{"id":6361,"date":"2019-10-19T17:42:08","date_gmt":"2019-10-19T21:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6361"},"modified":"2019-10-19T17:42:08","modified_gmt":"2019-10-19T21:42:08","slug":"looking-at-jenny-from-outside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6361","title":{"rendered":"Looking at Jenny from Outside"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been struggling with the question of whether I \u201clove\u201d life.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s something Stephen Jenkinson talks about, something that can become very strong when you realize that you are really going to die.\u00a0 <\/span>I hear people say they love life, and I can\u2019t say it.\u00a0 <\/span>I guess I think I ought to, or I wish I could.<\/p>\n

from Blog Post “Struggle with Self-Hate<\/a>”<\/p>\n

written in September 2010<\/p>\n

I\u2019m comparing myself to Diane who\u2019s \u201cglad to be alive\u201d, who faced life-threatening illness and lost both breasts.\u00a0 That made me feel like I was just whining and complaining and feeling sorry for myself.\u00a0 But I can\u2019t \u201csnap out of it,\u201d I can\u2019t consciously will myself to be any different.<\/p>\n

So here I sit, hating myself for being such a wimp.\u00a0 Somehow I\u2019ve got to find a way to feel compassion for this poor woman who\u2019s hating herself.\u00a0 OK, take a big step back.\u00a0 Here\u2019s this woman who was traumatized in infancy, and taught as she grew up that every thing was her fault.\u00a0 Especially if she was having a bad time, she was told \u201cYou just want to be miserable.\u201d She was given no guidance and support for how to live a healthy life.\u00a0 She struggled for years against debilitating bouts of depression and anxiety.\u00a0 She got married, only to find that she was unable to be sexual, blaming herself until years after the divorce when she found out she was struggling with PTSD.\u00a0 Now she\u2019s getting older, and has less and less energy.\u00a0 When she\u2019s depressed, even the basics of buying and cooking food and walking the dog become difficult.\u00a0 She just wants to die, and she hasn\u2019t any energy to fight that either.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So I don\u2019t know if I do \u201clove life.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>In my experience it\u2019s been tremendously hard work and having to go through an enormous amount of emotional pain.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019ll be glad to lay the job down.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Although I believe in re-incarnation, I know that when I die, “Jenny” will be gone. \u00a0The part of me that goes on to a new life is probably a part of me that I don’t even know. \u00a0It’s true that I’ve been working for a long time on developing a non-judgmental witness, and learning to look at myself from that viewpoint. \u00a0One of my practices has been, when I’m hating myself, to “take a big step back<\/a>” and look at myself from a distance.<\/p>\n

The more I separate from Jenny, and see her from the point of view of a non-judgmental witness, the more I love and admire her.\u00a0 <\/span>That\u2019s so odd.\u00a0 <\/span>From so much self-hate<\/a>, to see this person who has gone through so much, to see that she is brave and daring and very lovable.\u00a0 <\/span>There\u2019s some quality I can\u2019t name \u2014 maybe it\u2019s what Jalaja means by \u201csweetness\u201d \u2014 that Charlotte<\/a> also talked about.\u00a0 <\/span>A childlike freshness, innocence, and curiosity.\u00a0 <\/span>I can see that, and I do love that person and feel honored to be her.\u00a0 <\/span>This is the gift of walking the dark road out of town.<\/p>\n

In Jalaja Bonheim’s\u00a0comment on my blog post<\/a> for April 24, 2010, she says she sees “So much passion, devotion, creativity, and sweetness.” \u00a0When I first read that, I didn’t know what she was talking about. \u00a0But I so respect her as a teacher, and also my intuition knew that she had described me very exactly. \u00a0Her words got through my armor and I had to pay attention, even though I didn’t believe them. \u00a0Today, for the very first time, I see that quality in Jenny, and I am blown away by it.<\/p>\n

The degree to which I have gotten clear of all the threads that tie me to Mother is shown by the fact that I haven’t, for a moment, while writing this, felt the fear that I was “thinking I’m so great.”<\/p>\n

I owe this tremendous realization to Stephen and Gregory<\/a> who pointed me the way to “the dark road that leads out of town.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been struggling with the question of whether I \u201clove\u201d life.\u00a0 It\u2019s something Stephen Jenkinson talks about, something that can become very strong when you realize that you are really going to die.\u00a0 I hear people say they love … 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":[8,5,18,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depression","category-healing","category-ritual-year","category-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6361","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=6361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}