I’ve been reading my journal from 1993 and found many entries that resonate with this moment in my life. Alas, at this moment I am having a very hard time. I think due to social distancing, I’ve been triggered back into feeling very much alone and totally worthless. And being angry at myself for having a hard time. sigh. Right now I feel like I haven’t gotten anywhere in 30 years of struggle to heal from the first things that happened to me. \u00a0In 1993 I was dealing with chronic illness, systemic yeast, trying to keep to a very strict diet, etc. Around this time I say in my journal that I feel OK about one day in every ten.<\/p>\n
from journal for February 14, 1993<\/p>\n
Guidance, please give me some help?<\/em><\/p>\n
Patience, patience, patience.\u00a0 <\/span>You are doing much better at not being angry at yourself for being sick, keep doing it.\u00a0 <\/span>Gentleness, patience, curiosity.\u00a0 <\/span>Not curiosity about the illness<\/span>, that just leads you back into “trying to fix it.”\u00a0 <\/span>Try being curious about the way you respond<\/span> to illness.\u00a0 <\/span>You are beginning to see how much anger you have toward yourself, your body, your illness.\u00a0 <\/span>You need to treat all three as you would a dear friend, a precious child.\u00a0 <\/span>You are learning how to do this, and I congratulate you.\u00a0 <\/span>Learning how to love your life, in its dailiness, in its difficulty, is what is important for you, not “achievement” as the world counts achievement.\u00a0 <\/span>This work in your journal is important because it supports you<\/span>, not because of its value to the outside world.\u00a0 <\/span>Though why should you think of its value as any less than some other job that people do: selling clothing, say, or building automobiles?\u00a0 <\/span>What makes you imagine that that kind of work is more important to the whole than what you do?\u00a0 <\/span>And isn’t that the value judgement you are making when you see yourself as worthless because you don’t have a “paying job”?\u00a0 <\/span>Keeping this journal is a paying job, you pay for it with your life, your pain, your attention to detail, your work on yourself.\u00a0 <\/span>Rejoice and celebrate, my dear, you’re doing just fine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been reading my journal from 1993 and found many entries that resonate with this moment in my life. Alas, at this moment I am having a very hard time. I think due to social distancing, I’ve been triggered back … Continue reading