No more : working to keep my focus on the present and nurturing!

I have had a shit load of not being helped or believed or taken seriously lately and trying to support everyone else so over Easter I have just been taking time out alone doing the things that bring joy to Jasper and I. We have a lovely park walk that we go on most days now. It follows the canal flow towards the lake and when we cross over the Avenue with much through traffic we find ourselves amidst a grove of oak and willow and pine trees and close to a waterway where fallen leaves lay scattered. Here Jasper can chase the ducks and magpies to his heart’s content and I can sit on the ground surrounded by the trees and hundreds of leaves, peacefully immersed in nature. It does me no end of good to see my beautiful spaniel running fast through the grass with his fur and long black ears flying back, a huge smile on his face. We come across a lot of kids on the way and it was lovely on the way back to the car a few days ago to see a young girl doing cartwheels in the grass with her parents watching from a distance. The sight of free movement lately reminds me of how much my own expression and movement got squashed as I grew up. As traumatic events hit and little support or empathy or emotional connection was shown to me it was as if I started to live inside a straight jacket within which I unconsciously struggled for freedom not even really knowing what my predicament was.

Lately so much grief has broken free for me, the true acknowledgement of how much I suffered free from the inner critics attacks and blame of myself for my own emotional neglect and its results. As I have mentioned before in blogs on childhood emotional neglect (CEN) blaming ourselves is one of the most prevalent symptoms of neglect, sufferers also struggle with positive self care and discipline as well as positive self regard. And so often we fail to lay the blame back with our abusers because often we are told that it is our fault. The truth is that it is our responsibility to find the best ways to address and heal the patterns of ongoing neglect that come out of a traumatic or unnurturing childhood, however what happened to us was truly NEVER OUR FAULT and continuing to blame ourselves is a form of self abuse. Also there is no way to actually heal the past, we can only realise what the consequences of that past were. However, we can commit to no longer treating ourselves as we were treated then, so has to have a more positive, nurturing and joy filled present and future life.

It is getting to the point now where I am wanting less and less contact with my family. I saw lately how much I try to heal the family as the youngest child. I suffered from a form of survivor guilt when I got sober. I saw the deep suffering of my mother and my older sister and sadly I put my own life on hold to stay close in a situation where the truth would never be fully acknowledged. More so when I tried to point it out I would be sidelined, scapegoated or exiled at times. I stayed around and let myself be beaten up emotionally so often. The latest debacle where I asked my brother for help and he completely ignored me did enrage me, but it also showed me an unchanging truth. He doesn’t really see me, my true feelings are not important to him and he would rather I don’t confront him with too much reality. Luckily I recently found out that he is not the only executor of my dead mother’s will, my mother’s solicitor is also an executor and since he and I get on far better than my brother and I, I have decided I will deal with him in future and have as limited contact with my brother as I can. I have NEVER IN MY LIFE set boundaries like this before and it has damaged me, for years and years I longed to be seen and never was.

I have also stopped longing for connection with my other living sister’s children. I don’t seem to figure for them either and that is fine. I would not cut off contact with them but I also will not choose to have a lot to do with them either as the oldest son has shown over and over that I do not really figure in his life. I don’t want to linger on this because I am trying not to make myself distressed over Easter.

Today is the fifth anniversary of my older sister’s death in 2014. I decided today as sad as it is to know how she died, (I had a lot of memories flooding me early this morning of sitting beside in the hospital over the last 24 hours of her life holding her hand and knowing it would soon be time to say goodbye and let her go – we made the decision as a family to take her off life support on 19th April and she passed at 3am on the 20th.) I really want to honour her by being happy and living well, reaching out as best as I can for life and new connections with those who don’t fit with the old pattern of emotional avoidance, this doesn’t mean I wont always carry the sadness of seeing how painful her later years were but I will not let this eclipse the gifts available in the present. It is so important now for me to find a new life outside of all of this past trauma.

I cried a lot this morning realising how much my own life being put on hold really kept me inside a paralysed place for so many years leading up to my sister’s death and even years after. I am committed to trying my very best to bring my energy into the present and not focus on the pain of the past to the point that it paralyses me as much. I am noticing more when my thinking veers towards the negative and I feel that urge to want to punish someone (possibly mostly myself). I am using all the energy at my disposal that I can lately to answer all that with self soothing, self calming strategies. I do not need more pain and what I focus on grows. These days I wish to focus on self care, self support, self love and self nurturing there are a lot of lost years to make up for. I will continue to seek for those things that bring me a feeling of joy and peace….