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Archway Publishing - Charles L Blanchard

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62 pages

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"the seeds of self-destruction or SUCCESS" mixes together life's necessary ingredients of focus, fortitude, and forbearance. Father Charles Blanchard’s personal certitude, conviction, and courage triumph.
CHALLENGED BY LIFE'S PROUD WAVES, may "the seeds of self-destruction or SUCCESS" serve as common ground through which all people collectively walk together to challenge, inspire, and nurture the mind, body, and spirit.
Born into the world, beyond his control, spoon feed Charles the ingredients of life, cooking up an explosive recipe for self-destruction or success!
"Out of the dark reaches of that closet, who could have imagined a life full of successes and a sense of feeling settled? It seemed so far away then. So impossible."
"While an environment dominated by peace, warmth and light nurtures growth, there’s something to be said for the chaos and darkness that dominated the first thirteen years of my life."
"Here’s the big question to consider - How do you rise above a chronic and potentially debilitating condition?"
“New-Found Friends” walking life’s journey "Who are your trusted ANGELs?"

Sujets

Vie de famille

Relations familiales

Famille

Self-help

Informations

Publié par	Archway Publishing
Date de parution	23 janvier 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781665737470
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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the seeds of self-destruction or SUCCESS
ingredients | absolutes | possibilites

Charles L Blanchard

Copyright © 2023 Charles L Blanchard.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition © 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-3746-3 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3745-6 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-3747-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023901101

Archway Publishing rev. date: 01/21/2023
May The Seeds of Self -D estruction or Success be dedicated to Harry R. Posner Jr., my beautiful one, and our girls, Heidi Marie, Rosie Jean, Cecilia Yvette Carmel, and Sophia Catherine Laboure, for helping me to appreciate, see, and know what always was here: love.
Contents
Foreword
PART I: THE INGREDIENTS OF LIFE
Preface
Chapter 1: The Roots of Mistrust
Chapter 2: Shame and Doubt Reign Supreme
Chapter 3: The Guilt Begins
Chapter 4: The Vail of Inferiority Begins to Lift
PART II: FEEDING THE WHOLE—MIND, BODY, AND SOUL (The World of Absolutes)
Preface
Chapter 5: Leaving Home
Chapter 6: The Winds of Change
Chapter 7: Blowing Open the Doors
Chapter 8: Becoming Uncloseted . . . Again
Chapter 9: Duality
Chapter 10: The Year of Living Dangerously
Chapter 11: “To Where Are You Going?”
Chapter 12: Not Exactly a Return to Innocence
Chapter 13: The Fall from Grace
Chapter 14: Focus, Fortitude, and Forbearance
PART III: LIVING LIFE ANEW (The World of Possibilities)
Chapter 15: Rising Above Life’s Challenges
Chapter 16: Embracing “What Good Looks Like”
Chapter 17: “Where There Are No Resources, Create Them”
Chapter 18: Who Are Your ANGELs?
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
About the Author
Foreword
by Lloyd Sam Cunningham
When we wake up in the morning, we never quite know who we are going to meet on our day’s journey or if our shared experience is going to become an impressed memory in our minds, giving each person importance for the full journey of our lives. For me, I probably won’t understand the significance of that encounter until I take it in, with reflection, as I imbibe with coffee and God. Somehow, that journey and reflection has brought me into repeated encounters with Charles L. Blanchard. Some of these are with coffee, some of them are with pizza, some of them are just in prayer, and now, it is through the memoirs of his life. When Charles met me, I was a Roman Catholic priest working in vocation and Hispanic ministry. He was a college seminarian whom I met through mutual friends. We became friends. We would meet every so often, usually socially, but later, at church, when he and Harry came to town. At that time, I was one of the liturgical coordinators for AGLO Chicago (i.e., the Archdiocesan Gay and Lesbian Outreach for the Archdiocese of Chicago) on weekends while I completed doctoral studies in clinical psychology at what is today, Adler University.
Charles and Harry would bring me up to speed about their lives as we had dinner after Eucharist. I found their journey grace-filled as they endeavored to understand how God was and is working in their lives. A little less than a year ago, Charles informed me that at the urging of his spiritual companion, he was writing a self-help book and personal memoir about his journey that was leading him to overcome the obstacles of childhood abuse, a traumatic dog attack, homophobia, and now chronic illness through shared faith and love with family, friends, parishioners, and his husband, Harry. He honored me with the question, would I read it and write the foreword? I was stunned and blessed at the same time.
As a psychologist who often teaches developmental psychology, I was immediately taken by his reference at the very beginning to the developmental stages of Erik Erikson. Charles, in the first chapters of his book, uses Erikson’s stages to show us how the actual ingredients of our lives—because of childhood abuse and other traumatic experiences—may foster mistrust instead of trust, shame and guilt instead of autonomy, guilt instead of initiative, inferiority instead of industry, and role confusion instead of identity. Charles, through the experiences of having a mom, stepfather, a newfound faith, new friends, and purpose, found new seeds in his life that have grown generativity and intimacy for him. What you will read in this book is an expression of Charles’s generativity, which at the same time reveals the sacramental intimacy of Charles and Harry, mirroring God’s love to each other.
In teaching psychology, it is always easy to find the stories of how personal experiences lead some to failure. However, The Seeds of Self -D estruction or Success presents, in a very personal way, how Charles is able overcome the binary of nature and nurture through conscious decisions encouraged by positive people on his journey. The relationships he has found, especially with his husband, have led, at this juncture of his life, to find trust and hope rather than mistrust and despair.
Charles, as an author, in his present priestly ministry, writes for us, who are constantly hearing stories of self-destruction, a way to find trust, love, and hope instead of despair. I will recommend this book to both my theology and psychology students and give them an example of how mentors, friends, and lovers can lead us and others to overcome the obstacles of abuse, and how truly loving relationships, even same-sex relationships, can reflect God’s love. The book and friendship of the author are blessing to me.
Fellow Journeyer,
Lloyd Sam Cunningham, SVD, MDiv, PsyD, HSP
Part I

THE INGREDIENTS OF LIFE

Preface
I woke up in the closet.
It wasn’t a confused or disoriented awakening, stirring to find a reality I didn’t recognize; I chose to sleep there. Despite the limited ability to escape if needed, burrowing deep within the confines of those four walls felt somehow safe. Or as safe as I could feel in our house.
For the first seven years of my life, my house was not a home. At least, not in the conventional sense. Of course, what is conventional? We never truly know what happens behind the closed doors of others’. And we certainly can’t claim to understand the intricacies of each person’s story behind those doors. What I can say for certain is that it’s very complicated. And my house was no different.
So, I hid in the closet. It was the only place I could shelter myself from the wrath of my father. And as the beatings increased, so too, did the time I spent there. Of course, being in the closet would become a poignantly familiar theme in my life—an irony that is not lost on me. And the fact that I was a “special” boy (a euphemism, to be sure) seemed only to fuel my father’s rage all the more .
My house would eventually become a home, in as much as I would feel safe there. But that would require the extraction of my father and many days and nights of fleeing, fear, and terror before that.
Out of the dark reaches of that closet, who could have imagined a life full of successes and a sense of feeling settled? It seemed so far away then. So impossible.
I didn’t know to whom I could go to disclose the physical beatings and abuse my father administered. I couldn’t imagine any adult would ever believe a three-year-old saying that he and his mother were being attacked, physically injured, and beaten by the man who was supposed to be his father and her husband. You see, at that time, I needed to avoid the shame and the ever-present and unpredictable lurch of physical pain. I had to keep it all a secret.
To make some sense of this dangerous person in my house, I turned to the Warner Brothers and their Looney Tunes . More specifically, the Tasmanian devil. “Taz” was billed as an unpredictable life force that destroyed anything and everything within its path. From my perspective, the Tasmanian devil was very much the less-than-kind biological father I knew.
Thus, I began to refer to him—at least behind his back—as Taz. It was a well-deserved title. And it helped me make sense of the madness in my house.
chapter one
The Roots of Mistrust

Erikson’s