Learning to Forgive My Difficult Mother

This is a series of essays that have not appeared before on this blog. They were taken from my book, Surrendering to Joy, which I wrote in the year immediately following my daughter Teal’s death in 2012.

The other morning, as I lay awake in the post-dawn light, a dream fragment meandered through my mind. I saw my mother’s favorite Liberty scarf, one she gave me, with a hole worn clean through it.

It was not a big hole. It had not been cut or torn; it looked like a picked-at, worn-through sort of hole.

And it was not the work of mice or moths. It was the work of my greatest undertaking: restoring my self-esteem after my mother’s petulant, erratic care.

I am not here to point fingers and assign blame to a woman, now dead, who did the best she could with skimpy emotional means. Yes, I’m pissed right now. But who cares?

The bottom line is that the hole in that scarf is emblematic of a larger truth. As soon as I dreamed the image, I saw that this hole could not be repaired. There was no patch that could be put on it to hide it.

Rather it was a hole that had to be owned, seen and accepted. I realize now that the veil of my mother’s infinite ability to charm me has worn through. It is my job to finally tell the truth and own what happened in my childhood.

I’m inclined to love charmers of all kinds: weavers of big tales, blue-eyed beauties, charismatic front-of-the-room types. How I want to believe their clever, seductive stories – just like I wanted to be seduced by my mother and her Grace Kelly appeal. This has gotten me into trouble more than once, for I was a girl with a big imagination and I still am. I wanted my life to play out in sunlit lace, just like a really good romance circa 1962. And sometimes it did.

 For as many dark recesses as our family slid into, there were also gorgeous highs.

Coming in from sledding to my mother’s amazing spaghetti dinners. Trips to her best friend’s house to swim and eat take-out real Philly cheesesteaks. Blissful shopping trips downtown to Bonwit Teller’s to pick out the perfect outfit.

How I have feasted on these memories, playing them again and again in my mind – even as I navigated the utter chaos of life.

There’s a word for this. It’s called denial.

I can’t remember much of the abuse my borderline mother dealt me because I was too busy hanging onto the fantasy that my childhood was “just fine.”

This fantasy existed because it was necessary to protect my soul from the plate hurling, the fights, and the name-calling. I went to bed scared and woke up scared, never knowing when Mom the Monster would emerge again. I lived on the edge of my nerves throughout most of my childhood, terrified I would make a slip and do the wrong thing.

I assumed everybody lived this way.

Lately, my sister and I have been having some powerful conversations. Unlike me, she remembers exactly what happened. And why. And when. Our past helps explain why I have chosen some of the love partners I have. And why I have shrunk from my own power again and again in this life, out of nothing more than fear of reprisal.

I see now that my mother was rendered jealous by all that I had to give – except for those times she was actually proud, God bless her.

The very sad truth is that my mother really did give me the best she could, just as all mothers do.

How could she not? As mothers, we are biochemically wired to deliver warmth, food, love and shelter to our kids. Even the most severely psychotic among us must respond some way and somehow. There simply is no other choice.

Yet when there is a thin margin between your duties as a mother and your own mental illness, there is hell to pay. With that hell comes all the attendant baggage.

Now I consider the hole in Mom’s scarf an omen of sorts. It’s a warning to not rush myself in the healing process, nor to throw the book at my mother like a stern traffic court judge. That tattered hole is a warning to take good care of myself as I tread these rough waters, a warning to observe, record and feel, thoughtfully and thoroughly.

And to remember that despite the harshness, my mother truly loved me. She gave me that scarf one day as an act of love, even though it was one of her favorites. She wanted more than anything to avoid being the vindictive, erratic shrew that her own mother was.

Even in her pain, Boo told me how she loved me again and again, and I know it is true. Just as most of us do, no matter how sad or distorted that love may get.

Now, as I own what happened, my most tender feelings are beginning to emerge. And I am sinking into the surrender that reality really is the best choice. Always.

What could I have done to prevent my mother’s addiction and abuse? Nothing. And what could she have done to prevent it? Not much, given what she was dealing with and how little support she gave herself along the way.

As with everything, it was all part of God’s most perfect design, delivered for me to deconstruct one day so I can share it with you. For in this writing is my own healing. If you can relate to this, perhaps yours is as well.

God bless you, Boo, wherever you are.

Slowly I am finding my way back to gratitude for all that you once were.

***

Reprinted from my book, Surrendering to Joy.

 

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