Savage

A savage inner critic lives within my heart. A recent conflict has shown me at times I can turn the savage side around when I am stressed or hurting. Over recent days the Buddhist concept of loving speech has come to my mind often as well as the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh on loving kindness. Nhat Hanh reminds us that everyone carries sensitivity and pain even if they seem to be insensitive, that is just a sign their wound or pain is buried deeper, or they had harsh caregivers around them who made them shut softness down.

These days we seem to live in a shame and blame culture, where being nasty or derisive is seen as smart or sassy. Often there is a lack of consideration shown too for deeper emotional subtleties of context to situations and this comes out of a culture in which darker or softer feelings are often denied. We are told to ‘toughen up’ or put things behind us without being given permission to actually go through the process where by that may happen.

I listened to an interview with a paramedic for the second time yesterday that I spoke of in an earlier blog. A lot of it focused on the issue of suicide and feelings. As a paramedic this guy and his work partner were often called to The Gap, a notorious headland on the Eastern beaches in Sydney, Australia at which numerous suicide attempts and ‘successes’ happen. I shared in an earlier blog that after witnessing hundred of these this man’s work partner eventually took his own life. In the interview he said that they both absorbed so much pain and had next to no help with dealing with it. He spoke of how, at the funeral everyone cried and expressed valid emotions and what a relief it was to see so many people ‘being human’. Yes, I shouted inwardly hearing this, it IS human to feel, to ache, to feel sad, to struggle with difficult ‘unacceptable’ feelings, to feel powerless, weak and helpless, as well as vulnerable at times.

Luckily our culture is now recognising these facts. I listened to another radio programme from the BBC yesterday on ecological grief, it spoke of how many are feeling so sad and helpless as well as anxious about what is happening on our planet right now to plants and animal, most especially scientists but how, even in the recent past that was not acknowledged, nor the grief allowed a place. And the truth is we need permission to grieve, some of us grieve in silence but some of us ache to be held and have our grief recognised rather than denied or batted away with unhelpful comments. I feel so sad that the partner of that paramedic found nowhere to go with his pain after seeing all those suicides and being left by a partner who may not have understood how much he was suffering or helpless to respond.

As a culture we need to recognise wounds more and acknowledge them, not in the form of ongoing savage attack and recycling over and over of the lashing out and pain which is a form of repetition compulsion but in way of releasing, bearing witness and honouring the buried grief or trauma to properly release it. Grief has essential lessons to teach us about what is truly important and of value to us. And grief that may be buried under harder more stoical defences or anger, rage or protest, coming out sideways also needs acknowledgement for what it really is.

As someone who has suffered complex buried grief for over 40 years I now see where my grief lies buried. I see how it told me to isolate, especially in a culture where it could not find acceptance, allowance or expression. I think of my time after the head injury I sustained on the back of the first anniversary of my ex husband leaving me when I was full on in recovery trying to unearth so much repressed, historical grief (which I now know had such a massive ancestral multi-generational component)….after that accident the family I was boarding with told me to leave as I was ‘too sad’ and an all too painful reminder of a person they lost. I went to an ashram in Glastonbury still struggling but there, at least I got some holding and recognition from other souls who I believe were also struggling within a ‘spiritual bypass’. It has taken me many years to find a therapist totally comfortable with my grief, who I trusted and did not shame or abandon me for anger or rage. It has taken a big feat of strength to hear the cry of my own repressed life energy from trauma which is loaded with a grief over savage things done to me at hands of parents, nuns, friends and partners. But is has taken me longer to see the part I played in attracting and accepting the victimisation as well as participating in it.

Today I can fully acknowledge my grief over what began to be taken from me as a child and was cut out of me or arrested with the accident to my body at age 17….I am in the time of year now when I was ‘coming out’ of the accident, released from hospital on 24 Dec and struggling on the brink of needing to choose a career or course of study only to have my sister struck down with an aneurysm around 20 February the next year. Then there were 5 more years of struggle and pain before I left for overseas carrying all of that unresolved trauma.

Last night in meditation I released some more of the significant trauma around a relationship I had in 1990 and I did experience it leaving my body. I know I am not meant to stay stuck in this but in order to heal I have to find safe places to express it. These days I tend to turn towards the angels and my guides more, as well as pray to Jesus. I pray for the light to enter the dark places and for the grief to find release. I let my ancestors know all the time their suffering or loss will not be in vain.

As a culture I wish we would do more to acknowledge grief or trauma and work towards healing. Current trauma may have far back roots that lay in previous generations, generations who just had to press on regardless. Lately I have been the part of Alan Cummings autobiography in which he discovers the war trauma of his grandfather. In a particularly poignant part of the book he explains how his grandfather’s trauma and mental illness from war trauma had to be denied or buried due to stigma. So that trauma went mute, hidden under a cover of silence or other dysfunction. Luckily we are learning better ways, for trauma, grief and pain needs acknowledgement to help others to release and when this denied things turn even more savage and toxic.