Death of the White Rabbit

I ran after my mother, kissing her hands, her arms, her legs, anywhere I could find. 

‘Ok, that’s enough now.’

‘But I love you mummy.’

I continue to kiss her arms as she slows down to focus on a task in the lounge room. 

‘That’s enough.’

‘I love you. I love you.’

Repeatedly, I kissed her, over and over again. Desperate to demonstrate my love for her.

‘No more. That’s enough.’

Tears formed in my eyes.

‘This is what you can do. You have to kiss this rabbit 20 times before you can kiss me again.’

I looked at the rabbit and accepted it from her.

‘But I don’t want to kiss the rabbit. I want to kiss you.’

I started crying.

She laughed, ‘You have to kiss the rabbit 20 times before you can kiss me again.’

I howled, snot poured from my face. My whole face became a wet mess of tears and yellow mucus.

She looked at me. 

I kissed it. I cried out once more.

‘Yes, now 19 more times.’

Tears flowed boundlessly between kissing the rabbit and saying I didn’t want to kiss the rabbit.

…

About 17 years later I watched the film ‘Donnie Darko’, and I was truly petrified. The rabbit in the movie frightened me. My friends thought it was hilarious, and they would hide stuffed rabbits to surprise me around my house, or theirs when I would come over.  I would play the game not really understanding what I was doing.

About 10 years earlier I received a hand drawn card from my mother. A picture of a rabbit, life size and me kissing it. It said ‘happy birthday’. My mother, a gifted yet undiscovered artist, often drew hand-made cards for our birthdays, with the rabbit, my stuffed rabbit, regularly featuring.

My pain as a 4 – 5 year old was a huge joke in the family for my entire childhood. I laughed along with this joke. I couldn’t understand why it felt off to laugh at myself as a 4 year old.

Whilst this incident may seem harmless enough to many, it has many levels, which I’ve understood now for many years. The first level is rejection of love from my mother and primary care-giver. The second level is having to place my love on an inanimate object. The third is having my love mocked at, over and over again at the time of the incident and throughout my childhood.

This understanding has helped me over the years, but it hasn’t fully healed the scars from this time. 

Over and over again in my 20s and 30s this incident has come up to surface in relationships and friendships I’ve had. I have thought I ‘healed’ this incident from my memory and body memory. However, it has kept on returning like an insidious stomach ulcer that continues to fester when pushed.

In 2018 the white rabbit reared its ugly head once again with close woman friends of mine. And every time I’ve been surprised that when I have dove into the pain of rejection, that the rabbit has surfaced, again and again.

I am fortunate to have learnt many many tools to help myself (and others) process deep painful events from childhood. By far the most powerful, yet painful, yet the most free-ing, is being able to go inside the pain in my body, really feel the pain and let any memories surface from this space (and they always do).

Now I have done this process perhaps 100s of times before and the white rabbit has surfaced a great many times and during those times I’ve felt like I’ve healed this trauma from my early years.

What I realised very recently when I experienced the feeling of rejection from a friend I wanted to be closer to, that I hadn’t completed the process of giving myself what I needed most at 4 years old, snot drenched bunny in hand.

I realised I hadn’t finished the healing process, which is what I do with my clients (it’s funny how we as practitioners forget to do on ourselves what we help others with!).

On the 31 December 2018, I crawled into my bed and felt the pain once again. It was easy to feel it, festering wounds are like that. I went back to the time in my mind and welcomed the pain. I bawled. 

I let it flow. I let it cavern of pain emerge once more.

Then I asked my 4 year old self what she needed. I invited my mother in spirit to hold me as the 4 year old child. I realised it is easier to do this now that my mother is, in fact, in spirit. She feels a lot kinder and more loving to me now, and I’m more willing and able to accept this love (which was impossible for me to do when she was in physical form). 

I let myself be cradled by my mother, I let her give me what I most needed at that time. Pure unconditional love and presence.

Afterwards I felt free-er than I have felt before. Lighter. Clearer. 

It is still painful for me to write this. But I know the more I give myself that space and love I didn’t get as a child, the easier it will become and the less painful any future rejection will be. Because I’ve realised it devastates me way more to potentially loose a close female friend than a male friend. Emotionally, I am seeking and loosing again and again my mother’s love.

For me, 2018 marks the death of the white rabbit. And I am now committing to myself for 2019 to love myself more than I have before, and to feel more what it could be like to have a mother’s pure unconditional love around me. Wish me luck!