There’s a picture of me at 3 holding a big fish that I caught, delighted and giggling, shining. I’m digging down now deep in the darkness for that shine.
When I became a mother, I saw immediately that my parents had no use for children. Being good equaled being silent, being attentive to adults, being compliant, being as like an adult as I could be. And layered on to their adult-centricity, was what I see now was a tradition of generations of judgment, self-judgment and judgment of others. I finally have compassion for my parents and the lock-box they were in(cause it’s my lock-box too). And the little girl with the fish, I know her spirit still rides, I’ll find her.
I had recurring nightmares about a witch coming out of the closet door in my room for me. Also about being chased by a little red car with a man and a woman. I would lie in my bed desperately trying not to go back to sleep because I knew they would come for me. It never occurred to me to call for help, to go to my parents, to seek comfort and sanctuary. At five years old, I thought it was me against those demons, all alone.
I’m not an alcoholic, unlike most of my family, but I am a trickster, or the pathology is a trickster.
I don’t know if I can explain this. There is so much pathology, and it is confusing to expose. In my zeal to be good and to earn the love that could not be earned, I became my father. I turned my passion and compassion out to the world. I needed to make a difference. I was swept up in the women’s movement, I wanted other women to feel their power, express their passion, and BE their essence. I made a career of serving the birth of women’s selves. In this work, I found a competent and compassionate me, a full heart, in a way. I had a vision of a world where girl children could be the laughing girl with the fish and gave myself to that vision, leaving her(me) completely out of the equation. The earth mother, a leader, bearing the weight of the world, a vessel of compassion and tolerance and deep respect. I tried to give and give what I couldn’t get.
I have had the hardest time understanding that the compassionate, contributing, visionary me is pathological, because it was the one way I could earn goodness in my family. Goodness equals making a difference in the world. I have so internalized this. It’s a mean trick, really, and so much to give up, as I backtrack back to the helpless fearful child in bed with nowhere to turn.
To even get to the place of understanding the pitfalls of my sense of responsibility to the world, I had to peel back layers and layers of guilt. I have these powerful women in my dreams, who were always telling me what I was doing wrong. They were strong, professional, in control. I used to admire them, try to be like them. Now that they are unmasked, they are more overtly demonic, hideous, furious. Sometimes I still listen to them. Sometimes I turn away from them.
Marc describes my pathology as a voice that requires that I hide. If I let my light out, it could fill the world. I can’t let that happen. When I heard this, I felt hopeful! Light to fill the world! I know that light. I just am afraid to share it.
So I’ve been dragged kicking and screaming to the website over the last few months, as I work in the women’s group, at the retreat, and with Marc, with Deb. The man keeps leading me here, to the NOE people.
Dream this week: I’m overwhelmed with wracking emotional pain. I go to a building where Deb lives. The door is locked but a man comes along, opens it and beckons me inside. I knock on Deb’s door crying and crying. Inside is a great hall filled with dream women who hold and comfort me. The men are cooking in the kitchen. We gather for the program. Deb is at the center of things, and I wish I could get her attention. But I am so relieved to be in this place where my pain is welcome. The women begin singing. It is a beautiful place to be crying, truly a sanctuary.
Although I am numb to that pain right now as I write, I trust the experience of sanctuary.
I’ve always had an intense spiritual life. I have poured my experience of pain and of joy into journals and poetry, from childhood on. As I’ve worked through my resistance to sharing my writing, I realize I feel ashamed of both the pain and the joy. And as I occasionally taste the indescribable sweetness and rapture of encounters with the Animus, I have found myself awash in feelings of disbelief, doubt, and embarrassment. This is how I turn away from him. This summer I made myself “come out” and begin to talk about my experience of the dreamwork, and yes, of God, with the people closest to me: my son, my husband, my mother, some close friends. (My daughter and I talk about it all the time.- She exists almost constantly in a realm of deep connection or deep suffering), another story. It was, is, excruciatingly hard.
So right now here I feel afraid of being exposed. I feel it now. I have spent four years experiencing the transformational quality of the dreamwork, but wanting to keep it compartmentalized over Here, while the rest of my life goes on over There.( At the best times I can feel the love streaming from the archetypes through me into the world). But my life in the world is a devouring monster, my executive job, my many family and financial responsibilities, my tendency to feel guilty and responsible, and I so often feel swallowed in the dissonance between the essential me, whomever she may turn out to be, and the me in the world.
I am afraid of the trickster, the trickstress, exposed. My dedication to making a better world, a fraud? I am afraid of my incompetency and inadequacy being exposed. I am afraid of hurting people I love by exposing my needs, and especially of losing the people I love. I am afraid of being labeled narcissistic, selfish, self-obsessed. I am afraid of losing control, but what control? My life feels, has always felt, totally out of control. I am afraid of surrendering to the archetypes and letting them lead me, although there is nothing I want more.
I come here to the website to be in danger and to die, to fall into the sea from the slippery cliffs where I am following the Animus along a treacherous path. I come here to be seen, to expose the little luminous tender heart inside, the great yearning, the radiance. I come here to lay bare the tricks that silence me. I come here, with a grateful heart, to belong in a community of people who bache alone.