Leaving so often brings grief

I left the writer’s festival after my shift ended an hour ago. I felt such a complex mix of feelings swirl up, I had connected with several people today and really talked about some matters close to our hearts and it was such a special thing to have moments out in life, connecting with others after all of my long years in isolation. People volunteering were from all walks of life and all ages, there were Indian students and older women, as well as a Chinese mother with her daughter who has Aspergers, we got to share the door/ticket scanning duties and struck up quiet a conversation over that period. I also had a long chat with a man who had recently been at a conference held at the Gold Coast on trauma and he was so interesting. I would love to share details of our conversation here but to be honest before I do I need to follow up some links he gave me. He told me that like me he had a sibling die from over prescription of drugs and now he is fighting for better awareness around trauma and mental health as well as the taking on of responsibility and the shedding of blame and other reactive defence patterns.

So it was probably natural that I felt quite emotional as I packed up to leave. To assuage my anxiety I bought yet two more books!!! One a collection of very thoughtful essays from a writer recommended to me today Don Watson and the other a book called Birdwatching by William McInnes which is a kind of novel, I think. Maybe I wanted a little piece of the festival with me as I drove home but I was just so so overcome with so much deep emotion on the drive home.

Foremost on my mind today has been my father and deepening levels of love and forgiveness. I think of how we never really got to connect heart to heart and soul to soul as adults. I was very angry with him and rebellious when a teenager and young adult and we argued shortly before he died, that said I now know he really loved me even though at times his misattunement hurt me so deeply and in ways I did not even fully or consciously realise until very recently. I thought today of the fear I carry in close relationships which often fill me with great anxiety. I have such a huge fear of rejection and I feel ashamed as its very ‘self’ centred, that said none of us get very far in life without a healthy ego. I am going to share a reading by Tian Dayton I read at the festival today in one of my breaks about this need to know who we are and show up for ourselves.

I felt today on the drive home my bereft little girl being comforted by adult me as we drove past the hotel at which my sister had her wedding back in 1965 and followed the road that winds past the lake to my suburb. It was a huge outpouring of emotion today because taking the risk to volunteer today meant I did not stay ‘safe’ inside my cocoon or shell. Connecting opens my heart in ways others may not realise and I realised this weekend just how much my heart does long to connect. but connecting also brings up sorrow of other leavings and losses of which in my life there have just be so so many and I notice that after these kind of events or celebrations a very very deep and seemingly ancient grief seems to open up. The best thing I can do is allow the ocean of my heart to overflow with these feelings that seemingly come out of no where, sometimes the ways of my heart are a mystery even to myself.

I just called my sister as I felt guilty I haven’t visited her for two weekends now, but I put my own needs first for the first time and took the risk to get involved in something that make me feel involved and happy. Its been so long since I risked connecting and what I learned this weekend is that this world is full of beautiful people, there is a part of me that feels sad she has always seemed to prefer solitude at times and yet there is such a deep part of me which craves it too, and so often only feels truly connected in solitude. Golly the ways of humans are mysterious. I will share the Tian Dayton post on connecting with our ‘Self” in my next post. Happy Sunday everyone.