Ups & Downs

(Written in August 2009)
One of the downsides of having a really good week is that the slight amount of discomfort I’m feeling now — a little sad & scared — feels like a failure.  What’s wrong with me that I couldn’t sustain it when I got there?  No, it’s not that I “did something wrong,” it’s that life has ups & downs.  And my practice is: to bring compassion to this woman who is angry at herself for being scared & sad.  There there dear, it’s natural to feel scared & sad.  So much of your life was spent in futile struggle against the symptoms of PTSD because you were traumatized in infancy and didn’t know what had happened to you.  You learned to make yourself wrong for being terrified and depressed so much of the time.  Dear, you are truly a bodhisattva who chose this lifetime for the purpose of healing.  That means all of your work on yourself, even the techniques that failed to help because they were designed for more ordinary lives, not for PTSD.  You have learned to be more and more compassionate, toward yourself and toward others.  None of your work has been wasted.