Trusting in the broken empty deadness of the medical model with regard to my mental and emotional self will only kill my spirit.. It s something I am SO GLAD I knew implicitly when I got sober and the became depressed myself because I had not yet ‘met’ or reunited with my true self. There was a point back in 2002 when things were really dark a therapist recommended medication. I am so glad I did not succumb. If you take medication and that works for you, that is great, for me I could not travel that pathway. I trusted all I read in early sobriety, most especially about the inner child and a revelation to me was the work of Margaret Paul on healing aloneness that said our desperation or desolation is a measure of how far we live from the vibrant inner child and its unintegrated history.
If a child was hurting, came to me with scars on its soul is there any way I would tell them to take a pain killer or give them a bolt to the fucking brain? No I would ask them about how they got wounded and let them unpack the experience.. I know and believe the cure to my pain LIES IN MY PAIN.. Avoiding it as a messenger from my soul will only keep me in trouble.
It was when I met myself at 6, around the age of 42 that all the wounds opened up, but it was also when all of the healing began, painful as it was and my psyche co-operated by giving me dreams that spoke to the wounds such as the one of me with bandages in the place where my hands should be and the one of a teenage girl in a change room with wire coat hanger woven through her left shoulder.
I know now when my true self began to be killed off, I also know she lived on deep inside.. I had my instincts injured but my psyche was still crying out… It led me to therapy in time and away from the fellowship after about 6 years of recovery. Now I know that innocent, lively, joyfilled part of me to be more real than the beaten down grieving woman I became who felt she continually had to kill off parts of herself to adapt to a feeling wounded world and be loved.
Seeing my sister and feeling the deadness all around her of the medical model once again was tough today. Honestly I hardly spoke much I just sat and cried for most of the 95 minutes I was there with her in that little room. At one point she asked me to stop crying, but since I see tears as a soul response I didn’t argue and I didn’t comply.. the pressure I felt being there began to abate as soon as I got into the car for the 20 minute drive home. Fact is she told me today she does not believe in the shock treatment.. I see she had to go down that path and now its in God’s hands.. I read yesterday in James Van Prague’s book on love that many of us have critical spiritual turning points in our lives.. Sometimes we have to reach a rock bottom before we can look for another way.
Much as I told her how the pressure of trying to find her clothes is affecting me all she really wanted to know was how soon I could get the right size in the top that I already bought for her 2 times in 2 different sizes.. I just clocked that. I said I would do it when I can but I was making no promises that it would be before Monday.. Do I even exist for her at all? It’s a question I must ask.
Tonight I thank the Lord for my sobriety.. The fact is that a day at a time over more than 26 years I have not had to pick up a drink or a drug. I have felt all my emotions in sobriety, I have raged, I have cried, I have sworn, I have danced, I ached, I have been to depths of confusion, I have felt at times held within the healing arms of a boundless source of infinite love, and at others felt my soul held captive by demons or facing off with an evil witch who only told me I was a ‘waste of space and BETTER OFF DEAD’, but through it all I faced it all WITH NO PAIN KILLERS! All I can say this evening with regard to my sister is “there but for the grace of God and choosing sobriety go I”. Why God chose to let me get sober and not my sister I will never know.. I only know she is in prison right now and the only one who holds the keys to her freedom is her own soul.. Its just she doesn’t know that right now. I will keep praying.
Emerging From The Dark Night 