For most of my life I have tried to do the so called ‘right’ or kind thing while battling with self worth issues I did not even realise I had. Being sent to a Catholic School from the age of a toddler I absorbed a lot but my inner warrior and rebel didn’t really believe a lot of it.. For instance the idea of ‘original sin’ which lies behind what therapist and writer on childhood abuse, Alice Miller has labelled ‘poisonous pedagogy’ with its ethos of spare the rod and spoil the child seemed abhorrent to my sense of inner truth from the get go.
I was aware subconsciously that my two sisters were being hurt or punished by the nuns because when my second sister’s piano got sold out from under her after she stopped playing in rebellion for having been punished by the Nuns for wanting to learn to play ‘the devil’s music’ a Dean Martin track for my Dad’s birthday I was very defiant towards the man who tried to take it away from us. Its only in later years I learned how they had also beaten her across the knuckles while playing to ‘encourage’ her to play better. WTF??
I need to remember all of this stuff when I get scared of my sis and feel upset at things she has done, not seeing the ways she tried to make up for it. At the same time, her forcing me to wear the monika of ‘bad child’ after Jonathan and I broke up was also some kind of toxic attempt to erase me even further while siding with the old conditioned order…
I kept giving love and fronting up after she tried to take her ownl life in 2013.. I screamed at the ICU staff to take her off he meds when they questioned us to why she was on a lethal cocktail of about 5 prescribed medications including anti convulsives, and I am not sure if this was in the wake of the barbaric and unforgiveable shock treatment she endured at the hands of one psychiatrist. Where was the attempt made to unpack her childhood trauma by EVEN ONE OF THESE DOCTORS????
Today I know the cost of being nice while sucking up shit and still subscribing to toxic old world mythology can be to kill ourselves or parts of ourselves, most often the most vital, alive and fiercely passionate parts.
At Catholic school I was inculcated in a diet of self sacrifice. To love others was to give up yourself, to erase your own needs and wants, to accept the download of shame dumping that happens to the weakest link or ‘family scapegoat’ who can not live as their true self within the dis-eased family system or society. And yet on some deeper level I still kept forgiving that abuse and punishing myself with a demonic inner tormentor composed of harsh external introjects.. (this archetypal figure sometimes appears in dreams and active imagination as a looming nun figure. partly absorbed by osmosis from my Mum too who had to deal with their abuse also.) It has taken me these past solid 4 years of therapy with Kat to even begin to throw that ‘killer’ energy off.
After Mum died, being left alone with no one calling much I got connected to ‘Scott’ a soldier overseas who needed help, I have been trying to help him now for two years and our connection began on the second last Mars Pluto conjunction. For those who don’t know as Venus retrograde meets up with the Sun over the next few days Mars will be squaring it and the Moon will be opposing both Sun and Venus while it squares the Moon so we also have a Mars Moon square on the 4-5 June.. Mars and Moon sit together in my chart repressed by the force of Saturn… I have been trying to bust my Mars out for the entire 58 years of my life… so things coming to a head in terms of me seeing them more clearly is important right now.
One of my older nephews cut me out of his life over the ‘Scott” issue claiming I was ransoming his mother’s inheritance when Mum left my older sister now deceased nothing and the money sent to Scott was actually mine, not inheritance money….still it pains me to be no longer able to communicate with this nephew due to the fear of yet even more shame being dumped into me as well as pain and shame I had no part in creating.
Its important for me to write this out and some may question the wisdom of it being posted on a public forum such as this but I made one commitment that I would be transparent and naked on this blog and as honest as I could be.. It was not a wise move sending a lot of money to a ‘stranger’ but the truth is its highly probable he is actually genuine…that said I am still feeling frustrated that I got myself into this sticky mess…. had I not looked out side of myself for love after Mum died maybe I would have come through this better, with more resources at my disposal and able to visit or even help my estranged nephew…and yet the nasty way he treated me over all of this when all I even did was stick up for him and his brothers and love them does hurt even though I have now had to, for the sane of sanity, inner freedom and happiness, let that all go…
Right now as the Sun and Venus square off Mars we are seeing centuries of repressed anger, hurt and frustration, erupting in violent episodes in America.. Pluto isn’t involved in this eclipse but the Mars Pluto conjunction is still an active nascent ‘seed’ and Pluto Mars issues are historical and relate to deeply rooted individualism struggle and pain….
Venus relates at the moment to the lack of love, empathy and value that black Americans have been treated with over years and years and years, surely they deserve far far better than this.. It was comforting to see pictures of police embracing protestors on the news last night.. pain and unfair barbaric treatment needs to embraced and recognised for what it is.. Protest is not a sign of ‘badness’ but of realness, naked vulnerability, outrage at power stolen through repression.. It is the last authentic cry of the Self or Selves. We cannot always ‘be nice and good’ or ‘do the right thing’. Sometimes the socially considered ‘wrong thing’ is actually the right thing to do. Sometimes our inner Lion needs to roar at the thorn in its paw and someone needs to recognise the need for soothing balm or at least try to help the Lion remove it rather than spatter it with rubber bullets.
So often we try so hard to be good and nice only to find we have been fighing on the wrong side and sacrificed authentic inner truth to someone else’s value system. As we engage in the tough work of individuation, we have to fight (Mars) to establish our own value (Venus) and wisdom (Sun – Solar purpose aligned to global purpose) rather than seek for it outside in a world dominated by systems restrictive of core value with a dominant conditioning that does nothing to recognise or authenticate our true soul needs and values or even fundamental human rights to be treated with dignity, empathy, understanding and respect.
Emerging From The Dark Night 