April 1994: Interview for Journey Into Courage Video

Posted on April 5, 2022 by jenny

In 1994, Bess O’Brien decided that it was time to stop doing performances of Journey Into Courage, and to make a video. I went back to find the link to the video, and discovered that I have already published some of this in September 2012.

April 21, 1994

Mary and Bess came to videotape an interview with me for the Journey into Courage video.  I think the interview went well, I was able to be my passionate articulate self in answer to some of the questions.  Also at times the tears would rise up into my throat and spill out my eyes, and just as in performance I was able to let them be there and to keep talking.  I think I would feel uncomfortable if they were going to try to construct a 30-minute interview, but they only need about 5 or 10 minutes.  They also took a lot of “still” pictures of different parts of the house, so some of the interview will become “voice over.”

Some of the interview questions were expected “How did you hear about Journey?”  Some were not — and got me thinking about things in new ways.  One was “How has building this house been a healing experience for you?”  That’s quite an intriguing concept.  I think it was a healing experience in many ways, but it’s very hard to say why.  I ended up saying that it was because Dana and I worked so well together on the project.  She also asked about my spirituality, and I think I did manage to say something about the sacredness of every day things.  Bess asked something about my anger, which surprised me, I don’t think of myself as an angry person.  But I guess one of the gifts of Journey is the ability to use my anger, consciously and effectively, in the service of what I value.  She asked me about the advantages and disadvantages of growing up wealthy, I said something about not experiencing myself as “wealthy”, but that I was glad for a good education, that the money gave me time, time to write in my journal and to explore my psyche, and made it possible to see good therapists.

Well!  I hope it will work out that they can use the best pieces and not the ones where I stumbled and didn’t say it very well.  They didn’t get: me walking the dog, and circle dance.

When it was time to go to bed, I discovered that I felt so good in my body that it was hard to go to sleep. It felt like a lot of little doors in me, that are normally shut down, were now wide open.  It felt like I had really been appreciated for the very first time.  It felt wonderful.  And I notice today that my body feels better, not so stiff and sore.

Bess and Mary commented on how well I was able to articulate the answers to some of the questions.  Bess said “You’re so succinct that sometimes you answer five of my questions at once.”  I was thinking about how that is part of my cosmic job, to speak for the voiceless, to articulate what other people feel, but can’t express in words.  I have been angry that a person of intelligence wealth and creativity had her life so damaged by childhood abuse that she has never been able to live up to her promise.  But something that is desperately needed in our culture right now is for someone to speak out about the plight of abused children: and who can do that better than a person who is articulate and intelligent, who was herself abused, who has money and time to do the therapy, to work to understand what happened to her, and to write about it.  If I chose this life, if I chose to be born to abusive parents, it was for the same reason that a reporter risks his/her life to go into a war zone, to be a witness, to send back reports of what is happening on the battlefield.

(A week later)  I just read over the story I wrote about a person who is despairing and depressed and then some new person or event comes into her life and gives her a new look at herself, a wider context, a sense of connection and meaning.  And lo and behold! that’s exactly what happened when Bess and Mary came here to film me.  Their interest in me as a person, and in my house as a reflection of my creativity, and Bess’ carefully thought-out questions, gave me back a sense of perspective on myself and my life, a chance to see my gifts and my accomplishments, instead of just my struggle.  And that lets me see that I am not only the Keeper of the Calendar, an esoteric function which is of value only to the few who are trying to live a sacramental life, but I am also a reporter on the front lines.  My job is not to change the culture or to wake people up, but to just keep reporting as honestly and objectively as possible, the conditions on the battlefield.

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Evolution of my Prayer

Posted on March 26, 2022 by jenny

The prayer I’ve been saying for quite a while now, when I felt discouraged, was “I choose to trust that the wider, more inclusive, participatory, sacred cosmos is real, and holds the world I love in compassion.”  I say “I choose…” because I am unable to trust, I don’t really believe, but I want to set my compass needle in that direction even when I can’t move in that direction. I first found those words about the cosmos in an article by Francis Weller in Cosmos Magazine.  I’m surprised to see that I never did a blog post about them, because the “wider, more inclusive, participatory, sacred cosmos,” became such a powerful concept for me.

“Wider” is the Cosmos I saw when I realized that the reality had to be bigger than the “Big Bang” or the “Steady State.” Looking back in my blog, this is the closest I can find to a description of the Universe I suddenly had a vision of when I was wondering what was the true cosmology. When I was getting my degree in Astronomy, in the 60’s, the competing theories were the “Big Bang” based on the assumption that the Universe is expanding and getting less dense, and the “Steady State” based on the assumption that space was able to create hydrogen atoms. Of course now, everyone believes that the “Big Bang” is fact when the truth is that it’s just a hypothesis that so far has been upheld by the data. If someday someone found out that the “red shift” could be caused by something other than motion away from you, the hypothesis would have to be considered questionable. I was thinking about this one day years ago, and suddenly felt that both the big bang and the steady state were too simplistic for the reality. I suddenly saw a vision of an enormous realm of galaxies and stars and light moving in complex patterns. More recently I wrote “My new mantra is: the universe is unbelievably beautiful, extraordinarily complex, intricately interconnected, and outrageously creative.”

“More inclusive” is the understanding that everything matters, every being is important.

“Participatory” is the understanding that we make our world together. Stuart Kauffman says: “We’re participants in the story as it unfolds.  We aren’t victims and we aren’t outsiders.  We are part of the universe, you and me, and the goldfish.  We make our world with one another.”

“Sacred” — how could it be anything else?

One day I was saying this prayer and instead of saying “the sacred cosmos is real” I said “the sacred cosmos is alive.” The word “alive” just occurred to me, signifying that it was coming from “that of god” within me. Then the word “intelligent” added itself. And finally, my new understanding from Cynthia Bourgeault added “and works through me to create a better world for all.” I somehow understood this process even though I didn’t know I did. But I say “The Universe guided me to Stonehenge” attributing intelligence and good intentions and a specific need that this Universe had.”

So my prayer has become:  I choose to trust that the wider, more inclusive, participatory, sacred cosmos is alive and intelligent and works through me to create a better world for all. Just saying it fills me with positive energy.

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A Midwife for the Divine

Posted on March 21, 2022 by jenny

I’ve been reading Cynthia Bourgeault’s book, The Wisdom Way of Knowing.  I’ve read it before, there are underlinings, but this time through something made much more sense to me.  Here are some quotes from Chapter VII: Seeing with the Eye of the Heart:

Along the whole spectrum of consciousness … things are in a state of perpetual motion, a dance of becoming. There is always a kind of cosmic ‘downloading’ going on, as the divine qualities seek new streambeds to flow through; the imaginal realm presses against our physical one in an alchemy of transformation, aching, it seems, to come into finitude. …

Materiality, it seems, is really built out of vibrating, pulsating intelligence.  …  Creation itself belongs to the divine. Our role is more a creative midwifery that has to do with intuiting the new patterns as they arise in the imaginal and helping birth them into form.” pp82-3

I don’t know what made me pick up this book, it was buried in the many stacks of books piled around my apartment — attesting to my inability to organize and how easily I’m distracted in this time of COVID.  I’ve been looking for a deeper way into my soul. Reading passages like the ones quoted above helped me see how I have done just that, been a “midwife” to energy of the divine that wants to manifest. This is what the Quakers call a “leading.” It was certainly the energy that built Neskaya. I wouldn’t have said that I felt the energy of the divine coming through me, but I remember my many prayers to the “Spirits of Franconia Notch,” my chant to the Bodhisattva of Compassion while the concrete slab was being poured. I often say of Neskaya that it’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever done, that it’s what my heart most wanted to do. But now I see that Neskaya came to be more than I ever had any idea of: a container for healing trauma, a temple for sacred dance, a place where everyone feels at home. And clearly blessed by the Bodhisattva of Compassion.

There have been other times in my life when I have felt divine energy working through me. Sometimes I recognize it, like when I was part of a Prayer Call for those in India dying of COVID. But now I’m also seeing that Journey into Courage was the divine working through me. I’m seeing the fact that there’s no ego in how I teach Circle Dance and Astronomy indicates that this is the divine working through me too. Like building Neskaya, I feel like it is the utmost selfishness: I get to share something I love with people who want it, and it makes me totally happy. Another time when the divine worked through me was Painting from the Source.

This is from an earlier post about a conversation I had in a writing exercise.  Ereshkigal is a Sumerian Goddess of the Underworld, and she is speaking to me: The reward is great depth of perception, great power in expressing what you see, and the glorious moments of bringing through a truth from the shamanic world.

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Listening Deeply Within

Posted on February 5, 2022 by jenny

from my journal for Friday, February 4

Just meditated for about half an hour.  Tried to hineinhorchen, to listen within.  Asked Inner Teacher for help.  Paid attention to the sound of snow blower.  Reminded of planes.  “God comes disguised as our life.”  What was God trying to teach me through the plane noise?  To accept, listen, pay attention, instead of push away.  Remembering that moment of seeing all the names of people who responded to what I said on facebook, and feeling loved.  Really feeling it as sensation, warmth and being held.

hineinhorchen is a German word.  It means to hearken deeply within. It’s used by Etty Hillesum to describe how she listens to God in herself.

I reacted very badly to the sound of small planes for 14 years.

God comes disguised as our life comes from Paula D’Arcy to me via Richard Rohr.

I went through my posts for the last six months or so. In protest against facebook’s allowing misinformation, I stayed logged out most of the time, only logging in when there was something — usually activist — I felt was really important. I saw that a few friends had responded to almost every post. So I posted this on facebook: “Dear Friends who’ve responded to my posts, thank you so much!  Warms my heart, which I badly need in these dark times,” and got 48 responses. I was blown away!

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Inner Teacher

Posted on January 30, 2022 by jenny

I’ve been having a bad time. This morning I woke up feeling utterly bleak. I recite all sorts of meaningless phrases. “Great Beings, have mercy on me.” “May all beings be held in lovingkindness.” It doesn’t help. I can’t manage “I choose to trust…” That’s how bad it is. So I asked Inner Teacher for help.

Dear Inner Teacher, I feel so discouraged.  I’m in a world where evil wins out over good, where people are able to destroy their planet, and all of their fellow human beings, and there’s no opposing force in the Universe.  Please help me.

Dear Jenny, you are caught in a younger part.  One who is helpless and has been rejected yet again.  Her parents are not bad people, but they are immature and alcoholics.  They do not understand her at all, and teach her dysfunctional ways of being in the world.  “Don’t think you’re so great.”  “If you didn’t know how, why did you try?”  Your older self knows better.  Your older self notices helpful things in Elizabeth Goudge.  Your older self believes Demaris when she says she felt spiritual energy with Arnie, like the energy she felt with David when he was dying.  Dying is a spiritual experience, it is not just the end of a being, but a transformation.  Also, when Erica says your work on yourself helps the collective, you know that is true.  You can trust your knowing that Demaris and Erica are talking about a spiritual realm that is real.

Thank You.  That eases my heart.

Went looking through my blog for pictures of Little Jenny. The one of me at 12, I look so sad. Someone who has been hurt and who expects to be hurt again.  No hope of being understood, of being met as who she really is.  Because how do you know who you are unless someone meets you directly and reflects you back to yourself correctly.  Jalaja: “Passion, devotion, creativity and sweetness.”  Elizabeth: “Vision, commitment, generosity.”

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Steps on the Way to Neskaya

Posted on January 24, 2022 by jenny

Imbolc is the Cross-Quarter Day, also called Candlemas.

February 2, 1992     Imbolc

I went to folk dance yesterday, it was very hard getting myself there, and the tapes and tape deck and cauldron and candles.  Driving out the driveway I asked myself what the hell am I doing this for when I feel so tired and sick.  And my answer was that I care about the fire festivals, and the wheel of the year, and I want people to remember and celebrate the changing seasons.  And it turned out to be wonderful — there were a lot of people there.  I sat on the sidelines and watched for the most part, they looked beautiful and varied and skillful.  The four little girls danced almost every dance instead of playing as they usually do, so we seemed more like a real community.  We lit the candles and made good wishes for everything from a friend’s birthday to hope for those lost in poverty, hunger, homelessness.  Then we did the King of the Fairies and the dance of the Trees around the lighted candles.

At this point we were dancing in the Franconia Elementary School gym.

February 19, 1992

In less than an hour we’ll be having the closing on the Neskaya property.  I feel scared about it, but also absolutely sure that I want to do this with Dana.  When I remember that, the overwhelming scared feelings go away.  Perhaps we’re being fools, but if so, there ought to be more of this sort of foolishness in the world.

Instead of being on the river flat, this land is right at the bottom of “Three Mile Hill” which goes up to Cannon Mountain Ski Area.

May 14, 1992

Woke at 4AM, terrified and soaking wet.  Changed my clothes, took two Nuprin, did anilom viloma, recited the Prajna Paramita and managed to get back to sleep.  A part of it is chemicals / hormones etc.  Another part is terror about Neskaya — who do we think we are?  Where is the money going to come from.  Then I remind myself that we really want to do it.  This morning I remembered that I once wanted a church (be careful what you ask for, for god may give it to you) and now here we are building one.  Yes.  I still feel terrified, and I put it aside and affirm that we will do this thing.  This is courage.  This is perhaps what the I Ching was talking about.

Waking terrified at 4AM is a symptom of PTSD.  “Anilom Viloma” is a breathing exercise that usually calms me down. The Prajna Paramita is the Heart of Perfect Wisdom sutra, about the Bodhisattva of Compassion. See the I Ching statement in the previous post.

July 10, 1992

Today the Sun crosses my Jupiter in Cancer in the Eighth.  We went over to the Neskaya land just to “touch base” as it were.  It felt very good.  I feel very glad of this project, and willing to be patient with the process, to spend as much time as it takes to do it right because this is a sacred building.

The Eighth House rules other people’s resources, Jupiter is expansion, Sun transit Jupiter is good fortune.

July 30, 1992

Neskaya — we signed the application for a building permit yesterday. 

October 18, 1992

Our application for a driveway permit for Neskaya was refused.  This is very disappointing and scary.  I had to work hard last night to “soften” around the disappointment and fear and helplessness.  I suppose we could put the property back on the market (it will probably take years to sell) and buy something else.  But I still feel committed to the project, whatever we have to do.

I’m at the Neskaya property.  Dana and Bill Smith are walking up and down the road, trying to find a place to locate a driveway.  Our application for a permit was refused, and we’ve both been pretty upset about it.  Yesterday I was able to see that Neskaya is a big enough vision to absorb a $35,000 mistake, but today I just feel scared and bummed out.  Dana and I went up on the land to ask the spirits of the place for help.

December 5, 1992

The driveway permit came today.  Green light for Neskaya.

We had to have the driveway come out on a different part of the road because Neskaya is a public building. Unfortunately, the new one had to be steeper, which wasn’t a problem until the harder rainfalls associated with climate disruption started eroding channels in the driveway.

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Beginnings of Neskaya

Posted on January 24, 2022 by jenny

Some of my dancers are doing a project about the history of Neskaya, and wanted more information.  So I went back in my journal, looking for the first mention and some history about how the process happened.

October 14, 1991    Neskaya

I was too excited to sleep — filled with ideas for Neskaya, for poems, and illuminated pages, and dance/poem/performances.  This morning I wrote out a line from a poem by Rumi: “Let the beauty we love be what we do.”

I realize I haven’t written in here about Neskaya.  It is a project that has been slowly coming into focus for the last couple of years, first jokingly referred to as the “dance hall/dojo”.  We have been imagining a big twelve sided building with a conical roof and big supportive beams, perhaps looking a little like a circus tent.  We drew some preliminary sketches and Dana found a piece of land between Rte 18 and the Superhighway, in Sugar Hill, which might be suitable.  I don’t know when it occurred to us to name it “Neskaya” but we both felt it was the right name, and I checked through The Forbidden Tower to find that Neskaya was the Tower where Varzil the Good was Keeper, he who felt that there was no reason women couldn’t be keepers too.  Seemed like a good heritage.  The idea that Lynelle and Dana suggested in different ways, that I could pay somebody to help me construct my “dream theater”, has been incubating, and the Self Esteem workshop has pushed me over the threshold to commit to this project.

This imagined building and the land were not what we ended up with.

January 1992

Just write.  Begin from what’s in front of you.  No no no don’t wanna write.  Nothing to say.  I’ve been putting this off all day because nothing to say.  This is writing practice, practice, dammit.  We sold stock yesterday for the building of Neskaya — It’s my stock and I’ll do what I want to with it dammit DAMMIT. 

Good news!  Marion Zimmer Bradley sends permission/blessing to use Neskaya for a name.  Also wants to know more about us.  A nice hit of positive energy.

I think of the I Ching’s response to the meaning/purpose of my life: The Wanderer: the fire uses up the fuel and then moves on.  Neskaya may give some scope to do my life as vocation, spiritual practice, self-indulgence, self-expression all at the same time.  It will allow me to be both inward and outward at the same time.

I love the notion that Neskaya will allow my life to be “vocation, spiritual practice, self-indulgence, self-expression all at the same time.” Looking back, I can see that it’s absolutely true.

I don’t want to do this.  I feel so sad and I have nothing to say.  Explore “sad”.  Feels like physical let-down, all the cells sinking down, damp, heavy.  Also a melting quality as though about to burst into tears.  An overall tone of sorrow — grey, smooth — like mist.  Why am I sad?  don’t know. not profitable question.  Sad.  Discouraged: that means the heart taken out.  Yes, a feeling of the heart taken out.  No heart in me, no heart for the journey.  I sit here beside the road, a refugee, too tired to open my pack and get out my camp stove and make tea.  And lonely, no friends.  I see people passing on the road in the grey mist, their clothes dusty, their backs laden.  They’ve been bombed out too, and all their energy is focussed on taking just one more step away from their gutted hopes.  I’m sitting here watching them, feeling sad and lonely and discouraged and exhausted.  I think it would be fun if I could gather a few of them around a campfire: we could make music, tell stories, we could hearten each other.  But I haven’t the energy to build the fire.  Oh yes and I’m beating on myself for not doing it — someone’s got to do it — you at least have the vision because you’re sitting by the side of the road.  But at this moment I’m too exhausted, too exhausted by illness dammit.  I have a sense of Neskaya as being more than a campfire, it’s an actual shelter to welcome the refugees and nourish them.  Although I don’t fully understand how we’re going to build it, I know nothing can stop us now: the money is in the bank, Greg will be our contractor.

Here’s another example of “writing practice.” It started as “just keep the pen moving,” but sometimes became a way to tune in to another, deeper voice in myself. The imagery of being a refugee from a bombing actually comes from my early trauma, but I don’t know about that yet.

So where am I now: big piece of motivation gone, which is the idea that I have to figure it out — there’s a sense of more trust in the process — O what was it?  That realization that I would of course go on changing and growing, I don’t have to keep after myself to make sure that I do it, I can ramble along, paying attention each day to what needs to be done that day, and the great dreams will come when they come, and the visions and insights will be sparked by events or workshops or therapy, and in between I’ll wash dishes and watch chickadees and do yoga and walk the dog.  This is my life.  And somehow, magically, Neskaya will get built, and Dana & I will do what it takes, and there will be difficulties and hassles and some things won’t turn out exactly right, but some time within the next year there will be that amazing space, and we will gather to do folk dance, and improvisational theater, and workshops combining movement, drawing, writing, dreams —— and that will be very exciting and nourishing for me.

I’m still calling it “folk dance” because that’s how I began teaching in Franconia, but by this time I know it’s “Sacred Circle Dance” and we are doing newly choreographed dances with the understanding that traditional folk dances have a spiritual dimension. This was part of why we wanted to build a special building for movement arts that are also spiritual practices.

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One-page Autobiography

Posted on January 22, 2022 by jenny

I’ve been having a pretty bad time. I’ve started two drafts of blog posts, but haven’t been able to complete and post them. I’ve been having trouble concentrating and am easily distracted. This is the result of social distancing, simply not being with enough real physical people to regulate my nervous system. I started a project of hunting through my journals for 1991 – 1993 to find references to how we decided to build Neskaya, and what it took to actually do it. I found this piece in July 1992, written in a writers’ group that I facilitated. We started with an exercise of listing 10 chapters, and then writing them, that’s what the numbers in the following referred to. I was impressed with it as a very condensed story of my life.

I was born when my father was away fighting a war.  I was the eldest of five, and too much responsibility for the younger ones fell on my shoulders as my parents wandered deeper into the morass of alcoholism.  (1) As an adolescent, I felt myself to be rebel, beatnik, poet, but my rebellion spent itself in writing, on the surface I was debutant, honor student.  My one attempt to break out, as apprentice in a summer theater, was ended the very first day by a collapsing ladder and a broken ankle.  And by that time I had already settled for staying hidden backstage, and all my dreams of being onstage and speaking out in my own voice, those dreams dissolved without me even being aware that I had let them go.  I graduated from Wellesley with a degree in astronomy, and my life tried again to break out of those confining conventions.  I had no idea what to do with myself, so I went to Europe with Bettie.  Astronomy, Stonehenge, the White Goddess, folkdance, they were all there in that year, like seeds planted underground to sprout later into strange, flamboyant plants.

2) I went to California to learn to be a science teacher, and to get as far as possible from my parents.  There my outer life of denial and convention collided with my inner life of pain and protest.  I tried to stop the war in Vietnam, I cut myself with razor blades and wrote with the blood, I was hospitalized for nervous breakdown, I came back east to lick my wounds and descended into a suicidal depression.  3) Jack said “Buddha said life is suffering” and I hit bottom with an audible thump.  I went to the Rochester Zen Center and learned to meditate, cleaned up my diet, entered on the way of spiritual practice.  4) Struggling with questions of ego and self, I dreamed of lesbians, and catapulted out of the Zen Center on a rising tide of feminism.  

5) I bought myself a house in Brunswick and settled down to make a good life for myself as a single woman.  I began to study my dreams, and that opened to me the whole world of the lefthand way.  6) I began to write The Feminine of History, found the Center for Archaic Studies, met Dana.  7) Dana became partner in the work, friend, lover and husband.  Marriage provided me with a kind of safety I had never had in my life which first allowed me to finish writing my book, and then to enter into a Dark night of the Soul.

8) I went into the depths of the candida swamp, and emerged by understanding the physical roots of my condition in chronic illness and the emotional roots in growing up in an alcoholic family.  9) The pain of the airplane phobia pushed me into the further understanding of how I had been damaged by sexual abuse in my childhood, and that led to my joining Journey into Courage and the tremendously healing act of speaking out.  Back on stage at last — “This production marks the beginning of the artist in me coming out of the closet” — and a round of delighted applause.  10) And the artist keeps coming out, stretching beautiful red wings, supported and nurtured by Kripalu yoga and contemplative dance.  And soon — in the future — Neskaya!!

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Inner Teacher

Posted on January 13, 2022 by jenny

I’ve been having a really hard time. We have a few COVID cases among the staff, so things have closed down a little. I think they are realizing that we are suffering from lack of connection, so they are not forbidding us to get together, just discouraging us. The tables in the dining room are back to five people a table or less. It’s also been very cold, so time outside has not been much fun.  I found myself doing puzzles compulsively yesterday, and not even enjoying it. So today I asked Inner Teacher for help.

Thursday, January 13

Dear Inner Teacher, I’m feeling pretty bleak and finding it hard to do practical things.  Can you help me?

Dear Jenny, bless your heart!  You are much too conscientious.  It’s perfectly OK to do puzzles, though it would be better if you could enjoy them instead of doing them compulsively.  You are once again beyond the end of your resources.  You need more support from outside to be able to overcome your apathy.  You wish that you could, like Etty, like Joanna Macy, feel joy and gratitude.  Dear One, your ability to feel positive emotions was severely compromised by early trauma and lack of positive mirroring when you were very young.  One good thing, you haven’t been beating on yourself to “shape up.”  Keep in mind Little Jenny with the Dar Gorani Look.  She can see that there is a better world out there, but she can’t get there.  Be kind to her, and take care of her as best you can.  Remember, though you can’t feel it, you are greatly loved, and you are greatly loving.

Thank You.

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That Twilight Feeling, reprise

Posted on December 31, 2021 by jenny

These two messages arrived at the end of the year. They speak to exactly how I’m feeling, which is very lonely, very sad, a sense that there is no meaning to my life, a kind of end-of-life version of That Twilight Feeling. Matt describes this sense of aloneness very well, as a consequence of trauma. Checking inside, I see that my inner compass is still aimed at a better vision of life. There’s no “felt sense” to tell me that it might be true, but there’s still a kind of certainly that at least I’m facing that way, even if I’m slipping backwards. Tami Simon speaks to that in her year-end message.

Matt Licata 12/30/21

In addition to the chronic empathic failure and narcissistic injury which goes to the very core of our sense of self, what can be even more devastating is a deep knowing that “I’m alone in this.” The absence of companionship, of feeling felt and understood, is at the heart of trauma and devastating to a human being wired to rest within a relational field.

Tami Simon, 12/31/21

This person I didn’t know continued to approach, and when we were about 10 feet away from each other, this stranger smiled at me with a genuine sweetness … and kept on walking.

That was it; that was the small action.

And for whatever reason (maybe because I had been meditating all by myself for several days), this human act of softly reaching out to me with a gesture of connection broke my heart right open.

Your words matter. Your phone calls matter. Your emails matter. Your genuine smile matters. The way you hold space for another matters. With the smallest of gestures, we lift each other up.

Here on the last day of 2021, I want to remind us all that we matter … to each other. My sense is that we have no idea how many people we touch in small ways with huge impacts. Thank you for every act of compassion you share. I feel grateful to be in connection with you.

This reminded me that if I can do no big things, because of age, trauma, vulnerability to depression, etc. I can at least do small things. I know that calling two people on the phone recently cheered them up a lot and cheered me too. I think of Star, in the Clinic, telling me that she could see my smile behind my mask.

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