Every day I feel myself returning more to a functional life.  For several days after I first got home I was anxious to make sure I didn’t just close off all that I have experienced and move ahead as if nothing had happened, as if I have finished ‘the treatment’ and now could forget about what I have seen and felt.  I feel I have been given a tremendous opportunity to consciously create the rest of my life and I don’t want to waste it.

The question I keep wrestling with is, do I actually have to ‘do’ anything or have I already done it?  It reminds me of the conversation in Velveteen Rabbit between the Rabbit and Skin Horse.  Rabbit asks Skin Horse how you become ‘real’ and wise old Skin Horse explains “Real isn’t how you are made, it’s something that happens to you when a child loves you for a long, long time…”  “Does it happen all at once?” “You become, it takes a long time… but, once you are real you can’t become unreal again, it lasts for always”

So where should I begin to rearrange priorities?  I don’t want to fall back into the old, entrenched things that I have seen need changing.  But where do I start?  I was sharing this with a wise friend (she is my ‘Skin Horse’) and she said ‘Well, you don’t really need to make that decision right now, do you?’  It was so simple.  Of course I don’t.  It’s important that we see when decisions are necessary and when they are not.  But also, I see that the work I have done to process the events of recent months has internalised them.  They have become part of me. I am not the same person I was four months ago.  It will now always be part of me and affect all my decisions from this point forward.  That is, if I have truly internalised the experiences and not just been through a treatment. (see post ‘How are you doing?’ August 15 2011)  It was the best I could do.  I will have faith in myself.  ‘When you have done the best you can, you can’t do any better’ (Harry S. Truman)