Larry Parker: How Do You Move Beyond Blue?

Thanks for sharing with us Larry!

Wow, Larry, you're a star! What a great interview. Therese, I think that this meant more to me since we *know* Larry. Very very cool :-)

re:"seduced (in a good way) by Catholic ritual …” To paraphrase Robert Duvall in “Apocalypse Now,” I love the smell of incense in the morning. Even today."

Absolutely true for me as well, but I wonder if *seduction* can ever really be "in a good way".

re: "But Catholic doctrine is, shall we say, not very friendly to..."

and that is where I took the road less traveled and found G-d (exactly as I had known/believed when I was a child - before Catholic school).
There are two things you spoke of that I would like a little more insight on (if you are willing):
#1 " I was having doubts about my religion by the time I went to Georgetown.
There, I saw other people wrestling with G-d,..."

Here you mention two very different things - Religion and G-d. There are hundreds of Religions but there is only one G-d. Do you think that you might be wrestling to get G-d to fit your religion?

#2 [speaking of your parent's divorce]"So imagine the horror when that life and all the ideals, hopes and dreams come crashing down."
[then speaking of your divorce & marriage in general]"I think what drove us apart more than the depression is that we married for the wrong reasons and didn’t have enough in common.... if you start with the kind of commitment and commonality a marriage should have and needs to have, you can survive one partner’s severe depression."

First let me say that I am totally blown away at your insight (but then Therese did say you were a genius or at least had a ginormous brain ). Most of us are tripping over the same romantic/marital mistakes 4 or 5 times before we realize that if we do the same thing over and over and expect a different result... then we are nutz! Anyway, do you now think that those ideals, hopes, and dreams that were your parents marriage were as mis-matched as yours and E's and that you simply repeated what you had seen/learned as a child?
Once again - Thank you both for a great interview :-)
hugz,
Cully

Thank you for inviting me to your post Larry .It does remind me that I too struggled with God for many years and that could have been alleviated
if a caring person had come my way and accepted me the way I was .I thank God that my mother actually took a step towards me and asked my forgiveness before she died . In time I forgave the brutality that I still suffer from today

I am so proud of you, Larry! Kudos to you for taking this step. (((((Larry)))))

re: "You do have to remember, though, that Jesuits are a breed apart and do not embrace (for the most part) the most orthodox version of Catholicism"

ahh the Jesuits... little story about when I was in convent school... in my senior year (1965) on of my classmates got "with child" (hey, they let us run free on the weekends) and the nuns (Sacred Heart) were beside themselves with scandal, shame, guilt etc. and were going to *make an example* of this girl. Our priests were Jesuits and the most fearsome, ferocious, and loving one (Father Alfonse - G-d bless him) stepped up and put a stop to all the "gnashing of teeth" and when the girl began to show (about two months before graduation) she went to live off campus and he made sure that she kept up with her studies and got her diploma at the same time the rest of us did. Compassion... just got to remember that sometimes we are the windshield and other times we are the bug.

April:

You very simply yet eloquently express the views of Rev. Greg Boyd, the evangelical preacher from Minneapolis-St. Paul I discuss in the "Wrestling With G-d" post.

It's a tough thing for me. My secular education is so logical, and my religious education is so Catholic, that it's tough for me to fully embrace Boyd's highly Protestant model. Yet I wouldn't have written about Boyd if I didn't think there was something ... well, tempting is the wrong word :-) ... intriguing about his idea that this world is merely a fun-house mirror of the next in heaven.

So of course it will confuse us. It's supposed to.

Cully:

LOL!

Even if you (the general you) didn't like my interview, one of the things I hope it illustrated is that our lives can take some mighty strange and unintended paths at times ...

On a more personal note Larry...I can read your story and see all that you've struggled with and overcome and I am impressed...encouraged...and inspired to keep on trying to reach my goals and not give up on my dreams. It's really hard for me to express my gratitude ,but know that you've been very helpful and a great source of information. Thankyou!

Larry
how do I sign up to be a Bnet friend?

Jenna:

Thanks so much for your kind words (and prayers!!).

One note on your disability filing:

Remember what I said in the interview about being lucky not to suffer any cognitive defects (at least anything particularly noticeable) either from depression itself or from the medication? This is so true that my psychiatric provider/therapist has refused to sign any form for me to file for disability -- she has said, by medical ethics, she is bound not to lie and say I'm not capable of working professionally when I am. Which actually is quite a compliment, I suppose. (She just sent me a note congratulating me on this very interview.)

And you remind me that I am VERY, VERY lucky, despite my current unemployment, because I know not only you but so many people in my support group in New Brunswick and so many people in general with depression are forced to go on disability -- it is too paralyzing, at least at times. I hope you are in a good place in recovery since you are in college now.

If you don't mind me asking, Jenna, what are you studying? Is it a subject that you are excited about making a career in once you graduate?

Because I think that's the key. In my case, the best way to put it is that I couldn't NOT be a writer.

Lynne (and everyone):

When I agreed with Therese to do this interview (she asked me, but I'll admit, I have enough of a writer's ego that she didn't need to threaten me or anything ...), I was never aiming to "inspire" people. I just wanted to offer some empathy -- that all the five-letter-word-starting-with-C-and-ending-with-Y things that have happened to you thanks to these conditions have happened to someone else too.

And then some.

Or so I thought, anyway.

Both in the comboxes and in my e-mail, I've heard stories that, I admit, have made my hair curl -- people simultaneously thanking me for writing yet sharing horrors that I could never imagine, let alone have had to experience. And it reminds me that I'm lucky -- or even, in the spirit of BB, blessed -- in some ways, for all my difficulties. So it is really I who should thank you, not the other way around.

Although saying I "inspire," while it's generous and appreciated, is probably a bit overboard. What I think I've realized I do -- in the process of doing this interview, in hearing all of your wonderful words, and frankly in all the terrific writing Therese has done recently on the subject -- is **persevere.**

It's a skill I've had to learn the VERY hard way. Remember, since many of you have praised my intelligence, it's a curse in a way when you figure that my education from kindergarten to graduate school REWARDED me for perfectionism. I was the perfectionist's perfectionist, and I still have to work on it.

Yet I'm also like one of those weighted Bozo inflatable dolls. If you knock me down, I go down (and, thanks to this disease, I may stay down for awhile); but eventually, even if takes a long time, I bounce back up.

And even if, as Smokey Robinson might say, I also cry the tears of a clown. As do we all at times :-(

Help? I'm trying to sign up for the self-esteem group on saturday. How do I go about it.

Thankyou for sharing your story with me.