When I first started crying : late morning reflections

I am reading a novel at the moment that focuses on one day in each ten years of a relationship and in it the male character, Tom has just come out of a battle with alcohol. When he meets his partner, Esme he is quiet new to sobriety..but he does not share this with her.

In the chapter I just read he is a a party and feels like he is losing control of his body, he then starts crying.. it was a big reminder to me of how, at those first early meetings of AA I first began to cry and recognise my own deep soul pain.. A year or so before a really good friend who knew I was struggling asked me go to AA but I refused which is sad as she had a lovely friend who was a film director and was willing to go with me.. Instead I began my first try at therapy with her therapist Brian, who treated a number of people in the fellowship.

I remember being very scared of Brian and I broke therapy with him after about 4 months when he went into hospital for an operation making all kinds of excuses to my friend and it was only many years later I recognised what an emotional abandonment trigger that was.. Dad had died in hospital shortly after being readmitted following his cancer surgery in December 1984.

This was in 1992 (my first attempt) and it took me until December 1993 to get to my first meeting.. Sadly I fell pregnant to my then husband in May 94 and decided not to carry the baby to term, being newly sober I saw what lay ahead and didn’t want to inflict it on a child, the signs were there that my husband also struggled with issues and unresolved grief.. In the end I think this was one of the things that broke us, but I know it was the right choice. This was the sixth and final termination of pregnancy I underwent in the period of 11 years (1983 – 1994).

Crying a lot with my sister yesterday was not a first.. I found I cried less on the Saturday visit. I know I carry family pain for us both, it was evident today when her son visited to collect the key back for her unit and all the focus was on externals. When I mentioned the trauma associated with the coast house my father built in the year before my accident and 6 years before he became sick that none of this figures in his reality.. For my sister I am the one who carries the memories and thinking about it on my walk an hour ago I am like a kind of compassionate witness of her soul, of so many things that lay buried and all covered over with drugs.

I wept for my sis yesterday to see the loss of access to her true self most of all.. It is a terrible grief to be dissociated from our deep spirit and true self… A kind of murder most often perpetrated by some forms of psychiatry.

I do admire the work of John Bradshaw who talks about the necessity for grief work as well as deep inner child work which involves befriending and releasing feelings bound by toxic shame.. In many ways we are a shame bound society that buries so much of our past history. We are encouraged to ‘move on, stay happy, and put it all behind us’. My therapist always raises her eyes and smiles at that last one. The truth of the psyche is that we cannot just amputate experiences and key events, they live on and gaining power over them requires us bringing them up into the light of day..

The powerful insight shared by poet Robert Bly that in depression we refuse our grief, anger or shame healing work and a hand comes up from the Underworld and pulls us down.. Rather, when we consent to turn, face and experience these things we instead start to reclaim our lost soul energy, joy and passion in time after making friends with darker feelings (and this includes anger and rage as well as grief).. .but such a journey may take a long long time and what my first therapist Wendy called “many deep dives along the way.”

I am grateful now for my sobriety enabling my grief to finally open up. After all I got sober only one month and 2 days away from the 8th anniversary of my Dad’s death.. The fuller onslaught of complex emotions including grief required a second stint of therapy commenced in 1999 at 6 years of sobriety, and only opened the following year around the anniversary in 2000. I then had to abort that to come home to the site of the trauma and face it but I could not do that for another 10 years.. In the meantime my marriage ended and I was, with my ex husband’s leaving, dropped into the Underworld as well as the family collective unconscious. And for me that happened at the coast house Dad built by the ocean that I finally left behind in 2010 one year before finding the courage to finally move back home and confront everything.

Today, I am remembering a card my therapist Wendy Bratherton sent to me in 2002, the year I came back to Australia, in which she replied to emails I had sent telling her how I was struggling with depression and ruminating that it was a ‘mistake’ to come back.. She said this : “in no way do I see you as failing by choosing to return, that was an act of courage, but if things get too hard PLEASE SEEK HELP.”

It took me another 10 years to begin to get some help and out of that time it took another 6 with various therapists who were not quite right until I was referred to Kat my current therapist who has just been the perfect ‘fit’ for me..I see lately how much my inner critic likes to put me and my soul journey down, and how each step I take to engage with my wounded family does take courage. In many ways its easier to go no contact and refuse to engage than to attempt the hard work of staying as connected as we can while allowing ourselves to get support to explore deeply every single difficult feeling associated with the traumatising family..

It took me until about 2015 to understand that my families attempts to shut me down were just that, not my fault and all down to their different levels of fear, misunderstanding or defensiveness. These days I can stay engaged, be as honest as I can and realise that how other’s react to my authenticity has nothing to do with me and everything to do with them, that said I have to have realistic expectations of family and friends who have not suffered in the same way and be savvy about who I lean or or seek support from.

Over time I am coming to fear my feelings less and not having to side withe inner critic’s silencing and shaming of my true self. I am still very much a work in progress and I realise I still have quiet a way to go in therapy… but slowly over time I am so grateful I am finding the strength to stay engaged as well as show compassion and respect to those who have not walked similar path or refuse the one that in leading them into the dark could help them find their hidden or buried light, joy, soul and life energy.