Richard Wall said I only canonized my mother after I found out she was terminal, but thing is, I had the luxury and blessing of moving in and taking care of her those last six months as she literally curled up and died with several kinds of cancer. Mommy and Daddy were farm folk, and although Daddy LOVED science, Mommy was more the, "Never go to the doctor. If you go to the doctor they tell you you have CANCER and the next thing you know, you're dead" type, and it was repeated throughout my life that , "I want to die IN MY home, IN MY bed, IN MY sheets, now get me outta here."
You get a lot of psychic healing done while you're changing a colostomy bag, you know? You don't get Big Talks when there's been that much psychic damage done, but with us an entirely different kind of relationship emerged that was filled with her realization that none of any of it mattered any more and all of a sudden there were shared hilarities, because if The Traveler is blessed enough to be ready for the journey, then there's nothing left to do BUT laugh, especially when the Look Back is on a life lived in tight control for self preservation and a needless fear of being displaced.
I'm such a queen, there's a quote from Baby Jane in the last moments of Joan's confession when Bette says, "You mean all this time we could have been friends ..." Mommy came from a mighty and proud and scholarly matriarchy, but her two Great Aunts, then her Mama, then her Aunt Edna died within 14 months of each other when I was 12, and she never got over it and she was left all alone for the rest of her life.
Writer Extraordinaire John Shore wrote many years ago, HAPPY CRAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, and expounded its sentiments with a novel, EVERYWHERE SHE'S NOT. If you wrestle with the relationship with your mother, give this a go, it might help release some stuff for you. For others? you may not even want to go close to this. There's a quote from MARVIN’S ROOM:
<My feelings for you, Hank, are like a big bowl of fish hooks. I can't just pick up one up at a time. I pick one up and they all come, so I just tend to leave 'em alone.> God bless us, one and all, and here's to everyone who tries. xoxo
JOHN SHORE: << Every year on Mother’s Day I find myself feeling for all those whom the good Lord saw fit to birth unto a woman no more suited for motherhood than June Cleaver was suited for professional mud wrestling. All around them others are waxing rhapsodic about their loving, tender, wise, resourceful, self-sacrificing Exemplary Mother, while they’re stuck remembering how their loser witch of a mom used to feed them cat food, or lock them naked outside in the rain, or in some other way make clear they were basically crazy.
To we who belong in the Crappy Mother’s Day Club, I say this:
besides selling mountains of over-priced, landfill-filling sentimentalized detritus, the reason d’etre for Mother’s Day is to fortify people’s desperate need to forever tell themselves that they had mothers who weren’t self-centered cretins who had no more business raising children than a fish has raising gerbils. They must tell themselves that they had a good mommy, and a happy childhood, and a wonderful family life, and that growing up everything for them was fabulous and sunny and happy and healthy. Because if they don’t tell themselves that — if for a moment they allow themselves to feel what an unhappy, crappy mother they had — then very quickly things start getting very bad for them indeed.
They know if they so much as go near that thread, the whole sweater will fall apart. Hah! Losers.
Better to look in your wallet and know that you’re broke, than to never look in it and insist that you’re rich.
Happy Crappy Mother’s Day, you brave and unswerving adherents to the truth!
And to those of you lucky enough to have been blessed with a sane, good mother? We charter members of the HCMD club embrace you, sincerely wish you a wonderful Mother’s Day, and trust you’ll forgive us if we step out of your Mother’s Day celebration just the slightest bit early.
Every year about this time I hear from people for whom Mother’s Day evokes feelings that are anything but warm and fuzzy–people raised by mothers who overall did them a lot more harm than good.
If you are someone whom the celebration of Mother’s Day leaves feeling cold, isolated, or anxious, then these five thoughts are for you.
1. You’re not alone. Many if not most people had mothers who were no more fit to raise children than wildebeests are to raise sea horses. People love to think that just BEING a mother makes you a good mother. But that’s like saying falling out of a plane makes you a good flyer. It doesn’t. Hallmark’s stock would go through the roof if they made Mother’s Day cards that said things like, “Here’s to you! / You insufferably toxic narcissist,” or, “ Happy Mother’s Day! / I’m sending you my therapist’s bills,” or “Roses are red / Violets are blue / Europe had the plague / And I have you.” (Note to self: start Happy Crappy Mother’s Day line of cards.)
2. Be depressed. The key to a happy depression lies in not trying to not be depressed. If Mother’s Day makes you sad, be sad. Lean into that truth. Trying to pretend it’s not happening—that your depression isn’t real and valid—serves no purpose. Give yourself permission to do nothing on MD. Lie on the couch, cover yourself with a blanket, eat food you know you shouldn’t, and binge watch TV. Or work out. Whatever. Just let yourself be bummed. You got severely dinked in the mom department. You deserve some self-pity and self-love.
3. Be angry. If you’re depressed about Mother’s Day, you’re not really depressed at all. Depression is anger that’s turned in on itself, because it has nowhere else to go. You’re not sad; you’re mad. You’re mad at your mother for not doing her job. Instead of loving and nurturing you, she only used you as a pawn in her own ongoing emotional drama. Instead of dealing with her child, she made her child deal with her. You couldn’t get mad at her then for treating you the awful way she did, because your literal survival depended upon your pleasing her as much as you could. But that was then. Today, you CAN allow yourself to feel the anger towards her that you’ve always felt. Do. She certainly deserves that. So do you.
4. Feel the love. Reject the common mistake of believing that in order to heal from your dysfunctional childhood you must so utterly reject your parents that you effectively cease to love them. No person can stop themselves from, at some level, loving their parents, no matter how harmful or toxic their parents were/are. Loving our mothers is simply hardwired into our, well, motherboards. So while you can’t negate that love, you can contain it. It’s not your ADULT self you who loves and needs your mother. It’s the child in you. And that’s okay. Because you can give your inner child all the love that child needs. Just give yourself permission to do that, and to receive that.
5. And now a poem I wrote called “Raised Too Alone.”
If
your mother
was caustic,
toxic,
abusive,
vindictive,
twisted,
dangerous:
If she was irresistibly drawn
to making much too clear
that her unhappiness—
her pain,
her dysfunction,
her drama—
was more precious to her
than you could ever be,
so that as a child
you
had to live your life
frightfully and desperately
scrounging
for whatever
corrupted version of love
you could squeeze from her,
then this Mother’s Day,
while others
(as you imagine; as we all imagine)
are basking in the warmth
of their exemplary mothers,
you close your eyes,
and say a prayer
for her
and then say a loving prayer
for yourself,
for the child
raised too alone.
And then open your eyes—
and there is the world,
beautiful again.
Uncorrupted again.
And
[Screw] ’em.
[Scew] ’em all.
Because you are still here,
and you are not done yet. >>
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