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On the way home from the theatre, I made the attempt to unravel from the mixture of emotions that still had their grip on me. Anger, anxiety, sadness...I was all over the place, still fighting back the tears and trying not to play the blame game. The friend I had with me in the car had to hear my rantings, “It’s not the counselors job to know the human body,” I lamented. “They are taught to deal with emotions. It’s not a medical doctors job to know how to counsel. They are taught to treat disease! It’s not the cops job to know how to prevent the war. They have their hands full trying to fight IN the war! And it isn’t within the scope of a parent’s or teacher’s job to be intimately familiar with any of it!” Then I stopped shouting and allowed the ah-ha moment to sink in. A few seconds later, the tears finally started to roll. “It’s my job,” I said jabbing my finger into my chest and crying, “I’m the one I am so angry at.”
For over 25 years, I have been studying and researching how our bodies work and the way each aspect of being human (the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual) effect one another. What started out as a need to heal myself from undiagnosed trauma and emotional and physical illness, turned into a crusade to bring the message to others through coaching and activism. I decided a long time ago that what I was discovering was not taught in schools. It didn’t make any sense to me to spend years getting a degree if that degree didn’t offer me the whole picture or the solutions. I used that time instead to learn more about what I was seeing as the common denominators in myself and all my coaching clients (more on that later). Then I brought in the doctors and practitioners who were degreed, licensed and willing to work with me. When I started seeing amazing results...people, including myself becoming healthy and whole...I wanted to share it with other professionals and agencies. What I wasn’t ready for was the cold shoulder. No one wanted to hear from me. In deference to them, I had no formal degree...no letters after my name. I would look at their faces and almost see the words floating over their heads, “What could she know?” I was partially in agreement. Everything I learned was self taught...countless hours reading through medical journals, clinical trials, prescription manuals and believe it or not, hands on experience. I kept trying to share testimony anyway, remaining under the radar and hoping to strike a chord in any doctor or counselor willing to listen. “I didn’t have to be the crusader,” I would tell myself. “I only have to plant the seed.”
Time has marched on though and so has the devastation. My fear of speaking out as an “uneducated” spokesperson has reached its climatic ridge. Perhaps I needed to be exposed to four nights of trauma, hearing story after agonizing story and seeing picture after gruesome picture in order to trigger my own need to come to the plate. “What good am I doing if I don’t speak out?” Truth is, no one who even moderately understands stress and how it is potentially playing out on the human body and mind can afford to keep silent any longer. Not only is it our job to shout it out, we have to be the catalyst for change or our country will not be victorious over substance abuse. The stats will just keep rising every year as they have been, and our crusaders...the practitioners, counselors and law enforcement who are deep in the trenches, fighting the good fight, will need to keep spending their time in triage. They will remain too busy trying to keep people alive to really delve into healing the root causes that will lead to prevention. That is where “we” need to come in. Every one of us.
Each member of society has their role in the cause, the effect and the cure. No one is to blame. No one person is at fault. It is all circumstance and the culmination of many factors that add up to the addiction epidemic, along with the depression, suicide, disease and unlawful behavior. Fortunately, many of the underlying factors are within our control, but not if we continue to underestimate the influence of each and/or their potential to harm. We finally have to all agree that what we are doing to ourselves and our kids...the physical, mental and emotional stress we endure day to day is just too much for the human mind and body to bear. We have to break it down before it has the potential to break us. But where to start?
First, we each need to select our perspective. Where do you want to stand so you can view the big picture? As a parent, teacher, educator, counselor, medical practitioner, law enforcer, government leader, struggling teen, friend, family member, activist, advocate, coach, concerned citizen or most likely any combination of two, three or four of these positions. It is important to choose, because without the understanding that we are all stakeholders, there won’t be a full buy in. Instead, we will continue to insulate ourselves, thinking it won’t happen to us or our own family and believing that it is another’s responsibility to deal with “those” issues. Everyone’s eyes must remain open. Our souls need to start to rule over our egos and our hearts need to overcome our fears...myself included. It’s time to expose the causes we have all had a part in allowing to affect us. And finally, a serious look at how to eradicate them.
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