The Beauty of Living Twice

I have learned to forgive the unforgivable. My hope is that as I share my journey, you too will learn to do the same.

If only we could know our parents when we are children.

we all miss out when we close our minds and borders to global understanding of one another. We all have so much to learn and to share with one another when not in an imaginary conflict, created by artifice and fear.

Thus, the benefit of travel and open-mindedness: one can find one's own tribe.

What she helped me learn is that even compassion has boundaries. It is not for those who get up each day and choose a path of discord. This includes me. I have learned that I do not deserve compassion either if I do the same.

There is an exercise in a book I read by Pema Chödrön, an American woman who became a Buddhist nun, where you sit and concentrate on that which is overwhelming you and ask this energy, this thing, to overwhelm you totally; to consume you. At the point of total consumption, then you ask how many others are feeling this same exact thing at the same exact time and you ask to join their energy. I have found this to be the most healing and compassionate exercise.

My father used to call me back from playtime in our giant yard, take me aside, and, putting his hand on my shoulder, say, “You are letting those boys beat you so that they will like you. Now, go out there and win, and they will respect you.

I am working on forgiving the unforgivable.

I’ve seen him become sober so many times and do so well, and struggle to be a right guy. And fall apart again. But to what end?

It is easier to see who is real and truthful and who is pretending for nefarious reasons. While it can feel lonely to realize this piece of life, it is important to spend this alone time, to find a deeper place within oneself.

No one can ever make your dream perfect but you.

We can say that we are struggling. It helps them to know that we are only human and doing the best that we can. They aren’t stupid—they are just young. They aren’t as naïve as you might imagine.

As His Holiness the Dalai Lama said to me once, “A tiger does not apologize.

Now that we, my sister and I, are talking to her, truthfully; now that we have broken this vow of silence and someone else’s shame; now that our perpetrator, dead since we were little, is dead of his control: now we are present with one another. The real brutality of that is that it is decades later. The stigma put upon us, by society, by its shameful lack of action, by secrets in families, in culture, in religions, in misogynistic realities everywhere, is out in the open. Yet we lost a lifetime of love, of our family.

I have seen the greatest beauty. The wonders of the world, and the wonders of my eye.

I had to meet my mother as a person, separate from my childhood experiences and judgements of her, and know her from an adult perspective.

Oh, sometimes I continue to step on my tongue or go where I shouldn't, but all in all, there is so much work to be done.

I needed to grieve alone, not as a group and not as a spectacle.

This identity has a fuzzy-socks basket, a fire in the fireplace, dogs snoring on the couch. A library full of books to read and to look at.

That love is a comfort to me. I know that the balm it now offers as I feel the wound of his loss will stay with me and transform this grief into something else.

For those of us who have felt this broken piece that has left us unable to mate as others seem to do, there is such comfort in solitude. There is comfort in the alone time, I guess. Or it just seems less dangerous.

I opened the door to my own cage and freed myself. My illnesses ended. I demanded good medical care and got it. I respected myself and, with compassion for my whole self, got it. I learned that my anger was a beautiful thing. A powerful part of me, like my other valuable senses, like smell and taste and touch. That anger, when used properly, when controlled, when chosen appropriately, is a valuable action.

That opened me to understand that we can forgive anyone just about anything when we separate them from their issues, illnesses, and faults. When we step away from the dangerously ill, and criminally insane, and make laws to get them the help, healing, and quarantine that they may need.

I don’t miss her; it’s like she is a person I knew very intimately, but not me. I remember my childhood, I remember the majority of my life, like every person in their sixties. But my feelings are objective about before. I imagine that most people who survive extreme life-and-death circumstances feel this way. I speak with soldiers easily about this. I spoke to Aron Ralston, the guy who had to cut his own arm off to get out from under a boulder in a remote part of Utah. Each time I meet someone who has been to the edge, it’s like we have a shorthand. There is an absence of baggage. There is a need to serve.

Yes, there have been many points of view on this topic, but since I’m the one with the vagina in question, let me say: the other points of view are bullshit.

Sometimes it is the part of us that is not like others that makes us special, that is our talent. I