In and out of trauma....

Heart Ripped Open

                                             


Last spring I had a dream that I was trapped in a church with a group of people as it was being set fire to from the outside.  There is an incredible feeling of terror everywhere and I go to hide underneath a pew next to the wall.  I am holding my baby close to my chest to protect her and someone comes and takes the child from me.  I don't know if they are going to try and save her or kill her.  My heart feels like it has been ripped apart.

My homework from this dream was to feel the pain of losing my child. At that time I was still so shut down that I could only feel the faintest glimmer of what that pain was really like. I could only relate to it in the most abstract of terms.  I could think...God, it must be horrible to have to give up your child...on the verge of your own probable death... and never know whether she lives or dies.  I knew that this was something that would rip your heart out but I could not go there myself.  Since last spring I have been slowly brought closer and closer to that pain as dream by dream my will to avoid it has been broken.  In the outer world I have also
had life circumstances help to bring me to this place....Peter moving out, my mother's slow death from cancer, Peter leaving for Europe and the death of my cat.  Each one of these places of projected pain led me down yet another stair but the way to the final descent was still hidden.  Dreams of facing into my fear and trusting
to the Animus gave me the added support (though I didn't know it at the time) to take the final steps.

And then something new happened in my life that seemed to hurl me the rest of the way down....Peter fell in love.  My dearest friend in the world was lost to me.  I now felt so completely alone and abandoned.  My heart felt like it had been ripped apart.  I wondered why this could possibly hurt so much because I thought that I had resolved so much about our relationship over the past few months.  I also knew that this pain was really about me...but the thoughts still tormented me about how I was such a failure, so unlovable, etc, etc.  A call from Peter on Thursday asking me to do a favor for him regarding a money transfer put me into an incredible reaction and I retaliated by telling him that I wanted to sever all contact.  I wanted all his belongings out of my barn and I never wanted to see or hear from him again.  I continued in the vascillation of being in  reaction and feeling this heart wrenching pain  for the next two days. Yesterday things finally reached a breaking point and some power greater then myself was moving me closer and closer to the edge.  I wanted to run and hide but I felt frozen in terror. I felt lost and couldn't find my way.  I felt so utterly alone and I didn't know what to do.  There was panic and a sense of all my muscles tightening. The pain was agonizing and I could barely get a breath.  Somehow  I got myself down to the computer to write Peter an email while I was in the midst of this trauma ....to share my pain and ask for his forgiveness.  The tears came then and for some moments I felt the relief from  holding in all of that pain. That night more battles were waged as the pathology once again tried to make Peter the villain and sidetrack me from what this pain really was all about. Then the terror would come and I would be paralyzed with fear.  I tried to feel all the Animus homeworks from the past year, I tried to pray,  I did my yogic breathing, I repeated the mantra from my ashram days, I  rocked the wounded child....all this just to  try to and get through the next minute, the next hour.  I finally slept for a few hours with no dreams but I was awake again at 5am.  I got up and dressed and walked out into the cold dawn to go down to the studio to send Peter another email with more apologies and openings of my heart.  The birds were just starting to sing and I felt such a sense of peace on this cold, winter morning.  Professing to Peter how much he means to me immediately brings the tears to the surface and I can start to touch in to the immense grief that I have denied in losing my child.  The tears have only just started to flow from this well of pain and  I know that there is much more to feel and open to in the days and weeks to come. I do feel like I have passed through some sort of passage in agreeing to stay in that terror and find what lies on the other side.  I also have to say that even though I was alone in that bed fighting for my life last night there was an army of other worldly/archetypal support cheering me on.