When Your Mother Is Just Not That Into You
I learned today that my mother is not doing well. She will go for a CATscan next week and then there will be information regarding the status of her health. I suspect my sister will share the info with my ex-husband to pass on to me, which is….. whatever. And here his the thing. If my mother passed tomorrow, I know I wouldn’t have done one thing from the past 10 years differently. I showed up and served and reached out time after time. I took all the risk. I made myself available and vulnerable for service, healing, and connection….repeatedly and was handled like a dirty diaper, because I made decisions for my family that were best for us.
My refusal to show up for dinners and events and pretending that this didn’t and does not still happen or hurt, is the choice I make. Will her passing change things? It will not change my values or my responsibility for my own self-preservation. My mother’s rejection of my requests to heal, in addition to her overt disrespect for my detachment from situations that are harmful, keep us where we are. The presence of a loving, loyal, supportive mother will be no less in 20 years than it is today or last year. This is a painful truth- not one I can change-just accept.
I can hear it now… “She is impossible to love”, because that feels safer than saying “I was unable to give her the love she deserved”. Or “She was incapable of feeling love”. Again, safer than saying, “I am incapable of being loving and vulnerable”. Why would I want to engage or expose myself to those so utterly right, at my expense? I Surrender! I am no longer ashamed of the way you behave towards me. That is your business 100% Be right. Just do it over there and leave me to my life with those who feel and show love for me. Surrender is for Badasses. I fucken surrender my mother and sister.
Before recovery, I survived as a series of 
Just as some of us need more food, sleep, exercise, some of us require more time and space to recover from daily life in this overstimulating world. So silly and exhausting to try and hide this from others. Culturally, I guess, it is meant to be impressive, boasting self elected denial of our own needs and casually illuminating all the things we DO instead. I feel not only relief, but pleasure from admitting that “I just can’t do it.” Having Trusted Others who share this as a value is a spiritual triumph, especially for those with whom I choose to share a table and a bed. We mutually and collectively refuse the needless complexity of pretending…..and of tryyyyyyying to hard.
Lately, it has become apparent that the conversations need to begin now. Oh, how I want to impart healthy ideas about sex, bodies, love and intimacy. But who am I? What do I know? Please join the conversation, spread the word. Share your wisdom. We must do better for our children. With sex everywhere, we cannot be squeamish or silent and pretend it is all about love, marriage and babies, unless we want to create shame-filled sexuality for our children. I do not want that. Here is a little video, my first ever. I am eager to have the conversations with others– before I do with my sons. Please chime in here or email me or leave a comment. Let’s do this!
While on the treadmill at the Ymca, I locked onto E!’s Khloe Kardashian- Revenge Body. Seems like, with consistent safety, love, connection and support, people tend to achieve more. This is a huuuuuge differentiator– Those who DO and those who DO NOT grow up developing connection to god, family, community, and known innate talent or favorable attributes. Those blessed with any of these are the natural Badasses of the world, knowing and striving for their full potential–achieving greatness by their own internal measure–expanding natural talents and interests and seizing opportunities to give to and to serve–and not feeling the call to diminish others to elevate themselves. And there are those of us, who just want to be Ok, one day at a time as we discover our talents/interests and what it means to truly be of service, to get clear on who or what it is we intend to serve. It was not possible for me to recognize how to strive in these ways while obsessed with efforts to avoid given threats of despair. Despair was the only thing I had faith in, before recovery. Before faith, I had no models of, or experience with patience, acceptance, discipline, self-esteem, dignity, serenity.
Recovery invites me to have, recognize, and honor boundaries. Boundaries- my spiritual skin. I am naturally permeable and so without them everything gets right in and consumes me-leaving me full with other people’s information and needs, no mental space left for God or even for myself, only a need to invade someone else. My spiritual skin keeps me as me and you as you, protecting us all from the confusion of entanglement. I would describe my affiliations with my ex-husband and my family of origin as entanglements that formed before I developed boundaries– and as a consequence, died natural deaths in response to this spiritual development.
