My mother, aged 16 in 1941
I’m lucky, I guess, for in a lifetime that has spanned 63 years so far, I have had the fortune to have had three mother figures in my life.
My real mother was a drama queen. She was critical and anxious and depressed and ultimately bitter. She lacked warmth and found affection giving difficult and awkward, but she was my mother and I loved her in a dutiful way that was as exasperating as it was hard work.
My grandmother and my elder sister were the warm constants in my life. They brought laughter to a sad home life and gave me a taste and an attraction to warm people with big hearts.
They allowed me to balance my own psychi, and taught me empathy, and kindness and showed me that encouragement not criticism was the way forward .
If you are lucky you have a mom that nurtures and enables
My mother could not share that gift
But my surrogates could ……
Yes, not all of us have been blessed with loving mothers but you have been fortunate to have your sister and grandmother to give you that affection that we all crave.
ReplyDeleteI am envious of those who have experienced that.
Why does it take us this many decades of life to start to really understand this? One of my grandmothers was my safe haven.
ReplyDeleteWhat's that famous quotation by Canadian poet Alden Nowlan? "The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise."
ReplyDeleteIt's taken some years of therapy for me to figure out my late mother. My wounded inner little girl self weeps for the warm and close relationship she wanted from her mom and didn't get. My healed adult self weeps for my Mom and what she never got and so needed as a child; she couldn't help but pass that on. Generational trauma. It's real.
ReplyDelete