One small crack

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”

Carl Jung 

I’m tired today and it is because I think I have been facing some very painful truths and the potent mix of anger and sadness at times won’t let me rest and then its a fine line because for so many years due to both complex PTSD and the trauma imprint of several accidents and being emotionally rejected my psyche kept me in inactive lock down in a kind of inwardly paralysed state in which taking any kind of action seemed fraught with so much fear, complication and loss I could do nothing much and had so many feelings under wraps that were trying to unravel.  With no true inward or outward validation I so easily turned against myself and pushed myself.  I still do it these days even when I have finally after a long journey found a therapist who can offer me the unconditional support and regard for all my emotions that friends, lovers and parents couldn’t in the past.  Its still big work in trusting and letting go into healing.

Part of what I really struggle with lately is the fact that the inner critic takes up residence in my head and runs an endless commentary on all I am doing, not doing, should be doing and at times in the absence of a longed for connection being absent I reach to substances and food which has turned dangerous due to having suffered breast cancer early last year.

This week following my sister’s birthday and leading up to the anniversary of my Dad’s death tomorrow I see where I have been pushing myself forward instead of letting myself be in the silence, still and quiet to sit gently and lovingly with myself.  This week instead of having one cup of coffee I have had four days of having two cups of coffee.  This might not seem like much but I see how its coming out of a refusal to let myself rest and also I think there is an element in which I don’t want to feel the pain and sadness and today I feel really, really tired and also a bit disappointed with myself.

Don’t get me wrong after this time I have spent so much time in pain and sadness that I know unresolved sadness to be a dangerous place but at the same time I find it very hard to self nurture in ways which are healthy.  Reaching for that second cup of coffee or shopping for things I don’t need is really never going to hit the sore place that probably needs to be tended with more loving presence and empathy.

I am also wondering about my reluctance go to cemetery earlier this week to visit my sister’s resting place.  I can see that I didn’t really want to go with my Mum and sister because on some level I resent the fact it is them who are alive rather than the sister who showed me the most empathy love.  There I have said how I really feel!! But to some degree my sister who died also found it hard when I would cry because her own sadness was so deep she needed others to bring her out of it rather than remind her of it all the time.

Despite all this today I am grateful.  I am grateful to finally see the problem that others have with my emotional side not having anything to do with me but with them and their ability or inability to cope with emotions.  I see the times when I suffered abuse in this way with my mother and sister ganging up on me and should have walked away rather than sat there and stuck around for more.  But I also see where due to the pain of rejection and loss I have not had the courage to face these real feelings to take care of myself due to approval seeking or just a lack of courage.  At the same time I see how little emotional support I ever had growing up and am really reminded of this at this most painful time of year which was the time I was pushed away by my mother after my father died when we were both deep in grief and I really needed containment and support.  My therapist expresses it like this :  you were like a ball shot out of the cannon, Deborah and that happened many times.   My alcoholism which was well and truly under way at this point got much, much worse from then on.

Today I have to draw towards the positive thoughts, though.  I have been sober for just over 23 years which is nearly half of my life and is a major achievement.  Though I don’t work I live closer now to who I really am instead of from the false self that was pushed into an occupation by my father that I hated.  It took me until the age of 31 to try to break out of that and that was the time I got sober.  I need to remember the path of consciousness building and growing in awareness that I am travelling on is not an instant one, it takes many, many years.

My therapist who is a Jungian therapist reminded me on Thursday that Carl Jung said that basically for the first 50 or so years of our life we really don’t know what we are doing, it is only in the later years that we begin to grow and find meaning.  This is what he saw as the major task of our older adult years.  My astrological knowledge actually says that at age of 30 (the first Saturn return or full Saturn cycle around our chart) the first crisis hits where we begin to face the schism between who we really are and the confining aspect of our social and parental conditioning.

Depending on how well we handle that we hit another crisis at age 40 when the planet of individuality and freedom from constraint Uranus opposes the place it was in in our chart when we were born, at this time there can be a kind of explosion where we throw things over or suffer increasing frustration and painful symptoms if our soul is not being truly heard and expressed.  Then at age 50 to 51 we get the painful Chiron return which is when the planet of wounding or healing Chiron returns to the place it was where we were born after a whole cycle around our chart and we face the deepest wound and the way it has affected our life.  Within this wound lies our redemption and our healing depending on the perspective we take.

It was when Chiron hit my action planet Mars in 2005 I had the second major bike accident with kicked back into gear all the trauma of the major MVA I had at 17.  When it returned I got into the most painful relationship with a narcissistically wounded man who was very like my mother in terms of emotions allowed or disallowed.  I look back now as I approach the age of 55 in a few weeks and see that this relationship which came to me just prior to my Chiron return was the one that opened me up to the wound I carried so deeply but was so unaware of. Within the wound lies all of my pain and also all of the healing power that I feel becomes available to us when we reconnect most deeply to the soul within us that although injured is still whole somewhere and gains both character and substance deep within the broken places.

This week in googling shame and criticism I came across some wonderful quotes I am going to end this blog with one which really spoke to me.  It reminds me that when healing I need to keep a balanced perspective on where I really am and the extent of my realistic deficits.  I need to remember to see myself and others with eyes of softness, empathy and love. For the journey to heal and become conscious we are engaged upon is massive work and rests upon our ability to see and know deeper than superficial ego objectives, judgements and plans.

We are not human doings we are human beings, actually also perhaps even human becomings engaged in a deep process of growing awareness, wisdom, insight and love.

“One small crack does not mean that you are broken,

it means that you were put to the test and you didn’t fall apart.”

Linda Poindexter