Hi everyone, its Sharon again. Jes was supposed to work some this holiday weekend, but that didn’t happen. Oops. I don’t know what’s going on in Jes-land the past few days, while I’ve been out a lot. I hope they’re OK.
I’ve posted on a couple of DID groups that didn’t seem toxic, asking how other systems share power. (I’m currently chairperson of the council, and feel like I need to research the topic, now that power has kind of shifted internally.) Almost no one spoke up, and no one else seems to have a democracy? Are we that rare?
Wanderer and I have known about each other for a very long time. While Jes’ subsystem was pretty oblivious and did their own thing, Wanderer and I started the council when we were still in grade school. We had our disagreements, but teamed up to help each other bail out the boat and keep the system from sinking – I’d say we were writing back and forth to each other by, like, 4th grade-ish? (I used to have a journal from junior high that showed alters writing back and forth, but I haven’t seen it in years. I’m afraid Janet might have thrown it out in one of her “I’m not multiple” purges. We’ve lost several journals that way.)
The council’s influence has ebbed and flowed over the years.
When we were in our late teens, we moved to a new town with our mom, leaving our dad behind. While our bio-father wasn’t the source of all our trauma, it had been an abusive situation. Still, we had a working dynamic when we lived with him. We were a straight A student, in every advanced and gifted class available. Stuff was compartmentalized enough that we could function. Then the home reality shifted, and we fell apart. We went from straight A, National Honor Society student, to failing all our classes and dropping out of high school. The council’s influence also entered a low point, as what was Jes’ subsystem spiraled out of control. It took years to work all that out, and led to the the “one council member from each subsystem” rule, as members of Jes’ subsystem finally began to come to terms with being multiple.
The council had started as kind of a “oh shit, how are we going to handle THIS crisis” fire fighting team of 2, that became a council of 3 when it became obvious we needed a tie breaker. In our 20s, the council entered into a more advisory capacity. Major life decisions were weighed by the council, but day to day life was still kind of up to whoever was fronting.
The council entered its “golden age” in our 30s, after a pretty bad breakdown. That’s when Saoirse really came on the scene, as a fusion of other alters in the system. The first Wanderer/Sharon/Saoirse council was a power house, that really stepped in to help function in day to day life. We became a team. (The council wasn’t always the three of us, because of elections, but we became the 3 with the most time on the council.) When I say we became a team, I don’t mean we were all co-conscious – simply that we really learned to work with one another.
Now things have shifted again, and I find myself in a post-Saoirse world. What will happen to the council? Is it time for Wanderer and I to step back and just let Jes run the show? One of the things the made the “golden age” council was how balanced it was. It had its own equilibrium. That’s been disturbed now, and it has me concerned. I’m not sure what to do.