June, 2008 - At the end of December I gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Throughout my pregnancy, I talked with Marc about my commitment to God and my work coming first. The importance of parenting from that place. Marc talked about how when women give birth, they often take a break from their work, fall into “babyland.“ He was clear that this was fine. I was clear that I had no such intention. I wanted to be on top of it, working it, connecting what came up for me in mothering my son to my inner work, etc.
I had a wonderful pregnancy and a beautiful and challenging birth experience. In an instant, my whole life changed completely. I thought everything was great. People commented on how relaxed I was as a mother. I felt like things were going well.
It took over 2 months for the Demon to be smoked out. She had snuck in somewhere and I didn’t catch it. My son is 5 months old now, and my spiritual work has been interwoven with the outer work of changing the way I was mothering.
The red flag was that I was constantly holding my child. Not only was I unconsciously not letting others hold him, but I almost NEVER put him down. ALL DAY. It did not occur to me that this was odd or off. He was a baby and needed to be taken care of, right?
But holding him and not letting him out of my sight, (because I was projecting my fear onto him) creates a fear in him that was not there, is not real. To see and feel this is so painful. It is me denying my own fear and basically, giving it to my tiny son. So where there was no fear, there is. OUCH.
What was happening is that the demon got in and wanted to create a mamas boy. Wanted to set it up so I was the Only One for him. Also, I was projecting my own trauma onto him. I was in a constant unconscious state of worry. I was protecting him from his own feelings.
His own feelings, which are his to feel. His own feelings, which have nothing to do with me, which come from God and make him the uniquely beautiful person that he is.
Dream:
I am in my bedroom. My son is a black and white snake. He is in his crib. We are hanging out and it feels relaxed and nice. One side of the crib comes off, and suddenly my mother is in the room, yelling at me. It is unsafe, the crib is broken, don’t I care about the safety of my son raaaah raaaah raaah!!!!! I turn to her and say, “For chrissakes, mom, he’s a SNAKE, he can get out of the crib any time he wants!”
In the dream, I see that my mother’s mania is absurd. I easily face her and tell her she is ridiculous. (Never have I done so in my outer life.) This dream was huge for me. It opened me to the maniac worry place in myself. My homework was to see that demon (my mother in the dream) and then to yell at her. It was a whole new ball game, baby, once I started seeing it and fighting back. I still do this homework.
But there was another piece, and that is that seeing the worry opened me up to incredible pain. Pain from my whole life, living in that maniac energy, and pain because I knew that I was carrying that mania/worry (unfelt fear and pain) and giving it to my son, as my mother had given it to me, as her mother had given it to her.....
So, in my disconnection, I do not want to feel my feelings. I attempt to manage and control the feelings and everything around me, including my son. This is not loving, this is incesting.
The gift in all of this has been and is, that I get to feel my own feelings. I get to allow my son his own feelings, and I get to feel the feelings I did not feel for myself when I was a child.
This is painful and precious work for me. Pathology still tries to convince me when I am feeling my own, previously unfelt pain, that it is about Wakeland, that I am harming him, that something is terribly wrong. Instead of the truth, which is that when I withdraw my projections, it is incredibly painful. It is MY pain. When I drop into my pain and anchor myself in my homework, He is loving me. I am moving through my pain and He is with me.
As I write this, I can feel that it is important. I feel a fire swishing and growing within me around this. I recognize that I cannot slack, cannot turn away from this, from Him.
Dream:
My husband and I are sick and my dad comes over to do the dishes. He washes, I dry. He tells me I’m sick, I should go to bed. I tell him no, that I just want to be with him.
The feeling of this dream was so strong. So simple. Wanting to be with my dad. Feeling such love and sweetness and vulnerability.
In my session it became clear that the pain that I had not been feeling and projecting onto my son, is the pain of losing my relationship with my father.
My homework from this was to feel the pain, knowing it is about losing my father, and go to the grungy rock and roll Animus.
Since that session, I have felt my pain almost constantly. I feel deeply bruised and tender inside.
So instead of having my pain be triggered by leaving my son, and then going into a foggy, trauma place where I sometimes got lost, I don’t need an outside trigger, I know that this pain is here. I can feel it all the time.
Feeling the pain often drops me into incredible fear.
I can feel that I cannot move into deeper relationship with Him until I feel this pain, this fear. I cannot grow as a teacher of this work unless I continue to feel this.
This is my commitment, my work, my life.
October, 2007
When I started the Dreamwork, I did not know where I was. I was lost to myself and lost to the Divine. I did not know this. I knew I was miserable. I knew I needed help from somewhere. I could not live as I had been living. I was suffering. Stuck in the gyroscopy of diminishment and entitlement. I was anorexic, depressed, suicidal and full of shame.
I chose men who could not love me, could not commit, thus supporting my pathology of shame and unworthiness. The reality was, I could not love myself, I could not commit.
Unable to withstand the sacredness and preciousness of my own soul, I spent my life giving myself away. In every relationship, friends, lovers, bank tellers, near strangers, I opened myself to them easily and compulsively, giving them pieces of my true heart so I did not have to keep them.
My work over the years has been about breaking through all of this, unknotting myself from my mother, getting underneath all of my emotions and reactions and projections in order to feel the feelings that had been waiting for me all those years.
The greatest gift I have been given through this work has been to feel my own pain, feel my own devastation, because feeling those buried feelings is a direct line to God’s love and to my own soul.
I had God as a child. Intimately and specifically. I remember.
This work has brought me back there, to the remembering. To the pain of my separation from God, from our specific relationship , and to a reuniting, realigning.
This September I got married. I married a man who loves me fully, who sees me, sees my girl, my true self, and knows that when I am having a shame attack, that in that place, I am not me.
Even a year ago, I could not have let my husband’s love for me in, nor could I have loved him as fully as I do.
I walked down the aisle a fully embodied bride. I felt it, my devotion to my husband and to my inner work. I am a bride to God, and a bride to my husband. Fully committed. Fully present and willing.
Dream:
I am walking into a basement with purpose. It is a store. Ben approaches me. He says, “The old man is mine.” I nod, not fully sure what is going on, but I know he means the shopkeeper, and I trust Ben.
I see a girl nearby. She is strong and smiling.
Ben and I approach the shopkeeper and Ben stabs him in the back. I cry with relief and the girl comes to us and we leave together.
I am getting my girl back. My soul, my heart. The one I remember. The part of me who knew God and knew I was His girl.
Dream:
I am with Marc setting up for something. I knock over this huge structure and it falls and breaks. It is no big deal.
Marc and I drive to an office. My parents are waiting outside. My dad is very healthy and has dreaded hair.
He looks badass. My mother comes over and tells me my dad is going to die at any moment. I think that’s wierd, because he seems really well.
Inside, my mother tells Marc a dream and he cuts through everything with one sentence. My mother does not respond.
When we worked this dream in the strings at the fall retreat, I could really feel my father's presence, and it felt so so good to have him there. I held him and felt flooded with pain and love-the pain of not having him, of pushing him away, and my love for him, his love for me.
This is such a gift. The girl knows his love, walks securely in that love.
Dream:
I am in a house with NOE people. Ben and I are asked to check on a teenaged girl who is staying with us. We go in and the girl is dead and there is a teensy baby girl there. I can hold her in one hand. We take the baby and love and feed her.
I am this baby girl. I am being taken care of.
My work right now is to stand back with Him and wait.
My mind likes to tell me it is hard, that I can’t do it. But the more I do it, the more I remember. The more I stand with Him and wait, the more I feel the girl. I had all of this and I left it. I was quiet and stood in the quiet and felt God around me in all that I did, all that I was. I knew how to wait, to not step in too quickly, not to step in until He says it’s time. This was my life. I want it back. I do not want to stand anywhere without Him. I want to learn to wait for His word, and then move, then speak, then do. It hurts too much to keep doing it the other way. It is not who I am.