Grief is Universal

Grief and loss are universal experiences so it is very sad to me that we sideline or avoid those in grief or undergoing loss. This happens, I believe, due to both ignorance and fear and because there are those who find these feelings too difficult to face or have not experienced them, thus they lack empathy or decided to toughen up in face of the experience. That said there is a time to accept loss and move out of the resistant phase that can accompany undergoing a loss or grief so huge we find the many layers of it and complex feelings and reactions or defences around it, impossible at the time.

I just had some of my old pain and trauma triggered watching a series were a baby dies in childbirth, it bought back this times I chose to end pregnancies, something I was never proud of and felt great remorse, shame and guilt about for many years. I prayed to my guides after having a huge outpouring of grief and remembering bodily how it felt to have those babies torn from my womb and how sad the hiding was around them all in the years of my active addiction.

Lately I keep wondering if my own past trauma can tend to capture me so completely at times it becomes too intense, then I realise that I find it hard to show myself that sense of loving compassion at times. I was told tonight by my guides that with Uranus now retrograde (it turned backwards on Thursday) and Mars and Mercury also due to turn retrograde soon it will still be a time of clearing out old pain and gaining new insights into how all of that affected my life. All of the planets Jupiter to Pluto are now retrograde and retrogrades make us back track to digest old and new issues since both from the past and for the period of time those planets moving forward crossed critical degrees activating our issue by transit. When Mercury and Mars go retrograde too it will trigger more. Mars will be in Gemini and Mercury moving from the early degrees of Libra back into the final 10 degrees of Virgo.

This period of time September to February is an intense one for me anyway as it begins the trigger times of my near death trauma at the age of 17 and then moves onto Dad’s loss occurring at 22 and my sister’s aneurysm when I was 18. After that I ran away up north in 1981 and tried to come back to my teaching studies but was not allowed and that put me into a frozen addictive state. I never fully got to mature out of my turbulent adolescent passage and seem to rebel a lot as I had my sense of power ripped out all of that repeated at my Uranus opposition to its natal place in my early 40s after my husband left and I had the head trauma coming out of a session to relive the earlier trauma from the outside perspective of my father whose own Venus was so conflicted.. All of us girls carried some of that. In the past, my older brother has called me a ‘loose cannon’ but apparently we had an ancestor on my mother’s Mum’s side who was a rebel and a convict and both my distant cousin and I still have this rebel fighting spirit which is not all bad. This female ancestorof ours was convicted of incendiarism, she set fire to a public building and Uranus as you may know is associated to Promethus who stole fire from the God’s overstepping human limits. Lately I see how over the top I go reactively at times and how in fighting advice I may find myself disadvantaging myself at times. And yet anger and rebellion as well as protest are so often cries from the True or emerging part of a self that may have a long line of ancestral connections. Studying the astrology the repressed cry of Leo the lion in my parents generation (born in the 1920s) then evolved to a Pluto in Leo influence for those siblings of mine born inthe 1940s to 50s and then became a Uranus in Leo theme for those of us born late 1950s to early 1960s. I was given an image of my inner child playign with lion cubs a few weeks ago by inner guidance as well as of my young beloved one dancing in a field with many many butterflies.

On another note, my living sister is now finally out of a long and involved psychiatric stay and has been returned to an aged care facility, for the second time.. This made me so sad at first, on one level as she is still so very young to be put there, but the adverse affect of all of the 19 years of drug intervention and about 6 separate lots of ECT since 2016 has obliterated her short term memory giving her tremors and Parkinsons. However on Thursday night we actually spent over an hour and a half on the phone discussing her journey and past, she wanted to know the year of both Dad and Mums death as well as the circumstances surrounding both. See like me she never actively grieved at all, she just ‘got on with life’ but in time the unfaced burden of so much that was multigenerational led her to breakdown and at no stage in that 19 year process was her past explored or her other suffering family member actively engaged in the process of review. So disappointing and sad. In fact a few weeks ago she was interviewed by one of the head professors at the Black Dog Institute in Sydney and was unable to fill in many of the gaps, its interesting to me that its the traumatic things she can no longer recall, maybe there is some kind of peace in that in some way but to me as a deep feeling person it does tend to strike me as sad. It also makes me angry that at no time was I consulted or brought into help but I did find her ECT so challenging last year and got in so much trouble with her son for protesting about it I did pull back to my South Node Aquarian detached place. I always try to examine my part in things rather than apportion blame, or am endeavouring too, but as my therapist points out that also can mean I put my own needs down as well as hide the pain of being exiled or left out.. but how much of that comes out of a skewed perspective I am still not entirely sure.

On another note I spoke to my older brother a moment ago and he told me had had been with my sisiter in law to Melbourne for the first time in a while to visit her younger sister who now is in care and has no memory and a host of brain issues.. .They lost their mother at a very young age, I believe Pam may only have been 8 or so at that stage and Diana the oldest was about 12. Losses at the age of 12 litter our family and ancestors, Dad was this age when his father died and my great great Grandfather Thomas Trudgeon was only 12 when he lost his own mother.. He is the ancestor that comes through most powerfully to me and was the active alcoholic though I also learned this week that there is a lot of alcoholism on my mother’s father’s side as well. In our family we come out of so much trauma and our griefs all seem to be so interconnected.. Crucial losses going 4 generations back of children seem to have repeated in birth dates co joining death dates as well as death dates repeating very close across those generations.

I find it is getting easier to go gently on myself lately.. I cut my finger very badly early last week after a stressful day of taking my living sister out clothes shopping.. Her anxiety issues we so clear and challenging to manage and its a sign of huge growth she can actually get out with the help and so I wanted to support that. I had to be very patient and not get too frustrated at times with her indecisiveness which I also suffer and Cynthia Baily Rugg points out is such a huge part of anxiety conditions which tend to make us gaslight our true self and needs. The cut happened the next morning and went very deep and bled for 2 hours and I had to sit in therapy for a hour crying and bleeding last Monday, but Uranus statiioning was amping up anxiety issues for me any way.. I made sure I got lot of rest last week after the finger was cut.. Its healing now but by God I had huge spins last week.

Anyway I will close out this update post now which is a catch up post for those still following my journey. It is a while since I wrote much in my blog with so much going on.. I seemed to be unabled to find the words lately and my finger pad is only now healed enough for me to type.. I have also been making sure that Jasper and I get out for long walks in a lovely bush setting close to the lake this week.. I so need that soothing of nature right now.. I have wounds I will always carry deep inside, I never got to have that normal adolescent right of passage nor sexual awakening at all. It left me very fractured inside and I will write a post soon on that fracture that I am still working to reassemble and heal.

But for now I know all that I endured others also endure in their lives.. We all have some form of loss or grief it may not always be that easy to articulate.. And yet we need to, I most certainly know how much it helps me when others share about their own path through challenging life issues.. I am most certainly in good company with others when I share on any day about losses, illness and other traumas I and my extended family have suffered and lived through.