A Pilgrim’s Progress

A lot of us have an epiphany experience when we acknowledge the reality of our lives as warzone kids...but to misquote Churchill, that moment isn't the end of healing, or even the beginning of the end of healing, but it is, perhaps, the end of the worst of the suffering.

I like the phrase “safe space” even less than I like the word “healing”, but I understand what it means. I just think of it as making a secure perimeter! That soothes my manly soul.

When you're working to live in reality instead of the denial and make-believe you grew up in, it can feel like the ground is sliding out from under you. That's because it is! But the ground you thought was solid never really was. It's always been like this. It's just that now you're living in reality. Not a problem!

If you’re a warzone kid, I’ll wager a dollar to a donut that you’ve got…ambivalent…feelings about the holidays. You know what? That’s ok. There’s no reason for you to feel any differently than you feel. If you’re putting pressure on yourself to be different, or if you’re firing second arrows of judgment at yourself about your attitudes to holidays, do yourself a favor and take all of that out of your rucksack and leave it on the side of the trail. Santa Claus will pick it up later.

Life just ain’t like a laundry detergent commercial. Life is like life, and the best thing you can do for yourself is to embrace yours for whatever it actually is.

When you’re lost in the dark woods of your life and the path has disappeared completely, you’re in the Grail Woods! You only have to see the next right step, and you can always see that far, if no farther.

Do you know what a ‘league’ is, as a unit of measure? It’s how far you can walk in an hour. On the trail to the Western Lands, all us Pilgrims can always walk exactly one league per hour. No more, no less! Just like life. All you can ever do is walk today’s miles, and you’ll always go at the right speed. One league per hour. It might be five miles or five feet, and it doesn’t matter a bit which it is. You can only walk your miles, no one else’s.

You can only lick it out of the Grail woods by following your path. You have to discover it as you make it, and make it as you discover it. If you’re lost in the Grail woods, and you see a path, stay off it! It’s someone else’s path and it will take you around in circles forever. There is only one way out of this place, Pilgrim. Your way.

The only way out of the Grail woods is by learning and becoming what you are, not someone else, not what you wanted to be, or what you tell yourself you are, but what you actually are, the beautiful, never-seen-before-or-again you.