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Bleak. Discouraged.

Posted on October 5, 2015 by jenny

Monday, October 5

Bleak. Very discouraged. Got up to shit. To tired to make tea. Went back to bed, but totally unable to think of anything that would make me feel better.

Enjoying my life is not important. Doing something meaningful or worthwhile is.

I see that what makes the biggest difference in how I feel — and how I can function — is whether there are people around or if I’m alone. For a long time that didn’t make a difference in my life, I was in denial of my feelings of abandonment.

A friend called and tried to cheer me up. Mistake. Maybe I shouldn’t have answered. I told her about Barbara not calling me back, but she didn’t get it, said I should have called Barbara again. She could be right, but I needed someone to understand that I just couldn’t do it, that I was badly triggered by calling for help and getting no answer. Too much like what happened to me as a baby.

I think that’s what’s being hardest and most discouraging is that I get cheered up, inspired, by a good conversation or a good book, and I have good energy for a day or two, but then I collapse immediately if there isn’t moral support to sustain it. I don’t see what I can do about it, and that makes me feel hopeless and helpless, I get triggered into the state of an infant who is truly helpless.

I really don’t know what to do. Lying in bed this morning, trying to find something that would hold me, I couldn’t think of anything — no poem, no prayer, no sense of God or Jesus. I did have Fire & Rain in my head: “Been walkin’ my mind through an easy time, my back turned toward the sun, doncha know when the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around…”

Occasionally it hits me that I very selfishly want to stop being unhappy — there are so many people out there in the world who are having a much harder time. Sometimes, thinking about them makes me realize that I’m not alone, I’m part of a huge group of people. I think that the ones struggling with depression know exactly how I feel.

Of course the other thing that’s weighing on me is the question of how to find the senior housing that will be right for me. It’s getting too hard just to get through the day, not to mention those extra chores that have to do with maintaining a house and car. I looked at Kendal, which is in some ways ideal, but I’m not sure how easily I could find friends. The idea of spending time researching places scares me. Disappointments, like Cobb Hill, set me back. Cobb Hill is an eco-community, which appeals to me, but all I can do is buy a small house, and I need a place that offers regular meals as well as community housing. I desperately need a refuge now, not two years or more in the future.

I lost my TWLOHA bracelet, I can’t imagine where. The only times I take it off are to shower and for massage. At first I missed it badly, it connected me with a population struggling with depression and self-injury (nicer word than self-mutilation). Now it’s faded into the greyness along with everything else.

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Meditation for Peace

Posted on September 21, 2015 by jenny

Monday, September 21

Today is International Peace Day. Many people will be gathering to pray for peace in the world. We gathered yesterday at Neskaya to meditate for Peace. We wrote our hopes on white dove pieces of paper and hung them on a twig “tree” in the center. After the meditation we did a series of peace dances in our regular dancing time of 4:30 to 6:30.

Sitting for half an hour, visualizing peace, I surprised myself by having a wonderful time. First I saw myself as a dove, taking the tidings of peace to every country on the planet: America, Mexico, Guatemala … New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania … Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia… China, India, Russia … Bhutan, Kurdistan, Uzbeckistan … Egypt, Ethiopia , Tanzania … Spain, France, England … I was a little ashamed at how few countries I know. I did pretty well in Europe: Greece,Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Serbia, Croatia … Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland … though I can’t remember all the countries that once made up Yugoslavia. Is there still a Macedonia? We do a lot of their dances.

I imagined people dancing in the streets, then I imagined live music for them to dance to, food for everyone, enough clean water for everyone… Understanding that peace can only be built on sustainability, I imagined people being stewards, preserving nature, no cars in Yosemite Valley, in fact no cars anywhere — cheap, well-organized, fast (those trains that run on monorails above the ground), bicycles in cities, free to everyone — you just leave the one you used outside your destination and trust there will be another when you come out (think this is really happening in some European countries). Bus-taxies that don’t have a regular route but pick up people when called and deliver them where they want to go, computers making sure that their routes are most efficient (this already exists at airports). No police, but “Officers of the Peace,” trained in Aikido, NonViolent Communication, and mediation techniques. People are tearing down dams so the salmon can run upriver again (this has really happened, and it blows me away that the salmon know where to go when no salmon has been that far in generations). People are removing pigs and rabbits from Pacific Islands and the native flora and fauna are rebounding faster than any scientist predicted (this is also real). Whales and Dolphins and Elephants are recognized for their intelligence and revered for their wisdom. Absolutely nothing is done to harm them or their habitat.

That was about as far as I got in 30 minutes. I emerged full of enthusiasm and hope. I will hang on to this vision, and offer another one: Matt dancing around the planet, places you’re never heard of and famous places, people dancing with him of different colors, wonderful! It’s a place I go when I’m depressed or discouraged.

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Broken

Posted on September 20, 2015 by jenny

I was typing up the entry from Thursday, August 18. I usually try to type them about month after they were written. This blew me away because it’s such an obvious lead-in to the post about the “flash” of knowledge that God loves my faults, which came only a few days later. It helps me get that this work is done in layers, that each discovery has to be made again and again at deeper levels of embodiment.

Journal entry from 8/18/15

Woke up feeling sad and empty. What will I do with the rest of my life?

The book by the guy who started TWLOHA came and I started to read it. It’s a series of short pieces. He mentions reading Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, so I got it out too and read them in tandem. Jamie’s book is called If You Feel Too Much. In both books there is mess and brokenness, but also love and connection. I will have to read Jamie again and mark the quotes I want to copy. I’m getting a sense that all of us are broken in different ways, that even in our broken-ness we can help each other. Perhaps only in our brokenness do we have the compassion and understanding to help. I’m starting to see that even in my brokenness I can help others, I can make a difference. It’s also true that people can love me in my brokenness. I think of Eve and Lee Ann who both hugged me hard and said “I love you so much.”

This is something entirely new: to see that I can help, that I matter, that I can be loved, even though I am broken. This seems astonishing. I must have been assuming all along that I couldn’t really help, couldn’t really matter, couldn’t really be loved, unless I was healed. Like other things that have been so fundamental in my life I only see it when it is gone, disproved.

So now I’m down in the pit with all the other broken ones. We’re all in this together, and we’re doing the best we can, and we need to ask each other for help.

I’ve been wanting to heal because I wanted to be able to enjoy my life. Now that doesn’t seem so important. Compassion and community seem so much more important.

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Go Bernie Sanders!

Posted on September 19, 2015 by jenny

Normally I don’t pay a lot of attention to politics, it makes me so angry and depressed. A friend sent me this quote from a speech he gave at Liberty University, which is “deeply religious” and started by Jerry Falwell.

The message I gave at Liberty University is that the moral choice is to fight income inequality, and that the just thing to do is to work to make our society more fair. Below are some of my remarks to Liberty from the video above, but I think it is important to share them with you here as well so that you can share with others how I approach these issues.

I am far, far from a perfect human being, but I am motivated by a vision which exists in all of the great religions – Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and others – and which is so beautifully and clearly stated in Matthew 7:12. “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the prophets.” The Golden Rule. Do to others what you would have them do to you. Not very complicated.

I told the crowd at Liberty University that I understand that issues such as abortion and gay marriage are very important to them, and that we disagree on those issues. I get that. But there are other issues out there that are of enormous consequence to our country and the world and that maybe, just maybe, we don’t disagree on them. And maybe, just maybe, we can work together in trying to resolve them.

Amos 5:24, “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

Justice. Treating others the way we would like to be treated. Treating all people with dignity and respect.

It would, I think, be hard for anyone in that room where I spoke to make the case that the United States today is a “just” society or anything resembling a just society.

In America today there is massive injustice in terms of income and wealth inequality. Injustice is rampant. We live in the wealthiest country in the history of the world but most Americans don’t know that because almost all of that wealth and income is going to the top one percent. We are living at a time where a handful of people have wealth beyond comprehension – huge yachts, jet planes, tens of billions of dollars, more money than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes. But at the same time, millions of people are struggling to feed their families or put a roof over their heads or find the money to go to a doctor.

When we talk about morality and when we talk about justice, we have to understand that there is no justice when the top one-tenth of one percent own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. There is no justice when all over this country people are working long hours for abysmally low wages, $7.25 an hour or $8 an hour, while 58 percent of all new income being created today goes to the top one percent.

There is no justice when, in recent years, we have seen a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires while, at the same time, the United States has the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. How can we talk about morality when we turn our backs on the children of this country? Twenty percent of the children in this country live in poverty and that includes 40 percent of African American children. There is no justice when, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, children in our country go to bed hungry.

There is no justice when the 15 wealthiest people in this country saw their wealth increase by $170 billion dollars in the last two years. That is more wealth, acquired in a two-year period, than is owned by the bottom 130 million Americans. And while the very rich become much richer, millions of families have no savings at all and struggle every week just to stay alive economically, and the elderly and disabled wonder how they stay warm in the winter. That is not justice. That is a rigged economy designed by the wealthiest people in this country to benefit the wealthiest people in this country at the expense of everyone else.

There is no justice when thousands of people in America die each year because they don’t have health insurance and don’t get to a doctor when they should, or when elderly people are forced to choose between food or medicine because our citizens pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. That is not justice. That is not morality. That is simply an indication that we are the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care for all as a right.

There is no justice when low-income and working-class mothers are forced to separate from their babies one or two weeks after birth and go back to work because we are the only major country on earth that does not have a paid family and medical leave policy. That is not justice. That is an attack on family values that everyone should be appalled at.

There is no justice in our country when youth unemployment exists at tragic levels – with 51 percent of African American high school kids unemployed or underemployed. No. We apparently do not have the funds to provide jobs or educational opportunities for our young people but we sure do have the money to throw them into jails. Today, the United States has more people in jail than any other country on earth, and many are serving time in inhumane conditions. That is not justice. That is the destruction of human life.

I am not a theologian or an expert on the Bible or a Catholic. I am just a U.S. senator from the small state of Vermont. But I agree with Pope Francis when he says: “The current financial crisis… originated in a profound human crisis: the denial of the primacy of the human person! We have created new idols. The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose.”

He also states: “There is a need for financial reform along ethical lines that would produce in its turn an economic reform to benefit everyone. Money has to serve, not to rule.”

In his view, and I agree with him, we are living in a nation and in a world which worships the acquisition of money and great wealth, but which turns its back on those in need. And that must end. We need to move toward an economy which works for all, and not just the few.

Throughout human history there has been endless discussion and debate about the meaning of justice and the meaning of morality. I hope that by getting out of my comfort zone and speaking with the students at Liberty University that I can be a part of a dialogue with people who might not agree with us. I hope that some of them conclude that if we strive toward morality and toward justice, that it is imperative that we have the courage to stand with the poor and working people of our country.

In solidarity,
Bernie Sanders

A Video of the speech

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Kindred Spirits

Posted on September 18, 2015 by jenny

At the end of August I went to a gathering at Rowe Camp and Conference Center of Kindred Spirits. I decided to go because it was the last of the three weeks my therapist had been away, and I was having a hard time, especially being alone. It appealed to me because of it’s emphasis on recovery and authentic expression of feelings.

“With its roots in the 12-step recovery movement, Kindred Spirits encourages authentic expression of feelings and a commitment to balance tears with laughter as we awaken our hearts and move into our wholeness.” I signed up, thinking that at least I wouldn’t be alone and meals would be provided. The fact that those two things were so important to me is because my trauma was caused by being left alone too long and too often, and because my cries for food were rarely answered.

I visited my brother Jack, a recovering alcoholic (I think he has four years sobriety by now, maybe even more!) at his home in Camden, Maine. He took me to some AA meetings and I was struck by their liveliness, and the way people were willing to tell the truth about their lives. I had been going to an Al-Anon group in Littleton, but it had been unsatisfying. Too few people, and the same ones dominated the conversation telling the same stories. I told Jack, and he said “anyone who comes to AA has admitted they were powerless. After that there’s no point in not telling the truth.”

So I went to the camp. It was totally completely wonderful. I was neither depressed nor terrified at all during it. I knew that if I got depressed I could go to someone and talk about it. I think because I felt so safe, I wasn’t vulnerable to negative feelings.

I thought it was well designed for a newcomer because we had “family group” every morning for two hours. This provided a group of people that I got to know intimately. We got to share, first as pairs where one person would talk for five minutes, while the other listened, and then switch roles. Then there was an opportunity for each person in the group to share what was up for them that day. So I was immediately provided with a number of people I felt at home with.

In the afternoon there were “life-shops” available, some at 2:00, some at 4:00, and some that took the whole afternoon. I went to one on Grief and Loss, one on Soul: asking your soul a question, One on Conscious Living and Wise Aging, and one on Black Lives Matter. They were all healing and nourishing and inspiring.

In the evening there was dancing, which I didn’t spend much time at because I need to get to sleep at a reasonable hour, the “Candle Connection” a ceremony held in the Chapel which I found very moving, the “Talent Optional Show” which I planned to leave early but couldn’t. It was too funny and moving.

I’m so glad I went and am very likely to go again next year.

From my journal “Things to be grateful for today: the chance in Grief group to talk about the loss of what I never had. Good food. Having people around so I haven’t felt lonely or depressed or terrified.”

Overheard: “It’s hard to be grateful for a growth experience.”

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Process Toward Feeling OK Just as I Am

Posted on August 31, 2015 by jenny

Friday, August 21

I went in to Karen feeling lost. I said “I don’t know what to do with my life” and saw it stretching grey before me. Karen was very fierce “Your dancing, your art, your writing…” She said I had been forced to be hypervigilant as a child, and it was still there, built into my cells and nervous system. That’s why I’m constantly looking to see if things are OK, to see if something’s gone wrong, to see if something’s getting better. She said I needed to stop evaluating, needed to stop comparing things to the past. That I needed to get that I was OK in the present moment. At one point, while I was seeing myself as defective and discouraged, she said “It’s not your fault.” Of course! I’m blaming myself for being discouraged as though it were my fault. That helped. So I’ve started telling myself “I’m OK, just as I am, in this moment.” I said it all the way home, and all through the dancing.

I came out of Karen’s office feeling like just as I was, I was doing the Will of God. I heard a huge, quiet, resounding “yes.” Maybe I have grandiose expectations for what “doing the will of God” would look like. On the “days of grace” I didn’t do anything different, I just felt OK with how I was, and accepted everything that happened. They felt magical at the time, they were truly “grace,” not something I made happen. I accept that I can’t make it happen again. I see that my practice: of being in the present as best I can, and accepting everything as best I can, whether or not I feel good about it, or even OK or content, is what I am called to do. “We are not called to be successful but to be faithful.” When I feel discouraged or depressed or despairing, I can do my best to accept it.

I see that I’ve given up healing — “all better now” — as a goal. That has left me bereft, as I felt bereft when I saw that my motive for writing was “to prove that I deserve to live.” So I’ve been puzzling over whether to keep seeing Erica if I’m no longer trying to heal. But I can’t imagine stopping. I love her. The work we’re doing together is meaningful even if it never gets anywhere. Besides, I can’t not do it, just as I couldn’t stop writing.

The song in my head is “And he will raise you up on eagle’s wings, bear you on the breath of dawn, make you to shine like the sun, and hold you in the palm of his hands.”

Saturday, August 22

I visited Barbara and we talked about “attachment.” Barbara brought up the idea that one could be attached to depression. That scared me. I think of how hard I’ve worked, and how the “days of grace” don’t last. I remember my father saying “You just want to be miserable.” The idea that I go back to it because it’s comfortable. I don’t know what to do with this. I realize as I’m writing this that I don’t find depression comfortable, I find the days of grace comfortable.

I am profoundly discouraged. I look at all the clutter I want to get rid of. It seems like an impossible task but I’ve been able to chip away at it with Christia’s help. I guess that’s the best I can do. Keep chipping away. Be in the present as best I can. Try to accept whatever comes.

Sunday, August 23

Feeling OK this morning. Just as I am, I’m OK right now. Very grateful for hot tea. Reading Richard Rohr on the twelve steps (I’m taking the book with me to Rowe) and I had a sudden flash of something — it felt like an enormous liberation — it was something about how God loved my faults as well as my strengths — but that doesn’t verbalize it adequately. Maybe it was an experience of God loving all of me. Gives me hope to keep going.

Later in the day:

Hope. From the momentary flash of god’s love even though I’m not perfect, and also, even though I’ve given up the goal of healing — I’ll always be wounded, just as an alcoholic is always an alcoholic — but I can practice being in the present, and accepting what comes my way.

Did I say that I realized that since all my prayers to God to use me, to guide me to do his/her/its/their will, have brought no response, other than the occasional “You’re doing it now,” — all this had left me disappointed, because unconsciously I had the expectation that “doing god’s will” would look a lot bigger than that. I told Barbara “That’s ego.” I’m glad, and a bit amused, to see this.

Monday, August 24

(At Rowe for Kindred Spirits)

I’m seeing that my goal of “getting healthy” and “having a life,” was arrogant and I need to let it go. The days of grace were just that, gifts that I hadn’t earned and couldn’t make happen.

To be grateful for today: speaking my truth in Grief Group. Good food. Glad to have people around so I haven’t felt lonely or depressed or anxious.

“Humbly asked God…” I am humble when I ask God to “bless and keep” Mocha, Lynelle, Daria, etc. I know it might not turn out the way I want it to. But I haven’t asked for healing for myself, I’ve been trying to get there by my own hard work.

Tuesday, August 25

Question to ask of soul, turned into a dialogue. Is what I am doing now what I should be doing? Is the way I am living helping me open to grace? It is not what you do in the physical realm, but how you do it that opens to grace. Let go of the outcome.

Walking outside, looking for objects that might be my soul talking to me. The message I got was that I could totally trust my inner knowing — of what to take, what not to take even tho it drew my eyes, when to stop. I made a small grouping of things at the north end of the table.

How I allow myself to be guided by Inner Voice will open me to grace.

Wednesday, August 26

I was 73 years old yesterday. Did not confess to the others or sit at the birthday table. My best gift: that Inner Voice and Divine Process are one. And that my wounds are my joy because they were the source of the good energy I brought into the world. My life is not two lives: the wounded one struggling, the creative one bursting out when she can, but one life: the creative one transforms the wounding.

In family group I shared about how we can choose what to do with our wounds. We can hurt others, or we can work to process our wounds. The work is long and hard. We may never heal the wounds completely, but through the process of working with them, we can create much beauty, good energy, healing and meaning.

Added later (September 1) after some thought and a conversation. I’m not going to give up working on healing, I am giving up the goal of healing completely (“all better now”). I think I had the assumption that I couldn’t “have a life” without healing completely. No. I have a life right now, and I will continue to work on healing.

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Fear

Posted on August 20, 2015 by jenny

July 18

Erica said I needed to reassure the baby that it was OK to be scared, but I also needed to contact the ones who don’t want to be scared. One of those is upset because she doesn’t know if her fear drove Mom away, and what she can do to get her back. I realized while driving to Cory’s that I had imagined two parts that didn’t want to feel fear. Talking to Cory about the fear I said it’s not like ordinary fear, it’s frozen. Thinking about it more, I see that fear is “overcoupled” with helplessness. The second one doesn’t want to feel helpless. So I’ve been talking to all three of them.

“It’s OK to be scared. You have good reason to be scared, but what happened was in the past. It can’t happen again, I am here and I’m not going to leave you. I know I disconnect at times, but it’s my intention to always be here for you.”

“I know you don’t want to feel fear. You were protecting me. I couldn’t afford to feel back then. You were trying desperately to understand what made mother go away, and what would bring her back. Dear Baby Jenny, you had nothing to do with it. Whether you cried or didn’t cry, whether you were scared or angry, it wasn’t about you. Your mother was an alcoholic and she was focussed on herself, on what she needed, not on what you needed. You were a beautiful, intelligent, creative child, and she had absolutely no ability to be a mother, to pay attention to you instead of herself. Thank you for protecting me. You don’t have to worry about trying to get Mom to come back. I’m here now and I will pay attention to your needs.”

“You don’t want to be afraid because it makes you feel helpless. This is the result of trauma. Normally fear makes you want to run away or back off, but for you, fear immobilizes you. Being both terrified and helpless is one of the most horrible feelings a person can feel. Of course you don’t want to feel it.”

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To Write Love On Her Arms

Posted on August 14, 2015 by jenny

Friday, August 14

I went to the Co-op in Montpelier hoping to get blueberries. No blueberries! what a disappointment! And a little scary. What happened to the blueberry crop?

I was on my way to see my therapist Karen. I started feeling sad about the middle of the day. I’d been feeling like I needed to cry most of the day but the tears didn’t come. I kept having little flashes of ordinary things in the past which made me feel very sad. When I got to Karen I said my life had been wasted. That having a few moments of how good it could be allowed me to see how bad it had been for most of my life, that my whole life had been a waste. Karen said that wasn’t true. If I made a time line of my experiences with dance it would be different. (Reminds me of the book I wanted to write by collecting pieces from my journals. Three characters, the artist, the shaman, and the wounded one. Each had written a journal, but when you put them together by date, it is only one journal.) Isn’t that a better description of my life? I told Karen about going to Leah’s performance piece, and how she said she had been in my earliest writing group at Lynn Thorp’s house. Of course Journey into Courage was also part of her inspiration. She has been going on, encouraging people to write the truth about their lives, and then speaking it from the stage. So many lives have been changed — including Leah’s — and changed by her work. Some of the inspiration for her work was me. Changing lives one by one. I think of Meaghan and Cathy Jay and the woman at Kripalu who said my dancing had changed her life. Laney and the gift of blue stone bookends. Mary Ellen said I had changed her life. I remember the people who would come up to me and say when you said such-and-such it really meant a lot to me. I would not remember saying “such-and-such” but would recognize it as something I had said lots of times. Something so natural to me that it didn’t seem to me like anything much. I realized that I help people more by speaking my truth than I do when I try to help. But of course I forget that I’ve probably changed lots of lives without realizing it. Only if I get the feedback do I know about it, and that’s probably rare. Angela saying of my talking about Neskaya to her therapy group: “You are outside all the boxes those people live in.” Karen helped me make a start on these good memories and it made me feel better. I woke up this morning thinking about Ninalu and Shaking the Tree (dances I can put in my program for Sunday) and that felt better too. I’m feeling concerned about the importance of keeping positive memories in my mind.

With Karen I started listing all the things that I find so painful: the Veterans with PTSD who kill themselves or are in homeless shelters, the horrible numbers of women who are raped every day, children who are starving because they are refugees from war… Karen said firmly “What are you doing? what are you trying to prove?” I said I need to grieve about these things, but it also made me stop and see that I was leading myself down a path into depression. I also told her stories from my past — walking the basement corridors at Kripalu at 2AM because I couldn’t sleep, etc. I think that I was trying to prove that my life was very unhappy, but also needing to see that I am in fact better then I was then. All my hard work has accomplished something.

I was wearing the bracelet that said “TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS,” so I told her about the semi-colon tattoo and TWLOHA. There’s somebody else changing lives. Upworthy posted a piece about the semi-colon tattoo. It stands for people who support people with mental illness. There were stories of 9 individual people. The one who moved me the most was a young woman who cut herself. She had flowers, a semi-colon, and Love tattooed on her arm to hide the scars. She said TWLOHA had helped her so I went to the site. They offered a book and a DVD about a young woman struggling with addictions and cutting herself.

I ordered both the book and the DVD. When it came they had also sent me a poster and a bracelet. I put the poster up on my collage bulletin board. It has a big picture of Green Tara in the center, and meaningful cards posted around it. Somewhat like a refrigerator door. I watched the movie and was overwhelmed by it. It was based on the real life of Renee, who struggled with addiction and self-injury. A group of friends, also in recovery, helped her get off drugs so she could check into a detox center. One point of the movie is the necessity of help from friends and of telling the truth. Renée’s friend Jamie Tworkowski wrote Renée’s story and started a global movement. Its purpose is to help people who struggle with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicidal thoughts. It was a huge help to me, because it tells me I’m not alone, and I wear the bracelet for support.

It’s true that I’ve never been addicted. At one time in my life I was drinking a lot (a six-pack of beer in a day) but it just made me feel sick. I don’t have the physiology of an alcoholic. But I did cut myself (the story I told in Journey into Courage) and I did think a lot about suicide. One thing that stopped me from actually killing myself, was sitting with a few friends, around Halloween, and they were telling ghost stories. Suddenly the horrible thought came to me that I could kill myself and find myself floating around, still in terrible pain, and without a body to help me change things. I figured there was a 50-50 chance of life after death, and I didn’t want to suffer unending pain. But I still have days when I wish I were dead. Sometimes a little voice pops up & says “You don’t want to die, you want a life that works.” Other times, death just looks like a relief.

With Karen’s help I started remembering good stories of things I had done. I saw how changing the world by changing people one-by-one is the only way to do it. It doesn’t help to spend time worrying about all the bad things that are happening. “If one by one is good enough for God, it’s good enough for me.” Dr. Fried, in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,” p18.

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Living with PTSD

Posted on July 23, 2015 by jenny

The original title of this blog was “Living with PTSD.” A friend suggested I change it to “Healing from PTSD,” which is certainly more affirming. Yes, it’s true that I have healed a lot. Unfortunately, the result of that healing is not that I can do my life with any enjoyment — which is all I ask, I don’t want to live a bigger life or do exciting things, I would be happy with the life I have if it weren’t for PTSD — what healing allows me to do is descend into deeper layers of the pain.

Bessel Van Der Kolk, along with some other top researchers/practitioners in the field of PTSD, tried to have a description of a different version put in the DSM (whatever that means, I know it has to do with the “official” description of a diagnosis) for people who had been traumatized very early in their lives. The idea was to have a description of the traumatic developmental disorder that results when someone is traumatized before their brain and nervous system has a chance to develop. That’s what happened to me, which is why I’m having to navigate in this very confusing non-verbal realm, and finding it very heard to do “ordinary things” that let me get through the day. Trying to do more difficult things without support is too difficult — which is why I had my friend Lynelle sit with me while I do the Vitacost order.

I’m not sure that the journal entry really gives a sense of what it’s like. Everything feels like a chore, like walking through concrete, and then I have to stop for a while. Then do the next thing. It just feels so much harder than usual.

Tuesday’s journal entry:

Woke up with an ache in my heart. Yesterday was really hard. In the morning I went to Neskaya to help Kayla put together the playlist for the first night of camp. We did that, then she worked on putting it in order and marking with stars for who should teach it. I began to feel uncomfortable but I hung in there to support Kayla. Finally I was able to leave and go home and hide.

I came home and collapsed. Played Solitaire. I must have read, I don’t think I was capable of typing journal. Managed lunch.

Forgot. Before I went to Neskaya I did a big load of dishes. I had run out of spoons & bowls, so I just washed those and left the rest.

Lynelle wanted me to pick her up at FAST at 2:00, so after lunch I took Mocha up to upper GG. It was hot so we just went to the first fir gate — about 25 minutes round trip. When we got back, I followed Lynelle to FAST & brought her home. Rested for a bit and then did a dump run. Then another rest, then Lynelle & I did the Vitacost order. Another break, then I took her to FAST to get her car. I had planned to go on to the Co-op, but realized it was too much so I waited almost 2 hours before I went out. Got what I needed, came home. After a bit I cooked supper.

Paying attention to my body, I noticed that I felt a lot of tension down the front of my chest and up into my jawbone. My teeth chattered all the way to the Co-op and back. I don’t feel frightened, just a kind of exhaustion of the will, everything is a chore and then I have to rest. “Resting” doesn’t refresh or nourish me, it just gives me a break from my life. Going through my usual routines is even hard because it isn’t automatic the way it used to be, I could just do whatever without thinking, now I have to think what is the next thing.

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Life that was Stolen Before it was Lived

Posted on July 20, 2015 by jenny

I found this poem on rereading Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Untie the Strong Woman. It’s in a chapter on abortion, in particular the grief of someone who has an abortion who hasn’t been free enough or supported enough to mourn. Reading it this time, I resonated with the line

If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.

I too was poisoned at the beginning. I too live a life that is no life. Today is difficult because I am experiencing a flashback to what it was like for me as a baby. I feel bereft, alone, there is no one here with warmth, I’m having a lot of trouble doing “grown-up” things like washing the dishes. I worry about how I will do the next thing that has to be done. I don’t exactly feel afraid, I feel lost, lost, lost.

how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

THE MOTHER, BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?—
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.