Healing

My sister called yesterday and we spoke again today, I cannot explain how unbelievably happy it made me, this is the first time she has reached out in months and despite the fact there are huge gaps in her memory its wonderful to share a deeper connection to our past. Despite the fact she thinks she is not doing well I sense signs of growth.

The one thing I value and appreciate about her so much is that she keeps an open mind and does not judge and she also seems to be softening so much. I feel so sad they used drugs and shock on someone hit as a child but who knows if, as my angels told me last year after telling me to step back from my sense of outrage, if it is not all part of her healing and mine too!

I was in the middle of writing a longer post on invalidation and emotional neglect trauma yesterday when she called but I did not complete it. At about 4 am she sent me such beautiful photos of her youngest grand daughter as well as one of us both taken in 2020 when I took her out to her favorite Thai place for her 66th birthday.

Today I am both sad and grateful. Sad I suffered so much in an emotionally disconnected family, but grateful I arrested my downward spiral in addiction. Sadly my trauma kept me intellectualising and emotionally distancing/dissociated for many years, if the inner critic wasn’t tearing me to shreds the outer critic was only seeing the bad in others who hurt me. Watching some recent videos on emotional maturity is also highlighting that being not attuned to emotionally makes it more difficult for us to handle our emotions well.

It also takes so much sadness, anger and pain to burst through the shame and dualism on this journey to pierce through to the deeper reality that we all struggle and suffer in this life in different and similar ways. No one on earth has a magical formula for healing, no one is perfect, we all make errors and mistakes, no one has a license on perfection. Only by keeping our hearts open and our negative fear inducing egos in check can we to find the courage to reach out to embrace and connect to our fellow human beings in love. That only becomes possible once we have found a way to also embrace ourselves in our most vulnerable and wounded parts.