Riding more waves of grief : and some reflections on trauma, triggers and mothering ourselves

Unbidden a wave of grief will arise when you least expect it and that is most potently the way it is for me right now. And when I was shedding more tears in therapy today I thought to check the planets only to see what I intuitively felt the last few days, Mars has just moved into the lunar ruled sign of mothering and in a few weeks will pass over the natal position of my deceased mother’s Pluton in Cancer ruled by the Moon. Today I longed for the containment of one of those lovely afternoons spent with my Mum, either popping around to her cosy unit with a bird’s eye view of the park to share a cuppa or picking her up to take her out for one of our frequent afternoon teas. I called my sis again today and was conscious that she is also really missing Mum. I could tell she was grateful for the call.

I was also thinking a lot on the way home from therapy about the concept of loving containment. This is what we experience as babies when we are held and comforted in just the right ways, our bodies and distress or needs soothed by our mothers. Sadly for many of our parents they were children of War trauma or other traumas. They may have not had this containment or they might. I know for me it is one of my deepest wounds and it is interesting that as Mars traverses Cancer over the next month or so it will begin to trine my natal Chiron in Pisces. Chiron was also in Pisces during the time of the First World War, a time when families shattered and men were traumatised and by a weird piece of synchronicity yesterday while detouring to a local café after our walk Jasper and I ran into a dog park friend who is doing a lot of research at the War Memorial on her ancestors and descendants and she offered to do a trace on Mum’s father John James (Bluey) Brander.

Bluey must have been about 16 or 18 when he signed up to fight just after the start of the First World War. He saw action in Lone Pine and Pozierre’s, the mud and sludge and terrible decimation of the trenches which none of us in modern day can fully fathom the horrific reality of. I think of how Mum spoke of how little she knew of her father but together with a friend in later years they put a trace on him at the War Memorial back in about 2004 and found out when he signed up and the campaigns and offensives he fought it.

Anyway I have gone a bit off the track of the subject of mothering and self containment and its not only mothers that might mother us in childhood, it can be fathers too, or siblings or nannies or Aunts and Uncles, it might be a next door neighbour. And if there is a lack of mothering and containment that leaves a lot of us without sufficient emotional covering or ‘skin’. I was just reading a post by a person who put a recent like on a couple of my recent blog posts which spoke about how some of us with trauma have less of this kind of protection and lots and lots of trauma..we either never got to grow that skin or it was rubbed raw and so when we hit triggers or go through experiences which trigger old pain we are more likely to react in a seemingly off the richter scale kind of way.

I know my own Mum didn’t get a lot of loving containment. I remember as a child longing for a Mum who was often absent or tied up with housework or preoccupied with things looking ‘just right’. I remember standing on a stool as dresses were pinned on our around me. I remember one early sewing project for school being whipped off me by Mum, I was struggling with it so she finished it off and got me to submit it as my own work. Turns out my mother’s great grandmother was actually a seamstress herself for a number of years after she her great grandfather.

Finding ways to soothe and lovingly self contain our triggers, anxieties, hurts, psychic injuries or pain seems to be so essential on the path of dealing with trauma and Complex PTSD. It is also a critical issue when it come to dealing with the fall out of childhood emotional neglect (CEN). When we feel like lashing out or going off the deep end or little bit crazy then is the time for us to find ways to lovingly contain our distress. I love the concept that Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hahn talks of … cradling our self like a small child or baby. Check out is book Anger : Wisdom for Cooling The Flames if you need some help with this.

Anger or lash out can be a consequence of hurting or being invalidated and it is essential we learn ways to self care when this happens. We may need to take ourselves off for a time to get sorted because a boundary may be needed with others who are treating us insensitively. We may need to withdraw and go deep inside to meet our hurting self and hold it. Doing this is a way of lovingly mothering ourselves. It may be what is needed while Mars transits through Cancer over the next month or so.

You may wish to share below ways that you mother yourself and contain yourself through triggers. Some of mine lately are having a bath, massaging my body or feet and hands with lotion, cuddling Jasper (my dog), writing poetry, making a comforting meal, having a hot drink, wrapping myself in a warm blanket, reaching out to someone who will understand and soothe me and not make things worse.

It is a relief for me lately to be able to ride my own waves of grief over my Mum’s absence. Reaching out to my sister helps more than worrying too much and being overly upset when she doesn’t return calls. Having compassion gets me further than counting the cost of not hearing as I need that connection more and more now. And sometimes it is us who have to learn to take the action for soothing and connection, we just cannot always rely on an increasingly switched off, disconnected or busy world to do it.