Disconnection and connection : some thoughts

From quite a young age I had a sense of being on the outside of the life around me.  I was the youngest in family caught up in other worlds, only lately am I realising the depth of aloneness I felt and how the attention was focused somewhere away from my inner self.  And so I believe I did grow into a loner, but one who craved connection of any kind, no matter what the cost.  I didn’t have wise protective radar for who was really connected to me though as I don’t think I was connected to a lot and so it felt unfamiliar, emotional abandonment or disconnect I knew (unconsciously at that point) so I attracted more of that in the years that followed.

I have been thinking about it a lot today and seeing what a hunger to connect outside of myself did to me before I was connected to my deeper self.  Put simply those connections just did not work and I always ended up sorrowing and empty.  In later years with all the trauma and insecurity I carried maybe I didn’t find it easy to connect to others as I had begun to turn to substances.  I also had an implicit feeling that I was a failure for not ‘fitting in’ and so I needed to change, but lately I am realising I didn’t need to change at all, my task lay in coming to know myself, so I had something real to offer relationship.

The Buddhist’s say the ‘self’ is just a construction and I do believe we can construct a false self of representations, but I am a firm believer that there lies inside an essential core of us we can know.  For me, as a sensitive, soul attuned person I find this feeling comes when I am connected to nature and my inner world.  I never feel more at home as on moments where I sit being comforted by the breeze flowing on my face, listening to the song of a local magpie who comes to visit around lunchtime and while writing or reflecting I touch base with something essential and lovely so deep inside.  At moments like this I realise that my hunger for connection outside of myself often led me astray.  My need to be liked or understood by those who could not hurt me and I also made demands at times out of a needy self that did not know how to hold her own hand.

I am so happy to say that lately these feelings of ‘need’ are dropping away.  I was thinking today of the young child or baby who cries out and when not heard collapses into depression or resignation.  In my own case I am learning to give up and surrender longings I direct toward unavailable sources.  And I have discovered a fundamental truth, that I connect best to those who connect with their inward worlds, something I touched on in a previous post about being an orphan.

Lately, I don’t feel that totally empty, bereft feeling of orphanhood that I did before, I am not making demands to have a different journey or fate than I have.  I will always probably be a loner but the paradox is that in society I connect with others when I see deeper in a way those who are on another plane don’t.  It’s not something that is easy to express and I know there are others out there a lot like me.  I don’t feel as alone in the crowd as I used to because lately I see more of our common humanity.

A fellow blogger helped me a lot a few months ago when I was sharing how I had met with a friend and we hadn’t connected by saying that connections cannot be forced and we cannot will them into being.  Knowing when we are connected and disconnected is important.  For me if I feel disconnected in a certain situation its a sign to retreat and listen to my soul.   I find so much loving connection, too from my blog and through reading the writing and blogs of others,   It’s that joyous moment of pleasure and uplift that comes from being received and ‘got’ and I am so grateful for it.  I am also coming to be more and more grateful for my times of deep solitude which are like a balm to me.  I am beginning to realise all the gifts I have and its okay to be alone, not necessarily a sign of something wrong with us.

I also feel myself separating more and more from my family on the earthly plane.  Deep at a soul level I know we are connected and always will be, but it seems to me I am beginning to be aware of playing a ‘role’ in that family can limit my soul which wants to be freer to breath new life into old past grief filled places.  Its beginning to be a real possibility that I can find a way to live outside of the pain of a past that nearly crushed me and for that I am grateful beyond words.

The force that fights love

I just reblogged a post by Monica Cassani which spoke about that sub part of our selves ‘the inner bully’ or ‘inner critic’ who can give us such a hard time as we go about trying to heal ourselves and become stronger on the path of recovery, and when I say stronger I am meaning it in the sense that a strong soul can embrace weakness, deficiencies and other flaws in themselves and set about finding a loving way to deal with those aspects of their being rather than just put on a mask or become filled with bluff or bravado, or get defensive when vulnerability is triggered.

As I read this post and considered my own struggle with my inner bully I thought of the part that fear of love and fear of being loved, embraced, open or vulnerable may play in our lives when we finally do begin to change old ways of being with both ourselves and others from a negative to a more positive slant.  And at the basis of all positive change I think that a healthy attitude of self care and self nurturing as well as self compassion are so very important.   Until we can embrace our weak spots, our past pain, wounds and injuries in self acceptance and love we don’t seem to get very far on the path of healing and we may actually even self sabotage when offered the chance to embrace something good.  Until we can honestly acknowledge our gifts, sensitivities and strengths and our unique spirit in ways even others cannot we also don’t ever get to experience the freedom of a full life.

I notice a lot of things in reading other WordPress posts.  I notice how staying trapped in feelings of self righteous anger at abusers often keeps people stuck and as I read those posts (as well as some of my older posts) I see how such feelings actually hide deep within them a (often unconscious) lack of acceptance, a refusal to be able to let the pain go on some level. T his is understandable as pain can and does run very, very deep if we have suffered abuse and it is a very long and painful process to work this through, acknowledging and embracing all our feelings without being eaten alive by them.

And yet I also feel that as we come to realise that we in fact did not deserve such abuse and as a result now sadly treat ourselves in the very same way that is when we have at our disposal the greatest gift and resource that can be used to help us overcome the negative down spiral that follows a painful history of emotional abandonment and abuse.  We may always stay angry at our abusers and that is fair enough but if our anger implies that in some way we are resisting the pain that we need to feel in order to move through to healing that held in anger can be not only counterproductive but toxic and may block forward movement.

Healing to my mind involves opening the locked door of our heart that wants to stay shut to pain.   We fear inviting that pain in as our deepest fear is that on some level it may destroy us, that we might not survive.   But my experience is that when I open the door of my heart to the full impact of past pain or grief that pain or grief is able to move and to transform on some level.  At that precious instant I fall into a place of deep inward surrender and peace in which I know without any doubt the full impact of my entire emotional pain history and see so clearly its consequences.  As I do a part of me wants to rise up and say ‘NO!”,  This is the cry of my spirit that knew it was deserving of so much more and could have shone so much more brightly and suffered far fewer years in the most painful and lonely isolation, an isolation that kept me imprisoned for well over 14 years.  And this awful truth is a  deeply difficult one to embrace and acknowledge.

And yet, another part of my spirit in some way actually needs to say an unconditional ‘Yes!’ at that moment.  To embrace the pain I didn’t choose in order that I can now let the pain go, knowing that to allow it to define the rest of my life would be to continue to pay too difficult a price which will keep me locked in prison, locked in death, locked in resistance, locked in unbecoming.  And that is now not what my spirit wants anymore!

When I know my spirit to be free, when I look to the positive things in my day, when I count the gifts of this path, compassion, wisdom, insight, deeper psychological knowledge then I find gratitude and that gratitude tends to bring the sunshine out in my soul.  When I look to how I can use my own suffering to help others, when I realise it is a gift to be able to say that I hurt and have suffered, when I no longer need to hide, when I use that suffering to make me reach for the light and love and joy in any day, when I find avenues of self expression and ways to let the energy of love flow out from me and to anchor in those energies of beauty and love all around me, wherever I find them, say in sunshine, nature, good company, music, art, poetry, films, dance then my spirit shines and is no longer as bowed down as it was before by the terrible burden of a lonely painful past full of trauma.

And when I realise that all along the inner bully is just fear and thrives not on life but on attack well then I have a choice to answer that fear with love, compassion, wisdom and insight, and I no longer need to turn my inner bully out on others in the world, criticising them, even if they, due to unconsciousness or nastiness are continuing to try to cause me suffering.  Instead I can just turn to my inner child essence and spirit, take her by the hand and chose to walk away or answer with love, no longer hooked by my own deeply buried anguish into reacting, lashing out or trying to change what is and was never in my power to change and what I am so much better off, walking away from.

Finding peace

I went through the most intense rage a few weeks ago over the prospect of realising that I need to have my front tooth extracted, to be promised an appointment in July only later to be told they would not take be able to take the tooth out for 3 months.  On Monday the dentist called and they are going to take my tooth out in three weeks time.  I was grateful that I wont have to wait so long.  I can get the tooth out, get my denture and no longer have the prospect hanging over my head with all the attendant anger about the way things have turned out in my life.   If I continue to dwell on all of that pain I could go mad, but the point I am beginning to accept is I can not change one single thing from my past and so I now need to accept what my life and story has been so far.  All of that said feeling the rage was a very important part of the entire process.

As I consider this it occurs to me that often people struggle for they feel they should not have the story or life they have.  With our chronic self improvement culture, it seems to me that we are often trying to be or do or get somewhere else than where we are.  Many of us don’t seem to truly love and accept who we are, how we feel or even what we need.  We seem to be hell bent on changing things, improving things,  upgrading things and for sure some kind of improvement or progress can be a good thing, but to self reject all of the time, to believe that we are defective in some way and can only be loved if we change, well where is the love, healing and acceptance in that?  This is the question I have been asking myself more and more lately.

I have a close family member in my life who is struggling with a huge issue at present.  In fact this struggle and issue has been going on for years and years and years.  My relative cannot accept the situation she is in.  The truth is that if she accepts the truth of the situation she has to feel pain and thwarting of her will.  She has tried so many ways to fix the problem, but no fix is coming.  When she shares about it with me I want to honestly say ‘let it go, you are hurting yourself more by your lack of acceptance”  but I don’t feel its my place to point out a truth that may hurt her and one she has to arrive at by herself in her own time.   So I have just told her I feel for her and hope that in time she won’t cause herself more angst by struggling so hard to have what it is she wants but cannot have.

At the moment I am so glad I have a 12 step recovery programme which teaches me to seek the serenity that comes when I can accept what cannot be fixed, cured or changed.  I am so grateful I have a higher self or higher power I can turn to when I struggle in similar ways to ask for help and get my own will out of the way. For sometimes in life our will is just not meant to be, what we want is not what the universe thinks we need and how we handle this critical issue can be the thing that makes or breaks us.

Acceptance does not mean we like a thing, or love a person.  It is just a saying of an unconditional ‘yes’ to the will of life which may act at cross purposes to our will.  It is an ability to say I will let go of my need for you to be different.  I may not be able to let go of my want and my hope, but at some stage in order to find peace I need to let go into the reality.  I may need to let the person go if they infuriate or consistently hurt me enough.  My letting go in that case is a sign of sanity to my mind.

I guess that place of peace and sanity is where I am finding myself living more and more lately.  It was definitely a stormy, stormy journey to get there.  A journey on which I got lashed almost to shreds on psychological rocks of pain and anxiety.  But today I can see more clearly where those rocks may lay.  When I find things are getting stormy I can take cover in a place where I am not as exposed to the elements, or I can decide to toughen up and weather the storm, letting it tear away what wants or needs to be released.  I can look for something beautiful or joyous to fill my day and uplift my spirit.  Once I am aware of my pain I can treat myself in a tender self soothing way and not make things harder by beating myself or others up.   I can stop in pray or meditation and ask for help or guidance when I am struggling with issues of anger or grief.

And I am finding that I can open my heart to life more fully even on the cold dull grey days like today, for I live in a world with other humans who also struggle just like me on those days.  When I reach out, get myself to a group meeting or just make the effort to connect I can find that I am less alone and that there is someone out there struggling even more than me.  Together we can share the burden so that we know we are not alone.  We can speak out our pain, we can recover from that deep aloneness which comes from being imprisoned inside wrong ideas of self rejection, or unfulfilled and sadly unrealistic expectations.  Often these form a prison that keeps us trapped in angst, preventing us from accepting the grace we find when we turn towards ourselves, life and others in openness, acceptance, surrender, trust and love.

There are no wrong turnings.

Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.

Guy Gavriel Kay

 

Kindness restores me to true feeling

Kindness is what the Dalai Lama has called ‘his religion’ and when I think about it, often it is kindness shown to me in the form of empathy that brings my heart undone.  It happened today.  I had a follow up appointment with the dentist who removed my broken bridge and gave me a temporary one in February.  Before that appointment I believed I would be getting a new bridge shortly but was informed I had a crack in one of my front teeth, the one that got split apart in the accident that occurred with I was 17 and that now a new bridge was not possible. Implants for three front teeth are one option but due to PTSD I cannot go through that kind of invasive procedure.  The second one is that the tooth must come out and I will wear a denture.   Its a hard thing for me to swallow.  I will need a denture for three teeth as over the course of the past 37 years I have had two reconstructions on that part of my mouth parts of other teeth have had to be removed to build a new bridge.  Back in February it was hard to face a loss of this kind.   I am still relatively young (at 54) and I will now have to have that huge gap in the front of my mouth.  It is something I have to struggle to come to terms with.

I don’t want to avoid any more what needs to be done.  I have an infection in that tooth that is causing me problems.  The option to just plaster it over for another six months seems too hard to bear.  At some point I have to face the grief of loosing the tooth.  When I spoke to the dentist I was really honest about how I was struggling.   This is the kind thing she said to me.

“It is totally understandable that you feel the way you do.  A front tooth is such a big part of you and to have it removed is hard.   Its not just like cutting off a fingernail or something.” She then turned away and my tears just fell.  I realised in that instant the trauma I have gone through will always live on in my body and I have endured losses, but I also know if I face the facts, feel the grief and go through the procedure things will be better in the long run than avoiding it.  Maybe readers won’t relate to what a big thing it is for me.   I also know I MUST FACE IT.  Avoiding things that are painful for me is no longer an option.  I know in the past I have avoided pain and I know its because I have gone through so much pain in my life.

What was really beautiful today though was the empathy and kindness that my beautiful dentist, Sunny showed me.   She only has 2 and a half weeks until she takes leave to give birth to her daughter and wont be back to work until November.   When I left after absorbing a truth I had tried to avoid before and felt the problems the infection is causing for my body I wondered how I will last 6 months now waiting for the procedure to be done.  I don’t know the answer.   I have a bit of a headache at the moment as these big emotions are around.  But I do feel as I sit typing this with sunlight streaming though the window how grateful I am that in being shown empathy and kindness I was able to feel the full impact of the thing.  I have had dental trauma since age 16 when four teeth were removed in preparation for 18 months of braces during which I had to wear a bit and bridle to bed at night to pull the teeth back.  My teeth are aching as I write this.  That cellular memory lives on and I rarely have an undisturbed night’s sleep due to it as well as the impact of the head trauma I had 12 years ago,  I am aware as I type this that the anniversary of that accident is approaching… its ripple affects live on.  Trauma brings more trauma…that is a sad fact.   There is so much our bodies go through that other minds so often don’t understand.  I am just so grateful that my dentist does.

Searching for a way back to motherland

In a gorgeous old hotel, we sat with our sandwiches and cakes.  High tea.  Celebrators and faters left after only an hour.  We lingered on talking of movies and films of books and songs and art.  You are too old to know who Ed Sheeran is but I know you love music and lyrics with love written deep beneath the lines.  I share the video of Thinking Out Loud with you and remember how you and Dad loved to dance.

There was a whole life you lived before I came, an accidental child who you told was deeply loved, but attention was scarce.  I understand better now, you were both products of your generation, born out of the deprivation of war and economic depression.  My sister talks about a biography of Ned Kelly’s mother she is reading and for readers who don’t know Ned was a bushranger who stole from the rich, not unlike Robin Hood who underwent a very painful childhood.  His mother had children to three fathers and Ned found his way to prison early in life.

We speak of how now, children are fated with attention and so many gifts, its something you don’t understand, possibly a backlash and a 180 degree turn for that generation who never knew war or deprivation.

Under the table though your legs are aching.  As my sister leaves the table you feel free enough to shed a tear,  I am crying too as I touch you narrow hand enclosing it with mine, feeling the love the flows through from child to mother ,from mother to child my mother land.

And a thought occurred to me while we were talking that here in Australia it is mother’s day but how are we celebrating the earth, who is really the ground of our being and the mother to us all, are we aware of how much we burden it with consumption perhaps gone rogue due to earlier deprivations and fears which have fallen into unconsciousness or been swallowed down with mother’s milk.?

You and my father struggled so much and when he was gone, I went out and struggled alone.   On that first Christmas following his death you called me in Switzerland asking me to come home, but I was gone on drugs and booze, and then fell pregnant, my friends left me in that cold country alone.  And by the time I came back you were married again, but the aching for my father never went away.

It seems for so long I have been trying to find my way back to you, my mother land.  You are a hunger that beats in my breast, you are a knowing and wounds I often wear invisibly inside, imprints that call on me in early mornings and at dusk when Nana left you alone with only a stone from the fire to warm your cold bed.  Was it any wonder you cried this afternoon and that your legs ached. I hope it wasn’t too much taking you out, it was the way we both tried to show you how grateful we are and how much you are cared for.

Do we really know all of the silent griefs our mothers carry, how they hoped for so much more but could only give what they could give out of fate?   Do we know of their silent struggles?  Do we think to ask?

So for today I am grateful for what you have tried to give.  I remember the many times I turned away because to allow myself to want or depend would make me too vulnerable.  I see the pain I caused myself and others, but none of it was intentional.  And today I can say I love you more than words can say, that I see and understand and that for as long as you  need me in these final years.  I will be there.

Gifts of life

Grateful today for simple pleasures and gifts of life

Sunlight warming my heart

Vibrant orange colour of juicy mandarin that I savour with my glass of lemon, ginger and honey

Beautiful images online with soulful sayings

Music that has the power to uplift and inspire

Filling the soul with all kinds of deep feeling and joy

Poetry that falls from the fingers of talent writers

In books and particularly on Worpress

Beautiful humans sharing and exposing their souls

Shared family moments when we reminisce on past times

While deeper grief lays silently unspoken under the words

A deeper knowing arising within me

That love is really the basis of everything

And truly can be the fuel that inspires any movement

And any decision taken on any day

Gratitude for the awakening of a consciousness

That can be aware of

And thankful for all of these gifts

Most especially the gift of an open heart

Capable of feeling free awake and fully alive in this precious moment

Some times I forget : counting my blessings

I was reminded today when reading back a post I wrote but didn’t post yesterday of the very real reasons I felt suicidal and went through a painful dark night of the soul over at least 10 years.  I was reminded that I didn’t end up in that state for no reason and that without the constant realistic loving presence of a very good therapist that took me so many years to find I would not today be feeling the degree of joy that I am feeling and the sense that I have in some way emerged, even though at times on certain days I can get a pull back into that deep dark space where my mind remembers all the pain and the long time this journey has taken.

I was reminded that I didn’t make it all up and that my loneliness was so bone crushing because it was deeply real.  It wasn’t something I chose but something that happened to me out of unresolved experiences of being so very far away in my consciousness from connection with others who could not understand and due to having been left alone so many times without protection that I had to look to unsafe things and places and spaces for it.  I was also reminded of how all along even when it hasn’t felt like it some force or power has been taking care of me from behind the scenes.

This is most certainly not something I could prove to anyone, but I have had some very challenging things happen over years in terms of danger or loss or confusion and at some stage an angel has stepped in at the eleventh hour to help.  It has happened to me too many times now for me to doubt that I am cared for and loved and that feeling is such a long way from the feelings of deepest aloneness and lack of care that at times have tried inside my mind to lead me to take my life.

When I start to recover my sense of happiness and the feeling that I do have the power to make healthy choices on days which will bring me light and life and joy it can sometimes seem to me that in some way what went before was a kind of aberration, that I have been crazy or stupid to have lost trust in life, other people and love.  But I have to keep reminding myself that those feelings came from somewhere.   I hope never to lose a sense of gratitude that on many days now I simply do not have to live deep down in that dark night space so much now as I used to in the past.  Consciousness is always changing.

Recovery to me doesn’t mean I am suddenly bullet proof or impervious to pain, most especially when those I love are suffering, recovery means I can feel those feelings at great depth but they no longer place such a strangle hold on my consciousness.  On the days such pain visits, that I feel capable of taking some action to express love and care for myself and for others, while knowing realistically that so much of what happens for others is not my fault and outside of my power to control.

And the other miracle now is that I no longer see the world in such black/white terms.  I can see some of the deep human complexity in people who have been ‘bad’ to or hurt me in life.  I can see some of the shadow and insecurity even in those who appear to be so strong and have it all together and I am aware that both positive and negative forces and powers and manners of perception reside inside my own consciousness and can dominate on different days.

There can be days when I am tempted to judge my insides by others outsides, by the happy image they present to the world.  On these days I see myself as so inherently flawed and lacking that a dark cloud comes down but the miracle now is that on those days and in those dark moments a loving voice comes to me and tells me where I am seeing things incorrectly or incompletely.  This voice inside me encourages me to focus on what is good, while not ignoring what hurts, it encourages me to put some good into my day to soothe any pain or hurt or fear or doubting that is trying to lay claim to and imprison my soul in negativity.

And I can understand and accept that others suffer too from all the same fears and doubts and insecurities that I do and that often those people on any day may be fighting a battle I can not fully see or recognise.  When I am tempted to view things from a difficult or more painful perspective I can remind myself to pray to see things more realistically, more lovingly and more meaningfully.  I can pray to be relieved of the bondage of self centred or unrealistic perfectionism that may lay love, a sense of value and a sense of connection to waste.   And at the end of those days on which that force turns my life and day around I can go to bed grateful for all that I have survived, even the most painful of experiences for each and every one has made me who I am.