Over taken : reflections on feeling powerless

I had a very intense experience today.  It made clear a really deep theme and imprint in my life and for the first time I really felt free to connect with the deep rage and grief at the bottom of it.  Being a fairly sensitive person who is open, I open myself up, it doesn’t always serve me well and there are times when I need to be more protective of boundaries.  I have had several experience since I have lived in my cottage of gardeners coming and doing thing to plants or trees in my garden that I didn’t ask for and the other problem was I trusted they were going to do what I had asked or wanted and got distracted or wasn’t there to oversea.  It happened to me again today. I had an arborist in to take out some small trees at the back of the garage that were interfering with power lines and then I asked the person to prune my plum tree.

I had a call with a friend and then when I went out the arborist had pruned away a significant part of another tree that I had not asked him to touch.  I had a stunned moment and when he asked if everything was okay I just went kind of numb and speechless.    I felt this slam to the gut like I had been violated.

At the time this was going on another voice inside me was telling me not to over-react, that it was just a tree and the limbs would grow back but they had been sawed off and were all torn away leaving a huge ugly space in a place where there was formely a protective canopy and may I re-iterate.  I didn’t ask for this to happen”.  It took about an hour after the arborist left for the full impact of what just happened to hit home.  I got so, so angry and was in the shower screaming out “I never asked you to cut into that tree”.  After my shower I was doubled over in grief and my inner child was just crying and crying and so angry with adult me.  Why didn’t you protect me? she was screaming and adult me was crying.

What was also going on was just this feeling of being back inside the car all smashed up with bits of the engine cutting into my legs and lacerations to my mouth, not able to breath with my lung collapsed.  I was crying over how powerless I felt, how I could not stop so many bad things happening to me that were outside of my control going way, way back to my childhood : when I would be tickled in an abusive way or given enemas when really I had a stomach ache from loneliness or after a fight with my Mum, of being alone after school and having serious accidents with no one there to help or protect me.

All of this just hit me in the deepest, deepest way which is so difficult to really express in blog space.  Anyway I stayed with little Debs and comforted her.  I listened deeply to all of her pain and anger.  I told her how sorry I was she had had to go through these things from the past.  I helped in the best way to say how sorry I was that a mistake had been made that I didn’t intend and that next time I will be more aware but I also reminded her that her pain over the tree was really about a lot of other incidents of feeling powerless.  There was a lot of very deep grief and pain there going way, way back.  I then asked her what I could do to make her feel better knowing that I could not take the pain of the past away.  What she wanted was a quiet lunch and a trip to the library and not to have to take Jasper to the park today because adult me was too tired.  We also needed to cancel some other plans just to be able to ‘be’.

Its hard to explain but what happened today with the trees was not a small thing for me.  It was a deeply significant thing with roots reaching far back.  I am always anxious to allow gardeners into my garden as so many times I have had a similar thing happen.  I now have a very part time gardener who never does anything I don’t ask because he respects my boundaries he just wasn’t equipped to remove my trees and prune them.  What the arborist did today wasn’t right.  He thought he was doing the right thing so my anger has passed now, but never the less it was extremely important for me to feel it and express it to myself today.

I had a panic attack just after the arborist left and the panic attack only ended after I really listened to my inner child and did what I needed to do today which was just take care of me.   This latest incident with Venus retrograde square to Saturn shows me where a lot of my wounds to boundaries have happened.  Trees are very, very important to my soul.  They provide me with shelter and healing, to have one just cut about when I didn’t ask for it really does affect me. Others may think I am being too precious or sensitive but deep down I know I am not.  I know my body connects to these kind of things and so does my soul.  If my soul is hurting so am I and I wont find peace until I really turn within and trust what I feel even if its anger and realise the associations.  All feelings have messages for me about my past.

Tonight I have been panic attack free for about the first time in a few weeks. I am so grateful that I could really listen to myself today.  The torn tree wont go away and it will still hurt a bit to look at it, but I don’t feel angry tonight, only a bit disappointed but at the same time happy and at peace, because today I really listened to me and took my feelings seriously.