There seems to be a lot of grief pouring out of me today from my inner child.. Today as I looked at my books I thought of how alone I felt as a child with no one close to explain much to me of things I wondered about and of how, in this situation books (as well as my own poems and journal writing) became both a kind of refuge as well as a way of learning about things I intuited..
When the adults around you are not responding to you as you need it is tough, there is no where really to go with the complex feelings and when a beloved older sister marries and moves away that creates a huge hole, but the thing was for me after my sister came back from New Zealand when I was older she was not really the best role model she was drinking a lot and had OCD in terms of house cleaning just like my Mum. She would also bond with me when I was in my early teens by giving me alcohol and that was not a good thing boundary wise..
I am sure my parents were not aware of this (they never paid attention anyway to anything but discipline and appearances) but the sad thing was Dad also encouraged us to drink, its just what I saw in my home, no one was feeling or talking about the tough stuff. Life all about working hard and then having a few drinks to wind down in the evening, the only problem being that when the traumatic things started to happen and particularly following my accident and long stint in hospital where I was given a lot of pain killers when I came and after Judith’s aneurysm I really started to use booze as an unhealthy coping mechanism.. Then even later in those confused years as I tried to find my way into the world and Dad was so harsh on me, shutting down my academic studies I really started to turn more to drugs and also promiscuity.. Especially during that painful year he forced me into secretarial studies..
Not long after that my first emotionally avoidant boyfriend who was also an addict entered the picture.. As I look back there was no real intimacy between us, I was not capable of it having never been attuned to and so we connected primarily though ideas, drugs and sex… And then I fell pregnant twice something I could not share with my parents. Not long after this Dad feel very ill with cancer and was soon taken.. Add to this my sister’s breakdown, psychosis and then abandonment and it was such a dark, dark, dark time that I never really got to know about until all of these years later since all during it and up to 8 years coming out of it I was continuing to use alcohol to numb myself.
I see so clearly with all the reading, inner work as well as therapy lately that the soil I grew out of had no nutrition much. That ground was fueled by both of my parent’s emotional neglect, father loss and poverty so what ever material accoutrements came they were covering over deep wounds and it would be all of us siblings that carried it but as the youngest I became at first maybe the first overt sign of all the dysfunction as well as my older sister.
Today I woke as if from a three and a half year dream.. Somehow all the money I saved I have given away to the point I now am begging for money left to me I may not even ever get.. It is a shock to wake from this kind of dissociation but in some way the fact that love became so often associated with money in my family and considering my Dad’s wound I carried too it all makes some kind of sense.
Today I just said the serenity prayer over and over again, especially the part : “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” There is a loving voice there now of angels or God or something good telling me I did the best I could. I was never seen in my family by my Mum or Dad, I was never helped in the right ways. Mum honestly did try in later years but in the end due to her emotional unavailability and hard line attitude at times I was pushing her away. Often when we did get close she pushed me into things I chose not because they were WHAT I NEEDED BUT BECAUSE THEY WERE THE THINGS I LEARNED AND WAS TOLD I NEEDED.. OR THAT SHE OR MY FAMILY LED ME TO BELIEVE I NEEDED. The things I really needed, love, affection, support, wisdom and emotional understanding never came. Lately I am working super hard to birth them in myself.
I now see I was very lost in so many ways, led by the inner child still looking outside of herself, still not fully in touch with her real and true self and this I think is where anger and grief serve such a powerful purpose in our recovery for they are the inner fires and nourishers that help us to know what it is most touches, feeds or hurt our soul…Maybe all of these feelings and revelations coming to light today are about the shift into fire. Leo energy helps us to cut through some of the FOG. The FOG of fear, obligation and guilt seem to have driven me for years in so many unconscious ways.
It occurs to me while writing that over the next ten days or so the Sun in Leo will also be beginning to form a trine with Chiron now retrograde in Aries.. I read something last night about the underground spring of our valid life purpose and energy, that to me is what Aries and Mars are.. the source of our true Self is represented by the Sun but without a healthy Mars to fight for what we need we do get so lost or waylaid on this path of individuation.
For me what i am feeling today is that from the time of that accident I started to split off from feeling inside my body and from feeling safe in the world.. Like it got to the point where I could not even know after the second accident when I was hungry or needed to eat or even go to the toilet.. Waking up and getting to be able to move became almost impossible and this reflected the fact I pushed my self away and out and as far from human relationships as possible.. Its why I ended up smashed up on the other side of the world 16 years ago and why I eventually ended up in an ashram with so many other lost and wounded people seeking so confusedly the way ‘home’.
Finding my true self, knowing my true self, loving my true self that is taking so much time.. Getting to see the false bargains driven my unresolved childhood needs has been tough and it has cost a lot.. Kat my therapist often says to me “Deb, whatever happens with Scott and however much money learning this lesson costs, it if leads to your emotional freedom it will be well worth it” and how grateful am I for a therapist who is not a controller, who is so genuine and able to let my inner process unravel and play out through all of its twists and bends and hiccups and contortions. When I look back to other therapists I see how they failed not really being right for me but that too was all a part of my path.
Today as my body went through all its shock uncoiling to wake after a day I had a lovely outing with my Mum’s best friend, Betty I thought of that second last night before Mum died, of how hard she was struggling to stand and get out of that horrible hospital where my sister put her.. I wish I had taken her home to care for but I also see that would have been too much by the next day the fuckers had her so drugged up and in any case she had told me several times she was ready to go. I did not hang around the hospital bed for those final 8 hours my brother and sister spent there.. I left to live my life.. I was with her so so many times before and we had our final night two nights before she passed a night on which we said all of the goodbyes we needed to say.. She was not a nurturing Mum, she hurt me a lot as she was hurt and failed to be nurtured herself but she tried her best.. and this is what evolution is, we are raised by wounded parents and it is our task to get to know the nature of that wounding so we can answer not with anger and hatred but with deepening understanding and love.
I carry these wounds,you carry these wounds, and as Henri Nouwen says in his book on mourning it is though embracing the wounds as well as our human messiness and pain that we deepen into our humanity. Through opening and integrating the wounds we also get to know that part of us DOES REMAIN WHOLE AND UNWOUNDED DEEP WITHIN US TOO. THE PART THAT CAN ENLARGE TO CONTAIN THE WOUND AND MESS AND GIVE IT SPACE SO WE CAN EVOLVE IN NEW DIRECTIONS CARRYING WITH US NEW UNDERSTANDING INTO THE NATURE OF THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE. The wound may always remain but through it we can deepen and grow in empathy and understanding, depending upon the attitude of acceptance we take..
Chiron the wounded healer shows us the wound is the doorway through not only suffering but also leading to compassion and wisdom……. it may also be the thing that helps us most connect to our brothers and sisters in meaningful ways.. since we share so much in common in our wounding.. The point is can we be open and vulnerable or do we need to keep putting on the mask or covering the suffering over with filters, distractions and smokesceens?
Anita Moorjani speaks a lot lately about the growing empath/narcissist divide in our world.. she also speaks about it as the divide between empathic and predatory consciousness.. I have not read her new book on sensitivity and strength yet, it is on order but I get the message.. Often in our society sensitivity is seen as weakness.. I just watched the movie Flipped and it is about this, how sensitive open loving individuals are often judged or seen as though they are crazy bad or wrong in some way.. In the movie the young boy at the heart of the story wises up in time to see the truth.. It seems to me we get wounded through our sensitivity in this society. Negative narcissism convinces us to erect protective defenses that may in time calcify or imprison us.. But love has the power to penetrate these, love for our selves, love for our brothers and sisters, even as wounded, that said evil predatory consciousness is real…it truly does exist in our society.. Such a consciousness does not see the earth as embodied with spirit, it will use and exploit its resources without replenishment only for the glorification of power or ego and such a consciousness is driven by an emotional/sensitivity shut down that will not allow it to open to nor recognise implicit preciousness and human vulnerability..
When we desensitize our emotions and bodies then it becomes easier to be a blind consumer/ predator.. then we are just fueled by hungers and do not think of what we have and must give back to life, animals, other humans and to nature.. We do not recognise the sacredness or sanctity of this precious earth.. We no longer become custodians but rapists.. and then we also lose touch with the revelation of God in and through humans and matter, not as a lofty, dissociated, transcendent and transpersonal force but as an incarnated and fully embodied earthly one.
Emerging From The Dark Night 