Awake and live on a brand new day

I enjoyed reading Therese Borchard’s blog yesterday on Sanity Break  :   http://thereseborchardblog.com/2014/08/04/why-real-love-is-hard-work/

Therese talks about her battle in relationships to feel support and a belief and trust in love as a result of significant abandonment experiences in her own past.  It made me realise how much we create a version of the world so unconsciously formed as a result of our own past experiences.  This is something I have been conscious of for a while but it has been coming home to me a lot recently.

Following yesterdays dental procedure, which I went into with a lot of fear, I am beginning to be aware of the benefits of going forward in faith and with the realisation that just because things were so painful in the past, that does not mean that they must be today.

Yesterday my experience with the dentist was so healing and comforting.  I now have a young female dentist with a very kind and empathetic assistant.  I have also been putting a lot of effort into my own mindfulness practice of not resisting pain.  I must say the pain of four needles over a 10 minute period is not one of the most pleasant experiences of my life, Lots of people go through it every day.  That knowledge doesn’t make it easier.

What I was very grateful for yesterday was the opportunity to be able to express my feelings and reach out for a hand to hold when the pain was really, really bad.  Using the breath I was able to open myself more fully to the pain, realise (while being reminded by the assistant) that the pain was and is temporary and to use the deep breath to move through the pain, rather than clamp down on it. I was held and even comforted through the experience.  That has never happened for me before yesterday,  I have gone through so much alone. In fact I was abused by my last narcissistic partner after a painful root canal treatment for being in pain and ruining his day!!

Last night I woke in the middle of the night with so many realisations.  I was thinking of the needs I had as a young person for relationship and comfort and how absent it was in my own home.  But I have also become aware of my own many years of recovery from alcoholism that the wounds I have carried are really the wounds of both my mother and my father.  Neither knew much comfort, they both struggled to survive economically and emotionally, and as a result of being short on nurturing they could not really comfort and nurture me, when I needed it.  And then the walls came tumbling down with my sister’s cerebral haemorraghe and there was no place to go, especially following my father’s death and my mother’s hasty escape into a toxic relationship.

Since moving away from  AA meetings and more towards Al Anon I have been made aware of the very important issues of self love, self care and self nurture.  I have developed more compassion for myself in my struggles, while realising my own very real deficiencies which at times made it harder for me to give nurture in my own close personal relationships. I have learned heaps about empathy and about the healing balm of unconditional acceptance that will help and hold me even through ugly, hard and very painful emotions such as rage, resentment and hate.

I have felt the collapse into healing that comes  in allowing myself to feel and release this darker, less socially sanctioned feelings and tap into the grief that underpins my losses and my mistakes.  As a result I am now at least a little more able to move away from the painful Saturn Moon Chiron Pluto issues of holding onto wounds and expecting the worst while maintaining a stance of separation through fear.  And I have, through my own experiences of emotional abuse, understanding what it was and how it hurt me in past relationships become more aware of the very real potential of hurtful experiences from those who will try and overrun my boundaries or abuse me.

Like Therese I am not sure that I will ever go through life as a totally confident, openly vulnerable, accepting person.  I carry very real fears around emotional vulnerability, but lately I am feeling greater hope for a brighter presebnt.  A large part of the journey, especially in recognising and learning to deal with emotional neglect and abuse has been developing tools to cope and boundaries of discrimination and self care which enable me to sidestep what might be toxic or potentially not good for me.  And happily in the aftermath of my procedure yesterday, today I am only tender, not really sore, my worst fears were not realised which makes me realise  how important it is to live in this moment and to have faith in my ability to endure and process life.   There is a dull ache there in the place where my two impacted teeth were.  There is now more space in my gums. There is less cramping in my heart.

In receiving my Mum’s support as I have gone through this.  I am even more aware that all that happened in my growing up years was lonely and painful, but not has harsh as what my mother endured.  My mother was able to move through it and be tougher, though.  Less resentful of her burden.  She was not nurtured so my Mum isn’t a natural nurturer, although in later years as she has become more conscious she has really tried to compensate, perhaps, at times, to her own detriment.  She carries a lot of pain and other issues and her business and needs always came first.   I know she is suffering now as she has had to watch the painful consequences of this.   The emotional hunger I had for both parents love and tenderness attracted me to toxic relationships, which had to  be endured and worked through to bring consciousness to that pattern.

As I have been in deep pain over these last days leading up to the surgery I have seen images of my sister Jude screaming in pain in the care home she lived for the last part of her life.  I have felt the pain of her own choices which led along the road to body wreckage and disorder, all due to a lack of taking care of herself and her health, of trying to fly too high without exercising sufficient care for herself.  In the end she was supported in every way because she became totally dependent.  It was my Mum’s hidden dependency of the Pluto in Cancer generation and various impacts and traumas around being born during a tumultuous time in both society and in our family,  that Jude carried.  Her Mars Saturn was in Cancer, I have the Saturn Moon which is an echo. I see it now as a multigenerational legacy, I see it less personally while realising it has very personal ramifications.

This morning I feel the sun coming up over the horizon of my birth chart as it passes out of the waning square to natal Neptune in my third house. In the heavens it is moving into the waning square with transiting  Saturn. This is the consciousness raising period the annual retrograde cycle as it works out following the station direct.  The sun is shining so brightly in Leo, with such light and power and strength and warmth.  I am basking in the suns early rays here now as I write this blog. Feeling the resonances inwardly.  I listen to John Mayer’s words on disc in the song Home Life and hear them as my anthem.

I want to live in the centre of the circle

I want to radiate the light of the sun and let it illuminate all the other parts of my chart with wisdom.

Much earlier, after speaking to Mum I felt a great sadness for her emptiness, for the very real painful things she suffered alone.  And as I write this I also feel something much deeper informing my soul, the kind of deeper inner peace and joy that comes from realisations hard won,  Today I am so grateful for the precious gift of life.  For the hundreds of beautiful people I have encountered on my journey, for all the pain that has helped me to know better and more deeply the fundamental truths of things I had not yet realised and could only realise through pain.  I feel so alive, reborn almost,  as I wrap the healing arms of the Leo sun around my body and move forward in love to embrace this new day and as the Sun and Mercury progress slowly out of the twelfth house, with Venus trailing behind.

One thing I know, in life there is pain and joy Both are necessary parts of our journey,  Without one how would be know the other?  Today I will hold tenderly the realisation of that blessing in my own heart as I go forward into a new day.