A Pilgrim’s Progress

I'm a child sex abuse survivor living as an adult with CPTSD, Borderline, I'm a recovering addict, bulimic, and binge eater. Those are just some words from the mental health world.  I'm a human being with a soul. This podcast is about my journey to learn and become what I am. The three cornerstones of my life are Healing Circles, Jungian Analysis, and Zen practice. 
I'm a warzone kid - that's my term for those of us whose childhoods were more like a warzone than a supportive nursery.  We are legion! 
Welcome to the podcast! It's taken directly from the Pilgrim's Progress playlist on my youtube channel @trailtothewesternlands. 
Come on, Pilgrim. We've got a lot of miles to walk, and daylights burnin'. Let's walk a few miles together. We've got a lot to talk about. 

Here's my take on Robin Williams's classic monologue from "Good Morning Vietnam!" it's my way of capturing all the themes of the podcast. Plus ot was fun to do!

Imagine the psyche as a Jenga Tower made of wooden blocks. Warzone Kids have childhoods that took their Jenga towers apart and stacked them into rickety structures which tend to fall down in adulthood. That's our task as Warzone Kids, to put our Jenga towers back together, to live our lives now. 

378 pounds is the most I know that I have ever weighed. Today I'm at 197 and planning to run a half-marathon this spring. This episode is about a series of numbers and how they relate to my own healing psyche. Let's go!

Here's another metaphor for the place of peace and wholeness: When life hands you a lemon, tear it down to the nuts and bolts and make a hotrod out of it! 

Intergenerational Trauma. That's what the mental health folks call it. We pass down parts of our psyches from one generation to the next, for good and for bad. If you're a warzone kid like me, and you're listening to this, you probably shiver at the thought that you'd pass the damage down to your kids, too. 

I'm a volunteer circle keeper with Hidden Water, a group that facilitates healing circles by and for those effected by child sex abuse. This experience forms one of my "Three Pearls of Healing" - the others are Jungian analysis and Zen practice.  This episode is about my experience sitting in circles with my fellow warzone kids. Hidden water can be found at https://www.hiddenwatercircle.org/

This episode introduces the idea of the Trail to the Western Lands and the title of the podcast, "A Pilgrim's Progress." it's taken from a book I'm currently pitching. The inward journey toward healing becomes an external pilgrimage, and the challenges we face in our own healing become literal obstacles on the path.