Authorpreneur Dashboard – Susan Plunket
When Every Breath Becomes a Prayer
Literature & Fiction
Georgina, a Jungian analyst, returns from her mother's funeral to discover her husband's affair. At the same time, her teenage daughter is suffering from suicidal depression. Georgina consults a shaman from Peru, an Irish mystic, an energy healer in Minnesota, five psychiatrists and four psychologists to help her child. Together mother and daughter learn the big lesson of life: nothing is done to you; it is done for you, so you can awaken. Four stalwart friends accompany Georgina on this journey which carries her to the incandescent shore of her being, where she encounters her own heart.
Book Bubbles from When Every Breath Becomes a Prayer
Does suffering have a purpose?
All creatures suffer. Why? So we can begin to ask ourselves what we're doing in this dimension? So we can learn to have compassion for others when we see them suffering? So we can appreciate how good it feels when there's harmony in our lives and no suffering for the moment? So we'll begin to ask whether or not we're related to something eternal and infinite? What I've learned from suffering, particularly the suffering caused by losing what you love most, is that, as you endure it it breaks your heart open to a new understanding of what it means to be a human among other humans.
Twin Flames
When twin flames reunite on earth, it is for the purpose of lighting the way home for everyone.
A Tree called Thea
A tree can be as good a friend as anyone else. When your heart is ragged sitting under a tree or hugging it or even gazing upward into its branches can be a soothing balm. My tree is Thea, and when I'm with her things come to my awareness that I hadn't known before. Sometimes messages from those passed on, sometimes advice, sometimes comfort. To love a tree and be loved in return is a great solace.
Prince
Prince died yesterday. So where is he now? Singing in another dimension? Reviewing his life? Did he accomplish the tasks he set for himself before he incarnated? Was he a wanderer from a higher dimension, come to earth to bring his message and help us awaken -- only to be caught in the heaviness of the third dimension, and suffer more than he could take, being a sensitive Soul from a higher frequency? There are many wanderers among us trying to help us awaken. Sometimes they fall.
We Are All One
According to The Law of One, the Universe is one being. What you do for yourself is also done for everyone, just as what you do for another is also done for yourself, because there are no others. We each have a choice of whether to be in service to all or only in service to ourselves.
Raising Your Kids To Be Happy People
Happiness is within only. The earlier children learn this, the better their whole lives will be. Inner peace comes from a relationship with yourself that acknowledges your own divinity. Once a person grasps that they are not just their body, but that they have an eternal aspect, a divine aspect, and that every other being does too, the whole world changes in miraculous ways.
When Your Heart is Broken
The warmth of a dog's ears is like no other warmth. When your heart is broken into a thousand bits, lay down next to your dog and let loose your tears. He will lick them from your face with a great sloppy tenderness. Olive drank a river of my tears when my sister died. Then when Olive died there were no warm ears to soothe my heart or lick my tears away. It was the deepest loneliness of all. But then came Obi with his soft as silk warm puppy ears.
Phoenicia
There is a little town that time forgot. It's called Phoenicia. I grew up there, sleigh riding on Sister's Hill, swimming in the streams, playing ball behind the Parish Hall, being called home by the twelve o'clock whistle for tuna fish sandwiches, carrot sticks and cool aid, waiting for the school bus in front of Gordon's Drugstore. On Christmas Eve all the parents would put us to bed, {they thought}, leave and go from house to house have a different course of their midnight supper at each home. Pure magic.
Everything in the Universe Begins as Light
Our bodies are like crystals. Our seven major chakras, from the root chakra to the crown chakra, follow the colors of the rainbow, just as sunlight does when it passes through a crystal and we see all the colors of the rainbow, from red to the most beautiful violet. Our light is invisible, just like the colors in sunlight are invisible until a prism breaks them up.
Are You Afraid of Death?
There is help from the other side when it's our time to cross over. But we're not always ready to let go of our earthly life, to leave all those we love. Learning to let go of our attachments is a big lesson and sometime an early death is our teacher. Old age prepares us in a way to let go. But Julia is still young and doesn't want to leave yet, and she's afraid too.
The Soul Laid Bare
The nearness of death is a sacred time. Now stripped of its ego, the Soul is laid bare. We see things about the person dying, and about ourselves, which were invisible until now. As she lays on her bed dying, with nothing running counter to the Divine in her, Julia is approachable in a new way. And Georgina feels she's never known her until now and has missed out on loving her as she might have, had she not been so blind or preoccupied. and she hungers for communion with her sister.
Does Suffering Burnish the Soul?
Whatever happens to us in life can either help us grow spiritually or make us bitter. And it's our choice. Everything can be a catalyst for growth or a reason to despair. If you subscribe to the view that Earth is where we learn our lessons on the road to enlightenment, then it's easier to see whatever happens as a chance to burnish our Soul. If we don't use the catalyst, then we suffer for nothing.
You Are Not Your Body
While we walk on Earth we think our body is us. Then someone we love begins to die and their body melts away until they are just a bag of bones covered in skin - and we see - we are not our bodies. The Soul becomes more visible as the body drops away, until there is no ego left, only the pureness of being. And the Soul's presence is all we sense.
Social Media and Mental Telepathy
The world is so interconnected that Family Guy people know of Downton Abbey and Michelle Dockery. We all carry the same stories, heroes and anti-heroes around in our heads, whether we're in New York, Tehran, or Shanghai. Communication is instant via text, snapchat, instagram. Is social media preparing us for an even more instant form of communication - mental telepathy?
Regret
It's a little word, regret, but it can devastate you. Sooner or later, when we've been unkind or judgmental, we regret it. It's not easy to grasp the idea that when you hurt another you are hurting yourself, just as when you are kind to another, it is also a kindness to yourself. But that's the truth.
The Veil of Forgetting
In between our incarnations we review our Soul's journey toward awakening and choose catalysts for our next lifetime which will help us, or others in our Soul group, to evolve spiritually. We grow fastest when we are facing challenges in our third dimensional bodies on Earth. But because of the veil of forgetting we don't see our whole journey or rememberer past lives. We can feel life is unfair or harsh and get resentful of our difficulties, when in truth they are the catalysts for our progression. In between lives we see the whole story and have no resentment.
The Pain of Infertility
If you want to get pregnant and can't, it can make you feel defective, somehow less than a full woman, and worse, that life is unfair because you're left out, deprived of something essential in life. Some people go to any lengths to make it happen - and that's their journey. Some, like Lydia, bury the feelings and try to move on, but the repressed pain surfaces later. Others accept that they can't bear children and take it as a catalyst to help them awaken to a more spiritual path. Acceptance of what is sets us on a high spiritual journey. Nothing is done to us. It's done for us, so we can awaken.
How to Manage Anger so it Won't Make You Sick
When we feel anger we have a choice. We can accept our feeling, and accept ourself for feeling it, and use it as a catalyst to grow. If we understand our anger and accept it, without judging ourselves, then integrate the feeling, it won't make us sick. If we rage on, then get angry at ourselves, or someone else, for our rage, the emotion will down load into our cells and alter them - eventually causing cancer. Feel your anger and accept it and yourself. The first acceptance is of self. Sit still and tolerate your feeling until you see the folly in it.
Sailing Inwward
Everything on Earth has a season. During the first half of life we sail out into the world. In the second half of life we become more introspective, looking more deeply into our inner world, a world which is as vast inside of us as the starry heavens are outside. We always know we'll die one day, but we keep this thought at bay until we, or someone we love, is faced with a life threatening illness. Accepting that death is part of the cycle of all things in the third dimension, makes it less frightening.
Psychic Vampires
Sometimes a person leaves you, and then, they're the one who falls apart. They didn't realize how much strength they took from your presence. And you may not have recognized how much they drained you. It's as if they've put a big red hose into your heart or abdomen. Like a psychic vampire, they suck your life energy right out of you, leaving you exhausted. You have to psychically pull out the hose and seal the area to keep them from draining your energy, even after they've left.
When Your Friends Don't like Your Partner
When your most valued friends don't like your partner, it's a sign that something isn't right in the relationship. We can be blinded by our own projections and the narcissistic gratification of being adored. Other people can sometimes see more clearly what's going on. Georgina doesn't want to see Colin's underbelly, his shadow. She wants to bask in his attention, rather than to acknowledge his dark side.
Sleep
To have a good night's sleep, or even a delicious nap, is divine. When our puppy finally falls asleep after chewing up the house or our teething baby or feverish child calms and slips off to sleep, our gratitude and relief are boundless. Part of the art of falling asleep is putting our minds on something serene, beautiful and peaceful. Kate is lying in bed listening to the palm trees overhead. She imagines them as elegant ladies in silk evening gowns swishing through a ballroom.
The Purpose of Dreams
Why do we dream? Do our dreams serve any purpose? I believe they do, that they are trying to prepare us for coming events, or, to help us process what's already happened — to show us a side of things we may not be consciously aware of. Dreams add the missing element to our conscious awareness and in that sense, they are compensatory. They compensate for what our conscious self has not yet acknowledged. In the example of a man on horseback jumping over a ditch, the dream could be warning the old man that he is about to cross over into another realm. The dream could be preparing him for his death. For the young man the dream might be foretelling a big leap in his life.
How Stress Causes Disease
You might have a genetic marker for a disease and never get it. If you keep your body balanced to relieve stress you can prevent disease. Body Talk, yoga and meditation are the tools I use to relieve stress so I don't set off my genetic markers. I wish everyone knew about these. I put them in my book — to help spread the word.
Am I Making the Right Choices for My Child
From the moment I became a mother, I started worrying over whether I was doing it right, doing enough, using the right pediatrician, getting the best advice, signing up for the right gymnastics class, getting into the right school, hiring the right nanny. Should I work less or even try to be a full time mother? Guilt, Guilt, Guilt, was what I felt most of the time because I worked part time. In retrospect, I was probably doing ok and I certainly loved my daughter and wanted to do everything right for her to be the best person she could be. I wish I hadn't worried and suffered so much. I would have been better company for her.
Nightmares
We all have nightmares from time to time. So what causes them? I believe that nightmares happen to warn us of an inner situation in our psyche. Dreams of wild animals are a particular case. Jungian analyst Maria Lousie Von Franz says that dreams of wild animals are a warning that our own primitive aggressive impulses are awakened and ready to break down the barrier between our rational self and our unconscious irrational self.
No C-Section!
The Western way of giving birth in a hospital doesn't honor or empower the mother. Instead of using gravity and nature, the process is designed for the convenience and glory of the doctor. Many women are unnecessarily traumatized by the hospital experience of giving birth. As a psychologist listening to these women, it's clear how dehumanizing and devaluing the process can be made to feel in hospitals, when this should be a glorious, joyful and triumphant moment for the woman giving birth.
Essential Oils for Pregnancy
When I find something good, I usually want to tell everyone about it. Essential oils are like that for me. I enjoy them so much in my bath or in a diffuser or even just on the soles of my feet or over my heart. Oils can be particularly helpful for stress, depression, illness, anxiety, sleep and pregnancy.
Discovering You're Pregnant
How do you feel when you discover you're pregnant and you want to be? It can be one of the most miraculous feelings you'll ever have. If you were adopted it can also be the first time you'll ever see a blood relative, someone who could look like you and reconnect you to your biological stream. Georgina is so happy for her daughter to be pregnant that she tries to savor the news by taking it in slowly, in little butterfly sips.
Dream Interpretation
I love dreams, my own and other peoples. The unconscious is endlessly creative in producing images to communicate its message to us. Dreams see around corners and into the future. They are my most helpful tool as a psychologist and my favorite way of figuring out what's going on in my own life. They speak to us symbolically, in pictures, like in this dream —Georgina sees a pagoda floating in a blue sky. She wonders why her unconscious has given her this image.
Our Body Elemental
Have you pondered the question of whether or not we have a body elemental which works to keep us in balance? Some say it's an actual being about four feet high which often sits on our shoulder and works very hard to keep all our body systems in balance. Perhaps body talkers are working with this aspect of ourselves to bring our physical bodies back into a state where they can heal.
How Remote Healing Works
When my sister had cancer, far away from me, I traveled back and forth between her and my family. When I couldn't be with her, she gave me her permission to do remote healing on her and to go to other Body Talk practitioners who used my body as a surrogate for her to do the remote healing. It made me feel far less helpless to have this option. In this excerpt, Lydia and Kate are talking about how remote healing works.
How Stress becomes Disease
Studying Body Talk gave me a whole new appreciation for our bodies. All the stress, emotion and trauma that we don't process psychologically will get downloaded into our bodies, and when it reaches a tipping point, will become disease. But the body will fight tooth and nail to prevent this with its many tools, for example, our wei qi and our liver's decision making function.
Prejudice
This excerpt recounts an event which happened. These white men hung another human being for their pleasure, to show their power and superiority. Theirs was a power based only on a culture of prejudice and ignorance. It is painful to know that human beings are capable of this.
Pleasure and Beauty
Persian culture has so much more lush beauty than our own, with its severe Pilgrim underpinnings. I didn't grow up having tea in a rose filled garden or sleeping outside under the moon, with my whole multi-generational family, in beds protected by mosquito netting. Falling in love with a Persian man when I was in graduate school, introduced me to food made with rose oil and saffron, tea from a samovar, the poetry of Hafiz and Rumi and an overall gentler, more elegant way of life, than I knew in my own family, where the emphasis was on working hard and doing well, more than about enjoying each moment and activity of the day.
Persian Culture
The Persian culture is very beautiful. Persians are Indo-European, but they were over run by the Arabs. Their culture appreciates subtlety and beauty, especially in their food which is delicately flavored with saffron and rose oil. In this exerpt two little cousins in Teheran have just learned that President Kennedy has been shot. At this time the Shah was still in power and the religious fanatics had not yet taken over.
The Wounded Healer
I'm learning that when things don't go my way, even to the point of serious suffering, it's a lesson, an opportunity for me to grow. If I hadn't suffered losses and heartbreak, and experienced the death of someone I loved deeply, I wouldn't know the depths of pain that my patients are experiencing. Having been through these things makes me a better psychologist and a better person.
Intention Heals
Kate and Finn are discussing Kate's eccentric mother and her belief in both the power of our intention to harm or heal and the power of gratitude to transform us. Our emotions are powerful and affect both ourselves, others, and the world around us. We need to take care, about not only what we say, but also, about what we allow ourselves to think and feel. We can harm ourselves, others and our world with our thoughts, words and emotions. We can also do immense good with our positive intentions. Offer gratitude to your water before you drink it. If you do this, according to Masaru Emoto's work, you will change its molecular structure for the better.
Body Talk
Body Talk, created by Australian, John Veltheim in the 1990's to save his own life, is a system for bringing the body back into balance so it can heal itself. It is now in use world wide by alternative practitioners. It's not at all intrusive and it's painless. I studied it a few years ago, though I'm not a hands on healer, so I don't use it as part of my sessions as a psychologist, but I do go to a body talk person for regular treatments.
Servants?
It feels wrong to Kate that one grown woman should serve another as housekeeper and maid. Lydia lounges and shops and plays all day, while Myrna does all the cooking, cleaning and serving of Myrna's guests. Cleaning her own home — even though she'd rather be writing and drawing — is a spiritual practice for Kate, who is messy, by nature. Caring for her home brings balance into Kate's life. She doesn't exactly judge Lydia for having a servant, but she feels uncomfortable being waited on in Lydia's home.
Japanse Flower Arranging
When I was 21 I lived on Okinawa and took a Japanese flower arranging class. All of us were Americans taking the class and the teacher was an an elegant Japanese woman. She explained that depending on the season of the year a different vase was used and it was placed in a different part of the home. This level of attention to detail was new to me. I'd grown up with wild lilacs casually placed around the house in spring, evergreens on the mantle at Christmas, and roses on the dinner table if we were having company. This class gave me a new appreciation for, not only, the choice of flower to be used, and the arrangement of the flowers in the vase, but also, the placement of the vase in the home.
When Love Ends
With some partners, if you can't meet their needs, for whatever temporary reason, you get dumped. And not gently. They begin to project all manner of negative attributes onto you. You become the parent who withheld love or the sibling who stole the love or the person who betrayed them. When Kate is hit with a crippling suicidal depression and Georgina does everything she can think of to save her, Colin becomes furious at the loss of Georgina's attention and turns on Kate with a ragefull jealousy.
The "In Love" Feeling
When you fall in love — if "fall" is even the right word, it's more like you're captured by the idea of the other — it's a Divine experience. In that person, you see everything which you most love and admire, whether it's actually in them or not. We fall in love with our own projections, which we put on the other, because they fit, more or less. We can't just project our ideal feminine or masculine onto anyone, but only onto those who are somewhat of a match for them. In a sense, we fall in love with our own inner vision, an aspect of ourselves, that we project onto the beloved. Georgina has an experience of the Divine when she falls in love with Colin. She feels it's all happening outside of time in a secret world.
To Fall In Love
Jung famously said: "Love is not a choice. You're captured." Love is not a rational proposition. And we often love unwisely. This has been my experience in life as well. And it is Georgina's too. She was captured by Colin and lifted up to the gates of heaven, before he dropped her down into the sea and flew away.
Claustrophobia
It's strange that to get to the top of the world, and stand with your head literally in the clouds, you have to take a train through the middle of a glacier. Even Jung mentioned feeling a bit claustrophobic on the train to the Jungfrau, which is a ride through a tunnel carved in thick walls of ice.
Jung's Tower
There are places you dream about and fantasize about visiting. Jung's tower, which stands at the edge of Lake Zurich, is such a place for me. I'd had photographs of it on my desk for years and years and didn't even seem to know it was a real place one could actually see and touch. It is a tower that lives in my psyche, as Jung himself does. To suddenly see it through the trees, astounded me. I gave this experience to Georgina, as she is also a Jungian psychologist.
Delighting in Dogs
Shared memories with a beloved dog in a beloved place are among those that linger longest when a relationship ends. Central Park becomes dog park every morning until 9:00 AM, especially on the weekends. Dogs are allowed off leash and are frolicking everywhere. It was Georgina's favorite activity of the week to go to Central Park and walk with Olive, Kate and Colin. The beauty of early morning, the lushness of the park and the joy of the dogs, were an exquisite pleasure.
Adoption as a Wounding
Kate feels deformed because she's adopted. She tells her therapist that she must be subpar, otherwise why was she given away the moment she was born. She experiences her adoption as something that makes her an outsider and not as good as other people. She longs to have a child, so that for the first time in her life she will know someone that she is connected to by blood, someone that might look like her. She believes this will heal the wound of being adopted.
Meeting Your Birth Parent
The details of the meeting between Finn and his birth mother hadn't been discussed thoroughly by his adoptive parents and birth mother. It's overwhelming enough to meet a birth parent without being confronted by siblings your never knew existed. And nine is young for this kind of meeting. A nine year old will make all kinds of assumptions which could be very wrong. And could hurt a lot. These meetings need careful preparation and discussion, both with the birth mother before hand, and with your child both before and after.
Dreams
As a psychologist I work a lot with dreams and it's my favorite part of the work I do. Dreams balance what the conscious mind knows, by showing us in symbolic form, what our unconscious can add to the picture, to broaden and enhance our awareness of what's going on with us and what might be about to happen. A dream is a snapshot of our inner world at that moment. When you put the dream information together with what you know and feel consciously you have the whole picture of a situation. Whenever I'm confused about what to do, I ask my psyche for the gift of a dream.
The Rustle of Silk
I love trees. And because I love them, I often personify them in my writing. Here Kate is falling asleep in her house, which is nestled in a grove of palm trees. As she lies in the dark, listening to the wind moving through the palm fronds, she imagines that the trees are tall elegant women in ballgowns, which rustle as they move through the ballroom.
Choosing a Therapist
It's often not how smart, or even how experienced a therapist is, that makes them right for you. Do you feel the click with them? Do you feel heard? Can they create a safe space for you to explore your feelings? Also important is how respectful they are. Kate doesn't feel the click with Dr. Jonas and Dr. Jonas is, in a small but significant way, disrespectful by putting her feet in Kate's face. These things bother Georgina, but Cyrus wants only to know if she's helping Kate. Georgina feels she can't be, if Kate doesn't feel the click. As a psychologist seeing a new client, I look for the click too. Can I understand and empathize with this new person who has come seeking help? Am I the right match for them? Usually you can both tell in the first session.
Writing as Salvation
Kate suffered a suicidal depression, agoraphobia and panic attacks when she was sixteen. Part of her survival strategy was writing a blog about what she was experiencing and sharing it with fellow sufferers. Looking back at her blog seven years later, in order to write a graphic novel about surviving depression, she hears that voice as alien, but yet she recognizes it. The blog connected Kate with thousands of people all over the world who were also suffering the creeping blackness of depression. Her blog was part of what saved Kate and helped her return to the world of ordinary life. Many of my patients have used journal writing and blogging as part of the path through anxiety and depression.
Reincarnation and Ganesh
Many people on earth believe in reincarnation, for all species. In this excerpt, Georgina offers a prayer for the daddy long legs that her friend Emma has just killed. She asks that he may find the light and journey to his next form. She makes this prayer while looking at a sculpture of Ganesh. She collects them. I collect them. I'm not sure why. I've just always been drawn to them, maybe because of the elephant head and also because of Ganesh's story.
Agoraphobia
If you or someone you love is suffering from agoraphobia, don't push. Agoraphobia can be helped. It's often a part of anxiety or depression and when you get help for that, the agoraphobia resolves. But when in the thick of it, support from other humans is essential. In this excerpt, Kate is back on her feet, but still unable to leave home alone. In order to go back to work, Georgina hires an NYU student to be with Kate when she has to work. Ben also takes Kate to her therapy appointments. After eight months of going out accompanied by another person, Kate is able to go out alone again.
Danger of Being Idealized
Being idealized by your partner feels wonderful, but it's dangerous if it's too extreme, because devaluation always follows. The man who made me feel as if I was perfection, a being wrapped in spun gold, was the man who later found fault with me at every turn. Nothing I did was right after the idealization ended. This is a natural process — if it's not too extreme, as our psyche tries to balance each attitude with its opposite.
Art as Therapy
Kate suffered a suicidal depression and strangling anxiety as a teenager. Drawing helped her survive. For one thing it kept her hands busy so she wasn't digging holes in her scalp. Drawing also gave her a focus, and, a beginning sense that she could gain control over her pain. By drawing the way she felt, she could come to know herself in a new way, and even to accept her suffering. In that acceptance her state began to shift.
Animals are Starstuff too
Emma and Georgina are having lunch at an outdoor cafe and Emma kills a spider. The two friends disagree on her action. Georgina believes every being is an expression of the Divine, a sentient being and that we're all made of the same elements as the stars. Emma says it's just a spider, a nuisance at best, and that she has the right to take it's life. This difference in point of view underlies their entire relationship, yet they are friends and they accept their differences with a minimum of judgement.
Twin Flames
Twin Flames are people who come from one spark, one Soul, that has split into masculine and feminine. While incarnated on Earth they are in two separate bodies and if they meet the recognition is instant and the love eternal. It is two halves of a whole reuniting and is powerful enough to light the way home for many Souls. Standing in the falling snow, Georgina realizes that Matthew is her twin flame.
Rapture
Jung famously said: "Love is not a choice, you're captured." Georgina evokes in Colin his own internal idealized feminine, much as Beatrice did for Dante. We fall in love with what we think the person is. We project onto them our own idea of the perfect partner because something about them evokes our own inner ideal. A woman can compensate a man for all the hardness and misery in life, just by being. Colin tells Georgina this. She is his delight. At least during the phase of infatuation.
Coming home to Love
Kate is flying back across the world to Finn after attending a family funeral. He can see as she approaches, that she's wrapped in sadness. She's so relieved at his touch that she melts into his arms. He encircles her with his love and strength and whispers into her hair. A house feels different depending on who is in it and how they feel about it. If you love your house it will love you back. Kate loves their home and without her there loving it, it feels empty to Finn. So he whispers to her: "I don't like our house when you're not there."
Stepfathers
When you have a child and you divorce and then you remarry, if the sea gets rough, many fears will grip each of you. How resentful will your new partner be of the time you spend with your child? Can your new partner love your child? Is jealousy of the child by the step parent inevitable? Will the step parent be able to put his/her needs aside when the child is in trouble and be an adult and help? Even when the child's life is at risk, some step parents can not show up. There's a reason fairy tales depict archetypes of wicked step mothers. But there are wicked step fathers too. Colin is a wicked step father. His concern is all for himself, not with how he can help Kate survive, but only with how her suffering will impact his life. He can not lay his needs aside, even temporarily to help a suicidal teen.
Teenage Rebellion
Teens often go through a period of rebellion against one or both parents. When parents are divorced and either remarries, the rebellion can become outright rejection of the parent and refusal to even see them. Kate's father has married a woman twenty years younger than himself, and they travel the world together. Kate feels dumped by Cyrus and replaced by his "new little girl," as she refers to her father's young wife. But when Kate becomes suicidally depressed, Georgina insists that Cyrus be informed. Like a good parent, Cyrus understands rebellion and the need for it, and he shows up for Kate. With no recrimination, he sits beside her and takes her cold shivering hands in his warm ones.
Pollyanna
When you teach a little girl to sacrifice herself and to be friendly and co-operative, no matter the cost to her, in order to maintain a harmonious situation, you are putting her in danger. You must also teach her that she herself has value and that she has rights. She has the right to her body. She has the right to her point of view. We aren't in the Victorian age when a man told his wife what her opinions were. In this excerpt Georgina is struggling to understand why she allowed Colin to control her and why she tolerated his jealousy of and meanness to Kate.
Beware of Charming Men
Enchanting men delight us, seduce us, surprise us, lift us up on a wave of passion and romance and then drop us down to the bottom of the sea. Enchantment is marvelous, but we can't make the mistake of thinking it's love, or that it means a man is available for a committed relationship. Often the men that enchant us are more enchanted by themselves — or their work — which is a part of their identity.
Bonding with Another
Humans beings bond through shared experience, shared appreciation, shared humor, joy and tragedy. Monty Python, Family Guy, and The Simpsons are compelling shows for those who appreciate a certain type of humor. Colin loves these shows and shares them with Kate when she is a child. They cuddle together on the couch and laugh. They bond through this shared experience of pleasure. After he leaves she'll never watch them again.
Our Body Knows First
When something is happening in your lives, especially something we don't want, we can block awareness of it from our conscious mind. But our body knows and bears the brunt. What we don't work through emotionally, consciously, gets downloaded into our physical body. And emotional pain becomes physical pain.
Using TV to Survive
When psychological pain is unbearable, escaping into tv shows can help a person to get through another hour alive. The "normal lives," with manageable drama, depicted in Gilmore Girls, can offer hope that you too can return to a place of manageable drama. The mimi escape from your own reality, as you identify with Rory and Lorelei, brings a temporary relief from your suffering. Similarly, Grey's Anatomy provides respite, but also hope, as the doctors perform miracles. Maybe, you think, there will be a miracle for you too.
Depression is a Monster
Georgina and Kate are battling Kate's suicidal depression. Awake and asleep, they are in a nightmare. In this dream excerpt, Kate has been attacked by a man beast with claws and is near death. Georgina has rescued her and flown to a mountain top with Kate in her arms. Depression is a monster which attacks and kills. Here it is characterized as just that — a deadly monster.
When a Breakup is Right
It's surprising how a thing can happen in our lives which we think is the last thing we'd ever want, but after the pain, it turns out to be exactly what we need to grow.The first summer after Colin has left Georgina, she cries a river over him. But once she finds her footing again, she realizes it's actually a relief that he's gone. In fact, it's more than a relief, it's the right thing. She'd outgrown him and had been staying with him because it was less risky than being alone again in her mid fifties.
Reborn in Nature
Being outside, in the morning, walking under palm trees laden with water droplets, Kate feels clean and new, reborn. She's survived the storm. In her feeling of newness the palm trees concur, and when the breeze stirs their fronds, they baptize her.
Our Dreams Enlighten Us
Georgina guides her life by listening to what her dreams are telling her. She believes dreams come from the wisest part of ourselves to shed light on our current situation. In this excerpt she's telling her daughter, Kate, about the dream she's just had. In the dream, her husband is in a wheelchair, holding a baby. In reality he's recently left her for a woman half her age. But the dream tells her he's not doing as well as he'd hoped. In fact, without her, he has no legs.
The Nearness of Death
Georgina's younger sister, Julia, is dying. Her body is now only bones wrapped in skin. But as her body disappears, her Soul becomes more visible. As a young wild girl, her long red hair flying out behind her, her ego made the choices. Now, having endured much suffering, her ego and her Soul run on parallel tracks, with no disagreement. They are in harmony. One can see the pureness of her being and longs to commune with it. But once a person or an animal dies, it is their physical being we ache for, ache to touch and hold, but it's gone from this world.
Creativity Can Save You
When some strong fear or emotion has you in its grip, if you can objectify it, make sense of it, create an image for it, or a story about it, you can get a little distance so it won't hold you so tightly. In this excerpt Kate is drawing to keep her hands busy so she won't dig holes in her head. But also, because drawing puts a bit of space between her and the pain of anxiety and depression. Sometimes this space is enough for you to find a way out.
Clam Dream
Jung's way of interpreting a dream was to look at it both objectively and subjectively. Objectively, in Kate's dream the giant clams are giant clams. Subjectively, the clams are a representation of Kate, herself, an aspect of her, which her unconscious wants her to notice — to acknowledge and balance. Dreams try to show us what we're not seeing about ourselves. In this way, the unconscious balances consciousness to make us more whole.
Psychic Vampire
Our bodies often know things before our conscious minds will admit them. Georgina can't stomach the situation with her husband. Her body is trying to tell her that, but she's not ready to listen. He's stealing her energy, but since she refuses to see it, her body has to suffer.
Discovering an Affair
What does that first moment feel like, when you discover that your partner is having an affair? In this case, Georgina takes something out of her dog's mouth — it's her husband's small pocket notebook —and it's full of questions he's asking himself about another woman—a new woman who fills his mind. What does Georgina do? Something a child might do. She hides the notebook in her closet, inside her cowgirl boot, as if hiding it will undo her discovery.
Baptism After the Storm
It's the morning after the typhoon. Kate has come through it, and is walking around her garden. Some of the palm trees are uprooted. When the wind stirs, those trees still standing bestow a water blessing on her head as she passes beneath them. It's a sacred moment between Kate and the palm trees. The trees are using the breeze and water droplets from their fronds to reach out and touch Kate.
Depression
Depression is the most painful disease there is. Often the only thing that keeps someone from committing suicide is knowing what it would do to a person who loves them. There is no deeper courage than enduring agony to spare another pain.
Adoption
If you're an adopted child, or the parent of an adopted child, adoption is a word almost impossible to say or hear, in the beginning, at least. There's even a fear of the word, a fear of someone saying it in your child's hearing. No matter how much you don't want it to hurt your child — it will. The joy of adoption comes with wounds. For the parent, it might be the wound of failure. For the child, it's the wound of being unwanted. That wound can mushroom into all kinds of conscious and unconscious beliefs in your child's mind — things like: I must be sup-par, not good enough to keep, somehow bad. Why else was I given away?How do you heal all this?
A Palm Tree in Okinawa
Trees again here are portrayed as conscious beings. They're anxious, "waving their worried fronds around," afraid of dying.
The Archetype of the Fool
According to Jung, archetypes live in our collective unconscious and from this deep level, below the personal unconscious, direct many of our life choices. In this excerpt, Georgina and Kate talk about two aspects of the Archetype of the Fool. In most tarot cards the fool is pictured stepping off a cliff into the unknown. This can be a foolish move. On the other hand, if you don't have the courage to step out into the world and begin a journey, even when the way is uncertain, you'll never discover anything.
Time is an illusion
I'm typing these words now in three dimensional reality, but I'm, simultaneously, all my past and future selves, not only from this one lifetime, but from all my lifetimes. My spark of light may have taken form as a tree or a goat or an elephant so I could experience second dimensional reality. But part of me, and part of you too, even now, as we experience ourselves as human, walks among the gods as a being of light.
Trees as beings
I didn't realize, until I started creating bubbles, how many times I wrote about trees in this book. And each time I personified them. In one chapter they are whispering secrets to one another overhead, in another, the sound of the wind through them is compared to the sound of elegant women in long gowns swishing through a ballroom. In a third they are described as baptizing Kate when, the wind stirs and water droplets fall on her head. At a terrace luncheon the palms overhead lift their fronds and breathe. These are what I remember without looking at the book. I hope you love trees as much as I do.
the unconscious
So many of our reactions and so much of our behavior as humans is a result of our unconscious. We don't always know why we do something or why we feel a certain way. Sometimes we surprise ourselves, because something has come up from the unconscious, something we were previously not aware of. The unconscious is a vast landscape in each of us, truly as deep as the ocean and as vast as the starry heavens.
Coming Home
Returning home after a day's work is an experience common to many of us. In this excerpt, Georgina is standing on the corner across the street from her apartment building. She's enjoying the evening light as she waits for the traffic light to change. Light is a theme of the novel, and it is introduced in the first sentence in a casual way.
By the South China Sea
The creative process can feel daunting until you find your beginning point. Sitting by water, which is the symbol of the unconscious, is how Jung prepared to write. He would sit by Lake Zurich for days and even weeks, letting his unconscious prepare him to express consciously what he wanted to say. In this excerpt, kate is sitting by the sea, asking her inner muse to speak to her.
