I was surprised last night at exactly the time of the lunar eclipse (8pm here on the East Coast of Australia) to find this rage with my father who has been dead for a long time bursting out of me. What sparked it was an interview with a teacher who was being recognised for helping kids with Autism. I went to study teaching after my accident in 1979 and loved it. …I had wanted to do social work but was not well enough physically following the accident 5 months before to travel to another town to live as that course was not offered at that stage as a degree in my home town, so I undertook the first year in my home town of a Diploma of Education.
When things got really bad with.my older sisters illness that year (1980) I decided to move away to study but during that year I struggled and got involved in a pretty dysfunctional relationship. I felt out of my depth. Early the next year I told Dad I wanted to move back home and resume my teaching degree. All my good friends were at that college and I really missed them Dad came down so hard on me and told me I was all over the shop. His decision was that a secretarial diploma was right for me. There was to be no discussion or argument.
Even as I type this I am getting heat in my body. Last night I felt all the twisting symptoms of my repressed anger spiraling through me. I was pinned on the floor and fighting with the anger located at the base of my skull with all the contacting and pains running down my right leg as I pushed and pushed to get free. Then energy bursts and so much rage AT DAD NOT SEEING ME AND ACTIVELY BLOCKING ME, NOT JUST ON THIS BUT SO MANY OTHER THINGS..
In retrospect it made sense as this eclipse last night squared my Pluto Chiron opposition (affecting my Mars Saturn Moon) and my Dads Mars in Sagittarius squaring that. It occurred to me that his Mars squared my Chiron. Due to what he did I lost contact with my friends, I started drugging on weekends as well as drinking and acting out in other ways.
I think the unacknowledged anger with my Dad was triggered during that melt down with my sis on Sunday. My brother thwarting my inheritance now is stirring up all the complex feelings of helplessness and rage and I just read a great article on how repressed anger keeps so many of us stuck. I see it as behind my sisters depression and surrendering of her power to psychiatists who aren’t focusing on her becoming empowered That said, only she can make the choice to free herself.
It was good to feel this last night as anger has energy for action it. I know it cannot fix the past but it leaves me open to new solutions today. Though the dismissive part of me tells me this all happened years ago I know it continued to affect me deeply. I didn’t manage to break out of secretarial until 1992 and even the Mum got upset about it..But by then I could rebel and I did. Eventually I got a job in alternative therapies and then a bookshop where I graduated to buyer and I also started studying astrology, aromatherapy and psychology, though I chose to go back into secretarial when my husband and I moved to the UK in 1999 as it paid better.
Anytime I want to go for something or have something, meet up with someone a competing voice fights the impulse down. Its been just so hard to feel I have a right to exist or can have what I wan but looking back now I see where the roots of powerlessness lie. I also see how resentment at my Dad came out sideways in other relationships and one of the loves of my life, Simon who I met the year after Dad died was actually a teacher and he brought me my first book on Jung.. Memories, Dreams and Reflections. Sadly my addiction was well underway by then and he struggled to understand my angry outbursts that all make complete sense to me now.
I know lunar eclipses are forerunners of new starts at the following solar eclipse or, if they come after, it throw light on old stuff holding us back. A lunar eclipse is like a super intense full moon giving insight into emotional issues or the subconscious, often through powerful dreams or reactions. I will provide a link here to a helpful article on the 30 Nov eclipse below.
Last night I woke at 1 am and went out to look at the Moon it had a sun like halo surrounding it. I felt the ancestors at that time as all the powerful stuff that always goes on in my body in the middle of the night carried on.. As I write I think of how the Moon reflects back solar light but in a softer way. I think of all my Dad had to bury, leaving his own homeland behind at the tender age of 18, the same age I was when I started my teaching.. .I didn’t get that positive, supportive fathering I needed in my life and that is the reason why its been so hard for me to father myself and have good boundaries.. A lot of my anger seemed to fall on my Mum at times but I see she also struggled to be seen by Dad at times, he made fun of her rages and didnt get the wounded kid inside nor set boundaries on the kid acting out her damage on us siblings. But that is the way of things, or was then..
In some way I bore the brunt of so much and it fell to me to make sense of it. I sensed a long time ago a path to insight and wisdom lay in Jung, astrology and psychology, but I am still trying to find my way back to my own power.. Maybe this was a shedding (what happened on Sunday) and an emotional awakening of sorts. Possibly with the Solar Eclipse in two weeks there will be a chance for a better way forward for me.. Next year will be about finding new ways to express what I want to do and if I want to do a teaching diploma I am free to do it now.. Even if I am 58 years old it is never too late. Maybe (for me), (real consciously lived purposeful) life begins at 60.
Emerging From The Dark Night 