The Barren Valley of Shame

I did something really small but significant today, I moved my mothers memorial card from the centre of my altar to one side, the smiling photo of her holding my brothers French bulldog puppy that I graphic designed onto our Order of Service on an eggshell blue background with a flock of birds flying across it. I tucked her neatly behind the wooden gypsy horse that was her maternal grandmothers. I replaced her in the centre of the altar with a greetings card with a Lino print of a Wise Owl on it. And I lit my candles.

I paced for a time, restless and in spiritual pain. I found myself feverishly at the bookshelf gathering oracles. I needed an answer and I needed a fix to this excruciating state of shame I found myself in when I awoke this morning. I know what set me off yesterday, I dealt with it like an adult, yesterday. Today I simply woke naked in the dry and cracked barren valley of shame and I was crawling in my skin desperate to shake it off. Today was a day off although I would have happily worked to distract me from this feeling.

I don't know if everyone feels this feeling or whether it is the preserve of those of us who abstain from alcohol, drugs, food and all other addictions, one day at a time. The shite prize of sobriety is that without any anaesthetic at times I feel so utterly abandoned to the void, desperate, lonely and flayed with shame that I would consume anything, anything at all if it promised to take my pain away. It is woven through with neurodiversity and rejection sensitivity dysphoria and complex PTSD from a lonely brutal childhood.

I literally cannot bear to think there is a single person in this world who dislikes me. If one person does then everyone does. If I have harmed or hurt someone, I should immediately pay with my life.

This is the untreated state of the addicted mind without its substance. The shame an inner drug, the stress in the body an inner drug, keeping me from conscious contact with the Mystery, that keeps me from knowing Love. I was in prayer and meditation then for several hours; I prayed and prayed and spoke my fears and exhaustion and despair and longing.

Yesterday I had raged at God in the forest, just endlessly frustrated that my lot in life is to disappoint and harm those closest to me while the rest of the world thinks I'm great. Those that are closest to me, the most disappointed. I cannot bear the intimacy of closeness, for they will see why I am so unloveable. I raged at God to give me a fucking break, just to give me a fucking. goddamn. break.

Today I was like a pleading whimpering child. The rage was my inner teenager and the shamefilled innocent my inner child. The oracles I chose were my mothers; her battered old iChing and her Norwegian coins, her angel cards too. The iChing reading was spookily accurate; it said a cycle is closing and what is needed is an honest assessment and celebration of what has been achieved. It told me too to detach with Love and move through the world as if no one else was there. The angel cards produced those that assist with Money and Financial Matters; which again was absolutely on point.

I then turned to a book my mother wouldn't even look at. I did bring it to her house in 2020 but she kept piling other things on top of it. The Red Book of Adult Children of Alcoholics.

I opened it at random and I found the words swam as I read, I had to hold my finger to the page and read out loud line by line. It was section on reparenting and I had to stop reading periodically to weep through my grief. It talked about how I had had to parent myself and my sibling as a child; I know how to parent myself but only harshly. I have a critical inner parent for whom nothing will ever be enough. To develop and cultivate a loving inner parent the goal. By this time I had been in the sorrow for hours and I was exhausted. All I managed of the task in the chapter was brief note to my inner child saying Hi and that I loved them, and I would love to hear what they need today?

And with my left, non-dominant, hand I shakily wrote back:

I am happy to be seen.
I am strong and I am brave.
I am a good kid and I am a really good friend.
I love you, Big Al.

With that, I was able to rest. I lay down with the dogs in a sleeping bag like I did when I was a child. I reflected on the spontaneous move to take Mum off the centre of my altar, replacing her with the Wise Owl. I feel I am moving into a new level of mourning, again. The difficult task of untangling the real and imagined disappointments she had in me; and I in her. She lived her whole life it seemed with this notion that if she just told me, others, what to do that we would do it and everything would be right. What she failed to realise was that it was never a lack of knowledge of what I was not doing, or what should be done. It was always a question of capacity, of bandwidth, of resources.

She had all the opinions but never contributed to increased resources to do what she thought needed to be done. I come up against this in the world a lot at the moment; people not-in-the-arena with opinions about what I am not doing well enough, or not doing right or should be doing differently. They don't create capacity or bandwidth in telling me this, they just add to my shame. I am utterly over it; I am so utterly over giving this life everything and being the best person I can be, doing my best... and still feeling this abiding shame that I am unloveable and unworthy. This has to change. As the Oracle says, time to take stock and celebrate what HAS been achieved, even if it's another day sober... feeling my feelings.

It's a funny thing; I lived in perpetual resentment towards Mum when she was alive until she developed the dementia. Then the resentment fell away entirely; it was so futile holding onto something a person would and could never acknowledge now. I almost forgot the things I had resented her for. But they are coming back around now in the grief; not charged with resentment but with this unbearable sadness that I was such a seeming disappointment until she was dying, then she grasped my hand with an ecstasy when I arrived in her care home room and she breathed how grateful she was that I was there. She didn't know who I was but she knew I was the one that had always been there. She said that "you're the one who has always been there" and it was true.

So in taking stock today of what has been achieved - never mind the work and the books and the courses - never mind being sober for 14.5 years - I never actually abandoned my mother, through thick or thin. I showed up, I cared for her, I fought for her, I advocated for her. I did not harm her, I did not hurt her, she lashed out at me and I took it rather than reacting. I served her, I cooked, I cleaned, I did the laundry... I washed her, wiped her, cleaned her. I put boundaries in with her, with Love. I was her companion and confidente, I was alongside her as she waned. I really loved her towards the end, I never wanted to leave. I forgave and let go of my own disappointments. I may have missed her last breath but I was there within minutes, and I washed her again, and blessed her and prayed over her. I lamented - not just when she died but all the way through this process; she had the best death rites.

I can feel her presence now as I write, it just feels so important to take stock and she is affirming for me that her human self fell short in terms of expressing her love and gratitude at times but her Soul sees me. She sees adult me and child me (and yes raging teenage me) and she thinks we are marvellous.

Love you Mum.

Love you Alexi.

Goodnight x