Too hard on myself?

I would like to acknowledge a very valued follower of my blog who left a very honest comment on one of my posts yesterday.  I hope she does not mind being acknowledged in this way but thank you Caz from Invisibly Me for you comment telling me it would only be natural to be feeling as raw as I was yesterday after losing my Mum about 2 months ago.  Her comment reminded me that I often gloss over my real feelings, especially as part of a society that encourages many of us to ‘get over it’ and ‘move on’ but often does not really give us help or support to show us how this is done.  And we never ‘get over’ significant losses anyway, they mark us deeply as souls and stay etched in our memory…. we ‘go through them’ if we choose to be brave and vulnerable too, allowing the experience to deepen us and open us to love, healing, acceptance..

I was also reflecting this morning, as I slowly worked my way to the surface of awakeness from the undulating depths of sleep, that when we go through loss of a signifiant attachment our body is what grieves.  We may perceive that grief with our mind but its the body that can feel like something has been torn away from us and our heart may ache or go through contraction pains as tears work their way up.  Its what I experienced yesterday after going out to a lunch for my birthday.  During the conversation about the loss of my Mum with my cousin and sister I noticed how silent my sister was, because she was feeling deeply but unable to articulate at all.  In the past I see I have judged her for not being able to talk about things, but what I am noticing is that losses go deep for her and her deep pain at one point was not really responded to with ‘holding’ but rather with medications.  I have watched two sisters go through so called ‘highs’ of bi polar disorder  and see in that the way the mind tries to take flight from the intensity of experiences which are emotional and bodily and may attempt to pin us down to earth in some way.  It was interesting to me that on the night before all this deep grief I have been holding in my body broke open like a torrent yesterday I had a dream in which the airplane I was travelling started to turn over and the words came to mind “we are gone, death is coming”.  As an air sign I do intellectualise a lot.  I try to find words for feelings but I am also aware that feelings are not words but real bodily energies.  If we look at the word e motion it stands for energy in motion and what happens when we don’t allow those energies to move through us, they get blocked.  I know all the contractions contorting and twisting my own body had gone through in the wake of my accident in 2005 when really as I look back I was on the run to find a place where all my unresolved grief could be contained.  It’s hard to find words for it all here but it saddens me now to see the way I did, at times, push away attempts others made to be there for me, even when they too struggled to know how to do that in the way that was needed.   I then would feel a lot of frustration and anger and end up hurting myself all over by acting it out.  I never engaged in self harm but I do feel that is where the impulse to self harm comes from, we struggle with emotions we cannot quite express or fully articulate.

Anyway, today I felt upon awakening almost as if my entire being was being carried on a tide, I felt the expansions into the awarenesses of all the love I have longed for and the frustrated need for love that underlay so many of my angry or lashing out tantrums.  At all times my inner being was crying “please see me, please do not abandon me, please understand”.  As I see it in our culture this is the great need we all have, the need to be seen.  When we are not seen we can and do engage in violence of some kind and then the impulse can be criticised when really it is in the words of The Course in Miracles ‘a cry for love’, a call to be seen.

In the end though we must see ourselves.  We must learn to treat ourselves and others tenderly, even if we are not on the receiving end of such tenderness from others (which I believe is felt as so deeply offensive to those of us who are sensitive) but we also need to be sensitive to those who have had to cover their own sensitivity over with hard defences, they may act in ways we don’t like but there is still, even if deeply disguised in their offensive behaviour, a cry of numbness being expressed.

This morning on awakening I became aware of how in the weeks since Mum died I have been pushing myself at times when I really need to rest.  I have been having that extra cup of coffee or serving of ice cream when really I would be better just to get down on the floor and do some breathing practice to connect to myself and then let my body do the unravelling it needs to do.   I have had to push myself for most of my life beyond myself and what I really feel and most deeply need in body, heart, being and soul.

I was, at this time of year 33 years ago, pushed to go overseas when I really needed to stay close to friends who loved and wanted to support me at that critical time of losing my father.  I could not turn to my Mum as she had no capacity to hold and contain her own grief let alone mine, as she too, was also pushed and had to push away.   So in mid February, in the depths of an English winter, I went overseas all alone wandering the London underground and city streets, going to movies, shopping for things, but not really interacting with others or baring my soul.

No, all my grief went silent and deep and then there was the drinking and the drugs and the relationships that followed in which all that was hidden prevented me from acheiving any lasting, deep, or true intimacy. I was really a person in flight, on a flight that is now crashing or ending.    I am glad that it is, to be honest.  I know how much I long for earth.  I  know how much I long for tenderness and to be touched, to be seen, fully known and received.  Not just engaged in fly by night connections with others.

I am also seeing that I am not sick or bad for struggling as I do.  Anyone who had been through the extent of losses, trauma and broken attachments I have gone through would be struggling too.   And today I am so grateful I can fully acknowledge all the pain in my heart I feel for all the times I pushed away from those who as imperfect beings struggled to help me.

Sadly I could not feel the love in that but it also hurt to be told by my ex husband when my grief finally began to break through at 7 years of sobriety he wanted back the happy girl he married.  I had buried so much sadness and my happy mask was not totally untrue but at that point in my life happiness was not the depth of me  due to all I had gone through that was unprocessed.  And yet I loved my husband.  I just wish he could have acknowledged his own grief enough to also acknowledge mine, to give me open arms, understanding and a resting place. And yet (again) I also see I wish I could have understood why he struggled to and resented my therapy which made him feel excluded on some level.   I will never be able to fully make amends but I also know we did the very best we could at that point in time and that at that time I actually needed someone who was capable of a greater depth.  He was not the right partner for me at that time and I had my underworld journey, too, which would lead through yet another broken relationship with someone who resented my pain and judged me.

All of these recognitions, arising from deep within me shows I am softening and growing in awareness on the back of the recent eclipse in my 12th house of the uncosncious.

That I am learning as slowly as I can, to be less hard on myself and on others too.   So from the bottom of my heart, thank you Caz.  You gave me a reality check and a wake up call I really needed this morning and I am so grateful for your clear seeing at time when my own inner vision was clouded.  ❤ ❤ ❤