Sometimes a person draws close and they open the lid on feelings you hold in silence, grief can be there lodged deep, that never goes away, the memory of the thing that cut and bled that your spirit had to endure of the darkness you were born into and trying to release your spirit from the pain etched deep over those earlier losses that never goes away.
This happened to me today out in nature my being expands as my neighbor draws close and suddenly all the memories of traumatic Christmases past flood out of me.. but the one thing that Roz said to me today, was that she felt it was freeing Mum encouraged me to go overseas after Dad died and my boyfriend ended things.. It was a tough and lonely time in so many ways but was I really alone? After all as soon as I arrived in the English grey and made my way to a hotel I was greeted by someone who knew me and I well remember then all of the special places I went to over the following weeks exploring London, taking tube rides, trips to the Royal Academy to see a Chagall exhibition, tours of the museums, tea in Covent Garden shopping in one of my favorite shops Monsoon and then going to other other huge department stores. Coming from a business and fashion family maybe I was drawn to these places but it was the beautiful things I admired and yet there was silently carried within me the loss the disorientation, the cutting off from roots and the loneliness and all of the buried confusion and feelings.
The second Christmas away was difficult, I endured a third termination of pregnancy and that dark time in Switzerland following.. Then there are the memories of happier Christmases even if the shadow of Dad’s loss lived on over those and we rarely spoke of it.
Today a bright thing was the connection with my lovely neighbor that helped me to unravel some of this, even if in holding back the tears I then had a bit of a spin out, shortly after this my nephew called and it was so helpful to be able to talk over so many things about my family.
He has just been to a consciousness raising weekend with his wife where they did a lot of grief releasing work, he was sharing me about the wounding he suffers at the hands of an older narcissistic sibling who was the one who was so mean to be over the issue with Scott in 2019 and accused me of living inside a vortex, saying that if he had any contact with me he feared for his mental health. Not unusual for me. And today my nephew asked me if my second sister’s son had been upset with me for ‘being too real!’ in my blog. Its hard to say I just try here in some way to sort out my feelings and make sense of things.. I never mean to do harm.
Sadly for most of my life I learned only how to turn against myself, fearful of feeling and expressing myself I got lost, the past few years since starting blogging and pursuing more in depth therapy have been an attempt to turn this around. I forgot to acknowledge how special I am and how caught up I got in a very damaged family with misplaced values, but Venus now moving back is showing me deeper and deeper levels of where my father and mothers’ wounds lay. Sadly they pursued the material pathway feeling that if only they could build an empire things would be okay, they could be safe and make a good life for their kids but by working too hard and valuing externals they lost the way. Still there is the realization dawning of how I got lost in this way of living and confused about myself too in the midst of it.. Action and agency was often cut off especially around my education after my accident and eldest sister’s illness and breakdown derailed my development in so many ways.
I no longer wish for my life to be externally referenced. There is a lot I feel I am now becoming willing to give away so that I can live a more meaningful life, there is a lot more I am still learning about myself and my family and the values that make most sense for me that I wish to live by and orient my life around.
It was lovely too today to hear of the creativity passed down and carried on from my older sister who came to such grief and got cut down in her prime, her granddaughter carries all of this which is wonderful to hear, she is dying her own textiles using natural ingredients, making jewelry and selling it at the markets.
Who knows what our soul chooses when we are born into the families that we are.. Its up to each of us to make our way out of that carried multi-generational pain.. For me it is only happening slowly.
I had a very long chat with my grandmother’s niece yesterday. Julie is the one who tracked so much of our ancestral history and has had to work through her own chemical imbalances and emotional issues from being raised by adult children of alcoholics.. She has been taking care of her own mother now for some years who remains trapped in a state of senile dementia where she has reverted to the traumatised young girl rejected, devalued and unloved by her father who always told her he wished she would disappear. It was heartbreaking yesterday to hear Julie tell me how her Mum cries out to her in the night and often asks her “do you love me?” Julie always says “yes Mum I love you very much” to which her mother replies “no you don’t, no one loves me” showing the truth we can not hide that if we were not really valued and wanted and loved we cannot feel that and do not have it to give. Sadly Julie’s older sister also rejected her some years ago telling her “you could become acceptable to me if you only changed into being someone else” to which Julie replied “but if I try to change into someone else to suit you and then I have to do that with the people at work and others, how am I ever going to know how to be ?”
But sadly I identify with that, with the messages so deep rooted of being ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ in some way. How sad.. That is why today after managing to rise, bathe, water the plants, feed Jasper and have a late breakfast I took some gentle time to lie down quietly on the bed, connect to myself inwardly and hold my body in the sore places and told my inner child how much she is loved and allowed the tears and memories and longing to flow. I felt then the enormous legacy of pain I carry especially around the left side of my body that went weak in that dream and is the site of my 2016 surgery for the cancer diagnoses around the anniversary of my Dad’s death. I have to do it, this holding, I have to honor this, my herstory for if I do not if I loose touch with the child that feels and knows and longs and hopes what else is there? And I did try to call my living sister but, of course, she did not pick up.. At least I tried.
At the same time I must honor the tough stuff and give voice to it here, much as others prefer me to put on a happy face, sometimes at this time of year the old tough stuff just hurts and yet with the allowing and releasing of the hurt sunshine does come again, feelings of peace do come again, a safe home in my body does make its presence felt again.
While editing this a moment ago by brother called what an avalanche of emotion. They only live around the corner, not my brother but his oldest son and they are having a huge family Christmas with all of the trappings, he was going into detail about the food and I have only just managed to digest a smoothie and some cereal. Anyway after the call I cried my eyes out. this is my life alone with Jasper still trying to grow into my own skin and rise each day still battling so hard not to be taken down by the huge impact of that killer ancestral wave of buried feeling. And it was so intense then I put a call through to crisis support, the lady I got was from the UK and so soft and gentle, all I could do during the first part of the call was cry and feel the pain in my body. The simple words she said “I hear your pain” meant the world to me, she did not suggest I shut it down she allowed the words to come when they could and she allowed me to pour it out.. I really really needed to do that today with someone, no man or woman is an island and I even said during the call “we need our family” something that is not always easy to admit when the things they do can hurt and we become split off.
The expression used by astrologer Melanie Reinhardt ; “keeping the heart open in hell” for Venus retrograde comes to mind as I re-edit this in the emotional hour after that precious call from my brother.
Emerging From The Dark Night 