{"id":6465,"date":"2020-02-14T13:09:16","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T18:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6465"},"modified":"2020-02-14T13:09:16","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T18:09:16","slug":"a-new-part-of-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6465","title":{"rendered":"A New Part of Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven\u2019t posted for a while, because I\u2019ve been having serious trouble verbalizing my experience.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s been about developing a relationship with a very early fragment of myself.\u00a0 <\/span>It started with recognizing that the non-verbal, scared experience that I\u2019ve been having for a couple of months, is not some new phase of aging.\u00a0 <\/span>That was my biggest fear, that my loss of confidence and verbal skill meant that my aging brain was beginning to malfunction.\u00a0 <\/span>Now it looks like what was going on was the awakening of a very early part of myself.\u00a0 <\/span>My experience, over the last couple of months, has been largely that of an infant, probably who I was before I got traumatized.\u00a0 <\/span>I say that because it was my first intuitive feeling once I got that this was not me now, but another part of me from the past.<\/p>\n

Driving home from grief group, suspecting she was a very young part of me, I tried reaching out to her.\u00a0 <\/span>I felt my way through what felt like very dense, almost solid, fog.\u00a0 <\/span>pushing through layers, I finally came to a crack in the rock.\u00a0 <\/span>I started in, it narrowed to something impassible, but there was a sort of shelf to the right, a small cave broken into the rock.\u00a0 <\/span>I reached in and found the baby, and started swimming home with her.<\/p>\n

Once I got back to my rooms, I found a baby doll I had used in some of my early work with an inner child.\u00a0 <\/span>I got her out and sat with her tucked into my chest, next to my heart.\u00a0 <\/span>I could feel she was afraid, so I said to her \u201cIt\u2019s OK that you\u2019re afraid.\u00a0 <\/span>I wish you weren\u2019t, but I\u2019m not going to push you away.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m here, and I\u2019ve got you.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>When I had to get up and do something, I put her in a box, cushioned and wrapped up in silk and flannel, with the box partly covered so she was hidden, but could still see out.\u00a0 <\/span>That\u2019s how I\u2019ve felt the safest.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve started to have the odd, uncanny experience of feeling like I was new here, seeing things for the first time.\u00a0 <\/span>Also experiencing more beauty and richness.\u00a0 <\/span>Once I even had a sense of the gift of life, something I\u2019ve never felt before.<\/p>\n

Now, as I go through my day, I say the loving kindness prayer like this:<\/p>\n

May I be held in lovingkindness.
\nMay we be held in lovingkindness.\u00a0 <\/span>(meaning both me and the baby)
\nMay all beings be held in lovingkindness.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sometimes I have the sense that I\u2019m holding a newborn.\u00a0 <\/span>Sometimes she looks out at the world with delighted curiosity, sometimes she buries her face in my chest.\u00a0 <\/span>I feel a lot of love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven\u2019t posted for a while, because I\u2019ve been having serious trouble verbalizing my experience.\u00a0 It\u2019s been about developing a relationship with a very early fragment of myself.\u00a0 It started with recognizing that the non-verbal, scared experience that I\u2019ve been … 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":[11,14,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-present-day","category-spirit","category-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6465","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=6465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}