As we’re getting down to the last few scraps of 2025, it’s probably a good time to do a little bit of reflecting on what this past year has been like.
Speaking from the perspective of my own emotional recovery – my own spiritual healing – the work’s been pretty difficult, and at times, it’s just been downright exhausting.
But there’s one thing I’ve learned these last many years, and that is, that when you plow deep, you’re going to hit some big stones. It takes a lot to dig them out, but when you do, buried beneath them, you can usually find some pretty good, rich, fertile soil. And that’s definitely been the case this year…
If you’d like to see more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
Codependency, counter-dependency, and the inability to receive…
It’s been said that you can’t pour from an empty cup. It’s also been said that you can’t receive in a cup that’s filled. For a cup to be of true value, to be truly serviceable, it doesn’t remain full or empty; it transitions between those states as necessary:
I’m thirsty, so I fill a cup. I drink from it. The cup empties.
My friend is thirsty, so I fill a cup. I give it to my friend. They drink from it. The cup empties.
When we’re healthy, we learn to become both the full and empty cup as required. In the sickness of codependency and counter-dependency, however, the truth of the matter is that cup is never empty. It’s always filled with one thing: my own need for safety, for love…
If you’d like to see more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube.
As a kid, you walk into a room and you feel anger there…well, you feel angry, so you must be angry. You feel sad, so you must be sad. We learn to internalize those things, to take them on, and to come at the world from the perspective of those things that we’re feeling – believing that they’re our own.
As we get older and lean a little heavier into our work, hopefully, we begin to sort some of that stuff out. We begin to learn what’s ours and what’s not; what we can let go of – what we can hang onto.
And this can be incredibly difficult when we see people we really love going through a tough time. One trap in particular that it’s easy to fall into as someone who’s empathic, is the fix, save, and rescue trap. We see someone suffering, and we want to fix the situation. We want to save them from it; to rescue them from their peril.
Sometimes our motivations aren’t as unselfish as they seem, whether we’re aware of that or not. Part and parcel of growing up in a house full of emotional instability is often the dance of codependence: “I love you because of how you make me feel.”
In the presence of suffering, especially when it’s the suffering of those we care for, we don’t like the way we feel when we see them suffer, and so we want to rescue them; to stop their pain in order to stop our own.
If you’d like to hear more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube…
One of the great blessings of my own healing work has been that I have found myself in the presence of teachers who, consciously or unconsciously, have never been afraid to show their humanity. Some of it has been extremely noble, and some of it hasn’t. But the wonderful thing about that, is that I have learned lessons along the way that I could not have learned any other way.
I have gotten to see people being completely human in my presence, and that has opened up space and allowed me to do the same…
I roughed out a piece of Box Elder this morning. It was the first time I ever worked with it, and the blank was a little bit dry and unforgiving. It was a struggle at first, but somewhere in the middle of things, we reached an agreement.
My brother and I have a saying that we use every now and then: “Christmas in December.” It’s shorthand between us for “business as usual,” or “same shit different day.” He said that in a text he sent me today, which is what got me thinking about it.
Sometimes, you get the idea that things are going to pretty much run to form – that the work you’ve done time and time again will end up being “Christmas in December.” But then, it decides to throw you a curve ball, and best laid plans can quickly turn into a generous portion of “what the hell am I going to do now?”
When this happens, it can either end in failure, or it can give you some insight which you couldn’t have gotten any other way.
Such was the case this morning, when I cut too deeply into the blank, rode the grain, and because it was dry, ended up taking a chunk out of the bowl. I spat out a couple of appropriate Germanic expletives, stared at it for a minute or two, and then I stopped, and let the spoon tell me what to do.
Sure enough, it had a few ideas.
The blank was still pretty thick, so I took my carving hatchet to the end of it, repaired the bowl, now a bit shorter and shallower than I initially intended, and went back to work roughing out the spoon.
It’s drying in the wood chips as I write this. In a few more days, I should be able to fish it out and finish everything up. I’ll approach it a bit more carefully when I do.
As we progress through our healing work, there are parts of us that are going to kick and scream at every attempt that’s made to heal them. They see this work as a fight to the death.
We know that you don’t stop falling until you hit bottom. When that happens, something’s going to shatter. But the only thing that shatters is the lie. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. But that’s what breaks.
And what gets up and walks away, the truth, is a little more healthy than what hit bottom.
Really living through that experience; coming to terms with it and allowing it to be what it is in all its glory: the light, the dark, the love, the hate, the anger, the joy… all of it, that’s really the only way we’re ever going to heal. That’s really the only way we’re going to come through these things and to find the gifts that they carry wrapped inside them…
When you’re a kid, you’re pretty much at the mercy of the environment you grow up in – and the people who inhabit that environment. You can’t pack your fucking bags and move to Podunk when you’re three, that’s just the way it goes.
And so, we learn to adjust.
We learn to eat the food that we’re given. And sometimes, that food comes in the form of some pretty negative beliefs – pretty negative realities. We get told that we’re an idiot. We get yelled at. Maybe we get beaten. Maybe we get emotionally abused, or even worse. We come to find out, sometimes, that the love that we really want is highly conditional and based upon how well we fall in line, or dance to someone else’s music.
As we get older though, we sometimes continue on with those beliefs. We can hear those stories again and again in our heads. And though the voices might sound like the people who said those things – it might even be their words – sometimes, those people have been out of our lives for years or even decades. Maybe they’re even dead.
So, the question is, “Whose voice is it, really…?”
Amongst the things that get passed down to us from our families – the things that continue to support us, like family traditions or pictures or stories, heirlooms like China, wooden spoons, or upholstered rocking chairs, there are other things that can continue to structure our lives, like fear, shame, and guilt, and some of the darker, more intense stuff like hypervigilance, codependence, or toxic self-reliance.
When you’re raised with dysfunctionality, you learn very quickly how to read the territory. You learn to check the temperature of the air around you. You look for changes in expressions, changes in tones of voice… the slightest clue can give you a read on the environment.
And you learn how to adapt, how to adopt certain behaviors like people pleasing or hiding, never speaking your own opinion but constantly copping to the opinions of others. Or you learn how to constantly challenge authority, to yell back in order to make yourself bigger, so that the threat becomes less.
That was a favorite tactic of mine for many, many years.
These patterns provide a sense of structure and carry us through difficult situations. They can cause us to pick certain types of romantic partners, or repetitive dead-end jobs. They can drive us into reckless spending or self-destructive lifestyles.
Left unchecked, these things can continue to shape the way we live our lives. And so, in their own way, they, too, become family traditions…
There’s been a question that’s come up. And that question seems to be essential to this practice of spiritual and emotional recovery work. And that question is, “Do we have the courage to stand in the midst of the ashes of a life built upon the lies of others, and to allow our truth to express itself…even if we have no idea of what that truth is at the time?”
Not the stories. Not the hopes. Not the ideas of the way things are, or how they should be with us or the world.
Just the truth as it is, without the need or desire for it to be anything else.
This is some of the hardest and most essential work we’ll ever be called upon to do. It can shatter everything. And that’s why so many of us will die without completing it. Sadly, there are a good many of us who will die without ever attempting it in the first place…
…and at this time of the year, when we see the trees that are either bare or on their way there and the leaves on the ground, it’s easy to reflect on those things that have fallen away from our own lives. Some we’ve given up willingly – others have been taken away from us by the strong winds of change: friends who’ve passed through our lives who are no longer there, family members we no longer see or maybe who have died, places we’ve gone, things we believed, ways we’ve acted.
All these things that have come and gone.
Another metaphor that’s reflected upon this time of the year is that of the harvest – the things that we collect, the things that we bring in and fill our cupboards with that nourish us through the long, cold winter.
And while it’s easy to look at that side of it, there is another side to the idea of the harvest, and that’s the things that get left behind. Not only the obvious – the seeds that’ve fallen from the plants, but also the stems and the dying leaves and decaying roots. All those things that once supported the fruits and the vegetables that we’ve harvested, but now get left behind to die and to rot – to get mixed in with the soil to begin to support those seeds that have fallen…
Bonja the Bodger 