This morning I just didn’t want to go on. I felt bad about dumping my negativity on my good friend Elizabeth — we always talk on Tuesday morning, and she has been a tremendous support for me — in spite of that, I still felt bad but didn’t know what else to do other than tell her the truth. I started crying as soon as I heard her voice. I read her yesterday’s post, and while I was reading I realized that I had pushed myself to do things on Saturday, and again yesterday. In the morning I had pushed myself to complete numerous small errands — cash check, get stamps, etc. In the afternoon I pushed myself to walk alone, going up to the Rte 3 hiking trail which didn’t have a lot of memories of Bella. I started out walking fast, determined to get to the halfway mark — after all, I had done it last week with a friend. Turns out it was a bad idea. I couldn’t keep it up, I turned back at Skogumchuk Brook, and I started feeling nauseous.
While telling Elizabeth about all this, I cried a lot. Elizabeth said there was a storm passing through and I should just let myself precipitate, which made me laugh, and was also permission to cry as much as I needed to. When I finally stopped, she said that I didn’t sound like a person who didn’t want to live, I sounded like a person who was tired and alone. She validated that the experiences I had the last few days were difficult. She spoke very eloquently about what it is that I do when I’m teaching circle dance, which made me accept the possibility that I might be doing something valuable. She said I have the skills to create and give birth to an experience for the circle of dancers. As my therapists have often pointed out, if I can do it easily, I don’t value it.
I reminded her of her wonderful letter when she told me I was “generous, committed, and visionary.” She sent it to me in 2005, and forced me to start revising my image of myself. Later I started creating a document that contained all my good experiences, and all the good things people had said to me about myself. I called it “Resource” because a “resource” in Somatic Experiencing is something that makes you feel more calm and steady and centered. So I told Elizabeth that it was probably time for me to go back and read my “Resource Notebook,” and she said “You are so persevering.” I started to cry because that was just what I’d been judging myself as not being.