This Is My Family and What They Mean To Me: Part Three

This is Part Three of a series of three articles.  For Parts One and Two click the links at the bottom of the page.

Fast forward again to about four months ago.  I’d had over ten years in therapy of being given, over and over and very consistently, a broad and all-encompassing experience of being heard, understood, encouraged, applauded, held, taught to articulate, congratulated, celebrated, protected, defended.  Taught how to listen to my emotions and how to express them safely, how to understand the needs that they indicated.

How to understand the different components of my own mind and differentiate between that part of me which adapted to survive in childhood, and the authentic part that was just beginning to learn of its own existence.  The love nurtured that authentic part of me.  It filled the gaps left in my childhood, gaps that had affected the development of my personality.  My creativity came alive, I learned how to use my mind, how stand up for myself, how to identify my inner critic, see where it came from, and see how much authority I gave it.  

Bit by bit I dealt with what I’d run from and gradually dismantled the neurotic behaviors I had developed unwittingly.  One of them was the propensity to judge.  As I stopped judging others I stopped judging myself and that let to being able to face the truth that the enemy was inside of me.  I don’t mean that I was bad; I mean the enemy was everything I’d learned about myself and life that wasn’t true but which I had believed all my life.  I faced my past and wrestled with what often felt like insanity as unresolved emotions overwhelmed me like tsunamis. I frequently couldn’t see the boundary between what I was feeling, and outside reality.  Gradually, inner strength and clarity established themselves.

Throughout all this, I had kept the door shut on my family - my mother and my siblings.  I told myself I would never open it again.  Then my mother, who lived in the country, was attacked.  She had to be moved to Cape Town, where we all live, and all of us have been thrust into close relationship with her and, and to a slightly lesser degree, with each other again.  At first it was incredibly traumatic.  I didn’t want to come back, didn’t want to deal with anybody in my family. least of all my mother.

I felt as if I was drowning.  Buttons from the past were getting pressed all the time and I so had had enough of the past.  I didn’t want any more of it.  I especially didn’t want to give my mother any more attention at my own cost.  But I also didn’t want to just shove responsibility onto my siblings so I reluctantly inched my way back in.  Scared.  But it’s amazing how you can have changed and not realize it.  I didn’t give my power to my mother and as one of my sisters and I connected over the phone, I was surprised at how different I was with her, too.  Still I held back.  Then something truly miraculous happened.

One day she and I met up because we had to move our mother to a home.  I was terrified - mostly that I’d lose myself and wouldn’t be able to hold on to the strength I’d developed over the last ten years, especially the past year.  We were both scared, though.  At first it was awkward, but afterwards we stood together in the sun and opened up a bit to each other, and I felt as if my heart came alive.  A rush of love flooded through me, warming my entire being.  I had kept that door so tightly shut for so long. 

Last week the four of us siblings got together for the first time in about twelve years. We had to go through some of our mother’s belongings and each take what we wanted, because she hasn’t got a need for them any more.  I suggested a meeting of all us, but was very apprehensive when the time came.  But there’s something about my family - what is it?  Generosity of heart - yes, I think that’s it.  Courage.

Those things, and also perhaps the shared experience, one which traumatized all of us, and separated us in many ways for a while, but eventually brought us back together again in a way that could allow us to really move forward, as individuals, and as siblings.  That day with the four of us, we all let ourselves and each other just talk about the impact of dealing with our mother again and all the buttons that are being pressed now.

There was no edge of resentment or repressed anything.  There was a lot of mutual respect and kindness.  We even had fun with it.  Emotions came and went.  It was really beautiful for me.  I could see that all of us are reaching for healing within ourselves and we’ve all acquired wisdom along the way.  We’re all dealing once again with our relationship with our mother, memories of our father.  How our childhood impacted on us.  We’re doing it in different ways, but we’re all finding something to build on.    

Getting the love I needed these past ten years so I could deal with my own demons has freed me up a lot from the prison of many of my own projections and judgments.  It’s allowed me to open my heart.  And if you ask me today what I feel about my family, I’ll tell you the truth without hesitation.  I love them with all my heart.  I always have.

For Part One click here  For Part Two click here