This was written the day after the final day of the Courage and Renewal Retreat. Normally, when I post things I’ve written in my journal, I either edit them, or add material to explain some of the references. Today I’m too tired.
From my journal for Sunday, November 22
I started yesterday feeling despairing. No one tried to talk me out of it, they just listened without judgment. We were told to wander outside, or inside, look at something, then turn around and look at something else. Try to see them in a different way. I looked at the various works of art hanging on my walls: Amazing Grace, the big green painting, the tiny sewn collages, Judy Brubaker’s turtle shield, the objects in my hanging box. I took the pomegranate, thinking of the Armenians, and the forced marches into the desert. Then we were to do 5 minutes of “spontaneous writing,” what I call “keep the pen moving” —> there’s a story: Laurie’s “two minute writing.” The pomegranate pointed me to Persephone, and I wrote a piece that’s similar to one I’ve written before about my journey in the underworld. Then they played a piece of music called “with my own two hands.” What is there I can do for the world with my own two hands? Teaching sacred dance and creating ceremonies is no longer an option. Aging and chronic fatigue have made just getting through the day difficult, and I’m losing ground. Unless I can find ways to nurture myself, things I can do that give back more energy than they take, I can’t possibly do more than I’m already doing. What am I already doing with my own two hands? I’m writing this journal. And then typing it up. And then, if it’s relevant, posting it to my blog. This is my line in the sand. I take my stand in my truth, and the only thing that can move me is truth itself.
I was thinking that it’s because I inherited money that I had the privilege of being in therapy, of living to write my story instead of killing myself or ending on the back ward of a mental hospital, filled with drugs. But it’s also true that the “privilege” of wealth did not buy me a comfortable life, or only materially comfortable: enough food, a roof over my head, a reliable car. I look at Eleanor’s struggle with the bureaucracy and see how it takes every scrap of her energy to keep going. Finding help for healing is not an option for her. But the truth is: I write in my journal, type it up, use it as raw material for my blog because I can’t not do it. Even when I question what’s the point I don’t stop writing, typing, or posting. I post the question. I say yes, I’m in despair, this is what it looks/feels like for me.
When I realized that the loss of truth in the present crisis is what bothers me the most, that I have always let go of an old truth and gone for a bigger one whenever one came along, I saw that what I can’t forgive my mother for was her denial of the truth, her refusal to listen to the little IRNK inside that warns you, her drowning truth in alcohol.