Grieving the imperfection of life : today’s reflections

It has been a bit hard to breathe this morning, having those angry feelings towards someone and after a therapy session yesterday in which it became clear anger is not something my inner critic easily allows me. Taking wisdom from my anger, validating it, while not making it hurt my own body from being so deeply internalised, well, it is just not something I find it easy to do. I struggled with it over past days, with much pain falling to a bodily level, and yet what came to me when I was guided to a reading on the imperfection of relationships is that each of us in life has flaws and sometimes disappoints others out of our own blind spots or wounding.. Not everyone is capable of the necessary empathy. None of us is completely perfect and each of us try in our own faltering way to live and that often sets us at odds with others. If we have struggled a lot in our life in trying to break free to be true to our real feelings and they then end up coming out sideways we may often be judged by others. Often such treatment can really lance our heart deeply, especially when we feel we are trying as hard as we possibly can to go forward after many losses, frustrations or denials as young kids.. I was particularly interested to watch last night an episode in The Crown which showed Princess Margaret struggling after being emotionally hurt by a man who promised to marry her then acting out the rage and pain in a frenzied midnight drunken dance, witnessed from behind a door slightly ajar by one of the Royal servants. My God could I really relate to her feelings of frustration and betrayal.

I must admit to having felt suicidal again this week.. It makes me sad that on the 5th anniversary of Mum dying the ashes have not been dealt with, but the key word is YET. What upset me most about my Mum’s best friend’s reaction to this was the judgement of no hope and no possibility for change and yet I do not believe that is true for life is all about change and the cells in our body even change and replace themselves completely over a 7 year period. Also unlike Betty I am working on all of this in theapy with fucking minimal assistance from EVEN ONE SINGLE FAMILY MEMBER..

This issue of hope and change is what most gets lost in the depressive mindset. In this mindset often every thing is colored black, we see no possibility of things improving, we may feel every thing we did was a mistake and we also may lose a sense of the goodness of others, that someone out there may be someone trustworthy, someone we could experience love with and from. While not expecting them to always get it right.

That said, lately, at Christmas I feel the remoteness of the world. I hear from so few people and at times get tired of reaching out, and yet, I know I need to keep doing it so as to generate any connection with other humans. And I also just need to be soft and allowing around this time of year knowing that for a lot of people, it is not an easy time and does tend to bring up painful issues of distance in relationship.

The reading that I was guided to yesterday spoke of how, even if someone hurts or disappoints us, it is not always necessary to cut them out of our lives. Just because someone does not live up to expectations that we have does not mean we cannot love them, indeed we can learn to show tolerance and respect for both the path and issues of others, accepting that everyone has a reason for doing the things that they do.

The alternative to me seems to mean we remain trapped in judgements that then cause s to separate from love and we also fail then to keep what the Buddhists called the quality of boddhicita or an open, soft or awakened heart. Softening our heart when we feel anger is not always easy and it does not need to mean that we like what others do or see it as okay, it just means we take on board the reality of how things are that cause us frustration, angst or disappointment and then learn more effective ways of RESPONDING RATHER THAN REACTING. Not having to harden our hearts in rage means we can take care of our own feelings of hurt and know they are not the whole of the issue and we do not need to project them onto targets. And yet before we do this inner shadow work we may do that and need to forgive ourselves for not knowing better at the time.

This practice of R.A.I.N. I spoke of in a recent post is giving me a way to tune into the bodily sensations of feelings that live inside of me in reaction to current events that trigger me. Tara Brach talks of tuning into how it feels to experience anger or sadness in our body rather than move immediately to a defensive or attacking story line. Tuning into stinging, burning or shaky symptoms in our body and holding them tenderly in the light of our mindful awareness we can also be kind to the little child in us who may have longed for so much when young and have instead met only a succession of brick walls.

Lately I in therapy I am allowing myself to drop into feelings of sadness and hopelessness I seemed to have buried so long under running and wishful thinking and sometimes desperate attempts to be connected and ‘seen’. I am realizing at heart that it is I WHO MUST SEE MYSELF FIRST AS AN ADULT. In a taking on board how uncomfortable it felt to never be relaxed or held in my body I can react less out of those unconscious feelings while grieving hard for how painful that felt. Reading some older astrological posts on the two young Prince’s reactions and aloneness following the death of Princess Di has shown me how much I went through something so very similar, even well into my 50s . Sitting with the feelings and becoming aware of the names of ones that appear only as body sensations is not always easy for me, for I am coming to see the fight and flight have at times been overwhelming or else positive aspects of leaving a situation were not possible for me to engage in due to lack of both consciousness and will. Often I was just being driven about unconsciously by a whole lot of frustrated longing. And then at the age of 43 after my marriage ended I fell again into a kind of deep and painful ancestral freeze

Burying our true needs and feelings is no answer for healing. Hurt feelings speak of frustrated needs others may try to encourage us to blow off. Recognizing what they truly are may take some time, And then also allowing us the necessary positive things we missed out on a kids and even in our following lives.. Essential things for the soul such as fun, lightness, play, joy and spontaneity which sadly, so often, get lost once we get trapped in a traumatized world view due to experiencing emotional neglect or dismissal of our feelings, because, as I am learning, sadly when anger is not allowed, then the cry of the true self cannot be heard either, hidden like the silenced scream of a roaring lion from deep within our gut and heart from split off aspects of our murdered self.

After posting this I came across something I wrote that was related to it from a linked post. I am going to post that paragraph here :

Where am I going with this post? Yes, we stuff up… Is there malicious intent (possibly even if it is deeply unconscious). Am I too forgiving? Do I allow too much ‘imperfection’? The imperfections I was talking of earlier in this post more concerned the things in us that bent or fractured or torn out of shape by the world… when we see these things and when others see them they may only see them as our ‘defects’, not as consequences of things that were done or happened to us as the result of others or external circumstances, we can then be sidelined or blame ourselves when really the truth goes deeper… How we weather these things means knowing where the tear in fabric first came from.. Who used the knife to create the wound or scar we later have to carry..