Hello Everyone!
Your crew member Brenda Sue here!
I have been contemplating what I should write about this week. I have been doing a lot of deep clearing work and to be honest, it has been exhausting. I was trying to decide if I should share my Kambo healing experience or the work I have been doing around family grief. I think I will save the Kambo experience for the next newsletter. I have another session to sit with this medicine this week. I want to see how deep it will take me on the next deep dive.
So, let’s talk family grief. Ugh, I have been processing it for several weeks now and still feel the pain of it in my heart. I think my Kambo ceremony first opened the door to the realization of what I have been holding in my sub-conscious mind and in my energy body.
I think I will save the full story for the next newsletter but needless to say, it brought up my feelings of failure around family. One of my ancestors came forward with his story and I became aware that I had carried on his story, from so long ago, as my story. See if you can relate to this. When I was growing up, I saw families who went of vacations together, had fun together, called each other, and seemed to have a genuine connection. I always thought that would be great to have. I wanted to have that with my family. Well, I wasn’t born into that kind of family. We all love each other, I don’t doubt that for a second. But, I definitely do not feel that bond or closeness. I think I have always felt like the weird one in the family…lol…go figure…my openness, my curiosity of all things unseen, my multiple marriages, my life experiences, all of these things left me feeling like I didn’t belong on my family unit. I think the separation of covid and the division that has brought along with politics have made it blaringly clear just how little we have in common. I set boundaries and asked them to please not send me their political and religious agenda via messages, texts, etc. I asked that if we could just focus on what we had in common and talk about those things, that I would be really happy about that. Well, that has led to basically no conversation. I have not been “shunned” but definitely looked at like the liberal freak. Compound that with the letter from my mother, well, I wrote about that in a previous newsletter, so ya’ll know what I’m talking about. So, I am grieving the loss of the family that I wish I had.
Compound that with my kids going to Sweden with their dad and his girlfriend to visit family. My ex-husbands family felt like the family that I always wanted. We always had so much fun together, we had vacations together, we cooked together, we played games, we truly shared a bond and love for each other. As divorce should have it, you kind of naturally lose that connection. You don’t live near each other and I guess it felt like I didn’t have a right to still have the same connection. I guess I felt/feel like they might be angry with me for leaving the marriage and then they wouldn’t still love me (having that realization as I write this). Then, to top that off, my boyfriend’s son does not like me either. So, during this period of all of this coming up, Mike and his son, with his girlfriend, spent the day at the Wyndham together. (As a side note, walking around in the hot sun watching golf is not my idea of a fun filled day…lol) So, in the midst of feeling all of these feels about family, there it was again. The feeling of not fitting in, the feeling of not being a part of a family, the feeling of rejection, the feeling of grief. Which of course led me on a deeper dive, that feeling of not being fully accepted. What do we all want, as human beings? To be seen, to be understood, to be accepted. Then I thought about my Soul Family, my wonderful podcast family. The place I feel loved and accepted, the place where I feel seen and heard. The people I feel “home” with. Then I feel gratitude. Not everyone finds their Soul Family. I found mine and I hope all of you are lucky to have those people in your life that “see” you and love you. Those people who lift you up when you are feeling like poo. Those people that you can laugh with and cry with. Those people who will call you out on your **it when you need it.
The bigger message is, radical self-acceptance. Do I still love me even when I feel adrift? Do I accept me when others reject me? Am I enough? The deeper answer is always YES! Even if I feel a big fat NO staring me in the eye. We are always enough.
Love to you all!
Brenda Sue Jean Louise Jolene III