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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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’.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 … Continue reading “Normal”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holistic-health-emotional-healing","category-personal-moments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":469,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions\/469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/soulreflection.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}