Do You Want To Be Good Or Do You Want To Be Whole?
An Attempt To Ask Questions (Without Responding)
We all live with ghosts. Those of our personal, family and collective stories, those of the nations we were born in, those of the cultures that shelter us, those of our ancestors, those of our dreams remembered or silenced, those of the languages we speak. Stories open a passage between the living and the dead. The storyteller stands at the door to make sure it stays open so to allow everyone to be in contact with the ghosts.
As I walk back and forth in the corridor of time and generations, I feel quite comfortable. Even when facing the abyss of my dysfunctional family, the curses, the spells and the monsters, I feel at ease. Even when I flush out a ghost1 wearing my superhero cap I am very proud and satisfied to have finally dissolved an old secret or disintegrated some funky energies. By birthing this piece, over the days and weeks that it takes me to compose it, things are wobbling inside me and around me. Serendipity, synchronicities, and a lot of tiny other mysteries are coming my way. Small invisible entities sending me messages, begging me to pay attention, to be careful. They want me to shut up, sit still and be careful with my thoughts and my words.
Working with your lineages and discovering your trans-generational legacies imply to enter in relationship with larger than you. It also means walking the humble and slow path towards your authentic self and the people around you, in the here and now. It is sacred work, and it never stops! The work expands in so many fascinating directions. First and foremost, it expands us into a broader version of your being, taking account of all the layers of yourself; a luminous and rhizomatic version of you. It also allows building alliances with smaller and bigger bodies, the ones that really count. Yourself, your environment, your community, your health, your forebears, your descendants. Basically, it trains to become an Ancestor. It contributes at becoming good soil as the beautiful Sophie Strand2 suggests in her writings.
Ancestral healing has done a lot for me. It is my daily day dose of medecine (Medicine of the Soul!), an eye-opener, a spiritual quest, a transcendental way of being and seeing. It is actually putting to rest a lot of my psychic unrest. It is also allowing me to discover skills and talents I didn´t know I possessed. It added magic in my life and put on my personal mappology a lot of uncharted territories like the study of dreams, witchcraft and Seidr3, Animism4, Shamanism and much more. I feel more complete. More grounded. A more reliable source, a rooted mother and hopefully soon, a wise Sage and a respectable Elder.
But some days, like today, I have doubts. Am I in denial ? What if my need to gravitate in other cosmologies is barely an attempt to escape this one ? What if my need of community is a substitute for my lack of belonging, an attempt to palliate for my lack of closeness with my family of origin? Am I hiding under a stone? I can idealise things as much as I want, I can try as much as I want to be good if I am not whole, if I am not cultivating relationships and kinship with my people - what I am really doing? Is this what is called spiritual bypassing?
We all need to accept the wounds and the pain and the shadows as they are; it is the only way to continue the path. Because life is not compulsory, nor habitual, nor anything less than exceptionnal. Life is precious. Life is rare. Life is not a given. Life stays fragile, vulnerable, biologically uncertain. We are miraculous.
Miraculously saved. Miraculously surviving. Miraculously protected.
PART 1
I am the eldest and as the first born, I was hoped for and eagerly awaited. After the wedding of my parents, for every month that she was not pregnant, my mother thought something was wrong. The minute she realised she was with child, she probably silenced the howling voices of centuries of trans-generational fears, going far beyond her. She soothed the deep sorrows of lines of motherless women, and put back to sleep the told and untold stories of the loss of children. Though I have a privileged place, I carry nevertheless a gruesome curse on my head: I came after the mysterious, hidden, unmourned death of a baby in my close family. Let me remind you shortly, in case you are new here and you don´t know what I am talking about. I am what is called a replacement child. There are 3 types of replacement children: the haunted child, who lives in a family overwhelmed by guilt and silence, the bound child, who is incomparably precious and over-protected, and the resurrected child, who is treated as a reincarnation of the dead. I am definitely of the first type, the haunted one but at times, I would also walk in the boots of the other two!
My mother was emotionally not available to nurture anyone, let alone a child. So on top of the curse mentioned above, I was parentified at a very early stage in life. From a very young age, I was made into a little mama. As an infant, I learned to switch off emotions and discount my own needs - not to cry, not to disturb the adults around in need of their sleep or their comfort. My needs were petty compared to theirs! Be nice, be a good girl, don’t wake them, shut up. Everything in the sacred pursuit of caring for the family, barely holding. All for my two parents, my self absorbed, non-available parents. I carried distorted scripts about what was the best attainable goal: my soothing and well-being or the peace in the household ? It was clear I could not have both. I have been bred - instinctively - into the perfect little protector. Looking back, I can clearly see how silence, secrets and pain, the smaller and bigger abuses, moulded me even further into the role. I adapted in all circumstances. I was quiet and resilient. If anything was needed, I was there. Such a convenient being! I was able to be sacrificed and thankful at the same time. On good days, my biggest achievement was to understand and to excuse my parents for their failures and their lacks. On the worst ones, I was able to blame myself. On and on again. And again.
My sister was born two years after, at a time when the couple was already collapsing.
My mother recalls : “It was horrible, your father was never there, and when he was home, he was always angry.” My father used to say : “It was horrible, your mother was never here, she was always outside, with her friends, spending the money I was earning”.
My parents did not want a second child. She was an accident! A brutal truth that no one should be confronted with. Specially not the concerned person. But they did. They told my sister, I think it was at a very early age. This is so absurd. So hurtful. In some families, like mine, we use truth as a gun. We lie a lot and when we tell the truth, it comes with daggers. It penetrates and kills. My mother often talks about these desperate times. She was desperate when she discovered she was four months pregnant. She was desperate when her appendix broke. She was desperately rushed into the emergency room. She was so desperate that she begged the surgeon to take care of the baby too. Takecareofthebabytoo?
Against all odds, my little sister was saved.
What happens to a baby when joy is not there to welcome them ? What happens to their soul ? What happens to their small, frail and vulnerable body? When a child is unwanted, when the parents are disengaged, what are the psychological, the emotional and the physical consequences?
PART 2
After hushing myself for easing up the life of my parents, I found my next beautiful mission in life. I would adore and play and look after her and protect and care for my little baby sister. This was a new amazing opportunity to be of service and to sacrifice myself for a new cause. And even be more “good”. (Wholeness was not in the picture back then. I did not know about it!) I nurtured this small being with so much tenderness and attention that it really blurred the lines; who was the mother? People would be amazed and praise my mother about how responsible I was. I wore mothering as a trophy, as my sole identity. I was dedicated and able. I was clever, steady and good. So why not? Year after year, I would do more. I would wake up early and prepare breakfast, make sure my sister was dressed up ready for school, while my mother was sleeping. She was often tired. No need to wake her up. It was a lot for her to raise two children alone without the help of anyone! I would always make sure that homework was done. I would be perfect at tidying our rooms. I would be excelling at laundry too. Collecting and sometimes washing. A real fairy. I was happy to be helpful. Nobody was asking me to do anything. I would do, just by myself. I remember well when people would meet us (my mother, my sister and me), they would joke like: “You look like sisters!” or “Who is who?” I think I was proud, back then, to imagine that I looked older and my mother was proud to be looking so young, so as to be compared to her teen daughters.
I think about these moments with a lot of anxiety and heaviness. Lines were so blurred. Generational entanglement with heavy consequences for the three of us. Of course, no need to say that people saying that were weird-alpha-macho-male flirting with our divine mother but sometimes (and that is worse) it would come from old ladies, neighbours... Anyone else, now, today, someone normally constituted, would see the pain and the dysfunctionality of these three lost souls.
Despite my full dedication, love and protection, my sister developed slowly but surely, a neurotic need to devour attention. My mother, carrying tons of guilt, nurtured an unhealthy co-dependent, toxic, relationship with her. It is not that she did not care; she cared… but as she did not know how to care, she cared too much, or too little, or not when needed. She cared wrong! My father, blurred by his own darkness and heaviness, developed a tyrannic, despotic and oppressive relationship with her. Both loved her as much as they hated her. As for me, her actual caregiver, she never understood who I really was to her (of course, how could she?). She would often act out, lash back at me, dispute my authority (of course, who did I think I was?), yell at me, attempting weird stuff to make me react, put all possible blame on me…. It was terrible. From the start, we had a very fusional and complex relationship. All this, and much more, created a household with habitual violence and also cruelty. Verbal, emotional, and even physical pain was inflicted.
It took me a long time to realise that, during all those years, I call them the black out years, my body was crying out loud. It was crying into the void, because I could not hear it. Multiple and unexplained pains, auto-immune diseases, joint and throat recurring inflammations, but also accidents. Loads of them.
These were the stigmata of the irrespirable air of the abyss of my childhood.
As I write this, I just think I want to say that I cannot blame my parents for being unloving. I really think they were loving us. But they were just possessed by each their own untamed ghosts and demons. As we are now too, my sister and I.
As I research for nuances between the archetypes of the survivor (my sister) and the protector (me), I understand that there are not so many differences between the two. Doomed both of us. Both driven by a desire for preservation. Like underdogs, survivors hold fast and persist even when everything is lost. Like superheroes, the protector seems to be in control of everything and everyone. But their obsession is only making them more miserable when they feel they are not needed. Taken to the extreme, both are very handicapped. Both failing to ask for help even when they desperately need it. Both in denial. Often.
My sister is beautiful, socially active; she is a very nice person to hang out with. She is generous, she has a lot of humour, she is charismatic, she bears a lot of exceptional gifts. She is good fun and she is often portrayed as tender, giving and caring. But because of all what precedes, and because of the toxicity of the environment she was born in, behind all the glamour and glitter, she is constantly self-sabotaging. She has many traits of narcissistic personality; she is alternating grandiosity with a lot of periods of very low self-esteem. Depression at times, nervous meltdowns quite often. In solidarity with all the women in our family who had unsuccessful relationships, she has deprived herself of love. In solidarity with those who have experienced sexual violence, she has sacrificed her own pleasure. As she is a real tightrope walker, she juggles with everything in her life.
As for me, the truth is, I have not always been a good person. I have done and will make a lot of mistakes. They have piled up within me. It seems to be in our human nature to grip at them until our hands are bruised. But I must let them go. The need to share my shadows is immense. I have never done that. Yes, sharing them so they don’t take take over me. And in doing so, I am also trying to expel some of the poison out of me. Sometimes, I feel my shadow is bigger than yours!
You see, a mother's gaze is an act of affection, the child's first mirror; this is how suddenly they become aware of their existence. The eyes of the mother allows to carry out such a wonder of one's life: to love oneself. This can persuade someone that they can be loved. Well loved. Like little stars, the eyes of your mother can enlighten your explorations, they can direct towards truly loving beings and protect you from toxic stories.
But how can I blame you, mother, for not having laid your beautiful eyes on us more often? You were devastated by the fear of abandonment since your earliest childhood, and you had learned to fight against the terror only by playing a single role, that of the seducing being assigned to your grand father. Did arousing desire and then refusing it give you back some of that power that everyone had so unjustly deprived you of? How we desired, how we dreamed, that look of you….
Please, Sage, let go.
One day you’re going to see just how the universe has conspired to grow you into what you are, from the ground up to the sky. One day you are going to see how nothing will ever define you.
Transgenerational haunting is a psychoanalytic concept which was first advanced by Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok and is best described as unresolved trauma which becomes passed down through generations. Ghosts or “encrypted secrets” as they are called, can cause children to act out areas of their parent’s unresolved griefs, often exactly at the age that a parent experienced them. A good example is that of a child whose father dies at the age of 11 and who grows up to become a parent, only to find that when their own child is 11, their relationship with that child is lost in some way. It is as if there is some compulsion to repeat the past, perhaps in order to try and resolve the original wound, but in doing so, the next child is affected and the next and so the original trauma ‘haunts’ the family system. As Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok say in the book: The Shell and the Kernel “What haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others.”
You can read Sophie and subscribe to her substack here: sophiestrand.substack.com
In Old Norse, seiðr (sometimes anglicized as seidhr, seidh, seidr, seithr, seith, or seid) was a type of magic which was practised in Norse society during the Late Scandinavian Iron Age. The practice of seiðr is believed to be a form of magic which is related to both the telling and the shaping of the future. Accounts of seiðr later made it into sagas and other literary sources, while further evidence of it has been unearthed by archaeologists. Various scholars have debated the nature of seiðr, some of them have argued that it was shamanic in context, involving visionary journeys by its practitioners.
Animism (from Latin: anima meaning 'breath, spirit, life') is the belief that everything objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and perhaps even words—as animated and alive. Animism is used in anthropology of religion as a term for the belief system of many Indigenous peoples, especially in contrast to the relatively more recent development of organised religions. (Source: Wikipedia)
Fascinating how our suffering can lead us to our gifts. I am in awe of your gifts, dear Sage🙏💓