my brother's letter.

Hi Rick

It was difficult to respond to you on the telephone last week or even over coffee in August. I am therefore doing so by email. I am glad your work is going well and certainly a tour of 40 shows "validates" you as a comedian. You complain your family let you down in your time of need. This is not how we see it. I hope you can acknowledge that more than one interpretation can be reasonable. The objective of the family withdrawing from you was that we feel that the family has been enabling you to continue a destructive life style and we dont want to do that anylonger. We had hoped that you would get the message and get help.

What we did not want was for you to crash again and over the next several years return to our former level of functioning without addressing any of your underlying issues.

Irrespective of what had been hoped for it appears that you are recoverng on your own in the manner that you have in the past.You do look healtheir now than you did last December but in my opinion you could go further. I still dont think it can be done on your own and your shrink is of limited value.

Incidentally I read your blogs on myspace. You did not want me to ask you last August how you were making a living. You have the right to with hold information from me but if you dont want it to be known publishing it on the web is not the best approach.

You are very angry at Leane.
Rick the details are unimportant. Even the sex bit. The point is that she left you but the point you dont seem to understand was that you chased her away. Infidelity is just a means of escape it is not the cause of relationship breakdown.

In a similar way you chased your family away. Your blogs don't mention Reide calling the police in Camrose and your expulsion from your home town. I was not there but clearly you terrified your nephew and that explains your anger towards him when I mentioned his plans for the ministry.

You state that you are sensitive and creative and therefore were damaged in your upbringing in a way that the rest of us were not. Everyone grows up in a different family and I dont know if there was some synster event in your life which you have kept secret. Certainly you are creative, a trait that is held by many in the family. But for sure I dont think you are sensitive. I would note the Ballad to Bobby Picton combines insensitivity and creativity.

I do believe that you misinterpret the world and you have a difficulty learning from your mistakes. Thus the 10 years cycle of life crises on your part.

I am not a psychiatrist but I am a doctor and did study psychiatry. You state that even without drugs and alcohol you have the same feelings. This is not surprizing. Drugs and alcohol are not your primary problem they are just self medication on your part for your underlying problem. But unfortunately they are not effective.

ALthough I am not qualified to make a diagnosis it is well known that creativity and the schizophrenic trait go together. This is true of other thought disorders as well.

I agree with you on one point. Our parents did make a mistake concerning our upbringing. . Mom and Dad felt that the Lett family was immune from everything bad in the world. We did not and should not have the problems that others did.

That meant when you were a kid in grade 3 with serious behavioural problems it was not taken seriously. It was actually a joke or you were being bad and deserved punishment . No one entertained the idea that you had a thought disorder. Certainly I did not.

In summary I think are highly creative but have a thought disorder which results in you misinterpreting your experience and means that you are not capable of learning from that experience. You are approaching 50 but with your danish genes could well just be at the midpoint of your life. So dont stop on your road to recovery , you are not there yet. I am in Canada for another week and we could talk again if you wish. Let me know. Otherwise lets meet in early March.

Why am I doing this. Because you are my brother and I care about you. If i can try and help all of Africa it should be possible to offer to help my only brother. So dont be angry just think about what I have said.

your loving brother
Ron