{"id":4794,"date":"2015-06-26T08:26:51","date_gmt":"2015-06-26T12:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=4794"},"modified":"2015-06-26T08:26:51","modified_gmt":"2015-06-26T12:26:51","slug":"darkness-before-dawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=4794","title":{"rendered":"Darkness Before Dawn"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the chapters in Darkness Before Dawn<\/a> spoke so well to me that I marked a lot of passages.\u00a0 It\u2019s called \u201cInto the Dark Light\u201d by Elizabeth Rabia Roberts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She says \u201cany loss that strips away the identity you have cultivated and become comfortable with can start a slide into a serious depression.\u201d\u00a0 pp121-122\u00a0 I realize that I don\u2019t have an identity that I\u2019ve \u201ccultivated and become comfortable with.\u201d\u00a0 I have an identity that I\u2019m familiar with but that I have been trying to change for a very long time.\u00a0 That identity is itself depression.\u00a0 When Erica said I was \u201cextraordinary\u201d and then when she said what I believed about myself, who I learned was me from my parents, my familiar identity, was never true in the first place, it completely shattered that old \u201cidentity,\u201d the picture of myself as worthless, cowardly, selfish, etc.\u00a0 At first it felt wonderful, liberating.\u00a0 See post from 5\/17\/15<\/a>\u00a0 Then I felt like I had fallen into a swamp of fragments of what used to be me and what might be me, and was floundering desperately.\u00a0 Now I feel like I have a place to start.\u00a0 I remember Dr. Asher saying \u201cYou must have been very frightened\u201d and writing in my journal \u201cIt was OK to be frightened!\u201d\u00a0 I think that was the first thing that cracked the shell of who I thought I was.\u00a0 Meanwhile, David had abandoned me, triggering the ancient wound.\u00a0 For the first and last time I got angry about being abandoned, and went and smashed David\u2019s windows, and then went into the hospital where they and I tried to close down the thing that had opened up. See Breakdown in Davis.<\/a><\/p>\n

Another thing she said, and Parker Palmer<\/a> has said too, that on coming out of depression they experienced new growth.\u00a0 This certainly has not been my experience.<\/p>\n

She says \u201cYou are not alone.\u00a0 Someone is holding the consciousness of your greater world while you do your inner work.\u201d\u00a0 p123\u00a0 Our culture defines depression as \u201cweakness,\u201d as a consequence, \u201cwe feel bad about feeling bad.\u201d\u00a0 p125<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lineage of both religious and secular literature reminding us that times of total darkness are a natural part of the human condition.\u201d\u00a0 p125\u00a0 \u201cThese times were recognized as important and transformational because suffering is the predominant feeling of the process through which a human being must pass as the ego deconstructs and the transpersonal self is birthed.\u00a0 …\u00a0 Our ancestors identified these times of great confusion and inaction as \u2018initiatory states.\u2019\u00a0 …<\/p>\n

\u201cTo descend, submit, and die \u2014 the openness to being acted upon<\/i> \u2014 is the feminine essence of the human experience.\u00a0 …\u00a0 If these dark times are a natural part of our spiritual growth, then the long periods of sadness, grief, inactivity, and inner suffering that can accompany them are not evidence of weakness or failure, as we are too often told.\u00a0 Rather, they are part of a restorative and creative time in which we have access to previously hidden realizations and wisdom that can bring us into a new life.\u201d\u00a0 p126<\/p>\n

Being acted upon<\/i>, the author\u2019s italics, is the root of the word \u201csuffering.\u201d\u00a0 My experience right now is of \u201csadness, grief, inactivity and inner suffering.\u201d\u00a0 I surely hope that it will lead me into a new life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the chapters in Darkness Before Dawn spoke so well to me that I marked a lot of passages.\u00a0 It\u2019s called \u201cInto the Dark Light\u201d by Elizabeth Rabia Roberts. She says \u201cany loss that strips away the identity you … 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":[8,9,11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depression","category-journal","category-present-day","category-spirit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4794","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=4794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}