While I no longer consider myself a Wiccan, there was a time on my long and windy spiritual path that I did. And I had a massive issue with entering into a ritual circle “In perfect love and perfect trust”. Trust? Really? And while I don’t have the issues with Love some of us do, regularly being told “I love you” while a particular person molested us pretty royally screwed up the whole Love thing for some. It’s sometimes referred to as “the L-word” in therapy because it can be so triggering for some of us.
So, you want me to enter into a circle with people I don’t all know that well, possibly while sky-clad (bare ass naked), and do it with perfect love and perfect trust?! Yeah right. In your dreams, priestess. đŸ˜‰
But, believe it or not, I found a way to do it. And not by dissociating! The love I had for my circle mates was the love I have for all living things. Not a sexual love, not a romantic love, but a genuine, deep, caring love for those around me. Maybe a little motherly, but hey, that’s kind of my shtick. There are many kinds of love, and some I discovered were still untarnished. Caring about my fellow humans was one of them. Why am I talking about this here? Because caring about my fellow system members was another.
And trust. Oh boy, that was hard. My priestess joked, “I can trust so-and-so not to pay me back if I loan them money.” And at first, that’s the kind of trust I had for those in my circle (and in my system). đŸ˜‰ I then developed the trust that they’d be themselves, which maybe didn’t mean they were the best people but were being as close to their authentic selves as they could be before the Gods. Then, much later, I started to develop the trust that each of them had in them a spark of the divine – that as screwed up and damaged as we all were (therapists should give covens group discounts), there was something holy in each of them.
You might guess that this all applies to systems as well. Do I trust Saoirse? Well, I trust Saoirse to be a workaholic who sometimes is rather lacking in the fun department. đŸ˜‰ But I also trust that Saoirse has that divine spark in them; beneath all the damage, the fear, and the control issues… there is something good and holy about them.
Waaaaaaiiiit a minute, you say, that’s fine, but what about destructive alters? Well, the reason I’m picking on Saoirse, besides the fact I like to pick on Saoirse in general, is that a part of what makes up the Saoirse of today was actually an introject of our father. And not just our father, but our father’s rage. That part wanted to hurt and punish. But under all that, there was that spark of the Divine. There was a bit of what became our primary protector and host. I won’t attempt to tell Saoirse’s whole story; that’s for them to do… but it’s one of redemption. Saoirse still has the “shut up and suck it up” attitude sometimes, but is trying… it’s a lot better than the “I’ll set your stuffie on fire if you disobey me” attitude, and world’s better than the “you must die, you worthless piece of shit” one.
You can trust that under all the pain, all that anger and hurt, every alter has a spark of the Divine. I know, hard to believe. But that’s because you are a reflection of the Divine. (Yes, God has DID – why do you think there are so many Gods and Goddesses?) Even the most destructive alter, who almost killed us, fused and turned into our primary protector and host. Wild, huh?
So, back to that circle. I finally was able to trust that core goodness in the people there, and love them… and believe it or not, I finally went sky-clad one time (it was optional). That was a very vulnerable but freeing experience I’ll go into some other time, perhaps.
Some of you may have made the final leap here in this line of thinking. Even our abusers had the spark in them, although they may have all but extinguished it. Forgiveness is something we’re still working on as a system; it may always be… I can love the holy part of my father but also trust he’d remained himself – an abusive asshole. I could see how he had been damaged growing up, and I could forgive the wounded child within him. I could recognize a spark there that tried to shine through once in a while. I forgave my father while he was still alive. I even wrote to him. And I then remained no-contact from that point on. That’s a whole other post, though. Forgiving doesn’t mean you forget. It doesn’t mean everything is OK. It means you stop carrying around the burden that drags you down. It’s something you do for yourself…
Anyway, the thing to remember about our systems is that, at the end of the day, they protected us from really horrible things. That’s worth some love for everyone. And your system has gotten you this far and has always been with you – I can’t think of a better thing to put trust in. It’s literally the reason you are alive.
And that’s my ramble for tonight.