About this Journal

A Renewed Journal

Tue, 6 Aug 2013 16:32:02 -0500

It has been more than two years since I wrote of “Journal Entry” into this area of the MMWI Website. Lately, I’ve been slowly transferring the pages of this website to a Word Press software package, knowing that eventually, if not in the iteration of the Apple OS this fall (the Maverick OS), the ability to access my iWeb software will be compromised [since, for the last several years, Apple has not ‘supported’ its own iWeb software]. Hence I have to move this website in order to keep accessibility to it current. As I make the transfer, I realize that I haven’t been focusing much, in recent years, on the MMWI website, but have been placing most of my energy into the MMWI Blog (47 postings so far), as well as, for a year in 2012-13, as a columnist for WomensRadio.com.

I also realized that I had stopped placing entries into this Journal around the time that I started focusing on the Blog. And that the blog became the place I put all my thoughts -- both internal to my experience and to the nonprofit, as well as responses to current events in the news that related to men’s emotional wellness and the issues faced by sexual abuse survivors.

Hence, it’s time, now that I have two different places I write ‘entries’, to differentiate between the two in a clearer manner. I was discussing this problem today with my therapist, and he suggested that the Journal be focused on ‘internal’ issues -- thoughts about men’s wellness, sexual abuse survivors, my own experiences in relation to those issues, and thoughts about the progress of the nonprofit itself -- with the Blog more focused on ‘external’ issues -- such as sex trafficking, domestic violence, rape, sexual abuse, etc. that arose in the media and which I, in my capacity as an educator and the Executive Director of MMWI, has a perspective about and wanted to address. I believe I’ll try that approach for a while. If I do make a significant statement about something personal to my experience and healing, and want friends and colleagues to know about it, I can still ‘post’ notices on Facebook or LinkedIn, or in ‘global’ emails, but noting that the posting is on the website, rather than in the blog. The added advantage of that is that people who want to see what I’m thinking can look back at this website, instead of solely focusing on the blog entries.

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In that regard: sometime ago I wrote a long article about Dissociation, something that has plagued me for most of my life, but never made it ‘live’ on the website. I plan to revise it somewhat and ‘upload’ the article to this website, under “Male Sexual Trauma”. I also plan to write a journal entry about the death of my mother (following up on the death of my father in November 2011 and February 2012). I’m ready to talk about how her life and my interaction with her affected my life, in a more direct way. The Dissociation article very much is dependent upon that experience with my mother and her sexual abuse of me when I was a child.

For many years (since 1978?), I have written a diary, more or less on a daily basis [some months have been quite steady, other somewhat sporadic], so I have a wealth of thoughts to ‘fall back upon’ for Journal entries; not so much direct quotes, but rather thoughts that I have massaged over the years and from which I’ve come to realizations that I hope will be of assistance to other male sexual abuse survivors who access and read this website (female survivors can also gain from this website, as can the partners of sexual abuse survivors, but the MMWI website is primarily focused upon the issues faced by male sexual abuse survivors -- and adult males even more specifically). So, there are many places I have ‘worked on’ these traumatic life experiences that I have live through and survived, and which I hope, in turn, to allow to serve as ‘guideposts’ for other survivors.

And I need to keep ‘abreast’ of the progress (such as it is) of this nonprofit. I surely have never been able to find funding with which to expand that programs or hire staff to assist in the implementation of various strategic planning that I have formulated over the years, but I keep the MMWI Blog very much alive and hope to have more classes around men’s emotional wellness and the issues of adult male sexual abuse survivors, plus potentially classes around male-female communication, especially communication between male or female (or both) sexual abuse survivors and their partners. So, I will discuss those issues in this Journal as well.

Hence, it will be a ‘renewed platform for communication’ within the organization and about my personal experience as a male sexual abuse survivor. And, as noted, as was and continues to be the case (and hope), I will discuss those issues with an ‘eye’ for how it might assist other adult male sexual abuse survivors who choose to access this website and all the information I have amassed on it.

Progress, Setbacks

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 12:02:10 -0500

No path, however positive we may view it or have positive hopes for its outcome, is without stubbles and obstacles. And the path toward success on the part of Mariposa Men’s Wellness Institute has been and continues to be full of stumbling blocks. But I’ve made a distinct degree of progress of late, in spite of some major personal health issues.

As of February 14, I became a Contributing Editor [CE] for WomensRadio.com. That forum should, hopefully give me access to a much wider audience and allow the ideas that I’ve put forward on the MMWI Blog to have a larger ‘listening audience’. To access my CE columns, go to www.womensradio.com, look under Columns or type my name (Donald Jeffries) in the Search field. The column name is Mariposa Men’s Wellness and at this point I’ve got 5 weekly entries on the website. I also have my KETC Homeland Project video on ‘bilingual education’ posted on my CE profile.

And sometime next month (date to be determined) the Nine Network [formerly KETC Channel 9] will start up a Community Producer group which I’ve been invited to join. Apparently there is a small stipend attached to participation and I, along with other successful graduates of the KETC Digitial Storytelling classes, will be producing videos for the Nine Network Homeland Project. I’ll learn more about the project after attending the ‘kick-off’ class, though due to my own scheduling conflicts, I may have to attend a ‘make-up’ class after the main ‘kick-off’. More on that later.

Plus, after months of bureaucratic snafus ad nauseum, the Anti-Defamation League has finally sent me an antiracism trainer contract for 2011, so I will once again be performing those tasks. I’ve had to miss two contract dates so far this year (dates the local coordinator assigned to me conditional on the contract being in force, which didn’t turn out to be the case until last week). That will both give me a small extra amount of income and allow me to engage in an activity which I greatly enjoy.

The obstacles of late have been more health-related. I’ve started an ‘allergy elimination diet’ to deal with some chronic skin rashes (on my scalp, face, in the ears, and on my chest) that haven’t gone away. I know from experience that I don’t tolerate topical medications very well (in fact, damned poorly, with major adverse reactions), so I, along with my doctor, am hoping that this diet will help to identify some allergens which are causing the rashes, along with causes of chronic irritable bowel syndrome, a condition I’ve suffered with for several decades, without much resolution. The diet and cleansing makes me quite weak and often lightheaded and nauseous, but there’s at least the chance I’m ‘moving in the right direction’ of solving some chronic health issues, rather than simply feeling quite sick about 50% of the time, as I have for quite a number of years. Once of the major deficits of this ‘burning scalp’ issue that I’ve been suffering from since mid-January is that I don’t swim, since I would run the risk of getting chlorine in my hair and every time I wash my head, it burns like a fire (though frankly it burns even just rinsing it every couple of days with cold water). That’s a problem, as the swimming is helpful in dealing with the health issues related to veinous embolisms that I’ve suffered from in past years. But at least I still take walks as often as possible and hikes with the Sierra Club when I’m strong enough.

Anyway, some major challenges, but I’m ‘forging ahead’ with efforts on behalf of Mariposa MWI in the face of these stumbling blocks.

I keep nagging two of the members of my Board of Directors to send me updated biographies and photos for the webpage, but with little success so far. They’re facing their own health and life issues [the one major trouble with having board members who are contemporaneous to my own age], but I’m sure they’ll send them in eventually.

So, moving ahead and moving forward, in the face of continuing challenges. At least I’m keeping up, again, with these periodic ‘journal’ entries. That’s progress in and of itself!

New Year, Next Steps

Sat, 1 Jan 2011 15:08:46 -0600

Well, it’s time (over a year now) to add a new journal entry, to state where Mariposa MWI has gone since the “Seven Years of Hard Times” posting, on April 1, 2009, that started the MMWI Journal.

First, what I discussed in that posting -- that the nonprofit has not funding -- is still true. That’s the only real ‘bad news’, though. It turns out that I can accomplish a fair amount without funding (well, not ‘no funding’, but funding my nonprofit efforts out of my own pocket). Here are some of the very positive steps that I’ve taken since then:

• I’ve moved my primary efforts, as relates to Mariposa MWI, to LinkedIn. I have a profile page, have ‘connected’ with over 850 people worldwide, and am publishing a blog on a weekly basis. The blog is focused on the issues of adult male sexual abuse survivors, though I address other issues related to men’s emotional wellness also.
• I’ve joined quite a number of LinkedIn groups -- several focused on diversity issues and LGBT populations. I’m planning to create a new group, tentatively titled “Nurturing Men”, to which I want to invite a number of different people, whom I’ve connected with on LinkedIn, whose professional focus is also on men’s issues.
• I’ve met, via LinkedIn, Kathy Bernard, a dynamic woman who has a wealth of great ideas on growing nonprofit organizations. She agreed to join my Board of Directors, heretofore the first female to agree to join.
• I’ve added other new members to the Board of Directors -- Rob Harding, Bob Reszinski, and Chuck Kindleburger (all members of my First Unitarian Church congregation) and Michael Lowenstein, who is a good friend who I met at Jazz St. Louis. And, within the last month, I created a new Board of Directors page on this website, listing the photos and biographies of the Board members.
• I starting taking Digital Storytelling/video editing classes at KETC, the St. Louis affiliate of PBS, as part of their Homeland Project. I’ve produced two short videos, one of which was posted on the KETC Homeland Project website just last week. In turn, I’ve sent out an announcement about that video to around 150 of my friends and colleagues (mostly in St. Louis, some in New Mexico and elsewhere) and have posted notice on the LinkedIn main ‘bulletin board’, plus on some of the various LinkedIn groups of which I’m a member. I’ve already received quite a number of positive responses from both sources. Very gratifying!

With the new year -- 2011 -- upon us, I plan to take even more positive steps on behalf of MMWI:

• I’m studying manuals on FileMaker Pro 11 (for creating databases) and FinalCut Studio 7 (we used FinalCut Express software in the KETC classes). These will help me to creates relational databases for the connections I’ve made in LinkedIn and assist me in learning how to further my video editing skills.
• I plan to take more video editing classes at KETC, to hone my skills and, hopefully, to produce more videos to upload to their website. I’ve also contacted KDHX-TV about taking television production and documentary classes, but so far they have not informed me about when classes will occur.
• I plan to use my video editing and documentary skills to begin producing podcasts for the MMWI website, focusing initially on interviewing other males around sexual survivor and long-term unemployment issues. Eventually, I want to start shooting documentaries focusing on men’s emotional wellness and the issues of adult male sexual abuse survivors, which is the primary target population of this nonprofit.
• Rob Harding [one of my Board members] has offered to let me use his webinar account to create web-based instructional videos, and has offered to provide ‘seed money’ should I organize a conference.
• In that regard, I want to get around to organizing the kind of conference that I’ve been discussing for several years -- one whose focus is on bringing together regional mental health therapists whose practices work with male survivors.
• Via several of of my LInkedIn groups (Working St. Louis; Nonprofit St. Louis) I want to explore what it would take to find funding, even in the current tight-funding situation. Many nonprofit organizations are finding that their funding dollars are drying up, but there is always the possibility to people who do have funds to contribute would be motivated to contribute to a nonprofit, like MMWI, which has an emphasis and direction they hadn’t previously considered.

These are at least a few of the ‘next steps’ that I plan to take in 2011. I’m feeling like the nonprofit -- and my own life -- has a bit of renewed hope. The whole social media tact, via LinkedIn and Facebook (I have a limited account there, where I post notices about blog entries), has given me a stable ‘sense’ that MMWI is getting better known in the larger professional world -- and with worldwide connections, literally the world! I have renewed energy since August 2010 when I began expanding my focus on social media. I believe there is some real potential there.

“Reform Politics” As Cover For Illegal Political Manipulations

Mon, 5 Oct 2009 10:36:56 -0500

I’ve been ruminating about the illegal campaign financing charge against Sen. Jeff Smith [Missouri General Assembly] for the past several weeks, and want to speak about his behavior from the perspective of men’s wellness, which is my professional interest. It’s sort of ‘old news’ (given how quickly the media focus of events changes), yet the latest corruption charges against a third Missouri legislator last Friday make it current.

Let me emphasize, from the outset, that this is not a partisan criticism. In addition to managing a nonprofit focused on men’s emotional wellness, I am as a private citizen a veteran of 60+ Democratic Party campaigns since 1978 and, regardless of my personal sadness about how this case has played out, have been and fully plan to remain a thoroughly devoted liberal activist. Further, it is not partisan because political corruption hardly has a solely one-party face; both of the major political parties have plenty of history related to such behavior throughout American history.

But what makes this case so relevant to me, and to men’s wellness, is that Sen. Smith presented the public face of a liberal, activist, reform politician, who was not selling out to “the powers to be”, who was going to change the rules of the game to favor the common citizen. The enthusiasm for his reform campaign was so strong that a local director made a movie about him, “Can Mr. Smith Go To Washington?”, supporting his maverick approach. I saw that movie and was cheering for him along with many other liberal activists. And yet, even as he ran for office in 2004 against Russ Carnahan, even as progressive voters responded to his message of reform with enthusiasm and energy, even as he gained activist support for his underfunded, grassroots candidacy against the family dynasty candidate, who in the eyes of the political establishment was the assumed winner of the contest [a la David vs. Goliath], Jeff Smith was financing, with campaign funds, an underhanded, illegal smear campaign against his opponent and then knowingly lying to federal election officials about his behavior.

What is important to note here is that this behavior by Sen. Smith wasn’t a case of a reform candidate who started out with a fresh record and then, after years in the rough and tumble of electoral politics, was slowly corrupted by that system. We are talking about a politician who while he was running for office his first time around knowingly engaged in illegal electoral financing, while representing himself to his supporters as a fresh face who was fighting for the common citizen and against the corrupt system. And who then continued to cover-up that illegal behavior - and encouraged others to join him in the cover-up - right up to the time of his arrest, while at the same time continuing to promote his image of being a reform legislator.

It is the emotional disconnect between his public face and his private behavior, and what appears to be his denial, to himself, about the contradiction manifested by this behavior, that is so thoroughly disturbing.

None of us is ‘perfect’, nor should anyone expect perfection in our political leaders. Good representation, an honest approach to the democratic system, keeping ones hand out of the till - yes, those are reasonable expectations - but not perfection. But the larger dynamic that I am addressing here is the self-delusion, by some males, between what they say they believe in [their stated ideals] and how they behave in their lives [especially their unconscious willingness to fail to notice that dissonance] .

Hence, Sen. Smith’s statements, upon resigning, that he had done a lot of good for citizens of Missouri and had assisted many downtrodden groups to gain needed resources, as though gaining political office by whatever means, including violating federal election laws, was outweighed by “good works” once in office. Apparently he failed to notice the obvious contradiction between acting in an illegal manner in order to gain political office and what one does in the office. And yet what one does in order to get what one goes after, i.e. ‘the process’, is critical to what one gains in the end. They work hand-in-hand. Using illegal means to be able to do “good works” does not justify the illegal behavior. Quite to the contrary: stating that one is a reform candidate who is challenging the perceived inequity of the system even while actively participating in the very corruption that you say you are working against destroys the hopes and dreams and rational expectations of voters who hope and pray that you’re somehow ‘different’ from the norm. The voters did not set Jeff Smith up to a ‘higher standard’; he did that himself and then failed to meet even a minimal standard of acceptable political behavior.

Knowing that no one is perfect and that ‘the system’ itself has inherent problems, the best lesson that can come out of this whole process is if Jeff Smith could analyze the ‘dynamic’ behind his behavior and figure out why he could ‘not notice’ the incredible pain he has caused many politically progressive people who fervently believed in him and who truly believed he was a reform politician. He could, after serving his time in prison (or whatever penalty he incurs), give talks to young people entering the political realm on how to “look inside one’s soul” and notice such emotional disconnects and how to avoid those pitfalls in the political system. We, as citizens, don’t expect purity nor do we expect someone never to make a mistake, but we do expect lessons to be learned and better behavior to be manifested in the future. In psychotherapy, we often encourage clients with the phrase “progress not perfection” and note that that is an excellent goal to pursue; we should expect nothing less from our political leaders.

On Return from the High School Reunion: Reflections

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 12:14:36 -0500

It turns out that all the fear, anxiety, and nervousness that I expected to ‘arise’ during my return trip to Wichita & Derby, Kansas didn’t come to be. It wasn’t that I avoided the anxiety - I actually actively sought it out, to re-experience and revision the energy, by driving by the McConnell Air Force Base housing where I lived when the torture and terror was inflicted by my insane father. But while the memories came back, being there and seeing the general area of the torture didn’t evoke the flood of painful memories that I assumed it would.

And, truly, that came as a surprise.

It’s not as though the outcome to the terror doesn't continue to insert traumatic effects on my life - I’m still quite paranoid about the world generally and I have a decidedly unpleasant discomfort when anyone even playfully hits me, and I continue to be quite unnerved when anyone angrily raises their voice at me, for almost any reason, fearing (or the inner child fears) that I will be struck in the next moment.

But, as my therapist pointed up when we had our Kansas visit follow-up session, it’s as though the energy around the torture has been ‘bleed off’ in the intervening years. It’s like I had a clear memory of the torture and the trauma it invoked in my life, but in the intervening years, I’ve spent so much energy and invested so much work into working through the trauma that the “impact” of the actual events have dissipated. As my therapist observed. it was like I had carefully tried to contain the terror memories in a “strong box”, that was then locked and placed in a lead-lined container, and then I tried to slowly withdraw portions, as I felt emotionally healthy enough to do so. However, unbeknownst to me, minute holes had developed in the box, and slowly the traumatic terror “bleed” through those holes, out the bottom of the container and out of my emotional world. Such that, when I went to open the box, in the present - during this visit to the place of the torture, the impact of the event was gone. Literally gone.

Now, much of it had already gone during the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s, when I had gone through a most traumatic “emotional breakthrough” (as my therapist at the time speculated it was, rather than a ‘breakdown’). About 3 years of almost nonstop panic anxiety, followed by many years of less traumatic, though no less painful, working though the fear and PTSD. And it turns out - or so it appears presently, anyway - that that very hard, very painful, but ultimately productive emotional work dissipated much of the ‘traumatic torture energy’ contained in that “Wichita, Kansas Strongbox”.

The other part, somewhat amusingly, was that when I went to the actual reunion and saw my fellow classmates - and how much we had all aged and changed - it fully hit me, in a way that simply ‘thinking about it’ could never have done: that 40 years have past, that the events occurred 40 years ago, and that I’ve grown - and aged - as a person in the meantime. That may be somewhat of a “duh, of course” experience objectively, but for me, anyway, it took actually ‘being in the place’ that I had spent 39 years fearing returning to to know that that was true. Something about “being there” that changed the whole experience and its effects.

I truly had the chance to revision the event and revision the place. Derby has changed (I never really knew much about the town, since as military kids we were bused to the school, did our high school thing, and were bused back to the base housing). Driving around the town was like visiting a whole new town I’d never really known about. And seeing some of the people I have tangentially known in the high school, who are now adults, was a most pleasing experience. Many of them have matured and grown in ways that are most pleasant and engaging.

Mary S., one of the “court girls” (who was a member of the ‘sports royalty’ in high school), who was a fine and reasonable girl in high school and remains equally so as an adult woman, made a comment which truly brought joyous tears to my eyes. She and I and some other people were talking on the verandah of the Kansas Aviation Museum - where the Saturday night dinner activities were being held. I was laughing that in high school, I was sort of a ‘geeky kid’, who viewed the “court girls” with awe, so entranced was I with their beauty. Mary laughed bemusedly at my comment and said in return “let me assure you, Donald, that we girls felt pretty geeky ourselves”. Then, upon my noting, somewhat painfully, that as a military brat I had never had the experience of “hometown-ness” that the local kids had the chance to experience, Mary reflectively said “I hear what you’re saying, Donald, but the other side is that the military kids brought a worldliness to us, because they had had an experience that challenged our somewhat narrow, parochial view of the world born by only having the experience of growing up in one place”.

I nearly cried when she said that: I had, as a military kid, felt my whole life like an outsider, like no one in any of the communities where I lived ever accepted me as ‘one of the group’, because I wasn’t from that community. But Mary’s comment put the whole of that pain in a completely different - and ultimately enlightening - context. It’s true that none of us can experience the whole of every kind of human experience - our lives are just too limited - but each of us can have different experiences that we can then share and then enliven the lives of others.

All in all, a great experience visiting Derby, Wichita, and the high school reunion. And, as is often the case, it evoked realizations that I could never had known about before traveling there. I’m glad I took the time to make the excursion. It put to rest a long-harbored fear. And it allows me to invest that “emotional working-through energy” into other equally traumatic areas of my life experience. Who knows, maybe I’ll realize that other fears have ‘bled off ‘ more PTSD anxiety than I have previous suspected.