I have decided to take a break from much of my online activity. I find myself in a place where I need to draw in a little and heal, and have given myself permission to simplify. I do not know when I will next post here. It could be tomorrow, it could be months from now. I give myself the freedom of choice. If in some rare instance you might want to reach me, please use the form on the contact page.

I am holding the world in my heart, with wishes for love and healing everywhere.

Love Jane

I have found a sanctuary in my new homeland. It is a place of magnificent old growth trees, which talk softly to me as the angels and sprites float under the canopy. At a time when I am struggling to find roots, nature has once again done it magnificently for me.

Even should my irrational fears of losing my voice come true, nature will speak for me.

Computer painting © 2005 Jane Waterman, all rights reserved.

It's been a long time since I've written in my own journal. I think in large part my mind has been pervaded by a sense of worthlessness - and shame at the sheer audacity of sharing my thoughts. I have longed to reach out but have engaged in the worst kind of censorship. I find myself questing to understand the world, to escape the self-imposed embargo on my soul: to tell what it is like trapped on the inside.

I think in contradictions. I long for contact from family and friends long moved out of my life. I feel starved for a kind word, because I offer no kindness to myself. Journalling is an intensely personal, healing thing, and is indeed, the kindest thing I do for myself. To write words without censure, regardless of my fears of how they will be received or perceived, is surely what I have been put on this world to do. I still feel very much the alien, the stranger in a strange land. I have spent most of my life molding myself to be what I feel others want to see: what I think they will find worthwhile and acceptable.

Why do I have so much trouble believing that I need only be worthwhile to me, myself, I? If others do not see the genuine love in my heart, the concern, the empathy, and the caring for my fellow humankind for what it is (and I have spent many years regarded by suspicion and disbelief that one could feel so much for other's pain), then why should I treat myself with such unkindness? Why should I look down on myself as unworthy? I am made as I was meant to be, beautifully imperfect, and perhaps it may be that I will never be understood by any but myself and my beautiful wife. I seek contentment with that, and if I should find no other hearts and faces of love and compassion, this life should be enough.

Soon we leave this sanctuary of trees and eagles and water, and move to another home - a different place, but one that will be no less loved with the memory of trees affixed to the walls of my mind. And in time, my hands, will dive once more into the soil as they are meant to, and bring more saplings forth, and the ground will give forth other gifts of beauty to salve my wounds and anchor my mind.

In a cynical moment this week, the following maxim came to me: "The only thing more dangerous than having a pulse, is having an opinion."

Well, I do have an opinion, and even if I may be speaking it to an empty room, I will strive to no longer be afraid of it. I open a new page in this journal, as I open a new book of life.

Jane

Suicide is an especially difficult topic for me. I have known three people who lost the battle to depression and successfully ended their lives. I use the word "successfully" ironically. As a survivor, I know there is no victory in losing the fight, and to this day I am still haunted by the lives of these three beautiful, complex people - lives that held so much promise but were lost in the grip of depression.

I have been unearthing old materials about depression that I hosted on the web some ten years ago, deciding that they are still important - perhaps more than ever as so many people, especially teens, lose themselves to the impersonal disillusionment of the age. I mourn each loss and feel it as keenly as if it were the losses of those I was privileged to know for such a short time.

During my research to update these materials, I was heartened to know that there is now a day to recognize and promote Suicide Prevention, and it just passed on September 10. Although I am late, I feel it is still timely to reflect on suicide, on the great hole left by people who commit suicide, and why we should do everything in our power to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

Read more »

A friend of mine is fond of the saying: "The only permanent thing is change." That maxim has been true of my life recently, and will be for some time to come, I am certain. Words have circulated in my head. I have planned journal entries that flow seamlessly while I am measuring the streets of the neighbourhood with my feet. Yet, when I sit down to write, the words are censored: they choke, and somehow I do not make time to allow them to flow. Inside, I am snarled in the weeds, stagnant, unable to move, while outwardly I seem to be making progress, as evidenced by the movement of one foot before the other.

Read more »

On the high-pain days, the world seems to shrink a little smaller, and I am left with the dilemma of how to learn to inhabit my body when it is such a source of pain. As if mirroring my inner world, as I learn to feel emotions long-suppressed, wave after wave of storm hits my corner of the outer world, confirming my helplessness in the face of disability.

Read more »

Sometimes I feel like I'm speaking into a void, but the void is of my own making. I step closer to being authentic, to being who I am, but I hold onto the fears of who will judge me, what will people think, etc? Many years ago, a counsellor told me that I needed to make the shift to being inside my own head, my own skin, instead of being on the outside, looking in, from a dissociative distance.

Read more »

Not for a long time, has a place sung "home" like this one does. It's all been so quick - the work so hard, the ensuing body flare and pain so overwhelming - that the mind really hasn't caught up with it yet. This place is ours, our new home close to sea, mountains and trees. Fog wraps the mountains, Canada geese congregate in the nearby field, and underneath our very window, amidst the perennials, a lonely maple turns yellow and seems to shout with the miracle of it.

Read more »