Whenever I speak to my Mum lately I feel such deep sadness. I feel that having me as a daughter has been difficult for her from the start. I seemed to be too full of energy as a young one and she didn’t have the time for that. I don’t even want to be resentful any more it doesn’t get me anywhere. I long to be close to her but that kind of longing isn’t always for the best. And then when we speak because I feel connected to her through that Neptune contact on her Sun Mercury Saturn and with my strong Pluto Moon at times it feels almost like a psychic connection, as though I can feel in my body when things are ‘off’ with her and I am not feeling well either and then calmer when I know she has been in a calm space. I strongly feel that I am energetically connected to my Mum and I have a close friend who went through something so similar with his mother, when she died a lot of his painful physical symptoms ended.
My Mum carries a lot of grief. When I speak to her I find myself crying silently. I get off the phone and at the moment my heart feels like its pumping inside a brace or a straight jacket. I feel the blood flow through which is the love I have always longed to give to someone but has never really been able to flow that way. I think back to the last relationship when my ex would be gone for hours and hours surfing and of the helplessness, emptiness, grief and then rage that would come up. I am sure it was an old imprint for me for by that time I had experienced four significant relationships go to the wall and had known so much other trauma of being so alone at critical times of needing emotional support.
This week I have been reading a lovely little Buddhist book on heartbreak. I started to write a blog about it yesterday that I have not posted yet. The author himself has known over a dozen different forms of heartbreak and speaks of the Buddhist concepts of impermanence and the suffering of change that every human goes through, just some of us more times than others. He speaks of the need to keep an open heart, even towards those who have hurt us, a belief in the intrinsic goodness or Buddha nature that Buddhists believe exists somewhere deep down in even the hardest of characters. He also speaks of Boddhisatva nature which concerns the aforementioned ability to keep our heart open wide in the midst of our own suffering. But where does that leave us with healthy boundaries? Its a big conundrum.
I went to a lecture by astrologer Melanie Reinhardt in London many years ago on Venus retrograde which is where we find ourselves now. When Venus moves back towards the Sun it is retrograde, when it meets the Sun that is called the inferior conjunction and lays a seed. I was interested to note this particular conjunction between 4-5 degrees of Aries a few days ago in the dark of the moon was very close to my dead father’s Chiron which squared his natal Pluto in Cancer (mother wound) and opposed his Venus (values, self esteem and the feminine nature inside us all male and female). In the lecture Melanie spoke of the pain that Venus retrograde can stir up from times in the past we were not loved or valued, the pain that came when we longed for connections that were illusive and ended in betrayal or tears. She spoke of the concept of ‘keeping our heart open in hell’. What I am going through at the moment with seeing the stress the auction of the property I went to nearly three weeks ago just as Venus stationed to move backwards the week before has made me think of this. We go to see my Mum’s solicitor on Thursday to discuss what will happen as my Mum has offered to buy the property and lease it out, but now I am having second and third thoughts due to the stress that has been created, all around a search for hone which really needs to be found inside.
After the call with my Mum I felt myself straining to connect, longing to be noticed. She spoke of how she had a lovely chat with my brother on Sunday, while my brother is overseas for nearly 5 months every year I never hear from him. I have to let even that go as we are not close, we don’t really connect at all at a heart level. It hurts as I don’t have a Dad but who knows if Dad and I would have connected either had he lived, I was always closer to my godfather who really saw ‘me’ deep inside.
In the end I have to just keep breathing through this ocean of sadness. When there is an ocean of tears as is the case often later in life when we have lived so and lost so much and known a lot of disappointment we really need to learn how to swim in those deep waters. That is what I am doing now and it is strange as we now have quite a few planets in fire, but soon Venus will be back in the watery depths of Pisces for most of April, old pain I think is going to be revisited to be released. I am going to meditate my way through it as much as possible. For good or ill I have made the decision to stay in my old place where there is a lot of work to do and some expense rather than move to the new one. I am scared that this means I am not letting go on some level. Who knows? I know I don’t or maybe I do and just don’t want to admit it. Time will tell I guess if for now I can just learn to keep my heart open and keep swimming and not drown in this ocean. I DO know that I won’t drown. The only drowning could be that my breast cancer comes back and that is a constant fear.
Most of the book on heartbreak concern skills we can develop to be with our hearts in the midst of heartbreak. It focuses on what we can do to practice self care. That will be a topic for another post. For now taking care of me means a healthy lunch and then a visit to my therapist who I know I can trust with my heart.
Emerging From The Dark Night 