THE LEARNING JOURNEY

BALBOA PRESS

Contents

DEDICATION.....................................................vACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...............................................viiINTRODUCTION...................................................xiChapter I: The Hardest Lesson Of All...........................1Chapter II: Where Is Authority?................................17Chapter III: You Are Mind And Body.............................33Chapter IV: You Are Two........................................42Chapter V: Do It Now...........................................51Chapter VI: Love Thyself?......................................60Chapter VII: Marriage Is A Laboratory..........................68Chapter VIII: White Knight/Fair Maiden.........................86Chapter IX: Feelings Are Guides................................97Chapter X: Psychology and Spiritual Truths.....................112AFTERWORD......................................................127Appendix.......................................................139RULES OF COMMUNICATION.........................................139FEELINGS AS GUIDE..............................................143OPTIONS FOR ACTION.............................................145BIBLIOGRAPHY...................................................147

Chapter One

The Acceptance of Death

At age nineteen, life seemed predictable. My parents took care of me and taught me how to behave. I was sheltered, clothed, educated and expected to become a responsible adult. Although it was not expected that I would go to college (in my family girls were not encouraged to pursue higher education), marriage and family were nearly guaranteed. But my predictable life did not go according to plan.

In 1941, soldiers going off to the war in Europe were patriots, brave and true. They would come back victorious, be celebrated, and resume that predictable life. The explosion of that simple belief system became my first and hardest lesson in the classroom of life. My high school boyfriend, Doug Jones, didn't come back. He died on a hilltop in Belgium, never to be seen again. The war ended five months after his death and I experienced a chaotic mass of emotions. While wishing to join in celebrating that the war had ended, I carried a dark void of disbelief at the permanence of his death that left me isolated and confused. His was an enormous presence in the class of `43 at Yakima High School. Not only was he President of the class but a star performer in drama and music productions while maintaining an exceptional grade point average in all his class work. It was impossible to imagine such a dynamic, vibrant young man as no longer existing.

It was my first, but not last, lesson in recognizing that there is no escaping the permanence of death and the painful process of grief. My grief was complicated by my need to comfort his family who suffered a myriad of emotions. While they were angry with the German soldier who fired a bullet into their son's head, they also grieved and regretted that they had not helped us marry before he went off to war. In reality, neither of us was ready for marriage, but wartime accelerates the normal drive to enter into committed, lifetime relationships. As my fellow classmates returned from the war front, they joined me in lamenting the loss of a young man so full of talent and promise. Because we had been "steadies" for our junior and senior years, I was inextricably linked in their memories of him and many times they burst into uncontrollable tears when they saw me around town, in a store or visited me at home.

I was surrounded by a pervasive sympathy that both supported and weakened me. Some friends avoided me, not knowing what they could say or not wanting to feel their own pain. Others hesitated to talk of anything other than Doug's death and were taken aback when I laughed or appeared unemotional for even a moment. Thoreau was right when he said "Pity is the brother of contempt." Pity shifted my identity as a strong and intelligent girl to one of "poor June" and left me feeling weak and isolated. The role of "victim" was alien to my experience as a leader and achiever. After a year had passed, exhausted by the confusion of inner and outer disorientation, I fled to another state when the opportunity presented itself.

After settling into a boarding house full of returning veterans, and finding a secretarial job in a law office in downtown San Francisco, I found myself struggling with the desire to reject all of the teachings from my childhood and to live carelessly and rebelliously. I had unwillingly discovered that life could end without preamble and I needed to make the most of my time—an effort tinged with anger and rejection of my former religious beliefs and the discovery of unpredictability.

The "guest house" in San Francisco opened a strange but exciting world to the country girl from Yakima, Washington. These houses were filled as veterans returned from war and resumed their education. Women, no longer needed in munitions factories, sought new employment in big cities. That very first night in the dining room of the boarding house I met Jack and Alex, both of whom had returned from experiences as soldiers on the European battlefront. Both of them were taking advantage of the Veteran's package offered by the U.S. Government for financial assistance in gaining a college education. Both of them needed to augment that assistance by working in the kitchen at the boarding house for additional spending money. Jack was a law student waiting tables and Alex attended mortuary school while employed as an assistant cook. They were roommates and I married both of them, thirty-nine years apart.

Jack and I were married in August, 1949, and were not unlike the thousands of young couples who, making use of GI loans and a burgeoning economy, lived in a brand new home on the San Francisco Peninsula among other couples just like us who were eager to start family life. The entire community was full of hope and promise. Nearly everyone in the neighborhood joined a local church, hosted barbeques and spent hours discussing pregnancies, landscaping and the schedule of the commuter train. Our three beautiful children arrived within four years and were the center of our lives. Soon our schedule was filled with PTA meetings, Cub Scout meetings, choir practice, bridge games and anticipated summer vacations at the beach. After nine years of marriage we had begun to move into a new phase of maturity and satisfaction with our many accomplishments. Once again, life seemed comfortably predictable.

Then one day in July, 1958, my world shattered once again. Jack arrived home from his train commute looking strangely disoriented. He admitted to having a severe headache and immediately went to lie down. His coloring was an unnatural gray with beads of sweat scattered across his forehead. Although the headache passed within half an hour, I wasted no time in making an appointment for him to see our doctor.

After a stumbling and flawed process of diagnosis which took six weeks, the doctor called me from his office saying he was rushing Jack to the hospital. The tumor growing in his frontal lobes had finally produced a pressure which could be seen by a simple eye examination. Further tests in the hospital were followed by a rush to operate. Jack's mother flew from Pasadena to join...