Guidance

Posted on January 27, 2012 by jenny

(Written in July 2006)
Dear Guides and Guardian Spirits, it’s still raining and I’m scared about climate change.  I’m also scared that free sharing on the Internet is about to be sold to Big Business.  I see that my hope for the future of democracy has been heavily dependent on the Internet. I’m really pretty bummed out.  Please help me.
    Dear Jenny, Big Business owning the internet will not stop compassion, it will not stop the formation of local communities.  It will not stop you from teaching dance at Neskaya and making your art.  It will not stop Spirit from doing its work in the world because Spirit works through individual action.  The Internet helps you feel connected to all those people out there who are working for peace and sustainability.  Even without the Internet, you are STILL connected to them.  But your need is to FEEL connected and this is hard for you without visible evidence.  We suggest you build your community of support by staying in touch with specific people: Bobbi, Elizabeth, Beverly, etc.  It would also help to find people who are right here in the area.  WREN might help.  Be of good cheer, dear Jenny, the network of light is real and you are part of it, the Ocean of Compassion is real and all around you.  All by yourself, alone and depressed, you are still connected to the Web of Light, and as you keep your Heart and Spirit aimed toward, in alignment with, peace and sustainability, you are helping the world you love.  Do not despair, and remember we are always with you.
Thank you.

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The Dark Night of the Soul

Posted on January 26, 2012 by jenny

Recently I’ve been struggling with depression again again, and my friend Lynelle reminded me of a book that Elizabeth sent me several years ago when I was going through the worst of my breakdown.  The Dark Night of the Soul, by Gerald May. It wasn’t a help then, because “Dark,” as St John of the Cross uses it, doesn’t mean pain, despair, and terror, it means obscure, unknowing.  As I’m writing this, I’m thinking that the book is talking about stages in spiritual practice, where you stop trying with intellect and will, and instead leave it to God’s mysterious hidden process, which I understand to be taking place in the human unconscious.  I realize that’s EXACTLY what I’ve been learning to do to heal from trauma.  It is a practice, I come back to it over and over.
May says that as people progress spiritually, they become comfortable with mystery.  I see that’s what’s happened to me:  I can look at different explanations for the origin of the universe — the “big bang”, continuous creation — or theories of where people came from — that we evolved here, that we descend from visitors from another star — and I don’t believe or disbelieve, I’m contented with not knowing, and I’m pretty sure the REAL story is deeper and richer than anything we could make up.  (immediately I’m off on thoughts about questions people might ask me, and the red shift may or may not be a Doppler shift…  ) and back to the page.  Writing this, and answering imaginary questions, has made me feel much better, thank god.
(The “astronomy teacher” is a part of me that’s very competent and knowledgeable.  I used to have a slide show about archeo-astronomy which I haven’t given for years.  I recently resurrected it as a video, and am beginning to give it to audiences.  No matter how bad I feel, lost in some traumatized child part of me, if the astronomy teacher is called on, I enlarge into a competent functional adult.)
O yes, the book also talked about love as the primary purpose/goal of spiritual practice.  At that point I start feeling like I did when reading Zen stories, these people are talking about something that I don’t know, have never experienced, will never reach.  This is based on the assumption that I’m an unloving person.  Then I look out the window at the trees and the rocks — I do love them.  And I do believe that God is inside every particle of matter, that the Universe is the amazingly beautiful dance of Divine Creativity with itself.
What have I done with my life?  I built Neskaya because I loved the dances and wanted to be able to share them.  Everything I’ve done, from sending money to Heifer, to writing my book, has been because I love the world – the world of people needing help, the world of Nature which is SO complex and beautiful, such an amazing creation, and I love the people too.  I don’t think I love people, because for so much of my life I’ve been scared and shy, and it’s hard to find people I can really talk to, and so many people have no idea what it’s like to live with PTSD that they hurt me badly by trying to help.  But when I see or hear stories of healing, or communities working together, or communities that are building a new way to be as I can see in the “Occupy” movement, I have no problem loving THOSE people.  I don’t trust my ability to be loving, because I don’t feel gushy feelings, and I don’t find it easy to make small talk, but do I want their lives to be better?  When I look at what I most deeply want, it’s that people — that EVERYBODY,  all sentient beings — should be happy and healthy.  I’m thinking that the way I love is more like what the book’s talking about, and differentiates from attachment.  God knows I’ve done a lot of work on releasing attachment, especially to the things I most care about: Neskaya, Lynelle, Bella.  I’ve had to let go of any agenda of how they should be and accept how they really are.

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Morning Sadness

Posted on January 25, 2012 by jenny

(Written in July 2006)
One of the consequences of depression is I wake with sadness every morning.  Sometimes I work on it in my journal.

Morning sadness.  Ache in my heart.
ME: Heart, can you tell me what the ache is about?
HEART: I long to create widely, hugely.  I long to love and see my love reflected in people having better lives.  I want friends who share my vision and will co-create a new world with me.  I want to spend all my time being creative, and not be wasting energy on “bureaucratic” tasks.  I love the earth and it hurts to see people treating her with disrespect.  It hurts that there are so many lives narrowed and stunted by the culture of empire.

It helps to read something like this:
From Crossing to Avalon, by Jean Shinoda Bolen: “In musing about these remarkable gardens of Findhorn that grow out of a wasteland, I am reminded of how similarly remarkable it is when someone with a bleak and barren childhood, devoid of security and full of abuse, does not respond in kind by becoming a battering, abusive cynical adult but instead becomes a loving person who can trust others.  It’s a miracle when someone’s life begins as a barren trash heap and ends up a garden.  On seeing “the garden” without knowing its history, we miss the meaning and wonder and inspiration that it exists at all, just as I almost did on seeing Findhorn.” (p212)

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Guidance

Posted on January 24, 2012 by jenny

(Written in July 2006)
Dear Guides and Guardian Spirits, I’m feeling an urge to push ahead with applying to have an art show and getting an “about Jenny” page up on the website.  I keep losing my energy due to fearing that this is some kind of “blowing my own horn” and not helpful to the big picture.  Please help me with this.
    Dear Jenny, it’s fine for you to blow your own horn.  Who else’s would you blow?  “Myself it speaks and spells, crying what I do is me for this I came.” Putting your art work out there, putting out the realities of your life so that these things can be resources for people who need it, is part of the ongoing evolution of the universe.  The work you do — on yourself, at Neskaya, with your art making — is very important work, despite the fact that it is not visible in the general culture.  It is important that you put it out there, so that others like you will know they aren’t alone, and that many things are possible.  Do not hold back.  Do not let your brother’s remarks stop you.  He is jealous of you as your mother was, he doesn’t understand you at all and this makes him angry.  He is trying to shrink you to make you fit his capacity for understanding.  Don’t take his remarks to heart.  Keep on going, and remember we love and support you.

The support of my Spirits led to writing an “About Jenny” page and posting it on the Neskaya website.  I got positive feedback, and that led ultimately to me doing this blog.
The Art Show happened in May 2007.
“What I do is me for this I came” is a line from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.  First verse:

AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:       
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

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Struggle with Depression & Medication

Posted on January 23, 2012 by jenny

(Written in October 2006)
Eleanor got mad at me yesterday.  She thinks I’m depressed and should be raising my medication.  I said I was upset because I printed out stuff calling for political action and nobody cares enough to do anything.  She said they’re all overwhelmed and need Neskaya to be a sanctuary.  That was hard to hear — I’m afraid it’s probably true and that’s painful because 1) I’m not doing my proper work of keeping Neskaya as a sanctuary and 2) if everybody is overwhelmed — then there’s no one left to save the Earth.  I was thinking about the polar bears this morning and how I feel like I’m drowning, floating in a sea of fragments of what is supposed to be a solid floor.  My heart hurts, it feels like it is about to burst with pain, but at least I don’t have to hold back from the polar bears — I’m right in there with them, swimming for my life — except that solid land is too far away and we’re all going to drown.
I feel like it’s slap in my face that my job is to take care of Jenny, when I’d rather be in the Peace March (there was one in Concord on Saturday that I’d hoped to go to) — I’d rather be walking up the road with my colorful banner, and you’re telling me that I have to put down my banner and go back and take care of that piece of shit that’s lying in the road.
I feel terrible that Eleanor has been worrying about me when she’s so totally overwhelmed by her life.  I see that one thing I can do to help her is to keep my spirits up — I just don’t know how to do that.

Signs of depression: too tired to light a fire
too tired to do yoga
having trouble eating properly

I don’t know what to do.  Raising medication is certainly one possibility.  That’s what it took last winter.  I told Eleanor I would put all the political activity on hold and spend the next month and focus on taking care of the traumatized baby, and see if that helps, and if it doesn’t, then I’ll raise the medication.  I wish it didn’t feel like such a defeat.  “But you’re defeated now, aren’t you?” said Eleanor and I have to agree.  I wish it didn’t take such a long time to work — that would be so much easier – if I could “feel better fast”.

Profoundly bummed out.  I did a bunch of things & now I’ve run out of steam.  Crashed and burned.  Yes, I really am depressed.  It doesn’t FEEL like depression, or not like depression used to when it was combined with low thyroid.  And I thought I was doing well such a short time ago.  But clearly I’m not, clearly I’m losing ground.  And I really don’t know what to do about it.

 

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Guidance

Posted on January 22, 2012 by jenny

(Written in May 2005)
Dear Guides and Guardian Spirits, I’m feeling pretty bleak.  Please help me.
Dear Jenny, we love you very much.  You are feeling bad about yourself because you seem to get discouraged “so easily”.  You are comparing yourself to someone who has a “strong and gay spirit” who can “overcome” the obstacles that you imagine are “so petty”.  Dear, you fail to give yourself credit for how many wounds you have, how tenuous your foundation still is, how little support you receive from outside.  For a highly sensitive person, who was traumatized in infancy, every day in this toxic culture is a struggle.  To reaffirm your creativity in the teeth of those voices from childhood that say you are wicked and self-indulgent to spend time making art, is an ongoing struggle.  You are too often in the position of the one who is pulling the others out of despondency – as you did yesterday, creating a good experience for your dancers.  You had to carry the energy.  You don’t have enough experiences of someone else creating the container, choosing the activity, and carrying the energy.  Dear One, you are an artist and a visionary, you are supposed to have a support team, not be spending energy trying to create one.  Give yourself credit for all the hard work that you do, give yourself empathy for the visions that you are unable to bring to manifestation because you don’t have enough support.

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Medication

Posted on January 18, 2012 by jenny

In the last couple of weeks I’ve noticed that everything was getting harder. Just getting through the day is harder when I find it difficult to do practical things like shop or prepare a meal or take out the compost, when I feel sad when people leave,  and feel that old “push push” that I “should” be doing “something worthwhile,”  when I don’t bounce back from small triggers but stay down.  I had lowered my medication from 175 mg of Imipramine to 150 mg over the month of October by taking them alternate days.  From the beginning of November until about a week ago, I was taking 150 mg.  A friend reminded me in December that it could take weeks for the new dose to establish a new blood level.  So I started watching carefully, noticing that my resiliency was still good.  I had two weeks of astonishing happiness after the Winter Solstice at Stanstead.  But then it began to get harder. Many little signs told me that I needed to raise the medication back to 175mg.  Just making the decision helped.  I started feeling better right away, long before the raise could be effective.  In the past, when I’ve had to acknowledge that trying to lower the dose was not working, I felt defeated.  This time it just felt necessary, like going out to sprinkle ice melt on the skating rink of my front walk, instead of expecting myself to negotiate the slippery territory.  When I told my friend Lynelle about raising the medication, she reminded me that, though giving the Megalithic program raises my spirits, it also brings up a lot of old painful feelings from my unsupported childhood.

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A Day in the Life of a Trauma Survivor

Posted on January 17, 2012 by jenny

Woke scared.  I HATE waking up scared.  I’m too uncomfortable to get out of bed, but I’m uncomfortable in bed so why stay there.  I tell myself I’ll feel better when I have a cup of tea and get myself out of bed.
Looking ahead in my schedule I see some gaps, some empty days.  The usual cold chill flows down over my shoulders.  Cory’s coming over today thank goodness.  I think I’ll do an “ashram day” in 20 minute intervals because I’m so scared.
20 minutes     wash up from breakfast
20 minutes     read Elizabeth Goudge
20 minutes     bring in 2 loads of wood
20 minutes     type journal
I really need to talk to someone who cares about me.  Called Beverly, got her machine.  Called Ann, got her machine.  too discouraged to try anyone else.

Made a cup of tea.  I have a new set of affirmations, and I remind myself again again, just because something doesn’t work right away doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.

AFFIRMATIONS:
It is possible to heal
I am doing things that will help me heal
I am doing things differently
from how it was in my childhood
from what I used to do
I am telling the traumatized baby that I will stay with her, I won’t go away, I will give her all the time and space she needs.  I am committed to her welfare.
I am reaching out to my friends and they are delighted to help me.

Cory came at 1:00 and we went around the whole forest trail with both dogs.  I didn’t really enjoy it and I couldn’t have done it without her support.  Then we came in & had tea and I read from the Resource book.  Cory was very validating and helpful.  When she left I felt scared and lost.
I have to do some shopping.  It’s hard to do when I’m this scared.  I’ll just get the essentials.

Even late in the afternoon I was still feeling scared, but it did finally fade as it got dark.

The “Ashram Day” is what someone at Kripalu said when I told her I’d been “doing nothing.”  She said “What’s that like?”  and I said I set the timer and do 30 minutes of housework, 30 minutes of reading, 30 minutes of yoga, 30 minutes of walk outdoors..  She said “That’s not nothing, that’s an ashram day.”  I started doing 30 minute shifts on days when I was too scared and/or depressed to be able to tell what I wanted to do, and when I wanted to stop.  30 minutes gave me a structure to my day.  So now, when I spend some time playing solitaire on the computer, I see it as a “practice” which distracts my cognitive brain, so that my subconscious and unconscious can perform the work of integration and healing.  I don’t think of it as “nothing.”

The Resource Book:  in Somatic Experiencing a “resource” is anything that can help you feel more grounded and centered.  I went through all my journals from 2005 and copied anything anyone told me that was good about myself.  It grew to a sizable book.  I still read part of it when I’m feeling really discouraged.

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Live in a Way that Does No Harm

Posted on January 13, 2012 by jenny

I’m feeling tired & discouraged.  I remind myself that I just read a piece on Deena Metzger’s blog.  She talks about living in such a way that you do no harm to the world.  I can’t possibly do that.  I can’t walk to Neskaya most of the time, and I couldn’t possibly walk to Mac’s.  I’ve thought about a bike but my one attempt to ride one was really difficult.  I do my best to eat organic and local, especially organic meat.  But I’m dependent on other people using fossil fuel just for something as basic as food.  I think if I were truly going to live a life that does no harm, I’d have to walk out into the woods on a below zero night.  I did think of doing tonglen for all the people out there who feel as discouraged and tired as I do.  Breathe it in, and breathe out warmth, compassion, and permission to rest.

Tonglen is a Buddhist practice of breathing in your own pain, and the pain of all others who feel that way, and breathing out comfort.  I wasn’t able to do it until I had healed a lot from PTSD.

(1/13/12)  typed that up and posted it as a draft on Wednesday.  Yesterday I got very depressed.  A long talk with a friend did not dispel it.  I was fine while talking to her, but fell back into cold grey bleakness as soon as I hung up.  That’s the first time that’s happened in a long while.  Since I’ve been so much better, a talk with a friend has been able to bring me out of it almost every time.
When I got to massage I told Cory I was depressed.  She suggested I surround it with warmth.  O gosh I know that.  Right.  I’ve been treating it like an unwelcome guest. (Thank you, God, for friends who know what to say!)  So I made the inner gesture of softness and love, and there was an 8-yr-old girl, crying her eyes out.  Alone.  So I put my arms around her and told her it was OK to cry.  I don’t know what it was about, and that’s OK.  Then it came to me that there were two reasons to be depressed that I had written about, but I hadn’t let myself mourn.  Understanding that shifted the depression to grief.
After supper I called Pat.  I told her about Deena Metzger’s blog piece where she says it’s not possible to live without doing harm to the earth and its creatures, but that’s what she wants to do.  I did the thing of explaining why I couldn’t do that, but hadn’t let myself mourn that I had to live in a way that harmed the earth and its creatures.  While talking to Pat I remembered the relief I felt when I was at Findhorn, and saw all the marked bins under the counter.  Of course.  It’s not possible to live in a way that does the least harm unless you live in a community that lives that way.  I was laying the expectation on myself that I live up to that standard all by myself.  I think the people who even come close to that are young, strong, able to build, and garden, and bike, and living in a climate that does not contain New England winters.

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Wounded Warriors

Posted on January 12, 2012 by jenny

I went to the Wounded Warrior page intending to make a donation, but the story of the woman who lost both legs was that she was proud of her sacrifice because she was defending America.  I can’t support that lie.  But can I tell her that her legs were lost in service to the war industries owned by the 1%?  She needs her denial in order to feel OK about what’s happened to her.  And I’m sure that’s what’s behind the people who are afraid of an “Islamic Jihad.”  They have to believe in it so they can feel OK about the wars that our taxes are paying for.  I know, at some level, they know it’s not true that the wars are protecting America, but like the alcoholic who can’t give up his addiction, they have to stay in denial.  I think that’s the saddest thing of all.

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