Mother's Day

I have mother issues. Is there a daughter who doesn't? I am also a mother,
so I guess that means my daughters have issues with their mother.
Throughout history, mothers have both been revered and the cause for anything that goes wrong in the universe. Tomorrow is Mother's Day,
the day of the year set aside to honor mothers. It is also one of the most stressful days of the year for many women. I know I'm stressed.

I have spent every available minute of the last week in bed sleeping. I love to sleep! It's my favorite thing to do when I want to avoid something I don't
want to face, and I don't want to face Mother's Day. It's depressing to me. I listen to all my friends talk about their mothers with such love and I wish I
had that. At heart, I am still a little girl who wants her mommy, but my mommy is never coming. My mother is still alive, I think. I really struggle
with all the emotions I have tied to her, most of which I don't understand.
I'm angry with her. I'm sad for her. She is a human being, and I suppose she did the best she could.....but I don't believe she did do the best she could.

I try to be understanding of her. After all, I am a mother myself and as far as mistakes go, I have made some big ones. My mother was the eldest child
born into an alcoholic, blue collar country family. She has two younger brothers. I know very little of her life except the bits and pieces I have
gathered over the years, so I have little to help me to understand her. Her mother died when she was around 12. I have heard two versions of how she died. Her father, my grandfather, told me she died "of brain cancer or breast cancer, I can't remember which." She told me her mother died shortly after giving birth to her youngest brother, of complications from childbirth. I
don't know what kind of mother my grandmother was to my mother, but I know my mother resented her dying. My grandfather was not one to be
alone, so he remarried fairly soon after she died.

My mother's new step-mother, Evelyn, was not someone my mother liked at all. My mother said Evelyn was a clod woman who drank as much as her father did. I don't know much more about her, except she died too. My grandfather remarried again to a woman I would know and love to be my grandmother, Dorothy. My mother didn't care for her much, either. As I
think about it, I cannot recall anyone my mother did like. As far as grandmothers go, though, Dorothy was the best. I loved her.

I know life was hard for my mother. Living with alcoholics is never easy,
but my mother was also the victim of incest. My uncle Danny told me the children all shared a bedroom growing up. At night, my drunken
grandfather would come into the bedroom to get my mother. My uncle did
not go into any details, so that's all I know. I think it's all I really need to
know, anyway. My grandfather had some brothers, but there was one in particular I remember. Uncle Harry was the "fun" uncle. When I was little
he was at a family gathering with his five daughters. Even though I was
little, I knew exactly what my dad meant when he said "yeah, Harry got to
all his girls." It would not be a leap then to think he probably got to my
mother as well.

My mother also developed early and she had very large breasts. She told me she would skip school because the boys would snap her bra straps and try to feel her up. Breast size was really important to my mother. I was slow to develop, and graduated high school with an A cup. Once I had my first daughter, my breasts decided to catch up and I wound up with a C cup, but
my mother wasn't happy with that. Several times over my life she made comments about my cup size. I was happy with a C cup but she would say, "Don't you want bigger breasts?" No, I really didn't. Somehow, her
perception of female sexuality and self esteem was tied to the size of her breasts.

She graduated high school and married a serviceman. While her husband
was serving, she met the man who would raise me as his daughter. He was older than she was, divorced with two teenage daughters, and had a good
job at the local B & W. She became pregnant with me while she was still married to the serviceman. According to her, he offered to raise me as his
own, very noble of him, actually. My mother divorced him and married my father.

It wasn't a happy marriage. Both of my parent were alcoholics and my
mother was not prepared to be a parent, though she was in her twenties
when she had me. She did what was expected of most women at that time.
She was a member of the PTA (Parent Teachers Association.) She was a girl scout troop leader. She was a housewife and had dinner on the table every night at the same time. The house was clean and her children were
reasonably well behaved. To an observer, it would appear she was a good mother. At times, she could be a good mother. When I was around 12, my parents were in a particularly vicious argument. Out of the blue my mother yells "She isn't even your daughter!" That was the first I heard my father was not my father. He yelled back "What kind of mother tells her daughter her father is not her father in the middle of an argument?" She yelled back "I already told her, she already knows." Then she looked at me and said
"Didn't I already tell you?" She never said any such thing to me, but not wanting to be beaten I nodded my head in agreement. Satisfied, my mother said "See?" I don't know where the argument went from there, my head was spinning. They got divorced shortly afterward.

When I think of my mother from a distance, and not how she relates to me,
I feel so sad for her. She is bitter and angry. It consumed her to the point
where she has no hope, no faith life can be good. She does not know how to love or to be loved. I understand she is a victim of her childhood, and of
the times she was raised in. She is an alcoholic. She didn't survive her life.
When I think of her as my mother, however, it is hard to feel compassion
for her. I do try. I hope one day to be able to. I try to look at those few moments when she allowed herself to be a good mother to me and hold on
to them, but I have yet to succeed for more than a short while. She was a
cold, hard woman most of the time, and that is what I see, what I remember when I think of my mother.

I don't want to, and it makes me sad. When Mother's Day comes around
each year, I wonder what she is doing, what she is thinking, if she even
misses me. I am angry with her! I wanted, needed her to be my mother. I
try to hold on to the gifts she has given me, such as my ability to be tough. I survived the traumatic events in my life in part because she taught me to be tough. Like many things, though, that gift has cost me. I am not as open
and loving with my daughters as I would like to be. I know I seem cold to
them at times, and I do hug them, love them fiercely and deeply, but there is
a wall there. I would really like to be a warm, loving mother who gives
freely of her affection, but it is difficult for me. In that respect, I am handicapped. How do I reserve a day to honor her? Is she deserving of
being honored? I can't answer.

Because my mother was unable to be a mother to me, I parent by exception.
I know what hurt me as a child, and what I wanted from my mother, so I
don't do the things which caused me pain, and I try to give my children what
I wanted in a mother. That is not the same as parenting because your
parents were good people. I am often insecure, wondering if I am doing the best I can by my daughters. The worst part about parenting is you don't get your grade until your children are adults. That's when you see the fruits of your labors, and the results of your mistakes. I am seeing my mistakes reflected in the lives of my adult daughters and I am sad. I can tell myself
I did the best I could, and I really did, but still, I am sad. I have loved my daughters fiercely and with everything I had to give. I hope at the end of
the day, it is enough.

I understand the time and culture my mother lived in. I try to give her the benefit of the doubt, but in the end I am still angry with her. She was victimized as a child in the worst possible way a child can be violated. She knows that pain well. Yet, not only did she allow my father to do the same to me, she facilitated his access to me. I just can't reconcile that. Incest scars every single aspect of your soul; leaves no area of your life unaffected.
When I became an adult, I had no memory of what happened to me. I did
what was expected and got married at 18. At 19, I gave birth to my first daughter. When I discovered I married a pedophile, I went to the ends of
the earth to protect my precious little girls. I couldn't take away the pain of what happened to them, but I didn't have to allow it to continue.

I instilled in my daughters something I never had; a sense of self worth.
Being born female meant your worth was diminished. A female in my
family was worth only what she could provide in service to the men in her
life. I never wanted my daughters to feel inferior simply because they were female. I stressed education and self sufficiency from the time they could speak. Although my children were victimized, I refused to allow them to be victims. I taught them to be confident in who they were and to stand in the face of injustice. I taught them to be all the things I could not. I took my insecurities, my pain and used it to ensure my children would not have to
live my life. My pain would not be their pain, my failings would not be
theirs. In many ways, I did succeed, but I have also failed them. I suppose I would not be human if I had not made mistakes along the way.

My daughters are too young yet to appreciate the sacrifices I have made
on their behalf, or to understand the struggles I faced as a single parent.
It will be years before they can frame our relationship in any type of
context. They will never know the pain in my heart from feeling as if you
didn't matter even to your own mother. They matter to me. That is what I cannot grasp. Why didn't I matter to my mother? She was so cold towards
me, though I was desperate for her love and affection. After the divorce,
I was trying to cook supper for us and asked my mother to teach me how to cook. Her reply was "No one taught me and I'm not going to teach you." I thought my mother was the most beautiful woman in the world. I wanted
to be just like her. I put on her make-up, wore her jewelry and she was
furious when she caught me. I had to sit in a corner holding the make-up a
nd jewelry for hours, until her anger subsided. She allowed my brothers to beat me, to hurt me and when I defended myself it was me she punished.
I was older and I should know better, she explained. My brothers were 1
and 2 years younger. She would often punish me to extremes. I spent the entire summer once on a couch, looking out the window while she slept
and my brothers played. I waited for someone to come home so I could
get up and play too.

After my parents got divorced, she set aside any pretense of appearances.
She didn't seem to care anymore if she did what was expected of her. She didn't take care of us kids, the house wasn't clean anymore, and she spent
all of her spare time in bars. That was the only place I could spend any time with her. Back then, a child could hang out in the bar if the parent was drinking there. She taught me how to be sexual with men. She taught me
my only value was in my sexuality, how much men desired me. She beat me more frequently and with greater severity after the divorce. She beat me so badly once that even my father was concerned and wanted to notify the
police. I didn't want him to call the police, but my mother lost custody of
me and two of my brothers. She was permitted to keep one of my brothers, though I didn't understand it. Even now, I find it ironic my father was concerned about my mother beating me. From my perspective, it was
like the pot calling the kettle black.

When I was 16, she took me out to breakfast after the bars closed to have
a talk with me. She told me she was dying and had only a few months to
live. I was devastated. For the next few months, I went over to her house
as often as I could, doing things for her, cleaning the house. I doted on her. She lived across town, so it was difficult for me to get to her house. She
never came to pick me up from my father's house; I either took the bus or walked. She never got sick. I never knew what disease was killing her, but
it was never mentioned again. My had mother used it to gain attention. She used my fear of losing my mother to her advantage. I do not understand her.

After I had my daughters, I tried to incorporate her into my new family as grandma, but it was difficult. I tried to have a relationship with her,
talking to her about the problems I faced as a new mother, but I never
received any type of support. When I talked about how my husband had become physically violent with me and I wanted to leave him, it wasn't her
who stood by my side, it was her husband. He was a kind, decent man. He offered to shelter me and my two children in their small apartment, but my mother wouldn't hear of it. He stood his ground with her though, and
told me I had a place to live if I wanted to leave. I never forgot his kindness during that time, nor did I forget my mothers' lack of it.

I did leave my husband and entered The Battered Women's Shelter. Again,
my mother was nowhere to be found but by this time I wasn't expecting
her. I entered into counseling and started to heal the scars of my childhood and become the parent I desired to be for my daughters. I came to see the relationship with my mother as toxic to me and I stopped going to see her.
I had little contact with her at all for years. I healed much of my pain. I
missed not having a mother in my life. I saw the relationships my friends
had with their mothers and while they were not perfect, I wanted that. I needed my mother. I felt it was time to reconnect with her. I was older,
wiser, more mature. I felt I could accept my mother as she was, devoid
of what my expectations in her were. I would never have the mother I
wanted or needed, and if I was to have a mother at all, I needed to accept
her at face value, just as she was.

I started to spend more time with her. We went to yard sales, and
shopping. We went to bingo halls. I came over just to visit. When she
had her gallbladder removed, I opened up my home and cared for her overnight. Nothing had changed, my mother was still the same, but I
accepted her with all of her faults. For a while, it worked. I tried to talk
to her about my childhood. I wanted to gain some understanding and
insight into our lives. I was careful how I phrased any questions, so as not
to place blame on her, not to judge. I did not receive much information.
Her answers were short, contrived. Once, I tried to bring up the sexual
abuse, to see if she would offer me anything to it. I said "Dad molested me when I was little." She had no reaction. I could have said "the sun just
ducked behind the clouds." She replied "that's how men are." And it was the end of the conversation. So that was our relationship and I accepted it
was all it was going to be.

When my second husband left, my life fell apart. My mother was no help
at all. I became sick, so depressed I required hospitalization. When I
returned home, I was talking to my mother on the phone, telling her how
much it meant to me that my father had come to visit. (She did not come to visit, but, I never expected either one of them to come see me.) I don't
think I finished my train of thought when she hung up the phone on me.
And so that was the end of that. I have not spoken to my mother since.
I can only guess she felt I was implying some sort of slight by telling her
dad had come to visit, and since she hung up the phone I will never know
what was on her mind.

About a year ago, someone called me and left a message saying it was
urgent I return the call. I did not recognize the number, nor did I recognize
the voice. The caller did not identify me by name, nor did they identify themselves. I thought it was a wrong number. I tried to return the call and received an answering machine stating some office hours, so I hung up, not wanting to leave a personal message at a place of business. The caller called the next day, saying that the message I heard was the correct number. I
tried to return the call several more times without success. The line was
either busy or I heard some strange tone. I played the messages over and
over. Something about the caller's voice.....it was my mother. The last
message left she said "well I guess there's nothing more to say." I may
never know what she was trying to contact me about; she never answered
her phone and I never got the answering machine again.

I wonder how long I will grieve the loss of my mother. I never really had a mother, and she is not dead (that I know of) so it is strange to me to grieve
the loss of something I never had to begin with. So that is why Mother's
Day is stressful to me. I want to forgive my mother, because she is the only person she could be. I just don't know how. I understand horrible things happened in her life, but instead of protecting me from the things that hurt
her, it was as if she wanted me to suffer as much as she had. I go back to
the "no one taught me how to cook, so I'm not teaching you." Since she suffered, then I must suffer with her. I don't understand. I don't
understand because I love my daughters so much I would never want
them to experience pain and heartache in their life. And to the extent
that I am able, I will protect them from it.

Mother's Day Pancakes

There can be many sides to the same story, so this is the flip side of Mother's Day, the side of the day which fills my heart with joy despite the heartache hiding from within. My children opened my heart with love, such love that nothing of my mother clouded a moment of my day. Children replace heartache with heart. It is impossible to feel insignificant when the eyes of
a child shine into your soul. I may not have mattered to my mother, but I definitely matter to my children.

I can have thousands upon thousands of moments when I feel I am an utter failure as a parent, but it takes just one second of love from my child to wipe away the mountain. Today was my day. I was not able to be with all of my children in presence, but I felt them with me in spirit. Everything I did with my daughters today was something I wanted to do; they did not take one second for themselves. We watched Lady Gaga's new video,"Judas,"
(which I loved) and she sat patiently with me while I compared it to the Madonna video, "Like A Virgin." She let me explain the allegorical content, and we compared the two videos with respect to style, format and artistic
value. She usually doesn't like to hear anything I have to say if it sounds like learning might take place. We even discussed Lady Gaga's choreography
and musical influences! I loved it!

Next, we went to the grocery store and picked up some very fresh and
flavorful blackberries. Blackberries are one of my favorite fruits to eat
because when I eat them I almost feel the fresh country air of my childhood calling me back. I feel the warm sun shining on my face, I feel the solitude
and safety alone on my beloved farm but most of all it reminds me of a
time in my childhood when I was happy. All of that from eating a
blackberry. We picked out a bottle of wine and she bought me exactly
what I wanted for supper...the new chicken salad sandwich at Arby's.
We came back to my apartment and watched a movie. What a nice day.

Most of my writing originates from darker sources. When you are in the presence of love, however, the darkness wilts away. It is still there, a silent soldier awaiting its call to duty, but when love enters it must recede. My children taught me what love is, they taught me the strength of love, and
they taught me love is greater than my darkest fears. My children allow
room in my heart to remember my mother in a kinder light. I love my
mother simply because she is my mother. I love my mother because I
choose to love her, despite anything she has done.

Growing up, I had impossibly curly hair, especially for a white girl. The
curls were so tight I could not get a brush near it, so the hair did what it
wanted to do. Of course the style was 1970's poker straight and my hair
would never go near a straight line. There were not straight irons or great
hair products, and I washed it with VO5. The humid air made it frizzy and
the winter air made it electric. My name was Charlotte at a time when the book, "Charlotte's Web" became wildly popular and children were not kind
to me. Some of the children chased me around the playground pulling at
my hair trying to find the spider in "Charlotte's Web" of hair. I hated
having curly hair. This was one of those times my mother was a good
mother to me.

By the time I was in high school, chemical hair straighteners were hitting
the market. It was a very expensive process. I don't remember asking my mother if I could have it done, but one day she took me to the beauty salon
and paid for me to have straight hair. The stylist flipped and feathered it
just like Farah Fawcett and for the first time in my life I felt beautiful! I still recall how much I loved my mother for doing this for me. I appreciated
her taking me to get it done because I knew she did not have much money,
and this time I mattered. She put me first. My senior pictures were
scheduled for the same day, so I have the moment I felt like a movie star memorialized in my high school yearbook. It is the only picture I have of
all my yearbook photos that I did not ink out my picture. I was beautiful.
The straightening process lasted only a few days before my stubborn hair returned to its naturally curly state, but the picture and this wonderful
memory of my mother have endured through the decades. Happy Mother's Day, 2011. And to my mother, wherever you may be, today your memory warms my heart.

No More Pancakes, What I Wish My Mother Kne

Dear Mom

I love you still though you are no longer on this earth. I’ve always loved you, even when I hated you, when I was angry with you, when I needed you, when you disappointed me, when you didn’t live up to my expectations, when you were cold to me and when you abandoned me when I needed to have a mother. You were never going to be a great mom, or even a good mom. I knew this and I hated you for it at times. Through it all, I still loved and needed you. I need you now though I am a grandmother myself.

Your mom died just when you needed her the most. I don’t know if she was a good mother to you. You never talked about her to me. How I wish you did. Maybe we could have bonded over the feelings we each had for our mothers. Maybe I would have had a better understanding of who you are and why you couldn’t bond with me. Maybe I would understand why it appeared as if you didn’t love me. Maybe I would understand why you were unable to show me how much you loved me. I know your childhood was a nightmare. Your brother told me how you slept in the same room as your brothers, never having any of the privacy a young girl needs as she is growing into a woman. He also told me how helpless he felt when your dad came into the bedroom at night, waking you up and taking you somewhere else. Uncle Danny knew why grandpa took you out. It wasn’t a family secret. Your uncles did the same things to his five daughters. Maybe during family events your uncle also sexually abused you. Maybe you were even raped repeatedly. I don’t know. It’s just the way it was. All of the women and young girls were used at the perverted whims of the men in our family. Uncle Danny was afraid for you. Did you cry on his shoulder when you returned? Did you huddle with your brothers, seeking the only comfort you could? When did everything you were meant to be die? That’s when it started. I have a pretty good guess because you had some pretty serious armor on you. You were strong, though I know you felt like you weren’t. I know your emotional development stopped the second your dad did those horrific things to you, things no child should endure. And you did endure.

I do know you did your best to be a mother to all us children. I give you credit for that. I’m sorry I never told you I always admired your strength and I look to your example when I need to be strong myself. You couldn’t save me from the same horrors you faced. You couldn’t face the fact you were as helpless to save your daughter as you were to save yourself. I get it. You couldn’t save me, but you could teach me to be strong. Thank you mother. Because of you, I am strong. I was so strong I was able to save my daughters from the same fate as you and I. They were still sexually abused, but I eventually got them safe from any further harm. It was the worst time in my life knowing my children were being hurt in the same way we were hurt and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it. I did get them safe though. I was able to do that because of you. Your strength has guided me through the worst times in my life and like you, there were many events which occurred that qualified for the worst times in my life. You couldn’t be with me to support me through those times, but you gave me what I needed to make it through. I survived. Thank you.

It is my sincere hope that you have a better life now than you did here on earth. I was so angry with you for so long. I was angrier at you than I was my father. I don’t understand that myself, but I did eventually forgive you for all your failings. As I reflect on your life, I feel a deep sadness. I cry tears for the life you had even today. You didn’t deserve it. You never deserved the horrors you faced. Your life was so hard, you became hardened yourself to survive it. You made it impossible for your children to be a part of your life. I tried. I tried so many times. Each time, I failed to reach you or to relate to you as an adult. For this, I am sorry. I am profoundly damaged and I wasn’t strong enough to deal with your type of damage and the walls you put up around you. I wasn’t strong enough to have a child for a mother. I don’t blame you anymore for being a child in a woman’s body. You were never allowed to grow up. How many mother’s days went by without a single word from your children? This I regret. I was so busy trying to be a good mother myself and so wrapped up dealing with my issues with you I failed to recognize you deserved better than my wrath. If the pain my children cause me is any indication of how you must have felt all those mother’s days that passed without a word, I am intensely sorry I caused you pain. I am sorry that every single time I reached out to you, to try to have a relationship with you, I abandoned you over and over again. I can’t imagine what that felt like for you. I know how it feels to be abandoned by my children. It hurts deeply and intensely. I too have been abandoned over and over by my children. I forgive them every single time they hurt me. I forgive them when they cause me tears. I forget what they did so I can enjoy them when they are close to me. I put my hurt aside and try to never look at it again. I hope you were able to forgive me. I hope now that you are in spirit, you have the wisdom to know I am ashamed at how insensitive and cruelly I treated you. I was trying to survive. I too have armor.

You were still working at age 72 when you died in your sleep. I am grateful for this. You had no friends. You had no children in your life. It takes great courage to live each day without someone to love you. That is the life you made for yourself, or the only life you could tolerate. Maybe there was some safety in that for you. You were a reliable worker. When you didn’t show up for your shift, they called you. When you didn’t answer, they called the police for a wellness check. They found you in an eternal sleep. I’m so happy you had a peaceful death. That is the very least this life owed you. I felt when your spirit leave this earth. Your spirit came to say its earthly goodbye. Thank you for that. Though I wasn’t in your life the last six months you lived, I mourned deeply for you. I mourn you still. I mourn the mother you were meant to be, before your father killed her. I mourn for both of us. My father killed the person I was meant to be too. Because of him, I have spent a good chunk of my life wanting to die. How you made it through your life I’ll never know. My life is so much richer than yours. Your life was devoid of human intimacy from even one person. The few times you opened up your armor and let someone love you, they let you down. They left. They always left. I have been loved. I know what it is to be loved. I know what it is to love. You never had that experience that I am aware of. You talked so little about your life. I don’t know if you had hopes and dreams once. Your life didn’t have any meaning, anything of value in it that you could hold onto. Only two people came to your memorial service. Your favorite son and your youngest son were in attendance. I would have come if I had the plane fare, but even at that your passing you left barely a whisper in the world. You passed as you lived your life, alone and almost invisible. I tried to see you and I think I got glimpses of you now and then.

I know I was a difficult child and neither you nor my father could deal with me. Besides the behavioral issues I exhibited directly due to the sexual abuse, I also had an illness which caused me to have enormous energy. I chatted all the time. I was busy all the time. I had an active and fertile imagination and often became lost in the narratives in my head. I constantly asked “why” about everything and anything. I challenged authority and rules because I couldn’t live with them. The anger, rage, disappointments and sorrows I felt were because I was so sensitive as a child I was overwhelmed in my environment. I never thought much about it, but I was the only child who got to go to YMCA camp and Girl Scout Camp every summer. You and dad needed the break. I was also the only child grandpa took hiking in the Metroparks with him. Sometimes my brothers would come too, but not very often. Grandpa seemed to have boundless patience with me, but he only had to deal with me for a few hours at a time. You and dad needed a break from the hyperactive child I was. Those issues and behaviors flawed my ability to relate to you for many years and ultimately until the day you died.

Neither you nor my father ever understood me. For many years, I didn’t understand myself. I had difficulty controlling my emotions, and I felt emotions intensely. I felt laughter and sorrow with the greatest joy and the deepest grief. I felt deeply and acutely every slight, every unkind word, every injustice. What you saw as teasing, I felt like a knife searing through my soul. I didn’t like being teased and I acted out frequently. Every cruel word said to me created waves of despair. I was drowning in the pain directed at me. I also felt soaring joy at the slightest attention. I desperately wanted someone, anyone to be proud of me. What I had didn’t have a name back then. I have a condition called Attention Deficit Disorder and it rained down havoc on a child who was also suffering sexual abuse throughout childhood. I would be in my forties before I would be diagnosed and treated. I am still working on healing from childhood traumas. I will be healing the rest of my life. Thank you for giving me the strength to do what you could not; heal. Thank you for sending me to camp each year, though it was expensive. I loved going to camp. No one abused me there. I was praised for my efforts and wanted to please my camp counselors. I would have stayed the whole summer if I could. At camp, I was given the shred of self esteem and the confidence of my convictions I would need in later life.

Thank you for giving me the relationship with my grandfather, a privileged relationship my brothers would never know. My grandfather would give me the one thing I didn’t know I had in life; he told me I had choices. I may not like the choices I had, but I always had choices. Most of my life has been spent deciding between a bad choice or a worse one, but it empowered me in a way nothing else could. Because of the time I spent with my grandfather, I would have the wisdom to meet the challenges life was intent on throwing at me. He also taught me that no matter what my life would be, everyone had sorrow and pain in their life. No one escapes it. It is part of the living and dying process of being human. I felt less alone. I never drowned in self pity for very long. I lived by the motto “It’s ok to have a pity party, just don’t stay too long.” I could grant myself some time to feel the magnitude of sorrow in my life, and I gave myself the opportunity to come back out of it. There was a door that never closed. No matter what I was feeling or experiencing, I never let it stop me from moving on from it or growing in spite of it. I have you to thank for that.

There is so much I wish I could have told you, but I’m telling you now. Maybe the words will reach you. Maybe now that you are free from the solitary and painful life you lived, you could see your life with some clarity and my place in it. Maybe you are already in a new life, you reincarnated to a newborn baby or a young child. If you are, I hope this new life is charmed. I hope you feel the love and support of your parents. I hope you feel loved by all the people in your life. You’ve had enough pain for many lifetimes. I regret my role in causing you pain and I wish I could change it. We were two damaged people trying to connect with one another but we couldn’t bridge the divide. We each brought with us the past. We brought with us the pain, the memories and the survival instincts which shielded us from being hurt again. I could no more break through your armor than you could break through mine. Our fathers set us on a path when they crawled into our beds. Neither one of us could take another road. The only difference is, when there was a fork on that path, I took the road less traveled. I had to break away from you long enough to comfort my pain and to save my children from the same path as you and I.

I saved my daughters when you could not save yours, but it was from your strength that I was able to face my own nightmares in order to ensure my daughters had a chance for something better. Mom, all three of my daughters have a chance because you gave me what I needed to get them safe. To survive. Oh, they have their battle scars but they missed the war. They have so many people who love them. They know what it is to love and be loved in their life, something you were denied for 72 years. I think you would be proud of my girls if you had the chance to be a grandmother to them. I know you would love them, even though they are flawed themselves. They are intelligent and independent. They are beautiful. They are carving out their own lives in this mad and crazy world. I sacrificed my life so that they could have one and I have no regrets. I was able to do that because you showed me the way. As helpless and damaged as you were, you managed to do that for me. I am so grateful.

I live my life being grateful because I know the abyss. I know the darkness, the fear, the terror. When I allow myself to think of what we faced, I am amazed we survived it. The blackness consumes your life and there isn’t a part of it that’s safe, that isn’t touched by it. You never escaped your darkness, but I found the light and am able to live in it. I am grateful for the many times I have felt loved. I am hurt by the knowledge you couldn’t find a way out. I am hurt by the knowledge that sometimes when you tried to get out, I pushed you back in. I didn’t mean to do that to you. In a way, you were the ladder that helped me get out and live in the light; in the brilliance and happiness this life has to offer. I am sorry I had to step on you to get out. I am sorry I wasn’t able to reach down a hand and bring you up with me. Maybe you knew you would never get out. Maybe being the ladder was the only thing you could do for me. I got out mom; and though I still suffer the heartache and sorrow the abyss left with me, I can quell the muddy waters and bathe in life’s richness. I can do that because of you.

I am grateful for the richness in my life. I am grateful to be loved and to be able to love in return. I am grateful for the light. I am grateful for the strides I have made to heal my wounds. I am grateful for feeling the pain life tends to throw at me. I am grateful for the happiness I feel. I am grateful I made it out of the abyss when so many don’t survive it. I am grateful I didn’t try to cope with drugs and alcohol. I am grateful for the nicks and cracks in my armor. I am grateful for the richness life has to offer. I am grateful I appreciate the sunlight and the smell of freshly mowed grass. I am grateful I can see the beauty in the flowers and to smell their aroma as I pass. I am grateful for the courage it took to get my children safe and I am grateful I was able to do what it took to get them there. I am grateful you were the ladder. This, and so much more, is what I wish you knew. Happy Mother’s Day 2018.