Tag Archives: rage

Mother Love

by . Posted on
26 Nov

My parents have been visiting from the UK.  It’s the first time they’ve been to Avalon since our wedding here on the farm so you can imagine what a huge effort we put into trying to get all the outstanding jobs finished before they arrived (the thing is, there are always a million jobs still to do on a farm . . . )

We have always fought like cat and dog.  I was so angry and felt so rejected when I was sent away to boarding school aged 8 and I hated school and didn’t try, so I didn’t get good grades and I was an endless disappointment to my parents who knew how intelligent I really was.  I was an angry and troubled soul who rebelled as a teenager.  I hurt myself as much as I hurt them – smoking, drinking, sex games etc  Of course I failed miserably in my ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels and the family myth is that I got expelled for smoking.  At least with a change of schools and a headmistress who saw past the bluff and bluster to the pure heart beyond (thank and bless you Miss Hibbert you turned my life around and were the first person who gave me reason to believe in myself) I finally made good friends and began to belong.

My lesbian liaison didn’t help relationships with my parents and my subsequent heterosexual hedonism was more cause for concern and criticism.  Then I had an abortion and ran away to Hong Kong and pastures new.

Relationships were always strained and full of censure although we always had our honeymoon periods before I crashed and burned in some way in my selfish acts of self sabotage.  Needless to say I have been the black sheep and true to form have dabbled in all the addictions and explored far and dark horizons of the soul, psyche and society.

Not surprising them that they have viewed my spiritual journey with mistrust, that they have had to pick up the pieces financial and otherwise more times than any of us care to count or mention.  If their story has been one of disappointment, frustration and despair, mine has been that of rejection, lack of love and never being seen or heard for who I truly am rather than measured up to who they want me to be.

Needless to say its a relationship of tears and sorrow, rage and rejection and failure from all sides to forgive, let go, start afresh or see the other’s point of view.  Part of the problem is that we are all so alike.  Not only did I inherit my father’s nose, varicose veins, dodgy hip and temper, but I inherited my Mother’s constant criticism, aspirational nature and love of nice things, wealth and money.

Somewhere in there though is a pure and innocent, trusting and perfect heart.

This year as you know I have travelled deeply into my story and my self hatred, I am learning to forgive and nurture and be kinder to myself.  I have been opening my heart space with my ‘Heart of Yoga’ and have released a million tears and some long held heartache.  Instead of being a cold hard stone in my chest my heart is a living breathing thing.   I have had a huge shift.

None of us are getting any younger and who knows when or if  we will see each other again or whether they will visit Australia one more time so we were all determined not to fight or fall out.  We all decided not to spend too much time together and to bite our tongues and we succeeded.  By the second week when we had hardly spent any time together we all realised how much we loved each other and even had some beautiful times and some precious memories I will treasure in my heart forever.

Showing my parents the pristine rainforest of Angle Creek I held my Mother’s hand many times as she clambered over rocks – I don’t remember ever holding my Mother’s hand before.  Papery, warm, small and gentle, it was beautiful and somehow in those moments in the healing cathedral of green that is Angle Creek, where Mother Nature comes to rest, heal, nourish and nurture, something between us that has been broken for 40 something years was finally mended.  A miracle happened and I realised that contrary to my life ‘s lament that I hate my Mother and that we don’t get on, I realised that I love her.  Always have, always will.

She isn’t perfect, she is sometimes very unkind, she sometimes says things that are cruel or hurtful or thoughtless.  So do I. But like me she has a golden heart.  Like me, she had a far from perfect childhood and was abused and damaged.  Like me she longs to be loved and shows her love with the giving of gifts.  Like me she has a doughy belly and snake like skin on her shins.

Maybe the reason we have butted heads so often and for so long is because we have looked in our mirror reflections of each other and not liked what we have seen . . .

But finally, aged 45, in the middle of my life, I am able to proudly say ‘I love my Mother’, I am part of her, she is part of me, she made me, grew me, nurtured me, shaped me.  I chose her for a reason – so I could learn what love is and what love isn’t and finally learn to forgive and love unconditionally.  I love you Mummy, I really do x

Menopause or I don’t want to die

by . Posted on
15 Oct

Just as I had really started enjoying the summer of my life, with my little boy, my farm, my lovely husband, I turned into a raging Monster with a heart and soul black and dark and thick with anger and frustration.  Then the hot flushes started.  And still I didn’t have the sense to marry the two together.  I blamed toddlerdom (even though I have an angel child), Ged and the world at large.  My marriage almost didn’t survive the onslaught.  I couldn’t believe that Menopause could happen to me aged only 45.  We wanted another child . . . every time last year my period came later and later I was convinced I was pregnant.  I didn’t see the writing on the wall … didn’t even know there WAS writing on the wall.

I thought menopause happened in your fifties, not your forties.  I thought I was in my prime, not starting the steady decline to death.  I thought anything was possible and the world was my oyster.  Instead my ovaries were shutting down, changing me forever from woman to wasteland of broken dreams, lost opportunities and babies terminated before they ever had a chance to become.

Menopause is a bitch.  The mood swings, the violent rages welling up from nowhere, no reason and no way to control them.  The hot flushes which take over and rule my life.  The feeling of being ill and at the mercy of something so far beyond my control as to make me look like King Canute trying to stop the waves . . . The constant pain in my uterus, the grief – the endless waves of grief as I farewell my child bearing years, the little girl I didn’t get to have and hold, the sense of myself as young, that glorious feeling of ripe fertility only possible in late pregnancy, the sense of limitless possibilities . . .

All of a sudden I, who have duelled and diced and danced with death so many times in my lifetime and have longed to fall into his peaceful embrace am screaming and sobbing ‘I don’t want to die’.  Clearly one has to see one’s one ultimate destiny and the steady decline towards it unblinkered in order to appreciate just how precious this life, and every moment in it, is.

After all, we don’t know what is going to happen next.  I was flirting with the idea of getting pregnant again, not taking it that seriously, thinking I had plenty of time . . .

Baby is dying too.  She has Cushings and she is going downhill fast.  So I am also screaming and sobbing ‘I don’t know how or who to be without Baby’ and ‘please don’t go’ and ‘just one last summer together please’.  I’m letting go of babies real and ethereal – those who are and those who were never meant to be . . .

You see, I was so busy being busy, so determinedly procrastinating, saving the fun and enjoyment and play til some  ‘later’ in the ever diminishing future when all the work is done that I didn’t realise that we have to have fun NOW because we just don’t know what tomorrow may bring and the greatest gift we can give anyone, can share with anyone, can spend is TIME.  Sweet, precious, limited, ever ticking time.

Like Peter Pan before me, I never wanted to grow up.  I succeeded pretty well.  I only ever thought of myself as grown up last year and now it appears I am old, dried up, used up, washed up.  Old before my time with creaking joints and sore, tired muscles and wrinkles like clothes left too long in the dryer.

I didn’t know this was around the corner.  I never imagined how debilitating, depressing and daunting this particular female rite of passage could be.  It feels like transition in labour – totally out of control, completely uncomfortable, sick making, overwhelming and I’m trying to stand on the merry go round, yelling ‘I didn’t sign up for this, let me off!’

Why the code of silence Women?  Why don’t we talk about this, map the stages and ages of our ovaries and life’s passages so we know what to expect, when and how to wear and bear it.

The addict in me is appalled at how many pills I am taking at the moment.  And how many I seem to need.  My naturopath says ‘why not?’ and ‘stop fighting it, this is beyond your control.’  But really I would rather just ride it out and get it over with.  But I can’t.  I have a little boy to look after.  A little boy of three who knows what a hot flush is, where the fan is, and hates having to have all the car windows open while I ride one out.

I have to try and manage and mitigate and massage some of my moods into something resembling normality.  For my own sanity.  For my child’s future psychological health.  For Ged’s peace of mind.  If only I could sleep how much better would all our lives be . . .

I completely understand why my Mother’s generation took HRT.  Instead I am on red clover, licorice, zizyphus, vitamin E, iron, B6, zinc, st john’s wort, the occasional kava, some sort of anti stress pill and who knows what from my acupuncturist.  The grief I can handle, the physical symptoms are driving me mad . . .

No man could handle menopause.  No woman ought to have to.  It’s too much, too soon, I’m not ready, can’t cope and don’t want to die . . . .

The Darkest Day

by . Posted on
17 Jun

Ged and I had a huge row.  And after we had time to think and review and lick our wounds we had a very painful conversation in which I really saw that my anger and rage and railing against everyone and the world is intolerable.  So destructive.  And I knew deep down in my being that I needed help.  I have spent 14 years on the mat or on the punch bag and STILL I am angry.  15 years running and STILL I am angry.  The door of my blame was swung wide open and I saw that it was only me to blame for all that was wrong in our marriage and my life.  It wasn’t a pretty sight.

In fact, I was so devastated by the picture I saw of myself that I truly believed that there was no place for me in this world.  That Ged and Ben would be better off and happier without me.  I felt that I was so difficult to love, and so little loved by so very few, that somehow it would be kinder to all not to have to struggle with me and my emotional tornadoes any more.  God knows I have long wanted a rest from them myself and have begged for the burden of this anger to be taken from me.

I was so raw but also still so frustrated with myself, the situation, Ben, everything.  Shannon and Nathan came and to my great shame when Ben was (yet again!) putting stones down the pipe into the septic I snapped and grabbed him by one arm and hoisted him up in the air and then plonked him down on the ground 4 metres away.  It was exactly the sort of thing my parents would have done.  The only thing that was missing was the stinging smack.  But the energy was the same.  And that beautiful boy doesn’t deserve that, he deserves so much better than a mother like me.  I see so clearly that he could have someone young and pretty and joyful and light filled.  Instead he has got me.  I have already damaged him, and I don’t want to any more.  I want him to retain his crystalline goodness and beauty and his angelic love.  Please don’t let him be polluted by me and all my bile and rage and spite.

So I went for a run all churning up inside with such self hatred and self disgust, such sorrow and pain, such self loathing, fear for the future and despair at myself and the chaos I have created.  I only got as far as the Angle Creek ridge before I had to sit down and howl.  And it was then that it became clear to me that there was no place for me in this world.  It’s by far from the first time I have felt this but I hope it will be the last.  I decided to go up the logging track above the Eyrie and find a tree.  Of course it wouldn’t be today because I didn’t have a rope but at least I could make a plan.  And so I stumbled with every step, blinded by tears and despair at this being I was whose only peace was in letting go of life and all the things that I love the most and have made me the most fulfilled and happy – my husband, my beautiful boy and my land.

When I got up to the top I found such incredible beauty and peace.  Boulders and cliff faces tumbling down into a flora filled abyss, trickling streams from the deluges we have just experienced, and such serenity.  And there was I in my darkness looking for the perfect place to put an end to my sorrow once and for all.  Looking for a place to die.

The difficulties are immense.  I didn’t want to damage or harm my beautiful angelic boy so best to do it while he is so young and won’t remember his Mama who loves him so much.  I didn’t want to be found by anybody so that they would be traumatised by the experience.  I didn’t want to hang.  I had my lovely wool jumper around my waist and realisd I could use that so I fashioned a slip knot around my neck and boulder hopped looking for the perfect tree, the perfect spot.  There were plenty of places.  And my mind had become quite clinical and calculating about the whole thing.  I can’t now believe that I walked around for so long with a noose around my neck.  I don’t know what stopped me there and then but I decided to walk on to the area I had earlier envisaged as the ‘right one’.  In the walking I removed the jumper from my neck and somehow found a little peace and respite.  I think I thought ‘tomorrow’.

So I kept walking up the narrow track Judy had worn on her Vision Quest to find the open area she had told Ged about.  It was there, on the other side of a fence, bathed in sunlight and sheltered from the wind.  A little clearing in the forest.  I found a spot and lay down to rest, exhausted.

And felt the peace and warmth of the sun penetrate my cold body and soul and light and life re-enter me.  I felt healing angel hands of love and light soothe me, stroke me, heal me.  And finally after all my pleading over the last few years (‘take this cup from me’) that this rage and darkness be removed from me, I saw and felt it lifted away.

And I felt peace.  In my heart, in my soul, in every cell of my body and I knew I had the strength to return to my life, resolved that I and it would be different.  I had seen myself in all my truth and it was a horrible sight.  Somehow I had to pick myself up and piece together a way of being and living in spite of my horror at who I was and have the honesty to try and fabricate a new path out of the ravages of the old.  Somewhere in me there is a goodness and a love and a heart and if I can hold on tight to those and if not forgive myself for all the rest but at least let them fall away and hope that others can forgive me.  I have been the monster my mother called me in my teenage years, I see that now.  (She was right! )  But just like an addict who finally wakes up to herself (and I am an addict, after all) and sees the damage and destruction she has wrought and goes forth to carve a new path, so too can I.  I don’t know how.  I feel very shaky – my world has been rocked to its foundations and there is very little of the old me I can take forward from this point on but I have to be brave enough to find a way.  One day at a time.  With an open and humble heart, an open mind and a willingness to see and embrace opportunities to change and grow and become a better, kinder, nicer, more loving, giving and whole person.  For my own happiness, for my husband, my marriage, my son.  And just hope that they can forgive me all the pain and sorrow I have caused them, please forget who I was, and love me enough to hold my hand as I walk forward seeking a new way to be.