Friday, August 14<\/p>\n
I went to the Co-op in Montpelier hoping to get blueberries.\u00a0 No blueberries!\u00a0 what a disappointment!\u00a0 And a little scary.\u00a0 What happened to the blueberry crop?<\/p>\n
I was on my way to see my therapist Karen.\u00a0 I started feeling sad about the middle of the day.\u00a0 I\u2019d been feeling like I needed to cry most of the day but the tears didn\u2019t come.\u00a0 I kept having little flashes of ordinary things in the past which made me feel very sad.\u00a0 When I got to Karen I said my life had been wasted.\u00a0 That having a few moments of how good it could be allowed me to see how bad it had been for most of my life, that my whole life had been a waste.\u00a0 Karen said that wasn\u2019t true.\u00a0 If I made a time line of my experiences with dance it would be different. (Reminds me of the book I wanted to write by collecting pieces from my journals.\u00a0 Three characters, the artist, the shaman, and the wounded one.\u00a0 Each had written a journal, but when you put them together by date, it is only one journal.)\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that a better description of my life?\u00a0 I told Karen about going to Leah\u2019s<\/a> performance piece, and how she said she had been in my earliest writing group at Lynn Thorp\u2019s house.\u00a0 Of course Journey into Courage<\/a> was also part of her inspiration.\u00a0 She has been going on, encouraging\u00a0 people to write the truth about their lives, and then speaking it from the stage.\u00a0 So many lives have been changed \u2014 including Leah\u2019s \u2014 and changed by her work.\u00a0 Some of the inspiration for her work was me.\u00a0 Changing lives one by one.\u00a0 I think of Meaghan and Cathy Jay and the woman at Kripalu who said my dancing had changed her life.\u00a0 Laney and the gift of blue stone bookends.\u00a0 Mary Ellen said I had changed her life.\u00a0 I remember the people who would come up to me and say when you said such-and-such it really meant a lot to me.\u00a0 I would not remember saying \u201csuch-and-such\u201d but would recognize it as something I had said lots of times.\u00a0 Something so natural to me that it didn\u2019t seem to me like anything much.\u00a0 I realized that I help people more by speaking my truth than I do when I try to help.\u00a0 But of course I forget that I\u2019ve probably changed lots of lives without realizing it.\u00a0 Only if I get the feedback do I know about it, and that\u2019s probably rare.\u00a0 Angela saying of my talking about Neskaya to her therapy group: \u201cYou are outside all the boxes those people live in.\u201d\u00a0 Karen helped me make a start on these good memories and it made me feel better.\u00a0 I woke up this morning thinking about Ninalu and Shaking the Tree (dances I can put in my program for Sunday) and that felt better too.\u00a0 I\u2019m feeling concerned about the importance of keeping positive memories in my mind.<\/p>\n With Karen I started listing all the things that I find so painful: the Veterans with PTSD who kill themselves or are in homeless shelters, the horrible numbers of women who are raped every day, children who are starving because they are refugees from war… \u00a0 Karen said firmly \u201cWhat are you doing?\u00a0 what are you trying to prove?\u201d\u00a0 I said I need to grieve about these things, but it also made me stop and see that I was leading myself down a path into depression.\u00a0 I also told her stories from my past \u2014 walking the basement corridors at Kripalu at 2AM because I couldn\u2019t sleep, etc.\u00a0 I think that I was trying to prove that my life was very unhappy, but also needing to see that I am in fact better then I was then.\u00a0 All my hard work has accomplished something<\/span>.<\/p>\n I was wearing the bracelet that said \u201cTO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS,\u201d so I told her about the semi-colon tattoo and TWLOHA<\/a>.\u00a0 There\u2019s somebody else changing lives.\u00a0 Upworthy posted a piece about the semi-colon tattoo<\/a>.\u00a0 It stands for people who support people with mental illness.\u00a0 There were stories of 9 individual people.\u00a0 The one who moved me the most was a young woman who cut herself.\u00a0 She had flowers, a semi-colon, and Love tattooed on her arm to hide the scars.\u00a0 She said TWLOHA had helped her so I went to the site.\u00a0 They offered a book and a DVD about a young woman struggling with addictions and cutting herself.<\/p>\n I ordered both the book and the DVD.\u00a0 When it came they had also sent me a poster and a bracelet.\u00a0 I put the poster up on my collage bulletin board.\u00a0 It has a big picture of Green Tara in the center, and meaningful cards posted around it.\u00a0 Somewhat like a refrigerator door.\u00a0 I watched the movie and was overwhelmed by it.\u00a0 It was based on the real life of Renee, who struggled with addiction and self-injury.\u00a0 A group of friends, also in recovery, helped her get off drugs so she could check into a detox center.\u00a0 One point of the movie is the necessity of help from friends and of telling the truth.\u00a0 Ren\u00e9e\u2019s friend Jamie Tworkowski wrote Ren\u00e9e\u2019s story and started a global movement<\/a>.\u00a0 Its purpose is to help people who struggle with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicidal thoughts.\u00a0 It was a huge help to me, because it tells me\u00a0I\u2019m not alone, and I wear the bracelet for support.<\/p>\n It\u2019s true that I\u2019ve never been addicted.\u00a0 At one time in my life I was drinking a lot (a six-pack of beer in a day) but it just made me feel sick.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have the physiology of an alcoholic.\u00a0 But I did cut myself (the story I told in Journey into Courage<\/a>) and I did think a lot about suicide.\u00a0 One thing that stopped me from actually killing myself, was sitting with a few friends, around Halloween, and they were telling ghost stories.\u00a0 Suddenly the horrible thought came to me that I could kill myself and find myself floating around, still in terrible pain, and without a body to help me change things.\u00a0 I figured there was a 50-50 chance of life after death, and I didn\u2019t want to suffer unending pain.\u00a0 But I still have days when I wish I were dead.\u00a0 Sometimes a little voice pops up & says \u201cYou don\u2019t want to die, you want a life that works.\u201d\u00a0 Other times, death just looks like a relief.<\/p>\n With Karen\u2019s help I started remembering good stories of things I had done.\u00a0 I saw how changing the world by changing people one-by-one is the only way to do it.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t help to spend time worrying about all the bad things that are happening.\u00a0 \u201cIf one by one is good enough for God, it\u2019s good enough for me.\u201d\u00a0 Dr. Fried, in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,<\/a>\u201d p18.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Friday, August 14 I went to the Co-op in Montpelier hoping to get blueberries.\u00a0 No blueberries!\u00a0 what a disappointment!\u00a0 And a little scary.\u00a0 What happened to the blueberry crop? I was on my way to see my therapist Karen.\u00a0 I … Continue reading