It is Easter Monday.  This is a wonderful time of year to begin struggling with myself - looking for a new life.  Not only is the idea of resurrection with me, but I am trying to understand doves.  On Saturday, my grandson and I were in my vegetable garden.  There was a furious fluttering - a wounded dove inside the walls.  It was panicking, and it was not bleeding, so we went inside. A few hours later, we went back out to check.  The dove was still there, so we captured it.  We found that all of the primary feathers of its right wing were missing.  It had to have survived an attack of some sort.  Luckily, it landed in a small walled garden, but as last year's raid on my beans and squash proved - the walls are not secure.

Doves seem to be an important symbol in many cultures.  To the ancient Greeks, doves were renewal of life.  In the Christian tradition doves represent the soul or Holy Spirit.  And upon checking  for the new age definition, I found that doves ask us to go within and release emotional discord.  They will assist in releasing trauma stored in cellular memory.

Promise?

And this dove is a mourning dove.  I feel as if I have been in mourning for much of my life.  I am the oldest child in a large family wracked by alcoholism and violence.  But as a fish in a fish bowl, we thought everyone was swimming in the same dirty water.  As I got older I began to suspect maybe that wasn't true.  When I was in my mid-thirties I began attending Al-Anon meetings.  By that time I had been married to an alcoholic for years, and we had subjected our children to yet another generation of alcoholic chaos.

One of my assignments for Al-Anon was to make a family tree, to begin identifying patterns.  I had already learned a little about dry drunks - those who no longer drink, but because they have not had any therapy, they have not faced the demons and walked through the pain, they still live the chaos - and about binge alcoholics.  They may not be drunk all the time, or even often, but when they are it is awful.  So I looked at my tree and noted that one of my grandfathers was the town drunk.  Neighbors often found him passed out.  My other grandfather was a dry drunk.  He presented himself as a good, God-fearing, well-behaved young man while courting my grandmother, and she had the strength of will to force him to live that for the rest of his life.  They told anyone who listened though, that marriage was the worst thing they had ever done.  They did not love, nor even like each other.  My father was a binge alcoholic.  Some of the binges lasted for quite long periods and were very damaging.

But there was also something deeper, dirtier - probably the reason so many have retreated into the numbness of alcohol.  There is a pattern of intergenerational and intragenerational sexual abuse.  We don't know where it started, but we are willing to look at it, although writing this is making me nauseous.

I have nightmares.  I have read that if you dream of a house, it represents your psyche.  I am a brick Victorian.  If you come in from one side, the right maybe, it is a library.  If you come in from the left, it is a hospital.  I have come in the front door and found political events going on.  I have found abandoned floors, and new rooms at various times.  But there is one place I get drawn to, a dark place, and when I jerk back into consciousness trying to escape, my heart is racing, I am hyperventilating and I feel nothing but panic.

My sister and I are going to explore this together, partly searching our souls and our memories, party through dialog.

The mourning dove is in my office.  I have read that the primary feathers will begin to regenerate in about 10 days, and should be regrown in 30 days.  So I have a month to be one with the wounded dove.

-Clare

Over this past year, I have been on an amazing journey. I have had to confront many silenced issues in my life. Many of which I can barely bring myself to claim. I have companions on this journey, to whom I will forever be grateful. They are showing me that I can trust, I can even love and allow myself to be vulnerable.

This past summer I was shown a TED talk video of Brene Brown entitled Vulnerability. I was drawn to watch it several times over, deeply feeling and understanding the concept of vulnerability that she spoke of. This fall I was given a reading assignment about Oppression Psychology by Frantz Falcon. It spoke of the internalization of negative self-images from repeated exposure to oppression. Oppression was defined as; violations of one’s space, time, energy, mobility, bonding and identity. This results in alienation from one’s self, significant others, general others, culture and creativity…it creates shame. This is the story of my life.

Shame is all about secrecy, silence and self-judgment (Brene Brown, TED talk on Shame).  This shame has defined my life and my relationships with people. According to this Oppression theory people respond with one of three defense mechanisms…identification with the oppressor (secrecy), revitalization or running away to join a very different lifestyle, and radicalization or committing to radical change.

I have lived through the identification stage, keeping family secrets to be a good daughter, sister, niece, granddaughter. This had been the persistent pattern of my life, to protect the family of origin from exposure and shame. I hid my true self because I believed that my life was a mistake, that I was not worthy of love and acceptance, that I was lucky that this family tolerated my presence.

I have lived through revitalization. I took a path of education and professional life to distance myself from the patterns I had grown up with. A wise woman told me that I pursued a career in the medical field to be close to healers, probably an attempt to heal myself through osmosis without ever having to feel shame, to expose my true nature, to be vulnerable.

And now I am journeying on the path of radicalization. I have spoken and written the secrets. I have faced the giants from my childhood and the giants are tumbling down. The wall around my heart that has protected me is breaking down. I have come to realize that the very same wall was separating me from an authentic life. I want to live and love authentically.

This dialogue with my sister will be an important part of this continuing journey,

Maggie