Today I think of the agonizing place I was in this time last week in the lead up to my Mum’s fourth anniversary of leaving us and see that as it built to a crescendo there were aspects of Complex PTSD flight I was in at the same time as I was reaching out for valuable connections. And the deep darkness did almost consume me again on Sunday, I felt all of those deeply desperate and suicidal feelings.. Two gifts came on that day, in the form of a call from my Mum’s best friend and a text from one of my nephews.. These connections helped my grief to move which is not always possible when we go into our own versions of lockdown around it. Also being able to just be with my feelings as they rose up helped.
I was thinking today about the passage of Mars as it has now moved into fire and will be opposed by the Moon in Gemini as it meets and passes over the Sun in Sagittarius.. Sagittarius rules the hips and is a fire sign (to do with energy burning up while moving forward.) Moving our hips helps energy in pelvis shift and this is a place in the body where trauma can be held around the bowel of the sacrum. A good long walk really helped me yesterday when my anger and anxiety and grief got triggered by something hurtful.
Yesterday, too, someone shared in a blog on trauma how essential moving is to coping with Complex PTSD and the buried effects of both the abandonment melange as well as the flashbacks.. For some of us we may not be aware we are in flashback or that mix of painful feelings associated with abandonment trauma : grief, fear, anger, disappointment, confusion.. Some of us come to be so traumatized in our bodies we can get frozen and fear moving forward as it may be associated with a sense of dying or being killed off by hostile forces around us in earlier days.. Some of us actually were killed off by forces around is in childhood.
Fear of our feelings seems to be at the root of so much we go through. Fear of re-experiencing old pain that can only be made sense of as we do and stop covering it over with both defenses and the denial that was part of a successful coping strategy to keep us safe (but emotionally confused or in fog) in childhood. I am seeing a couple work through all of this in the novel I am reading that I mentioned in my blog earlier in the week.. The fear in this case revolves around emotional unavailability due to addiction in parents and the later adult child defenses assumed which block intimacy between them and vulnerability.
Anyway allowing grief to be let out means we get to experience a new birth and also the possibility for humor and joy.. We may even be able in time to develop as sense of irony around things we suffered and found super serious in the past.. This is one of the aspects I love about the humor of Ricki Gervais who tackles the complex issue of grief head on in his Netflix series After Life.
Today I am smiling also having a bit of a chuckle at Jasper snoring along side me.. He is more relaxed than I have ever seen him lately… being around my erractic PTSD energy has been tough on my pupster but he is my litmus test for authentically expressed emotions.. If I ever get angry he will not run if it is genuine anger, he comes closer to me.. That dog knows far better than me how to set boundaries.. This is a work in process for me being so strong Neptunian.. but today I am grateful to be learning more and more each day as I make progress along this messy journey of emotional recovery.
Emerging From The Dark Night 