This is a post I have been meaning to write for sometime, but the enormousness of it daunts me and I never know what I really want to put into words, what I want to share, and what should just float through my life like a cloud in the sky.... I have been motherless for almost all of my life. I just never had a name for it. And growing up I never let it really bother me. My dad raised my sister and I with everything we needed to thrive, and we did. I had a grandmother, and a couple of aunts, and plenty of friends that had moms. I was fine.
Fast forward to me being pregnant with Adelaide. Soon I realized that there was a lot that I didn't have. Not only did I not have a mother to go to with questions about her own pregnancies and births, but I have also since lost my sweet grandmother, my great grandmother, both of my aunts, and pretty much any woman that has any relation to me what-so-ever. It's a GIANT hole....and it's one that I didn't realize existed until I was pregnant, and even more so once Adelaide was born. It must be something in our hormones that makes us need to be mothered ourselves. Or something so primal that just "is"...so what do I do about it? I now know that having my midwife leave in the middle of Adelaide's birth also has something to do with it. To be left by your own mother when you are a small child, and then to be left by your midwife when you are in labor with your first child, and relying on her to be your guide and your care taker...These pains are much deeper than just an ordinary pain that goes away.
So now I am pregnant again, and this time my longing for "mother" is more powerful than I can ignore. I have so much work to do, but I am doing it, and it's helping. One woman that I talked to about it told me that I DO have that 'mother'...that she is ME....and I think she is partially correct...but that doesn't help me feel warm and snugly when I want to be taken care of. I have read so many books, "mothering the new mother" for one was all about our needs to be mothered when we have a new baby. It talks about places all around the world and how cultures celebrate the new mother, and care for her, and help her with this new role. I am also reading "wild feminine" by Tami Kent, which has really helped me a lot. It's made me realized that I have never honored the amazing things that my body can do because I am a woman. I have never celebrated my cycle, my breasts, my womb, nor even considered it. I always saw being a woman as being less somehow, or more of a burden, or more painful. But my eyes are seeing different now. And I am so happy about that because now I can teach my own girls to honor themselves for the abilities they possess (like growing babies). I am opening my eyes to the mother that I will become. I am so proud of this body of mine, and that I am female. One of the biggest eye openers is a book I am reading now called "motherless mothers". It confirmed to me that I AM motherless (like I really needed confirmation) because I fit the profile exactly. How heartbreaking that is for me...because it means that I'm not as "fine" as I thought.
One of the biggest things I am working on now is forgiving my mother for leaving me. It never even dawned on me that I didn't "forgive" her, or that I felt anything towards her really. But I have been working a lot with another wise woman who is helping me heal my body both physically ( a few weeks ago I couldn't even walk because my hips were so sore...now they are almost pain free!) and emotionally. I am realizing that forgiving my mother is what is best for ME, best for my babies, and what will honor me in the best way I am able. It doesn't mean that I ever want anything to do with her, to speak to her or to know her, it just means that I forgive her, and I am not going to carry her around with me anymore. I am setting myself free.
I can feel these giant shifts happening in my soul. I know that I will never be loved by another woman the way that I love Adelaide. I know that when I just want to be held to the breast and rocked and told 'it's okay" that I have nobody to turn to, and I know it is now, and always be up to ME to be the mother that I need when I need her. I don't have women in my family that I can ask about breastfeeding, or growing up, women that will remember things I went through when I was young, but that is life. That is reality for me. And I am finally beginning to accept it. I am so lucky to have two sweet girls, one of whom I can't even imagine her face yet, to cherish and give the love that I will never have. And I know that THEY will heal me without doing anything except for being themselves.
