{"id":815,"date":"2010-10-23T09:29:30","date_gmt":"2010-10-23T13:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=815"},"modified":"2011-12-26T11:26:14","modified_gmt":"2011-12-26T16:26:14","slug":"struggle-with-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=815","title":{"rendered":"Struggle with Depression"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Written in October 2003)
\nA dream about grade school – where I learned not to let on that I wanted something for it wouldn\u2019t be given. Family was that way too. I think about babies who die because no one is there for them emotionally. This is no foundation for a life \u2014 for living with any sense of energy or delight or vitality \u2014 for being able to go out and meet both the joys and the disasters with a sense of adventure \u2014 this is what I really value and so want to be able to do: to meet life with courage, every fiber of me engaged, fully in the present… and this is why I\u2019m so angry and disappointed in myself, for being so numb and dead, for shrinking from the daily tasks \u2014 as though if I would only choose<\/em> to, I could go out and meet life with a gay spirit…
\nI felt a little better while I was writing about the dream, and I did feel some love in my heart\u2014 yes, DAMMIT, I do love life, and that\u2019s why it\u2019s so painful to go out into the world, to go to the laundromat and see people isolated in their cars, the world around them all paved, vacant-eyed people going through the motions, reading the \u2018want ads\u2019 while their laundry spins in machines \u2014 instead of going with others to the banks of the river and using their bodies to get the clothes clean. Some of this sense of isolation and hopelessness is projection of my own state, not everybody was numb. There were the two young men wrestling and laughing, the woman who came up and helped me…<\/p>\n

Dear Spirits, please help me!
\nDear Jenny, we encourage you to stay in this place of emptiness. There is great richness here. Do not be afraid. You cannot be stuck here forever, or rather this place is no different than any other place you\u2019ve been, it\u2019s still in the hands of god, still part of the territory of life that you are exploring.<\/em>
\nThere was another thought and I lost it! Please tell me again!
\nDear Jenny, it doesn\u2019t matter. It will come around again as dreams keep coming until you are able to pay attention to them. There are infinite numbers of \u201csecond chances\u201d, there is no way that you can make an irredeemable mistake. Dear Jenny, do you not see your profound love of life, that makes you so angry when you see it squandered? Angry because you imagine that those others are doing it willfully, whereas you are stuck with no choice having been inflicted with depression like a birth defect… or else the story changes and it\u2019s you who are willfully refusing to enjoy a life that you know is good. Dear, no one willfully refuses the gift of living with energy and eagerness, unless they have been hurt. Everybody wants to be happy, and everybody is either reacting to pain by pulling away (understandable and forgivable) or else they are struggling, as you are, to learn how to use their hurts in the service of greater consciousness and compassion. No matter how lost you feel, this is your intention, this is what you are doing with your life.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Written in October 2003) A dream about grade school – where I learned not to let on that I wanted something for it wouldn\u2019t be given. Family was that way too. I think about babies who die because no one … 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":[8,3,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depression","category-guidance","category-spirit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815","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=815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}