(Written in January 2006)
Work with Karen was painful. Trying to be OK with myself just as I am and finding it impossible.
I’m feeling incredibly confused and lost, sad and scared. Heart feels squeezed. I don’t know what to do except keep going thru my routine. I’ve got the Gremlin house in the big canvas bag to take to Lore. I have no idea what I’ll do with her. I think of trying to make a self-portrait — trying to find a version of me that I can accept and love. This person who feels so awful, and is hating herself and doesn’t know what to do about it.
How does it feel in my body? Chest feels cramped, blank and grey. There’s also a little vibrating energy around my neck and jaw. Every thing feels blank and dead and grey. No beauty, no meaning, no warmth in the heart. The Ocean of Compassion is just a phrase that doesn’t mean anything, but I can feel the pain in my heart that wants/needs to make contact with compassion. I don’t know what to do. It’s OK to not know. It’s OK to just wait for something to shift.
Woke sad and scared. Recited as many of the affirmations as I could remember. I wish I had someone who really knew what was going on with me and could help me. It’s so frustrating, to have had a few days of “normality” when I felt clear and confident and undistorted, and then to fall back into the nightmare, back into deep depression and then thru the various hells of fear, sadness, heartache, speediness, and always cold, no warmth, no place warm & safe where I could go curl up and rest.
Bleak. Cold stony wasteland bleak. I read through my affirmations. They don’t mean anything. I can’t believe I’ll ever feel different.
I’ve felt better before, and I’ll feel better again.
This is a process, things will change.
This hard cold stoniness is not who I am. It is the product of trauma and adverse brain chemistry. This is what a baby feels when she has been left too long by her mother. The hard cold stoniness is a defense, and it’s also how the world feels when mother is gone: no hope, no warmth, no love.
Dear Guides and Guardian Spirits, my heart hurts a lot. Please help me.
Dear Jenny, we love you very much. Your heart is sore because you were hurt so much as a child. You were beautiful, loving, generous, and creative, but your mother was not able to respond and reciprocate. She was irritable and angry a lot, for reasons that had nothing to do with you. She was jealous of your creative exuberance, and tried to flatten it and you. She left you alone too often. All of this was painful and traumatizing for a little girl who only wanted to love and be loved, and to share the things she was excited about. She learned to hide her pain because she was made wrong for being in pain. The pain you are feeling now is her pain, baffled, constricted, layered with invalidation. When you are able to be with that pain with compassion, you bring comfort to that lonely hurting child, and to other lonely hurting children. When you are unable to do it, remind yourself that this is because you are so badly wounded. Do not make yourself wrong. Be as kind to yourself as you can, even if that means retreating into a book. Dear Jenny, you are working very hard, and your work has positive effects in the world, even when you feel so miserable.