I became so emotional in therapy rhis morning reading Wilfred Owen’s poem about fire and iron and a lamb to the slaughter, it was as if all of the suffering of those young men in the trenches entered me, many of them boys and then it occurred to me that I nearly died at the age of 17 which was the age my great grandfather was when he was in his first year of active service in the trenches. So so sad that my mother carried the emptiness of his loss in such crippling emotional neglect she tried with every effort of will to rise out of in her life.
Mum only found my great grandfather John James Brander’s war records quite late in her life, around the year 2008 when she went to the Australian War Memorial to research them with my godmother whose father fought in the Light Horse Brigade. Just to think, too, of what those horses endured in the midst of battle and war, magnificent wild animals beloved to the Goddess makes me sad too, it was portrayed so powerfully in the 2012 movie War Horse.
I wondered at the grief that made me stop reading due to being so overcome my entire axis spun in therapy today.. In a way those words fire and iron speak to the rise of technology and machines that could be used to hurt, maim and kill. the notion, too, of a father leading his son to a sacrifice speaks of how the empires used their young sons as fodder.
Kat is used to these forms of attacks by body undergoes while sharing in her rooms and moves her chair out of the way on its casters while they go on.. We watched together that segment of the movie I shared in my latest blog where Owen and Sassoon meet. I identified with the soft, gentleness of Owen, that would dovetail with the fact he was a Sun sign Pisces which is where my Chiron is placed and my living sister whose softness was covered over with a bullying brusqueness due to her harsh childhood is a double Pisces as well with both Sun and Venus challenged by Mars in Sagittarius which speaks of a fiery cutting off from that soft empathy in some way.. Dad had Mars in Sag at the same degree.
Perhaps it is that wound, occurring to me at the age of 17 that marked me out as different through undergoing a massive full body trauma that then repeated again in 2005 at the age of 42 when my natal Mars was being triggered by Chiron – the planet of wounding and healing.. Such a descent marks one out to become wise due to suffering and then enables them to help others from out of that incurable wound.
In the movie Regeneration, scenes showing that soldier strapped to a chair with a leather headdress on him today reminded of the contraption I had to wear for over a year in 1978 that fit with a bit into my braces. This had eyelets on each side of the straps that led down from the cap like covering that attached it to the bit locked in my teeth at the back.. I had to sleep in that thing night after night and it made my teeth ache. with the most screaming pain. Was it any wonder I crashed within a few weeks of my braces coming off and blew out two and a half front teeth while cutting my tongue in half. At times I feel all of that twisting and unbinding in my tissues at night when I wake and hold to the walls of the toilet to steady myself, it really is a kind of nightmare that no one outside of me can fathom or even knows about but my ex who punished me for it by making me sleep in another room.
A lot of guilt came up today too for me not ‘saving’ my sister 4 or so painful months ago from that second round of ECT.. I had the scream about it that I unleashed in the email to my brother and nephew but of course it did not go down well.. My brother has only ever shamed me, he has not AT ANY TIME SHOWN ME A THREAD OF EMPATHY AND THE SAME FOR HIS HORRIBLE WIFE WHO IS JUST SO MEAN AND UNKIND AND AS OFTEN TREATED ME LIKE AN INSECT OR LEPER.. ITS NO FUN AT ALL CARRYING THE FAMILY SHADOW.
I finally had the huge breakthrough in therapy today of how much I REALLY SUFFERED AND IT PUTS LIE TO THE FACT OF BEING TOLD I SHOULD STOP BEING FULL OF SELF PITY BY THOSE WHO NEVER SUFFERED A SHRED OF WHAT I HAVE.. I always just kept trying harder and harder and each painful knock and invalidation that came my way hurt.. I value the kindness of Dont Lose Hope Who said today I was already going through too much to help my sister. That seems true and I have fought for her at times even when she was so so unkind to me in those years after Jonathan left and honestly her meanness did a lot to contribute to that later painful head injury. She and my mother both loved the thuggery of football (and here I am talking about the brutal and dangerous Rugby form that results in so many head injuries,) but come to think of it Mum once told me in later years that one time my Nana was so angry with her she hit her head against the wall. Mum always forgave her knowing she was a single mother under so much pressure. Similar abuse then obviously got enacted on my sister who got pushed into a cupboard by Mum broke her wrists and was told she was ‘fine’ until she found it impossible to pick up a glass without dropping it.. She often took the wooden spoon to my nephews bum so an angry email about the ECT was obviously going to be misunderstood since I do not think he has been vulnerable enough to face the roots of his own trauma!
I also acknowledge today that genuine sadness over all of that loss of exquisitely soft and tender young men such as Owen and my grandfather is not a crime and it takes a lot of strength to give a voice to it our culture that is so numb and superficial in its ways. I now cannot bear to hear people going on and on about narcissism for God’s sake have they any idea of what those people went through? At the same time we have to give these robotic people who hang onto a lofty superiority a wide berth when we are healing from trauma. So many would prefer to take flight and I am working on a post about that tendency which comes from some writing by Jay Griffith I have been reading over the weekend.. We take refuge in the air due to our fear of reality and it takes a brave person to face that suffering in a body, that said there is as time to give it back and also to give it a voice. That is what I am committed to do in my blog. It is what I now see as my major life purpose.. Surely I was not put through all of this for nothing and am strong to have survived and brave to for sharing about it.
Emerging From The Dark Night 