AJ and a LATTE

Mom-ing is Hard

I have spent the last several days in the dumps. I’ve just had the blues. Everything has been just a little bit off, a little wrong. Last night after a really good day, all I wanted to do was sit down and cry. I avoided going to bed for fear of not sleeping.  The hurt was just so real. The pain was so intense that I couldn’t see it was there—the inability to see the forest for the trees.

Mom-ing is hard.  It is really hard. Without going too far into details and to protect the feelings of the guilty, growing up was not ideal. I had a great life and a great family.  I had everything I needed and most of what I wanted. The one thing I didn’t have is a traditional “mom.” Mine wasn’t ready to be a mother. Yes, she had the mechanics…she got me here, but that is where the nurturing ended.  She wasn’t ready. Too young, too ill-equipped, to selfish…I will never know the full truth. Then my dad brought my Bonus Mom into our lives, but his mother was so afraid of being hurt again that she built a wall around us both. I never felt the real love or developed the real relationship I desired between a mom and a daughter.  I longed for it.  I saw how my grandmother loved my dad. I coveted the relationship between Mama and Grandma (my bonus family). I watched my mom with my brother.  Even though I was so so very loved by so many, I never realized that one relationship I wanted more than any other. 

So in my mind, I built the fantasy. I decided what kind of mom I was going to be and what my relationship would be with my children. I found a man who loves me unconditionally and fully. Then my dream took a detour. We had one perfect baby boy, but my girls betrayed me. My body betrayed me. God withheld those little girls. But I persevered.  I had my little boy…my little boy who didn’t want to snuggle, who didn’t want me to rock him or fix his boo boos.  I had an independent little man.  I created a little human who was… just. Like. Me. He was independent to a fault. He didn’t need anyone. I passed my fear and my dysfunction on to him. DON’T GET ME WRONG. HE IS PERFECT! He is just not “the dream.” He is not what my mind’s eye pictured.  He never ran to me after school crying “Mommmmmy!!!”  He sauntered up and said, “Hey, Mom.”  Then he took care of himself. And oh, my, how he had my number early.  He learned at an early age that guilt for not being the perfect mom was my kryptonite!  But in my mind’s eye, I had to be perfect in spite of having no example to follow.

In the meantime, my biological mother and I had a falling out. I had to draw some very firm boundaries simply to protect myself from the rejection, the hurt, the manipulation that I honestly don’t know that she will ever realize within herself.  She wanted to be more. She wanted to be the perfect mom, but I wasn’t her dream either.  I was independent. I didn’t need her approval or her doting.  I couldn’t be what she needed.  I had grown into a woman who was unable to handle the instability and the tactics that I don’t think she was even aware she possessed.  I had been shaped by my Maw who was hurt, wounded, bitter.  I was sheltered from the one woman who really wanted me but wasn’t strong enough to fight the grandmother who was a force and the bond that had been formed between the devastated little girl and Hurricane Mary who loved ferociously but handicapped a part of that child to never let down a guard and be vulnerable.

I dreamed that when my mom (my bonus mom) retired we would be able to have the relationship she and her mother had, but fibromyalgia, fatigue, depression got in the way. Mom’s dreams of what she wanted to do after retirement were vapors as they melted away the future I wanted with Mama.  We don’t go do things. She doesn’t come over and hang out. She doesn’t sit with me and just savor the moments together.

My son doesn’t need me. He is exactly what I raised him to be—independent. He didn’t follow my dreams for him. He took his own path. I see where he is making mistakes, but they are his to make.  I don’t agree with much of what he thinks, says, does. But he is a man. It is his life. I have done my part and given him the foundation to be independent. I raised him how I thought was best. I did my best. He is a good man.

As I see the words on this page, I see a history of broken dreams.  I see a line of women who had a picture in their mind that never came true.  Some of the stories have happy endings. Some of them are still playing out. Some of the endings were bitter and broken and sad. They all run a common thread—they are dreams that are broken. I am at a crossroads.  This brokenness has manifested itself—generations of brokenness—within my heart.

• The grandmother who wanted so much more from her life but could never force the world to comply so she ruled with an iron fist and tried to force her will.
• The mother who wanted to want her child but just couldn’t be a mom until it was so very late. The pain she inflicted had taught the daughter to distrust and to build walls.
• The bonus mother who wanted a daughter but had her stolen out of fear and insecurity. The marriage she longed for is not what she got—it is just so different than her vision.
• The woman who out of self-preservation developed a fairy tale that could never come true because it was based on the ideal, not the messy world we live in.

I see mother/daughter relationships in my friends that I grieve to experience.  But those are not my reality. Those relationships belong to the friends through whom I live vicariously. I long for (as it says in Proverbs) my children to rise up and call me blessed.  But that isn’t in the nature of my strong, independent boy. Then I see my friend who grieves this Mother’s Day because one of her children is with Jesus and no longer able to be held on earth. How selfish I feel.

IFS-Internal Family Systems- is a form of therapy that has one get in touch with that inner child and begin a healing walk with the little girl who began her life in the middle of this cycle.  I have spent many hours with my internal little girl. Not being vulnerable made limping through life so much easier, but I am discovering a fullness I have never experienced.  In talking with my little girl (aj), I have realized that my having the blues is her pouting.  She is trying so hard to make me protect myself by hanging onto the unrealistic dreams of the past. She can control those historical echoes and recreate that dysfunction because that is what she knows. To be hurt and miserable really stinks, but it is like that old pair of shoes that don’t feel good anymore but breaking in new ones is so very uncomfortable. AJ, it is time to let that pair of shoes go.  They don’t fit you anymore. I am grieving for the death of my dream. It isn’t because the dream was a good one. It was simply not realistic. That “perfect scenario” isn’t real. Seriously, can anybody see me being soft and cuddly or my son calling me “bless-ed”?  I’m lucky if he calls me daily! Haha

What would happen if I allowed myself to release that dream–get my pout out of the way and revel in the messy, yucky hot mess my world really is? So my mom doesn’t come hang out. We text throughout the day nonstop. Do I want to see her more? Sure!!! Do I make the time to go out to her house and hang out? No. So…..not my mom’s problem! It’s that dream. Do I wish I could have healthy relationship with my biological mother? Sure!!!  Can I? No. I grieve that the relationship with her is nonexistent, but that was a choice I had to make for the health of my family, my child, and myself.  I am not saying that door is permanently closed, but it isn’t possible right now. My old broad (Maw-my mean old beloved grandmother who was so much my person we were almost one) is gone. Can you believe she had the audacity to age and go live with Jesus?!  Rude!!!  I can see so many unhealthy things in our relationship, but those traits were not all bad. I miss her with every single breath. Is my son perfect? No. Am I? No. Did I do the best I could raising him? Yes. Is he doing the best he can? Yes. What more could I want? He has a beautiful woman who loves him with everything she is. She makes him happy. What could be better than that?

It is time to go get in the shower to get ready for church, have a good cry, and let AJ release the dream. Life is good; I mean it is really GOOD. It is time to let my little girl enjoy the life that God has created for her, for HER. It is time to let her love who she has and how she knows. It is time to let go of the dreams that are keeping her small and to let her grow into what God sees. It is time to forgive the hurts from Mother’s Days past and embrace the Mother’s Day of TODAY. It is time to let that grieving mother know that she is STILL the mother of two. It is okay to admit that AJ grieves for those four baby girls she carried but never realized. It is time to let go of the guarded heart and love fully and completely. It is time to allow her to release the relationship she had to sever to survive. IT. IS. OKAY.

AJ, none of those hurts were your fault. Love fully. Laugh with a joy that would make Carol Burnett blush. You can’t give that Tarzan yell, but you can sure don that smile and laugh to your belly.  Little girl, you are okay. That son loves you; he just shows it in a language that you are still trying to learn. And sister, he is bringing you the most beautiful gift—a daughter. (y’all, he’s marrying good!)

Dreams are good. They can propel us. They can help us find a goal. They can also trap us. My dream today is a beautiful castle and I am escaping the dungeon.  Time to go to the highest turret and enjoy the lands around me rather than cry in the shackles of dreams incomplete.  Today is Mother’s Day. Today is the day that I love myself because God allowed me to have a mother, be a mother, mother kids who need me, and most importantly forgive my mother (both of them-one for not being who I needed, and one for having a body that has forsaken her and not allowed her to be the one she wanted to be). Today is the day I need to love my son’s mother. 

Happy Mother’s Day to you—however your Mother’s Day may look. With or without children, in pain or in joy, it is a day that has been given. We should cherish it.

Until next time…