A Mother's Woe

I have always prided myself in being an open book, meaning what you see is who I really am.  Another birthday has come and gone; and that sometimes has a funny way of taking you back to past memories.  Of other birthdays, of childhood, of lost loves and of loves gained throughout the years.

I feel fortunate to come from a large family.  A family that loves me no matter what is going on in my life, knowing that I can be imperfect, make wrong decisions, take the road less traveled, confident that at the end of that road there they are waiting for me and happy to see me.  That to me is everything.  That is the core of who I am; my family.

Once in a while, you meet people who live in the shadow of who they used to be.  They don't live in the present, for some reason they can't.  I'm not a psychologist.  I will not attempt to try and analyze.  I will only say, how sad.  How sad that they can't trust the people that actually love them.  Their father, mother, brother, sister.  How sad that they can't comprehend that only they have the power and obligation to make their life worthwhile.  How sad that they feel they need to do it all by themselves and live their lives as if they had no family at all.

Sigmund Freud analyzed that most insecurities, anxieties, failures and personal short comings are attributed and caused by one's own mother.  In tune with that philosophy, its no wonder why so many people are angry with mom.  I, myself, am guilty as charged.  I have been angry at my mother for decades, to the detriment of no one but myself.  But in all that time, I have never stopped loving her and never will.  She taught me what love is in so many ways.

So for all the women out there who wonder why their grown children are not as close to them as they wish, stop torturing yourselves.   There is something innately engrained in us that make us rebel against our mothers, our first nurturer, our first love.  Rest easy in the fact that child rearing is not easy, and for many, the cards are stacked against us from the beginning and yet somehow we managed to raise our children, with love and compassion.  We can only be there for our grown children when they allow us to be there for them.  And that is totally their choice, not ours.  What they do with their lives after they leave the nest, rests solely on their shoulders.   To attempt otherwise is futile.