I just got home from taking the garage sale signs down and dropping the first of the remaining household effects of Mums to the Salvation Army by way of my sister’s place. She helped me recycle the cardboard into her units big communal recycling skip and loaded me up with her unneeded food. I cried a lot looking at her (silently) searching Sam Wood recipes on her I-pad and this is the girl/woman who could not think of cooking for herself a year ago. I climbed the steps Mum fell down 7 years ago on the day it was too much for me to help her and composed a poem in my mind, she and my sister had been mean about all the in laws and I was pleading with them for compassion, to see things from another perspective. Mum told me in spirit as I descended the stairs slowly that the fall was not my fault or responsibility.
I had to get the last sign down on the way back as it was too big to get in the car with all the other things on the way out and the floodgates burst as my inner adolescent shared her pain of being torn open by a car and having that repeat on the second attempt at separation in 2005 at the age of 43 after Jonathan left me all alone and I abandoned the first therapy and pleaded with him to not let me do that. It all makes sense to me. What a violent bloody separation and I could not negotiate the separation stage of adolescence and young adult hood as my older sister broke down with a cerebral bleed around this time of year 40 years ago.
In her unit my sister had photos of her ex husband with his two brothers, both of whom are dead now, the second oldest died of alcoholism after a bike crash after arguing with my brother in law. As I look at young photos of my older nephew I see him so full of life and light and a desire to please. I see the innocence in him and in later photos I see a harder edge to his eyes, what my other sister’s third child calls ‘the corporate eagle eye’ what did he have to surrender in order to fit into the masculine heroic world of conquest? Don’t get me wrong he has a good heart but the hard edges are obvious to me now and the fear and confusion around those deep feminine feelings . I am not ‘making this up’ just because I didn’t ‘cut it’ in the dog eat dog world, that said I never allowed myself the necessary support after the accident and tried to get far away due to my older sister’s trauma. In the end I watched her destroyed when her husband sent her back to Mum and Dad with a one way ticket and separated from her four sons, no wonder she nearly screamed the cinema down when we went to see a movie in which a queen of Denmark was violently separated from her two children after having an affair with her mad husband’s doctor.
So much for me to contain, but not too much. I had to wheel her out that time and give her a cuddle and I only understood it all much later. I tried my best to contain my sister in her pain and saw the evil of what medicine did to her soul, that said everyone had the best of intentions for her. Thank God I got to AA at 31 and decided never to take psychiatric meds.
The irony is not lost on me that my second sister’s two sons wanted all of my psychology and John Bradshaw recovery books out of the coast house. Everything was packed up without my asking and when I told my sister I thought this was wrong she said she was scared to tell me as they assumed I would hit the roof. This time I surprised them by not reacting but taking it on the chin, my therapist believes I did very well in organising the removalist so speedily and without any kind of outburst but I did cry heaps. A therapist years ago said its easier for women to have tears than anger as anger is not an acceptable emotion for us. Ideally we should be cool, calm and rational about shit. WTF!!! Yeah right… better not get the men in white coats set onto us with sedating syringes full of napalm!!!
If it sounds like I am a bit shitty you are right. I screamed it out in therapy yesterday with Kat. I contained the rage. I told my sister I hate it that the family have decided there is something wrong with me for feeling painful truths and speaking passionately, while fighting for my right to not be obliterated. I will not be totally silenced in my blog either. I need to speak up even if I seem to be some kind of threat. And the truth is killing forces live in our culture and in our world, they want the truth of suffering and its real roots silenced, but we cannot consent to this. At the same time we must honour why Saturnian defences exist ; to keep the deeper inundation of psychic forces at bay, its just fear of destruction and rebirth really when it all comes down to it
Phew!!! Good to get this all of my chest, today (on Mars day : Tuesday) I am fighting back today. Taking action to free myself of past shackles. What I endured at 17 was so, so soul and body destroying and emotionally as well as physically violent. Such a traumatic thing to go through I never came back from it fully due to the other traumas that followed in my family. Today I let my child and adolescent self cry as they grieved and showed me, for the first time, the full enormity of what I suffered until 31 when I got sober. For that blessing of recovery I am beyond grateful, something carried me and protected me through out all of the dark years and I am emerging, as my guides told me I would back in 2006. I will keep speaking out and bearing witness to the fact that light rises when we fully have the courage to submit to and embrace the dark and its why I named my blog what I did. I am only one of millions of us trying to emerge and together as we unite I believe we must transform that anger to be voice for truth, compassion and love while fighting for our right to be real and feel the truth from the most authentic side of our selves.
Emerging From The Dark Night 