(Written in October 2005)<\/p>\n
This morning I woke up with an ache in my heart and realized I was angry with myself for not being beautiful.\u00a0 Then my heart went out to me, and that helped a lot.<\/p>\n
DAMMIT! Somewhere, at some time on the planet there must have been men who would appreciate me \u2014 who would appreciate my intelligence and my passion, and my woundedness, and how hard I\u2019ve worked to heal from those wounds.\u00a0 Surely there\u2019s a woman worth loving in there, one with value above a pretty face. and my anger and my pain and my ability to be present for someone else\u2019s pain.\u00a0 Surely that\u2019s worth something?<\/p>\n
Somatic Experiencing with Brad helped a lot.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t sure if I was even going to talk about the man who rejected me but it came up, with a lot of tears.\u00a0 At one point I became aware that my body \u2014 arms, thighs and butt \u2014 was making a container for the pain in my heart.\u00a0 That was comforting somehow.\u00a0 Then the image of the battlefield that appeared during \u201cRed Rain\u201d appeared again.\u00a0 Blackened earth, bombed out buildings, destroyed vehicles, corpses, a few lost people wandering around.\u00a0 Black sky overhead with a gleam of light near the horizon.\u00a0 Reminds me of the \u201cbombed out village\u201d I found in the work with Debbie.\u00a0 Brad asks if I can imagine someone there with me.\u00a0 I first imagine Mama Greene \u2014 but it doesn\u2019t work, she doesn\u2019t belong here, I can\u2019t make her appear.\u00a0 I sit alone with it for a bit and then suddenly remember Joanna Macy who is immediately there next to me.\u00a0 I tell Brad about the workshop, learning not to be afraid of despair, knowing that I would not change how I\u2019m living even if I knew there was no hope, because I can\u2019t live any other way.\u00a0 Brad says \u201cBecause it\u2019s coming from inside you.\u00a0 That\u2019s true beauty.\u201d I had said earlier how much it hurt that I wasn\u2019t beautiful, and a little about being angry at myself for not being more attractive.\u00a0 Now I realize that my life was wrecked before it even got started, part of the devastation Western Culture has inflicted on our planet and all of our psyches.\u00a0 \u00a0 That burned-out landscape is the collective psyche of Western Culture, the flip side of the slick advertising and the neon lights.\u00a0 I realize that I\u2019m not alone in my pain, that I\u2019m not alone because I\u2019m unattractive and worthless, I\u2019m alone because this is a bad time to be a woman looking for a male partner among the shell-shocked victims of the ongoing world war.\u00a0 That helps a lot.\u00a0 I tell Brad about the last line of the poem: \u201cHow dare I be discouraged in this work by anything so trivial as fear of personal failure?\u201d I realize that the whole issue about whether I\u2019m attractive or not diminishes into the category of \u201ctrivial\u201d.\u00a0 It\u2019s much easier to imagine that there are men out there who would appreciate me, it\u2019s just that my chances of meeting one are minimal.<\/p>\n
(Written in October 2005) This morning I woke up with an ache in my heart and realized I was angry with myself for not being beautiful.\u00a0 Then my heart went out to me, and that helped a lot. DAMMIT! Somewhere, … Continue reading