{"id":6065,"date":"2019-04-18T11:10:26","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T15:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6065"},"modified":"2019-04-18T11:10:26","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T15:10:26","slug":"grieving-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6065","title":{"rendered":"Grieving"},"content":{"rendered":"
I posted this on June 2010. \u00a0I’ve been going\u00a0back and reading my blog from the beginning. This one struck me as describing so well how I was ten years ago. \u00a0So I’m posting it again.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n

(Written in June 2009)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m guessing that I\u2019m angry at myself for still being sad.\u00a0 I should be through with the grief work by now.\u00a0 I\u2019ve read everything I\u2019ve written to a sympathetic listener, some to more than one.\u00a0 So I should be done, right?\u00a0 And at the moment it all seems pretty small stuff.\u00a0 Abusive parents and rejecting boyfriends.\u00a0 So what else is new?\u00a0 I never lost a great love, or had someone I really care about die.\u00a0 Other people have much more reason for grief than I do.\u00a0 That\u2019s what my head says.\u00a0 My heart is swollen with unshed tears.
\nI\u2019m reading The Shell Seekers, and it brings home to me how barren my life is.\u00a0 Good healthy loving supportive relationships between mothers & daughters.\u00a0 Wonderful loving sexual relationships.\u00a0 People who can cook and garden.\u00a0 Sadness at the loss of real relationships.\u00a0 Although I notice that they don\u2019t let themselves cry, it\u2019s seen as admirable not to cry.<\/p>\n

I sat in Karen\u2019s office and cried for half an hour with no idea what it was about.\u00a0 \u201cYou don\u2019t need to know,\u201d says Karen.\u00a0 But I think I have to justify it.
\nI don\u2019t have to know what it was about.
\nI don\u2019t have to know what to do about it.
\nI only have to be there for it, be there with it.\u00a0 This is the traumatized baby I picked up from the garbage can and she has a right to her grief.<\/p>\n

I think this grief must be from a very non-verbal place.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s coming up now because I have healed enough so that the baby feels safe having her feelings.\u00a0 I have to remind myself to keep her safe, to allow her to grieve (even though I don\u2019t know where it\u2019s coming from \u2014 I can guess at how barren and stony was her infancy) to allow her to grieve and to soften around her and hold her in her grief.\u00a0 There, there, dear, you have a right to grieve.\u00a0 You deserved to be cherished, loved, comforted, supported and guided, have your real self be seen and mirrored back to you.\u00a0 What you got was a mother whose narcissistic wounds did not allow her to love, or even see another person accurately.\u00a0 You were expected to love her, make everything OK for her, and she projected her self-hate on to you and treated you like you were someone you weren\u2019t at all.\u00a0 You never developed a real sense of your strengths and weaknesses, you grew up believing that you were unlovable and that you had disappointed your parents.\u00a0 You\u2019ve spent your life trying to prove that you deserve to live.<\/p>\n

This morning I\u2019m sad again.\u00a0 And nothing to say.\u00a0 \u201cPlease see me.\u00a0 Please hear me.\u00a0 Please understand how difficult and painful my life it.\u201d\u00a0 I wake up in the morning feeling sad, with no energy to start the day.\u00a0 I make a cup of tea, and write in my journal, who is my completely accepting witness, and interested in every detail of my day.\u00a0 I have a ritual, a routine, for how I cook my breakfast of eggs and rice, and that helps me do it, I don\u2019t have to make any choices.
\nRight now it\u2019s being hard to just get up & do breakfast.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had my second cup of tea, but I don\u2019t feel hungry, don\u2019t feel like moving.\u00a0 But I have to go on with my day.\u00a0 If I just sit here I will feel more and more immobilized.\u00a0 So just do it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I posted this on June 2010. \u00a0I’ve been going\u00a0back and reading my blog from the beginning. This one struck me as describing so well how I was ten years ago. \u00a0So I’m posting it again. (Written in June 2009) I\u2019m … 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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depression"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6065","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=6065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6065\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}