Lori: [00:00:06] Windhorse is our innate ability to uplift ourselves and our environment by giving rise to a positive energy that is both relaxed and disciplined. Since 1981, Windhorse Community Services has integrated this understanding with modern conventional therapies, meditation and contemplative traditions in the development of at home whole person mental health recovery. Windhorse Journal is dedicated to recovery and at home, in person mental health care with the mission of communicating decades of clinical and personal experience to professionals, educators, students and anyone seeking recovery options. Please join the dialog. [00:00:45][39.0]
Chuck: [00:01:17] Welcome everyone to the Windhorse Journal. I’m your host, Chuck Knapp. And I’m so pleased and honored to be presenting today’s podcast, the conversation with a former team about the completely remarkable recovery journey they shared. We’re joined today by our dear friend and former client Julia and by Janneli Chapman and Jack, who are her primary team members. So Julia, throughout the conversations we’ve had, there have been some discussions about psychotropic medications and benefits you receive, but also some of the challenging aspects that were possibly even harmful. I’m just wondering. Based on your experience, what would you say about the skillful? What would you have to say about the skillful use of medications at this point? [00:02:11][53.4]
Julia: [00:02:14] I guess perhaps I should start with the fact that this whole episode, if you will, started with a medication I had, was having all of these obsessions and went to a doctor to try to get a medication to help with the obsessions and was given a couple of medications that I guess I was latently bipolar and that wasn’t known. I don’t know if that could have been known. I don’t know if there was any way of knowing that. So I’m not really saying that I blamed anyone for that. It was just something that happened. And so the medications that I was given was what started the whole episode of Mania that started me driving with my eyes closed and all of the other crazy things that I started to do. That was a long time ago. I don’t know if there’s a way of now knowing if if a person is latently bipolar or not. I don’t know if they are, but I really don’t know if there’s a way of determining that or not. But I just wanted to mention that because I thought it was important. But going on on past that the medications that I was given before I left the hospital, I was put on very strong medications, which made me gain a huge amount of weight. And I was kept on those medications after leaving University Hospital and and began therapy with DR. Green in Boulder and continued to gain weight, I went up to more than 200 lbs at a little more than five feet tall. I was not able to hardly move. I could hardly walk. I could hardly do anything but want to eat. I was just ravenous all the time. I was basically in a in a straitjacket, a chemical straitjacket. I couldn’t. I remember having these terrible feelings of that. I couldn’t that I couldn’t show any aspect that I couldn’t. My face was just like affectless, that I couldn’t show any feelings in my face, that it was just like this blob of emptiness. And I have painful memories of standing in front of the mirror in my bathroom, trying to show feelings, trying to smile and trying to do these things that would show emotion. And it was it was heartbreaking. I couldn’t show any kind of emotion, and I would practice doing that in front of the mirror. And it was it was just this heartbreaking thing for me. [00:05:35][200.9]
Chuck: [00:05:36] Julia, could I ask, did you feel the emotions, but but they weren’t you were able to kind of demonstrated with your face? [00:05:43][7.1]
Julia: [00:05:44] No, I didn’t really feel anything. But like overwhelming sadness, I felt like my family totally rejected me. You know, I to this day, don’t know how true that was or how much I imagine that. But I was incredibly ashamed of myself. I didn’t want to see anyone. All I could think of that was all they saw was how incredibly fat I was. And I didn’t want anyone to see me. I didn’t want to see anyone in my family. I was so ashamed of myself and all I want you to do is eat in spite of that. And, you know, I just hated myself. I just hated myself. I couldn’t walk a straight line I think Jack can attest to. And I walked off into the road all the time. I couldn’t walk a straight line. Everything that they were trying to accomplish with those medications, I don’t think they accomplished anything. They made me more depressed. They made me hate myself more, made me want to die more. And I continue to attempt suicide with overdosing on those meds. They didn’t accomplish anything, although maybe they do for other people. You know, I certainly can’t speak for anyone else. Know, maybe they’re very successful with other people, but they were not for me. They were just horrible. And I think that there wasn’t that sensitivity about weighing out that was the good, which there was no good that way out with all the negative things that those drugs did to me. And eventually it was recommended that I go on a different medication that would help me lose weight and. I was thrilled about that. And I started to lose weight. And I went to a diet place that I stayed at for a while and I started to lose weight. And that just was the most incredible thing. I was so encouraged and so excited about that. And of course it swung me off into another direction where I eventually kind of stopped eating because I wanted to see this happen more and more quickly. But I lost £80. And, you know, I was ecstatic. I was ecstatic. I was able to walk. I remember going clothes shopping and being able to buy clothes that would fit. And I looked in the mirror and I was so excited about how things fit me and I felt so much better. And I and I was able to have expression in my face everything that those drugs had taken away from me. Now I head back and I just. It kind of had given me so much back. Just being off of those and I remember seeing my mother after, probably not seeing her for ten years. And the look that she gave me, she she was so proud of me. Well, you really look great. And, you know, I can’t tell you how much that meant to me. You know, I wasn’t cured by a long shot. I was still cutting myself like crazy. But that really made so much of a difference in my life. I was able to start volunteering because I could could go with other people. And I wasn’t afraid to let people look at me. So it made a huge difference in my life. I think medication was so important and for doctors to know what it does to you. [00:10:04][259.7]
Jack: [00:10:04] Was there a period in there, Julia, when I remember you couldn’t read taking the Depacote, you couldn’t read. And I remember you as I got to know you. This is still when we were. I was getting to know you, like, just feeling the tragedy of that, because you’d actually had quite a intellectual life before that. And then somewhere in this same period, you started to build a reading again, also when you switched medications. And of course, it led to you being on. Right. But but there was a period where you couldn’t read. You couldn’t track. [00:10:37][32.8]
Julia: [00:10:38] No, no. I was like a zombie. I was really like like a zombie. And I, you know, over the years have spoken to other people who were taking Depakote and they found it to be incredibly helpful for them. So I think it’s a matter of, you know, how different people respond to different drugs. It it was not the right drug for me. You know, other people might be the right drug for other people, but it wasn’t the right drug for me. And. It took a long time for me to be able to to get off of that. And and that was a huge waste of years of my life. And it made me so, so much more depressed. But when I got off of it, it was an awakening. And it you know, as I said, it didn’t it didn’t stop all of the cutting and depression because that wasn’t the cause of it. You know, it was the cause of other issues, but not not for cutting, but but it sure helped a lot. [00:12:02][83.6]
Jack: [00:12:03] Eventually, that other medication, which I think was Topamax. [00:12:05][2.2]
Julia: [00:12:07] Topamax. [00:12:07][0.0]
Jack: [00:12:08] When you said I never used it really worked well for you for a lot of period. Then for some reason you got toxic and you couldn’t take it anymore. You started, remember, you had some really weird visual side effects from it. [00:12:23][14.8]
Julia: [00:12:24] Yeah, I started having a lot of different issues with the Topamax and had to go off of that, but that was after I had lost all of the weight. But I did have to go off of that. I started having a lot of issues with that. You know, medication is so it’s it’s it’s critical. I mean, it was for me, it was so important. And that self images it I don’t know if a lot of doctors realize what self image is, especially for maybe a girl, maybe more. I don’t know. Probably not. But it sure was for me. [00:13:12][48.3]
Jack: [00:13:14] You’re as great a doctor as DR. GreenE was. He isn’t the one who made the changes. You had another doctor. You need a doctor sometimes. Like you really needed his subtlety and his he really was curt and understood nuances of medication that I think. Yes. [00:13:33][19.4]
Julia: [00:13:34] He was a pharmacologist. [00:13:34][0.4]
Jack: [00:13:36] Exactly. So he and they would work together, I think. And helped you helped you made some big you made some big changes of medications at different times. And I think each one was right at that time. But you you kept changing at times. [00:13:50][14.4]
Julia: [00:13:52] Yeah. Yeah. It was hard to find the right medication and it didn’t stay here necessarily. But I remember there was you know, there was a doctor in in Denver who DR. GreenE, who is a pharmacologist. Right. And DR. GreenE, you get advice from right. And I remember he would write letters to DR. GreenE because I would see him periodically for medication, you know, kind of checks. And he would write letters to DR. GreenE about how I was doing with my medication. And and I asked him to please send me copies of every letter that he sent to Dr. Ruth. And and he did. And he would he would write things like how much weight I was gaining in the letters, because I was I was just gaining an incredible amount of weight. And I would just read those letters and I still had those letters and I would lay in bed with the covers over my head, just crying my heart out, reading the letters that he wrote, talking about how much weight I was gaining. And I had asked him to send me copies of the letters. But somehow I think he should have known better, you know, I don’t know, maybe he had to send me copies because I requested it. I don’t know. But. I, I wish that he hadn’t sent those because they were just they were just terrible. But I guess I can’t blame him because I asked him to do that. But just seeing that in writing, him saying that just just devastated me. It just made it. My my fear is that it was so apparent to other people more real. [00:16:04][132.3]
Janneli: [00:16:06] Maybe we should have a big ritual and burn all those letters and have a whole process. Yeah. [00:16:11][4.8]
Julia: [00:16:13] Maybe I should burn a lot of things that I have. [00:16:15][2.3]
Janneli: [00:16:16] I mean, with friends, with community, you know, not just alone, but but kind of make it a, some kind of offering to your health and well-being and love of life or something. [00:16:28][11.6]
Julia: [00:16:29] Yeah. That’s true. [00:16:31][2.0]
Chuck: [00:16:32] I’m really curious, I guess, from everyone’s experience. But of course, Julia, especially here is here that you’ve made the statement, how critical it was to get the right medication so that it’s enormously helpful for you. At the same time, it sounded like they almost killed you also, along with everything else. I mean, they were just there. They were they were they were killing your ability to kind of be in life and breaking your heart and the process of working with doctors and all that. That was pretty rough going there in a lot of ways. But you did manage to find yourself coming to something that actually has been really helpful over the years. [00:17:14][41.6]
Julia: [00:17:16] Yes. I think that’s I think that’s very true. But, you know, maybe I’m jumping the gun here, but I think I didn’t have I didn’t have the self-confidence or the ability at that time to say what I wanted or what I needed or how I felt about the medication or about how it made me feel or about any of that and how I wished that I had had that ability to do that because nobody could have read my mind. And now one of the great things that I’m able to do is to ask for what I need and say what I need, which I couldn’t do for so many years. Which is huge. [00:18:14][58.5]
Chuck: [00:18:15] What would you have liked to said? [00:18:16][0.9]
Julia: [00:18:18] I would have liked to say how it made me feel, how what it made me think about my body and myself and how ashamed I was of myself and how it made me want to die even more that any help that it might have been giving me, which I don’t think it gave me any, was lost in all of the negative things that it did. [00:18:47][29.5]
Chuck: [00:18:50] So this is. [00:18:51][0.5]
Julia: [00:18:51] Why I couldn’t say those things. [00:18:53][1.6]
Chuck: [00:18:53] Now, this is a really important thing for us. I mean, channel you and Jack are on this journey with Julia, but a good thing for any professional person or loved one family member or loved one to remember, to really try to help people’s voices come through when they’re not really feeling that strong or clear about. About what they need to say. Yeah. Is there any place, anything in this territory that would be useful to talk about now, do you think, before going on to the next stage? [00:19:30][37.0]
Julia: [00:19:32] Just in terms of medication, the medication that I’m taking now really helps me a lot. I don’t have any desire to go off of it. It doesn’t have negative side effects that I’m really aware of. I think that maybe it makes me gain a little weight, but that’s a tradeoff that I’m willing to deal with. I, I know that it really helps me and my mind is still very clear. I don’t have side effects that are interfering with my life in a negative way. And it, it it it it helps me to think really clearly. I know in the times in the past when I have gone off of it and it’s been years and years ago, then I’ve had a lot of problems develop. And so I know that I really need it and I’m fine with that. I can I can accept that. I have no problem with that now. And I know that it really helps me. And I’m very grateful that we found this combination of things. And so I think it’s really important to find the right medication. If you need medication, then it’s important to find what helps. And I think that I have been taking this for years, and I. It’s been working. [00:21:14][101.4]
Jack: [00:21:15] Julia, do you find that you made it through the course of year of the year or over time that you’re still changing the doses of the different meds you take? Or is it always the same, the same 12 months? [00:21:27][12.2]
Julia: [00:21:27] No, I, I have been changing the dose in that I’m taking less. My body metabolizes things differently, and so I need less. Sometimes we do blood levels of things and my blood level gets too high because of my metabolism, I guess because of my age. So it’s been going down, if anything, but very slowly. [00:21:55][27.2]
Jack: [00:21:56] I’m remembering there were times where it was kind of like the Topamax getting toxic. There were times where like, it’s interesting to hear you say the blood levels. You’d be taking the same thing over time and then either you’d get confused and take too much or or just slowly the levels built up. And I remember there were a few times where you had kind of medical crises because you you’d gotten into a, you know, excessive toxic range, sort of it just kind of drifted into that. [00:22:30][33.9]
Julia: [00:22:32] There were times when I was confused and took too much. I I’m not in that place now. I’m very careful about what I take. And I am not taking too much. I’m very I know exactly what I’m taking and I’m not. My mind is not cloudy or confused in that way. And I’m very careful about what I take. And I’m good with that. I don’t I’m not concerned about that now. I’m very happy to say that. [00:23:08][35.8]
Chuck: [00:23:09] Jack, what you just brought up is a really important piece of proper use of medications, which is, don’t you know, one dosage? You know, you don’t fall asleep on one dosage. You really stay attuned to what’s going on. Sometimes down, sometimes off, depending on age, depending on the time of year. All that is to stress levels is all kinds of things that factor into that. So thanks for naming that. [00:23:31][22.3]
Julia: [00:23:33] absolutely. [00:23:33][0.0]
Jack: [00:23:34] Know, if I could make a comment about maybe general practice in Windhorse we do something that’s. I think I encounter in the general practice of other people. They find ideas that we have. Our psychotherapists go to sessions with clients when they go to their psychiatrist to manage the medications. And that that used to naturally happen because psychiatrists who are also people’s analysts or therapists, but then as over the decades that those professions have branched and now people will often see somebody just for med management and often for very brief periods of time and often like months apart. And I we generally don’t do that. And I often it’s not uncommon that I get pushback from from families or clients that, oh, it’s fine, we just meet every three months. But when you relate to meds in that way, there’s a huge loss of nuance, of what you went through was a lot of nuanced adjustments of medications. And so we you know, when somebody is medic doing medication changes, you might meet weekly or every two weeks. And if somebody is on stable medications, then it might be monthly or maybe every two months. But the psychiatrists that we work with and also nurse practitioners, people who prescribe medications, I should say, we tend to meet frequently and include the therapist because they can bring a lot of the nuance in and observations of the team members that, you know, the person who’s taking the meds may not be able to relate to the doctor. And I think sometimes I think the good effects, you know, and the kind of positive healing effects people have are because of this little thing is like it’s much more intelligent and nuanced how people use medications instead of these three month check ins for 20 minutes. Like, how could a how can prescribing doctor possibly know how to adjust medications on that frequency? It’s they can only make very gross adjustments at that level. So here’s my opinion for you. [00:26:04][150.1]
Julia: [00:26:04] I agree with you. But I think a lot of that has to do with finances. [00:26:07][3.0]
Jack: [00:26:08] Yeah, exactly. You know. [00:26:09][1.1]
Chuck: [00:26:11] Yeah. [00:26:11][0.0]
Julia: [00:26:14] Unfortunately. And insurance. [00:26:15][1.5]
Chuck: [00:26:16] Yeah. Yeah. And you know, Jack, if there’s a really good point that if a person is in a very dynamic and changing, you know, part of their recovery path, then that kind of frequency is really important. And we both know some people really kind of get off to a place where there’s not much going on, really. They’re on pretty good dose life stable and then every three months rhythm can work. But your our experience at Windhorse is usually there’s a lot more dynamic tension and things that we have to pay attention to. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, one of the things that I think worth mentioning here, too, is that, Julie, you’ve been talking about this in a number of ways, which is that one of the huge tricks with with medications is to not obscure the person’s subtle intelligence in such a way that they can’t actually be in their recovery process. Their mind isn’t clear enough to do that. And and it sounds like you went through a period in the early stages where your mind wasn’t very clear. But then at some point, as you’re describing in just these last few minutes, how once your mind became very clear at some point, still is. So that’s that’s a particular side effect of that you’ve you’ve watched change over time, allowing your mind to be really present. [00:27:37][80.6]
Julia: [00:27:38] I remember often going off of my psychiatric meds, just stopping them all. You probably remember Jack, and generally I would just stop them because I wanted to be able to think. I just wanted to have some clarity in my thinking. And it was just a matter of time before I would crash. I mean, I knew that, but at least I had a little bit of time where I wasn’t totally wiped out by these drugs. And then eventually I had to go back on them because I just crashed. And I would just go. I would become incredibly manic and. But I hated the feeling of being on those drugs. They they were just terrible what they did to my ability to think I was like in a in a chemical straitjacket. I just couldn’t sink. I couldn’t do anything. And the medication that I’m on now doesn’t do that at all. So I think there are more things available now than there were, for sure. So so that’s definitely something that’s changed. But I think those are things that, you know, people have to consider when they put people on all of these medications. There are all kinds of effects that that are maybe things that they have to think about. [00:29:26][107.6]
Chuck: [00:29:28] Still generally inject people who practice some form of psychotherapy, always learn a tremendous amount from their clients, and they grow a great deal in their time together. In Windhorse work, we spend so much time with our clients and with each other as well. In so many different kinds of activities that are learning and maturing can can be particularly powerful. And we’ve we’ve call this process mutual recovery. And I’m wondering if you to what you say about your own personal kind of growth and maturation and what you learned in this, you know, from Julia and from each other. [00:30:06][38.8]
Janneli: [00:30:08] Well, mutual recovery and mutual journey got to go hand in hand for me when I think about those words. And just as I’m thinking about this, one thing that I learned is that. I found my capacity. I learned that I had capacity to hold situations and finding Julia’s capacity. I feel like Julia was really finding capacity for self regulation, for working with and being with difficult emotions, finding her own capacity around resilience, her resilience around the trauma that she experienced. And along with that, I was finding my own capacity for being a therapist, for offering my life, my world, myself in a way that also had certain boundaries or certain limits and the limits. Became kind of a gift, like when to say it. For instance, at some point I ended the team early. And Jack, you and Julia continued. And there was for me a sense of I needed to take care of myself. I needed to stop. And I felt that Julia was in a good enough place, not the perfect place to leave. But but certainly I also had my own needs to develop myself. I went into three year retreat, which at its own kind of experience, but I really needed to kind of trust something about limitation as well as expansion of growth and expansion of experience. So that’s one thing that I learned from myself. And being with Julia. [00:32:10][121.8]
Chuck: [00:32:12] And kind of feel a poignance in what you just said, Charlie, because I was that was a real powerful time in your life. And I know it wasn’t easy to stop on the team and at the same time, you had something really calling your heart and you went that direction. And I think it was absolutely right on, you know, right on the money as far as what you needed to do in your life at that time. And it’s part of what happens on teams tours now. They they are working for periods of time for for the people involved. Then sometimes someone someone’s called someplace else. [00:32:47][35.7]
Janneli: [00:32:49] Yeah. I think also as you’re talking, I’m realizing that the stopping of working on the team was a big transition for me going into retreat. But then I moved from being 30 years as a psychotherapist to being a teacher as a professor, and that transition also was an important part for my continued inspiration and growth. So, yeah, that was another piece of it. [00:33:16][27.2]
Chuck: [00:33:18] And. I don’t know how frequent it was, but Julia, you and Janneli, I think, were you certainly were in each other’s minds and hearts, but there was occasional contact. Just over the years, as you know, there was a through line to. [00:33:35][17.6]
Janneli: [00:33:36] Yeah, when I was in retreat, we wrote some letters back and forth. So there was that contact. And then once I got out of retreat, we also saw each other over the years too, stayed in contact. [00:33:48][12.3]
Chuck: [00:33:50] I think one of the things that I’ve experienced with people on teams is most of the people I know that are doing Windhorse work have a pretty very strong commitment to some kind of journey in life themselves, and I think that’s contagious for each other to our colleagues as well as to our clients and families. So Julia, you’re on a real path that know we all found very compelling and very intense at times. And it was amazing. You made it through some of those periods where you were look really just, you know, the passion for doing something, you know, moving your life forward in the way that you were called to do was very evident. Still is. And part of what what can work with teams as well is the through line of other people like DR. Greene was a through line that that allowed for you to leave. [00:34:39][49.5]
Janneli: [00:34:42] And Jack. Yeah. [00:34:42][0.0]
Chuck: [00:34:42] Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I don’t know, Jack, if you want to jump in here. [00:34:46][3.4]
Jack: [00:34:47] Yeah, sure. So, Julia, you were one of the first people I worked with when I started working with Windhorse. I had done the previous decade. Working with homeless people in all kinds of capacities and worked at the local homeless shelter here when it was still kind of a just passed the church basement stage of a nonprofit. And then I’d also worked in the the local locked psych unit and I’d worked in the outpatient detox and I had worked in private practice with Naropa students, probably a few other things, but, but it was like the end of a decade of doing that kind of stuff. And then, then I was introduced to Chuck and, and I started, I think you were one of the first people I started to actually work with. And so for me, the like, the, it was a personal path of coming from a pretty of different. Part of the mental health system, you know, and coming into a really different pace of work. And I think I had a lot of kind of recalibrating and figuring out, you know, what often is called boundaries in our work. You know, like, you know, I was also first introduced to this thing of basic attendance that is so central to the Windhorse view. And generally, I would talk with you on the phone often after I met with you, Julia, and you would coach me. And I remember just coming into the experience of basic attendance. And when I look back and I don’t think about this much, but that was a pretty profound thing because what starts to happen is the idea that now I’m basically attending and now I’m not pretty quickly broke down. It was kind of like, Oh, I’m having experiences of watching my mind with another person and why wouldn’t you do that all the time? And actually, it’s pretty hard not to do it all the time. You can’t just switch out of that once you start doing that. So it’s funny how pervasive it becomes. And then and then interacting with you, Julia, was kind of a path, you know, I was going through a transformation of, I suppose, how I viewed you. And in the early days when you were like, as you’ve described, you were so medicated, it was hard to know who you were. I do remember feeling surprised some months after knowing you and spending time together, we I think we would do 3 hours at a time, twice a week. That was kind of standard. So, you know, we spent a fair amount of time, I mean, over the months starting to get to know who you are working with you really honestly with the boundaries of what am I a paid therapist and what of my what are we just human beings spending time together. And that was transformative to me. It’s funny there off you know we talk about the therapist friend dilemma and the separation and I like to say when you if you saw that dilemma, you’ve failed. But if you resolve that dilemma, maybe if you integrate that dilemma. I think that’s what I came to over time and kind of integrating that in like where they actually are in opposition, they can come back together. And then in those times I think this idea of like, Oh, now I’m working and now I’m not, or now I’m a therapist and now I’m my non-work self. Still to this day, that that distinction kind of went away in a strange way, that probably sounds like terrible boundaries, but it’s like you just remain, you know? And you and I see each other every week. For how long? Over a decade. It must have been you depended on me, and I was in this role of being a helping person. And we were. We’re friends, you know, and, like, definitely formed this, like, deeply knowing each other. I mean, that’s a big part of the, I guess a process I went through. And it wasn’t just a sudden insight. It was like a long process of being affected. You know. [00:38:58][250.8]
Janneli: [00:39:00] You’re making me think, Jack, about mutual recovery, where at some point, for instance, Julia and I were in the same predicament together, or I imagine you and and Julia were two. And so because we’re in the same predicament, I have to heal myself. And and in essence, Julia will also heal, not because I’m doing something to her in the work, but more. I’m cleaning up my part of the equation, if you will, or my part of the relationship. And I remember one time my teacher said, If you come to the fact that your neurosis is their neurosis of your neurosis, then you might be getting somewhere. And I, I know that’s such a roundabout way to talk about it, but it really isn’t about doing something to somebody in terms of counseling, you know, it is about finding our authentic way of being with another person and all the trappings that go with that that we have to sort through and let go of or surrender to or whatever it is and it is. Yeah, I think that’s what I also learned and you reminded me of that when you were talking. [00:40:12][72.2]
Chuck: [00:40:13] Julia, how was it to hear Janneli and Jack talk about this? [00:40:17][4.5]
Julia: [00:40:19] I’m just thinking about what what they’re saying. And you know what you’re saying right now. Generally, things that you might be doing to me or acting as a counselor or a therapist. I got so much from you watching you be a mother to Ian. I learned just watching you in relationships, in your family. I just can’t even tell you how much I learned about being a mother and ways of relating by watching you relate. Not anything you did with me or to me, but just you and your life know ways you would talk to clerks and stores just the way you were as a person. That’s what you gave me. Those kinds of things. Maybe because of the amount of time we were able to spend together because of this special kind of Windhorse relationship being different than other kinds of relationships. I learned so much about just ways of life, ways that you were in your life, and that that you could be so adventuresome riding a three wheeler, you know? I mean, I just learned so much about things that I wanted to do. And because I loved you so much, I learned the things that I wanted to try. And the same with you, Jack. I felt that friendship by focusing. I felt our relationship changed over time. First of all, I’d like to just comment that I’m amazed that you stayed at Windhorse after having gotten me as your first client or whatever I was called. I get that I’m amazed that you even decided to stay and not go back to the homeless shelter or whatever. So thank you for that. But I felt that protectiveness of your family and your boundaries and all of those things that that you talk about. But for me, I needed people to accept me and. You’re likely to include me as a person and trust me and want me as a friend. So that meant so much to me. I wasn’t trying to feed your life. I just wanted you to feel like you could count me as a friend. And I think it took a long time before that came through in some kind of a way. But that’s what it what it was, because I felt so alienated from everybody. And I just wanted to know that somebody could see me and trust me and feel like I was worth being a friend to in spite of all the craziness about me. But, you know, I learned so much from both of you. Jack, I loved your incredible sarcasm because I am a New Yorker, so sarcasm is part of my life. So I yeah, that was. I just loved that. You know, you you guys are so different from each other, but you just covered all the bases for me. You know, and I learned so much about you and your kids and reading stories to them and recording them. I tried to get my kids to do that. I mean, you had no idea how many things we learned about life from both of you and and about being parents and about everything about cooking turkeys, about this life. Because I had lost everything. I didn’t know how to do anything. And you guys taught me everything again. [00:44:50][270.9]
Janneli: [00:44:50] You know, Julia, one of the predicaments that I remember I felt at the end when I was getting ready to go into retreat, was this incredible guilt and fear that I was abandoning you, that I was leaving you with Jack and DR. Green, which I knew you were in good hands, but I did feel that sense of, Oh, am I abandoning Julia at a time when it’s really important not to leave? And I. I really went through this a lot, and it was part of my mutual recovery to find the courage to say, it’s time I I’m at a limit for my life, for myself, not because of you or anything. Even in the psychotherapy world, it was just I needed to go into retreat or I don’t know what was going to happen to me. I just knew. I knew I needed to go, but I had to really muster up a lot of courage and bravery to say, I’m going. And I think in some way you also had that same courage and bravery to continue on, you know, and realize that you you could live without me. You could survive. You could keep going on with Jack and Dr. Green, but maybe you didn’t like it. Or, you know, maybe it wasn’t such a great experience for you to have me read either. [00:46:18][87.6]
Julia: [00:46:18] I did very mean things that I still regret. I wrote terrible letters to you. I wrote terrible and said terrible things to you. [00:46:30][11.7]
Janneli: [00:46:30] Wrote them because you cared. You cared about my son. [00:46:33][3.2]
Julia: [00:46:34] Yeah, but, you know, those were things I have thought about and talked about a lot. And I was able to to do that because I knew, first of all, that you would not hate me or reject me for them and that you were strong enough that you would not not do what you needed to do for you. That was really important for me to see because all of my life I just fell down and did what everybody wanted me to do for them, and I never stood up for what I needed to do. I tell people about a person who had passed me as a child because I was always worrying about every body else and not taking care of myself. And I was able to see you taking care of what you needed to do for yourself, even though that was really hard for you and that was so important for me. To see that in spite of all the mean things that I did and your incredible kindness and never saying anything back to me about all that terrible things I said. [00:47:54][80.4]
Janneli: [00:47:55] I thought it was good that you could get angry at me in those letters. Really? I mean, you didn’t get angry at me much during our work together, you know, face to face. But but in those letters, I could feel that you could finally trust enough that even that emotion toward someone that you were attached to, that you cared about so much me, that you could also just let it rip. And it wasn’t going to totally annihilate you or me. [00:48:25][29.8]
Julia: [00:48:27] Yes. And that really was important for me to see that people need to do what they need to do for themselves. I need to do what I need to do for myself and not always just worry about everybody else. And that was so important for me to see that you could do that. And our relationship continued. And that was a very important event for me. It was painful, but it had a really positive outcome. [00:49:05][38.4]
Chuck: [00:49:06] You all had such great contributions and input into a couple of things that I knew about Windhorse work, which is more a matter of being with people than doing something to people, and that within that sanity is contagious and may not be easy to quite identify what it is at the time. But all of you talking over this, all the podcasts we’ve done and recordings and what’s what you’re in or what you’ve been discussing right here. While it didn’t feel so great at the time, it’s really borne fruit. And Julia, for you to be able to look back and go, I needed it. I needed somebody actually doing what they needed to do for themselves. And an example of that. That was a profound thing for you to experience, even though it was tough at the time. [00:49:53][47.4]
Julia: [00:49:55] It was, and I’ll never forget that and how that applies to me in my life, because if I could see Janneli do something like that, Janneli who has always been the angel in my life and then I know it’s okay to do and it’s important not only okay, but it’s it’s really important to do. It’s the right thing to do now. [00:50:21][26.3]
Chuck: [00:50:23] And you were able to speak directly. It was anger and not have it cut off. Generally, you didn’t cut off. That’s right. And then you also had Jack Dr. Green as well. But Jack, you were you were there in another way as a person to bounce up against in your presence as well. So the two that was quite a very piece of teamwork right there. [00:50:47][23.3]
Jack: [00:50:47] That occurs to me and correct me, Julia, if I get this wrong, but I think in the end, like how we stopped meeting regularly. Of course. But then I would drive to Denver and see and I think we maybe went to once a month. And then I think at some point you’d said, okay, that’s all. I love meeting with you. And I think we we’d come to the end. I think you were you were ready to stop. My memory is a year, but you’re the one who said, okay, let’s stop now. [00:51:22][34.3]
Julia: [00:51:22] You know, I don’t remember exactly how it happened. I was hoping to talk about today. It was something inside of me was a dread that I thought about for a long time. I kept thinking every time that you were coming, that you were going to tell me that you were going to stop coming. But as time went on, I knew that. I didn’t want you to stop coming, but I knew I would be okay. That I loved seeing you. And I used to go out for pancakes or whatever we did. But I knew I didn’t need you to come anymore. I knew that. That I was okay. That I could write checks myself. I could do everything. I could drive to work everyday. I would be okay. [00:52:11][48.8]
Lori: [00:53:36] Windhorse Journal is a publication of Windhorse Community Services supporting recovery from mental health challenges at home and in the community since 1981. [00:53:36][0.0]
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