Tired

Is anyone else feeling terribly tired today?    I think the Mercury retrograde always goes better when we can kick back and take things slowly and not rush around too much, and I will be honest, when I have to go out this week it feels a little like I am going against the grain of things as deep feelings are percolatting around inside me about the entirety of my journey to here as a cell that rose out of the cells of my ancestors and in a family where so much tragedy and trauma befell us.

I was crying deeply about it while reading some of this week’s poems in therapy yesterday.  I was feeling so sad that death took my Dad before could enjoy his life and that Mum was robbed of her loved one at the age of 60 which is only four years older than I am now.  I was crying for it all and lately when I listen to songs of that time I am transported back to the old days at Mugga Way which was the big house 
Dad ended up building after the builder went bust and the one where all the tragedy began to befaell our family.   

I listened to a powerful astrological lecture on the Kennedy family and the role of tragedy that can occur as the Gods cut ordinary mortals down to size when their dreams and ambitions get too large and the drive comes out of a desire to escape poverty.  It was a lecture given by psychological astrologer Liz Greene and it really resonated with me.  Dad worked so hard driven by purely material objectives to escape very poor and terrifying conditions in pre World War II Holland.  He left that country and never looked back but the emotional and spiritual sides of life were neglected.  So it is interesting to me that my attendance in AA which began about 25 years ago (6 of December is my sobriety birthday) made me realise that the spirit I was seeking through alcohol could not be satisified in that way and I must begin to look towards both the spiritual and the emotional.  I needed to learn to look inwardly at least that was what I learned in my early days in the fellowship when I discovered the contribution psychologist Carl Jung had played in the inception of Dr Bob and Bill Wilson’s recovery and founding of AA and the 12 steps through another member Roland H.   Jung said therapy could not help addicts, only a spiritual conversion could and it was recognised that there is power in one recovering member helping another for no profit.  It comes back to me in therapy all the time when Kat my therapist shows she doesn’t really have a handle on addiction.  That said I now know that early attachment trauma plays a huge part in addiction and in the face of absent or wounded emotional and personal attachments we can try to attach to substances but they cannot give us love.  Only short term relief and the shame we go on to develop blocks a relationship with our true self and others. 

Anyway sobriety did not mean I had a handle on my emotions or my wounds and empathic sensitivities that I now see are a part of most addicts lives, as is trauma. Early on I was told by a counsellor to go to Al Anon adult child meetings.   He pointed towards a box of tissues when he said this and continued “you wont find any of them in the rooms of AA”..  okay why was it then I used to just burst into tears as I sat and listened to heartbreaking stories “in the rooms?”  

These wounds and traumas come to light after we get sober and we have to deal with them if we don’t want to go back to our old ways.  And its a tough path but well worth it.  I feel sad for both sisters they did not get to a twelfth step fellowship of some kind Al Anon could have helped them both and maybe they would not have had to resort to drugs or bi polar diagnoses, though the roots of bi polar were then not understood and I don’t think they still are fully.   And I was reading on the Awakened Empath site that several empaths said they had problems with bi polar emotions when they picked up on others as empaths and did not learn, know or practive good boundaries or self care.  I know for a fact my sister who is hospitalised now was always trying to help EVERYONE.  But not in a balanced way.

Anyway there but for the grace of God….I have so much to be grateful now.  I have been the witness in my family that came to hold the feeling function for the family which at first made me a scapegoat.  It was an issue being discussed on the Awakened Empath site on Facebook yesterday.  Empaths so often end up us the scapegoats exiled in families for busting the lid on family secrets, another point being discussed yesterday. Rather be a scapegoat though, after all Jesus was one!!!!!. 

At one point in sobriety when my niece started to open up to me about her family secrets she was encouraged by my brother and sister in law to break all contact with me.  They actually turned up to a coffee date I invited her too, flanking her on either side while wearing dark glasses like the Mafia as my sister in law (a defended narcissist) fired questions about why I was not working.  At this stage my marriage had broken down due to my repressed feelings and trauma breaking open.  I understand why they wanted to protect her but did I have leprosy?  It was the feeling they gave me.  

Anyway I cried over that for years but lately I am finding my voice and my authentic power.  I am feeling the full impact at the moment of 56 years of trauma and living and its a miracle that my capacity to feel and embody emotions that are not only personal but collective and multigenerational has grown over the past 14 years since my marriage ended.  It had to so I could go on this healing journey.  I am not blaming myself any more. 

It is only natural I guess as I find myself heading towards my 26th year of sobriety in two weeks time that I am feeling this way and tired too.  It is also interesting to me that Mercury planet of communications and migration and writing and journeys goes direct on this day.  As it backtracks over the course of its retrograde it will square first my natal Pluto in the first house then my natal Chiron in the seventh.   And I believe Chiron was in these square Virgo degrees when I got sober and close to my natal Pluto which rules death, addiction, rebirth and transformation.  Is it any wonder I need to stay quietly at the present close to the inner world which is the place I most feel at home anyway in a world that is at present so traumatised???

Lately I really feel the truth that I am finally ‘coming home to myself’ but not only to myself but to my ancestors too. I feel them all around me every day.  I feel them deep in my body and soul as I read my poems and cry to depths of my being in therapy.  I need to feel all of this to be free.  For I do believe it is true, we cannot heal what we cannot feel and we cannot become aware of it either until we embody our feelings. And their losses and challenges serve as a reminder for me to be grateful every day for what I have and can live, a sober life.  I am grateful I can feel and not labor under a ‘diagnosis’ in what I so often see as a disembodied materialistic narcissistic society often so defended against human vulnerability and feeling that it labels those who do feel and have legitimate responses to trauma as ‘sick’.   Go figure.  Surely we are meant to find deeper understanding so we can support those who are trying their best to heal and find a better way.