I recently went home to Hastings to spend some time with my family. It�s the first time I have been back since my dads funeral. I had a number of reasons for doing this. One of them was to spend time with and support my sister Laurel as she has been having a rough time coping with all that has happened and the feelings that have been flowing since our father�s suicide and the recent birth of her daughter.

Another was to see how I felt around my mother and the rest of the family. There are lots of feelings running deep and my whole sense of family has effectively been destroyed. I have been feeling great pain and anger and I guess I wanted to see if I could go down there and feel love for and or from them.

My feelings around love and family have been really messed and are very confusing. It is very hard to feel anger, distrust and betrayal for someone you instinctively love.

For the life of me I desperately need to move through these feelings to get to a place in my heart where I can feel all that love I have for my family members without all those other very painful feelings getting in the way.

I spent two weeks down there with them all mostly watching Laurel love and nurture her new born. I am so proud of Laurel watching her breast-feed, love and grow into a mother has been truly beautiful - it literally took my breath away. I see her struggle and watch everything about herself and her children so carefully, all the while trying to do it so differently from how she was raised. Seeing her panic and pull herself up when she does something just like mum used to do was hysterical!

Laurel and I spent some of our time together sharing our feelings about our dad�s death and our family as a whole, trying to come to terms with it and make some sense of it all were there seemed there wasn�t any.

Laurel was sharing with me how she felt the sexual abuse wasn�t turning out to be the thing she has the most problems with in regards to her childhood (and the surprise that has been).

She said to me "I�m beginning to think that my mother was the monster in my childhood, not my father and brothers" and all the things that she was remembering and the things that are still happening between her, mum and the rest of the family. The damage mum did with her mouth growing up have left her with far more scares than the men did with their sexual abuse.

It�s strange what happens during shock and grief and our memories are coming back and we almost seem to moving through our whole lives again remembering loving and crying.

In any case as you can imagine our feelings are many and varied and they evolve and change from day to day as we try and heal. So I said to Laurel what do you think the lesson in all of this is? I mean what are we supposed to learn from all this we feel?

She looked at me and said she had not thought about it like that and I was saying well there has to be one and most likely a few because this is too much to happen for no reason. I have been finding it very hard and there just has to be one.

Well I am beginning to think that I am getting a Lesson In Love. Its so complicated and full of emotion but its really what its starting to look like as I fumble around here in the dark feeling so much pain.

On the bus back to Auckland the next day I was thinking about our conversation and my feelings. I began to think... I had questions about love. Like, well ... where does it come from then? Since I have always felt it and still have so much of it in spite of all that has gone on.

Think about the different kinds of love you see and feel and there are many. Father to son Father to daughter, mother to son mother to daughter, brother to brother, brother to sister, lover to lover and then all of those in reverse again to name just a few.

I have so many questions, but you know I am beginning to think that love isn�t something that we can manufacture or hold. That you can not make it happen or control it, you can�t hold onto it when you get it, as it feels so good you surely want to share it and pass it on.

This starting me thinking again, "OK, where the hell does it come from then." Seeing as I have always known it and have so much of it and given that it hurts so much to try and hold on to it? Knowing now that I can't just up and go somewhere to feel it like I wanted to be able to in going home.

That is that love doesn't come from people, it comes through people and that perhaps its not something you can or are meant to hold on to. It seems to flow through people from a much higher and obviously purer source. That the only way we ever truly feel love is when we give it, giving rise to a love and then in reverse theory.

Meaning to me that love flows through us forward and in reverse, it does not come from us but through us from our much higher self and that it not our's to control, just to share. That being the only way you will ever truly feel love and experience it completely.

I had many things I wanted to say to my mother about all this abuse ... the sexual, physical and verbal... to get it off my chest, but found I couldn�t. I was standing there looking at her before I left, crying my heart out inside and thinking all I can do for you now mum is to love you some more.

I have so much love and compassion for her, she is my mother and I don�t want to hurt her any more than she already is.

I am so like her it�s not funny. So, for all the things I wanted to say to her I can say to myself, for in me, not my mother, lies the best chance for change as it does also in my sister Laurel.

Well this is what I am feeling at the moment as my emotions move through the many different layers of love in the hopes of finding the one that will rest ok with me now.

It feels like one of the things I am to learn from all this is quite simply a Lesson In Love. What a beautiful gift this is for me now at this time when I have been so desperately wanting to feel ok about love.