How Did I Get Here?

I started keeping notes for my memoir when I was 10. Those notes and any interest in cataloguing my life in great detail dissolved a long time ago.

To shed some light on how I came to this work I will summarize some historical details about me, in somewhat rapid-fire. Things move rather spontaneously where I live now. They used to move in goose-step: very rigid. Now, it's like solar weather- spontaneously moving, no map.

I was born the middle child out of seven kids on the coast of Maine. My family lived in poverty, though my siblings and I felt loved. After a short yet violent spur with cancer, our father one day never returned from the hospital. I remember being home alone that night, and the phone kept ringing. The doctor was on the other line to tell us he had died. I was unaware, and he wouldn't leave a message for me to give my mom when she got home.

My mother was stricken with grief. Being a full time mother for twenty years and losing her husband of even longer, she was depressed and the government took away the kids.
I was eleven when this happened. First my sisters were taken away and put in different places, and my older brothers found their own ways to evade that fate. I waited in other people's homes for a government car to arrive and take me away.

When they did, I was told that my siblings and I would maybe never live together again. In my "Psych-Evaluation" I remember they asked me if I could have anything in the whole world what would it be? I answered, "A grave stone for my dad."

The government held supervised visits with my mom for a year in a small room with poor lighting. During the visits we were told saying things like "I want to go home" and "I miss living with you" would have the visits terminated. When my mom said things like, "I miss you and love you so much," she was scolded by the person watching us.

At my crowded foster home I shared close quarters with many high-risk children coming from abusive situations. From my first night there, I learned that overweight kids were expected to earn the approval of the woman of the house by losing weight. I had always been a chubby kid.

Children who didn't lose weight were ridiculed and not given the same opportunities. Without any other plan and very little connection to anyone outside the home, I started losing weight. During the second year at this home my younger sisters moved in. Because of my father's military history there was money waiting in the bank for anyone who adopted us. Instead of my mother getting this, when we were taken away it was in the government's hands. My foster parents wanted that money and so they adopted my sisters and I. There came a day we were signed over, we lost our last name, and our "rights" as our new mom told us.

During this time my sisters and I were completely cut off from the other half of our family and also prohibited from speaking to each other or being in a room alone together. We were subjected to abuse and to witness the harm being done to other damaged children coming in and out of the foster home. When suggesting we might tell an authority we were told that nobody would believe kids when compared to them- The highest rated foster parents in the whole state. "Who do you think they're going to believe," they said, "us...or you?"

With seemingly no control over my life, my words, or even my relationship to siblings under the same roof- I used control as a means of coping with an impossible situation. At age 15 I was offered alcohol at school, and discovered a new way to forget my grief, loss, and pain. From this age on I used drugs and alcohol as often as I could acquire them. That same year, food and weight obsession became an eating disorder. This eventually resulted in me being taken out of school during my final year of high school, being medically monitored and graduating from home.

When I turned 18 I had a different last name and an empty savings account where my father's military life insurance would be- if the family that adopted us hadn't spent it. I was told I was not a part of their family when the checks ran out. I was surprised to find out there was any money- we hadn't known there were checks at all. After moving out my adoptive parents threatened a restraining order if I attempted to call or contact my sisters who remained in the home- even after their house burned down and they lost everything for a second time.

At 18 I was physically weak and self-medicating around the clock to try to stymie the eating disorder, the guilt, and the fear that followed me everywhere. I subsisted on alcohol and substances that I could beg, steal or borrow from the most unsavory people I could introduce myself to. I got into a series of toxic relationships, wrote the book on people pleasing, and was arrested for stealing food from a grocery store.
I had no ability to form a real relationship or an honest conversation. I couldn't get a night of sleep without using chemicals to dull away the nightmares and flashbacks.

My day-to-day was a horrific blur.
One day I came upon a book by Thich Nhat Hahn, The Sun My Heart. I began to study the teachings of the Buddha via books by His Holiness The Dalai Lama. I got a copy of the Tao Te Ching and underlined and highlighted and dog-eared it until the binding was failing. I recited sanskrit mantras and wrote in journals in an effort to stay away from the next chemical temptation. I studied meditation and Eastern spirituality for the next 7 years while immersing myself in Maine's wild spaces. I worked in a remote cabin with only a footpath leading to it across miles into the woods, serving tourists who wanted to experience wild Maine forests. I learned how to whitewater canoe, backpack, sail and ski. I made an annual trip to the highest Mountain, renewing my commitment toward being well enough to want to live.

Even during my time in the woods and waters of rural Maine, I couldn't shake off nightmarish thoughts or my fear and loathing around food. The whispers of chemical oblivion followed me like a shadow. I believed the Buddha's teachings and I loved the moral precepts but I found it impossible to conceptualize loving myself- it was too abstract, and I believed I was too broken.
Furthermore, I was so afraid of feeling my body that I lived outside of it in the realm of thinking or dissociating by substance.

At this point in my twenties I fell to an all time low, despite my life appearing OK from the outside. My family had reunited, I reversed the adoption and was reinstated as my mother's daughter again- getting my name Brown back. My sisters were all free from the foster home and we had reconnected. I was happily single for the first time, living in an apartment in a cool city on the coast with a well paying job.


Despite appearances, I felt hopeless. I was shaken to my knees alone on a winter night after puking up blood (again) when I felt something break loose. It wasn't something physical that broke- it was something spiritual that clicked. A completely unique and unmistakable inner wisdom shone forth from my heart and all around me that this was the end of the line.
The restriction-diet-binge-purge cycle, full-time drinking, and promises that I will stop tomorrow crumbled around me when I heard this internal message ring true. That's how it felt- so completely true.

This glimpse of reality in a horror of fog felt like the only truth I had understood in a long time. This was the actual end of the road. I knew it wasn't the same old I'll be done tomorrow story I told myself for years. I went to bed not knowing what it meant. The following morning I threw away all of my chemicals. I got a medical team involved, a CPTSD therapist, and joined a local meditation group. The group met once a week in an old basement bowling alley. For the first time since I was a child I felt a sense of wholeness that was more valuable than anything, and I didn't want to forget it again.

It was at this group just a few months later that I talked with a person studying to be a guide in transformative methods of inner work. They wanted to bring the skills of meditation to children to help them connect to their own peaceful center. I was interested in the specific types of meditation they shared about and after our group meeting they offered to give me a session in what they had been studying.
This was my introduction to the Wholeness process developed by NLP pioneer, Connirae Andreas PhD.

It was suggested I pick a topic that was mild- not my biggest issue, but I couldn't resist going with what was heaviest for me: the addictive patterns of thinking and miserable relationship to food. I liked that I didn't have to share what I chose as a subject- I just kept it to myself.

Because this is a long and tiresome account of events, I'll wrap it up here. Lets just say- that one brief introduction to a direct-path method for change has allowed me to be free from behaviors I couldn't shake for half my life. That single session healed me in a way that completely changed my life. I had been spiritually active, intelligent enough to know how to avoid behaviors, and still hadn't been able to find relief from my past on my own. When I was introduced to Wholeness Work I learned a valuable option- investigating what I take to be "me" and getting to the very core of my being. This session brought me right back to my "glimpse" of wholeness I had just months before- shining clear and bright.

In the years since, I have became a trained coach working full time with clients who struggle with a host of issues. I've come to find that all experiences of separation share one thing: it hurts to not be at home in oneself. I've explored deeply into wisdom traditions of Advaita Vedanta, including lineages such as Jean Klein, Francis Lucille, and Rupert Spira, alongside Sri Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj. These share in common the core of all spiritual practice- the wholeness of being.

I love the intersection of metaphysics, Indian philosophy and evolutionary science- especially where the Materialist worldview falls apart when meeting Analytic Idealism. I love the work of Arthur D. Schopenhaur, Jung, and Plato's archetypes as described in the books of Bernardo Kastrup PhD.

Aside from reading and enjoying materials about philosophy, psychology and science I enjoy the skills I teach to others with my loving partner nearly every day of the year. He happens to be the person who originally shared the Wholeness process with me years ago in the meditation group!

I thoroughly enjoy sharing in this way to bring others vitality and wholeness. Thanks for taking the time to read this summary of my journey- I hope it helps give some background as to why I so strongly believe in the healing power of awareness!