{"id":5115,"date":"2016-04-11T12:55:07","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T16:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=5115"},"modified":"2016-04-11T14:36:12","modified_gmt":"2016-04-11T18:36:12","slug":"surrender-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=5115","title":{"rendered":"“Surrender”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I talked to my friend who said of my recent blog post about \u201cLiving Well<\/a>\u201d that I was in reactive\/responsive orientation instead of\u00a0creative orientation.\u00a0\u00a0I did some thinking about this. \u00a0\u201cReactive\/responsive\u201d is choosing what to do with things that come at you.\u00a0 \u201cCreative\u201d is choosing\/creating something new.\u00a0 I told her I had made a choice to surrender to Divine Process, to let it guide my life.\u00a0 She said \u201cWhy would you want to surrender?\u201d\u00a0 The first thing that came to mind is: because I\u2019ve made such a mess of my life, but then I don\u2019t think that\u2019s true \u2014 but I kind of got stuck there.\u00a0 There was a long silence.\u00a0 I have the feeling that she didn\u2019t get it, but also that I had failed to explain myself adequately.<\/p>\n

Do I really think I\u2019ve made a mess of my life?\u00a0 The \u201cmess\u201d was made by circumstances over which I had no control,\u00a0and having to live with\u00a0the reality\u00a0of PTSD.\u00a0 Looking back, I see that I have been in terrible pain most of my life.\u00a0 I\u2019m still in pain, though now it seems at least legitimate and real, as grief for all the losses, all the pain that\u2019s happened to people, creatures and the earth.\u00a0 I\u2019ve worked to \u201cfix myself\u201d for a lot of my life.\u00a0 Understanding that I was broken, not defective shifted my attitude toward myself \u2014 that I was not born defective, that the things I was trying to \u201cfix\u201d\u00a0 I had learned from dysfunctional parents. \u00a0My experience of myself was not<\/span> who I was, but what I had learned.\u00a0 I worked hard, I tried so many things, but I never seemed to arrive at a place where I felt good, comfortable with myself, happy for more than a few days.\u00a0 I have struggled with severe depressions and disabling terrors, with absolutely no idea why they visited me.\u00a0 What was I doing wrong?\u00a0 I have tried so many things most of which didn\u2019t make any difference.\u00a0 I also felt that I have a lot of creativity inside me that I have never been able to express.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until I came to accept that I had been traumatized that I began to get some inkling of what had distorted and stunted and limited my life.\u00a0 In my work with a new therapist I have been able to allow myself to get in touch with the unbearable pain of the core wound.\u00a0 Finally understanding what I\u2019ve been up against has helped me see that I have actually done surprisingly well with my life.<\/p>\n

Glancing back over old journals, I see how hard I was working to understand what was wrong.\u00a0 I can\u2019t keep reading them because the pain radiates off those pages \u2014 the pain I felt at the time but was either in denial of, or didn\u2019t see for what it really was because I had never experienced anything else.<\/p>\n

One way to look at my life is to see it as me struggling to heal PTSD and failing.\u00a0 It\u2019s true I do have some time to go yet, and healing is possible, but the process is more painful and is taking longer than I ever imagined.\u00a0 If I understand that my healing work on myself benefits the human energy field, and thereby helps the whole earth, then I feel that my life hasn\u2019t been wasted.\u00a0 But if I see myself as selfishly engaged in something that\u2019s only for my own benefit then my life has been wasted.<\/p>\n

The question of \u201csurrender\u201d comes up because my life as it is is unmanageable.\u00a0 Just getting through the day, just managing the basics of food and cleaning up, and getting to therapy is sometimes all I have energy for.\u00a0 Other necessary things like paying bills, getting the car\u2019s oil changed, require effort and tend to get put off.\u00a0 Even more important things like investigating and applying for a retirement community are really difficult to get to.\u00a0 From my first visit to Kendal<\/a> to actually completing the application took\u00a0six months.\u00a0 I\u2019ve hired someone to clean my house once a week and someone to help with food, and even with that help there are many days when I think it would be easier to be dead.<\/p>\n

But the big question is \u201cWhy go on?\u201d\u00a0 If it\u2019s this hard to get through the day, then I have to have a pretty compelling reason.\u00a0 If my healing work is just for myself, that\u2019s not enough.\u00a0 That brings up the question of vocation.\u00a0 If I thought that \u201cGod\u201d or the Creative Process of the Universe or my own Higher Power had given me a task that would really help the planet and other people, then I could keep going with better heart.<\/p>\n

Another difficulty is that I do very badly when I\u2019m alone.\u00a0 I\u2019ve lived most of my life alone and been OK with it, probably through denial of my loneliness, or being numb to it. \u00a0But now, with the original wound of abandonment wide open, I\u2019m finding it very difficult to be alone.\u00a0 What happens is I become apathetic, totally non-functional.\u00a0 This is what happens to a baby when it\u2019s left alone too long.<\/p>\n

The most painful thing about my life is that, far from making a mess of it, I\u2019ve created a good life for myself.\u00a0 Unfortunately I can\u2019t live it.\u00a0 There\u2019s very little that I\u2019m able to enjoy.\u00a0 I\u2019m also unable to live in this beautiful home that I\u2019ve designed and built for myself.\u00a0 I look around and I see so much that\u2019s beautiful, but also neglected plants, unfinished art projects, piles of mail that need to be gone through, etc.\u00a0 I have a tendency to blame myself for not doing better, not being able to appreciate and be satisfied with all I\u2019ve done.\u00a0 But the ability to enjoy depends on brain chemistry.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know why I can\u2019t do better.\u00a0 One possibility is what Francis Weller suggests: that I haven\u2019t been able to grieve my losses enough to be able to experience small joys and little blessings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I talked to my friend who said of my recent blog post about \u201cLiving Well\u201d that I was in reactive\/responsive orientation instead of\u00a0creative orientation.\u00a0\u00a0I did some thinking about this. \u00a0\u201cReactive\/responsive\u201d is choosing what to do with things that come at … 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":[8,11,14,4,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depression","category-present-day","category-spirit","category-trauma","category-vocation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5115","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=5115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}