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Excerpt from Chapter Six: Are We All Walking and Talking Magnets?  

Fused at The Wound 

A memorable synchronistic “God moment” occurred in my life about 11 years ago when I first dreamed of becoming an author who could change the world with my insights on codependency recovery.  Three days later, I received a small, plain package containing a book of poems from a person I did not know.

The book, Iron Man Family Outing: Poems about Transition into a More Conscious Manhood (1990), was written by Rick Belden.  I would find out that Rick is a poet, author, artist, and respected explorer and chronicler of the psychology and inner lives of men.  He also is a coach for men who feel stuck in their lives.  Inside the cover was a short note asking me to enjoy the book[1].

Believing the book was “God sent,” I scoured the Internet for clues about Mr. Belden.  Finding almost nothing except a physical address, I wrote him a letter introducing myself and asking him a handful of searching questions like, “Who are you? Why did you send me a book? Of all the people in the USA, why did you choose me?” 

A few weeks later, I received a thoughtfully written letter which answered most of my questions.  In it, he explained how he had found me through an Internet based search on psychotherapists who provide services to male trauma survivors and other related disorders.

His intentions were to share his deeply personal book of poems to other men so that they could benefit from it.  It was clear that he was both on a mission to heal his own deeply imbedded childhood trauma wounds, while helping other men try to do the same.  This is no different from most psychotherapists I know, including me.

In Rick’s poetry, he vividly and evocatively shares different vantage points of a trauma survivor’s journey toward hope and healing.  His poetry captures the suffering and despair as much as the hope, self-acceptance and resolution (healing). His book especially depicted the suffering of one man, his bouts with self-destruction, and his will to crawl out of his broken life and heal, so he could become a healing force in the world.

Rick’s emotional vulnerability, courage and honesty about his childhood trauma and the emotional scars it left behind, makes his poetry life changing.  He is one of very few role models I have.  Learning about Rick’s passions, opened me up to the possibility that we were brought together by divine providence.

Every so often, I get a feeling that what I am doing or have done was not happenstance, but instead, was directed by a heavenly source such as one of my guardian angels[2].

When I decided to read Rick’s book, I had one of these other-worldly feelings, like that moment had already been scripted for me.  I intuitively knew that the one poem I would randomly choose would have a profound effect on my life.  I just knew. That’s the moment I read the poem, Fused at the Wound.  It was an emotionally evocative rendering of magnetically connected dysfunctional lovers, whose power for emotional health was squelched by deeper, more malignant underlying forces.

It was the perfect rendering of a codependent’s frozen and powerless experience with his pathologically narcissistic lover.

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Fused at the Wound

  fused at the wound

is it love or is it addiction

                 why not both

she knows tears + I know anger

together we almost made a whole person for a while

fused at the wound.

but our little house of lies isn’t big enough to hold us now

she won’t stand up for herself + I can’t stand up

                   for both of us at the same time anymore

so we ride the broken lover’s seesaw of staying + leaving

                    one foot in + one foot out

we dance in the kitchen like unloved children + wait

                    for fulfillment of old pain’s expectations.

so anxious to leave         so anxious to be left

so anxious to be right    so anxious to be hurt

so anxious to be disappointed

so anxious to be alone again.

when this whole thing started

                    I wanted us to be immersed in each other

                    I wanted us to fix each other

                    I thought that was what people were supposed to do

I don’t want that anymore

I don’t need that anymore

                    but I still don’t know

                                 how to love someone I don’t want to fix.

Reprinted with permission of the author, Rick Belden, from Iron Man Family Outing: Poems about Transition into a More Conscious Manhood, copyright 1990, by Rick Belden, http://rickbelden.com

[1] More about Rick’s coaching can be found here: https://www.rickbeldencoaching.com/

[2] My departed mother, Mikki Rosenberg, is the one that I believe is most present in my life.