What do I want for this year above all else? The year that will mark my 60th in the spring, that feels shocking to even write, let alone accept could be possible. There is no mistake when I consistently say that I am celebrating my 18th, transposing the date of my birthday with the age, a Freudian slip that has such meaning. How do I now consolidate it all, the years of disembodiment where I wasn’t present let alone ‘home’ or with any sense of real self? How do I move into the present, come into much more sovereignty and eldership letting go of the past, the apology for my existence, this feminine legacy? Somehow even though it’s not part of any specific goals I’m setting for the New Year, I know the shift is already taking place as I let go and surrender. It’s a kind of distillation process, extremely painful yes, but also joyful and exciting as I connect to my spirit and begin to get wafts of the incredible perfume in the air. So this brings me to my FOUR words for this year allowing them to slip in seamlessly as I free flow write. So here it goes…… ACCEPTANCE of myself and of ‘what is’. Coming out of the black and white, this essentially male paradigm of good and bad or light and dark that has kept me imprisoned and on a treadmill. Trusting and surrendering to this dance of opposites, seeing magically how Kali, the Dark Mother informs and saves me over and over, as she continues to destroy and eradicate that which does not serve. Accepting this last year which was full of shocks as it was necessary to face deeper realities that needed addressing. Seeing the bigger picture and accepting the teaching instead of allowing the normal critic annihilation. Acceptance as the opposite of resistance which is suffering itself. And then GRACEFULNESS like the olive trees that are fluid, soft and beautiful. Within this word is a sense of ease, of the rightness of things. Olives are strong and hardy, they can live for months out of the earth and still survive and yet, there is something soft and yielding about them, the way their leaves shimmer with a silver green, catching the light and almost dancing. What is the difference with this word to the word Grace? It’s something about how I choose to live my life, as opposed to how grace might come in from the outside. Something about my place in the grand scheme of things, our divine birth-right. This sovereignty and sense of self that is not arrogant and dominant or self deprecating and apologetic but stands radiating in that wholeness. Mary Oliver’s geese poem comes to mind. So, as I tune into my place in the grand scheme of things with this word gracefulness, LIGHT-HEARTEDNESS now comes to mind, so I’ll go with the word. My heart has been very heavy for a very long time, grief that has felt absolutely unbearable and shattering. I’m coming out of the underworld, shedding my cocoon at last. It’s time to lighten up, to laugh more. Time to trust to the magic and miracles that is happening so often rendering me speechless, letting go of the past and trusting to a new future. And finally as I feel my heart opening with this energy, to give permission for an extra word since normally it’s only three….to BEAUTY because of how it opens my heart, like having a glimpse of creation itself, the awe that leaves me catching my breath. It’s time for me to allow beauty inside, to dare to come into this intimate relationship with the Beloved. It’s time to source my life from this place of devotion, instead of surviving from trauma with snatches of beauty, like grabbing a quick breath in panic. To see beauty everywhere. To source my life from this place, this fundamental truth that is not separate from me, if I dare to shine my beauty and accept the true nature of my existence.
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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. The message for me is clear and it’s a global one too as auto immune and neurological illness affects millions. Mystery illness has at its root a dis-regulated immune system, the bugs come second. Trauma and dis-regulated nervous systems is also a huge part of this as well, the many layers and research by people like Stephen Porgess with the poly-vagal theory, continually proving this to be the case, showing how chronic illness so often stems from adverse childhood events (ACE’s). The wires are crossed and in this confusion and lack of self protection and self love, our immune system ends up attacking our own tissues as the real invaders go undetected.
So, we have to look more closely, do our shadow work and take off our blinkers. Recognise the smoke screen. We are asked to buy immunity with vaccinations which not only don’t work but are deadly and dangerous. We give our power away at every level and wonder why our immune system doesn’t work for us as, we bombard it with these same vaccinations laced with heavy metals, drink fluoride in our water, spray our gardens with glysophate which destroys our guts, eat GM highly modified foods, blast ourselves with electro-magnetic frequencies (EMFs) in our homes 24/7 and much, much else. We give up control of our bodies and lives to unconscious doctors and big pharma and become slaves to the system and we are sicker than we have ever been in history. Then, not surprisingly stealth bacteria (alias patriarchal dark forces) having confused and weakened the immune system, hide out undetected in military bio films while slowly and invisibly taking over the body and brain (alias planet elites). That was my reality as a child. I was a performing puppet, objectified, taken over and ‘eaten alive’. I had no self reference whatsoever. I didn’t see things coming and this is the global denial as we are all more than half asleep. I was disembodied and anaesthetised and chronic fatigue was the brutal grace that woke me up quite literally kicking and screaming. It’s time to wake up and speak up, to stand in sovereignty. I will no longer listen to people telling me I’m too much while we sip our champagne as the Titanic sinks. I’ve colluded and done this for a lifetime and the price I have paid is way too high. It’s a Kali time as She is forcing us to listen before it’s too late. I hope you understand the message I make here relating to how Lyme bacteria work and the way the dark forces are operating and taking over under the insanity of patriarchy. We need to get our global immune system fully working, to blow apart the ‘bio films’ that are like military hide outs containing different co-infections some sharing DNA (ie media, politicians, big pharma, Monsanto, all in bed with each other) and all these pathogens (alias blood lines) working together and using an ingenious system of quorum sensing, that keeps them all safe and impenetrable. Bio films are not affected by antibiotics now, even though many unawake doctors are still using masses of them to no avail and destroying the gut flora and body’s resistance in the process. Even not discussing here the bio warfare story that is shockingly real with Lyme’s, we’ve created the super bugs and fighting wars head on, as we know, only intensifies the very problem itself. To heal against the plague of mystery illnesses on the planet right now, we as a public, have to become stealth-full, ingenious and creative, recognising what we are up against. Most people have Borrelia in their system but it remains dormant until it is activated by too much stress. Get it wrong by being too acidic and the Borrelia build more bio films and increase in numbers, hiding out by crossing the blood brain barrier where they are even more difficult to find. There are virtually no mainstream doctors with cures who can help, much less any outside of the US, who know it really exists, which is scary beyond belief given the numbers of people suffering with Lyme's. Furthermore, it does seem to be sexually transmitted and it does apparently get passed in utero though once again, this is rarely mentioned. Blood tests cost a fortune and are currently only 20-50% reliable, leaving millions with inaccurate results and nowhere to go for help. Pathogens take over because the system is weakened and there is no-one at home to stop them. Instead of clearing out the toxins and healing the immune system, we are asked to take more toxic drugs that only make us sicker. To my horror under the dark field microscope, it was clear that I had absolutely no killer T cells because my immune system was so compromised. I had no lymph cells working either. My system was in a state of severe toxicity and overwhelm so it couldn’t respond on any level. In all the 20 years of my searching with allopathic and alternative doctors, spending an absolute fortune, not one healer has been able to help with this realisation, until I went to India last year. One simple dark field microscopic test with a special stain revealed exactly what was happening, even showing up the specific bacteria and co-infections including mould, as well as the bio films they were forming as an ingenious survival strategy. We are living in dangerous times, the powers we used to believe in, can no longer be trusted. Doctors not working for big pharma and offering powerful, natural solutions are being jailed and even silently eliminated. My own healer has had to go underground for similar reasons as he and his fellow French research scientists have been threatened. This fundamentalist, ‘take over’ by the elite, is thanks to Donald Trump extremely clear and perhaps is the hidden gift he has to offer in waking us up out of our denials, so we can really see the pathology happening. Healing therefore has to be an inside job and whilst incredibly difficult and painful to be a pioneer, the canary in the mine, it’s so we take back our power and recognise the enormous strength we really have and the incredible grace that is with us. There are incredible free internet summits on cellular detoxing, leaky gut, broken brains, parasites and much else, so even though it can be difficult to find functional doctors at least it’s possible to research and navigate some way through. There is finally some understand of the devastating effect that trauma has on the nervous system and the vagus nerve in particular. 20 years ago I had no such luxury and it was desperate to have nowhere to turn to. This is a time some say where we are going through the chaos in order to birth the new ‘divine human’, living from the heart and being conscious of what we are all doing to ourselves and our beloved planet. However, if we choose to rise up with the Black Madonna, with the sacred feminine, with Gaia or with the Sophia the Goddess of Wisdom, whatever name you prefer to use, with the internet as Her tool, we also would be wise to stay carefully under the radar working in a different way, listening to Her wisdom in this. We must be careful how we choose to confront and be honest so we are not naive to the risk being taken out by those with strong invested interests. I feel this viscerally, memories of past lives all so vivid still. We have to be shape shifters, to play them at their own game, build our own bio films, align to higher forces at all times trusting to this light. We have to do it together, to recognise the separate and divide tactics and not be fooled by what is happening. Together in love there is nothing we cannot achieve. The metaphor is clear. Wake up first as you have to know what you are up against, facing reality is essential if we want to heal, as if you bury your head in the sand as I did, believing that authority has your best interests, you will for sure, pay for it later. I keep coming back to the metaphor itself, as this writing is not a lesson in how to heal Lyme’s, even if it seems to be. Few doctors have any clue about the reality of bio films and how they operate. Before I stayed in denial rather than face the truth about my family and the lineage trauma or my illness and to a certain extent that was necessary back then. Now I’m healing by facing the imploded trauma and the truth of Lyme’s which is new, as we are living in a time of fast awakening which surely does help. Shocking as it was some months ago, I’ve seen bio film under the microscope so I’m no longer in denial or fooled at what the co-infections are capable of. Waking up has meant that I can address the root cause instead of remaining blinkered and off track. UFOs ie unwanted foreign organisms cannot get the upper hand with a strong immune system just as the dark forces cannot function, if we wake up and refuse to cooperate. The light is way more powerful. However, it's also not a black and white, dark and light, double bind kind of masculine paradigm where fighting and opposition works. In this respect, as a friend pointed out, I am also struck by how enzymes like Serrapeptase, Papain and many others act as catalysts to destroy biofilms. I'm even more excited about how chlorine dioxide is the best bio film buster that there is and is a rockstar when it comes to healing Lyme. We need to think outside the box as when we are stealth-ful and open, working together, the answers present themselves. The Google definition of catalyst says it’s a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction without itself undergoing any permanent chemical change; a person or thing that precipitates an event. The body is our temple not our enemy as I had thought but we have to pay attention and listen to its implicit wisdom. We need to heal any unaddressed trauma so that we regulate our nervous systems above all else. And in this respect, be gentle with your body and what you are up against personally and collectively. Titration is necessary with trauma, one step at a time, gently does it or the system will be completely overwhelmed. Don’t go in with full attack, thinking more is better like I did, repeating brutal ways of programming or the die off and toxin release will create way too much of a Herxheimer reaction which is harmful, painful and self defeating. Likewise, as I see the correlation, don’t think you can beat toxic patriarchy, the Cabal or big pharma by being too open and naive, or you will inevitably get way more than you bargained for. Don’t have unreal expectations, illusions or fall into fundamentalist truths of black and white as I did, see reality as it is and be prepared. Recognise your own narcissism and ask the Divine Mother, to help you find another way, one that is about quantum magic, as if you put a positive narcissist with a negative narcissist you will have a truly toxic and dangerous combination. I’m so grateful for the incredible leaders who are showing us the way, as we go through this global dark night’s of the soul, creating a safe container and teaching us sacred and mystical practices to strengthen and prepare. We are initiates going through the birthing pains of something new without knowing what is on the other side and the great mystics like Rumi, St John of the Cross and Theresa of Avila have always been the ones who knew how to truly navigate the dark night’s of the soul. The global metaphor therefore is to slowly and confidently build the immune system on all levels and gently clear out anything toxic at a cellular level, that isn’t welcome to support this process. We are the each a cell in our global immune system and we need to work together in the same way. At a Lyme level, we have to strengthen the elimination pathways of the gut, liver and kidneys and to use strong enough binders to grab onto the neuro toxins to avoid them going back into the body often via the bile. We have to do this individual healing, we are not separate and as we clean up our toxin load and shadow narcissistic behaviours, this healed energy does change the world. We need to be physically strong in order to stand in our fierce warrior energy, this has to be our first priority. We have to come together. With HER. We have to bring back all exiled and fragmented parts, transforming trauma to soul power, coming back into divine sovereignty. Quietly co-creating and building our own love bio films, our own networks of grace where we protect and support each other. This union and One Heart. It’s the only way. What we do for ourselves, we do for the whole, this journey has to begin with the self, going within to heal anything that is not love itself. And we are not alone, if we surrender and pray for help and divine guidance, I know from experience this holy grace and support is always there. Lyme has been the sacred wound, the greatest medicine and initiation for catapulting me into self love and self acceptance as well as distilling exactly what I now see is my mission. Just as Joan of Arc said 'I was born for this', I too feel I was born for these times, finally things are making sense. So to my confession. Until now, crippled with shame and not wanting to acknowledge the horrors of what I have uncovered in my family of origin and lineage, as well as dealing with such a debilitating illness day in and day out for twenty years, I have kept this death wish and suicidal part mostly to myself. I was shattered from taking on way too much, building a house in Italy on my own and having another burn out in the process. The 12 step says you are only as sick as the secrets you keep but it was like I was gagged and forbidden to speak, unable to break the silence that goes with incest. I was stuck in a brutal, on-going critic attack for not being perfect all the time, over identified with my wounds, managing severe symptoms and pain daily, overwhelmed by the planetary situation and under the weight of it all, not surprisingly, unable to claim my sacred gifts, my Golden Shadow.
So it comes as a huge relief to hear from Andrew Harvey as he initiates us so powerfully on a Fierce Feminine course, that it is an absolutely vital part of awakening for everyone to come to this point and recognise the shadow of the ‘death wish’ and what truly is at stake right now on the planet. To see how I had subtly given up whilst pretending otherwise with my super positive, omnipotent selves who learnt how to keep going in all kinds of nightmare challenge. Thank the Goddess for these brave and persistent selves, the strategies that got me through, but now it’s a time to be more radically present and stop living my own fake news story. To say it how it really is, daring to be transparent and real. To hear that it’s actually a sign of sanity to feel overwhelmed and outraged with our own personal betrayals and suffering, as well as what is happening on the planet, rather than the norm of disassociating and numbing out in one form or another. Even though for years I have self abandoned and fallen into victim as my default, I see that healing my immune and nervous system is absolute priority and whilst I have some severe challenges post a blood test, at the same time finally I have some killer T cells working which is excellent. I saw them taking action in front of my very eyes and I know this is a welcome sign of the empowering work I’m doing. According to Andrew we all need to prepare ourselves and strengthen our sacred practices, otherwise in the words of Marion Woodward, we will be going into a forest fire only wearing a tutu. I’ve had to become more savvy, I was without healthy boundaries having had them shattered from a young age, I was wide open and too innocent, like a lamb to the slaughter. Finding or creating resonant support in some way, instead of isolating and giving up is vital. Coming together to feel and to expose the horror of patriarchy in silencing and separating us all, so it can follow out it’s brutal agenda. Andrew is helping me see those shadow aspects in myself, rather than solely pointing fingers outside, taking radical responsibility first for cleaning up my own house. Asking for help instead of denying my vulnerability and the righteous rage I have been feeling. Daring to be honest and authentic, coming finally into spiritual congruence and honouring this direction above all else. Recognising this inside job of shadow healing and the spiritual truth of ‘as above, so below’, and then trusting to magnetising, resonant others to co-create ‘networks of grace’. I feel frozen yet I’m burning from deep inside Emotionally blocked yet for years I’ve cried I’ve given up hope but I’m still fighting for my life I need you so badly but truly, is it worth the strife? Longing for my twin flame, yet aching to be alone Inspired by travel, yet so relieved to be home Adoring deep relatedness but delighted when you leave Blissful mystical union but do I even believe? Courage to give up hope, yet in truth I don’t dare Surrender to the dark womb, whilst searching elsewhere Cherishing what is important yet forgetting to notice Staying fully on target whilst totally losing focus I’ve stories to tell yet permission isn’t granted Purpose is unknown though the seeds are planted Doubts and regrets whilst feeling at peace with it all Trusting I can fly yet preparing for the fall? Desperate for results and yet not giving a damn Feeling a total failure whilst being my own greatest fan Reaching for the stars whilst remaining here on earth Humble in my brokenness yet fully recognising my worth Intensely embodying the Truth whilst letting you go Intimately knowing You but with nothing to show Embracing my Beloved yet standing on my own A fragile tender infant who is mature and fully grown WHAT IS YOUR SPIRITUAL COCAINE? Einstein said there was only one important question to ever ask : ‘do you believe the world is a safe place or not?’ And linked to this, Caroline Myss reassured me in a recent talk with Andrew Harvey, that it’s ok to admit to being human, praying simply and truthfully: ‘Hover over me God/Goddess, I’m about to do something stupid. I’m tired of myself, I’m my own worst enemy but I’m going to show up. Help me to have the strength and fortitude to clear this self loathing”. Myss continued to say that since the sacred has been decimated in our modern world, we need to first invite people into discipline, which will eventually lead to devotion. That one moment is enough, this spiritual cocaine that can be so profound, just a taste is to be permanently addicted as you recognise the power of truth. She asks why we are more comfortable with skepticism, focussing always on what doesn’t work and why it is so difficult to devote ourselves to the Mystery? And I am reminded of my A.C.A. 12 step days some years ago and how we were asked to choose between two doors, one marked ‘Heaven’ and one marked ‘Discussion on Heaven’. Back then, running for my life with symptoms of PTSD albeit unknown then, I chose the safest option, the discussion door. I didn’t trust at all for good reason. And, I needed those years of discussion to find myself, I was so split off and far from home. Now, thank the Goddess, I’m hovering with one foot at the threshold, a little more embodied and daring to open the other door marked Heaven. I’m learning what this devotion really is - that as Myss says, is like a holy portal, sacred balm, silence that contains grace and is soothing and renewing. So –what is your spiritual cocaine, your sacred narcotic? What is your discipline be it contemplative prayer, walking the dogs or wild Shakti dancing? What are the moments that impregnate and shows you that magic and miracles exist in this call and response universe? I get wonderful white feathers that float down at the perfect moment after I’ve been in a ritual ceremony as further confirmation of my sacred alignment. It’s like feeling the Goddess right by my side, that I’m not alone, trusting the synchronistic messages and signs that come my way on a regular basis mirroring my reality. Making up simple chants on my harmonium to the mystic words of Rumi or Hafiz and reading poetry is a new and very welcome discipline that leads me quickly into devotion. And, my precious dogs are a constant reminder for me to wake up, they are so in tune with what matters, it’s humbling to receive the daily gifts they shower on me come rain or sun. My way to God has also been to navigate the banished underworld embracing the Black Goddess and Kali, excavating shadow to become a clearer vessel, facing reality and family ancestral secrets full on to find that angels really do exist. Not in the places I had expected but turning up nevertheless. Teresa of Avila the great female mystic said, we need to ‘drain our own swamp’, this ‘inner reptile’ and reminding us that prayer is a huge key to this shadow healing. It’s not an easy path or for the faint-hearted and few choose to go there, but in the dark of course, you see the light very clearly, you cannot be deceived. The Mystics like John of the Cross and Avila knew only too well what was demanded by truly entering the Dark Nights of the Soul. It’s about navigating one’s own demons, looking at ourselves in the mirror, coming back into embodiment and praying to be alleviated of self loathing and ghostly shame imprints that feel like a familiar yet toxic, second skin. It’s about honouring the hidden atrocities and untold ancestral stories that need a voice as they insidiously pass down the lineage, so that with compassion, mercy and grace, full healing and release can happen, freeing up generations before and after. What really does it for you, brings you home to yourself, to the One, maybe gives you that ultimate high? What is your portal to something bigger than yourself, that it is benevolent and on your side? I need to say here, I’m not talking about counterfeit spirituality, all those distractions and illusions in our materialistic world that encourage us to seek instant gratification through shopping, the internet or comfort eating. And I’m not talking about the New Age narcissism of focussing solely on love and light or the self improvement and growth work that I have also been addicted to in my self absorption and desperate search for redemption. I’m talking about divine grace as the antidote that comes unbidden when you least expect it and leaves you speechless. I’m talking about giving up our gripping control and arrogant thinking that we can do a better job. This perfume that goes the distance. This sacred sweetness of silence, the whisper of the Beloved however it comes or speaks to you. Human or other worldly. Imminent or transcendent. It’s all the same in its myriad of forms. So, what does sustain you in the middle of the night all alone, connects you to the unexplainable mystery when you are desperate to your core? What nourishes you when your heart is heavy with the agonies and despair of our current world? What leaves you speechless in awe and wonder strengthening your heart with joy? What gives you the stamina to withstand your interior spiritual self, to stay true to yourself even when the rest of the world fails you? What generates a power within you so that you can stand as a sacred activist in the ultimate minutes before midnight? I would love to hear about your stories of alchemy, how you were forged from base metal into gold? Stories of hope and faith. Mystical moments changing you forever? Animal and spirit helpers coming to your aid? Car number plates giving you unbelievably clear guidance. Things that have blown you away, that make no sense but make you bow down with gratitude and awe as you find yourself able to take just one more step in this insane and yet so tenderly, beautiful world? I’ll tell you mine if you will tell me yours? I must go as my dog Chammy, my greatest teacher, is playing footsie and that’s a good reminder that time is up…….she knows a walk is more important for both of us. I want to be home made orgasmic 80% dark chocolate, offered as a delicacy, one piece at a time with the honour and devotion that I deserve. To be adored by so many women salivating all over the globe, to come into this intimate union, feeling the influence I have on them as they just take one look at me. Some are undone and seduced with one glance and I know they are all too ready to rip off their clothes and make passionate love to me in that moment. Some savour me ever so slowly letting me surrender my nectar into their mouths, dropping a little further into their bodies and feeling the gratitude of being met so deeply. All the while I am at the mercy of a sensual cascade of reactions that allows us into this melted and sacred marriage that cannot be undone”.
I want to be an olive tree, ancient and strong, welcoming my annual pruning of wayward branches that do not serve my growth and in particular cutting down the masculine ones that nakedly and brazenly reach for the sky. How wonderful it is that my loved ones know exactly what is good for me, I can simply stand, majestically rooted, and put all my energies into the feminine, low hanging branches, so that as a welcome favour in return, my heavy laden skirt, drips nectar filled olives for an easy harvest.
Containment affords such
Sense of safety Inside my skin This secret boundary I never knew Was my birth-right This holy temple With innate sensations Pregnant body wisdom Birthing intuitive ‘knowing’ Unique, precious autonomy That is completely And utterly mine Belonging to no-one Programmed so young Plundered too often Deferring to others Conforming as norm Split off, fragmented Years of therapy Showing me otherwise Healing shattered boundaries Offering new options Ways to live Where I am A free spirit This ‘divine child’ Finally given permission Is it spiritual Along the way Dare I admit This core phrase That spoke itself Voice deep within Screaming for freedom Setting strong limits And swearing allegiance To personal power And absolute sovereignty Saying with clarity: ‘This dragon’s fire Fucking burns anyone Who dares invade My private space’ So……….. Who am I Beneath these masks Mouse or dragon? What is left When without words Inauthentic but polished Layers of conditioning Are finally removed And I’m left Empty and alone Wondering what happened Shocks hitting home Facing painful reality? Mother’s Empty Womb Of pure possibility It may be…. But often feels Like pure hell Kali’s fierce love Taking no prisoners Do you know That perfectionist achievers And apparently polarised Imploded, broken souls From personal experience Mostly without fail Present unconscious masks Covering toxic shame Unaware of punishing Brutal inner critics That slowly destroy The will to Keep on trying To even bother To be accepted By the family? Maybe it’s true Our sacred practices Are all that Ever really holds Us safely from Birth to death This inner space Great Mother’s embrace I don’t doubt But I notice As a woman Tender and fragile This Shakti unfolding I also need Nourishing, solid containers With fellow sisters Sometimes also brothers Willingly saying yes Despite being burned Again and again These Facebook groups Like Artist’s Awakening Offering reassuring community With clear guidance Familiar resonant souls Transparent and open Sharing deep vulnerability Reflecting a vital Sense of ‘mattering’ This holding space Giving me place No longer treated As a belonging This fundamental, welcome Sense of belonging SHE as the Feminine who was Vandalised and destroyed But never beaten SHE who comes In different disguises With heart intact Sacred or profane Beckoning ‘come closer’ SHE who is Protective and Tender Saying Please Surrender I will hold Your desperate longings And sprinkle them With magic dust Inspiring new visions And miracle outcomes This Golden Chalice Of embodied awakening Honouring the shadow As artistic gasoline Igniting co-creative dreams Emblazoning the world This Rising Phoenix Arising from ashes Longing for love Brave new paradigm Devoted to birthing Heaven on Earth and ever-growing Networks of grace I feel some concern looking at the olive tree with the jasmine growing up through it and the fig tree encroaching from two sides. Everything seems shiny and radiant but I notice a familiar and visceral feeling of being smothered, slowing down my breath to almost stopping, contracting my energy while projecting that the olive tree is in some kind in danger. Old patterns kicking in just by this mirror as I stand on my terrace here in Italy. With more discernment and listening to my inner Observer, I can see what’s really happening. We look a little closer. There is no take over. It’s true it’s a little less ordered, perhaps a bit more chaotic visually with inter-twining leaves, but it’s all ok. It’s about appropriateness and space, this inter-dependence, so that all three trees have the chance to blossom and produce their gifts, without impacting negatively on the other.
Phew. Seen from a different lens, I breathe a little easier, feel safer in my body, happier for the olive tree and grateful for how nature informs me, if I slow down enough to witness Her teachings. I’m seeing how this relates in my life, how challenging it is for me right now to move into a way of co-creating, rather than either living independently and alone or living with others but feeling so easily dominated and dis-empowered as a result. This terror of being totally ‘taken over’ and annihilated, such that I can choose isolation, the other arm of the crippling double bind that moves me between invasion or abandonment. One or the other. Vampire or Victim. Independent or Co-dependent. I can do either. So…. how to co-exist and be in delicious inter-dependence like these trees are managing so beautifully. How do they do it and what is the secret? Some months ago we cut back the olive quite severely by cleaning out the centre so the tree could breathe, clipping out the masculine branches that shoot upwards making it impossible to harvest the olives and thereby encouraging more of the feminine branches that grow downwards. Now it has space in its centre and I feel this in the core of my body. It’s why I’ve cleaned up all my olive trees like doing a spring clean it feels good. I notice that the voracious jasmine below, seeing it’s opportunity has come up to be held through the olive tree’s clear centre, in order to grow upwards to the light and give off more of its blossom. The fig tree that was nearly dead some nine years ago, lying in a strange position horizontally on the ground, has this last year become so abundant as it enjoys the garden watering nightly, cloaking protectively over the white Magdalene statue below and producing many more fruits than normal. Surprisingly, all three trees are thriving and abundant despite the unusual combo, this tree-o. The olive tree has tiny olives that survived yesterday’s June hail storm, the jasmine has expanded everywhere, showering it’s scented white flowers and the fig tree has proud little figs that are soaking up the sun’s powerful rays ready for August harvest. I feel into how I would be with two other human beings so intimately close in my private space and again my body contracts. I’m not used to working in close connection with others like this trio is organically and happily doing here on my land. I’m consumed with a fear of being ‘taken over’, suffocated and trapped. I like it when people come but these days, I notice I love it when they go. This wounded part of me who is shame-bound and beyond redemption, is paralysed, frozen and voiceless, she cannot defend herself and ultimately, she feels safest alone. So how to live in this inter-dependent place now that my healing centre has more capacity to open and offer living accommodation to others? How can I honour and hold my boundaries, dare to express myself authentically so that I’m not taken over or one or other of us, cuts and runs. Adapting to the new way of three trees together, each with the capacity to bloom even if it looks a little different and unusual. I have a history with trios desperately trying to find safety between one parent and the other, stuck in the middle like the olive tree. Holding up my jasmine father because he needed my help, feeling overpowered by my fig mother encroaching my space. Everything in life offering us these mirrors affording us the opportunity to change our reality and break free of old patterns and restrictive limitations. In my view, double binds are the worst, jammed between two impossible opposites trying to find some peace and balance, feeling without choice. Do I cut down the fig tree or the olive, this black and white insanity that we live with globally. What is the middle way, the place of resolution and harmony where everything is included, I never learnt this? It’s too easy to use the chain saw as in seconds a life can be gone, I’ve done this many times. But the idea of passionate and co-creative inter-dependence where all parties thrive in some kind of intimate and organic community , whilst being a dream I have, also terrifies me right to my core and I feel my little feet - she who was traumatised so early on, getting ready to run even as I write this (chain saw in hand just in case). Yet still I rise as I think of Maya Angelou’s poem. It’s all about personal boundaries, the safety they afford if I/we give ourselves permission. Still I imagine how it might be possible, what are all the ingredients for thriving inter-dependently outside of the old hierarchical, patriarchal model? The olive tree is strong and they are incredible survivors, sometimes managing to stay out of the earth for up to a year and still live when re-planted as happened to one of mine. That’s amazing, they are not easily beaten. However for me, there is an interesting point here that’s more important. A tree that has consistent lack of care and love where some land-owners around this area have stopped cleaning up their trees and left them to be totally taken over and dominated by parasitic ivy, known locally as Ledera, they live but cannot produce any fruit. Peter Levine talks of this, how it is the unsuccessful escape, this immobilisation that leads to the experience of helplessness and giving up, stuck in the ghostly black hole of trauma. Parasites are vampires, that’s what Ledera does, they live off their host. They totally take over as is the case with Lyme’s infection that I was diagnosed with early in 2017, the stealth bacteria are masterful and wipe out the immune system, re-directing forces to work for them. It’s no surprise that I understand the metaphor of what’s got ‘under my skin’ and what is ‘eating me alive’. These were my realities and I also recognise this is about ancestral trauma, this trans-generational legacy that gets passed down in order to honor stories that were untold and dishonored. I'm stronger as I know finally what I'm up against and I'm reclaiming my stealth and creativity in the process clearing my own baggage but also healing my lineage. I digress but you can see this is my theme and I know my healing lies in not resisting this truth but facing it with love, seeing the deeper teaching being offered. Anyway, as a result, these olive trees along my road have long since been able to give of their true gifts. They are totally suffocated with no hope of changing, as each year the Ledera gets more entwined and choking on all the branches with no-one coming to their aid. This is the same with our negative thoughts and belief systems, the way we can sabotage and destroy ourselves because of early distorted programming. The balance of power has gone out of sync. Finally at the ripe age of 59 taking radical responsibility, with new eyes and more resonant families of affiliation, I’m endeavoring to do things differently. I’ve taken off most of the things that have been choking me, finding my way back to some sense of sovereignty, giving myself this quiet space at my delicious piece of paradise here in Liguria. However I’m also seeing how isolated it is to live alone outside of community, like the olive tree living out of the earth and I'm longing to find some safe way to be with this kind of healthy inter-dependence. Neither extreme really works. I’m wanting to find the middle way of co-creating, combining what I know and daring to put it clumsily into practice and to forgive myself, since as pioneers to a new heart paradigm, I/we are mostly without guidance, steering a new course. I see much more clearly how it’s all about space, boundaries, awareness and appropriateness and all needs to be monitored vigilantly and regularly. It’s not a one off thing you do now and again, it’s a moment to moment tuning in and being 100% present. I can’t delegate it anymore to anyone else in some co-dependent cover up, it’s an inside job. Checking in with my body constantly as I heal with this demanding de-tox protocol for Lymes or finding ways to be intimate with my partner so we aren’t passing ships in the night, taking each other for granted. Or at a practical level on the land especially as the heat intensifies and after rain, because, in one day, the trees and plants are growing at a huge pace with the life giving sun and they can be over-shadowed and crowded out quickly succumbing to mould or infection. Lettuces can suddenly become inedible all in a day or two’s lack of attention. Relationships can wither just as quickly. We are no different. Everything needs love and care. We need constant food and watering, this on-going nourishment, not now and then when it suits us. We don't need to control and over manage everything as has been my way, but we do need appropriate, healthy boundaries, not mixed messages but clear transparent communication. Open dialogue, holding space for everyone's needs to be part of the field. We cannot make assumptions of how other people function and everyone must be responsible to share as honestly as they can. When I get overwhelmed, it feels easier to get out the chain saw and be dominant or withdraw and withhold but that hurts too much and is more of the same old. Awareness, trust and patience are vital. One step at a time, gently does it as they say in the 12 step programme. I have no answers and this feels way out of my comfort zone despite continually stepping up to my vision, hoping for miracles. People are so different. The jasmine for example is highly unlikely to destroy the olive, it’s vigorous but way too gentle to do any harm. To continue to grow, it needs something to give it support. The fig is a different kettle of fish, it’s so passionate and grand, it could easily overshadow and block the olive tree’s sun and space. It’s not wrong for being so exuberant, it’s just it’s nature to be big and bold but still in community, it needs containment. And still, even more ironic, it appears to be strong but the wood is flimsy in comparison with the olive and huge branches get ripped off in the winds as happened yesterday, where the olives remain totally intact. Appearances can be deceptive. As an Aries I can seem confident and strong like the fig, but I have an innocence and sensitivity that is much more like the jasmine. As people we are like this, we need to recognize whether we are a jasmine, a fig or an olive tree and how that works with others. We need to admit what we do when we are most stressed and vulnerable because I mostly start to over-talk where another person will totally withdraw. Shadow work in my view is essential to find our way through together. We have to know what our needs are, whether it’s ok to be as close as the jasmine is with the olive or whether we need to have more space and shine solo. I suspect I will always need my safe alone space and that this is non-negotiable. I'm realising I'm a bit of a lone wolf despite years of being a socialite using distractions of all kinds. It’s up to us to re-set where boundaries have been shattered and destroyed so that as we come into more alignment, we can bring back inner balance and safety. So - it’s all in my hands and I cannot ignore this precious on-going and radical responsibility that holds the key to my happiness and wellbeing. And with this self love, how I can then better 'Mother' other sentient beings in my life. Giving and receiving both together. The possibility of safe, thriving, inter-dependence. Thank you Mother Earth for your inspiring and beautiful teaching today. To write as a spiritual writing exercise, ‘the last time I saw you’……… makes no fucking sense. Nothing makes sense, it never has. How do I write about this when there are no words. I didn’t see you. How can I write about the last time I saw you, when we were in pitch darkness, in a vast liminal space with our eyes closed? We didn’t exist on that plane yet , ours was a pre-verbal one, dominated by sensual knowing. I never saw you but I felt you totally. Intimately. I knew you as me, there was no separation as we moved between the veils. The last time I felt you, the world was sacred. Tender, safe and nourishing. I was with my Beloved, entwined in Your arms ,Shiva and Shakti, we were One, breathing in sync, floating in bliss, undifferentiated beings of pure love. How do I explain this aching loss to others, the tsunami that took you away in a second? No warning, no explanation, no support. Total devastation with the body holding score. A black hole of sheer terror and haunting emptiness. Silent, unheard screams. Crippling abandonment that ripped me in two and broke my heart. I never saw you, we were the same and yet different, existing in a symbiotic and cherished union. Without you I was lost and confused, stuck in limbo, frozen in time and space. Lonely and without hope. Half living. Forgetting to breathe, shocked to my core. My nervous system never recovered, hyper alert and dis-regulated. Shaking for a life time with no proof or explanation why. You disappeared so fast, one minute together, the next you were gone. Sudden empty space, my other half no longer. No-one in the mirror, just me all alone. What happened? What did she do? Will we ever find out? Dearest Graham, we had an agreement to co-exist as twins, that was the deal right? Will I ever feel you again? Will this wretched sorrow ever leave me? This rage at life? What is the purpose of this existence, this dreary human life without you at my side? What is this ‘twin loss syndrome’ that is so misunderstood and wreaks havoc on survivors? Straddling the worlds searching for you, has been all I’ve known but half pretending to be here on earth is killing me now. The deadly toll of holding on and refusing to participate has destroyed my health, cost me dearly. I can’t do it anymore. If now, I choose to be here in my body, to make this commitment to fully incarnate, do I have to let you go? This, our secret, liminal world, my non existence here? Is it essential, to face this primal wound now in order to heal and fully arrive? I cannot continue in this half hearted, split and dis-embodied way, it’s too punishing an existence. Life is calling me. I need to let you go in order to find you, to allow the remembrance of you, to be fully embodied as a poetic and mystical sensory experience. This exquisite paradox, you as my beloved teacher and brother. Please help me, I’m terrified to face and feel your physical loss in my ravaged body, to be broken open once again, to grieve the pool of tears for years of separation and chronic amnesia. I must come home to me now, and say a YES to being here. A radical 100%, no more excuses. It’s time. Thank you, I love you, Please forgive me, I’m sorry. Oh Blessed Great Mother I’ve been so far away from You, so bewildered and lost
Searching frantically in the Underworld, misguided and alone Show me how to breathe, to connect with the beating of Your strong Heart Remembering You….. moment by moment, body to body, Your cells as mine You have always been here , whilst it is I who was separate and scattered Teach me how to surrender, to trust and melt into Your loving embrace Show me the breath taking beauty, the power of Your darkness and unfolding That I may trust more and more to the ever changing magic, the raw wisdom of the Immanent One I call on Kali, Durga, Tara, Lakshmi and Lalita, the long nights of Dhumavarti I call on the power of Shakti and embrace the feminine, Her receptivity, grace and glory She who cannot be separate from her Beloved but who sings with different voices, In all forms – the mountains, trees, insects and birds, the oceans, stars, animals and flowers Forgive me for straying for so very long, away from Your nourishing support, your holding arms Forgive me for abandoning You, dear Mother, as I did myself, for favouring the masculine and keeping it all ‘together’ The rest that now is possible, with Your tender and unbridled mercy The dropping of the soft rose petals when it’s time to let go, death and rebirth over and over…… Thank you for bringing me ‘home’ to my body…..to imperfection…....to face my shadow, heal my wounds To the pause between the breath, the empty womb of nothingness, the recognition of pure possibility This space of the empty dark womb, the unconditional safety that is Yours to give To this FIERCE LOVE that in honouring You ……. can bring Heaven to Earth. Mother I hear You calling in the
Swelling of the figs and the audacious yellow broom In the knarly local stone and the olive blossom on the trees Mother I hear You calling in the Magic of the fire flies, dancing with the stars And in the distant village lights held in luminous mountain curves Mother I hear You calling In the tenacious, sucking brambles so hardy and strong And the dying brown jasmine whose perfume I still ache for Mother I hear You calling from my Own estranged mother in her recent, reticent words Saying……‘I’m not sure if you want contact or not?’ Mother I hear You calling because I’m not immune to your powerful, metaphoric ways And the delicious subtlety when You knock on my door Mother I hear You calling even though I’m scared I know You understand and respect my caution I’m doing it embodied this time, being present with You Mother I hear You calling deep in my cells Feeling You in every sensation, in every emotion Savouring Your abundance, the rich gifts and intense flavours Mother I hear You calling and in truth I’m desperate and pregnant, longing and ready To receive Your nourishment, resting in your cosmic breast Mother I hear You calling from ancient times and beyond Help me Blessed One to open like a delicate flower Showering my gifts and tenderly surrendering as You do Mother I hear You calling, I’m on my knees Please forgive me, I’m sorry, I love you, thank you Enfold me with Your love and bring me home I don’t want to go where there’s no-one I know I don’t want to be where there is only me I’m scared of the silence, of the void inside So I’ve looked outside where I’ve tried and tried My body’s exhausted, my emotions are raw I’m tired of the fight, my mind says no more Give me the strength, ,the courage to be brave It’s time to stop treating myself like a slave Please help me to see that I’m not alone That I really don’t have to be on my own Help me to find that place of surrender Where I can truly be held, so strong and tender It’s time for the silence, to face the dark place It’s time to stop talking, trying not to lose face It’s time to start listening to the voice within Thank you dear spirit, you never gave in Sovereign Green Mantis Queen of Insects Sacred message delivered Angular sharp edges Piercing evil eyes Camouflaged and primed Patriarchal war machine Loveless, sterile matriarch Heart-less and demonic You scare me I abhor you Menacing weapons intact Demanding total allegiance Consumer-ism is all Narcissistic piercing glare Preying on victims Not wasting sentiment Dedicated to survive Programmed to kill Will you ever Stop this madness? Preparing for onslaught Radar 180 Vision Delicious rapt attention Unwavering desire for Blood and flesh Savouring the flavours Tasty property slaves Calculating cold questions Tell or die Fodder play thing Mine to dominate Gaze never lessens Power is absolute You will succumb ‘I am Master’….. She says with Penetrating angry glare Visceral panic alert Deep, dark foreboding Solar plexus clamps Breathing shuts down Razor arms grip Venomous jaws attack Perilous poisonous ‘hit’ Drugged and defeated There’s no escape Quaking in terror Aftermath of shock While predator gorges Cannibal’s pure delight Ripped to shreds Writhing, hopeless agony Screaming, muted rage Precious liquids gone Sucked completely dry Power viciously stolen One more lunch What just happened? Masterful, sinister game Shame cover up Endless repeated ambush Brutal and uncompromising No exposure allowed You must be Guilty without trial What the fuck? Plundered and devoured Torturous living hell Eaten while alive Watching it all Here I am Walking empty shell Anaesthetised, half dead No skin intact Innards ripped out Juices sucked dry Precious life force Authority.…all gone Complete take over This my temple What the fuck It doesn’t matter?! So what now….? Sea of darkness Shattered dreams and Broken, empty promises Vast blank space That doesn’t feel Like pure potential While body moans Throbbing deep aches Orphaned and stranded Shocked and confused Gaping open wounds I’m here now I’m so sorry I wasn’t before I’m with you Now, at last Holding you tight No more the Brutal Inner Mother This Shadow King Usurping female wisdom She who ruled And drank blood This cruel tyrant Who lives everywhere Dark ancestral legacy Poisoning the globe Inside and Out Now I see I honour you IN my body Grounded and strong I’m watching you My heart saying Yes My gut saying No Praying not Preyed In the mines Sweet yellow canary Tiny song bird So acutely sensitive Suffers toxic gas Menacingly quick poison And rarely honoured Sacrificed for others Dies as martyr Un-integrated shadow From ancestral legacy Dark, implicit secrets Like seeping gas Infect open channels Burning the landscape Desecrating the feminine Fascia, skin, cells Abruptly ripped open Energetic ghost imprints Scarred ancient wisdom Shadows ever darkening Hidden in crevices Gasping for breath Shame in disguise Ancestors calling forward Begging for forgiveness Honouring and understanding Welcome HER home Visceral collective memories Vandalised sacred sites Angels, demons alike Inherent fluid wisdom The Sovereign Queen Dormant never broken Years of apprenticeship Returning in glory Reclaiming HER body Giving up martyrdom Honouring chosen karma Bringing back authority Tender and potent Flapping HER wings Sweet yellow canary Breathing freely again Singing HER song Compassion is the Medicine :
To accept the unacceptable To satiate the insatiable To speak the unspeakable To believe the unbelievable To bear the unbearable And to own the disowned. A sanctuary and a resting place To redeem the unredeemable I’m asleep, brainwashed, easy to control
I’m on autopilot like a robot with no soul If I’m numbed out, closed down, I can ignore what I see Why should I care about you, when I’ve forgotten there’s a me? It’s easier when I’m anaesthetised so I can follow like a sheep If there isn’t a set system, I would collapse in a heap So l’ll choose not to notice, to turn a blind eye Preferring gratification, living my life as a lie You can show me atrocities, talk to me of war Tell me about pornography and the life of a whore But I won’t listen to your ranting as I’m not really here I’m lost to myself, disconnected from my fear You can talk to me of suffering, of animals in distress Point out all the problems, how the world’s in a mess But words and images don’t mean a great deal Because I’m in a deep sleep, can’t see what’s real So if you want me to feel, I’d have to open my heart Melt some of the ice put in place from the start I’d have to come home to reconnect with my pain Finding compassion being gentle with my shame So don’t blame me, judge me, define how I should be Don’t shake me, cajole me, force me to see I can only wake up, when I’m ready and willing When I see in my heart that it’s MY spirit I’m killing It is time for mourning. It is time for death. You have held me at bay for long enough and the bells are tolling. There is no stopping me now. The momentum is too strong, the time too ripe. Why fear what is offered. You who have resisted for so long, fought every battle, confronted every demon. Now the battle is over. You can rest. You can face and be with your fatigue, your battle scars and see you did them proud. You have not failed. You have come to the other side. There is no more fighting to be done. This was the old game, the old way. There is a new way approaching, a new guard of honour, a different battle to be fought.
You who have fought so bravely, why do you weep now as if you failed and are beyond redemption? How can you sit there with your criticisms and self judgement that it could have been done any other way? Who are you with your arrogance to know the chosen way, the way of the brave hearted. The fight for justice. The peace that is offered is not branded with the blood of those that have gone before but gilded with the courage that flows in their veins. Don’t cry for lost days or lost loved ones. Noone has gone, they have only reunited with the One who never left and waiting for you who beckons from the other side. Never underestimate the illumination possible from staring reality starkly in the face. There is a bright light waiting for you here in the truth beyond all illusion, in the way that is directed and clear. Do not judge this space so harshly because it doesn’t speak well of fantasy and charm, it cuts through the limitations and mirage that blinds with its illusions and veils and brings forth a clarity that allows for a new day. A new day that is fresh and clear just as Kali slices out the demons in her existence until there is nothing, literally nothing that stands in her way. This is justice fought in the name of mercy, this is the bridal path that claims no survivors and offers redemption in the name of the Lord. This is the only peace worth fighting for, the mercy that is attainable by absolute blind devotion. This is the way home. This is what it means to die and go to heaven. This is peace. Unwelcome body screams Ancestral aching cries Ripping to shreds Dissecting from inside Seeking an outlet Inflaming, burning, destroying Damaging vital organs This uncontrollable fire Unconscious self hatred Twisted, distorted miasms Down the lineage Fury wrongly tamed Destroying inner boundaries Animal near death Mashed to pieces Brutal, inner parent Unthinking, malicious owner The animal howls Trapped and hog-tied Sadistic, torturous regimes Weapons of vice Gasping for breath Dampened digestive flame Teeth and talons Prior to domination Sharp, lethal, primed All but gone Soft under belly Way too exposed In extreme danger Flesh at risk Where are you My dragon’s fire? Instinctual, enflamed beast My sovereign kingdom? |
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