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| Little Molly, 1952 |
It may have been somewhere in my teen years when my mother told me that I didn't walk until I was 22 months old. She said that I sat in my playpen and whined. I probably also sat in this walker and whined, too. My mom didn't know that there was something terribly sad and wrong about leaving me in a playpen and not responding to my "whining."
Many years later when I was in the last week of a 28 day stay in inpatient alcohol and drug treatment, my mother made an appointment for a session with my counselor on the outside. It wasn't until I got out of treatment that this counselor told me what had happened in that session. And that is when I realized that my narcissistic mother hadn't traveled 2,500 miles from Michigan to help and support me. She had come all this ways to let everyone in my life here in Oregon know that it wasn't she who was the "bad" one, it was me.
In her efforts to convince my counselor, who wasn't buying it, of how I was born a "bad seed," she disclosed the time that I had forced her to nearly kill me after I simply would not stop crying — no matter what she tried! — and made her put a pillow over my face and nearly suffocate me to death. I would have been about the age in this picture above. I was born that bad. My counselor went on to tell me that my brother and I were lucky to have physically survived our childhoods.
My mom was not well. She was desperately overwhelmed with being a mother of twins without support, with her expectations centered around image management and perfectionism, and with her young lifetime of generations of unaddressed ancestral and cultural trauma. My mother had had no experience or modeling from her own mother and father of how to respond to my needs and my brother's — and to the full range of our emotions — in ways which were appropriate, which strengthened our bond, and which created an environment of safety and predictability and security. Compassion, empathy, and unconditional love were out of reach for my mother whose heart was walled over with layers of trauma and loss.
That was then.
All this said, my beautiful, tortured and terrified mother — whose self-loathing manifested in a grandiosity and entitlement that demanded everyone around her meet her needs — was absolutely doing the best that she could. That awareness, grounded in an understanding of trauma and a deep experience of compassion, doesn't excuse or justify anything. What it does is free me of carrying the deadening weight of unforgiveness and bitterness and resentment and countless generations of trauma.
It has been a long journey back to myself, back to the essence of who I am, after a childhood where, to survive, I had to learn how to be the pretty object for my mother to show off. The requirement was to be this object, this extension of her, rather than myself.
Francis Weller is spot on when he describes the work of the mature human as being that of holding grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and being stretched large by them. And there has indeed been so much grief and so much gratitude. They are interwoven, with one not being possible without the other. At least this has certainly been my experience.
The gifts of trauma work are profound, and potentially even for those among us who are the most deeply wounded and lost. Because the work of healing and transforming trauma leads us back to Love.
Incredibly, the last seven years of my mother's life unfolded as a great healing between us. At age 87, my mom experienced a partial awakening following a breakdown and suicide attempt. Through antipsychotic medication, dementia that enabled her to forget what she could not have bared to remember, and through being immersed in love... my mother's heart became accessible. For the first time. And I was able to give, and she was able to receive, the love she had always been so starved for and also defended against for a lifetime. It was a miracle.
And a miracle that I could love my mom. After everything. After everything. I was able to love my mom. And when the self-loathing buried for decades would surface as her narcissistic barrier dissolved, I was able to meet my mother right where she was at. Each time she would say something like, "I'm just trouble," I understood how old this place was and how she'd always felt like so much trouble for her own mother to care for.
I didn't tell her not to feel that way. I didn't should on her. I listened and witnessed and simply said, again and again, "Mama, you're actually not trouble for me. You are my treasure." And she would look deeply into my eyes. And her body would relax. And a smile would creep across my mom's face. And she returned my deep gaze into her eyes, smiled, squeezed my hands, and called me her "precious darling."
Love is the most profound and powerful medicine.
* * * * *
I did a lot of grieving in my therapy session this past week. And right alongside my grief is gratitude, the depths of which there are no words to adequately describe. I was just feeling so much for family members and friends who are struggling, for the people in Gaza and at our borders, for little Molly and little Nancy (my mom), and for all of us who have and who are experiencing pain and loss and trauma.
And I get to feel! I get to feel the full range of my emotional world and all the gratitude that comes with being so alive, so deep, so heart-centered and human, so me!
And my therapist reflected how each time that I feel this sadness or outrage and whatever I am allowing to emerge and flow through me, I am wrapping my childhood self, little Molly, in my arms as a loving mother would her beloved child. And I am letting my younger self, and my adult self, know and integrate more and more deeply that it's all okay. It's okay to be right where I am at — to be really sad, or really angry, or whatever is arising. It's all okay. These are the messages that my child-self and my adult self have been absorbing for some time now — You are safe, you are precious, you are loved just the way you are. (Funny how the person who comes to mind in this moment is Mr. Rogers...)
And I am free. I can be an increasingly fully embodied human being living this whole-hearted life. And I can experience an indescribable depth of compassion, not just for myself and my mom and those I know, but for us all. Compassion, connection, and love because it is not easy to be human. I keep coming back to the words of e.e.cummings — "It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." It really does!
Coming from a place of such disassociation and addiction, bone deep fear and shame, and so many generations of trauma, it is a profound, an utterly profound gift to feel. And to Love.
This is the gift of trauma work, of awakening. Thank Mystery/God/Goddess/Spirit and all the many helpers along the way for this amazing gift of opening to the essence of who I've always been and who we all are. I recognize that now. This beauty, this sacredness in us all. I weep with gratitude... And love. There is no greater medicine, no greater need than to love and be loved.
May more and more of us pour into ourselves and those around us and our hurting beautiful world an ever growing and evolving depth of compassion and love. After all, we are all connected, all related, all family.
Your words and thoughts are beautiful and heart-opening. Thank you Molly.
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