The last few days I’ve been lonely. Being sick with a sore throat and earache, and kind of tired, I’ve not been working much and have had lots of time to myself. I find myself logging in to my blog and looking at the posts of other survivors, looking eagerly for comments on my own blog.
I’m tired. Nothing’s wrong, but I’m sick and tired, I’ve got my period and I’ve got no mother. I never had a mother, but now I really don’t. It could be I never hear from her again. I told her the truth, and she’s not a big fan of facing facts, at least not on a time scale less than glacial. I don’t regret sending her the letter, but I am a bit sad.
I’m thankful this weekend is Easter weekend. I don’t celebrate Easter, except in those areas that overlap with Eostre, the holiday Pagan’s celebrate on Spring Equinox, which are mostly the good bits about new life and bunnies and eggs and blessing children (and therefore, metaphorically, Spring Herself) with gifts of sweets. This is good because I have the time off, without the commitments.
I’ve been hungry for time to myself, but time for myself feeling sick and tired isn’t really it. One thing I’ve noticed is that although I haven’t been working as much, my business hasn’t fallen apart. Perhaps I can have a soul-life and a work life at the same time.
I’ve been able to work in the garden a bit this week, weather permitting, which has been a blessing. We’ve put in a huge rasberry patch in the back yard, and some new grass for the dogs to pee on. They set to work right away, eating the new lawn, rolling on it, and other dogly stuff. Our big dog is getting a bit frustrated with having two mommies sick, and no-one to give him the abundant affection he so clearly deserves…
I’m taking a break from the acupuncture too, till I’m well again.
Part of being Pagan is having respect for the cycles of life, the waning moon as well as the waxing, fall as well as spring, winter as well as summer, compost as well as planting, menstruation as well as ovulation.
There is a tarot card, the Hermit, which to me is about big, barely visible things happening when nothing important seems to be happening.
So as a good religious Pagan, I need to cover myself metaphorically in leaf mould (or a nice soft blanket) even when the weather and my fear of losing momentum says grow, grow, grow, and allow a little fallow stage before I move on.
And maybe that’s okay. Like spring, where things grow in fits and starts, weather and frost permitting, I’m allowed to expand and unhide and then contract a little too.
I too have spring rituals – the taking off of shoes, since I try to go barefoot as much as I possibly can in the summer, things like that. While I don’t celebrate as much as I should, probably, I do very much enjoy the wonder of spring and the scent of rain again.
Out of curiosity, do you go to Starwood? It’s a huge pagan festival in southern NY that I go to every year. I think you’d really enjoy it, from all I’ve read here.
http://www.rosencomet.com/starwood/
Sometimes the ‘informal’ rituals are the best ones, I think. I’ve never been to Starwood – I’m not near NY – it does look good. I sometimes go to Spring Mysteries Festival but that’s the only US one I go to (I’m in Canada).
Everything’s going to be okay.
Did you ever read that book “Woman on the Edge of Time”? There’s a passage in there that is so beautiful. This woman is locked up in an institution against her will, and while there, she visits another reality in her mind. In that reality, they say to her “We’d be stupid not to know that you’re hurting. That you’re fed drugs that wound your body, and that no one there seems to want to help you heal. Don’t fade from old pain to return to new one. Guest here awhile.”
We’d be stupid not to know you’re in pain and hurting. That you’re tired and sick. That your mother is ridiculous for not contacting you after you told her your heart. You are right to be saddened by it all right now.
Everything will be okay, Warrior. Your body is healing, and so are you. And then you will have the strength to fight, like the Warrior you are.
Thank you. I did read that book ages ago, although I don’t remember it that well. I remember that the other reality she visits is a lot better place than where she is. I think it was the first book that I read about women being put in institutions against their will, and I may not have been able to take reading that part. I think I may not have finished it.
Thanks for the support. I know I’m a warrior, I’m just so tired right now. At least I know why.
Another fiction book that I find inspiration from (actually most of her stuff is good) is Ursula K. Leguin’s book “a wizard of Earthsea”. The Wizard of Earthsea is about a wizard fighting a monster that chases him when he runs from it and runs from him when he chases it, that is a part of himself and his past. It’s a good metaphor for survivor gunk, which might be why she wrote it. Reading her books, I sometimes find heals parts of me I didn’t even know were broken.
Your post was like a poem, very visual and very emotional at the same time. I wonder what kind of spectacular song you could create from it.
I have heard many survivors mention mother loss. I think it must be a deep component that most survivors must deal with. I knew it was for me, but I see it in other survivors as well. I feel it like a deep throbbing ache. Wish it wasn’t there, this huge gaping whole begging to be filled.
Several years ago I was taking a class on ecopsychology and for the course you had to do a series of meditations out in nature. I had a vision of the earth encircling and lifting me up with the words that the earth was now my mother. Since then the whole is starting to fill up, slowly.
I believe that we all need and deserve that kind of mother love that our little selr yearned for. It is there still deep inside us. I know that there is mother love out there for you.
Thanks for your bravery in posting.
Kate