{"id":896,"date":"2005-05-19T11:24:23","date_gmt":"2005-05-19T19:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2005\/05\/19\/the-overly-examined-life\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:23:48","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:23:48","slug":"the-overly-examined-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2005\/05\/19\/the-overly-examined-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Overly Examined Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

I saw a grief counselor today at The Centre for Living With Dying<\/a>. What prompted me to call, finally, is that yesterday I expressed myself inappropriately at work, which made me realize I need a safe place to process all the pain and anger I’m sitting on as I go through life’s daily routines. The woman I met with is the minister who performed our marriage ceremony. Talking with her was the closest I’ve felt to being where I want to be since leaving Texas.<\/p>\n

One thing that became clear is that the grief of my father-in-law’s death compounds the previous grief of leaving behind a dear community by moving to California. That community, the handful of friends, was my bedrock. They are still my friends, sure, but the physical displacement is what hurts.<\/p>\n

I also realized something else. I lamented to the counselor how I’m not taking actions that I know might be comforting or helpful, such as making art or exercising. The realization dawned that I’m resisting because I want<\/em> to feel poorly. It’s a way of making room for grief in a culture that relentlessly strives, in a life that requires returning to work and chores and bills, and where few people want to hear of one’s pain. I’ve been feeling ill in body and spirit. I want to be sick. Leave me alone and let me rest; let the process happen. <\/p>\n

But I haven’t allowed this, haven’t given myself permission; instead I’ve countered with self-critique: What’s wrong with me that I don’t do what would be “good” for me? I haven’t even granted myself the luxury of unexamined experience. I live so much in my mind that I have abandoned my heart. The unexamined life, Socrates said, is not worth living. I agree, to a point. An overly examined life, however, is clouded by second-guessing and self-conscious narrative. <\/p>\n

So for now, in the moment, I give myself permission and space to feel like crud and to live my life without self-critique. I’ll feel better when I feel better. My body and spirit will let me know. It’s happened before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I saw a grief counselor today at The Centre for Living With Dying. What prompted me to call, finally, is that yesterday I expressed myself inappropriately at work, which made me realize I need a safe place to process all the pain and anger I’m sitting on as I go through life’s daily routines. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","category-social-science"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10858,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions\/10858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}