Out In The Mountains : Health & Wellbeing

Based on what I have experienced, we all need to settle up our relationship accounts with the people who mothered us. This is true no matter how wonderful or terrible they were at mothering us.

We all come into adulthood with some amount of emotional deficit due to the mothering we received or didn’t receive. It’s usually some combination of the two. We all need to free ourselves of the pain, anger, and disappointment that comes from being mothered in ways we didn’t deserve and from not being mothered in the ways we did deserve.

Doing this work means we can gain a realistic and maybe even accepting picture of our mothers. We know we have reached this point when we no longer believe our mothers will somehow be magically transformed into the mothers we’ve always wanted, and we are also finally mothering ourselves in the ways we deserve.

Doing this work means we have a better chance of creating the healthy relationships we need in the here and now with other people, too. When we do this work we are less likely to pick people in the present upon whom we unknowingly project the image of “our mother” with whom we “shadow box” futilely in an unconscious attempt to settle up the relationship account between our mother and ourselves. I am convinced that many intimate relationships fail because of the pressure the partners exert on each other to make up for the emotional mothering deficits each has brought to the relationship. This is a pressure that is neither fair nor realistic to take on or to dish out.

Things really get complicated when they have children. The partners are faced with the demand to give their children nurturing they never received as well as to prevent themselves from hurting in ways they may have been hurt. Many people actually become jealous of their children when they need to give them emotional nurture they never received. Many distance themselves from their children to manage their jealousy. Many become overindulgent toward their children, thinking if they give their children what they never had it will somehow magically heal the deficits in their own souls. Distancing ourselves from our children or overindulging them only hurts them and does not heal the wounds between our mothers and us.

So what does it take to heal the emotional mothering deficits we all arrive in adulthood with? What does it mean to come to terms with the reality of who our mothers were in light of the picture of the “perfect mother” we all seem to have hard-wired in our heads?

For many of us, we only begin this process after we have failed at a career, at being partnered, at parenting our own children, or in relating to our own mothers. For those of us who are GLBT, realizing we are not heterosexual often forces us to look at where we are in our relationships with our mothers. Sometimes our mothers have to die before we are willing to explore who and what they were to us, and how we were shaped and/or maimed by the relationships we had with them.

No matter how large or small the pain, anguish, and disappointment between our mothers and ourselves, settling up with our mothers, whether or not still alive, can make a big difference in the quality of our lives while we are still alive.

Letter writing is one of the most helpful tools we can use to name and claim the truth of our experiences and feelings. Many a person has found it amazing to write a letter to Mother, only to discover how much they needed to say and feel from the past they didn’t even know was inside of them. These letters, once fine-tuned, often get mailed with a reminder from me that this is not about a living mother hearing them, it’s about them finally saying what they need to say.

For those whose mothers have died, I ask them to use their non-dominant hand and invite the mother to write them back in response to the letter they wrote. I remind folks death ends a life, not a relationship, and encourage them to be brave. Those who have crossed over are usually very eager to respond to the letter. Dying lifts the veil of denial, self-centeredness, and ignorance that may have prevented them from mothering their children in the ways they needed and deserved. Dying also helps souls see that they can’t move on until they have settled up with their sons and daughters. The responses most receive are amazingly helpful, healing, and holy.

It never ceases to amaze me how people’s concept of God changes once they do this work. People who have not settled up with their mothers often imagine God in “super mother” terms that are not realistic, or they often reject any image of God that is “mother-like.” They also usually cling to the “father-like” image of God vehemently.

For those who have settled up with their mothers, imagining God as a loving mother is neither overblown nor underrated. It is simply another metaphor that helps them relate in meaningful ways to The Sacred Source from whom they have come and to whom they will return upon their deaths.

How we were mothered matters a great deal as does how we resolve deficits in the mothering we received. Having faith in the healing process that is available to us all, whether our mothers are living on this side of eternity or not, matters a great deal, too. If these are matters that are among those in our lives we need to be attending to, there’s no time like the present.

Rev. Christine Leslie, cofounder and director of Triangle Ministries, A Center for Lesbian & Gay Spiritual Development, is available for individual and couple counseling, weddings, and retreat/workshop leadership. She can be reached at 860-7106 or revcsl@aol.com .