She is no longer perfection who fell from her pedestal.

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mom

 

It’s Mother’s Day today here in the US. I woke up thinking of my Mom. She passed away just about eight years ago. Hard to believe I haven’t seen her for that many years.

As I thought about her, I thought of this picture above of the two of us together, in one of those picture booths they had back in the day. We were traveling across the country by car and these picture booths were available at many of the rest stops in the midwest. The rest stops situated on overpasses that graced the highways. My parents had just split up and mom was taking us to visit our grandparents in Michigan. She drove the four of us, my sisters and me, all the way across the country by herself in her 1964 1/2 Bronze-colored Mustang.

I got up and looked at the real picture and as I looked at it, what struck me, maybe for the first time ever, was her full humanity – the fact that she was just a human being. What struck me was her age – she was 36 years old here. So young to be facing motherhood on her own. She had her parents 2,500 miles away, but she had no siblings. And, she was facing great shame and judgment during a time when single motherhood was very uncommon.

She was just a woman, a young woman, hit hard by infidelity, separation, and divorce.

I could feel this ‘just a woman’ piece for the first time. You know how, as kids, we see our parents as gods? How they seem so much larger than life, as if they are super people with super powers? And in seeing them this way, their love when we get it is magnified like 1,000x? 10,000x? or even a 1,000,000x? And, so are their limitations, wrongdoings, and faults?

I don’t know if that is how you’ve carried your parents’ (especially Mom’s) limitations and wrongdoings, but for so many years I did. They hurt so much.

But seeing her here as this beautiful woman, trying to hold it together while in so much pain, and seeing me next to her, eyes full of love for her and getting my face as close as I could to her face, what has been left of any feelings of not enoughness-of-love fell away. I could see that everything hurt so much because I loved her so much. We do as kids. We love our parents so much because we are still in touch with that purity of love, that innocence of love – until we cannot bear to feel it in a world that’s forgotten it. That was how it worked for me. Perhaps, it was different for you. And, what I see is this underlying way children are, still holding up this huge image of Mom because the love within our hearts is huge and full and without resentment – until it no longer is huge and full and without resentment.

Oh, how I see her now in her humanness. Her frailty and amazing strength to do what she had to do. And, I see my love for her – my big-hearted, shiny-eyed love for her. I just wanted her to be happy and I couldn’t make that happen. I just wanted to be happy and I wanted her to see me happy, and she just couldn’t all the time because of course she was human and doing what we do to get through these lives we are living. Seeing her happy would have made me feel safer during those years.

It feels funny to be writing this at my age – like I should have this all together by now and I didn’t. And, I don’t.

To finally see her in her tenderness, with all of her flaws, trying so hard to keep it together when she probably wanted to just run away from it all, is the greatest gift I could unwrap on this Mother’s Day.

She is no longer perfection who fell from her pedestal. And, neither am I.

 

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The True Mother Within

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Mother

Mother – never our ideal, never that whom we hoped for…really hoped for.

I learned this as my mother was dying. I realized she would never be what I had always hoped she would be. No mother can, nor will. No human can fill that mother longing within us. We mothers try. We mothers fall short. We mothers beat ourselves up for this.

What mother can?

This past week, I was held in the lap of this mother that is the bountiful presence that births life. She is the tree whose arms wrapped around space like a vine wraps itself around the trellis. She is the sky whose stars shot through the night sky. She is the garden, whose birthing beds produced a magical harvest. She is the silkiest, saltiest water to ever embrace this woman’s body.

This past week, I was held in the lap of Molokai. This magical island is deeply rooted and grounded. Her energy is of the earth in a way there are no words to describe. She is wild and untamed and I came to know this place within myself – wild and untamed.

What if she is the creator, the One that gives birth to all that is?

What if she holds all the world’s children?

What if this mother is the mother you long for, the mother that can hold you in the ways you long to be held, can hear you in the ways you long to be heard, can touch you in the ways you long to be touched?

What if She is the only mother who can do so?

How would your life change if you came to know this?

How would your relationship with your human mother change?

How would your relationship change with yourself, and with the world, if you knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are already held in the most bountiful lap, the most embraceable hug, the most adoring look possible?

This Mother’s Day, may you know Her embrace; may you know her bounty, may you know her adoration, may you know her love. May you come to know that your human mother cannot fill your deepest cravings to be mothered – but the Mother can and she is here, right now, holding you in her most bountiful lap. And it is through Her embrace that we remember the true mother within.

May we offer gratitude and love to our beautiful and bountiful Mother Earth…and to all the world’s mothers.

 

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