Failure to protect

The failure of a parent to protect a child from damage or trauma is the number one factor that leads to a lack of trust and safety later in life.. That insecure foundation of feeling at risk or unsafe will not be easily corrected without work and we may always contain remnants of fear over the failures, all of those times we were let down, left alone, unseen, unhelped, ignored.

These were some words that came to me reading a book about good parenting that has stirred up a lot of pain for me this week. The four S’s parents need to provide are Security, Safety. allowing the child to be Seen and Soothing.. It bites me I got NONE OF THESE.

It all came up via text with Scott today.. I was telling him of the multiple lacerations and injuries I sustained.. My arm was pulled out of my socket at one point, I had third degree burns due to Mum’s caravaning holiday cleaning with boiling water frenzy, I got a fish hook wedged in between my big and next toe due to Dad’s carelessness with fishing tackle. I had to let myself in every day after school to an empty house with a key from the garage workshop and one day the key was not there and I cut myself bashing on the window in fury, I had to get 30 stitches that time.. This is not to mention being hit, being tickled to the point of pain while being laughed at while Dad didn’t stop. Him failing to stop when we needed desperately to go to the toilet on long trips, him denying other hurts. Today I just said this to Scott “I am so angry with them”.. “why wasn’t I even important enough for them to care about.” YES I AM ANGRY BUT UNDER THE ANGER IS GRIEF OVER HOW POWERLESS I WAS AS A YOUNG CHILD AND EVEN TEENAGER!

This is the state for those of us abandoned emotionally as told in the fairytale The Handless Maiden by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.. In the story the miller is so preoccupied with other things (primarily work and industry) he willingly hands his daughter over to the devil and in the end her hands are cut off.. She has to wander handless until found by the King when trying to eat pears (with no hands) in his orchard. The King falls in love with her and gives her silver hands but in time she has to go on a journey after falling pregnant to grow her own hands this only happens when she goes deep to the forest and then cries and cries and cries to heal her hands and grow new ones. Please read her version of the tale in the book Women Who Run With The Wolves if this interests you.. I first read it at about 5 years of sobriety and it resonated so deeply with me then, even if at that stage I had no clue of the neglect I had suffered.

The Handless Maiden in time will be reunited with her Kingly or solar self (and maybe even her Divine Masculine) once she spends that time alone and gets to know herself in depth as well as tend to her injuries.. This is true for me too. At times it seems as though I have spent most of the past 19 years of my midlife deep in the dark forest of healing but I was encouraged by a dream I had a few nights ago which involved me trecking up a very steep and stony path to the top of the mountain with a man and when I arrived I saw the sun breaking clear of mist and that to me would represent my spirit coming alive after all of these years of hardship.

I awoke today very much feeling the twin pulses of the planetary energies Saturn and Uranus.. For those who are not aware over the next week Mars will begin to conjunct or meet up with Uranus at 6 degrees of Taurus at the same time as Saturn and Jupiter in Aquarius form a tense square to both.. This ingress of Mars into the Venus ruled sign (out of the Mars ruled sign of Aries where it has been for many months due to past retrograde movement in 2020) is very important.. Venus has to do with the active receptive feminine principle and is very much about having a sense of worth and value.. Uranus acts to blow away the restrictions that Saturn can place on us..

If you have planets in the early degrees of the fixed signs Taurus, Leo, Scorpio or Aquarius these transits are going to be hitting you.. For me they are impacting my Mars Saturn Moon with Chiron and Pluto so its no surprise that Scott with his strong Uranian signature would be waking these up in me.. I am still working to find the levels of forgiveness for my father.. He was very much with me spiritually in meditation this morning, he was reminding me too, of the wounds he enacted on my brother, how it happened out of unconsciousness. He also showed me how, via spiritual and angelic guidance he has been there for me as a protector since he passed in 1985. He guided me to Jonathan and there was a reason that relationship failed.. I could only cry with it all this morning as I felt all of this dawn (in such a Uranian way) deep inside my own heart and soul.. It is actually not his death anniversary until tomorrow, the 8th of January…

It is freeing to feel how painful it was for me to lose him then and to be aware of all the other difficult legacies I carried.. He did not like my partner at the time who was abusive to me and was very worried about me.. He told me all of this in meditation this morning.. He is also helping me to grow in compassion for my sister..But I still cannot call her.. I am still not near to forgiveness for the way her side of the family have cut me out and treated me like I am nothing..I have some healing to do before I can open my heart to them.. I don’t like it that I can’t (as I have always tried to be a forgiving person) but I have to be real at this point and stay true to my human limits.. .. I have been through so much in my life, I deserved more empathy and support than I ever got from an emotionally shut down family but they still DID THE BEST THEY COULD.. I DO KNOW THAT.