My mother wound bust all of its stitches and demanded to be healed, properly this time around.
“I have to go back and be happy! I have to paint toes and smile at my children and sit down to dinner. You get to go hide up in your room!!!” I screamed at my mother in the middle of the highway, rain beginning to fall, as I stood on a bridge overlooking a powerful, unstoppable river.
The Rogue River, the river I have lived on for the last year and a half, like a fish out of water, transplanted from the big city that was my home for more than four decades.
The river that just keeps moving, no matter what. No matter the season. No matter the weather. The river is constant. I walk the highway to the river several times a week for exercise and peace amid the chaos of my crazy household.
The river has come to represent the inevitability of life for me in a way the ocean never did. The ocean always symbolized possibilities, infinity, endlessness, vastness. Hope.
The river, on the other hand, feels relentless to me.
My husband, sister, and brother in law all fell into the river last summer on a beautiful sunny day, and each one of them feared for their lives in those split seconds.
The river just keeps moving, raking you over boulders, pulling you under, spitting you out again, moving moving moving.
The ocean can be calm.
Not the river. The river is never calm.
“What am I doing here? Why have I come here? What is my purpose here?” I have been asking myself over the last 16 months.
“What is my work?”
Yes, I am writing a book. I am planning for a more settled home for our family of four. I am building a content creation business from the ground up with no experience. I am learning. I am writing, in fits and starts, trying to put down on page a lifetime of failures and lessons.
All of that. Yes.
But there’s been this echo inside of me, urging me deeper, deeper, deeper.
And I think I have been resisting that urge without realizing it. I have been sticking very close to the surface of my feelings, relying on all I have learned about personal growth, detachment, spirituality, in the previous two years. I realize I have actively avoided reading literature on personal development and spirituality. I have stuck to biographies, politics and other mainstream nonfiction, and fantasy fiction.
I have not even really dug into my witchcraft work, herbs and spells, improving my meditation and prayer work.
I’ve been drifting, riding on the waves of what brought me here, but not examining the actual state of being here.
I certainly have not entertained the idea that I might still have mother wound work to do.
Why Am I Here?
I moved in with my mother and grandmother under the auspices of taking a break from the crazy hustle and bustle of earning an income, paying bills, and go go going to keep up with the status quo.
Most of that plan fell apart almost instantly.
My mother and grandmother were hanging on by a financial thread to their way of life, and so I took over the bills of the house.
My grandmother had very recently begun her rapid descent into dementia, and so a healthy portion of her care fell to me.
My mother, though three years free from her abusive marriage, was still in the doldrums of a life and dreams unrealized, so much of the emotional work of keeping her spirits up showed up at my door, both physical and metaphorical.
And that is where I found myself last night, on the highway, in the rain, screaming at my mother. Ripping open my mother wound.
Church
It all started with our usual Sunday morning “church.”
Quite often on Sunday mornings my mother and I find ourselves on the front patio in chairs when it is nice outside or snuggled on the couch on colder days, coffee in hand, kids playing around us, talking about the deeper aspects in life.
Love, loss, the universe, meaning, purpose, hope.
It was a good talk, this cold and foggy Sunday morning. We talked about being more intentional with our lives, taking spirituality and philosophical study more seriously, going deeper into self knowledge, self care, and self love.
I actually set the intention to be more introspective, to go deeper.
My mom committed to working on her philosophy, and on self love.
My mom has struggled with self love her whole life, something that she admires in me, her oldest daughter and the biggest promoter of self love she knows, and yet can’t quite grasp herself.
It is… ephemeral… just beyond her reach, reach though she does.
It all, always, comes back to how unworthy of real love she is, all her mistakes, her flaws, her imperfections, play like a highlight reel of failures through her busy head all day long. Her only escape from it all is her fantastical romance novels.
Her only relief from constant feelings of inadequacy.
Things. Things. Things.
So, as we were about to embark on a walk together (I invited her to come along with me as part of a “move more” campaign), she found her sewing machine sitting out in the rain in a garbage heap we are preparing for a dump run.
For a bit of background: my husband and I have had to make several dump runs from this house. My grandmother and her husband lived here for 25 years and stacked and stocked and piled things into cabinets and cupboards and sheds and garages for all that time.
Before we even moved in, we helped pack up multiple washing machines, lawn mowers, tables and chairs, blankets upon blankets, and boxes of stuff in disrepair or disuse.
One of our goals in living here is to help improve the property, which itself has fallen into disrepair, while also making this space livable for the six of us.
That means dump runs and throwing things away that have not been used and will likely never be used.
Toss It
Carlos and I also have a problem with throwing things away.
“Toss it.” Has become a common expression between us, with our own stuff as well as, sometimes regrettably, the stuff that does not belong to us.
It’s hard to run a household of six with very little help while up to your neck in crap.
But I digress.
“Who threw this away!?” My mom came into the house from outside, vibrating with frustration.
I had no idea. I had never even seen the sewing machine and had no idea where it had been or come from.
So it had to be Carlos.
“Huh? What? I don’t know.” My husband’s favorite response when he’s caught doing something he’s not supposed to do.
“I’m sorry, Mom. We didn’t know.” I said.
Still pretty pissed, she carried her sewing machine up to her room and came back down to walk with me.
As we walked down the highway, my mother walked closer and closer to the edge of the very narrow shoulder of the road.
“Don’t walk close to me.” She said.
I looked over at her.
“I might get hit by a big truck, and I wouldn’t want you to get caught in the mess.”
Melodrama and the Mother Wound
This is my mom. Very fatalistic. I’m used to it. I come from it. I embodied it myself for most of my life.
High drama.
You see, I’ve done all my mother wound work. Or so I thought. I know my mom through and through. I know she’s doing the best she can with what she’s got. I know she’s got a lot of work to do to heal her own wounds. I know she’s terribly sorry for my painful childhood and early adulthood she was a part of. I know that everything she does that may seem hurtful or vindictive comes from a place not of anger at anyone else but anger and even loathing with herself.
So I did what I always do, at first.
“Mom. You’re supposed to be working on your mental diet. Remember? It’s just a thing. A sewing machine. It doesn’t make Carlos right, but your anger is unwarranted. This is too much for this situation.” I said, calmly, removed. Superior.
“No!” She stomped her feet on the highway. “No!”
Fortunately, by this point, we had made it to the sidewalk, so I wasn’t worried she would throw herself into traffic. At least not too worried.
“I’m not angry. I’m frustrated. It’s like my things don’t matter. Like I don’t matter. I don’t think he even cares about me. It’s like he looks at my things and says ‘fuck it.'” She told me.
“Mom, you actually think Carlos is thinking in his head ‘fuck it’ about your things? You actually think he knows it’s yours, that it might be important to you, and that he says ‘fuck it?'” I asked.
“Yes! I don’t think he cares about me. I don’t think he respects me.” She insisted, stomping her foot again.
“Mom, if you think Carlos doesn’t care about you or respect you, then we shouldn’t live together.”
Instant calm. “I saw that one coming.” She said, resigned.
Ah. So here it is. The self-fulfilling prophecy.
It had all played out in her head long before we ever took this walk. She had had this conversation in her head with herself and she had predicted it would come to this. That we could not possibly live together if my husband doesn’t care about her. And she was sure, absolutely positive, that my husband did not care about her.
“Mom,” I began again. Trying to reason with her. The cycle. The cycle playing itself out like always. She goes into her fits of madness, unreachable with reason, the descent complete. I try desperately to reason with her, to bring her back, to show her the truth, the reality, that she is surrounded by people who love her.
That my husband, the most loving person I know, loves her.
“No! No! Even-“
“No Mom. I need to take a break.” I interrupted her.
I put my hood up as we crossed the bridge and the rain began to fall gently.
I hid my face, my thoughts swimming.
And then… inexplicably, I lost it.
I just lost it.
“Carlos chops your wood. He takes care of your dog. He’s constantly asking you what you need and how he can help you. He works for us every single day. He cooks, he cleans, he takes care of himself so he can take care of us. He has dedicated his whole life to us, to this family, and yes, you are included in this family. How can you possibly say he doesn’t care about you? This is crazy. Crazy! You have to change, Mom! Change!”
And now, of course, she’s calm. She’s humbled by my rage. She’s imagining this is all her fault. My feelings are all her fault.
“I’m sorry.” She said.
But I’m already too far gone.
“No! Now I have to go back and be happy! I have to paint toes and smile at my children and sit down to dinner. You get to go hide up in your room!!! After all of this! I came out here for a relaxing walk. I had my headset, and I was going to listen to my podcast! The single time in a day I get to have peace!” I yelled.
“Listen to your headset.” She said.
And then I completely and totally lost it, breaking down into shrieks and sobs. The mother wound gaped and gushed a river of pain.
“I left my headset at home!!!! For you!”
“For you!”
I screamed into the night, the river sweeping my wails all the way down to the Oregon coast. I’m sure of it.
And then I ran.
I ran and ran and ran until I couldn’t run anymore, away from my mother, away from my pain, away from I don’t know what.
I finally stopped at a post in the ground, resting my throbbing head against it, and I breathed and cried and breathed and cried and hit my knees.
I’m sure I looked like a mad fool, a true banshee, to passerby on the highway, but I didn’t care.
Then, I got up, I turned around, and I headed home.
Because I did in fact have to go back and be happy. I had to paint toes and sit down for dinner and kiss my babies and read books and laugh at silly jokes and be okay.
I had to be okay. My little family needed me to be okay. Motherhood demanded I be okay. Motherhood would not allow time for mother wound healing. Not right now, anyway.
And on that walk back, I had a mile and half to come to terms with myself.
“What is wrong with me? Why did I get so upset? I fucking lost it. Why?” I had this internal conversation, exploring parts of myself I had not touched in a long long time.
I’m usually very calm and collected with my mother, why had I fallen apart?
I’m sure some would say it is because I was triggered that the conversation had to do with my husband, and sure, maybe there was a small part of me that was frustrated by her inability in that moment to see my husband as the devoted son in law he is. But it was deeper, much deeper than that.
And then it hit me like lighting from the sky in the middle of the rain storm I was now marching home in.
“She doesn’t love you enough to change.” The little girl’s voice, little Shanna, whispered inside my head.
Oh fuck.
Oh.
Fuck.
It all came flooding in.
The mother wound.
“She doesn’t love me enough to leave him.”
“She doesn’t love me enough to make him stop.”
“She doesn’t love me enough to change.”
“She doesn’t love me enough to be better.”
“She knows better. But she won’t do better. Because she doesn’t love me enough.”
I had no idea I had been carrying these feelings inside of me since I was a child.
I was so sure I had done all of my mother wound work. So sure I had covered all my bases.
I was not angry with my mother. I was not even frustrated with her. I could be frustrated in moments, but I did not have any negative feelings about her anymore.
This, I came to see, was about me.
I had buried these feelings of unworthiness, of neediness, of pain, so deep inside, and then I had covered them over with superiority and calm. Detachment.
This was not about me needing my mother’s love. I knew she loved me in the only way she could.
This was about me connecting her love for me to her actions in her own life, even as they related to me.
This was about me needing her to prove her love to the little girl me.
I have spent my life examining mothers, when I was a child and now that I am a mother myself.
Examining them intensely.
I’ve spent very little time concerned with good moms and bad moms. I don’t care about all that. We’re all good moms and bad moms depending on the day, the week, the moment.
I’ve examined what makes mothers rise and what makes them fall. What makes them show up and what makes them run away.
I’ve created this narrative in my head that mothers who truly love their children rise for them. They fight for them. They go to bat every time for them. They are Jennifer Lopez in Enough.
They throw themselves in front of their children, sacrifice their lives, go to college, write bestselling books in shabby apartments, work their way up in their companies, get help for their addictions, leave abusive husbands… all for their children.
And my mother did not do any of that.
So.. she must not love me.
How sad I was in those moments in the rain, how heartbroken I was.
This, this heartbreak all along had been my mother wound. Not what my mother had “done” to me, but what I had been carrying around inside of me that had not been “mothered.”
Not because I believed any of that anymore. Indeed, now that the words came flooding into my head, I could easily logic my way lovingly through them.
Motherhood is not a badge or a cape, it is not a shield or a sword.
Motherhood is a complex role in a complex life, for each individual woman who is a mother.
Women rise because they are ready to rise, not because they are mothers, though, yes, sometimes motherhood is the catalyst.
Women fight because they are ready to fight, not because they are mothers.
Women work harder, get help, change their lives, because they are ready, not because they are mothers.
Like anything else, motherhood can be a blessing and/or it can be a curse.
Sometimes, for some women, motherhood doesn’t not make us stronger, it makes us weaker. It does not make us heal, it opens our wounds further. It does not make us work harder, it makes us more tired of working.
My mother is a woman outside of being my mother.
I can let my mother be whoever she is, as a mother, as a grandmother, as a woman.
And my inner little girl does not need my mother to do anything to prove her love. My inner little girl has me.
And I can heal my mother wound.
I can love her. I can be better. I can work harder at the things I love. I can rise. I can mother my inner little girl.
And I can cut the cord I have attached to my own mother, demanding she be, say, do anything differently for me.
This, I now see, is what I came here for, fish out of water. This is why I’m on the river.
I did get home after several more bouts of crying on the highway.
I did paint toes and sit for dinner, giggling over chili and cornbread.
I did read to my children as they lay in bed, watching them sweetly fall off to sleep.
I thought about how many cycles I get to break, how I get to show up for my kids, and how all of this is related to the woman I am and the woman I will be, as I heal my mother wound.
“Now you have a mountain to climb.” My husband said last night, as we sat on the couch after the kids were in bed. “At least now you know what the mountain is, and you can begin the climb. Just think of what a wise and wonderful woman this all will make you.”
“Mmmhmmm.” I responded.
And I just lay there, on the couch, and I let the tears flow and flow and flow, silent. Unstoppable. Like the river.
