{"id":199,"date":"2010-03-17T15:58:20","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T19:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=199"},"modified":"2012-03-22T20:02:13","modified_gmt":"2012-03-23T00:02:13","slug":"the-tough-little-drip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=199","title":{"rendered":"The Tough Little Drip"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Tough Little Drip that Just Wouldn\u2019t Quit\u201d
\nThis part of myself appeared at a woman\u2019s retreat in Essex, Mass.\u00a0 The retreat was called \u201cWoman\u2019s Way\u201d and one of the techniques we were taught was \u201cPercept Language\u201d \u2014 mostly for use with dreams, but it could be used other times as well.\u00a0 In percept, I would speak of myself in the first person and the present tense.\u00a0 Other people, objects and adjectives always had \u201cpart of me\u201d added to them. So, if I dreamed of a big black dog, I would describe it as the big-part-of-me, black-part-of-me, dog-part of-me.\u00a0 Sometimes doing this would reveal unexpected truths.\u00a0 Out walking one day, I was thinking of my grandmother, and saw a wing nut in the road.\u00a0 I wondered if it represented the winged part of me, nutty part of me, grandmother part of me.\u00a0 It was true that Granny, with her flights of fancy and somewhat tenuous hold on reality, could be described as both winged and nutty.
\nAt the Retreat, my bedroom was on the first floor and stuck out to the side of the building.\u00a0 It was January and as the weather alternately froze and thawed, a big ice dam built up on the roof which, one night, began to drip, keeping me awake.\u00a0 I threw a towel on the floor, but then it went thud, thud.\u00a0 I was very angry and upset about it keeping me awake.\u00a0 In desperation I turned to percept language: \u201cI anger myself with the tough part-of-me little-part-of-me drip-part-of-me that just won\u2019t quit-part of-me….\u201d and suddenly saw a vision of this tough little kid plodding doggedly through a blizzard, soldiering on through severe depression, and I felt a grateful surge of heart \u2014 \u201c…and I LOVE her.\u201d She was the one who kept me going, through mind-numbing depression and cold frozen terror.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t be alive today if it hadn\u2019t been for her.\u00a0 I made a pottery piece of her to go on a project of a map of my life.
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nJournal entry from Jan 11, 1994
\nI tried to go to bed, but the drip was keeping me awake.\u00a0 I piled on towels, and felt a hit of wry admiration at its stubborn persistance, outflanking me at every move.\u00a0 I put in my ear plugs, did my breathing, composed myself for sleep…\u00a0 Drip! Drip!\u00a0 OK, I said, I’ll have to deal with it:\u00a0 “I’m irritating myself with that tough part of me little part of me drip part of me that just won’t quit part of me \u2014 and I LOVE her!” and my relationship to the drip changed completely and I stopped irritating myself with it.\u00a0 Yes, that tough stubborn little drip who just wouldn’t quit, despite all the efforts to muffle her, who just kept going until she found her tribe, the people who could welcome her.\u00a0 And then of course I kept myself awake with excitement with these new discoveries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Tough Little Drip that Just Wouldn\u2019t Quit\u201d This part of myself appeared at a woman\u2019s retreat in Essex, Mass.\u00a0 The retreat was called \u201cWoman\u2019s Way\u201d and one of the techniques we were taught was \u201cPercept Language\u201d \u2014 mostly for … 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":[5,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healing","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199","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=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}