Reflections On Awakening From Unworthiness

With my mother at her assisted living, August 23, 2018

Although I usually come every other day, as usual my mother was surprised to see me today when I arrived to visit toward the end of her lunchtime. I also felt her to be engaged with me right away, which was a relief after twice recently experiencing my mom to be more quiet and withdrawn than usual. I live with the uncertainty of not knowing when the Alzheimer's will claim more of her.

But today she smiled, called me her "sweet darling," and expressed that she was so glad that I'd come. Then she became quiet and the look on her face was more serious. I asked, "How are you doing today, Mama?"

"I feel like I'm worthless."

Wow. Such a miracle that my mom will be vulnerable and honest today and tell me how she is feeling! This is an indescribable change from all the years growing up and on through most of my adulthood in which my mother would act out her intense feelings of worthlessness. This is the self-loathing that was covered over with her toxic narcissism and the brutally she projected outward onto everyone around her, certainly including my brother, my father, and me. And this is what began to shift five years ago when my mother was forced into treatment for her severe mental illness, was prescribed antipsychotics and other medications, and became immersed in the love of her family...

I asked my therapist yesterday if he'd ever seen someone so brutal and so crazy as my mom had been open up to giving and receiving love. "No," he responded.

*****

I looked into my mother's eyes. "I'm so sorry you're feeling that way, Mom. Whatever you're feeling or thinking, I just love you the way you are. I just love you. And I know that this is not an easy time in your life." I hugged my mom. And I began to massage her shoulders. Mom smiled and said, "That feels so good."

I just stayed in quiet witnessing to what my mother experienced. And her mood began to shift and lighten. Then I offered something new for my mom to hear and perhaps take in.

"You know, Mama, there are ways that you are helpful and even inspiring to other people. I take photos of you, or you and me together, a lot. Some of them I post and share along with a little story about us. And our love story, the story of you and me and the love we share, it touches some people."

My mom looked at me and asked, "Really?"

"Yes, Mom. Our little love stories make a positive difference for you and for me and even for others, too."

My mother smiled. And then I asked a young staff person to snap the picture above.

*****

There is so much that has changed my life and that I am profoundly grateful for. One is knowing that it is not helpful to try to fix myself or anyone else. Fixing does not work. It is not way we become empowered to truly love ourselves and others. I've also learned that "shoulding" on anyone simply increases suffering, such as by saying "you shouldn't feel that way." Any form of denying, minimizing, distracting, negating, or anything less than meeting pain with the tenderness, compassion, and wisdom of our hearts is likely to cause more harm than good.

Instead, and as I've learned to gradually befriend myself, I've also learned how to increasingly be a good friend and an empathic presence with others. Today, over and over, this miraculously includes getting to affirm the sweetness and power of love with my own mother. In this process, I have been mothering her and mothering me and extending and experiencing the love that both of us had for so long been starved for. 

The journey back from worthlessness is a long and most extraordinary one.

*****

Judith Duerk, one of my first loving and wise teachers, writes in Circle of Stones: 

How might your life be different if, as a young woman there had been a place for you, a place where you could go to be among women... a place for you when you had feelings of darkness? And, if there had been another woman, somewhat older, to be with you in your darkness, to be with you until you spoke... spoke out your pain and anger and sorrow.
 

And, if you had spoken until you had understood the sense of your feelings, how they reflected your own nature, your own deepest nature, crying out of the darkness, struggling to be heard.
 

And, what if, after that, every time you had feelings of darkness, you knew that the woman would come to be with you, and would sit quietly by as you went into your darkness to listen to your feelings and bring them to birth... So that, over the years, companioned by the woman, you learned to no longer fear your darkness, but to trust it... to trust it as the place where you could meet your own deepest nature and give it voice.

How might your life be different if you could trust your darkness... could trust your own darkness?

*****
 

My mother and I are among countless others who did not grow up having this experience of deep and consistent empathic mirroring. We did not have the support, caring, compassion, tenderness, and love we needed to know, accept, and love ourselves. And in its absence, big parts of ourselves split off and went underground. 
 

There is such a big price to pay when we shut down, shut up, and shut out.

Yet, under it all is this love that does not die.

Pema Chödrön writes:

Spiritual awakening is frequently described

as a journey to the top of a mountain.

We leave our attachments and our worldliness

behind and slowly make our way to the top.

At the peak we have transcended all pain.

The only problem with this metaphor is

that we leave all the others behind --

our drunken brother, our schizophrenic sister,

our tormented animals and friends.

Their suffering continues, unrelieved

by our personal escape.

                  

In the process of discovering our true nature,

the journey goes down, not up.

It’s as if the mountain pointed toward the      

center of the earth instead of reaching into the sky.

Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures,

we move toward the turbulence and doubt.

We jump into it. We slide into it. We tiptoe into it.

We move toward it however we can.

We explore the reality and unpredictability

of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away.

If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes,

we will let it be as it is. At our own pace,

without speed or aggression,

we move down and down and down.

         

With us move millions of others,

our companions in awakening from fear.

At the bottom we discover water,

the healing water of compassion.

Right down there in the thick of things,

we discover the love that will not die.

*****
 

If, against all odds, my mother and I can today share a love story together, it must be possible for any of us to awaken from the trance of unworthiness and fear and discover the love that will not die.

Bless us all on our journeys...
❤ Molly