{"id":6145,"date":"2019-06-05T19:21:30","date_gmt":"2019-06-05T23:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6145"},"modified":"2019-06-05T19:21:30","modified_gmt":"2019-06-05T23:21:30","slug":"professional-psychotherapy-client","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6145","title":{"rendered":"“Professional Psychotherapy Client”"},"content":{"rendered":"

From my journal for May 4<\/p>\n

After reading Margaret Wheatley<\/a>, and recognizing that the things I love \u2014 circle dance \u2014 and what is of most value to me \u2014 writing about my life \u2014 are not about achieving a certain result.\u00a0So I let myself accept that the earth will die \u2014 well of course it will<\/span> die eventually \u2014 and was able to walk outside and appreciate the green grass and the buds on the trees. But it\u2019s clear that I lost it right away. Well. My job is not to be happy, but to be present, and often what I have to be present to is pain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve heard people say that if you’re in the present, you will be happy. \u00a0Not my experience. \u00a0And I think anyone in physical pain would say that’s not their experience either. \u00a0When my trauma is triggered, then what’s present is<\/span> pain.<\/p>\n

May 5<\/p>\n

I have a lot of things I have to deal with, the form to fill out for the oral surgery, and stuff like that.\u00a0 <\/span>Things I keep putting off because I\u2019m too tired.\u00a0 <\/span>I was just reading something in my blog about the long ongoing struggle between letting myself rest and getting things done.\u00a0 <\/span>One thing I didn\u2019t keep track of was when I stopped being able to do things that actually nurtured me: changing the hangings at Neskaya, putting up a Christmas Tree, an Easter egg hunt for my dancers, even elaborate centerpieces.\u00a0 <\/span>Slowly, one by one, I\u2019ve had to let those things go.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From The Bird in the Tree by Elizabeth Goudge<\/a>, p316:
\n\u201cShall I not see that to live is to have relinquished
\nbeauty to the sequestration of the dark…\u201d
\nWas that what life must be, a continual loss of beauty?\u00a0 <\/span>Youth, love, happiness, health, work, life itself, one left them one by one behind as life went on.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cRelinquish.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>It was a good word.\u00a0 <\/span>It suggested not the tearing away of treasures but the willing and graceful sacrifice of them.<\/p>\n

May 6<\/p>\n

I have been feeling a little sad and \u2014 not sure of the word, \u201cdefective\u201d isn\u2019t right \u2014 maybe it\u2019s that I\u2019m seeing that so much life experience has passed me by while I struggled with severe depression.\u00a0Not so much marriage and sex and children, as jobs and travel and wide interests.\u00a0Here\u2019s Susan with her teaching, her eggs, her dollhouses, her genealogy, her singing group… I told Mary at Meeting, when she asked what I did, that I had been a \u201cprofessional psychotherapy client.\u201d\u00a0I feel bereft of my \u201ccareer\u201d as founder of Neskaya, teacher and priestess of Sacred Dance.\u00a0It\u2019s not something I can talk about easily.\u00a0I did try telling someone about it, but I could tell that she wasn\u2019t interested.\u00a0And I don\u2019t expect many people to be interested.\u00a0So where do I go from here?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While I was still teaching at Neskaya and designing seasonal ceremonies, I didn’t feel like it was a career, or that I was doing something “worthwhile.” \u00a0Since I’ve been at Kendal, where I’m not part of the container, I’ve been able to see that my work involving Neskaya, is a career, is<\/span> worthwhile. \u00a0I have not wasted my life. \u00a0The fact that most people aren’t interested does not lessen the value of my achievement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From my journal for May 4 After reading Margaret Wheatley, and recognizing that the things I love \u2014 circle dance \u2014 and what is of most value to me \u2014 writing about my life \u2014 are not about achieving a … 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":[5,9,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healing","category-journal","category-present-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6145","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=6145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}