The Downturn

Posted on March 4, 2011 by jenny

(Written in August 2008)
Kayla helped me open up about feeling discouraged and disappointed and ineffective and I finally was able to cry.  I’ve been “soldiering on” since the Nia training, and the tears have been building up.  I talked about struggling to help things/people/causes I care about and not having enough energy — or else the thing is just too big for one person. Kayla said she was hearing the experience of my childhood, all alone, without adequate support, expected to do a job much to big for me.
I can hear Dylan’s voice: “You’re right from your side and I’m right from mine/ we’re both just one two many mornings and a thousand miles behind…” — it suits my mood: that feeling of we tried so hard and haven’t been able to make it work — and what do we do now?  A sense of being worn out in the struggle — no energy to try something new, no energy to pack up and move and start a new life somewhere else.

I am so tired.  I realize I’m not eating enough because I’m too tired to cook properly.  Or maybe I’m getting enough food but not enough variety?
I’ve written out three scripts for the drama project (“Telling my Story”).  They’ll just have to do.  I’m too tired to do more.  I think it’s emotional and mental tiredness — a lot of stuff kicked up in the unconscious by this project.  I could probably dance if someone else taught.  I haven’t walked the dog because I’ve been too tired and it’s been raining.
I see that I jumped into the Nia training, and also into this project, because there’s a tremendous pressure of unlived life inside me — all the things I would have done if I hadn’t been struggling with depression and terror and illness.  But it’s too late.  I don’t have what it takes to carry it out.

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Radiant Priestess

Posted on March 3, 2011 by jenny

(This was written in July 2008, just before I crashed really badly.  I had been feeling so much better, and I thought I had “really gotten there” i.e. arrived at a place of health and strength.  But I was actually on the threshold of the worst bout of PTSD ever. It took me over two years to recover.)

Another sad thing about reading from 1988 is I have so many good ideas for professional development: courses in Astronomy, Astrology, workshops, etc. that I’m unable to bring to fruition.  The whole struggle with lethargy (physiological) vs. laziness (moral) that seems so silly painful and misguided in the light of an underfunctioning thyroid gland — Dana telling me I “didn’t want to enough” to overcome lethargy which was so painful and invalidating.  Not something you would say, e.g., to a quadriplegic.  What would have been validating for me to hear?  Something like “obviously you care a lot, you really want this thing to happen, but your physiology is just not able to support you.” Would that have helped?  Possibly a little, at least the validation of how much I cared and wanted.  The failure to overcome the lethargy was due to lack of correct information not lack of will power.
The tendency to make myself wrong for everything, everything I felt, everything I experienced — learned from Mom & Dad and heavily impressed very early.  Perhaps even impressed on a foundation of infant trauma, and infant misperception of being the center of the universe.  Then reinforced by a culture that uses judgement and blaming to keep people in line.  God!  I am amazed and astounded that I got this far.

This other version of myself — not the dull cramped ugly one who’s not very practical and doesn’t have much to say — but the radiant priestess who leads the dance, and the warrior who champions the oppressed, and the compassionate one who can be present to other people’s very deep pain.  It’s hard to believe that I could be her — but that’s who I really am.  And at the same time I’m not that, I’m the imperfect vessel, the servant who does her best to do the work of the radiant one in this world.  Accepting this, I don’t feel conceited at all, I feel humble and greatly honored.

I’m noticing increased anger — grounded, solid, totally without guilt anger — at Mom & Dad for what they did to me.  Validated anger.  What they did was wrong, and it damn near wrecked my life, and if I hadn’t been such a strong fighter, had such a clear vision of how my life was supposed to be, I wouldn’t be sitting here now, happy with my life and feeling sure the battle was worth it.

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Reading Old Journals

Posted on March 2, 2011 by jenny

(Written in July 2008)
Reading 1987 is fascinating and painful.  I’m struggling with the plane phobia — doing a lot that I hope will help: DMA Structural Consulting, David Grove Workshop, NLP — also blaming myself and trying to figure out what’s really going on.  All of these are doomed to failure because I’m not aware of the root cause which is trauma.  No wonder I was depressed.  And no one around me understood my agony so I was continually being invalidated, and I was invalidating myself.  Painful to watch myself working so hard for no results.  At least I can now appreciate my strength and determination and hard work.  And have compassion that so much was misguided.  Another huge issue I was struggling with was the one of not trusting my own feelings.  At one point, doing structural consulting with Dana, I said “You mean I really am as lost as I feel?” which brought about a huge deep change.  Although I think it will be a long time before I get how important feelings are in being able to be grounded in reality.  Then there was the problem that traumatized fear is not coming from current reality.  So much of what I was trying to do to heal was sabotaged by not understanding the mechanism of trauma.
Then there was the whole issue of “lethargy” vs. “laziness.” At one point Dana even says “Maybe you don’t want to enough…” thus reinforcing my parents’ invalidation, but I was up against LOW THYROID, DAMMIT.  DAMMIT DAMMIT.  No, I am not a lazy person.  And I did care about many things, and I was unable to take action because my body wasn’t functioning properly.

I’ve been reading from 1988.  I seem to be doing really well, pleased with my progress.  Knowing that I’m going to tumble down into severe misery leaves me wondering — what was this?  Was I really doing better?  Yes, I guess I must have been — there have certainly been plenty of ups amid the downs.  At the same time I wonder what happened to all the great insights and learnings.  Perhaps I felt better because I had seen that sexual abuse was part of the picture and thought that if I worked on it I would get better.  But I did the best I could and still didn’t get better.  I talk a lot about “addiction to achievement”, and I was certainly dealing with that somewhat, but now I see that I also had a need to be effective, to trust that if I had an intention I could carry it out, to see my intellectual insights bear some fruit in change of behavior.  But all my insights and intentions kept running aground on post-traumatic stress and low thyroid.  Then I would fall into the default position: it was all my fault, I wasn’t disciplined enough, maybe I “didn’t really want to.”   So painful to read.

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Rally to Save the American Dream

Posted on February 27, 2011 by jenny

Yesterday I met my friend Pat at Mac’s and we drove to Montpelier for the rally. It started out as a “We stand with Wisconsin” rally but along the way it turned into a “Save the American Dream” rally.  There were rallies in all 50 states.  Pat and I parked downtown and walked to the Capitol Building.  The speakers were on the stairs and we were all on the first big terrace.  Some people had done all the shoveling so we’d have a place to stand — we gave them a big round of applause.  When Pat and I got there, we were handed signs:  “DON’T CUT US OUT” with silhouettes of public workers, and “UNIONS MAKE US STRONG”.  I went up to the top landing to get our signs stapled to two sticks.  I also tried to get a picture from up there but alas my batteries had run down.
When we first arrived, someone was leading the crowd in singing.  Then one of the organizers said “What does democracy look like?” and we all shouted back “This is what democracy looks like!” over & over, louder & LOUDER!  A woman who’d been in jobs that were unionized and jobs that weren’t, spoke about the differences in her experience — the difference between having to work at several low-paying jobs in order to make ends meet, and having a living wage that lets you spend time with your family.  A man spoke about “the American Dream” and how it used to be about a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage, but now it’s about people needing relationships and co-operation, not another material goody.  At the end, one of the organizers spoke of the many reasons he has hope.
I’m really glad I went.  It felt good to stand there with a bunch of people who don’t like what’s happening in our country, to cheer and clap and wave our signs.  There were even signs connecting us to the Egyptian revolution — “WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN,” and one that said “more cheese – less sleaze” with a picture of Wallace & Grommit.  One person was wearing a hat that looked like a big piece of cheese.  Pat told me that’s Wisconsin’s claim to fame.  You can see a lot of those hats in the pictures.
About 7PM last night I went to the MoveOn site and saw pictures of all the rallies.  There were at least 4 that I could recognize as Montpelier.  It gave me such a sense of hope to feel that we had all done this together.

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Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Posted on February 23, 2011 by jenny

(Written in May 2008)
We watched Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.  I hadn’t realized that Ellen Burstyn was Vivi — current Vivi — she did a great job.  There was also child Vivi and young mother Vivi.  Made it a little hard to keep track.  I enjoyed it, but was also stunned by it.  Vivi was so alive — but she should never have had to care for 4 kids by herself.  And she was never really allowed to mourn the loss of her childhood love.  There was also the horrible scene with her own mother and the ring at her 16th birthday.  And little Sidda, doing her best to help, and believing it was her fault when her Mama had a nervous breakdown and had to go away.  That was never talked about.  It was a great scene when one of the Ya-Yas tells her father to write a check to Sidda for all the years of therapy when she tried to figure out what she did wrong.

But I found Vivi lovable and forgivable.  In contrast my own mother looks dead, selfish, stingy, concerned with her image.  The scene where Vivi takes Sidda back for the ride on the plane that she’d funked the first time: Mother would have just made me wrong.  Mother wasn’t like Vivi, she was like Vivi’s mother, stunted.  Stunted because she wasn’t properly nourished, because she was confined by a cage of oppressive ideals.  I’d like to find my way to forgiveness of Mom, but at the moment I’m just angry at her for being narrow and damaged, and not fighting it.  I fought all my life and finally won.  Mother just drank.  And made nasty remarks about anyone who expressed the aliveness she had repressed in herself and was jealous of.  I am ashamed of her.

[This was written in 2008.  I say I’ve “finally won” but I had at least one more bout with disabling PTSD.  In some ways the worst.  I wouldn’t say “I’ve won” now.  My life is a continual struggle to stay balanced.]

Divine Secrets (movie)

Divine Secrets (book)

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Planned Parenthood

Posted on February 22, 2011 by jenny

I find it hard to believe that the House of Representatives cut funding tor Planned Parenthood.  What were they thinking?  Surely the most important thing human beings do is raise the next generation.  Having more children than you can adequately care for is not going to give any of them a good start.
It should be obvious that parents, especially challenged parents — single mothers, poor or disabled parents, etc. — need all the help they can get.  In Freakonomics the authors, Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, look at a number of situations in which actually looking at the facts disproves what the general public thinks.  For example, they wonder about the crime wave that didn’t happen.  A rise in the crime rate was predicted for the 1990’s.  Governments responded by building more prisons and putting more police on the streets, and this is the generally accepted reason there was less crime.  But when the authors looked at the actual statistics they found that the crime rate was already going down BEFORE the extra police and prisons had been put in place.  So what could possibly be the REAL cause?  The authors searched around and came up with this answer: Roe vs. Wade happened in 1973.  This means that all those babies, that would have been born to poor, unwed, drug-addicted mothers, did not grow up to be criminals in the 90’s.  I don’t advocate abortion as a strategy for reducing crime, I would rather see education and easily available birth control to prevent children being born who will grow up to lead violent miserable lives.  And I ask those who oppose abortion: are you willing to take on these disadvantaged babies and give them a decent upbringing?
The other study that I think about was one done by Karlen Lyons-Ruth.  Bessel VanderKolk talked about it in a workshop at Kripalu in August of 2007.  My notes say “Karlen Lyons-Ruth did a study of home visits, in which a home visitor went to young, unwed mothers, and gave them guidance in taking care of their babies.  The single most effective mental health intervention is to help mothers learn to care for their infants.” I got the impression that they had done a 20 year study of the infants whose mothers were visited compared with a control group of infants whose mothers were not visited, and that the amount of violent behavior exhibited by both groups was very different.  The “visited” infants in general were better adjusted than the control group.  I tried to find the study on the internet, but could only find a recent study where the outcomes were the amount of difficulty entering Kindergarten.  Still, we can pretty confidently predict, that without some intervention, a kid that’s difficult in Kindergarten will continue to have difficulties.
VanderKolk expressed his disgust at our government which would of course not fund any such program, but would build more prisons instead.  He told us that South Africa was funding such a program.  He said they won’t see the results for 20 years, but at least they care about the future and are willing to take action.

Bessel Van der Kolk will be presenting a program at Kripalu next July.

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Treasures in Heaven

Posted on February 21, 2011 by jenny

(Written in January 2011)
-25°.  A white world and a clear sky.  The waning moon in a clear sky looks like a jewel lying on silk, an opal maybe.  There are no words for how beautiful it is.  As the sky gets lighter still, the moon fades, losing its glow and its 3-D quality, becoming flat, a torn bit of lace, a paper mask.

Had a bit of a visit with Daria yesterday.  Can’t remember how it started, maybe I asked her about faith.  She said she had put together something that worked for her, maybe some form of reincarnation.  Then she asked her father, and what he said really shook her foundation.  She wishes now she’d asked him more before he died.  But at the time she’d assumed he thought the way she did, so it was a shock.  Their foundation was in Quakerism.  I said I believed in reincarnation because people were born with such wildly differing skills & knowledge, and it could take a whole lifetime to work on a single problem.  I told her I had been a little upset by Tenzin Palmo who said that everyone was reborn, but only those who had developed a strong enough spirit that they could control their next birth – only these were reincarnated.  Then I told her the thing I once told Kevin, that if my work on myself resulted in a better life for whoever got that chunk of energy, I would feel my life had not been wasted.  After talking with Daria I went on to think that if my healing work on myself is changing the human energy field, then that’s a tremendous contribution.  (Of course, that’s what Tenzin Palmo was doing in her cave, and why the Dalai Lama told her to go back.) It’s not Neskaya, the building and the corporation that counts, but the good changes in people’s lives that have resulted.  I feel like I’m now understanding the words about “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” because changes in consciousness will go on, and have ripple effects.  I think of two psychic friends who told me that what we do at Neskaya has results bigger than the earth.

Still feeling pretty good.  The revelation that my true work is in the invisible realm and therefore something eternal, something that lasts, is not wasted, goes on contributing, or goes on changing in a positive direction — I don’t know how to get it into words.  I thought of trying to tell Eleanor last night, but didn’t.  I think because of the difficulty putting it into words.  She already knows it, I think that’s what she meant when she said “When we don’t give up, don’t commit suicide, then we are helping god.”

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Bleak

Posted on February 19, 2011 by jenny

(Written in February 2008)
Woke feeling bleak.  Heart like a stone.  I can’t tell if I’m tired or if I’m depressed.  I just don’t want to do anything.  I read in Animals in Spirit: “Death means wanting to be peaceful; it’s knowing that your work is done.  There is no struggle because it feels right.” p107 That’s how I’m feeling.  My only struggle is because I think I shouldn’t feel that way, I should make myself …what?  Shape up?  Get busy?  When I felt my heart’s cold stoniness this morning I had a moment of compassion, of wanting to comfort it, and then went back to feeling stony which I think means I’m angry at myself for feeling this way again.  But now I’m thinking well, this is how I am at this moment.  What if I were to honor it.  What if I couldn’t think “You’re wrong to be so tired.  Start visualizing yourself as full of energy…” then I would just let myself rest.  It’s not like I can’t do basic life support for myself and Bella.  That time of needing so desperately to be taken care of was short.  Actually, maybe what I most needed to know is that it’s OK to rest.  I don’t have to justify it by thinking that I’ve been sick, or adding up what I’ve done to show that it’s enough.  One day at a time.  It’s OK to do nothing for the next 24 hours.  Thy will be done.
I’ve been reading The Dean’s Watch.  Slowly, savoring every sentence.  I feel nourished by it in a way that I’ve not felt nourished by anything else I’ve been reading.  I also made scones yesterday, and they turned out well!!  GOOD FOR ME!
Dream fragment from the night before: Struggling to drive up a hill, road washed out.  Maybe this is where I am in my life right now.  Having to travel slowly on a path that has not been smoothed or leveled in any way.

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Enjoying the Happiness of Others

Posted on February 18, 2011 by jenny

(Written in February 2011)
Had a moment of revelation yesterday.  Driving through the Notch I saw skiers coming down Gary’s and Zoomer, bright waves of snow behind them.  First I felt jealous (I haven’t skied for years because of balance problems) then I remembered/imagined how good it felt to do that, then I was happy for them.  I could just participate in their happiness without having to do it myself.  I have such wonderful memories of skiing, and I realize after a whole day of skiing, memories are all I have.  Why not enjoy them and not ask for more? Being happy for others is the third component of lovingkindness that Sharon Salzberg talks about.  It feels a whole lot better than being jealous.

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Fight or Flight, or… Freeze

Posted on February 17, 2011 by jenny

Many people don’t know that the instinct to preserve one’s life has a default setting.  When we’re in a life threatening situation, our body gears up for a massive use of energy.  There’s a shot of adrenaline, the heart & breathing speed up, blood flow is shunted away from organs that aren’t essential and pumped into muscle.  If the person can run away, or fight for their life, that energy gets used.  If they can neither flee nor fight — think of a possum threatened by a coyote — then instinct shuts down the body which falls into a death-like state.  This is called “playing possum.” But it isn’t really “playing” at all.  It’s not a conscious choice.  Instinct has frozen the possum.  If the coyote doesn’t eat it, this instinctive response will save the possum’s life.   I’ve actually seen a video in which the coyote nosed the possum & then decided it wasn’t interested in dead meat and walked away.  The possum lay there for a bit, then stood up, shook itself off, and walked away.
After studying the behavior of animals in the wild, Peter Levine answered the question: “Animals in the wild, prey animals especially, risk death every day.  Why don’t they get traumatized?” He found that shaking themselves off afterward discharged the energy that wasn’t used to fight or flee, but was frozen in the body.  Humans however, have largely lost touch with this instinctive release.  We are also faced with situations that our biology never evolved to handle, like the swiftness of modern automobile accidents or the horrors of modern war.  The symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress are the result of the energy built up in the body that was never released.  Peter Levine developed Somatic Experiencing as a way to allow the body to release that energy, to in his words “re-negotiate” the trauma.  There is a page on “Somatic Experiencing” on this blog.

For more information, see Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger.

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