Emotional Immaturity or just a wounded self growing up?

I have been contemplating so deeply following the confrontation I had with my brother on Saturday.   I know that it stirred up a lot of hurt.  My brother had a very different connection with my father, they were in business together and Dad was much much younger when my brother was born, he was 24 and when I was born Dad was 41 a very old parent for the 1960s. I think my brother took on a lot of my Dad’s unresolved drives from a very impoverished childhood growing up in Holland in the 1920s and 30s.  When war threatened he got out, leaving his entire family behind, and his Mum was a war widow from what I know now alone, just as my great great grandmother was in the 1890s.  So its no wonder when my Mum and Dad met they instantly connected together as both lost their fathers before they become teenagers.  If you understand any astrology and I tell you they both had Sun Saturn Mercury conjunctions, Mum in Scopio and Dad in Virgo that early father loss and deprivation would make sense to you.  If I then tell you I had the Saturn Moon with a very wide conjunction to Mercury (planet of siblings and communications and perception) a lot makes sense in terms of the ancestral an inherited traumas and patterns.  I nearly lost my life at the age my father left Holland (in 1938) and was the age he was (18) when my older sister had her cerebral bleed from working too hard, smoking and drinking a little too much.

My brother carries Dads practical drives with his own conjunction of planets in Virgo  and his son lives on my father’s pattern having no contact with his own grandmother who lives only 10 minutes away.   He works compulsively and when you meet him there is so much body armour its hard to hug him.  At my sister’s funeral he never even looked at me or gave me a hug or said I am so sorry.  That really hurt.

I started out heading my post emotional immaturity because its how I feel when I spend any time around my brother.  I wonder if getting upset that he didnt help my sister’ s second son is a boundary mix up.   I know that I tend to take on responsiblity for things that are not my concern.  I feel so much for my nephews (my sister’s sons) due to all they went through.  My others sister’s boys had a lot of financial help from my mother but not my older sister’s.  Their father was a bit of a con man but that isnt their fault.   I wonder how mature it was of me to get upset with my brother for not helping with something that was not his responsiblity.

What also came up is how my sister and I are here supporting our Mum as much as we can.  My brother keeps a great distance and at the time of year Dad became ill and died (late October to early January) he goes away.  When I mentioned the loss on Saturday he just blocke me.  That all happened years ago, he said to me.  Move on!  What the fuck you move on by grieving something I never got to do due to the fact I was sent away overseas thousands of miles from home just over one month after my father passed and then I went into addiciton.  When I tried to come back my mother had remarried.  My father was rarely mentioned.  My older sister was by then disabled.  I moved to the next major city and was so alone, apart from my godparents who did their best to give me a home for a time.

I never got to be held.   Due to the fact I became an addict in those years (1984 – 1993) I never got to process any of the pain.  I want people who are not in addiciton recovery to know the wounds we alcoholics and addicts carry go deep.  Even when we have years of abstience it still takes a lot of time for wounds to heal or be uncovered.  Some of us dont get the chance if we go behind defences or stay wedded to the scapegoat roles so many of us had foisted on us by an uncaring unfeeling world that is deaf dumb and blind to the deeper traumas we suffered.  If this sounds like a lion’s roar then that is what it is.

That said in the end its we who must bind up our wounds and care for them lovingly without dumping them on others, but we must be prepared to be blocked or sidelined by those who don’t have a fucking clue.  When we lose our negative self soothing strategies that only make things work then we have to find better ones.

I wrote a post on trauma and using imagination to heal yesterday.  One of the things that worked for me in the darkest most alone days following the end of my marriage when all I had not resolved rose up leading me into isolation at our family’s holiday house by the sea which was built a few years before my accident was finding the image of a loving Goddess like figure within.  This came hot on the heels of months of being beseiged by a shaming inner critic/demonic figure telling me what a piece of excrement I was better off dead.

Today I know my pain and rage and self criticism grew in a climate of emotional neglect where I was not seen or heard in my true self and needs.  So I learned to shame and blame and sometimes that gets turned out.  I forget that people do the best they can and not everyone is as sensitive due to trauma and empathy which deepens our knowing.  Sometimes I feel very raw and young and emotionally immature and yet that’s okay as I am making the commitment to grow.   I still have a lot of maturing to do, but at least I recognise it.  I carry a lot from the past and sometimes I feel that I have nearly drowned in it.  Slowly my energy is turning toward the present but I know the past is still a deep part of me, it always will be, I will never be able to become bulletproof to old losses, injuries and hurts but if I can acknowledge them and give them love and keep my mind based in love not fear.  I will be in a good place.  This is something I know for sure.