The abandonment pain that a lot of us with multi-generational trauma now manifesting as Complex PTSD have to hold can at times be enormous. This was bought to mind this morning after reading two very moving posts by trauma survivors doing inner child and shadow work.. One had expressed pain over their relationship to their father which I really understood that had sparked by his death,their father had been abusive and abandoning in their life..
I share often that this time of year leading to my father’s illness and diagnosis with cancer back in 1984 was painful for me and that it took me another 9 years to get sober and then even more years to begin to understand not only that impact but his overall impact upon my life too, which was so often buried and silent (Sun square to Neptune, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and the South Node in my chart).
In the dark years of my descent into and out of addiction and trauma the longing I so deeply and unconsciously held to be seen and loved by him held inside my body and subconscious to be seen was initially manifesting in a lot of promiscuity.. I could not even be aware in those painful years 1986 to 1993 how it would manifest.. I do count myself lucky that around the 9th anniversary of his death, I met and married someone who gave me an opportunity to be connected enough in a positive way to at last begin to reach out and trust. I was lucky to get sober due to that even if it was I who made that choice, the support of my husband really helped me then. Prior to that in the darkest most painful years 1990 to 1992 I was enacting so much damage in and through my addiction.
Last night I was watching a program where a woman with abandonment issues ran while trying to apply for a job that asked her to list her prior felonies or convictions.. this reminded me that a year or two after I got sober, met and married Jonathan I had to come clean with a new boss about a drink driving conviction I got in that very painful second last year of my drinking.. Luckily this boss was a praticising Buddhist and he expressed admiration for my level of honesty in coming clean about the conviction.. I never will forget his words about me ‘burning up old karma’, I ended up getting the job as a sales rep for an alternative bookshop (which allowed me my first use of a car in many years) after I had a short period unemployed after getting sober in 1993.. That then, in time led me to my dream job in an alternative bookshop at 3 years of sobriety and also enabled me to start studying aromatherapy part time, when the same boss allowed me to reduce 5 working days to 4 if I was able to fulfill other commitments to the job.
All this goes to show that my shame over not being able to so called ‘cut it in the real world’ is unfounded as my therapist points out but the truth was my emotional work all lay in the future as it started to errupt at about 6 years of sobriety.
My fathering wound does lay deep, its probably what made me lend nearly all of my savings and some of my inheritance to Scott on the promise of him coming to love and support me. I know now deep down that the inner emotional support work I have to do is mainly internal, I cannot bequeath it outside of myself and yet the loneliness I was experiencing in those four months after Mum died on the back of so much more trauma in December 2017 led me to look at least for someone.. Also being kinder to me means its not at all healthy for me to shame myself for inner child wounds I carried from parental neglect passed down. When I lash out at Scott lately over money that is not the true issue, just that my parents were so busy trying to make it financially in order to give us a more secure future as depression survivors that they so often left me alone, just as they had to be alone as kids.. Why be angry at them? Well it hurts when we do not have our parents time and attention, that is just a fact and so our anger is legitimate as part of the wound. and that anger is best worked through in therapy. At the same time being able to have those very huge feelings of rage, anger and grief seems to be ultimately freeing, it helps us to forgive in some way parents who did the best they could with what they had been given even if it was woefully and all so painfully inadequate.. In time we begin to see from a more adult perspective that even though it was not entirely their fault that they could not both be more present and conscious..it did have a very huge impact, one only we can work in the present to help ourselves transform in some way.
It was interesting to see yesterday that when I did the research on Jung’s outer planet transit during those years of breakdown and inner work retreat that spanned 1914 to 1922 or so I also researched the transits of my accident which occurred on that September weekend in 1979. I discovered that on that weekend transiting Venus in Virgo was aspecting transiting Neptune in Sagittarius.. I have these two in square in my own chart Venus is in Aquarius and Neptune is in Scorpio for me, but Dad had Venus natally in Libra opposing the planet of wounding, Chiron in Aries with both in square to natal Pluto in Cancer.. I always felt Dad’s wound of self value (Venus opposite Chiron and square to Pluto) drove him and was a huge driving factor in the way my older sister who came to grief due to addiction and over work ended up playing out the family karma.. Mum carried a wound of drivenness to due to abject neglect and poverty in her childhood that none of us could have been fully conscious of. In her chart my sister Judity had these planets of his on top of or aspecting her own and they also tie back to my mother’s great grandfather who had to leave Cornwall due to material survival issues and carried so much grief over not only the loss of his mother, but the previous generational losses which were significant.
Sadly due to my sister’s desire to be seen by my Dad (who was involved in a business with her older brother) she overworked and came to grief in the following year 1980 after my accident.. And so it was no one was there for me when I needed them and that also on some level must have made me feel I had nothing much of value or worth inside either. And then there was the pain (Neptune square to Venus) of seeing her shattered and then Dad die 5 years later after cancer took him, ravaging his insides. And then to be sent overseas carrying all that from 1985 to 1987 was just so so much to handle.
No wonder I get so angry at times, even if it was no one’s fault what happened to us and how we suffered at times feels just so so unfair and yet it happened, nothing about it can be changed and it invariably rears its head at this time of year.
An interesting fact now occurring astrologically and due to be with us for some months due to Venus due to station retrograde in Capricorn in about 3 weeks time is the over those next weeks Venus will be moving closer and closer to a conjunction with transiting Pluto at 25 degrees of Capricorn.. Venus will make the first exact conjunction with Capricorn on the 11th of December, 7 days before it turns retrograde on the 18/19th at 26 degrees of the sign.. It will then move backwards for the following six weeks before turning direct on 29th of January at 11 degrees of the sign.. It will then begin hitting Pluto again around the final weeks of February in terms of being in orb and being affected by it although the second conjunction of Venus and Capricorn will not take place until the 3rd of March.. This is a very long time for us to be getting deeper insights into both our values and the way we relate to others in relationship due to hidden or underground power dynamics (Pluto) or with carried multi-generational trauma (Venus Pluto).
A Venus Pluto transit often sees power struggles or emotional turmoil as we wrestle with issues from the past rearing their heads in relationships (Venus) and in how we relate to our hidden shadow parts as well in relationship, so my feeling is that we are going to understand ourselves and others a lot better coming out of this if we are prepared to do the inner work and holding as well as understand how and why and what we or others may be projecting or playing out it current power and relating dynamics that give us insight into our selves and our past.
Emerging From The Dark Night 