If people do not love us or accept us, I am learning that is pretty much down to them and the relationship they have with themselves and their own shadow and feelings. People who become hard hearted and have had to defend against feeling seem to have had some aspect of themselves shut down in childhood, they can then project this aspect of themselves onto us as it is in relationship we seek the shadow.. We can also do this to others. If we lack assertiveness, for example, we may attract someone who railroads us or seeks to impose their will on us.. they may deny us attention or affection we seek, just as a parent denied it.. If we stay stuck in a battle with them and the wound things only tend to blow apart and when they do we get forced back inside to do our inner work.
I am seeing this more and more in my family dynamics and self relationship at the moment and am realizing that even some of us who were not loved and accepted unconditionally can still do that when we make love a conscious choice and commit actions of being as honest, aware and intelligent as we can be in relationships.
It can be difficult for the wounded ego to love, it often is more well versed in the ways of hurt and denial… The hurting ego hurts (and may hate) others as it hurts and hates itself or was hurt and hated in childhood. I saw in my brother last week how he hates things that are not perfect or are scarred or ‘damaged’ in some way.. He told me a while back what a perfectionist his older son is but when told someone who knows them both, they said to me “yes, but what about him?” One day he called me up to say he wanted to come over at 9 am (a time that was then hard for me with PTSD) and said “you had better be ‘presentable’ by the time I get there!’. I know the hard things my Dad did to my brother when he was younger to ‘toughen him up’ and ‘make him a man’, I also know he was cut by the brothers at Catholic school using some kind of macabre punishment weapon..It was pretty much standard practice in a lot of Catholic schools during the 50s to use caning and then straps as well as blades and that is not even to mention the sexual abuse that went on. He referred to this a few years ago when we had one of our rare catch ups with him in the short time before Mum died in 2017.. But to be honest i think a lot of this perfectionism and fear comes from our family legacy of trauma and alcoholism of which is pretty much unconscious.
I just read some lovely passages in Paul Ferrini’s book The Wounded Child’s Journey Into Love’s Embrace they really resonated for me..
God addresses me only through my love for myself and my love for you. My love is Her channel. Without my love, there is no opening through which God can manifest. My love is the opening. She is waiting for.. Without my love, Hers remains unmanifest. With it, Hers pours forth with an intensity that is awesome.
So I do not have to hide my faults from God or from you. Spirit will take my faults, forgive then and use them to show me my innocence if I will let It. And if I am willing to be vulnerable before you, you will not strike out at me for my mistakes but forgive me. For forgiveness is your nature.. It brings peace to your heart and to mine.
(Love).. is the only law that brings increased freedom every time we submit to it. Love never enslaves us, but merely enlists our support. The law of love only functions when we say Yes to it. When we say No it does not seek to criticize or punish. It just waits patiently till we are willing to receive its gifts.
When we welcome love, we clearly see that we are all in various stages of the journey home. No one is further ahead or behind. Each person is where he or she needs to be right now.
As a child of the 60s self love was not something I learned growing up with an anxious, busy, emotionally unavailable mother.. self criticism, punishment, isolation, being left alone, being unseen, hiding, pretense and shame were what I learned.. My Mum did fight a lot though.. She fought not to be put into domestic service (she was briefly put by my Nana with a family for a time but got herself out by getting an apprenticeship as a seamstress) Later in life she fought to have the first designer dress shop in our small town in Australia.. she had to go to Melbourne in a dress she made and convince designers like Prue Acton and Carla Zampatti to take her on.. .But my Mum had to appear strong a lot of the time and after my older sister crashed and burned and my Dad died from the stress of my accident, Judy’s aneurysm and his own millionaire project hurting his health she was left alone and carrying so much… The only power she had then was money as she did not really know how to relate to her grandchildren in another way and things got messy after my second sister’s marriage ended and there was a lot that went down between her and her husband who had been in business with Mum for many many years. My sister tried to take her own life after something went down with my Mum not letting one of her son’s off on a loan he was struggling with that she easily could have helped him with.
Kat often says to me that in my family money was given instead of love and time and attention.. It is why when, before she died, Mum offered my sister and I a considerable sum I refused it… now I do regret that as money is being withheld due to me being seen as unsafe with it…
Anyway I diverged and meandered in this post which seems to be a working out of how I found it a struggle to feel valuable enough to be loved and loving to myself being raised in my dysfunctional family of origin, . Being loving to others was never as hard for me as I always made myself available to suffering family to give comfort, often coping heaps of ‘crap’in return… this is the way it goes for a lot of us unnurtured adult kids who learned more about codependent ‘love’ rather than genuine emotionally nurturing reciprocal love.
These days I know what is most needed instead is for me to start turning all of that support and support back on myself and my own life and working to connect and give to others who want to give back not those who only want to shame dump, misjudge and emotionally withhold on me.. God knows some family members will only sacrifice you, they often do not see you at all… especially a narcissistic family that seems only to value appearances or money over deeper emotional connection… I do not resonate well with that kind of mindset. This does not make my values ‘right’ and theirs ‘wrong’ or vice versa.. we are just on different journeys. These days I am coming to know who I really am and what I value… and am finding ways to stand by those values and learn to be less critical of self and others when I can and often I fail.. ..Being loving to self and others is a big part of it but even as much as I love some people these days I am learning I just do not really respect them and their values much any more.
Emerging From The Dark Night 