Thank you so much for your sharing of your humanity in such a humble, authentic way from the perpetrator perspective.
Thru it I realized how much grief and rage I still hold toward patriarchal violence, even after my potent 50 year healing journey, facilitating groups with 1000's of women globally around this all so commonly experienced violence and powerlessness of women. Blessed be the women of Vietnam who suffered by the hands of American soldiers. May she have heard you....
That was so helpful to read such a personal account from a therapist dealing with his own grief. Thank you two for sharing this thorough-going resolve, beautifully expressed, deeply felt. It seems to combine all the threads of Hubl's teachings into a single narrative. Well done, Patrick!
Matthew: This incredibly moving story from Patrick resonates me on levels other than any trauma I may have within me. It reminds me of the Moral Injury (the M.I.) done to all citizens of a country by the politicians who support wars - by the lobbyists (many ex-politicians) who infiltrate our parliamentary halls peddling their business deals and handing over the paper bags of money (metaphorically but also in actuality via the means and systems they have available to them) - via the photo-opportunities and jingoistic calls to patriotic fervour - via the journalists working for the press barons who ramp up community fears and urge us to war - sending our young people to play games with greater powers in the waters or neighbourhood (war games, exercises, fly pasts - all to encourage some kind of event - or to create false flag events so that the carnage may yet again commence. Bound to do the Master's forward role of spear-carrier by things called Treaties and appeals to our long-standing friendship, buddy-hood. Obscene - all of it. Not to forget the Arms/Military investment in Tom Cruise movies... My local federal MP - as an opposition rep. and spokesperson on economic matters was highly appealing - but the moment his party won the last election and became a Minister - his demeanour has significantly changed as his party tramps up anti-China rhetoric in our south-west Pacific region - a region for which he has responsibility. I feel betrayed. I am astonished at the general level of ignorance of politicians and convinced most only go into the position for the heady sense of power they may be able to wield - their hubris overcoming any of their sensitivity. All of these thoughts come to me as I read of Patrick's attempts to come to terms with his own personal trauma - of never having had the decent moral support of earlier therapists acknowledging his nation's complicity. - their complicity in what his nation had sent him to. I have read Studs Terkel's The Good War - and any number of other accounts of war zones - Afghanistan, the WWII New Guinea/South Pacific/south-east Asia- Japan War, the American War in Viet Nam - in Korea - apart from Afghanistan (where a nephew spent a half-year) I have been to most theatres of war mentioned - and in Europe, across Asia - just recently visiting the quarter of a million war dead in the Arlington national Cemetery in Virginia in the US - where the fields of war dead on gentle slopes and among wooded dells operate to bring some comfort to those visiting - I guess. Lots to think on - Matthew. Thank-you.
Thank you so much for your sharing of your humanity in such a humble, authentic way from the perpetrator perspective.
Thru it I realized how much grief and rage I still hold toward patriarchal violence, even after my potent 50 year healing journey, facilitating groups with 1000's of women globally around this all so commonly experienced violence and powerlessness of women. Blessed be the women of Vietnam who suffered by the hands of American soldiers. May she have heard you....
That was so helpful to read such a personal account from a therapist dealing with his own grief. Thank you two for sharing this thorough-going resolve, beautifully expressed, deeply felt. It seems to combine all the threads of Hubl's teachings into a single narrative. Well done, Patrick!
Matthew: This incredibly moving story from Patrick resonates me on levels other than any trauma I may have within me. It reminds me of the Moral Injury (the M.I.) done to all citizens of a country by the politicians who support wars - by the lobbyists (many ex-politicians) who infiltrate our parliamentary halls peddling their business deals and handing over the paper bags of money (metaphorically but also in actuality via the means and systems they have available to them) - via the photo-opportunities and jingoistic calls to patriotic fervour - via the journalists working for the press barons who ramp up community fears and urge us to war - sending our young people to play games with greater powers in the waters or neighbourhood (war games, exercises, fly pasts - all to encourage some kind of event - or to create false flag events so that the carnage may yet again commence. Bound to do the Master's forward role of spear-carrier by things called Treaties and appeals to our long-standing friendship, buddy-hood. Obscene - all of it. Not to forget the Arms/Military investment in Tom Cruise movies... My local federal MP - as an opposition rep. and spokesperson on economic matters was highly appealing - but the moment his party won the last election and became a Minister - his demeanour has significantly changed as his party tramps up anti-China rhetoric in our south-west Pacific region - a region for which he has responsibility. I feel betrayed. I am astonished at the general level of ignorance of politicians and convinced most only go into the position for the heady sense of power they may be able to wield - their hubris overcoming any of their sensitivity. All of these thoughts come to me as I read of Patrick's attempts to come to terms with his own personal trauma - of never having had the decent moral support of earlier therapists acknowledging his nation's complicity. - their complicity in what his nation had sent him to. I have read Studs Terkel's The Good War - and any number of other accounts of war zones - Afghanistan, the WWII New Guinea/South Pacific/south-east Asia- Japan War, the American War in Viet Nam - in Korea - apart from Afghanistan (where a nephew spent a half-year) I have been to most theatres of war mentioned - and in Europe, across Asia - just recently visiting the quarter of a million war dead in the Arlington national Cemetery in Virginia in the US - where the fields of war dead on gentle slopes and among wooded dells operate to bring some comfort to those visiting - I guess. Lots to think on - Matthew. Thank-you.