struggling upwards

I am going to have to think about suffering.  Do you remember when we were children, sometimes when we would complain Mom would tell us to offer it up? I always thought she was asking us to give our suffering to God, to make it/us holier, somehow.  Which leads me to think of all the Catholic celebration of Christ's suffering on the cross.  We have been enculturated to believe that suffering makes us better humans, more godly.  So you say I can feel grief without suffering, and I just can't imagine it.  Suddenly, I am having a really hard time defining suffering.

Okay, recently my dog died.  That was painful.  The whole process of letting her go was painful.  Did I suffer?

Hmmmmm.......

And you pose an important question...Why are family secrets so valuable to our family?
They are worth destroying lives and relationships over...
but why do they hold so much power and authority over our lives?

Why is it so important?  My first thought is shame.  We keep secrets because we are ashamed of ourselves and ashamed of our family.  We don't want anyone outside the family to know we are not the bright, upstanding family we think we appear to be!

But also shame - because there must be something terribly wrong with me, I am inherently flawed - I must be unlovable.  If I show the world I am unlovable, no one will love me.  Right now we think we are passing for okay.

Also, we don't know how to fix it.  Nobody has done it.  Look at our family, our extended family...can you identify a healthy branch of us?  Just like trying to think of anyone in recovery, there are no healthy family dynamics to mimic.

The last thought that comes to mind is that once we realize what a mess our family is, we are adults.  We have to go back and discover what happened to us.  That is not fun.  Then we have to look at what we have done to others.  That is almost worse.  There's too much pain.  It doesn't seem bearable.  But we do survive, even though it doesn't seem that we should.

I wanted to share a dream I had.  It seemed to have a message.

I think it started in France.  I was at the very top of the Eiffel Tower, and I could see the world, including our Appalachian Mountains.  But then I was here in the US, climbing a mountain.  There were a lot of people climbing as well as milling around at the base of the mountain.  I had a really hard time climbing.  I ended up climbing on my stomach, and pushing with my legs as I pulled with my hands.  Other people around me were still climbing upright, but I didn't have the strength.  I pulled and worked, and my head cleared the summit.  I was holding onto the crest and scanning the world from way up high - and I saw the top of the Eiffel Tower.  I had such a beautiful sense of connection.  I looked around and realized that my youngest daughter had also climbed the mountain, and was standing on the crest with other people, and a friend of ours was also there, holding the baby up in the sky. I recognized the friend, knew who it was, but could no longer identify them when I awoke.  I never stood up, I just clung to the mountain and looked at everything.  I also said,  "Be careful with that baby."

Then I looked down the impossibly steep slope and wondered how I was going to get down.  I turned around, sitting on my butt like a sled, and I was down - it was smooth and quick and amazing.  I joined the people milling around at the bottom, then woke up.

I have never prayed for a dark night of the soul.  You are courageous!

I love you,

Clare