I watched a YouTube video, by Dr. Gabor Mate, on how to reset the body from chronic stress. It was an eye-opener. Although as a healer, I am aware that our deepest issues create stress and disease, this video has helped me pin it down just that little bit more and helped me recognise how the stress of being a caretaker affects people.
I’ve been looking after my elderly father every day for eight months. Prior to that, I was visiting him on Sundays, taking him to Doctor’s appointments when necessary, or visiting him in the hospital when yet another physical issue needed attention.
He had a stroke seven years ago, which had a considerable effect on his body, but he recovered enough to be capable of a relatively normal life. Then five years later, my stepmother, who he had been living with for nearly fifty years, died of cancer. He has been on his own since, managing his life and getting on with it. My younger sister played a large part in his survival because she called him four times a week and has been doing so, religiously since our step-mother died.
I had not had a great relationship with my father. Actually, it was pretty bloody awful. But, I thought, this was the perfect opportunity to get to core issues; stuff I couldn’t get to before. I’ve never believed in ‘confronting’ parents about their parenting. Instead, I took responsibility for healing myself. But it is only through sitting with him, every day, that I am seeing things I never saw before.
Over the months of being with him, cooking for him and eating with him, my body is reacting to those pesky underlying emotional issues and the terrible carnivorous diet he eats. My digestive system has been acting up and I seem to be sensitive to everything. The right side of my body feels squashed, and my right knee clicks painfully. The slight arthritis I have in my hands is now flaring up all the time.
What was going on in there?
I received some BBSH healing, which led me to make changes. I now exercise every day using Somatic exercises and I’ve stopped drinking coffee. But more importantly, I’ve started to take control of my eating again. My father wants me to eat what he eats, thereby avoiding having to feel guilty about eating it in the first place. And for a while, I did that, trying to please him, making sure he didn’t feel uncomfortable, or guilty. I tried to live his lifestyle, until my body reacted to the stress, and my emotions were triggered, and I realised that the eating issues I have had since my teens are a direct result of his fears about women’s bodies and their sexuality. Which is tricky, because I am a woman!
I have these fears too. But I now know they are not mine. They are simply emotions and beliefs I introjected as a result of my younger years spent living with him. And, because they are not mine, I can shed them like scales, one at a time.
A golden opportunity for growth.
One of the biggest issues I have been trying to heal is a belief I have held since childhood that I was born into the wrong body. I ‘should’ have been a boy. And not just any boy. A Native American boy. Yet, here I was, in the body of an Irish girl who didn’t even have black hair or nut-brown skin. Instead, I had white skin and brown hair! Typically Irish.
The Native American thing died out when I was in my early twenties and the boy thing seemed to have gone underground until I was in my forties. Becoming a mother reinforced the fact that I was, indeed, a woman.
And it was painful. I never got to grips with menstruation, or my female body. Having breasts was downright uncomfortable and I often wondered what life would be like without them. Having a female body meant I was under certain obligations to men, like having children and my body not being my own. Now that I am post-menopausal, I never have to worry about it again. I have done the woman thing; I can no longer have children, so that’s that job done. My body did not belong to me then, but now it does so I can do whatever I want with it. (Where that belief came from, I have no idea. But I’ll figure it out later!)
In a conversation with my mother a few years ago, she told me that as the first child, I was supposed to have been a boy. In the sixties, it was only when the child was born that parents knew the sex of the child, so my birth as a girl was a failure, for her. In utero, I picked up that being a boy was important and it became part of my identity - and my struggle. My family expected the boy to take over the business, eventually, so that was never going to happen. It was at time when women were not bosses.
Four years after I was born, my brother came along. The desired son, finally. Only he proved not to be what my father thought a son should be. My brother was a sensitive little soul and cried a lot. He was not a hardy boy’s boy. Seeing this, I tried hard to be the boy my father wanted. I was a tomboy. I climbed trees, fell out of them, and pushed my body beyond its capabilities, trying to show my father how much better I was than my brother, even though I was a girl. As a teenager, I ended up with lumbago, trying to outdo my little brother in physical strength. I wanted so desperately to be the son he wanted that my body protested, loudly.
My father didn’t even notice.
I have damaged my body so much over the years because, the belief that I had the strength of a man, pushed me into stupid situations where I really hurt myself. But it is now, through being around my father, that I can get to the bottom of the reasons why.
This afternoon, as I was walking downstairs, I felt like my adult brother, and like a cowboy. My bother’s energy. Into my head came the words: “I can be the boy you wanted, not the girl you are afraid of”. I see that I am still playing out that belief: helping my father lift heavy things, being energetic and efficient - his idea of what makes a man -; keeping myself physically ‘big’. Not being slim would be dangerous, triggering his lack of boundaries around women.
I have done such a lot of work on this, but having watched Gabor’s video, I realise I need to do more. I need to honour myself more while still caring for him. I want to look after my body, my female body, and stop acting as if I was physically a man. I know part of it is self-protection, but it is a harmful self-protection, and I need to find a better way to achieve it.
I recognise myself in the video about how I care for Dad: I am patient, accommodating, and self-sacrificing; qualities typically associated with women, ironically.
There are obviously many layers to unpeel.
With this ever-emerging information from my subconscious, I am making the necessary changes. I know these current health issues are simply signposts, showing me where energy is still stuck. But part of me wonders if I am creating new problems even as I heal the old.
I guess there is no way of knowing, but if I continue to heal self-sacrificing and self-negating behaviours, the outcome will have been more than worth the effort.
I can so relate to what you say about using your body as a man would. I did the same, and injured myself in the process. I also rejected my femaleness as a teenager and tried to live as a boy.
When I became a mother I learned to love being a woman, and was not expecting how free and delighted I would feel as a post-menopausal woman. Perhaps because I was never traditionally feminine, it's been easy to adjust to my new status. I say this, because many women fear menopause (although you are surely not one of them!), and I like to scatter the seeds of the idea that it can actually be a wonderful time of life.
I went through the menopause when I lived in Egypt, and didn't realise that mood swings, etc, were part of it. It was such a challenge to exist there I didn't even notice them. Luxor was traumatising enough!
But, the literal 'meno-pause' was such a blessing. I could finally say NO!
Like you, I was really happy afterwards. And yes, I hope other women can feel the same way.
Perhaps more do than we realise. :-)