Where did I go?

I am really feeling the core of me today, emerging like a seed from the coatings, getting distance from the killing energies that my therapist Kat has called murderous. Yesterday was intense after my lunch out with my sister and Mum’s best friend, so much repressed emotion burst out of me after Betty and I dropped my sister off. I think of all the shock treatment took from her, I think of how. as children, we both survived Mum’s trauma storms in different ways.. I think of how much of my father is in my sister, that quiet gentle side that watches and knows.. I think of how my sister suffered at Mum’s hands too, after my sister’s husband left, how she was judged ‘manic’ when she was trying to come alive but energy was going out all over the place.. I think of how I watched those two battle and then my sister try to take her life in the aftermath.. I feel for them both.

Kat said yesterday that there was a banked up energy in the family of parents not really wanted to be parents or be available for parenting. I listened to a 45 minute recovery Al Anon story last night by a woman who grew up around no active drinking but did have the alcoholic stress there in the family in other forms.. Her father could not accept her as she was (she was gay and he disowned her for this.. such an alcoholic thing to do) and she grew up numb and with a great distance inside her between her true self and knowing of and being aware of and in touch with her needs and feelings..

I identified most with the rejected confusing feelings and the sense that need could not be allowed. I am also seeing how hard my Mum fought not to be ground under in poverty and have her identity and being erased..in her childhood all the forces of repressed feeling and lack of empathy were pitted against her.. but she fought, not to remain a domestic servant, to get a trade (tailoring) and then met my Dad and together amidst the backdrop of depression and World Wars they fought to build a life.. Sadly the last pregnancy (which was me) they did not have a lot of time for, they tried to love the best way they could, but so often their faces were turned away, their support pulled towards my older sister who by that stage had completely unravelled.. And there was the complexity too of that older sister who is now dead being more of an available surrogate Mum but then gone and then collapsed under the aneurysm.. so much trauma for our entire family really but deeply deeply contained by me, especially the fracturing of bonds and attachments.

I woke today grieving how isolated I became from 2004 onward.. It is clear to me I am an extrovert in some ways.. I do love people, I love connecting, when I am no longer suffering under the toxic burden of lack of trust due to lack of empathy shown by parents and a younger sibling (older than me but younger than the two older ones) I was a happy outgoing child but sadly I lost the way to her and to all that was golden and good in her.. Some time along that path or way I lost the capacity to love myself… and by God that hurts. H O W E V E R…..The good thing is that when WE CAN BE REAL AND ALLOW THE HURT ITS VOICE WE FIND SOMETHING BETTER, CLEARER, STRONGER UNDERLYING IT ALL THAT CAN CONTAIN AND TRANSFORM IT ALL..

In a way I am now able to separate out of what my therapist Kat calls my ‘SuperEgo trauma storms’ these are the forces that came down via my great great grandfather who found himself such a long way from home, responsible for 16 kids at a time of depression, a man who then started drinking and became abusive and forced that trauma into the cells of his descendants..Mum’s cleaning frenzies now make far more sense to me.. This was the young fatherless girl used by the Nun’s to clean their rooms and the chapel.. the Little Match Girl who had to use a warm stone to comfort her at night when her mother was far gone.. It makes sense to me of where i then ended up alone too as have my siblings..

But I truly do believe today something good can come out of all of this. I was reading my book my Angel intuitive Kyle Gray earlier Light Warrior and he reminds us light is always available to us when we call on the power of love, Jesus, God or Higher Power and ask for the way back to strength, to the releasing of wounding, wrong perceptions, defences and fear and to the decision to trust in goodness.. None of us went through all of this trauma for nothing.. indeed what we missed out on, and long for shows us clearly what is of most value to us…what is most needed for us to find the way home.

Today I am grateful.. I had a long conversation with my sister today.. I thanked her for my birthday lunch and was able to share how my anger hid the grief and actually cry for my Dad with her earlier.. she also lost her Dad but she did have him until the age of 31 .. it was still hard losing him but I missed that critical support at essential times and he negated what I tried to tell him I needed and made me do a career I did not want.. That is okay, it held me in good stead when I went overseas being able to secretarial work… but it did leave wounds.. But what I am learning, even at this late stage, is that we have to champion ourselves, we have to value ourselves and most importantly of all we have to know ourselves in order to find the path back home even if it lays over a long long journey of jaggered rocks, broken glass and stones…that Self we left behind somewhere is patiently waiting for us and our hurts give us essential insights we do not get when we forestall them or try to ignore or by pass them.

I hope this blog makes sense today.. At times I still feel disengaged from life but in some way I see how essential this disengagement was.. I had to go to a deep place and I had to go there mostly alone but with the support of others too, like my therapists and recovery buddies and fellow bloggers.. I do believe we can not only survive these painful realities but use them to build a better world. Everywhere I look if I want to I can find evidence of those who triumphed over adversity…the most important thing is that we do as Virginia Woolf recommended : “to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is.. at last, to love it for what it is” rather than turn away in blindness and deny truths most essential that contain within them our path to redemption.