You Are My Sweet Darling

I am often moved to share miracle moments with my mom. This was last night when Ron and I joined her for dinner at her assisted living. While the Alzheimer’s is claiming more and more of my mother, which is very painful to be witness to, at the top of the list of what she remembers every time that we are together is that I am her “sweet darling.” And then I respond, “You are my sweet mom.” And we smile and gaze into each other’s eyes.

Every moment of happiness, connection, belonging, peace, and love is a treasure, an extraordinary treasure. There is no greater wealth that we humans can experience than that of sharing the love in our hearts.

These are also miracle moments that I never thought my mother and I would share. Every therapist I'd had for 30 years concurred that my poor mama was incapable of love, that she was compelled to push away love. And, truly, all the evidence again and again said that was true. I had felt shame that any part of me held out that someday something ever so tiny may shift in my mother that would allow us to simply have more than brief moments together free of the toxicity of her projections of self-loathing. I had stopped thinking that reciprocal love was possible. But maybe there could just be this tiny shift... which I didn't believe would ever actually come...

Then, five years ago, the shift began following a breakdown and hospitalization, and out of that a profound change began to emerge for my mother. A small opening into my mom's heart occurred. The impossible became possible and then became reality. It's still so surreal, holding both truths - that my mother was brutal and that my mother is loving.

Gratitude and grief and deep bow to Grace for the precious sweetness that my mother and I have been able to share over the past five years, something that hadn’t been possible before the successful treatment for her severe mental illness. 
 
Miracles truly do happen.

There was also this courage inside, not just me, but also my precious mom. Under all of our wounds is the love that doesn’t die.

 ❤❤❤ 

Bless us all on our journeys.

May we all be so blessed to find the doorways to our hearts.

May we all know the beauty of our true nature.

❤ 

Molly