My Mum’s heartbreak and some reflections on loss of a felt sense of joy and life in our body

I sometimes cry when I think of my Mum as a young child. I am glad I got time in sobriety to be with my Mum and talk to her about her past.. I wish more children would do this with parents, even the ones that wound us, passing on wounds they were not even aware of. This is not a cop out for abusers only to say that it is hurt,damaged or abandoned people who end up hurting, damaging and abandoning other people, even their offspring.

Some say they do not know how someone could abandon a child, they don’t realise that person was not yet a full adult and may never have known how to be there, they may have reasons for running or abandoning that lie deep in their past.. I think lately of my brother in law who ended up abandoning two families, leaving behind grandchildren he has no contact with..Knowing his history of loss and a family trauma of addiction I feel it was hard for him to face his own past pain and when my sister began to breakdown he could not cope.. I understand this now.. sometimes men blame themselves for not being able to ‘fix’ a partner, the truth is, it was never their job.

Marianne Williamson writes a lot about the healing relationship.. She talks about how in a partnership we both may bring levels of wounding with us, if we had that in our past.. the holy relationship is one in which we do not shame or blame others entirely, we see our part even if as empaths we were fated to match up with narcissists invested in shutting down all emotions and we take responsibility both for our own healing as well as showing necessary empathy if that is called for or learning at least to show it for the wounded child, who in being hurt or abandoned learned not to do any better.

Thinking back to my Mum I often think of how as a child left alone all the time she played hooky hanging around the local shops and buying sweets, visiting the local pharmacist from time to time who would syringe out her ears.. I often thought after she told me that story that it may have been the one time my my was touched with care of some kind.. Nana was so often not there and when she was she was hard on my Mum, I feel both parents did not receive a lot of physical affection and Mum was punished and forced into a condition of OCD from all the stress.

I often feel that loneliness around the time of day Mum used to come home alone to an empty house, a pattern that repeated with me.. I try to be in touch in some way in the hours between 3 and 5.. Last weekend I made sure I visited my sister at that time, sometimes I listen to music and touch base with deeper feelings especially lately.. this works better than getting caught up in a spin or panic attack. I am learning to accept the reality of how it was for me and how that pattern played out… how I kept distance in the past.. I watch this tendency inside me and try to balance alone time, deeply connecting with my soul and nature with time spent with others in relationship.. Over time the hole in my soul of loneliness and abandonment depression is being filled. Its also good to have one therapy session at 3 pm to be able to connect deeply in that space.. As I recognise the deeper roots of what happens in my body everything begins to make sense.

Today I am grateful to be able to feel in my body the emotional reality I carried in my family. I am trying to judge my brother less for maintaining distance and only ever ringing to discuss economics.. I know now where I can and cannot look for deep connection and not to expect the impossible from others. After all my brother carries his own struggles differently…

Today I am making real efforts to accept, appreciate and love my life as it is, while looking for the things I am very very grateful for. Had my Mum and Dad not worked so hard I would not be as financially secure, that said I would have loved more time with them not working, but that was not to be.. I carry the pain now and know its not the whole of me.. I am also beginning to let my sis be where she is without taking it on as much….I am visiting as regularly as I can because deep inside my heart that feels the right thing to do… It is good to now know, honor and act on what feels ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ for me. I lost the way to this so long ago and I know now i am far happier when I stay in alignment with my instincts…

On that subject I read this great quote on a blog by Benny K of the Written Addiction last night from Albert Camus…

“Man is the only animal who refuses to be who he is.”

I think in some way that quote only goes so deep as our conditioning led us away or astray from our animal bodies from the time of Descartes onwards when thinking rather than sensing or feeling became associated with being who we are, so we were taught to identify with ideas or ideals or mores rather than intrinsic soul centered, animal body centered instinct, intuition, sensation and feeling.. Peter Levine is great to read on this issue and his work shows how to bring people out of trauma by getting them to find pockets of joy and love and positive feeling in the body that live outside of the gravitational negative force field of downward spiral trauma that sucks us completely of our vitality, sense of being alive and embodied self hood.

Running mental scripts of negativity or past pain over and over seems to be the natural inclination of the trauma affected thinking brain, where as the feeling body would feel more alive just being out in the world interacting and feeling the healing power of a cleansing breath of wind.. There are so many ways we can shut down feeling and numb the body and a body that has never been loved in childhood (has only been terrorised, or hurt or hit) becomes a body the mind wants to take flight from and will begin to run all reasons for doing so, since life so long ago came to be found to be both unsafe and full of pain.. When this happens and we shut down or take flight from living in a fully alive body then I believe we are truly messed up and lost as human animals born into what we come to believe is only a terrifying and terrorising universe. We find it all too hard to live with this and our bodies carry and express anxiety all of the time.. Seeking self soothing, grounding and reconnection with the body seems to be an extremely important part of healing.. Here is where connecting with animals and nature can help us.. as well as finding ways to synchronise with more peaceful, calming and naturally connected forces and rhythms of life and nature.