Who our mothers were/are, whether our relationship is positive or not, we are ever impacted by her. Freud, controversial or not, said that our adult personality develops from early childhood and mother figures are said to weigh heavily on who we are today. This is absolutely NOT about Mother bashing. Just because it was/is does not mean you cannot change things up, of course we do. As I work through the Mother Archetype, I have found a few things that I totally relate to and my Evil Inner Witch has clung to all my life until I find the voice, give it credence and then let it go. I was brought up to be a Provider, a Protector, a Nurturer, a Mentor. My Mother helped make me these good things. My birth mother is different than the mother who got me when I was six months old and raised me. There are things I inherited, genetically, and my raising was different.
From my birth mother I could have inherited my birth mother’s eyes, physical features, my menopause/menstrual body functions, my intelligence level, my sleeping patterns, the way I age, my body shape and ways of being too thin or too heavy, and my first nurturing/or not. My heart learned her heartbeat. My skin, hair, lungs, bones carry her blood. And, interesting enough, my first emotions, thoughts and beliefs were passed through as well. Her pregnancy feelings I felt. I carry the Primal Wound. Imagine the abandonment. But my conditioning came from the mother that raised me from six months on.
My Mother that raised me was highly fearful that I would, like the baby girl I replaced, would die. I was a very ill baby. I was malnourished. I had rickets. I only weighed 11 pounds when she got me. I was a non-thriver. But this woman loved me alive.
She taught me to be independent, to worry about what others thought, to become a strong woman. I always said that Mother was a feminist even though she did not know it. While she did not stand up for herself (she was of that older generation where woman did not usually work away from home (teacher for 43 years) but I learned to be strong and independent and way too vocal about who I was, what I would put up with, telling my truths, and yet, she taught me to be forgiving and sometimes I have forgiven too much.
I never heard my mother complain about her circumstances and, as I aged, I realized how much she could have. She had complex emotions that she never shared often. I am different from her in that. I am more like my birth mother and will have my say.
Mother needed me to be, I thought, her perfect angel baby, and very earliest memories I have were of not being that. In the end, she did not want me to be that and I would have been relieved to know it.
Anxiety in us comes from that relationship. It can create perfectionism. I really have worked on this and it was not her that demanded that of it. For some odd reason, I demanded that of myself.
My sense of “thin” being, somehow, “good” and being overweight was somehow “not good” came from her feeling like she was not beautiful and thin like a younger sister. We, as mothers, do not realize that every child thinks their mother is beautiful unless we decide they prove us wrong. My mother had the most beautiful voice and yet she thought she had a “teacher’s voice” and could not sing. The most beautiful stories and songs I ever heard came from her lips.
The things she thought of as beautiful, I deeply believe are beautiful as well. Peonies are one. My most beloved flower blossoms are the ones that grew abundantly in her flower garden that was half an acre of absolute beauty. My interests were cultured by her. We had an extensive library and I have an extensive library. She had beautiful classical music records that she played for us and had us tell the story that came from the music. She developed my heart of poetry.
We were never enmeshed in that she was not a helicopter mother. I taught myself my own boundaries and lived by them, usually by making a mistake and learning from it. I was not required to do any housekeeping or chores because she never had the time and we had a housekeeper. It was my father that tried and soon gave up on me ever being a house-anything. I learned quickly by being married really young and loved housekeeping and household chores because I never learned to resent them.
My mother never expected me to mother her. That is huge. I know of many who lean on their kids for financial or emotional support until their daughter’s life can feel incompetent in such a role-reversal. I grew up never wanting to be a burden to her, nor did she expect me to save her in any way.
I became independent early and have been a lifelong learner because she had been. She never demanded or expected that I would eventually go top university as a single-parent mother of seven. She often told me, then, how very proud of me she was. Of course, not without the typical mother-daughter struggles of her trying to understand this new aged daughter of her.
I do have to say that I have realized what a lonely child I was since mother worked long hours. She went to school before I did and returned late and then was marking papers in the evening. It left me to my own devices and I did wander around trying to find ways to bond with others. It was her that made our lives so comfortable and I was aware of this and never ever resented her for it. I do remember wishing I had homemade dresses like the other girls.
I did lean on my girlfriend’s mother a lot for emotional things. I could not burden my mother so very often, curled up in my girlfriend’s mother’s bed, we talked about emotional things. I realize that she must have realized a type of loneliness in me. She was a great mentor. I learned, early, how to seek out such mentors. And, I am grateful for that. One of the greatest sayings my girlfriend’s mother ever said to me, when I was blamed for something I did not do, was, “You know what you did. God knows what you did and too hell with everyone else.” I live by that 70 years later.
Yes, there are mother daughter estrangements. Yes, as a mother, I have experienced this in different ways. I divorced the father. I adopted two daughters who carry different genetics than I. My older daughters saw, and experienced, disrespect of their mother. They saw me struggle with my own self-esteem and chaos as I matured and being a university student and working. I have definitely learned that we cannot know our mothers for we have not walked in their shoes.
I met my birth mother in my 60th year. In fact, I had my 60th birthday when she had her 90th. It was a celebration like no other for me, for her, and she was the loveliest of women and I loved her sense of humor, her ability to love this one that was lost, and for giving me a huge family of beloved siblings. I am grateful she did not raise me. I could not have survived what some had to survive. I was one of the blessed ones.
The mother that raised me taught me so many important life lessons. Yes, I am like her in many many ways that are not genetic. I will ever be grateful for her. I cannot wait to see her again.
Let me tell the story of Coyolxauhqui, the girl of bells, here, as I know it:
Once women were fierce and resolute as stone. They literally walked with jade beneath their tongues, seeking a home. They worked the land and jewelled their bodies in the manner of what they thought was a yearning for their god. They realized the power of words. At night, they would follow the Sun as he set, thinking he was their god. At night, they were said to go into the underworld; that dark and purifying world of Jade. It was there that they would spring up from Mother Earth in greening and blossoms. They made their homes beautiful with flowers and hymns. They had visions. From their bare breasts came the buds. From their legs blossomed the white feathers of their god. Their mother gave birth to the Sun and Moon. They knew this. But, once, their father beheaded the moon and tossed her down and she shattered into thousands upon thousands of pieces and there were stars. Snakes grew as their feminine skirts. They fell, and in their falling, entered darkness. But neither lights nor darknesses will last.
“
The song will be reborn
in each body in such a way that we learn
to redefine what is ours, as our daughters will,
too, and our daughters’ daughters, and their
daughters’ daughters will know that their
bodies are light on Earth, heat of the sun with
its tona, energy, fecundity, song that dances
along the perimeter of stars. And so, they watch
over us from the firmament at dusk and dawn
as the sun is born and dies. These goddess
-es of water were destined to be masters
of their own desire, guides of their own
light. We must engrave on our hearts:
The place where goddesses are born.
- From the collection Goddesses of Water © Jeannette L. Clariond. Translation © 2022 Samantha Schnee.
There is more. See Coyolxauqui is the personification of the moon and she is said to have had four hundred sons (the stars). When her mother got pregnant, they considered that their mother had been dishonored in some way. They did honor-killings, at that time. On son decided to kill her. But, the unborn child, within her warned her but it was too late. The mother had already been beheaded. But the child survived. He sought to pay his siblings back. He slew them all and actually had his siter beheaded and her head thrown into the sky where it became the moon. The battle and story was carved into Aztec pyramid where it stands today.
Today, the mother is seen as mother Earth. She is the goddess of femininity, of war, and agriculture. The child became the sun. Coyoxauqui is known as the goddess of the moon and her name means golden bells for the bells she fashioned and attached to her cheeks.
This ancient story represents how girls may psychologically try to “ki9ll” off their mother in themselves. Some do it by completely walking away and breaking that sacred union. Some try to extinguish some parts of themselves they recognize as their mother. Some had relationships, all their lives, that were not good with their mother. As a species, we try to do better with each generation. No animosity, simply remembering what one needed and then put that into their way of mothering. Some choose not to have children as their childhood might have been so dysfunctional and they have not, yet, worked through the whys. Some could not have children but find ways to fulfill that need within themselves and become mother to people, places, things (usually pets). Some become nurturers in so many other ways. But, no matter how much we try, it is there. Having being mothered by two, I have a huge sense of what is genetic in me and what is conditioned. I am the product of two, for sure, and, as a mother, I have sacrificed in ways none but I would know… and none but I need to know. I offered up my life five times and adopted two, to be a mother and my mothering was the best I knew at the time to offer. I am sure there has been a time when my children wish they had beheaded me…lol. But, in the end, as we all should, we come to understand they WHY of it all… and, perhaps, forgive me my mothering shortcomings and praise me for my ‘try-hard’.
©Carol Desjarlais 1.13.23
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