Love, Loss, Disapproval, and Reclaiming Self

Seventeen days ago, my younger brother died suddenly and unexpectedly.  The thing is that while I loved him, he disapproved of almost everything about me. (and what he did not know about me, he would have disapproved of even more) I have spent a good part of my life trying to be someone he would like.  Most of my people-pleasing behaviors were an attempt to be who he wanted me to be, and a lot of my anxiety, and belief that I was not “good enough“, was based upon his disapproval.

Spending the better part of the week after his death with my family brought on a resurgence of those feelings, and those patterns of behavior reasserted themselves with a vengeance.  It has been a challenge to let go of those behaviors, to recognize those feelings and release those anxieties.   My grief has also been accompanied by the conflict that existed between us and my feelings about that conflict.

The loss of my younger brother has caused me to reexamine my relationships with the other members of my family who remain, and my presence in the world.  I have also been challenged to remember all of the work I have done in these past years to discover my true Self, but most of all, to remember that Self. 

All of that work means nothing if I cannot remember my true Self in this grief.  It is not perfection that must be achieved but, integrity.  I am a strong, loving, capable woman who serves my beloveds well.   I am a woman who has a noble purpose that I serve with honor, courage and integrity.  And while my brother was a good man, whom I loved, he was wrong about my value and my worth. 

 Loving my family, does not require that I agree with them.  I will grieve him and love them even as I remember my true Self.  So Mote It Be.

on silence and healing

I don’t do silence very well anymore.  It feels too much like compliance, like hiding.  It feels too much like the smiles my mother always wanted, like lies of omission so as not to make everyone else uneasy, like secrets that poison the soul.  Silence feels like pretending to be small, timid and weak.  

Anger is a natural emotion and when given appropriate expression it can be resolved.  Being silent about that emotion can twist it into something else, rage. And silent rage can twist into depression or, worse into violence, uncontrolled, directed inward or outward.

Grief and sorrow are human experiences and they heal with time and expression, but in silence they can linger and become chronic and persistent. 

Pain is a normal part of life, but it is only a part, it is not all of what we are here to experience.  Pain is temporary, but unless it is given a voice it can become a festering wound that infects the entire being.

Fear is also a common experience.  And it is my experience that if I am silent in my fear it holds much greater power over my soul.  If I can voice those fears and look at them in the bright light of day, they become less large, less powerful and I can choose to act with conscious choice rather than being paralyzed by my fears.

Joy, Love, Faith, Hope and Truth are the most powerful gifts a human can experience, in my opinion.  And these too require expression.  If we are silent in these blessings, if we are silent about our gratitude, if we are silent about those things that inspire us, we fail to honor and nurture those gifts, we fail to make room for them to manifest in our lives. 

It is not my nature to be silent.  I have spent many years living against my own nature.  Silence becomes a habit and when that habit has taken root too deeply it can take a lot of work to remove it.  I am working to live a less silent life, and I believe that life will be a healthy and a happy one.

Fear no longer rules my mind

Grief no longer chokes me

Rage no longer rules my heart

and Pain no longer wounds me

Hope and Joy and Faith and Love

These things shall now replace them

By Sun and Moon and Stars above

My Spirit now reclaims them.

on empty space and learning to love better...

Winter is here.  My relationship with the man I fell in love with is returning to its previous form of expression.  My friend, as he said he would, saw me through the holiday. Because, let’s face it, being alone through the holidays just plain sucks. 

I am grateful for his company and for his acceptance of my love.  I am grateful for the freedom to love him in the way that I wished, uncensored and unrestrained.  I am grateful for the opportunity to learn about myself and my desires and my needs, to learn about my boundaries and how to respect them and how to express the various people who share this body.

I have learned a great deal through this experience.  I have loved him with everything I am and (for maybe the first time in my life) I did not lose sight of who I am but rather gained a better understanding of how I function

I shed a few tears when the holiday was over.  I was sad.  But I am not afraid, and I am not grieving in the way that I expected to. There is a space inside that feels like a flower opening and making an empty space for the sadness to exist but it is not painful, it just aches a little because I will miss the intimacy and warmth that we shared.

I will continue to love him and our friendship will continue as before, although our connection is stronger than it was, and I am grateful for that too.

I am surprised to find that I am hopeful.  That I am capable of loving someone and of letting go when the time comes.  I can love someone and not sacrifice everything that is truly important to me.  I can be stronger having loved someone. 

I will not be alone, I have other lovers and friends with whom to continue this adventure and I will.  But for my friend and the gift of these past seven months, I give thanks.  

Winter is coming...

For the past six months or so I have been engaging with a friend whom I trust and respect.  He has been helping me to learn and to experiment and to explore my own inner desires, needs and identity.  And to find my power and to open the boxes.

The experience has been productive and enlightening as well as profoundly pleasurable and often intensely painful. 

I knew when we began this journey that he needed to maintain and respect his own boundaries.  In this case, that meant maintaining his emotional distance.   I knew that it would end, and while it has continued for longer than I originally expected, it will be ending soon.

I am grateful for the sacrifices my friend has made on my behalf.  I am grateful for the fact that our relationship will not end but rather, will continue as before.  But that fact poses another challenge for me. Because one of the many profound things that has happened during these past few months is that I have fallen in love with him.

I knew when I fell for him that I would hurt when it ended.  I knew that he could not fall in love with me.  And I made a choice.  I made the choice to allow my heart to fall, and to face the pain when it comes. 

I will admit to wishing and wanting a different ending than the one I knew would be.  I will admit to wishing that he could indeed feel the same.  But I will not regret the choice I made to love him. 

I fell in love with someone a year ago, and chose not to act upon it.  I held back for reasons that matter not even a little.  I vowed that I would not do so again.  So I cannot regret falling in love and loving this man for the time allowed to me.  Nor can I regret the pain that will result from the loss of him in my bed when the winter comes.

I do keep wanting and wishing.  I do feel the pain of the grief and the loss even now.  But I also feel the fullness in my heart of loving him.  And that is worth everything.

Stolen children

I remember a recurring night-terror that I had as a child of about seven.  I would dream that a mad-scientist melted my parents and my brothers into buckets (a sideways version of the witch in the Wizard of Oz) and took them from me.  Children of that age typically experience night-terrors regarding loss of family and abandonment.  

  

I woke at two this morning from a dream and was able to recall at least the last moment of it.  In that moment, I accused my family of origin of stealing my children.  I have this dream occasionally.

This may sound like an exaggeration but, in reality it is not.  My children were taken from me by my parents and given to others to raise.  I was not allowed to know anything about them or their families.  They were lost to me completely, possibly forever.

My parents are good and loving people.  They truly love me and were doing what they honestly believed with their whole hearts was best for me and my future, and for my children and their futures.  They were absolutely sure, and they were wrong.

I have never given birth to another child.  I did get to meet each of my children when they reached eighteen years, and I am building relationships with them but, I will never have the kind of relationship with them that I wish for, that the mothers who raised them have (and for the record, both of my children were raised by wonderful and loving families.)  I am grateful for the chance to know them.  I thank my Gods and my ancestors for returning them to my life.  But I am a footnote in their lives, a welcome visitor but, a visitor nonetheless.

I have come to terms with my anger over my parents’ choices.  I have forgiven them, and myself for my own compliance with their decisions.  For the most part, I have learned to let go of “what might/should/would/could have been” because, if I do not, I cannot live in the present or the future. But my grief over what I have lost still visits me, and the pain of that betrayal by those who loved me, whom I trusted most, is evidently still an obstacle for me in trusting and in being loved.

It is not possible for anyone to take from me more than that which has already been taken, and yet, trusting that is a greater obstacle than I might have imagined it would be by now.  I want to learn how to overcome that obstacle, if indeed I can.