I woke up this morning with this completely formed thought in my mind. It wasn’t even words. It was just this thought, more like an image and less words:
The future is unclear because the past and presnt are still unresolved
And there you have it.
This is happening now. There is some space that is opening in me somewhere that isn’t my mind and it isn’t my body. Images and phrases are coming, like bubbling up. If they weren’t positive and meaningful, I’d think I was going crazy. Instead, it feels like I’m connecting w/ myself maybe for the first time.
I am just now starting to dig into the present and how I’m living daily, and the past that I am just now exiting.
It’s washing over me in waves.
I continue to want the future to be clear and focused, and it’s not.
This past week, a revelation from Jay which I’ve mentioned: our holidays have been shaped by your grandmother. This was really her idea of what holidays should be. This of course was coming from her own trauma and desire to create a happy family and in America, that means presents and a big meal.
She prepared all year long really for the holidays, especially Christmas. She was a master textile artist, accomplished in almost all the textile arts from sewing to knitting, crochet, tatting, you name it, she could do it and do it masterfully, win-prizes-at-the-fair level of quality.
She made all of us jammies each year. So all five grandkids got jammies each year. It was truly exciting. She gave us as many gifts as our parents did, wonderfully homemade and also store-bought gifts.
She’d been raped by her first husband. She was married at 15, divorced at 16, this happening in 1915. She had to go back home to the place she’d been despised and rejected.
My grandfather saved her from more years at home and she spent the rest of her life thanking him by centering her life on the family.
This shaped how she raised her children and how our holidays were shaped. We were bathed in gifts and the intensity of a holiday that would be done well. It was done in immense love and incredibly neediness.
I love gift giving so I had no idea how many things I’ve wanted to do at the holidays that I’ve said no to. I’ve weakly suggested for years that we have others join us that aren’t in the family and that wasn’t well-received. I’ve wanted to go other places or serve meals somewhere. Nope.
So I dug in and did it all. All the special plates and meals and gifts, all the traditions and rituals I could find. I crammed a lot into the holidays, much of it for the kids and the other kids and people in our extended family.
Most of it was really good. The girls have good memories, I have good memories. The problem was, there wasn’t as much of me in it all. I truly wasn’t doing all I wanted to do, and I was frequently tired, sometimes sick, from all the effort.
So who am I?
I don’t think I can resolve the future until I resolve the past, the person I am stepping away from as I become a new me. How can I figure out the future if I continue to not listen to who I’ve wanted to be? I will continue to let my life be shaped by what everyone else wants and needs. I will continue to be a cipher.
Kay said this week that there isn’t anything bad.
I don’t have to condemn and hate the past. What I did nourished me in many, many ways. There were numerous happy times and wonderful people that formed much of who I am today. I can transcend and include.
I’m excited to see what’s coming. It feels like I’m moving into a new stage. It’s been five years of driving the Palouse for help. I thought I’d be done at the end of last year, 2018. Now I wonder when I will at all, honestly.
Kay said recently at first I just needed clarity on even what was happening to me or what had happened. Then we started doing the healing and the recovery work. Now, something else is unfolding and happening.
This summer w/ all the triggering and the trauma of my parent’s move leveled me in waves. I still don’t fully understand all of that, but I know they’re all connected to my inability to feel confident in myself and in my relationships.
My parents can’t protect or nurture me. When I felt threatened by others with my husband and children, it’s about whether they will abandon me also.
So yeah, the year of the illusion of abandonment.
For my mother, I know she did better than what she was given. I continue to honor her by taking care of her practical needs. The choices she’s made w/ men and how she’s treated me on her own have shattered me in ways she’ll never understand. I know forgiving her and moving ahead helps me heal and not keep repeating the same boundary-crossing and lack of awareness.
I’ve also realized it’s hard for me to imagine my children feeling any way toward me than how I feel toward her. I imagine that every time I make a mistake or say something wrong, they will be gone. I still believe this and can feel that in my body.
Tonight we were at a friend’s house celebrating his birthday. Their three-year old son started to have a meltdown over another little kid playing with one of his toys. My other friend knelt down and was trying to diffuse the situation.
In the child psych book I’m reading, The Immutable Needs of Children, there is a section on how you avoid all emotion that is upsetting and that’s one way you’ve been disrupted as a child. I realized I experienced that as a kid, not being safe w/ emotion, and quite possibly had no idea how to fight or argue w/ the kids. My goal was to just try and communicate well so that there were no hard feelings or things to discuss. I didn’t know how to do that so I didn’t know how to do that with our kids.
Jay and I fought alot, and when we argued w/ the kids, we asked forgiveness. As they’ve gotten older though, I feel like I’ve held my breath around them and not sure how to talk through things. It’s harder to be real when there is distance and less time together.
So when our friends were consulting their son, I realized I was holding my breath, and trying to look away and deflect. I was hoping it’d get over soon.
These are the things now I can see that I do and am and have been doing. I can see the changes I’d like to make and am seeing I have the space to do that.
Awake. Woke. Welcome.