{"id":3479,"date":"2013-01-19T10:08:15","date_gmt":"2013-01-19T15:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=3479"},"modified":"2013-09-11T14:27:58","modified_gmt":"2013-09-11T18:27:58","slug":"break-the-chain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=3479","title":{"rendered":"Break the Chain!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been very excited about celebrating One Billion Rising<\/a> with a dance party at Neskaya<\/a>.\u00a0 Tena Clark wrote a song \u201cBreak the Chain\u201d and Debbie Allen choreographed a dance to it.\u00a0 There\u2019s a great video of people dancing<\/a> to the music, and more than one teaching video to learn how to do it.\u00a0 Yesterday I was watching it and found myself getting all excited.\u00a0 Partly it reminded me of Journey into Courage<\/a>, and the joy of giving those performances.\u00a0 Then somehow the excitement went over into fear.\u00a0 At first I was upset and angry at myself.\u00a0 Then I thought about Peter Levine\u2019s concept of \u201cover-coupled\u201d, of how two emotions can be so firmly welded together that you can\u2019t have one and not the other.<\/p>\n

I was able to be OK with the fear, and really glad that I was going to my friend Randi\u2019s for lunch.\u00a0 I knew she would be welcoming and safe.\u00a0 Driving up, blue sky & white snow, I thought about the book Beverly recommended, Difficult Mothers, by Terri Apter<\/a>.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been reading it, and now I thought of the effect of the envious mother who can\u2019t bear it when her child has a success.\u00a0 This creates a pattern of sabotaging successes, which I certainly have.\u00a0 I get sick or do something stupid, or crash in some way.\u00a0 I saw that my excitement in doing One Billion Rising was the sort of thing that would have produced a cold glare and \u201cDon\u2019t think you\u2019re so great.\u201d\u00a0 My fear was compounded by the low grade foundation anxiety that I had forgotten something important or done something wrong.\u00a0 So I played good mother to myself.\u00a0 I imagined hugging an upset little girl and telling her \u201cIt\u2019s OK, I forgive you your failures, and cheer your successes, and no matter what you do, I love you and I\u2019ll never leave you.\u201d\u00a0 The fear faded instantly.\u00a0\u00a0 Big surprise!\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t usually happen that quickly!<\/p>\n

Then I thought about how my relationship with Diane fell apart, and how she played my mother\u2019s role.\u00a0 I ask for help and she disappears, I show her an unpleasant truth (actually I sent her a link to the first video of One Billion Rising<\/a> which starts with women being abused in different cultures around the world, and then standing up out of it) and she responds coldly and dismissively.\u00a0 I realize how my long struggle with depression through the winter might have been rooted in that.\u00a0 I was only a little sad about losing Diane as a friend, because it was clear that if she couldn\u2019t handle me asking for help, and the reality of abuse, then there was no way we could have become the kind of friends I was hoping for.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t spend any time thinking about what I should have said instead, how I could make it OK, or ruminate on how stupid I had been, so I didn\u2019t think I was affected by it.\u00a0 But in fact, a very deep wound had been triggered.\u00a0 Now I can have compassion for myself for being depressed most of the last few months.<\/p>\n

Writing this down, and then posting it activated the fear again.\u00a0 I’m doing my best to bring compassion and comforting to it.\u00a0 And I remind the little girl “Mother is dead. She can’t hurt you any more.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been very excited about celebrating One Billion Rising with a dance party at Neskaya.\u00a0 Tena Clark wrote a song \u201cBreak the Chain\u201d and Debbie Allen choreographed a dance to it.\u00a0 There\u2019s a great video of people dancing to the … 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":[12,8,5,19,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-depression","category-healing","category-interesting-link","category-present-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479","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=3479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}