(At Kripalu with Jack Kornfield, December 2008)
\nAt least I slept.\u00a0 Feeling totally bleak this morning.\u00a0 It was so painful yesterday, not to be able to feel any softening in my heart as I heard people\u2019s stories of compassion, not to be able to think of anything good that I had done that brings the body change that means truth.\u00a0 So my story is that I\u2019m a bad person, that I have no natural compassion, that I\u2019m a weakling and a coward that I can\u2019t just shift this by my own efforts.\u00a0 Can I have some compassion for this poor woman who is so hard on herself, and who believes such a cruel story?
\nThat damn story is not true.\u00a0 I\u2019m not incapable of compassion but my unhealed wounds are making it impossible to feel right now.\u00a0 This is clinical depression rooted in post-traumatic stress, it is something that happened to me, not who I am or what I choose.
\nI just don\u2019t have enough support, inner and outer.\u00a0 I make it be that if I had lived better or more wisely I could have a network of friends to support me…\u00a0 But that\u2019s wrong and cruel.\u00a0 I\u2019ve spent my life struggling with depression and terror.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t had the time or the energy or the confidence or the emotional health to make friends, and too many people who might have been friends have said unintentionally cruel things to me, because they have no idea how trauma affects people.<\/p>\n
The woman in the dorm, when I mentioned depression, said she knew about that, gave me a hug.\u00a0 Then she said she was a bad person, a failure, she had many regrets, and my heart opened and I hugged her.\u00a0 So even in the dead stoniness of depression my heart can still open in the face of someone else\u2019s pain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(At Kripalu with Jack Kornfield, December 2008) At least I slept.\u00a0 Feeling totally bleak this morning.\u00a0 It was so painful yesterday, not to be able to feel any softening in my heart as I heard people\u2019s stories of compassion, not … Continue reading