{"id":6256,"date":"2019-08-08T16:51:39","date_gmt":"2019-08-08T20:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6256"},"modified":"2019-08-08T16:51:39","modified_gmt":"2019-08-08T20:51:39","slug":"dark-night-of-the-soul-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6256","title":{"rendered":"Dark Night of the Soul, Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saturday, August 3
\n3rd cup of tea.\u00a0 <\/span>When I went out to walk Mocha, my legs felt very weak.\u00a0 <\/span>I decided I needed grounding, so tried to feel my legs and my feet contacting the earth.\u00a0 <\/span>Mocha went down the Yellow Brick Road, so I walked outside the campus, out Rte 10 and back through Rivercrest.\u00a0 <\/span>My mind felt very strange, like I was in some other dimension.\u00a0 <\/span>No words, lots of \u201cfelt senses,\u201d I think once before I described them as \u201cblobs.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Visual and tactile things.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019ve been reading Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum<\/a>, and she describes interactions between people that carry a lot of hidden material, sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit.\u00a0 <\/span>Knowings, and lies, and objects, and stories interwoven.\u00a0 <\/span>Unexpected understandings.\u00a0 <\/span>I am slightly uncomfortable in this place, lost, \u201cout of control\u201d \u2014 although controlling things seems much less important than understanding the flow that\u2019s going on.\u00a0 <\/span>Because that\u2019s what it feels like \u2014 I\u2019m being carried down a turbulent river in a little boat.\u00a0 <\/span>I have a paddle, so I can shift the boat, to stay in the central flow.\u00a0 <\/span>No way is that \u201cin control.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Something about being able to trust what I do in the moment, even if it looks \u201cwrong\u201d or has no result.\u00a0 <\/span>I understand that I am undergoing some huge shift in who I am and the shape of my life.\u00a0 <\/span>It makes sense that there would be times of confusion and lostness, and that it might take a long time.\u00a0 <\/span>I wish I had a traditional shaman to help me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m attempting to describe the feeling hoping it would help me make sense of what I have been experiencing. \u00a0It didn’t.<\/p>\n

The link gives a number of readers’ impressions of The Painted Drum, which really helped me understand why I was both moved and confused by it. \u00a0I had to stop reading because I got so triggered, I don’t know if it was by the book, or by a lot of other things.<\/p>\n

Tuesday, August 6
\n3rd cup of tea.\u00a0 <\/span>I am dying to my old life, and I have no idea what the new one will be like.\u00a0 <\/span>Somewhere between finishing the second cup and starting this one, it occurred to me that the \u201cdark night of the soul<\/a>\u201d involves the stripping away of all you are attached to.\u00a0 <\/span>So then it comes that \u201cgod\u201d is doing this to me.\u00a0 <\/span>Then I feel a presence, oddly a masculine presence, also oddly it is very close outside me and inside as well.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cBecause I love you so much,\u201d says the masculine voice, and I feel such a sense of kindness and love toward me.\u00a0 <\/span>I feel myself both giving and receiving this intensely kind love.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dr. May, a psychiatrist, says:\u00a0 \u201c\u2026 my experience is that people often experience depression and the dark night at the same time.\u00a0 To say the least, the dark night can be depressing.\u00a0 Even if most of the experience feels liberating, it still involves loss, and loss involves grief, and grief may at least temporarily become depression.\u00a0 Conversely, a primary clinical depression can become part of a dark-night experience, just as any other illness can.\u201d Dark Night of the Soul<\/a>, p156<\/p>\n

Talk with Erica:
\nGrieving the old life that\u2019s dying
\nGrieving the life that never got to happen
\nNeed community to help me grieve<\/p>\n

Wednesday, August 7
\nOne of the things I told Erica was that this collapse showed me how much I\u2019m up against, how really damaged I am.\u00a0I tend to trivialize it.\u00a0I think because I\u2019m white, and rich, and well-educated.\u00a0I\u2019ve got all that going for me, how can I complain.\u00a0So I trivialize my difficulties, and blame myself for being lazy and incompetent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually I think I may disappear my difficulties, just as my parents did. \u00a0See “Colonial Dames<\/a>.” \u00a0Not only do others fail to see my pain, but I also fail to see it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saturday, August 3 3rd cup of tea.\u00a0 When I went out to walk Mocha, my legs felt very weak.\u00a0 I decided I needed grounding, so tried to feel my legs and my feet contacting the earth.\u00a0 Mocha went down the … 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":[8,9,11,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depression","category-journal","category-present-day","category-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6256","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=6256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}