After one very painful emotional visit to the bedside of my older sister in her care home before she died in 2014 my ex partner, Phil said to me “you better watch out you don’t end up like that!”. It was painful as Jude would wail and cry as I sat with her holding her hand trying to give her comfort in the home where all they did was medicate her. In the end she could not stand alone, she needed to be lifted to go to the toilet and she was in nappies..
It makes so much sense to me now knowing the ancestral history that she could not be supported or mothered just as our mother was not and in later years believe me my mother did all to see she had the right care but sadly due to her own issues with lack in childhood she also denied her material things that would have made things happier for her claiming when she wanted them she was “on a high” I have seen my niece accused of this and my other sister who has now not been out of psychiatric care for yearly a year, the longest period since her frequent incacerations started in around 2011 after we both moved back ‘home’ following the end of both of our marriages.
Phil could not stand the emotions but I get it, my own paralysis and fawn C PTSD trauma has made it, at times, and especially lately as I try to navigate and process and unwind this ancestral multi generational trauma so confusing and difficult and it now makes more sense to me how emotions get mixed up and we lose our power and ways of expressing it well to find both freedom and self respect.
On that note I am making sure I get out at around 9 am and force myself into present time to go walking as icy as it is at the moment after that last chiropractic SOT treatment on Friday that evoked huge spirals..
When I crashed and fell of the bike after that June cranio sacral session in 2005 on the first annivesary of my husband leaving which I underwent with my then therapist I was literally flung head over heels and the replays at night and when I have my spins : they are not just panic attacks, they have to do with birth trauma and lots of astrological connections but that is all far too complex to go into here and I am still trying to make sense of it.
I had a weeks break from therapy last week and I got spun into Jackson’s money issues big time forking out even more money to supposedly get this ‘parcel’ of his here. My second cousin was in constant contact as she was so worried..I collapsed into bed a couple of time around 3 pm on the weekend and it was hard to stand up.. talking to her in some ways helped.
The truth is I have been so isolated but therapy and particularly my poetry speak of feelings that then are enabled to flow out of me when I share them. I find I gain that insight and so, even though it was a push to drive there yesterday I did manage it. But I came home to a dog in such a terrible state and had a major spin out after it. Simon tends to let him run off lead in a patch of bush with so much dirt and horrible burrs that due to the nature of Jasper’s hairy cavallier paws get stuck and embedded so deeply. I was so so so distressed yesterday when I got home to find him I was screaming and crying and blaming therapy.. I even wrote an angry post agout it that i then took down and I lost my phone and could not find it back as I composed a text to Kat saying I was going to stop therapy.. That did not come out of a rational place..
What we are currently exploring in therapy is how I panic when there is any form of mess and things are not ‘perfect’ as they should be in Mum’s eyes and then blame and hate on myself. But then carrying all of that comes back to the fact I believe that Mum had to struggle so hard to be seen as a child and only felt she could be loved if she kept things clean and in control. Nana often punished her as she was being forced to clean things up. I have stopped her mid OCD cleaning frenzy to then see her cry in frustration and desperation with all of those fevered and frenzied emotions of a young child she had to bury when then she was also used as a cleaner for the Nuns for punishment for not doing her homework. She had no father to give guidelines and love she came home each day to an empty house due to Nana having no widows pension following the lost of my granddad due to war injuries.. Fucking Nuns…
Kudos to Mum, she told me she never blamed Nana for hitting her.. “it was just frustration” she said. I wish I could have had that compassion to know that about the way Mum was with us…but the psychotic core or splinters of that live in me and were being screamed out in therapy in Kat’s rooms yesterday she let me rise and spin and cough and splutter..
At times i feel I am not making progress but healing all of this multi generational stuff is huge work.. As the overt diagnosed addict I seemed to carry it but addiction was behind my older sister’s bleed at 34 and her subsequent psychotic breakdowns leading to abandonment by her ex husband.. Phil could only be disdainful and angry about that with me.. But he did have a point If I do not want to end up unable to walk and shitting nappies I really do have to do as much work as I can on learning more about how to truly help myself, love myself and continue to externalize my own deep carried trauma without shame For hearing that angry voice in therapy yesterday telling me I am a worthless piece of shit was so so painful and scarey it really just IS NOT TRUE..
Emerging From The Dark Night 