My Mother, Myself
Thursday, April 17th 2008 @ 4:34 PM (not yet rated)
My sister and I have always had a secret pact. If I start acting like Mom, she is to just shoot me. We have always laughed about it while we were complaining about Mom and her emotional tirades, her selfishness, and her insensitivity.
I recently had a session with our Spirit Reader, Lisa and she said that my mom did not know how to relate to me from the time I was born. I think that is true. My mother was 18 when she had me, and really just a child herself. She was living out the role that was expected of her: graduate from high school, marry as soon as possible, and start a family. I was born in the heat of a Kansas July in the times when there was no air conditioning and we lived in a rural area. She had no book stores, no internet, no sisters, and really no friends. All she had was my grandmother. Mom yelled a lot when we were growing up. She was unhappy as far back as I can remember. She locked us in our bedrooms every afternoon and she would sleep. It never occurred to me that having a mother that slept all afternoon was unusual. It’s only been in the last two years that I realized she was severely depressed when we were growing up. I talked to her about it last year for the first time, and she told me at one point she fell on her knees crying, and asked God to help her. She said things were a little better after that.
I call Mom every few weeks and she talks about herself. I’m ok with that now. She needs someone to talk to and vent her frustrations, and I finally got that I don’t need her to be present for me; I need to be present for her. My 99 year old grandmother is in a beautiful new room at the nursing home and complains every day. It’s how she has always been. I told my Mom that Grandma could be in the Hilton and she would still complain. I come from a long line of complainers and I am determined to break the pattern. I finally realized that my complaining about my mother was just perpetuating the cycle. As a matter of fact, I was complaining to my BuzZen group about my mother who was complaining about my grandmother, who was complaining about the nursing home. Wake up, Donna! How many years would I have continued to do that not even realizing that my complaining nature was the very thing that repelled me about my mother?
One of the most awakening moments for me came when I learned about The Turnaround. In a synchronicity, I found the work of a woman named Byron Katie. It is actually called The Work. What she does is amazing and works on every situation in your life. It starts with writing down thoughts that are causing you difficulties in relationships and in your life. Then you take the thoughts and put them to a test of four questions. It’s one of the methods I am strongly committed to in my coaching because the results are faster and have far greater impact than anything I have ever seen. So simply put, The Turnaround is this: when I have the thought “My mother complains too much”, I simply turn the sentence around and reverse it. “I complain too much”. And then I realize that the very thought I have that is causing me to suffer is really about me. The acceptance of personal responsibility has great truth. The thought, “My mother should not talk about herself so much” is turned around to “I should not think about myself so much while my mother is talking” or “My mother should talk more about herself.” And, is that true? Well, it would lead to a greater understanding of who I am to find out more about her, because I am my mother. The Turnaround is always there if you are willing to look for it.
This is the most important self work I have ever done. It was always easy to see who I was through my dad’s image. I modeled myself after him, because I deemed my mother unworthy. It has been far more enlightening to face and embrace my mother’s side. Every place, every thought of my mother’s unworthiness reflected in making myself unworthy. My mother and my father have done battle inside me for years and now they are coming together to make me a whole person, as I understand who I am, and am brave enough to see my own shadow. My mother is an amazing woman who did the best she could in the situation she was in. There are many wonderful things about my mother that I have overlooked for many years.
In honor of my mother, Lois:
"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
that saved a wretch like me....
I once was lost but now am found,
was blind, but now, I see.”
Donna Fleetwood
Head Beekeeper/Coach
