Letting Go of Who I Wanted My Mother to Be
By Alma Frances Pellett
For much of my life, the examples I’ve had of womanhood have been aspirational. Mothers who took care of their families in and out of the home, who had passions, failings, and interests encompassing the entirety of life. My own mother was no exception to this, being my primary example of the kind of woman I wanted to be. She’s the reason I am proud to be a feminist, an example of how to survive the death of a child (twice!) and still manage to creep along, an explorer of wanting to learn about the world around her, just as I have tried to do in my life.
But in these most recent years, as I have been applying my understanding to my own life as a woman, little things have appeared in the internal image I built of my mother. Some casual phrase here that hurts those I care about, a reminder of things in her history that were much darker, a bit of callousness seeping through. The deep feeling of love and pride is still there, and the encouragement to explore and live my own life, but those very human failings seem bigger as the years progress.
Communication has become sporadic, going to superficial or safe topics to avoid conversations that cause nothing but a feeling of loss in me for weeks afterward. I never minded my father being difficult to talk to, but my mother? This is far more personal. I don’t want to chance losing what little I have.
Most every woman I know has struggled with this at some point in her life, even more than those who have been surprised to see their mother in the mirror. Some have cut off communication altogether, including with anyone who expresses similar feelings. Some have stuck through, trying to be a source for others who might be in the same situation. Some have had no mother at all. But all are working at finding what is right for them, as a person.
But what will be best for me? I don’t yet know. I only know that I’ve managed to shape her in my image, the person I strive to be.
Will I ever get to know her, the real her? When at some point in the distant future I get to see all of who she is, good and bad, complex, deep, making her way through life having gone through some of the same struggles I now have, will I still love her? Will she still love me?
I think we will. It’ll just be a different kind of love, something much more real. But for now, the challenge is in simply letting go of the woman I wanted her to be.
Alma Frances Pellett is a software developer, writer, and mother to five autism spectrum children, working to be the woman she always wanted to be.
