The Relentless Hope of Healing the Mother Wound upon a Mother’s Death
Reflections on Self-Mothering
Sitting here sipping a nip of Amaretto, not because I like it, but because it helps me feel close to Mom. It’s the same reason exactly twice a year I buzz through the McDonald’s drive-through and get a Filet o’ Fish or buy my sons the candies Sixlets and white Tic Tacs.
Tomorrow would have been Mom’s sixty-eighth birthday. Gratefully seventeen years ago on that day, we were able to celebrate together the birth of my second son on her birthday. That is so special to me. Then breast cancer took Mom a few days after Mother’s Day when she was sixty.
It’s an odd thing to be the oldest of the matrilineal ancestors at forty-six. Or back when Mom passed when I was forty. It’s lonely. It’s sad. It’s disorienting. I feel untethered, still, even after over seven years of missing her.
To be completely transparent, because I am only transparent these days, Mom and I never really saw eye-to-eye except when she was in the hospital for the last time when I spent my last day with her on Mother’s Day. I share a fair bit in my books, Body 2.0, Ischemia, and Unlearn Moderation, and my poetry, but we did find an understanding as she was transitioning from this earth. We found an unexpected common ground as I mothered her into her death.
While I realize this may not land with many, my relationship with Mom has blossomed since her death. I talk to her every day. I know she protects and is present for my boys whether they know it or not. I see her in a formation of Canada geese overhead, in the mourning dove that won’t leave the deck table all day on Mother’s Day every year, and in my own face every day as the gray hair and wrinkles begin their enthusiastic advance.
I look into Mom’s face every day in the mirror. And behind my face, and her face, I see her mother, and her mother’s mother, and beyond into my matriarchal portal from the void. I have finally stopped resisting all those who created me. I accept their faults, their damage, their wounds. Their wounds are my wounds and I stand here willing to own the healing for them all.
Their wounds are my wounds and I stand here willing to own the healing for them all.
Loss and life’s unimaginable challenges that blindside you will send you reeling. For some, grief becomes their way of life, an albatross rather than an inspiration. The loss may always be present, and yet that space within and a reminder of our own mortality can become a type of fuel if we choose it.
I find that making the most of that pain to dive within and double down on my own healing has somehow created some meaning where I’ve struggled to find some. I chose to fling myself into the mother wound with retreats and meditation and journeying. I’ve found I’m not prepared for how deep it goes for me. But, hell, I’m committed.
I chose to fling myself into the mother wound with retreats and meditation and journeying. I’ve found I’m not prepared for how deep it goes for me. But, hell, I’m committed.
When I was in the hospital after my preventive double mastectomy and DIEP flap reconstruction to avoid being claimed by the early death via breast cancer, my breast surgeon, clearly a woman of science, looked into my eyes and said to me, “You stopped the cycle. Be proud of that.” I thought, what cycle? The genetic cycle? Because I had already given birth to two sons. And she continued, “I don’t understand it myself, but when women heal themselves they heal all the women who came before. I know it in my heart.”
“I don’t understand it myself, but when women heal themselves they heal all the women who came before. I know it in my heart.”
And today, I feel it in my heart. Over the last seven years and some, I have chosen to dive deep into that mother wound, to explore it, poke at it, immerse myself in it. I have chosen to cultivate my intuitive wisdom of the deeply flawed and intensely powerful women who birthed and birthed until I came through them.
For years, I ignored them, resented them, blamed them even. I see now, I feel now, that is the scar from the patriarchy, the damage of my own internalized misogyny. And here I sit in the complete knowing that I am them. They did the best they could with the resources they had and wounds they endured, and honestly, wounds they inflicted. I can only imagine the world within which they lived. I earnestly stand on their broad, confined, dispirited, and hopeful shoulders.
I can only imagine the world within which they lived. I earnestly stand on their broad, confined, dispirited, and hopeful shoulders.
I look into the mirror into myself, beyond myself, into the part of me that feels hopeless to be mothered. For that I get creative, some Betty Dodson, some Madonna, some Emerentia, some Atahensic. When we are bereft of the physical presence, we must innovate. The brain truly doesn’t register the difference when conjuring is the best you can do. I have some beautiful and impactful women in my life that I love deeply. And yet, the particular brand of mothering I need is the brand that can mother through fire.
The last seven years of my life have been a gauntlet of tests; tests of resolve, tests of resilience, tests of my nurturer depths. It was an incredibly shallow pool for a while there, dear ones. The desire and plea to the universe to not allow a female child to come through me were desperate and sincere, and gratefully answered.
To bring a female child into this world, into this culture, is a singular challenge. This patriarchal existence has chipped away at me, as I sense it chipped away at my matrilineal forbears. Although I’ll not know that from their mouths, I can only journey with their spirits now in my mind, heart, and spirit. I feel as though I may finally be brave enough to hear what they will have to share.
Even as I write that, I’m not sure. I’m really not sure. But I look into my mother’s eyes every time I glance in the mirror and I seem able to hold her gaze for longer and longer. I trust that someday I’ll be strong enough to hear their burdens, witness their wounds, to unwaveringly meet my own eyes in the mirror.
But I look into my mother’s eyes every time I glance in the mirror and I seem able to hold her gaze for longer and longer.
Until then, I’ll carry on with my Betty Dodson books, Madonna playlists, and meditations on Emerentia and Atahensic. My heart tells me they all hold me. And as my oldest baby tells me, I’m going to follow my heart. And so it goes. Happy birthday, Mom. I’ll see you, and all of you, in the mirror soon.
*This article was originally posted on Medium on August 29, 2020.
