My father died at 5:00 AM this Saturday  peacefully in his sleep. For the last month, he has had excruciating pain in his back, so horrible that he’d scream at the top of his lungs and clench his fists until his knuckles were white. This is despite the fact that he’s the most stoic person I’ve ever known. The doctors thought it was just degenerative disc disease, but I think that’s bull crap. They never bothered getting a CT of the abdomen even though his hemoglobin was plummeting, sometimes a few grams a day. He couldn’t take anything but Tylenol because everything else makes him have severe nausea. Personally, I think he had a retroperitoneal bleed (bleeding in his abdominal cavity). He was on Coumadin to “thin his blood” and the INR, which measures that, was way too high. His liver and kidneys were all failing. The only reason he had fifteen minutes of peace before he died was because I asked them to give him IV Ativan. It probably killed him because of the respiratory depression it causes, but it was a blessing. It was mercy. His life over the last year had been terrible. All in all, what a terrible way to go. 

With your permission, other than today, I’ll just post “Best of Erik” entries through Thursday. I’m so sleep deprived, and I also need to be there for my sister, Laura and vice versa. 

I would love to have your stories for the book on a few topics:

• Feeling stuck, having no direction
• Having trouble being emotional honest with self and others
• Emotional resilience problems (Not knowing if you can “get through this.”)
• Loss of control (over children, family members, self, friends, etc.)

Please include whether how you want to be identified (e.g. E.M., Elisa M., anonymous,) and email them to emedhus@gmail.com

Enjoy Erik’s answers to blog member, Hyla’s, Ask Erik submission. Be sure to read all future posts for the next submissions call out. They’re usually accompanied by a deadline so you might want to  you read the posts the day they’re published.

Hyla’s questions: (Note that I don’t edit anything, as you know, but I really didn’t do a grammar and spell check on the transcription like I usually do. Too tired!)

I am trying to enter ur question for Erik for the next contest….So I’m asking :  how, how do we get OUT of a victim consciousness, one of the “it’s NOT fair” feeling, while in this reality, the abuse we have suffered does appear SO UNFAIR! All the while knowing on another level that it is, in fact, ALWAYS fair… THE feeling vs the understanding of it. Being STUCK.!  Head vs heart. I need to get beyond the abuse I’ve suffered. I am ready to leave the physical. Can’t see my reason to stay. Why? How to forgive the unforgivable, make peace and continue on in this scary world…. Why r we here (the abused children) ??? How, please, HOW do we END feeling the victim?

I read the above to Erik first.

Erik: All of the questions are rooted in the same thing. It’s all about the same stuff. She just wants to make sure you understand her point. Part of it is kind of a venting and trying to lead themselves to the answer. The bottom line is they need to let go of their stories.

At this point, I wonder why he switched from “she” to ‘they.” I still don’t know. I guess he’s saying this is applicable to more than just her.

Erik: The way you let go of your story is to recognize that experiences don’t happen to you; they happen for you. That’s the first step toward you taking back your power, recognizing you are empowered. A victim and a victimizer share one thing in common and that’s a sense of not feeling empowered. From the standpoint of the victimizer, they want to feel power so they take it from someone else. That’s what they think they’re doing. The victim feels like they are powerless by allowing someone to take it from them. But that’s all an illusion. That’s bullshit. So they first have to recognize that. I recommend that they stop and think about what they can learn from it. I’ll give them one thing off the bat and that was that they’re empowered by nature.

Me: Ah, so our natural state is that of empowerment, and life sort of robs us of it.

Erik: It doesn’t rob us of it. We just forget it.

Me: Ah!

Erik: We forget it for many reasons. Sometimes it’s on a spiritual level. That’s why we forget everything when we come back here. We have to let go of every other life that’s going on. If we kept a hold of all that stuff, it’d just be too much information and too many things that don’t allow you to—you have to let go of the experiences that defined you so that you can then redefine yourself. That’s what the whole process of consciousness is. It’s constantly defining and redefining itself.

Me: Interesting. Erik, you told me that suffering is a gift because it takes you to that neutral place by stripping you down, breaking you, so that you can redefine yourself.

Erik: Yes, and what causes suffering is a resistance to a choice we’re being asked to make. The choice is always based on, “Do I continue to feel the way I feel?” First you have to ask yourself the question, “Do I like the way I’m feeling? So I want to keep feeling this way?” If you’re asking the question, “How do I let go of being a victim?” then obviously you don’t like the way you fucking feel.

Me: That’s true.

Erik: As soon as you are aware of that, then you become aware of where you are. From there, you can decide what direction to take.

Robert: He’s going into other particular things how this person has made it a habit of giving away her power.

Erik: And there are other family members who do the same thing. I’m trying to help them recognize that that pattern is something they’re not aware that they’re creating for themselves. I’m trying to wake them up by letting them know that they are empowered. They’re letting the story take over their life instead of letting go of the story and recognizing that the story was written for them. The story didn’t happen to them.

Me: Was this some sort of spiritual contract in her case?

Erik: Yeah, Mom, but sometimes people get too enthusiastic about the contract and shit like this happens.

Me: What was the contract?

Erik: It’s about recognizing where your power is. It comes from within you. It’s about understanding and empathizing how people’s suffering is rooted in what they hold onto. It’s a lesson in developing compassion for even the person who’s hurting you, to learn how to forgive. In this case, forgiveness is going to be the thing that empowers them. You can’t forgive if you stay rooted in blaming and all this other stuff. All of that is just misdirection.

Me: It’s hard to forgive sometimes.

Erik: It’s hard to forgive if you’re focused on, “I was done wrong,” instead of seeing it as an opportunity to become more aware and more enlightened.

Me: So it could be that the victimizer was giving them a gift of some sort.

Erik: Everything, everything that we experience, whether we label it as fucked up or fucking awesome, is a gift.

Me: You’re saying so many awesome things, Erik!

Erik (teasing): Yeah, I know I’m the shit.

Robert: He’s doing this thing where he takes his fingernails and rubs them across his chest like he’s polishing them.

Me (chuckling): Like, “I’m all that?”

Robert: Yeah!

Erik (in a sappy voice): I love you, Mom.

Me: I love you, too. So anything else before we go on?

Robert bursts out laughing at what Erik said next.

Robert: I don’t know if you want to put this on the blog, but he said, “I shot my load. It’s done. Let’s move on.”

Me: Oh, my god, Erik!

Robert and I laugh.

Robert: You’re terrible, Erik.

Erik: This is the shit that I can’t always say to Jamie because she’ll filter me out.

Me: I bet so!

Erik: Or she’ll say it, and then she’ll get all embarrassed and, “Tee hee hee.” Whatever.