What was your favorite part?

The magic of provocative therapy...

If you make it to the end of this article, you’ll appreciate the benefit of what I impart here. If you’re just window-shopping, go back to doing whatever distracts you.

Life is a navigation of obstacles to reach the summit.

Either moving past the obstacles IS the path, or it is where you reside, finding a comfort zone in chaos.

I remember a time in Portland Oregon, when we (all seven of us) were in this bus.

I had agreed to go to Portland so that my kids could be with their friends that they had met in unschooling interactions.

While Portland is a beautiful city, the chaos there is palpable and undeniable. Living in a converted school bus that looks like everyone in it is on an acid trip didn’t help. I simply was not in a position to do better at the time.

I was in a cycle of fear. Stark terror, indeed. How could I keep my family together? How could I keep them fed? How could I accomplish the simple things that most people take for granted? (Getting water, hygiene, waste disposal, connection to communication, and more)…

I was constantly in fear of the cops doing some bullshit to break up or threaten my family. This was not paranoia, because in 2005, we lost everything due to bank and court fraud. Guess who evicted us? Cops. This fear was, at that time, cemented in my mind. That car behind the bus? I had a doctor to provide a note that the bus and the car were my auxiliary aids for disability, and the city came while it was hooked up to the bus with a tow bar, removed the car, and stole it. The tow company (Sergeant’s Towing) later settled with me when the city did.

This kind of activity happened several times in Portland:

This was an officer Nguyen, who I walked up on questioning my then wife. She never learned what it takes to respond to this construct, so it was always my duty to fend off these bullshit encounters. I am a foot taller than Nguyen, so take that into consideration, but I wasn’t a dick to him, although I believe I held my frame.

Some asshole, just because they saw kids, called the cops and asked for a “welfare check.”

But no one had to call. This officer just showed up, and then shifts to the “doing a welfare check” narrative. You can hear him contradict himself. This is officer Brandon Haase:

I kept bemoaning the circumstances. “How can I find a place of peace?” was the question that kept re-playing in my mind. Keep in mind that I was afraid to leave the bus, because, in all of my family, I was the one most prepared to deal with cops. And yet, I was doing almost everything concerning running errands. Constant anxiety…

And one day, it hit me. Perhaps my place of peace was embracing the chaos…

It wasn’t a fireworks kind of moment, and I didn’t go outside and dance naked or anything. But that moment, the moment I allowed the chaos to become my peace, forever changed how I operate.

I heard Joe Rogan embracing a concept called “Good”. Something terrible happened… “GOOD!” (now what). Embracing what happens, and looking for the solution is what gives us the keys to move forward.

This shift in perception, this embracing of the chaos, the obstacles, is what changed the above picture into this picture.

The city of Portland had, long before this picture was taken, installed “NO PARKING” signs all up and down N. Lombard Street where this was taken.

The thing is, I had sued the city for ADA violations in federal court (without a lawyer), and while the judge over that case, Marco Hernandez, was the opposite of an honorable person, he couldn’t dismiss my case fast enough (at my request) when the city decided to settle with me.

So, I went to Arizona, got a much better bus, and got a van, and I proceeded to build the new bus out right there in front of the old bus, for about 8 weeks.

During this time, the city stopped by. The woman in this video - I had never met her, but everyone I showed the video to in Portland told me she was the absolute worst parking bureau employee, as far as nastiness and bullying. This is not my experience at all with her. It’s jaw-dropping to see the difference in attitude.

I had been building out the bus, and they saw all of my equipment, lumber, and the transition.

They let me know that since the van was mine, they weren’t here to harass me or bother me. Seriously, this was a shift.

If this article, and these videos change your perception of me, GOOD. I’ve been through more shit than Charmin, and I’ve learned every step of the way.

What was your favorite part?

If you’ve hung on this far, here’s the final nugget in this piece, and it’s a humdinger.

In 2013, I had the awesome gift to train under a couple of mentors. Both of these mentors had a profound effect on my life, but one of them in particular.

We were talking one day and he related to me how women would tell him about their experiences with sexual abuse.

Before I continue this story, it’s important to know that this mentor introduced me to the work of Frank Farrelly, who coined the term “Provocative Therapy”. (This is no way an inference or allusion that Frank Farrelly or Provocative Therapy endorses what I am about to tell you.)

So, we’re sitting one day, and this mentor tells me about how women would tell him about their experiences with sexual abuse. They would do this in counseling sessions, where my mentor was helping them move forward.

He told me, You know what I started asking them? I shook my head, not knowing.

He told me I started asking them what their favorite part was…

If you’re as shocked and disgusted as I was when I first heard this, just hang on.

The reactions from the women hearing this were just as volatile and contemptuous.

“Why would you ask me that?!?!” They would exclaim.

He then walked me through, just as he did for them, that he asked them this because they seem to be attached to it, carrying it around like an old friend.

My jaw dropped, but as he went on to explain, so many of us walk through life with our friend: “something that happened to me”, and this friend (the trauma) becomes our comfort zone. We don’t leave home without it.

It is only when we realize that we have the power to re-paint horror and trauma as something that we survived, rather than re-living it over and over again, that we can emerge as the owner of that situation.

As a survivor of sexual assault and abuse, I can verify.

And, to vouch for my mentor, I personally witnessed him turn several women around mentally from being a victim, to being an owner, during my time training with him.

What I learned from him was the highest form of magic I’ve ever witnessed, or had the honor to use.

So, for whatever happened to you, or whatever may be happening to you now,

What is your favorite part?

Is life happening TO you, and thus you’re a victim? Or, perhaps life is happening FOR you, so that you can look back on it and say “I fucking slayed that dragon.” It’s your choice.

The next time you get in a spiral, and the fear has its claws around your neck, walk to the mirror and ask yourself - What is my favorite part?

P.D., Jay Vincent Shore