Grief and Conflict

We are humans, all of us.  Regardless of our spiritual paths or our religious beliefs, we are not immune to the truth that death is a part of our experience.  We will all lose people we love and we will all have to work through our grief over those losses.  None of us get a pass on this in life.  

Seventeen days ago, my younger brother died unexpectedly and suddenly.  We have shared more than one lifetime together, as well as our bloodline.  I loved Him and we had conflict between us, and we stopped working on our relationship about two decades ago.   

Sometimes we will lose someone we love without warning, with no time to prepare or to say our farewells.  And as is the nature of relationships, either family or lovers or friends, sometimes that loss will be of one with whom we have conflict.  Love and conflict are more often companions than mutually exclusive conditions.  For conflict with one we do not love is often reason enough to walk away from another person but, we will persist in spite of conflict if we love another.  And so, grief is often complicated by unresolved conflict with the one we loved and lost. 

We each grieve in our own way, and in our own time.  For me it is a delayed experience.  For the first two weeks, my perception of reality was surreal, often blurry and out of proportion.  Then life became normal again and my grief began to visit me at night.  When all is quiet and my mind can identify what my heart and soul are actually grieving and, my heart and soul can feel that grief, it is the conflict that I feel, and the pain of that conflict and the anger that it exists. 

Another conflict that accompanies grief is that in moments of unexpected emotional crisis, old habits of behavior, old patterns of relating within the family, reassert themselves.  Conscious effort is required to recognize these habits and patterns and to re-establish newer skills and ways of being.  It challenges my sense of self, and forces me to reexamine my relationships with those whom I love who remain.

I have work to do.  Including the work of reaching out to Him whom I have lost to assist in what way I can, and to ask Him to work with me to make some peace between us before the next life we share.  May our Ancestors and my Gods and Allies bless us and assist us in this work.  Blessed be. 

Visions

I have been "head-blind" most of my life.  I was not always so, but I made the visions go away when I was a small child.  And I do not mean visual messages only.  My most effective talent is auditory, in the form of language.  I have never really been able to silence "the voices"  completely.   But my strongest talent is neither of these, nor is it the tactile or kinesthetic sense of knowing that I sometimes feel.  

I have recently unlocked one of the boxes in my heart that was covered in cobwebs and dust.  It had been locked up tight for so long that I had indeed almost forgotten that it ever existed.  This is the task that my Patrons have been pushing me so hard  to accomplish.  I opened the box and discovered...empathy.

I have been working to unlock the boxes for months now and, as each one has been opened, more and more of my senses have returned to me.  I am becoming less and less head-blind with each box.  I have visions, I remember dreams, I can identify and engage with the various voices that I have heard my entire life.  I am more aware of the "feelings" and the information that they convey,   But most of all, my heart has become open and I can feel.  

It has been awkward and painful.  It has been frightening and has caused me to revisit many old demons and self-destructive behaviors to be sure that they will not serve but, I see again, I remember, I feel.  I am no longer living the half-life of someone blind, deaf, and dumb.  I am no longer one of the living dead.  

May my Gods be pleased with what they have wrought.

Quickening

There is a moment during pregnancy when the child inside the womb quickens.  When it stirs within and the mother can feel that the being inside is not only alive but a separate being from herself, a new and different creature.  I remember the moments when each of my children moved within me.  I remember the moments when they became real to me and not just ideas and faces I saw in my dreams.  The remnants of my past lives feel a bit like that to me, like separate beings but, alive and part of me. 

The Queen of the Abyss has been healed and I have come face to face with Another that was hiding behind her.  I understand that the Sorrow was meant to teach me compassion, and I believe that it has.  I continue to nurture that compassion by working with a Goddess of Compassion, by establishing a new relationship with White Tara, a Goddess with seven eyes; Who sees, offers protection, and blessings. 

But the real work ahead is to reconcile the immense Rage I hold within me.  I do believe that some of that Rage is a remnant of past lives. But some of it belongs to this life, and all of it belongs to me, all of it is mine to claim and to reconcile.  And the time has come to do just that.

You might ask “Why?”  Why not simply nurture compassion?  Why ever let the Rage out at all?

It has taken a great deal of my power to keep it hidden and contained for most of my life, power that I was meant to use for living.  In those moments when my guard was down and it has escaped, it has been destructive and out of control, hurting me and those around me.  And suppressed rage, unexpressed anger, is one of the most insidious causes of clinical depression, which I have battled for most of my life.

My Gods, my Ancestors and my Allies have been pushing me to open this place, to find what is hidden beneath and I have.  They will not let me rest until I have learned how to express the anger and how to do so safely.  If I am to serve my Community and my Coven, my Gods and my Ancestors, I cannot have a nuclear bomb hiding inside me waiting to explode and destroy those for whom I am responsible.

I have always been afraid of my power for fear that using it would result in “everyone ending up dead and bloody”.  I realize now that is because I associate my power with my rage.  I can learn to heal it, express it and control it without simply locking it away inside my body like some rotting corpse in a tomb.

So the Rage has quickened and I must as well if I am to learn to do this work.  May I do so with compassion and power, honor and grace, courage and conviction.  So Mote it Be.