I talked to my sister recently and asked if she was interested in the \u201coccupy\u201d movement.\u00a0 She said \u201cIt\u2019s just a bunch of young people who want to make trouble.\u201d\u00a0 I said actually there were older people too, and real conversations were going on.\u00a0 I may even have said that they were creating a new kind of community.\u00a0 She focused on all the garbage left in the park.\u00a0 I finally said \u201cLet\u2019s talk about something else.\u201d
\nI thought I was OK.\u00a0 Even though I had been tired all day, I was able to teach an evening of dance.\u00a0 But the next morning I woke up depressed, barely able to function.\u00a0 Eleanor came in and told me her latest tale of bureaucratic bungling, and then asked how I was.\u00a0 I said depressed and needing to cry (crying will often relieve the feelings, even when I don\u2019t know what they\u2019re about.)\u00a0 She said \u201cCan I help you cry?\u201d but I was already crying.\u00a0 First I said I didn\u2019t know what it was about.\u00a0 Then I said maybe it was disappointment because I had hoped to see Cory that morning and had been unable to get ahold of her.\u00a0 That kind of disappointment will often cast me down.\u00a0 Then I told her about my sister invalidating my excitement about the \u201cOccupy\u201d movement, and she said \u201cOh, Jenny, that\u2019s BIG.\u201d\u00a0 I cried some more, then gave her a hug.<\/p>\n
Looking back now, I see that the person who spoke so intelligently and eloquently to the reporter with the video camera at Occupy Littleton<\/a> on Saturday, that person just disappeared when it came in contact with the \u201cfamily field.\u201d\u00a0 The \u201cfamily field\u201d is like a magnetic field.\u00a0 It\u2019s what I call my internalized parents, a very particular energy that shuts me down, especially when I\u2019m being enthusiastic about something I care about.\u00a0 It\u2019s something that I\u2019ve never met from my sister \u2014 I know she loves me and she\u2019s been a great support in the past.\u00a0 But the \u201cfamily field\u201d is still inside me, and can be triggered, especially by my siblings.<\/p>\n I\u2019m always sad to see how easily I can be struck down into depression by a relatively trivial event.\u00a0 At least I now know what to do.\u00a0 First I called my most politically aware friend, but only got a machine so I hung up.\u00a0 When another call failed to connect with a living person, I went to the computer and found Ellen Kennedy\u2019s video of dancing to \u201cAmerican Prayer\u201d<\/a> as part of \u201cOccupy Boston.\u201d\u00a0 It has become very meaningful to me over the past weeks, but somehow it didn\u2019t work. I talked to my sister recently and asked if she was interested in the \u201coccupy\u201d movement.\u00a0 She said \u201cIt\u2019s just a bunch of young people who want to make trouble.\u201d\u00a0 I said actually there were older people too, and real … Continue reading
\nSo I went to Marianne Williamson\u2019s speech at a church in Berkeley<\/a>.\u00a0 I had already watched about 30 minutes of it, so I moved the cursor to start halfway through.\u00a0 I found her enormously helpful.\u00a0 She speaks intelligently about politics, but always in the context of Spirit.\u00a0 She reminds us of our history, and of the other movements: the Abolitionists, the Suffragettes, the Civil Rights movement.\u00a0 I had to stop listening because it was time to leave for Montpelier.\u00a0 I felt much better, but also very strange, almost like I\u2019d been called out of one world and into another.\u00a0 In some ways that\u2019s true, I had been submerged in the world of a traumatized infant and had shifted to the world of an intelligent, compassionate, and aware adult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"