Struggle, Gunk, Hope

Every week, pretty much without fail, I spend $90 that I'm not earning and go to my energy therapist Betty Dingreville. Betty is an amazingly gifted intuitive. I have been working with intuitive healer people since the early '90s and Betty is probably the most tuned-in person I've been to. She is able to see energy, help energy move, and she also receives information about what it means. She also seems to be at the centre of an energy-shifting community of people and is able to provide an ongoing narrative of what we're all contributing.

For example, as part of yesterday's adventures in the spiritual/energetic realm she saw me moving energy out of my much-stuck stomach area, named it as over-reliability (I am too convinced on a deep level that I can only rely on myself) and told me that me and my husband (whom I can barely tolerate in my current sickness and shit-sitting) are doing great work on a soul level (we both have dysfunctional patterns in our systems that mirror each other and, while causing a lot of discomfort, help us see where we need to change). She also told me that my contribution in this changing energy is to be the person that provides the link of rebirthing us into the new energy (thanks in part to my name Tasha Sophia Diamant which means "to rise again" "wisdom" "diamond"... perhaps I should regret that my mother didn't go with her second choice of a first name, Velvet).

None of this sounds wacky to me. I know that energy is the bottom line of everything. Everything is energy made manifest in some way. I also believe that there are many levels of energy and awareness. I KNOW that I am stuck. I have known it for a long, long time. I am pretty much always in and conscious of my stuckness--God knows, especially lately. It's why I get sick. It's why I have difficulty in my relationships. I just don't know how to change it. Or I should say, for years I have been working on it and moving shit--in that long, long time I have actually come a long, long way.

It's just that apparently it's endless. And joyless.

I know I'm stuck. I can see that my husband is not the reason I'm unhappy in our relationship. I know I need to change. I can even see a lot of the time where that change needs to happen. Well, after all this time and sickness and struggle and knowledge, I have to wonder if I'm able.

I know I'm shifting energy. What Betty tells me always makes sense to me (except for the part about there being an end to the gunk... there's always more). One of the main reasons I go to Betty is that I feel like she, more than anyone else in my life right now, gets me. What I wish I was getting is some results that actually made me feel better for more than a day or two.

I believe it is possible actually to be pretty much gunk-free. I see it in kids and in some of my students. I believe I came into this place with gunk and so attracted all the other gunk that has fucked me up over the years (family, school, culture, advertising, etc.). Gunk is different from the normal sufferings of physical existence. Gunk is an extra weight that goes beyond pain and loss. Will I ever be free of gunk? In this lifetime, I feel like I'm just the worker bee.

Or maybe I will get results, maybe I am changing. Just as I was writing the last paragraph (at 6 AM) Claire woke up and then Dave woke up and then she went back to bed and I got into bed with Dave and cried and told him what I'd been writing about. The other day, after a long time wondering where the hell my family has been for me, I phoned them all and cried. (It turns out they do care about me.)

Betty says I need to ask more clearly for what I need and I started doing that this week.
In my new artist statement for the Human Body Project (that I haven't posted yet), I write that nothing will change unless we allow ourselves to be more vulnerable. When I was able to tell my family members how I was feeling earlier this week, I knew I was letting myself be more vulnerable but right after I felt like I had closed back down. And, now, after talking with Dave I feel like I've allowed it again.

I feel more hopeful than when I started writing this entry.

Dave says maybe I just need to accept how I am right now. In some ways, that's what this whole project is about. Writing about where I'm at, showing myself naked--they're acts that are a form of self-acceptance.