"We reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind. To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough." – Combahee River Collective (1977)
Exactly ten years ago, I walked into an Al-Anon twelve-step meeting at a church in Dearborn, Michigan. It was Superbowl Sunday. I was the only man in the room.
In 2016, I finally hit rock bottom after decades of people-pleasing, conflict-avoidance and treating my feelings like they were speedbumps on the road to some whacked-out Western notion of success.
I was exhausted, resentful and lonely.
This is what happens to people socialized in spaces where emotional neglect is the norm, where no-drama policies are enforced, where unspoken quotas regulate affirmation and nurture.
This is what happens when someone’s identity and worth are not determined by belonging to a beloved community, but by the rugged individualistic capacity to be good, stable, civil, nice and never a problem.
I was trained to conform to the standards and expectations of those with status.
I became addicted to addicts and narcissists - to alcoholics, workaholics, winaholics and rage-aholics – who are committed to top-down relationships where they are on top. I perpetuated these pedestals and pecking orders in all sorts of ways.
I never heard any of my pastors, professors, bosses, mentors, or any other pillars of the community say that pedestals and pecking orders are highly problematic – and that mutuality and accountability are the panacea.
This is one of the main reasons why I had to get into this 12-step program, where hitting rock bottom is not a failure, but the start of getting free from pedestals and pecking orders.
When I say that I became addicted to addicts and narcissists, what I mean is that I learned to organize my life in such a way that I would be the kick-stand and the side-kick to important, charismatic people. My worth was attached to their approval.
I was trained to be an extremely flexible, easy-going enabler who rarely looked out for what I needed or wanted. Most of the time, I did not even know what I needed or wanted. I bent over backwards and sacrificed for the squad – so that everything could run smoothly.
My life was shaped by shame-based systems. I learned to hide, to never show weakness, to avoid vulnerability at all costs, to always put my best foot forward so that it appeared that I always had my shit together.
When I got into a program of recovery from this addiction, I started to realize that I rarely rest. I am uncomfortable with ease. I believe I must earn everything. If it is hard or challenging, or causes pain and suffering, then it must be worth doing it.
When life is too easy, I feel a strange sense of guilt or shame. I feel like I am coasting, like I must be cheating. I can only tend to myself for so long before I feel selfish, before I feel like I am taking up too much space in the universe.
I am possessed by this pioneer spirit, passed down over the centuries by my peasant forebears who fled Germany, England, Ireland and Wales to cash in on the psychological wage of whiteness in the United States.
For the first time in their lives, they secured a social and material advantage. Because the supremacy story was on their side.
My ancestors settled on stolen land and hustled hard in coalmines and lumber yards, and on farms and construction sites. They were addicted to the American Dream. As a result, they became emotionally constipated and spiritually starved.
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In my twelve-step program, I have learned that codependency is baked into the core of my being. Codependency is a social, relational addiction to staying in good graces, to over-functioning for others, to going with the flow, to obsessively care-taking, to taking one for the team.
The “authorities” in my life banked on me being a good boy who did not make waves. I learned to walk on eggshells. I made sure that I did not ruffle anyone’s feathers. I often left social situations worried that I said or did something wrong.
My entire life, I’ve tried to get love from those who have very little love to give. I’ve tried to get intimacy from people who do not have the capacity for intimacy. I’ve tried to change people who do not have any interest in changing.
Many of my codependent patterns were signed, sealed and delivered during the years I played competitive basketball for white male coaches. They instilled in me the destructive belief that if I do not hustle hard for important people, they will be disappointed in me and they will reject me – and I will have very little value.
Fear, anger, shame and duty became driving forces, on and off the court. These patterns continued for decades with bosses, mentors, friends, colleagues and, of course, my spouse.
Codependency is about meeting the perceived needs of other people, even when those needs are not mine to meet, or unrealistic to meet.
Codependency cons me into saying “yes” to things even when everything in me is screaming “No!”
Codependency cons me into fixing people instead of feeling with people.
Codependency cons me into being the savior for someone else.
Codependency is arrogant and controlling. It is a god complex.
My twelve-step program teaches that other people do not need me to be their god. They need Something Else.
We all need Something Else.
I’m not talking about a colonizer god who is calculating, controlling, conquering and coercive.
I’m not talking about a quid pro quo god who holds grudges, or who expects me to live out of debt, duty or obligation.
I’m not talking about a hazy god who hides, holds back and refuses to give direct, clear feedback.
I’m not talking about a god who expects purity or perfection.
I’m not talking about a god who demands that I earn worth, value, love and affection.
I am talking about a divine Being who breathes with us and brings new life out of all the dead, rotten, wilting, broken, addicted and codependent places inside of us.
I am talking about a feral Force who ditches duty and performativity for playfulness, open-heartedness, transparency and full solidarity with those muted and minimized by the addicts and narcissists who run the world.
I am talking about a God of mutuality who makes it crystal clear that every single human being is a beloved child of the divine, nothing more, nothing less, no matter what.
People get caught in codependent patterns when they come to believe that their belovedness is conditional, that they do not have inherent value, that they do not belong to Something Else, just because, no matter what.
Codependency is a progressive disease, like alcoholism and Alzheimers. If you don’t get treatment, it will get worse. Codependency is also an epidemic in America. It is aggressively manipulated and reinforced by capitalism, nationalism, Zionism and other supremacy stories.
My own codependency is particularly acute because it was exploited and reinforced by what liberation theologian Dorothee Soelle called Christo-Fascism.
I was taught that Jesus died on the cross and that his shed blood covered all my sins. I believed that my life mattered because I was part of the people who were saved – which meant that everyone else was wrong and going to hell. Especially Muslims, Mormons, Jews, Atheists, Queer folks, Catholics and all those dumbs dumbs voting for Democrats.
My flag-waving pastors quoted passages from the bible to prove that America and Israel should always be placed on the pedestal. Our God was almighty and male - and He loved me. However, He was also deeply disappointed in my lustful thoughts. He was irritated about my unwillingness and inability to convert my unsaved friends. He was pissed off about all those people in my life who did not know Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior.
I was oriented by an evangelical Christian culture built on relationships with adults that were warm, fun, hospitable and hierarchical. In childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, dozens of evangelical baby boomers “invested” in me.
These white men poured time and energy into me, and in return, they expected me to show up, stay sexually pure, promote Christian programs and get people saved. They passive-aggressively got me to behave by quoting bible verses.
I was pummeled with the pressure to produce, perform and be something big. I was told that, as a man, I must be the spiritual leader of any romantic relationship, and that I must share the white evangelical gospel with my friends, or they would go to hell when they die.
I was not physically abused or molested by evangelical adults. But I was traumatized.
I have a desperate fear of disappointing others because I was told by pastors, quoting the Apostle Paul, that it is the duty of Christians to be all things to all people – so that we might save some of them!
I have a strong tendency to repress pleasure and desire, much of it due to being told in adolescence – over and over – that whatever I do, I better not ever have sex before marriage because once you have sexual intercourse with someone, God makes you “one flesh” with that other person and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to change that.
I learned to suppress healthy anger and to not let my needs be a burden on anyone because the bible says that anger does not produce the righteousness of God and that we should not seek our own interests and that we must learn to be content with whatever we have.
I struggle to intimately connect to a divine Power that pivots on love and compassion because for two decades, people twenty-thirty-forty-fifty years older told me that the God of the bible was loving and full of grace, but also just, righteous, all-knowing, all-male, demanding, at-a-distance, easily disappointed and has a perfect will that allows for violence, war, rape, abuse, famine, genocide and eternal damnation.
I am also traumatized by the fact that, for two decades, I pelted other people with the gospel of white evangelical Christianity. I signed off on the supremacist belief that people will go to hell when they die if Jesus is not their personal Lord and Savior. I pressured students I taught and athletes I coached when I was the adult in the room.
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I was emotionally and spiritually counterfeited by a Christian faith ripped apart by the pedestals and pecking orders animated by hetero-patriarchy, nationalism and other supremacy stories. I cannot just deconstruct and move on from this mess. Because this is not how trauma works.
Trauma embeds itself in the body. It overwhelms the central nervous system. It changes the ways we process memories. Trauma makes the body’s threat-perception extra sensitive. So we perceive threat where there is no real threat.
When this happens, our thinking goes off-line and the body takes over. We address our old pain in new contexts. None of this is rational. Thinking differently won’t save us. Our healing and recovery is holistic – embodied, emotional and communal.
In his book The Body Keeps the Score, trauma specialist Bessel Van Der Kolk says that there are two ways that humans heal their trauma. We can do it “top down,” by getting vulnerable and processing the memories of our trauma with others. We can also do it “bottom up,” by allowing our bodies to have experiences that contradict the helplessness, rage or collapse that have resulted from our trauma.
My 12-step program is helping me heal top down and bottom up. It is an emotional and spiritual process that is also deeply political too. Because when we resign ourselves to the trauma responses we learned in childhood and adolescence, we become helpless in the face of unjust, abusive and oppressive situations.
We get stuck in rage ruts. We run away. We numb out. We get cynical and sarcastic. We catastrophize. We avoid conflict. We hustle hard to perform and produce for others. We go along to get along with those in our social network.
All of these trauma responses enable American empire and its addictive supremacy stories.
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I do not write all of this as an exercise in self-flagellation. This is part of an empowerment framework fueled by self-love.
I will not get free without scrutinizing my old patterns. I know that if I refuse to examine my scars and heal my wounds - or if I just attempt to “be resilient” and willpower my way through life - I will be continuously haunted by my old destructive copings.
Everyone has their own stories of grief and trauma and addiction and codependency. These are some of mine.
None of this is written to blame the adults and authority figures who raised me. I believe that they were doing the best they could with what they had. They were simply playing out the patterns passed along to them. They were either unaware of the possibility of Something Else, or they lacked the capacity to pursue it.
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I believe that I am on this planet to repent, to break rank, to get free from the intergenerational cycle of addiction and codependency that I am caught up in. To do this sacred work, I am being defined not on what I am against, but who I am for: the precious people actively resisting addictive supremacist systems.
In the 1970s, a group of Black women started gathering to support each other in their spiritual and political organizing. They called themselves the Combahee River Collective. It was named after the 1863 Combahee River raid, led by Harriet Tubman, that freed more than 750 enslaved Africans.
The Black women of Combahee were constantly navigating patriarchal hierarchies when they participated in Civil Rights organizing spaces led by Black men. But they also had to deal with the racist sentiments and structures of feminist organizing spaces led by white women.
In their 1977 statement, the Combahee River Collective proclaimed the key to collective liberation:
If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.
The Combahee River Collective coined the phrase “identity politics,” which has been defrauded in recent decades. As Black women, who were constantly navigating America’s rock bottom, their particular identity allowed them to know better than anyone what was required to end all oppression.
These Black women did not want to be tokenized. They were not interested in taking hierarchical positions to lead institutions addicted to supremacy stories. They refused to be codependent with racist and patriarchal power structures.
These Black women did not need titles or positions of power to prove their worth. They embraced an identity politics soaked in self-love.
These Black women simply demanded to be recognized as human, levelly human – so they could set the tone on their own terms. They adamantly rejected all pedestals and pecking orders. They knew that if they had an equal voice, if they truly shared power, then they could eradicate supremacy from every system.
These Black women were best equipped to cultivate collective liberation because they came from a lineage – way back before Harriet Tubman - that had embodied this vintage 12-step wisdom for centuries:
Our common welfare should come first.
In American society, this spiritual truth is not self-evident.
In order to reclaim it and embody it, we must go find the rooms where people have hit rock bottom, one way or another.
These are the folks who know the way forward.
