Where are You?

Start here.

“Wellness,” is all the rage today. An industry has been built around it. In essence, it’s a marketing term for that which, historically, been called pulling your shit together. Self-help, life coaches, wellness initiatives, therapy, pharma, treatment…all roads lead back to the attempt to pull one’s shit together. To make order out of chaos. It’s a term I’ve never really cared for. I’ve been in the “Wellness,” field for about 4 years now. My perspective on it presents differently. What are we talking about, really, when we are talking about improving one’s condition? We are talking about Change. Transformation. Point A sucks for whatever reason, time to move. Time to change. What does that look like? Well, welcome to the process, and process matters. We are entering the process at what is known as the 4th stage (action) of the Stages of Change. There are 5, we’ll get into that down the road a bit.

Some History

I don’t have a Hometown. While being a Native Son of Minnesota, I was raised by the grand, benevolent mother that is the United States. I came to being at a Salvation Army school for wayward girls in St. Paul in 1970. I’ve had to check the “other” box on every state issued form, from that point forward, on some part of every form. I was raised by my maternal grandparents; both children of the Great Depression in rural central Wisconsin. My grandfather (father figure) was orphaned at an early age and was taken in by the farm owned by my great grandfather, and that’s how my mom and her siblings came to be. My biological father? Who knows with any certainty, apart from my dead mother. The information that I must go on, which I have no reason to doubt, provided by said dead mother, is that he was a roadie for a bunch of long hairs that would go on to become Cheap Trick. How fitting.

There were a number of times in my adult life where I found myself stepping off of a bus or a train with a suitcase and little else. Denver, New Orleans, Chicago, Minneapolis. [One of those times I had to panhandle in the transit station in downtown Chicago to make the last leg of that trip on the Metra line out to rural Illinois.] “Starting over,” each time; I have taken residence in vehicles, the back rooms of shops that I have worked in, trailers, and an array of structures with four walls that could be loosely described as, “apartments.” Usually about 400 square feet carved out of some turn of the 19th century grand residence, renting a room that had its own shitter and stove. Point is, I’m no stranger to physically living in what is typically described as abject poverty in physical surroundings. In environment, as well as circumstance. I get it. I can completely and wholly empathize, relate, sympathize, whatever label of relationship or familiarity you want to hang on it. I was raised a gypsy, this is the way. In each instance, I was able to reach a certain degree of comfort and stability in my surroundings, my environment – to go from zero to something, to ascend out of that state of physical, abject poverty.

                Sobering up was a different kind of starting over, but the process is basically the same in practical, physical, and logistical terms. You have to start from nothing, clear the slate, step off the bus. You are in a new and unfamiliar location, existentially in every way. The state of poverty rhymes. It also rhymes with most any process of transition. The path of change may be different for all, the surroundings may vary, but the pavement itself is remarkably consistent. In the most stark yet ideal scenario; you will physically move into about 400 square feet with a shitter, a stove, a suitcase and the contents of your pockets. That’s it. It’s terrifying. Here we are. The number one point of resistance I run into when working with those in early recovery or those contemplating sobriety is that “I can’t just go away. X and Y need me (family, employer, community, etc.) to provide _____.”

Dude. You are not here now. You have to go away to be here. Yah, it sounds like you are going to jail. In a way, you are. You fucked up that bad, this is what this looks like in the most real of terms. You only think you are connected to the things and people around you; you most certainly are not. Same goes with any state of chaos. To remain in an altered state of dysfunction is just rearranged dysfunction. Find a zero and get there. Get on the bus. Literally get on the bus, or train, or in the car, whatever.

Therefore…

The circumstances that brought you here are irrelevant. You have decided to come to this point. That was a process in and of itself to get to this zero. These are the Stages of Change that I mentioned earlier. They are as follows,

1.       Precontemplation

2.       Contemplation

3.       Determination

4.       Action

5.       Maintenance

These stages transcend. You started to get an idea that something sucks (1), the idea stuck (2), the suck became real (4). You want or need to change in the most drastic of terms and have done what it takes to get to zero. Now what? What are the immediate concerns? Where are you? What do you need? We are talking about the base of Maslow’s Hierarchy here. Food shelter and clothing level. For our purposes, you have just stepped off the bus, physically as well as existentially - in Minneapolis, Minnesota. An urban environment. It is at this point where I have to take you, the reader/consumer into something of a slipstream.

CONFLUENCE

                Allow me to present a series of lists. These are lists that I will be referencing and drawing from. This list of lists shall have lists added.

Dimensions of Wellness

1.       Emotional

2.       Physical

3.       Occupational

4.       Social

5.       Spiritual

6.       Intellectual

7.       Environmental

8.       Financial

Stages of Change

1.       Precontemplation

2.       Contemplation

3.       Determination

4.       Action

5.       Maintenance

This is where the slipstream starts. We apply lists to lists. Dig? For example, we take an item from list 1 (Wellness) and apply it to list 2 (Stage of Change). Presented as say, the ‘Precontemplation of Environmental Change,’ if we pull two items at random. We apply this methodology in a continuous manner, it doesn’t stop. Ever. This is process, not product. This process has Cartesian points that are kinetic and exist in ether. There are no direct linear paths. So to speak.

                For presentation purposes we are going to look at two coordinates in unison. (maybe more) A point of the present, and a point of process. Where are we in relation to zero, and what were the obstacles to reach the baseline of zero? In a way, this is where we start drawing our own map. A map to life, liberty, and agency.