In honor of Mother’s Day, below is a reprint of my article from May, 2020.
Tomorrow will be my sixteenth motherless Mother’s Day. And while it had gotten easier over time, the absence of my mother feels now like a wound opened anew. Exacerbating these feelings are the demise of my fourteen-year-old dog seven weeks ago, day seventy of coronavirus social distancing, and the loss of intimate family relationships—all in the midst of an unprecedented transfiguration of life as we knew it.
With both parents gone, I currently reside full-time on the other side of the parent-child equation. Among other things, this includes my being on the receiving end of behaviors I once directed toward my own parents. As a family-systems-trained psychotherapist and coach, I have seen these types of multi-generational pattern replications frequently in my practice, as well as being an active participant of their playing out in my personal life.
Living solely on the parenting side of the parent-child dynamic has taught me a lot about myself as a child to my own parents. This is especially true regarding my mother, with whom I shared a life-long relationship riddled with mutual disappointment, judgment, and resentment. Despite my unsuccessful attempt to achieve closure with her when she was dying, it wasn’t until the roles had flipped with my own children that I was able to release the hurt and anger I carried toward my mother, replacing them with compassion, forgiveness, and love.
The turning point was when I began to see my mother not as my parent, but from the vantage point of human to human and mother to mother. I understood—not as an intellectual concept but at the very core of my beingness—that she was a human being who happened to also be my parent. Viewing her from the adult part of me instead of from the limited lens of my inner wounded child, allowed me to gain a new understanding of who my mother was, the life she had lived, and the pain that had so intensely permeated her life and the lives of those she loved.
Regret is a bitter pill, especially when it involves someone who is no longer of this world, with whom you can never right your wrong. The one person for whom I carry this type of regret is my mother. While the story is a sad one, I share it in the hope of helping others who may be experiencing parental discord—and especially those whose parents are still living, with whom there may still be a chance for repair and reconciliation.
I ran away from home at fourteen and spent the next nine years adrift, trying to find my place in the world. At 23, I attended my first personal growth workshop in Los Angeles. A couple of months later, I did the advanced seminar, which included visualizations, partner exercises, and processing of our families of origin and experiences growing up. I came out of the workshop feeling livid about the multitude of mistakes my parents had made, how badly they had wounded and damaged me, and their complete lack of awareness and accountability about what they had done.
A short time later, my then-husband and I came east to visit my family for the Christmas holiday. Having been encouraged in the workshop to confront our parents (but lacking any guidance about the best way to go about it), I decided I would express my feelings to my mother, and hold her accountable for what I believed to be her many transgressions as a parent.
I went into her bedroom and spent the next two hours berating her for being a terrible mother—for her failure to take care of me as an infant, for her physical and emotional neglect, and for her lack of being present, nurturing, and attentive throughout my life. Her own mother was visiting from Tennessee, and the two of them just sat there and cried while I angrily and relentlessly lambasted my mother.
Here is the lesson (and the regret): expressing anger and blame from the inner wounded, raging child with the actual person with whom these feelings originate (a parent, for example) IS NEVER PRODUCTIVE. This is true for several reasons: 1) when we are expressing from the inner wounded, raging child part of us, we are in the child ego state. That means that, like an actual child, we are unable to see the bigger picture, or leverage the more rational, adult part of us that can view the situation from a more comprehensive and complex perspective. The more we are seeing things through the lens of the child, the more limited—and thus less accurate—is our perspective, 2) even when our anger is justified, the more emotionally charged the communication is, the more likely it is that the receiver will get defensive, and the less likely they will be of actually hearing and addressing what we’re trying to say, and 3) the more blaming, shaming, or verbally abusive our communication, the more injury and potentially irreparable damage is done to the relationship, thereby sabotaging the very results we’re trying to achieve (accountability, apology, repair, improved relationship, etc.).
So, what to do with all of those feelings of grief, rage, pain, and resentment we have toward our parents? And how do we go about getting our adult-child needs met by them now, while they are still here and where there may be the possibility of forging a new, healthier relationship with them?
I can tell you that blaming, shaming, or being verbally abusive to your parents is never helpful. However, expressing and discharging those feelings in role plays with a therapist who is trained and skilled in emotional release work is a critical first step in the healing process. The wounded inner child who is stuck in feelings of rage needs a safe space in which to release and process those feelings. And the discharge and neutralization of that rage is a critical component to being able to then address your feelings and issues with your actual parent from the more resourceful adult ego state. It’s the difference between expressing HOW you feel about X (describing your feelings and issues), which involves the adult ego state, versus expressing directly from the wounded parts that are overcome by the intensity of those feelings (the child ego state).
And the regret that I carry about my mother? In addition to the hurt I caused her back in her bedroom in 1982, I regret that I didn’t take the time to learn more about who she was as a person. I regret not asking her what her life was like growing up, about the unspeakable secret that was her first marriage—which I learned after her death had ended in her husband’s suicide after she sought a divorce. I regret not seeking to understand the undercurrent of her ever-present emotional pain and self-medication with prescription drugs and alcohol. I regret not learning about the girl and woman she was before she married my father—her life as a nurse and founder of the first civilian dispensary during the war. I regret not seeing my mother in the more comprehensive reality of who she was—a beautiful, intelligent, and cultured lady who instilled in me a love of words and good grammar; a young woman who moved across the country by herself in her twenties—something that was unusual and brave in the 1940s—a woman with clear opinions, a quick wit, and a great laugh.
While my mother lived, my own wounded-ness caused me to see her only as a chronically depressed and deficient parent. Now being a parent-less adult who experiences only the other side of the parent-child relationship, I am able to see my mother in an entirely different light; as a person with the strengths, challenges, and weaknesses that all human beings have—a complex woman who happened to be my mother.
I love and miss you, Mom. Wherever you are, Happy Mother’s Day.