Deep in the ocean of silence

I waded in deep soul waters this morning, allowing myself to rest in the silence after another conversation with my sister. She is doing so much to clear up the estate right now and tomorrow we are off to the coast but when we speak I am ever more conscious we live in different dimensions of the family experience and astrology allows me to make sense of so much. I wanted to call my nephew today to say thank you to him for all he has done at the coast house, I felt like he was taking it over but he moved back to our home town with family and is the one family member using it who has a deep association with it, that house represents different things to each of us, for me its associated with my near death accident as we had our first holiday there a year before I had the crash and the year it happened I was taken there and carried to the beach as I could not walk.

I recognise at times I only see things from my perspective, I try to make sense of all of our family dynamics by writing and exploring our ancestral history, I live in the largeness of it and I feel the spiritual dimension of it, especially in relation to the continuation I am. But that is just one continuation. A moment ago after reading some lovely meditations from Louise Hay I took out the trifold overseas driver’s licence belonging to my Dad that Sue and I found clearing our Mum’s things in the year after she first died. In it Dad kept a picture of me aged 6 and an oval Dutch Delft medallion of a Dutch windmill.. even writing this moves me to tears as I think of the connection to Europe that feels so deep in my bones. I know Mum’s side of family history fairly well, but Dad’s side, not so much but when I look at this momento that Dad obviously kept it warms my heart and allows me to grieve for the way I interpreted my father’s distance and the pain I went through in the years following up to and prior to his death where I struggled with relationships with intimate partners.

I do believe that until I could heal the wound with my father I could not have a lasting relationship with a man, there was just too much underground anger there at how I got killed off (through no conscious fault of my Dad, only his misattunement) or remained unseen by my father.

This killing off theme is big in my life and in the psyche of addicts. If we cannot support and love our true selves, how do we get psychologically born? If we were not seen, how do we learn to see, know, love and champion our true selves? I do wonder if I projected some of my pain onto my nephew’s children when I saw them on the weekend. I am not allowed to mention them now but seeing children’s vulnerability, knowing and attunement to life and adults never fails to move me. Something precious can be lost in childhood if we don’t get supported to trust our inner knowing and feel that we rest on a solid basis or foundation of secure self within.

In many ways I am still ‘finding myself’ at the age of 58. In many ways I am still growing up and learning to separate myself from a complex and traumatic family dynamic. I see things I didn’t see before. I understand I do not have a lot of power in the family due to my developmental arrests and have probably been judged, however I do not know what others think of me and neither should it matter, it is just that the desire for closeness with family is so deep rooted and has so actively been thwarted over years, which is an ancestral pattern with deep roots.

In exploring the life of my 5 times great grandfather I learned he died on the same say I was born and he lost 6 children just as I did, mine were terminations of pregnancy I never brought to birth and the resonance of the connection was not lost on either my therapist or I this week, after I discovered the truth of William Trudgeon’s life recently.

At times I struggle with why I have not made more of myself in ‘the world’ but as Kat pointed out yesterday all of my work has been inner work and very hard inner work at that working to mine the gold of my true self from the lead and brass of my past and the family collective. Its an individuation journey out of a collective matrix and I cannot expect ‘worldly’ people to validate this. I just know my sobriety was a spiritual gift and has a very strong meaning and that I must continue to talk of things like the multi-generational legacy. I am in many ways only lately feeling it may be possible to break out of mine after years of being almost buried underneath it.

That said today I was adrift in the ocean of tears, peace and healing. I cannot survive if I do not live an inwardly centred deeply spiritual life. In many ways I am a refugee from a family structure that could not birth me in any way, shape or form. My birthing now is up to me finding what it is that makes of my life something with meaning and gives me a sense of joy and value. Sometimes I feel that this weekend’s coast trip will be yet another journey into the dark. The life that was for my family during the late 70 and early 80s has now vaporised. our family is changing form and a new generation is coming to pass, but I do believe it is important to know our roots and of our connection to the family and ancestors to be more aware. I feel it is very sad when certain family members get cut out of the picture because then the family loses much in terms of wholeness.

That said not everyone can make their peace with family members especially if there is a lot of hurt or a painful legacy of abuse or rejection that cannot be healed or addressed. The Louise Hay meditation I read today had to do with how important it is to love ourselves and each other and this so often requires a leap or change of perspective, a digging deeper, an overcoming of superficial appearances or judgements and a willingness to make our own relationship with a person based not on projection or ‘hear say’ but upon a direct relationship in which we become prepared to grapple with our blindspots or shadow projections. That said not everyone wants this… sometimes we just seek to stay safe and cosy within our own particular perceptual comfort zone but then we miss out on truly meeting the real person behind the projection we have thrown onto them and our capacity for a true and deeper intimacy is thereby sacrificed.