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(Written in January 2006)
Woke without fear, but sad.  Huge sadness — that life is sad and everywhere full of pain.  Interestingly I don’t feel despair — and I see that despair, hopelessness, is different from sadness.  I accept that I may be carrying this sadness for the rest of my life: sadness for the traumatized baby inside me, sadness for all the wounded babies, sadness for the whole world, sadness for all the pain we humans inflict on each other and on other species.  I hold the sadness gently, knowing I won’t leave it.

This feels like the longest January on record.  Woke neither sad nor scared, but tired.  So amazing.  Such a big shift.  And yet I don’t feel very different.  Still sad, not joyous.  But I don’t feel wrong to be sad.  This IS my choice, to stay with this task, and not leave it for some illusory promise of “happiness” that’s based on denial.  What’s gone is the irritation and impatience with myself for still being scared, sad, tired, etc.

(Written in January 2006)
Saw Deborah St. Cyr for acupuncture yesterday.  Told her about the feeling in my chest, and that if I said to myself “It’s a traumatized baby” then everything softened and it was easier to be with the fear.  When she started putting needles in, she said something about “strengthening the container.” That reminded me of Beth’s sculpture and the one I had wanted to make and how I had seen that the heart was shielded because it needed to heal, and then the heart needed to connect with the baby, not turn outward again.  Then it came to me — the baby is in the heart!  That’s why the heart is all grey like the baby was.  That was very exciting — it’s not the grey of stuckness, degeneration and death, it’s the grey of a frozen traumatized baby.  Even writing it down I can feel the shift — from being angry at myself for waking scared again to compassion for the terrified frozen baby, and willingness to stay with it as long as it takes.
And if it takes the rest of my life, I’m willing to do that.  It’s amazing that I care so much about this baby, who is me, as though the baby were the earth, or all the babies traumatized by war, and not Jenny who I’ve never thought was worth that much focus and effort.  But the baby doesn’t seem like “me”, more like the task I’ve been given and I’m willing to take it on.  My work to heal this traumatized fragment of the universe is meaningful.  And I think one thing that’s helped this shift is Sharon Salzberg quoting the Buddha as saying there’s no one more worthy of your love in the whole universe than yourself.

Something has shifted because I don’t care if I ever “get back to zero” or “have a life”.  I’m willing to go on like this forever (or at least today I am) waking sad and scared, doing my art, walking the dog, going to therapy, meditating, teaching circle dance.  Just as it is, it’s enough.  That thought doesn’t make me feel glad, I’m still sad, but it’s OK.  It’s a worthwhile task and I’m willing to do it.

Did some good Somatic Experiencing work with Peter.  I told him most of what’s been going on.  When I described the shielded heart he had me open & close my hands slowly, and I got all warm & soft inside.  It felt wonderful — I said with surprise “There’s so much love inside.” There was a sense of strength in my legs and back, making a container for the soft heart.

These last few weeks I’ve been feeling much better.  It started with the work with the inner baby and 5-yr-old described in the last post.  I feel like I’ve come over a threshold, I feel solid and real and confident.  I feel like I’ve been climbing a cliff my whole life, with occasional rests on ledges when I thought I was “all better now”, and then on the cliff again when triggered.  Now I feel like I’ve gotten to the top, I can walk easily on flat ground and survey the territory.  The feeling of strength is quite new, I don’t think I’ve ever felt strong in quite this way.  I don’t feel rigid or armored, I feel flexible.  I’ve been fascinated by the flocks of birds that come to the seed on my patio.  Something will startle them and a whole group will take flight, moving together fluidly, not rigidly like soldiers on parade.  The flock is flexible, it can expand or contract, divide to go around something, perform a tilting turn to the right, land in a tree one by one.  I feel like the pieces of me are able to move that coherently now.  I’m not always working to hold myself together with tension in my muscles, but can relax, knowing I will stay together.  I know that this is the gift of Somatic Experiencing, the ability to be with ALL the pieces, even the ones in terrible pain, to welcome them all into the “committee” of me, and not to ask that they change.

Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t have until you get it.  One of the first gifts to me of Somatic Experiencing was the sense of a “floor” under me, such that if I fell apart, the pieces are caught as in a safety net, the ones on the edge don’t drop into outer darkness.  I didn’t know that I was afraid of losing parts of myself, until I became aware that they would be caught.  Most of my life I’ve been struggling along, trying to survive and desperately wanting to be out of the pain.  I had no idea of what “health” would feel like.  Maybe it would be like a time when I felt confident, or when I felt happy.  When I finally got on anti-depressant medication, after several months of building up the dose gradually, I arrived at normal brain chemistry and was completely surprised.  I couldn’t remember EVER having felt that way.  I also discovered that life was so much EASIER.  Being depressed is like carrying an invisible 500 pounds.  Nobody knows it’s there and they wonder why you can’t keep up.  Maybe you are lazy or don’t really want to.  You start to believe these invalidating messages because you can’t see what’s really slowing you down.

Yet another gift of the trauma work was beginning to reach out to people, make friends, ask for help. When I first got on medication I was surprised to see how easily I could be friendly with the girl at the check-out or the guy at the car wash.  I became aware that when I was depressed, I felt like a dark cloud and didn’t want to inflict myself on anyone.  When I’m depressed or terrified it’s painful to be with people in any kind of ordinary activity.  It just hurts worse to see people having a good time when you can’t.  I would feel better when I was by myself and didn’t have to keep up a front.  Recently that has changed radically.  In the last year or so I’ve been fine being with ordinary people doing ordinary things, and gotten depressed again when they go away.  NOW I’m comfortable either way.  I hope it stays like this but if it changes I have lots of ways to deal with it.

One of the things that’s helped this transition has been creating a small group of support. During the last few years, when I realized I needed more help just to keep going, I asked some people I knew if they would be willing to come have cups of tea, and/or walk the dog, and when they were willing to do that I asked if they would be willing to listen to me read about grief and depression.  When they were willing to witness me that way I began to feel much more safe with them.  Too often people I think of as friends have said very hurtful things if I speak of being depressed or terrified, and I’ve learned to be very cautious.

(Written in March 2011)
Lynelle had a new book on Focusing, (The Power of Focusing by Ann Cornell) written by a woman who’d studied with Eugene Gendlin and gone on to teach lots of classes.  So she’s developed the technique into a fine art of getting to connect and converse with inner knowing.  I’ve been trying to use it with the fear, but it’s not working.  I think I’m trying too hard.  I imagine if I say “Hello” to it the way she suggests it will fade or change, so I’m really trying to make it go away.  Of course that doesn’t work.  I wonder if I could work with the next layer, the one who wants it to go away.  I immediately hear a burst of words: “I want to have a life!  I’m sick and tired of being disabled by this low-grade fear!  I wish it would go away!” and while I write these thoughts down I feel warmth and strength in my belly.  O yes, she’s angry, and she’s standing there, hands on hips, the angry 5-year-old and I just smile, I’m glad to see her.  “You haven’t painted in a long time!” she complains.  I get an image of a grey stone shape labeled FEAR and then painting it out with red.  Yes, maybe I can do that.  But it’s also true that the fear is part of me so I can’t just make it go away.  It’s like a terrified baby, lying there screaming, and my integrity and compassion demand that I just sit here with it, let her know I’m not going away.  “I’m still here, I’m not going to make you talk if you don’t want to, and I’m not going to abandon you.” “You abandon me all the time!!” “I’m sorry, that’s true, but it’s not my intention to abandon you, and if I do leave you, I’ll always come back.”
Wrote more in my journal but I could still feel the frightened one.  I thought of leaving her somewhere and got a panicked “Don’t leave me with her!” meaning the 5-yr-old.  I reassured her, asked about Mama Greene.  Baby still felt scared.  So then I said “How about if I carry you next to me in a Snugli kind of thing?” I could feel her warmth & gratitude & love.  I can feel it now.  “There, there, dear, I’ve got you.” The 5-yr-old says “What a wimp!” I say “I think you’re jealous and you’re welcome to come along on any adventures today.”

I made a Jizo with a clinging baby, a little how I feel my inner baby clinging to me.  I put his arms around the baby and bent his head to look at it.  I like the result. The thought of the baby clinging and being held is comforting.

I had promised the 5-yr-old that I would paint so I went up to the studio.  I  squeezed out some black & white paint & covered two pieces of paper with sponged grey labeled “FEAR”.

This was the start of a long period of feeling really great.  I made another of the new style of Jizo, and I kept going with the grey fear painting.  I taped the two pieces of paper together and covered them with sponged black & white.  Then I spent some time making a stamp that said FEAR.  After stamping FEAR all over the painting in both black and white, I started painting red flames coming up from the bottom and starting to cover all the grey.  This ability to persist with a project is new and felt really good.