(CHOSEN) FAMILY

Dad and I had brunch yesterday with Mitchell and Barry Roffer and their wives in Port St. Lucie.  The Roffer Boys are two of the three sons of my parents' closest friends when I was growing up, they were surely my father's best friends from their earliest days as kids in the Bronx, until they died.  The Roffer home in Yonkers was my second home, often felt more like home than my own, with passion and people around all the time.  It was amazing to see these guys with Dad, his eyes lit up, a connection to him in a deep way, the fathers were members of the Spartan Social Club at DeWitt Clinton High School, and they were simply "The Spartans" throughout my life.  Ten or so couples, they loved each other deeply, partied together often (they used to be "not asked back" from every Catskills Hotel they went to for getaway weekends), and they were the people who were there for my father and mother always, through her sickness and death, and then for him beyond.  Dad and one other guy and one wife, are the sole survivors.  Being with Barry, Mitchell, Carol and Janet yesterday reminded me of how much chosen family has been there for me, no matter whether blood was not always thicker than water.  Why I deeply cherish friendships and powerful connections.  We can choose "family," the people with whom we have each other's backs.  The kind of people who, like Barry did yesterday, make sure that Dad has his phone number, in case Pops needs anything.  Humbling to feel how much love simply transcends everything.  Including time.   

CELEBRATE ME HOME...

The reason that I called this “Man.Kind,” with a period both separating, and connecting, Man+Kind is that it reflects so much about how rarely the notion of "kindness" is rarely at the top of the lists of attributes when thinking of men.  As a quality to be highly valued.  I wonder if it is less about being an aspirational quality, or is it people not thinking of kindness as relates to men, or men not thought of as being kind?  Is kindness thought of as feminine?  Gentle, kind, sweet, soft, SENSITIVE, SENSUAL…are those really female?  In Italian or French or Spanish, are those words F or M?  Anyone would think those are words that are feminine in nature, and I want to be ALL of them, in addition to whatever positive qualities are thought of as being "masculine."  The Dalai Lama.  Thich Nhat Hanh.  These are "real men," all male, in my opinion.  We all have the feminine, we all have the masculine within us.  How do we combine those parts of ourselves, to feel full…to not hide out from who we are?  I love language, I love words, I cherish opportunities to find a perfect word so that an emotion, a feeling, a thought gets communicated.  And language can be so limiting at the same time.  For us to live congruent lives, fully embodied and joyful, I believe we need to acknowledge and EMBRACE all sides of ourselves.  It was always easier for me growing up to honor my "feminine" (it was not about being straight or gay) because I saw that women had "the" power and I looked at men as either being somewhat "weaker" (how I viewed my Dad) or the kind of testosterone-infused maleness that never resonated.  I grew up as the "sensitive guy" for whatever that meant.  It was not until I connected with aspects of being a man in these recent years of my journey that I was able to hold all of those parts together.  Whether I was being called a Lesbian in a Man's Body or a Man with a Period, I am good with it all.  And while I wondered for so many years what, if anything, my Dad actually did teach me - especially about "being a man" - I look at him today and see that his kindness, his softness, even what some may say is his "weakness" are qualities that I took on my osmosis, and am proud that I have.  I don't want to deny any of the light, or the shadows.  Embrace the fullness of our richness, our individual tapestries.  Each of our unique alchemies and stews.  Celebrate me, and all of us, home, in who we are.  

CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN - PART 1,000,000

As Ben Shaul and I create our first joint creative site in the new year - 2Str8Dads - I am compelled to revisit this place of Man.Kind for the first time in so long.  I am deeply in the midst of moving from what "was" to what "is."  Asking myself new questions, one question in particular.  "What do you want, JP?"  It is simultaneously exciting, as well as completely unnerving and humbling to be face-to-face with this, as I often have no answer.  Or it is often, simply, "I don't know."  Here I am, in the early stages of empty nesting that has hit me profoundly.  As a content person, I am a believer that context is at least as important.  And, I have no context for this place in which I find myself.  For the first time in my life - literally - I can seemingly ask this without the very real needs to feel responsible to take care of someone in my life, whether a mother, a wife, a child. And in those times when there was no one there whose needs were, or seemed, more important than mine, I anointed someone with that dominion over what might be best for me.  As if it was easier to do so than take charge, and decide from the inside-out.  Thinking of, and for, myself was never in my DNA in a critical way.  So, here I am learning new ways of being.  Because, in the end, I need to (re)craft this life of mine by honoring who I am, what I have done, and what I have been willing to do and be, yet stepping fully into somewhat of a new emotional wardrobe that I have been working on, and welcoming, for years.  And it is challenging to do so without a foundation of experience.  I am welcoming new tapes, new voices and messages, and I need patience when they don't stick, or find their way home inside.  

So, what do I want?  Having been inspired by the writings of Danielle LaPorte, I can say that, at the very least, I know how I want to FEEL, whether it is from an encounter, an experience, being with another.  I want to feel congruent and joyful, and not so connected to the old messages or the past stories.  I want to feel proud of me in new ways.  To show me (and my kids) that it's never too late to shift.  And, that love is all there is.  So, I chose to enter the belly of the beast.  With my father.  It's not like he's not the beast.  I am.  The beast of my own feelings and challenges, within.  I have come to Florida in the last day, to be with him for a few weeks, I haven't spent this kind of more-than-weekend time with him in more than 30 years.  Just me and him.  Towards the end of his life, there is no more important transition in energy for me to make, than in this relationship.  It is at the heart of my spiritual and emotional growth, I get that it is absolutely essential to deepen the shift that I have been moving through for the last few years.  It's more than simply dropping the past disappointments, or seeing him through my dead mother's disappointing eyes.  It's that he deserves my love fully simply because.  It is at the heart of my realization that fuller compassion and love starts here, my spiritual/emotional evolution is so tied to my ability to heal, as best as I can.  Even, in a way, if I am doing this alone, even if it is the sound of one hand clapping. By choosing to be with him, instead of staying in NYC and missing out on half of Cooper’s vacation, I am making a different kind of choice, one that my father never would have made, and one that doesn't feel natural to me.  This man who has been my only parent for more than 41 years, the man who never was a go-to parent in the way that I wished he could be, the most challenging (well, maybe the second most challenging) person in my life, the pilot light and trigger for some of my deepest shadows and frustrations.  And, it doesn't matter.  It has finally become clear that making peace - with myself more than Dad - is essential.  Before he dies.  I am so grateful that my kids support me in this, they get what maybe I never fully did, how this is a key to whatever is next for me.  And thank you to my friends who have felt my pain and sadness, more often than I am care to admit.  One of them wrote me yesterday with her deep and profound wisdom that took my breath away.  Her level of compassion and love, now taking care of a mother with dementia who never showed up for her, has deepened my understanding of forgiveness, and provides a beacon of light for what is possible.  I share her words here:  

I was thinking about my mom this morning and how when all her held memories and expectations of (and therefore disappointments in) life were gone in her dementia, all that is left is an innocent delight and joy and love.  Our hurt and pain is held memory and our story about our pain and hurt becomes a personalized myth that we hold as our TRUTH. That held memory is all that is in the way of our love, of our innate capacity to just BE in love.  I was thinking how one day I could be in my mother's condition and what a waste of life it would be to have to lose my mind in order to exist in and as love. All of me--my ego-identified me--resists this insight even as I share it with you. Who would I be without all my held memories and hurts and beliefs? I would BE LOVE. But the ego wants none of it..and my higher Self is looking at that and being gentle and patient while I allow my ego to throw its tantrums in resistance to the inevitable.  Inevitable because Love happens spontaneously when we become demented or we die or when we give up our personal myth. I am not there yet by any means--by any of those three paths to capital-L Love.  But I am gently observing myself and the possibility of choosing the path that doesn't require my dementia or my death. All Love to You 

LOVE IS ALL THERE IS.  Happy Holidays.