Not turning the pain of rejection into suffering

When the pain of rejection or exclusion stings can I take in the hurt and realise perhaps its where I am meant to be? Or am I going to fight about it, bitch and moan until the cows come home (so to speak!) carrying on a useless argument with a painful reality that will only make me suffer more?

I keep giving love to my family as much as possible and it can look at this stage like I don’t have much of a life, Christmas spent alone, not invited to spend it with the closest family I am trying and going to not make of this pain of rejection and exclusion a suffering for myself (maybe it wasn’t even intended that way but is just the way things are rolling?).

By some strange case of synchronous chance today a valued follower of mine ‘liked’ one of my past posts

https://emergingfromthedarknight.wordpress.com/2018/10/10/the-author-of-our-own-suffering/

and it just so happened to turn out to be the one I most needed to read today as a reminder to just suck up the pain today and count my blessings.

I am now sitting in the cool and quiet of my cottage while the quieter pre Christmas world goes on outside. I just went to the local shops to get my morning coffee and I noticed everyone is now in relaxed holiday mode. Here in Australia temperatures are set to soar over the next few days as summer finally anchors in following the summer solstice here. My body was wound down into such a deep spiral yesterday morning before I had to go collect my sister from the hospital to bring her into town to collect her car. She is driving to have Christmas at the coast with her son (something I was informed of just a few days ago with the back hand comment “oh I didn’t I tell you he was coming up?”) At this point I am just letting it go with good grace though I cried all the way home after dropping her off and having a coffee with her yesterday, it would have been great to be invited but its probably just NOT MEANT TO BE.

This is the second Christmas anniversary of Mum’s death and the anniversary of my Dad being taken into hospital and never coming out alive. My brother takes off to the United States every year at this time. So I am alone apart from a family friend who heard I was going to be alone so kindly invited me to her place for lunch tomorrow. All I can figure is that its where I am meant to be.

My cousin just dropped around with her son to take Jasper for a walk and she could not believe my sister would not invite me for Christmas after the support I have tried my hardest to show her this year through out 2 hospitalisations. By my sister is drugged. Not a tear was shed yesterday, my sis doesn’t ‘do’ tears as the meds stop her feeling and she is shaking so badly from the lithium they have her on and are trying to reduce again that it makes me cry every time I leave any of our visits. To see that much emotion dammed up inside with no exit route at all is just plain tragic and makes me weep and weep … however….IT IS WHAT IT IS. And I AM SURE MY SISTER IS FEELING A LOT DEEP INSIDE HER, its just hard for her to speak about any of it as she is a very private person who does not open up as I do.

At this point sad and mystified as I am to why her family exclude me I am just going to count by blessings… one for sobriety, for 25 years now I have not had to take a drink or drug to mood alter. I do take sugar though so I cant pretend I am not using something at times to try to deal with the profound sorrow I feel inside a lot of the time and the emptiness at the way my life has turned out at 56 years of age. Second I am alive and awake to enjoy certain things, like sun and wind and coffee and friendships that appear out of the wood work, loyal and beautiful followers on my blog, fellow journeyers and poets and writers. THESE GIFTS GLADDEN MY HEART ON THE TOUGH DAYS WHEN IF I REGARD THINGS FROM A PURELY EXTERNAL PERSPECTIVE IT CAN LOOK LIKE I DO NOT HAVE OR AM NOT ENOUGH.

This time of year is the anniversary of many losses and separations but even with all the loss endured and suffered over the past 16 years of my own profound Dark Night of the Soul I have gained something, even if it was a pathway into a deeply profound ancestral grief carried for three or four generations more…. I see the patterns and I see the part of me living them out and then I also see the other side which is the witness self that is somehow (and at the same time) removed from it all or at the very least has the capacity to bear it and bear witness to it. Maybe I am slowly ascending out of it or incorporating it so deeply that it no longer has as much profound power to capture my energy into a dark crucifying painful personal Underworld as much as it used to. Its not an easy mantle to be the family shadow carrier.

God is also keeping me separate too from my friend Scott who is facing a tough Christmas of terror where he is stationed at the moment. It’s no secret that radical fundamentalists are at war with the spirit of love of Christ that wants to see woman valued as equals and able to receive an education, something these men would love to deny them while doing all they can to spread a reign of terror which kills and brutalises innocent civilians as they try to worship in their own chosen way.

There is all kind of killing that takes place in our world all kinds of soul and psychic murders, so if being excluded is the price I pay for being real, feeling too much or seeing too much and not shutting up about it, maybe its better that I am alone because its more lonely to have to sell your soul to fit in somewhere you do not belong. And without our soul integrity what is anything else in this life really worth????? And didn’t Christ say somewhere that he came to bring a sword. We may be separated at times from what we personally desire or ache for but in some deeper place we are never truly separate as long as we keep a spirit of love, compassion and tolerance awake and alive in our hearts and souls. That for me is the true message of Christ Mass. And I wish it for everyone most especially my precious friends here who shine their own love lights every day through blog posts, poetry and artistry. I wish you all over the next few days A PEACE THAT PASSES UNDERSTANDING.