I had just spent several minutes looking through my paternal great-grandfather’s meticulous log of every theatrical performance he saw during the early years of the 20th century, complete with ticket prices, written in flowing, precise script. I was fantasizing about ancestors I never knew, wondering what other family stories lay buried in our cupboards and how many of them I might never really understand, now that my father had died a few months ago. Mom and I were trying to sort through mountains of paper still looming from his death this summer and the preceding years.
“A piece of paper was underneath a chair I moved the other day,” said Mom. This sounded exciting. She continued, “It was a legal document naming Herberta Moran, bringing a formal complaint against John Painter Sr. for abandonment.”
Shit. I had a different feeling where this was going now. Herberta and John were my paternal grandparents, and my father had been born a good bit less than nine months after they were married. My grandfather never lived with his wife and son, much less provide any kind of home — no house, apartment, room in a boarding house. It sounded like a sad situation, to be sure: difficult, heartbreaking, lonely, disillusioning. In the 1940s, it was still difficult for a woman to initiate divorce proceedings, so my grandmother and her infant son lived with her parents for the two years while they waited for the divorce, and possibly longer.
My father’s conception was always a touchy subject with my mom; not only had her relationship with her mother-in-law been awful, but my mother has always held some pretty black and white views on sex and relationships. And they are very different from mine in ways that tend to feel a bit like a demented carnival ride when we try to talk about them. My mother spoke again.
“You know, it’s still hard to be a single mom. I can’t support you.”
Ah, right: there it was — the whole reason she started speaking. My premarital sex (the only kind I’ve had) = pregnancy. Pregnancy = a ruined life, since I am not married.
It was the same equation in college, when I first started having sex: sex = pregnancy = dropping out of college = ruined life.
Things start to get really fun when we add in her view of the breakup of a serious sexual relationship: premarital sex + breakup = irrevocably damaging heartbreak = ruined life.
As we all know (ahem), women have sex because they think a man will marry them. When that doesn’t happen, the disillusionment scars them for life.
If we want some icing for that slice of cake, check this out: she’s wanted me to provide grandkids for at least the last five years or more. If I don’t have kids soon, I’ll be barren and bitter and empty inside, according to her. And then I’ll have to fill the void by teaching school or something. So: turning thirty = the age when she had me = time for me to reproduce. Time to reproduce + not married = about-to-be-ruined life. Clearly, my odds are running out, right? If I don’t get married soon, that inevitable pregnancy will happen in an inevitably ruinous context.
I think I’m dizzy.
If anyone can see the emergency shut-off switch for this ride, please wave at me on my next go-round. Normally I’d keep my head and arms safely inside, but it may be time to break that rule. I’ve been “safe” — and stuck — for far too long.
The first time I learned that my father may have been conceived “illegitimately” was Thanksgiving of my sophomore year of college. I was trying to borrow the car to get to my gynecologist for my three-month birth control check-up, using some false pretense I can’t recall. My mother asked point-blank if I was having sex. I followed the advice of Seventeen Magazine and said yes. It was terrifying, but I took heart in knowing that I was being honest about trying to be responsible for my health.
I wasn’t expecting my mother to turn on me later during the holiday. I forget the exact words, but I’ll never forget the feeling of being blindsided as she hissed some backhanded comment at me about the dates of my father’s birth versus his parents’ wedding. Her implication was clear enough however, as her fear for my well-being was overshadowed by her fear of shame and mixed with resentment over how her mother-in-law had treated her over the years. And said mother-in-law was standing a couple of rooms away during a rare visit. It was a rather tense holiday.
Unfortunately, the lesson I took away with me was to say as little as possible to my mother about my sexual relationships. I’m not entirely sure at this point whether this has worked for me over the years or against me. Generally it seemed like my private life was both private and mine, but it may have only been the former. Every once in a while my mother would come out with some piece of outdated advice or ask some clearly out-of-touch question, and I’d bounce between trying to avoid it and trying to explain why it might not apply to me (or to many people I know).
The recent comment prompted by the divorce notice was only the latest in a long history of her fears generating some faulty math. It is frustrating and sad, and I wish I could find a way to get her to understand many things: that the world doesn’t quite line up with her conception of it; that there are many parts of the sex/relationship conversation that even Dr. Phil might not get right (or even entertain), despite what she may think; that her fear, her shame, and her feared shame are not mine; me.
But maybe that’s part of the problem: I want her to understand me, and that may not be possible. In fact, it looks like I may have stumbled onto some math of my own: I want her to understand me = I want her to approve of me. And wanting her to approve of me = a ruined life, since I will never be able to live my life exactly how she would like me to live it for her. That’s been apparent since I was a toddler.
What hasn’t been apparent to me since I was a toddler is just how paralyzed I’ve been as a result and what to do about it. At this point, my internalized mother may actually be harder to deal with than the real one. She’s harder to see, blending in with the rest of me. Most of the time I don’t even know she’s there, which is a big part of the problem. Maybe it’s the problem. After all, no one wants to hurt someone they love. But when “betraying” Mom = hurting myself = a ruined life, and staying loyal to her also = hurting myself = a ruined life, clearly I’ve gotten the math wrong in one of those equations.
I think I know which equation is faulty. Now where did you say that emergency shut-off switch is located?
wow… thank you everybody. lots to chew on. being a taurus though, i’m pretty used to ruminating.
i really can’t address all of this amazing conversation now, but thought i’d offer a couple minor points of clarification.
it wasn’t a phone call — we were in the room together, but the document had been found (or “found”) previously by mom. at the risk of sounding naive, it seemed plausible to me given the incredible disarray of the room both during my father’s life and even more so after his death, with the dissolution of his business and the personal finances suddenly all falling on my mother’s shoulders, with a great deal of financial fear and confusion. they are/were both packrats, from a long line in both families, and there has been a lot of shifting and sorting of all manner of paper, etc. apparently, when my father’s dad died & they were cleaning out his house, they had to literally sort through every single piece of paper, magazine, etc — they guy actually had important things like savings bonds and the actual deed to his house stuffed between issues of life magazine and national geographic stacked everywhere on the floor.
that said, eric made a comment to me about the symbolic power this detail takes on in the narrative as presented, and it has me wondering. maybe she didn’t find it under a chair, or at all; maybe she did. either way, she needed a way in to linking her fears for her own financial stability to her fears for mine and her fears about my sex life; or all of my life, really.
anyway, like i said, i have much to ruminate on; including some of that “soul recovery” mystes mentioned.
— amanda
Friends,
Two days ago the Australian government apologised to all the people who were institutionalised as children. The whole country opened its heart and tears flowed. It seems right to share it in this space.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/rudd-says-sorry-to-forgotten-children-20091116-ihcd.html
We have all been wounded whether we had biological parents present – or not.
All the more reason to be gentle with ourselves and others.
(gentle hug)
Linda
ashawf and others,
If a child is raised to have no compassion for those who raised them, what does it mean? Does it not in part reflect on the parent?
I wonder if anything can be found in outer planet astrology that sheds light on the way this seems almost a generational trend. I suspect that act of parenting has changed significantly in this country in the last six decades or so–if children see sacrifice and selflessness (however wounded) in parents as they are being raised, they have a sense of love and desire to protect them, even while they fight to establish independance from the values of their parents.
But if all they see are self-absorbed and manipulative predators? And, why is it that so much of today’s adult generation has had failed experiences with their own parents? Given these experiences, are they effectively teaching the younger generation compassion, love and wholeness? The current adult generation is doing better with taking care of the environment and other things, but do they really get the type of compassion that reaches beyond who you are and how things work for you?
So many adults in my experience have lists of people to blame for their struggles and who they are, and they are scour acquaintences and events for people to add regularly. To me, someone who still gets a rush or any comfort from blaming someone else in their life, especially a parent, is still stuck in some late stage of childhood–albeit maybe with brilliant talents and enviable survival skills.
Irresponsible and selfish history and current behavior of parents should not be overlooked either–overlooking the behavior sanctions it. Really, if they’ve done nothing to earn your love and respect during the time they’ve raised you, they probably don’t deserve your love or respect.
But it leaves me curious–why is this failure such a common one today, and in what ways is the current generation of adults/parents perpetrating it?
Karen,
I agree, one has to first have compassion to give compassion. Unfortunately it is not a basic utility like electricity which can be turned on by a switch. I also agree that it is a very painful process to reach to that point to feel compassion for oneself and for others. Trust me I have been there. In my equation, there are older siblings in addition to parents.
But I have reached the point of total forgiveness in my life and I feel nothing but the compassion even for those who have (knowingly or unknowingly) wronged me and I cannot describe that feeling. Yes I cannot heal them either, but through me they can see that it is possible!
I have 4 kids, aged almost 16 through to 8. The most important thing I have learnt as a parent over the last 4 years is to let go of my “big” expectations of my children, namely of them being the same as me and of making the same choices I would make.
I realise that parenting is a process of letting go – from the moment you hold a baby in your arms for the first time, you have to start letting go of them – to their father, to grandma, to preschool, to school, to friends, to work, to their own lives and their own choices.
I have practised this with my 15 year old and have seen him develop into a young man who makes decisions for himself (most of them responsible and fantastic) and sees and expresses my flaws without fear (and usually accuracy).
I also have a 12 year old son, who is on the autism spectrum, which makes for a flurry of therapy and intervention. Again, I have had to accept him for who he is, do the best I can in the circumstances to stretch his capabilities educationally and socially (while making sure I do the things I really need to do for myself) and to let go of my expectations.
I had a conversation with my eldest son a year or so back. He noticed and appreciated that I wasn’t butting heads with him about the choices he made and asked me why that was – was it because I realised that it caused fights. No, I told him, it was because I realised that it was important for me to be able to be myself. So I needed to let him be himself too.
I am far from the perfect parent, but this really works for me as an underlying principle – to allow my children the freedom to be themselves for themselves. They are not “ours”, they are in our care. We are in their lives for a reason and our parents are in our lives for a reason too. But ultimately we each have our own lives to live.
Sometimes, when we are in a state of awareness that others around us are not, the best thing to do is to listen, observe and wonder. And to get on with the business of doing the things that we are here to do.
Hi ashawf
Maybe I wasn’t clear in my tiredness last night but I am acutely aware of what compassion is; what I was trying to say is that most of the time I (and people I come into contact with) couldn’t just switch it on…..there’s a path involved: woundedness – self-destructiveness – beginnings of waking up – blame – hurt – anger – more self-destructiveness – more woundedness – acting from patterns instead of core and causing more problems, which obfuscate the core wound – more waking up – more hurt – more anger – more blame – slow dawnings of higher consciousness – attributing responsibility as opposed to blame – acting out new, more positive patterns – and so on.
‘In our times, women have relatively more freedom of choice, more awareness and knowledge than our mothers, then the responsibilities lie on us to be more compassionate and understanding of our mothers and help heal their wounds while finding our way.’
I don’t think women need to feel any more burdens. And can we heal our mothers’ (or our fathers’) wounds before we have already found our own way? I know that for me, an important part of my process was to attribute responsibility to each of my parents – instead of blame – and therefore reclaim a part of myself. Surely this is what Eric was alluding to. (I’m not convinced that they acted in total unawareness, either.) It’s not about not acting with compassion; surely it’s about acting with consciousness and compassion for oneself, out of which arise compassion and awareness of other people in abundance. As for letting love flow in our mothers’ direction, I think that is the natural response to true love from them and we wouldn’t have to chide ourselves into doing it!
Eric, mystes and Karen,
about my compassion….let me try this again…
You all might be very familiar with this
“Father forgive them,,, they know not what they do” (I am not a Christian…by birth…but I do connect with this very well).
I don’t know about you folks, but to me it means that He was talking about folks who live and act in total ignorance and unawareness. To me it also means that If you become aware, know and feel connected then that’s the moment you come out of the blame game, even if you have every right to blame. This point is the also mile stone where you begin the work of “UNDOING, UNLEARNING” characterstics that are not your own, and start your own journey towards your “center”
By compassion, I don’t mean that you have to be a sucker and give in to manipulation and control, on the contrary, you know exactly where the other is coming from, in your mind you can call out their bluff in no time, but you cannot MAKE them see something they cannot see, what you can do is with compassion and kindness, despite their weakness and strengths, help them raise their awareness, and then let them choose.
If it’s not one thing, it’s a mother!
It seems to me that you don’t need the shut-off switch; rather, you are doing a wonderful job of clearing out the “internalized mother” that reflects fear, shame, etc and discovering yourself and understanding her in the process. And the love of self and love of mother then has the room to expand as each person is accepted for who they are.
I have had a similar journey. For me it got incredibly dark at times especially since the “destination” was unclear. Somehow I believed that when you put one foot in front of the other and move “forward” I was extricating myself from the morass – but this was a feeling from the heart and not a logical, verbal explanation.
Namaste.
‘I would say that if compassion, for oneself.
I think we are entirely too accepting of our parents agendas, manipulations and ignorance, and not nearly suspicious enough of their agendas nor of our need to seek their approval. So many of us buy into their guilt trip like it was totally inert. It is not. One of the most severe blocks to personal growth is our loyalty to those who would hurt or control us, loyalty that is generally based on the need for endorsement that will never come. Part of the problem with this loyalty is that it can be disguised so many ways, and rationalized so many ways.
We live in a time when the concept of pesonhood is barely understood; and its relationship to making the break from our parents, inwardly and externally. This is not about a lack of compassion, though in our compromised state and our fear of abandonment it feels that way. It is about reaching escape velocity from their narcissistic view of who we are.’
Aw yes, Eric. So true; it’s worth reiterating. Too tired to read the whole blog but just came on to speak about ashawf’s comment and saw yours while scrolling down 🙂
Compassion for the buggers is all very well and good…..it’s a rocky road to get there when the heart and soul and core are wounded and bleeding and you don’t even have a f*cking clue about what happened! It takes a brave and persistent heart, willing to face that existential aloneness to get there (well, in my experience anyhow!). Compassion is good – the hardest for me was beginning to learn compassion for myself; for allowing myself to be okay even when I get things wrong. A little thing yet so large. I can’t be doing with pseudo-compassion, either – when folks stuff everything else down and hide it with a false smile and false caring. I shudder just thinking about it.
Somewhere, somehow, I turned a corner in the sea of pain and the long road of trials and suddenly I find it not just difficult but impossible to feel bad about myself, even when I’ve done something ‘wrong’. Truly a triumph over toxic parenting! (And the echoes of a Catholic heritage.) Slowly I have been relieving myself of the mire of blackness and futility and I’m exploding into 3D technicolour, living from my core. Universes expand, all the cosmic tumblers fall into place…(a nod to Field of Dreams). Philip Glass’s lyrics to the opera Akhenaten come to mind:
Open are the double doors of the horizon
Unlocked are its bolts
Clouds darken the sky
The stars rain down
The constellations stagger
The bones of the hell hounds tremble
The porters are silent
When they see this king
Dawning as a soul
Truly, life starts here 🙂
Well, I’m full of the Scorpio Death Ray today, so I will probably be an EOA (Equal Opportunity Asshole). Reading Linda’s comment about ‘getting the grip’ had me muttering ~girlygirl, that way is the Tar Baby…~ Then came Eric’s very incisive, extremely rational indignation.
Eric, Bess, Linda, Asha, “ia,” my beloved Fe oh, and yeah, Amanda:
Hey:
Want to know where the Switch is? I do recommend the Hell Express once a year. Where you climb down the tail that you still have but can’t see into the place where you keep *all* of your wahwahwah’s mommydid me thisaway and wahwahwah-daddy-did-me-that-a-ways. Sometimes those per-sonars get transposed on to the Jacks, the in-laws, the partners, the bosses, the wetbacks, the Crips, the WhaaaatEvers. But it *is* a trick. Just one stitched so seamlessly into the process of discourse we can’t rightly spy it.
I set aside one to two weeks for my visit to Hell – every year. After a couple of days of burning, the bright face of True Pain starts to shine through. You can’t stop there, it’s just the beginning. A few more days and your body will start to protest. Thank it and keep going.
You will experience every imaginable reaction – *you will die, you will lose your children, you will lose your house*(well, my landlord did die during this one) – the subtle guideropes of blame will keep strumming, saying :: this isn’t yours, it is someone, something else. Or conversely there is the guiltriff :: oh, you did all this. Bad you. Badbadbad you. *They* were right all along.
This is soul recovery work and no one can do it for you. Talk therapy is great for letting the Great White swim free for a few hours, but then, sigh, you’re back in the old identity suit, although it may be looser.
***
~Hell~ you say? Really? Really. The Red Book seems to be a record of this kind of journey. What I am trying to figure out is how Jung could cap this off after about 3 hours each night? I heard that he slept nearly not at all, but this is big work. On the other hand, no wonder he kept writing it for 16 years.
(i should probably not write more and get too sucked in, but i am getting a lot out of reading and writing right now so i guess i must need it. thanks for the space.)
my belief is, and i could be entirely wrong, but if our purpose was to be fixed and find some sort of place that is the end point of things, solved and sort of perfected, than a lot of what people go through in relationship to their parents/families/society would make sense.
however, my relationship to everything human in the world only began to make sense to me when i started to accept the possibility that the purpose of life was purely and simply expansion. in the case of a lower order, chaos may serve expansion in a roundabout way. (yeah, do you get what i mean?) in the case of a higher order, then wise orderly cyclical expansion (much like the celestial movements and the ways of nature) would make sense.
this being the case, i began to recognize the ultimate trap was the labyrinth of focus upon the inner machinations of a mans reason for doing what he does, be it in the global theater or in a home or school, in a supermarket line, or in a church. i won’t say i am not too often entranced by it, caught back up and then suffer for it…but when i don’t look at it like that, than i seem to have a kind of outrageous immunity to the normal fate of others experiences here.
why i say this is not because i think we can in any way not adore and desire connection and experience with our fellow human beings, but certainly something is amiss in our way of being– humans i mean. i am not in denial about that fact. i just do not have any evidence that trying to figure it out from the perspective of “why” makes sense or has a benefit truly. it is the ultimate trap and saboteur.
okay…and this may seem even stranger, but, what if the only thing that makes us different from everything else in all the universe, which expands according to some higher order all the other beings of the universe seem aware of and not by a chaotic nonsensical destructive expansion, is some lack of rhythm with what already exists. it is as if we are outside of some knowing and this means we are just terrifically out of step and this out-of-step-ness is quickly relieved but without it a real image of smeared truth or a veil is what we experience. like, we can’t hear it or see it until we get with it.
okay, bear with me a little further. for instance lets take astrology: this focus upon the stars co-mingled with ancient intuitive reasoning and like in the case of eric, modern intuitive realignment of that ancient thru line, is a simple easy remedy and a being can suddenly LINK up with the wise orderly expansive way of being. no one is inventing the stars. but by looking at them and aligning with their wisdom, suddenly life makes sense and we flow, be it with something we want to call fate or an inner self-ness that has been typed (as in personality typing) minutely and broadly by the spiritual-sciences. it makes you feel better. you suddenly have purpose. it’s easy. just reading about it and you feel better. (that’s why i am here right now. it helps me realign with the rhythm of the universe. it’s good magic.)
if this is so, then, there could be in any given day under any and all given circumstances opportunity after opportunity just to view and therefor link up with the greater order that relieves us of all this paralysis and suffering and hurting each other and poor choice making that has these really rotten repercussions.
much like how some people notice spirals everywhere, it works, if our purpose was just to expand and not to figure out but maybe just NOTICE very soft focus, i believe in my heart, the entire universe, how it be-s is an ultimate remedy.
why this fits in with AP’s writing to me is, humans want to pull humans into the way they are familiar with. but all of nature/the rest of the universe, just sort of happily waits for us to join them in the bigger picture. i think the longer we spend focused upon the why it is the way it is, the longer we are not in the moment of now that is waiting for us to link up with the simple point of our purpose…to expand (and to expand means to create, create life in all its forms.)
we are going to learn all the lessons we need to learn along that way. so, maybe it’s just time to leave the moms and dads behind. the past, the people, the ways of before right where they are. like an arrow head sort of. if you tear the veil with the point of your purpose to link back up, then they can make it wider by joining you later if they want to.
you know…for me, if they were happy and well, i’d say, lets watch them and model a little and maybe incorporate some of that. but they are not doing so hot, like not even slightly most of the time and i am looking for it, trust me. i mean, WHOSE IS? hahaha. well, i mean sometimes mine are. and i enjoy every drop of it. but generally it’s just one chaotic moment after another, that is expanding, just not happily. not creatively. not magically. not in alignment with the greater whole. we see humans as the greater whole. jeez we are entirely outnumbered here. the greater whole is everything that is not human. we just need to join all that while still getting to be ourselves. there is a way, and that is the expansive journey of grace.
anyway, i think the paralysis is not born of what we often think it is. it’s just a sign, like a node or something eric is always writing about. it’s an inner conjunction or a trine maybe. (he would know.) it is the universal nature inside of you giving you a pause to try to let you see the way to feel better and to end all this yuck and to move into what is good is: TO GO NO FURTHER! it’s a dead end. the way to you is up and out. up and out of the labyrinth forever…or a day. whichever comes first.
well…that’s my hard won truth. i hope it might be helpful to someone else.
bess
My investigative reporting career is rife with stories about figuring out who my father was/is and therefore who I am not. One day in the peak of my work on PCBs, I was dealing with a GE spokesman named Jack Batty. Absolutely full of shit; a nozzlehead, as pesticide activists call them, named after the part of the pesticide apparatus that actually sprays the poison. The GE PR team are the people who will tell you (to this day) that PCBs are as toxic as table salt and that aflatoxins, found in organic peanut butter, are worse for you.
So one day I was talking about this with Joe, my mentor/therapist, and the conversation shifted to my father and why he “did not believe” that my work exposing GE’s crimes was true. Nor did he seem to believe that I was true or that my life was true; he had once announced, “You have no values.” Anyway, I was obviously frustrated with my father, who through his career has been involved in nuclear public relations; he was on the PR cleanup team for the Three Mile Island disaster (and Joe knew this). It takes (shall we say politely) a special mentality to do that kind of work.
Now, for Joe, the next thing that happened was easy judo for a therapist. He asked if I would try to convince Jack Batty that my reporting was true. I said no. Then why would you try to convince your father?
This was radical for me: it put Jack Batty in my father in the same league, where they belong. For a moment, all of the family crap and daddyness of Dr. Coppolino had evaporated into the obvious comparison between he and someone who did exactly what he did: lie and rationalize on environmental issues. It was easy for me to have no loyalty to Jack Batty, and suddenly I had leverage to drop all loyalty and expectation from my father.
I have had some knock-down, drag outs with him over the years about this issue; but what I have learned over the years is that he has no clue what he’s talking about. He has no interest in the deeper issues (for example, for him, it’s fine that the nuclear industry is safe and we can set aside the issue that they have no clue what to do with the waste). He did not know that we have reactors in the US designed just like Chernobyl (uncontained, graphite cooled), and so on.
And I did not figure out for a long time what a threat I am to his beliefs; to his reality framework. Had I tried to have any loyalty to that, basically, to that lie, I would not be the person I am today: someone not afraid to speak truth to power. I accepted that he was not going to accept me. (He started to become very positive when he learned that Jonathan Cainer was letting me write his horoscope in the Daily Mirror, mainly because he knew that Cainer was a Big Guy and that if a Big Guy approved of me and trusted me to write his column, that must be meaningful). Geesh. But it still felt good to have his sincere admiration in those moments. He was also positive when I took to the road and started turning up all over Western Europe, mysteriously gainfully employed the whole time.
I’m happy that in more recent years he went into communication consulting within the power plants helping to avoid problems, training the guys how to prepare for their NRC drills. That, I can get behind. Anything to prevent a nuclear meltdown. But when they happen, let’s call them what they are.
Three Mile Island was not the equivalent of two dental x-rays, as they were spinning at the time. In fact, I learned recently that a good friend of mine had packed her bags and was ready to get an early jump on evacuation, had things gone badly. She’s now an EMT and has that be prepared mentality and explained that had things been slightly worse and the winds been slightly different…well, her car was packed and her kids were ready.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
Oh yes, “under the chair” was clearly a planted piece of evidence! No doubt!
For me, the most complicated part of the never-ending-story (or dizzying cupnsaucer ride) is getting a grip on just what that parental agenda was and is.
These things have a way of befitting that Pisces description Eric so aptly posted in another article — that of the visible being in and the in being out (of sight).
Parental negative agenda is very hard to scope out – after all, it is all we ever knew.
Once discovered – like the paper under the chair – it is overwhelmingly obvious and so is its destructive nature.
Im beginning to see that Paralysis is the common response to this problem and that I am not alone in finding I must find ways to expose the lies taught by momndad without further damage to Self.
Thank you Amanda Painter for painting a great essay (math included) that exposes this broad-stroked situation.
Bess… We’re all honorary Scorpios today. Thanks for rollin’ it out.
M
One thing I should add as a clarification of the pervasive immaturity in the family (since sometimes this is a matter of opinion regarding standards of behavior): His mother wrote my husband a letter saying that she didn’t love him anymore when he decided to spend a summer with his father (and new family) after having a brand new half brother.
As my husband was an adolescent at the time, it caused him severe trauma. His mother never brought this up or apologized. When I encouraged him to discuss this with her before the wedding, she told him in response, well I was sad because you guys had left.
So, that is the type of behavior by which I am diagnosing them as immature…and this whole entire post is paranthetical to the one below ;>
To Amanda,
This is an interesting piece. I read it again and it leaves me wondering about your father, who seems to be missing in this particularly fraught relationship between your mother and her mother-in-law, and your mother’s interpretation of how the mother-in-law’s sexual choices impacted the lives of others.
Does your mother attribute certain traits of your father, or certain behaviors that your father suffered from his mother, to his mother’s nature?
Here is a story of mine, which may or may not at all relate to your mother’s, but as your story evoked this experience I’ll share it:
My boyfriend (now husband) and I had an unplanned pregnancy while dating. We realized that we wanted to get married and build a family together, but were nervous about the “rushing in” as it were. One of his hopes had been to break the pattern in his family, or at least break away from it–his mother had gotten pregnant with him at 17 or 18, and had married his father right out of high school. It was a failed marriage that was very traumatic for him.
His sister likewise got pregnant in high school and did not tell the father until it was too late for her to do anything but have the baby. She had the baby as a single mother, in hopes that the father would eventually marry her. He did so before going off to Iraq, so that she and her daughter could get benefits if he were killed in battle. After he returned safely, he promptly took up with someone else and his sister sued him for alimony and child support–which he gave so resentfully that he does not see his daughter more than once a year.
My husband was 30 at the time of the first pregnancy, but we hadn’t been dating long and were not quite financially stable. So we decided to wait on the pregnancy, but go ahead with the wedding. My husband and I got married last year and have just learned that we are expecting again, and are thrilled.
I’m not a fan of his family. His family strikes me as pervasively immature, and I see their sexual decisions as a symptom of that. His mother tries to compete with me when I see her (I minimize this). His sister and daughter visited us before we got married, and the daughter announced that she wanted me to buy her gifts (this was the 2nd time in her life she had seen me) so that my husband (fiance at the time) could save his money.
I think part of my husband being different was wanting to break that pattern. And that is why I married him. He has gallantly taken on the challenges of maturing and self-development on our path together, and I love that in him. We don’t clash so much over his family because we see their failings in a similar way. But if we didn’t?
I feel like a lot of this story with your mother’s anger and sense of doom might be found in her relationships (and even perhaps in her own decisions) with your father. It might be a dead end, but then it might be something.
Cheers, and thanks for sharing.
my mother often recommends to me fabricating complete untruths to cause people to divulge information to me. maybe the letter under the chair is not real, too. i agree you could being tricked a little (mild).
is there any way you can just not engage her for awhile? i think that is the best medicine with my mom. (i have taken whole years at a time actually.) she respects me more that way. it’s sort of like training her. you know, you are powerful. flow the conversation the way you wish, but if she won’t go with you…then just find creative ways to make and keep boundaries. for so long, your mother was the keeper of the flow. but now it’s your turn. only by default is she still able to play you sort of. i know it feels rotten sometimes to perceive those we love as also saboteurs but i always think of the matrix, like when they are training neo and they say, anyone still hooked into the matrix is a possible agent, cause the agent can get inside them, the same people they are trying to free and save. society is predicated on conformity and maintaining the status quo…whatever that is to that person.
we don’t need to know the root of that need to have us all conform, to know that especially those we love or have grown up around have the fastest ins to our weaknesses. if being weak, afraid, flawed, hurting, makes you similar to her, and that makes her feel she has done her job: to grow a good member of society…well than, making up lies and doing all sorts of absolutely impossibly amoral things may seem all right in the service of this mindset.
nothing like inflammatory information to keep the hooks in.
and while going your own way may be fraught with equally painful epiphanies at different times, etc, at least you were the cause of them and you can trace them back to yourself which in the end, is a mystery worth solving (or adventuring through). whereas in your mother’s case, she may never give you the satisfaction of making sense, coming around, transforming…and certainly the sense of goodness you feel when you are the keeper of your own well being, the writer of your own best story…is truly divine. (anyway, if you are the magnet that now is the new cornerstone of society, she may just have somewhere new to conform to. TO YOU! YOUR GRACE! no better place to find a new hope than in her own daughter since she can at least feel some ownership over you, whether it is righteous that idea or not. )
ps. i get this lesson on a regular basis between sister, mother, dear friends…more so down the vein of the feminine than in the realms of males– female treachery is somehow much more a knife to me then men doing their versions. and also, when my beloved women, whose lives i have taken a hiatus from come round and i revisit them, inevitably the lost connection gave them some space. i was not activating the parts of them that bring them into their downsides that relate to me. and you’d be surprised, your mom may have in her way been saving you from making her mistakes just by the resistance she creates in you. bodhisattvas right? you win every way you play the game of disengaging from her trip! (or that is my experience.)
i wish you so so so the very best of luck. families can be such sticky webs of love and torture sometimes.
yay for eric keeping his finger on the many pulses of this moment in time. TX! keeping my head up high and living as best as i can, a little better the past few days for the longstanding PW.
xo
bess
I would say that if compassion, for oneself.
I think we are entirely too accepting of our parents agendas, manipulations and ignorance, and not nearly suspicious enough of their agendas nor of our need to seek their approval. So many of us buy into their guilt trip like it was totally inert. It is not. One of the most severe blocks to personal growth is our loyalty to those who would hurt or control us, loyalty that is generally based on the need for endorsement that will never come. Part of the problem with this loyalty is that it can be disguised so many ways, and rationalized so many ways.
We live in a time when the concept of pesonhood is barely understood; and its relationship to making the break from our parents, inwardly and externally. This is not about a lack of compassion, though in our compromised state and our fear of abandonment it feels that way. It is about reaching escape velocity from their narcissistic view of who we are.
Fe… my love, you write: “The finding of the legal document has the feeling of almost a deliberate entry into a diary.”
Or the deliberate feel of come-again? It was *where?* Remember it was a phone call. Remember that A’s initial reaction was excitement. Remember that the pain that her mother proceeded to (attempt to) share is part of an ethos *that Amanda doesn’t subscribe to*.
I smell a trap.
She’s going to have a hard enough time keeping this level of openness as her ‘ruin’ of a life gets more complex and interesting. You have to make clear decisions about how you handle the approval/disapproval of pain-sharing critters in and around your family or you won’t have any energy to do, think, be anything else.
The word ‘mother’ should be an honorific; we need to come up with another name for people who breed in order to escape themselves.
M
I am thinking like Eric on this.
The finding of the legal document has the feeling of almost a deliberate entry into a diary. Like you’re hoping somehow, someone will read it and find out something you have had a hard time expressing, or need to feel relieved from its burden.
Perhaps the paralysis you feel isn’t yours but hers and that you’re still living it out.
I have the doozy of maternal “mementos” that I discovered in one of my parent’s trunks when I was a kid. It was a box of the thirty five metal stitch grommets that were used for the C-sections my mom had for both me and my sister, back in the day when C-sections looked alot like autopsies. The vertical cut. Ouch.
oh, let me just amend my closing. . .
*always* Open to openness,
otherwise, Scram.
“Researching compassionately into your mom’s life…*
At risk of sounding, I dunno, alive I’d say
Horsefeathers.
Or at least reserve the archive-developing, genealogy-of-pain seeking type of compassion. You’d have to be a stellium Cancer to get off on that, and even then. . .
Listen, kid. Some people just love to suffer. They can’t, cannot, can NOT get enough of it, and they simply cannot believe that anyone else should live without it. Some of those people are mothers. It doesn’t make them any less pitiable, but it does let them in a damn sight closer than they should be.
Open to openness,
Myst
Maybe I’ve been watching too much David Lynch lately, or maybe it’s the investigative reporter in me, but I’m trying to figure out how a document like this ends up under a chair. This is the kind of thing that people hide in file cabinets, that a good archivist can find. How long had it been under the chair? Where exactly was the chair, and who was reading it when they stashed it down there?
ashawf, that is a lovely comment, and a great and timely perspective. thanks.
The emergency switch is called “Compassion”.
Researching compassionately into your mom’s life, from day 1 to where she is today, each and every influence she has been under, freedom(financial, emotional, social) she has had or lacked, and also some astrological research about her life, will give you completely different perception.
In our times, women have relatively more freedom of choice, more awareness and knowledge than our mothers, then the responsibilities lie on us to be more compassionate and understanding of our mothers and help heal their wounds while finding our way.
Our mothers have been where we are today….but they could have been in much less fortunate circumstances than we are in. we love our mothers, but with a lots of expectations. We expect our mothers to be the givers of Love, but some times we have to allow some to flow in their direction too!!