This is the title of one of my favourite Sade albums, there was a very confused and painful period following the breaking apart of my last relationship and a huge falling out with my Mum where I took myself off to the next major city sleeping overnight in the car then spending some time with my Godmother who also took me in back in the 1980s when I was really struggling in the aftermath of my father’s death and all the ensuing trauma. I was still stuck in my final years of active addiction the first time, but the second I was fighting for my life and sanity in sobriety.
My Godmother eventually needed her spare room back so I lived for a while in a hostel and then answered an ad for a room with a guy who owned terrace house in the centre of Sydney but sadly he turned out to be an abusive alcoholic. I remember I was attending meetings of AA at the time and someone warned me they thought he may go off the rails and throw me out which did end up happening. I let some honey drip down the cupboard and whenever I cooked with garlic that sent him into a rage and the final straw was when he accused me of slamming the door too hard when I went out to the shops to get some food, oh and there were a number of names he called me leading up to this, before the final showdown where he gave me 12 hours notice to vacate. That is when I surrendered and moved back to Canberra finally but that Sade album was one of his favourite albums and I remember with fondness listening to it during that period.
I was well and truly lost and as many know its been a long hard road back. I developed breast cancer within the next 5 years and saw my sister try to take her life and my sister die all in the following three years.
There come times when we have to swallow our pride and ego in order to move through things. There are times when we have to swallow down our pain and realise the world has all kinds of people in it and in the end we cannot expect fair treatment from everyone, but never the less in the midst of everything we still can practice self care. We just at times have to let the power of love be stronger than pride or a wounded ego too and learn to let go of things.
I was just walking Jasper off lead by the lake and a couple were coming towards us with an Australian terrier, my heart lifted thinking that a moment of inter doggie communion may be about to happen when the lady fixed Jasper with a stare and said “that’s a funny mix of a dog”…. Ouch. I just smiled and said “yeah, thanks a lot for the feedback?” She looked sheepishly at me and then said, “often they are the best kind” with a smile. Sorry to say a few moments later I just broke down in tears and then the resentment and anger started up as I was calling her names in my head while the ‘witness’ part of me watched it all go down with some sense of humour and irony, while yet another part of me was still feeling pissed off and thinking ‘what gives some people the idea of making such kinds of value judgements out of the blue to someone they don’t know?’ Admittedly it was her perception and I don’t want to get bitter and twisted about something pretty goddam minor, so I just let it go in my mind.
I guess in the end we have no power at all over how others see things or interpret experience. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say, or ugliness, or ‘funniness”, or ‘strangeness”. Never the less her comment launched an avalanche of self criticism within me in and inner storm as the critic told me I am strange too and will never belong. I can smile about it now. I decided after our walk to take Jasper and I to a favourite spot in the sun for afternoon tea and the hurt soon passed away as I continued reading my book in the warmth of the late spring sunshine. I had taken offence, recognised my reaction then worked it through finding the best way to let it go, and believe me I know its only a very very minor deal in the scheme of things I am going to mention below.
At the moment I am listening to Stan Grant read his latest book Australia Day on MP3 CD in my car. He is talking in the first few chapters about the different reactions of first nations people to the recent furore that is accompanying the colonisation of Australia and the ‘celebration’ of ‘Australia Day’ on the 26th of January which marks the date of white federation.
For many aboriginal people this date represents all kinds of bitter hurt and complex loaded feelings of resentment over dispossession. Ongoing battles over years involved mass campaigns of genocide following white settlement, not to mention the forced removal of children from aboriginal mothers, as well as ongoing attempts to eradicate first nation’s people’s ‘blackness’, rich cultural heritage and languages.
Grant is speaking for both the acknowledging of wounds as well as the development of a heart based approach, together with spiritual fortitude and capacity on some level to let go of some of the hurt and wounding rather than just see it re-enacted over and over and over again endlessly. As a journalist he has travelled to many hot spots around the world and seen the impact of wounding playing out in war, retribution and genocide.
If we want to move on and make this country a more caring, psychologically aware and reconciled place along with acknowledgement of what was done to hurt our first nation’s people needs to be a way of finding how to live with the legacy of the aftermath and with all the complex consequences searching ways and means to change, improve, soothe or raise the pain up on some level. It seems to me that only love and tolerance and compassion really provide the answers in the end to old hurt and injury but often they can be difficult things to come by.
Moving on from psychic and emotional and spiritual injury is a fine line, wounds need to be tended lovingly but not overly indulged or re-opened. Acknowledgement that scarring remains and can also provide a site of spiritual healing and elevation to a more grace filled, wholistic approach is also essential. For to just keep re-enacting the pain and hurt and injury over and over again without using the hurt, pain, bitterness and rage as a fuel to create positive change really in the end only leads to a bonfire or creation of a ticking time bomb that promises to blow up everything.
I am a great believer that wounds occur to help us to gain compassion and insight, they help us to recognise the wisdom of the words that to forgive another involves we nourish and seek the comfort and support of divine and timeless spiritual essences of our ‘Self.’ Much I guess depends upon your perspective though, do you believe for example that there is a part of your spirit that is eternal and can remain unbroken by injury? Do you believe that there is a part of your soul that in suffering it and bearing with it can sanctify the wound in some way, raising it up or do you believe that some hurt is just impossible to move on from and that the toxic poison left can cause lasting inner damage and corrosion?
I do think it depends on the degree of injury in combination with other factors, for example how isolated we are and how much help we are giving to hold and contain the pain. Some find some wounds just too painful to move on from, and people react in all kinds of different ways to injury.
Maybe I am being naïve to believe that once again, love is the answer and yet I don’t think I can bear to give up on love as long as I live. At times its almost impossible to bear looking into the heart of darkness the results when intense injury turns corrosive, toxic and wantonly destructive leading to the killing off of all genuine deep feeling and empathy.
Emerging From The Dark Night 