I\u2019ve been through some huge convulsion, or conversion, or transformation, or rearrangement of my psyche \u2014 I don\u2019t have any words for it.\u00a0 It\u2019s even hard to talk about because its effects in my life don\u2019t seem monumental.\u00a0 It all seems very natural, and at the same time a wholly new experience.\u00a0 The only thing I can compare it to is when I got on anti-depressant medication that worked, and normal brain chemistry was a completely different experience from depressed brain chemistry, an experience I\u2019d never had before in my life.\u00a0 I felt like I had lost 500 pounds.\u00a0 I felt like I had dropped a big heavy chain attached to a big block of concrete.<\/p>\n
In the present, I\u2019m aware of two major changes.\u00a0 I can see the beauty in Nature for the first time in a long time, but at the same time there is grief \u2014 I\u2019m guessing it\u2019s because I can see that nature is suffering under our onslaughts.\u00a0 I see dying trees, and mourn.\u00a0 I see living trees and rejoice.\u00a0 The other huge change is that I don\u2019t feel the old \u201cpush, push\u201d any more.\u00a0 It had to do with needing to prove that I deserve to live<\/a>.\u00a0 That push has disappeared many times in my life, but then reappeared fairly quickly.\u00a0 Now it seems to be gone for good.\u00a0 How do you notice something that\u2019s not there?\u00a0 Usually by being struck by what\u2019s there instead.\u00a0 In this case, I feel very solid, instead of vulnerable and anxious.\u00a0 In the past when I seem to have got to a place of healing, I tend to think \u201cO good, I\u2019m OK now,\u201d and imagine I\u2019ll be OK forever.\u00a0 Sometimes I even try to lower my medication, but that always turned out to be a disaster.\u00a0 Or I think \u201cO jeez, I feel good now and that\u2019s not OK so something will go wrong pretty soon.\u201d\u00a0 Either way, something generally goes wrong pretty soon.\u00a0 Now, I expect there will still come hard times, but I\u2019m not scared that I will lose this solidity, this feeling of being planted solidly in my life.<\/p>\n Part of this transformation was certainly helped along when I went to California to do a Grief Workshop with Francis Weller<\/a>.\u00a0 My driver to Bolinas from the Airport, said, as we got close, \u201cWe\u2019ve left America.\u201d\u00a0 We had crossed the San Andreas fault, where the Pacific Plate is moving underneath the North American Plate<\/a>, creating periodic earthquakes.\u00a0 We had left the North American Plate behind and are now on the Pacific Plate, a totally different kind of rock.\u00a0 I like to think of the earth made up of all these sliding shells of rock, and sliding apart, or over each other, or colliding with each other as the Indian block hits Asia in a million year crash that raises the Himalaya Mountains.\u00a0 All the pieces of me, sliding, riding over each other, breaking into volcanoes or mountain ranges.\u00a0 It\u2019s such a surprising image.\u00a0 I always think, when I fall apart, of my pieces lying like a puzzle, scattered about.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t realize that I also saw them falling through space, until I started doing Somatic Experiencing and suddenly there was a floor where no floor had been before.\u00a0 But this is new.\u00a0 All these pieces are staying in contact and interacting instead of separating out.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen beautiful pine cones \u2014 I don\u2019t know if they are pine cones, but they look a little like the plates in a turtle\u2019s shell.\u00a0 I\u2019ll find one and bring it home to remind me that my pieces are all here and interacting and alive<\/span>.\u00a0 They are not stuck in some rigid pattern, or completely separated.\u00a0 They can have a relationship.\u00a0 They can help each other change and grow. \u00a0I think this is called “integration.”<\/p>\n Two other things that helped this transition: Forgot one other thing. \u00a0When I first read about Francis Weller’s “Five Gates of Grief<\/a>” it validated my grief that I hadn’t let myself feel because I didn’t believe it was real. \u00a0Once I allowed myself to grieve, I stopped being depressed. \u00a0I haven’t been depressed since.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve been through some huge convulsion, or conversion, or transformation, or rearrangement of my psyche \u2014 I don\u2019t have any words for it.\u00a0 It\u2019s even hard to talk about because its effects in my life don\u2019t seem monumental.\u00a0 It all … Continue reading
\nKindred Spirits Camp<\/a>
\nWriters for Recovery<\/a><\/p>\n