from my journal for July 23, 1976:<\/p>\n
amazing! miraculous! out of the depression and into an energy high.\u00a0am weaving a finn weave project (tough going) that has been on the loom since Easter.\u00a0Yesterday the weather broke and my mood did too.\u00a0glorious sparkling days, each leaf and blade of grass stands clear.<\/p>\n
what did it?\u00a0first of all, acceptance of being depressed.\u00a0Then staying with it, allowing myself to feel the feelings, stop searching for escapes.\u00a0Stay with it, though this is painful, though it seems as though I have always been depressed, will always be depressed.\u00a0and then somehow, miraculously, the wheel turns, the weather changes, and I am out of it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I see that recently, I have come very quickly out of my downs by recognizing that it is the baby who is scared, despairing, frozen, and sitting down next to her and saying \u201cI\u2019m here, and I\u2019m not going away.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>It has been a long long practice in being with the pain.\u00a0 <\/span>Reading through 1976 I found one of the first times I did it.\u00a0 <\/span>Something like 44 years I\u2019ve been working on this practice of being with the pain instead of trying to make it go away or numbing it.<\/p>\n
One thing it took me awhile to see was that \u201cbeing with the pain\u201d as an attempt to make it go away does not work.\u00a0 <\/span>I had to be willing to be depressed \u201cforever\u201d which is hard to do, until I finally began to learn that it \u201cworked\u201d and could do it without a manipulative motive.<\/p>\n
So now, when I feel triggered by this whole coronavirus thing, I sit down next to the baby<\/a> and say \u201cI\u2019m here.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s OK to be scared.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m not going away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mostly, I\u2019m not scared.\u00a0 <\/span>I saw fairly early on that we in the US were not prepared, that we would probably overwhelm our health system, and a lot of people will die.\u00a0 <\/span>I do have one friend who\u2019s seriously at risk, my friend Eleanor, who already has a compromised immune system, and is trying to live on disability.\u00a0 <\/span>Otherwise, my siblings and their children & grandchildren are all in pretty good places to weather the storm.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m the most at risk, and I\u2019m in the safest place.\u00a0 <\/span>But I have also accepted my death<\/a>, so I\u2019m really not worried about that at all. \u00a0I’m not at all happy about the people who will die, the people struggling to get food, the health workers who are risking their lives and overwhelmed. \u00a0I am ANGRY at the capitalist system<\/a> which prepared us so badly for this. \u00a0And I think this is a tremendous opportunity for us to wake up<\/a> and realize that we are all in this together, all in the same boat \u2014 Spaceship Earth \u2014 and we need to work together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
from my journal for July 23, 1976: amazing! miraculous! out of the depression and into an energy high.\u00a0am weaving a finn weave project (tough going) that has been on the loom since Easter.\u00a0Yesterday the weather broke and my mood did … Continue reading