I Embrace a Crooked Path

My Introduction to Illumination

A Biergarten in Austria. Photo: Schoenhofer

Thanks so much to Dr Mehmet Yildiz for inviting me to join Illumination as a writer. I go to my profile just to see myself as a staff writer for Illumination. His invitation to join this impressive group of writers has helped me to up my writing game.

So a little about me.

Living in Europe

Three things that have always interested me are mental health, spirituality, and writing. Being a catholic, I thought the only way to spiritual living was to become a priest. I lived in Rome, Italy, for four years to study theology, learned to speak Italian, and traveled all over Europe. My cousins, who are Bavarian, invited me to come to their home in Munich, Germany, every holiday. I lived in Liverpool, England, for three months in a catholic parish. I loved the chance to travel, experience new cultures, and study in one of the great universities in Rome, The Gregorian University, in Italian.

A Priest

I became a priest in 1977. A decision I regretted almost as soon as I made it. In 1984 I volunteered to go to Zimbabwe, Africa, on a mission to help people in that area find ways out of the deep poverty they experienced. I learned their language, Tonga, and lived in a remote area called Binga, for almost six years. During that time, I met my future wife, an Australian nun working in a hospital in the city of Bulawayo. I wrote about that African adventure in a book I published in 2017 called “Stumbling into Happiness.”

A Mental Health CEO and Family

From 1989 to 2019, I worked in mental health, first, as a case manager, then as a Director, and later as the CEO of a three-county mental health jurisdiction. My wife and I enjoyed raising three children, all of whom live in Chicago now. In 2013 I began writing and illustrating a blog for work called “Overflow,” which were my musings about well-being and self-care. I illustrated the blogs with my own cartoons, which were terrible.

A Writer and Traveler

When I retired as CEO in 2019, everyone asked me to continue writing the blog, which I agreed to do. However, I forgot about the blog because of the fun I was experiencing traveling and being schedule-free. In November of last year, my former colleagues intervened and told me they wanted me to up the game on my writing, which I did. Then in March of this year, Dr. Yildiz invited me to up my game again by becoming a writer on Illumination.

My schedule is changing from writing a blog every three weeks to publishing every week to writing and publishing a few times a week. I feel I am fulfilling what I told everyone my goal was in retirement — to become a writer and a traveler. I am so inspired by the other writers on Illumination and motivated by everyone to dig a little deeper, to become the writer I’ve always wanted to be. I feel I am fulfilling my three principal interests, spirituality, mental health, and writing. I should add a fourth to that — having a wife and family.