My friend Peg Streep writes painfully and movingly about Mean Mothers — Those who couldn’t do, or didn’t do, what was needed for their children. There’s a lot of work to be done to heal those children’s wounds.
A sad truth is that when we recognize what’s missing in a child’s life, too few of us step in to make that difference. And those of us lucky to have had what we needed keep finding mothers everywhere to nurture and guide us and we’re more adept, perhaps, at letting that Love in. And some, but not all of us, gather ourselves and take ourselves off to the psychologists and do the work to realize we’re well worth the efforts of mothering and mother ourselves. And I’m grateful for all of those who break the pattern…
But most Mothers struggle along and get it as right as they can. Most learn how to Mother their own and the neighbor children or their students as they cross their field of vision. They do the best they can…
And so, for all the presents and the halloween costumes and moments learning what they had to teach us, thanks Moms.
I wish that more of us subscribed to Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation. Would that more of us would “Arise then women of this day…” and grab back the responsibilities for Peace.
In the meantime I wish you Peace with your memories and your realities and joy when it’s appropriate. Missing my own blood relatives who mothered me, Being grateful for my other Mothers. Beyond grateful for the young women and men who have allowed me a glimpse of what’s expected of me and allowed me to love them. My Husband introduced me to his two beautiful daughters who were so well mothered by Shirley and who are such great mothers in turn. I am incredibly inconsistent and still full of wonder that there’s a place for me in that circle.
I’m a lucky woman, and that’s plenty to keep me going on this beautiful warm and sunny Sabbath as the Flower Moon rides into it’s last week of beauty. (I’m watching those lilies of the valley every day.)
