I spent more time with my sister today.. I went to the Apple shop and her phone is working fine, it just froze on Sunday and that confused my sister.. I do not have an i phone but soon got a crash course in how to navigate one from the beautiful young woman with the deepest blue eyes that works there. Ir took some effort to eat and get there by 12 I had a massive after breakfast spin as well as panic attack in the toilet after the lunch I ate at the shopping center after looking for some shampoo for her.. The cancer surgeons rooms called when I was in the loo to confirm tomorrrow’s appointment and I had to cancel my sister’s appointment which was actually the same day.. I was very stressed talking to the receptionist and running all over her with my anxiety babble.
I got to see my sister by about 1 pm and she was not as hard as yesterday. I felt so bad about the way I wrote about her yesterday. this family dis-ease confuses me so much.. I know she is being invalidated by her son over certain things, he tries to tell her she has enough clothes but the clothes she does are few an do not enhance her and give her a sense of fun, joy, life and vibrant alive spirit and she is not eating just lying all day in her pajamas with the door closed.. But then, this is a kind of advanced petrified freeze trauma response with elements of fawn too.. So today I just sat with her and helped to tidy her room and talked to her about her own childhood.. a lot of which involved being sent away for holidays or minded on Friday nights when Mum and Dad were busy with one of their numerous business enterprises..
It made sense to me that my own crash happened on a Saturday morning following a Friday night I ran away to a friends to stay so as not to be all alone with Dad at home who by that stage basically ignored me most of the time, maybe one of my responses to a difficult non nurturing home life was to run (strong Uranus). Dad did not really knowing how to relate to a teenage daughter and he is NOT TO BE BLAMED AS HE WAS 41 WHEN i WAS BORN N 1962 AND OF A VERY DIFFERENT GENERATION.. BLAMING ACHIEVES NOTHING BECAUSE HE TOO, LIKE MY MUM,, WAS JUST AND INNOCENT CHILD IN A GROWN MAN’S BODY AND HE HAD NO FATHER AT ALL. JUST AS MY MUM DIDN’T. He also learned to retreat and see his redemption and salvation as lying in material achievements and that all began to crash for him and all of us from 1980 onwards with Judy’s aneurysm, leading to his own death by cancer of the stomach 5 years later.
I ended up sitting on the side of my sister’s bed and holding her hand today. I cried and told her I am sorry I did not say what for but later in life it was hard for me to draw close to her due to the complex feelings of abandonment I also felt around her.. I see how hard she tried in her own way and what she too, was battling with.. She looked at me and said with the saddest eyes “I am totally broken” I just held her hands looking in both eyes and said “That is your trauma speaking, I firmly believe that no matter how shattered you feel right now by your history there is a part of you that is complete and whole” I could tell she did not believe this but my sister gets torn down and as Sarah Woodhouse points out in her brilliant book You’re Not Broken trauma makes us believe a lot of lies.. it steals our power and keeps us in lock down, protection/attack (inward against the self or outward against a ‘cruel unfair’ world) or alternatively in arrest or freeze. Unhealed it does not allow us to identify our power and reclaim it, that is what recovery does when we come to see the fault was NOT IN US BUT IN A HOST OF OUTSIDE FORCES AND CONDITIONS THAT WE SOMEHOW INTERNALIZED INTO A FALSE SELF CONCEPT..
I saw clearly today how much my sister is internalizing and how she needs far far more than she is getting that place. I know the real solution does not lie in more clothes but if they make her feel she can at least get up and get dressed what is the harm in beautiful clothing.. Does she need to be told she is making it all up?
It took a long time to calm down after coming home.. Jasper ran off up to the neighbors as he wasn’t walked AGAIN!! and then I engaged the neighbor but I was oversharing with her as I have no one to talk to face to face.. and so many just seem to dismiss the true causes with my sister.. I feel at least better for having tried to be there for her today.. its no good falling back to my Aquarian South Node position of emotionally detaching.. In the car on the way there I cry with the surge of love and desire to be there I feel as I feel Mum and Dad and Judy and the ancestors all around me giving me a foundation and encouragement.. I did not get sober for nothing, nor do all of my psychological work for nothing.. Even if my sister decides not to pursue that path and stay frozen at the hospital I will never desert her, like Perseus confronting Medusa and the Gorgons’ head of emotionally petrified terror I just need all my resources, sword and shield but also mirrors as well as oceans and oceans and oceans of deeper acceptance and compassionate tenderness.. She needs validating right now and empowering not dismissing and negation.. She has already had far too much of that..AND IF I CRY I CRY…for the tears do not always last.
Emerging From The Dark Night 