November 1, 2022 - from the journal
My Life with Mom
There does not seem to be a way to win in communicating with my mom. She wants me to listen to all these horrible family secrets about her childhood, my dad, and other relations; if I try to speak up, she either does not listen, misunderstands, or turns it around so she is the victim and I am the bad guy for not wanting to listen, if not the bad guy, then I am being insensitive.
She complains about how my dad used to control people with money, but she has money issues too.
She does not see how she favors my brother and men in general. The way she fawns over my husband makes him very uncomfortable; one, because of how she never gives me credit for the many things I do and because it is excessive.
When I was leaving my first marriage, she got drunk and told me that I should be staying for the sake of my boys; that Jaret and I would never work out. The other day she told me that no one in our family ever liked the father of my children. So, should I have stayed with a guy that no one liked and be miserable for the rest of my life? I am confused.
I am exhausted from trying to be someone she would love. It does not matter how successful I am. It does not matter what good things other people tell her about me. She just does not see me or if she does, she does not say so.
She has always favored my younger brother. He sees that now and has told me he does not want that, nor did he ever ask to be the favourite. He told me that old dogs never learn new tricks and I should stop trying to change Mom, and stop waiting for something different between her and I.
I give up. I need to stop being a people pleaser and simply be myself.
I need to be the person and do the things that make me proud of who I am.
I need to do things that bring me joy.
I release the need for my mother’s approval.
I release the habit of allowing her stories to bring me down.
I release the belief that I have to listen to her stories.
I release any obligation to have my boys look after or visit her.
I release the belief that I must hold my tongue, while she is free to say whatever she wishes.
I will make time to listen to her and hear her out. I will attempt to set the record straight on the confusion currently on the table, and then stop trying to be heard.
All that matters is that my own heart is pure. I release all grief about my relationship with her. I release all obligations as they have been towards the mothers and daughters in my family line and all of the methylation that goes with it.
I can seek to understand my feelings and the impacts of my experiences in an effort to grow myself, to heal, and to help others through my writing and coaching clients in my business.
I release any hope of having her change and understanding me.
I am done being the bad guy simply for living my life the way I choose and for being successful.
If only it were that easy. Of course it was not.
Every little girl wants her mother’s love. Inside every grown child of a wounded mother is a wounded girl. I still had that wound and all the releasing to the journal was not going to change that fact. I needed to understand more about me. I needed to understand more about her.
There was much more work to do to get from that point to peace.
I feel so tired when I deal with her. It is like she sucks away my energy leaving me exhausted until finally, I want to hurt her back.
I am not that person. I am not the person who plots for years to even an old score. Those women were in my family on both sides; I do not wish to carry on that family tradition.
I wish I could make her feel what I feel when she shares her stories. I wish she could let go of the past and just enjoy the present. Even dementia does not give that gift to her; it appears to impair her short-term memory, while preserving the past.
My lessons are to not respond in anger and not respond in text anymore. If she wants to communicate with me, it needs to be in person or on the phone.
What was my fear about talking to her in person?
That I would cry and she would feel bad.
That she would not listen or would misunderstand me.
She misunderstands and does not listen anyhow. She does not read what I write, or misinterprets it. In person, she can see the effect she has on me. That seems fair, as she is dumping all these awful memories on me; of course there is an effect. How could there not be?
I am on edge every time she calls or wants to see me because she might share more. I feel awful that she went through these terrible things as a child and as a young married women but I cannot handle this knowledge. The stories make me feel bad about being my father’s daughter. They make me feel bad about simply BEING. I believe I ruined her life because she had me with him when she was nineteen and after I was born was when he began to mistreat her.
For that reason, I felt it was my obligation to listen, to try to validate her feelings about those experiences; even though it was killing me.
Thank you for reading my story. I appreciate your time and attention. My spirit of intent in sharing this is not to seek sympathy; it is to share the experience of these ancient wounds that have gone on for many generations in my family and what happens when families do not communicate and heal.
Now is the time to clean and clear these wounds. It is the time for us to be the ones we are waiting for. This series is my journey to healing. I hope in the telling of my story, I can help another person know they are not alone, perhaps inspire them to find the strength to heal for their family line too.
Pain exists in a family until someone is born who has the strength to feel it all the way through to peace.