Counselling brings new revelations

Two weeks ago I went to a counsellor for the first time. I am not one for holding back when you seek medical advise so I launched right into my situation and why I had booked in. The main two points were my Mum’s suicide and another issue that is not relevant here. Mainly I talked about Mum.

The counsellor asked a few questions as I struggled to open up through the tears. She asked me some questions I had been asked before. After I relayed some memories of Mum, the counsellor asked ‘What are your feelings surrounding these memories? What were you feeling as a little girl?’

No one had ever asked me those questions before. I had to think about my answer. It wasn’t easy to think back to being a little girl. So my responses startled me. In most of the memories I was scared, disappointed, angry, upset and stressed.

These were some of the memories that came to mind:

1. In needed help to change my Barbie’s clothes. I was pestering Mum to get her help. She was on the phone and I got the feeling she didn’t want to help me.
2. I wanted to go swimming on a Sunday morning. I was trying to waked Mum up to come with me because I wasn’t meant to go alone. She was angry with me for trying to wake her up. She yelled at me and slapped me lightly on the face.
3. It was Christmas. We (my two brothers, Mum and me) were going to the shopping centre to get our photo with Santa. My brothers had just explained to me that Santa wasn’t real. I was upset and didn’t want to go on and sit on an imposter’s knee.
4. It was Mum, my brothers and me for the day. Mum was excited to present us with three options of how we could spend the day. They were all beautiful and fun. Things like a) going to Adventureworld followed by a picnic in the park, b) spending the day at the beach with a cold slushy each and a dusk dinner of fish and chips or c) something equally as enticing… My brother proposed another idea, something he had been waiting and hoping for, something he would have really enjoyed. Mum blew up. An alternative was not an option and now all of the options were off the table.
5. Mum and Dad fighting, repeatedly.

I never realised in all my thinking about the past and recalling these few memories that they were mostly negative.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to explore my discovery further and I don’t have another appointment for two weeks so I won’t uncover more about this discovery until then.

I want to know:
- How do I reconcile these negative memories into something positive?
- How do I make my ‘inner child’ happy?
- Can I achieve the above by finding more memories with Mum that are positive? Or focussing on memories with other people instead?

Talking to Dad

Our family gatherings are rare and are fraught with the anxiety of knowing we’ll have to communicate with one another. In the depths of my gut confidence is slowly brewing and my heart beat gets faster. I need to talk about mum’s death but I never do.

This last Christmas was different. My brother had recently suffered an emotional breakdown. It got so bad that the brewing juices in his stomach had to be digested. He confronted Dad. They spoke about Mum, her death and his emotions. On Christmas Day he recounted his experiences to let us (my other brother and I) know what it was like to be on the other side of fear. He felt anew and a sense of relief. He had almost not finished saying that we too needed to confront Dad because he would not raise the issues with us before Dad called us all over, as a family.

All four of us sat down as the dysfunctional family that we are and talked, or should I say listened. Dad gave us his side of the story.

He told us how he knew mum wanted to leave him and he didn’t want her to go. She had a lover. Dad invited Mum and her lover to talk about a solution to this problem (he’s very pragmatic). ‘Was she going to leave?’ Dad wanted to know. ‘Was her lover going to leave his family and support Mum?’. Yes, was the answer on both counts. But when it came down to it Mum’s lover did not deliver.

You can imagine she was devastated and ashamed. She had lost her support and the very person she was trying to turn away from was the one trying to help.

In my mind, another piece to the jigsaw of Mum’s life and death was set in place. It was emotional to listen to Dad’s story, to digest it. But what felt most important during the listening was that he was talking to his family. All that acid build up in my stomach was hit with an antacid so powerful that was turned to water and flowed away. It was talking and communicating that made all the difference.

We have not spoken about Mum’s death or life since. And sometimes the acid rises up. Yet I still feel such a sense of relief knowing that the flow of communication has started. It was so valuable to hear the truth and I am lucky to have been able to. I need to take more opportunity to talk about Mum because each time will make the tempest brewing inside me just a little bit calmer.

Ritual and ceremony for communication and reconnection

I’ve being trying to think of a way that I can remember my mother. Some way to feel a connection with her, like a ceremony / ritual.

I’ve heard of other motherless daughters doing a routine they had together, like going to a park where they used to go, looking at old photographs, or going to her grave.

I was very young when my mother died and so we hadn’t developed any routines together that remind me of her. I live away from her grave and so can’t be physically connected to her by being close to her place of  rest. What to do? It has to be meaningful to me. I don’t want to pick some ritual, like going to a church / temple, which would be meaningful if I were religious but I am not. Again, what to do?

I recently read eat pray love by Elizabeth Gilbert where I found some inspiration for this task of creating my own motherless daughter ritual. These words are taken from the book and replaced with references to motherless daughters in bold. You can of course replace motherless daughters with whomever you need to connect with. P.S. I highly recommend this book.

“What I wanted for so long was to have an actual conversation with my mother,  but this was obviously never going to happen. What I had been craving was a resolution, a peace summit, from which I could emerge with a united understanding of what had occurred in her death, and a mutual forgiveness for the ugliness of her disappearance from my life. But months [and years] of soul-searching had only made me more lost and locked on my position, turning me into someone who was absolutely incapable of giving myself any release. Yet it was what I needed, I was sure of it. And I was sure of this, too-that the rules of transcendence insist that you will not advance even one inch closer to divinity as long as you cling to even one last seductive thread of blame. As smoking is to the lungs, so is resentment to the soul; even one puff is bad for you. I mean, what kind of prayer is this to imbibe-”Give us this day our daily grudge / curse“? You might just as well hang it up and kiss God goodbye if you really need to keep asking questions for your own life’s loss. So what I asked God that night on the Ashram roof was-given the reality that I would probably never speak to my mother again-might there be some level upon which we could communicate?

I lay up there, high above the world, and I was all alone. I dropped into meditation and waited to be told what to do. I don’t know how many minutes or hours passed before I knew what to do. I realised I’d been thinking about all this too literally. I’d been wanting to talk to my mother? So talk to her. Talk to her right now. I’d been waiting to re-connect? Offer it up personally, then. Right now. I thought of how many people go to their graves unforgiven or unforgiving. I thought of how many people have had siblings or friends or children or lovers disappear from their lives before precious words of clemency or absolution could be passed along. How do the survivors of terminated relationships ever endure the pain of unfinished business? From that place of meditation, I found the answer-you can finish the business yourself, from within yourself. It’s not only possible, it’s essential.

… This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn’t have the specific ritual you’re craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising…”

By asking these questions, Elizabeth Gilbert helped one survivor find an answer. Miss Gilbert, thank you for your words.

From this passage I realised that I don’t have to be self-conscious about a ritual of my own devising. I will go to her grave when I can, and when I can’t… I’ll find a beautiful calm place for me to be with her, most likely a secluded beach. And there I will forgive her and I will let our souls reconnect and dance together as blue light.

Why Pocahontas is a good role model

Pocahontas kicks bud!

I have always loved the Pocahontas story and in particular the Disney movie of the same name. Here the reasons, in no particular order, why Pocahontas kicks butt! She is:
- A motherless daughter,
- HOT!
- Native American,
- Stops a war, and
- So fiercely independent and self-assured she lets John Smith fend for himself (he has to return to England for medical treatment after being shot). He can come back to me!

Photo by yourFAVORITEmartia n’s

motherless child

Check out these beautiful renditions of Motherless Child. Let these give you inspiration and a way to express your feelings about your loss.

Recording of John Legend singing over still photograph.

Unknown girl singing along to the John Legend version.

Unknown group from the 60s/70s. Poor quality. Great version.

finding a new mum

Finding a new mum was a hobby that I took up as a child. At first, it was an innocent activity that I wasn’t fully aware of. I would call my friend’s parents mum and dad without understanding the complexities of what I was doing. As I matured the search became more obvious and overt. As a teenager I was on the search a boyfriend without sister(s) in the hope that his mother would take me as their surrogate. Looking back I realise that this calculated mother finding behaviour was naive. I was hoping that a relationship would just be there rather than developing one. This behaviour changed and I started looking for a career mentor, it seemed a more realistic goal.

After letting these dreams of finding a new mother figure slip away I read an article about a woman who advertised for new parents (can’t remember the source). Now that is calculated! I thought she was crazy – What kind of people would she attract? Was she so emotionally needy as an adult that she still craved that closeness and support in a parental figure? Could she not resolve the issues she had with her biological parents (whom where still alive)? But, for this woman it worked. She found new parents and was happy with their supportive role in her life. This inspired new hope in me that I could do the same. I mentioned the idea to my boyfriend who thought it was a little strange. I dropped the notion again.

Then, I watched this Enough Rope podcast between Andrew Denton and Isabel Allende. Postscript below…

ANDREW DENTON: You must though miss not having your daughter to pass on what you’ve learnt in the way your mother has passed on what she’s learnt to you

ISABEL ALLENDE: Since my daughter died I realise that I look for young women and I sort of adopt them as daughters. My daughter-in-law, Laurie, my assistant Juliette, um and other women that I have around me and I want to pass give them the knowledge and the resources I have. I want to share everything with them. I all my clothes are cut bias so that I can share my clothes with everybody. Ah I everybody has the key to my house and they can come in and take all my jewellery or whatever they need. That’s what I would do with my daughter and so I have other daughters that are not blood related but they are the daughters of my soul.

So it does happen. People do find new mothers that are inspiring and supportive.

Developments on the search for a new mum to follow…

Characteristics of motherless daughters who do not have another mother figure in their lives

Hope Edelman‘s book refers to MD that have another female figure in their life who takes over the role of mother. It could be an aunty, teacher, family friend, older sister or any other number of possibilities. However, an additional family dysfunction arises when there is no substitute mother figure. I am in the latter category.

I have a godmother. When you goggle search godmother she is defined as “an influential figure who provides support”, “serves as a sponsor for a child”, ” promises to raise the child” and “sensible mother figure”. My ‘godmother’ does not fill these roles. Probably it wouldn’t be of significance – people grow apart, except my godmother has always been present in my life.

In some ways, I feel like I am meant to take her on as my mother figure but she doesn’t represent what I want and need from that figure. Plus, if I reach out to her as my mother I usually do not receive a response befitting of a mother to a daughter, hence I feel let down. I feel that I am of little importance next to her own biological daughters.

Now that my father and godmother are partners and are buying a house together she will be more a part of my ‘family’ life.

Characteristics of motherless daughters who do not have another mother figure in their lives:

• Quick but irrational connection with ‘mother figures’.
• Sense of loss or missing when that fickle ‘mother figure’ does not respond as a ‘daughter’ might hope.
• Longing to feel a strong connection with father figure.
• Curiosity and jealousy about how other daughters associate with their own mothers.

There are some other important motherless daughter characteristics outlined here. This website highlights that you may feel these symptoms even if your mother was / is present in your life.

My Story

This is the story of how I became a motherless daughter.

On a school day  in April, I was shaken awoke and told to go downstairs by our neighbour. I didn’t fully understand what was going on and I didn’t ask questions. When I got downstairs to our neighbour’s house I was sat down on a couch next to my brothers, I was on the end. I was told, then and there, that my mother had died. I was 6 years old. I wasn’t told the cause of her death. I didn’t understand what that meant, but people were crying and so I thought I should do the same. I only got one tear out.

I was so excited because we got to go to McDonalds for lunch that day.

My Dad was away at the time (he traveled for work) and flew back because of the news. He looked so happy when he arrived, surely he already knew that she had died. I think that energy buoyed me up and that was probably his point.

There was a lack of stability during that time. No one talked to me about what had happened and for me it became this amazing part of life – specialness, uniqueness. I was almost proud that I had this story to tell! ‘I don’t have a mum, how amazing, I am so different to you, that makes you boring and me interesting.’ My brothers were upset that I was spreading the word and that I didn’t seem at all perplexed about what had happened. They told me that I shouldn’t tell people so unabashedly. When they told me that, it was the first time I realised this situation wasn’t a good thing, but I still managed to push those feelings aside and for the majority of my childhood I never questioned my predicament.

It has only been in my adulthood that I have learnt, and continue to learn, the impact that being a motherless daughter has had on my identity. For instance, at the age of 18/19 I finally realised that the circumstances around her death were not innocent. I asked my eldest brother to tell me what had happened, some of the things that I was too young to understand at the time.

My mother had committed suicide. She had taken sleeping pills and drowned herself in the family bath (my brother was the one that found her). My brother relayed to me that she had attempted suicide before. Previously, she had once taken us all (my two brothers and me) to a quiet place and told us to go to sleep in the car. She had tried to gas the car with us all sleeping in the back. She was going to kill us all. My eldest brother woke up crying, followed by my middle brother and me. She then apparently lost confidence in her attempt and returned home.

I will add to this blog when new thoughts and feelings come to mind. There is definitely a lot of expanding to do.

identity

thinking/reading over the post “ignorance is not bliss” and the issues surrounding it i have realised that i was skirting the crux of the matter with this post. my concern is that i don’t know my identity.

i have not (was not?) able to identify with people around me for the greater part of my life. it was only after reading the book motherless daughters in 2005 that i came to realise i was not ‘special’: that there were other people out there like me, that i could identify people who had similar experiences to me if i searched harder. this was as much a harsh reality as it was a blessing.

initially i was upset that this ‘specialness’ about me had changed, like i had lost some weird ‘power’ that gave me a different perspective on the world that others didn’t have. since those feelings have subsided my place in the world is somewhat normalised. i have been able to find a network of people that i can communicate with about my experiences. it took me a while to talk about my mum’s death and the circumstances surrounding her death so i realise how important simply initiating those conversations can be, yet i crave conversation and analysis about my lack of understanding of my identity.

i hope that i am able to find the forum to discuss and learn about some of these questions:

• does it matter if you don’t know who your mother or father was?
• can people build their own identity independent of those figures?
• what techniques have people tried to create their identity?
• do other groups of people without knowledge of their biological parent(s) also seek out these answers, such as, adopted children, stolen generation children?
• what impacts does that have on their lives, if they can’t find the answers to those questions?

if any one can recommend books, internet forums, groups on this topic i would be very welcoming of the input.

ignorance is not bliss

what do i know about myself, about my heritage? these are some of simple questions that most people wouldn’t ask themselves regularly, but i find myself pondering every few months. i wonder where i have come from, who am i similar to.

after mum died we didn’t visit any of our extended family regularly, on either mum’s or dad’s side. through my life i would say that i have had more contact with my dad’s side of the family. while i enjoy the company of my paternal aunties and cousins they don’t have my blood, and so i never looked at them and thought “they are my peops”. my maternal aunty and cousin visited me recently and i realised for this first time in my life “these are my peops”. i could see the mannerisms, the humour, the looks, the similarities were there, for the first time in my life.

unfortunately, there are still so many questions that remain about who i am, things that other people would define themselves by:

• what was mum’s favourite colour?
• what dish did mum love cooking and eating?
• what was mum’s favourite thing to do in her spare time?
• who did mum admire?
• where did mum love going on holiday?
• what were mum’s fondest childhood memories?
• what advice would mum have offered me at crucial times of my youth?
• what was my mum’s middle name?