This is a very personal reflection and journaling of my relationship with my mother. I have even questioned whether or not to share it. Is is too personal? Am I too vulnerable? Shouldn't I be more of an adult already in this relationship? But I have decided to post it because it is part of my Camino, part of my healing the split, part of standing in my own feet with my own personal code of honor intact and connected. It is my journey of recognizing and honoring myself. And it just happens to involve my relationship with my mother. It is in 3 parts that have unfolded over this past week.
The last time I wrote I shared that I was in the midst of first chakra initiation and healing. Seems like no stone will be unturned...I hadn't consciously realized that my relationship with my mother was so deeply connected to my first chakra. Well, of course it is, but I just hadn't realized, or felt it so deeply, until last night.
My mother is an amazing woman. She is 77 years old, and she is still expanding. She's passionately involved in Young Living Oils, meets new people all the time, makes new friends all the time, is very active and engaged, is on a spiritual path, and has spiritual sisters whom she loves dearly, and who love her as dearly as well. She's a very blessed woman who's really getting to live a rich and wonderful life on her terms.
Last night, after dinner, I wanted to complete the conversation that got started the other day when she said to me, "Well, all I ask is that you come home happy" from my pilgrimage. How is it that she can make these statements to me that just go in and twist and turn in my gut, and in my heart. I was so taken aback by her comment, and then her subsequent explanation that I was just so unhappy and hard to be around, and that she's concerned about the kids, and what about Steve, and on and on. I became defensive. I also asked questions. I really tried to listen and to honor what she was saying while I felt like I was being slapped on the hand (it actually felt much stronger than a slap on the hand). I felt like a little girl who was being told I was naughty and had done it all wrong. Now there's a familiar story.
So, last night I wanted to complete our previous conversation. Instead, I just opened up the wound even bigger. No matter what I said, it came back to my mother, and how she feels that she can never say the right thing to me; that I over-analyze her and what she says and how she says it; that she can never do it right; and of course there were tears, and on and on. She also said that I have never let her mother me. I realized, and said that we are locked in a dynamic together, and that we actually perceive the same things about each other. I also suggested that maybe we just shouldn't really talk because it doesn't work - that we communicate very differently and instead of communicating directly with each other, we end up missing the mark, and usually end up hurting each other.
After this conversation, I felt so incomplete, so empty, so un-met, so lost. What's come up for me is the years of pain I have experienced with her. I am her daughter, but somehow we just miss with each other all the time.
I keep her at arms' length...and have for as long as I can remember.
I don't feel safe around her. There have been so many times when I have shared something that I truly desire or want, or feel, and the response has often been,"why do/would you want that?" So I have stopped wanting what I want.
I don't feel heard or listened to. So I have made it one of my top priorities to deeply listen to, honor and acknowledge what others are sharing.
It feels like some of my deepest wounding is from my relationship with my mother. I am really trying to say this in a not blaming way, but I am sure that it comes out sounding like that. I can tell that she also feels very wounded by me. I have not been the kind of daughter that she wanted. I wonder if I ever have been.
I thought about this a lot last night. Here I am, her first born child, and a daughter. I can imagine her feeling so fulfilled with being a mom and having a daughter. But then it was me. I looked just like my father. I have this feeling that I haven't let her in very close from the beginning. I don't do well with needy people. I pull away and put a wall up between their needs and me. I feel pulled on. I feel them trying to suck my energy, and so I put up defenses and barriers around me so that they can't take my energy from me.
When my parents got divorced, my mother expected me to be there for her. After all, other mothers' daughters were there for their mothers. She even said last night that she had no one, and had to lean on her friends then. Yes, and so what's wrong with that? I have told her that I could not be there for her, not given my relationship with her, with Dad, and their relationship. It was not appropriate for me to be that person to lean on. How many years has it been since the divorce? At least 25 years and this is still an issue for us.
So what's the core of the issue? What's the essence of it? From my perspective, the core of this unresolvable issue is that Mom needed me to be there for her, and I was not, and never have been.
I learned how to not need her, because if and when I did, there was always an expectation of payback. If I needed her, then she could need me, and I would have to be there for her in ways that did not feel right or good.
At one point, she would come in to my bed at night so that she could have someone warm to sleep with, so that she wouldn't feel lonely, so that she wouldn't have to sleep with my father. And then she would tell me how it was for her - and impose her beliefs, stories, and complaints about marriage, sex, and my father on me as I lay there in bed with her. As I tried to make myself as small and safe as I possibly could, because of course I couldn't tell her to go away and to get out of my bed, out of my room. My personal space meant nothing to her. So within that space, within in my body, I would pull myself away from the edges and make myself as small as I could within myself so that she couldn't touch me, or influence me, or pull me into her sad world.
This is my core wounding right here. Seems like no matter where I go, this is where I come home to. To feeling like the powerless little girl who couldn't say no to her mom, couldn't have boundaries, and so tried to make it look okay without really being present, so that at least my mom would think that she was getting what she wanted from me. All appearances would be intact, and we could pretend to be a loving daughter and mother.
And that's what we have done for 51 years.
I have created a way of relating to her where it's on the edges of my body only. It looks okay from the outside, but it actually feels really empty and unnourishing for both of us. Neither one of us is fulfilled, satisfied, or feels loved, respected, heard or acknowledged. I am on the edge of myself with her, and I am on the edge of her life with her. I am not an integral part of her life at all, and while one part of me is so thankful for that, I am also aware that I don't get the best of my mom. Other people do. I don't get to experience the truly wonderful, loving, caring person that she is and whom others love to be with.
This sucks...
Out of my need to feel safe with her, to not let her suck my energy, and to not let her take away my desires, dreams, and what matters most, I hold her at more than arms' length away from me. I only let her see the shell of me, and I do not let her into my heart, my heart's longings, or what I am truly feeling or experiencing. I RELATE TO HER SO THAT SHE CANNOT TOUCH ME, so that she cannot take me, my essential ore self, away from myself.
As I write this, I realize how crazy it sounds. My mother does not have that kind of power to take my essence away from me. My essence, my soul, my spirit, is mine and only I can give it away. Or split off from it.
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