To be held tenderly, releasing my ancestral burdens

I am grieving a lot today the absence of softness, kindness and tenderness in my life growing up and in how I treated myself when shut down. I listened to a really interesting video on spirituality and near death experiences on Friday night, parts of it rocked me, showing each word we say and action taken or received has long lasting consequences, karma if you will. It talks about the barbaric age we are coming out of collectively at present, it’s why I believe we need more compassion around subjects like narcissism, it’s the cold hard brutality of my ancestors past that is with me a lot lately, and spirit makes it clear to John Suich, who over the years has interviewed over 2,000 people who have experienced NDEs, that we are evolving out of this period now, with all of its toxic aspects intensifying and revealing themselves, and most importantly that any action of love has far more power than those taken in fear. That said this reminds me how powerful are the ideas and words spoken to us when young which act to sever us from love, tenderness, compassion and self love, leading so many of us to self abandon or betray or self devalue (on the empathy end) or do this to others as a response (negative narcissistic end of the self love spectrum.)

I grieve alot at times for how, separate I kept myself from life from 2002 onwards, I battled so much but not having had many experiences of kindness it was hard to trust in the world, to feel safe, and that makes sense to me when the world I was living in seemed so harsh and barren at times.. often it seemed I had to struggle so hard while not feeling at all like I fitted in. I now understand a lot more of the how and why of getting separated from my inner self, although that inner self with a lot of inner knowing had so much wisdom. At heart, I am a very soft empath , but that sensitivity and softness was not always valued, And so in the words of highly sensitive person therapist, Elaine Aron, I came to carry a strong sense of a devalued self, which is what was rising up in me last Thursday.

At times lately I still feel like the solitary mountain goat in the wilderness, then a glimpse of a happy, more connected state of being makes itself apparent, moments like the other day after my therapy session when I legged it out for a longer neighborhood walk with Jasper and we connected with my young neighbors. Looking into the bright eyes of these beautiful kids, with so much to offer life I feel great hope, if they are being given help and life to blossom. Zane and Marianne seem to have a loving, gentle Mum to home school them and encourage their creative pursuits and we two had the best chat about grief and new starts and the way our culture shuts feelings down. How I wish I had had that kind of parent, but my parents sadly could not provide what I needed most. Now it’s left up to me to do the best repair I can around this, recognizing I can’t blame Mum or Dad for the hard line way they were, because, lets face it, neither of them knew much tenderness, possibly my father more so than Mum but he still came down so hard on me after I struggled following both my accident and Judy’s hemorrhage. .

Looking at how my family is today, none of my siblings self nurture they have a legacy burden of hard work, no rest, bop til you drop, or use booze or pharmaceutical drugs to soothe themselves or slow down. Seeing the state of my living sister lately coming out of over 7 years of psychiatric barbarism is a fucking shock, like witnessing a night mare, seeing someone with her inner child pushed in and down into a huge tummy. .Her spinal column is also completely collapsed. Trying to breathe light, life and love into her at times gets so exhausting and so I have pulled back again. She has to bear the consequences now of choices she has made in ignorance. But at times I do feel the way I detached from her due to fear of hurt may have made it harder for her.. That is the way it goes with me, I truly do try to look for my part in things.

For myself it’s good to rest today, to take it slower I push myself mercilessly too and do not even realise it.. the inner critic hits me around and reading about the legacy burden in Jay Early’s book on the inner critic is helping me to see how each of us in the family carry that.. We never feel we can depend on anyone and so we all tend to tough it out and go it alone.

Today I am self nurturing.. I had a lovely bath and some fruit and yoghurt as my body told me its in need of hydration at the moment. I also had a listen to this beautiful meditation on the angels and ancestral healing.

I love the concept of how each element is ruled over by one of the major archangels, Raphael (air). Michael (fire), Gabriel (water), and Uriel (earth). I will also draw the light in so that I do not feel myself to be in such a barren stony place as I see how I create that at times by the way I treat myself pushing myself just as my ancestors had to do.. I do not need to hold onto that heavy legacy burden. As Jay Earley reminds me, I can tune into my body to see where the trauma or charge is held and do the breathing work to release it while seeing it burned by fire, dissolved in water, buried in the earth, or blowing away on the wind (air). There is always a way to transform hat hurts when we can realise what that hurt is and honor the truth while not remaining stuck. And I no longer need to beat my own inner child about with harsh thoughts or words. I can let he be, let her breathe and set her free to live, free of this terrible weight of past burdens she has carried. And I can also be really tender with her today, to ensure she feels safe, but also encourage her to be strong, to take the risk to show up in the world more fully as my true self.