This was my first Mother's Day without my mom since her death at age 94 on June 20th, 2020. I thought of her off and on throughout the day and missed her deeply, as I do everyday.
It is also true that in some essential ways this wasn't actually my first Mother's Day without my mom. The difference now is the finality of her physical death whereas before, when she was imprisoned in her mental illness, for years — and because she was unable to love — it felt like my mother was among the walking dead.
Throughout most of my adult life when the second Sunday in May was approaching, I would stand in front of the greeting cards lining the shelves of where I shopped with a heart that ached. It was all I could do to not weep out loud as I painstakingly searched and searched for a Mother's Day card that even began to approach anything that would fit, that would be at least partially honest and true, and that was not a lie.
And again and again I thought of what a big business opportunity it would be and, much more importantly, the empowerment and healing it would bring to countless people like myself if there were a whole line of cards that were created which spoke respectfully, tenderly, and compassionately to the reality that so many of us experience.
However, that would require of us to collectively acknowledge that there are many deeply wounded mothers out there who look nothing like what is described in the Hallmark cards. It would ask of us to break the Don't Talk rules which serve to perpetuate — rather than heal and transform — the denials, pain, and generational and cultural trauma that are far from the exception in America and beyond.
* * * * *
Over the many years of my own ongoing deep work of healing and awakening, I've come to understand that I was far from alone. So many of us grew up with the the experiences in our childhood homes of abuse, addictions, ruptured attachments, fear and shame, and many degrees and forms of trauma. So many of us did not receive the loving mothering, or fathering, that we needed to thrive and grow into our wholeness. So many of us had mothers like mine.
This cultural dictate to deny the truth, to pretend that all mothers are naturally loving to their children, is certainly not truly about protecting moms. No, our denial has served to protect and perpetuate the patriarchal, misogynistic structures that have severed so many women, and men, from the depths of the wisdom of their hearts and the soulful strengths and gifts of the deep feminine that we all carry within ourselves.
We live in a culture here in America, and in so many places around the world, which is profoundly out of balance with the Sacred Feminine. Everywhere we see the symptoms of our long estrangement from holding with reverence and respect that which births, nourishes, protects life. The outer world reflects the inner separation from our own depths and intimate interwoven relationship with all beings.
And this separation — this rupture and fortification of our hearts, this divorce from the balancing forces of the feminine, this disconnect from belonging, compassion, and love — is what ultimately drove my own mother to reject her own children. To survive, she'd already long since rejected herself. If self-loathing comes to replace the truth of our sacred preciousness, it is hard to hold anything as precious.
So we need to remember this: People who commit monstrous acts do not fall from the sky. No. Rather, they are deeply lost to themselves and who they truly are.
* * * * *
There are so many layers to the forces and reasons that I have long been discovering and continue to recognize which sever us from ourselves and one another. It is an extraordinary journey, this exploration of how we get lost and how we can nurture in ourselves and others what we have forgotten.
And this courageous path of going deeper and deeper and deeper into the story of myself, my mama, and of so many others, has been an essential part of my awakening. For without the fierce intention to cultivate understanding and compassion and an ever deepening consciousness of truth, we are too likely to contract rather than expand as the years go on. And I truly believe — and have certainly witnessed again and again — that we humans are becoming more brittle and bitter as we age, or more deeply loving.
There is this following of the thread, this thread leading all of us more deeply out of our illusions and into the truth. This is what I have discovered has nurtured and grown my heart such that I can forgive the unforgivable, love fiercely, and sift and sort through all kinds of stories of what it has been like to be of a certain age, to be male or female, to be of this ethnicity or race or religion, to have grown up in this time and place, to have had these parents or societal values and beliefs, and on and on. Following the thread helps us to understand.
And understanding frees us from our illusions, from the debilitating messages of a relentless inner critic, from shame and projections and bitterness and denial, from generations of aching hearts that yearned for love but never quite found it... within themselves and our world.
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
— William Stafford
* * * * *
My mother with her 3 grandsons on her 87th birthday, June 5th, 2013, on the psychiatric ward at PeaceHealth Urgent Care Memorial Hospital
At first it was incredibly heart-wrenching. Mom spent her 87th birthday on a psychiatric ward of a hospital just five blocks from our home here in Vancouver, Washington. She could no longer keep the self-loathing at bay, and all the toxic survival tools that her narcissistic illness had instilled in her were no longer working. And my mother just wanted to die. Being alive had become unbearable...
In sitting with my mama over the last seven years of her life, I listened deeply. And again and again I allowed the tenderness, compassion, and deep strength and wisdom of my heart to guide me. Grace and Love grew to permeate the spaces between us and within us. And for the first time ever, my mom and I would sit and simply gaze into each other's eyes. I never got this when I was a tiny new baby or at any time in my childhood. And nor did my mama. But now here we were, simply gazing into the eyes of each other's hearts and souls.
And the healing for both of us grew and deepened right up until the very end. And all of the forces that for so long had fed the illusions of separateness, fear, and shame loosened their grip as our hearts opened and expanded. And I mothered my mother and she mothered me. And I feel the healing grace of Love rippling out to our ancestors and the generations of today and beyond.
* * * * *
For some time now I've known that the story of my mama and me is way bigger than just the two of us. Just as the story of Mother's Day is bigger than anything that we can ever find in a Hallmark card or the flowers and other gifts we give each other on this or any day of traditional remembrance. There is instead this potential for reclaiming and reframing Mother's Day and every special celebration.
We can seek to create our own traditions through the infinite ways that we humans can more deeply open our hearts and extend ourselves with kindness, generosity, compassion, and love. We can work together to create a world where all mothers feel safe and protected, experience belonging and community, and know and trust that their basic human needs will be consistently met and held with reverence and respect.
Then women like my mama will no longer become compelled to commit monstrous acts. Instead they will love, protect, and cherish themselves and their children from day one onward because they have been loved, protected, and cherished. Just imagine a world where this is so. I do. And it begins with each and every one of us.
 |
| My mom shortly before her death in June 2020 |
No comments:
Post a Comment