(Written in June 2005)
Read some of Getting Through the Day. It didn’t help yesterday, but today it’s clear that this level of despair is that of a child who has tried everything and given up. She’s curled up in a ball in a dark place, she can’t believe that anything would change, she can’t imagine rescue, she’s locked herself away from everything. I can see her, the face is that of a slightly older little Jenny than the one with the Dar Gorani look — she’s perhaps eight years old. And she knows that nothing she does will be appreciated, that her creative exuberance is not wanted, that she’s being asked to do things she doesn’t know how to do, that her needs for nurturing, comfort, guidance, reassurance will never be met and might as well not exist. She still wants to make these impossible people, her mom & dad, happy, and she desperately wants to be loved.
I told Karen about the despair, and the child who has tried everything, and I got out the picture of little Jenny, and cried a lot. My sense of her is that she’s shut everybody out. That’s why I felt no rescue was possible on Saturday. I said to Karen I think I probably just have to sit next to her and wait for her to realize I’m not going to leave.
Getting Through the Day is Nancy Napier’s comforting book of strategies to help adults who were hurt as children.