Category: Examples of an Imperfect woman

I see the finish line, the last few feet, and I already want to sit down and FEEL the absence of daily caring.  It isn't that you have to do this or that, but that you are on call, that it is your responsibility to wash clothes, to clean behind, to feed, buy groceries, pay attention to their schedule, to urge, remind, remember, deal….the active daily mothering is about to end.

I can't even remember, at least not clearly, what it feels like to just have my husband and I living without the added weight of children.  It isn't like they are constantly in need, but you are not free either…like an invisible tether, you feel them holding on.

I am ready to be free as he is ready to be free.  Which is the natural evolution of parenting, to be there until they can fly alone…and flying solo is our goal.

I am sure, I didn't think, think, THINK about the consequences in life about having children, they seem so cute and little and cuddly and nice and easy…like adding sunshine to your life.  You don't see the whole picture, until they are leaving…or feel the weight you signed up for until it is gone.

We have had children living with us for almost 26 years.  During that time I have undergone a huge emotional upheaval and many estrangements…and made inner changes that deeply affected my children. Some for the good and others made their lives more complicated.  Mostly, my role as mother changed as much as I did….for how could it not.  

Being a mother is you being you….with children who look up to you and toward you for their needs…and how you respond will impact their worlds.

I recall the vivid turning point in the relationship with my son…and I can recall the old me and me trying so desperately to change in how I mothered him.  How much of his life was damaged by me and then how I learned to do things differently, at least most of the time.

Even in his last week, he does what teenage boys do and I do what mother's do…meet head to head wanting completely different things.  Passing through me is the old rage flavor, but I don't even dip my toes into it.  I go and do something I can control, like make tea.

It seems that I could not have gotten over the finish line of my healing without the children I have given birth to, they are my greatest teachers in changing the pattern. 

Now, it is time to see the patterns taking form in their lives.  Where they are picking up the baton and beginning their lives…well He is picking up the baton.  He doesn't even know how much of the first part of the race his father and I have run, but he will certainly become aware he is on his own…when he is living in another state.

And, we will feel the empty hands and hollow space of responsibility.

Our list will be shorter….and the tasks not so crucial, nor will they have the same impact that parenting has.

I am not sure that I will ever have this type of responsibility again, that compares to mothering.  It is a 24/7 job, you are never not on call.  

With the children now being out on their own, I feel a distance between me and their needs.  I can see that in the future, we will be the second string, we will come in when the big guns are needed.  And, it is my dearest hope, that we will be spared knowing that kind of tragedy…and yet I also know, we both will gladly take back the baton, when crisis arises.

Until then, we can turn down the volume on responsibility.

(photo taken quite a few years ago….)

"When you are a mother you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice – once for her self and once for her child."  Sophia Loren

As I look upon Mother's day, I see my mother and I see me mothering.  I see how mothering doesn't come with a clean slate, that the child doesn't make you a better mother depending upon his or her life, but rather it is all set in place by your life experiences.

What you fear will infect an otherwise normal response.

Where you are weak, will be challenged time and time again, urging you to shore up those weaknesses by choosing different…most often our failure is the most strongly felt by the child.

Sadly, we are asked to be the mother our mother's couldn't be, and tooled with dysfunctional tools she gave us.

When I seen the errors of my mother, I tried to do the opposite in hopes of sowing different results in my children; breaking the chain of dysfunction.

Dr. Maya Angelou says, "When you know better, you do better."  Which sounds so easy…and simple.  Stopping the harmful reflexes are not always easy.  

Children who come from mother's who are still wounded from their own childhood, know that hurt people hurt people.  You then begin motherhood hurt.

A hurting, wounded woman often looks to the child for comfort and happiness, to make her feel loved…the child's behavior then is to either make her happy or make her sad.  They become the happy switch….or anger switch. They control the mother's life.

When others celebrate Mother's Day, I feel oddly detached and maybe shameful for having such a complicated, hurtful, detachment from my own mother…the flowery singing of phrases seems foreign to me. And, my own rocky mothering to my children don't fit the phrases either.

It is almost like it is a false holiday…a day where we overlook all the failures and hurt and concentrate on the good.

I guess I just have complicated feelings about mother's day.

When I look towards my mother, there is a mountain of twisted hurt….when I look at my mothering, I see transformation.  But, at the same time I know the hurt I caused while not aware.

My reflections on mother's day are not in cards and quotes.

For those mother's out there who are trying to unravel or turn off the switch attached to our mother's feelings….I wish you strength.  

The hardest job you will ever do is to unplug your self from your mother's happiness. To no longer be responsible for her happiness or disappointment.  

This disconnection is crucial.

A mother who is unhurt will have plenty of space to allow her children the freedom to be who they were meant to be.  

May Mother's Day be a day of unplugging and being free!

Twenty-Six years ago today was our wedding day…I was 28, he 32. Hard to believe 26 years have gone by.  Our magic is that we didn't always agree or see life from the same view, but we always respected each other…even when mad…or more importantly when we disagreed.  We had to work into our life our differences. 

The greatest thing I learned from my husband is how to be your self.  

How to stand up for what you feel and to be stubborn about it.  The things that used to really upset me, are the same things I admire.  He was un-bendable….and still is…about who he is.

Once I stopped trying to change him or wish he was different… we got along much better…or I got along much better…I lovingly accepted.

I learned to respect his uniqueness and his unabashedly being himself, regardless of fashion, political correctness, other's wishes etc, he just lived life guided by his own inner sense of being.

What I can always count on is him being himself…peacefully so. Honestly. He doesn't expect others to think, feel or care like he does.  He just does himself, by himself, outstandingly…with reckless abandon.  A man with his own mind and sense of personal morals and values.  

Perhaps the only time he questions himself, is as a father.  A role that no man can know, but only can learn by doing, without knowing.  And can know better in hindsight. And yet, the greatest gift a father can give his children is to model being a strong individual, to love yourself by being yourself…and to love and respect their mother.  He has.

He has taught me love by being himself…and by respecting who I am. We both are allowed to be different…without consequences.  We respectfully go our own ways. 

Our love is unbound, free and strong…due to our personal freedom.

We don't complete each other, we are complete standing alone.

In the midst of my greatest breakdown, when I didn't know who I was or if our marriage would survive, I told him we will put our marriage on the floor, that we will work on each of us finding our center; on being who we are…and if in the end, we ended up with two people who no longer cared to be together, one of us would be strong enough to let the other go. That we both had to be strong and authentically our self…and not stay for the sake of the other's happiness, but we were free to stay or to go, if need be.  We ended up with "I love you today…" for we didn't know in the midst of so many changes, how this story would end.

And we still don't know.

What I do know, Is…I love you today!

If you look across the river you can see a pair of Sand Hill Cranes… I seen them yesterday on my way to work.

And, nearing the end of my route, a flock of wild turkeys crossed the road in front of me.

The turkeys have been here all winter, the Cranes are back for the summer…sure signs that our weather is changing.  

I love how the birds don't wait for the right weather, they come back at their usual time…and make adjustments.  The weather rides along with them…and doesn't hold them hostage like it often does us.

One good thing about the LONG winter/spring we are having is no dusty roads!

I feel like I am mud bogging each day.  The river is rising, the snow banks are falling, (and sometimes more snow) but imagine the world with no change.

With roads being the same…no new birds, no seasonal changes, no bright days and no cloud formations…or no new mud holes.  Each day offers us a new landscape of change.