Which Way To Turn

I am thinking today of the way in which I have struggled growing up with a lot happening around me that did not suit me, that impinged on me, traumatised me, frustrated me, impacted on me and being the youngest how I was always on the periphery of a drama or event going on looking in from the outside, watching and wondering and not knowing which way to turn to get my needs met.

I guess in this situation a child turns inwards to herself, she tries to make sense of things far beyond her.  With no one much to talk to there is a lot of inner self talk that goes on and we make up ideas which may or may not be true about ourselves, who we are, how we relate or do not relate to others.

I am thinking about this a lot today as for the past 8 years or so my body has been manifesting this not knowing which way to turn struggle most dramatically, while the impacts of numerous physical and emotional traumas on my nervous system have built over years.  Until recently I have struggled to find a place to consistently release these and have them validated and recognised so that the many fractures which trauma and life have made on my life can begin to connect or be pieced together.

Over the past ten years I have had at least six failed or aborted therapies and as a result the pressure of these unresolved traumas have built up inside and have manifested in push pull dynamics with my skeleton and muscles, much broken sleep, toing and froing, much pain, sadness, anger, confusion, suicidal depression, fear and doubt.

Externally there has been the pressure of my older sister’s ongoing emotional and mental trauma and incarceration in a home for acquired brain trauma where she was heavily medicated and subsequently drew far away and then was pulled to death last year, in April by the heavy led of her complex grief and pain.

There has been my mother’s two hospitalisations with operations, complications, clots and illnesses in which I have been the only family member to offer consistent support, since my other sister has been hospitalised on four occasions (or is it five) for psychological issues of mania and depression and my elder brother decides for his own reasons to maintain a distance, calling from time to time (which in the past I have resented but now see is his own choice and right.  He may be healthier and much happier for not being pulled into the drama.).

And now in the last month there has been my sister’s shock diagnosis with breast cancer, a mastectomy operation and only my aging mother and I to support.

As I write this blog and consider the impact of  feel the overload on my system, I realise that quite some time ago I strained the limit of my capacity to help and I struggled knowing how much I could or could not help, should or should not help in order to help and take care of me.

It’s a delicate balance and dance, one I can’t always manage well (but in writing this I see and know I HAVE managed, even though its been painful, scary and hard.)  I feel such a responsibility to my family since my father died.

I have spent so many years in anger and resentment over the way it has been. That my needs and feelings did not seem to be recognised. I spent a lot of the years after 40 trying desperately to get away from it all to a place where I was free and questioning then, even if I wanted that freedom or deserved it.

With my astrological awareness I am conscious that with Saturn on my Moon and Mars the karmic burden I am bearing in a familial and  multi-generational context is just what it is, not personal at all and my task has been to become conscious in the midst of it all. I am most aware of this at present as the planet which acts to liberate our conscious awareness, Uranus is soon to turn direct in the eighth house of my chart which deals with deeply complex issues of relationship and need which become tangled and enmeshed in our systems or psychic shadow.

The major lesson of Saturn Moon deals with the issue of emotional deprivation as part of an upbringing that was short on nurture. The lesson as I have read is that the self has to come to be the healer of its own self, the bearer of its own wound (especially since Chiron is configured with this stellium of Mars Saturn Moon), the mother to the child within who driven in needs runs here and there looking to fill a gaping hole that cannot be filled truly by anything external.

To get to here and live it has been a massive journey. This morning I woke feeling most strange, betwixt and between, tired and rested, feeling the need to move and the need to rest, thinking of my family and what I wanted to give but also resented giving.

I opened my email to find a daily meditation from In The Rooms, a site devoted to recovering alcoholics, it was about time, how in recovery we need to spend time with ourselves and not doing what others want us to do but doing what we need to do to suit ourselves. It spoke of keeping a distance from negative people. I had a bit of an instinctive pull back reaction to this email. It felt really judgemental to me, a bit too instructive and defensive.

Today I know I can be around negative people and I don’t need to take it on. I can see the negativity, II can laugh at it, I can see it as just one of many human foibles.

This happened yesterday after my mother and I picked my sister up from the hospital. We went to a local café for a coffee. It was a hot day and we sat outside. Opposite us an elderly lady was selling beautiful little bunches of flowers. My mother and sister looked down their noses at her and shook their heads making all kinds of comments about her and how she should not be there etc, etc. My sister then complained about her coffee how it did not have enough froth of the right kind and then when the waitress said in a kindly way “a flat white isn’t meant to have foam”, my sister said sotto voice “the customer is always right” with a dark look on her face.

I observed all of this feeling not a little frustrated but I laughed inwardly while inwardly cringing and feeling embarrassed. I felt kindly towards the lady selling flowers, I didn’t understand the problem. I’m not saying I am better or worse than my mother and sister but I don’t feel like them a lot of the time and I am glad for that.

It is funny but I am recognising that just by the sheer act of opening my computer, logging on and writing this blog, I have retrieved my lost energy from the betwixt and between state I awoke in.   as I sat quietly ruminating in my comfy floral armchair, I had several blog ideas one of which was a question “Can you see the beauty around you?” which relates to the negativity I see in my sister at times and myself at times too. A state of pain and suffering and inner turmoil that at times can block out all that is good and beautiful in our lives.

This week I had a very powerful session with my body harmony therapist. I relieved the trauma of being 17 and being smashed up in a car with my body cut into and my lung punctured, struggling to breath. I felt the sadness and disconnection from life of those months spent pinned to a bed in skeletal traction and of the burning and pain in my chest as they inserted the tube to breathe for my lung. What happened in my sessions as her warm kind hands opened me to my buried grief was not thinking about it, it was the real gut pain from deep within I connected too, the sadness at not being able to go to my formal, of feeling separated from everyone and everything.

I now see the impact of that time.  How I struggle to feel a part.  How I find it hard to accept invitations to big events like weddings and parties. How I keep myself separate. Since reliving this I am much more present to the day. I am feeling the coolness on my skin of the day which I would not have been all that conscious of before because my energy was pulled inwards by stuff trapped deep in my cells I did not really understand or could not release.

I am conscious of how much my body had to bear and bury in silence. As I write I am feeling a peace and a hum that was not there before can OMG  is this happiness, this warm lovely foreign feeling, the gratitude of being able to be up before 9 and not pulled in my two hours twisting and pulling backwards and forwards with all the complexity of my life and the buried trauma.

There is still a ways to go in healing. But I DO know that as long as I can connect to the truth of my past and liberate it I will be free, I will not need to shut the door on my so called “negativity” or suffering or erect defences or judgements against it. I will feel compassion for the wounded self who still has not found grace in the healing. This for me is such and amazing liberation and a most beautiful and rich blessing.