If this latest Mercury retrograde has taught me anything at all it has been about how my thoughts and reactions to things cause either happiness and peace, as well as suffering.. It is said that suffering comes when we do not just accept certain painful things as a part of life, we can create more pain by how we think about that and how defensive we become. Our wounding may be one such thing as well as the things done to us by others, often in ignorance.. Struggling with the complex feelings around my sister, ex husband and family as well as the consequences of the last head injury and where I ended up as a result has shown me how much of my own pain and neglect I did not fully understand.
I also know more than most that my mind does not just reside in my head, it involves the entirety of my body. Lately with all of this ‘bursting’ and birthing energy around me I have been feeling layers within layers ,both personal and ancestral as well as familial and relational… Seeing how the emotion and true self repression is affecting my sister and where her mind goes as well as how she so easily gave up her power to so called ‘professionals’ and did not even try to look inside to her soul has been so interesting but painful too.. That said at times she really receives me but I do feel guilty sometimes when I go to visit and babble on about the past, especially how it was for me when she is so mute and says so so little..
My older sister who died in 2014 has also been on my mind a lot this week.. When I used to go visit her in the home for acquired brain injury and she was not yet nearly totally bedridden she would often look at me and say “let’s get out of here”. It would be a big task to wheel her heavy body in the wheelchair out and up the back path to cross the road to the local cafe, Ricardos but these were fun outings.. I also used to take her to the movies a lot and this involved meeting the maxi taxi across from the cinema where we used to go. At one movie that dealt with child loss she actually started wailing and screaming in the cinema.. I didn’t like to wheel her out but was concerned for the other cinema goers.. it was only natural that this movie triggered my sister considering how her husband sent her away from them and then disappeared with her four sons.
In the end I could not fix things for my sister I could only love her. that is what I also finally realized later last week about my living sister. Lately I do what I can now by visiting one to two times a week and try to think of things to take to her to remind her there is life outside of that place where they leave them all alone so so much and do not think to address the soul or inner child in those poor suffering people who go there.. that said maybe the place holds some people at a difficult time and gives them what they need.. I do not know as I am not God..
How I think about all of this now has perhaps changed.. Do I honestly regret coming back to Australia in 2001 and 2005? Yes and No.. I got to spend time with my Mum and older sister before they died but the impact on my body has been tough I have lost three more teeth since then and had those two surgeries, one for cancer in 2016 that I am sure I would not have suffered had I chosen to stay away.. Our life path rests on what we choose and how we react (consciously or/and unconsciously) and that power rests in us, family bonds can be so strong even in dysfunctional narcissistic families. We long so much and when they hurt us a part of us seems to get confused.. and if they demonize us for being angry or expressive that shuts us down even more..
So sad to me that I could not see and know what I could not see and know before.. And who knows if I am not yet being duped by someone else.. Only time will tell.. I just realize more and more lately with the help of therapy how dissociated I have been and how disabled.. that dream of the wounded man really showed my situation in stark relief.. Lots of my living sister seems to have been killed off too. For me my murdered parts continue to cry and scream from the basement of my soul and I am doing my best to hear then and not shame myself for them any more.. It also seems to me that my sexual self got disabled too… I watched this powerful drama on feminine sex drive this week Sex/Life on Netflix it shows the split we can go through in trying to be ‘good’ and repressing instinctive life urges, sex is one, self becoming/expression/unfolding is yet another..
We all have masculine and feminine sides, sometimes they may fight each other and then the ego is yet another voice that can sometimes work to derail us, though my friend Corey calls this the Super Ego.. when that assumes control in our lives it can continue to kill our full self or parts of others off in its quest for power,control or repression.
Emerging From The Dark Night 