This is part four of an exploration into how I navigated a recent difficult period. The first in this series is, Distorted Nostalgia.
"Runaway child, running wild …
Better go back home … where you belong …"
Temptations, 1969
From my journal …
My niece, wearing a pink outfit, is throwing up and running away ... from me. She has a bruise on her forehead. We were traveling together, and at some point she returns from the bathroom without her jacket – also pink. When I inquire, she said that she had thrown up. “On your jacket?” “Yes.”
Later she is upset at losing all that was in the jacket pockets – especially a photo of a young boy. The photo had been worn and creased, but it was all she had left and now it was gone.
At a restaurant, the staff helps her to escape. At first I say fine and leave. But at home I looked over all I had acquired for her. They were all inappropriate for a fun loving child. They were weights and tools wrapped up to look like gifts. I realized that I wanted her back so I went back and demanded her return.
I sit with the first message from this dream. My child self is not happy with what I have been feeding her (throwing up) and giving her (weights and tools). She was mad about what she had to give up and finally ran away. And I was fine with it until I looked at what I had been offering her. Then I realized what I had done and what she really meant to me.
The second message in this dream was where she chooses to run away -- a place filled with food. Aha! My runaway child is placating herself with food.
There is definitely a pattern here. My fire self, [the one who interrupts my quiet moments with the flame of anxiety and tension] is overbearing and pushy. My water self is rebellious and running wild. Ai yi yi, something has to give.
They are each overreacting, one to fear, the other to hunger. My fire self takes over at the first sign of chaos, loss of control and stress. I am afraid of losing ground to the chaos, the ten thousand things of life that haunts introverts like myself.
And whenever I succumb to the fear, a second reaction spills out due to my hunger for life itself. My water side rebels and starts me to binging to compensate – as if there will never be a chance again … to enjoy life.
Ah! The message of the dream I ignored comes dancing back before my eyes. I do not want to lose any more time, I feel like I have given up so much already, I do not want to miss out on the passion of living in the moment, not again, not anymore. I have been so sick for so long, enough with all this working hard all the damn time. And it does feel like a family curse, now that I think of it.
I sit with these realizations as tears well up and fall to my journal obscuring the words. When I can talk, I say out loud, “Please don’t leave me again … we will get through this together … I promise.”
Next … a dialogue … finally
Posted in
Submitted by katrina on Mon, 07/28/2008 - 9:00am.
Wish I could be there. Very well spoken.
Katrina,
I wish you all the blessings and power you need on your journey. Thank you for these words. It is good to remember that returning to work (and thus returning to grace) bring a chance for us all to rest and have joy.
Wishing you joy in the Work.
David
Dear Katrina- Thorn reposted your blog and happy am I. Your passion, always so immense, comes blowing out in these words. So akin to my own heart and soul that it makes me have a bittersweet smile.
The Storm is only now coming to the edges of our universe and yet it will sweep and consume all that is. In the end, our beautiful universe will be so much...more? Different? Complete? Who knows?
All I do know is my soul came here to witness and be part in this period. I cannot shrink from the work. I am here with you, fae sister!
Thought-provoking piece, Katrina. Thanks.
I don't know what to call myself either. In Pagandom, I've taken to referring to myself as a Witch at Large. In the interfaith world where I'm active, I call myself a Pagan. Sometimes I call myself an uppity woman or a Second Wave Feminist. I've never really thought to publicly identify myself by my sexuality, het woman, which is very "white bread" and old-fashioned. Not only het, but serially monogamous for the most part. It seems almost a liability these days to say you're het, but I am proudly and happily so. I tend towards intellectualism but only have a BA, which doesn't carry much weight, at least in public and professional worlds, no matter how much you've studied, trained, and can articulate, even teach.
My biological heritage is Irish, Dutch, French Huguenot, Euro-mongrel. My social heritage is Roman Catholic on one side and conservative Methodist, temperance-crusading, women's rights and education on the other, with distinct East Coast sensibilities, now mellowed by more than half a century living on the Left Coast. My maternal political heritage is conservative Republican (altho what my relatives might think of current trends in the GOP I cannot imagine, since they did have brains and they did think and they did have a social conscience), yet I am much farther left in my outlook than any elected official I know. My paternal political heritage is blue collar Democratic, except that my dad broke with his family on politics and allied with my mother's family's conservatism.
I'm a former hippie, a home-birth advocate, a home death and green burial advocate, an opponent of capital punishment and resorting to warfare to resolve humankind's differences. I support the right to conscious self-deliverance. I rejoice in any and all consensual expressions of love and eros. I'm a lover and a mom.
I have never missed voting in an election and I disrespect those who don't avail themselves of this hard-won right. (I have ancestors who fought the Brits in the American Revolution.) I support workers' rights. I recognize our interdependence on this planet, so could be called a greenie. I'm a committed environmentalist in my day-to-day life (in terms of eating locally grown food, expanding public transit, recycling, preserving open space and wildlife, opposing exploitation of natural resources [strip mining, oil-drilling, nuclear facilities, agribusiness, monocultures, clear-cutting timber, overuse of pesticides, genetic modification, etc.]) I want to make the city streets "safe for dancing," as my old friend Tony Serra said when he ran for mayor of SF on the Platypus Party ticket.
Well, you got me going there, my friend. Thought-provoking read, as I said. ;-)
xo,
Macha
Lovely azaleas!
[cough][gag][snort][sneeze]
Just lovely...
I know what you mean.
I feel you. There is too much bs- particularly when people decide that their temperament is tantamount to truthful and ignore everyone else.
I get irked by immature extroverts or closet introverts who ignore you REPEATEDLY and then pretend you're out of line for being upset by the time they can't pretend you didn't say anything anymore. I find that the same people will ignore you if you blow up right away, too, and that it's because they just don't think that honoring what you value is important to maintaining a relationship, or even worse: that you don't know what you value at all and that it's all a mind game for their pleasure or annoyance. Then they call you passive-aggressive, aggressive, moody, touchy and temperamental. I call them "not listening".