An Ocean of Longing

There is an ocean of longing inside my heart and body,    I feel that this ocean of longing is the reason why I have had massive head trauma and it must be really rising up lately as two days ago I hit myself in the head by accident when throwing the ball to Jasper in the park.  I really hurt myself, it was cold and raining and I felt so alone and broke down in tears, but part of me was okay in a strange way too.  Old deep pain of past head traumas was catalysed then, I feel.  I still have a very sore spot on my head and the inflammation is causing a lot of fluid in my tissues.

It is difficult to explain the pain that happens to a child when that child and its impulses are put into a straight jacket or the child is cut and spliced and fitted into a mould where she or he cannot really express the true self.  This psychic situation was expressed in a dream I had just after my marriage ended. In one part of the dream I was a young girl whose hands had been cut off and were all bandaged up.   The child was standing in front of a mirror.  In another part of the dream I was in fitting from trying on a dress (as a young child).  The dress was on a hanger but the hanger was of barbed wire and it had been sewn through my shoulder right through the centre of skin, bone and tissue and try as I could I could not get the coat hanger out.

I think this refers in some way to my childhood.  My mother was a qualified seamstress, she rebelled against being sent into domestic service by her mother (actually sent to live with another family in the same town) and got herself an apprenticeship.  Later she and my father went into other businesses.  By the time I was a teenager she had her own clothing boutiques, and I started to work there part time from the age of 13.  My major motor vehicle accident at age 17 took place on the way to work at the boutique.

I have memories as a child of having to stand very still as she pinned all of these beautiful dresses on me.  Later in life clothing and grooming played a huge part in the way we were taught to present ourselves.  There is nothing wrong with looking lovely, as it is a big part of expressing one’s soul but in my case, this preoccupation with clothing and looks was not really food for my deeper soul which needed a deeper recognition and attention beyond the merely superficial and material.  I know my own mother was so unmothered herself that she passed on that deep wound and emotional hunger to her youngest daughter, leaving me alone, as she was left alone by her own mother.

These days with the benefit of more years of emotional recovery I see how all of my siblings moved into roles where they could work out life scripts formed in the crucible of my parent’s unconscious unmet needs and longings. I have been thinking about this a great deal as the Sun transits through the sign of relationships, Libra which also concerns Venusian issues of self value, self worth and beauty.  Ideally these are things we associated with our true soul, but what if that true soul isn’t valued in childhood and helped to develop and feel a sense of its own true worth, being and values?  What if it goes underground?

My belief is that in this situation we can attach to substitute things to feed us and give us a sense of value and okayness and these can distract us from what we really truly need.  If the fundamental hunger and need is not soothed and understood and channelled in the right direction we suffer very deeply as it rises up to become a flood which can overwhelm us later.

This value issue plays into key issues in my father’s life.  He had the Moon in Libra challenged by Chiron and magnified by Jupiter.  I see my Dad had a huge need to prove himself of value and to amass material wealth in order to find a place of security and escape the fear and deprivation of his own past.  The problem was that he over-rode or ignored deeper soul needs and this drive drew his attention away from nurturing the emotional self in his own life and his family.

My Dad didn’t nourish himself.  He worked hard and then he smoked too much and drank and ate very rich food, this tied together with all the stress and trauma that played out in our family from the late 70s onwards led him to develop stomach cancer in 1984 at the age of 64.  I am thick in the memory imprints and buried emotions of this at present as it was close to this time of year that he was diagnosed and this diagnosis came on the back of about 7 major traumas in my own life.  Following his death, cast adrift overseas I carried so much pain, and father hunger.  I swallowed it down with alcohol and acted it out unconsciously being drawn to relationships too quickly and opening myself up too quickly due to my own hunger and low self value and replayed wounds due to my mixed up feelings of longing and deep grief.

I have been really grieving this father loss and its ramifications in my life over 30 years over the past few days.  I am seeing so many deeper connections between trauma and my actions and pain in relationships.  I am also sure that in some way the little accident I had on Monday is related as I have been told that the likelihood of accidents is always strong around key times of trauma and grief.  On Saturday I also lost my car keys as I was distracted on an attention level by a lot of churned up feelings and thoughts.

At these critical times of deep revelation when intense feelings are brewing and making their way to the surface of consciousness (Sun opposes Uranus planet of freedom, liberation and intuitive insight in four days), it is extremely important for those of us on a healing pathway to practice self care and self soothing.  Time spent in nature, grounding ourselves is essential.  Making time and spaces to just ‘be’ and connect with our deeper soul in whatever way is best be it listening to music, doing artwork or journaling all will help us.  We also need to be loving and kind to ourselves.  For if we have a huge backlog of unlived life the urges that rise up can be very powerful.   I know in my own case I need to stay  grounded and realistic and in touch with myself, so that my urge to fly away from things does not end up back firing on me and allows me to slowly integrate all the feelings and insights that are emerging.