Flowers and Hearts

We're coming up on one of the hardest times of year for me - Mothers Day. It's difficult to wade through the messages everywhere that all mothers are saintly. Some just ... aren't ... No matter what anyone else believes, nobody really knows what goes on behind closed doors ... except the ones behind those doors. Some kinds of memories can sour the pleasures of the present.

And of course, the annual event (and its hype) is also a reminder of one of my children who is not here anymore to wish me a happy Mothers Day. . . that kind of pain never goes away, but is more keenly felt on the 2nd Sunday in May.

For those of you who are fortunate enough to have had a wonderful mother, I am glad that you did. If your wonderful mother is still living, be sure to tell her - and show her (not just one day a year) - that you love and appreciate her. That means a lot more than gushy words in a card, pretty flowers or corsages, and chocolates once a year.

If your wonderful mother has passed away at any time (and especially recently) - I grieve with you for having lost someone very special in your life.

And if (like me) how you feel about your mom is "complicated" and you have mixed feelings (at best) about Mother's Day - and especially IF you are a mother with that kind of background ... might I offer my perspective?  I have learned through trial and error (mostly error) that the best way to survive the last week of April and the first half of May (with all the advertising campaigns capitalizing on guilt and shame) is to focus on the present and BE a good mom all year round. 

A good mom is one whose children feel safe to be themselves around her.
 

Photo "Dandelions" courtesy of sattva at
www.freedigitalphotos.net

"Now" is important.  Now matters. Continue breaking the cycle of bad parenting, abuse, and/or neglect. Treat your children - no matter how young - like the real people they are, not just as miniature extensions of yourself. Don't set them up to be laughed at - and NEVER laugh at them or call them names, or dismiss their "little feelings" (there is NOTHING "little" about feelings) as "cute" just because the reason for their distress seems minor to you. 

Respect their boundaries. Take their side. Celebrate their accomplishments. Go to bat for them when they are treated unfairly.  Say please and thank you to your children, and MEAN it. Say you're sorry to their face (and MEAN it) when you mess up. Teach them basic housekeeping and cooking techniques, do these tasks together, and teach them the joy of helping others for its own sake, not to avoid punishment or gain a material reward.  They will remember for the rest of their lives the way you treat them when they are little.  They will also remember how you treat others who have little or no power, and when they grow up, they will most likely treat others the same way.

And when the day comes (whether they're three or sixty-three) when they want to honour you for being that good Mom - and they will - don't rob them of that joy.  Smile and say thank you.  Even if all they bring you is dandelions, if it comes from the heart, see the heart behind it, look them in the eyes with all the love you have inside, and say thank you.

Self-talk

Any new venture can be exciting, but it can also be overwhelming.

Since I was accepted into an online grad school, I've been quite busy preparing for September. Whenever there is a lull in the activity, my meta-brain kicks in and I start having doubts, second-guessing myself.

It's been over twenty-five years since I graduated from university with a Bachelor's degree. I'm over fifty years old - what am I doing by launching out into a new career path at this stage in my life? how many years would I have left?

Taken right down to its most basic message, my doubting and questioning boils down to one accusation: "Just who do you think you are?"

Interesting question! Still more interesting that once reduced to its most basic nature, it becomes clear where it's coming from: the well-worn recording I have in my head that was etched deeply into my psyche from the time I was a child. That recording says, "You're a screw-up. You'll never amount to anything. Nobody's ever done anything like that before in this family. What, do you think you're better than we are?" 

Oh really?

This kind of thinking is part of the old life. That was the old me - and I am not that person any more. I don't have to listen to it and I certainly don't have to accept it, because it's not true.

The key to getting a song out of your head, they say, is to have an "eraser song" lined up that is more powerful, more meaningful, and more positive than the one you just can't shake. It's the same with thoughts, beliefs about yourself. 

"A new day dawning" - I took this photo
in May 2010 when we were staying at
Killarney B&B, a scent-free space
in Bedford, Nova Scotia.

My "eraser thoughts" look something like this lately: "I need to do this! No more cow-towing. Even if nothing ever comes of this latest venture, I am doing this for me, not for anyone else. I'm not my past, nor am I stuck there. The voices from that awful, hurtful place don't hold any power over me any more. I can do this. I can take whatever comes, one day at a time, just like always.  I'm worth the extra work and expense. It's time to look after my own well-being." 

Self-talk is important. What I say to myself about myself can make quite an impact. It makes the difference between being swept away on the wave of the opinions and thoughts of those around me, and being built up to withstand the onslaught of criticism and negativity - even if that stuff comes from me ... or from some person in my past who, perhaps out of some sense of inadequacy, paralyzed me with shame, trampled on my dreams and crushed nearly every spark of individuality out of me. 

I'm not that person any more. Sometimes I barely recognize myself. On the whole, I like myself better now. That someone else might still see me the way I used to be, needn't dictate the choices I make now. 

And if they can't handle or accept who I am now... that's their loss, not mine.

The Gift of Acceptance

When I was growing up, I was in survival mode.  I spent a lot of time just making it from one day to the next without drawing attention to myself.  I didn't think I deserved anything good because I was told I deserved the opposite. I was the heir to a generational curse that began two to three generations back - one that sprang from poverty at the turn of the 20th century and the subsequent depression.  My parents (especially my mother) were bullied as children and never got away from the bullies - who had kids who in turn bullied me.  Of course, so did my mom, but that is a different story.  

As a result, friends were hard to come by.  I rarely had any friends, because hardly anybody wanted to befriend someone with a bull's eye painted on her back.  (Those that did, already had targets on their backs.)  And because friends were so scarce (I never had any more than 3 friends at a time and even then, not until high school), the title of "best friend" became fiercely competitive, sought after, and a source of great distress if someone else won it. It left the others feeling like losers. Less than.  Rejected.  The next step in that parade was that the one who chose a different best friend would eventually gravitate away from me, get other interests, move on and leave me friendless. 

Again. 

After I married and moved away, that mentality followed me.  Any friendships I had were with one, at the most three people at once. And I cringed every time one of my friends referred to another person as his or her "best friend".   To me, it meant that I wasn't good enough.  That I was being rejected.  That I would be abandoned.  

When I got into recovery from codependency back in February 2009, I learned a whole new lifestyle - a lifestyle of letting go with love.  Much of that lifestyle is based on accepting what is - and that is something that I cannot manufacture. 

It is a gift.  It's a gift I pray for and that God gives.  I don't have it in me to accept what I can't change.  In fact, everything in me rails against it.  I STILL cringe when I hear a friend say that someone else is their best friend.  It triggers all those old feelings and fears in me, feelings of inadequacy, and fears of rejection and abandonment ... even though I know that it's probably not true.  I pray for the strength to accept and I pray for the acceptance itself.  And I have to keep praying for it - because it kind of leaks out or gets used up, I haven't figured out exactly which. 

But acceptance is the key to enjoying today (that is, not letting the 'what ifs' rob me of being happy today), the key to evicting stress from my life.  Once I started (with God's help) accepting that other people not only make their own choices but are supposed to do so without my input, and to bear the consequences of their own actions without me rescuing them, the burden of caring for them in that unhealthy way ...  just lifted. 

It doesn't mean that I'm not ready to lend a hand when God asks that of me.  It just means that I no longer consider myself obligated to do so "just because" I'm that person's spouse / mother / sister / daughter / friend. I'm learning that I am me and that everyone has boundaries, including me.  Crossing those boundaries without permission is a recipe for disaster.  

It also means that I can be okay with my friends having other friends that they consider closer to them than they consider me to be.  Any success I have on that front is more a function of how well I like myself rather than how much they like me, anyway. If I keep focused on accepting people, places and things as they are, praying for the serenity to do so - I fare better.  I don't go off pinging into the danger zone and sabotaging relationships that are important to me by giving in to my fears.  I LET.  With God's empowerment ("to want to, and to do"), I let life happen to me, and accept it on its own terms.  

It's His gift to me.  And that is a gift for which I am repeatedly grateful.

Breaking the cycle

Hurting people hurt people. 

It's a saying I've heard before - and I use it frequently, because it's true.  If all a person has ever known is abuse, ridicule, abandonment, and betrayal, it's all that person expects, and after a while it is seen as normal, just the way the world works.  

But it doesn't work like that.  There are people who wake up in the morning and don't wonder how many times or how deeply they'll get hurt that day.  For many years I didn't know that, because it was the way I lived life.  And I thought it was normal.  It WAS normal - for me.  

But it wasn't right.

The problem with that cycle of abuse is that once it's seen as normal, the tendency is to react to things the way the abuser did, even if the abuser is long gone.  

I remember an incident that happened when my first child was about 8 months old.  The poor kid was teething, and it hurt a lot. And she cried just about non-stop. Nothing I did helped: ice in a facecloth, Anbesol, bread sticks to chew on, the list went on and on.  I was getting more and more exasperated as the days wore on interminably; my patience was wearing thin.  

I'd taken about six hours of trying to ease her suffering one day, and it seemed to me that she just WOULD not stop (not could not: my perception, another danger sign).  I felt a wave of irrational anger build up in me and I knew that if I stayed in the room with her for one more second, I'd do something I would regret later.  I fled to another room, laid my back and my head against the wall, as if the wall somehow would give me the strength I needed to keep from losing my temper and terrorizing my child.  Before I knew it, one of my legs drew forward and I kicked the wall behind me with my heel, hard, in frustration.  And my heel went through the wall and stuck there ... until I wiggled it out.  

I turned around and saw a five-inch gaping hole in the drywall where my heel had gone into it. 

Found this picture HERE

The sight of that hole, and knowing that if I'd stayed in the room with her... well, it wouldn't have been good ... sobered my thinking.  The anger was replaced with a healthy dose of awe mixed with fear.  I left that hole in the wall and didn't want it to be repaired.  For years it stayed there as a reminder to me that people have feelings and things don't, that I was capable of the same kind of evil that I experienced as a child from angry parents, and that it was wrong to take out my frustrations on my kids. Period.  

I didn't know how to deal with the intensity of my pent-up emotions; I was afraid of them and shoved them down inside of me, and sometimes they'd boil over and I'd scare myself again.  It wasn't until after my children were both in their teens - and had already shut me out of their lives - that God showed me the root of the problem and I knew that I had to break that cycle, that self-perpetuating message I'd heard ever since I was a kid ... and that if I wasn't careful, I'd continue to pass that message on to my own kids without even being aware of it.

You know the message I mean. Or perhaps (lucky you) you don't.  It's the one that comes from a person that thinks he or she knows what love is - but doesn't.  It's the one that says,
- You're no good.
- Nothing you ever do or say is good enough.
- Go away, you bother me.  My problems are more important than yours are. Than you are.
- Your feelings don't matter.  Get rid of them. I don't want to listen to it.
- You don't deserve my protection; I'm not ever going to take your side.
- You were put on this earth to make me look good.  Shame on you if you don't.
- All I need you for ... is to do chores. 
- You don't deserve a "thank you."  Not even once.
- You deserve to be beaten. Hard, fast, and repeatedly. With whatever object is handy (and if no object, a hand.)  Until my arm is tired. And without a chance to tell your side. Not once.
- If you EVER tell people about what goes on here, I'll make sure you suffer for it.  You'll end up looking like the worst liar or the worst ingrate that ever lived. 
- Nobody will ever love you.
- You'll never amount to anything.  If you do, though, I'll take the credit for it for "raising you right."
- What you think doesn't matter.  YOU don't matter.

It's hard to break that kind of cycle.  It took a long time to build - generations in fact - and it took concerted and sustained effort to break it.  Every message I got as a child, even though it screamed in my mind, I had to frequently and immediately counter with the (new-to-me) truth I was learning:
- I have intrinsic worth.
- I can contribute to a conversation and not be ridiculed.
- What I feel matters.  Shoving my feelings down inside of me and denying their existence is hurting me.  I can express them safely.
- I can trust my own judgment. I can be wrong, and I can start over.
- I have a purpose.  I deserve to have a life, to exist, to occupy space.  I don't have to apologize for it.
- I can find pleasure in doing things for people.  It's okay if they thank me; (I should say "You are welcome" when they do, rather than deflecting their praise with religious platitudes.)
- The abuse was WRONG. IT WAS WRONG.  I did not deserve it.
- Children are people too.  Doing something to hurt their feelings and then laughing when they cry ... is sick and wrong. 
- The truth is the truth, whether or not people believe it. I can't change what other people do, think, or say.
- I can be loved for who I am, not just for what I can do. 
- I can take pride in my accomplishments because I worked hard for them. 
- I matter.  I am entitled to have an opinion.

My kids - by the way - will be the first ones to tell you that their mother, while far from perfect, has undergone a radical transformation in the last three-plus years. They feel more comfortable telling me things - confiding in me, because they know I won't "freak out" like I once did and that I'll actually listen.  

Yes, breaking the cycle is hard.  But when I remember what that vicious circle was like - there's NO WAY I'd want to go back to it.