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I wrote in my last post about the book I found and am reading, Walking With Loneliness by Paula Ripple (1995) Ava Maria Press.  Ripple wrote one chapter about the passing of her mother and about how her eight children agreed on how their mother loved them in a way that gave them each the greatest freedom to claim and to live their own lives — their way.

Ripple uses the expression “know your own name and name your own days.”  By “knowing your own name” in reference to how her mother did this Ripple was honoring the fact that it was only because her mother was able to increasingly know her own self that she was then able to allow her children to each know their own self, as well.  By choosing to “name your own days” Ripple described how setting the course for one’s life each day by naming it means that life does not pass by unnoticed, unheeded, or unattended to — from the inside out.

Most people who find their way to this blog had their lives interfered with if not “claimed” in abusive, invasive and harm-filled ways by the very adults in their childhood who were supposed to set the example about how to live one’s life to the fullest — but did the opposite.  Ripple’s mother was clearly a healthy person.  My mother was the opposite.  Yet I have lived my own life in spite of her, although I never feel I have lived my life to the fullest.

As I concluded the reading of Ripple’s chapter about her mother I found myself thinking about how naming one’s own name and naming one’s own days leaves no room for trying to control any other person.  This kind of naming seems perhaps like drawing a picture of one’s self with a pencil that defines boundaries, that defines our self within OUR life — the life lived in our days. 

I am thinking I have very high standards for myself that I never let myself meet.  Is this a destructive or constructive pattern for myself?  Do I look over my own “fence” into some other field where I do not belong?  My days are my days.  My space is my space within which I live my days — within my own boundaries, inside and out.

Have I hung up my own sign in my life saying, “Linda lives here and she is doing a fantastic job?”  Is naming — a kind of claiming?  I claim this day.  I name this day.  It did not pass by me unnoticed no matter how humble my day might seem — IF I compare it to — whose?

All the way from my early teens through my 40s at times I heard a voice calling my name as if from a great distance.  I can hear that calling inside my mind now any time I think of this.  It remains a mystery to me, this name calling.  The voice was female and it was beautiful, but it also seemed filled with longing.  For me?  Was I calling myself?  Was an angel calling me?  Did the voice cease its musical calling because I finally found myself?

I cannot imagine naming my days by anything other than something I value.  Something I value is something I love.  I am a person who has struggled a lifetime with not being able to say with truth, “I love life.”  I watch so many I know who claim no belief in any kind of life after the death of their physical body.  I cannot imagine for myself having that kind of dead-end take on life.  And yet sometimes I suspect it is because I believe the life of eternity after this physical life is so much better than this one that I lack the appreciation I WISH I had for being here now.

I work on this in some way every day of my life.  Naming myself in my life — naming the days of my life — before I pass through the veil at the end of this life into the next world — I often think it is exactly because of the great loneliness I so often feel that I think the next world will befriend me because I have so much trouble befriending myself and my life in this world.

Ripple’s point about her mother was that because her mother gave herself her own name and named her own days of her own life she was thus able to give so much to other people.  This is one of the greatest losses I suffer from the 18 years of severe abuse by my mother in my childhood:  I have the greatest difficulty giving myself permission to be giving to ME.

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Wandering around with my visiting brother yesterday I stumbled upon a book I find very useful and fascinating.  It’s available online for a penny plus shipping – and well worth this cost!

Walking With Loneliness

By Paula Ripple (1995) Ava Maria Press

I am not Catholic, but this bothers me not the least.  The book is excellent, and of great use to me – and perhaps to other severe early abuse survivors who struggle to creatively comprehend facets of life that perhaps few others ever have to contemplate.

If in the future I have the time I would be honored to write a kind of study of my reactions to the words Sister Paula Ripple included in her text.  The pages are filled with gemstones, even for those who find themselves pondering life without any particular spiritual aspirations.  For example from pages 28-29:

“The writers of the gospel do not speak directly of the loneliness of Jesus but we cannot miss the impact it must have had on his own journey if we look at the misunderstanding, rejection and betrayal that were a part of Jesus’ life.  Even his closest friends missed the meaning of the reason for his coming.  They looked to him to be a person of power and earthly kingdoms despite all his words that this was not why he had come.  The loneliness of Jesus must sometimes have been like the loneliness of one who has mastered a particular discipline to the point where it offers no new challenges.  The loneliness of Jesus must sometimes have been like that of a person who has developed a finely tuned sensitivity to life and can rarely find someone with whom to share that feeling.  The loneliness of Jesus must sometimes have been like the loneliness of the person who sees and tells the truth in the presence of people for whom truth is of less value than acceptability [being accepted by others].  The loneliness of Jesus was the loneliness of individuals who have entered deeply into the cave of wisdom, of those who stand in their own place, of those of flawless inner integrity — as they relate to others who have lived as spectators rather than as participants, lived at the surface rather than at the depths.”

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Sister Ripple offers that no human on earth escapes loneliness; that in fact loneliness is one of the most essential experiences of being human.  She writes about how all efforts to “make the feeling go away” are failed attempts that can cause us to miss what might be the greatest learning experiences of our lifetime. 

Loneliness is a creative experience, and befriending and following the lead into learning that the loneliness we early abuse survivors know so well might offer to us our greatest opportunities to even stun ourselves with the discovery of the depths of our great potential.  Sister Ripple continues on from the above passage:

“I know what loneliness is.  I have felt it in my body and in my heart.  I have sometimes feared it, sometimes sought release from it, sometimes tried to ignore it or forget it.  But, at same moments, I have also never been far from the inner conviction that there was life for me in those dark spaces — life that pursued me with an intensity like no other.

I can speak of loneliness with authority only as it relates to me and to my life.  I believe, because others have shared their lives with me, that their way of experiencing loneliness is not foreign to, nor is it different from my own way.

I can describe my feelings as I have experienced loneliness on the banks of the Mississippi and the Charles, on the shores of the Atlantic and the Pacific, in the inner city and in the small rural community.  But, what I wish to center on is not so much how I have felt, as what I have done with the pain and the fearsomeness of those feelings, where I have allowed them to take me.

What I wish most to share is my own system for and manner of walking with loneliness….”  (pages 29-30)

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 I am not sure there has ever been a day in my life when essential loneliness wasn’t my companion.  I know loneliness as if it is “the set point” of my being, the state I always return to.  I am chronically lonely.  I seem to have been built this way.  This author knows how to put into words what I need to know in order to think about loneliness more specifically, constructively and — hopefully.

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“The presence of strangers with whom I shared life in whatever way has been important for me as I struggle with a deep strain of loneliness.  It is a loneliness I no longer wish to remove, but with which I must deal, in which I want to find meaning and life.”  (above book, page 63)

I am glad this little book has come into my life.  I know I will find some important statements in it that will help me move forward in my life with more confidence as I learn to understand myself as a human being a bit better.

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