Jocelyn K. Glei: What if you’re not broken?

These are hard times, in general, but being quarantined (I'm on my 2nd week) highlights our ability to sit with ourselves (or not).

Currently listening to Jocelyn K. Glei: What if you’re not broken? 

My self-hatred and shame, are on my list as my issues I would like to work through actively this year. They were my main goal, before COVID-19 happened.

I relate to what she posits, that we have this habit of saying, I'll do it, when...

For me, it, romance and love have been blocked by my body, and my shame. My pain.

I have a lot to write these days, but because I stay on a computer all day in my work-from-home-quarantine, I am staying away from it. I am just taking things one day at a time and trying to get through the work I have to do to stay employed and paid.

Diana Athill.

From Write, Never Marry, and Other Love Advice from Simone de Beauvoir's Editor: An interview with acclaimed writer and editor Diana Athill shortly after her 99th birthday.

I really began to write entirely as a healing exercise. I didn't realize that, but that first book I wrote came out of the blue, a good many years after my unhappiness. I had been living carefully enough, working at a very interesting job, having lots of friends. But all during that time, I do know that if I stopped and looked at myself and said, "What is my life?," I would have said to myself, "It is a life of failure." Simply because I'd grown up in a family and at a time when my job was to get married and have children, and I had failed. There was this underlying thing of failure deeply buried. I didn't sit down and say, "I'm going to write that book." It happened. It was a very uncanny experience, and it came easily. And when it was finished, I was healed.

The interview is by Anya Raza, check it out. Athill is 99 and sharp as shit. Goals!

Lisa Ling and PTSD.

I watched an episode of Lisa Ling's This Is Life last night. It's playing on OWN, after originally playing on CNN.

I really liked Our America by Lisa Ling on OWN, and this is in a similar vein.

I don't know why she left OWN, Our America had a better production value, but the content is similar, and I really like and respect Lisa Ling. According to an interview with Ling, cited on Wikipedia, she could look at "edgier" content with CNN.

Last nights episode "Jungle Fix," was all about ayahuasca, a plant-based hallucinogenic that is espoused by some to be a useful tool in confronting and dislodging trauma. 

Ling travels to Peru and interviews folks who flew down there specifically to take the drug, and to try and face their demons. 

The most powerful interviews come out during her interviews with veterans. They are clearly (understandably) angry at the lack of help they're getting back home, and with about 22 American veterans committing suicide daily, they're willing to try anything to alleviate some of their pain.

While on Our America, Ling did an episode called "Invisible Wounds of War" that, to this day, my friend S and I talk about. It deeply, deeply moved and upset me. The pain was palpable. I could taste it and feel it and it was just an overwhelming viewing experience.

That might make it seem frightening, but it was beautiful and important. 

I recommend both of these episodes. 

Treatment looks like different things to different people. We don't all have the same needs. We don't process things the same way. We all struggle to access help, and our drug laws are antiquated, maybe access to assisted retreats with certain drugs could in fact dislodge certain things for certain people. 

If someone is in deep pain, they deserve the opportunity to try whatever they can to help themselves.