Sunday<\/p>\n
I had been thinking about some words from my journal for the 60\u2019s\u00a0 \u201cWell tranquillized for complicated return to P.A.\u201d\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember\u00a0what happened that caused me to run to my aunt & uncle in Hillsborough. but I think my words triggered something.\u00a0 I started to feel activated.\u00a0 When the tea-water was ready, I decided it wasn\u2019t tea I needed but meditation.\u00a0 So I set the timer and sat.\u00a0 And relaxed.\u00a0 Felt the fear and then realized it was one of the younger Jennys.\u00a0 I saw myself walking around and around in Jane\u2019s back yard because I couldn\u2019t sleep.\u00a0 Walking the basement corridors at Kripalu because I couldn\u2019t sleep.\u00a0 I see my adolescent self, frantic and desperate, searching for refuge.\u00a0 Not even having much of a goal except to feel better so I could have a life. \u00a0Mostly I was just trying to get away from the pain.\u00a0 I see myself running\u00a0desperately down darkened corridors, knocking against walls, having no idea what to do to make things different, having no one to go to for help.\u00a0 I did finally start going to therapists, most of whom were helpful.\u00a0 Though I remember Dr. Levy, in Portland, who I experienced as disapproving and judgmental.\u00a0 \u201cYou do not know what wars are going on, down there where the spirit meets the bone.\u201d \u00a0I feel such compassion \u00a0for my desperate younger self.<\/p>\n
Tuesday<\/p>\n
I\u2019m still struggling with the pain of my adolescent self \u2014 well I\u2019m not sure struggling is the right word.\u00a0 I feel the pain in the background, and there\u2019s a habitual mechanism that tries to push it away, but when I notice it, I remember that it\u2019s a part of me that I feel enormous compassion for.\u00a0 Then I can hold the pain in softness.\u00a0 It feels like that\u2019s the best I can do.\u00a0 If I try to talk to her, to reassure her, she can\u2019t hear me.\u00a0 So I just hold her.\u00a0 She is struggling with invisible pain, pain that\u2019s not recognized by anyone around her.\u00a0 So she can\u2019t really see and validate it for herself.\u00a0 That\u2019s why she cut herself \u2014 the blood at least was real in a world of unreality.\u00a0 There was a quote from Jacqueline Winspear about veterans self-mutilating: Her heroine Maisie Dobbs remembering working with \u201cshell-shocked\u201d veterans of WWI\u00a0\u2014 \u201cThere were men who … would cause themselves injury, as if to feel, physically, the wounds that lay in their souls.\u201d<\/p>\n
I read this to my therapist, who pointed out that I was able to be present to my adolescent self without trying to make her change. \u00a0She also said that I had worked hard for years, worked devotedly and unrelentingly, to be able to be there for my desperate younger self.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou do not know what wars are going on, down there where the spirit meets the bone.\u201d\u00a0 From a song by Lucinda Williams.<\/p>\n
The Jacqueline Winspear quote is from “Leaving Everything Most Loved,” p42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sunday I had been thinking about some words from my journal for the 60\u2019s\u00a0 \u201cWell tranquillized for complicated return to P.A.\u201d\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember\u00a0what happened that caused me to run to my aunt & uncle in Hillsborough. but I think … Continue reading