Pockets' of Consciousness

1 of more to come

This is my first Blog, and in the next couple of blogs that I write I would like to tell you a little more of my healing journey. From where it began and why it has brought me to where I am now.

I guess if you are going to begin, I should start at the beginning of this life, I am the eldest of six children, and the only daughter. My mother was 18 when I was born and my father was 23 yrs. old. My mother and father then had five sons after me, with the next being only 13 mos. younger. What can I say my mother always wanted to be a mother, so she had five of her six children within six years, and then the last little straggler was born five years later on my 11th birthday.

Looking back now, I know that I was a very curious child, I remember looking at things in this world with growing wonder, i.e. Leaves, bugs, and flys etc. I also know that I walked without fear, which was a very daunting task for young parents with other young children. My mother has told me that when she first took me to the lake when I was old enough to walk that I went into the water and just kept walking. I was enjoying myself, not so much her. Also at a very young age I was climbing everywhere, when I was very young, 2 or 3 yrs. old, I took my brother who was 13 mos. younger and we climbed a ladder up onto our neighbour’s roof, to the peril of our neighbour as she tried to get us down (she went through all of the rungs in the ladder and scraped her legs). Another climbing expedition was into a hay loft in a barn where my father was, when I was only about one and a half years old, which scared the bejeebees out of him (rightfully so).

I tell these stories as this is really when the patterns of my life were starting to be set in motion. How I may have begun taking on the fears of other people in my life. As an adult with my own children I can totally understand their fear, but as a young child, from that child’s perspective I was OK, why are you afraid, and thus begins how we start to perceive the world and then start to fear the world. Was it my fear, no, I saw how it effected my parents and then I started to believe that there was a reason to be afraid to explore. One could say it likely taught me caution, but it also taught me to fear, I am very leery of heights now. Strange though as I love to fly, I love being above the clouds and seeing from a bird’s eye view, who knows I was likely going up on that roof to have a better view more likely to see what the men were doing on that roof. This is just a few of the examples that were part of my growing up life, there were many, as my mother has been adamant about pointing out to me, that I was more trouble than her five boys put together. I was a little hellion, I was smoking at ten years old, and enjoying every minute of it (this was in the late 1960’s). Like I said I was an explorer of life.

When I was 11 yrs. old my father had his first episode of many, but this was the worst as we did not know what was happening, (we later learned that he was Manic/Depressive, or as it is known these days Bi-Polar). This is when I was put into a situation that not a lot of 11year olds are put into, the responsibility of looking after my younger brothers when my mother would go and visit my father. The exploring started to take on a different flavour now, I had to be responsible, it wasn’t just me. I also had a very strong bond with my father, I was the apple of his eye, this new situation, now made him not as available, it also contributed to him to start living in a cage of his own making. What if he got sick again, what would happen etc. Now I can look at this pattern and how much of my father’s fear did I take on at that point. I know I did take on a fear of being too happy or too sad as this is an inherited dis-ease (chemical imbalance), that I may also have this dis-ease, thus the festering sore waiting to explode.

I came from a very intelligent family. My father was off the scales smart, there was not that much that he did not know about. He would read the encyclopedias for fun and quiz us on different items. He also had the dictionary handy this used to drive me crazy for lack of a better word. However because of his mental condition he did not go past grade 13 (yes there was a grade 13 at one time), as it would mean him leaving home, it was just to overwhelming and he could not cope with that (he was only 15 yrs. old at that time – he later told us that he believes his first episode was shortly after puberty and then not again until before he got married). Anyhow I digress.

This little bit of my life is to point out in general how the issues in this life start. The issues that stop us from fully living our lives. There is no blame here, this is life and how we perceive it to be. It may be coloured in many different inks, but to dispel it and say oh that is just silly that this would affect you later in life, is to dishonour it. Remember this was from a child’s perspective, and this pocket in time/consciousness, is still living somewhere within you, as it has stopped you from living your life fully.

As my wonderful Teacher/Mentor Algonquin Medicine Man says to us all the time… Gentle, Gentle.

More to come in the next installment……. Love and laughter Healed Roots…