Mothering: the cycle of love and mistakes

In therapy, in my late thirties, my therapist commented that it was a wonder that I had such a positive outlook on life having, as she said, “raised myself.” Oh, I had a mother, alright; I was her first born. She went on to have ten more… and to become a world famous physician. We all pretty much raised ourselves.

But here’s the thing, somehow, her amazing optimism penetrated every one of us and so, despite incest, sexual abuse, one fatal illness that wasn’t, and all the other challenges that life – and living in that family – had to offer, somehow she raised an amazing bunch of strong, positive people. We’re all alive, mostly pretty darn healthy, and we all know how to make the best of our lives.

In her late seventies, when learning of some of the horrors that her children had endured, mom began to forget things; ultimately she forgot everything about most things except for who her children were. Ultimately she became a small, grey bundle of pure love, and felt, for the first time in my life, like a real mom. She never did tell me that she loved me though she did refer to me as “her buddy” once. It warmed my heart.

Her death, late in 2012 at the age of 91, put much of my life in perspective and let me understand at a profound level how it had come to be that I’d lost custody of my own children because of the pathology of my behavior, behavior that I seemed completely unable to control.

But even though I saw my children only every two weeks from the time that they were eight and ten, I tried to be the best mother I could be despite my extreme lack of training. All I knew mostly was that I wanted to love them and protect them and never let the kinds of things happen to them that had happened to me. I taught them what boundaries were and what their rights were when they opened windows in discussions that would allow me to do so.

What I really wanted, of course, was to be there for them physically, to hug them every day, to let them know how much I loved them and appreciated them.  It was difficult for all of us and I was thankful that I’d breastfed at least my youngest; that bond helped a great deal.

They are grown now, my daughter exhibiting the same kind of genius that her grandmother had, my son exhibiting a sensitivity that makes him the amazing artist/musician/songwriter that he is. I gave my children, apparently, the same inheritance that my mother bestowed on her own children: the challenge of raising themselves without a mother in-place and the optimism to deal with it. Neither of them has children. I wonder about that sometimes.

We are human and many of us learn via making mistakes; being a mother is a constant learning experience that I can see now, never ends. My daughter calls me many times a week just to talk, despite a 70 hour work week, and my son, bless him, emails me with regular questions about his early childhood that have arisen from therapy. If I loved them any more I would explode… and I tell them so.

There is no job more important in the world than being a mother. As mothers, we are responsible for creating the compassionate, thoughtful human beings that will ideally be creating this ever-evolving world in which, with wisdom and a fair share of luck, each generation gets just a little bit smarter than the one that went before it.

Rev. Victoria Pendragon, D.D. is an artist, wordsmith, empath, the author of Sleep Magic, Surrender to Success and the happy perpetrator of My Alternate Reality on You Tube.