Holistic Health & Emotional Healing – Page 9

Did Women Birth the Patriachy?

‘The job of the initiator…. is to prove to the boy or girl that he or she is more than mere flesh and blood. ‘

Iron John by Robert Bly

I struggle with the polarities of feminism and patriarchy. We are, not only, interconnected beings, but, more critically than that, the perpetrators of patriarchy have been birthed from the vaginas of women.

Women have been just as much of an integral cog in the creation of the ‘demonised’ patriarchy as men; we are a dominant and powerful influence on the children we birth and raise in this world.

This is what we can no longer ignore. We can no longer speak from the place of victim but must acknowledge our own accountability towards the state of our lives and the lives of our ancestors and our future generations.

When we raise our children we need to be deeply aware of the choices we make towards them, this is not about academic education, status, employment; this is about the psychology of raising a child. What creates a grounded, stable, kind, compassionate being? Our role as parents, mothers and fathers, is critical.

The deep truth is that it is not about gender, it is about love. Both women AND men are being abandoned by our current structure, where we place emphasis in all the wrong places. Women’s opportunities being suppressed, men committing suicide at horrendous rates, LGBT communities persecuted. This is not about feminism or patriarchy, it is about our humanity towards each other.

Our children need to feel deeply & soulfully loved in order to be able to walk into the world with kindness and compassion. And this is not as simple as saying ‘I love you’ and packing them off to daycare or nannies or school or extra classes. This love is not about who there are going to be in the world it is about who they already are – a soul, born with all the potential of total acceptance. We teach our children to hate, we teach our children to fear, we teach our children to create clear separate identities to each other. Parents are responsible for every generation that comes forth, it is the single most important job in the world and it’s time to take it more seriously.

It is time to focus on healing the wounds that prevent us from raising our children well, to be wholly accountable for the impact our own actions and choices create in the world.

I will not call myself a feminist when my brothers are being punished for acting out their wounds nor will I align myself with the patriarchy when my sisters are struggling to reach their power.

I will continue to advocate for emotional healing and natural parenting to be the only recourse to humanitarian living, to kindness.

To love.

“… It is easy to love the part of ourselves which resembles a radiant God but real love is to also to love the part of ourselves which is like an imperfect, lost, grief-stricken wanderer lying by the roadside. This wandering, grief-filled soul exiled in the broken world is redeemed by our love, and at the same time this lost wanderer is the one who will guide us home…”

Jason Hine

I believe…

I watched my daughter fly into a fury the other day and, from that simple but emotional outburst, I have witnessed my own, deeply held & damaging, belief unravel.

She came to me with a problem between herself and a playmate; she shared her story to which her playmate immediately denied and refuted (standard), but what happened next was that the playmate’s parent spoke quickly and clearly stating that their child was not a liar. I believe they were just trying to be positive to their own child, showing support for their own upset, and I do understand that, but from my daughter’s perspective she heard ‘the playmate is not a liar and therefore you must be, as your stories are different’ and she raged and screamed. In observing that clearly, I realised that had happened a few times to her in different guises, that a comment, innocent or otherwise, had left her to feel that she was not believed.

In this understanding of her, this rage coming from lack of validation externally but more importantly, internally, not being able to hold her truth without fear of it being stripped away, I saw myself.

Those moments in films where flashback pictures litter the screen, running through countless memories to create the story that is now; that was me. My life rewound as I watched myself try and validate my values, thoughts and ideas via external sources; sharing books, memes, research, videos, anything and anyone else’s perspective to show another that my own thought might have value. And I do all of that because my belief in myself, in my own voice and opinion has not been strong enough. How different it would feel if I could speak my truth and leave it on the table of discussion, just leave it there, to be exactly what it is, my own; to no longer feel the need to explain it away or tie myself in knots to convince someone else to listen and validate me. To know that my worth is enough to stand alone, to be taken, received or rejected and still be OK.

And as I wonder how best to help my daughter, who has absorbed that sensitivity from me, I know that the only way forward is for me to have the courage to leave my opinions on the table and walk away, to take a deep breath, trust in my own wisdom and no longer seek the validation from outside.

It is time to step up and into My Self and hold my own truth securely within my soul, so that my daughter can also hold hers.

Defined by Pain

When both my sister and my cousin hung themselves, the words offered to me by my family were… ‘troubled souls’. As if that explained everything.

Those words defined these two individuals, wrote off their whole lives because they were perceived to have been born into the world as ‘troubled souls’. I am also described in this way.

Frankly, it’s Bullshit.

No one is born a troubled soul; no one comes into the world shattered and full of pain. It is given to us on our journey and mostly, predominately, from our childhood.

When I was a young teen, a mother at my school told me (indirectly via my mother) that I reminded her of Jodie Foster, in the film ‘The Accused’ (Jodie Foster’s character is gang raped in the back room of a bar, witnessed and ignored by on lookers, and treated like the criminal rather than the victim.) Quite an offensive and powerful statement to make about a young girl. At the time I was indignant and outraged that someone could speak about me in such a way, still a child, still a virgin, still innocent. It has taken me another 20+ years to fully understand her statement.

When my father molested me as a small child, he took away my innocence. He created a premature sexuality in my expression and personality and, more than that, it was birthed through me without my understanding. What that meant was that my dynamics with men were utterly confusing. I attracted unwanted attention from all quarters, not least my mother’s boyfriends, men in the street, the caretaker at school, my driving instructor, all to a lesser or greater degree treated me as an object of desire, a Lolita.

I had only ever learned, from my role model, my father, that this is who I was supposed to be in the world, a desired feminine; and with that there would be complications. With that men would believe that I had led them on, teased them, courted them. And I had, but I didn’t know it, I didn’t understand how, because I was just being ‘me’.

The thing was nobody else understood either. So my family members saw me as flirtatious, inappropriate, testing, asking for it… friends could feel threatened by my presence and, again, rightly so. I lost count of how many of their boyfriends tried to ‘cop a feel’ under the table or in the back of the car when they thought no one was watching. All of this I thought was normal, this is men, this is life, this is how it is to be a woman. But I also felt judged and alienated and lonely and I didn’t know why, because I was just being ‘me’.

When I uncovered my father’s actions to me, which had been hidden in my early childhood memories, I first told them to a friend of mine who is a therapist. He said to me, ‘Didn’t you know? You showed all the signs of an abused child’. Slowly my memories unravelled and I was able to see how my unconscious sexuality had permeated my life, my attractions, my complications. I was able to see that I had been defined by my pain, my wound that had been inflicted upon me, but only the rare few could see through the pain, the rest just saw me as a ‘troubled soul’.

So I want to speak up for my sister, for my cousin, for me and all of those who have had great wounds inflicted upon them. None of us are troubled souls, just the opposite; we are innocent ones, born like the rest in perfection and purity. We have been defined by our wounds, some of us get the opportunity to change that, some of us don’t, but behind every uncomfortable, inappropriate, damaging behaviour is just another innocent that has been badly hurt.

Love Linguistics

2016 is the year of love, absent and present.

I started the year in a place in my relationship that, whilst knowing cerebrally that my husband loved me, I couldn’t feel it. I felt unloved.

Added to this ache was a gnawing sense that my daughter couldn’t feel my love, that no matter what I did for her she was tetchy and upset. I truly believe children can fare many life storms as long as they feel deeply loved, yet I was sensing that my darling girl felt empty despite my absolute adoration. How could this be?

Thankfully a dear friend directed me towards the work of Gary Chapman and his ‘5 love languages’ for couples and for children.

What a revelation! How could I have lived till nearly 40 (it’s the big one this year!) and not have understood these crucial love languages?

To précis his work (which I cannot recommend highly enough), each of us needs to have a full love ‘tank’ in order to be at our emotional best. This tank is filled by receiving love in 5 different forms, but, from age 5 upwards, we usually utilise one (or two) of these ways as our primary expression of love.

The 5 languages are quality time, physical touch, acts of service, gifts, words of affirmation.

Before even reading the book I had a moment of hallelujah when I read the 5 types. I am so clearly an ‘acts of service’ personality, I had even explained it unknowingly to a friend when discussing my daughter – how does she not know I love her when I get her to all her classes and desires on time with the right outfits, snacks and accessories! This was me showing her how important she is to me. But she is not an ‘acts of service’ love-receiver and here is the crux.

As Gary Chapman explains, once we move beyond our honeymoon love fest, both in relationship and parenting, and we settle into our own spaces and habits, we need to speak the same language in order to top up our tanks. Without this we end up like a Chinese man and a French woman trying to sustain connection without learning each other’s language.

Such a simple concept and yet so indefatigably important.

As with the Chinese & French couple, it is a choice they make to learn each other’s language. It may not be easy to speak, but if connection is desired, it is really the only way.

So I started to speak the love languages of my husband and daughter; and my husband began to speak mine.

The change in our household has been near instant. From feelings of sadness, desperation and alienation to connection, love, vibrancy and happiness. This. Just from dialling in to each other’s beings.

My daughter now comes and curls and folds herself into me just as she used to…. Absolute bliss. My husband and I are enjoying the lightness and humour of love again.

I am beyond grateful for this work and I wish is were a curriculum subject at school. I believe these linguistics to be part of the foundation of a happy society; connection across borders on all levels.

So let’s study on….. let’s Love on…….

Messy Friendships

There is a weird double standard that floats around in the world. There is an understanding that marriages and love relationships don’t always endure a full lifetime; that paths diverge; partners grow up and away from each other; there is an allowance for this to occur and yet, for friendships, there is a shame and disapproval when they hit similarly rocky times.

From my experience, friendships are not dramatically different from love relationships. There is always a honeymoon period, that time with a friend where you feel the soul bond, the bubbles of happiness in each other’s company, the hits of connection when your thoughts collide and that high of being ‘understood’. How long that lasts and what it transforms into is unique and varied but there is undoubtedly a pressure that, once a friendship has been created, it carries with it a veil of perfection that mustn’t be questioned.

In my relationship, if there is an ‘issue’, a moment of conflict, I am supported socially to endeavour to resolve it. ‘Don’t go to sleep angry’; if you carry resentment it will only rear its ugly head later down the line; best keep lines of communication clear and open etc etc. Apply this to a friendship model and it’s almost as if you are creating conflict, making trouble, rocking the boat.

I am that person who likes to clear the air, I like to talk things through when I’m pissed about something and try and figure out a better way for both of us. I think it is definitely a positive attribute in my relationship but in my friendships it makes them messy.

My husband will comment that I seem to have patterns of conflict in my friendships but when I step back and really take a wider view on it, actually I have the odd moment of disagreement. Certainly, compared to how often I argue with my husband, my points of disagreements with friends are few and far between (and rightly so, when we include the context of time spent together). However, they feel emotionally so much bigger, as if I have trespassed into forbidden territory. There is a fear of loss so much greater than in my marriage, where we hold a spoken and written commitment; in friendship there seems to be a stronger possibility of final separation.

Let me put this into context, imagine having a flash point with your partner and instead of cooling down to then talk it through, you choose not to speak to them for 6 weeks and then when you do pretend as if nothing’s happened. Is that at all sustainable as a relationship model? Yet it is widely used in friendships. And please don’t think I’m preaching from a high horse, I have been completely guilty of this too, more times than I care to confess.

But today it just struck me as totally crazy. I want my friends to be just like my relationships, that we front up to our difficult moments, that we stare them right in the face and work it out, because I know that it brings me into deeper and more loving connection with my husband when I do this and I know it would be the same for my friendships too. It might be messy but it would definitely feel more real.

Dot to Dot

A couple of dear friends have recently confided their frustrations at where they are at emotionally. They have done ‘work’, they’ve uncovered, examined and released some of their wounded places and they feel like they should be in a better place than they are.

I get that. Doing the work often releases these bubbles of happiness and connection; these moments of awareness where I can feel in the flow of life, love and the universe. Sometimes these bubbles last for months at a time, sometimes only hours or days, and in between times I can wonder if they were real or will ever be attainable again.

Whilst listening to my friends in recent days, I came up with a metaphor that feels realistic to me. The dot to dot drawings….

If my life is a dot to dot drawing and each dot is one of those bubbles of universal understanding and connection, the spaces inbetween are the moments of confusion and wondering.

There are times in my life where the dots are so close together that I almost surf between them, that the difficult moments are so brief I can feel the flow of universal love supporting me to the next dot; and there are times where the leap between dots feels like a chasm so large I lose my faith that I can ever experience those moments of soul love again.

The entire picture is my whole life, I am not going to hit that final dot, I am not going to complete the drawing until my last breath on this earth. That makes sense to me, that it is an impossible expectation to be in that dot state at all times but the more dots we experience, the clearer the picture becomes, our greater understanding grows despite the fact that our confusion can still appear with regularity.

This dot to dot will be framed and displayed as a reminder for me during the connection and the disconnect.

I hope it helps you too xxx

Anger

I recently got cross with a dear friend’s little girl. It had been bubbling a while, something that I needed to take some time to look at and also a reflex. I had spent the weekend being told a series of untruths, just as children do, but one came after too many and I had enough. I was angry, not wildly so, I didn’t say or do anything terrible but it was clear I was annoyed and cross. As many of us know, this a great faux pas. To be angry with another person’s child is a line that ought not to be traversed.

I apologised, and I meant it, both to child and mother but that line had been crossed and therein lies an issue.

I “shouldn’t” have been angry with her.

Except where there are ‘shoulds’ there are unhealthy shadows, more over it has been done, it can’t be undone, yet the focus is so often about trying to erase its memory, trying to find a way to discount it from our past. Why have we got such an aversion, such a stigma around anger? Of course, we can always endeavour to find the kind way, of course we can learn from our outbursts and try to do it differently next time, but why are we, as a society, so unforgiving about anger? If someone does something to upset you surely it is healthy to let that out? And even with the very best of intentions, sometimes that comes as an explosion. I don’t believe that anger is a bad energy, it is One of our energies and it is important to acknowledge it.

I look at all the sickness in the world right now and so much is spawn from anger; I am closely present to a darling friend trying to save her own life as she heals herself of cancer, and she has Anger. She has anger from her childhood, so buried within her system that it is making her mortally sick. And I can promise you, that anger is well deserved, I know a fraction of her story and she has every right to be mad as hell. I expect she has her moments of daily anger, she has a political rant every now and again, but she needs to get crazy angry for a moment, a real stomach churning, yeti screaming, puce face eruption of energy and get it out. But where can she do this? Where is there permission to do this? Instead she is supposed to move on, forgive, take the high road, have compassion. Well she does, she has all of those in buckets and spades but she needs her anger too. She needs is so that she can live to see her children grow up and so that I can make my way to Oz and give her a bloody big hug.

So I go back to this place I’m at right now where I feel so horrible for having been angry with this lovely little girl, I feel mean and ogre-ish and yet there is a tendril poking up through my shame that says, ‘it’s ok’, ‘you got cross because right then you needed to’, ‘you apologised because you’re nice too’ and actually I think that is true.

And I am grateful to this experience, as much as the fences that need building between me and my friend are hurting my soul, I know this reflection on my own anger is healing and positive. I know that I am going to take it into my own family and give greater permission for my kids and my husband AND Me to have our outbursts. That instead of shaming those moments, instead of shaming me for being perceived as imperfect, I am going to feel that energy course out of my system and return to peace.

Anger is welcome here.

Good Children

When my daughter was two there was a flash point between my own mother and myself as I heard her praise her granddaughter with the words ‘good girl’, frequently and repetitively. Nothing wrong with that? My mother didn’t think so and understandably so, it is a standard reinforcing phrase for our children, encouraging and affirming, right?

Except that I didn’t agree. I didn’t want my daughter being fed this belief that she was good if she managed to fit a shape into its matching hole, or if she tidied the animals back into the box. Yes I wanted to affirm her actions, encourage her explorations and adventures, but I didn’t and don’t want my children to believe that they are either good, or conversely bad, for arbitrary things.

I remembered this incident this evening as I flicked on the television and an image flashed up of a celebrity in a third world environment endorsing some ‘saving’ protocol. It irritated me and I took a moment to wonder why. What came up for me was the fact that all these endorsements can so often come from wanting to be perceived as good, worthy of love, worthy of their status by doing the ‘right’ thing. I do not know any of their individual motivations and I don’t want to crush the spirit of charity and philanthrophy, in the slightest; but there is a truth that some of these processes do more harm than good, some corporations pay a face to promote something that may not be the best for those in need or for the environment. Yet, if egos are schmoozed into believing they are doing ‘good’ in the world, it hits that childhood reinforced message – you are loved if you are good and the deeper questions, the deeper morality actually don’t have to be mentioned.

Goodness 1 v Humanity 0

Boy, I do not want my kids or anyone, or me (!) to feel like they have to be good to be loved. Within 24 hours I can be so wonderful, kind, patient, loving, attentive, generous and also hateful, jealous, angry, spiteful and mean. I still want to be loved. I still want to love myself for those whole 24 hours not just the ‘good’ bits. I want to be able to stand up to the world and shout out the injustices, the misdoings, the corruption and still be lovable even if it means I have not toed the party line.

I want my children to feel like they can say no to being seen to be good, if actually it is not real kindness, real honesty, real humanity. Being good used to represent those things, but it has become generic & soulless, our generations have been so numbed by this baseless praise that we are responding like Pavlov’s dogs to it. Tell us we are good and we won’t ask any more questions…

Does that resonate?

Normal

I’ve just finished watching ‘This is England 90’, a raw and poignant portrayal of a community through the years. They face incest, drug addition, racism and violence in amongst the normality of friendship, family, love and courage.

I have found it painful to watch because so much has resonated for me. I may have been brought up in middle class luxury in comparison, but many of the events, the feelings & the pain are the same.

As I witnessed a character pull herself out of heroin addiction, as she came to terms with the history of incest and violence in her family, I wept. My heart surged at her heroism, her wish to come through it, to find a future for herself, and I had such understanding and compassion for why she was there in the first place; why heroin was so attractive to her; and why her choices kept bringing her deeper into shame.

You see I am normal now. A bit of a hippy and earthy weirdness might be some’s judgement but, by general overview, I am normal. 2 kids, suburban house, husband, play dates, school runs. Normal. But I am frequently plagued by memories of my childhood and youth, tormented by the shame of my behaviour that would not fit into ‘normal’. That if people knew the lines I have crossed, the dangers I have experienced, I wouldn’t be allowed in this ‘normal’ club, I’d have to be one of those that has suffered, or is unstable or is a cautionary tale. So I don’t talk about those things I have done.

And then tonight I watched this character be so like me and so like my cousin, who did not survive to make it to normal, and perhaps like my sister too who I never had a chance to compare notes with before her pain took her. I watched this woman and felt so much compassion for her history that she would always hold no matter how ‘normal’ she becomes and I realised that I needed to feel that for me too. To understand why I gave my spirit away over and over again, to understand ‘why wouldn’t I’.

Sometimes when I write on this subject the shame sneaks into my head and wonders if these words are self indulgent and dramatic. Then I think of all those others who are hiding behind ‘normal’, whose souls ache with the harming behaviours of their past and I know I must speak.

I am normal. I am wounded. Where I have been is how I have survived and that’s ok. When I stop judging myself for those days, for being broken, the world will stop judging me too. When I start loving that part of me, then I can be loved too.

Another Day, Another War

‘The World can’t be “fixed” now — it has to be healed. And healing is not an event, it is a process.’

Marianne Williamson

Today, our country has agreed to bomb Syria, in the name of humanity and yet so far from true humanity.

Innocents will continue to die.

The discussion on social media is all about killing, how can we justify killing, ‘the greater good’, shootings in America, gun control, refugees. Every voice is strong, powerful, vehement and righteous. Understandably so, on all sides, of every argument.

And I think I know why.

I think we really need to start at the very beginning. I have a passion for understanding human psychology, my father was an eminent psychiatrist and he definitely passed this trait of curiosity on to me. I struggled (and still do in some ways) with anxieties, self harming, destructive patterns for years and, although through some of the worst of those years by the time I reached parenthood, I wanted to understand the psychology of our children enough to try and break some of those chains that bind.

So many parenting decisions, therefore, have been fed with the context of what effect they might have on the psychological stability of my children. It opened up an unfathomable new world.

Against our animal impulses, we are predominately raising children to be disassociated from instincts, security, attachment, intuition and solid foundations. This is not a blame or finger pointing exercise and there are huge variable for every individual but it is important to start seriously considering these influences on the lives of our future generations & communities.

In exploring the neuroscience (Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt) of children’s brain development and the repercussions that ignoring animals’ needs for security, survival & nurture can have, the world implodes. The hatred, violence, disconnection from compassion & humanity can be unravelled by understanding how our current view of parenting is shaping the world. Why are our descendents getting angrier? Why are they hurting so much that they are hurting others?

Because they are disconnected. If we leave our children’s cries unheard and unresponded to, then they never will truly believe that there is any safety for them in the world. If we control their behaviour to unreasonable, age inappropriate, expectations, then they will never believe they are good enough, capable enough. I damage my children, I scream at times and I witness the damage that does to their psyche in front of my eyes, the safety I provide shrivels when I am raging, when I am expressing my disconnect from compassion. Each of these elements is just a small part of an enormous whole. In America, women receive 6 weeks maternity leave, their babies are being left, their animal attachment is being severed way too early, way too soon.

Do we really think that if our children were brought up with a deep knowing and sense of their worthiness and trust in unconditional love, do you think any of them would be suicide bombers, or war waging politicians? Really?

That is where we need to start. We need to bring back the understanding of our small actions as individuals, as parents, as carers to raise each child with enough humanity to stop the wars.