I felt very sad saying goodbye to Meira my wife and Rwth, my youngest daughter, at Heathrow airport yesterday. It reminded me of the countless times when, as an actor in a previous career, I would stock up on new clothes and toiletries and leave the family home to live in hotels and bed-sits whilst touring and performing in halls and theatres up and down the country. I’d miss out on home comforts and the warm secure feeling of having a loving family around me. It’s so much easier for everyone if we stick to the familiar and stay in our comfort zones, isn’t it? However, recovery involves risking; taking life by the horns and learning to confront the burden of being human. And, for me, it involves using the fear I’ve experienced lately as I prepare for this Winston Churchill Fellowship as a reason to DO things rather than as an excuse NOT to. I did allow myself to cry, incidentally, as I kissed Meira and Rwth goodbye. Showing such feelings of vulnerability is the biggest risk of all for me – demolishing that façade of invulnerability that I hid behind for so many years takes courage and is imperative, I believe, if recovery is to flourish. I have to accept my humanness else I’ll always be in hock to some or other mood-altering substance or behaviour. I’ll also miss seeing Bethan, my eldest daughter and, in particular, my two darling granddaughters, Begw and Efa. Saying goodbye to them was something else and I best not remind myself of it now or I’ll start crying again…..!
My flight (number V5001) from Heathrow to Newark in New Jersey was faultless. I’d splashed out an extra £50 for a seat by one of the exits so that I could have more leg-room. Well, I am over 6 feet tall after all and, damn it, I’m worth it! I also had the company of Jide Bada who was sitting next to me, a London-based solicitor who works for one of the leading banks, and was heading for New York for a 9 day break with his wife, who would join him later. We discussed the world-wide financial crisis and how more and more people were suddenly waking up to the awful reality that ‘people, places and things’ (money in particular, he said) would never satisfy their needs and provide them with that sense of security that they so obviously craved. A religious man, Jide proffered that only some kind of spiritual interference in these peoples’ lives would ultimately satisfy those needs. In the main they craved wholeness, he believed (as did Carl Jung), and it was this sense of separateness - from themselves, from their fellow men, and from God - that accounted for the spiritual bankruptcy and the resulting emotional pain which he said so pervades society these days. Jide had a dilemma, however: how to get these people to recognise their need of God without them having to suffer too much first.
I told him that we in the Substance Misuse field had much the same problem: how to get people who are dependent on alcohol, drugs (prescribed or illicit), or other dependencies and problematic behaviours to recognise their need of help without them also having to suffer too much first and, in many tragic cases, dying.
It is very hot here in Newark. New England is currently experiencing a heat wave. And what clothes have I brought with me? You’ve guessed it!
Before retiring for the night at my hotel in Elizabeth, New Jersey, I went for a short walk just to unwind after the long journey. Outside an IHOP Restaurant I met Adam and had a coffee with him. Adam is working in nearby New York as part of a team drilling test bores for a proposed new bridge spanning the Hudson River. He’s going to be away from his partner and two children for 4 months and that sense of separateness was beginning to get to him as well – that natural human condition of loneliness. We talked for a while and both of us felt better for it. Adam was also concerned about bed bugs! There is an infestation of bed bugs in New York hotels apparently and he’s been spraying his room and all his bed clothes in an effort to avoid being attacked by the mites. I checked my bed linen when I returned to my room but couldn’t find any evidence of bed bugs. When I got up this morning after a long, restless night, however, I can tell you what I do have - jet lag!
Maybe listening to some music will help. Courtesy of my friend Colin Macdonald, who’s a member of the Policy Advisory Group at the Welsh Council on Alcohol and Other Drugs and who leads our ‘Love and Forgiveness’ retreats (there’s another one from 3rd to 5th December at Trefeca in the stunningly-beautiful Brecon National Park, incidentally – so book early, places are limited!), I’m currently listening to music on an iPod he sent me. And the piece that’s massaging all the right emotional spots for me at this moment is the Adagio in G Minor played by the Limar Lapinsch & Latvian Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra. It’s exquisite, and it’s quickly restoring me to my usual, peaceful state of mind.
Later today (26th) I’ll be catching a train from Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey to Hartford, Connecticut. And tomorrow I’ll be having lunch with Cheryle Pacapelli, Director of Operations at the Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery (CCAR), who has been my contact there. That’s when we’ll schedule out the first two week stage of my 2 months visit to the States.
That’s all for now folks. I’m now going out to treat myself to a full American breakfast with four strips of bacon, two eggs (sunny-side up), golden hash browns and two cinnamon-apple compote pancakes with whipped topping!
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Hoffwn ddiolch i'r holl bobl sydd wedi cysylltu yn anfon eu dymuniadau gorau i mi ar gyfer y Gymrodoriaeth hon. Diolch arbenning i'r nifer ffyddlon sy'n gweddio drostaf a thros lwyddiant y daith hon a'n gwaith yn y Cyngor.
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