JewBu Quest: From Abuse to Happiness

JewBu: a Jew who practices forms of Buddhist meditation & spirituality. This blog documents my quest to 1) heal from sexual, verbal, and emotional abuse, 2) come to terms with losing Mom and Grandma to Alzheimers, 3) find balance, explore the spiritual, stay present. Bascially, I've experienced some pretty crappy shit in my life and want to find a way to move past it and find happiness.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Hard Times

I seem to have a lot of hard times. What does this say about me? I was verbally and emotionally abused by my father and raped by my friend. Recently, my neighbor was murdered while I was at home. To make it worse, mine is the last known address in the state of the crazy murderous bitch. I have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and was just getting myself over my symptoms when the murder happened. Now, I'm back in a whirlwind of fear, insomnia, over-vigilence, and lots of other symptoms.

I used to practice yoga and meditation regularly, but haven't really been able to do this much since the latest incident. I just don't feel comfortable being spiritual now with strangers and I lack a good sangha/community/kehila. So, I figure, where better to search for a group of like minded people than online?

I want this blog to be a place to record my process of healing and my quest to balance out my Jewish neurotic practices with some Buddhism. I'm done relishing my suffering and am ready to be free from it. At the same time, I'm still Jewish, so suffering and remembering my ancestors suffering and worrying about future suffering seems required.

Does it matter that I'm posting this? Will anyone ever read it?

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey - Like your blog. I'm going to start one myself soon. It'll be all about fighting PTSD. I've had it for a few months now since I was raped last summer. But now, I'm committing myself (almost) entirely to beating this. I don't want to have any symptoms a year from now. I want to make it a distant memory in my future.

Keep it up JewBu. I'll send you a link to my blog.

Friday, December 19, 2008 4:35:00 PM  
Blogger Karma said...

The JewBu approach to PTSD is a little different; it is to accept the PTSD, let the symptoms come without judgment, and then let them pass when they are ready to pass (supporting yourself as much as possible throughout the process).

If you fight the PTSD and try to make it disappear, sometimes the symptoms just get stronger. Its normal to be traumatized by a traumatic situation. It has been 10 years for me, and every once in awhile, there will still be a PTSD symptom (but not that often any more -- mostly for me involves sleep).

Sunday, December 21, 2008 7:34:00 AM  

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