My sister sounded so down again today.. I offered to take her out as she wanted to get some make up but after she had decided no, I wondered if these outings about clothing and make up were hitting the spot, after all the wound she feels after suffering so much trauma and being left is about how she feels deeply on the inside and that cannot be fixed by clothes and make up, But sadly all the violent treatment she has suffered his distorted her body and affected her capacity to feel beautiful and worthy so so deeply that I makes me cry.
I always do my best to respect my sister, to be honest I am not that interested in clothing shopping but I came from a family where my Mum owned boutiques. Sadly some trauma happened over this when my sister in law went to work for my Mum after the first shop opened in our home town in the early 70s.. Apparently my SIL was going around town telling everyone it was her shop and this upset Mum and she must have said something. Now I see it as so sad as my sister in law ended up hating my mother and it’s understandable not to have been treated with tenderness in that wounded place, but how could my mother show benevolent adult empathy when she had not addressed her own wounding? How could she have reacted in a more tender and caring way? She could not and so now I hardly see that side of the family.
My SIL lost her own mother at the age of 12 and was sent to boarding school. When she met my brother she actually came to live with us and when she did Mum told me in later years she kept up a great distance.
“I never felt she wanted to be a part of our family, she was always reading.”
This makes sense to me, knowing her past. I also married the oldest son of a mother with three daughters, I found it hard to be close sometimes due to my own lonely childhood. Many years later when I was struggling my SIL said to me after my brother’s 60th birthday “do yourself a favor and get away from ‘that one'” – she pointed to Mum. “Do what your father did and just get away.” That to me is such a Uranian comment, because if we do the ‘geographical’ what is it that we are really running from? Mum seriously saw the error of her ways in later years and tried to heal it by my sister in law arrogantly said to my living sister “I hate her, she has nothing I WANT!” Sad but perhaps understandable.
As a super Uranian Aquarian with a first house Uranus in Leo, I have sometimes been down on myself for abandoning my start at independence in the UK with my husband from 1999 to late 2001, but lately I also see my return as essential to my soul journey and part of the multigenerational legacy..
Thomas my GG Grand Dad on Mum’s side left his family behind at the age of 37, my father, John, left his family at the age of 18 the same year I was when my older sister fell down and bled from the head and then went into a coma. Nana’s Mum, Eliza Jane (daughter of Thomas) left her traumatized family behind in New Zealand and my older sister went there at the age of 19 when she married the husband who later abandoned her. Her husband, took her back to the land of our ancestor’s migration, New Zealand, after her bleed, and before he did he had arranged for another woman to move in with them. I will never know what my sister endured then.. .My nephew only told me she became psychotic but is it any wonder?
My brother in law then sent her home to Mum and Dad for a supposed ‘holiday’ with a one way ticket in 1983 when she was 37 years of age which is when she made the attempt on her life. At that stage she also lost contact with her four sons aged 15, 14, 8 and 6. she did not see them for many years and one of then refused to invite her to his wedding. The younger of the boys made so many attempts to connect with both his Mum and Grandma as well as me in later years.. In fact my next relationship broke when I decided to stay in town to see Greg and his wife and not go back to travel with my then partner, he was so hurt he broke things off with me after trying to make me choose who mattered more to him. I did not handle this well either.
Seeing that all happened to my older sister who died in 2014 and how broken it made her obviously both traumatized and terrified me. It was not long after that I got into trouble after falling pregnant twice in the following year. Then my father died in January 1985 and my drinking and drug taking was escalating.. I was already going into a lot of blackouts and especially after going off alone overseas where i fell pregnant again on the first anniversary of Dad’s death being left all alone in Switzerland by two close friends who went back to Belgium to find work.
When I think of my struggles from 1985 to the year of sobriety 1993 in which I was lucky enough to meet my ex husband, (from the land of my ancestors UK on holiday here in Oz) I wonder at times, along with my therapist how I survived all of it, especially the hard deeply emotionally barren and lonely Sydney years of addiction 1987 to 1993. During this time, as I have shared, underwent two more terminations, the one I am most ashamed of is the one that happened in the final year of my drinking and was due to a one night stand. I told no one and them I abandoned my naturopathy studies and truly hit my rock bottom in my own annus horribulus, the same years as the Queens’ 1992. I met my husband thankfully the next year in June and got sober that year too.
I thank God for never going down the psychiatric route. I thank God I found AA in December 1993. I would not be here now if not. But is also not an easy path. this one that leads us into the wilderness, one where we get split off and stuck in our heads and one where the adults around us were the source of so much suffering, distress and danger. When I think about it all I wonder how it is that so many of us survive at all. And that we can only do by feeling our way.
In the midst of writing this post my cleaner arrived which is also a big trigger especially at lunch time. My head was going off as he was cleaning my kitchen after I tried to prepare lunch. He has just left but I noticed as soon as he started to run the tap to fill the bucket to wash my floors my body clenched and I was back in the caravan about to be burned by my Mum’s carelessness. I reminded my inner child she actually is safe today. In the midst of the ‘cascade’, I prayed about it and I was told to connect to my body and feelings and this is what came up for me (written in a stream of consciousness).. It makes sense of how and why life so often felt so very dangerous to me.
People are so dangerous you do not know what they are going to do next they may make move and it’s going to either hurt or kill you…..fhe only way to stay safe is to hide or to hold really really still but I get angry at having to hold and so I clench and then I spasm but they even stop me doing that because if I look or act strange they may get angry.
.. before i know it I am being driven out of my mind, it’s hard to know which way to turn to keep safe from them. I only know people are not to be trusted so often they do not see you at all or what you need, they only see what they need or project or wish or want.. I am sick of being used as their container.
This makes sense to me. I am about 17 days off my 39th AA birthday.. Was a packed and amazing and scary 39 years of recovery.
Sadly my sister did not want to go out again today.. she told me she is tired of walking as she always ends up leaving the aged care place and walking alone.. It was a relief in one way and with the cleaner coming would have been too much to manage. I just have to keep trusting and showing up and walking this path of recovery a day at a time.. And lately I use the AA slogans a lot to keep my nervous system in check and myself breathing slowly.
Easy does it
First things first
A day at a time
39 years coming out of multigenerational trauma of over 7 generations may only be a very very miniscule or drop in the vast ocean of evolving emotional time (Neptune) if I think about it… I just have to keep using all of my tools while knowing no life is perfect and so many of us get dealt just so so much.. Sadly there seems to be a lot of lack of understanding at times, because the truth is we only know our lives from the inside, not anyone else’s the most we can truly hope for in life is to be lucky enough to meet some truly compassionate people like my therapist and some good friends along the way.
Emerging From The Dark Night 