Today I am gaining a sense of what it may mean to me to begin to live a free life outside of the suffering of my painful family and past. I read an interesting line in a reading today that said “because my fate – my very life – was no longer tied to theirs”.” WOW!!! Did the lights come on when I read that reading. It made me realise that in one line those words expressed a central truth of my life, and then I thought about something else I read about the North Node in Leo where the writer Martin Shulman spoke of how the central lesson with this astrological placement was to learn how not to identify with impersonal karma.
I am very aware of how much my own strong family karma legacy tied up with addiction and emotional abandonment has affected me until now and it is only lately that I am glimpsing the possibility that I may be finally able on some level to break free, that all along these wounds I suffered had nothing to do with me and my intrinsic soul but were learnings never the less. They are ancestral issues that have replayed and I believe that also a huge part of my recovery journey involves learning about how to live as a person deeply conscious of all that ancestral karma but able to also transcend and live outside of it, too.
I do believe it is possible to no longer tie my energy to that ship of doom because I heard an inner voice telling me to open the book to that page to read those words this morning which turned a light bulb on inside my mind.
But just writing that I do believe that perhaps in someway it has been my necessary fate to be the one who brings conscious awareness to the wound which is really a deep mother wound, a mothering and mother wound that I recognise from knowing the ancestral history goes back to the death of my great, great, great grandmother hundreds of years ago. That death and grief led to the migration of my great, great grandfather in 1874. He travelled thousands and thousands of miles away from his family in Cornwall with a young family and a little baby daughter who died and was the first one to bear the name Eliza Jane Trudgeon, the name of my mother’s mother’s mother! And also the name of my oldest sister’s youngest son’s wife. Really if you know the whole historic tapestry there are just so many of these marvellous, mysterious, interconnections that repeat complimentary colours woven by a skien unravelling across years and lifetimes!
I finally reconnected with my niece yesterday. A schism between her Mum and my Mum has meant that distances and fissures have formed since the 1960s when a motherless daughter came home to meet our family. She was, to my Mum, a curious emotionally detached creature who did not seem to want to ‘fit in’. Then someone (my Mum) did something that hurt someone (my sister in law) and then that someone decided they did not want to have anything much to do with that other person (my Mum). But what lies deeper is the fact that the mother wound in my sister was never understood, nor acknowledged by my own mother. In not being aware many years ago she acted in a way that didn’t show empathy. The issue and event is now really deeply regretted by my Mum but no forgiveness is coming from the other side which is understandable on some level but has had very painful consequences in the later generations and broken apart other relationships causing yet more separation.
These kind of emotional severings due to attachment wounds unprocessed are par for the course in alcoholic or feeling wounded families and I came across a book years ago that spoke of how such cut offs often lead to a mental illness with an emotional attachment basis in later generations. To quote AA “we are only as sick as our secrets” or as damaged as we are to past wounds and issues gone unconscious or buried, severed or sealed off locked tightly away with fear and hate bred through misunderstanding and deep hurt unprocessed and unhealed. Suffice to say that this wounded person also lacks empathy most particularly to her own daughter and then you realise it really is a case of the blind and wounded hurting the blind and wounded. One or two scorpions locked in a deathly battle fearing ever to let down their guard and be open and vulnerable.
Together yesterday my niece and I unravelled and then tied back together some of the severed threads. I missed my beautiful niece being in my life for so many years, as for a couple of years we were so close to each other. There is really no one like one of your blood family who is also spiritually awakening to share with. In each others eyes and from sharing heart to heart you find yourself no longer split off, but returned home to deep soul recognition.
Yesterday bought both sadness and happiness. Mum is in hospital with blocked veins. Trauma gave me the courage to try to connect with my niece and that made my heart sing with joy, she gave me so much affirmation and I learned even more from our hour long chat, but our conversation also brought into stark relief my own need to separate from an emotional caretaker or holder of wounded feeling/family scapegoat role that I seem to have been locked inside for years and years leading to inner unhappiness. And I see most clearly that my need to break free must now be honoured. So much of that karma was never personal but I took it on in a saviour role which was not healthy and I feel now must be firmly and finally let go.
Emerging From The Dark Night 