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Forgiveness: Trash Removal for the Soul

Seeking and giving forgiveness is essential if you want to become a better person. But it’s hard and often seen as a green light for more abuse.

Mood music:

For you to understand what I’m about to get into, let’s review the AA 12 Steps of Recovery, which has been an important guide on my own flight from madness:

1. We admitted we were powerless over [insert addiction] — that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to [insert type of addict], and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

There’s a recurring theme in almost every step: Forgiveness.

To truly heal and grow, you have to be able to ask others for forgiveness. People like me have to do that, because you hurt a lot of people in a lot of ways when your addictions and mental disorders get the better of you.

The haze of OCD and the related addictions exhausted the mind and body and incapacitated me for days and weeks at a time. I was useless to my wife and children. I let family relationships and friendships suffer because getting the binge and then collapsing under the weight of it was more appealing than being a good friend.

I lied to a lot of people about a lot of things and had the audacity to think I was above others, no matter how screwed up I was.

I’ve asked for and gotten a lot of forgiveness along the way. I’ve done my share of forgiving. I long ago forgave family members I clashed with because of dysfunction. It doesn’t always end estrangements.

But as a priest once told me, forgiving doesn’t mean you permit someone to flog you anew.

It’s hard. Damn hard.

Resentment weighs you down and makes you weaker. It’s like carrying a Dumpster full of trash on your shoulders.

To move on and be better, you have to take out the garbage.

Below: “Prayer” by EddieTheYeti

Prayer by EddieTheYeti

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When Anger Was All The Rage

I had a vicious temper when I was younger.

To call it a byproduct of OCD, depression and addiction would be pushing it, because I think the temper would have been there even without the mental illness.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/A-nULlfJDvk

Examples of my temper include:

  • Hurling a fork or steak knife at my brother in a restaurant on New Years Eve 1979 because he made a joke I didn’t like. The more dramatic among my family members say it was a steak knife, though I’m pretty sure it was a fork. That the utensil could have embedded in my brother’s head and caused serious injury didn’t occur to me.
  • Lighting things on fire out of anger, including a collection of Star Wars action figures that would probably be worth a fortune today. I would pretend they were kids in school who were bullying me. I was a bully, too, but that didn’t matter.
  • Road rage. Tons of it. I was an angry driver. I would tailgate. I would speed. In the winters I would intentionally spin out my putrid-green 1983 Ford LTD station wagon in parking lots during snowstorms. While in college, I nearly hit another car and flipped off the other driver while my future in-laws sat in the back. Traffic jams would infuriate me. Getting lost would fill me with fear and, in turn, more anger.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

There were a lot of legitimate causes of rage for me. The drug I took for Chron’s Disease had a lot of nasty side effects, including violent mood swings. A brother and two close friends dying — one by suicide — gave me a lot of anger. Being stuck in the middle of turf wars and working late nights while at The Eagle-Tribune certainly made me a walking ball of fire.

I’m sure the fear and anxiety that came with my OCD contributed to more anger.

I’m even convinced the anger was useful in a way. Finding things to fixate my rage on had a perverse way of making me feel better, like I was somehow above the insanity because I could point my finger at it and call it names.

But somewhere along the way, it stopped working and started to suck the life from me.

That’s what anger does when you let it rule for too long. The burning feeling starts off as an energy that lifts you. But left unchecked, it becomes a parasite that takes everything and gives nothing.

Once that happened, I had to do something.

I kept going to church and a real faith took root. I found it could sustain me far better than rage could.

I went to therapy and started to face the demons that made me angry so much.

In time, the anger left. It comes back for a visit sometimes, but it no longer rules my life. It’s better that way.

Below: “Unleashed,” by EddieTheYeti

Unleashed Ink by EddieTheYeti

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A Sick Mind, A Tragic Situation

A few years ago I wrote about childhood friend Mark Hedgecock, who at the time was a thrice-convicted pedophile who was chatting up young girls on Facebook. He got kicked off Facebook shortly thereafter, and I lost track of him.

Unfortunately, his name has surfaced again.

Mood music:

He’s been accused of soliciting and collecting child porn through his email account. According to Boston.com, the AG’s office was tipped off by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which discovered the email account. Investigators traced that account to Hedgecock. He was held on $50,000 bail and, if he gets back on the streets, he’ll have to wear a GPS device.

Part of me feels for him, because he’s mentally sick. But given his long history as a sex offender and pedophile, I believe he needs to be locked up permanently.

I feel especially bad for his stepfather. For him, this is the latest tragedy in what has been an unspeakably terrible year.

Late last year, Hedgecock’s sister and mother died within a couple days of each other. Stefanie died from complications with pneumonia, then his mom suffered a fatal aneurysm.

As a kid, I was in their home constantly, from first grade straight through high school. His parents treated me like part of the family. I never knew Stefanie in adulthood, but I remember her as the baby sister. My most recent memory of their father, Victor, is from around 1986, when he scolded me for speeding around our Point of Pines neighborhood in my father’s 1985 Lincoln.

Last time I was sick from Crohn’s Disease was that same year. Mark came over to check on me almost daily.

As angry and unforgiving as I am about his record as a child predator, that’s an act of friendship I can’t forget. I also know what it’s like to lose a sibling, and I remember how Mark was there for me when my brother died in 1984.

I sometimes wonder if Mark’s life would have turned out differently had I been a better friend after high school. I tend to doubt it, because I was damaged and couldn’t get out of my own way back then.

Sometimes people simply grow up to be monsters. When that happens, they need to be removed from society. Call me intolerant, but that’s how I feel.

That said, I’m going to keep this family in my prayers. It’s all I can do.

Roosevelt School, Grade 6
My sixth-grade class photo from the Roosevelt School in the Point of Pines, Revere, Mass. I’m at the bottom left. Mark Hedgecock is behind me at the upper left.

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Pain Leaks from Mind to Body

Mental illness can lead to physical sickness. It’s a simple fact that some people find hard to believe.

Mood music:

I often hear people arguing over whether this person’s or that person’s aches and pains are “all in their head.” You know the type: There’s never any real underlying disease, but they’re always calling out of work with a headache or some intestinal discomfort.

It’s all in their head, you say?

Well, yeah.

It’s called psychosomatic illness, when mental anguish leads to physical sickness.

I’ve been there. Migraines. Brutal back pain. A stomach turned inside-out.

But it wasn’t always clear that what ailed me was in my head. As a child I was sick a lot with Crohn’s Disease, and that confused matters later on.

To throw the Crohn’s Disease into remission, doctors used the maximum dose of Prednisone, which caused migraines. You can read more about that in “The Bad Pill Kept Me from the Good Pill,” but the bottom line is that these headaches came daily and always made me sick to my stomach.

Later in life, I developed severe back pain, the kind that would knock me onto the couch and keep me there for weeks.

In the last month, I’ve gotten an unwanted refresher course in what all that was like. I wrecked my back and was prescribed Prednisone for my troubles. The mood swings and depression I remembered returned. Thankfully, I’ve turned that corner.

The earlier examples were all legitimate physical problems. But at some point my brain lost the ability to differentiate a real Chrohn’s flare-up or back spasm from an imagined one.

When the mind thinks the body has suffered a trauma, it has a habit of becoming real.

Doctors always warned me that mental stress could trigger Crohn’s flare-ups, and I guess it did, especially when my parents divorced. I’m fairly sure my brother’s death set off the last real flare-up in 1986.

The migraines and back problems, meanwhile, seeped seamlessly into the things that were going wrong with me mentally.

Anxiety attacks felt essentially the same as a heart attack, complete with the pain shooting from the chest to the neck and down the arms. Migraines followed. Work stress often sparked migraines and back pain.

While it was difficult to separate other legitimate physical problems from those stemming from mental distress, I can tell you that dealing with my underlying OCD, depression and anxiety made a lot of ailments mostly go away.

When you deal with what’s in your head, the pain in the rest of your body can be eased and even eradicated.

Psychosomatic illness still visits me on occasion. But it’s much better than the old life of perpetual pain.

black and white picture of a bald man with his face in his hands

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We Need More Roosevelts in Public Life

PBS launched a new Ken Burns series this week, this one on the Roosevelts. What I’ve seen so far reminds me of why I’ve always idolized this family.

The documentary focuses on Teddy, Franklin and Eleanor — how they each overcame deep personal demons and rose to the top of American politics. In the process, they changed millions of lives for the better.

I’ve written quite a bit about them over the years. The launch of Ken Burns’ latest masterpiece is as good an excuse as any to offer up this compilation.

Teddy Roosevelt Did It All. What’s Your Excuse?
TR was a sickly boy whose asthma often left him struggling for breath. He could have used that as an excuse early on to avoid life’s big challenges. Instead, he lifted weights obsessively and built himself into a bull of a man who would live what he called “the strenuous life.”

6 Guys I Look to in Times of Trouble
Teddy and Franklin are on this list — FDR for overcoming polio and changing the world as president.

Eleanor Roosevelt Was a Badass
I’ve always admired Eleanor Roosevelt. She defied the society of her day and helped forged a new path for women. She was a tireless fighter for the disadvantaged. During WWII, she traveled to the front to visit the troops, despite the danger. She was an early fighter for civil rights. One of her most famous quotes was to “do something every day that scares you.” The older she got, the more badass she became.

The Roosevelts: An Intimate Portrait poster

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Blackstone House of Horrors: The Story Doesn’t Add Up

There’s a pretty awful story unfolding here in Massachusetts, about four children living in filth and neglect at a home in Blackstone. It reads like a horror movie: The house was infested with vermin, 2-foot stacks of dirty diapers were everywhere and feces covered the walls. The two youngest kids showed signs of neglect. Police found the remains of three infants and a number of dead animals in the house.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/rUfYNQsr3h8

The mom, 31-year-old Erika Murray, came off to neighbors as a dedicated mom, and her Facebook page paints the picture of a happy family. While the two younger children were severely neglected, the two older lived seemingly normal lives — going to school, playing with friends, smiling in pictures on the front porch. The Facebook page — taken down over the weekend — showed pictures of home-cooked meals.

Murray’s lawyer says the woman is mentally ill, trapped in a world of cold fear. The man she lives with apparently wanted no more than the first two kids, so she claimed she was babysitting the other two.

Authorities were first tipped off that something was wrong when a neighbor went to the house and saw the horror. The four kids were removed from the house on August 28, but the infant remains were only discovered a few days ago.

Predictably, people are rushing to judgement. The comments sections of the various news reports are full of anger toward the mother. I feel that anger, too, so I’m not criticizing the commentators.

At the same time, this story doesn’t add up on so many levels. For example, we know almost nothing about the man of the house, who lived there the whole time. It’s inconceivable that he lived there blissfully unaware of the filth around him.

Also, Murray’s parents have been described as doting grandparents to the two older children and didn’t know about the two younger kids. They apparently never went in the house. It seems impossible to me that they had absolutely no idea about what went on in the house and that they never saw anything about their daughter that was off.

Pardon the expression, but everything about this story stinks. The truth of it all will eventually come out.

My hope going forward is that Murray gets help. She needs to pay a price for subjecting her children to the terrible conditions. But if she’s mentally ill and can be treated, she should be given that treatment and given a chance to be rehabilitated.

Most importantly, I hope the kids are well taken care of from here on forward. I pray that the youngest children get the best medical care available.

Erika Murray's Blackstone, Mass., home

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I Didn’t Know Danny Lewin, But I’m Grateful For Him

As an Akamai Technologies employee, I practically inhaled Molly Knight Raskin’s book, “No Better Time: The Brief, Remarkable Life of Danny Lewin, the Genius Who Transformed the Internet.” It’s a spectacular look at the history of the company, and it captures the Danny Lewin I’ve heard about from colleagues who knew him.

Mood music:

I was laboring unhappily at a newspaper on Sept. 11, 2001, when Lewin died aboard American Airlines Flight 11. It’s largely believed he was the first victim of that day, stabbed while trying to stop the terrorists from hijacking the plane.

Back at Akamai, as the surge in online traffic threatened to grind the Internet to a halt, Danny’s colleagues worked feverishly to keep the web from crashing. They succeeded, and it’s one of the many inspiring stories to come out of that horrible day.

At its core, the book is the story of Lewin’s friendship with Tom Leighton, which took root at MIT. Lewin was a mathematical genius who wrote a set of algorithms that would be used at Akamai to create a faster, more stable Internet. Leighton was his soft-spoken professor and mentor. Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Leighton, who is now Akamai’s CEO. You can listen to the interview here.

But the thing I most identify with is Lewin’s restless, relentless personality. He was loud and pushed his goals with the speed and power of a freight train. I’m pretty useless when it comes to mathematics and code writing. But I identify with that drive. It’s one of the byproducts of my OCD — sometimes a curse, many times a blessing that has helped me achieve success in my own profession. There’s no record of Lewin having OCD. He was shaped by a history much different from mine.

He served for four years in the Israel Defense Forces as an officer in Sayeret Matkal, a unit dedicated to fighting terrorists. He had unlimited energy that kept him going with little sleep. He was a devoted husband and father.

He was also loud and could be ridiculously demanding of people, something I relate to.

Learning about him has been a pleasure. His story inspires me to work harder and take nothing for granted. I’m grateful for that.

There’s a cool footnote to this story: Danny’s remains were identified in 2004 and buried in Sharon Memorial Park, a massive Jewish cemetery south of Boston. It happens to be where my brother is buried, along with both my maternal and paternal grandparents and my great-grandmother.

It’s just one more bond connecting me to a man I never met; a man who influences me all the same.

Lewin book

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9/11 Lessons: We Rise Again

As we take time to remember those we lost on Sept. 11, 2001, let’s also remember what we’ve held onto.

Mood music:

As the years have passed, I’ve found myself comparing the terrorist attacks to the personal demons we all deal with at various points in our lives.

Many of us have fears, regrets, dreams and nightmares. Like terrorists who threaten to blow up buildings and people, our personal demons threaten to destroy us. But as I’ve learned from my own experiences, we don’t have to let the evil win.

One thing that has inspired me since 9/11 is the way New Yorkers have gone on with their lives. I’ve been to Lower Manhattan many times and seen people doing so even as they walk past what we used to call Ground Zero. The first time I saw that I was angry, because people seemed to be passing hallowed ground without a care in the world. I’ve since come to see it as a sign of strength.

Terrorists can destroy buildings and take lives. But they can’t keep us down for long.

The WTC site now includes a museum commemorating that terrible day, as well as a memorial built around the footprints of the Twin Towers. There’s also 1 WTC, which is now the tallest building in America. I’ve seen it at various stages of construction.

Bill Brenner at 1 World Trade Center

I see it as a symbol of how we manage to face our adversity and rise up.

For years after 9/11, I was terrified of flying. I eventually got back on planes, and today I love to fly. A couple years ago, I even took a flight on 9/11.

I rose.

Before my current job, I worked for Akamai, a company co-founded by Danny Lewin, who died that day aboard American Airlines Flight 11, the plane that struck the North Tower of the WTC. The company was struggling at the time of his death, caught up in the dot-com bust of the early 2000s. He always said the company would make it because its people are “tenacious as hell.”

He was right. His company ultimately rose from the depths and is a powerhouse today. Many entities and individuals have risen in similar fashion.

We rise after awful events like 9/11. We rise after sickness, loss and the mental-physical maladies that threaten to ruin us. Not everyone makes it. But enough do to fill me with a hope that will never dim.

Take time to remember the dead today. Watch some of the 9/11 documentaries on YouTube, because they’ll remind you that people who didn’t make it that day conducted themselves with honor and saved others.

Then rise up and carry on.

one world trade center aerial shot

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Making Sense of a 9/11 Obsession

It happens every time the calendar rolls into September. I start watching documentaries about 9/11 and can’t stop.

It’s as if an unseen force is controlling my actions. I go from one YouTube clip to the next.

Many people do this in the days leading up to the anniversary, but for me there’s the OCD element, where after I watch something I can’t stop thinking about it. I’ll forget the rest of the world exists and just replay the scenes in my head over and over again.

Maybe it’s supposed to be this way. We need to remember what happened that day — the people we lost and those who distinguished themselves as heroes.

Or maybe I’m just making excuses for the part of me that can’t seem to look away.

Whatever the case may be, there’s at least one documentary I want to share with you: the Discovery Channel’s Inside the Twin Towers.

You can watch it all on YouTube in ten 10-minute clips. Here’s part one:

I think this documentary is important because you can learn a lot about the goodness man is capable of.

There’s a morbid aspect of the program where they show what it was probably like to be inside the towers as they collapsed. But this is mostly about people helping other people despite the risks to their own lives. You see a lot of strangers helping each other.

Once the haunting aspect of the documentary wears off, you’ll walk away feeling inspired.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll realize that you are capable of great things, of touching a lot of people, regardless of your own personal demons.

Events like 9/11 are full of evil and sorrow. But, as Mister Rogers said in a show he did right after the attacks, the helpers always come. Some are firefighters running up endless flights of stairs with 60 pounds of gear on their backs. And some are stock traders who, when put in a certain place at a certain time, did something they were always meant to do.

God has a plan, all right. Sometimes it involves awful events. But it’s a plan that sorts the boys from the men, the girls from the women, and the good souls from the selfish and indifferent souls.

If that’s the lesson I take from this annual obsession, so be it.

9/11 World Trade Center Memorial

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Those Scars Are for Life

rfk63

Yesterday I came across this quote from Rose Kennedy, late matriarch of the 20th-century political dynasty:

“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.” –Rose Kennedy

Whatever you may think of the Kennedys, it’s a fact that Rose lived through more than her fair share of grief.

Her oldest son, Joseph, was killed in WWII. We all know what happened to JFK and RFK. A daughter, Kathleen, died in a plane crash. Another daughter, Rose, was mentally disabled, and she outlived two of her nephews — Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, son of JFK; and David Kennedy, son of RFK.

I haven’t lived through that much loss, but I’ve seen my fair share, including the death of an older brother and that of two best friends — one to suicide.

Knowing what that felt like and how I feel now, I’d have to say Rose was accurate in her assessment.

Time has certainly been a healer.

I’ve moved on with my life in the face of death, illness and other adversity. I have a wife who’s beautiful from the inside out, and we’re blessed with two great kids. I have a career I love, and I’ve gotten to do some very cool things.

The good experiences have been part of the medicine for grief, and there’s even some solace within the grief, because I was lucky enough to have such loved ones in my life early on.

But not a day goes by where I don’t think of the dead for at least a few minutes.

The good memories take up most of those thoughts, but it usually ends with the memory of their deaths, and that still hurts. It doesn’t paralyze me like it used to, because the scar tissue is thick. It’s the kind of scarring you always feel, tugging at you here and there. It’s part of my mental anatomy for life.

I’m OK with that, because it’s important to remember.

Mood music: