I am so tired and so discouraged. Set the timer for 15 minutes to meditate. Immediately my heart started to hurt. Instead of trying to make it go away, I offered it as prayer. The first time I’ve been able to do that. I know my pain is about the earth, global warming, wars, and my exhaustion.
While walking Mocha I looked for evidence of Spirit. “Where is spirit in this?” Flowers, color, beauty, no problem. What about wilting flowers, dirty sidewalks? I found it confusing. Intellectually I believe that spirit is in everything. But I have no experience of spirit in everything. I remember the time I was driving on the highway through country and felt how much I loved the trees. And then I felt love coming back from the trees. That’s as close as I’ve ever been to feeling spirit in the world.
Intense session with Erica. Trying to get in touch with my heart. Putting my hand on my heart, paying attention to sensation, making sounds and feeling the vibration. Then I started feeling really hopeless, and finally I got angry. The anger felt good! I’m not choosing to be helpless, I am truly wounded, damaged by things that happened to me.
Realizing the extent to which my life has been ruined: by early trauma, by Mother’s mis-representation, by the social distancing required by COVID. It looks like I will never “have a life.” I don’t think I’ll even be able to do Sacred Sites again, which is one of the meaningful things I love to do. It looks like I’ll just keep stumbling on, doing my best to feed myself and take care of Mocha.
I typed up the talk with Erica. It was amazing that I went from feeling a complete failure to seeing that it wasn’t a choice I was making. I wasn’t choosing to be helpless, I was damaged, wounded. I worked so hard to heal, and I healed a lot, but somehow COVID, and the social distancing, triggered my early trauma and so far I haven’t been able to recover. There’s also been the health stuff, my body breaking down: thyroid collapsing, bursitis, cancer, inability to sleep.
I think about how my life was ruined by trauma, lies, and COVID. But I’m not the only one. Even here at Kendal there are people whose lives have been ruined by things they had no power over, and certainly in the greater population outside. I remember something I once saw, a workshop for prisoners. The leader had them stand in a big circle and then asked them to take a step forward if they had a parent who was an addict, and again, a step if their family was poor, and so on. It began to be obvious that the people who were prisoners, were there because they had so many counts against them.
I also remember taking a test about how much you had going for you and how much against. For me: I grew up in a wealthy family, against me: my parents were alcoholics, for me: I got a good education, against me: I was traumatized in infancy… According to them I had more things against me than for me. In which case I actually did well with my life.
The title, “I am Not a Bad Person, Bad Things Happened to Me,” is what I say at the end of Journey Into Courage, as I throw my razor blade into the garbage can. But I think it’s taken me this long to get the truth of that.