August 28, 2002

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  See, I told you, “cute kid”, if you like fat babies.  I tried
  to post this picture with the previous blog, but xanga wasn’t having it
  yesterday.  [a note on the pic:  absence of flowers says this
  was taken in the winter, either late '46 or early '47; the
  greenery behind me was a mass of red geraniums (Pelargonium spp.) that
  covered the fence on the west side of our yard.  They are
  memorable for me because of an incident the first time I planted 
  my own garden.  I was very young, not yet in
  school.  My parents gave me a packet of seeds,
  "bachelor buttons", the flowers I liked best at the time.  I
  carefully spaded and raked a small area and sowed the seeds.  Then
  I picked up a stick off the geraniums and poked it in the ground with
  the seed packet on top to mark my little flower garden.  Maybe
  they were old seeds.  None came up, but the geranium stick took
  root and sprouted.  There and then I got my reputation for a
  green thumb.]

  I didn’t have a topic to blog about today until I read chastityrose‘s
  comment.  She hopes I “have or will find my purpose and great
  joy.”  One of my great joys in life has been finding a series of
  purposes and achieving each one.  The current driving purpose for
  me is to finish my memoirs, to complete telling the stories of my
  various purposes and their joyous fulfillment. 

  In my early years, my purpose was to survive and make liars of the
  doctors who said I would not live to grow up.  Along the way, as
  God told me to do, I learned as much as I could.  When my
  first daughter, Marie, was born, I felt I’d “grown up.”  Now, I
  feel that true maturity didn’t come until I had lived twice that many
  years and chanced upon the therapy group that enabled me to begin
  taking responsibility for my life.

  Along the way, I formed the purpose to work in some healing
  profession.  My first choice would have been to be a medical
  doctor, since I had so much contact with them at a young age. 
  After encountering gender bias and accepting its limitations, I decided
  to be a nurse.  I got far enough into that profession to realize
  that medical science wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and that most
  of its practitioners were less interested in healing than in getting
  paid for trying to heal using a flawed set of tools and
  techniques.  By then, psychology had caught my interest.

  Some intensive study and a brief period of work in the counseling
  field revealed some weaknesses in the established forms of that
  profession as well.  A set of professional “ethics” a lot less
  ethical than I thought was good for the clients tended to sour me on
  that field.  I discovered around that time that the avocational
  “work” I’d been doing through psychic readings was more effective for
  helping people than conventional counseling was.  Thus began about
  a quarter of a century of professional practice as a psychic counselor
  that has brought me both joy and frustration. 

  I learned many things from the readings I did over those
  years.  I can’t begin to enumerate them all here now.  The
  cosmic wisdom I channeled for others was often relevant to me as
  well.  Sometimes the clients didn’t follow the advice, but I
  did.  Perhaps the most joyous realization for me from that time
  was that of personal responsibility for healing and growth.  Even
  when (or especially when) the client was turning the responsibility
  over to me, expecting me to wave a magic wand and make their lives
  wonderful, that task remained theirs to do.  Over and over, I’ve
  told people, “you can abrogate, but you can’t abdicate responsibility
  for your own life.”   Now if I’m asked for a reading, I give
  it.  If the client chooses not to accept and act on the advice, so
  be it.

  So, Lisa, rest assured that this life of mine has its share of both
  purpose and joy.  I think it’s interesting that both of those
  things you wished for me are the very things that most fill my
  life.  I’ve never been one to go along without purpose.  Even
  fun pastimes need a purpose, for this Virgoan soul to enjoy them. 
  It wasn’t until Michael Big Bear prescribed a daily play time for the
  good of my spirit, that I could allow myself such “purposeless”
  activity.  Even before I started playing for its therapeutic
  effect (that was almost nine years ago), each of the “jobs” I had
  chosen for myself:  psychic, gardener, iconoclast, artisan in
  stone and metal, parent, writer… was chosen because I loved the
  “work”.  In a life where there is no clear line between work and
  play, all is joy.

  P.S.  My new scanner is GREAT!

  • 2:02 pm
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