Head did me in : today’s reflections

I had a tough start today.. my head did me in with its thoughts but I mustered up the energy to clean through a bit and then went to the lovely Peace Park by the lake for a walk with Jasper.. The swans have given birth to baby cygnets in the past few weeks. It was so beautiful to see a mum and dad with four babies waddling into the water. I had to keep Jasper firmly on the lead as he is such a birdy and the pent up energy in my dog is like about one hundred ever ready batteries. He is a great fly killer and leaps to attack with speed of a demon… The air was so fresh after all of the rain and it was lovely to feel it… We got back to the car and I went to get a coffee and something for lunch and then took Jasper again to a small park near the shops to make up for the time he was left waiting in the car. (Something that happened to me for hours being from a older family at holidays to the coast when they wanted to go drinking at the local club.. Hated it!!)

When I got home and opened my blog I saw that where my head goes early on in the day is always into an ‘everything is wrong and I have to turn everything over place’ coming back a short while ago and opening to read comments I see its just NOT TRUE. There is such a loving community here that I am part of WordPress.. No I do not meet anyone here in the flesh but I still feel my soul to be so nourished by this community and feel a lot of love flowing backwards and forwards between us. That really sustains me, and has sustained me since 2013 when I was in such a terribly bleak and suicidal place after the last failed relationship.

I have a home that is cosy and a bit of work but its been my base for 10 years now. I have a gorgeous loving dog (who is my main family) and I have my poetry, reading and writing..

I listened too, today, to an interview given with a Scottish playwrite on the theatre program on Radio National who has a play being performed in Brisbane at present and he was talking about how much isolation he sees coming out of the age of individualism and capitalism. I tried to write something about this and the connection to unresolved grief that I have not posted yet, yesterday, and it was not lost on me that we need this sense of belonging as well as the understanding its normal for so many of us to have gone through tough things and to struggle with pent up emotions.. When we can open about this, then we connect, we realise the similarities instead of the differences and ‘better than worse than perfectionistic divide’ which a cult of individualism and materialism promotes.

Sadly at times, my own tendency is to shut down, to forget others also went through grief and loss, to judge myself by externally imposed standards that are too harsh and don’t take in either the degree of attachment wounding in my own life and in my family. As I open my heart more I remember others also lost fathers, or wives, or husbands, siblings and friends to illnesses and addictions. The family that found my grief too much in 2005 and kicked me out were driven by pushing me away as I reminded their daughter of a close friend lost to active addiction. Never mind that in 2005 I had ALREADY BEEN SOBER FOR 12 YEARS.. I WASN’T HURTING ANYONE BY CRYING AND NEEDED COMFORTING BUT LIKE A BAD SMELL THE FAMILY JUST DID NOT WANT ME AROUND..

Maybe at that time I was not taking as many active steps as I needed to get well but by God I had suffered a head injury that was so bad. I was lucky at that time to get support through a community initiative organised through Cambridgeshire hospital called “Home From Hospital’, the girl who was assigned to me, by some strange angelic chain of coincidence was actually from my dead Dad’s hometown in Holland. Her name was Marlene and she was gorgeous, but when the family told me I didn’t have a place with them and needed to go I went to an Ashram, Marlene and I stayed in touch but then after it all got too lonely and tough over there, I decided to come home, and it was not until after that sadly Marlene told me that she had hoped we may have been able to share a place together.. It was a golden opportunity I missed in order to come home to the site of so much unresolved family trauma.

Anyway it is important for me to write all of this stuff down today as the anniversary of me deciding to come back to Australia from the UK for the third time in 4 years in October 2005 is now here and coincides with Dad’s diagnosis with cancer. I see how at this time of year I was pushed and pulled all over the place by unresolved grief as I searched for a place and community of empathy and soul recognition it was so hard to find, although at Glastonbury I was held in my grief and loved through it by many kind, loving souls.

At this time of year I do cry a lot and my symptoms get intense. I actually reached out to my older (dead) sister’s third son yesterday as he is on his own with two small children and has done some inner work and moved away from the medication pathway to embrace a more emotionally sober based recovery, I needed that yesterday because at this time of year it is important to be able to share if I feel vulnerable and emotional. With my last partner he would abuse me for it. He actually threw a mug across the room and broke it one Christmas when my grief came out.. it was just SO SO HARD. I WENT THROUGH 3 CHRISTMASES WITH THAT KIND OF BEHAVIOR TILL IN THE END IN 2010 WE GOT TORN APART.

As I write I can see that where my head went to this morning is an old reaction pattern. Things are tough at this time of year so my old traumatised judgemental self thinks I need to take flight, a lot like the lead character in the movie Chocolate which is one of my favorite movies. But cutting and running and distancing is NOT WHAT IS NEEDED NOW.. WHAT IS NEEDED IS CONNECTING AND OPENING UP AND SAYING AT THIS TIME OF YEAR I STRUGGLE AND AM SURE SO DO MANY MANY MANY OTHER PEOPLE.

Cutting and running has been an old Uranian and (family multi-generational) pattern since 1874.. It never worked before but only ended up getting me in a lot of hot water and it worsened my great great grandfather’s addiction.. What is needed right now I see in the sober light after a grounding walk and good cup of coffee is externalising, being emotionally real and authentic as well as embodiment.. telling my story, listening to other’s grief too and normalising it, as well as the recognition that all of the past even though in the past still has a place, as part of our emotional path or particular soul journey that led to here..

Anyway in conclusion, just for today I am not only listening to my mixed up head, but uniting it with deep feeling heart so that I stop beating up and dismissing all of the good things I have in my life now, for which I am so grateful. I am also not choosing to push my grief to one side but honoring it, knowing feeling it makes me realise how precious and valuable real honest to goodness connections that value it too are for me. Feeling grief or sadness lets us let the joy in too, opening up to the flow of it all and releasing it allows new life opportunities to come through.

Today I also realised it is up to me to take action to connect as much as I can.. I reached out to my sister’s boy’s family and am going to take the young one out to buy a gift on Saturday. I just got a reply after asking for this and they were thrilled about it all. My heart did a big leap of joy at this… too many times I have just let my grief make me too passive, if I want to connect I need to keep reaching out, because nice as solitude is the sweetness of authentic connection also has value, a very important heart value.