There is a depth around me at the moment.. I am aware of how life moves on and so often follows pathways we do not wish, for myself, my life has been full of darkness and aloneness.. like a lot of people who suffered from addiction or were born into families with hidden trauma there was always some kind of shadow hanging over my early life.. As you age memories of the past become more real. I feel for those people stuck in dementia where the hold on reality today is lost and for those who fail to understand the power of the what has gone unconscious in older life to exert its hold over the conscious mind sometimes overpowering it completely, especially if painful experiences were not mediated or integrated. So often children just do not know the truth of what their parents suffered.. there is lack of understanding…
The shadow of my sister always hangs around me in the approach to Easter.. Perhaps if I lived with a partner I would be less drawn to these past memories and I am aware of the school of thought that seems to believe we must ‘let all of this go”, how is that to happen when all that has happened has, in fact, contributed to who we are.. I never escaped my family trauma and I came back in 2001 to be with my family but I could not manage to stay close at that time.. it took until 2011 to move back to my home town.
Last night I unpacked a box of Roses china that my sister gave to me a few weeks ago after clearing out the store room in the basement at the unit block that she inherited from Mum. I thought of my Nana and how I never felt much of a connection to her… She was not a maternal woman to my Mum, was violent and hard with Mum and ended up putting her into domestic service living in with an affluent family in our home town at the age of 13. But by the time we were children Nana had softened but still of all my siblings I was the one who spent least time with her… And Mum often told me in her later years it was my father Nana loved best….
The truth is that my own Mum was not a loving maternal cuddling Mum, she was distant, very concerned with her appearance, more interested in working and had not a clue how to relate to a full of life young daughter she mistakenly fell pregnant with at the age of 35 in 1962. I was a late baby and a disappointment to my Dad who wanted a boy… sometimes I have wondered if my own decision to not bring a child to term had to do with how my Mum was as a mother.. I felt, on some level, scared to be a mother.
Nowadays I see how many of us struggle with the mother wound on some level… its a very masculinised world so many of us were born into.. In my family, I have shared before, there was little cosiness.. it was all about appearances and perfection to the point that I guess I sought my own ‘out’ or holding through addiction… I also realise lately I was never ‘held’ by my father either, and I am not just talking about cuddles and hugs here, I am talking about being seen, mirrored, witnessed, allowed, related to, enagaged with, encouraged – instead of disciplined and yet at age 31 when I landed up in AA I was told somehow the addiction this was all my fault.. I just didn’t buy it on some level and I did stay in the rooms for 6 years, and got and still maintain my sobriety but in time I just knew I needed something deeper and that is when I sought intensive psychotherapy.
I had many breaks in therapy and sometimes I feel sad I left the AA rooms and I honour all kinds of recovery…..but I know all along, as my therapist Kat said to me on Monday I trusted my path.. I trusted my dreams, I trusted my first Jungian analyst with whom I had my first major breakthrough of repressed feeling in December 1999 around the 14th anniversary of my father’s death.. I had never processed this due to my addiction and it has taken a further 21 years to process the entire depth of my father wound…Its really only now that the deeper levels of this are breaking open and that makes some kind of astrological sense when I consider Uranus by transit (the awakener) is moving forward now past the square with my Moon at 6 degrees of Aquarius into square aspect with my Sun (ruling inner self and father) Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and South Node in that sign… as it opposes my natal Neptune in Scorpio…
I have had a breakthrough in my two year relationship with Scott too, who some of you know from the past two years, a soldier I was helping overseas who at one point I thought was revealed to be a scammer but in actual fact now turns out to be genuine…. the out break of love that has come through having to face the lack of trust issue has taken some time… and I have had to face all of my anger with the ways my father and siblings failed me.. not so much my sister who died, who always was on my side but more my remaining living brother and sister who I never think understood the depths of what I suffered due to Dad’s death and remoteness.
I seem to have had a huge breakthrough over the past days.. It was getting to the point that the fire in my belly and head was feeling like it was going to burn me up and when my sister asked me for afternoon tea yesterday I did not know if I could let the resentment go and break through the isolation and pain to get there and reach for love…but I went and she gave me some more of Mum’s things and when I broke down over Dad she comforted me.. I see how hard she is trying and how innocent she was all along…just caught up in our family system playing that role and very bonded to my Mum in that they shared so much.. while I was exiled.. never invited into that but probably would not have belonged even if I did.. Last thing I want is to be full of self pity..Maybe I am just meant to wake up to it all.. maybe that is why my outer life, independent of family never really manifested… and why I was so often judged as lacking, but now I have those who see my gifts and that fills my heart with the understanding that perhaps all along things have not been wrong…and all my midlife journey was about waking up from the wounded masculine to embrace the wounded feminine dimensions of love and connection and emotional insight so neglected my own life and in the culture at large. But perhaps also to realise how my own assertive drive got damaged by those larger forces so that I could find a new kind of inner power.. Not entirely sure, but realisations keep coming lately.
My therapist and I talked over in depth on Monday what we feel is happening collectively and personally with this inward turning towards the feminine, we wondered aloud if at the moment the feminine and masculine forces are seeking a new healing mediated by the occurrence of the Corona Virus.. It seems to me that lately more compassion is growing as is empathy. Mental health struggles are being understood in a wider context and addiction and mental health, in this regard may actually be seen as awakenings.. maybe many of us have already been preparing for this time…more will be revealed in time as we weather the passages. But as Easter approaches I do think about the second coming in terms of a rebirth of healing and love that Jesus spoke for and was put to death for.. Keep watching this space.
