Full Moon, Memories of Mom and More

What's on my mind this week . . .

Honoring all who nurture and mother. Gratitude and blessings to you.💖

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This is a photo of my mother (on the right) and my favorite aunt (I am her namesake) when they were perhaps late-teens. Those bobs look perfect for the 1920s which would have been the decade each came of age. The mother I see in this photo and in other rare photos of her younger self is a woman I would have liked to have known. By the time my sister and I were born, my mother was in her early forties, had survived multiple miscarriages and a bout of tuberculosis that cost her one of her lungs. The carefree look she has here was sadly long gone.

As a child growing up in an alcoholic family I learned the emotion of disappointment all too well. Not that my mother didn’t try to spare me, but her way of protecting me emotionally created more problems than it solved. She thought that if she didn’t tell me, for example, that we were taking a trip then I wouldn’t be disappointed when it didn’t happen. This pattern of not telling me things stretched into all areas of our life as a family so I was never really sure as a young child what was going on. I just remember feeling confused an awful lot and that confusion was frightening.

What her lack of communication produced in me was an unsettling feeling of always being taken off guard – always being surprised and feeling unprepared. And, strangely enough, also the feeling that no matter what I wanted I would be disappointed and it wouldn’t happen. As a young adult, I found disappointment a repeating pattern that had its roots in my mother’s need to protect me (and herself) from what she viewed as upsetting or unpleasant emotions.

After all, in my mother’s generation there were no books talking about childhood emotional development. There was only the passing on of parenting skills from one generation to the next. And if my mother could not process disappointment in her own life experiences then how could she possibly show me how to handle that same emotion. But disappointment is a part of life, isn’t it? Just like joy and sadness and all the other emotions.

Having lost both parents by the age of 27, I found that my inability to handle the emotion of disappointment, meant past disappointments colored my present and future. It was only through some good therapy that showed me how to develop a new way of understanding and expressing disappointment that I was able to move on.

It’s a full moon today, one in Scorpio, the sign of deep emotional waters, and an opportunity for transformation. I write release lists on the full moon. For this one I will be releasing any blocks I carry that prevent me from feeling the depth of my emotional experiences. My emotions don’t need to be fixed. They just need to be experienced and expressed in order to be released and healed.

Through my spiritual perspective, I have come to understand that many of the disappointments I experienced in my life were moments of Divine Love and Protection. When my relationship with a man I had been planning to marry fell apart I was emotionally devastated but eventually came to realize that it wasn’t a good relationship from the beginning; nor would it have been a good marriage. And I have seen the hand of the Divine at work with jobs I wanted, business partnerships I sought and even submissions I’ve sent off for my writing work. Disappointments all, but all moving me forward even when I didn’t realize that was what was happening.

Having this view takes a great deal of trust in the Divine and a belief that I am being guided in my life. With this approach I am much more accepting when things don’t turn out the way I wanted. And as I shift into acceptance I find my peaceful center and from that I find the energy to again move forward.

I invite you this week under the full moon in Scorpio to consider how you process (or don’t process) your emotions. What lies in the depths of your own being that needs to be set free? What disappointments need to be grieved and released? People will disappoint. Life will disappoint. There is no avoiding these truths. And you, too, will sometimes disappoint others. And you will even disappoint yourself.

Surround yourself with the energy of Divine Love and Light and realize that every experience is part of the process of creating the person you are always in the process of becoming. That person as worthy of the greatest love and respect.

Sending compassion to all in need this week.

with love,

Cathleen

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