Re visioning past pain

Due to the current Venus retrograde in Gemini triggering my natal Chiron (planet of wounding in the seventh house of relationships) and Pluto (in the first house of Self and identity) old pains have been triggered around my sister recently.. When she dropped off the jacket I left in her car by mistake after our walk last Sunday (during which my coffee blew off the roof of her new Mercedes as I was grappling with Jasper, leads, coats and bags, I had the usual anxiety and feelings of being squeezed in her presence) yesterday afternoon the incidents I had discussed earlier with a friend where she smashed my toy koala in the bedroom door deliberately and broke the music box that played Waltzing Matilda in it when I was only 4 or 5, I have been re-visioning the pain of this incident.

I remember she did it because we were chasing around the old house and I ran into a room and pulled the door closed behind me and it slammed by accident on a Hawaii lai that Nana had brought back for her, I didn’t mean to do it, but she got so angry and grabbed my bear and held it deliberately in the door and smashed it on the bear.. It may seem not like a huge thing to some but to me it was like she had smashed me in the door and I did not understand the level of hatred in that action of retribution..

In the shower today I realised it was more about what ever she was carrying.. In old photos of her from teenage onwards I see a dark brooding anger in her and a resentment and it makes sense if you know in the family system we were a part of she was Mum’s champion and also the third or ‘lost’ child who had to run around doing things to please not only my parents by my older brother. And I think she also resented my older sister who actually thought this sister was a bit of a ‘goody two shoes’ always telling Mum stuff about Jude she may have wanted to hide. God knows family dynamics are not easy when there is so much repressed anger being passed down and with our multigenerational legacy of alcoholism and suppressed grief..

In one of his books John Bradshaw says that in these families sometimes Dad hits Mum (or vice versa) that person takes it out on the older siblings, the older siblings pass it down to the youngest who then kicks the dog…. I don’t ever remember wanting to act out my feelings on our family dog Whiskey in those years but in past years I have taken stuff out on Jasper at times and I am not proud of it.

It was helpful today in the shower to realise whatever my sister was carrying probably didn’t have a lot to do with me (although being 8 years older she did find me a nuisance and pain, she actually told me this in later years along with other painful comments like “you’ve had a shit of a life, I pity you!” said just one year out from Jonathan leaving me when I made the mistake of going to stay with her up north).

Today I could recognise how much anger there was in our family, how under control we had to be, how scared or hypervigilant I was a lot of the time and how unjust my inner child felt it to be. Today she was saying to me “it wasn’t fair” and I agreed but if you read David Richo’s book The Five Things We Cannot Change ; And the Happiness We Find From Embracing Them, then you realise as adults that a lot of what happens in life isn’t fair and we cannot expect it to be as we grow in maturity and become less inwardly centred and narcissistic (even if its an inverted form of narcissism we suffer from.) The truth being we live in a universe peopled by people of damage and hurt not a mystical paradise of ongoing positivity, joy, consciousness and light.

Nasty things she said to my nephews now make sense as I realise my sister did not have a clue of who I was, and was often judging me from filtered projections and resentments…I may have done the same to be honest but I honestly don’t recall ever envying her as she claimed, I just longed for her to be kinder. Is it any wonder then that I have struggled so in female and male relationships (since Dad never protected me from the nastiness of either Mum or Sue) and then he died?

It occured to me today that Venus has to do with how we were valued as kids.. How we were touched by the adults around us and our siblings also figures a lot here.. I remember in the book on retrograde planets by astrologer Erin Sullivan I began to study back in 2003 the she says love and a sense of value and worth is very much communicated by non verbal means when we are babies and toddlers as well as verbal ones…I know the death stares Mum used to give could often freeze me or make me feel like stone and we would be on high alert when her nostrils started to flare if she disapproved of something we were doing or not doing, maybe being too ‘real’, exhuberant or messy….the pain I went through to correct what were not really bad teeth still affects me to this day, that said I know Mum and Dad often thought they were doing the right thing but the message I so often got was that there was something ‘wrong’ with me and it went in deep…I tried to use alcohol to compensate for my insecurity and low self esteem and this was, sadly encouraged….

Getting a handle on all of these Venus issues right now is helpful and its interesting to know that every 8 years Venus makes a transit of the sign Gemini, my relationship broke up on the second last one in 2004 and its interesting that my ex husband decided to take this time to get in touch…my husband was not valued by his mother and found living in the UK as a even a highly qualified horticulturalist difficult, in Australia he was able to find respect and many good clients but he lost all of that when we decided to move back to the UK in 1999. At times I did not see him either and my own recovery came first.. I can cry about it lately but know we both did the very best we could in tough circumstances at the time…

Venus rules our relationships, Gemini as a dual sign relates to both ego and shadow.. we attract aspect of our shadow towards us and relationships hold up a kind of mirror, hopefully its not an inverted or opaque one.. the glyph for Venus resembles a hand mirror… and intimacy can be broken down to read into me I see….but sometimes our capacity to read others and not project is not strong…

Today I can let that past pain over my sis be. I don’t have to attach to it as much, that insight in the shower today helped me help my inner child make sense of it. My sister tries her best to be connected these days it’s not helpful to keep fearing her or pushing her away. I am still wary though, to know someone talks about you behind your back is hard, maybe fine to help work things through for clarity or serenity but when what the person is telling others is just pure projection or based on untruths or jealously it is bloody hurtful. That is something I cannot really excuse or deny completely.. her actions have caused me real harm at times.