Feeling so sad today. On Thursday my brother asked me to the ceremony that was being conducted by aboriginal elders to bless the new building he designed and built. I was very concerned considering the way he works all the hours God sends and then knocks back alcohol with out concern for the fact he is tired, as a friend in the fellowship pointed out, he is abviously using alcohol to keep going. I wish he could stop and rest.
I also know he is so creative, his mind constantly active on designs, I am just not a real fan of the huge buildings he creates, full of steel and glass with a huge marble tiled atrium containing a double helix shaped fixture (is it a staircase?), genius in its design though. Part of me switches off to something that to my mind and heart is huge and cold, something that is not warm, cosy and comforting. However the idea of the building which now houses the finance department being blessed by the original owners of this land did appeal to me.
On Sunday evening, I faced the prospect with a mix of ambivalence, part of me didn’t want to be pulled into that world and is still tired from recent radiotherapy treatment, the relationship part wanted to be there for my brother, at an important milestone. He wanted me there and it felt sad he should go through that ceremony with none of his family (who have taken off overseas) by his side.
In addition, in Australia it is the first day of NAIDOC week too, which celebrates our indigenous people and draws attention to their culture, as well as to all they suffered at the hands of white colonisers : forced separation from land and their children, an overrunning of their mythological and magical ways of participation mystique with nature.
My brother was to let me know on Sunday night when the ceremony would be. The call never came. I could have called him but part of me was relieved not to be pulled in and thought perhaps he has changed his mind about having me there. At 10 ish this morning there was a rap on the door, he had called and texted me according to him, yesterday, the problem he has been calling an old number that I haven’t operated under for over 5 years.
As soon as he left (there was not enough time for me to dress as it was a hellishly cold morning and I was cosied up in layers of fleece and wool bedclothing having pottered around since rising late at 9 ish) i felt completely and powerfully overcome with tears and a deeply painful mix of longing, thwarted love and grief for my brother, so sad I had let him down, even though he was the one mixed up about the contact numbet.
I do know there were many aspects to what was occuring for me. I haven’t had much of a relationship with him, we are in very different worlds, there is a huge age gap, and I lost my father many years ago, a father who I suffered at the hands of and was emotionally distant from but longed for. Dad’s death when I was in my early 20s came on the back of so much loss, thwarting and trauma. Shortly after he died, I went overseas and then to Sydney to live, rarely seeing my brother and feeling quiet abandoned on some level, especially at the end of my marriage when I opened my vulnerable heart and termination history and received no response from him.
Over the nxt 40 minutes I cried, I phoned my therapist before deciding to get dressed and hot foot it over to the building where I found a scattering of maybe 13 people wih leads in their hands clearly in the process of unravelling the celebration. I had arrived too late, called brother who was now in office and didnt seem intersted in connecting up.
I left in a swirl of emotions, judging myself for not being in and of the mainstrem world, feeling so lost and separate, but feeling on some level free as well, glad to have missed it…not really, sad I was too late to share with my brother something so important, and so conscious too, of Dad’s absence.
Thinking as I often do in strange ways ont things I did wonder if in some way the Universe was protecting me, giving me space from something. In my chiropractic treatment at the moment we are working on issues of boundaries and identity. As the baby in the family I often don’t feel seen and I also feel pulled into their world. I operate on a deeper level emotionally. In chiropractic we are working on how I can be involved without losing myself, or being flooded by things others carry but don’t recognise.
Feeling it all leads me to feel a mess, raw, small, undeveloped and it just occured to me contact with family is often a trigger for those of us with complex PTSD of earler evperiences which flood us in the present moment and feeling small is often a sign we have age regressed or regressed to an earlier loss, difficult experience or trauma. Perhaps this mornings tears were part age regression but also associated to other losses and leavings. Sometimes when I leave or separate from others after time together, or when time together is thwated I get emotionally overwhelmed by old grief.
We have a Cancer new moon today and we have Venus planet of love and relating in that sign together with Mercury which rules communication so deep feelings are sure to be stirring up (mmm all trine my natal Neptune which is so deep feeling in the water sign, Scorpio.)
Cancer relares to family, feelings and issues around the need to feel safe and secure, we are hardly likely to open our soft underbelly if is going to be stomped on and old fears around not feeling that safe seem to coming up for me now.
Cancer also relates to the ancestors and lately I have been feeling and reflecting on aspects of the male ancestors lonely journey away from home and family in a struggle to survive and provide for their families and the stress and trauma that resulted. After my btother shared on Thursday night about how he was abused by the brothers at his school, there was a sadness I felt of the son of my Dad who didnt get fully nurtured and maybe a lot 9f projection too of my own issues onto him.
The complication and intensity arising with this New Moon that I have been sensing today is also due to the fact all three Cancer planets oppose Pluto. According to the astrologer Leah Whitehorse of Lua Astrolgy these aspects speak of the wolf at the door, painful old feelings, needs, primal instincts, hungers, desires, shame or secrets that may have been kept under wraps but need to come out or will be disinterred. It also shows the Cancerian need for retreat and self protection will be challenged.
It seems I have been picking up a lot of deep feelings during this New Cancer Moon. Soon all three planets will be in my twelfth house and that too relates to the ancestors, most especially my maternal great, great grandmother, Eliza Jane who met and married Thomas Trudgeon in the land of my ancestors and then emmigrared to NZ. She left him when his alcoholism became too much, she had a stellium in Cancer falling un my twelfth house. The roots of that painful relationship have spread tendrils of fate, threads that have woven through my family leading to diagnoses of bi polr disorder, difficulty with boundaries, pacing, self care and nurture in several generations.
I have ducked that diagnosis by my involvement in AA work in therapy and recovery process of feeling and sharing my feelings in fellowship and therapy. I believe we are all bi polar, life is about two valences and some of us manifest them intently in our drive to live, express and survive. And I do believe addiction and unfelt sadness is inherited or passes down and can manifest in strong feelings and instincts we need to understand as we grow on the path of personal and collective consciousness.
Choosing a path of conscoius recovery I believe helps us grow more than being pinned by a diagnosis that tells us little. We need the relationship with our insides and to understand the part family and inner child history has played in making us behave as we have.
Emerging From The Dark Night 
Reblogged this on Grandtrines .
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