Jonnie Introduction

INTRODUCTION

We invite you to invoke the spirit of Jonnie Zheutlin by enacting Nine Fucking Steps Towards Forgiveness. The title of each step is an instruction, accompanied by our own take-up, sometimes with Jonnie herself. This documentation is not intended to be viewed sequentially as a performance. Rather, we created a score for you to perform Jonnie; to invoke forgiveness in your own time.

Notes on Jonnie

When we first met Jonnie Zheutlin she told us she was, “Done being done.” Three years earlier it was the opposite, Jonnie was “done, done, done”—ready to die. She attributes her change of attitude to forgiving herself. Through the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s 19 Commission, we connected with Rabbi Joshua who referred to Jonnie as an elder who “walks the walk.” We met with Jonnie over Zoom once a month starting in January 2021.
“I use fuck, shit, hell language,” 94 year-old Jonnie told us. “Fuck, I’m almost dead.”
We asked Jonnie how she was doing with the COVID-19 pandemic. “I’m comfy with silence and addicted to 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles,” she said.
Jonnie is the mother of five children: four daughters and a son. She herself is the youngest of four girls, “the baby.” Jonnie told us, “They always thought I was stupid so I believed them.” Jonnie is a self-described late bloomer. “I didn’t use to be a lot of things that I am now.”
In mid-life Jonnie changed paths, divorcing her husband and moving away from her kids. ”The man is supposed to leave, it never occurred to me that I could.” She left her husband and helped establish the Women’s Building in LA. She went to Esalen and became a Gestalt therapist, an interpersonal therapy approach that is sometimes associated with the mantra, “I and Thou in the Here and Now.”
Jonnie felt guilty for not being enough: enough for herself—she thought she needed a partner to complete her; enough for her kids—there were periods of estrangement.
Jonnie was living independently at Mountain Meadows retirement village when we met her in January, 2021. By the time we visited her in Ashland in July, she was packing to move in with her daughter in Portland.
Most mornings at Mountain Meadows Jonnie would walk the meadow loop with her dog Maggie, a cantankerous shaggy black pooch Jonnie sometimes calls her “Precious.” When we walked this loop with Jonnie and Maggie, she pointed out some of her favorite sights: sun on water under bridge; a cypress tree named Miranda because the tree “wanted to connect.”
Jonnie feels energy and she experiences “happenings.” Past happenings include that time she fell, describing it as getting “pushed from the other side;” another involved a dancing kite string which she interpreted as her deceased partner letting her know that he was there.
“How will we know that ‘you’re there’ after you die?” we asked Jonnie. She told us she wanted to come back as, “The feeling of forgiveness.”

Thank you to the following for supporting our work with Jonnie: Amrita Ramanan, Russell Zook, Paul Adolphson, Cathy Zheutlin, Rabbi Joshua Boettiger, Ben and Linda Bellinson, Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor residency.

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