Category: self esteem

Guest Blogger – My Dad on Death and Dying

Published on by Scott Williams2 Comments

My dad was an orphan whose father fell off a skyscraper a few days before switching jobs. Howie was one year old. His mother died when he was eleven, after being hospitalized for over six months. Dad was not allowed to see her because of hospital policy. He lived for a time with his older brother and sister-in-law, but grew up on the streets. He worked to provide for himself since he was an adolescent and eventually joined the military. Growing up my dad never had only one job. I remember vividly how he would come home from the Air Force and change uniforms to go work at the Liquor Store, then later somewhere else. He was not content to stay poor and raised us in a middle-class family. He has never complained about his life.

This is his blog post:

Have you ever been emotionally stressed or disturbed about how other people provided an unhealthy influence about death and dying and it’s effect on you?

To share thoughts on such an a topic as this is a little dangerous. The subject touches on influences inherited from family upbringing, relationships, personal theological beliefs, and what you have or have not been taught.

Also in a day when it is no longer fashionable to share personal feelings which might offend anyone there is no easy solution. If you have such a topic to write about, however, then you must disregard opinion and be honest with yourself and the reader.

First I want to share my thoughts on “death” and specifically “funerals”, then finish I will finish off by sharing my thoughts on “dying”.

My grandparents were “old school – don’t let anyone know your personal affairs, children should be seen and not heard, and don’t ever read a newspaper on Sunday, as it is the Sabbath” types.

On Death-

When it comes to death I believe it is a time of transition for the person dying and the loved ones left behind. For a person of faith some people, myself included, feel it is a graduation to a higher realm in heaven. For the agnostic or atheist it depends on the individual. On earth it is a time when a former life can turn into a legacy to be cherished by loved ones……or sadly in a lot of cases mean nothing.

Funerals is when it gets complicated. I really thought, and I still do think, that my relatives ideas for funerals was sick, inconsiderate, and almost retarded, when there were grieving children left behind. Tradition and “we’ve always done it this way”  reasoning sometimes are a curse when it comes to planning funerals Of course children have no say in what transpires at a funeral because no one puts themselves in the child’s place or family tradition rules.

This is where I apologize in advance if I am offending anyone  when I say that

The controversial tradition of having to have an open coffin for funerals is barbaric. It is thoughtless and can be very traumatizing and have lifetime psychological effects, especially on a child. I speak from experience. This was the case in both my wife as a little girl of 11, losing a grandmother, and in my situation as a child of 11 losing my widowed mother. My wife has several times shared her deepest feelings on this, and to discuss them with me again 61 years later still bothers her because her memories of grandma are as a cold corpse in a coffin, not a loving grandmother.

In my own life my memories of many nights at a funeral viewing and a lengthy funeral where I was seated 10 feet from my mothers open casket left indelible scars on my memory. I am still get bothered by this over sixty years later. It was one thing to suffer from viewing a cold grey corpse but the tradition of having to kiss the corpse sent shudders up my spine when I had to do this. Family tradition be damned…I will never subject my loved ones to remember me as a cold grey pasty corpse. I have already told my older brother, who was my guardian, that  I will not participate in this tradition when he passes on and he totally understands, however his wife simply must follow tradition.

For me I want people to remember a smiling, youthful, mischievous, old person who enjoyed life to the fullest, loved taking risks, and believed family was everything.

I also do not want my loved ones to inherit an administrative nightmare as my brother and I did by my mother letting a friend be executor and a relative being her lawyer. This was a recipe for disaster. Being only 11 when mom died the estate had to be put on hold with the Provincial Supreme Court until I was 21 years old. Over the ten years the Executor friend, the relative lawyer, and the Supreme Court, literally financially raped our estate of 75 % of the value.

My wife and I have good wills – a living one , and a dying one. Both my wife and my funeral arrangements are paid for. I have ensured a trust company and my oldest son be co-executors. Believe it or not, and a lot of people won’t believe it, it’s cheaper that way than having Uncle Charlie or whomever take care of everything (who as Executor legally is entitled to 3% of your estate ) even though they do not have the skill or experience. It can, in fact, be substantially more expensive to have a relative assigned.

People do not realize the mammoth amount of succession laws and tax implications there are to deal with. An executor who is ignorant of this can cost your loved ones extra heartaches and money. If some children have loans from parents which are unpaid this can cause stress among siblings if no one like a professional trust executor (who gets paid the same as Uncle Charlie) is handling the finances. Nothing causes problems, divisions, and hard feelings more than inheritance money mismanaged.

As far as my attitude about the act of dying——–I would hope my heavenly Maker would tend to agree with me when I say I have a good relationship with Him. After providing several miracles in my life, two involving almost certain death I know he knows my name. I am not afraid of dying and I have a contentment about after my death, however I really don’t want to rush the experience or suffer. The only grief I have about leaving this world is the effect on loved ones.

As a guy who likes white water canoeing, roller-coasters, and who believes that age is just a number I would finish by saying I have had a blessed life and it has been a wonderful ride.

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Listening To Your Critics

Published on by Scott Williams7 Comments

I met Al in college. He was awkward, clumsy, ugly and small. His mannerisms labelled him – loser. He had a sharp wit but that didn’t seem to matter. Al was an outcast.

I’m not sure of the reasons but a few of us decided to use Al for an experiment. We had heard a speaker talk about loving the unlovely so we decided, with somewhat dubious motivation, to use Al as our guinea pig. A sows ear to a silk purse…

So in typical Pygmalion fashion we began to convince Al, and everyone around him, that he was a winner. We told him he was good looking. we had pretty girls flirt with him. At the college sporting event we started a cheer – “Al, Al, Al”. It wasn’t long before the entire stadium was yelling his name. He ate it up. He became our team mascot, then our school mascot; our own personal Gurgi (from The Chronicles of Prydain, if you haven’t read it to your kids, why not?).

Something started to happen.

It wasn’t long before Al began to look different to us. I wasn’t sure if it was his dress or his manner but he had changed, and continued to change. It wasn’t that he became more like the rest of us, more like society. Al became more “Al” like. He realized that in spite of the media, in spite of all his previous experience, he was obviously good-looking – everyone was telling him so. Apparently he had a good body as well. He was popular, though he probably didn’t understand why.

And Al started to blossom.

It wasn’t long before Al really was cool, very cool in fact. He was hilarious, witty, engaging, even gregarious. He started to approach girls. A few didn’t turn him down. At sporting events he ran the crowd. It wasn’t long before our little Pygmalion was indeed the most popular guy at the college.

Mental health professionals tell us that our self-image is largely determined by the attitudes of those closest to us. If our friends think we are ugly we soon believe them. If they think we are amazing then this too will define us. It is for this reason that I have always insisted that my boys are winners, beautiful, talented, and incredibly humble. just like their dad.

So many of us have been belittled by spouses or friends so long that we have come to believe we are ugly, or stupid, or unlovable. Some of us have been in abusive relationships with someone who reminded us, often in subtle ways, that we are losers. For some reason our self-esteem has been ruined. We no longer think of ourselves as winners, as valuable. We have lost our “Al-ness”. We have succumbed to the inner and outer voices that demean and negate. There are probably people in your life who find their self-esteem from making you feel like less. They need to hurt you to feel good about themselves.

And some of them are closer than we realize.

I have that inner voice that reminds me of my failures and has a list of the ways I fail to measure up. You probably don’t need to tell me my faults, I have a complete index of my mistakes, most of us do. It is easy, the older we grow, to forget that we once loved ourselves, were once allowed to share our “Al-ness” without ridicule. Most of us have become so fearful of sounding arrogant that we can barely remember how special we are, or at least were.

A little Al can go a long way. You just need someone to believe in you.

Stop listening to your critics, especially if that voice sounds an awful lot like yours…

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Weekend Musings – There Are Victims And Then There Are Victims

Published on by Scott Williams13 Comments

“A benchmark of emotional management and responsibility is the realization that our past can no longer be blamed for our actions in the present.“
Doc Childe and Howard Martin

Every day I work with people who are victims, real or imagined. They grew up in a bad home, someone has rejected them, the white man has dragged them down, people have taken advantage of them, they have been abused, raped, abandoned, the list is endless. There is no shortage of people to blame.

Usually the client or person I am talking to has legitimate issues. They are dealing with things that most people can barely imagine. They are trying, the best they know how, to find some anchor in a life that has been beyond their control. Many patients I have spoken with have gone through horror stories and are endeavouring to move forward. They are the reason I get up in the morning and go to work excited. They are my heroes.

Others are looking for something to pin their pain on. They cannot see any personal responsibility, they will not own their own complicity. They sit and we talk and it is always someone else’s fault. Often they have legitimate complaints but they wear their victimization like a crown and filter everything through with a pre-disposed diagnosis. This week I met with a young man who told me that the reason he could not pass in school was because generations ago people oppressed him. I reminded him that he was not in fact alive a couple hundred years ago and though he has had to suffer historic abuse and that has undoubtedly profoundly affected his life, perhaps the reasons he is failing in school have more to do with the fact that he is skipping and spending his considerable income on crack. He called me a bigot.

I come from generations of alcoholics and the pragmatically poor. My dad was an orphan whose father fell from a skyscraper during his last week of work before going to a new job. His mother died when he was 12. He completed grade 9 in school. He had no social safety net, no social worker looking out for him, no strong family to provide for him, no one to blame. So he didn’t.

Years later my father would stand before the Governor General of Canada and receive the military equivalent of the Order of Canada, our highest civilian honor. He had, in fact, finally finished his high school equivalency in his forties. He had worked his butt off to make something of a shunted life. He is my son’s hero. Wednesday he will be our guest blogger.

Every now and again I will have occasion to feel sorry for myself. Maybe things aren’t going smoothly or my friends have nicer houses or boats. Sometimes I wish I had a family with money and a house on a lake. But then I remember how fortunate I am to come from a heritage that simply would not give up.

As i sit here writing this it just hit me, I have never heard my dad complain about his lot in life. Ever.
Wow.

“People spend too much time finding other people to blame, too much energy finding excuses for not being what they are capable of being, and not enough energy putting themselves on the line, growing out of the past, and getting on with their lives.”
J. Michael Straczynski

 

Casual Fridays – Lessons From Life

Published on by Scott Williams9 Comments

Ford Fairlane photographed in College Park, Ma...

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” ~ James Baldwin

I did not really grow up in a strictly religious home. My grandparents were alcoholics and they taught me different lessons than you would probably learn at “Johnny Church Member’s” grandmother’s house. By the age of eight or nine I knew how to play Bridge, Texas Holdem, Blackjack, Craps, 21, 31, 333, Follow The Queen, Stud, Baseball, Woolworths, and various other derivations of many poker games. I learned that you had to be at least thirteen before you can sneak beer from the basement. I learned that everyone drank, that only certain types of beer, always Canadian beer, did not taste like “panther piss”. I also learned that children didn’t matter. I learned that mouthy little kids like me were to be “seen and not heard”. I learned that drunkenness was a daily thing, not a special holiday activity. I learned how to swear. To this day I can pack more empties in the trunk of a Ford Fairlane than anyone I know.

My grandmother was a poor gambler but didn’t know it. She thought she was an excellent player and indeed seemed to be so to an eight-year-old child. She understood the fundamentals of the game and would beat me every time we played. She would usually take my allowance. It was a very tender family.

By the time I was eleven or twelve, however, I began to win. Eventually two things dawned on me: First, she wasn’t that good. Second, she had taken a great deal of my boyhood money and it was time for her to go down. Somehow I convinced her that we should play for higher stakes and I began the carnage. Slowly, relentlessly, I drove her into the ground.

I looked at my grandmother. This was the person who had taught me how to play. She was the woman who had raised my mother. She was an old lady on a pension, and I took her for everything in her account. At eleven years of age I damaged her financially. I watched her sign a cheque in defeat. It was for hundreds of dollars. Did I feel guilty?

I remember thinking at the time, “this is the greatest day of my life”.

As I look back I wonder why I did not feel any remorse. My grandmother was not a nice person. She did not know how to express love, and one could argue she felt little as well. She was a bitter, angry little alcoholic who would later disown me because I won an argument, and not even an important one. When she found out I was engaged she commented, “I don’t know the woman but she must be a slut to marry him.”

I learned a great deal from my grandmother. I learned that family is not that important. I learned that it is easy to lie to cover up addiction, that beer was consumed before lunch for ‘medicinal’ reasons. I learned that bitterness worked. I learned that I didn’t matter. I learned that love was conditional.

As I ponder that part of my life, and the subsequent apathy I felt when she died, I realize that I, on occasion, feel ripped off. I did not have grandparents that I could love and cherish. My father was an orphan. The grandparents I had were not nice people.

I look at the grandparents that my children have and I’m thankful for all four of them. They each have brought something unique and wonderful to the table. My children love them all dearly. When the boy’s papa died last year I was saddened and thankful for his life and his legacy. I am jealous of the relationship my sons still have with their remaining grandpa and grandmothers.

And thankful. Very very thankful.

p.s. – next Wednesday my father will be joining us as our weekly guest blogger!

The Origins of Shame

Published on by Scott Williams17 Comments

Interesting and disturbing article via Psychology Today:

The YouTube video below was brought to my attention by a long-term client who also happens to be an excellent therapist and works extensively with concepts of shame in her own practice. It’s fascinating, informative and provides a neurological basis for an understanding of the kind of shame that I write about. The primary lecturer, Allan Schore, and the other researchers don’t discuss shame, in particular—they approach this topic from the perspective of attachment theory; but as you’ll see, their explanation of neurological development in the infant helps us understand how an early and deep-seated shame takes root.

You’re no doubt familiar with the nature vs. nurture debate concerning the relative importance of heredity and the environment. Nowadays, the prevailing view seems to be that it’s neither one nor the other but an interaction between the two that defines us. Even so, most people assume that you are born into the world with your complete genetic makeup and that you then interact with your environment. The primary lecturer in this video—Allan Schore, a member of the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UCLA—challenges this view:

“One of the great fallacies that many scientists have is that everything that is before birth is genetic and that everything that is after birth is learned. This is not the case.” He goes on to explain that there is much more genetic material in the brain at ten months than at birth. Only the brain stem or “primitive brain” is “well advanced” at birth; the rest of the brain continues to unfold and develop for the next two years as neurons become myelinated and interconnect. This development does not occur in an automatic and predetermined way; rather, it is powerfully affected by the environment, in particular by interactions and relationships with the primary caretakers.

It’s a more nuanced view of the nature vs. nurture debate. Not only is it nature and nurture, as most of us already believe; an individual’s particular genetic makeup (nature) also continues to evolve during the first two years of life under the influence of the environment (nurture). In other words, what happens to you, emotionally and psychologically, during those first two years, and especially in the first nine months of life, will powerfully influence your neurobiological development, determining how your brain takes shape in lasting ways. Most important among the brain parts that develop during these early months are those that involve the “emotional and social functioning of the child.” And if those parts of the brain are to develop appropriately, “certain experiences are needed. Those experiences are embedded in the relationship between thecaretaker and the infant.”

At about the 5:45-minute mark in the video, Schore makes the following statement: “there’s something necessary…that the human brain needs in terms of other human contact, for it to grow. It’s a ‘use it or lose it’ situation. Cells that fire together, wire together. Cells that do not, die together.” The idea is related to the notion of critical periods: organisms have a heightened sensitivity to certain environmental stimuli during specific periods of their development. If the organism does not receive appropriate stimuli during this critical period, it may never develop certain functions, or develop them with great difficulty or in limited ways.

So what is Schore telling us? If an infant doesn’t receive the kind of emotional interactions it needs from its caretakers during the early months of life, its brain won’t develop normally. Certain neurons that should have interconnected will instead die. “Use it or lose it”—if you don’t get what you need during those first two years, that experience will affect you for life. As my own client translates it, this means “brain damage.” You might be able to modify that damage with a lot of hard work, but neuroplasticity has its limits. You will never be the person you might have been if you’d gotten what you needed during that critical period of emotional development.

A deeply sobering thought. You can call it what you like—bad parenting, failure of attunement, insecure attachment—but when things go wrong between parent and child in the first two years of life, you are permanently damaged by it in ways that cannot be entirely erased. The awareness that you are damaged, the felt knowledge that you didn’t get what you needed and that as a result, your emotional development has been warped and stunted in profound ways—this is what I refer to as basic shame. The concept lies at the heart of the work I do.

Schore’s view invalidates the simplistic theory that mental illness is the result of a chemical imbalance in your brain. It’s not that you lack sufficient serotonin in your neural synapses; rather, the existence or lack of certain neurons, and the interconnections between them, has been permanently altered by failures of attachment during the first two years of life. You can’t fix that with a drug. Cognitive-behavior therapy might teach you some useful techniques for coping with your damage but it won’t make you into a different person. You’ll never be just like the person who went through the emotional experiences she needed during that critical period.

Two other lecturers in this video link the experience of secure attachment during this critical period to the development of both a fundamental sense of self-esteem and the ability to feel empathy for others. The relationship to shame and narcissistic defenses against it is implicit. Either you get what you need from your caretakers during those early months and your brain develops in such a way that you have a fundamental self-confidence and security in the world; or you don’t get what you need and the residue—the neurological damage—is basic shame. Either your caretakers are emotionally attuned to you and you develop (neurologically) the capacity to empathize with other people; or those caretakers let you down and as a result, your constant struggle for a sense of your own worth and importance powerfully limits your ability to empathize with other people.

Near the end of the video, Schore stresses the importance of joy in the attachment experience—that is, the infant’s attunement with its mother in the experience of her joy and interest in her baby is crucial for optimal development. If you don’t have that experience, if you don’t feel that your mother experiences joy in your presence and finds you beautiful—it will permanently damage your brain as it develops. In an earlier post on my website, After Psychotherapy, I wrote that the baby whose mother doesn’t adore it (or feel profound joy and interest in her baby) “never gets over it, not really.” Now I can say why: it’s because the neurological development of its brain was permanently altered by the failure to get what was needed during the first year of life.

Watch the video here.

Joseph Burgo, Ph.D. in Psychology Today

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Casual Friday: Does Anybody Out There Know Who I Am?

Published on by Scott Williams9 Comments

English: Cover of Undead Fishtank album, for u...

Tony Campolo tells a story in one of his books about something that happened after World War II. There were more than 200 Frenchmen who returned to Paris suffering from amnesia. They had been in prison camps and were so psychologically devastated by their ordeal that they had lost the conscious awareness of who they were.

In most cases, their identities were quickly established, but after all that was done, there were still 32 men whose identities couldn’t be verified. The doctors who were treating them were convinced that their chances for recovery were slim unless they were connected with former friends and relatives and restored to their once-familiar settings.

Someone had an idea to help. They published photographs of the men on the front page of newspapers throughout the country, and gave a date and time when anyone having information about any of these amnesia victims could come to the Paris Opera House. Well, on the appointed day, a crowd gathered to view these war veterans who didn’t know who they were. In a dramatic moment, the first of the amnesia victims walked onto the stage of the darkened opera house, stood alone in the spotlight, and slowly turned completely around. Before the hushed audience, in a halting voice, he said to the crowd, “Does anybody out there know who I am?”

It is a profound question.

I mentioned on this blog that recently I had a Grand Mal seizure at work. Fortunately I work at a doctor’s office and two of the best doctors I have ever met were on the scene within seconds. At least that is what I was told. I don’t remember any of it. Apparently I also became physically violent at one point as well, although I wasn’t there to see it.

It is a scary thing to wake up on a gurney and not know what is happening. It is very similar to waking up from an operation with that foggy pseudo-understanding that something has happened and you should know what that is. You understand, on some level, that you shouldn’t be in an ambulance – it’s a work day. It gradually dawns on you that you don’t know where you are or for that matter, who you are.

I could not remember where I lived.

It is a bizarre thing to realize you do not know who you are.

Many of us spend our entire lives trying to find out who we are. We jump through hoops and do things hoping to be loved, only to find out that we have lost a sense of ourselves. We grew up believing we were going to be rock stars and multi-millionaires, at the very least healthy, wealthy and wise, but we aren’t, and we may not get there anytime soon. It is easy to build your identity on the wrong things, trying to impress the wrong people for the wrong reasons. It is no wonder than that so many of us have come to the conclusion that the real world is boring and life has little meaning unless we find it from within.

The older I get the more I realize that life does not hand you meaning, you have to grab it for yourself. The paltry drive to acquire more money and status is so entirely meaningless yet enticing. How many rock stars and celebrities have to kill themselves or end up in rehab before we as a people stop spending our lives wishing for something that does not heal our souls?

So who are you? As Billy Crystal says in the immortal Princess Bride, “Hey! Hello in there! Hey! What’s so important? Whatcha got here, that’s worth living for?”

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Living My Life To Impress A Five Year Old

Published on by Scott Williams13 Comments

Many of us were damaged emotionally when we were children. We were criticized, we were belittled, we were told how to live, how to act, what to wear and how to think… by other children. Have you been to a playground lately? Have you noticed that their opinions are fairly… stupid?

Or maybe it was a relative who criticized you and turned you into an introvert, or taught you to suppress your emotions, or hide who you are. A relative you now realize is an asshole whose opinion does not matter.

So why are you still acting like he told you to 25 years ago?

Perhaps you had a parent who told you that you were an idiot, or stupid, or worthless. Twenty years later you still battle insecurity, still feel like a loser. In counseling we find out that you feel this way predominantly because of what you were told when you were a child. You now realize that your alcoholic, abusive, degenerate father is a moron.

So why do you still hear that voice in your head?

My grandmother and other relatives told me/taught me countless times that I was a mouthy, disrespectful, immature burden that should be “seen and not heard” (and preferably not seen). I grew up to live up to some of those expectations, perhaps because I believed them on some level. I have taken the time to analyze why I spent so much of my early adulthood trying to fit in, rebelling against the status quo, saying everything on my mind without filtering, etc. In spite of great parents who loved and believed in me I now believe that those relatives taught me important and dysfunctional lessons that I have spent decades trying to come to grips with. With little effort I can still hear my grandmother’s voice. My uncle’s voice.

Mental health professionals are fond of telling us that much of our psyche was formed when we were little children. It is increasingly apparent that many of us had our dysfunctional coping skills, our poor self-image, and our self-destructive tendencies formed while we were yet little people – impressionable, ignorant, socially retarded, childish little kids who had no idea how to filter out the negative and destructive messages. We heard messages and learned lessons that continue to haunt us, regardless of what we understand intellectually. We believe, on one level, that we need to “get over” our past. Making that happen, however, is a different challenge altogether.

We have been imprinted, and those tattoos do not just wash off. It is one thing to realize that you have been molded by dysfunction, it is another thing altogether to effectively break free from that influence. Those attitudes and coping skills have become a part of who you are and how you cope. You have owned them. Really you had little choice.

Every day I talk with people who have been emotionally scarred by childhood or adult friends, or authority figures, or those who were supposed to love and protect them. In counseling they begin to recognize that several of their foundational beliefs and coping mechanisms, ways of dealing with the world that they have relied on for decades, may in fact be deeply flawed. It is a horrible and humbling thing to realize that you have been living your life believing distortions about yourself and your world.

For decades you have believed that no one can be trusted, and you have proven yourself correct countless times. You have evidence to support your cognitive distortions so they must be real. Anger is the way to deal with perceived slight. Always stick up for yourself. Never give up. If you want something done you have to do it yourself. Forget about the past. Meekness is weakness. All men are assholes. All women are bitches. I’ll never get better. I’ll never be able to cope. Never let anyone see the real you. Don’t take crap from anyone. Hurt them before they hurt you. Hitting your partner is ok if I say “I’m sorry”. I won’t measure up. Yelling works. Vulnerability leads to abuse. Nothing will ever change. I’m a failure. I can’t be honest. I’m damaged goods. No one could love me. I’m a loser. The list goes on and on.

Go back to the playground. Go back to that bedroom, that old house, that church basement. Take a hard look at that abusive parent, relative, adult, child. Healing and growth begins when we realize that the voices in my head and the attitudes and coping skills I developed to protect myself may not work anymore. They may, in fact, be keeping me sick and powerless.

You don’t have to listen to him anymore. She was wrong about you. That wasn’t your fault. The coping skills you so despise in yourself isn’t your fault either. You were doing the best you could with very little information and support in a dangerous world not of your making.

It’s not your fault. Talk to someone. Time to question everything. Time to be free.

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Guest Blogger – Rule of Stupid on Self Blame

Published on by Scott Williams21 Comments

Today’s guest is Rule of Stupid, an amazingly honest, fearless blog with the best header picture I have seen. Check him out!

Scott has kindly invited me to write a post for his blog. The invite came from a post Scott wrote, and in particular a phrase he used about fears we have – “if people really knew us, if we really acted in an authentic way, that no one would like us”. The phrase “if you really knew me you’d hate me” haunted me for years and I’m going to try to share some of my story in the hope it might help any readers.

I had a troubled time growing up. My mother was dysfunctional, my father had left when I was a baby and we were poor. When my mother re-married it was to a dark and brooding man who brought a lot of pain and abuse.

The trouble is, when parents inflict trauma on a child the child has to cope, but doesn’t have any coping strategies. Every message, biological and cultural, tells the child that parents look after them, and that parents are, to all intents and purposes, God – all powerful and always right.

So when parents bring pain, the easiest way to make sense of this is to put the blame on the self. “Parents are good, but they hurt me, so I must be bad.” This is the coping strategy that often results from bad parents.

Sadly, a strategy that pays off so young is incredibly hard to shake. In fact the strategy soon becomes invisible – we don’t even know we are doing it – so it just becomes the norm. We then grow up with a permanent sense that everything bad that happens is somehow our fault.

This is the origin of the all to common “if you knew me you’d hate me” mantra. The self-blame has morphed into a blame that pre-empts our mistakes – it is now a general attitude to ourselves.

Another tragedy is that the belief can create the reality. If we think we are rubbish we will shy away from making friends – then our loneliness will increase our sense that we are rubbish. On the flip-side, we can horribly over-compensate and become brash and insensitive – “people won’t like me anyway, so I won’t care about them either!”

We come to operate in so many ineffective ways that our lives can become one big, self-fulfilling prophecy of loneliness and misery.

So how did I get out?

First, I have to say it took years, and I can’t write a fifty-page post. Instead I’m going to try and summarize the most helpful thing for me.

Love.

For me the love that saved me was my wife. For others I know, however, it has been love of music, a friend, writing – the object doesn’t matter. What matters is that we find something outside ourself that we want so bad we’d do anything for it. Even be ourselves!

When I first picked up a guitar I fell in love, and I remain in love today. I loved music so much that I played in front of others. I discovered that I could confess to them in song, both showing myself and still hiding myself behind the safety of the phrase ‘it’s just a song’. While still terrified of the world my passion for music saw me take to the stage. I learned to talk between songs and found parts of myself that people liked.

For a while I was a musical clown, creative and funny, and I enjoyed it. Then I met my wife – and she wanted more than a funny guitarist. I couldn’t hide behind a mic any more.

But again, I loved her enough to try, to risk, to dare. I slowly, painfully revealed more and more of myself, and as I showed myself to her, so it became natural to show those things to others.

No-one has ever rejected me for my honesty. My friendships have only ever grown stronger.

I once believed many things that are not true. One was that everybody else had it sussed out except me. They didn’t. Everyone struggles.

A second was that once I had it figured out, things wouldn’t hurt any more. They will. Pain is part of life for everyone – but so is pleasure. Hide from pain and you lose pleasure too.

Another was that there was some magic trick, some arcane knowledge or potion, some secret that would make me alright, take away the pain, give me confidence. There isn’t one.

But that isn’t bad news – it’s the best news you can have – because if there’s no secret, no hidden magic, then healing is available for everyone. And it really is!

So here’s the bad news.

It’s going to hurt.

My wife and I argued. I went through some very dark depression. We struggled and we hurt – but we kept going, thank God. That’s the only secret – if it’s even a secret – that you keep going.

Breaking the belief that we are ugly inside, shameful or that people will hate us is both the easiest thing and the hardest thing in the world. There is only one way, and that is to find out – to show yourself, to dare, to risk. It is scary, it is painful, but it is also beautiful, liberating and like slowly seeing in colour for the first time.

More than anything I can say with absolute confidence, with the knowledge of experience, that the pain of facing the fear is less than the pain of suffering under the fear without end.

You are not china, you are not fragile – you have survived everything so far, you have survived what gave you this pain! You can survive being the real you and when you do you will rejoice in it.

Coming Tomorrow: The Biggest Complaint I Get About Men, Hands Down!

I Wanted To Change The World

Published on by Scott Williams14 Comments

insecureI remember when I was 14 trying to smoke. My buddy Brent and I stole a pack of cigarettes from my mother and went off to smoke them in hiding, in case the smoking police caught us and told our parents. It was very urbane, we lit up and started to suck. We were coo, for about a second until the smoke reached my lungs and my body went, “not in here!”. I felt like I’d been hit in the chest by a baseball bat. We both hacked and barked and I almost barfed, and after about 30 seconds it calmed down and I looked at Brent and said, “Pretty smooth huh?” (I’d seen that on a commercial). I think Brent was going into cardiac arrest.

We worked away at that vile thing, hacking and gagging and my eyes were tearing up and flushed and my throat felt as though I’d been eating the sidewalk. But we were looking cool. That was until I turned green on the way home, and threw up on my bike, and drove into a ditch, and hit my head on my steering wheel, and threw up again all over my pants, and kind of passed out for a bit on the road to the air force base.

But it was a small price to pay for cool, right. And after a few dozen I didn’t get sick anymore and I was set. Course I couldn’t play sports much anymore and I stunk and it took my dad about 3 minutes to catch me and apply the hand of justice to the backside of reproach. But I was cool. I belonged and I was better than other losers who couldn’t handle their smoke.
A lot of us pridefully try to fit in, in order to be someone.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression… so they say…
As a result many of us are hungry to impress other people.
We want so bad to make a splash. Just look at the Academy Awards. It has become a contest to see who can wear the most outrageous outfit, people dressing up like birds for heaven’s sake.
Why? To stick out in the crowd, to be noticed and admired. “Love me- hate me, just don’t ignore me.

Many of us feel we have marginal personalities. We wonder if we will ever fit in, especially when we look around at those who seem to fit in far better. It leads us to perform. We are great performers, you and I. We have pretended to be many things, many different people. We have learned to fit in, to say the right things and impress the right people. Many begin to rationalize any behavior that will allow them to look successful or healthy. We lie. Though we are supposed to be adults, no longer tossed to and fro by peer pressure, the fact remains that we are all still trying to fit in, to be loved, to be adored.

I have tried to find my identity in many places, and many of those places were destructive. Girls crave love and attention so much that they settle for anything that even resembles it, mainly from guys looking for only one thing. Guys crave status and respect and when they cannot find it they are fooled by its illusion in pornography and casual sex. Lonely people longing for approval fall into the world of drugs and alcohol, and insecure people strive to get to the top, only to find their identity lost when they finish second. It is the reason for the latest trend whereby young girls of twelve or thirteen give blow jobs out as free gifts at house parties and school dances.In each case, people are looking for love and acceptance, identity; for the fulfilled life. They long to rise about their own mediocrity and worthlessness and soar like the eagle; but instead they wind up more confused as to who they are, and where they fit into the world. We have all felt the shame of insignificance, and left wondering if life is even worth it. We have all dreamed of being a ‘someone’, of being loved and adored. We have all longed to be special.

And if the truth were told many of us are convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if people really knew us, if we really acted in an authentic way, that no one would like us. I once heard a speaker say, “If you really knew me, you wouldn’t come to hear me speak. But that’s ok, because if I really knew you I wouldn’t talk to you!”

That’s our greatest fear, isn’t it? If I let you inside, if you knew that even though I get paid to be mature, be wise, be profound, say smart things, if you really knew what a screw-up I am, could you still care for me? Could you love me if you knew how ordinary I was, how black my thoughts can be, how insecure I am, how convinced I am that I am ugly? I’m a great person until you get to know me. How can I believe that someone could think I was special, love me for who I am, without any of my masks, if I can’t even learn to like myself?

The older I get the more convinced I am that this is the greatest and most difficult journey we will ever take – the road to self acceptance. As the monk once said, “When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself.”

I still want to change the world but maybe I need to start closer to home.

When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world.
I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation.
When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town.
I couldn’t change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family.
Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.

Author: Unknown Monk 1100 A.D.

The Body Image Revolution: How one image started the conversation

Published on by Scott Williams15 Comments

Something revolutionary happened this week. A woman posted a photograph of herself in her underwear on the Internet. Although there are thousands of pictures of women in their underwear on-line (and in magazines, catalogs, television, billboards, etc…), this picture was different. It was different because this woman is fat (not my word).

Stella Boonshoft is an 18 year-old student at New York University and she loves her body. She is proud of her body and she wanted to use her body as an agent of change. She struggled with hating her body for much of her life. She was bullied and tormented as a child and adolescent. And she learned to make peace with her body. So she posted a semi-nude picture of herself on her blog and opened a nation-wide conversation about body image, misconceptions about health, and acceptance. She is extraordinarily courageous.

Stella posted this picture of herself along with the caption:

“WARNING: Picture might be considered obscene because subject is not thin. And we all know that only skinny people can show their stomachs and celebrate themselves. Well I’m not going to stand for that. This is my body. Not yours. MINE. Meaning the choices I make about it, are none of your f*cking business. Meaning my size, IS NONE OF YOUR F*CKING BUSINESS. If my big belly and fat arms and stretch marks and thick thighs offend you, then that’s okay. I’m not going to hide my body and my being to benefit your delicate sensitivities.”

Our nation has been leading a crusade against fat people. Rather than encouraging people to love our bodies and care for ourselves in healthy and nurturing ways, we encourage fat-shaming- a phenomenon where we blame people for their nerve to inhabit fat bodies. If you are fat, you are told to deprive yourself in an attempt to manipulate your body to be thin by whatever measures necessary. Health is secondary to thinness. Now, many people will argue that you cannot be healthy if you are overweight. This is simply not true. More and more research is emerging showing that not all obese people are unhealthy and that being overweight (according to Body Mass Index [BMI] charts) may actually be protective in certain ways (this is called the “Obesity Paradox”). In addition, being thin by any means necessary has significant health risks as evidenced by people who struggle with (and too often die from) anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. I believe that leading a healthy lifestyle, which integrates movement and a well-balanced diet of whole foods, is more predictive of an individual’s health than his or her BMI. Yet we stigmatize an entire group of people based on their body size under the pretense that this must mean that they are unhealthy. The stigmatization and bullying of fat people only leads to body-hatred and disordered eating behaviors. Think about it: if you hate your body, does this really motivate you to treat your body well? It usually results in the very antithesis- increased sickness and poor health. It was disheartening to read the comments on some of the blogs that featured the story about Stella Boonshoft. Although there were some supportive comments, the bullying and cruelty were hard to bear.

Fat-shaming simply does not work. If it worked, we would not be in the midst of an “obesity epidemic.” As a clinical psychologist, I work with patients of all different sizes (some considered underweight, average weight, overweight, or obese according to BMI) who struggle with accepting their bodies. For many people, how they feel about their body determines their mood and their daily activities. I hear from people who think that they are too fat to go to the movies, walk through the park, check out the new museum exhibition, exercise at the gym, or attend a party. People have stopped living their lives to the fullest because they feel that their fatness prevents them from being a productive member of society. They feel unacceptable, offensive, or less than because of their body size.  And feeling this way does not make them any thinner.

We need to learn to accept and love our bodies, to stop hiding and disengaging from life because our body weight isn’t considered “average.” From love-not hatred – comes nurturance and health.

by Alexis Conason, Psy.D

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Why It Sucks To Be Canadian

Published on by Scott Williams39 Comments

Growing up in Canada has many advantages. Canadians really are the most polite people you will ever meet. It is somehow hardwired into our DNA to say “excuse me” and “thank you”. Traveling to other countries it is always a bit of a culture shock until I realize that waiter who has no manners and is talking so gruffly is not actually upset or rude. We are a very sensitive people.

When I lived and worked in the United States I found the people to be wonderful, even if I never did come to understand the appeal of biscuits and gravy. I mean seriously, that is disgusting. The Americans I knew were quite convinced that they lived in the greatest country in the world and were proud to tell me. This is a very un-Canadian way of thinking. In Canada we believe we are from the greatest country on earth, unless you might find that offensive. And actually, when I think about it, even saying this is quite pushy and if I have offended you, please forgive me. I’m sorry.

Growing up I was taught that self promotion was arrogance and a humble person never brags. Humble people, we believed, made fun of themselves and were self-deprecating. We are not flag wavers. Telling someone else that your country is better than theirs is considered the height of bad form. Psychologically Americans and Canadians are very different animals. Canadians have grown up in the shadow of the giant. We tend to define ourselves by what we are not, as opposed to what we are.

As a Canadian it is very difficult for me to admit that I believe Americans raise their children with a much healthier sense of self and self-esteem. Canada is a country of 35+ million people who don’t like themselves. In all my years of counseling in Canada I have yet to meet more than a handful of people who actually like themselves and would describe themselves as having good self-image. That is at least in part to my contention that to even say you have healthy self-esteem in Canada is extremely difficult. If I tell a group or an individual that I like myself I somehow feel dirty, conceited. I usually follow this up with a joke that makes fun of myself. This is a very Canadian experience.

Obviously people from other countries have issues with self-esteem as well. The purpose of this article is not to elevate or minimize another culture. I am simply implying that the Canadian experience is, on some level, very twisted and unhealthy. I have struggled my entire life to come to grips with my feelings of worth and am only now, well into my forties, willing to admit (with a little Canadian trepidation) that I am coming to like who I am. Just writing those words remain difficult for me, however. Stating publicly that I like myself is fighting against generations of self recrimination and sociology.

Religion has also had a hand in making it difficult for people to have a healthy self-image. I did not grow up in a very religious home but every summer at bible camp I was reminded that “everything good is from God” and the intended converse, “everything bad is Scott.” My Baptist camp counselor told me that, “Without God I could do nothing and there is nothing good in me.” I was “born in sin”. I have since grown up to understand those statements in perspective but I distinctly remember feeling like a dirty wretch every summer at the altar call.

I am Canadian.
I am trying to like myself but feel bad telling you this.
I have secretly always believed I was ugly although I wondered if I was good-looking.
I am paranoid about people thinking I may be arrogant.
My parents told me I was a winner but I thought that it would be conceited to believe them.
I have spent my entire life struggling with self-esteem.
If you tell me I am a loser I am prone to believe you.
I am Canadian.

It’s time to let ourselves love ourselves. You are amazing. You are beautiful in spite of what you see in the mirror. You are fine just the way you are. Amazing. More brilliant than you know.

“Something inside you emerges….an innate, indwelling peace, stillness, aliveness. It is the unconditioned, who you are in your essence. It is what you had been looking for in the love object. It is yourself.”
– Eckhart Tolle

“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.”
– Edmund Hillary

Casual Friday: The NTLA

Published on by Scott Williams9 Comments

Many years ago I belonged to an exclusive men’s club called the NTLA.

I won’t tell you just what the initials stand for yet so it’ll give you something to do for a few minutes. The members of this club were passionate about canoeing and not just any kind of canoeing – whitewater. We would pattern our whole year around the NTLA. We would plan and share pictures. Whenever a few of us and our wives were together that’s all we would talk about. The NTLA.

It was like being in a room with a bunch of teachers. Many of my finest friends are teachers and they are awesome people… alone. But put two teachers in the same postal code and you can pretty much leave the room. You know who you are.

Teachers love to talk about teaching. In Fort McMurray my three best friends were teachers, and if we were all together… it was so boring. I could pretty much leave the room and they wouldn’t care. I would try to enter into the conversation and they would all turn to me, give me the little patronizing smile, and pat me on the head and say to each other… “oh, isn’t that cute. He thinks he knows something about teaching.” They would throw me a cookie and go back to talking.

There were no women allowed in the NTLA. Not that any of our wives were interested. By the time the NTLA would come around, they were begging us to go away – so everyone was happy.

It was called the “No tan-line annual”, the NTLA. 6 guys, 3 canoes, beans, testosterone, burping, farting, and no toothpaste, no bathing suits.There was a cardinal rule. No bathing. I used to wear the same clothes pretty much the whole time we were out there. It was guy heaven. If we would have had access to a remote control it would have been perfect.

We were passionate about the NTLA. We collected all the info, planned overly, prepared anally. We were into it. It was important to me. To all of us.

Then one year it fell apart. It was the year I first found out my wife had breast cancer and I was an emotional wreck. I phoned my best friend at the time in search of emotional support and before very long it denigrated into a conversation about how he didn’t feel that we should do the canoe trip anymore. I couldn’t understand why, and my emotional state did not aid in my comprehension of what was really going on.

A few months later, on a whim, I phoned my best friend to see how things were. His wife answered the phone and said in a slightly surprised tone, “Aren’t you with him? Why aren’t you on the canoe trip?”

Seven years before that phone call I had started this canoe trip. For years it had been the center-piece of my year. I had taught the participants how to paddle, read maps, make wet fires, shoot whitewater (usually the Churchill River), look for a campsite. Now they had gone on a trip and did not want me there. I was crushed. Later on the phone with one of the guys he explained that I was too intense, they wanted a casual trip not an adventure every year. He said that they did not value my friendship, that there had been personality and leadership conflicts. They simply didn’t want me around.

Five guys whom I had considered close friends. One whom I thought of as a brother. I felt beaten. My feelings of self-worth plummeted. Not only could I do nothing to help my wife during her hardest battle of her life; now I began to realize my friends wanted nothing to do with me. Many of my hand holds were being stripped away.

Most people love you conditionally.

Philip Yancey tells the story of Dr. Paul Brand who has devoted his life to treating leprosy patients in India. In the course of one examination Brand laid his hand on the patient’s shoulder and informed him through a translator of the treatment that lay ahead. To his surprise the man began to shake with muffled sobs. “Have I said something wrong?” Brand asked the translator. She quizzed the patient and reported, “No, doctor. He says he is crying because you put your hand around his shoulder. Until he came here no one had touched him for many years.”

Many years have come and gone since the NTLA. I have grown up, become much more self-aware, and understand more about life than I once did. I continue to learn what it means to be authentic, as much as I am able.

As I look back on that time in my life I have come to understand that there are few people who will be there for you, no matter what. Most people have the best of intentions but struggle to understand the true cost of ‘unconditional love’. I have also come to appreciate the few people in my life who I cannot shake, cannot surprise, cannot impress, and cannot chase away. Those individuals who love you in spite of who you are, not because of what you can do for them. They inspire me to want to be a better person, to walk the walk – not just talk the talk.

I spent some time this morning with a close friend, someone whom I would like to believe I care about unconditionally. This article came up during our conversation. I was struck but the gravity of what I was proposing; loving people without judgement, without agenda, without walking away when everyone else does. It forced me to confront my own premise and ask myself what Cory would have to do for me to abandon him. It would be nice to write glib sentiments about my willingness to “lay down my life for a friend”. It’s another thing altogether to live that commitment when I am busy, or self-absorbed, or hurting.

They say a friend will help you move, a real friend will help you move a body. I would hope if it came down to it, I would be willing to take the wet end.

If you liked this article you might want to check out – Lowering Your Expectations

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others

Published on by Scott Williams9 Comments

Mr. Johnson (Sesame Street)Some time ago I had the very uncomfortable experience of being publicly humiliated while having drinks with two friends at a local pub.

I must admit, these men were gorgeous. I know, I’m a guy and I’m not supposed to notice, but as you’re about to understand, that fact was made abundantly clear.

We were sitting and talking, sipping on beer, when the strangest thing happened. Gorgeous women started coming over and giving us their phone numbers.

I am, at this point, using the word “us” incorrectly. Perhaps I should rephrase that.

We were sitting and talking, sipping on beer, when the strangest thing happened. Gorgeous women started coming over and giving “them” their phone numbers. As this way happening, for some odd reason I was reminded of Sesame Street. Why you may ask? Do you remember on Sesame Street when they had that game they always played with Grover?

“One of these things is not like the others….”

“Can you guess which one is not like the others…”?

I was sitting with those two pretty boys and playing this game in my head when it dawned on me, possibly for the very first time, that I was not as good-looking as they were. You see, to this point I had never really considered that I was different then they were. My mother thinks I’m quite attractive. My wife seems to like how I look. But perhaps love is blind, or at least nearsighted.

As I sat there humming the Sesame Street song I realized that I had never been at a table for this phone number ritual before. This may happen to you all the time, but I’ve never been given a woman’s phone number in my life. You may not believe me, but I’m no Brad Pitt. I cannot remember a single time in my life when any woman even hit on me. I am not crushed by this revelation but it did force me to consider a few things.

Many of us are not pretty. We look in the mirror and squint. We are keenly aware of our ugliness, our defects, our imperfections. Even those who are considered attractive often spend an inordinate amount of time paying attention to their smallest blemish and focusing on their flaws. We have become of a culture that is plagued by body dysmorphia.

Every day, in hundreds of ways, we are reminded that we are too fat, or too bald, too short, too ugly, too poor, too old, too young. Media is bloated with beautiful people who have had multiple medical and cosmetic enhancements, all presented for your enjoyment after they have had even the slightest reality photoshopped out of them. No wonder we don’t like what we look like; we are competing with fantasy.

One of my closest friends is considered to be extremely attractive. While in high school he thought he was unattractive, plain. His weight was not the same as the jocks, he wasn’t tall enough to look like a basketball player. You understand what I mean.

Some years back he screwed up his courage and told his friends and family he was gay.  He began going to gay bars in Vancouver and the most amazing thing happened. In this community his body type, height, hair, and features made him desirable; and young, beautiful men with athletic bodies constantly approached him with interest.

Suddenly the rules were all different.

Imagine if you could walk into a bar like that after thinking you were ugly or fat or bald. Think what it would be like if your greatest flaw, the thing about yourself you most despised, suddenly was considered gorgeous by everyone around. Wouldn’t that have a significant effect on your self-esteem? Suddenly you were beautiful. You could hold your head up high and know everyone wanted you. Imagine.

What a sick world.

A world where you are hired because you are attractive. Where your height makes a difference in your pay grade. This sick society judges people on the basis of things that don’t matter. I have talked to many brilliant women who have been pushed aside because they don’t look right for the job. Children who are passed over on the playground because they are not pretty enough. Beautiful young women who believe they have to perform fellatio in order to fit in and ‘get a guy’. Youth who have been branded outcasts on the basis of looks or style.

If I could tell those people anything it would be that they are beautiful just the way they are.

You are beautiful just the way you are. Don’t change for anyone. If they love you they will like the way you look. If they ridicule or judge you based on your outer shell then forget them and walk away.

Never be ashamed of who you are.

Casual Friday – You’re a Williams!

Published on by Scott Williams2 Comments

365: Day 140, YOU're awesomeOne day I went on a walk with my dad. Some of you have issues with your fathers but I don’t. My father is a player, a lover, a best friend. He may be a half a foot too short, but women love my dad. He knows how to treat a lady. When you are around my father you can’t help but feel special. He has that effect on people.

Once, years ago, some friends went on a road trip and unbeknownst to me they showed up at my parents place. My parents had no idea they were coming. An hour or so after their arrival they called me… from the hot tub. At that very moment my father was bringing them a cheese platter and sparkling apple juice. That’s my pop. He loves people and it shows.

He has always been my biggest fan. If I was even indicted for killing someone my dad would probably visit my jail cell and tell me “they had it coming”. His loyalty has no limits. He was the man who taught me about loyalty. My children know the word too. Family is everything.

That walk was many years ago but I remember it like it was yesterday. Through strained emotions my dad asked me, “whatever happened to your self-esteem? I always knew you to be the most confident person I have known. You believed you could do anything, and you usually did.” At the time I had no insightful answer for him. It has been years since that conversation and I am only now beginning to understand what was happening to me during those years of my life.

I started out as a winner. I believed in ‘me’. But when one or a few of the most important people in your life remind you constantly how much of a loser you are, when you know every day you don’t measure up, when you have artificial constraints placed upon you, you begin to die inside. Some of you know what I am saying. You have people in your life who are disappointed in you as well. They remind you that you don’t measure up. They judge you and reprimand you and rate your performance. And slowly and little by little you succumb to their criticisms.

I have been rereading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers”. He is my favorite author, this month. Gladwell contends that there is no such thing as a self-made man or woman. Every successful person has a series of seemingly insignificant advantages – from the month they were born to the place where they happen to go to school. Gates was no accident. Neither was Einstein. Each of these individuals had something stacked in their favor, some winning edge. A significant majority of successful hockey players, for example, were born early in the year. They were more advanced, got more breaks, more ice time, better grooming. He makes a strong case.

My dad and mom instilled in me a sense of value. It is hard to under-estimate the impact that has had in my life. Both my parents were from humble beginnings and had no shortage of people reminding them that they were losers. Neither of my parents came from advantage. My father was an orphan. But somehow, for some reason, they invented the myth that I carry to this day. Though my relatives were a bunch of cattle thieves and alcoholics I grew up believing that to be a “Williams” was something special, almost magical.

I am thankful to my parents for their investment in my life. I have tried to follow their example and instill in my own children a sense of pride in their family and their worth. It’s easy to do, they’re awesome. My boys were raised to think being a Williams was like winning the lottery. As young kids they couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t want to be a Williams. My young son recently had a son of his own and every time we get together one of us will remind five month old Angus Scott that he is a Williams, that he can do anything.

In a world that reminds us on a daily basis we don’t measure up I am thankful that, from my youth, I was told I was special. It is a legacy I am proud of. And why wouldn’t I be… I’m a Williams.