I know we have hit on some heavy things, I promise that this space will not just be a continued place where you come here and are shocked by my truth. My intent is to give perspective on why we break, and how we can find a pathway to healing. We all heal in different ways, my pathway just tends to be a house in west Texas. I had a conversation with a work mate about trauma a few weeks ago. She made the statement, "Wow my trauma seems like a fairy tale compared to what you have been thru." I stopped her there gently and reminded her, just because my trauma doesn't sound like yours does not mean that your trauma hurt you or changed you any less. Read that again. Then read it again. This game of comparison has to stop and that is just as much a lesson for myself as it is for anyone reading this.
Inside the stories we tell in life there is a desire to understand our pain and how we rise above it. This is a multiple step process and we often get stuck in a layer of the onion if you will. Healing others or at least trying to from this space is dangerous. I love that in Reiki the first tenant after you receive your attunement is first heal thyself. When I wanted to immediately share this gift of energy work that had been transformative to my life I was reminded over and over of this. First heal thyself. That is what I have been focusing on for the last several years. It has been terrifying and heart wrenching. You internally gaslight yourself because that has been your outside experience with the world. If you decide to look for them there are many more affirmations of "You're crazy!", than there are of setting a boundary when the things you are trying to heal from hurt so much.
People don't understand how their behavior repeatedly hurts you. When after careful explanation of the facts and the behavior continues, this is confirmation that this person is acting from their own unhealed space. Then you know that to heal this part of your story, the only choice is to step away and draw a line. Choosing when to draw that line in the sand can be the most agonizing choice that you ever make. In truth this is because in some ways, that line has nothing to do with their journey. You have to take ownership in the part of you that allowed the perceived disrespect to continue until the point of drawing the line. When you draw that line you are saying, this is the way I wish to be treated. It is not however your choice to agree, and the truth is they may not agree that any wrongdoing at all exists on their part. That is the chance you take when you set a boundary. You are asking them to work thru this unhealed space with you. When silence is the reply... there is very little you can do to change it and you just have to let it go until a time when you can hopefully meet again with new tools to bring to the negotiating table. I am an extremely forgiving person. If you show up to do the work, I will too. After all, we are all learning every day. Epiphanies happen just as often as our poor choices. The universe definitely knows the breadth of my menagerie of poor choices.
This year my sister passed away. This was in a way sudden but not unexpected. She had a kidney disease and had been on dialysis for many years, and cheated death more times than I can possibly count. A few times she even lied about her death.. which seems funny now, but then.. not so much. In fact when I received the call that she had passed I was like.. are you sure? and sure enough, she was actually still alive on life support. Because our family dynamics at times would make jerry springer blush we had a very difficult relationship. I loved her to pieces but she was also a very traumatized person. There are so many things about her character that I adored. She was determined and strong. She could be generous , extremely so when she wanted to be. There are so many things about her that were wonderful and good. Her goodness though was often overshadowed by her internal pain. She could create a drama diversion so large it could swallow nations. She was constantly struggling to be seen. As maddening as it could be, It was a phenomenon I completely understood.
Recently while reading Brene Brown's book Rising Strong, she describes this technique for communication in response to hurt feelings that begins with " The story I'm making up in my head is ..." Boy did that lightbulb ever go off. For my sister, she was trying to find an outside way to express the deep pain she was feeling. At times, it was felt by everyone of us in her pathway. After many years of being caught in this cycle with her, I had to finally let it go and draw a line. Even though I understood her struggle, instead of allowing me to work thru this space with her, she repeatedly made me a target. We didn't speak again until the month before she died. I do believe she knew it was coming. She was making her amends. I'd like to think she made peace with those in her life. I do wish though that she had made peace with herself. I grieve for the sister relationship that we were never really able to have for more than just a few scattered moments in time.
Her funeral was so strange. These occasions are always an emotional tightrope with everyone trying to decide how to act and feel. I think I felt outside my body most of the time during that experience. What I noticed most heavily was this shattering of illusions. I learned that she was a different person to everyone she met. She was authentically inauthentic. I took pause to look at my own behavior. How many times do I let go of who I am authentically to be perceived as important to others, and how many times is that shallow version of myself thrown to the wolves for dinner. This was an important lesson for me. I have no time to be fifty different boxed up versions of myself. I should not have to change myself like a chameleon simply to keep peace. Boundary setting happens when you have done the work to know your triggers. The triggers that cause a trauma response and make you behave inauthentically in certain situations will most definitely help you identify the areas that need your attention. Talk about an AHA moment. That week was full of those moments.
I find it extremely interesting, particularly in my parents generation to call gen xers and millennials triggered as a form of derogatory gaslighting. After all, they are the reason we are all triggered to begin with. I had little to no supervision after the age of 6. My mom was either in school or working. I legit spent most of my summers alone. I became the master of ramen noodles at an early age. When I think about the fact that everyday I walked 16 blocks thru the city to my grandmas house at age 8 I cant imagine allowing my child to do that. My circumstances are also so different in my own motherhood journey. I feel like my mom often had to choose between two terrible choices and could only choose the least dangerous one. I find it interesting as well for this generation to be blaming us for the breakdown of family values... well has any one at any point tried to solve the issue of why families break down to begin with? Addiction? Abuse? Poverty? Shame? I digress.
I read a book recently about narcissistic abuse and how this is carried on into sibling groups who then perpetuate this abuse against each other. It creates this dramatic life long push and pull. We are quite literally always at war with one another. When peace accords are reached, they are usually only temporary. It isn't really this way so much with my step brothers and sisters. I honestly don't know them as adults that well, though we grew up living next door to one another as children ( that's a whole other tale to tell on a different day.) I recognized a lot of these patterns between the three of us that are blood related and it made so much sense to me. But how, how in the world do you heal this divide and what is my responsibility to it? Love is such a tricky bastard sometimes.
About two years ago I asked my husband for a custom stained glass window for the house. In it I wanted to incorporate some of the themes in my life that led me to this place of ultimate deconstruction and rebuilding. I had this feeling that this was kind of a puzzle piece in my journey. When we bought little house there was a window at the bottom of the stairs that was boarded up. My grandmas house had these cool stained glass windows in the living room and since I wanted to create a true grandmas house vibe I knew that I wanted to incorporate that aesthetic. I chose elements to represent this journey. The yellow border represents "you are my sunshine", My grandma would sing this song to me after we played itsy bitsy spider before she would put me to bed. I chose an iris to represent the matriarch of our family with her leaves stretching out to touch and protect each of us in spirit. Dragonflies have always represented spirit and transition to me so I used my moms wedding china and her baby spoon to make a little dragonfly. The red and blue dragonfly represents my dear friend Jenny. I chose purple for my friends whose daughters passed away . Each had a significant impact on my life and my families life. It is a very special piece to me. We had not installed it yet because well, quite honestly we didn't want to break it.
I had ridden to my sisters funeral with my brother who now resides about six hours south of me in Texas. After the funeral he wanted to come to the house and though we also have a very tumultuous relationship, I thought we had reached a place of peace and understanding between us. When he wanted to do a small project with me I immediately thought of the window. My brother is an excellent carpenter and possesses many skills that we just have not tried yet. I really enjoyed his help in putting it in place. Over the course of the time he was here we talked a lot about how our sisters death affected us. I know that I tried in the best way possible to explain why I react to certain things the way that I do. It isn't always rational. However a person who loves you understands that sometime what you need is not rational. They just hold that space for you, or not as they desire, until maybe you can heal that trigger and let it go. This is an important part of healing trauma and it requires mutual respect which certainly isn't always the path we chose when dealing with each other.
I had saved the installation of that window for a time when it would mean something. I felt that with the discoveries made at the funeral that this would be a fitting reason to try and put some of these monster's to bed. I wanted to move forward in authenticity and not repeat the mistakes we had made in the past. I often felt that we just tolerated this weird woke version of each other until the mutual disrespect reaches a boiling point and explodes. In this I am equally guilty. Id like to say that the window installation magically healed all that but it didn't. I do still hold out hope though that one day we can truly hold this space for each other and figure it out for good. For now though, lines in the sand have been drawn. Ultimately only we can decide when to reach out. Its a difficult thing to admit that even in the harsh words between us we do, even if just as a defiant byproduct of this behavior, push each other towards growth. Sometimes though the pain surrounding these harsh words prevents us from reaching our full potential as supportive siblings. We have each dealt with our hurts very differently. We also communicate in very different ways. I think for the most part we have each chose a familial isolation and each of these blow outs reaffirms this decision. Which of course is sad, at least it is to me. It will never change the fact that I love my brother, and who he is at his core dearly. Despite our communicative failings I know he feels the same.
Its a hard thing to say goodbye to patterns that have been a constant theme throughout your life. You end up wrapped in this blanket of despair and struggle to remove it. I think of my mom a lot in how she at times just accepted what she thought she deserved and never understood her full power. After I married I came back home to visit to an apartment that was still in dramatic disrepair, holes in the ceiling revealing sky light and more roach roommates then should ever be comfortable. Her fear of change was often palpable in her decision making. She never believed she deserved better or worked to make better decisions. This is also something that I struggle with. Undoing these patterns has been a 45 year long goodbye. The installation of this window represents to me a point in time that was revelatory and marked a change in direction. I look at it now as a Bridgepoint to what I hope in the future is a fruitful and hopeful experience full of understanding and resolution. I do know that in some ways I may not ever get the peace between us that I hope for. I do however have to stop trying to deal with our differences with the same rusty tools. Breaking generational trauma is hard for everyone involved and there is no easy workaround.
This window represents finding my power and my voice. I believe in the magic of this discovery and I believe in the purpose it served to have hard conversations with the people that you love, especially those who have the only other valid perspective to what you went thru together or separately as it seems as children. I want to move past the embodiment of hurt people hurt people and into healed people help people discover who they are outside of the pain and judgment that they place on themselves.
I have adored this quote and feel like it speaks to my own journey..
" The deepest work is usually the darkest. A brave women, A wisening woman will develop the poorest psychic land, for if she builds only on the best land of her psyche, she will have for a view the least of what she is. So do not be afraid of the worst. It only guarantees increase of
soul power through fresh insights and opportunities for re-visioning one's life and self anew."
soul power through fresh insights and opportunities for re-visioning one's life and self anew."
Clarissa Pinkola-Estes.
Comments
Post a Comment