The phrase "Like mother like daughter" made me cringe when I was growing up. My voice sounded like my mother's voice when I answered the phone and often even her close friends would launch into a conversation with me, thinking I was her. It was embarrassing.
Even more embarrassing because she was the last person I WANTED to be like.
I grew up terrified of her. Her temper was ... red-hot and dangerous. At 8 years old and less than half her height, I ran away when she lost her temper; that only made her more angry. After she caught up with me, well, it wasn't pretty. Though I would have denied it at the time because I protected myself from the truth in order to cope, deep down, I believed she was a monster.
That was my unconscious perception of my mother for over forty years. Everyone thought she was a saint; I even deluded myself into thinking that she was, that I was being brought up in a "Christian" home, that I was lucky she was bringing me up right. But she wasn't. When she got mad, I'd better not be the one in her cross-hairs or I would be in for it. Aside from the times she lost her temper and lashed out physically, the constant criticism became second nature to her. She didn't even know she was doing it. In fact, she thought she was raising me right.
I hid from the bare facts of my childhood until I was 42 years old. And when I finally faced them, I nearly went insane with rage. How dare she! How dare they!! Everyone in the family was complicit. We weren't allowed to talk about what went on inside those walls. Only after I couldn't run from it anymore - not that long ago - did I realize how very angry, hurt, and resentful I was against her for robbing me of the right to be a child. For over five years I was unable to forgive her. For the first two of them, I couldn't even stand the sight of her. I cut her completely out of my life. I did come to some modicum of tolerance for her. I thought I had forgiven her, but I had only made excuses for her behavior and never really faced my own feelings.
So as I got into a spiritual process of recovery and began to systematically look at these hurts, I realized that I had to forgive her, but I was a very long way from that. And it was suggested to me that as a child, I was never allowed to feel my feelings but had to stuff them deep inside. Feelings, I was told by my counselor, were healthy to express in safe ways. Feelings are for feeling. That's what they are designed to do. They are a pressure relief valve, a signal that something is wrong and needs to be righted, or that something is right and needs to be enjoyed in the moment.
I journaled my forgiveness journey. I wrote down all the big - and little - things she did and said that hurt me and how that affected me at the time, the messages her behavior gave me, how terrifying it all was, the repercussions throughout my lfe, and how limiting it still was for me as an adult. In putting this all on paper, I gave myself an avenue, and permission, to express all those feelings that should have come out when I was a child, but I didn't have the self-awareness or the emotional maturity - or a safe enough forum - to do it at the time. I was too busy surviving.
I cried and cried and cried. For weeks. All that hurt poured out of me, in tears, and in ink on paper... I poured out to God all the bitterness and the anguish that a small child of eight years old could feel after 40 years of holding it in. Occasionally - and these times were precious - I spoke to my inner child and told her the things she should have heard, true things that countered the lies that she was no good, that she was evil, stupid, crazy. Truthful things like she was special, that she could be herself and people could like her just the way she was, that she didn't have to change for anyone, that what happened to her wasn't her fault. Day after day - all that garbage poured out of my spirit. It needed to come out into the open; it was killing me inside.
As all of this emotion came to the surface, it became clear to me that what she did to me was wrong. It might have been for the right reasons sometimes - but the way she went about it was wrong. She didn't know how to praise or encourage. She thought it shouldn't be necessary because she didn't need it growing up. She felt sorry for her mom, who was herself a victim of spousal abuse, and so my mom did everything in her power to make her own mother's life better. It was different for me; I was terrified of my mom and did my best to avoid her attention, because the attention was doled out in criticism, fault-finding, and abuse.
As the built-up pressure came out of me, as the tears washed away the hurt and the rage, the storms subsided and more and more often there was a calm. The knowledge that what she did to me was wrong ... was a revelation to me. I had taken the first step in forgiveness. "What you did was wrong." And the second followed it: "What you did hurt me - in ways you can't even begin to imagine." And the third, "I have a perfect right to be angry!"
Expressing that anger - to God, whose shoulders are so broad and who loves me so unconditionally, was the only safe outlet for that amount of rage. He was so patient, so kind. He held me and let me rant, let me weep, let me do whatever the child in me had to do to get that poison out.
Slowly, a new realization dawned on me. I began to understand that I wanted her to pay for what she had done - not just pay, but pay ME back. And then I remembered something that Joyce Meyer said. Something about what happens when someone hurts you - it's like they stole something from you. Something irreplaceable. Like self-respect. Or self-esteem. "But they don't have it anymore," she said. "The moment they took that thing from you, it flew from their hands and they couldn't give it back to you even if they wanted to!!"
It was like being owed a bad debt. They owed; they couldn't pay. It could stay on the books for a long time, or ... I could write it off.
All that was left was for me to make a choice. Was I going to keep that debt on the books or was I going to write it off - the way a bankruptcy trustee writes off the debt of someone who's unable to pay his or her creditors?
I struggled with this for quite a while. The words of a speaker I heard once at an AA meeting came to me. She talked about having to forgive her mother over and over and over, and that it came slowly after a long time of consistently doing that. But she kept at it and it eventually reached her heart. That made such a big impact on me!
Finally I prayed, "Lord, I'm willing for You to make me willing to forgive her in my heart. By the power of the sacrifice of Jesus, and definitely not my own strength, I choose to forgive her, as often and as many times as it takes to be real to me."
Honestly, I'm not exactly sure when it happened. It was gradual, as I kept turning that over to Him again and again, being honest with Him about it, asking Him to take it one more time, yet again, and ... thanking Him for His patience. But as I did, I started to see my mother in a new light...as someone who herself was emotionally stunted at the age of two years old by her abusive stepfather, and who was deeply bound up in her own fear. One day as I was thinking about her, I found myself - well, misting over. I looked within and found that God had given me compassion for this woman. I found myself wanting to help her, not retaliate.
That's when I knew that I had forgiven her in my heart. What an amazing feeling!
That's when I started noticing other things too. I believe that something spiritual happened in the heavenlies when forgiveness finally won. I remember sitting across the table from her during a visit, blown away as she opened up in detail for the first time to me about her growing-up years. She, who just a few short years previous had been unable to understand how I could be upset about things that happened 40 years ago, admitted to me that she grew up in fear, and that she was still afraid. "I guess things that happen to you when you're little really do follow you into your adult years," she mused. I nearly fell off my chair. Finally she understood... something I thought would never happen.
Since that time, our relationship has deepened. I call her and we talk for an hour or an hour and a half at a time, when before, I'd avoid doing that and she'd call and send me on a guilt trip, and then I'd call her or write her out of a sense of duty, and even then the conversation was superficial. Now, it's so different. We talk about "real" things - spiritual things, important things, things of the heart. Often.
And the best part is I've noticed a softening in her, a desire to be free of the fear that has been such a part of her life for over 70 years. She has asked me some very pointed questions. Me, of all people - the one before whom she did not dare be wrong. How ironic is that! She's nearly ready to admit that she is powerless over other people, the very first step in healing.
I couldn't be more pleased for her. She's about to start an amazing journey.
Even more embarrassing because she was the last person I WANTED to be like.
I grew up terrified of her. Her temper was ... red-hot and dangerous. At 8 years old and less than half her height, I ran away when she lost her temper; that only made her more angry. After she caught up with me, well, it wasn't pretty. Though I would have denied it at the time because I protected myself from the truth in order to cope, deep down, I believed she was a monster.
That was my unconscious perception of my mother for over forty years. Everyone thought she was a saint; I even deluded myself into thinking that she was, that I was being brought up in a "Christian" home, that I was lucky she was bringing me up right. But she wasn't. When she got mad, I'd better not be the one in her cross-hairs or I would be in for it. Aside from the times she lost her temper and lashed out physically, the constant criticism became second nature to her. She didn't even know she was doing it. In fact, she thought she was raising me right.
I hid from the bare facts of my childhood until I was 42 years old. And when I finally faced them, I nearly went insane with rage. How dare she! How dare they!! Everyone in the family was complicit. We weren't allowed to talk about what went on inside those walls. Only after I couldn't run from it anymore - not that long ago - did I realize how very angry, hurt, and resentful I was against her for robbing me of the right to be a child. For over five years I was unable to forgive her. For the first two of them, I couldn't even stand the sight of her. I cut her completely out of my life. I did come to some modicum of tolerance for her. I thought I had forgiven her, but I had only made excuses for her behavior and never really faced my own feelings.
So as I got into a spiritual process of recovery and began to systematically look at these hurts, I realized that I had to forgive her, but I was a very long way from that. And it was suggested to me that as a child, I was never allowed to feel my feelings but had to stuff them deep inside. Feelings, I was told by my counselor, were healthy to express in safe ways. Feelings are for feeling. That's what they are designed to do. They are a pressure relief valve, a signal that something is wrong and needs to be righted, or that something is right and needs to be enjoyed in the moment.
I journaled my forgiveness journey. I wrote down all the big - and little - things she did and said that hurt me and how that affected me at the time, the messages her behavior gave me, how terrifying it all was, the repercussions throughout my lfe, and how limiting it still was for me as an adult. In putting this all on paper, I gave myself an avenue, and permission, to express all those feelings that should have come out when I was a child, but I didn't have the self-awareness or the emotional maturity - or a safe enough forum - to do it at the time. I was too busy surviving.
I cried and cried and cried. For weeks. All that hurt poured out of me, in tears, and in ink on paper... I poured out to God all the bitterness and the anguish that a small child of eight years old could feel after 40 years of holding it in. Occasionally - and these times were precious - I spoke to my inner child and told her the things she should have heard, true things that countered the lies that she was no good, that she was evil, stupid, crazy. Truthful things like she was special, that she could be herself and people could like her just the way she was, that she didn't have to change for anyone, that what happened to her wasn't her fault. Day after day - all that garbage poured out of my spirit. It needed to come out into the open; it was killing me inside.
As all of this emotion came to the surface, it became clear to me that what she did to me was wrong. It might have been for the right reasons sometimes - but the way she went about it was wrong. She didn't know how to praise or encourage. She thought it shouldn't be necessary because she didn't need it growing up. She felt sorry for her mom, who was herself a victim of spousal abuse, and so my mom did everything in her power to make her own mother's life better. It was different for me; I was terrified of my mom and did my best to avoid her attention, because the attention was doled out in criticism, fault-finding, and abuse.
As the built-up pressure came out of me, as the tears washed away the hurt and the rage, the storms subsided and more and more often there was a calm. The knowledge that what she did to me was wrong ... was a revelation to me. I had taken the first step in forgiveness. "What you did was wrong." And the second followed it: "What you did hurt me - in ways you can't even begin to imagine." And the third, "I have a perfect right to be angry!"
Expressing that anger - to God, whose shoulders are so broad and who loves me so unconditionally, was the only safe outlet for that amount of rage. He was so patient, so kind. He held me and let me rant, let me weep, let me do whatever the child in me had to do to get that poison out.
Slowly, a new realization dawned on me. I began to understand that I wanted her to pay for what she had done - not just pay, but pay ME back. And then I remembered something that Joyce Meyer said. Something about what happens when someone hurts you - it's like they stole something from you. Something irreplaceable. Like self-respect. Or self-esteem. "But they don't have it anymore," she said. "The moment they took that thing from you, it flew from their hands and they couldn't give it back to you even if they wanted to!!"
It was like being owed a bad debt. They owed; they couldn't pay. It could stay on the books for a long time, or ... I could write it off.
All that was left was for me to make a choice. Was I going to keep that debt on the books or was I going to write it off - the way a bankruptcy trustee writes off the debt of someone who's unable to pay his or her creditors?
I struggled with this for quite a while. The words of a speaker I heard once at an AA meeting came to me. She talked about having to forgive her mother over and over and over, and that it came slowly after a long time of consistently doing that. But she kept at it and it eventually reached her heart. That made such a big impact on me!
Finally I prayed, "Lord, I'm willing for You to make me willing to forgive her in my heart. By the power of the sacrifice of Jesus, and definitely not my own strength, I choose to forgive her, as often and as many times as it takes to be real to me."
Honestly, I'm not exactly sure when it happened. It was gradual, as I kept turning that over to Him again and again, being honest with Him about it, asking Him to take it one more time, yet again, and ... thanking Him for His patience. But as I did, I started to see my mother in a new light...as someone who herself was emotionally stunted at the age of two years old by her abusive stepfather, and who was deeply bound up in her own fear. One day as I was thinking about her, I found myself - well, misting over. I looked within and found that God had given me compassion for this woman. I found myself wanting to help her, not retaliate.
That's when I knew that I had forgiven her in my heart. What an amazing feeling!
That's when I started noticing other things too. I believe that something spiritual happened in the heavenlies when forgiveness finally won. I remember sitting across the table from her during a visit, blown away as she opened up in detail for the first time to me about her growing-up years. She, who just a few short years previous had been unable to understand how I could be upset about things that happened 40 years ago, admitted to me that she grew up in fear, and that she was still afraid. "I guess things that happen to you when you're little really do follow you into your adult years," she mused. I nearly fell off my chair. Finally she understood... something I thought would never happen.
Since that time, our relationship has deepened. I call her and we talk for an hour or an hour and a half at a time, when before, I'd avoid doing that and she'd call and send me on a guilt trip, and then I'd call her or write her out of a sense of duty, and even then the conversation was superficial. Now, it's so different. We talk about "real" things - spiritual things, important things, things of the heart. Often.
And the best part is I've noticed a softening in her, a desire to be free of the fear that has been such a part of her life for over 70 years. She has asked me some very pointed questions. Me, of all people - the one before whom she did not dare be wrong. How ironic is that! She's nearly ready to admit that she is powerless over other people, the very first step in healing.
I couldn't be more pleased for her. She's about to start an amazing journey.
Wow. What an amazing healing experience. You know part of my story and how much I can relate to this post. You inspire me to keep digging deeper and never give up!
ReplyDeletePosted on Facebook: (by L. MacD)
ReplyDeleteLovely Judy...and Praise God..He always works things out as we lean into Him , time and time again...he never tires of our leaning..
I never cease to be blown away by how God can use even the most horrible of experiences to help someone else. And I am so grateful that He keeps that invitation open to trade in my ashes for His beauty.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing part of your story, Little M... it actually got me to thinking about my own journey. If my story can inspire you, whom I admire so much - that blesses me, no end.