mother myths

While shopping in Target a few weeks ago, I came across some stickers in the dollar section, and in each pack, one of the stickers bore this quote:

As fellow ACONs, I'm sure you've guessed that I did NOT buy the stickers. I'm not terribly big on mother worship.

This phrase is one of hundreds that our mother-idealizing society plays on repeat, increasing in frequency as we get closer and closer to Mother's Day. To honor your dear mum, you may buy this quote on note cards, on picture frames, on refrigerator magnets, on plaques, on jewelry, on art prints, and on vinyl wall transfers. I even saw a cross stitch sampler pattern. I'm sure it doesn't stop there. The message is strong: your mother should get credit for everything in your life. Everything. Even if you did something yourself, it's because she raised you to be somebody who can do that thing. Have positive personality characteristics? Inherited from or instilled by her. Your children? Also her accomplishment. Did another person positively influence you? Well, only because your mama gave you the social skills to network, or was related to that person, or sent you to the college where you met them. And on and on. 

As an ACON, phrases like this hurt. They erase me and my experience. They perpetuate the myth that mothers all genuinely love their children, that mothers are the ones who are always "there for you," that all mothers are nurturing, that mothers who do harm only do so inadvertently, because they had the best of intentions and were trying as hard as they could, and really, what kind of ungrateful child complains about the (surely trivial) harm done in the past?

Phrases like this disregard the many, many people who are hurting because "all they are" sometimes - or often - feels like crap, due to a childhood - and often an adulthood - filled with abuse. 

Now, I don't think that people who utter this (and I'll include the supposed originator of the quote, President Lincoln himself) really believe this to the core, even if they say they do and think they do. And that's because deep down, we all know it's not true. It's certainly not true for those of us who have had to break away from abusive mothers. Sure, your life bears her marks, some good and many bad, but there's also a hell of a lot that YOU did yourself, and it's absolutely OK to claim it and be proud of it. 

It's not true even for normal, healthy mothers. No matter how supportive, how nurturing, how fantastic a mother a woman might be, she is not her child. And since the child is his or her own person, he or she deserves credit for doing whatever he or she did with the raw materials provided by dear Mama. As for all a person "hope[s] to be" - can you imagine anything more defeatist than saying that you cannot ever be anything other than what your mother made? How awful. Even if Mama was truly an angel, how horrible to have no destiny other than what she provided. In the case of a child born to an emotionally unhealthy mother, what a terrible life sentence for "all I hope to be" to have no actual hope.

This relates to personal accountability, which is a theme often touched on in discussions of dysfunctional mothers. If "all that I am" is due to my mother, than all she is is due to her mother, and so on back through the ages. Nobody, then, is really responsible for her own actions. You know this not to be true. Each of us receives some DNA, some nurture (or neglect), and some programming from our mothers. Many of us may have run on the scripts handed to us for a long time, but if we're able to come out of the auto-pilot of our family programming, we receive something that is entirely ours: autonomy. We get to decide what to do with the DNA and the history. We can make changes to who we are and what we do. We can work to heal our wounds, enrich our lives, and pass a different package on to our own children, for them to use in their own way when they are ready. 

With apologies to Mr. Lincoln, I suggest we throw away his mother-worship for something more true, written by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be." 

All you are, or hope to be, you owe to yourself. 

living kindness

This entry from Jonsi with a passage from Dr. Martinez-Lewi caught onto a splinter of a memory that had been nagging me in the last few days. 

I say that narcissists are not good people because when we know what they reap in terms of human relationships, the picture is ugly. Yes, they may give money to worthy causes. Some of them are generous and that is good and praise worthy. But when we view their personal lives we see close up the psychological havoc they wreak with their spouses and children and other family members.

I think of this as The Kindness Issue. I commented once that while growing up, there wasn't an attitude within my family of serving others in simple, daily ways. My mother objects to this point of view - she countered via email that she and my dad were constantly doing things for other people like donating to food drives and putting money in the collection plate at church and sponsoring a poor child overseas. These things are true, but as Dr. Martinez-Lewi notes, it's not giving money that makes a person good. 

Things I never saw my parents do:

• approach somebody on the street who needed help and offer assistance
• run errands, prepare meals, or otherwise help out a friend or community member who was ill or had had a baby
• go without something they wanted in order to give it to somebody else
• perform random acts of kindness
• perform hands-on service (medical missions, soup kitchens, Habitat for Humanity, trash pick-ups)

Now, my mother says that she and my dad just didn't make sure we saw them do these things. That doesn't jive. If they had been in the habit of living kindness in their everyday lives, wouldn't I have noticed? I want my kids to see me do these things, every day. I want them to see me being kind to other people and also being kind to them. I've been challenging myself to act on kind impulses - rather than just thinking about the homeless woman on the corner near a grocery store, go up to her and talk to her, and volunteer to bring her a meal. Get involved in my community, and talk about it with my kids. Involve the kids when I can. Donate food not just when a holiday food drive calls my attention to it, but as a regular part of my grocery shopping. Accept the challenge of service trips when possible. Offer child care to friends who need a break, give my free time to somebody who needs an ear or a hug instead of rushing around on my own agenda.

But there's more. I want my kids to see me put away a shopping cart that was left in the middle of the parking lot. I want them to see me holding doors open for people. I want them to see me greeting people, offering help when it looks like it might be needed, saying encouraging things to harried parents in the check-out line. Rather than thinking about reading a book later to my kids, put down what I'm doing and read it now. Give them unsolicited hugs. Notice good things about them and tell them. I don't want them to see me doing these things so that I look good to them, but so that they learn to do these things, too.

I want my kids to feel like they have enough emotional and physical abundance to share. I want them to notice opportunities to share it. I want them to engage in the world in a loving, giving way, not in a tit-for-tat, stingy way in which one only does kind things for a tax deduction or to look good in front of others.

on motherhood

During my grand file clean-out, I found a document containing quotations about motherhood. I wonder if my own preoccupation with all things related to children and motherhood is related to the failure of my mother to parent compassionately?  (I'm sure it is.)

Some choice quotations:


To show a child what once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own - is happiness.
- JB Priestley

Every mother is like Moses. She does not enter the promised land. She prepares a world she will not see.
- Pope Paul VI


The art of living is to function in society without doing violence to one's own needs or to the needs of others. The art of mothering is to teach the art of living to children.
- Elaine Heffner