Whispering Wyrd

The Healing Web

recent posts

  • Ten Months Free! A Thank You From My Heart

    I was going to wait until the actual ten month anniversary (in three days) of being free from benzos, but I want to say this now. I need to say it now.

    I have the best family and extended family anyone could hope for. They’ve seen me through withdrawals, through fear and pain, and they are still here with me now. Years ago, a doctor told me that when I finally healed, I would lose friends and even family because “they won’t recognize the healed version of you.”

    He was right to an extent, yes, I’ve lost a few people. But the vast majority stayed. They recognized me. They accepted the healed me. And for that, I am forever grateful.

    My wife and my sons, first and always. My parents. My aunt. And my lifelong friend, Jeff. These people are the greatest gifts in my life. I hold nothing against those who didn’t stay, everyone has their own path to walk.

    Every day, I think about how fortunate I am. People tell me I’ve “changed” since getting off benzos, that I’m a “better” person now, easier to be around. Maybe they’re right. The truth is simple, while I was on benzos (and alcohol before that), I was angry all the time. Depressed all the time. Trapped in my own inner pain.

    And, honestly, a lot of that came from where I lived. I hated that place. The culture didn’t fit me, and I couldn’t be myself. Moving here, moving to these mountains, saved my life. I am surrounded by beauty every single day. Four distinct seasons. A festive, fun culture. Celebrations instead of heaviness. A place where I am free, finally, to be myself.

    The people who supported me through withdrawal will always have a sacred place in my heart. Getting off benzos was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. As much as I love words and language, there’s no way to adequately describe what over twenty years of use, and the process of breaking free, did to me.

    I had two seizures. My heart rhythm was disrupted with multifocal PVCs. My muscles stiffened so intensely it changed my gait. And on top of the physical pain and devastation, the buried trauma of my past came roaring to the surface once the chemical fog lifted. In some ways, those memories hurt worse than the physical symptoms.

    But now, ten months off the drug in just three days from now,I am healing.

    I still experience “waves,” those temporary returns of symptoms, but I also experience “windows,” times when the healing shines through and everything is clear and quiet again. Healing from long-term benzo use is not linear. That’s been one of the hardest lessons to accept. But I have hope now. Real hope.

    I’ll be 60 in a few months. And as I’ve told friends and family, I only wish I had done this sooner. I don’t know if being younger would have made withdrawal easier, but I wish I’d had more time to enjoy this clarity, this freedom, this ability to finally be me.

    To those who supported me, who encouraged me, who stayed, thank you from the bottom of my heart. There is no way to put into words how much it has meant.

    For those who remained to see (and accept) this healed, authentic version of me, I love you. I know now who my true family and friends are, and I appreciate you more than I could ever express.

    ~Buck

  • I Am Healing

    I am healing,
    I can feel things I’ve never felt before!
    The mountain forests and the ravens
     are more than just trees and birds.

    They are reminders and messengers
    that we are all a part of something larger.
    We are all parts of the web of life.

    I couldn’t articulate this before,
    with my spirit clouded with drugs.
    But now I am free of that terrible bond,
    I can see clearly now all I had missed before.

    Joy fills my heart these days.
    Like the year, every day has its seasons.
    And I embrace them all without fear or regret.
    Life is too precious a thing
    to spend it with a clutched heart
    and a chained spirit.
    This feeling, this present moment is freedom.

    ~Buck

  • Embraced By The Sacred

    I walk within the Sacred,
    mountains rise like ancient cathedrals,
    streams sing hymns through the stones,
    and forests lift their green prayers to the sky.

    Some seek peace in temples built by hands.
    I find it in the soft wind against my skin,
    in the deep speech of ravens circling above.

    No one need explain the Sacred to me,
    it lives in my breath and in the beating of the world.
    Some truths dwell beyond all words.

    I am embraced by holiness wherever I wander.
    What room is there for fear
    when even the night sky whispers its promise,
    that light always breaks through,
    as love forever kindles the heart.

  • I Survived

    I fought through darkness of terror and pain,
    and I survived because of love.


    I rode through the storms like Thunor,
    and screamed as I gained hard-won wisdom like Woden,
    as I fought through the blackest halls where shadows whispered lies.


    It was the love of my wife and sons that saw me through,
    when I was in darkness indescribable.
    No one can understand that pain and fear,
    that beast of addiction that seeks to devour
    unless it has stalked and tormented them as well.


    Now I seek the quiet mountain streams and find their light,
    with love in my heart and peace in my mind.
    I now see life’s beauty bloom where darkness once grew.

  • Sacred Earth

    I walk among you, old sacred Earth,
    and you breath ancient stories into my bones.
    The wind isn’t empty air, it is your voice,
    whispering truths we humans have forgotten.

    Even the stones here hum if you listen long enough.
    The ravens don’t just “call”, they speak!
    And the desert isn’t empty, it’s full of life and memory.

    The Earth remembers my name.
    It knows me as someone who once lost their way,
    but now is finally finding their voice.

    Finding my voice among the sacred mountain forests, my Lyfjaberg.
    I listen to learn, and I heal in the midst of beauty.

    My heart and my spirit
    tell me I am finally home.
    Where I am finally free to be me.

  • Healing

    Healing

    For so long I drifted in a darkness deeper than any sea
    Despair stuck to me like a cold chill, whispering that I would never be free.
    Hope, then a  fragile ember, had dimmed to ash,
    and ancient demons, hungry mouthed and hollow eyed,
    fed on the marrow of my spirit.

    Then the mountains called.
    We came to this high desert where the sky breathes prayers of blue,
    and I felt the first warmth of dawn pierce my long night.
    Here, I breathe freely. I walk freely on sacred Earth,
    and at last, I am home.

    “Santa Fe is a good place for healing,” the people say
    and it is true. I have walked out of the prison
    built of addiction and fear, and left the rusted keys behind.

    Now the wind wraps me in its songs and whispers my name.
    Ravens fly above, messengers of change,
    their black wings stitching hope into the wide sky.
    The forests and the streams open their arms,
    inviting me to rest and heal in their green and silver embrace.

    I speak my gratitude and thanks out loud
    to stone and stream, to feather and root,
    to the seen and the unseen, the human and more-than-human.
    Healing is a conversation, and I am listening now.
    We are nature, and nature is us.

  • Belonging to the Earth and the Many Parts of the Self

    Belonging to the Earth and the Many Parts of the Self

    In my early life, I was, like many others, taught that the soul was a single thing, and that it would either be saved or damned forever depending on what I believed. That old teaching still leaves traces in my mind sometimes. It shows up as fear and dread, as a sense that I must cling to a particular belief in order to be safe and not tormented after death. Even now, I sometimes feel the echo of that childhood training… the idea that eternity hangs on believing the “right” things.

    But as my life changed and I grew up, as I’ve come off drugs that clouded and muddied my inner world for decades, as I’ve spent these past months walking among juniper, sunlight, ravens, and mountains, something has shifted. I no longer feel that the soul is a single, brittle thing that can be lost. I don’t feel that we are here just to “pass a test”. Instead, I feel that we are part of the Earth, not metaphorically, but literally and spiritually.

    My bones are made of minerals that once belonged to stone and soil.
    My breath is the same air carried by ravens and pine needles.
    The blood in my veins is the same water that flows in streams.
    My warmth comes from the same sun that rests on the mountains.

    Nothing about me is separate from the Earth.
    So how could I ever truly be apart from it?

    I have been thinking about the older, pre-Christian view of the self found among the early Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, and Germanic peoples, my ancestors. In those times, a person was not understood as having one single soul. Instead, the self was seen as a weave, a living pattern made of several different parts, each with its own nature and its own destiny.

    The body returns to Earth, just like everything does.
    The breath returns to the wind and the wide living world.
    The mind of feeling and memory lingers for a time, like an echo or a scent, before softening into the quiet.
    The life-force, sometimes called hamingja, continues, shared among family, land, and those we touched with our lives.
    The companion spirit, the fylgja, goes its own way, continuing its journey.
    And the parts of us that are heavy, our pain, our sorrows, our unfinished stories, are held by Hel.

    Not hell.
    Not punishment.
    Not fire.
    Just the deep Earth.
    The roots.
    The quiet place where memories are kept until they can dissolve in peace.

    To me, this feels true and real.

    It feels like something my heart already knew instinctively, but had no words or language for.

    It means that death is not a sentence of punishment.
    It’s more of a return.

    A softening.
    A rejoining.
    A remembering.

    I no longer feel that I must cling to any particular belief to be safe.
    Safety is already here right now, in the Earth that carries me, the breath that sustains me, the mountains that witness me, and the sky that welcomes every exhale.

    Belief is not required.
    Belonging is enough.

    When I put my hand over my heart during times of fear, during those times when the palpitations rise and my old anxieties stir, I remind myself of something…

    I am of the Earth, and the Earth is with me.

    If I must return one day, and I will not be “cast out”.
    I will simply go home.

    ~Buck

  • The Importance of Being Yourself

    The Importance of Being Yourself

    This is the most open I’ve ever been in my public writing, so please forgive me if it runs long.

    I write because it’s the clearest way I know to speak from my inner world. Sometimes the only way I can express what I feel is through poetry. Other times, like now, I need plain words. And sometimes the two blend together. I’ve always written better than I speak. Spoken language has always felt… filtered. Shaped. Edited against judgment. Written language lets me speak as who I really am.

    The Weight of Speech and Accent

    Part of this comes from where I grew up. In my youth and young adult years, if I had spoken the way I thought, I would have been called “weird.” So I learned to talk like everyone else. I suspect many of my friends were doing the same. When I read the things they write now, I see depth and sensitivity that none of us ever spoke aloud. Peer pressure has a way of squashing what is alive in us.

    To this day, I worry I sound like an uneducated backwoods hick when I speak. A few years ago, I was talking to an elderly woman in a park. She watched me for a long moment and finally asked, “Are you from Tennessee?”. It was the accent. I’m not from Tennessee, but I did grow up in rural Texas, and the accent stays whether I want it to or not. My sons don’t have the accent, one of them even trained his speech into a “neutral” accent. I’ve tried, but some things just live deep in the bones.

    People hear the accent and assume ignorance before they hear the actual words or message. So again, I write.

    Spirituality and Identity

    Writing feels like my clearest expression of my spirit, my real self. When I wasn’t living that real self, I was deeply unhappy and clinically depressed. I spent so much of my early life trying to fit in, to not stand out too much. But one place where the pressure was especially strong was spirituality.

    I believed things that weren’t welcome where I lived. I felt animist presence in the natural world. I resonated with Buddhism and Daoism. I sensed life, spirit, and meaning in all things. But those were not beliefs you spoke about in rural Texas. Not at all. So I tried very hard, many times, to believe like everyone else did. But it wasn’t me. Every time, I was living a lie and I hated it.

    You didn’t talk about such things. You hid them. You guarded them. There were some things you just didn’t talk about or express in that time and place.

    Once, I was even turned down for a job at a local tech company because they had read something I wrote about my spirituality. They told me in the interview that they “couldn’t trust someone who isn’t Christian.” I was stunned. It was blatant discrimination and they weren’t even trying to hide it. Shortly after that, I was hired by a major national company in a larger city about 50 miles away. There, they didn’t care what I believed, only about whether I could do the work. I became Junior Administrator of in-house software and access control there. Until the company was bought out and 900 of us were let go, it was the first time I felt valued for what I could do rather than judged for what I believed.

    Living With a Restless Mind

    I also live with ADD without hyperactivity. My mind never stops moving, and it moves fast. It can be overwhelming, but it has also driven me to read widely and deeply throughout my life. Research is one of my greatest comforts, especially during the lingering waves of benzo withdrawal I still sometimes have. For me, learning is a kind of meditation.

    What I Want to Say to Anyone Struggling to Be Themselves

    Do what heals you!

    Your true friends and family, if their love is real, will not abandon you for being who you really are.

    Society, on the other hand, is fickle. It will break you if you let it. So don’t let it!

    I am happier now than I have ever been, not because everything is easy, but because I finally live in a place where I am free to be myself. Who I really am. I spent most of my life in the deepest depression imaginable. Moving here saved me, it gave me hope. And hope is powerful medicine, a powerful antidote to clinical depression.

    If you have to suppress your spirit to belong or “fit in”, then you are not where you belong.

    You are unique. The world has more than enough copies, masks, and echoes of “real”.

    The world needs you. The real you.

    Be free.

    Be bold.

    Be yourself.

    ~Buck

  • Moonlit Night, A Living Heart

    Moonlit Night, A Living Heart

    The full moon rose last night, bright and beautiful. I stepped outside to see it. The cold air felt good on my skin, and the world was awash in silver.

    I sometimes forget that the moon moves the tides. And not just the distant oceans, but the tides in me too. I am mostly water, after all, and something in me remembers this. The pull. The rising. The falling. The turning.

    No wonder feelings can come and go like waves.

    No wonder healing comes in “tides” and withdrawal symptoms return in “waves”.

    The way I see the world isn’t just some belief to me. It’s simply how the world reveals itself to me when I am quiet enough to notice. The moon is not just a symbol, it’s a presence. A being. A being older than any story about it.

    The runes feel the same way to me.

    Not relics, not decorations. Not the language of conquest or things to put on costumes. But living currents. Patterns of meaning woven through breath and bone. They are part of the same web the moon is part of, the same web that holds forests, rivers, the cries of ravens, and the beating of my heart.

    Last night, I felt Uruz in the moonlight,
    not as brute strength,
    but as life stirring inside my body.
    Quiet persistence through the waves of benzo withdrawal.
    The endurance that grows like roots deep in the ground.

    The kind of strength that says,
    “I am still here”.
    I am healing, even when the healing is slow.
    Even when it hurts.
    Even when the fear moves like strong winds through my chest.

    And then Ansuz, the breath rune,
    the whisper that moves through trees,
    through songs,
    through prayer with no words.

    I breathed in the moonlight.
    I breathed out all the tension I could.
    And the world breathed with me.

    My heart is not my enemy, even when I fear its uneven rhythm.
    It is trying, always,
    to return me to life.

    So I stood under the full moon,
    barely moving,
    and everything around me seemed to exhale with me.

    The mountains,
    The junipers, firs, and pines.
    The quiet sounds of night animals.
    The big silver eye of the night sky.

    We were all one tide.
    One breath.
    One web of being, part of the vast web of wyrd.

    And for a brief moment, not long, but yet enough,
    I remembered that I am not alone in this healing.

    I whispered, “Hello”.
    The moon shone back.
    And that was prayer.

    A Closing Blessing

    May the moon watch over your healing.
    May your breath return you to yourself, again and again.
    May the tides within you find their rhythm.
    May your heart remember it’s not alone.
    May the living web hold you gently tonight and always.

    Buck

    (Photo credits: My son, Ty Britt)

  • Saying Goodnight

    Saying Goodnight

    I step outside every night before bed
     and I see the stars above the mountains.
     Their light shimmers in the sky
     watching over all below.

    I always make time for the moon,
     as she has comforted me throughout my life.
     Her soft light is soothing,
     a gentle reminder of how good it is to be alive.

    The mountains are still there,
     though now blanketed by night.
     I feel their healing presence,
     and I whisper to them, “Hello”.

    There is a gentle breeze,
     getting colder by the day.
     This, and the fallen leaves,
     announces winter is on its way.

    I do not fight against the turning
     of the seasons.
     That would be folly. Life, as we know,
     continues on.

    I take a slow, deep breath,
     savoring the cool, crisp air,
     then I say, “Goodnight”
     and sleep until the light.