In completely unexpected ways this time in my life is yielding more healing potential than I would ever have imagined. I am most blessed to be experiencing a confluence of positive forces synergistically flowing through my life, more than I would ever have anticipated. It is hard for me to remember how desperate, how much in despair I have been for most of the past four years since my previous life on Long Island with Sara imploded. I am in a completely new and different place. Out of the chaos and destruction, the incredible death and devastation, of the December 26th Tunami, I was blessed with the magical connection with Lovely Lady Lynn, and a whole new life has emerged for me out of the infinite possibilities of the Kosmos. Our deeply committed love relationship will bring me back home to New York, a possibility completely unforseen.
A decided fringe benefit of moving back to New York is that I will be close to my two adult daughters, Rebecca and Jennifer, who have blessed me with four wonderful grandchildren, Zack, Camden, Josh and Lindsay. I have been mostly estranged from them since I left New York, and when I settled in Tucson in 2002 and coming here across the world to Sri Lanka, my connection with them and the grandchildren became more and more distant. But all that has miraculously been changed.
The other day on my blog I got this moving comment from my eldest daughter, Rebecca, who was born November 16, 1967, when I was in Vietnam.
Hi Dad, Reading the posts about your time with Lynn in that far away place I'll probably never see--like so many other places you've "traveled"--and also your posts preceeding and after her trip, I hear your love and wonder and hope for the future. Something that I've missed so much from you. Getting little glimpses into her and the one brief conversation I had with her, also give me hope that our fragile relationships can be again strengthened. I, too, have great hope for all of us. Stay safe and sane until you come HOME to many new beginnings. With much love from your first daughter--and Bri and the boys.
I spent most of yesterday writing my two daughters this letter of amends: Download an_amends_letter_to_my_daughters.doc It is a fairly long depiction of our relationship and the negative impact my PTSD from Vietnam has had upon it with a recommitment as a result of the relationship with Lynn to radically change for the better our relationship.
When Lynn visited me here in Sri Lanka a couple of weeks ago she brought me a couple of marvelous books by VA psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America that I have been reading voraciously the past several days. Incredibly, earlier this afternoon I came across this passage from Shay:
Some of the men I work with, astonished to be alive now in their early to mid-fifties seem on the verge of finding this ability to be at home, here, now, with their partners, their grown children, and especially grandchildren.
I totally accept now that my healing from Vietnam is intimately tied in to being an active part in the lives of my four grandchildren; indeed, I am most blessed and like that favorite quote of mine from T.S. Elliot, I feel now I can finally come home and know it for the first time.
At the time of my 45th birthday I had spent a lot more time outside the U.S. than in. I decided that it would be better to raise my kids (6 and 1 yrs old at the time).
I think I made the right decision but sometimes I have my doubts.
I think I would move back to Europe if were a bit younger (I'm 70) . I don't like what's happened to this country. Especially in the last 5 years.
Mybe I'm just a reincarnation of the flying Dutchman or Phillip Nolan
Posted by: Ned SMITH | April 25, 2005 at 03:36 PM