Really grieving

I have felt so many inner walls come down over the past few days following my extreme illness that went on for over 3 weeks.  I am noticing that the defences against the grief and pain that surrounds this particular time of year are lessening and I am able to really fall into my feelings both alone and with others.  There is not so much head talk about the pain but more a real feeling of it opening my heart in places that were defended and locked away before this.  Today in therapy (I had a two week break due to being too tired and ill to get there) I was able to read two of the last prose poems I wrote about the experiences of learning of my father’s cancer and being immersed in family grief over the loss of my step grandfather in my first years of life and really grieve deeply while I read them.  It was such a relief to feel that I could finally feel all the love that has been hidden under anger and rage before.

Reading Mark Wolynn’s book on ancestral issues and grief has also really helped me to heal my relationship with my mother over the past few days.  I did a visualiation from his book that when I have the time I will share here yesterday and it just opened the flood gates for me.  In the exercise you visualise your mother before her and all of her pain and then notice the impact and impressions in your body, often we block this feeling with defences we use to protect ourselves or judge the parent both of which block us off from the love a little baby naturally feels and gives to a parent.  When we block this love we block our own life energy.   This has made so much sense to me of bodily symptoms that have been a mystery to me for over 10 years and we kicked into gear by the head trauma I had in 2005.

Today I also made a connection to the unresolved emotional grief and pain of my great grandfather that I carried.  According to Wolynn many of us unknowing carry the grief or trauma of an ancestor which kicks into gear at the same age they suffered the trauma and have symptoms that make no sense until we find out the true story of what they suffered that is often hidden.  In my great great grandfathe’s case the grief over the loss of his mother and his loss of two babies who were the namesake of my great grandmother was not expressed as he became an alcoholic.  Part of the family exiled him and he died in an institution.  I feel both my sister who died and I carried his trauma/grief and became alcoholics ourselves.  In my case I found sobriety in 1993 and have been working to understand the deep roots of attachment issues that dogged me for years and it makes sense to me that I found sobriety in the same month my great great grandfather and great great grandmother left Cornwall to migrate to New Zealand in 1874.   I am going to do some energy work with my great great grandfather over the next few days to ask him to free me from the entanglement.  At the same time though I  am able to greive fully and I cannot tell you what a relief that is.  As I grieve fully I experience my heart opening and I can actually feel happiness flowing in and acceptance as well as healing.  I am so grateful for this.

This afternoon as Katina and I were going over the multiple losses I suffered in the wake of my father’s death in 1985 I could finally feel compassion for myself.  I saw how harshly I was judged by those who had not a clue what trauma at that point I had both suffered and witnessed.  I just never spoke about it but acted it out in all my relationships.  I had no help to grieve and unresolved grief has dogged me for over 32 years, but I feel that I am beginning to resolve it now.  I no longer have any hatred or anger in my heart and I feel so free.  I see how hatred and anger are so often defences against fully feeling the impact of our deepest vulnerability.  We fear that on some level it will destroy us, but in my experience it actually empowers us beyond measure. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to feel the peace I feel this evening.   I think I am finally learning what love really is.