Tinglytoes ~

I feel like you spoke from my heart. You are able to say things so much more clearly than I am, though. That expressive clarity is one of the things I had to give up. To me, it is the sign of a very good mind.

I struggled for years with the reality that my physical appearance doesn't match my profound inability to function. My facial muscles don't work like they should any more, but the slackness just looks, to others, like "depression". I can pass for "pain and dysfunction free" in public without a thought, but every single minute I spend out in the busy environments, or in face to face conversation, is torture beyond description. Just using my voice is often torture. I have no desire to explain myself or excuse myself to other people, though, unless I've committed an offense, and so I could not find a way around this. (However, those people whom I've brought back into my life from my past know how animated and bouncy I "was", so they'll see the difference, face to face.) I used to resent not simply having lost a leg or something obvious. Now I am glad that I "pass", because it is a normalizer.

We used to provide therapeutic care for teen boys who had committed horrible offenses, and had significant behavioral challenges. Our approach, generated during my previous time as a Social Worker, was to look candidly at their dysfunctions and deviancies, and set up their environment in our family home so that those dysfunctions and deviancies became irrelevant. It took very careful planning. The end result was that they were able to be "just boys" in a family, and get up on Saturday mornings and watch cartoons in their PJ's, and have all of the daily family experiences they truly needed. Inside the home, you seldom knew the extent of these boys' histories. They could play and laugh and be actually "normal". We couldn't extend that environment into the public with most of them, except with the support of a few young, dynamic Case Aides by their sides. That seems to be my approach to my situation. Define the mechanical dysfunctions I have, adapt where I can and find a way to make the rest of the issues irrelevant, while still engaging with the current of life. I think of the computer as an "adaptive tool", in that regard.

I think people assume/expect that they have so much control in their lives. Any evidence to the contrary means they have to reestablish control by converting it into anger, and directing it at a chosen "cause" of their injury or loss. Acceptance has become equated with "failure" or "giving up". The best gift I now own is the complete knowledge, and peace with, the Truth -- I have no "right" to any control over the physical aspects of my life. Even the most basic, fundamental aspects, like food and shelter (I have gone without the former more than once in the past few years). The only Actual control I have is to accept Life as Life, and to choose to find joy wherever I can, and to feel my frustrations and pains honestly, but to not over-indulge them and let them take me over. I'm from the Puget Sound Region, which has borrowed a lot from the culture you live in. (I could not live in CA, as beautiful as it is there, for just the cultural reasons you refer to). My whole peer group settled comfortably into that successful, intelligent, "enlightened" upper middle class, with all of the associated magical thinking. I love so many of these people, but I see their assumption of control in their lives and I actually pray that they never have that shattered. I know, however, that if they do, and they survive it emotionally, they will be so much more free, and really truly happy. I know that now that I have reestablished relationships with these different, important people from my life, I can tell them, when it's important, about my health issues, and they will actually see me as I am, compassionately and with real empathy. I can't explain why this is the case. I think it's partly because they're already comfortable with me as "normal" by their unconscious definition, and so what's wrong with me physically will, by default, end up being included in their definition of "normal".

I like the "Wounded Healer" archetype. I associate that with what you are saying. The person who has lived through what life actually has to offer and become the stronger and more compassionate for it, and therefore has a kind of Peace that other people want to emulate, or that can serve to teach other people. My dad, a Methodist Minister who is fluent in the original Biblical languages, loves to point out that the NT Greek word used in the "Sermon on the Mount" is actually a word that translates accurately as "wounded healer". He will demonstrate how this is the whole point of that sermon. I think that almost every culture and religion has that same archetype. Not that suffering is the goal -- but seeing life as what it is, from the larger perspective, and letting go of attachments to physical identity and possessions and the expectation of Perfection, as a result of having lived through life's challenges, and making peace with the world, and with a true Compassion because of this, *is* the point. What I find ironic is that when I let go of the narcissistic expectation of a sort of functional perfection, I found True Perfection, in the Universe and how the whole process of Life works. It's so much more freeing to see that Perfection in what Is, rather than to try so hard to impose the reflection of it over what is.

I really wish I could express myself with your clarity. You demonstrate so much insight and perspective just with that gift. I keep checking in to this forum to see if you've posted. I think that you probably bring a lot of good to the world, whether or not you mean to, just by having achieved, inwardly, what is unconsciously shown by your insight and your ability to communicate it simply.

Thank You :-)

Linn