Is there no end to the discussion of how mothers have ladled out trauma and created the mess that is at the root of all of our lives’ messes?
As a woman, and, yes, a mother, this is tricky business.
I mean, talk with anyone about the depths of their pain, and I can almost guarantee they will dredge up a memory that involves, yep, you guessed it, their mama.
What’s a woman to do?
What does it look like for us when we discover that some of our less-than-vaulted behavior comes from experiences with our parents -and for the purposes of this entry – our mothers?
And, then, how do we handle knowing that those experiences have taken form and landed right where we would prefer they not land – in the laps – or perhaps the hearts and minds and spirits of our own kids.
And, yes, when we get right down to it, our mothers had mothers. And, their mothers had mothers. And, so on and so forth. If you experienced the 1970s, it’s kind of like this old Faberge hair commercial where the beautiful Farrah Fawcett keeps on saying “And so on. And so on,” while pictures of her keep popping up onto the screen.
I kind of forget what that had to do with hair. But, I can certainly liken it to generational trauma.
Do you know what mothers are? Every single solitary mother?
Have you guessed?
Mothers are… drumroll please…human.
And, humans are imperfect. It comes with the package.
We are a complicated composition of desire, thoughts, wounds, hope, love, rage, and more. And, much of that lies buried deep within us like a sort of scary package that, uncertain of what it contains, is thought better unopened than unpacked and sorted through.
So, what’s a mother to do?
Well, for starters we unpack it. We can sort through our lives and find the pain and the power, the burns and the beauty.
We look. We explore. And, we do so with as much tenderness as we can muster for our mothers and ourselves and our mothers’ mothers. And, like the Faberge shampoo commercial says: and so on and so on and so on.
We love our mothers for how they tried. And, we do the same for ourselves, and for our children who will try and often fail too.
*This blog rose from a request made from well-respected friends who were talking about mothers, trauma, and compassion. Out of our discussion came this blog.