Breath

Through this autumn of 2020 I've been thinking a good deal about breath.

To breathe is to live.

As we all journey through this peculiar time in world history, here in relative isolation, I've been living my life in simple, daily ways and noticing my breath, my lungs- how they feel, where they are in my body and what limits my capacity to breathe. I am also noticing what it is that causes me to breathe deeply, to relax, centre and feel alive. I first began to notice the impact of fear and anxiety on my ability to breathe easily, just before the "Lock Down" here, almost 3 weeks ago, when Rob's mother sent him an email that we had no idea was coming- it's been three years since they last spoke and with this unexpected correspondence came a wave of deeply dark energy and trouble. The following day Rob hurt his knee with a piece of wood while building, (and he'd been doing just fine on the safety front until then)

which created an injury to the bursa, that then developed in to cellulitis and caused a huge amount of subsequent trauma and worry. This pattern of cause and effect has been repeated hundreds of times through the last 26 years. When it first began it was through letters being sent. Crazy behaviour and angst would inevitably erupt in our household and other consequences- troubles: burst pipes, complaints at Rob's work, our children having wild meltdowns, terrible arguments between us and various forms of accidents and sickness. Nothing I did ever stopped this dreadful process from happening again and again. We'd pick ourselves up, just get our dignity back and mend the broken pieces when wham it would strike in yet another form. I eventually took to pegging the various letters and other posted items in trees in the garden until Rob came home from work, as I didn't want to bring them in to the house. Many times we burnt them, some are still at the lawyers office for "safe keeping"- out of our domain. The thing that I noticed this time around, was the impact of this dark energy on my breath. When the autonomic nervous system (fight/flight/freeze) is triggered due to a perceived threat, the breath shortens and becomes constrained and the natural easy rhythm is misplaced.

One of the consequences of these visitations is a form of mis-communication and dislocation between us (which is why I knew something was very wrong before the email came through) and it was a wee while down the track before I realised that Rob was in trouble with his knee injury. It felt like the whole world was against us and it felt very, very scary. A water pipe in our front garden then burst. I felt incredibly panicky and anxious through these days, while also wandering in and out of rage-a huge anger that this woman would continue to bring so much trouble into our lives. And my breath told me the story- shortened uneasy breath and heart palpitations.
How can this possibly be- well may you ask!! A woman who loves Jesus above all else, yet can activate so much harm in the life of the son that she professes to love so well. Every day praying- prayers becoming bad medicine. "Blessings" sent that morph in to curses. My lungs hurt- life diminished to survival. But I..AM..WOMAN here me roar!! (huge breath)- how dare you!! This life of ours is not yours to take. This marriage is sacred before God! And so I set about gathering my medicines and herbs that I have spent the last year preparing and I made poultices for the infected leg & others for the damaged knee and I made nourishing food and herbal infusions and I brought out my tinctures and I read some more of what I needed to do.

 And so with a doctors visit (for work and to be safe and yes, an antibiotic) we applied what we had and little by little we healed....the leg, the knee and our lives.
While Rob rested, I walked to the trees..my friends. And I found strength and I found solace and I gathered up my courage. That first day- heart beating strangely, breath all over the place, anxiety  extreme (beyond normal- I'm a resourceful person) and as I walked across the paddock under the watchful eye of the grand old trees in the Showgrounds, a bee came and landed on my hand, a little further a long a red admiral butterfly came fluttering up and landed on my breast- breathe....reassurance- it'll all be ok.
The next morning when I could hear the sound of water rushing through the pipes like crazy and Rob was still asleep, I walked around the house in the early morning mist in my dressing gown- once again feeling agitated and anxious (what next!) when I looked up the path and here coming towards me was the most beautiful little hedgehog- all will be well. Breathe.

 As is the way when you develop a relationship with healing plants- just the right thing presented itself to us to help heal the knee. A post by a friend prompted me to research the Cotton Rose bush that is growing down the back of the garden. A glorious thing- its also known as Hibiscus Mutabilis as the flowers come out white then fade to pink and the following day they finish their life in a deep shade of rose.

 This is the first year that our Cotton Rose has flowered properly. It'll be finished as soon as we have the first frost. I read that the flowers most especially can be crushed and used as a poultice to help reduce inflammation due to injury. Perfect! Breathe.

 We both felt ourselves settling in to trust, breathing more fully, as these beautiful flowers began to work their magic.

I crushed up one flower at a time to make a poultice each day.

 Until we found that it was no longer required.

 Lots of rest was also helpful.

 Beauty...deepens the breath too and is everywhere we look.

 Cats know just how to collapse in to deep peaceful relaxation when they feel safe.

One morning I was watching a video from the wonderful healer Prune Harris and she was demonstrating an exercise that connects the lungs and the immune system. I taught it to Rob and so we practised it that evening in Lucy. He got it perfectly. Breathe- deeply. Rest.  

You can learn it here too, if you like.

And so we naturally return to  "Acknowledging the good that we already have in our lives as this is the foundation for all abundance". Slightly paraphrased from Eckhart Toile.

 And soon enough we have been able to ride our bikes and walk again together and visit our beloved places and trees. For it is amongst these friends- "The Lungs of the Earth" that we find we can draw breath most deeply.

 And know that we are safe in their care and strong arms.

It's fascinating to me that we call the in breath inspiration- to inhale, to in-spire.
Trees absorb carbon dioxide, humans exhale it, trees breath out oxygen- the very substance we need for the breath of life-in. Isn't that amazing!
I have also been thinking about this global state of emergency caused by a particular virus & it's mutations, that is effecting and limiting the breath of the entire world; simultaneously. This impact is brought about obviously physiologically, but also psychologically. The virus infects/invades the cells and inhibits the natural function of the body, the emotions of fear, panic and anxiety and so forth, evoked either by presence or imagined threat of the virus- in us, have precisely the same impact. All of it alters our ability to breathe- in, oxygen. Life.

The dictionary states that breath is:

~ The air inhaled and exhaled in respiration.

~ Respiration, especially as necessary to life.

~ Life, vitality.

~ The ability to breathe easily and normally. She stopped to regain her breath.

~ Time to breathe; pause or respite. Give him a little breather.

 And isn't that just the simple reality of things- we each must attend to our own respiration. Our life breath is our own and cannot be shared. Our inhalation forms our inspiration- out of which comes our unique creative gifts- our offerings to the world. When we are not able to breathe freely we seldom flourish.

The dictionary also offers this definition of the word inspire:

To fill (someone) with the urge or ability to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.

I love that we are so wonderfully and marvellously made, but it's funny how we really have so little knowledge about all the complexities of our human functionality. I'm a pretty simple living woman, I've come to realise- while others pursue knowledge, information and what they believe to be truth with great gusto, I am happy pottering a long in life with my own personal interface; yet ironically, I ask a thousand questions a day and I have a huge passion for learning- real stuff- things that are either wondrous, or that provide answers or assistance for everyday living. That's why I love nature so much. The plants and trees never put you crook and are always too happy to see me and offer their support and assistance.

In the lovely Steiner/Waldolf model of the 12 senses that I mentioned in my last post I have discovered that there is no Sense of Breath- I guess, because breath is life itself, but there most certainly is The Sense of Smell. Fairy Dust Teachings suggests: " It is through the sense of smell that we gather massages about the environment with every breath we take by the automatic function of smell that detects dangers, food, and other people. Think about common phrases we use like "I smell" trouble in the air". "Did you get wind of that?", "She is a breath of fresh air", "It's stink that she can't have the day off"....Our sense of smell plays a powerful role in the way we recognise each other, are attracted to mates, recall memories and even warnings about the environment around us".

I realise now that I have always had particularly acute senses and it is through my sense of smell most of all that I navigated my early years of life. The comforting smell of my Teddy was my anchor in those first 7 years of my life. The scent of winter sweet, blossom flowers, daphne, feijoas, passionfruit etc were all indelibly embedded in my olfactory memory bank from very wee. It was the smell of the house at Sunray Avenue (Rob's childhood home) that I will never, ever forget- the rank, mouldy, musty odour of contained mildew & dirt pervades every inch of that dwelling. It always made me feel very ill and sometimes gave me nightmares. Half the house has no concrete foundation so the stench of stale dirt has permeated everything in those 50 years of it's standing. Interestingly- in truth, I was never welcome, nor safe in that house. What we can smell we can make a choice about- mostly. "Ooh that bread's gone mouldy" causes us to throw the offending food in to the compost. Stinky feet, bad breath- we'll keep our distance. And of course, there are all the glorious smells that enrich our life daily: the comforting smell of dinner cooking, for instance, allows us to relax, feel safe and perhaps edify our much needed sense of belonging- even if just to our own lives.

But, it's that which we cannot detect, yet we breath in, that can really cause a problem: the pollen grains I see all over my car just now, but are invisible to me as I inhale them, or the cold, 'flu, covid19 virus that gets right up your nose without giving the slightest hint of it's presence. Even more disturbing is the energetic, covert toxin that arrives by stealth and causes chaos without the slightest permission- only the symptoms give it's presence away. In every instance it's the breath that let's us know what's going on in the beginning.

When it comes to these invisible invaders, we find that we are not in control of the situation, but what we can do is to gather around ourselves allies that will help to strengthen us and equip us to manage an uncalled for encounter with that which seeks to aggravate or destroy. And again I return to my simple ways and knowledge. It's tragic that in our modern age so many of us have lost generational knowledge of almost all good living practises. This has been brought home so powerfully as we've all had to be so forcibly re-educated to the basic practise of washing our hands to stop the spread of disease- any disease. But we've also forgotten about fresh air, sunshine, gardening, growing food, gathering herbs for nourishment and healing and how to prepare and cook food from real and actual ingredients. Learning and practising folk medicine and growing our own food or foraging for it and knowing local food producers well is the most fundamentally empowering thing we can learn to do for ourselves. Every part of this process is entirely in our control. We get a choice. We get to build our own immune response system in to health, or we can choose to tear it down and pretend that someone else was in charge. What I love so dearly is that these skills will travel with me through the rest of my life and they help me to breathe, to inspire, to create, to live my best life and they give me the very best shot at loving myself and others well. The other toxic stuff- I'll go on fighting for our freedom no matter what it takes.

Weaving a Nest

I have long been fascinated by the idea that we perhaps, have 12 senses, rather than just the 5 that we are all so familiar with. It was Rudolph Steiner that first proposed this intriguing concept. I just love this post here at Fairy Dust Teaching that explains it all so beautifully. Having been raised in very conventional ways, myself- this news is thrilling to me. Suddenly, everything makes so much more sense, now that the missing bits have been delivered. It's like only ever having a set of five primary coloured crayons, kept in a very skinny pencil case, with which to colour in the world- so limiting. And then, quite suddenly, being presented with a complete rainbow box of delicious pastels to work with- everything changes.
I really like this homeschooling diagram as it puts the development of the 12 senses through childhood in to very helpful perspective.

And this is why I believe that a "good" childhood is so vital, a child's well-being is woven strand by strand with fine threads & teeny stitches in to a belief & value system that will travel with her the rest of her life. It may seem a very strange metaphor, but this belief system is much like a healthy pelvic floor- elastic & supportive & beautifully constructed to hold all the vital organs of creativity in place- effortlessly. The fabric of childhood values, is in fact, not crafted by the child, but woven by others around her. She may offer small snippets to be added in to the creation, but she is not the architect, nor is she in charge of the project. Some of the materials used are imperceptibly passed on by other generations, others are absorbed in to the fabric simply through the close & seamless bond with mothers & caregivers, as for some long time the little one does not see herself as separate from the mother, but as one & the same. Which is why I inadvertently absorbed so much of my mother's self hatred & melancholy. As a child you have no idea what is normal or healthy, or if it is not, it's just your life. Some of us are offered beautiful life blankets woven with love, richness & great skill, that we carry with us in to the adult world gratefully. Others are offered blankets of discordant colours & materials that may be scratchy & itchy & cause us no end of trouble & discomfort & do not serve us well. It is a very difficult thing to find yourself with a dumb life blanket. And the truth is, we are not at liberty to just throw the thing away, it's ours whether we like it or not & we must figure out for ourselves how we will re-craft the offering, in to a support that will more graciously sustain us. This work may mean a life time of unpicking.
I have come to observe that many people receive perfectly fine life blankets, others have a good bit of work making do & mending theirs, and then there are the others- the scapegoats & black sheep who have to face the truth that what they have been offered will harm, kill or disable them if they don't deconstruct the blanket almost entirely. The reason that we are not at liberty to simply burn the offensive thing is that by now it has also become part of our emotional & physical body.
I have become very aware of a troubling phenomena of recent times, as I observe many people around me suffering- really, really struggling with unsolvable, incurable health issues. And in every case I note that the life blanket given to them in childhood is a toxic/scratchy one. I  have struggled for the last 30 years with a lack of vitality & an inability to resolve health issues & become fully well myself, no matter what I have done to try & help myself, until now...now that I have fully separated myself from a father who intends me nothing but ill-will & has done so for over 40 years. You see, it never stops in childhood- the toxic thing, it goes on & on- sticking to your life life like dog poo on the bottom of your shoe. You cannot just simply, pull your socks up & get over such things.
Those who are so damaged that they have nothing to offer their offspring other than life blankets embedded with utterly inappropriate poison apples, are to be pitied.
Their legacy to their victims is a perpetual & gnawing sense of un-belonging & abandonment that follows us in to every nook & cranny of life, never allowing us rest. As a consequence we end up in a state of heightened anxiety & nervousness, struggling to trust others & the goodness in life- we long for even a little of the happiness & sunshine that others seem to so readily gather around themselves. Once activated by the life threat, we come to discover that the panic switch is set to always on & alert, & our rest & restore function is rendered faulty or broken.
So, how do these parentally disordered human beings come to be this way?
I cannot tell you.
All I do know is- that when you reach old age you have a lived your life daily, thirty thousand times over, making one choice, one response of love or contempt, kindness or selfishness- one decision at a time. How we came to have three such people within our family life, I also cannot tell you.
It has been a long 30 years of suffering the consequences, but we have done the work, we have used the tools that we have managed to dig up or find for ourselves & we have methodically bent our heads & worn down our fingers as we unpicked the corrupted & ugly threads & we have rewoven them with feathers & usnea & sheep's wool & joy. Snip, snip pull. Warp, snip, pull, discard, weft. Snip, snip pull, discard. Warp & weft.
It's not enough to proclaim "tell me if I ever start to behave like that!" the ink is indelible- the threads must be cut & pulled.
At various times through the years we have looked up from the work- to rub our aching necks & pause to consider what home means to us, what love means to us, what feeling safe means to us & what would healing from it all really look like.
Well it looks like this: photo credit: Linda Hallinan

 A work of art & perfection. Cleverly, beautifully crafted, little by little until the very best nest is formed. And it always fits the family, the person it is made for- just right.
I love too, the way that my beloved Wild Carrot (Queen Anne's Lace) mimics the nest- flowers giving way to seed & closing in on themselves to form a beautiful, natural womb of protection for the mature seed of her making. One of the golden threads of nature is the miraculous- humans don't always know that they can be part of the same lovely plan.

When we came across that lovely Danish concept of Hygge- making life cosy & warm, we were so delighted & we set about infusing our lives with as much Hygge as we could muster. Recently we came to see that the fundamental thing that must be in place before Hygge makes any difference at all, is the state of The Nest. We each get to craft our own nest through our adult years, but we will only do a fine job of this creation if we have truly assessed & dealt to the state of the life blanket we we've been given so long before.
The first of the 12 senses is The Sense of Life, or The Sense of Wellbeing.
Fairy Dust Teaching suggests that one of the fundamental things that children long for is a rhythmic life-
"And it is the rhythms that hold life- rising and setting of the sun, seven days a week, the cycle of the moon, the twelve months in a year- that we build our rhythms upon. Children require rhythm and actually long for it!! The more rythmical the life of a child, the healthier that child."

Here in this home we return again and again, as beloved children to the basic threads, materials for building a cosy nest- the scents & the beauty of seasonal flowers growing in our garden.

 The wonder of lettuce going to seed.

 The gratitude for the delicious Red Shiso that volunteers each summer in cracks all about the garden.

 The medicinal plants like yarrow...& the visitation of bees.

Seeing once again the wonder of the process of metamorphosis right before our eyes.

 Knowing, always knowing that Lucy is just there, keeping company with the hydrangea Bloody Marvellous. Lucy feels like home- always.

 Eating a rainbow from the garden- because there's nourishing magic in such food.

 Standing in awe before an echinacea flower- such astonishing form.

 Gathering so much glorious summer produce from our little community garden down the road, then sharing it with others.

Harvesting Kawakawa fruits from the school down the road & eating breakfast with joy.

 Gathering wild flowers for their colour explosion. Wow!

 Picnicking by the river at Sacred Hill in the heat of summer, having taken the time to prepare delicious food for our dinner.

Marvelling at the setting sunlight through double Thalictrim blossoms.

 Holding the nourishing gift of red clover blossoms- also offerings from the summer garden.

 Bothering to peel the mountain pawpaws & making Nan's old Fruit Delight dessert recipe with them.

 Taking the time to carefully collect one of every begonia blooming in pots. Their petals are tangy & lemony & so much fun in salads.

 Sitting a sunflower head on a wee seat- like an important visitor.

 Reading snippets of fabulous books like Apples for Jam to each other, warms our hearts & makes us feel loved.

Memories-
"There's children's laughter escaping through the iron gates & past the oleander, and the daffodils, sprinkling on the just-cut lawns that line the road and fluttering up to me through my open window, falling over my shoulder's like fairy glitter. And that atmosphere of sleeping head to tail in trains and on holiday, and knocking on walls to see if others are still awake". Tessa Kiros

 Staying to watch the moon come up even though it's long past tea time & then running to the car 'cos we're freezing.

 These are the threads of life that we now weave- rhythmically, daily, joyfully.
Vintage French enamel bucket- op shop find.

Because all that really matters are the moments- knowing that you are loved, will always be loved & you are truly, fully awake & alive.

The moments...

"Observing freedom" 

 Captured in a split second by David (son). Click photo to enlarge
 Life. Gift to see.

Moulin Rouge sunflower in Matthew's amazing, productive garden.
Photo- Matthew (son).
Life. Gift to see.

Also snapped in a moment of time. Setting sun. Effects- produced by Australian wild fires.

Photo- mother. Life. Gift to see.

Photo- father. Me age 59. Life. Gift to see.

When The Nest is woven with threads of love, kindness, care & acceptance...warmth naturally comes to fill it & grace abides.

Life

All is well.

A Story to Tell

I have been away again a long time & I am sad about that.

I have tried to write many times this year, but my stories were too odd, too strained & one time, all that I had written, just up & disappeared.

So I have waited, hoping that some sweetness would eventually arrive.

But it hasn't.

I look up & find that it is already August. This year has unfolded in the most unexpected & peculiar ways. I have had no control over events & for the 29th year in a row, no choice what-so-ever about the impact of the family chaos & dysfunction we have found ourselves embroiled in, yet again.

But it has come to me today, quite clearly, that it is time to tell our story.

The tale of almost four decades of love & struggle.

Whether anyone else understands, is offended or judges me for doing so, no longer matters.

But first of all, let me tell you what derailed everything.

Right at the beginning of the year- Rob had some unexpected contact from his elder brother Roy. Unexpected because...the last time he wrote to Rob, 12 years ago, he had a great deal to say (without ever having talked to his brother, I might add) which included:

"I may have backslidden somewhat, but I can assure you that I have more Christian values in my big toe than you have in your entire body, in fact, your entire family. I am ashamed to call you “My Brother” and in fact, the creature that you have become is no longer my brother. The real Rob, the brother that I loved, the young boy in the picture below, is Dead. I will get a china urn and fill it with ashes from my next camp fire, and I will put your name on a plaque to be hung around the neck of the urn, to remind me of the brother who was. This urn will take its place next to the urn and box containing the ashes of our dog “Silo”...

His previous email, 5 years prior to this, also expressed his enormous angst & deep disgust that he held towards his brother & he told him that he would leave it 10 years & then maybe check in again after that & see if there was any change (also written without actually seeing Rob in person or having a conversation with him).

Needless to say, there was no response required to such announcements.

But here Roy was, contacting Rob after all these years & announcing that he forgave him (well kind of- with conditions), having recently re-dedicated his "life to The Lord" (for the third time) & with some pretty sharp-pointy-stick prompting from his best friends-  he had arrived on the email doorstep. Then with a little straight talk & grace on Rob's part, a civil conversation was begun, a Pacific cruise taken by Roy (with his mother) & a Church conference attended in Auckland. Whilst sitting through the weekend, Roy began to complain of a sore back. Eventually, with his mother's insistent prompting, he agreed to head to the hospital to have himself checked out, where-upon he was instantly admitted, soon suffered a massive cerebral seizure & at that point was rendered unconscious; only to die 3 days later. He did have a history of recurring melanoma so it wasn't entirely a surprise, but none-the-less abrupt & unexpected, especially if you haven't "seen" him for well over 17 years.

Having created some significant buffering for ourselves over the last decade, from family dynamics, we were unprepared for the impact that abrupt loss brings & found ourselves navigating some bumpy weather- plenty of unpredictable & unexpected emotions & some very peculiar situations thrown in to the mix. When Rob made his way back to his family home to be with his mother & younger brother & to say goodbye to Roy, he suddenly found that there was no room at the inn- as a strange woman (that he'd never heard of in his life before) was sleeping in his old bedroom. She announced that she was his brother's "adopted" daughter (with 6 children of her own) & set about organising everything & every-body as if she'd, in fact, been a part of the family all along. So, within the whirling dervish of chaos that this death has wrought, we find ourselves uncomfortably facing the past, the present, the unresolved, the things we never knew, the things we will now never know & the bare-faced truth about a disordered family that was set on a path of self-disintegration many years ago.  

I read here today- "We are all storytellers...engaged in an “act of creation” of the “composition of our lives.” Yet unlike most stories we’ve heard, our lives don’t follow a predefined arc. Our identities and experiences are constantly shifting, and storytelling is how we make sense of it. By taking the disparate pieces of our lives and placing them together into a narrative, we create a unified whole that allows us to understand our lives as coherent — and coherence, psychologists say, is a key source of meaning."

I am not certain that in writing our narrative there will come a coherence, but I do know that it has come the time to tell the story of "The Marriage"- this union, that has a life & a tale all of it's own. I have shared so much loveliness & beauty in the last 7 years & that is all still true & certain, but sometimes there is more- so much more & in that place of other-life there is a cutting, a loneliness & a despair, a malaise & a chaos that persists.

Here I sit- aged 56, yet I don't feel any age at all. What I do feel, is that inside of me, still lives a wee girl, a ghost of a girl- called Katie.

She is sweet, shy, innocent & so very, very sad. Trauma changes the souls & brains of little children. It is never their fault, nor can they fix themselves. Children are not made of elastic like everybody says. That is a convenient fabrication. We are fragile & malleable & precious & we deserve to be loved & protected- always. My Nan would always say of the hard things (like her children getting pregnant out of wedlock)- "It's just one of those things that shouldn't have happened", in her deep gruff voice. Those words never helped. And it did happen & I was entrusted to a mother that cried the whole week of her own honeymoon in despair, & there-after had one foot out the door either emotionally or practically most days. She was sad & depressed & desperate & trapped (mostly in herself) the whole 6 years that I knew her. The last time I saw her as a child, she was almost dead & it wasn't until this year, age 56, that I realised that I had always carried the burden of guilt that if my mother wanted to leave so badly, it was my fault. I knew she was very sick & I didn't grieve for her & I didn't blame her when she left.

 The next two years (rather peculiarly) were the happiest years of my childhood- the two years that my father was waiting on his divorce before my "new mother" could be installed. There was a calmness & a gentleness about that time that was never to be repeated.  My father caught me watching television through the crack in my bedroom door one evening, but instead of growling he invited me out to watch the Avengers with him & that became the pattern that was both kind & comforting to me, at that time. I also recall seeing someone making a cake on television- a fruitcake, I thought perhaps that I could make one too. I stored the recipe in my head (all of age 7/8) & then asked Dad & his flatmate Geoff whether I added the eggs in to the mix with their shells on or off-as the instructions were to add 3 "whole" eggs. They said they weren't sure & not wanting to do it wrong, I added 3 eggs- shell & all! They happily ate my rock cake, spitting out the bits of shell as they went, while I concluded that I should probably take the shells off next time.

But that's the thing about dysfunction, it doesn't come along waving banners & telling you that it has arrived. There is no family barometer sitting on the wall so you can figure out how you're doing & whether you've tipped in to crazy, odd or toxic. Narcissistic personality disorder didn't even have a name back then & hitting, kicking & screaming abuse at your "adopted" step-children wasn't even against the law. It's an interesting thought to ponder that perhaps trauma survivors have (or end up with) symptoms instead of memories.

By the time I turned 16, things were so bad that I would cry all the way to school & all the way home again. That household was all ice-cold withdrawals, punishing silences for weeks on end, torrid strip downs with the white water word hose, that left me in emotional sobbing tatters of worthlessness time after time; no fairness, nor borders, no respect, only egg shells, broken glass & contempt. Not once did I see a difference of opinion worked out with skill or even basic decency. And my opinion- was never asked for, nor sort- except when my father needed a confidante, a captive shoulder to lean on when his marriage hit the wall, yet again.

I knew I just had to get out of there, but I also had almost no self confidence or sense of personal worth & no idea about how I would live life out in the world on my own. I left early the following year & headed to Wellington to start my School Dental Nurse training. My father then made an uncharacteristic intervention in my life, toward the end of that first year & organised for me to go with a Youth for Christ group that were heading to Samoa to build a house. It was the late 1970's & there were a lot of pentecostal christian happenings going on. The actual "team" volunteered from all around New Zealand & first got together at the Baptist church in Miramar Wellington, to plan the house building & ministry in November 1978. I walked across the city from the Dental Nurses' hostel,  up the stairs & "saw' Rob for the very first time. That moment, both our lives changed forever. Our romance was improbable & according to all & sundry, entirely ill advised. But we soon recognised that we had been given something unique & precious & that was all that mattered.

Early the following year I turned 18 & I found myself taking an overnight, 13 hour train journey to Auckland, to meet Rob's family. His mother took a vehement (but covert) disliking to me from the moment that she met me. That first evening she insisted that we all go to the movies together, which would have been ok if I'd been invited, but it was all decided around me- we would be going to a double billing screening of two science-fiction movies. I abhor science fiction & I said so & that I would rather just stay home while they all went out together & I was very polite. However, I was pressed ganged & silenced & off we all went. I had nightmares for a very long time after that. The next morning I woke to find that I had been bitten on my eyelid by a mosquito while I slept & my eye was so swollen I couldn't see a thing out of it. But I had fallen in love with a man, not a family & I didn't think much more of it on my return to Wellington.

It was in this period that Rob moved to a flat in Auckland over in the Eastern Bays & he discovered that my estranged mother was living " just around the corner". We made arrangements to visit her together- a flat & unremarkable event. On my return to Wellington I received a letter stating that my mother never wanted to see me again, although she was "there" should I ever really need her. So that was the end of that! 

Fortunately when I graduated Rob came to be with me, as my parents shot through without even asking if I needed a hand (since I didn't have a car, nor my license) to get the 6 hours to Manaia- a 3 pub, 800 people town in South Taranaki, where I had been sent to. However, I soon received a letter from my father (not checking to see how I was doing & sending his love) but instead, damning me to hell for "shacking up" with Rob who had bothered to look after me & get me to my destination safely. Rob eventually left his job in Auckland with Telecom to come & be with me & got a job in the laundry & later as an orderly in Ward One, at the local hospital. We married in December 1980 when my parents could "fit us in" but instead of feeling treasured & beautiful on my wedding day, I couldn't even bear to look at my father after the hounding he'd given me the night before for "not pulling my weight" & helping out enough in the day leading up to my wedding.

Rob & I soon fell in love with a wee run down house in Hawera with a large over-grown garden that friends from church were renting & managed to purchase it for $14,000! We lived a simple life & "grew up" in those nine years living together in Hawera. Anna was born in 1983 & I felt strong & confident as we started a-fresh, creating a family of our own with wholesome values of love, nourishing food & make-do-and-mend. I joined La Leche League, fully, happily breast-fed & made lots of lovely friends through the AOG church we were attending.

And then Matthew was born...& there was yelling.

This poor little boy arrived in to this world & he hated it- everything about it.

And everyone said- "It's got to be the mother's fault".

After months of being on call day & night & with very little respite, I was exhausted & starting to see the first signs of depression set in. At church I was instructed to breastfeed in the toilets only if I was going to insist on nursing my baby past 9 months. I was soon labelled rebellious for not submitting to the authority of the Pastor's wife! Things deteriorated from there & we soon realised that it was time to leave Taranaki.

Rob wanted to remain in hospital work & had applied three times to do the one year enrolled nursing course while we were still living in Taranaki & each time had been rejected. He bravely enrolled in a night class & upped his English skills by passing school C & then later UE English. By the time we moved I was pregnant with David. Once we arrived here in Hawke's Bay, Rob was soon accepted to the full three year nursing course at EIT. We had imagined that being in Hastings would be a good thing as my step mother had been kind & helpful when our first two children were born, however, this was not to be, as she & my father had fresh ambitions & headed off to America for a 6 week holiday over the time that David was born. We were clearly inconvenient & worse than annoying & found ourselves utterly rejected & unceremoniously dumped- all of us. David was still a new-born when my father decided to stand for Parliament- having not even visited the new baby, I suddenly found myself being castigated for not getting out there & door knocking in support & was emphatically told, that if I did indeed want to know him as my father, I would have to get involved (fully) with whatever he was doing. Having not had a single whole night sleep in Matthew's first three years of life, now looking after a new baby & all the changes that our move had wrought, this landslide of rejection was just all too much for me & by the time that David was 18 months old, my health completely collapsed & I was to lose my entire prime adult life to ill health & emotional trauma from that point.

When David was 4 we found a nice little church where we liked the people & the people liked us, but tragically, what we did not realise, was that we had arrived at a time in the church history where the whole thing was about to collapse & we ended up being caught in the rubble & the consequences, some years down the line.

My father continued to get married a lot & my brother's first two marriages failed as well. The endless turmoil & instability; the endings & losses & heartaches caused us all a great deal of distress as a family. 

Peg Streep talks about the five things that the unloved daughter feels in childhood over here. 

She says that these are common feelings experienced by the daughter's of unloving mothers & are all part of the emotional legacy:

1) That she is unlovable.

2) That she is isolated & alone.

3) That it's her fault.

4) That she might be crazy.

5) Deeply fearful & insecure.

But, what I have come to find, is that these feelings are also commonly experienced by anyone who has been exposed to (or been part of) a disordered or faulty family. So although the traumatic events that I experienced as a young child & the subsequent loss of my mother & the divorce of my parents deeply effected me alone, the patterns of disorder only grew deeper & more complex as the years went by, culminating most intensely in the decade where Rob was working as a registered nurse in the Children's ward, our children were navigating adolescence, my health remained severely challenged, there were peculiar dysfunctions in the churches we attended & every part of the various family affiliations escalated in to unfettered chaos. It was during this time that chaos & deep distress became part of the fabric of our own family & then weird & awful things started happening that could not be explained. 

It was as if a dragon was stirring. Our world became a scary, turbulent & unsafe place to be.

Reactions to life & me, began to arise in Rob that hadn't been present before & I knew we had to address them if any of us were to survive. Katie (the wee innocent one) was utterly terrified & confused & became increasingly distraught. Catherine determined to unearth the truth & find a way to safety for us all, but it was to take many, many years.

Rob was born to English parents who had both fled England & randomly arrived in Kenya in the late 1940's. Once there, they met, married & had two sons four years apart. The little family & Nangy (grandmother) left Nairobi at the time of the Mau Mau up-risings & took passage by boat to arrive in New Zealand with all their worldly possessions in 1963. After a time in a caravan park & rented housing, they built a house in West Auckland & had another son 10 years after Rob was born. Rob's elder brother didn't stay with the family long & soon shot off to sea at the age of 16. He eventually met a woman who was a working ship girl at that time & married her & made a home in Australia with her & her troubled son. The tragedy of her life remains too much for me to bare even now- although we were never friends. Her German father died of a fatal heart attack at the age of 54, her mother soon after, walked in to a river & drowned herself. At 22 her only son died of a drug & alcohol overdose & all through this time she received one tragic personal health diagnosis after another. She didn't reach 60 before bowel cancer ended her life too. So when Rob's brother died so suddenly at the age of 64 earlier this year, that just added to the deeply tragic story.

The younger brother was born "not quite right" & never managed very well at school. He was pretty amiable & was enterprising enough, but took the brunt of his father's unceasing cantankerous angst- whose health had also collapsed & was becoming increasingly drawn in to a fascination with the might & power of the Third Reich. A great deal of hate, anger & rage swirled around the family home. When Rob was 17 both he & his mother "got saved" which was to divide the family rather effectively. Rob joined a Church & a christian band & became very close to his mother,  his father gathered an ever increasing array of Nazi memorabilia which he stored in the roof (attic) of the house. The younger brother married young, had three children, attended church with his mother while also using, growing & selling cannabis over a 20 year period. Not long after this point, his marriage failed. Everyone around him was traumatised by the break up of the family, yet his mother continued to protect & defend her precious, faultless, impeachable son.

In the early 2000's it suddenly surfaced that there was much more going on in the broader family dynamic than met the eye. We woke up to realise that an attic full of Nazi stuff was not necessarily a healthy thing, especially in light of all the hatred & chaos that had become part of the family interface & we attempted to initiate a conversation with Rob's parents about the situation. Our attempts to communicate were stone-walled & we were labelled trouble makers. It didn't take long for me to be made the official family scapegoat & I was ostracised at every turn.  Just recently my (ex) sister-in-law shared with me that our mother-in-law had "trained them all to hate us" over many years- & they did! It was at this juncture that a pattern settled in to our lives where every birthday was sabotaged, every holiday ruined- as Rob would return to work only to find that in his absence a complaint had been made about him & he now had to face disciplinary action. He became the target of an intense bullying campaign by the charge nurse & was eventually forced out of the hospital (even though he won the subsequent mediation process). At this point I had to scoop up my broken husband, quite literally out of the gutter & try & put him back together after a complete nervous break down.

But I run a head of myself. The year that we realised the destruction that Rob's father's obsession with Hitler had wrought in all our lives & we tried to bring it to light & talk about it our daughter ended up in a near fatal accident & her car was written off, Matthew was admitted to hospital with suspected meningitis but it turned out to be HSP, his cousin almost died from a meningococcal infection, David broke his leg, Rob was facing continual unsubstantiated complaints at work & I was utterly terrified. And there was more- from here on every time that Rob's mother would write a letter or send something by post we would know, because all hell would break loose in our household &/or awful things would start happening again & then....lo & behold a letter would arrive. It got to be so bad that one day I refused to take the letter inside until Rob got home- so meantime, I pegged it up in tree. Eventually we pleaded with his mother to please stop sending things as we were so scared & distressed, but she refused to listen or even discuss it & it was at this point that her campaign to get rid of me started in earnest & she began to feed all of our correspondence to Rob's older brother & when she had riled him up enough she set him on us like a dog.

Somewhere in all this Felicia's heart started giving her trouble & she eventually underwent a quadruple heart by-pass. That means everything- everything was so blocked up, her heart simply could not function without immediate surgical intervention! Tragically there is soooo such more to this story but I will just summarise the last bits- Rob's father died as he had lived- badly & painfully after much time in hospital & many surgeries; with a colostomy bag & little dignity. He passed away 9 years ago & it was only after weeks of searching, that his wife found his will (that Rob had organised for him) scrunched up in the bottom of an old cardboard box. We thought that we might find peace, after he was gone & things did shift in some ways, but there was more to come, that we did not know about. 

As a christian of 40 years standing, Rob's mother has always had her little mantras like "God never fails"  & "Trust in the Lord with all your heart & lean not unto your own understanding" & "always look at the beautiful person inside" (although that one never applied to me). But it wasn't until Rob's brother died in March & he was back in full contact with her & the ghastliness started up all over again- itchy rash, seriously sprained ankle, painful teeth, awful feelings, outbursts & jittery stuff that we realised (as I had always known) that some human beings are capable of asserting their will & antagonism on you even from a distance & it can cause great harm. I think secretly she must have been to Hogwort school- truly! 

Gentle dialogue was tried once more, but the door of the heart is still firmly, obstinately shut. However, Rob is now fully awake. After all these years, his mother can no longer wreak havoc in our marriage or through our lives & we are gathering up the poor dear souls that we are & starting over again with the healing & recovery process.

I love Jeff Brown's writing. He shared this just the other day-   

"So many people get judged when they refuse to put their pain away. They get judged for showing it, for speaking it, for insisting on sharing their memories of abuse with those they know. I am not talking about those who overwhelm strangers with their stuff- I am talking about legitimate sharings with those they are connected with in daily life, including those who abused them. All too often, they are fed one repressive message or another: “Don't look back,” “What's done is done,” “Don't be a victim,” “Your feelings are an illusion,” “Be strong.” What is ironic about this is that those who insist on embodying and expressing their feelings are actually the brave ones- unwilling and unable to live a false life. Their stuff is breaking through their defences because they are tired of carrying the weight of buried truths. They want a healthier and more authentic life. Those who seek to shame their revealing are actually less courageous- turning to repressive mantras in an effort to bypass their own unresolved feelings and memories. If they can shut others down, they can remain shut down themselves. But shut down doesn't take us anywhere good. If we don't deal with our stuff, it deals with us. Speak UP!"

So have I have spoken up...because it is exactly the right time to do that. I have become a disruptive truth teller in the process because it is also time to challenge the old paradigms of dysfunction in our families & communities. It is time that things changed & those of us who have been trapped in trauma came out of the darkness & found belonging & love & light.

It is our time to live- really live & to heal, from so much abuse & pain & the effects of other people's chaos.

A friend told me the other day about Rudolph Steiner's teachings; of how he believed there to be twelve senses.

The first of which is life- the sense of life.

That seems like a very good place to begin our healing....