A Request
Hiking in the Andes, Cusco Region, Peru. Photo credit: Brint Duncan.
In January, I stated my intention for starting this blog:
In the following series of posts, I intend to share some of my healing journey with others. For my friends and family, so that they may better understand why I had to leave home. For others too, in the hopes my story may in some small way help them on their own healing journey. And for myself, as a reminder of the path I’ve traveled so far, and the distance still to cover.
At the time, I thought this blog would be about just that: healing. I envisioned stories of psychotherapists and shamanic healers, novel modern medical treatments and traditional folk remedies.
As I put pen to paper, I was surprised to see that what began flowing out of me were not stories of healing and hope. It was anguish. Anger. Despair. Even as I tried to redirect my efforts, and write about my experience with ayahuasca, I found I could not transmit any more than a superficial recounting of the events and circumstances of my ceremonies.
No, in order to share authentically and with any depth of meaning, it has been necessary for me to go back and write about experiences from my past. As many of you have read, the vast majority of these were painful and challenging for me. Indeed, they almost broke me.
The writing, for me, is cathartic and therapeutic. I could quite contentedly write all day and never publish a single thing. What fuels me to share these writings, is the:
Pain of losing two close family members to suicide.
Feeling of helplessness as I watch other loved ones suffer from anxiety and depression.
Knowledge that the rates of depression among American youth have increased more than 70% in the last decade, and that 1-in-3 may be suffering from IBS, and that these two phenomena are connected.
So, to my readers, I want to express my deep gratitude to you for taking the time to read my Wanderings. The messages of appreciation and support are deeply affirming, and I am so appreciative to those who have reached out.
A request: Please, do not be sorry. “Sorry” suggests I have brought you down. “Sorry” intimates sorrow, which can be a pitying and often powerless emotion. “Sorry” means my life experience warrants sympathy. It does not. The words I invite you to keep in mind as you read The Soul Wanderer, are one’s I wrote back in January as I was exploring my motives for starting this blog:
Despite every privileged advantage I’ve been blessed with…
I am blessed. Fortunate. Privileged. I recognize that it is only by virtue of this privilege that I am even able to share my story. To be born as a white male in the U.S. has bestowed me with innumerable and untold advantages in my life. Even as dire or depressing as some of my experiences may seem, I am one of the lucky ones. And so it is from this context that I invite you to read my writings, with the knowledge that for every trauma or challenge or setback I’ve described in The Soul Wanderer, there are folks out there who have experienced much, much worse, and who may not have the means or resources to find their way on to a healing path.
This is especially important to remember as we step into this moment of global transformation. “Sorry” represents our past, the events of human history that got us here—to a global pandemic, systemic racism, police brutality, oceans full of plastic, the loss of a species every twenty minutes, and utterly ineffectual leadership. Now is not the time for sorry. Now is the time for action and change.
So, instead of “sorry,” I invite you to replace that with empathy, action, resolve. I give you my solemn vow that I am working to replace my ‘sorries’ too.
Yours in gratitude, healing, and change.
Jonathan🧡