dark night of the soul: part 1

The wise and often internally silenced part of me which I call my witch (as in the part of me who is intuitive and connected to the cycles of nature) needs to be heard and seen through words right now. I realize now that the part of me who is mostly in charge of my work life is the young part who is still trying to get her needs met from an emotionally chaotic and unreliable outside source. The young part is going to work every day and going into the grind, the darkness that the hospital holds and that the patients bring. However the patients don’t only bring darkness, as it is their light that this young part connects to through music, movement, art and relationship. This young part brings the spirit of innocent play to the patients who come for treatment. And while the patients like this young part and she likes them, this young part does not feel heard or seen by the other adults who work at the hospital, who supposedly care as much about the patients as she does.

My witch feels pissed that this young part is the one who letting herself be vulnerable to difficult personality defense mechanisms that patients lead with in relationship until they feel they can trust (little) Jeannine. The young part is open to feeling the pain that comes with relating to others’ defense mechanisms because she is trying to reach the young and innocent part inside of them. She is willing to be enter into the field of relationship and feel the sting that comes with these defense mechanisms. She knows there is beauty and truth of the person past the walls and stingers that are initially received. She believes so deeply in this beauty in each person that she allows herself to be emotionally pummeled at times. Lately, though, this young part is feeling profoundly weary and drained with this relational therapeutic approach. She is, indeed, on the front lines, wanting to make a difference. But this has been her strategy for the last eleven years. She has only cracked the door to the possibility of making a difference from a calmer, more empowered place and perhaps letting this seemingly wiser witch part be more in charge of the helping and healing of others. The young and earnest part is beginning to question how she got to this place and what it is she really stands for and is willing to sacrifice, since she is an army of one in this battle of love. Occasionally, other staff members stand up for her and take some of the heat, but this is only on occasion. She is mostly on her own in this quest.

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Attempting to speak from the wholeness of myself now, the truth is that this painful cycle of compulsive self-sacrifice relates to my own developmental wounding. The veil was pulled back recently after seeing/feeling that the heavy and dark experience of sacrificing my sense of self to be good enough for a disorganized and unaware work environment was akin to doing the same thing my whole life as a response to intergenerational familial trauma. Naming this awareness is not so much about assigning blame to any specific person in one’s family, but about recognizing the how we as healers eventually become aware (sometimes in spiraling layers) of the impact of whatever intergenerational trauma has been unconsciously passed down through the generations. These patterns of intergenerational trauma can be made evident as we become aware of the ways we are conditioned to exist in the world. Often, there is an upper limit to the level of aliveness that is tolerated within in a family system due to trauma such as war, mental illness, addiction. When these traumas are not faced or dealt with directly, the energy they hold gets passed down through the generations.

As healers, we set out on our earnest quest to help and heal others and are then unwittingly catapulted into our own healing journey, our own dark night of the soul, as the ghosts from these traumas past begin to make themselves known to us. As we hold the candle of faith in this dark night, we often see the limiting and stifling beliefs that have been passed down to us as a result of the myriad of traumatic experiences that happened way back when. Once we can see them and how they have manifested in the present moment, we then have the chance to release them, which will not only give us more choice in our lives but also make us clearer conduits to be present to the healing paths of others.

 

above painting by John William Waterhouse, 1916: “Miranda”