I let myself rest : reflections on Mercury retrograde

I let myself get into bed and drop off to sleep at 3 pm today. I was so exhausted and the intensity of last night’s shock/trauma was so acute, I almost felt as though I was being taken into an extreme bi polar state but what it felt like, rather was that the amalgamation of all the traumas I have been through in the past were rising up. I still have a feeling in my head as though I have been beaten around, just as I was in the second accident. Perhaps this time of year brings up the trauma and I see the extremity of it, as well as how hard I push myself carrying all this stuff and not allowing myself to rest.

I let myself sink into the inky dark softness of a rainy afternoon but when I woke I was confused that I was wearing clothes and realised it was the afternoon not the morning, everything had an unreal quality and I know I was not in the present at all but also I was feeling crippling fear before I fell asleep. I associate sleep with being overpowered and it took some soothing of my inner child to calm me down, I recognised was actually feeling terrorised.

It is not lost on me that I have supposedly connected someone in a location dealing with terrorists (unreal or real). I think of that as a reflection of the terror I lived in as a child and even seeing the traumas that befell myself and my family. I know there are people out there who would prefer I not visit these dark times and put my focus there, but when I woke up there was an interesting programme on a woman who had endured loss and she was speaking of how ancient cultures actually allow the past and ancestors a place, they recognise that past experiences do live on and we never really ‘put them behind us’, the best we can do is integrate them.

I know this is not a popular view and the last thing I want to do is go on living in past trauma but past trauma still does live on and that is why in recovery we must make an active choice for gentleness, we do not enter the trauma again without a safe hand to hold, without grounding ourselves in the present too. I need to try to achieve this ‘grounding in presence/the present’ every morning when I wake up and for some reason I manage it better during the week than most especially on Saturdays which are often painful for me.

I really need to befriend my traumatised body right now. I have not been giving it enough time and love and attention. I recognise that often my body does not always feel ‘safe’ but sometimes it does. I need to refind my trust in the dark not as an ominous place but as a place of healing, especially with Mercury now transiting retrograde which means we do feel a pull back from deep within the unconscious. It started this particular retrograde in square to my natal Uranus in the first house and I have been having some very powerful and amazing dreams, most especially the one about swathes of luminous fish turning into bubbles of orange light which began this retrograde period. Part of me was fearing today that I was going through some kind of break down but what was being asked from Mercury retrograde was instead for me to go inward and be more quiet, to trust the night and darkness and its positive gifts rather than reject or fear it.

The interior soul life is not easy to live in this extroverted culture but there is a place for it. I need to seek comfort at this time of year containing as it does so many painful triggers. I need to draw close to the inner sources of healing that are there. Its why having more pressure put on me from the outside at the moment is tending to drive me a bit ‘crazy’, as per Mercury retrograde in Scorpio. This one demands depth and solitude and deep feeling work. I want to honour this Mercury retrograde transit.