Love and affection : some reflections

I wrote this earlier before going out for my sister’s birthday lunch, I posted it and then took it down as I did not want to portray her older son in a way that just revolved how he reacted to me following Mum’s death. I feel sensitive about hurting family members because he is a very loving Dad who tries to the best of his ability and has had to deal with a lot after my sister had a breakdown.. following her hysterectomy.. I am postng it again as it contains some of today’s experiences.. I love my family I just want there to be peace for all of us, love, understanding, connection and most importantly tolerance and kindness.

Poor Mum when I think of how her childhood was my heart fills,with compassion lately. I know I got wounded but she tried so hard..she often got it wrong and we weren’t allowed to be angry with her ..she always forgave her own Mum knowing how hard she struggled as a war widow and in the later years she did cry over never being cuddled or told she was loved, Nana also often made it obvious my Dad was someone she had more interest in being around than Mum, just as Nana favored my older brother over my older sister Judith.

I had the insight this morning that often anger is resistance to a painful truth, as long as we cannot accept that harsh reality (and acceptance does not imply we approve of it or like it) just that we realise life is not ideal we actually remain stuck in a lot of defensive shit.. and that can end up with us just repeating all the ways we got stuck in the first place.. That said anger is a cry from our True Self telling us something is off or isn’t right.. It may also often come out of having no power as a young child.

I had another of those lovely moments driving home from our walk today when Jasper just looks me so deeply in the eyes with such love and presence I burst into tears.. I know the happiest times I have had in recent years are times with him or when he has connected me with ‘strangers’. On Tuesday I met my lovely Dutch friend for a coffee. Jane and I met at the dog park back in 2013 when her dog Bailey was still alive.. Bailey sadly died 3 years ago and Jane showed me a photo of him again the other day.. Well during this car moment with Jasper my You Tube play list then started playing the Bee Gee’s song How Deep Is Your Love and that is when the floodgates opened again.. that was the song we chose to play second last at my Mum’s funeral after my older brother and I gave our elegies.. I was sitting next to my sister Sue’s youngest son then and I was crying so much he hugged me and ended up giving me his white hanky. I still have that hanky as no one else in my family is touchy like that or affectionate like Elliot in fact his older brother hardly even made eye contact when we first met after Mum died he just kept looking at his phone and there was no hug, no “I am sorry about Grandma”.. nothing that is the Son we are having lunch with today.. for my sister’s birthday as the younger son lives a way away from us here.

I know the older son has a softer side its just his father was an adult child of an alcoholic and he used to use criticism and sarcasm a lot to put people down.. it was something that used to annoy my Mum, that said he could puncture an egocentric person’s grandiosity so it may not have been all bad and I do remember him cuddling me on a few occasions after Jonathan left and my grief over the lost pregnancies came up when my only niece fell pregnant out of wedlock in 2004.

Anyway I am an affectionate person. I am warm. I honestly don’t know how I survived in the cold family, though later in life Mum learned to hug us and tell us she loved us.. I think me getting sober in 1993 and finally being able to show an interest in her past opened her up even if she argued in the early years of me revealing I was in AA that I was “the only one in this family with a problem!!” Hello Mum!! Our older sister had a cerebral bleed from overworking, smoking and drinking too much as well as probably abusing valium….

Anyway its some kind of victory to have been able to organise this lunch for my sister’s 65th birthday today… I said to Kat yesterday in therapy how as an artistic, creative, sensitive type I did not feel I fitted at all into a business oriented family.. Kat was saying to me a few weeks ago “I would love you to find an artistic community, Deb.. with people of like mind.” Well Kat, my life is a work in progress so who knows what lies in the future.. for me I only know I want it to be something warm, a life filled with honest expression and so much love and affection.. By God my Mum needed that, my Dad needed that and my ancestors needed that.. their lives were so goddam tough and I must be grateful after all these years of sobriety and therapy I can know why I reached for something to warm my spirit and bring me alive over all of those cold years alone.. .alcohol, the problem being it was not the right kind of ‘spirit’ what I was most longing to feel was the vital aliveness of my own body and nature, something Eckhart Tolle addresses in a lovely You Tube video I listened to last night..

Slowly I am risking coming alive.. I will not be killed off forever and I will today count my blessing for all of the good things in my life.. family, Jasper, my blogging community, nature, music, friends, books, films, my lovely cleaner Sonam. just so so much to be so so so so grateful for. Enduring all of the tough stuff, feeling the true hurt of being left alone and in emotional neglect is somehow freeing me up now.. to find something better that is not just a repeat or replay of that hurtful past.