How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races--the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are only princesses waiting for us to act, just once, with beauty and courage, Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

So you must not be frightened if sadness rises before you larger than you have ever seen, if anxiety like light and cloud shadows moves over your hands and everything you do. You must realize that something has happened to you; that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hands and will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.


Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet

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“Judith Jordan’s concept of self-empathy is pertinent here. She has written about how a person can develop empathy for her own experience--see it and understand it more fully and truthfully and compassionately. She can ‘feel with it’ for what it has been and what has brought it about rather than in the critical and self-disparaging ways that she may have learned to feel about it. This empathy for our experience or for our past evolves out of engagement with another person(s) who is empathic about our experience--initially, more empathic than we ourselves can be. The empathy of others can lead us to more empathic understanding of ourselves.”

excerpt from The Healing Connection by Jean Baker Miller and Irene Pierce Stiver

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There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea we are now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

--Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, ACT IV, Scene 3

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"The attainment of wholeness requires one to stake one's whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises."

C.G. Jung

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Life in the 30's

What to do in the Darkness

by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

Go slowly
Consent to it
But don't wallow in it
Know it as a place of germination
And growth
Remember the light
Take an outstretched hand if you find one
Exercise unused senses
Find the path by walking it
Practice trust
Watch for the dawn

“If we observe women’s lives carefully, without attempting to force our observations into preexisting patterns, we discover that an inner sense of connection to others is the central organizing feature of women’s development. By listening to the stories women tell about their lives and examining these stories seriously, we have found that, quite contrary to what one would expect based on the governing models of development emphasizing separation, women’s sense of self and of worth is most often grounded in the ability to make and maintain relationships. As Jean (Baker Miller) wrote in her book Toward a New Psychology of Women (1976), “Women stay with, build on, and develop in a context of connections with others.”

Excerpt from: The Healing Connection: How Women Form Relationships in Therapy and in Life by Jean Baker Miller and Irene Pierce Stiver