We just did a lovely long walk around Manuka and its parks, we parked in the street where Nana lived and we basked in the first lot of warm winter sunshine for days. We then walked around to the hole in the wall at the Milk Bar to get a coffee and while waiting me met Rahja a maltese shitzu and its owner. When I commented on the name being Indian his owner told me she had just visited there she also shared the grief over the loss of another dog at 18 years of age.. She told me her husband was “in his head, not at all emotional” but the death of their beloved dog hit him hard.. I had told her before how deep I feel the soul connection is between dogs and their owners. Of course he just does not show his emotions, it does not mean they are not there buried somewhere.
We walked back to the car via the lawns area of Manuka and as we did we passed Mum’s first shop which is now a Focus Eyewear place. When Mum bought it it was called Pour Madame, she took on all of the old stock then made herself a dress by hand to go and court the lastest Sydney and Melbourne designers.. That was my Mum, such a strong lady despite all of her emotional neglect.. That first shop she owned was called Gabby but in time it became The Faded Jean Machine, as Mum acquired another shop across from it and called that Gabby.. I started work there on Saturday mornings at the age of 13, I was expected to work.. It had a long counter with a vintage cash register and we stocked the Australian jean label Jag which was very trendy then (the 1970s) The different jean styles were pinned up on panels on the wall and kept in cubicles behind the counter.. It was not there I was on the way to work for when I crashed in September 1979 it was a newer store again Giano….I don’t think I ever went back to work in the stores after that or possibly I did as college started the next year, maybe I did do the odd Friday night and Saturday morning. That time of my sister’s trauma, 1980 is very fuzzy to me due to my Complex PTSD.
After we passed the lawns on our walk we went up the little lane way to go back to the car, we stopped at a huge old tree as Jasper did a pee and i thought of how that tree had witnessed it all and possibly even my Mum at 7 years old running up that alley way on a lonely afternoon after school. I thought of how time can give us a perspective on events but also of how much deep suffering we also often have to go through to rise above.. In alchemy, I was reading lately, this process is called the sublimato. The sublimato may be an expanded perspective or a dissociation, we do not want to touch the earth again so we may need to take refuge in ideas or ideals or points of view or we could use these too to deepen our quest.. But all along the body calls to us to be alive again, through fully embodying and giving expression to its pain and emotions.
I do not know if I am expressing this well but as I walked up that lane way I started crying again and saying to Dad how sorry I was. On the morning i crashed I had been staying with a friend and he was alone at home as Mum was working, for some reason when I woke up in the crushed vehicle at the side of the road it was Mum who came when they called home. Later, in the hospital they wheeled me past Dad and I was screaming but my face was so badly lacerated he did not know it was me.. When I had the cranio sacral treatment in June 2005 I saw all of this from an inward level while crying so so deeply and feeling his pain.. I then crashed on the way home.. which leads me to question what was I carrying for Dad?
Dad rarely bought me gifts apart from a huge game of Lego and some watches after overseas trips but while I was in hospital in 1979 he bought me the book Anna Karenina… it seemed to be some kind of message. I was also thinking so strongly of how sad I feel about my sister being so isolated from the outside world as we enjoyed this morning adventure..
I am home now.. I am not sad.. I am grateful.. At times like this I feel the depth and enormity of it all, so much as well as the presence of love of all of my ancestors surrounding me, then I sit down to write to try to give it a voice.. With Gemini on my mid heaven this way of communicating about my past trauma is very important to me, it has been soul saving!.. At times I wonder if it is self obsessive all of this inward focus and introspection but for today I had the insight that depression makes us focus so much on ourselves and our own perceived limitations and pain it makes it hard to really see anyone else while undergoing it and others may feel abandoned by our emotional absence, just as we were hurt by our parents, and so we can become all we are fighting against or suffering for..
In the end humans beings as well as human experience is complex. This is why lately I am trying more and more to suspend fixed judgments.. Things happen and there may be a learning that needs to come about.. as long as we stay open to deepening then maybe we can also in time, find ways to rise above and gain a far broader perspective on all we witness, endure, suffer for and struggle with in this life.
Emerging From The Dark Night 