Statement of Faith

Posted on June 24, 2010 by jenny

I want to write — I guess it’s a “statement of faith” — my story about the universe and my life that gives me something to hold on to while I go through this rocky time.  “Rocky time”?  This is nothing compared to what I’ve been through in the past, but now that I’ve had a long time of feeling good, and confident, and being able to get things done that used to be so hard (like work in the garden) I want to be like that again.

Describe “rocky time” — I’m scared and sad a lot (certainly easier to handle than terror and depression), I’m not comfortable in my body or in my life.  Odd and uncomfortable bits of memory surface, like pieces of songs from the 50s. I think they are flashbacks to childhood, and I’m caught in an alcoholic nightmare where all the edges are a little blurry and there’s nothing strong and solid to hold on to.

I really do believe — even when I can’t feel it — that the core of the universe is creative love, and that this creative love exists in every grain of matter and all the space between.  That this creative love budded off a part of itself and became me, because I was needed by the Totality.  That just as I am, I am thoroughly and completely loved, I don’t need to do anything more to “deserve” this love.  God doesn’t think my life has been wasted at all.  God has used me to do many things — like Journey into Courage — that have helped change the lives of people in good ways — and I don’t begin to know what those are because I don’t see them, except every now and then when someone tells me.  I have been lucky enough to do something really big and visible, which I know without question was what I “came into this life to do”, which is the creation of Neskaya — a sacred space, a “healing sanctuary” — which I created out of my love for the folk dances and circle dances and wanting to share them. Another part of my life has been the work to heal trauma.  I believe that trauma was necessary for my life’s task because what I do is shamanic work and trauma was my shamanic ordeal.  It prevented me from “succeeding” in conventional ways and forced me to find the things that meant enough to me to keep going despite despair and terror.  The work I do in this realm does not just heal my own psyche, it also changes the human energy field to make such healing more available for everyone.

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Voice of God Within

Posted on June 22, 2010 by jenny

Woke with a jolt of fear.  Last night was the start of a Sufi Retreat at Neskaya.  When we went around the circle saying our names and what we hoped to get out of the retreat, I stumbled around, finally said I wanted to be more connected to Spirit to help me handle my pain about what’s happening in the world.  A woman across the circle said something similar, she spoke specifically about the disaster in the Gulf, and then said she wanted “solace and courage.” Yes, that’s exactly what I want.  Thank you.

I’m at Neskaya and I continue to be scared.  We did the first prayer session and are waiting for breakfast.  In one prayer about “the friend”, I was able to feel a helpful being at my side, giving me loving support.  I’m trying to offer my fear as prayer, I’m asking that god’s will be done, and please god show me your will (I hear the voice saying “You’re doing it, you built and endowed this space, and still care for it, fill it with your love, and you are present with your vulnerable heart and your grief.  There is nothing more that you have to do.  Yes, it’s true that when you are were feeling better, it felt good to “get things done”, but that’s not necessary.  And of course it feels better to be without fear and despair, you’d like to be feeling that way again.  Dear, you will feel that way again, this fear is just another opportunity to comfort the traumatized baby.”) (Thank you)
I had no idea that the Sufis were so emphatic about finding the voice of god within.  That was very validating and comforting.
When I’m feeling OK, not depressed or terrified, I feel extraordinarily lucky that I managed to do exactly what I came into this lifetime to do.  I didn’t know it before I built Neskaya, in fact I was terrified the whole time we were building, but it has become abundantly clear that God designed me to be a Circle Dance teacher, and gave me the money to build a sacred space for dance.  I’m so grateful!

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Summer Solstice

Posted on June 21, 2010 by jenny

Last night we celebrated the Summer Solstice at Neskaya.  We did a lot of old dances like the Bach Sun Meditation and Intitusuy.  We did some new ones – Sunrise is one of my favorites.  We had a clear sky toward the end, and the sun shone through the northwest window almost to the altar with the bodhisattva on it.  It only does this for a couple of weeks at the summer solstice.  We used to see the sunset from that window, and the light would shine directly on the bodhisattva, but alas, a tree has grown up and blocked it.  I suppose I’ll have to have that tree cut.  The amazing thing is, this wasn’t planned, it just happened.  And at the time of the winter solstice, the sun is low enough to shine through an upstairs south window on to the Bodhisattva.  Building a sacred building may produce unexpected surprises!
Summer Solstice also makes me think of a passage I wrote for The Feminine of History is Mystery.  It was written when I was still living in Brunswick Maine, and could not imagine ever finding my “tribe” of people who would celebrate the Summer Solstice with singing and dancing.  I wrote a description of an imagined celebration at Stonehenge, and in the middle of the writing I called out to “my people” — and they answered!  And now I feel unbelievably fortunate to have built a place to which they came.

in the pale pre-dawn light, men, women, and children, wearing animal skins and bright colored woven cloth, carry banners and flutes and tambourines.  down the hill, through the valley of the avon, up the shoulder past the mound and the heelstone.  a sense of joyful expectancy, of reverence, but no rigid formality, dogs bark, children laugh.  there is a moment of solemn silence at the sun’s first flash, then they will sing old songs and new, dance thousand-year-old dances with new variations, feast and share the year’s gossip and wander home again .  .  .  o my people, how I envy you, what a sense of loss that I am not there too — are you the past or the future? we are both the past and the future, we are where the circle meets itself, never fear, you too are enclosed by the circle.
opposite right hand page 133

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Where I write

Posted on June 18, 2010 by jenny

After posting the description of the desk where I wrote my journal from about ‘82 to ‘98, I thought I would do a description of where I write now.  I’m sitting on the right side of a small denim-covered couch, with my dog next to me.  My journal notebook is on a lap pad. There’s a second couch at right angles, and a table between which is covered with another miscellany of objects, not nearly so interesting as on my Grandmother’s desk.  There are books, a box of kleenex, a jar full of pens.  I look out the glass doors to an unfinished patio of big stones.  To the right, almost out of view, are three big chunks of granite, with flat sides, they are set up as a table and benches.  At the end of the table is a statue of Kuan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.  On the left of my view are two poles intended for bird feeders.  I’ve hung many feeders there in the past, and the bears got every one.  Now I just toss scoops of seed out on to the snow.  What’s fun about that is the chickadees and squirrels can eat at the same time.  The bears have ignored this year’s hummingbird feeder, but alas so far, the hummingbirds have too.  I’ve seen one there only twice.  Through those windows I have seen chickadees, bluejays, juncos, the occasional goldfinch, wild turkeys, squirrels and chipmunks.  Once I saw a fox. This time of year I see rabbits, and the bears too when they deign to visit me.  I had a mother with three cubs several days ago.  There are wooden windchimes hanging on the second pole, they make a lovely mellow sound.

In the house, out of the picture to the left, is my masonry stove.  It operates on the same principle as a Russian fireplace.  You build one big fire in the morning, let it burn flat out which is the most efficient way to burn wood.  The hot gases circulate in a flue that goes all the way around the stove, and the heat is transferred to the stone which then radiates it slowly for the rest of the day.  When I get up in the morning it’s still warm.  I have loved living with it.

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Guidance

Posted on June 15, 2010 by jenny

(Written in July 2009)
Dear Guides and Guardian Spirits, I’m feeling a little sad and scared and lonely.  Can you help me?
Dear Jenny, relax.  Let your weight sink down into the couch.  You are truly supported by the earth under you, by the large group of people for whom Neskaya is important, and by many spirits including us.  It is truly OK for you to do nothing.  We know that this is still a little scary for you.  You have driven yourself, your whole life, to prove that you deserve to live.  So it’s a little scary to let go of that ancient conditioned behavior.  But it never was necessary, it was your child’s mind who thought that if she could just do something “right” she would get the love that was in fact her birthright, she should have been getting it all along.  Later, when it became clear that nothing you did would please your parents, you projected the one who needs to be pleased onto the great “Them”, on to god, spirit, the Universe, still trying to prove that you deserve to live.  None of that was necessary.  Just the fact of your existence proves that the Universe was not complete without Jenny, just as she is.  Do let yourself relax and take it in.

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Grieving

Posted on June 14, 2010 by jenny

(Written in June 2009)
I’m guessing that I’m angry at myself for still being sad.  I should be through with the grief work by now.  I’ve read everything I’ve written to a sympathetic listener, some to more than one.  So I should be done, right?  And at the moment it all seems pretty small stuff.  Abusive parents and rejecting boyfriends.  So what else is new?  I never lost a great love, or had someone I really care about die.  Other people have much more reason for grief than I do.  That’s what my head says.  My heart is swollen with unshed tears.
I’m reading The Shell Seekers, and it brings home to me how barren my life is.  Good healthy loving supportive relationships between mothers & daughters.  Wonderful loving sexual relationships.  People who can cook and garden.  Sadness at the loss of real relationships.  Although I notice that they don’t let themselves cry, it’s seen as admirable not to cry.

I sat in Karen’s office and cried for half an hour with no idea what it was about.  “You don’t need to know,” says Karen.  But I think I have to justify it.
I don’t have to know what it was about.
I don’t have to know what to do about it.
I only have to be there for it, be there with it.  This is the traumatized baby I picked up from the garbage can and she has a right to her grief.

I think this grief must be from a very non-verbal place.  I think it’s coming up now because I have healed enough so that the baby feels safe having her feelings.  I have to remind myself to keep her safe, to allow her to grieve (even though I don’t know where it’s coming from — I can guess at how barren and stony was her infancy) to allow her to grieve and to soften around her and hold her in her grief.  There, there, dear, you have a right to grieve.  You deserved to be cherished, loved, comforted, supported and guided, have your real self be seen and mirrored back to you.  What you got was a mother whose narcissistic wounds did not allow her to love, or even see another person accurately.  You were expected to love her, make everything OK for her, and she projected her self-hate on to you and treated you like you were someone you weren’t at all.  You never developed a real sense of your strengths and weaknesses, you grew up believing that you were unlovable and that you had disappointed your parents.  You’ve spent your life trying to prove that you deserve to live.

This morning I’m sad again.  And nothing to say.  “Please see me.  Please hear me.  Please understand how difficult and painful my life it.”  I wake up in the morning feeling sad, with no energy to start the day.  I make a cup of tea, and write in my journal, who is my completely accepting witness, and interested in every detail of my day.  I have a ritual, a routine, for how I cook my breakfast of eggs and rice, and that helps me do it, I don’t have to make any choices.
Right now it’s being hard to just get up & do breakfast.  I’ve had my second cup of tea, but I don’t feel hungry, don’t feel like moving.  But I have to go on with my day.  If I just sit here I will feel more and more immobilized.  So just do it.

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PTSD

Posted on June 13, 2010 by jenny

(Written in June 2009)
What’s coming up is how sad and frustrated I feel that I haven’t been able to live up to my own standards of responsibility and integrity.  I feel very sad that I had to leave Kayla to run Neskaya all by herself through the winter.  I feel very sad and frustrated and angry at myself for all the things I said I’d do and then didn’t carry out.  I haven’t done so much of that lately because my experience this last winter brought home to me what my limitations really are.  I feel ashamed of this, but my sense of integrity demands that I not take on things I can’t carry out.  I did manage to get Neskaya incorporated, and to apply for and get the 501c3 status.  I bullied myself unmercifully to do those things.  Either I burned out or else the trauma work I’ve been doing has made me much more aware of the wounded part of me, and I can’t bully her any more.

After breakfast.  Now I’m feeling hugely sad, tears right at the surface.  Not a clue as to what it’s about.  Maybe the stuff I read to Pat — about not being able to live up to my own standards, about not being seen, not having the pain and difficulty of my life be validated, not being able to believe that I’m truly doing the best I can.  The emotion gets stronger on that last phrase.    DAMMIT — I am working as hard as I can, to take care of myself and do the work of healing Dammit Dammit Dammit!!! My doing my best has nothing to do with results.  Feeling sad again today does not mean that I did something wrong, didn’t try hard enough.
Dammit, I’m dealing with PTSD — Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Like any veteran of combat, except that my flashbacks are not scenes from a battlefield.

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I’m doing the best I can

Posted on June 12, 2010 by jenny

(Written in June 2009)
I’m thinking about the words I wrote yesterday “Please see me.  Please hear me.  Please understand how painful and difficult my life is.  Please understand that I’m doing the best I can.”
My therapists understand.  All three of them have commented on how hard I’ve been working.  Caryn even said many people quit, they aren’t willing to do the work.  What’s tricky now is that what’s needed for this phase of the work, which mostly doesn’t look like “work”, is that I have to take very good care of myself, sticking to a routine of eating and sleeping and exercise and not taking on anything extra.  The hardest part of the work nobody sees but Caryn.  With her I’m able to let myself feel very painful and scary states, which I then have to process, not by active catharsis which feels like what I want to do — get this over and done!  That doesn’t work with trauma.  What I have to do is stay in the painful state with patience, holding back the screaming and dramatic movements, instead waiting for my body to do on its own the processes that release the energy.  In my case that’s a lot of shaking, teeth chattering, and yawning.  When I don’t have Caryn’s help, and the difficult feelings come, I try to stay with them as much as possible, to pay attention to the physical sensations in my body, and try to hold the difficult feelings with compassion.

Dear Guides & Guardian Spirits, I haven’t written in a long time.
Dear Jenny, you’ve been doing very well with this work you have taken on.  We admire your courage and persistence.  We love and support you.  You are doing just fine at being yourself, and taking care of yourself.  You don’t have to do anything more in order to “deserve to live.” We are sorry that your parents taught you such a cruel lesson, that they let you believe that you didn’t deserve to live.  There is no question of “deserving.”  Goddess made you just as you are, because the Universe was not complete without you.  Remember this.  And let yourself feel our love.
Thank you.

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Please understand me

Posted on June 11, 2010 by jenny

(Written in June 2009)
I talked with Eleanor about my sadness about a relationship that’s not going well, and how rejected I felt on Sunday.  She was very understanding and validating.  She reminded me that sometimes people become angry, defensive and rejecting, when they are feeling guilty.  And I remember Caryn suggesting that my friend’s invalidations were because she was frightened of the deep work I am doing.  After the session with Karen, where she pointed out that I don’t know what my life would have been if I hadn’t been traumatized, and I reminded myself of some of the gifts — having to go straight for what was most important to me because anything less couldn’t motivate me to overcome the challenges.  But I still do have to mourn the things I didn’t get: friendships I couldn’t sustain because of terror and despair, friendships that failed because they couldn’t/wouldn’t understand what I’m up against, work — like doing the slide show — that would feed my soul.  I was thinking “I accept my life as it is” and the rabbit appeared.  I accept that my wounding allows me to work on healing at a deep level.  I just wish it weren’t such lonely work.  I wish I could find “trauma buddies”, other people living with PTSD, so I could talk about my struggles with people who understand.

Please see me.  Please hear me.  Please understand how painful and difficult my life is.  I don’t expect you to help me or take care of me.  I don’t want you to feel guilty if you don’t want to spend time with me.  I just want you to understand how painful and difficult my life is, and that I’m doing the best I can.

Caryn McHose in Holderness is my trauma therapist

Karen Collins in Montpelier is my emotional anchor, I’ve been seeing her for over 20 years.

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My Desk

Posted on June 10, 2010 by jenny

(Written in January 1992)
Candle.  30 minutes.
Just write.  Begin from what’s in front of you.  What’s in front of me?  My desk.  On top a blue recipe box with cards of people’s addresses, a beautiful thin porcelain bowl with odd bits of wood, amusing hand made tree ornaments, a little plastic bird with real feathers, calendar and clock.  There is a carved design on the back of the top.  It’s an old desk, I think it was my great grandmother’s.  I write on the front that lets down, it has a piece of blue leather set into it.  I face a variety of pigeon holes and two small drawers.  When I was a child I turned the pigeon holes into cave dwellings for my little china animals.  Now they contain envelopes, photographs, bank statements, paper clips, etc.  There’s a plastic container of gold stars, a box of staples, a box of slides, a package of cards with a large heart made of flowers on the front.  There are some spiral bound notebooks in the tall pigeonholes: one has the geomancy writings and the other the beginnings of “how I became a shaman” — two projects I haven’t gone on with.
On the writing surface is an astonishing variety of odd items.  A large double ended crystal sitting on a piece of gold foil.  A small brown embroidered chinese pouch and the topaz crystal that I use as a pendulum — holding it by the price tag that I never bothered to remove.  The lit candle: a cheap white one in a cheap glass star-shaped holder.  A book of matches, odd pens & pencil, ink cartridges.  Small bits of waxed paper containing tiny colored stars.  A small card, written on in block print:

COMPLEMENTS OF “THE PIG WOMEN”
HOPE YOU ENJOY THIS AS MUCH AS
THE PIG DID THE MILK.

I found it in one of my Elizabeth Goudge novels, bought used, and I love it for the picture it conjures up: some farm wife sending extra or spoiled milk to the pig women, they return a cake or garden produce or even some bacon with the card, then the farm wife uses it to mark her place in Elizabeth Goudge.  I love the sense of neighbors sharing, the short distance between the pig and Elizabeth Goudge, the feeling that she would have enjoyed it too — pigs and neighborliness being as much a part of her writing as spiritual effort and understanding.
Seven little bottles with droppers!  One unlabeled, half full.  Bottles of extracts: yellow dock, chickweed, usnea and senecio aureus.  One of amethyst crystal essence, an empty tiny bottle of Rescue Remedy.  There’s a pink ribbon, a salt cellar (because I eat so many meals at my desk) a tube of hand cream, an empty tea mug.  There’s a small porcelain cup made by Dana and filled with angel cards.  There’s also a small pyrex dish for vitamins and a potholder, both need to go back to the kitchen.  What an amazing collection of objects!  Fortunately most of them are small or there wouldn’t be room for my journal!    Time!
(What an amazing exercise.  It’s brought me back to a sense of affection and humor for myself and my life.  What a funny absurd magical woman who keeps all that stuff on her desk.)

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