Photo by Vetrivel Viswanathar on Unsplash

I’m a Canadian. If you’ve met one, you know that we have an intimate and sometimes frustrating relationship with the word please.

Please had its humble beginnings as the Latin placere, meaning “to be acceptable, liked, or approved.” In a move that would make Darwin proud, it evolved into the French word plaisir, meaning pleasure. If you know anything about the French, this definition makes complete sense. It was stolen under the cover of night to appear in Middle English as the new and improved plesen, which translated closely to satisfy or be agreeable (cough, cough, Canadian foreshadowing). It finally got its true, standalone identity as please in the 1620s.

In the day-to-day life of a Canadian, please can mean any or all of the following:

• A polite way to interrupt: Excuse me, please, but I think you dropped your medicine ball.

• The highly effective please/sorry combo: Can I squeeze by you please? Sorry!

• A sarcastic response: Oh, please.

• The spouse whisper at the door when you’ve been saying goodbye for 45 minutes: Please, for the love of God, put your shoes on.

• The passive-aggressive theft deterrent: Can you please stop stealing my his-and-hers garden gnomes!

It feels like we have full user rights to please like no other culture. In my thousands of unconscious interactions with the word, I realized that I’ve never really thought of please as a prayer.

When my best friend died of an overdose, please was the first thought that I could find. That and help were the only words that I spoke.

When I was released from a 72-hour hold, they returned the cheap black belt that seemed so important for me to get back. A belt that didn't even hold up my pants. She laid it on the counter with my shoes and wallet. My body chewed through the joy and relief to land right back in the place of nothing being any different. I didn’t understand at that time that please was the only complete prayer that was reachable.

Please will mostly come out of me like an unconscious breath.
Move the shopping cart that you left in the middle of the aisle.
Put your coat on.
Pass the salt.

Just for this minute though, maybe it can mean:
Please ease their suffering.
Please give me the courage to…
Please let me lead with an open heart.
Please.

God’s in My Chair

I think and I plan, while I chase things around that i don’t really understand. I think my way through the day like a tornado tearing trees out of the ground. I throw my mind, around the ring, from thing to thing. Add oats to the shopping list. Put the dish in the sink. Is it the blue box this week? Where did I leave that string?

The divine sits under every thought while I watch the next video and read the next book and then sit in my chair and ask are you there?

Are you there god, it’s me. Here I am, set me free from the bondage of this thought, of this fear. All this time god’s not lost, not needing finding. God is everywhere. In the tangles of your hair. In the smile of your daughter and the doll that you bought her, for her birthday. In the love that we all share. Love in small moments, always happening somewhere.

I put down the books, put a pause on the thinking with love in my heart to thank you, god for today, in this moment we are here, together.

Can you stay?

Photo by Simon Wilkes

I slept okay, if you call passing out at 5:00am after a 3-hour show, too many shots of Jäger and visions of a blurry beach, sleeping. Most nights were some version of the same, play, party, pass out. The last few years had felt like living in a stranger’s body. I’d become a pack mule for a heavy and very awkward load of emotional stuff that was always just a little out of reach. I could see the pack, but no matter what I tried I couldn’t get inside it. I was tired, in my bones, and the only solution seemed to be to move faster and try to leave me behind.

The band started talking about a move to Vancouver and the whole thing felt like a big, shiny permission slip, to let go of the heavy and head for something new. Within 24 hours everything was packed into a red 4Runner, and we were on the road. 3,874 km away from where I was seemed like a logical next step.

We found a little place in Little Italy near the tail end of the messy, beautiful, tragedy of East Hastings. Three guys in a 1-bedroom apartment right on the edge of it all. Vancouver was expensive even then. The place was pretty much what you’d expect, baseboard heaters and stained beige carpet. Why do they put beige carpet in rental units? We flipped a coin for the bedroom, and we all slept on air mattresses.

It was the summer of China white, and it was killing people. The whole neighborhood was blanketed with it. When you know something will eventually kill you but that you’ll die without it, what do you do?

We’d hop in the jeep, taking a little battery powered pignose amp and a melodion and drive down to park right in the middle of it.
I need to say something here. We had no illusion that we were saving anyone or even helping with the actual problem. We were just 3 guys making music. I’d power down the back window and they were right there. Mothers and fathers starving themselves to death without any power to stop it.

Tent mates laughing and holding hands one minute, the next, exploding into violence like a lightning flash. People would make requests and we’d play them if we could. It didn’t matter if we knew the words, just the first line of verse 2 and the chorus was usually enough. The music was a bridge, to laughter and dancing and connection. We’d sing for people and sometimes watch them die right there on the sidewalk.

The thing that I still remember most vividly about that time isn’t the chaos or the tragedy, it was the completely unexpected sense of connection. I’ve always been really good at opening my heart to give to others but terrible at leaving it open for the receiving part. We’d just finished playing a sing-along of “Harvest Moon” and it hit me, full on, that broken is broken. There’s no belt that you can earn.

There was a guy named JoJo. He wore a suit on the strip; every day. Like the full thing with top hat and tails. He was seriously disfigured, which sometimes brought extra spare change and more often brought on a special kind of hell. When JoJo was panhandling, he’d put both open hands together, palms up and point enthusiastically at the top hat. That smile lit up the whole block. After all these years, I still sometimes wonder where JoJo is.

Being around people who didn’t have the bandwidth for pretending seemed to help keep that door to real connection open just a little. I couldn’t see any of that back then, the music just felt like a good thing to do.

I wanted this sense of connection so badly that I started putting myself in dangerous situations, desperate for the feeling to stay. Most of this had to do with drugs but I’d also go to super sketchy places, by myself, in the middle of the night and just stand around, waiting to see what might happen to me. If you’ve never felt numb like that, it’s really hard to explain it. I wasn’t sad. I didn’t have a death wish, not yet at least.

The scariest part is that it actually worked for a while, like it was helping me heal. I felt truly alive for the first time in a decade.

In the middle of all this I flew back from Vancouver with a return ticket in hand. I was going home to record an album and then get right back on the plane. The night that I got home I went to jam with my people and met my ex-wife. I never used my ticket. Deep down I thought a wonderful woman and a white picket fence might save me from myself. There was real love there and there was also what I thought could be a solution. Downloading your healing to someone else never works and usually just hurts them in the process.

Looking back through today’s lens, the geographic cure didn’t work, wherever you go, there you are. Something did work though. On a sidewalk on East Hastings playing half-remembered songs for people the world didn’t give a shit about, I found a part of myself that I didn’t really even know was gone.

The busking was the start of a long road to redemption. I sang and laughed (and sometimes cried) with people who society had given up on just like I felt that it had given up on me. The breaking and the healing were all found in that singing.

We all have a West Coast Highway in our past. Some of us are still driving it. You don’t have to drive it alone.

A note, after writing this: I’ve lived with this song for many years and have listened to it now and then. Listening again now and sitting with the words before hitting send made me super emotional. At first, I was asking myself if there was something still there that needed healing, for me, for JoJo, for everyone caught in something they can’t see their way out of. The answer that came was that the emotional connection is the healing itself.

Lyrics - Peter Learn
Music: Peter Learn, Andre Forget
Organ: Peter
Guitar and vocals: Andre
Bass guitar: Phil Albert
Drums: Michael Brushey
Fiddle: Don Reed

This is an experiment of sorts.

If you’re new here, I write quite a bit about life through the lens of addiction and codependence. They’ve both been faithful companions for many years. Both seeing me through and bringing me to difficulty and despair and right back around to surrender and self.

Life presents itself to me as song. Conversations are both lyrics and melody. I hear truth in songs. When I’m trying to figure out words to follow or actions to take, I listen. If what I hear feels like song in my body, then it’s usually the right path to take. It doesn’t mean that the path will be all love and light. The music can be happy or sad. It can bring me to tears or bring up feelings that I thought were already down on paper. Whatever comes up, if it’s song, I trust it. I learn the tune; I practice until I know how to work with it.

Being in treatment for alcohol was a terrifying time. I didn’t know if my family would be there when I got out. I wasn’t sure it mattered, or if I even wanted out. All I knew was that I‘d decided to live and was desperately trying to figure out how, one literal step at a time.

Part of being in treatment is learning small, self-care habits that have been swallowed up in the chaos of active addiction. Stuff like making your bed, brushing your teeth, washing the dishes.

Week 2, I was assigned morning kitchen duty which consisted of making breakfast for 60+ people, washing the dishes and then scrubbing every inch of stainless. Some in our group saw this as service to others and some resented being forced into serving.

Maryanne was in her mid 50’s and I was 29. She’d led a rock and roll life. Every morning she had on a different rock shirt. The ones with the dark center and the lighter long sleeves that you used to find pinned on the wall in smoke shops or hung randomly on silver racks in small record stores. Stones, Zeppelin, Doors…all the greatest hits. Greatest hits that people requested night after night at shows that I was playing with my band.

I had a New Year’s show booked…at a bar…2 weeks from that morning.

The center was shutting down for Christmas and most of the clients were going home, against the advice of the staff. I had nowhere to go so I was staying, except for my New Years show…at the bar…also very much against the advice of the staff.

Maryanne and I were thick as thieves, immediately. There was a small cd player in the kitchen, and every morning, she’d bring down a road weary stack. Cases with no covers, missing liners, discs with smudged sharpie art where titles used to be. We’d dance and sing at the top of our lungs. A small mirage of joy in a building so heavy with heartache and unreleased pain.

We only ever talked about booze once. It was enough to know that there was everything to say and nothing. Whether we lived or died was uncertain and that would have to be good enough.

I hugged Maryanne the day that she left for Christmas. Holding both of her hands, looking underneath her crooked smile, I thanked her, pulled her in tight and told her that I’d see her soon. I went and played my New Year’s show. It was weird and hard but also freeing in a way, and I came back still sober.

Back at the center I waited for Maryanne.

She never came back.

I found out a few months later that she’d died from drinking. Her death hit me harder than all the other losses that I was facing. It was almost like part of my hope died with her. I dealt with it in the only way that I knew how at the time. With song.

I write songs for different reasons and from different places. Sometimes I’m trying to convey a universal message or make a statement about the world.

This song is not that. The words aren’t catchy or clever. There’s no fancy turn of phrase. These are words that I never got to say to her out loud. I think somehow, she heard them anyway.

This is a love letter to a friend, a fellow traveller and a groovy dancer.

I’ve said it before Maryanne but wherever you are, a part of me is with you.

Maryanne
Lyrics - Peter Learn
Music: Peter Learn, Andre Forget
Piano and vocals: Peter
Guitar and vocals: Andre
Bass guitar: Joe Reda
Drums, recording and production: Sean Perras

Cover image: Clasped Hands of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Harriet Goodhue Hosmer, 1853. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Open Access)

My first real experience with grief and loss came to me by way of my dog Chunka and my cat Clancy. The day that Clancy came home with us he was still so young that we were just blurry outlines and obnoxiously loud excitement. He looked like a little orange pom-pom, no tail, no ears, just a tiny pom-pom of orange fluff. Clancy’s mom had died and he hadn’t weaned properly. Chunka knew right away the role that needed filling. She had been a mother and Clancy needed one.

Over the following weeks and months Chunka was the caterer, the taxi and the warm blanket. Clancy would squeak out his tiny meow when it was dinnertime. Chunka would pick him up gently in her mouth, like a secret she was afraid to break, and gently set him in his bowl, where he’d lap milk with his whole face. When he was full, he’d give the same plea and she’d nibble him up, carry him over and lay him gently in his bed. There she’d slowly and meticulously clean the little fluff from head to toe and then nuzzle the blanket around him.

As the cat grew, so did the friendship. Clancy learned that it was much easier getting around on Chunka’s back. He’d scramble up her legs and dig his claws in to keep himself steady while she chauffeured him around the house and the yard. She didn’t seem to mind being a pincushion. You’d often find the two of them cuddled up together, paws entwined, snoring away a lazy afternoon. They chased balls and stole kibble from each other’s dishes.

Before this I never knew that animals could be friends. I never knew that animals grieved until that day. Chunka had been struggling with hip issues for over a year and our tile floors made a bad problem worse. That summer she really started to decline. There was no more hide and seek behind the tree, no more chasing the ball, and no more rides for Clancy.

Clancy understood the change as well as any of us, more. He sat with his friend for hours, just being there for her in her decline. All these years later, I’m drawn to death and dying. Not morbidly. So many people miss their own dying experience getting lost in making everyone else around them feel better. Clancy was my first teacher in supporting and allowing with no agenda.

That last morning you could see it on her face. The suffering had clouded over her eyes. Glazed and a bit unfocused, she kept pawing at her face. She was telling us very clearly: I love you, you’ve been the best family and it’s time for me to go.

My dad bundled her up in a blanket and set her gently on her bed in the back of our old green station wagon. That’s the last time I saw Chunka and the last time Clancy saw his best friend.

The dog’s leash was always stored downstairs in the basement, hanging in the back storage area. For the next two weeks Clancy lived at the foot of that leash. He would meow for his friend, his mother, his other half. He would only leave to eat or to use his litter box, but the love of his newly departed friend would draw him right back. His grief was heavy and he allowed it to come on full force. He felt his sorrow and cried for his friend. A mix of yowling and the smallest of chirps. Like he was trying to coax her back for just one more ride.

Almost two weeks to the day of Chunka leaving this plane, Clancy’s grieving process seemed to come to an end. Almost like he instinctively understood that what he needed was now complete. He’d shed his tears and said his goodbyes and it was time to get back to catching mice and chasing string. I like to think that they were together in that space, at least for a short time, before Chunka’s soul moved on for good.

I often think about how I deal with the grief in my own life. Am I living it with that much acceptance and clarity? It was grace, it was god or whatever word you want to use. I’m so grateful to have been given this gift by my cat and dog. One of so many gifts that animals have given me in this lifetime. Joy, playfulness, acceptance, forgiveness, and mostly love.

Thank you for reading, I really appreciate you :)

You used to bring me flowers. I’d cut the stems shorter with the kitchen scissors. I’d empty the little plastic package into the vase and watch as the water turned from clear to cloudy.

My dad would buy mom flowers every Friday. Daisies and daffodils were her favourites. She always used the same vase, the one she kept on the top shelf of the China cabinet. It was too high to reach.

Thankfully, she had the small folding stool that lived beside the stove. Somehow, that whole part of the ritual made it feel all the more special. She would take it down with the care of the love that she felt for him. The reverence of a lifetime of these small moments shared together. Gentle movements full of purpose and promises remembered and honored.

The vase was just big enough for the size of the bouquet. Big enough to make the flowers stand up tall. She would kiss my dad’s cheek with that gleam in her eye, “George you shouldn’t have, we can’t afford this.”

“Mary,” he’d smile, “there’s no world where you aren’t getting flowers every Friday.”

The vase sits on the counter now, full of daisies and daffodils. It turns out that they’re my favorite too. I buy them from the little shop down on Third Street. The one with the checkered canopy and the old lab sunning himself outside. My dad’s flower shop.

I thought about putting the old vase back up on the shelf, where the space that you used to fill wasn’t so hard to be in.

But I’ve decided that there’s no world where I don’t get flowers every Friday.

This one comes with a song :)

I love my friend creativity but sometimes she scares me. I feel her so deeply in all the places in me that are the most real in an earthly sense. She opens up my heart to love, for myself and others. She connects me to all the hard parts of life and the world that I don't really understand any other way.

Then one day I turn around and she's gone. There's no note, just an empty hallway.

I wonder where she went. Is she catching up with old friends? Maybe she has her own journey to complete? I tell myself that she's probably with someone who needs her kindness and generosity more than I do right now.

Sometimes she comes back with so many stories to tell. They spill over like floodwaters breaking the dam. Sometimes all she has for me is a tiny whisper. One word, one thought. She always seems to know the right thing to say. The message isn't always for me. She watches me fumble with finding the right words to share her story with the person it was really meant for. Maybe this is her true purpose. Giving me messages that connect me to others so I can truly connect with myself.

When she's been gone too long I worry. Not worry, panic.

Did I do something?
Miss something?
Was it something I said?
Is she ever coming back? Has she shared all the things that were meant for me? Is that door to my heart closing for good?

I have many creative friends who go through some version of this but the journey's different and deeply personal to each.

My super talented songwriting partner of many years, Andre Forget, was going through a particularly long patch of this many moons ago and creativity greeted him on her return, with the message in this song. I think creativity will always return if I make space for her.

If you're dealing with her absence today, I hope that you find some love and inspiration in these words and music.

Well, this is new for me and a little vulnerable. I write from real places not from my imagination usually. I’ve been writing littles vignettes that are starting to feel like maybe they could be something bigger if I can find the courage...or the discipline ?!

Anyways, I thought that I would put some of it out there to see if it resonates with anyone.

Charlie had a feeling. No, not a feeling. A knowing that he was here for a reason and that he’d been here before.

He couldn’t quite explain it. It was coming through like a boat in a dense fog, but he knew Jeff and Susan too. The human suits that they were wearing were new, but he knew the beings inside.

“I wonder where my suit is” thought Charlie.

He couldn’t remember the last time that he’d seen it and this explained why his roommates seemed unaware of his presence. How was he ever going to get their attention without a good cat suit?

This was worrying but he didn’t see a solution at the moment. Charlie had felt a little niggle last week that gave him some hope.

Jeff and Susan had been slow dancing to Marvin Gaye in the kitchen, holding each other’s hands and slowly swaying in place. Jeff had stopped moving for a minute.

He brushed a curl of Susan’s dark brown hair behind her ear and leaned down with a whisper. A small smile brightened her eyes and then she burst out laughing.

The sound was like all the bells of Christmas morning and Charlie suddenly felt a little rumble in the back of his throat. A sound like a tiny boat motor sputtered out from where he thought his mouth should be. It startled him at first. Then he remembered.

Purring.

This is what he did when he was happy and relaxed (and sometimes stressed) but mostly happy and relaxed. It felt like a little part of him had just become real.

My mom was an incredible woman. A huge open heart with space for anyone that needed it. An unshakeable sense of justice and fairness. A mind that was both sharp and broken, fully in the moment and trapped in trauma. My siblings and I spent her last days on this plane together. I'm grateful for her today and every day. She's still here with me, just in a different way. Happy Mother's Day mom and to all the grandmas, aunts, cousins and friends being mom in so many ways.

Christmas Day

The melody of your memory was strong but it gradually started to fade. The day you left this plane we were all with you. For days we sat in chairs and on your bed, sharing stories of the cats, so many cats. We laughed and told jokes and sang your favorite songs. You breathed slowly in and out, soft and steady, like you were holding your own vigil.

There was a Roadhouse across the street where we would go eat together. It was a greasy spoon with a western theme, wagon wheels on the walls and Maple Leafs playing on the big screen. We ordered fries or wings and for a few hours pretended that all was well and that you weren't dying in your little room across the street.

We talked about our kids, who was playing what sport and who had a new boyfriend. We talked until silence and the reality of what was waiting took over and then we walked back across the street.

The hallways on the way to her room were gray. Why are they always gray? In the alcove in front of the window in her room sat a little battery powered, orange stuffed cat. It had 2 little kittens and would breathe in and out. We bought it for her to help build a bridge across the gap of her Alzheimer's that would take her to all her memories of her beloved cats. I brought in my guitar and played Desperado. It was one of her favorites and I could hear her strong clear voice singing it in my ear as we'd sit together at the piano.

So many hours with my mom at that piano, her playing and singing hymns and me plunking out whatever song I was supposed to be working on that week. I sat on her bed and held her hand, asking for forgiveness for all the times that I fell short, all the times that I was too busy to come. I told her that she was the best mom and that I loved her. I told her that it was OK, that I was OK and that she could go.

That last morning the nurse came in to tell us that my mom's feet were blue, and it wouldn't be long. All the stories had been told and all the goodbyes said. We sat in silence, broken only by small comments, listening, holding space and waiting. The monitor beeped steadily, beep, beep, beep and then stopped. I remember someone gasping and someone else saying oh no. We all leaned in and kissed you and hugged you one last time.

I'd gone down in the elevator to talk to the director. On the way back up there were two others with me. I found out later that they were from the funeral home. I didn't know they were there for my mom, and they didn't know me. They were sharing how amazed they were that so many people waited until their birthday or Christmas Day to move on to their next thing.

When I walked into her room for the last time, I could feel that she was gone. I didn't go to the funeral because she wasn't there, and I'd already said my goodbyes. Over the next month, I listened to music at night, in the dark and she was there. I cried and I remembered. Slowly the melody of her memory became a little quieter. If I ever need my mom, I just sing and she's there with me, sitting at the piano again.

I’m a man writing about a cycle that I've lived inside, but never suffered physically.

This story isn't about one specific woman. It's about  so many women  in my life who've lived with abuse. The anger, tears, disappointment, fear, resignation, strength, determination and love. I’ve beenhesitant to post this as I don't want to be seen as trying to speak on their behalf, but it feels like something that needs to come out.

You walked slowly towards me, your shoulders a little hunched, your face pinched, and your hands bunched into tight fists. You were all white knuckles, and your grief covered you over like a fog. I never understood how or why you loved him. From the first day, the bruises started to appear.

They were faint at first, just a little brown spot on your forearm, like a mirage in the distance. And as you shrank, the bruises grew. They crept up your arms onto your neck and face. They grew larger as you started to shrink away.

“Why do you stay?” I’d ask.

You'd look at me, bewildered and resolved, “I love him” and that was that.

The hospital file had enough short stories for a full-length novel.

Chapter 1: falling down the stairs.
Chapter 2: tripping over the cat, “I’m such a klutz”.
Chapter 3: “it's not his fault; you don't know what kind of pressure he's under”.

I never heard your laugh that whole summer. You’d smile with your mouth, but your eyes were hollowed out.

“You need to get out before he kills you”.
“But I love him".

We each knew our lines and went over them every time he broke another part of your spirit, another bone in your body.

The neighbors heard the gunshots. They found you lying in the kitchen, a pool of blood under your head spreading like a virus. Your leg bent at an impossible angle.

He was dead and you were not. The shot meant for your heart had missed and there was still a pulse, faint, fleeting, just an idea of life.

Your hospital room was dim. The outlines of flowers and vases and cards broke through the gray.

The machines hissed and whirred their ominous warnings, “not out of the woods,” “there may be long term neurological damage”.

I pulled up the closest chair and sat down. Your hand was cool and pale. You loved him, and I love you my dear sister.

I rounded the corner, blacktop turning to gravel. I felt the pop and the skid as I laid on the pedal, barely slowing down for the corners, bordered by Maple and Ash. Their reds and golds like a sash around the sky. Something is nagging at me that I’ve been here before. Deep down inside I know these shores. I pull over, gravel to grass. I let the truck idle as I reach for the dash and pick up the picture, all faded and wrinkled. The one I’ve been carrying for 25 years since he walked out the door. It’s a picture full of questions. Why did he leave? Where did he go? Did he ever think of me? My heart starts to pound in my ears like the drums of war. I’m feeling dizzy just like all the times before. I know what to do, count to 10, and again. Breathe slow and deep while I turn my mind inside. It’s slowing down. The GPS says 3 more miles, 3 more miles of country roads of dogs at the end of their chain and old mobile homes beaten by the sun and the rain. I know he’s waiting there at the end of those 3 miles; he told me that he would be when we talked on the phone. I don’t know if I can go through with this. My palms are sweaty and my heart’s beating the drum again. I’ve come this far. The chance for answers just a 3-mile drive from my head to my heart. I put the car in gear, swallowing my fear and uncertainty. 3 miles or 300 miles, the seconds tick by like hours. I round the corners and see the flower garden, peonies and pansy’s and the old, rusted Buick that he said would be there. I pull into the driveway slowing for the Husky and the chicken running loose, then park the car and kill the engine. I open the door and sit for a minute steeling myself. I pull my jacket out of the back seat and slip it on as the wind comes up and then walk to the door, slow steps, hesitant steps. I knock once, twice. There’s the sound of rustling and the TV that was playing American Pickers turn off, then he opens the door. There’s my eyes and the little dimple in my chin mirrored back in a face with an extra 20 years. He smiles shyly, hesitantly and asks me to come inside.

This morning I’m setting the funny aside to talk about faith. Not the church kind, necessarily. The kind that keeps you anchored when everything you built gets taken away. If you’ve ever felt the wind knock you sideways and wondered if you’d ever find your footing again... this one’s for you.

Before we go in, this one touches on some dark corners. Abuse, addiction, and some pretty low lows. If you’re in a tender spot today, maybe save this one for when you’re feeling lighter.

My faith, my knowing, is a spider web in a spring storm. I’m anchored to the branch, to the trunk, but I’m blown about. Why did she die? Why did she leave me? I didn’t deserve to lose my house. How do I take care of my kids? Every tragedy is a straight-line wind of fear, of pain and uncertainty. The wind blows until I become the fear and forget my web.

The winds have always blown.

Sometimes they are gentle, like the touch of a loved one. They rustle the leaves of love and contentment. Sometimes they tear the roof off the house.

My whole life the winds have blown. Blowing in the neighbour who smiled as he lowered his garage door and told me to take off my pants. Blowing in the sounds of fists striking flesh as I hid in the dark. Blowing in the bottom of a bottle and the peace of a pill. The peace that turned out to be the devil in disguise. The devil gleefully stole my family, and my fortunes and my fragility and left me closed off and dying every day in a pile of despair.

But the winds turned, because that’s what winds do.

They blew in compassion and forgiveness. They blew in love anew. The winds come and go, calm and blow and here I remain, anchored to that branch and that trunk. My faith remains even when reduced to one string of web, holding me in this world.

I am here. I am alive, sometimes it seems, against my own dreams and wishes.

I am here and my knowing remains. It will always be the same. If the web were to disappear, I am still here.

Knowing.

Thank you for being here and for giving this your time. If Blowing Winds landed for you, please share it with someone who might be holding on by one thread today. Sometimes we just need to know that someone else made it through the storm.

This morning I’m putting the humor away to share a story of loneliness and how trying to fill it from the outside never works. If you’ve ever sat with a glass of wine and wondered why you feel like a ‘broken shell’ despite having it all... this one is for you.

There was really no reason, at least not one that mattered in any tangible way. Thoughts of why crept into my head for years after. Nighttime intruders breaking their way into my dreams to steal my sleep away, leading me to wonder am I a bad person? Was I trying to throw off the blanket of loneliness that I held tightly wrapped around me every second? Was I just selfish?

It was all these things, and none of these things.

I had a love, a blazing hot love of my life. Every good thing about me only revealed itself when reflected in her eyes. We had a life. We’d cook paella on Sundays, sharing whatever wine was on the LCBO sale rack that week. Decades were shared in hours, walking, laughing, lying in a tangle of arms and legs.

All this love painted over the loneliness, dulled it down until it almost disappeared. But it didn’t disappear. It saw the light of love and burrowed its way further inside where light couldn’t touch it. It whispered seductively in my ear that she wasn’t enough, that there was no way that she could ever really love someone like me.

It was the silent soundtrack that played on every station in my mind.

It was playing the night that I met her. It was a birthday dinner with a bunch of people that I cared about. As much as that broken shell of me was able to care.

I had been introduced to her a few times. She was pretty and confident, and she made it clear what it was that she wanted. We talked and flirted, she refilled my drink and let her hand rest gently on my arm as she set the drink on the table.

Her hand stayed just a minute too long, and she motioned with her head. I watched her walk away, slowly and seductively, with purpose. I followed her into the room.

As soon as the door closed, the soundtrack was drowned out and it was all body heat and stars.

When it was all over, she kissed me on the cheek and whispered “thanks” as she walked back out the door. The music came back slowly at first, then growing louder and louder until it drowned out all other thoughts.

Lonely....lonely….lonely. There was no reason and there was every reason. The soundtrack of loneliness drowned out all the love. It held it down until it couldn’t resurface again.

Thank you for sharing your time with me, it’s valuable and I really appreciate it. If this piece resonated, please share it with one person who might be hearing their own soundtrack of loneliness today.

I wouldn't call myself a writer, at least not in the classic sense. I've always loved words. I spent years lost in books as a kid. Words and music were both anchors in my life. Music connected me to my soul, then to songwriting and finally to drugs. All three temporarily filled a bottomless pit in my heart. I spent years chasing that feeling, trying desperately to feel connected to anything.

Eventually, addiction tore my life down to the studs. Family, finances, mental health, custody of my son. It almost took my life until I finally reached a point where I was too scared to die but couldn't stand another second in my skin.

This was the start of a lot of unpacking and work. 2023 found me paralyzed with fear, struggling financially and right back at that place of living and dying.

Through a series of unbelievable synchronicities, facilitated by my wife, I had a Kundalini awakening. All the fear was gone, there was only love and bliss for 8 weeks. It slowly faded leaving me with an overloaded nervous system, a lot of questions and a rabid desire to write. Over 12 months, I joined a meditation school, developed a spiritual practice and wrote... about myself, about love and pain and uncertainty. It turned into a workbook, then a journal, then a book and kept going. My heart's calling me to help and heal. To be quiet enough to act as a mirror. Personal ramblings, addiction, serious coaching, humorous nervous system resets, spiritual nonsense, there's a little of all of that.

Here is how the rooms are set up:

Down to the Studs: Raw poetry and essays on addiction, finding center, and the awkward, beautiful process of starting over.

Ground Control: The triage station. Practical tools and frameworks to help your body remember what it feels like to be safe.

Not Currently Ascending: The sacred nonsense. Humor, parody, and survival kits to disarm the pressure of "growth" so we can stop taking ourselves so seriously... seriously!"