Monday, August 27, 2018

An Afternoon With My Mother and Reflections On What Really Matters


Every day that I arrive to visit my mother I never know what I will walk into. There are the good days and the hard days. And every day is a gift.

Saturday was a hard day. I came during the end of lunchtime. Everyone else at my mother's table had left or was leaving. My mother's plate had barely been touched. And I noticed right away that she was leaning far to the left side in her wheelchair. I pulled her wheelchair back and attempted to help her into an upright position. I struggled several times moving her feet to be more centered, trying to help her left elbow rest on the arm of her wheelchair, lifting her up a tiny bit to shift her position in her chair. Nothing was working. I asked a staff if they could help right her, but was told that servers are not supposed to assist with things like that. And I knew that. It was just painful witnessing my mother leaning so far off to her left side that her chin was barely above her plate, which was slightly to her right on the table.

I continued to watch my mother struggle to eat. I had already switched a spoon for her fork when I noticed Mom attempting to bring the spoon to her mouth. There was no food on the spoon.

"Mom, how about if I help you eat today?" I had never done this before. "Okay," my mother responded. Slowly she accepted each spoonful of her lunch that I brought to her mouth as she continued to lean way over to her left. I tenderly fed my mother and whispered in her ear how much I love her. "My beautiful daughter," my mama said.

I was determined to address how my mother appeared to be placed in a non-centered way in her wheelchair. I brought this to the attention of her caregiver as soon as we returned to her apartment. Her sweet and compassionate caregiver smiled and nodded and took my mother to use the bathroom. I tried to call Ron to share my sorrow about what I was witnessing today.

When the caregiver emerged from the bathroom, I noticed right away that my mother was still leaning to her left. The caregiver told me that she had tried to use a pillow to prop my mom up, but said that my mother did not want to use a pillow. So we just went ahead and put on her fleece and I handed my mom her sunglasses and covered her with a blanket. (This is the prayer blanket made by Suzi Maley and Suzi's church group in California five years ago when I was engaged in the legal battle with a former stepson to bring my mother home to her family here in the Pacific Northwest). Then we headed outside to the garden to a cooler but lovely day.

*****

Once in the garden area, I sat to the left of my mother and pulled my chair right up next to hers. This way I was able to use the arm of my chair for my mom to rest her left elbow on. She was so tilted and simply unable to use the arm of her wheelchair to keep herself from slanting sideways. So we just sat there, snuggled in together. I alternated between holding one of her hands or both hands with both of mine. It is a meditative experience, this sitting in silence with my mother.

Mom broke our silence a few times. "I'm thankful that you spend this time with me." "Are you warm enough?" "I was just thinking the same thing." (This in response to my commenting on how lovely the breeze was.) "Are you warm enough?" "It's so wonderful that you can spend all this time with me."

I leaned gently on her shoulder and nestled my face into her hair, quietly saying how much I love her, how this is our special heart-to-heart time together (while tenderly touching her heart), how she is my priority (affirming that the only person I see more of is my husband), how our time together is such a precious gift. Mom would nod or quietly say yes... 

*****

I reflected on how these are the moments we were never supposed to have together, my mama and me. Her mental illness and severe narcissism had been a wall that had made giving and receiving love and compassion an impossibility for my mother. Others had existed as extensions of her and were there only to serve, mirror, and affirm the fragile but brutal and tortured reality that my mother lived in.

As I began to heal and open my own heart, things shifted for my mother and me. It took me four years back in the 1980's of therapy and sobriety and support before I could bring myself to stand up to my mother's abuse and insist on healthy boundaries. I was also shifting from fear, rage, and long neglected grief and loss related to my mom to understanding, compassion, forgiveness, and love. And I simply could no longer feed her narcissistic supplies if that meant colluding in her abuse of me or anyone else. This is something my mother found intolerable. 

Still, my mother's periods of refusing to see me or to have any more than limited contact with me and her only grandchildren did not begin in earnest until she married her third husband, who was the only husband out of four who fully enabled her abuse of me and even both of his own two children. When I realized that this husband was going along with the abuse, I was angry and upset and also relieved, relieved knowing that in selling his soul he at least was also protecting himself from being a victim of physical abuse. I'm sure that he also acquiesced because he thought this was what he had to do to keep my borderline mother from committing suicide. 

When this husband died, his son took over feeding her narcissistic supplies and began the long journey of grooming and weaving a web around my vulnerable mentally ill mother, puling her away from me and fueling our estrangement so that he would one day be the one to benefit from her will. It took close to a year, and a legal battle that cost a total of nearly $250,000, to pry my mother loose from the hands of narcissistic greed and entitlement and bring my mom home to her family.

*****

I believed that I was prepared five years ago to receive, care for, support, and love my mother. My eyes, mind, and heart were wide open. I understood and, as best as I could, accepted her mental illness. I also now had a loving and incredibly supportive husband. My three loving adult sons were here and able to help. I had beautiful and deeply caring friends. I was surrounded by the support I needed to care for this mother of mine who had been so brutal for much of my lifetime. Most importantly, I had done 30 years of healing, strengthening, deepening, and expanding my heart. I had been gifted with these decades of heart-work which have blessed me beyond my wildest dreams.

Through all the years of grieving the loss of my mother, I had just never dreamed possible that there would come a day of a homecoming that would become a mutual homecoming of our hearts, the hearts of my mama and me....

I weep right now for all the years lost to us, all the years where my mother was incapable of loving or being loved. I used to experience this shame that I wasn't done, just moved on, just okay with never having been loved by my own mother. And my compassionate heart-centered therapist would gently remind me again and again that the most primal need any of us have is the love of our mothers. He helped me to be tender and gentle and compassionate and loving with myself and how hard it is to experience and come to terms with such profound loss. There is simply no time limit in the grief any of us hold in our deepest hearts if we have not been loved by our mothers.

And this primal need was also what my twin brother gave voice to the last time we spoke on Thanksgiving 1977. John told me that his latest "plan" was that he was going to hold out and just be himself ― no more pretending to be some false self to please her until Mother finally loved him for who he was. Just over two months later my brother committed suicide, dying without ever knowing the love of our mother.

*****

So this was not supposed to happen for my mama and me. This sitting quietly together outside holding hands, feeling the gentle breezes, and speaking of and sharing the love in our hearts. I wasn't even holding out waiting for that love. 99.9% of me had given up on ever being loved by our mother. I had come to understand my mother's illness and hold her with deep compassion and forgiveness. And love. This was a love that I never believed would be returned or shared.

But I was wrong.

There simply are no words to adequately describe the power of love...

When we peel everything away down to the very essentials, I agree with my wise and compassionate teachers who have helped me over the years to see that just these three things will matter when I die: 
     - Did I become who I truly am? 
     - Did I learn how to let go (especially of resentment, bitterness, blame, shame, anger, unhelpful belief systems, etc.)?  
     - Did I love well?

*****

I need to get ready to see my mom for lunch and time in the garden today. Gratefully, when I spoke to the nurse in charge at Glenwood yesterday, she checked in with my mother and called me back and said that my mama was not having a sideways kind of day. I have no idea what this afternoon will bring. Other than love, the love that my mom and I are gifted with sharing today. 

May we all awaken to the Love that is there within our deepest being. 

May we be at peace.
May our hearts remain open.
May we know the beauty of our true nature.
May we be healed.


With love and blessings,
Molly
Pictures I took in the garden at Glenwood Place.

Thursday, August 23, 2018

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
 

Stephen Cope: She's Reaching for You


The feminine comes to us in nature. 
Go outside. Look at the amazing waves 
of green, of lilacs, of blue mountains. 
We are in the presence of the 
manifestation right here.
And she's reaching for you.

Stephen Cope 
 

Stephen Cope: The Night Sea Journey

This is a powerful and wise quote. I have experienced firsthand this "night sea journey" over many years now. I've also witnessed, personally and professionally, the process of healing and awakening of countless others who have courageously undertaken this pathway into our deeper selves. Yes, it can be incredibly painful to open our hearts to what we may have long neglected or denied and to instead agree to gradually learn how to "exile nothing." That said, it is my belief that remaining disassociated and split off within ourselves - which also inevitably results in our lack of intimacy and deep connection with others - is what causes us the greatest suffering. May courage and compassion be contagious. May we all be engaged in this amazing journey of coming home to ourselves. 
With warmest blessings...❤ Molly


The "night sea journey" is the journey into the parts of ourselves that are split off, disavowed, unknown, unwanted, cast out, and exiled to the various subterranean worlds of consciousness... The goal of this journey is to reunite us with ourselves. Such a homecoming can be surprisingly painful, even brutal. In order to undertake it, we must first agree to exile nothing.

Stephen Cope 

I found this quote in Bessel Van Der Kolk's book,
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and 
Body In the Healing of Trauma 
 

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Be As Courageous As You Can: An Inspiring Story


This is a story that I heard on NPR a few days ago. It was an interview with Heidi Van Schoonhoven, the owner of La Grande Dry Cleaning who posted a sign outside her storefront one year ago. It reads: "White supremacy is wrong. Trump condones white supremacy. If you still support Trump, your business is not welcome here." 

Heidi states that she was first moved to post the sign following Mr. Trump's response to the deadly confrontation at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. One year later the sign remains. 

La Grande, Oregon is a mixture of political beliefs and is certainly not a liberal oasis. Yet, Heidi acted and risked the condemnation of her neighbors and customers and even losing her business. I was struck by this woman's courage and integrity and how it was that she was compelled to act, no matter the potential consequences, rather than stay silent. 

In the interview, Heidi spoke of Timothy Snyder's excellent book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century (https://www.amazon.com/Tyranny-Twenty-Lessons-Twentieth-Century-ebook/dp/B01N4M1BQY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1534980587&sr=8-1&keywords=on+tyranny). Specifically, she quoted Lesson #19: "Be as courageous as you can." (http://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2018/06/yale-historian-timothy-snyder-20.html)

Heidi Van Schoonhoven was educated and aware of the times in history, of which the holocaust was certainly one, in which millions suffered horrifically and died as the result of massive complicity. She named what is happening today and its parallels. And she became compelled to be as courageous as she could and act. This was her way to make a difference.

This whole interview on NPR's Think Out Loud brought home the value of civil disobedience, of courage and the diversity of actions each and every one of us can take, and of the need for us to act out of our grounding in consciousness of a higher good for us all. Our silence or apathy, our inaction or unskilled actions, our ignorance or turning the other way in the face of the suffering of others all this and more contributes to this place where we find ourselves at today in which so many suffer and so much of life on Earth is threatened.

It need not be so. 

Just imagine if each of us were to look deeply within ourselves to unearth and become increasingly conscious of the ways that we are complicit in that which harms. Just imagine the difference we could all make if in identifying more and more of the problem we become empowered to increasingly be part of the solution. The options of how we can make a difference are endless. 

Heidi Van Schoonhoven's business has thrived over the past year. Yes, she's received her fair share of criticism, especially on line. She's also received donations and countless expressions of gratitude and respect and appreciation. This is what can happen when we step into the hoop of our own courageous selves and choose to not remain silent through our words or actions in the face of injustice, dehumanization, suffering, greed, and the many other faces of violence and fear.

Among my ongoing prayers is that we humans will root ever more strongly into what it is that we bring to our human family and the family of all beings on Earth. I hold this passionate prayer that each of us will increasingly be a courageous as we can.

Bless us all...
Molly