Touching Down Into The Deep
On a Zoom call with Dr. Isabelle, my Jungian analyst in, for heaven’s sake, France, I read from my dream journal, the most recent version of a dream I have been having for years… In the dream, once again, guests are coming for dinner… they are due at any moment and I don’t have enough […]
Once-Ever
July night. Full moon rising. Deep blue shadows. Through shutters, lacy silhouettes of oak trees. Fan overhead on low, circling-slow. Ready for bed, for sleep. Not much cooling to come tonight, so I turn down the quilt, rest on top of the clean sheets… And I feel in all my being this ordinary good day… […]
On A Summer Night
Triple-digits had us pressed between red-hot griddles, hot-glued indoors all day… trapped in deep gloom, all blinds, shutters, doors and windows closed, at the mercy of the AC. So at 10PM when the outside thermometer drops to a mere 85 degrees, I greet it like an Alaskan breeze and escape out onto the balcony. Oh, […]
Scattered
Time to gather myself in from all the places I’ve flung myself in recent days— appointments, computer screens, living rooms, kitchens, restaurants, coffee shops and donation boxes of all varieties— where I happily and mindlessly dropped off my energy because I had some. I should have gotten a receipt, but I was too busy having […]
A Most Fortunate Woman
It’s strange. When I write about or dip down into my everyday experience of the limitations of my illness… when I talk about how bad it can sometimes get… it can feel like I’m lying. Because, really, I am a most fortunate woman. With some years of experience, I know I have to say yes, […]
The Prescription
Sometimes it feels less like I have a disease, and more like the disease has me— with deep aching pain in muscles and joints and chronic fatigue that can turn into life-crippling crashes when my energy plunges so low I’m on the floor, too exhausted to move or talk, just cryin’-tired, no treatment, no cure. […]
Passage
The sun rises, the sun sets… the seasons roll… the river bank gives way to the river… the stone steps become more swaybacked foot by foot… even the stars in the vastness of space are born, gleam their light-years, dim and die… everything built up wears down… everything that comes, goes… what exists does not […]
The Wrong Measuring Stick
I fail. I miss the mark. I do not measure up. I am constantly beaten down or beaten up, constantly falling short comparing myself to others, never reaching unreachable marks… until one day a change-thought comes crowding in— You are using the wrong measuring stick. Yes. I see. I am held captive by a Prison […]
The Infinite Holy
My spiritual mentor— former nun, poet, Ph.D., delver in ancient myths, student of Jung’s work, all her life legally-blind— when speaking of God would often use the name “Holy One.” Not God, not Creator, not Father or anything I’d ever heard, but “Holy One.” And each time I heard her say “Holy One,” I felt […]
Reflections
I have my chair turned to the window today— a bright, breezy morning in September. A low white cloud breathes out a frosty fog-breath that dissolves into wisps as it goes sliding down the slope of a hill below. Sunshine and breeze strike the silver disco ball hanging outside on the balcony, sending spots and […]
