liked to retell some of those stories, and the highlights are still seared in my memory.

And while it would be nice for you to speak for yourselves on this matter, you usually don't. You usually speak the automatic knee-jerk Pain Body talk that comes from the seat of fight-flight-freeze response (known as the cerebellum & brainstem).
Everyone in our family has been hearing that repetitious song for decades [generations] especially on the Fulnecky side of the family.

A reckoning should mention these circumstantial evidences, but not give them the same spotlight as we should/would give a unique or fully empowered or fully self expressed free-willed testimony.  Because those are complaints and ideas that belong to most if not all humans.  Those are verbalized expressions of the older, instinctual parts of our brain: the parts that we share with lobsters (Dominance and hierarchy).

The thing that I think impedes us most from being a healthy family (that shares joy & support vs attacks) is how we talk to each other.

All five of us still attack ourselves as well as each other. Brain scientists, developmental & therapeutic psychologists, coaches, science-based teachers, Journalists, lawyers, politicians base their careers on the FORMATIVE POWER OF WORDS. And they have demonstrated in study after study  that WORDS MATTER.

Words are critical to relationships, to the formation of healthy brains, self esteem, and frankly it's embarrassing how much we use words to harm in our family.

And there appears to be a randomly enforced prohibition on using positive encouraging words, which is scientifically and psychologically reprehensible.

If I could help free you from the self hate that you were taught, if I could encourage or teach you to silence your voices of criticism, and to love your body, I would.
Hell, I'm still on the journey, like you.
It would just be nice if we could support each other on that path.

But I've had to release the notion that one day you might come to embrace me as a full member of this family. 

Michelle and Jennifer have told me in so many ways that they don't feel so much like I'm their brother but more like a distant cousin, because I was born under different circumstances, I didn't see or experience the same exact trauma; although I experienced plenty of it In different ways. Have you ever tried do you understand that you don't have the unique privilege of being the eternal winners of victimhood or that you live your life better than I live mine?

I'm guessing you think I had it much easier, but if your powers of compassionate sight were clear you could see how probably I was not made to suffer much less than you if any less, my sufferings were just different. 
I belong to a different generation, a different mindset, my brain as a man is also biochemically different than yours.

But it seems that we sibs keep returning, some of us more than others, to a world of comparison, another feature of a destructive way of being. 

I'm ready to put that behind me and so I have to communicate this regardless of whether you agree with it, regardless whether you even read it.

It's the stuff I'm past ready to confront, forgive, heal, & And reclaim the energy that has been wrapped up in pain & blame.



Blackbird singing in the dead of night just take these sunken eyes and learn to see/All your life you were only waiting for this moment to be free
blackbird singing in the dead of night take these broken wings and learn to fly/all your life you were only waiting for this moment to arrive

I also apologize for sounding sanctimonious. Sometimes heartfelt sincerity comes off that way especially when you want things to be better.


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The Failures of Modern Culture: Observations on the decay of community in nonagrarian society. AKA Bowling Alone Because Everyone Else is Working

ESSAY: The failures of a nonextended family / nonagrarian culture; and the reemergence of feudalism.

You know what I find very ironic or just strange as hell?

It seems that in our culture it's rare for two adults to engage in a mentor/apprentice relationship unless money is being exchanged, or the very least, that one person is significantly older and has the right titles.  My attempts with friends to advise, teach, lead by example or even just give biking, swimming or driving lessons often end poorly.    I find it's a rare ego indeed that can humble itself enough to trust the judgment of another over their own, much less to be willing to re/learn something new.

I understand my perspective is limited to the ten-ish different families/ tribes/groups of people I've immersed myself with in Alabama, Germany, Austria, Ohio, Indiana, and the DMV.


IMHO it's ironic that I've been thirsty and hungry, unable to find the consistent life mentor I've been seeking since age 17.  Because somehow logically I would think that there are people out there who would love more than anything to mentor a young person, especially as there seems to be relatively few young people out there willing to be mentored.

I mean there are probably hundreds of mentorship programs in the United States alone for teenagers up to the age of 18. But after that… If you're lucky enough to go to college you have academic support services. There are professional therapists, and rarely someone in your workplace who can give you some advice now and then.  But all of that falls far short of the resources you would have when living near extended family full of wise elders.

Young parents and even not so young parents are rarely full of deep wisdom, positive mental fortitude & healthy boundaries. So why does it seem like I am so alone in wanting help to make up for the lack of wisdom in my own family?

I can tell you that if my family had been more agrarian/ extended-family centric I would've been a hell of a lot better off.  Growing up around grandpa and grandma, great aunts and uncles, I also know my sisters would not of had eating disorders, we would've had elders to guide our family out of irrational decades-old family grudges.

But instead elders were always like these very distant angels I had rare access to.

Any sort of physical or monetary assistance and inheritance just isn't equivalent to golden wisdom, (while I'm still really grateful for ALL gifts and social privilege I've received)

Part II:  The decay of traditional modes of upward mobility and the suppression of community.

I think the suppression of wages and the enshrinement of corporate welfare in our political and legal system is also to blame.  Communitarian values suffer when one is forced to compete and spend all of one's time on wage slavery, that is there is NO TIME TO CULTIVATE PERSONAL or SOCIAL GOODNESS.  I have lived in and among people from different societies on the feudal/libertarian-democratic/socialist spectrum.   The social differences and patterns between socio-economically libertarian /Darwinistic countries and those where one doesn't fear for survival and spend ;most of their waking moments securing themselves and their immediate progeny have long demonstrated higher quality of life... both subjectively and by raw quantitative per capita income data.

Most western Europeans can afford to be informed and cultivate socially-bonding leisure activities. And most if not many consistently poor countries have social stratification (CLASSISM) and cultural norms that counteract social or economic democracy.  Accepted radical income disparity and the lack of social welfare is allowed by law.  No matter how economists and politicians want to slice or dice it, there has never been an effective free market solution that creates or supports a high quality of life or a STABLE, DEMOCRATIC, fair, fully participatory, low unemployment economy.  While there have been benevolent and charitable despots (Qatar, etc), peasants aren't guaranteed the philanthropy will continue, the laws won't change by decree when times get tough, or regimes change.  Look at history.

History is also where you should look for proof of the strength of democracy over the unregulated free market.  Greece, Rome, vs Persia. New Europe vs Old Europe for gods sakes!  The gradual democritization of Europe, and yes, most of the world is not a fluke.  The "arc of justice" is not  a pretty fantasy (like the never-realized fictions of Ayn Rand or volatile autocracies), SOCIAL & ECONOMIC JUSTICE ARE INCREASING BECAUSE THEY WORK.  Anyone who denies that democracy is not the best system for long term prosperity, stability, peace, and stability is not connected to reality.   Anyone who denies or equivocates that economic libertarianism is synonymous with democracy is equally deluded.  Just as I and anyone else would be VERY ignorant to believe or promote the idea of complete economic socialism or regulation.  Economies and systems MUST flex with changing population, migrations, technologies, weather, climate, knowledge, conflicts, etc.  That's why we have scientists in positions of power of the SEC, Treasury, Federal Reserve, etc... to provide TEMPORARY and targeted easements of regulation, changes in production and lending rates, and other forms of stimulus.

Instead, our country has diluted its own overall economic power and security by allowing divestment in social infrastructure and living wages.  Corporations are now free range entities with little accountability. They may hurt persons, deplete resources, or worsen communities with minimal impunity, in fact, often less accountability than government.  They claim to be creators, and only having the ability to create in a minimally regulated environment, but then they want the protection of the corporate welfare state when other countries also play by those same unethical and dysfunctional Darwinist rules they promote.  How can one blame China and other countries for not playing fair, like with intellectual capital (copyright or patent infringement) when such stealing is the exact result of free market lax regulation? This is ignorant and childish hipocrisy plain and simple.

Henry Ford knew what the New Deal architects and 20th Century Western Europe have proven; that legally binding socio-economic contracts including living wages (wages which enable savings, paying off debts, and an amount of leisure) increases profitability even for the top 1%.  It is simply the pointless hoarding (no-flow) of capital within the economic elite that retards stability.

Libertarianism d/evolves into feudalism.  And we see many neo-feudal nations today, most of which are defined by the supressed hopes of millions, and apathy of most of its citizens.  Because there is such limited upward mobility, few ever see the possibility to live as anything more than impoverished neo-peasants.  Cultural tools such as class, education, language, and race status maintain the feudal economic system.  Both the powerful and the powerless millions remain apathetic.  Why foster aspirations of good health, education, and material comfort when there is little real democracy?   Instead, the permanently oppressed poor tolerate the status quo and spend their time socializing instead of competing, boot-strapping, or climbing socio-economic ladders.  

























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