Getting on Medication

Posted on July 7, 2012 by jenny

Because my parents were alcoholics, I was very opposed to the idea of medication.  Even when I finally had a good experience of how an anti-depressant could work, I continued to try to get off it.  Every time it was a disaster.  My guiding spirits said “medication is neither good nor bad.  Your life needs to be workable.”  I have finally accepted that I will probably have to take my current dose of 3 medications for the rest of my life.

Before I got on medication, I was part of “Journey Into Courage”.  It was a tremendous boost for my emotional health.  A project with a group of women, who I had come to love, telling our truth from the stage, was a wonderful healing experience.  After touring for four years, Bess decided to make a documentary about how we created the performance piece and what it meant in our lives.  The showing of the documentary was the end of our performances.  I suddenly plunged into a bad depression.

(Here’s where Spirit enters the story)  I don’t usually read the newspaper, but I had a copy of the section of some Vermont paper which had us right on the front.  Needing to distract myself from how bad I felt, I started reading it all the way through.  There was an Ann Landers column (or maybe it was Dear Abby) in which someone asked her to remind readers that National Depression Screening Day was coming up in October.  I called the 800 number and was told that the nearest to me were in Concord NH and Norwich VT.  I came to the designated place in Norwich, filled out a questionnaire —  I had a little trouble with things like “Have your sleeping habits changed in the last six weeks?”  No, I’ve always had trouble sleeping.  But I filled it out, and went for my private session with a psychologist.  I expected to be told “What you have is moderate depression.  You should probably try medication.”  What he actually said was “You’re in our fourth category.  You’re in a severe depression.  You should get on medication immediately.”  I was dumbfounded.  I walked out thinking “If this is severe depression, I’ve been severely depressed my whole life.”  That gave my self-esteem such a boost that I was undepressed for a month.  But then I began to go downhill.  My therapist in Montpelier was a psychologist, but she asked around and gave me the name of someone at Dartmouth-Hitchcock.

I went to that psychiatrist and she prescribed Paxil.  I started taking it but began to be more and more terrified.  When I asked the doctor, she said “It will get better.”  But it didn’t.  I was experiencing terror through the roof.  On the fifth day I started hallucinating in the grocery store.  So I quit taking it.  Some friends who heard me on the phone with the doctor said I didn’t sound scared.  Well of course I was reporting on my condition from my objective scientist — sort of like the test pilot who’s saying altitude such and such, speed such and such, in a calm voice while his plane is plummeting toward the ground.  That awful experience led to the summer from hell in 1996.  I was prescribed a tranquillizer, but then of course became depressed again.

My friend Eleanor, who is an expert in emotional problems, said she thought my therapist in Montpelier wasn’t able to  help me, and she recommended I see Dr. Cynthia Rankin, a specialist in mood disorders.  The first day I walked into Dr. Rankin’s office, she took one look at me and said “I want you on medication IMMEDIATELY.”  She thought I was a bit too “tender” for her usual psychiatrist, so she found Char for me.  Char was a Nurse Practitioner who specialized in getting women on the right antidepressant.  Over the last year I had tried Zoloft, but it just put me to sleep.  I tried something else and realized I was too scared to take it for five days.  I thought “someone’s going to have to talk to me for the first three weeks or I’ll never be able to get on anything.”  God bless Char, she did talk to me on the phone everyday for the first three weeks.  When I told her about the Paxil episode, she said “You wanted to be un-depressed so badly you kept on taking it, even though it was making you so terrified.”  What a relief.  Most people asked why I hadn’t stopped taking it sooner.  She put me on Imipramine, she said it was the “gold standard” that it had been around so long they knew all about it. I think it took seven weeks before I started to feel better.  But when I really began to feel better, I was amazed.  Life was so EASY.  I had never felt like this before.

Because I had stopped typing my journal into the computer in 1995, that time in my life wasn’t available.  At one point I decided to read through the hand-written journals.  I was blown away to find that the doctor at Dartmouth-Hitchcock had diagnosed me as “Post-traumatic Stress before the age of three.”  At the time I didn’t believe her.  Though my parents were alcoholic, they had never been violent.  It was much later that I began to understand the nature of trauma.

Posted in Depression | Comments Off on Getting on Medication

July 1975: Long Buried Treasures

Posted on July 6, 2012 by jenny

(From Ritual Year, written in July 1975)
For tapestry class, I retrieved an old sketch pad from Biddeford Pool, and unearthed long buried treasures: the Hieroglyphic journey, mandalas from California, perhaps from the first return to Maine?  I wish I had dated them.  Also the loom I drew for the FREE YOU and the page about the apollo project.  Strange and deeply encouraging to find these fragments from my long-ago self, long buried and forgotten talents.  Some of the mandalas are really beautiful, I couldn’t see that then.

Wondering what is the significance of posting pieces written a long time ago, in a blog that’s about living with PTSD.  Like the entry “Long Buried Treasures” I’m finding things I wrote so long ago, while I was struggling with severe depression, which I didn’t know was “severe” because I had never known anything else.  I was also struggling with systemic yeast which had at least been diagnosed so I had some idea how to deal with it, and struggling with a serious, debilitating Phobia about the noise of local small planes.  Nobody around me, including me, had any idea of what I was really up against, so people were judging me for not being able to just “get past it.”  I was judging myself.  Sometime in this period (late 80’s to early 90’s) I read Ellen Bass’ The Courage to Heal, and found self-mutilation among the consequences of childhood sexual abuse.  That really helped me understand the seriousness of what I was dealing with.  So the entries in Ritual Year surprise me by their passion, color, and exuberance.  Something like the Truth Express.  It amazes me that someone damaged and disabled as much as I was, could produce these little bursts of creativity.

Posted in Ritual Year | Comments Off on July 1975: Long Buried Treasures

June 1992: The Tale of the Disguised Princess and the Ruby

Posted on July 5, 2012 by jenny

(This is one of my favorites.  Done in writers’ group in June 1992 while listening to gamelan music)

Balinese music conjures up a bazaar — silk saris and brass teapots and huge masks carved out of wood and painted brilliant colors.

What if there was a street market that sold magical wares?  Powders, potions and wands.  Crystal balls and tarot decks.  Cloaks of invisibility.  Seven league boots.  Magic animals that would talk to you, or transport you over an ocean or help you slip through the walls of a castle.  Charms for finding hidden objects: I have a sense of something very precious hidden in a box with an inlaid cover, black and gold and red.  The box is inside a chest carved with figures of demons and filled with blankets woven of wool from mountain goats.  The chest is in a room in a turret up a winding staircase, but the entrance to the staircase is a secret panel next to the fireplace.  To open the panel you need to know to press on the rose that’s second from the left in the carved swag of flowers.  To get into the room with the fireplace you have to be known to the people of the ruling class, and you have to be important enough to be invited to a party in this room.

Or else you could be a servant.  Servants come in to clean the room after the party is over, if you were dressed in drab nondescript clothing you might get left behind and no one would notice that instead of going back to the kitchen with the others you had pressed the second rose on the left and gone up the secret staircase to the tower room, found the carved chest, silenced the wailing demons with a word of power, plunged your hand deep under the blankets and brought out the inlaid box, opened it to find an enormous ruby set between a pair of gold wings and hung on a chain so you could put it around your neck.  Because of course you are not a servant but the disinherited princess of another country, and you have come here disguised as a servant in order to recover your ancient power.
With the ruby around your neck you do not need a cloak of invisibility, you can walk back through the castle and only those who have good will toward you will be able to see you, and they will not be able to speak of you to your enemies.  Or you could ascend to the topmost room of the tower.  Here are secret books filled with knowledge, written in ancient and forgotten languages.  The ruby gives you power to read the languages, and you choose the most important book, the one with a leather cover studded with jewels and a huge gold clasp holding it closed, and pages adorned with huge elaborate illuminated calligraphy — but after reading it for a while you realize that here is not the wisdom you are seeking.  So you look around at all the books, large and small, some bound in leather, some tattered and torn.  Which is the most important — there’s a sense of urgency now.  I can use the ruby to call a bird, one of the huge condors from the mountains, and he will carry me back to my home.  I can’t take all these books with me, but they represent the wisdom of the ages.

I realize that with the ruby I can call the animals and understand their language, I can tell friend from foe, I can travel safely through any city in the world — I can do something completely new!  What do I want with the wisdom of the ages.  I call the bird, and leave the tower.

Posted in Ritual Year | Comments Off on June 1992: The Tale of the Disguised Princess and the Ruby

July 1992: The Journal is a Safe Space

Posted on July 4, 2012 by jenny

(Another entry from Ritual Year, written July 1992)
Vision.  I always forget, when making visions, that the inner reality is much more important than the outer one.  In some ways it’s much easier to create a vision of a completed work of art, or an improvisational theater group, than to create a vision of being in charge of my life.  What would that look like?  How would that feel?  I’ve no idea, only that I imagine that I would feel more grounded, more relaxed, and not so frightened all the time, not always feeling like I’m doing something wrong.  I would feel like my life belongs to me, like I could do anything I want to with it — then I wonder if there’s anything in my life that I feel like that about: the car? the house?  But they mostly feel like “shoulds”, I should take care of them, keep them clean, etc, not like something I can “do what I want to” with.  But then I want to keep the car in shape so I can go where I want to, keeping up the house creates an environment that supports my inner life.  I suppose the trouble comes when I compare my housekeeping to some impossible, perfectionistic standard — the house is never as clean, or as well organized as I would like, but it’s also true that I’m not willing to spend the amount of time and energy it would take.  That feels OK to me when I know it’s my life, and not OK when I feel Mommy/Daddy’s cold judgemental eye looking over my shoulder.  One thing I do have in my life that I can “do what I want to” with is this journal.  Here I’ve created a space that is completely safe, where I can experiment, and play, and dive as deeply as I want to.  And I never feel the cold eye of Mommy/Daddy anymore, I think I used to but that’s faded away.  I occasionally feel the curious eye of a reader, that’s YOU dear friend, but mostly that makes me feel supported rather than criticized and leads me to be a little self-conscious about my language but otherwise doesn’t affect my writing.  This has happened over the last five years or so, since I’ve developed the rhythm of typing into the computer — that reader that I’m writing for, with the curious eye, is older and wiser and infinitely more merciful than I am now, she brings compassion and understanding to the events I’m now recording for her, she is myself, one year older.
So I’ve done it, here in the journal, and now I want that ease of creativity, that sense of recording the present and my process for an infinitely merciful witness, to extend to the rest of my life, so I can have the same feel about washing dishes, or dancing, or taking the car to have its oil changed, as I do about writing in here.

 

Posted in Journal, Ritual Year | Comments Off on July 1992: The Journal is a Safe Space

Ritual Year

Posted on July 3, 2012 by jenny

I’ve been going through “Ritual Year” and I like it.  I thought it was all negativity but it’s not.  I just read one about a therapy session with Karen.  A blood-soaked bundle holding the pieces of a childhood that had never come together.  Today I know that those fragments are the result of trauma, the pieces of an event I’ve never been able to integrate.  That’s so amazing!
I was looking for “Truth Express.”  It wasn’t by itself in the quotes folder.  It occurred to me that it might be in Ritual Year.  When I went to the folder, I saw that the documents had never been converted into Bean.  So I started that huge job.  I can only do one page at a time, so it takes a while, but also allows me to look at the book in some detail.  I copied “Truth Express” and “Ereshkigal” to post in the blog.  I posted The Journal is Center yesterday.  Now I’m reading through the printed version.  Somewhere it says “third version,” and there are marks of editing.  I need to compare the printed version with what I have in the computer.  There is a blank paper inserted in the last season (SUMMER) indicating where the editing stopped.  Shall I print out a new version?
The idea behind “Ritual Year” was to collect 365 pieces of writing and arrange them according to the days.  Many turn out to be in the correct month, but how I placed them was a pretty random process.  They are mostly collected from journal years 1987 – 1992.  Some of them are depressing, or maybe I should say reports of being depressed.  Some of them I like a lot.  It’s a little like the blog in that there isn’t a lot of continuity.  I’m not sure what I want to do with it, whether to try and “improve” it and print out another version, or just posting some of my favorites in the blog.  Well I’ll probably do that anyway.

Posted in Journal, Present Day, Ritual Year | Comments Off on Ritual Year

March 1976: The Journal is Center

Posted on July 2, 2012 by jenny

(from Ritual Year: written in March 1976)
Today I felt very depressed and sick.  The old fear came back, fear of the ringing phone, of the sun and wind outside.  I went looking for an escapist book, but could not find one.  So I decided to read my journal — have been toying with the idea of asking a friend to read it, but keep thinking it’s childish and valueless and stupid.  So I read the Mimi journal, Apollo’s book, everything typed up to the pages in Ondine.  It was staggering!  I have returned to the center of myself.  The insights in those pages!  The truths that I am now coming to believe completely that are expressed as intuitions even as far back as the Mimi diary.  The description of Don Quixote as the man trying to make the vision live in the world, and the recognition of MYSELF as the one I was talking about.
I used to find it discouraging that I had expressed things so long ago that I am still struggling to believe, to make real in the world.  Now I find it an incredible proof of my powerful intuition, which has always seen the cosmic truths, even when my intellectual and reasoning self couldn’t.  And a sudden strong sense of myself, not as a linear life in time, but as an expanding sphere, continually expanding on all fronts and continuously returning to center.  The journal is center, because it is the place where I come in touch with my “past” self, the effort of my life is not to write the journal but to learn how to read it.

For more information on my journal see page Journal Background

Posted in Journal, Ritual Year | Comments Off on March 1976: The Journal is Center

Somatic Experiencing

Posted on July 1, 2012 by jenny

(Written in January 2011)
It really helped to see Caryn.  I told her about how tired I’ve been feeling.  She said “How does that feel in your body?” Relaxed & heavy.  I told her I’d been doing stretches & the fold without the bolster.  She was delighted, says that’s major healing, especially how my right ankle is OK with lying flat.  She says my body is much softer.  I told her about the women in Enduring Lives, & St Teresa saying at first you have to dig — and I mimed digging — but eventually it begins to flow — and I made a gesture like bringing down rain.  I said I was angry and jealous that I hadn’t got to that point.  She said you’ve done a lot of digging.  I agreed.  Then she said it was the first time I’d make that gesture of bringing something down.  She said it was always coming down and all I had to do was let it in drop by drop.  I told her about the idea that when you were on your true path, synchronicities would help and support you on your way.  I reminded her of my experience of god and shells and asked “Do I need to let go of the slide show?” She thought I should call Anthony and see if there’s something I could do to help him get the tape converted to digital.  Then I said I wanted to work on my neck.  She asked how I spend most of my time.  Sitting on this couch with a slightly slumped posture.  She said it would be better if I could either find a way to sit up on the couch, or get up periodically to ease my body.  I’m sitting straighter now, tho not how it would be if I were on a cushion.  I’ve put the journal on the cushion to raise it up higher.  That helps some.  Ideally I could sit on a cushion on the floor and write on a low table.  The trouble is I like being near the fire, I like having the dog next to me, I like having the view of the patio.  I’ll work something out.  Caryn showed me how to roll & pour my head in a limited space with a folded blanket for my head.  I could do it in the loft after doing my stretches.
O yes, when Caryn talked about how I had worked so hard, & needed to rest from my labors, it occurred to me that maybe I needed to spend down time, integrating, before I’ll be ready to do the slide show.  In which case, the delay has been necessary.  Having that interpretation helped a lot, allowed me to accept the delay, and paradoxically I started to have more energy.  Though that was already happening on Sunday when I walked to Skogumchuk and danced Santiago.

Posted in Somatic Experiencing | Comments Off on Somatic Experiencing

June 1993: Ereshkigal

Posted on June 30, 2012 by jenny

(Written in June of 1993, in  Writers Group: a guided meditation, I can’t remember now if it was something I read out loud, or something that was on a tape.)
I was on a mountainside, by a stream, a view out over wide plains, very tall trees on the other side.  I follow the path over the shoulder of the mountain and come to a narrow rocky ravine.  The cave is between two bastions of rock, it’s hard to get to, and narrows quickly.  Soon I have to crawl, but I’m also aware of points of gold light, so though I feel a little claustrophobic I’m willing to stay there.  Raccoon comes to me in the darkness and leads me to a place where the cave gets wider, and is lit with an unearthly radiance.  The light is cool and bright, coming from every direction, not like daylight.  I see a bright figure on a petaled throne.  It is Inanna, she is quite beautiful and so bright that I can hardly see her.  She has smooth dark skin, like an Indian.  But when I ask if she is my guide, she takes my hand and leads me to Ereshkigal.  Ereshkigal I couldn’t see very well, she was dark and gnarled, I would say ugly, but I couldn’t see well enough to tell.
Why have you come to me at this time?  — So you will know the pain and rage of the buried sister.
What do you require of me?  — Honesty.
What more is required for me to become fully engaged with this process?  —Listen carefully.  I am not very articulate so I must stumble for words.  If it were a painting there would be a fine gold line dividing two enormous darknesses, like the cave that you entered.  You must go into the darkness to find the light.
No, Damn, I’m willing to listen, but this all sounds like the most godawful platitudes.  I know the pain and rage of the buried sister.  Surely there’s something more here, something I’m missing.  What do you really have to say to me?
—Something about the power of anger, how to use it correctly, how to burn up what should be burned.  You were angry at your friend today for whining.  Correct use, correct use.  “That’s what it costs” you said.  That’s what I say to you, that’s what it costs, that’s what it costs to live.  It’s hard to be yourself, to really be authentic, to stand for yourself against all the pressures telling you that you’re wrong, crazy, isolated, sinful, selfish.  Selfish, by god — yes I say be selfish, be authentic self.  Jesus didn’t die on the cross so you could be Jesus-clone, he died so you could be Jenny.  You must pay the price to be Jenny.  The price is poor health and lack of understanding from society, the price is that many people will not notice you, and many others will be threatened, still others will be jealous and try to tear you down.  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.    The price is self-doubt, and conflict, a struggle to keep your balance among the great spinning wheels, constant effort to see truly, rejection of easy answers.  The reward is the satisfaction of encountering truth: bone-hard, bone-deep.

Posted in Guidance, Journal, Ritual Year | Comments Off on June 1993: Ereshkigal

April 1992: Truth Express

Posted on June 28, 2012 by jenny

(I wrote this in a writing group I was facilitating in April of 1992)

I want to do a more focussed writing.  I’m sick of rambling.  Yet I don’t have any topic to write about.  I want to go for the jugular, reach deep, make words cut and flow.  and my arm hurts, cramping my style.  Need to write larger, looser.  and then run out of steam.  a topic, a topic, my kingdom for a topic!
Driving over I thought about the congestion in my upper chest, and wondered what it was that I am trying to discharge, and thought how my shadow is creative, lively, spontaneous, assertive, rambunctious, speaks up, speaks out, speaks the truth, demands the truth…  so perhaps it’s that uproarious rambunctious one who wants to get out.  Like the streams running down from snow melt, full of rocks and foam.
Rambunctious.  Full of rocks and foam.  I spit on your tidy tea table.  I spill out your house and flood through the windows with new life, brown and foaming.  outta my way, here I come — the truth express — listen up folks: this is the TRUTH.  You gotta let what’s inside you come out.  What I do is me, for this I came.  Do each day the best you can, true to yourself and true to the moment, and your life will take care of itself: it will have coherence, order, meaning, trajectory.  It will have a shape carved in time.  You don’t have to worry about that.  You don’t have to be perfect, or good, or slick, or successful, or convincing.  All you need to do is be true.

Posted in Healing, Journal, Ritual Year | Comments Off on April 1992: Truth Express

Summer Solstice at Stanstead Stone Circle

Posted on June 28, 2012 by jenny

We celebrated the Summer Solstice at Stanstead Stone Circle on Saturday, June 23
It was fabulous!  The circle was decorated with colorful things, a sun/moon, a sun, a banner of the chakras, a dragon, a hobby horse/unicorn, and colorful banners.  They also had strings of colorful plastic “prayer flags” with cut out designs.

The ceremony began with Julia calling the directions.  Anne Catherine repeated her words in French.  The first half (2 hours) was dances with recorded music.  I taught the Stivell An Dro (and wound them into a spiral around the center).  We danced An Dro Retourné, Maize, and Standing Stones among others.  I didn’t do all the dances, it was energy intensive to dance on grass.

At 5:30 we had supper.  In little groups on blankets, we ate and shared what we had brought.  After supper, the fire basket was brought into the center and a fire lighted.  Then we danced to live music which was just wonderful!!   We danced Dark Spiral, Winds on the Tor, La Bastringue, Shepherds’ Dance, and By a Quiet Stream among others.

The sky was AMAZING.  Puffs of cumulus at first white, with lower wispy grey clouds passing across.  Then the white turned to cream, to gold, to peach, and finally red.  In the west there was some cumulus with white edges, it really looked like another world beyond the edge.  One pile of grey clouds had a sort of red-grey mist under it.  I realized it was probably rain and worried until we could see that it was clearly passing us by.
The spirits of the directions were bid a fond farewell — in both English and French.

Posted in Circle Dance, Spirit | Comments Off on Summer Solstice at Stanstead Stone Circle