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| My namesake diving ‘by chance’ into Korben’s cab in the Movie "The Fifth Element". I was born two months after its release :D |
Leeloo here diving into our family bio with a spotlight on my big brother Sebastian Taliesin O’Donal.
I grew up calling him Bastian because Sebastian was evidently too difficult
for my toddler brain to handle and the name stuck around the house. Most of
his friends call him Seb or Sebbie if they’re being cute. I’ll stick with Seb.
He was born in the middle of America on July 18, 1976. At the time of writing
this bio he is coming up on his 47th birthday. Seb is the oldest of eight
while I’m the baby, four boys and four girls in the family, all alive and
thriving with families of their own now. We are blessed.
If you haven’t figured it out from the name we’re a wee bit Irish in descent…
actually more than a wee bit, but not what you’d expect perhaps. We have some
African ancestors on our Mom’s side and some Middle Eastern roots on our Dad’s
side which makes our skin coffee with a bit of cream… yet some of us have
striking blue or green eyes and reddish hair… go figure. I think our family is
beautiful.
You might think growing up in the middle of America as a person of color and
mixed ethnicity has exposed us to a lot of racial tension and bias. You’d be
right about that.
One constant source of comfort for us growing up is necessary to mention. The
Parish we grew up in never held our skin / eye / hair color combinations
against us. This may seem inconceivable to you, but I report the truth
here.
In our Church we were embraced as family among a bunch of mostly white
European folks. They empathized with us when we were persecuted for our
seemingly strange ethnicity and I suspect they insulated us from a lot
of the bias levied against us in our city of birth.
We grew up Catholic (of course with varying degrees of embracing or rejecting it) and attended the local Catholic School and for all the
horrors you see presented in the media about such an experience, let me say it
was NOT. It was wonderful and we all felt loved and cherished by our teachers,
friends and their parents.
Of course there were exceptions, there are always a few nuts in every loaf, but
our deep connections with our Parish family insulated us from that harshness
when it made its rare appearances.
Mom and Dad were hard working folks and though we weren’t wealthy by American
standards, we had more than we needed by world standards. Our financial
troubles could be called ‘first world problems’ looking back on it. I fell in
love with the Weasleys of Harry Potter fame and in a lot of ways see our
family and our home life kind of like that. Our parent’s home still reminds me
of The Burrow :D
Like the Weasleys however, there were plenty of bumps and scuffles along the
way, and that brings me to focus on Seb. He had his share of troubles.
He slid into multiple addictions in his early high school years and honestly, has only
just recently recovered from his core addiction. He’s been sober almost nine
years now and I’m so proud of him for getting help and helping others to
recover.
He’s been a lot easier to get along with the more sober he’s become and I’ve
learned that there is a big difference between ‘sober and well’ and ‘sober and
NOT well’. There is definitely a deepening in the levels of surrender to God’s
will over time for those in real recovery. Such has been my experience with
Seb anyway and he tells me it is pretty much universal.
It was in his early recovery that Seb was prodded by his sponsor to learn Two Way Prayer (something our Pastor had been inviting us to do for years). By this time he was ready to try it and you see some of the results of this way of prayer here in the Journal Entries section.
Some other things you should know, Seb LOVES music, plays multiple instruments
and doesn’t have a bad singing voice. He loves his wife and four kids and is
sometimes overwhelmed with remorse for putting them through the hell his
addictions caused… but he’s learning to forgive himself and make amends. He
loves to camp and hike with his wife, go to various music festivals and
concerts and loves spending time with his two grand children.
I’ll leave the rest for you to find out through his journaling which I’m
combing through sporadically and posting here.
Blessings on you and your journey,
Your friend,
Leeloo
