A Mother’s Love – Part 7

I am on a bit of a writing streak this week, so although this post won’t be published until September, I am writing this at the beginning of August.  I currently feel very out of season, so it seems strangely fitting for there to be a dissonance in my time of writing and that of publication.

Usually at this time of year, my energy is high, and I am out and about enjoying the world, full of life and ideas, and I ordinarily have lots to give.  This typically fades for me as summer wears on, and then by mid to late September, I begin to feel a little weary and often a bit rundown.  This is the space I find myself in at present.

The calendar is telling me I should be having a whale of a time enjoying the highs of summer, while my body is telling me to snuggle under a blanket on the veranda on an evening and to embrace the slow pleasure of getting cosy.  Because of my history, there is always a risk that I might buy into society’s narratives about what is ‘normal’ and give myself a hard time for being a party pooper, but I have chosen not to follow this route, instead choosing to trust what my own system is telling me, and taking some guidance from the natural world which also seems in large part to be gearing up for the end of the year (I went into the wood to meditate the other day and found the first red autumn leaves lying on the ground).

And that brings me to the subject I want to tackle today… I have now written several posts in this A Mother’s Love blog thread, but so far, I have not made it clear why I chose that title for this series; I have only alluded to it in parts.

So, today, I am going to, hopefully, address this gap.

Society at large tells us that mothers love their children unconditionally and that love ‘should’ be reciprocated by the child.  Society tells us that a mother’s love is a wonderful thing which grows, nourishes and supports a child to flourish.  The assumption in many circles is that if a child shows ‘outlandish’ behaviour towards their parents (i.e. does not show appreciation for the love they are receiving), this is a personality defect in the child and should be corrected through a combination of guidance, positive reinforcement, and sometimes even punishment.  It’s a pretty standard part of the unwritten parenting 101 manual here in the UK.

Because this story exists in the society in which I grew up, and is the dominant narrative to which people subscribe, my somewhat quirky and at times outrageous behaviour (particularly as a teenager) was met with much derision from the adults around me.  I was told that my attitude stank, that I should shape up my behaviour to conform to that which was considered normal/acceptable, and that my Mum, in particular (although my Dad had some interesting ways of parenting too), did not deserve the lack of respect I showed her, some of the venom I directed at her, or the stress I caused her.  Simultaneously, I had the message that my hyper-independence was a trait which should be celebrated, as was my ability to engage in the adult world in a way that other kids my age could not.  So, on the one hand, I was being scolded for adapting to my environment, and on the other, praised for it.  Because that’s not confusing for a child at all.

Now, let me take you back in time to the post where I told you that my Mum was the woman who said she wished I had been stillborn.  I was in my thirties at that point in time.  Do you really think that if she had held onto that wish for over thirty years, she would have been saint-like in her behaviour towards me during that time?  Do you think she would have been capable of showing me the actual level of love and affection a growing child needs?  Should she have been able to adequately meet all of my needs (particularly the emotional ones), despite being landed with a child she did not want, whilst also embracing the phase of life where she was expecting a greater level of freedom and less responsibility?

Or, do you think there might have been a fair amount of resentment and intolerance directed at me, despite meeting the visual criteria for the outside world of a responsible parent?

Did she actually love me?  This is a question I ask myself all the time.  Sometimes I think the answer is yes.  There are some photos of us together, although very few, where she is actually smiling at me, so this would suggest she felt some affection for me.  The problem is that I’m relying on photos to gather this evidence.  I don’t actually remember that being her attitude towards me.  Most of the time, I just felt like I was a right royal pain in her a*se and that I had some serious improving to do if I wanted to be treated with love and kindness.

Simultaneously, I know my mother had a horrendous experience of being parented herself.  My dad, who was not a man to use particularly emotive language about anything, described my grandmother as evil.  Is a woman raised in such an abusive environment capable of adequately attending to her own children?  Was she showing love in her own way, but just had a funny way of going about it?

Maybe!?  And then sometimes I think the answer is no, because no one who directs that amount of venom towards their daughter could actually be considered loving.  It’s a real head f*ck of an unanswerable question to live with!

As a child, I never questioned any of this.  I was told by society that Mum loved me and that I should love her back.  So I tried, and failed, continuously to elicit the positive regard I so craved.

When I felt hurt or protested my experience, I was told I was too sensitive, that what I was experiencing was not how things were, that I should be more understanding and accommodating and loving towards the people who caused me distress; no wonder I became an explosive ball of defence. I was constantly having my experience denied and being told I needed to change in order to make that experience different.  But nothing I tried worked, because the problem was not with me alone; it was in the relationship.

So, the love (if that indeed is what it was) that my Mum showed me produced a hyper-vigilant, hyper-independent, somewhat paranoid and defensive adult that felt utterly incapable of doing relationships.  I would feel continuously hurt, react, be told I was wrong and then try to suppress/deny my own experience.  I can tell you, from my own perspective and from that of many other people I have worked with, that this experience can lead you to seriously question your own version of reality and to try to shut yourself off from it.  This is a great strategy for staying in a toxic relationship, don’t feel it, that way you get to survive.  But it also leaves you vulnerable to abuse!

No surprise then that, after leaving home at sixteen, I entered into a string of abusive relationships and found myself in some very scary and really quite dangerous situations without ever fully understanding how I had gotten myself there.

So a mother’s love, you see, doesn’t always produce the outcomes that society might expect.  The flavour of love matters.

As with so many people on a healing journey after the experience of abuse, trauma or emotional neglect.  I have had to align myself with the idea that my traumatised younger self still needs the love, care and affection she wanted and needed all those years ago, but that no one else is going to show up and rescue her.  The only person who can attend to those needs now, is me.

I have had to learn to acknowledge and validate my own experience.  This is what I am feeling, whether anyone else thinks I should be or not.  I can choose to voice my experience and ask for my needs to be met in relationship (sometimes they are, and sometimes they are not), or I can choose to stay quiet if that feels like the better path, but the only person who gets to say whether or not my experience matters is me.

After years of having your experience denied, this can be a really hard skill to master.  And so frequently, I find, it’s the exact flavour of love which was missing, which would have helped you to feel safe, loved and cared for, and its absence in history can cause so much pain in the present.

There are myriad approaches you could take to tackling this deficit.  My own particular formula has been a blend of nervous system regulation strategies, learning not to follow the story that my mind is telling me about what this experience means, but to stay with my felt experience, finding the courage to communicate this to others, and being willing to accept that other versions of reality can co-exist alongside mine, without wiping mine out.

You, no doubt, will have/will find your own unique blend.

Can you resonate, fellow traveller?  Do you know what it is like to question whether up is in fact down and whether you should be trying to stand on the ceiling, or live an August style life because the calendar suggests that’s the done thing?

If you feel so compelled, please do let me know your thoughts and how these words have impacted you. It’s always nice to hear how things are for you.

Thank you for reading to the end of this latest leg of my journey.  I’ll be back with more soon.