What comes up for you around Xmas and Xmas day in particular?
The other morning I woke up and was immediately hit by an intense wave of grief relating to Xmas generally. It was like the necessary defrosting out of a deep freeze and it followed a dream about clearing out food that had been frozen for four years, for a party that in the end never took place. This is how I had survived post my marriage separation, still living with some kind of fantasy, driven forwards as the only way to cope. Now 14 years on, as I sit in an empty space, brutal grace forcing me to finally open my heart, it is clearly time to re-visit this old and very painful period of my life. It’s necessary to defrost, to let the grief have space. I feel shaken by it but also know it’s a sign that I am finally strong enough to face reality and dare to write about what took place. I had thought I had dealt with the pain but post this weekend’s shamanic ritual family constellation training, now I’m seeing that I had merely survived each Xmas period, unable to fully process and feel what actually had happened at Xmas, all those years before. This Monday morning after the powerful Sunday experience, I felt completely different, like the lens on my glasses was completely clear. On waking, I was catapulted back to Xmas morning 14 years ago in my beautiful Devonshire cottage by the River Yealm, where my husband and I were watching our excited children opening their stockings. Emma and Edward had no idea of our personal agony or at least we thought they didn’t but what I know now is that children are sponges to the energetic truths that lie beneath most of our external masks and behaviours. They suffer the consequences of our suppressed emotions, the ’elephants in the room’ and lineage patterns but usually have no idea how much they have carried on their tiny shoulders, for way too long, until later in life, they too find themselves in therapy, wondering why they are also stuck in behaviours and ways of being that do not serve. The reality for us as parents on that morning was quite different from the ones the children were experiencing, with their Xmas stockings jumping up and down on the bed. I had moved into this spare room many months before out of desperation for two reasons. The first was that my husband was drinking at the weekends and as a result was snoring violently, such that it disturbed my sleep so badly, I had asked him to move into the spare room when he was choosing to drink excessively. He would not and since my health was already ruined with chronic fatigue, I couldn’t afford to suffer sleepless nights and feel wrecked even more than I already was, so I chose to move out of our marital bedroom. It was staggering that in these circumstances, my husband felt rejected and sulked, when I decided to sleep in the other room because he simply could not see past his own selfish behaviour. I felt guilty that somehow I wasn’t being the perfect wife but in truth I was totally shattered with being ill for so many years and it forced me to take responsibility for my own self care, instead of constantly trying to consider others before myself. I was a severe co-dependent and martyr and it was time I set some healthy boundaries, if I was to stand any chance of healing from chronic fatigue. Beyond that, the second reason came following a suggestion by my counsellor, that I stop drinking any alcohol in the evenings to help unblock amnesia, because without this mask, I was suddenly presented with a shocking realisation, that when my husband made love to me, it felt like I was re-living a traumatic experience with my father’s sexual abuse and I could not separate my husband from these original, disturbing and haunting memories. A year or so later, despite having couple’s counselling to try to save our marriage, my husband had moved out to another cottage in the same road, that we owned, where he lived alone whilst remaining close by. Although this was agony when I found out there was another woman, I was existing in a fantasy that despite this, we would somehow make it through because after 18 years, the concept of divorce for me, was unthinkable. I’d signed up for life. That was the only way I could manage, a complete ending of our marriage was impossible to comprehend and sent me into waves of panic attack at the mere thought of it. On this first xmas during our separation, my husband returned for Xmas day, so that the children had the reality of us being a family but the truth was that he was having an affair with a supposed friend of mine, which had devastated me on every level, literally pulled my legs from beneath me. Beyond that I was still very sick with chronic fatigue, exhausted from regular nightmares that kept waking me up, where I was suffocated and unable to scream to save my life, until one particular night when I found my voice and screamed our house down, terrifying my daughter who woke to see what was happening. Letting the cat out of the bag… I had been in deep therapy for some time, struggling to accept the reality of sexual abuse by my own father and yet unable to deny my body, ie my somatic experiences that kept confirming a truth I didn’t want to accept. I was in a double bind, desperately trying to negate the reality that felt devastating to acknowledge and yet at the same time knowing that my body held the score and was finally releasing this somatic wisdom in flashbacks, body sensations and regular nightmares. My husband simply couldn’t accept what I had told him about my father, he didn’t believe me and took everything personally, when I needed time out from our love making. I felt desperately alone and confused, wanting to honour what was arising with my body’s implicit wisdom, whilst at the same time trying to push it away so it didn’t have to be true. When I didn’t honour my body choosing to ignore what it was revealing, I would get pay backs with serious consequences. Love and abuse were intertwined, twisted together and as a result of early programming with both parents, I had long since given up trusting myself and my own intuition. It took years to face my father’s betrayal, such that I would swing backwards and forwards in a painful double bind that was exhausting. It’s not surprising with such mixed messages that no-one else other than my therapist could fully accept my reality because it took years for me to fully stand strong with it, to see the reality and hold it for what it was. Any time that a friend would stand for me, I would end up defending my father and when a new sexual abuse therapist had suggested that he had un-doubtedly groomed me, this was too big a step, such that I left the therapy after only one visit. I had always had an issue with my mother but in my eyes my father although emotionally distant, had been the down trodden and passive victim. I didn’t understand why I loved my father and yet was repulsed by him at the same time, it made no sense or rather I didn’t want it to make sense. A few weeks before Christmas, knowing that my marriage was totally broken, in utter and abject despair, I called my estranged mother down to stay for a short time. I remember my beloved dog Archie growling as I opened the door to her because he knew his job was to protect me and that my own mother had not been a source of nourishment or safety for me. To everyone else she seemed the ideal and perfect mother but she had wanted my life blood, needed me to re-live her life and collect the sports trophies that she had never been honoured for. I didn’t exist unless I conformed to what both parents needed from me. Waking during the night, in what felt like an overwhelming panic attack, I went to my mother’s bed, I suppose in a desperate attempt to get some much needed comfort. The reality was very different. She moved over to give me a hug in the bed and I ended up convulsing in a kind of spontaneous re-enactment, where I was screaming and kicking to save my life, words flying out of my mouth without any control , saying ‘get the fuck off me, don’t touch me’. There was nothing I could do, it was like my instinctual nervous system took over at last, the imploded paralysis finally was being released, just as had happened in my nightmare only a week or so before, where finally a scream came out that nearly shook our house down. This moment with my mother was a potent release for something I had suppressed for a lifetime and could no longer deny or push down. Amnesia or not, now my body was speaking truth. I never intended to tell my mother that her husband, my own father had molested me but I had no choice, it happened anyway, like my soul was directing me to some kind of resolution and authenticity as a way to save my life. I realised years later, that this was a kind of brutal grace that came in to allow my truth into the open. Desperate and surrendered into ‘holy brokenness’, I was no longer able to pretend and hold onto this personal and inter-generational trauma, that was not mine to carry. My mother could not accept what happened. I left her bed distraught and totally alone, disassociating as a way to manage the shock. I was broken hearted but at a deeper level, not surprised, since I had never experienced any kind of closeness or empathy. This wasn’t a known reality, love was conditional. This subject was too big for her, it cut to her core. She was totally incapable because of her own horror and repressed pain, so we went walking in the woods the next day as if nothing had even occurred. In a vain attempt to resurrect what happened because it was staggering to ignore the intensity of the previous night’s experience, the more so since I had never been emotional with my parents, I dared to say that my father had abused me, that this was my truth. Once again she closed the subject as if I was not speaking the same language. And then she left. My mother went home and I realise now, that a part of me died. That's when I realised I lost my mother as well. My 20 year marriage was ending, my health was ruined, and here in my most desperate need, shattered in pieces, my mother could not stand in any way at my side. My son chooses to live with his father at age 12 At the same time, I found out in a matter of days, that my son had chosen to go and live with his father leaving his sister and me to live on our own. I don’t believe now that he understood the consequences of our separation, he saw how upset his father was and wanted his dad to have support, as I had Emma. We were split down the middle, literally, though the dogs stayed with me. My husband had retired early, so he was unusually free to take care of our son but it had never occurred to me this might happen, especially since my husband was the one who chose to finish our relationship. Our lives were totally separate, I wasn’t the wife he married and our interests were different but I wanted to keep our marriage regardless. He was the one who had fallen for another woman and moving out and whilst the marriage breakdown itself was more than I could bear, to consider losing my son at age 12 suddenly, was absolutely not a reality I was able to take in until it actually happened. And even then, it was as if it was a dream, a momentary thing where my beloved son was staying up the road but not for long, until he would definitely come back home to me. Surely? One minute he was crying on my lap in the kitchen, as a young boy of 12 and the next he suddenly grew up and moved out. Within days. In the shock and helplessness that I felt, I didn’t fight for him. I couldn’t even fight for myself and it never occurred to me that I had permission to do that. I was like a child not a mother, the shocks taking me back into the helplessness I had always felt as an infant, totally alone and unsupported. I was at the mercy of what happened, I didn’t know I had options. I had worshipped my husband and yet when I stopped being the compliant wife and asking that we work this through as a couple, he chose the easy route of finding another woman who adored him. I was out of control, there was nothing I could do it seemed. At 12 my son had a right to choose and perhaps that was the best thing, since he had a great relationship with his dad and they had one on one special times that so many boys never get to experience with their working fathers. I survived the best way I could. My son never did return back to live with me and our family was split in two, my daughter with me, my son with his father. I never got to complete my son’s growing up, something that still breaks me apart, like unfinished business. Christmas phone call So here we were on Xmas morning pretending it was a celebratory occasion. My husband had come down early in the morning to be ready for the children’s happy present openings. He had gone out as always on Xmas eve to the pub, while I had spent hours filling the life size children’s stockings, preparing the usual left over mince pie crumbs that Father Christmas had apparently eaten coming down the chimney. I am proud of myself on that front, as Oriah Mountain Dreamer asked the question in ‘The Invitation’, when we are desperate……can we still get up and do what needs to be done for the children? And the answer is yes I always did. I kept going even feeling desperately sick and weak and with all the shocks that tumbled in one after the other, years on end. If it wasn’t for the children, dogs, weekly counselling, healing sessions and 12 step programme, I wonder if I would have made it through this spiritual emergency without being hospitalised with psychotic drugs, because everything I knew was being challenged, the framework of my reality shattered in all ways. I cannot deny too, that money helped, to be able to go and see therapists on a weekly basis was a lifeline and something I have never taken for granted. Especially in a system where the majority of doctors only know how to offer help in a five minute consultation with big pharma drugs as the solution, which is useless and often very damaging when dealing with mystery illness and trauma, now pandemic in our world. Anyway, back to Christmas Day. The children were ripping open the paper when my mother rang on the phone. My world ended like a bomb that was thrown and exploded. Or like being on the set of Independence Day when the world had been attacked by aliens with everything destroyed walking around in total shock. That same sense of annihilation, of being totally alone with no-one. That’s when I gave up hope altogether, questioned my own sanity momentarily but then realised with a staggering clarity, that I was not going to get the acceptance of my truth from my mother or father. She could not be there for me, she had to shut down pretending it did not exist, siding with my father which is how they always existed in their dysfunctional, love-less relationship. It didn’t matter if I was dying or going absolutely crazy from losing my marriage, my mother had chosen to ignore my breakdown and cries for help, in order that everything could go back to normal because it was too horrifying for her to consider. I understand that was the best she could do, now there is no judgement but in that moment my mother chose to save herself and not me. I was broken and she had nothing to offer me. This is what happened in slow motion. The phone rang. I walked to the tiny study next to the bedroom where the children were happily opening their stockings and I lifted up the phone. My mother said two words “Happy Christmas’, immediately followed by ‘can you not just forgive your father?” I froze. Surely she didn’t just say that? Seven words out of the blue. I was almost watching it all like a scene from a film I didn’t want to be acting in, but had no choice. What did she mean? Did she mean that if my father was guilty I should just get over it, like he hadn’t turned up to meet my train one evening, something that simple? Or did she mean that this very experience had happened to her and she had had to ‘get over it’ and so therefore so should I? What did she mean with that statement? Did she just hope that I was deluded and not well as a result of my long term illness? I don’t know, I’ll probably never find out. I don’t remember what happened after this, whether I said anything more. Everything rushed by me so fast, yet somehow I returned for the children still opening their stockings shocked but saying nothing. Inter-generational sexual abuse and the Church : M.E. Too movement This day, the birth of Christ, our Father in heaven, my own father, was he, was the church with its priests to be exempt from blame, excused of all crimes with no discussion, no remorse and no apology. Even if I had been wrong, was there not a place for healthy enquiry of some sort? Was this not patriarchy playing out in my own home and what better day than Christmas morning for this to happen? Clearly my mother wanted me to go back into my box and keep a lid on everything, pretend we were all fine again, that my trauma response in bed with her two weeks before, hadn’t really happened. Let’s just send the guilty abusing priests to a third world country, where poor and underprivileged children who don’t matter, can suffer the consequences and no-one will know any different. Let’s keep silent and say nothing. It's easier, less messy. Like a friend of mine from 12 step days whose own mother cleaned her up at age 4, wiped off the semen from molestation by her grandfather, the repeat story she had suffered, so they could continue with Xmas day as normal. Another friend whose mother fed her to her father and friends but who was in high society and even invited to Buckingham Palace, so clearly it couldn’t be true. My blood boils that this is normalised, or that we project that sexual abuse and incest belongs only to a few high society figures, as if it isn’t happening everywhere, right under our noses, with those closest to us in our own families. Everywhere, right to the top and that’s not even discussing the whole issue of satanic child abuse rituals which is a whole other ball game. I remember at my father’s funeral in the UK, Jimmy Saville had just been arrested and in discussion, I made a comment that this was not just a one-off celebrity issue, only to have the other person who was happily blaming Jimmy Saville as this evil person, look shocked and horrified that I might even conceive of such a thing. I remember sighing deeply, recognising what I was up against, her bubble slowly deflating but not fully burst, me as ever the bringer of unwelcome news. I said no more, my father’s funeral was not a place for further discussion on this, even though I found it fascinating that Jimmy Saville’s exposure was so prevalent at this key time for me. My brother who I saw for the first time in years, tentatively welcomed me with a greeting when he said ‘you seem to be doing quite well’, to which I replied solidly, ‘I am learning to hold both sides of the situation, love and abuse’. Nothing more has ever been said, we have never met or spoken again but I held myself with dignity in that moment. This is distorted patriarchy that has been getting away with sexual abuse, trafficking, paedophilia and incest in every arena of life for millennia, while we the women were scapegoated and excommunicated for our sinful behaviour. Just as my maternal grandfather always blamed the whores in the back streets of Liverpool, as tempting and causing men to sin. Here in Italy my colonic healer telling me out of the blue, a shocking true story from San Remo, that one mother denounced her partner for abusing her child and next she is being accused, as the local Round Table rallied around to protect her paedophile partner, just as the Vatican has done with its wayward priests. The party’s over, it’s time for exposure and as painful as it is personally is for me, I for one am grateful that we are living at a time of disclosure in every sense of the word. I’m glad it’s a time for the return of the fierce feminine and of sisters standing with each other, instead of in opposition. It’s early days but the momentum is here. I digress but Xmas is linked of course to the church and paedophilia and incest is part of the church’s demonic cover up story. This story with my mother ringing, happened on Xmas day, so it cannot be separated. I carry my own sense of having sinned, of being cut off from the family and tribe, this inter generational trauma of women and their hauntingly mad screams, that are seeking honouring and healing at last. This is on my shoulders, I feel them pleading and imploring, their stories needing to be told. The ghostly, shame imprints handed down through generations of incest and satanic ritual abuse that now needs to be brought out from hiding. I have a vague memory of what I see now was my own stand for truth. My own M.E. Too statement to my mother, saying that I said I couldn’t go back into a box and pretend that it hadn’t happened but if I didn’t say it on the phone call, I know that I wrote a letter saying just these things. wasn’t locked up or sent away for my sins like those before me who did not have such privilege or safety but the whole process was devastating and shattering. With sexual abuse we are left alone and this is what needs to change. I did suffer in silence for too many years while everything festered. I did feel excommunicated and totally alone and I didn't have sisterhood to back me up all those years ago. This is why I am writing my story. I cannot collude anymore with the secrets, lies and deception that goes with incest, as it is passed down generation after generation. My ME Too moment was before anyone was willing to tolerate or discuss the abhorrent and taboo subject of incest, except perhaps to relegate it to the margins. The time is ripe now, I must speak the unspeakable and be a voice for the voiceless, particularly in relationship to pre-verbal sexual abuse, to oral infant rape in particular. ‘The body holds the score’, the body doesn’t lie I tried hard after this Xmas, wrote letters that explained my position but nothing came back. I didn’t have the courage to speak again about it on the phone or to meet them, it was clear that despite the book I read called, ‘Families in Recovery’ by Beverly Engel, that this was an illusion and not a reality for my particular family. Also I was still dealing with amnesia under the age of ten in my house and back then it wasn’t a time where people understood about somatic memories, plus to explain the myriad of symptoms and triggers, felt like standing in front of a witch’s tribunal, trying to justify myself, knowing I had already been proclaimed guilty. I wrote one letter in particular to my mother reaching out with such vulnerability and where she wrote nothing back. Silence. That was her choice but I suspect she just froze as I have done so many times. My father wanted to meet and interrogate me, as he said that I had been ‘infected by therapists’ and so I chose not to do this. I didn’t feel strong enough. I was only just staying true to myself with no-one around to support me and I feared I would be overruled and lose myself again. Years later my estranged brother who is a doctor, questioned me on the absolute facts like giving me his statutory five minute consultation, when it happened and how, but in the overwhelm I shot myself in the foot. At my father’s funeral years on, my brother said in arrogance that if he hadn’t diagnosed one of his patients in five minutes, then he hadn’t done a good job. What he or I didn’t say more appropriately, was that he was therefore hooked into a psychotic system, that can only prescribe big pharma drugs but that’s another story. He said he had spoken to our mother and she had denied that it happened, that unless I could clarify exactly the details, clearly it was not a reality. In other words without specifically saying it, I must be a fraud or deluded and destroying the family for no reason, as if there was some benefit I would get from speaking out my personal truth. I didn’t know what I know now, that in early infancy and especially pre-verbal, because the hippocampus is not on line before around two to three years of age, the body does not hold memories in a story and clear form but in implicit and split off memories. The scars are invisible just as it is for in utero or collective trauma but now the research shows how much damage can happen as psychic dna is passed down the generations. And mostly, in discussing this fragile and traumatising experience, invariably because full nervous system healing has not taken place, the body defaults back to the terror, annihilation and disempowerment that took place during the violence. If it’s pre-verbal it is just that. There are no words. When I’m down touching into trauma I literally cannot speak, I’m gagged. My legs are pulled from beneath me, they have no strength and hardly hold me up. It’s easier not to go there, the recovery process is treacherously hard, this I know. It takes a long time to come back into the body, when there has been pre-verbal sexual abuse and it can take years, as with me, for the body to finally release frozen memories in the form of flashbacks, sensations, triggers and nightmares. Titration and learning how to modulate the experience with breath and somatic tools, is essential to avoid total overwhelm and breakdown. No-one would do this unless they were literally fighting for their life, there are no pay offs and no benefits that come from others. The nervous system has been dis-regulated and the brain wiring seriously affected. It's hard, courageous healing to re-build trust in yourself and in others, that is not for the faint-hearted but it's also invaluable and necessary work when you have been instinct injured at this level. Ultimately the body doesn’t lie, as Bessel Von Kolk shows clearly in his book ‘The Body Holds the Score’ and finally I am learning how to not negate my truth and perhaps more importantly, to hold it close to my heart and choose very carefully who I share it with. This has been my hardest learning curve, my journey with containment, trusting that I can hold myself better than anyone. It always feels like I’m guilty, that I closed the relationship with my mother but in truth she chose to stand by my father and say nothing when I was at my darkest hour. It's not about judgement but it is about self care and self compassion in order to heal. have always felt like a fraud, like I didn’t exist but that is how it was, I was objectified and ‘taken over’ by both parents in different ways. Bessel Von Kolk said on a Collective Trauma summit that is you want to become 'some body' then you have to move away from being 'no body' and this says it call. Trauma causes separation and split off from the body. Beyond this, I did carry the sins of the fathers, this excruciating shame passed down and condoned by the mothers. To heal I had to change this belief system, to choose myself over keeping the peace. I couldn’t betray myself anymore and yet the guilt and sense of wrong doing nearly killed me. In the early days, I was crippled by abandonment pain post losing my husband, parents and both children, that had me go out in the evenings, just to walk around large supermarkets because being at home alone was too unbearable. The children had their lives to live, Edward was doing O levels with his father and my daughter had gone away on a gap year. Then my beloved dog Archie died. I was estranged from my parents and living brother, gradually beginning to bring into consciousness the devastating loss of my beloved twin Graham, finally understanding a little more, why without a male at my side I felt totally split in half. Visiting my estranged parents and my father for the last time Some years later, the few times I would go to visit my mother out of dutyand pressurised somewhat by my daughter who felt stuck in the middle, I ended up traumatised and very sick for weeks after, so I had to stop doing this for my own safety and wellbeing. I had to tell my daughter that she could have a relationship with me and with her grand-mother but not try and make everything better between us, this was my/our business. We all had to find our place in the family system, to come out of the co-dependent madness we had existed with. I had to start standing as a mother and adult, setting healthy boundaries. I had negated myself and my body for a lifetime with horrifically severe consequences, that cost me my health and my life. To go back on my truth now, would have been certain soul death and I simply couldn’t’ do it. I chose to ‘betray’ my parents to save my life. And now as I write the word ‘betray’ in inverted commas I see how I am judging myself because that’s just the myth that we live with, where we are supposed to honour our parents above all, whilst Christ’s real teachings was to honour ourselves and this inner light, in order that we can take this out to the world. I was a chronic co-dependent, my life had existed for the ‘other’, so to make a stand for myself felt like betraying everyone and being selfish. This is the journey that most of us need to make in order to come into the light of our own being, to see the 'I AM' presence that exists within and not without. Back then, however, I didn’t seem to have any skin whatsoever. I had let the cat out of the bag and my very presence was a reminder of this huge, unwelcome elephant in the room. After various nervous system healings , when I started to feel much more embodied and stable, I was able to go and see my mother without feeling traumatised and sick as a result. It was like I could stay with myself and not self abandon, to hold both sides without losing myself altogether. This was radical and a sign that I was developing my own skin and provided I only spent very short times, I could shape shift and survive without too much of a backlash. Once after my father had died, a couple of years later, I gently challenged my mother in her kitchen, about the fact that she had actually closed the relationship with me and not the other way around. I reminded her of the letter she never replied to and looking straight down at the floor, she seemed shocked, quickly mumbling something about speaking to my father and him denying it. She was desperately trying to not resurrect this old story and blurted out that he was only capable of saying the occasional dirty joke, as he was truly so innocent on the sex front. So that was it, she asked my father if it happened and he obviously denied it, as if he would likely come clean and say ‘yep hands up I did that, sorry’. She had told me years ago one interesting point, which was that due to my father’s lack of know how, their sex life had been a disaster and it was only in therapy, that I learned that most of the sexual abuse issues in families, come from there not being a healthy and vibrant sexual relationship between the adult parents. I gave up at this point, as I felt the old sense of hopelessness around this subject, it truly was too much for my mother to deal with. I did see my father in the nursing home where he died of Alzheimers and the last time I ever saw him before the funeral, he was delighted to see me, kissing me full on the lips which always repulsed me, asking who this beautiful woman was who came to visit. I had always been his ‘golden girl’ and he was like a radiant, little boy on Xmas day so excited and playful. The last words we spoke together revealed everything and this time I had my partner as a witness, who saw the ‘elephant in the room’ and stood at my side. My father was for once extremely lucid and clear, as we later sat around a large afternoon tea table, turning to me and then to my mother saying ‘The trouble is Margaret, I’m very confused. I don’t know if this beautiful woman is my wife (turning to me and smiling radiantly) or if you are (turning to my mum and behaving like a tiny, frightened, little boy)’ at which point my rejected mother, with a look of absolute horror on her face, turned on him and aggressively shamed him publicly, saying that he was constantly acting mad and crazy and how hard it was for her living daily with this insanity. Like a bubble that suddenly burst, my father collapsed back into his ‘mad’ Alzheimer’s self, unable to utter a word of sense after this, their co-dependent and loveless relationship clear to see. That was the last I ever saw him. Painful as it was, I did get to witness this scene in slow motion, like I was watching the story of my own life and I did begin slowly after this, to see that it wasn’t my responsibility to heal my parents, since they were closed and incapable of facing any of it. Even though their marriage was not a loving one, they were a formidable duo and closed ranks together, to avoid any infiltration or possible exposure. It was my job to heal my own story of incest, the secrets and lies that had crippled me with a debilitating illness, where I couldn’t stand my ground or speak my truth. Validation would not come from outside and I had to stop seeking for this. Inside I had felt intrinsically bad, worthless and beyond redemption, such that no amount of speaking therapy ever changed this core sense of crippling guilt and shame. It was my business to stop this distorted behaviour from going forward, to do everything I could to heal this ancestral legacy so it went no further. So this is what I did, working for four years intensely as part of a shamanic ritual family constellation training, where in groups of about 50-90 Italians, we worked to heal personal and global inter-generational trauma. And not surprisingly, incest is always one of the main themes, especially now since it’s time that everything underground, is brought out into the open to be healed and returned to the light. Potential Healing 14 years on : The defrost and re-birth I’m writing this piece because out of the blue, my daughter told me that my mother was desperately upset to be the only guest in her new assisted care home, that didn’t have anyone to spend Xmas with. Up until now, despite my father’s slow demise with Alzheimer’s, she always had friends who offered her to spend the day with them but this year, having just broken her hip badly and having to move out of her own home as a result of her diminished mobility, she was due to be totally solo. My daughter stepped up because she lives near in London and arranged for her to go down to Devon with her new dog, in the car where my ex and his French wife would be hosting my son as well for Xmas. I was in mild shock to think of my mother spending Christmas with my ex husband after 14 years , where he has wanted no contact with me at all. It hurt in one way and yet as I dropped deeper, I knew it was perhaps some kind of potential healing of how everything comes together in some way, the karmic connections that we all have, like it or not. Nothing has changed in one sense and yet everything has. This is the paradox. I was seeking external validation and approval from people who were never able to do this and it was pointless. I’ve spent my life going to where the doors are not opening, desperately trying to bash them down instead of seeing that I can look elsewhere. Throwing pearls to swine if you like as a way I was re-enacting the old story. This shift has had to come from me, as my occult healer once said to me some 20 years ago ‘Hilary (my name back then), you will do your soul’s work, when you no longer care what other people think about you, when you can stand alone’. I’m a work in progress on this, I do need a lot of reassurance from the few people in my life who I do trust but I am much more solid with inner and outer resources that keep me stable and where I can finally self soothe. My co-dependent behaviour is finally not in control. No-one in the family has honoured what happened to me personally but I have. This is what matters, this journey 'hom I am healing by standing for myself, as my shaman said recently, ‘the dark cannot enter when we are being truly ourselves. This is the I AM, the IO SONO, the light that we are seeking and must honour’. This is happening. I’m defrosting and melting, birthing myself just like the goo in the cocoon, I have had to dis-integrate, to fall apart to come together again. In one way, it's like nothing ever took place, like 14 years of ‘madness’ I had to go through with no validation and yet the journey has been about my own growth and alchemy. Me as the butterfly struggling to get out of the cocoon and where if I had been helped too much, I might not have made it. The struggle was necessary, the dark nights of the soul that went on for years in the wilderness moulding me into something new and different. My mother had fostered dependency so she would feel needed, to fill her vaccum. Having a mystery and chronic illness was an initiation, a testimony to my own ability to suffer and endure, showing me my courage, strength, resilience and determination. Along the way I gained the gifts of compassion, wisdom, awareness and humility. This is what counts. True empowerment is about coming into balance with power and vulnerability together, not one or the other. I had pushed long and hard enough wearing myself out in the process, hyper alert and unable to stop. The ego might want comfort but the soul is here to evolve and standing in sovereignty becoming my own authority, setting healthy boundaries and finding self compassion is part of my karmic lesson for sure. How I have been forged, what I have learnt, how this has changed me for the best and ultimately, even more importantly, what service I have come to offer as a result. And how that includes me and might even include permission to rest and be. My mother spending Xmas with my ex husband after 14 years of no contact I realised that my mother had spent two years with my ex husband when I was 39, as she moved in to help us all, when I was bedridden in the early years of my collapse with chronic fatigue but also every Xmas I would host his parents and mine, so we were all together. My husband didn’t have to give up work as a result, we are both indebted to them for this, as truly we couldn’t have managed in those dark years. My ex no longer has his parents and is an only child, always feeling like he is very alone and lost. I suspect my mother will be a good diversion with her deafness and fantastic ability to butt in and not listen, so that instead of my ex husband’s wife being the ‘problem’ as has historically been the case with my children, it can now be my mum instead. At least, I am no longer playing the scapegoat or being the ‘problem’ with my health condition since I’ve changed my job title to whistleblower and am taking the consequences. It would be too much for me to part of this is for sure but I am hugely grateful that my ex and his wife are willing to do this. I would hate to think my mother was suffering alone in some new care home, as the only one without family. I’ve experienced Christmas in Italy without anyone, my kids with their father for two years in a row and it’s absolutely shit. No other word for it. I on the other hand, although feeling the anguish of grief pouring out of every pore in my body as it floods in at odd moments, I'm glad to be quietly alone with my beloved Ardhan in the mountains, open to what is the right thing to do at Christmas. I need to rest. To have space for the tears which keep happening randomly, apparently for no reason but clearly important. And with Brexit and other house/land building issues which have been shocking and huge to deal with, such that this quiet time is invaluable. I’m writing most days, it’s a life line, as it helps me integrate so many lost years and so much intense suffering. Finally I can sit with myself, see outside the box, liberate myself even more from the cultural ‘game’, that I had been caught in and unable to fully separate from. This Xmas myth that we are all hooked into, despite saying or acting otherwise, it’s still so often a difficult time with all the feelings and memories it brings up. I feel the shift, like I’m stepping back out into humanity to belong but on my terms, with my own authority and listening to the divine messages that come through, to see what service I am to be part of, whether that means to self care or to care for others if my energy permits. My habit is to over-extend without self reference and to pay for this afterwards. These days I’m much more present and self loving but I can still too easily default to old ways especially if I’m with other people. I’ve given up trying, am handing everything over in prayer, humbling admitting my powerlessness and asking for guidance. I’ve burnt out too many times in a desperate effort to be the perfect mother, partner or friend, to get it right, to try to create the idyllic Christmas that covers up the depths of sorrow that lies below. The Christ light that has to begin first at home, as an inner, healing journey before it can begin to go out in service. Yes…this IO SONO (I AM in Italian), realising that as Gerard Manley Hopkins said when referring to himself, ‘it is for this reason, I came’. And as I write this, I’m reminded of when I screamed at God to help me with the nightmare of my divorce and chronic illness all those years ago, asking what the point of it all was and looking up to see my very own name on the numberplate right in front of me…..HLARY. These miracles, this grace that was and keeps showering down on me even, when it seems otherwise. Grief, facing the reality of what Christmas has meant for all my life Life has been a compromise these last 23 years having Chronic Lyme, my energy would go into the red like a bank account at the smallest of things and it was never predictable. The Xmas’s where I would over-extend as my habitual way of behaving and exhaust myself in the process, as I would cook for my in-laws and we would host parties in our special cottage for many of the locals. The days in bed afterwards. The times I would go skiing and stay all day in the hotel or apartment , watching the children go off skiing with their father, crying alone in misery at what the holidays meant for me being so desperately ill. Longing to be part of the sports activities but totally incapable. Food I couldn’t eat because of intolerances and serious reactions. Endlessly pretending to manage, so as not to cause any problem and constantly self betraying myself in the process. Even my own brother feeling rejection when my parents moved in, telling them that I was manipulating them and faking my illness, just like the children with M.E. who were forcedly thrown into swimming pools to see if they would sink or swim, whilst their terrified parents were left to watch. Feeling so alone, since doctors in their ignorance would imply that sufferers were frauds and hypochondriacs, which was perhaps the most painful aspect of it all. Family and friends even joining in with these projections, silently or otherwise, especially as they would see me looking pretty and slim and assume there was nothing wrong. No-one seeing behind the closed doors. The invisible deprivation. I want to say these two key words again and put them in capitals : INVISIBLE DEPRIVATION. And, underneath all of this, the deeper anguish, the loss of my beloved twin Graham who died in utero and never made in to this world. Another subject known as the Lost Twin Syndrome but with little understanding and few who I can share with. The aching loss I feel being severed in two, only half of me here, the Xmas’s I never got to share with him. The Xmas’s I can’t remember because despite all the years of personal growth work, I have complete amnesia in my house under the age of ten. The Xmas’s after this that I recall going to my father’s parents and my aunt and uncle with their mute son, how dull and difficult it always was but how I had to put a brave face on it and be as always, absolutely charming. My grandfather always really scared me, he was so foreboding and serious. My aunt with daily migraines, my uncle later who tried to commit suicide. Ours was not a happy family line despite all the apparent middle class and Mrs Bouquet niceness, the front that was so cleverly portrayed. The Xmas’s over the age of ten at my own home, where I would sit in this one chair and literally pretend that I was happy with my presents, in particular with a stocking that had nothing I ever wanted. I recall dreading sitting in that chair knowing how hard I had to cover up, the severe adaptation to survive. Our house was sterile, cold, devoid of warmth and sensory memories. The ridiculous satsuma at the bottom of the stocking that I resented, nothing, no joy. Just a fake smile and words of gratitude, which was necessary in order to show my mother in particular that it was all incredible. She could not tolerate anything but a happy outlook, grief or anger was forbidden, so I went through the motions and got through those Xmas days. Just that. It’s why I made such a special effort to give wonderful surprises to my children, probably overindulging them but longing that they experienced some joy on this special day. That they were free to be themselves in whatever way possible, have some magic come in. Xmas is always a reminder of families coming together, most of my friends have at least a sister or brother they spend time with, even if their parents have passed away. I literally do not remember a Xmas with my living brother when we were children under the age of 10 or 11, not one, I have no recall. My brother left home abruptly at 18 and cut me off in the process as well as our parents, which was devastating, as I was a clone of my mother and in his own desperate attempt to survive, he moved as soon as he could to the Solomon Islands, which is about as far away as you can go from the UK. Xmas is a reminder of all the Xmas’s, that I never once got to spend with him or his children from that point, despite chasing him around the world not understanding why he didn’t want connection. I adored him and the separation was excruciating, ripping me apart year on year. This is why it’s so painful, there were never family times with sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews they simply never happened. I guess that’s why I moved to Italy, on some level trying to start again, find a new family of affiliation and yet the aching void can still be triggered by the stark reminder of Xmas memories. That last Christmas Day all together So that last Christmas Day is inscribed very deep in my mind. My husband was my world, my life and when I lost him, I lost everything such that I was catapulted back to the terror I felt as a tiny infant and foetus. The early years with him and with my young children before becoming ill were the happiest of my life, he truly was my Knight in shining armour. I’d done intense work on abandonment issues in the 12 step programme but despite reading endless books by leading therapists like Pia Melody, nothing and I repeat nothing, prepared me to accept the end of my marriage and the loss of the one man who I had loved with all my heart. With no connection with my parents or brother, without my husband, I was left orphaned and alone. I didn’t know it back then but it re-triggered the original trauma of my vanishing twin such that panic was always close by. My daughter living with me was all I had left of our family unit and whilst I tried hard to ensure that she didn’t have to take care of me, emotionally she couldn’t help but sponge up too much of the suffering that I went through. Even after our divorce, I remember one Xmas where we spent it together as a family and I dressed up to look really stunning, secretly believing that my husband wouldn’t be able to resist me, would come back. In reality we were not suited to stay together, I had changed too radically and we no longer resonated at all, but still I couldn’t separate out. It took me over five years to let go and staying in the village to be close to my son in particular, watching my ex with other relationships, was a kind of torture, wrenching me apart over and over. Holy Brokenness and embracing suffering bringing it back from exile Perfectionism near on killed me. Battered and bruised from endless over-trying, I have been forced by brutal grace yet again, to drop into my body, into this ‘holy brokenness’, where there is nowhere to go and nothing to do. Suffering and my alienated body has had to be brought back from exile, to be accepted and allowed refuge. I couldn’t stay in my body before, the trauma was too much and don’t get me wrong, sometimes it truly can still be too much. The ‘window of tolerance’ when clearing trauma truly is an important issue as pushing beyond this can be really dangerous. Grief is up as part of the healing process and comes before full acceptance and I notice with a sense of relief how when honoured, it brings me ‘home’ so I feel more grounded and present. I've slowed down and this is key. I feel more feminine, a little softer. There’s space for more lightness, even some joy if I give it a voice. I’ve been away too long, this is the greatest abandonment, this self betrayal, the overwhelming sadness of how I have given away my power for a lifetime. So, now it’s time to be myself. To dare to let life come to me, trusting that I will not be abandoned in the process, even if there is silence and empty space. I’m learning how to drop down into the dark womb of nothingness, this en-darkenment that is what 95% of our world is made up of, as we all insanely rush around like automatons, distracted by one thing or another. Especially at Xmas despite all intentions to do otherwise. I’m done with drama and bi-polar swings as a counterfeit way to avoid the pain and as a cover for true intimacy or self sabotaging by drinking alcohol and eating too much sugar. And I’m recognising that I truly do relish my own company, this empty space spending days alone writing and contemplating here in the mountains, with no disturbance except for the occasional dog walk. Thanks to intense work with regulating my nervous system, I’m in my body with more energy, even if I have a great deal of physical pain with arthritis, fibromyalgia and many other inflammatory and neurological symptoms. Two years ago it became clear under dark field microscopic analysis, that I was in fact suffering from Chronic Lyme disease, not M.E. I know it’s a metaphor for what has been under my skin, the stealth bacteria and co-infections that were literally ‘eating me alive’ and this doesn’t go unnoticed, nor does having an immune system that hasn’t until now felt strong enough to take on invaders. Thankfully my T Killer cells are back on track, rallying the troops as I say a full yes to my life whatever that means. Lyme forces everyone to become incredibly strong, there are few Lyme literate doctors and even more of a cover up happening than with M.E./Chronic fatigue. It truly is an inner journey. I have to take great care of what I eat, to continue with my healing regime which is a 24/7 situation. There is no saviour coming, that’s another myth but I can and do show up daily. Twenty three years of chronic illness does not go away overnight with positive thinking, self care is vital. I cannot afford to spend my Xmas’s anymore, indulging in over-eating or pretending that it’s a happy occasion by using every trick on offer. I get tired with people and can’t do this anymore. I hadn’t realised just how much I had suppressed and how hard I tried to get through and beyond my painful associations, with what Xmas represented, either through over-extending if the children came to stay or being desperately miserable and feeling alone and outside of the family, when I was alone without them. It was fucked if I do and fucked if I don’t. I had no idea of the sorrow that lay underneath that now I’m finally facing and releasing. My personal story where I felt so alone and scared to speak the unspeakable. This promise to write my memoir if only for myself as part of healing and moving on but hopefully to make a difference to others still suffering and in the darkness, confused and alone as I was. I'm now a Spiritual Emergence coach for this reason, we need frames of reference when our whole lives are shattered and turned upside down and psychotic drugs invariably do more harm than good. Taboo and exiled subjects like incest, inter-generational, pre-natal and pre-verbal trauma and Chronic Lyme, (possibly even started as a result of biowarfare from Plum Island located off the state of Lyme), all need to be addressed and acknowledged. For a while, the shock of what I researched and confronted sent me into horrendous depression, the illusion shattered but finally I emerged out of the cocoon to see how many others are doing the same. The party clearly is over, full disclosure needs to happen. Big Pharma and others in authority clearly do not have our back, despite pretences otherwise, just I experienced as a child with the message to perform and be a slave or otherwise I would not be safe. These days I am not so easily duped. The Emperor really isn't wearing any clothes. Being the canary in the mine, I have to be strong in spite of the ignorance and refusal by others, to accept shocking truths that need to be faced not marginalised, suppressed or belittled. Being a way shower is important, it's a sacred duty for me now. Death is easy as my shaman says, living and facing reality is what is truly the hardest thing to accept. So that’s about it at a personal level, it’s a story that I haven’t fully acknowledged until now, despite years of work on myself. I needed to write this, the healing is immense and knowing that my ex is with my children and mother this Xmas is not a coincidence. Life has come full circle and I’m finally strong enough to integrate everything that happened, to see reality as it is, to understand why Xmas has always been so hard. To have compassion for myself and do things differently. To have no judgement, we were all doing the best we could in extremely difficult circumstances, with what was handed down. I spoke to my mother yesterday on what’s app like nothing had ever happened and she told me that when I come in January, she wants to give me the £15,000 she had given to my brother, to make it fair. I don’t have judgement anymore but I don’t feel I know my own mother and that’s sad. Fourteen years of little contact is a long time, even I can’t quite believe it, the day by day survival just to get through. We all did our best, just that. At least now as I stand liberated. I see that being orphaned is a necessary initiation of standing alone and finding my own inner resources as a resilient survivor. It's part of separating out from the tribe, individuating in order to come back and offer the gifts of the life experience to others. I can create the Xmas that works for me, give myself the self love and nourishment I need, give up the pretence and be more authentic. It's bound to feel strange, stepping outside the status quo is different. It’s a new start, a re-birth with a very small crew around me. To cry if I need to and in the space of acceptance to marvel at the laughter, that comes so soon on the back of grief, the new possibility that is born from facing reality head on, feeling the emotions that for so long have been aching for relief and acceptance. Honouring it all, allowing it to just be. Perhaps this is forgiveness. I have a sense it might be. The melting and defrosting at last. It's liberation if I want it to be. Summary Now I realise that Xmas is about offering our special gifts in some way to others in service. It’s not about indulgence and searching to ensure self centred pleasure which is invariably an unconscious distraction to unresolved pain. It’s digging deep to find our own Christ and Sophia Light, how we have been forged by our life experiences and how we can offer this out to the world. Our offerings, not as duty or manipulation but coming from love. It’s about miraculous, unexpected and surprise gifts that turn up when we least expect it, just as the Wise Men did to Jesus bearing incredible offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh. I know that it’s about the alchemy of who we are, our unique gifts that magically offer to another, a way out of suffering, a sense of connection and belonging that only really comes from the truth of our full presence and the opening of our heart. This is what I want to do at Christmas from now on. Not as an unconscious way to prove that I matter, that I belong, or for validation, but coming from my own heart that has been shattered into pieces by loss and heart break , only to reveal the gifts of compassion and humility, the realisation and treasure of what true powerlessness and suffering is about. How it points to the real Truth with a capital T. How none of us are exempt from suffering and what it means to live this human existence, this shared humanity where we are all part of the One and where everyone knows grief of one kind or another. This is what Christmas now means to me, that my life be an offering, some kind of grace that comes to others, to that which is innocent and loving, in need of help and unable to ask for it as I was. This buried treasure that lies within all of us. Just that it arrives, like grace, out of the blue, unbidden because it is the only thing that got me through. This amazing grace that saved a wretch like me and opened me finally to the gratitude of my existence, my mattering, my belonging and the Christ Light that has always been with me, even when the flame seemed to have gone out.
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