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May 11th, 2014: Mom and me on Mother's Day
- our first to celebrate together in 40 years
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| 1951: Three generations |
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| 1953: In front of our home on Harcourt, Grosse Pointe Park, MI |
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| John, Nancy, Molly |
Pictures tell a story. Sometimes they also reflect deeper truths if one looks beneath the surface of initial impressions.
This year
my mom and I celebrated our first Mother's Day together in 40
years. How precious this day was. How precious every day is with my mother, and every moment that is able to be shared together as a family of three generations.
It was 39 years ago that my sons' father and I headed West from Michigan, landing - when our money had nearly run out one month later - in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. I am so grateful that this is where we set down roots and that today I am the mother of three amazing sons, all native Oregonians. While Oregon and Washington is the home of my heart, spirit, soul, Michigan is the land of childhood and my ancestors and will always be in my cells, in my bones, part of my essence. As will my mother.
It was 39 years ago that my sons' father and I headed West from Michigan, landing - when our money had nearly run out one month later - in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. I am so grateful that this is where we set down roots and that today I am the mother of three amazing sons, all native Oregonians. While Oregon and Washington is the home of my heart, spirit, soul, Michigan is the land of childhood and my ancestors and will always be in my cells, in my bones, part of my essence. As will my mother.
Such a primal relationship this is, the one we each share with our mothers. Without exception, all of us fall somewhere on a continuum of more or less having received the nourishment, affirmation, blessings, and love from this first primary relationship. Our experiences can range from a deep and abiding love to unfathomable rejection and abandonment. For much of my life, I experienced the latter.
This deep injury to my heart profoundly haunted me. Unknown to me for many years, this torment I desperately tried to bury, forget, deny, disassociate and run from followed me, showing up in an array of faces - among them were depression, fear, shame, substance abuse and other addictions, relationships in which I felt abandoned again and again, and the fog of living in separation from myself, people, other beings, life. Coming from generations of women who were not able to mirror the beauty of their children back to them because they were strangers to the truth of their own beauty, my experience was one of feeling deeply flawed, lost, alone.
That primal injury to the core of our being can cost us dearly. And, although it may outwardly look different, we often go on to perpetuate what has been unattended in the hearts of generations before us onto the next. It takes so much courage to take it on -- the patterns which have caused harm to so many for so long. It also takes just as much energy to stay asleep as to wake up, but with far different consequences.
The miracles that have been unfolding in my life and in those I love continue to expand beyond my wildest dreams. This is not to say that heartaches, losses, struggles don't continue. Life is messy. And life is amazing! This is what had been lost to me before - the amazing nature of life. This awareness has come to me through gradually and increasingly learning the gifts of the alchemist - how to transform life's wounds into blessing. What I have been discovering is that the degree of our losses - when embraced, healed, transformed - matches the degree of beauty, joy, love, belonging, purpose, compassion, courage, wisdom, and profound blessing that emerges when we commit to waking up.
It is perhaps strange to say, but the truth is that I am beyond words grateful for my tears. Everything I have most struggled with has held in its depths profound gifts. After years of shutting them down deep inside, once I opened to the tears of the sorrows I carried in my heart - which were often the sorrows carried for generations and also those of our culture and world - all that had once eluded me became possible. It became possible for me to begin to see what I saw, know what I know, feel what I feel, need what I need. And be who I truly am. From this awakening to the truth of the beauty of my true nature and yours, my family - a family once torn apart by tragedy - today deepens and deepens and deepens in our individual and collective consciousness of love. WOW!
And that is the story of tragedy transformed to love held in these photographs. Love is contagious. And the power of compassion and love is beyond my wildest imagining.
So, tag, we are all it! We can all spread the good news - that even in the midst of tragedy and loss, the gift of love awaits. May we find it now.
This deep injury to my heart profoundly haunted me. Unknown to me for many years, this torment I desperately tried to bury, forget, deny, disassociate and run from followed me, showing up in an array of faces - among them were depression, fear, shame, substance abuse and other addictions, relationships in which I felt abandoned again and again, and the fog of living in separation from myself, people, other beings, life. Coming from generations of women who were not able to mirror the beauty of their children back to them because they were strangers to the truth of their own beauty, my experience was one of feeling deeply flawed, lost, alone.
That primal injury to the core of our being can cost us dearly. And, although it may outwardly look different, we often go on to perpetuate what has been unattended in the hearts of generations before us onto the next. It takes so much courage to take it on -- the patterns which have caused harm to so many for so long. It also takes just as much energy to stay asleep as to wake up, but with far different consequences.
The miracles that have been unfolding in my life and in those I love continue to expand beyond my wildest dreams. This is not to say that heartaches, losses, struggles don't continue. Life is messy. And life is amazing! This is what had been lost to me before - the amazing nature of life. This awareness has come to me through gradually and increasingly learning the gifts of the alchemist - how to transform life's wounds into blessing. What I have been discovering is that the degree of our losses - when embraced, healed, transformed - matches the degree of beauty, joy, love, belonging, purpose, compassion, courage, wisdom, and profound blessing that emerges when we commit to waking up.
It is perhaps strange to say, but the truth is that I am beyond words grateful for my tears. Everything I have most struggled with has held in its depths profound gifts. After years of shutting them down deep inside, once I opened to the tears of the sorrows I carried in my heart - which were often the sorrows carried for generations and also those of our culture and world - all that had once eluded me became possible. It became possible for me to begin to see what I saw, know what I know, feel what I feel, need what I need. And be who I truly am. From this awakening to the truth of the beauty of my true nature and yours, my family - a family once torn apart by tragedy - today deepens and deepens and deepens in our individual and collective consciousness of love. WOW!
And that is the story of tragedy transformed to love held in these photographs. Love is contagious. And the power of compassion and love is beyond my wildest imagining.
So, tag, we are all it! We can all spread the good news - that even in the midst of tragedy and loss, the gift of love awaits. May we find it now.
With deep compassion and love for us all ~
Molly
*************
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,
but by making the darkness conscious.
- Carl Jung
The more we love, the more real we become.
- Stephen Levine
Kristin, Kevin, Nancy, Ron, Molly, Marita, & Brian
(Matt was working. Photo by our friend Diana Steinbrecher.)
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