I connected with a person last night who was close to my older sister who died in 2014 in the years before her aneurysm and had a chance to observe my place in the family during those Pluto years 1979- till after it happened in February the following year.. He said that the way I spoke to him at that time showed I did not identify with my family on many levels, that I saw their behavior as confused. It came to mind later that, at that time, I, too was confused and became even moreso in the years after my sister came unstuck.
It got me to thinking after our long chat last night of the soul journey that is particularly ours in our family, that we may go through experiences to learn and as an empath it was the compassion I could feel even for behavior that at times was problematic and hurtful to me that most struck me. Was that due to me being ‘different’ in some way? As the one to lift the lid on the addiction and neglect issues reaching back it has been a huge journey in many ways for me. Knowing just what I can and cannot be responsible for in this life.. I think too of when my second sister fell ill with breast cancer she almost suggested me into having it, urging me to go for tests and I was the one there to support her through both her own tests, results and surgery, but of course by the time I had to operated on she had gone away and was not able to be there. I do remember her younger son visiting me with his soon to be wife at the hospital two days after my surgery, they were in town for a short visit before leaving for the land of our ancestors to be married that April.
Sadly at that time (2015 – 16) I did not have a good therapist.. my older sister had died the year before and that was a painful year, at a party my other sister threw for my mother’s 90th, a elaborate ‘performative’ affair, she talked about me behind my back and smeared me to her sons and my older sister’s sons, when I tried to confront her over how wrong she was about me ‘envying’ her, she at first tried to deny it and then said that my other sister’s son had no right to tell me what she said.. Then she said “I always thought that is how you felt” That was like a cold hard slap. How wrong could she have been? How often did she hurt me by her own misattunement and even my her condescending judgement? But then sadly she had to put everything on appearances rather than inner substance and after hearing about that and being in pain over her denying and not even feeling genuinely sorry I went over on my right ankle while trying to run off the anger and anxiety on the spot in my living room one night.. I was not able to walk for about 6 weeks following that injury and of course the breast cancer followed about 15 months later. That all arked up today in twists and surges and a huge fall back to sleep after them around 7 am. Only for me to wake at 9.30 all twisted around more and struggling to stand up.
When I had the massage on Friday it seemed to shift the swelling around that right ankle connected to the mass on my left hand side shoulder around the site of my 2016 surgery… There is a lot of anger and pain inside of me. and then I see that where I got captured in the family was about so much unresolved in both me and the family and yet the truth is that I no longer need to be trapped there any more.. patterns are breaking down. .. That longing to be seen by, as well as connected to those who could not see me is fading now. I see how it gets triggered in the present at times but that that pain can be responded too from within myself from the inner parent to the abandonment feelings of the aching child with tenderness, compassion, understanding and love.. In those past years I did not have sufficient ego strength to not be drawn back in, especially when Mum pulled on me again after my sister had a fall due to over-medication in the years following all of that angst.
Did my soul choose this family, or was I just a continuation of the ancestral line and all of the emotional neglect? Was I the one who would be the so called ‘light bringer’? Or is this that a kind of ego hubris?
My family friend was not aware of the pain both Mum and Dad carried but as an immigrant to Australia he understood Dad’s millionaire project.. In a way my Dad’s empoverished Venus opposing Chiron in Aries and squaring Pluto in Cancer was the catalyst for so much that went down for my older sister.. She also has the cardinal signs strong in her chart.. her aneurysm hit under a transit of Neptune to Mercury but an astrologer had told her in the year before that a critical event would hit her in the following year that would either transform or destroy her.. My family friend told me last night my sister came back to Canberra hell bent on proving herself to my business family.. but it was a project doomed to fail and in the end it was that overwork that made her ill along with lack of self care and over use of both alcohol and drugs as well as cigarettes.. If only she could have loved herself. If only she and her husband had made a life apart from my Dad’s wound and my Mum’s wound, I am sure her life would have been so different.. Sadly she was not the golden child and she would have been far better off out of our family system.. In the end she lived her life as the disabled scapegoat.. but the system failed her in some way and she was not conscious enough to break free.
Good as it can be to take the so called ‘long view’, that Neale Donald Walsh talks of in the previous quote I shared, many of us also get entrapped in family systems and the family fate and on some level I do feel as a culture we also suffer from the absence of connection to the nurturing feminine energy. Technology and industry did bring benefits but they fueled greed and ‘affluenza’ too and when we disconnect from the maternal wisdom in our body organically we do suffer, an awakening around this realization may be a powerful theme of the awakener’s (Uranus) passage through the feminine Venusian ruled sign of Taurus.. in esoteric astrology Venus in Taurus relates to the earthly side of value and nurturing and what we value can affect how well we love, care for, treat, honor and show respect for both the earth of our being/bodies as well as those of others and how connected or disconnected we become from the loving nurturant inner feminine is so important.. In much of our collective a subtle kind of misogeny ran rampant for so many years… Especially during the 60s we saw a rebellion here upsurging. The feminine was trying to find a kind of emergent power after centuries of being over run and devalued by a hubristic power driven disconnnected ego, a hypermasculinized force torn away painfully from its feminine ground.
It is hubris in some ways to feel we have a power we lack at times due to unconscious and unresolved needs that may stretch a long way back.. I have been feeling compassion for both brother in laws of mine demonized by the family, both had massive emotional neglect too, but they lacked the financial power and in time they got hurt in the system and had to leave it.. My attempt to break free in the years 1999 to 2002 also failed in many ways when my own marriage hit the wall.. I lived and learned, often through excruitating agony…and through a crippling bang to the head when transiting Chiron in Aquarius hit my natal Mars Moon Saturn in the sixth house (body) in 2005…so it was I got pulled back home as it was hard to take care of myself after it. I had that time in the ashram after the family I was lodging with in typical narcissistic fashion shamed me for being in recovery and injured, the one friend who would have supported me over there I had to run from due to this.. So many things went down in those painful years.. In many ways I was a rapidly drowning person struggling to resurface as herself while taking many hits due to the unconscious panic driven choices I was making in the aftermath of being flung back so naively and unconsciously into the family ‘soup’.
It would take that head injury and yet other damaged relationship to finally wash me back up in my home town in mid 2011… and its been 10 years now of trying to break free of the family enmeshment, 5 of those in therapy now with a very very helpful therapist.
As Saturn now moves towards 7 degrees of Aquarius it is finally breaking free of its slow square transit to my natal Mars Saturn Moon conjunction which is very much tied up with our maternal collective inheritance of trauma addiction and emotional neglect.. The transit of Saturn is now applying in a challenging square to my natal Neptune in Scorpio at 13 degrees in my third house of siblings, communication and perception. As it does Saturn moves back into the collective square to transiting retrograde Uranus in Taurus now at 13 degrees too. We will all be feeling the growing tension of this squeeze between the two ‘biggies’ rulers of the incoming Aquarian Age.. Something that I noticed lately was that here in Canberra, Australia we went into to lock down when Uranus stationed retrograde around two months ago. And we are coming out of it as Saturn stations direct. Everywhere I look I can see the struggle of these two forces as we attempt to come to terms with a whole lot of new rules and regulations promoted and generated by our fear of dying or being immunologically compromised if we dare to take the risk to interconnect (Saturn in Aquarius brings fear of or restrictions around community interaction and connection).
The truth is our individual souls floats in an interconnected sea of many energies and tides. There is the ocean of family, of nature, of friendly interconnections we make via attunement and resonance.. this latter seems most especially to be very strong as so many of us now share our journeys via social media groups or in an online community. but we also need the connections that come from body to body not just mind to mind. Then there is the inter connection we feel as souls on a collective journey with very deep archetypal themes of longing, loss, fear and love, hope and despair.
The collective mind is how almost externalized on some level via this vast web of intercommunication that is the internet.. The internet has so many positive benefits for us but we must also remain grounded and ‘earthed’ even as we use technology. This is a dynamic balance we all need to find I guess. Too long on the computer and we lose our way to the natural rhythms and especially if we allow these to interfere with our natural winding down sleep cycle.
What we ingest too has affects, not only in terms of foods that feed the brain in both our guts and head but in the type of sustenance we take in as a kind of soul nurture.. In this regard music, arts, painting, craft, walking in nature, cooking, massage, gardening and connecting to the stars and night sky all have a role to play in helping us on our soul journey as we grapple with both carried wounding as well as with deeper spiritual urges within us that lead us to ‘rise above’ as well as break free of old unhealthy patterns and childhood wounds that block formation of a connective, loving ego in service of the loving soul and not just the fear bound shame bound critical super ego.
I seemed to go into bit of a rant in this post which morphed over the hours of writing it. I hope it speaks to others on some level.. For me I want to take the longer view on both my ancestral and family trauma as well as my personal trauma.. I see the part that my own attachment to the old ghosts can play in blocking connection at times but I also see the need for soul care too, in a world often hostile to anything soulful… So it is at this profound time of Mercury retrograde in the balancing sign of Libra that I put everything on the scales of perception and play with exploring all of the many resonances in my life and the lives of friends and family members.. I thank God today for manifold blessings and that in some way she and her angels kept me safe even during those times I was so alone and in the words of the AA Big Book “far from human aid”. I am grateful for the 12 steps, for a mind of inquiry and I no longer abandon my body as much.. It even allowed me an extra 2 hours of sleep earlier today. That, for me, was a much needed gift after the past 10 days of inner work on deep issues of how my own life force so often got slammed back inside or mercilessly derailed. But then, maybe every hard knock just had to happen to force me back to the ground of being that needed me to anchor there before I could form the wings to fly above it all and see it all from a far wider and more deeply integrated perspective.
Emerging From The Dark Night 