I discontinued participation in my men’s group experience of over four years after internal bickering and a lack of mutual commitment to our long term relationships ebbed. The ongoing conflict between Patrick Pinson (my former AA sponsor, and owner of Cedar Mountain Drums) and Jim Sleeper (editor of the Mentor, a men’s magazine) was just too much for the group. In my desire to bring healing to the group energy, I gifted each member of the men’s group with a thirty page manuscript on spirituality, healing, and forgiveness for a Christmas gift in 1994. I spent over forty hours writing the manuscript, and struggled mightily with the preparation and presentation of it to the group. Not one person read it or gave me feedback on it, until several years later when Gary Nieuwhoff finally read it, and gave me positive feedback.
This heartbreaking experience with a group of supposedly spiritually evolved men has had a lot of staying power with me. One of the reasons that I have been so reluctant to share my story with the world is a result of the indifference to my truth that this men’s group expressed to me through their behavior towards me. I guess that the world can’t reject me at a deeper level than my own father did early in my life, or how the present friends did, yet receiving more rejection has never been a life goal for me. My 1995 response to this rejection was disgust, and to destroy my copy of the only creative writings that I had ever made. I destroyed the greatest act of creation that I had ever been involved with, up to that point in time. I have made sure to make several copies of this present work, however, in case my past sense of self-hatred and destruction briefly resurrects itself to wreak havoc on my new creative works.
I walked away from my two best male friends, Michael Harris and Gary Nieuwhof in 1998. We did so much together. We played tennis, went out to dinner, traveled around Oregon, and generally shared in the camaraderie of three men sharing a similar journey. But, there was a lot of intimacy in our conversation, and Michael and Gary came up with a destructive idea that they needed to keep secrets about many aspects of their lives from me, and each other. I confronted them about it, stating that I wanted no part of their conspiracy of silence. I walked away from our friendship, when Michael’s long term girlfriend Sue, who we loved dearly, told us that Michael was becoming emotionally abusive, and that Sue was afraid Michael might even get physically abusive. It was devastating for me, but it was done in the interests of maintaining spiritual integrity in the face of secrecy, deception, and girlfriend abuse by Michael, and Gary’s need to support Michael’s agenda instead of mine.
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