When I was 2, my mother left my dad and moved to Hawaii. According to her, we had a two room hut and lived just off a ditch. I don't remember much about that time in my life but it has been a source of some problems that I have only recently been introduced to.
I don't believe we have to know all the things that affected us to be able to let them go but this one was a turning point for me. There were lots of things that happened during that time but one big one was a boyfriend of my mom who (according to my mom) loved me more than he loved her so she couldn't marry him.
Now, I had no reason to disbelieve my mom's story until recently. My journey to clean up my disproportionate thinking has brought me to some realizations of some things I was taught by my mother. I've worked past the physical abuse, slogged through some of the mental abuse and learned to love myself just as I am (despite the fact my mom believed I was a punishment from something horrible she did in a past life).
Though I always knew she had self esteem issues, I never really understood how that was forced on me until I started looking at the some of my mom's parenting practices that I was led to believe were loving. The song, "You and Me Against the World" by Helen Reddy was "our song." As a 2 year old that is a lot of responsibility! I wasn't old enough to be in the equation. I should have been being taken care of instead of relied on. It was painted as a place of honor. I've decided it was not an honor I no longer want to keep up with it.
She spent many hours trying to be a better mother to me than she had for herself....at least in her eyes. (I didn't see my grandmother as just an old person trying to get into heaven.) Much of what my mother did, she said would better my life. Too much of it was how she wanted things for herself (things she felt were missing in her childhood) but she left out so many of the things I needed to actually feel the love she said she was showing me.
Oh, I knew she loved me, in her own way. Now that my kids are grown, I look back and wonder how many times that my sacrificed needs to give them what they said they wanted, were really understood by them? Or was I just passing buck. My kids are all different than me and not one of them gets me, like I felt like I got my Grammie.
One thing is certain, my kids all knew they were loved....or at least...they say they always knew I loved them. It was the same thing I told my mother when asked that question.
One thing is certain, my kids all knew they were loved....or at least...they say they always knew I loved them. It was the same thing I told my mother when asked that question.
No comments:
Post a Comment