Its not easy I know in a world fraught with appearances and comparison to see the unique and individual being you are especially when those supposed to love, foster and nurture you only filled your head with mean things or else you watched them abusing their bodies or not resting, living a fraught and disconnected life. And yet, how could it not have been so? Something that preoccupies my thoughts a lot lately as I come to more acceptance around the emotional neglect aspect of my ancestral and parental legacy..
I have a lot more compassion now as I see how hard both my parents were trying to pull themselves up from the mud and survive.. As a child in an adults’ body I cannot see this longer range view, often it takes so much suffering and going down to rise to encompass this truth.. none of it was personal at all.. Never meant to harm or wound and yet it did!. And when I think lately of the dramatic swings my body made as all this began to push for attention from the age of 40 onwards (as Uranus opposed Uranus while Neptune squared Neptune) that all makes sense too. The pain is no longer so personal any more maybe I am finally integrating more and more of it.
Over five generations our family bonds got torn and then the struggle to live with the unconscious psychic inheritance made us crumble.. my older sister was the real casualty, even though my accident came first around my Dad’s 59th birthday in 1979… Six months later a vessel in my sister’s head burst and she was forced into both psychosis and dependency as without essential support my family could not give her what was needed to recover. The being torn away theme also replayed when my brother in law took her overseas only to dump her in an asylum for a while and then return her to us with a one way ticket.. This happened in 1982 and was so uttterly painful for me to witness. My nephews (closer in age to me than my brother) were no longer in touch with us and that is when my own struggle with intimacy and terminations of pregnancy followed It feels right to be re-exploring this today with the Moon in early Cancer in conjunct my Aquarian Moon and the transiting Sun (today at 6 Aquarius.)
I have rivers of compassion for my parents now but I still carry the great grief of loneliness over separation from family that played out.. Hard as I have tried on my return to Canberra to be included by my sister’s family they continue to keep distance just as my father and his son and grandsons did to his own family .. Its the same with my brother’s children, we got close for a while but then those bonds got put to death by my sister in law who never dealt with her mother’s early death and just encouraged me in 2004 to get as far away from family as possible..
It hurts to feel the longing for sibling love I got from Jude that doesnt come from my two remaining siblings. They both continue to keep a great emotional distance (just as my father did from his.) It is pointless and counterproductive for me to deny the longing I have to love them and be loved by them. It pierces me so deeply but in the end I have to give all those feelings to God and the angels else they get too hard to manage. I ring my brother but he didnt even bother to return my call last week. Get sick of trying at times.
Forgiveness for life not being perfect or ideal is MOST ESSENTIAL to my peace and healing at present.. the more compassion and empathy I offer to my true Self the more this becomes possible for feel for others… And yet feeling the anger and rage over the denial of it and their scapegoating of and inability to see me as I am has been very important too.. It means I feel worthy of being seen and valued and don’t just blow the truth off, covering it in mists of denial or fog. Or ‘making nice.’ I kept trying at this with my sister and failed.. Not heard zip from her since last week. I let that go to God too.. in my soul I know we are connected so I have to try to send her love even as her great distance wounds me..and I am not alone in this as so many of us suffer in this way with family and siblings.. We compensate by finding a spiritual family of choice..
Jasper and I managed an earlier walk today.. I was grateful for it.. I am having some epsom salt baths with Himalayan Rock Salt and Bergamot and Orange lately that are helping my body relax and today as we walked the lake on Australia Day (or as the indigenous peoples would rather it be called : Invasion Day) I heard and felt the suffering in the wind and the grey churning lake of the dispossessed ancestors.. Hearing a story from one of the stolen generation last week on the ABC arts program broke my heart. Apparently fter they took these children from their parents, driving them a great distance away they gave them chloroform to anaethetise them. So so sad.. it made me scream and cry for them..
It is imperative here in Australia that we must face up to what was done, even if it was the British colonising forces that wreaked such havoc on an entire population.. On that note I started to watch a very funny comedy stand up performance by Trevor Noah yesterday afternoon called Afraid of the Dark in which he deals with a British person invading India in skit that has the colonising ‘force’ in a very funny dispute with the Indian person who asks him which of the Gods told him to invade the place.. It was funny, insightful and ironic…It also showed the complete ignorance and opposition of ways of perceiving reality that exists and how split off the heroic egoic forces of patriarchy were that lost connection with depths and abadonded a complex and rich multi-theism for a superficial conglomerate monotheism.. devaluation of the feminine followed and yes not only A FEAR OF, BUT TERROR OF THE DARK THAT THEN HAD TO BE VANQUISHED.
Today I give thanks for a safe home here in Australia where positive steps by government have contained Covid very well, while at the same time acknowledging I am also an invader… my father took flight from his own country due to fear of death.. he never wanted to back.. visited only a couple of times.. Visiting Holland in 2001 for the second time I was overcome with grief when I saw the love my Aunt has for us.. I will always be grateful I managed to make a bond with her for a short time before her death in 2008. I sadly could not accept her help after the head injury in 2005, if only I had been braver…I cried today while walking over the many opportunities I had to bond with people that I rejected out of fear.. even after the head injury people offered me some help but I chose to come back here..
I am glad in a way.. I got those final years with Mum and Jude but I am full of sadness too for the independent life I did not get to live and yet, if I had not faced all of this would I have grown so much as a person, in love, wisdom, empathy and understanding? Probably not.. Maybe its time to acknowledge just how strong and amazing I am even with all my very human vulnerabilities and complexities.. Maybe its time to see my shadow contains gold.. Maybe its time to stand up and roar..To own my power and never ever chose to remain silent to or bury the necessary pain that brought myself and my family as well everyone else to here. To keep bearing witness to the wounds while choosing not to live there or be inundated by the pain of them so utterly from now on.
