Dear Family, Friends & Community,

After a long absence I am returning to the “Story I Find Myself In”, but with a very new and challenging twist to the story. For at the least the next few months, maybe the next year or so, my story is going to be centered around “Finding My Feet Again”. The words above are taken from a Denison Witmer song, one that has been ever present in my mind over the last couple of months.

So after the last month and a half of silence, I am here to talk about my game plan from moving from “deal to heal”. Some of you know that I have been struggling with this thought process and this reality for the past two months, and to some of you this all fairly new. I am writing here so that I can be held accountable, so I can be confronted when I have a bad attitude, so someone will force me to be honest even when it makes me really uncomfortable. I am writing here cause I now that I cannot do this alone and I know that I need help, especially in keeping my motivation and consistency. I know the following is a lot of writing, simply a lot to read, but I really hope you find yourself with the opportunity to read it.

As many of you know I went to Boston a couple of weeks ago to spend some time with the Meyers’ family. The visit had two purposes. One was to simply hang out with the Meyers’ family and get to know them better. The second purpose came out of a dialogue that I had began with Kyle around the beginning of October. It was in the beginning of October that I found myself facing a rather large decision with some pretty big ties with my past. I needed to decided whether I wanted to begin to journey from “deal to heal”(with the love and support of my community) or if I was going to walk away from my life here amongst the Stetler’s, the Landing Place and Columbus in general. The decision was huge for me and was a choice surrounded with fear. When I initially made the decision to stay, knowing that I had a whole lot of work ahead of me, I began to dialogue with Kyle about my fear and just some of the things that were going through my head. Our conversations progressed from talking about my fear, to talking about the source of the fear, to talking about the hurt and pain associated with my relationship with my dad, discussing my rather large relationship issues, my fear of abandonment, lack of trust, among many other things. So while I was in Boston we continued this conversation in person, with hopes of moving forward past a certain place where I have always seemed to get stuck.

The time there was good for me. It was really intense and in some ways I still have not processed all the thoughts, feelings and words that I took in over my four days there. I came home from my trip pretty motivated to move forward in this journey, but that motivation dissipated rather quickly. Life got busy and I got tired, and when I get tired I lose my motivation to do anything aside from live out my everyday life. I was frustrated, I did not want to do any “dealing” or “healing”, I just wanted to live my life. To wake up every morning, go to work, interact with people, come home, have dinner, watch some T.V., go to sleep and repeat the same process day after day. I began some serious regression, decided to stop thinking about all the “shit” that had been heavy on my mind, cause I was tired of feeling overwhelmed by it all. I canceled an appointment I had set up with a counselor, because I just wanted to live out my every day life.

The appointment I canceled would have been this past Tuesday. This week in general has been crappy for me. Somewhere in the midst of the busyness of the week I picked up a pretty bad attitude. Part of it came from being over tired and frustrated with my life, the other part came from allowing things that I was afraid to be honest about compound into bitterness and resentment that was bigger than it needed to be. My bad attitude paved the way for me to be overly defensive and to seriously consider moving out or even moving back to New York. I spent most of the day Friday trying to figure out what I was going to do and what my response would be to the whole situation.

I think if I had spent my weekend any differently, I probably would not be sitting here writing this all out. But I am not really interested in messing with “What If’s”, I simply want to move forward and believe that I made a wise decision in how I spent my time this weekend.

It was the way I spent my weekend that brought me to this point of ultimate frustration. My weekend was not frustrating, but my conclusions about myself at the end of it were. I was in my car on the way home from Target, and I decided I was just done. I was tired of being stuck in the same circle of thoughts and patterns of behavior. I was tired of not being able to think about stuff that really matters, about things that I care about and want to learn more about. I was tired of my life only amounting to the daily grind. Which conflicts big time with my desire to just live out day to day life in an effort to not have to “deal” with anything.

Anyway, I came home motivated to write this all out, to formulate a game plan, to move forward. I very much want this all to become a reality.

The Game Plan:

1. I contacted a counselor with the Vineyard Church of Columbus. I attempted to use their services back in February and did not possess the adequate follow through. It became inconsistent (I canceled a few times) and once I lose consistency, I lose motivation. The person I was attempting to contact was not in the office Friday, but will hopefully contact me on Monday. If I don’t hear from her on Monday, I will follow up with another phone call. My major roadblock to following through with counseling had been not really knowing why I was going there in the first place, as I did not want it to be both a waste of my time and money. However, tonight I think the goal of counseling became crystal clear to me. I have some amazing relationships in my life right now, I am surrounded my some of the most phenomenal people I have met in my entire life.

I want to go to counseling so I can learn to be honest with the people in my life. So I can learn about building trust in relationships and not being so confined by fear. I want to share life with people that I am surrounded by, and right now I often allow “co-existence” to become the norm, and that cannot be okay. I know (as the last month has been a great example of) that I cannot just magically do that on my own. Yes, to some extent I have be more honest in my life here in the last two months than the entirety of last year, but there is still so much more. And I know full well that is going to be so hard to keep this hope and motivation, that I am going want to return to daily grind of my life as fast as I can, but I can’t keep doing that. I cannot continue to take two steps forward and three steps back. I am struggling with talking big and not having the follow through. Of knowing all the right things to say and not being able to make them happen. This is not about pacifying the concerned parties in my life, this is about really getting my crap together and moving from “deal to heal”.

2. I am in the “planning stages” of opening up communication with my family. It is slightly awkward for me to be writing this all, knowing my mom will read it, but I know I have to start somewhere. I currently enjoy the relationships I have with my family, especially my mom. Somewhere in the last few years we entered the realm of peaceful co-existence, and I really do not want to mess that up. But I know that I need to begin to understand my past, the things that happened within my family, why my dad made the decisions he made. Understanding is vital to this whole process. So though it is going to be very awkward for be to have these conversations with my mom, and eventually with my dad and my brother, I need to do it. After I returned from Boston I was all ready to write my mom an email filling her in on the last month of my life and begin to communicate with my dad through a brief letter. But last weekend when I sat down and attempted to write them both out, I failed miserably. I failed because I was scared. Because these are uncharted waters that I am entering and I basically fear what will happen next. I also became hesitant to “rock the boat” of my peaceful co-existence with my family right before I would be spending the holidays with them. But now it feels like I just need to “do it”. Maybe just a little bit at a time, as it does not have to be this avalanche of a conversation where I let everything come out at once. Little steps.

So here is where I begin . My deepest gratitude goes out to you if you have read this far. I appreciate your presence in my life more than I could possibly express. Now all that is left is to "Do It."