{"id":6013,"date":"2019-01-31T10:38:23","date_gmt":"2019-01-31T15:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6013"},"modified":"2019-01-31T10:38:23","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T15:38:23","slug":"and-what-remains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6013","title":{"rendered":"And What Remains?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read what I had first written to the group, and said something like \u201cI have no idea what remains.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>One of them said \u201cWhat is not yet discovered,\u201d which was a huge help.\u00a0 <\/span>I remembered and added: Eve and LeeAnn saying \u201cI love you so much.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>It wasn\u2019t until I had written the revised version that I remembered Rose Marie saying \u201cOh I love you.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>What remains?\u00a0 <\/span>I know there are at least 5 people who love me.<\/p>\n

I know something else, even more important.\u00a0 <\/span>I know that I can<\/span> love.\u00a0 <\/span>My mother taught me that I didn\u2019t love her if I wouldn\u2019t do what she wanted.\u00a0 <\/span>I never understood what she wanted, so I wasn\u2019t able to carry it out.\u00a0 I didn’t realize this until I rewrote the notes<\/a> I kept on my last visit to Cincinnati before my father died. \u00a0<\/span>I extrapolated from that inability to understand that I didn\u2019t care<\/a> about anyone or anything if I wouldn\u2019t do what they wanted or needed.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>So I\u2019ve felt most of my life that I wasn\u2019t a loving person. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of the things that have helped me most are: my husband teaching me that it was possible to care and not do anything for the person.\u00a0 <\/span>So I would eventually be able to recognize that I did love somebody, even though I wouldn\u2019t do what they wanted.\u00a0 <\/span>On the other hand, sometimes I did something to help another person who I loved, but it was either too much of a sacrifice for me \u2014 what comes to mind is when I disconnected the solar power system hoping to help my tenant who was sensitive to electromagnetic fields.\u00a0 <\/span>It didn\u2019t help her at all that I could see, and it ended up being a mistake because we lost our backup power if the electricity went off, and it has turned out to be impossible to get it hooked back up again.\u00a0 <\/span>The other thing I have done is to allow other people to exploit me because I cared about them.<\/p>\n

Another thing that helped was Elizabeth Goudge<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/span>In The Scent of Water, she has one of the characters say \u201cLove is not some nice thing that you feel, but some hard thing that you do.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>I rarely feel loving.\u00a0 <\/span>If someone tells me about their pain, I can feel my heart open immediately, and I usually give them a hug.\u00a0 <\/span>Since I have started working with Erica, I have begun to understand the toxic effect of my mother\u2019s inability to be happy, despite my attempts to please her.\u00a0 <\/span>And I have started to feel my loving toward many people.\u00a0 <\/span>This is what remains: knowing that I can<\/span> love, which turns out to be more important and more satisfying than whether people love me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read what I had first written to the group, and said something like \u201cI have no idea what remains.\u201d\u00a0 One of them said \u201cWhat is not yet discovered,\u201d which was a huge help.\u00a0 I remembered and added: Eve and … 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":[5,11,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healing","category-present-day","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6013","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=6013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}