The Release of Anguish

This morning, I noticed the absence of a familiar ache that used to reside inside a dark, shadowy place inside me. In years past, during the first half of January an undercurrent of unsettled anxiety existed even when nothing warranted it. This went unchecked for a few decades and, unfortunately, some collateral damage occurred due to the emotional roller coaster. But, it just did not happen this year. There is no irritability or anxiety. No stabbing pangs of heartbreak. It is more like a fond reminiscing, a wistful desire for a child to know she is loved. She is important. She is a Gift of God by way of her creation. There are two days a year when I have a knowing that she is thinking of me as I am thinking of her. It connects us across space and time. I love you, I love you, I love you. I say it over and over. Willing it to reach her, wherever she is.

After meditation this morning, the mother-daughter estrangement pattern ping’d in my brain. “A mother whose daughter does not want a relationship with her”. That thought stung. I choose to not have a relationship with my mother because I do not feel seen, heard, nor safe. Forgiveness. Yes. But I keep my distance.

For a few years, anonymous letters were exchanged between myself and her adoptive mother. Both of us promising eternal love for our baby girl. About a decade ago, she identified me through a registry, then retracted from actual contact, out of fear, I rationalized. Frequently, I pour love over her in prayer and meditation.

Ironically, my niece does not have a relationship with her birth mother either. She (the mother) is in denial. I believe there is guilt and shame around the circumstances of her birth which deter her from allowing contact. It’s an opposite paradigm where the daughter is open yet the mother is closed off.

The mother/daughter wound is pervasive across the collective. In nearly every client interaction, there is the history of a direct or indirect influence that has contributed to a trauma or wound that left lasting impressions in a family. My family’s prior generations on both sides also hold similar traumas. I wonder if this is evident within every generation that existed before? I ask myself “is this an ancestral trauma of which I am supposed to heal?” Even before my fingers finished typing the question, the answer thundered through me as a resounding ‘yes’.

Sometimes, I ask the post adoption department if there is any correspondence available from her. But this time, I sense a fear of rejection - - the possibility exists that there is either nothing there for me or, worse, there is something that states she wants to maintain a distance. Either scenario makes my stomach feel queasy.

Another fear. And one that feels daunting to undertake at the moment. To notify them of yet another name and location change... emotions of shame and guilt returning … just like when I was 19 years old signing papers to give my baby to strangers. What kind of person was I to do such a heartless thing? These and other memories coming back to the surface again.

Today, I explored the question: That earlier version of me was an insecure, shy but kind-hearted, girl who’d been convinced that she was a mistake. Raised in a volatile family required walking on eggshells most of the time. The primary focus was survival. It seemed there was no way to earn accolades or respect as nothing I did or said was correct and it seemed I was on the wrong side of a conflict most days. Close friends and a school counselor were aware that things were happening in the house, but the sheriff was a family friend and no one else intervened. Any discussion about dreams, college or helping plan a future was dismissed when it was brought up. The main goal as voiced by them was after graduation, the kids were out of the house and they didn’t care how or where it to be. Playing ball at college was a possibility, but in the summer of ’84 a node-point arrived where everything came to a halt. That day could have been the end… of me or someone else. By way of a miracle, an angelic message, both of us were spared. But that young, naïve, wounded, and angry girl left home. Neither parent attempted to find me and when a caring adult notified them of my wellbeing, their response was “she’s your problem now”. I was not in a heart-centered state because it was dangerous to open up and trust anyone with my feelings. My heart had been barricaded from everyone, even myself.

I thought love had to come towards me from something outside of me. I did not know what it was supposed to look or feel like, though. So I misunderstood being loved for being useful, because that was how I survived with my parents. I’d been told I was a liability, a hindrance, a financial drain, dumb, ugly, and a waste of space. I did not believe myself to be worthy of love. So when someone told me I was pretty and they loved me, I clung to them. And since innocence and gullibility was affecting every decision, I got pregnant. More than once. Terminating the first pregnancy, I fell into a depression. With the same partner, I cast a spell that is still reverberating today: Dear God, I will give a life to another family as penance for the one I’ve ended.

The adoption, alcoholic and abusive relationships, divorces, and cancer have been the primary bullet points of my story. In the retelling of these things, it used to be to justify or excuse my behavior, argue for a limitation, to deny culpability, or gain compassion for an ulterior motive. None of which are healthy and all of which perpetuated a victimhood mentality. More co-dependent relationships followed. But I was truly unhappy and wanted that REAL love that I hoped really in existed. A divinely-orchestrated new friendship linked me with Al-Anon in early 2000. My first women’s group illuminated a common theme: we were all raised by alcoholics and every relationship involved an addict. At the time I was with the fifth alcoholic & abusive partner, trying to fix him. But I eventually learned that it was me that needed fixing. It seemed daunting and I balked at first, but something kept nudging me to make a change. It was inconvenient, embarrassing, and dangerous. But I left.

This resulted in a subsequent trauma bond with my recent partner during a cancer diagnosis and treatments the following year. Although it was cleverly disguised with higher values and morals, codependency still existed in our house. In being in support of his plans and dreams, I acquiesced most of the time. It wasn’t so much that what he wanted went against what I wanted, but it was easier to go along with the rhythm he set, then my life was okay, too. We sustained this way for many years… until we didn’t. In retrospect, foundationally, it was just a continuation of the same dysfunctional subconscious behavior on auto pilot. I gaslighted myself continually. I completely lost my identity and rather identified with the roles I played in all the things that kept the household and business moving along.

When I was driven away from the adoption agency, I was crying and watching the building rescind over the back seat. The voice in the driver seat barked at me “crying about it isn’t going to change anything” and I caught his glare in the rearview mirror. My body shook uncontrollably and since that moment, I have had no recollection of the subsequent months that transpired.

This year of sitting in grief and allowing it to open, unwind, expand, and be seen and felt in its messy, ugly entirety was an unexpected gift. I discovered an inner grace that I did not know existed inside me. This iteration of Janice, nearly forty years later, is an entirely different person. My heart is now wide open. The person I was hoping would save me and show me real and true love - was me. To wake up on this historically painful date and not feel any anguish was different. But with a new clarity, I understand how it had been enmeshed among other traumas that were similarly not permitted to be fully processed.

Because memories are not stored inside the brain.

They are stored in the field within and beyond our bodies. We are 99.999+% light energy and the remainder is the stuff that comprises the earth as well as our physicality. It is now well known that emotional and physical traumas affect us until we find a balance or otherwise harmonize them. There are resonant fractal antennae within our DNA that accesses information. The discordant vibrations of trauma can exist as kind of an echo - for as long as the lineage continues to enable its existence. This can be by way of ignorance or denial. Usually, as the physical body endures decades of oxidative stress and toxicities due to food, chemicals, etc. over time, it will succumb to the effects of disharmonious frequencies and then discomforts or maladies become evident. In hindsight, there were many signs before the first cancer diagnosis, but I ignored them, medicated them, or enabled them.

We’ve been conditioned to subscribe to what “runs in the family”: brown eyes, big feet, mannerisms, and medical conditions. We perpetuate these similarities and believe them to be static and permanently defined in our life. But then we do the same when it comes to our thoughts and belief systems. Subconsciously, that program is now running the body and suffering similarly as the parents and grandparents. But even those in conscious self-awareness can be dealing with cyclical illnesses or chronic issues that plague their lives. Indigenous communities have known this for generations.

In homeopathy, such conditions may be addressed with Miasm remedies. In energy work, we sense the presence of these etheric echos in the emotional, mental, and/or spiritual aspects of the person (Carl Yung has written about this). A hypnosis healing session is a co-operative endeavor whereby discovery and transgression of the root cause of ailments or limitations occur. There are so many modalities of energy healing available today, one does not have to look very hard. Sound/music, magnetic devices, craniosacral therapy, acupuncture, crystals, scalar waves, bio-feedback programs, just to name a few have become prominent in society.

A question some of us ponder is why do we have so many hardships in life? The answer that comes to mind is for the joy of living it. Free will means there will be a lot of variety and influences while we are here. We will appreciate the good stuff more when we have a clear understanding of what we don’t like. And there is so much gratitude for life when we are being in service to others. There is also deep honor when we can help in the transmuting of pain to peace, and in helping others attain healing. Over thousands of years, humanity has ascended from the darkest of dark ages wherein they behaved more like wild animals than human. We are at a time in our evolution where alchemizing our ancestral consciousness as it relates to abandonment, betrayal, shame, and guilt is at the forefront. Giving through love is the pinnacle of the glorification of the gift of Life.

Once our non-truths are revealed, the false program we’ve been operating under is disengaged and we implement a whole new unique program based on our true values and desires. It is through our dedicated intention to be better and do better that the old paradigms disintegrate, forever removed from influence over our children and lineages. And no one is exempt from the ability to do it.