I had been unable to organize my house, made a near impossible task with my mother's things and all that I had bought to divert myself from my grief about her death and the memories of my life before, what I had had and not.I would begin, work 2 minutes and be unable to sustain it. If working with M, I could not bear his impatience and orders. So not a thing got done.
With M's sister gone to Washington, again, nothing got done. I could not more than attempt one time to work, and stop.
We are working together nearly all day, and progressing, M's sister and I.
I find it interesting that it is the work of a household, around which I grew, my grandmother and mother working around me, which I find so impossibly stressful.
I am grateful to M's sister. She is encouraging, good-natured and reassuring. Flexible and non-judgmental; she is unflappable, patient and persevering.
Which I am doing now. As I do so I review the long time of my grief and isolation, how I coped by buying this and that, anticipating my future, which I now fear putting into place.
Yes. Written this way I see how my profession helped to reconstruct essential parts of me. The need to attend others was natural to me. But unbeknownst to me, the concentration and open heart with which I did so put into practice an incipient knowing and care for myself, as well.
Except for a brief period, I was an indifferent and largely half-hearted worker until I went back to graduate school. With this my attitude and value put into my work became driven and heartfelt. I brought this to my profession and never wavered in this. My sense of myself became one of self-respect.
Had I not established this basis of self-regard, integrity and self-confidence I could not have had either the intentionality or the courage or the purity of heart to do this FOO work.
Thank you very much.
COPA
