Just got back from two walks on which water poured from my eyes as I was not even conscious of crying and then had a huge anger outburst with families unavailability on coming home, as well as on the walk. Logged on to check my feed on WP and the following paragraph from a recent post on the Trauma Research UK blog spoke to me.
I will post the link at the end of this post.
Feeling emotions can be feared by both survivors of developmental trauma and adult interpersonal relationship trauma due to any previous experiences (or attempts) to express oneself having been met by further punishment or abuse. It can take a great deal of time for a survivor of trauma to begin to accept that both feeling and expression are natural instinctual forms of experience which need not be approached or dealt with by fear (and fear related behaviours).
Understanding just how much feelings can become bound in fear (and shame which is related to a fear of being seen as ‘out of control’, raw and vulnerable) for us collectively, is it any wonder we escape through protective means of internal and external judgement..
The truth is most trauma and neglect or abuse survivors WERE FUCKING FAILED OVER AND OVER AGAIN AS CHILDREN THEN BLAMED FOR IT LATER.. we GOT IN TROUBLE FOR CRYING OR GETTING ANGRY, OR EVEN PROTESTING.. EVEN LATER IN LIFE WE GET TOLD : ‘PUT IT BEHIND YOU’, ‘ GROW UP’, ‘GET OVER IT’, ‘STOP BEING SO DRAMATIC’, ‘YOU ARE JUST TOO SENSITIVE’, ‘DON’T BE SO THIN SKINNED’, ‘STOP ISOLATING’, ‘GET A LIFE’, ‘GET JOB’ OR A THOUSAND OTHER FORMS OF ADVICE FROM THOSE NOT FULLY INFORMED ABOUT THE LEGITIMATE TRUTH OF OUR EXPERIENCE OR QUALIFIED TO GIVE IT.
In fact I remember at one point in my recovery a friend telling me I needed professional support, not just the AA fellowship alone as in AA we are often told anger is one of the seven deadly sins. I was also told it was not helpful to seek emotional validation from family members but I still went on to do it and even members of the fellowship gave me a bum steer at times. that said we have to become aware and savvy of where we can turn in trauma and sometimes grief lies under anger and anger under grief. For most trauma survivors it is all too much to survive, understand, and process that we MOST TRULY CANNOT DO IT WITHOUT QUALIFIED, INFORMED PROFESSIONAL HELP. The point made in that post too, is that it is through our feelings we learn what is true and through their validation, how to escape shame and self blame and how to self champion.
On the subject of struggling with painful feelings in the aftermath of wrong judgement and trauma, I was deeply moved last night to watch the second concluding installment of the documentary made on Lindy Chamberlain and her false imprisonment of just under 3 years for the ‘murder’ of her baby daughter, Azaria, she never committed.. It brought to mind how, as a youngster, I got so upset at watching an old movie in which a character was wrongly accused of murder and had to do so much time in prison.. In the movie the truth about her wrongful conviction only came out after she had been killed by the United States for her ‘crime’.
By that stage a lot of unfair shit had gone down in my family and my sister was never called to account for the abuse and sidelining she passed down. Now I know she was on the receiving end of it too haven fallen into a cupboard after being pushed by Mum who hit her over the face with a slipper and then tried to deny her wrists were in fact broken. This sister was also beaten by the Nuns while learning piano over the knuckles as well as told that a piece of music she wanted to learn to play for my father by Dean Martin was ‘devils’ music. My sister rebelled and never played piano again and she was, at that time, at the top level of her skill.. Mum ended up selling her piano out from under her and I am sure my sister may not have told her all that happened.
It is hard to stay angry with a parent who can be loving as well as mean as well as a sister who can be the same.. My older sister was kinder and almost treated me as if I was her baby as she was 16 when I was born but when she left when I was only 3 in 1965 setting sail for the land of our ancestors, New Zealand, with her husband Ron I felt so bereft and it took a while for them to come back. In time my sister became completely incapacitated in the face of her trauma and when Dad’s death occurred on top of all of this I really floundered feeling I had no where to turn. Mum and Dad were so preoccupied and then Mum’s grief seemed to make it impossible for her to support me and so she encouraged me to go away.. I kept going away each time there was no where to go because in the end it didnt really matter to anyone much how deeply I had been affected. I feel angry about that while knowing too, its just the way of things in families of multi-generational trauma and neglect.
On that note last night re – reading essential parts of Mark Wolynn’s book on multi-generational trauma I was struck by the core sentences chapter.. He says how ancestors have these emotionally charged beliefs, such as “I feel as though I am about to die,” or “”everyone will end up leaving me, or “it’s too hard to breathe” and how these feelings actually go back to critical events pr experiences that happened for their ancestors (for example, death by asphyxiation in gas chambers or as a result of gassing or lung injury in war) that were never shared. They then begin to emerge in a descendant’s life at around the same age as the ancestor experienced the trauma or loss or separation..
Last night it occurred to me that when Jonathan and I left for the UK to live in 1999 I was 37 years of age, the same age my soon to become alcoholic Great Great Grandfather was when he and his wife Eliza Jane set sail from Cornwall for New Zealand on 12 December 1874.. which is the date in 2017 my mother died after saying to me two nights before, while struggling to stand “I must get moving!”
Thinking about the hidden power of my ancestral inheritance that has led to each of us three girls suffering sidelining, abandonment and isolation, some in mental institutions, ashrams or homes it is also no wonder I felt the push pull to then travel backwards and forwards to the UK 5 or so more times from 1999 to 2005 when I had the accident/head trauma at the age of 43. I was actually told by an astrologer who writes a lot about Chiron wounding and healing. Melanie Reinhardt that she felt the pulls were deeply ancestral. When I first travelled to South West England I felt the power of the grief when at one point in an open field on the English mores of Devon a horse approached me and cried one single tear.
I am not sure what year Eliza decided to leave my GG Gfather Thomas due to his alcoholism. I know they had, at that stage, given birth to 16 kids, two of whom, bearing the same name as my GG Grandmother died before the third Eliza Jane (Trudgeon) my Great Grandmother was born.
In time Eliza Jane left New Zealand for Australia with my Nana Amy and then Amy left Victoria for Canberra with her husband John James (Bluey) Brander who suffered war injuries in about 1920. My Mum was born out of town in Goulburn for in 1924 there was no hospital in Canberra, it was a new city under construction and that was the end of the immigrant path way that doubled back to New Zealand and the UK through later marriages and connections of descendants as well as to Queensland where several of my Great Great Grandfather’s brothers who emigrated with or after him ended up, being estranged from him, as i believe he died in an asylum in 1926, two years after my mother was born.
Watching the trauma and pain that Lindy Chamberlain as well as her husband, Michael and three surviving children, Aiden, Reagan and Kahlia endured in the after math of the wrongful conviction of both their mother and father moved me so much last night.. After the program I looked at Lindy’s chart and was not surprised to see she was a sun sign Pisces and born in 1948 which is the year of the prior Saturn Pluto conjunction (which took place in Leo and is currently being transited or passed over by Venus in Leo which represents solar will) and that the planet Mars was sitting in that conjunction as well forming what is know as a Yod or Finger of God aspect with the Sun in Pisces inconjunct Neptune…
Lindy found a way to tolerate both her anger and grief (both associated with Pluto) at the injustice (Saturn = repression by powers that be such as police or legal edificies of ‘justice’) ofwhat she suffered not only at the hands of the legal system and police who failed to consider the testimony of eye witnesses who actually saw and heard a dingo close to the camp ground in Uluru on the night her baby, Azaria was taken, but also at the hands of the Australian public all to willing to judge (Saturn Pluto) and slam her with all kinds of names. (Note: this is not to deny the huge groundswell of support also shown to the Chamberlain family by much of the Australia public as her trial and conviction divided the country).
I found it so powerful towards the end of the program to hear her read a letter she wrote to her 16 year old self. In the letter (which I will try to link to later when I can source it) she speaks of the importance of forgiveness, not as a denial of the hurt or injustice felt, but as an active choice to move on with a heart of love open to embrace new life rather than shut down or twisted out of shape by the toxic poison of unprocessed anger, bitterness and resentment. I was so saddened to see that her ex husband Micheal was not as lucky and ended up dying of leukemia in 2017.
Lindy also used her anger (Mars sextile Neptune = she fought with love) to fight.. At a certain point towards the end of her 3 year imprisonment she refused to continue to work for 5 cents a day scrubbing out the showers in prison at the order of a ‘screw’ (or prison guard) hell bent on hurting her deeming through this abuse how he could pass down his own rage. After her release in February 1985 she and Michael continued to fight over many years and various appeals for the truth…. She did not give up until justice was served and an apology was finally given.
I know this post has travelled all over the place, but my point I guess is that we deeply need our feelings as assertive powers of self to guide. We must harness their power to not be abused and have the abuse internalise. We must take action to be real, honest and true even in the face of judgment and misunderstanding. We must take our needs and reactions to hurtful, shameful or unfair experience seriously and work with them skillfully both to liberate our real life energy and help others not to be hurt and imprisoned by suicidal ideation, or self destructive behavior as a result of internalised abuse, neglect or trauma.
Also, at some point we have to own that the abuse or trauma occurred and not that we are at fault but that it may have a purpose.. Towards the end of the documentary when asked in an interview “Why you?” by an interviewer, Lindy answered : “Why not me?” She on some level accepted that what happened had to happen that way but neither did she collapse or stay embittered the experience and the injustice.. .. I believe her strong sense of faith in love and inner power carried her through, a belief that on some level her experience and loss had meaning and value.. I also could not help keep thinking of the words Astrologer Liz Greene uses to describe those of us born under the influence of Saturn Pluto energies (especially when configured with inner planets such as Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, or Mars) while watching the entire program.
Wisdom through suffering, and purification through the ordeal by fire.
The ordeal by fire involves Mars and is important in our trauma recovery work we embody that energy of anger (to serve our solar sense of innere self) to fight for our emotional reality and truth. There is also the ordeal by water which Jesus speaks of and concerns grief.. To me the tears shed on some level cleanse us, they wash away some of the pain and even the ash that may be left in the wake of both justified and unjustified episodes of anger and rage as old feelings and experiences rise up to be acknowledged, felt, alchemised and purified.. Having containers such a prayer or meditation often help as does the loving presence or open holding space of our own or another’s unconditional presence..
We need this ventilation work but it needs also to be done in a safe space with people who understand its true purpose who will not sideline or shame us for it, because in so doing our recovery and self embodiment out of the experience of trauma may be sadly and most tragically thwarted with terrible consequences, both for us, and for those with whom we are in relationship.
The link mention above can be found below:
https://traumaresearchuk.wordpress.com/2020/09/28/using-feeling-to-recover-from-past-trauma/
Emerging From The Dark Night 