Looking a bit more critically at Grandma G.

 Several years after my parents' divorce, and especially after she decided to start going by her middle name, my sis started taking a more critical look at dad's family tree and family history. And, especially as our No. 2 brother anointed himself as guardian of dad's family heritage, my sis started doing that more with mom's family tree, especially with Grandma G.

Now, I'm distanced enough from both sides of the family tree that I don't need to do any heritage guardianship, and can also look skeptically at things.

The biggie to me always starts with: Why did mom take so long to get married? No. 2 is: Why did she marry someone younger than herself?

She was 26 when she and dad got married in 1955, in the latter half of the baby boom era. And, while not totally "old maid," yes, that was several years later than average.

The age difference? Dad was 16 months younger than her. Again, not normal for back then.

Plus, mom was a TWA stewardess back then. Back when that was a big deal, and women had to meet weight requirements, and then, still got dumped by the airlines in their early 30s. Just on the looks angle, why hadn't somebody picked her up?

There's the added factor that dad got cold feet and looked at backing out, after officially proposing. Mom's parents said: Oh, no you don't. Given that dad was eyeing going back to seminary, beyond broken engagements in the middle-class world being a big deal in general, it would have been a ginormous deal with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

But, why, if he didn't really want mom, did they insist? With TWA looks and all, was mom psychologically not marriage material?

Before the time I was 12, maybe already at 10, just possibly a bit younger, I knew I didn't want to have kids when I grew up because I thought mom was mentally ill. As an adult, I pegged it as schizotypal disorder as a best guesstimate.

Since most mental health issues, especially personality disorders, are as much or more nature than nurture, what was mom's childhood background in the G home?

I also find it interesting that Grandma and Grandpa G never had a second child. Yes, it was the Depression, but? Grandpa was a St. Louis cop, and may have already made detective by this time. He never lost his job. Grandma's family had a small amount of money already at that time, I think. Not rich, but "comfortable" to some degree, unless they lost all of it.

So, was Grandma unable to have a second child? Or just did not want to, and was vehement about that, and stood up to Grandpa G more than mom did to dad? If it was psychological, was there some sort of competition for Grandpa's attention as mom grew up?

Life at 60

 Humaste to me. If I'll practice that.

Another decent vacation to sis and the family. Still don't know what she'll do when Andrew semi-retires, let alone what he'll do if she does the semi-independent life she says she'll do.

As for me? Recovering from the flu after getting back here to Tex-ass, with the massively stuffed sinuses, and perhaps a deviated (deviant?) septum, or too-large adenoids that I didn't outgrow, contra Dr. Diddams, and that provoking a small touch of asthma, and an even bigger touch of fear of breathing problems.

And, with that psychology, and the vacation being "OK," as in "use it or lose it" at a semi-trapped job, and as at times I do feel a bit lonely, not just alone, and as in, wishes here and there aside, I'm sure I'll remain lifelong single .... 

I feel mini-depressed. Dreams and hypnagogic thoughts while lying in bed lead me to reflect on life, and think of life's sometime shallowness, and perhaps my degree of sometime shallowness, to the degree that Dr. Miles whatever was correct — though to the degree he was correct on the "that," he knew nothing about the "why."

And, in part because of being frugal with the heater, I really, really feel chilled to the bone even as I am at least semi-recovered from the flu.

I have for what, 20 years, referenced Eliot's Prufrock that "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons." That's even as a NASA civilian astronaut candidate says I have lived an interesting life. Shy, neurotic? Constrained? Check, check and check.

Some things may be interesting, but, anything employment-related or relationship-related has been measured with coffee spoons indeed.

Two interesting notes about Lifering's Congress

 Unless there's two unexpired terms, or unless I missed something and the old 3-3-3 on three-year terms became a 5-4 on two-year terms, for the first time since I left Lifering's board of directors, if I recall, it has a contested election. Well, two contested elections in that five people were running for three spots. That's good, in terms of investment and involvement.

Not so good? A proposed bylaws amendment change, because it was rejected by in-person delegates, doesn't go to us absentee voters for a vote. I didn't realize that, several years ago, when absentee voting was approved by bylaws amendment, there was a proviso that kept us as second-class voters.

Sexual compulsion, PTSD, and control issues

 This piece from PsyPost, in talking about differences in PTSD symptoms between combat veterans and sexual abuse survivors, lays it out simply. Sexual compulsions for child sexual assault survivors in particular may well be about sexual control.

Ain't that the truth.

Dadditude not one of gratitude

Like many people in recovery, for various reasons, gratitude is sometimes an issue. If you're like me, it's more the issue of accepting compliments from others, without minimizing explainers attached in return, than it is being grateful for the outside world.

But, it can be both.

Anyway, recently, I realized in reflection that it was a problem for my dad on the other side. He just couldn't be grateful that often, or at least not publicly express it. I don't think it was an "older generation" thing of bottling up emotions as the primary cause. Rather, I think that it may have been a fear of looking psychologically weak and indebted, admitting he needed help at times (and had just gotten it) and related matters.

In specific, after he got his PhD at Concordia Seminary and was stuck with fill-in preaching because he didn't get a "call" to a Lutheran college, and also didn't get one to a Lutheran congregation, it was me that put a bug into the ear of a pastor visiting St. Louis that broke that logjam on the parish side. Yeah, Flint was already going downhill, but "East European ethnics" plus German-Americans in his congregation, it was a place he liked in many ways. Any thanks to me? Not that I recall.

Psychological autarky

 I realized recently, after getting some new emails from Marie and journaling about it, that that's what I seek from life as much as possible.

Whether it's psychlogically good or bad, in the sense of healthy or unhealthy, that's been my goal.

I'm not a wilderness survivalist; I can't butcher my own deer. I can't even fix my own car. I accept the need to live, nay, to exist, within society.

But, to actually live, psychically? It's like Jeebus saying "be in the world but not of the world." And, I'm going to drop some more thoughts here in days ahead.

One other thing that stimulated this was reading my 2001-12 journaling Word document, at least most of it from 2006-12. It was "factual" and also an attempt at Branden-brainwashing (there are no Branden-brainwashing concertos) that didn't work because you have to already have psyched yourself out in some way to be able to psych yourself out further.

Unseemliness from a board member

 Won't say WHAT board, but my few regular readers can guess that.

While it's possible that any Dick or Jane who's a member of an email list associated with a support group could comb through membership information, by email address, for that email group, it would certainly be easier for a board of directors member.

It would be easier yet for said board member to cull through the entire email contact list that HQ has on file of past and recent donors and other Lifering contacts, and well-nigh impossible for a Dick or Jane to do that.

And, it would be unseemly for a board member to do that to encourage people to pre-order a personal memoir that, while connected with the reason for the nonprofit's existence, is not actually published by it.

I'm just leaving this here for now, but may write something elsewhere in the future.

Emotional abuse was the best tag I could think of.

The three of us: Two users, one used

 

Used

By two women

At the same time.

 

One, controlling,

Which I recognized

Early on

And stepped back,

Only to be insulted.

Such is the ease of email.

 

The other, with other issues,

Trying to stoke jealousy

In another man

Rather than leaving him

Or taking other actions.

 

That, I did not see immediately,

Even as the two met in person,

And me, with my own issues,

Including slowness to anger,

Not yet upset by the first,

While not yet knowing

The manipulation of the second.

 

Sometimes, the webs we weave

Aren't even conscious,

Whether they deceive others,

Ourselves,

Or both.

 

You both know

Who you are

If you were to choose to admit it,

Should you be faced with this.

 

More than a decade later,

I know not where one of them is,

In terms of self or psyche.

The other claims

Depths of spiritual enlightenment;

If so, that too could be tested.

 

Humaste

To all three of us;

Per the Buddha,

I start with myself.

It's easy to engage in Trumpist virtue signaling when ...

 When you're living off the teat of the federal government in another way.

That applies to Tim, No. 3 of my brothers and No. 2 of my abuser brothers.

He's a little more than four years older than me. 

He used to work in oil and gas field sales in the Four Corners area of the US.

Oil prices, especially, started falling before COVID really hit the fan, but that exacerbated it, and natural gas prices also started sinking.

His company put him on part-time, at first, IIRC. He then volunteered to share the pain with a couple of lower-level employees.

Eventually, they furloughed him. Not fired him. IIRC, they kept him on insurance coverage, but didn't work him at all.

Well, Tim told the rest of the family after several months of that, that he was ready to get an "Obamacare job" (the man he once called "blackie" in front of me and probably worse elsewhere), rather than continue on this, doing something like auto parts delivery for not too too much above minimum wage. This was about a year ago.

Well ... as of a month or two ago, he said he was working part time ... dunno with bennies or not ... driving oil and gas field supplies from the Four Corners to Odessa, in the heart of the Permian Basin, and then either deadheading back or bringing some supplies back. Dunno whether it's with a full semi, one of those bobtails, or what. I also, from what he said about minimal sleep on some turnarounds, am not sure if he's following US Department of Transportation regulations, if he is in fact driving a semi of any sort, whether with a full trailer or not.

Anyway, a year ago, he went through the "they're lazy" about the various people getting federal unemployment, etc.

Well, in talking with me on the phone that month or two ago, he casually dropped something I hadn't even thought about.

His wife died about six and a half years ago. Tim turned 62 in September. I don't know if he did it then, or earlier, but, he's claimed survivor Social Security benefits. If his wife were to be getting $1000 a month at full retirement, Tim could have been claiming about $600, by what I determine through a brief Social Security chart, if he started claiming survivor benefits at 60. Farmington, NM, is not that much different in cost of living than semi-rural North Texas. With a paid-off mortgage and perhaps still having a company vehicle for off-job usage, if it were me, I could actually save money on that much payment.

It's earned, yes. And, of course, I'm sorry that Brenda, who I knew before Tim did, has passed away. But, it's also a stroke of luck. Had Brenda still been alive, her school paraprofessional job would have been in trouble during COVID. Would Tim have thought she was grifting for any special federal aid she got?

SOS — Secular Organizations for Sobriety — is dead, but local groups don't recognize it AND Jim Christopher's "heirs" won't admit it

SOS being Secular Organizations for Sobriety, founded by Jim Christopher.

Christopher, kept afloat personally by the largess of Center for Inquiry for years, had to get others to help bail him out a few years back to get matching funds that CFI required of it, rather than a blank check which it had been cutting.

Well, the website got overhauled as part of that.

Without Duaine Metevia, who may not have been "THE" right hand man of Jim, but certainly was "A" right hand man. That would be the Duaine who, a dozen or so years ago, after Marty Nicholas stepped down as head of Lifering Secular Recovery and dodged founders syndrome for himself, and forced the organization to do the same, which it has done generally well indeed, threatened to call the cops on me if I ever attended the Dallas SOS-LSR meeting again.

That meeting was dual-branded at the time. I was at the Lifering Congress when Marty stepped down, and was also elected to its board. I talked about this after getting back from Dallas. I never mentioned Jim's name. But, I had no problems if people inferred I was making an insinuation, hint, whatever. 

That's when Duaine threatened to call the cops if I ever showed up again.

I got Lifering to stop the dual listing, of course.

Back to three-four years ago.

Duaine is cut out of the loop by a younger generation, with better web design skills for non-professionals, or professionals, than him. (Jim could barely send an email himself; his secretary at his office at CFI-West, which he got along with a salary, as part of the personal gravy train, had to do anything like this for him. It's part of why many people besides Marty were ready to move beyond SOS, which Duaine wouldn't tell you.)

So, he eventually takes his ball and runs home. 

The national meetings list is no longer maintained.

When Yahoo ends its email groups, he makes no attempt to find a replacement on another site. (Lifering is at IO Groups.) He doesn't create a Facebook group, though somebody else has. 

Then, Jim dies in July 2020.

And, SOS goes further downhill since then. SOS National had the "stay tuned" on meeting lists basically since that time, and it's now going on five years.

Center for Inquiry is clearly not going to fund a paid successor as executive director, let alone with a secretary and free office space.

And, I've known for years they don't have a real board of directors. Whether the IRS knows that, and what that would mean, and how far short of a real board of directors they've been, I don't know.

Now, in today's Net world, sure, it's not impossible to maintain local sobriety groups by word of Facebook mouth or whatever. But, that doesn't easily reach people who move across country. And, the lack of email groups or social media, which are unlikely to be maintained by individual groups, means that there's not that source of information about national happenings, either.

In short, these people are kind of like orphans. But, not 2-year-old or even 6-year-old orphans. They're like teenager orphans, who can survive on their own, but would be better off as part of a family.

Maybe leaders of some of them, like Metevia, have a smidgen, or more, of anti-Lifering animus. Maybe some are just wedded to tradition, even if it's a dead weight, the corpse has been rotting from the inside for five years, and the physical embodiment of the corpse has himself been a corpse for more than a year. Maybe, beyond that, but short of animus, it's stubbornness.

But surely, some leaders of some of these groups know of Lifering's existence already.

Anyway, whoever runs their website, and whatever other de jure (but not de facto, sorry) organization SOS has, from St. Louis? They've been contacted with a short and sweet summary of all of this:

"Wouldn't you be better off officially disbanding the organization and getting / encouraging member groups to join Lifering as their first / best option?

"Signed,

"Someone who knows some history"

The response, from John Gennari?

"Secular Organizations for Sobriety truly respects all paths to sobriety."

I replied to him, admitting the question was at least partly rhetorical, but telling him that clearly wasn't a direct answer and thus I was taking it as a "no" from him.

Given everything I've said above, IMO he's wrong. I also suspect that he knows enough about Lifering to know that ... at a minimum, even as an SOS last-ditcher, the issue is open to discussion.

So, maybe he wants to be a medium-sized fish in a tiny, and drying, pond. I mean, if there is a St. Louis SOS meeting, he can't even get that on the website. If there isn't one, he doesn't even have a personal puddle he's swimming in, only the national pond.

And, a quick Google proves me more than half right, at a minimum, on everything provable. A MeetUp shout-out isn't a website. Yes, he's getting one or two other attendees about .,.. one quarter the time? But, well over half the time, there's one attendee and I think we know who that is. The MeetUp isn't even linked on SOS's online groups page, though all of its nonexistent Yahoo groups are. Other than the Winnipeg group's website that led me here, the only other things listed are within a 60-mile radius of Buffalo, or Amherst, New York and CFI headquarters.

That said, going to THAT link? The plot thickens!

Gennari is ensconced at CFI West, according to it. Quite a magic trick, John, being in both St. Louis and Los Angeles. But, THAT would indeed seem to confirm the other part ... he's Jim Christopher 2.0, and seemingly not a lot better at current age techie stuff than him, or a mix of that and no better at getting help from the people (CFI IT staff, mayhaps?) who did the website overhaul five years ago. It's also "interesting," per what I know and what I've heard others say, that he identifies as a board member when the reality of an actual functioning board has also been a question. 

Seriously, dude. You've been at least a self-anointed heir apparent for what, a year, I'll guess, before Jim died? You've had two years to fix and update the website and haven't. You're a fine chip off the old Christopher block indeed.

AND ... interesting. NO IRS 990 form on file. But, that's an OLD notice. Back from the 1990s. Still, it shows Christopher was some sort of mis-manager then. Surely it wasn't fully under CFI's umbrella in 1992. That said, this additional info? Who is Hubert Michael Lenihan? Answer? Involved with a trademark suit over the SOS name. As in, Marty before Marty. In a sense. But, from what I can tell, never really involved in Lifering after the split. I MAY HAVE met him at a Bay Area Lifering Congress.

And, I've wasted enough time.

I will say, per the trademark lawsuit, I think Christopher talked about "individual SOS group autonomy" because he knew he was shit as an administrator. Peter Principle, sloughed off.

==

In addition, this quote from the SOS website:

If you can't find a physical meeting in your area, there are dozens of on-line groups utilizing the principles of Secular Organizations for Sobriety.

Is not true, or at least not unequivocally true.

SMART, for example, has four "steps," is explicitly wedded to cognitive behavioral therapy (which, IMO, may help you STAY sober, but is too rationalist to help a lot of people GET sober), and has at times, IMO, played footsie with moderation.

Nor does it take account of Refuge Recovery and other allegedly "spiritual but not religious" (Buddhism is a religion, folks, and Refuge Recovery is based on principles that are ultimately derived from the religious, metaphysical stances of Buddhism) sobriety orgs that aren't AA/NA. 

And, if it WERE true, wouldn't it underscore my point and make an SOS national org even more nugatory?

== 

Two comments, a year later.

First, looking at old emails from the late Itchy Bradley, he thought Duaine was a "call screener" for Jim a decade-plus ago. Could be; Duaine's computer skills at that time would have looked like stable genyus to Jim. (Sidebar: Why did CFI never build a website for them? Why did Jim never ask? The second question probably loops back to Duaine.)

Second, when the old Yahoo Groups disappeared and Duaine was cut out of a website redesign at about the same time, to raise money per a CFI demand? An email of his said that SOS Dallas would never go away. It linked to the website, which is ... now dead.