{"id":4071,"date":"2013-12-05T11:23:03","date_gmt":"2013-12-05T16:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=4071"},"modified":"2013-12-05T16:56:53","modified_gmt":"2013-12-05T21:56:53","slug":"ten-years-forty-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=4071","title":{"rendered":"Ten Years \u2014 Forty Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote a journal piece 10 years ago, on my effort to understand which stories work for me and which don’t. \u00a0I posted it as “Choices & Dysfunctional Beliefs<\/a>.” \u00a0It’s painful to me that I’ve been struggling with PTSD for 10 years, and am still struggling with it. \u00a0I’m struggling to accept that I will never be “all better now.” \u00a0I think having that expectation means that I’m continually disappointed with myself. \u00a0I look out ahead of me, and I see a grey waste, punctuated with a few bright lights.<\/p>\n

I look back, to 1971, when I was having a truly dreadful time. \u00a0I remember being cold a lot and terrified. \u00a0I looked up some passages from that time and copied them into my document of raw material for this blog. \u00a0Then I suddenly felt totally terrified and lost, and realized that looking at that material was too dangerous for me. \u00a0I haven’t looked at it again. \u00a0But it does give me an index. \u00a0Forty years ago I was struggling with PTSD and had no idea. \u00a0So I have come a long long way.<\/p>\n

I’ve been reading a book “The Art of Possibility<\/a>” and in the chapter called “Giving an A” is a story about Thurgood Marshall when he retired from the Supreme Court. \u00a0He was asked what accomplishment he was most proud of. \u00a0He said “That I did the best I could with what I had.” (p46) That made me feel OK with my long struggle. \u00a0I can truly say I did the best with what I had. \u00a0I have no regrets. \u00a0There are many painful incidents that I wish had never happened, and I wish I had had more help along the way, but all the choices I made \u2014 looking back I see they were bad choices \u2014 but I didn’t have any choice at the time, I didn’t know a lot that I know now.<\/p>\n

The Buddhist belief in reincarnation is one that I hold, even though I have no idea what the mechanism is. \u00a0Will I feel like I’ve waked up from a dream of Jenny’s life? Or will Jenny disappear and the energy that animated her go on into someone entirely different? One of the things that’s motivated me this lifetime, is to do as much healing as possible so whoever gets this energy next will have an easier time. \u00a0Back when I was still a practicing Buddhist, and looking at people’s lives from the point of view of reincarnation, it seemed to me that you could work on one single issue your whole life. \u00a0If it weren’t that we keep coming back again and again, trying to learn more and heal more, I would feel like our single lives are wasted. \u00a0That also helps me accept how difficult this life has been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote a journal piece 10 years ago, on my effort to understand which stories work for me and which don’t. \u00a0I posted it as “Choices & Dysfunctional Beliefs.” \u00a0It’s painful to me that I’ve been struggling with PTSD 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":[8,7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depression","category-somatic-experiencing","category-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071","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=4071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}