Mistakes, Guilt & Forgiveness: the Tragedy of Error

Content Warnings: infidelity, sexual abuse

I have explored a certain kind of meditation in depth. Some call it Dark Night of the Soul; some call it the Inner Child or Inner Monster meditation. Regardless of the name you know it by, it is that frightening experience in which we face the dark, ugly truth of our own actions and pasts. If we stay the course, it can be a life-altering experience each time it is done.

I am also a follower of the Dark Goddesses: Kali, Skadi, Hela, Erishkigel, Baba Yaga, Sekhmet, Medb, Hecate, Persephone (the Queen), the Morrigan, Coatlicue. I explore the mysteries of life - not the happy verdant plants. I seek the mysteries of the mud in which the primordial soup was mixed, the blood that comes with both life and death, the body wastes that carry away toxins that could kill us and still might if we don't keep them buried or somehow taken away from our homes, the snot that keeps our delicate tissues from breaking down, the tears that cleanse our eyes of physical and emotional hurts. I embrace the stench of death and the crap of life.

So when I came across this situation, it intrigued me. (Names and details have been changed.) This is roughly how the tale was told to me by a friend, Victoria Pendler, a Welsh hedgewitch.

Brent is a big guy, the kind who prides himself on his strength. He is Heathen, antifa, and listens to his wife when she talks about feminism. With three kids, his family is his life.

Lauryn, the wife, had initiated several discussions about them becoming polyamorous, which ended when Brent changed careers drastically and Lauryn suggested their life was already too chaotic to pursue something as serious as the kind of poly relationships they'd been talking about. Brent agreed.

A few years later, Lauryn offered to let a friend of Brent (and acquaintance of hers) to stay at their home when she left her husband over emotional abuse. Within a few weeks, the other woman left, nearly destroying Lauryn and Brent's marriage, and making threats against the couple.

When I came in to help, I first listened to the story as they presented it. Brent was devastated. He'd believed he was pursuing a poly relationship possibility, but had made several mistakes along the way, including engaging in sexual activity before telling his wife that there were even feelings.

Lauryn felt betrayed because she had always talked about needing to discuss relationships beforehand due to being cheated on in the past. She believed Brent simply couldn't love her if he would so easily dismiss her and her needs in the situation, but she also couldn't believe that he was capable of such behavior. She said several times that she'd never once thought he could do this because of his own history with being cheated on. 

I spoke to Brent about the situation in detail, and several things raised flags for me. When I asked him to describe the sexual encounter, he spoke of "freezing up," feeling pressured and desperate. When he explained that he had felt so guilty he'd immediately showered in very hot water, I asked him if the encounter had reminded him of his childhood sexual abuse. 

At that point the floodgates opened. Brent had been molested by a family friend as a child, and the way that the other woman had approached him had been in the exact same, passive-aggressive, emotionally wheedling way that he had experienced decades before. In a nutshell, he had felt raped again.

Once we'd explored that, I pointed out that Brent's past did not excuse his behavior. It only gave us something to work with to restore his wife's trust in him, as well as something to address to prevent a similar situation from ever occurring, which seemed very important to him. He agreed that the realization didn't excuse him, and he vowed to work on his relationship and on his inner child issues.

Several weeks later, I followed up with Lauryn and Brent. They were doing well, communicating thoroughly. Brent had asked Lauryn to outline specific actions he could take for werguild (restitution) to her, and she had given him some assignments that focused on him getting to know her more deeply and taking on more of a controlling role in his own life, which I felt was an insightful move on her part.
However, Brent still spoke of the incident with a great deal of self-loathing and guilt.

I realized that he was stuck, blaming himself for not being strong enough to overcome his childhood trauma and stop the whole thing from happening. Having worked with childhood trauma and inner child situations before, I could see that his approach, while understandable, was sabotaging his ability to grow past his behavior as his wife and family needed him to do. He was trapped in endless loops of understanding but being afraid to take charge and change his behavior in a meaningful way.

Right now, we are working on getting him to the point where he can forgive himself. Since he is such a big fellow, he is seen as masculine, manly, and the like. He has internalized this perception, and feels that he should not be able to be victimized in any way. He seemed a bit shocked when I pointed out that his actions during and after the sexual encounter stemmed from him being almost desperate to not be seen as a victim, and that it had lead to the majority of the lies that Lauryn had been hurt by.

Brent's inability to forgive himself for being weak, traumatized, and only human is actually impeding his ability to NOT be weak and traumatized. While I had been concerned he might use his childhood as a get-out-of-jail-free card, instead he considered his trauma to be a sign of his failure as a man.

Brent has a long way to go, and Lauryn is still struggling with her own feelings about things, but they both need to forgive themselves for being effected by their pasts in order to move on in a healthy way.

I hope this story helps others going through similar situations. We cannot use our pasts as an excuse, but we also can't act like we are capable of dismissing any effects our pasts might have on us, how we react to situations, or how we feel about things. The emotional situation is ALWAYS valid. How we deal with it determines how healthy it is.

Kali the Destroyer: Death vs Rot

Kali is the dark mother goddess of Hindu mythology. She is death and time, both, blue-black as deep space and blood-thirsty. She was created as an aspect of Durga, a warrior goddess, to drink the blood of demons so they could not regenerate, and to destroy those demons. Her blood-lust shook the world so hard, it nearly came apart.

But Kali is a mother goddess. She does what she does for her children - all of humankind. She is a protector, though we don't always see what she does as protecting.

When Kali realized she was destroying the world, she stuck out her tongue. This is a symbol of shame. She was not trying to lick more blood, as some interpretations say. The Hindu symbology on this is very clear. She regretted her loss of control.

Kali is the goddess of disease, specifically plagues. She doesn't cause the plagues, though. Hindus pray to Kali to save them from plagues.

Kali is the goddess of time, which, at its core, kills us all. In many ways, she is the goddess of inevitability. (I just thought that in the voice of Agent Smith of the Matrix... lol.)

So what does this all mean? What place does Kali have in our lives?

Kali is the vaccine that gives you disease to prevent disease. She is the vomiting and fever that kills the virus in your body. She is the sad determination of pulling the plug on a loved one when all that is left for them is pain.

Kali is the impassive march of the days and years that wears us down eventually. She is the death and decay that makes room for new life. She is the mama bear that tears apart those creatures who would threaten her children. She is the rage and violence we feel in defense of our friends and loved ones.

Kali is also the bullet that takes out a war buddy who is too injured to move out of the line of the enemy. She is the knife that cuts off a breast riddled with cancer. She is the poison of chemotherapy that takes care of the rest of that disease. She is the old member of a pack who disappears one day so as not to be a burden to the others.

Kali is the hard, painful choices. She is the actions that we don't take unless they are absolutely necessary. She is the tears we weep when we have to do the hard things. She is the good-byes that cannot be avoided or taken back. She is the pain we feel when we realize our mistakes, but she is also the actions we take to admit those mistakes.

In many ways, Kali represents the harshness of life and the darkness within us all. She accepts the realities and moves on, but not without emotion - often anger, or blood-lust, or even shame.

Though she is often seen only as a goddess of death, she is a very real manifestation of our own human nature - that determination to survive as a species, to protect our own, to live with the pain and passion of our own fleeting nature.

"You were only killing time and it can kill you right back" - Out of the Frying Pan (And Into the Fire) by Meatloaf

Daycare Woes and Bloodshed

I like my daycare, make no mistake about that. They are nice, with lots of kids for my children to play with, and decent meals served three times a day (plus snacks).

But I sometimes want to smack them. Particularly the helpers.Now, I'm sure they are nice enough people, but sometimes they do something that sets my blood boiling.

Usually, it is something like talking to my son like he's a two-year-old idiot or a fourteen-year-old pain-in-the-butt. Since he's a four-year-old pickle (ie, normal, rambunctious pre-schooler), that really pisses me off.

Now, I understand that the boy-child can rub anyone the wrong way after a handful of hours. He is loud, persistent, demanding, and rather whiny. But when someone starts telling him that they don't expect him to have a "good attitude" or "good behavior" from the minute he arrives, I just want to slap some fear of the Mother Goddess into them.

Big knife, dead body... end of story

Seriously... Kali... Dark Mother... She'll smack you into next week, just to get your attention!

So, in the words of Stormcrow: "back up offa my baby, muh-fuh, or I WILL cut you!"