{"id":1865,"date":"2011-09-13T08:38:59","date_gmt":"2011-09-13T12:38:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=1865"},"modified":"2011-12-26T10:23:27","modified_gmt":"2011-12-26T15:23:27","slug":"guidance-for-scared-sad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=1865","title":{"rendered":"Guidance for Scared & Sad"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Written in October 2003)
\nDear Spirits, please help me.\u00a0 I\u2019m so scared and sad.
\nDear Jenny, the sadness is grief for losses of the past, and you are afraid it will never change.\u00a0 Dear one, it changes all the time.\u00a0 Relax.\u00a0 We love you and we are gathered around you right now.\u00a0 It\u2019s good to move with your fear and sadness, and it\u2019s also OK to do nothing.\u00a0 This is a long journey, a process, and what\u2019s most important is the compassion you are able to bring to yourself.\u00a0 Try to observe yourself without judgement.\u00a0 We see a woman who is sad and scared, and who is making herself wrong for being this way.\u00a0 But this is just how it is right now.\u00a0 Of course you don\u2019t want to feel like this, it is painful, and the stuck quality triggers panic and helplessness.\u00a0 Remember that you can \u201cdo\u201d stuck \u2014 but we see that this idea is not helpful right now.\u00a0 \u201cStuck\u201d is being very scary for you.\u00a0 You are like that baby who is down in the well \u2014 a process is in motion to bring you out of it, and it\u2019s OK to wait with patience.\u00a0 There, there, dear, we are so sorry you are having such a hard time.<\/em><\/p>\n

Everything feels impossible right now.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what to do.\u00a0 It\u2019s OK to not know what to do. It\u2019s OK to wait in the place of not knowing.
\nThere is a process in motion.
\nMy intent is to heal by facing into my fear, grief, and despair,
\nand to be open to what they have to teach me.<\/p>\n

Feeling how torn apart, or double-bound, I am by the two voices\/energies.\u00a0 1) I want to face into my feelings and really feel them, I am willing to do this, willing to feel the pain, I offer myself to this process.\u00a0\u00a0 2) I wouldn\u2019t be depressed if I had something to do so I should just keep busy, there\u2019s plenty of housework, etc.
\nWell there\u2019s certainly more energy for choice 1.\u00a0 When I think about making myself do laundry I just feel sick and weak and weighted with lethargy.\u00a0 But when I try to face into the pain I just feel helpless \u2014 the helplessness is so painful.\u00a0 I think of being a baby whose mother doesn\u2019t come.
\nBut how to be with the feelings?\u00a0 There must be women in Iraq feeling as hopeless and helpless as I do right now: facing another day of the struggle to find food for the children, to keep them warm, to keep them from running out into danger, trying not to think of the bomb that might fall or the machine gun that might rip through the village, grieving the deaths of loved ones, caught in the pain of not knowing what\u2019s happened to others, worrying about what kind of future there will be for my children…\u00a0\u00a0 Writing that seems to ease it \u2014 maybe I don\u2019t feel so alone with it.\u00a0 I suppose it\u2019s a little like tonglen \u2014 breathing in the world\u2019s sorrows.\u00a0 There must be women in New Hampshire \u2014 in Gorham where the mill closed, wives whose husbands have lost their jobs. Struggling to feed their family (on what? Welfare?) to keep the house clean, trying to stay cheerful, worrying about the refrigerator that\u2019s on its last legs \u2014 we can\u2019t buy a new one now \u2014 and how will we pay our fuel bills…\u00a0\u00a0 And the children feeling hopeless and frightened, facing another day of humiliation at school, another night of sexual abuse, coming home to find Mom unconscious on the couch, afraid that Dad will get violent again…\u00a0\u00a0 So much pain.\u00a0 And then all the people with chronic or fatal illnesses \u2014 the woman last night with chronic fatigue, Judy with her throat tumor, Lynelle struggling with her joint pains and her painful hands…\u00a0\u00a0 Then I think of Mom & Dad and their lonely deaths, Mom especially trapped in her pitiful isolation, and me and Dana, supposedly loving each other but feeling more and more distant as our lives diverged \u2014 and I want to scoop up all these people and cuddle them like frightened children and say \u201cEverything\u2019s going to be all right\u201d \u2014 but do I believe that?\u00a0 Where is the Ocean of Compassion?\u00a0 Are we all resting in the hands of god?\u00a0 I know this at some level even when I\u2019m feeling most despairing.\u00a0 I know that our pain-filled world is held within compassion.<\/p>\n

So then what is my despair about?\u00a0 It\u2019s about not knowing what to do.\u00a0 So if I sit here, with this pain in my heart, and I know compassion holds all of us so I don\u2019t have to do something about the pain right now \u2014 then what do I do next?
\nThe next thing is to make rice cream for breakfast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Written in October 2003) Dear Spirits, please help me.\u00a0 I\u2019m so scared and sad. Dear Jenny, the sadness is grief for losses of the past, and you are afraid it will never change.\u00a0 Dear one, it changes all the time.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depression","category-guidance","category-spirit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}