Griswold - The Book of Help: A Memoir in Remedies

I wasnt raised, exactly. Well, I was, but more like raised through sets of instructions to prepare me for worst-case scenarios rather than for, say, life. Fair to say I overtrained for crises, even. Everyone knows that habits of childhood are hard to break. So it turns outnot to brag (and Im not sure this is something one would ever brag about in the first place)but if its out there and in English, Ive probably tried it. And technically speaking, I shouldnt even limit it to English. Ive tried a few things in Portuguese.

Whats the it, you ask? That remedy, that discipline, that modality, that thing it aint cool to admit youve done at the Ivy League mixer. Ive logged some fifteen thousand hours in search of, spanning forty years and six continents. My search has included (but is not limited to) ways to become less neurotic, to become less of a romantic, to develop emotional intelligence, to get over childhood conditioning, to get out of my own way, to find my place in the world, to be successful in love, and to generally attempt to become more evolvedone nano-micro-millimeter at a time.

Its said when doing anything, a nearly alchemical event happens right around the ten thousand-hour markyou become an expert of sorts. So I suppose, in an unintentional way, I will declare myself an expert searcher.

Whether this drive was due to particularly odd/searching parents or my own sensitive nervous system and anxious mind, I found myself at a young age with an emotional sensitivity that, for a good long while, felt more liability than asset. I was trained earlyfor good and for badto look outside myself for something that might help me have a smoother relationship between me and me. At birth, my parents assigned me a Christian Science practitioner; by age seven I asked Santa for my first mantra; by twelve I began taking weekend workshops on personal growth. By twenty-seven, I tried to go the academic route, figuring I shouldnt overlook the traditional means to develop. I indoctrinated myself into the halls of Yale Graduate School. By thirty-two, I was a classical acupuncturist. Compulsive? Probably. Freak show? Maybe so. Or, perhaps, from a kinder vantage point, Ill call it an over-the-top existential curiosity.

In spite of my great intentions, by age thirty the family I had chosen, the one I created, exploded (although is getting arrested more explosion or more implosion?). And for all the training I received, the tuition fees and mantras and first-aid readiness, nothing prepared me for handling what came my way.

The point: at my darkest hour, if somebody had told me the surefire way out of my predicament was to ditch my clothes and run naked around Balboa Island backward under the full moon singing God Save the Queen in Castilian Spanish, Id have done it.

You might think Im being hyperbolic. Im not.

Nude, clothed, upside down, right side upyou name it. And the following, a record of my attempts and experiments to become a more loving, more awake, more durable version of myself. I think of it like an off-trail log of the landscape of one persons interior.

And this particular log is informed by my affinity for the edges of the bell curve, not the middle. Thats my bias. Ill own it here, right up front. Im drawn to experiences and stories that are the most private, the most embarrassing, the most cringeworthy, the most taboo, the mosthow can I say?the most from the underbelly of our experience, the stuff our culture seems to give us the least permissionand least wordsto put words to. Like those times at the end of a party when the really good stuff happens, when most everybody has gone home, but a core set of stragglers is just getting started, telling their deepest-darkest, cracking themselves open on the kitchen floor, all in a huddle, after the coffee or all the beer or the only decent dessert has run out.

So in these pages, you will find me reporting from that place, and that place in me, because thats where Ive learned the most, from others and inside myself. And when I wasnt learning, I notice its where Ive felt the most alive. I hope to add in some small way to the great canon of experience where, for one reason or another, the unsayable was suddenly okay to say. If you are anything like me, you could use a little more of that. A little more breathing room, to make life more bearable, more true.

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EMBRACING THE BELOVED: RELATIONSHIP AS A PATH OF AWAKENING