Mother’s Day Lands Different Every Year
Always a mix of grief and gratitude.
Feeling called to write about grief and gratitude on this Mother’s Day. Apologies to those who receive this twice. Wishing everyone a day of feeling whatever you need to feel around your mom or motherhood or both.
Losing my mom was the greatest grief of my life and the one I’ve taken longest to write about. So I’ve lugged it around all this time.
I didn’t write about my mom for many years because I wasn’t ready to let her go. Which meant I carried deep grief inside.
For the past few years I’ve been criticizing myself for not writing about my mom—while gradually beginning to write about my mom. I’m accustomed to being criticized for not doing things as I am doing them. So I do it to myself.
Compassion is a much more effective motivational tool than criticism, but neither of my parents had much compassion for themselves, making it extremely difficult for me to find any until after they died.
My mother was extremely critical of herself, which is how I came to be the same way. My father was extremely critical of my mom, which is how I felt like he was criticizing me all the time. In fact, he criticized me very rarely. He didn’t need to. Because he constantly criticized my mom, and I took note.
My father’s criticism of my mother was his projected criticism of self. And my mother’s exaggerated criticism of self was her own plus his, which she internalized as her own.
My mother was depressed my entire life. With the exception of her final three years, when she was dying of cancer. When my dad finally stopped criticizing her and found compassion.
Which feels a lot more like love than criticism. And so she bloomed. As she was dying.
In my home growing up, my mom showered us with love and compassion to compensate for my father’s criticism. If only she had showered herself with love and compassion, too. She might still be alive.
We cannot live on a steady stream of criticism if it isn’t balanced by even more love and compassion. Many moms know this instinctively and balance dads’ criticism with abundant love. Mine did. I did. The woman I babysit for does. Moms want balance for their kids. Too much criticism leads most of us to instinctively compensate with abundant love. If you see an OVERLY loving mom, my first question is where is dad’s love?
Moms who overcompensate are overcompensating for something. Often dads’ inability to show love.
Dads HATE this and criticize moms for being too soft. For buying the kids too much crap. For reacting when they hurt themselves. For babying their babies. For overdoing on birthday parties. For signing them up for too many classes. For worrying too much. For scheduling too many play dates.
Here’s the thing. The dads aren’t always wrong. The moms are often doing TOO much, to make up for the dads not doing enough. Instead of criticizing moms for doing too much, dads need to do more. Then moms will naturally be able to step back and do less.
And we do. Just ask my kids.
Moms are trying to nurture kids the way kids need to be nurtured to feel safe and secure. And many are driven into overdrive by dads who make kids feel the opposite. Through constant criticism.
Not all dads. Just most dads I’ve spent much time with. (Jeremy Simon jumps to mind as an exception. Here’s to more exceptions all the time!)
Men are capable of empathy and compassion. But in most nuclear families in the country where I live, it falls on the women to model these things for children.
My mom had HUGE empathy and compassion for others. As do I. She had none for herself. Leading her to marry someone who had none for her. Leading me to do the same.
I haven’t wanted to write about my mom while mad at her. Because I focus on the bad when I’m mad. I was PISSED at my mom for several years when I realized the foolishness she led me into. Good f*cking grief. How could you do this to us, mom? You were smarter than this.
And she was. Which is why it is so damn frustrating. My mother was BRILLIANT and ridiculously talented and yet that was shrouded by depression created by living in a system built on devaluing her.
After my dad died, I set out to write a book about him. Because he assigned me to. And because I didn’t honestly think I’d ever stop being mad at him, so it seemed foolish to wait for that day.
As a result of writing about my dad while mad, I documented a lot of his bad. I think I wanted to spare my mom that.
Really, I set out to write the book about him because I never stopped trying to please my dad. Often hurting my mom in the process. It’s poetic justice that this instance of pleasing my dad actually protected my mom.
Which is really why I sought to please my dad in the first place.
When my dad was happy, he didn’t hurt my mom. Thus it became my job to keep my dad happy. By doing everything he wanted me to do.
Which hurt my mom. Because it was often the opposite of what she wanted me to do. My dad wanted me to go to an Ivy League school to shut up his family who said he ruined us kids by raising us in poverty. He also wanted me to have power and a top education and be like him. My mom wanted me to take a gap year and travel.
Why didn’t I listen to my mom?
Because I was always seeking to please my dad. Because my dad dominated my mom, making me respect her and her opinion less.
I hate that! And it propelled me to leave my abusive marriage. I want my kids to respect me.
That and I want to be around for them to respect.
As I began to research the book my dad assigned me to write about him in his will, I saw that I had recreated my parent’s marriage. I had been in complete denial until then. But once I saw it, I had to make drastic changes. History told me where the future was headed.
I was not going to die prematurely and leave my kids with a dad who didn’t know how to show love.
I spent my first Mother’s Day without a mom hospitalized in Westchester, NY, having tried to harm myself more times than the people around me could handle.
I remember drawing lots of birds and flowers as the TV reminded us all to call our moms and show our love. My sick rescue cat Zinnia had just undergone a radically expensive radical mastectomy my roommate charged to my credit card in my absence. I felt like a sucky cat mom without a mom in a lot of debt surrounded by people struggling even more than I was. I thought about throwing something at the TV more than once. Probably good I was locked up on that first Mother’s Day without my mom.
My second Mother’s Day I sent grateful cards to all the women in my life I could celebrate as moms. Dozens and dozens. I decided to lean into the day I wanted to black out on the calendar.
I had a love/hate relationship with the day and with moms in general until I became a mom myself. It became much easier to make it through Mother’s Day when I could celebrate my own motherhood.
I embraced one former boyfriend’s mom as a surrogate mom in many ways, but the moms of other men in my life often got a slightly chilled reception and never any cards or acknowledgement on Mother’s Day.
Somehow it felt disrespectful to my mom. And also a little disrespectful to me to feel expected to celebrate other people’s moms when I didn’t have my own.
I also never called other people mom. I couldn’t call my stepmother my stepmother until after my dad died. It just began to feel right. But only after more than a decade of calling her my father’s wife.
My mom asked me to call her Mother when I decided I’d outgrown Mommy. Which might have been age three. I broke that woman’s heart in so many ways for so many years. By pushing her away.
Mother, I am so sorry. Maybe now you understand why? I blamed you for staying with him and dying. I blamed you because I knew you were going to die before you died, because you couldn’t leave. I blamed you because I didn’t understand. Because you can’t understand until you experience it yourself. I blamed you because you blamed yourself. I blamed you because he blamed you. I blamed you because society blamed you. I blamed you because I wanted to believe I could never be you. I blamed you because it was too dangerous to blame him. I blamed you because you were more capable and I expected you to fix him, to fix everything. I blamed you because you were the victim. I pushed you away thinking it would make it hurt less to lose you. Ha.
I blamed you and then I became you because it’s what you modeled, I didn’t want to become him, and I needed to understand what you went through to find the empathy and compassion to forgive you. And stop being mad at you.
Mission accomplished.
I did it all to be able to understand and forgive you. To know how very much you loved me throughout. To see how devastatingly hard it is to leave and appreciate how much harder it would have been for you. To understand repetition compulsion.
You motivated all of my study and research of domestic violence and trauma recovery. Also neuroscience. Polyvagal theory. Holistic health. Dance. Culinary therapy. Grief. Gratitude. All the things that drive me most I got from you.
I did what he wanted me to do first so I could do what you wanted me to do better. I learned to write and communicate and publish and document so I can write about the things that mattered to you.
There is a short game where you please the demanding man and a long game where you honor the brilliant wise woman.
Mama Melinda, you taught me both. Also how to do them simultaneously. You taught me how to always do more than one thing at a time.
As I head into my 25th year without a mom—having had you for 25 years—I feel grateful for balance. You taught me so many things. And you gave me strength and wisdom to do even things you couldn’t do for yourself. You’re the very best mom I ever could have had and I am so grateful to you and for you. You made me who I am today.
You taught me how to be a mom. My empathy and compassion come from you. You were a born nurturer and you baked it into me.
You installed so much of my programming. My love of babies*, animals*, flowers*, music*, dance, cooking, sewing, balance, math, fairness, computer science, technology, homemaking, birthday parties*, fashion, beauty*, the ocean, California, restaurants*, food*, color*, efficiency*, multitasking*, storytelling*, diversity*, travel*, learning*, trying new things*, resourcefulness*, optimism, justice*. All these things come from you.
*The things I get from both of you are extra strong. Like my stubbornness and rebellious nature.
On this Mother’s Day I miss you less than I’ve missed you in a long time because I feel you with me more. With forgiveness comes my ability to open to all of you, including all of your resplendent beauty and brilliance. You are inside me, Mama Melinda. And now that I have learned how to forgive you for things not your fault, I can embrace all the ways you are part of me. And forgive myself.
It’s been quite a journey these past 25 years without you. A journey to bring us back together. Thank you for your patience. I saved the best for last.
Happy Mother’s Day. Thanks for being my mom and teaching me how to be a mom. I love you. You taught me how to love. (And then we taught the dads. It just took them longer. Because it wasn’t hardwired and as long as we were there to do it they didn’t see a need.)
Not only did you teach me how to be a mom, you taught me how to get the dads to be dads. Respect.
Of course, you also taught me to recognize patterns. And you taught me to have the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. SO much of my courage comes from you. Channeling your energy helps me do things that otherwise feel impossible. It is a powerful gift to get to channel you. Worth all the work it took to understand and forgive you.