Personal Moments – Page 6 – Soul Reflection

Heartbroken

A little over a year ago, my mother and I were in therapy together.

I voiced the words I feared the most.

‘I don’t feel like you love me, I feel you tolerate me.’

To which, my mother nodded and added ‘that’s because you are so difficult’.

And my heart broke

It broke so hard and so deeply that I felt swallowed by my grief. My head accepted this status, my head has compassion for the wounds of my family, but my heart….. my heart hurt beyond anything I could have imagined.

I have carried this pain gnawing at me day after day, knowing that I needed to find a way through, to accept, to surrender, to move on and past and up and over and and and and….

And I couldn’t. Because I knew I needed mother love. I knew and know that Mother Love is the most powerful and healing and soulful of loves and how was I to face the rest of my life being so undeserving of that.

I couldn’t see my way out of the darkness.

This last weekend, I left my family for four days, to explore the depths and murkiness of this pain. I stepped into a weekend of holding, healing and transformation so that I could emerge again into a space of love. And I was terrified that I wouldn’t, that no one would be able to help me.

Whilst the moments and details of these weekends are confidential, I can reveal a vignette of what I received.

I was held by a woman, loved by a woman, nurtured by a woman who channelled the power of the Divine Mother from the heavens to me. I know that I shall never forget the face of this Goddess who offered her healing to me, who showed me what it was to be wholly and unconditionally loved. It has changed me profoundly.

I experienced Kintsugi.

Kintsugi is the Japanese art & philosophy of mending pottery with the fissures of brokenness healed with gold. The pottery becomes more beautiful and of greater value from this process.

And that is what happened to my heart. My heart will always carry the cracks of its break but, just two days ago, those sharp & painful edges were filled with gold.

~~~~~~

With love and gratitude to all the Facilitators, Staff & Women from The Celebration of Women, The Goddess Workshop, Celebration of Being.

Scapegoat

I have so much to say and I’m not sure how’s it’s all going to come out but it’s a real mixture of what’s tumbling around my head, heart and soul and also how that relates to the pertinent space the global media is reflecting right now.

I received a real lashing for a recent post (Weinstein et al). It hit me hard and I have taken some time to reflect on it. As much as I work hard to construct my opinions as solely mine and I endeavour to use ‘I’ statements to emphasise that, I have realised that when I post something on someone else’s social media page, it turns my I statements into a ‘you should’. It can feel as if I am telling someone that my opinion belongs in their space. So I have learned from that and will be more cautious about how and where I share my thoughts.

But the essence of that blog still stands for me and I have delved a little deeper into my psyche as to why I hold these beliefs which are perhaps in conflict with a majority. What are my reasons?

What comes up for me is the concept of the Scapegoat. Because not only I have created a scapegoat to escape facing my own issues in the past but I have also been heavily labelled as the scapegoat in my family of origin.

Being the scapegoat within my family dynamic has meant that I am the excuse for them to not be accountable and responsible for their own actions and parts within a story. If I am the person who is ‘wrong’ then that makes those labelling me ‘right’.

And the water is murky because as sure as some of what I’ve been accused of are downright lies, some rumours are carried in truth. Which, more than anything, gives them greater fuel. But what I have come to learn is that my truth and their truth are two very different animals. So whilst my behaviour may be judged by one to be sordid, or untrustworthy, neurotic or perhaps even a little bit crazy. My truth is that I can see the cause and effect on how these events unfolded. I can see the beginning of pain and woundedness that developed into acts of desperate love seeking, or unhealthy out-letting. Once I stopped believing the stories about me from them, I started to see how unhappiness evolves.

And truthfully, it has been the most extraordinary gift, because now I can no longer see ‘bad behaviour’ but only brokenness. I can no longer label someone a predator or an abuser because I see their desperation, their shattered spirits trying to find a way home. I know that being labelled the bad one only spiralled me into deeper despair and I can’t see how it is a solution to anything except the abdication of accountability for all parties.

Because not only have I been the scapegoat but I have also made others my scapegoat. I have been abused and I have abused. When I think of the #metoo campaign, I wonder how many of those speaking out have ever abused others in some form? How many people have used their power to manipulate a person or scenario for their own gain or safety? And why is sexual abuse the pinnacle of this discussion? Some of my experiences that have had no sexual overtones or physical violation have been far more damaging to my spirit than the more overt domination. None of it is right but perhaps neither is it simply wrong.

I cannot stand on a pedestal and say #metoo without also saying that perhaps I have left others uncomfortable, damaged, hurt by my own actions – from a place of unconscious woundedness maybe. But isn’t that the same for most?

Speaking out, speaking up, reclaiming our power is vitally important but with that comes the core piece of accountability and compassion. Where are our own wounds reflected in these others? How can healing really occur without understanding?

I am a scapegoat, I am an abuser, I am a wounded and healing woman.

Time to Fly

In the past few weeks I have been assailed by anxiety; heart racing, breath suffocating and waking for hours in the night.

This is not new to me but it has been a long time since I have experienced such a prolonged and unceasing episode.

Old habits rise up and tempt me to ease the sensations, the desire to numb (food, drugs, alcohol) or distract (replacing with the physical pain of self harm), but my commitment to myself and my children helps me to reach for the healthier soothers that I have developed over these years of healing. One tool has been the learned ability to sit with the feelings and witness them unfold rather than a trying to escape them. Ooof! A hard one but it has been enlightening to observe the trail of my thoughts in the early hours of the morning.

Another of my soothers is reading. Falling into a world of delicious and enticing fiction calms me and takes me out of my own world for while, a break from the pressure on my chest. When it’s not fiction, I choose works that inspire me to reconnect with my spirit, to bring me back to faith and trust in the Divine; words & belief that can draw me away from my obsessive and destructive anxiety spiral.

Last night, my early hours were occupied with the words of Dr Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon, who experienced a profound NDE (Near Death Experience) that filled him with the ultimate trust in the Universe, in Love and Light. His words and description of his journey between life and death are beyond beautiful and a wonderful reminder for me to hold that bigger picture in my daily life.

When I was growing up, my mother used to say that I would need to meet somebody who could let me fly but who could also ground me. She was half right; I do need to be around people that don’t inhibit my wish to fly, to dive into the world of divinity and philosophical exploration, but the grounding she spoke of was a need to be held back into the ‘reality’ of our practical world and what I have realised over the past few weeks is that it is those details that create so much of my anxiety. Constantly pulling myself back into the minutiae of daily life, I keep forgetting my core belief of trust, I step too far into the fear of left brained conditioning and up springs my anxiety.

Eben Alexander’s ‘Proof of Heaven’ is one of those gifts that reminds me to reconnect with my spiritual reflections.

It’s time to fly.

Alone, at Last.

Last week, my husband took my beautiful children camping for two nights. It was an adventure that my husband needed to explore with them, without me there. A moment for his relationships to strengthen and bond. And the kids were super excited, camping is their absolute favourite!

But it wasn’t only a big adventure for them but also for me. It was the first time I had ever had a night away from my children and I wasn’t sure how I would feel about it.

Certainly in the lead up to the trip, I ran through a gamut of emotions from terror, excitement, anxiety, curiosity, sadness and joy. The day before, as they erected the tent in the garden to try it all out and jumped around with the unfettered joy that only exists in those depths of childhood, I felt tears and rage at not being a part of this. And woven into those intense feelings, was the knowing of how important a moment this was for them and for my husband. With that, I bade then farewell with conscious lightness, ease and blessings. Wishing them the happiest of journeys and discoveries together.

Then I turned back into my house and embraced my alone time, at last, over 8 years since the birth of my first child. 52 hours of me.

I loved it. I loved walking into town at my own speed; I loved wandering around the shops without a schedule to return to; I loved coming home and turning lights on that would otherwise have woken the babes and reading a book before bed without using a torch. I loved waking at 8am (!) just as my body asked rather than being dragged from slumber by pokes, prods and requests. There was so much that I loved, yet I missed them every minute too. And I realised how much I adore their company even with the bickers and the ‘why’s’ and the pestering because mostly they bring just the extraordinary joy of innocence, discovery and love. And whilst I loved my 52 hours I would happily have swapped it for 52 hours with them.

I know that these 8 years have flown and so will the next 8 and soon after that they will be leaving. I have plenty of time to be alone in the years ahead and instead I want to be witness to as much as I can of their childhood. Yes, I will bless them in their adventures, I will not hold them back in my arms when then want to fly, but whilst they are here, I will savour every precious minute: happy, challenging, sad or funny. Each one matters to me before I really am alone, at last.
** The picture are the gifts they brought me. Heart shaped stones and one they found with a letter F, for ‘family’.

Role Models

I am sensitive to the role models that pass through my children’s lives. Not for the obvious reasons, I care less about their differing values to mine (as long as they’re not morally corrupt!) in fact I enjoy my children being exposed to different view points and exciting their curiosity and questioning, but I mind greatly about their consistency in our lives.

I know I can’t control where life takes us and friends pass through over the years and that itself is a great lesson for my children, but there is still a place for acknowledging the importance of each role model and their influence.

I speak from a place of loss. I speak from a place of sensitivity to those moments where an adult left my childhood world without word or explanation.

Growing up, the role of father was a gaping hole in my life, my own being emotionally incapable of filling it. Later in life, my early choice of boyfriends certainly reflected my desire for a father figure before therapy and personal development moved me beyond it. But in my childhood itself, certain men stepped forward to offer themselves as a surrogate; family friends, my mother’s boyfriend, uncles, many spoke directly to me, acknowledging the gap and asking permission to represent a father to me.

Every single one left me.

Not a single one remains in my life as a guide or elder. This is not a pity party, I have beautiful support around me now, but at the moments of their leaving, I grieved a loss every time, alone and unacknowledged. Each one just disappeared from my life, sometimes out of loyalty to my mother; sometimes out of separation from my mother; others, I project, because I was too challenging or difficult for their perspective, but for whatever reason they felt no need to say goodbye. And that hurt beyond measure.

So for my children, I ask, when life takes you away from us, when our paths diverge, please just take a moment to say farewell.

Emancipation

I wasn’t sure if I would ever write this post, if I would ever talk about it so very openly. It is delicate, because I am not wanting to hurt those involved and yet inevitably, just by broaching the subject, I will. So the choice becomes between knowingly causing pain to another and healing myself.

I have chosen to heal myself.

I have chosen to withdraw contact from my mother, for the time being. It has not been an easy or light decision, but after 40 years of a very fragile and damaging relationship, it is time for a break.

The rain is buffeting ferociously as I type these words and I feel the chill run through me from the safety of my sitting room. The fierce rain reflecting the power of my tears.

I am not going to discuss the minutiae of wounding that has occurred to create this breaking point, that would be unnecessary pain for all involved, but it is important to know that it goes against every aching cell of my body to cut the energetic life line to my mother; that this has been the very last resort of a gazillion resorts. To feel that I have no longer have a mother, and not by death, is the most painful thing I have ever had to experience.

And I write about it because there is huge shame surrounding these dynamics in life. Shame that my mother can’t love me enough; shame that I have failed as a daughter; shame that the most primal and most basic of relationships has been severed; shame that I deprive my children of their grandmother. Shame, shame, shame…

We went to therapy before Christmas, my mother and I, one of those last resorts….. It didn’t bring us closer as I had hoped. It didn’t help to create a mutual understanding. It did help me to see that I cannot keep asking, begging for something that cannot be given. It did help me see how the shame I carry for not making it ‘work’ poisons my own family, the heaviness of rejection and pain leaks out in unhealthy ways.

And with that I saw that I needed to take a break. To give myself a chance to be the best I can be without the burden of being a ‘difficult daughter’. To give my family a chance to start afresh without the binds of ancestral suffering.

I hope that one day I will be able to walk beside my mother again in total acceptance of who she is, but for that to happen I need to be clear and strong and grounded with who I am without her.

I need to emancipate myself.

With grateful thanks to Bethany Webster and her phenomenal work ‘Healing the Mother Wound’.

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.

Marching Backwards

The #womensmarch didn’t resonate for me and here’s why:

Firstly, it’s called a ‘women’s march’. I want to clarify that I fiercely support the sisterhood of women and the power then can evoke when united, I understand that women need to rise, to shine their light and remember their innate wisdom to be able to gift to the world. I am behind all of that 100%.

I don’t understand why a march that is to unite people to stand up against their belief, in Trump being a disastrous president, excludes half the population. Surely that is counterproductive? And yes I understand that men went along too, but did they go feeling fully in their power? I know men that, though liberal, thoughtful and kind, would not wish to attend because they have had enough of the segregation that ‘feminism’ creates, they don’t want to attend a walk like this as a feminist but as a man, because that is what they are. Just like the women are women. It would have been so easy to create a march with an inclusive name – Humanitys March for instance.

And then what is the purpose of this march? To show their disdain and dissatisfaction with the morality of President Donald Trump…. and yet 63 million people voted for him, so they are also showing huge disdain and judgement towards 63 million voters. I am not a Trump supporter, nor do I like the majority of his ideals, as I’ve seen them expressed in the media, but I’m not going to sway anyone’s opinion by telling them they’re flat out wrong to have voted for him.

I might be able to understand them if I invited them to gather in small circles; sat together, broke bread together and listened to each other’s stories. In that scenario, I reckon I’d learn a lot, but marching with placards calling them liars and bullies (because everything labelled at Trump, also labels them), is just continuing the separation and alienation.

Some of my very favourite women rose up and marched and I honour them in their determination to do something and to stand up for what they see to be gross insults to humanity. I recognise their spirit, love and intention AND I don’t know how this march is going to change a single thing. I don’t know how this march does anything other than increase the unhappy feelings of inferiority/superiority, control or lack of, division and hatred.

People are shocked by the arrival of President Trump and what he represents, but only by understanding why and how he came to power will anything change.

#grassroots #meetthevoters #compassion #unconditionallove

The Story Behind

Just over a month ago, I received some heavy criticism about my mothering. It came from a source that I was intending to bring into my inner-circle, that I was hoping would become a safe place for my son to spend time, so it hit me pretty hard. Not just a stranger on the street criticism, a real heart punch.

So I have, as is my way, been reflecting on it quietly for the past weeks, wondering what gift it is bringing me.

I have found it now, it is The Story Behind.

The story behind everyone’s behaviours is something so often missed, not least that of children. I was accused of being controlled by my son and not creating enough boundaries for him. So I have replayed my memories to try and understand how that perspective arose, because it is not one that resonates for me.

I’ll start with the ‘control’. I have learned and am still learning when to change my No’s to Yes’. I very carefully ‘control’ or consider certain aspects of my children’s upbringing, including their nutrition, their education path, their sleep amounts etc; then there are other things that I try to control until I realise that actually it’s my ‘shit’ that I’m trying to enforce and let it go. So when my child asks me for something, quite often I’ll say ‘No’, because I’m too tired, or it feels a bit complicated or anxiety inducing, and then my child will explain to me through their feelings or words how important it is for them and if I can see that it is my ‘shit’ stopping them following their bliss, even if that means allowing my son to bring home another 10 (bloody) sticks, I’m going to do it. And when my son throws a wobbly because I am not standing next to him in an unfamiliar and scary environment, I’m going to try and listen to that wobbly more than whether or not he needs to ‘learn’ independence, because I’m hearing his feelings. So am I controlled by his feelings? When I deem them to be valid and important, which of course is entirely subjective, yes I am and happy to be so. Do I feel controlled by him? Not at all.

But I can see how it might look to someone who doesn’t know my son; I can see that him getting a bit frantic and asking for me might look demanding and ‘controlling’. What, of course, they don’t see is how content and happy he is most of the time, they don’t see the contrast, which is the sign for me to know how he’s feeling. I am, after all, his mother.

Then there are his boundaries, which I perceive to be quite solid, strong and wise (age appropriately of course), so how did another see this completely differently? One example was when he was doing some cutting and he reached up, with the scissors, and mimed cutting at my hair. In the seconds that followed, that always feel like long minutes, two adults came down hard and fast on his actions. They told him he mustn’t, they told him ‘poor mummy and her beautiful hair’ and he buried his head in my lap, shamed and sad. I whispered to him, I told him I knew he was just tricking, I knew he wasn’t really going to cut my hair; I explained that they didn’t know him well enough to know he was being cheeky and funny and they were just worried. I whispered all these things to him to raise him out of being, in his eyes, unfairly judged. I could also see how it was perceived that I wasn’t setting boundaries, that I didn’t ‘back up’ the other adults, except they didn’t know the story behind. They don’t know how that boundary had already been set and that’s how he felt so confident jesting with me, us both clear that he wouldn’t cut my hair ‘for real’.

I see this play out in the world today and I see polarity and hatred following Brexit and Soon-to-be president Trump. I see the split second dive that shames each side rather than the breath, the moment to consider the story behind. No one is born racist, there is a story behind that, no child hits without a reason why. I was judged, as was my family, by the lack of looking for that story.

AND I understand that this will happen, that I can’t protect my children from those that forget to look at the story, or haven’t time, or haven’t patience, or have had a bad day. They will be judged, they are judged, I will be judged and I am judged and I, also, will judge others when all those factors rise for me too. But it’s worth talking about, worth writing about because I know that once we hear another’s story, and I mean REALLY hear it, judgement dies and love comes in.

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.