Last Entry of 2008

I am in San Juan, Puerto Rico, writing in a hotel room, what I expect will be my last blog entry of 2008. Gabor is somewhere in the Keys and I am with Aaron Richmond who has been my Year End Cruise personal assistant for four years now.

Many people have been generous in giving money for the World Peace through Inclusion Tour since October. I want to be quick to write that the cruise was paid for before I left on the Tour. Your fund raised dollars are not supporting my participation in a Landmark Education course on a Caribbean cruise.

Personal assistance has become very much of a subtext of the Tour. I define personal assistance as a relationship between two individuals where one is willingly and intentionally using their bodily, emotional and mindful capacities to support another to fulfill their intentions. In general personal assistants provide support in the areas of mobility, bodily well being, communication and a very difficult to define area I might call guidance. In the area of guidance the assistant takes part in structuring the environment so that the supported individual can best use their own abilities and be best received by others. I have written an article about personal assistance which is available for free at www.ancilla.tv.

Their have been several challenges to my personal assistance since mid-October when Gabor, Erin and I formally launched this Tour. Not the least has been the breakdown in the financing that pays Gabor’s and other’s wages. It is nothing short of miraculous that Gabor has stepped into supporting me facing the uncertainty of when and where the money will emerge to pay him. His capacity to sustain willingness is even more enormous than his physical strength, upon which I also rely continuously!

This other side of the rabbit hole is marked by how much more obvious is my own responsibility to sustain the relationship through which I receive the support that sustains me and creates my capacity to accomplish my intentions. More than ever I must take an active interest in ensuring that Gabor, and now Aaron, and others who come and go, understand and have enough agreement with my intentions and strategies in order not to feel either confused, abused or abandoned and that their needs and concerns are heard and addressed.

My current fatigue on the matter is not that there is a problem either with Aaron or Gabor, but that the last week of finishing up Christmas related activities and getting ready to come to Fort Lauderdale, meet up with Gabor, and fly to San Juan, Puerto Rico to pick up the Year End Cruise have been complicated by the sudden illness of another assistant who had come from Canada to relieve Gabor. Between her inability to work and her own need for our support we have been using all the capacity we have. This of course is not the problem – the worry is that we are so close to breakdown in my support relationships that it has become difficult to decide what to do, what not to do and which problem to solve next. If I cannot reliably set the context, direction and provide the resources to sustain the structure of my support, my personal assistants lose a considerable part of the stability they need to support me well. The dynamic dance breaks down.

As it happens we made Fort Lauderdale and Puerto Rico and no further hitches were encountered. May the course “Simple Pleasures” and the cruise itself bring me some insight on ensuring that the stresses of the last few months are firmly behind us.

Judith