Complex ; unpacking some of my historical anger around my sister.

Sibling relationships are complex, that is a very true thing said to me in a comment by Lisa Hutchinson this week in response to her post on emotional abuse in family relationships. I

woke today with a lot of realisations around how I ended up injuring myself from stored anger at things my sister did to me over the years but most particularly when we both returned home to live in 2011. At that time the family judged her as being ‘manic’ she was actually trying to break out dysfunction and its not unusual to happen from the age of 40 when transiting Uranus opposes the place it occupied in our birth chart.. And how we react will depend a lot on how much repression of our true self or individual spirit there was at birth and how well we negotiated the Saturn return at age 30 which is a time we seek to understand or break free of the limits of faulty programming.

It occured to me this week that as Mars in Aries backtracks over the next two weeks, from the final degrees of Aries back through the sign it will trine both my own Uranus in Leo at 29 and my sister’s natal Pluto at 23 degrees of Leo. Leo has to do with our solar energy and our parents both had natal Neptune in that sign and two baby sun sign Leos never got to live past toddler hood on Mum’s ancestral side.. One of my grandnieces has her sun at the same degrees of Leo opposing my own Sun in Aquarius and I have watched her hold things inside from the sidelines. It is said that our Mars placement should serve our solar placement, that means in order to live as our true light (Sun) we must be able to take actions to express it and live in harmony with it (Mars.) My sister has Sun square to Mars, her Mars is at exactly the same position as my fathers (5 Sagittarius) while her Sun and Venus are are the same degrees of Pisces as my Mother’s Mars was.. It is recognised that Mars is debiliated in Pisces as it gets confused and ‘watered down’ in that sign.. When Mum raged Dad retreated and he never stepped in when she hit us.

The issue came up today of how my sister smeared me behind my back to my older sister’s sons as well as her own back in 2014 and one of them told me on the night of my mother’s 90th, which my sister arranged as a big event..All of those family members had been drinking since noon, and I wasn’t ‘invited’ to the after party drinks being the only sober family member.. The following day I confronted her and she tried to deny it, then tried to blame him and then told me she thought I was always jealous of her.. what I really longed for was more of Mum’s attention and not to beh hurt by her in the ways she often did to me while growing up.. And I calmly told her this, all without blowing my stack.. but inside!!!!

The upshot was I ended up injuring my ankle really badly from running on the spot with anxiety trying to manage the build up of feelings this left on the following Thursday, and due to the fact that after confronting her I choose to stay engaged. I similar thing happened when we went on a trip to Sydney with Mum and all my trauma came up (as that is where I spent my final addictive years and got sober, meeting my husband.) On that occasion I got shamed for crying and told I wasn’t welcome at the meal if I continued to cry.. I stayed at the hotel feeling so awful seeking a hiding place in the function room when her aggression and taunts got too much.

Kat,my therapist said it would have been better then if I got myself on the bus and home because the next day they all sidelined me again. It was an excrutiating train ride home. It was only two years later I came down with the breast cancer and the ankle injury badly affected my lymphatic and sinus drainage system on the right hand side of my body that deals with self assertion and fighting our corner.

We should all be prepared for historical anger issues to become ‘hot’ again over the next 10 weeks. It is when the Sun opposes Mars from Libra in October that a light will be shone on the ways we are reacting or over reacting (that said the build up of insight accompanying the slowing of Mars is for me bearing fruit already). Lisa said to me in the comment last night that each sibling relationship is complex, emotional abuse can oscillate with times of closeness and that in the end THE ONLY POWER WE HAVE IS OVER OUR REACTION (but only with time and insight into ho we deal with the subterfuge and complexity it evokes.) It pays to bear in mind that there is always a reason for getting angry or feeling hurt. Furthermre just continuing to allow wounded emotionally ignoratn or insensitive individuals to hurt us when they are shame dumping is not healthy for any of us empaths or those who had to carry the wounded feeling function in the family.

On this note, this morning I thought of the wonderful book written by emotional abuse expert Beverley Engel I read many years back called Honor Your Anger : How Transforming Your Anger Style Can Change Your Life. In that book she goes out lines in comprehensive detail the different anger ‘styles’, these are the ways we learned to handle, deflect or bury our anger in our family of origin and show how these may derail us.. Also coming to mind while writing is the work of Janet Woitiz and her take on elements of the intimacy struggle so many wounded adult children suffer from. In her book of the same name she reminds us that repressed anger is a huge problem for those of us growing up with addictive or abusive parents.. A child’s right of protest may either be actively squashed by a parent uncomfortable with anger in themselves (and they may be the one that rages) oor it may be feared by them and we many be punished for it, teased, baited or ridiculed which then forces the anger inwards. This can lead to a host of problems with straight forward assertion, honesty, difficulties with knowing how to deal with the issue leading to counterproductive assumptions and reactions. Passive aggression being one of the worst. It also leads us to turn against ourselves and criticise ourselves for something that was actually healthy.. Trying to express our pain and assert our truth!

I see so much lately how I try to appease my sister.. It was never safe to be angry with her especially around Mum who would always take her side, so many times they ganged up on me for protesting and didn’t like it when I sided against them in alliances in which they failed to show necessary empathy for in laws at times. That said I now understand better how my Mum could not protest as a child either.. and how scared and alone she became.. Her own Mum struggled without much emotional or financial support for many years after the loss of my grandfather during those hard years of the depression. My Nana already carried the toxic burden of being an adult grandchild of an at times abusive alcoholic who had massive issues of repressed grief..

I see lately the financial retention issue and massive conservatism and fear of lively energy and embodied self expression is something all my siblings carry but my living brother and sister more so. I see all this fear my sister is currently expresssing over money as being in no way real, but rather a legacy of something she is carrying ancestrally.

Anyway I am heading over to see her this afternoon. I replaced the top that was too large for her, I found it impossible to choose another and I gave up..sometimes the family put her down for what they see as an ‘obsession’ with clothes and looking good but at times she really DOES NEED CLOTHES and she has a right to wear something she feels comfortable in regardless or not of her being too hard on her self. Is is not easy for her with that huge tummy she has which is a result of being used as a guinea pig by two psychiatrists over a 20 years period.. The last one over medicated her and then abandoned her after my mother died.. This new one was better, had dropped off a lot of her meds earlier in the year but my sister was drinking on top of them and over exercising and doing far too much as I see it, she had also not sought therapy or tried to look inwardly at her pain or patterns.

There is a problem we all have in the family with self modulation and regulation and it is said of addictive families we are either full go or full stop… this is an issue I work had on trying to modulate in myself and it has to do with stress carried epigenetically as well as OCD patterns around perfectionism and self esteem. It also relates to the shadow as the more of our real self and its authentic energy we have to repress to gain approval or acceptance as kids, the more dramatically it is likely to come out sideways in extreme energy ‘bursts’. Integration of the shadow takes a lot of work over many years and often begins at the critical ages where outer planets such as Uranus and Neptune oppose and square their birth place.

I saw all of this unfold for my sister and also how Mum derailed her at times following at the end of her marriage.. Sadly my sister stayed bonded to Mum and didn’t get good psychotherapy which I see could have helped in some way, even a knowledge of adult child patterns of addictive or trauma based families could of helped her..Mum’s death really took her down and I remember reading in a book on recovery from narcissism a few years back that in such a situation of enmeshment a person may even become psychotic in the aftermath of a parent’s death if they never dealt with the abuse..

In the end my sister’s choices affect her life. I see the choice to undergo shock treatment as just another way of losing power and consenting to be put to death and bury the truth. A kind of misguided form of self abuse. And I too must find a way to live and manage my own self energy while surrounded by all of this confusion because seeing an abused kid then be hurt again (even in ignorance) just breaks my heart. Its an ongoing dilemma for me managing to stay in touch and help as I can but also remaining aware of the times I had to deny how much she hurt me and bury the truth in my body only to end up having a massive physical injury as a result. I had the head injury in 2005 when I ran away overseas to get away from her after she abused me at the coast and Mum sided with her.. I then felt out of my depth and came back but the whole way back on the plane I had a terrible tummy ache, just as I had before setting off to see her on Wednesday with those 3 tops… I don’t want to be swallowed by someone who is hurtful to me at times, I am a caring person but there is a statute of limitations for me lately on how much I can continue to show up only to be dealt a backhander by her some way down the path. And I don’t want to have to have another injury from not listening to the truth of how I REALLY FEEL!