“Mother” is an old English word originating from the Greek word “Métér” meaning “The Moulder”; one who shapes raw material into a framed structure and in our case, shapes humans. She’s simply life; the goddess of details that gives meaning to creation. It's well known that women keep houses alive and add spirit to them but MOTHERS, mothers keep people alive.
Our mothers are the first and only meaning of HOME we’ll ever have; we literally live in them for 9 months, once we come to the world we turn homeless, and both of us will mourn that for a long time however a mother knows that part of her job is to provide a safe nest for her little ones to grow wings and fly.
Unfortunately my mother wasn’t like that, she took me by the hand and we metaphorically lived in department stores trying to build a home as material as it could be, and oh what a wrecked home we had. She never knew how to care for things let alone people, she just needed them around so no wonder she couldn’t care for me. Now when I feel like I need a mother I go shopping and try to make objects alive, I developed an attachment to curtains, cushions, little flower pots, vases and tulips; those thin tall flowers she adored and the little details that constitute a house except for one tiny detail, I can't find love in the department store nor in the super market. I can't find home in relatives or friends, I can't find security even if I was living in the safest house on the planet. I tried looking for it, the serenity of a solid grounded blood network; it turned out to be a blood clot. I wanted to tell her that she can stop worrying but I couldn't because I am worried all the time to the extent that I shut myself in, I stopped feeling certain things out of fear, I stopped crying. You don’t know how hard it is to keep such a huge amount of tears locked in; it’s like self poisoning or maybe drowning willingly feeling all the oxygen sucked out of you and suffocating.
I sometimes find myself standing in front of the flower stand in that department store looking at her favorites and wishing she would've looked at me once the way she looked at her tulips. I feel sorry I wasn't her favorite flower, believe me if it was my call I wish I was a tulip. I wanted to love her but she wouldn't let me, I wanted her to love me but I knew I didn't match your expectations, it was hard on both of us, I wanted to save her but the truth is no child can save her mother, all I can do is wish her a better suiting daughter in her other life.
I read an article once by author and inspirational coach Bethany Webster about something called the mother wound and it defined it as the pain of being a woman passed down through generations of women in patriarchal cultures. And it includes the dysfunctional coping mechanisms that are used to process that pain. This pain is manifested in not feeling good enough hence comparison, shame, feeling we must remain small in order to be loved and a persistent sense of guilt for wanting more than we currently have.
She says “For daughters growing up in a patriarchal culture, there is a sense of having to choose between being empowered and being loved. Most daughters choose to be loved. A daughter internalizes her mother’s unconscious beliefs then she has her mother’s approval but has in some way betrayed herself and her potential. This decision is made out of love, loyalty and a true need for approval and support from the mother; it’s the daughter’s emotional survival instinct. However, if she doesn’t internalize her mother’s unconscious beliefs in her own limitations but rather affirms her own power and potential, she is aware that her mother may unconsciously see this as a personal rejection which may remind the mother of her un-lived potential. And if the daughter feels worthy enough to reject some of the patriarchal mandates that the mother has had to swallow then she can easily trigger that underground rage for the mother and her pain usually manifests as manipulation, competition and self-hatred. Many of us confuse being loyal to our mothers with being loyal to their wounds, and thus, complicit in our own oppression and slipping into a pattern of passing the mother wound to the next generation We all have sensed the pain that our mothers carry and all of us are suspicious to some degree that we are partly to blame for her pain. However we need to realize as both daughter and mothers that no sacrifice a daughter makes will ever be enough to compensate for the high price her mother may have had to pay or for the losses she has accrued over the years, simply by being a woman and mother in this culture.”
After reading this I realized I am a living example of what Bethany described, I think I unintentionally triggered her anger and accordingly she started convincing me that I am responsible for compensating her for the agony she has been going through with my addict abusive father, and so I did. I moved out and looked for an apartment to make my mother safe I wanted us to be physically and emotionally safe, I was tired of the beatings and the abuse and because we live in a patriarchal society I never blamed her for anything she was always the victim and I was the savior and my dad was always the villain. She said she’ll come with me yet she never did, she bailed out on me because I reminded her of her un-lived potential. And our relationship worsened by time and the gap got bigger and bigger as I got more in touch with my true self.
Ever since my mother passed, I have been having a hard time both physically and emotionally. I experienced a vaginal infection that has no biological root; I can’t even treat it, it turned out to be psychosomatic. I feel discomfort and pain, never aroused, no sexual desire at all and it became cold and dry with lots of cramping and itchy pain. The low estrogen in my body had my bones ache and I felt exhausted most of the time. I visited a number of doctors, no medication worked. I finally visited my shrink; he said I might be taking my suppressed anger against my own vagina as a symbol of motherhood, when she died I had no symbol around which for him is perfectly normal regarding my rejection of having my own children. He said a vagina is like a flower it needs constant watering and the lack of intimacy in our lives whether physical or emotional leaves the vagina cold and the body overwrought by the least activity. Now I know why she never had the energy to share things with me, she was overwrought as well; her vagina was cold and neglected. I feel bad that I didn’t know her flower was wilting and for blaming her for her cold vagina, I know how it felt and I am glad she’s gone because it might be her closure; the end of drought.
I went on a vacation with a friend, I met this story teller friend of hers for the first time and we decided to try naked moon bathing, while swimming naked in the middle of the night with a total stranger, she told me that when we miss the wombs of our mothers we go swimming in the dark, it is said to be symbolic to safety, and being weightless and naked in the dark. I realized my need was nothing but longing for my mom and her womb, I felt so safe, I didn’t want to come out of the sea. I felt her all around me and it was heartwarming for the first time in a very long time and my vagina was not cold anymore I felt it turning warm bit by bit like a gradual emotional orgasm. A few weeks later I went on women retreat in Dahshour with a bunch of exceptional women, and there I got to be heard and appreciated in a gracious and loving manner. I stared at those women giving me so much attention like a scene from a movie; it was like I lost one mother and God blessed me with 11 mothers instead, mothers that are sewing back my wings to let me fly, each one of them gave me something precious and affectionate in a total unconditional way and at a point in time, they all looked at me like my mother used to look at tulips even though I was not one and such a gift was profoundly gratifying. Then this great Yoga instructor came along to help us do some laughter Yoga then relaxing meditation, and again I felt the warmth all around my uterus and down my vagina, it felt like giving birth to something maybe to my forgiveness or my appreciation to the good hearted warm vaginas all around me.
Those women made me realize that when I was away during my mom’s final days, I was only protecting myself from an image of her that might horrify me; her illness, my helplessness and how it hurts me to be only around, I was away because that’s the only way I can look at her as another person and at me as an independent being, we’re no longer parts of each other, her faults will only stop mutilating my soul if I am away and I get to feel empathy instead of anger, I am tired of being angry at her and at the desperate childhood hopes I had, away I can be angry at the world, the circumstances and the culture that led her to be the mother she was but not at her. She should've known better but I know it wasn't a matter of will it was that of ability. I left my mom a while ago and I am proud to say I am better off but I am sad that I had to leave and define empowerment away from its source. I will always love her yet from a safe distance. I want be the woman she might have never sacrificed yet I am going to forget her; her identity and her doings, I am only keeping her beautiful face. And as the great Pablo Neruda said “Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us.” I know she couldn’t love me, no matter how hard she tried, pretended or even believed but I forgive her and I will allow myself to forget the pain she caused me with utmost generosity. She would generously be forgotten yet somehow lovingly remembered.
One of those women taught me that human love has its own limitations and as much as we wish things were different, they aren’t. I am going to take all the unconditional love I can get no matter how scarce it can be and I am going to make the effort needed to find hearts holding such kind of love and when met with conditionality I am going to walk away silently and move on.
I am warm now, maybe I was meant to have such a traumatizing childhood and I was meant to lose my mother in order to meet those women, maybe they need me to heal their own mother wounds or even their mother-daughter relationships, maybe I have answers to questions they never asked but what I am sure of is that by only looking in each of their eyes I got reassuring answers to lots of questions that ached my heart. I will be forever grateful for these women for the warmth they brought to my body and soul through these brief encounters.
I will stick to the department store for the memories, after all it was my home and my mother’s grave, I might not find love in that store but I am sure I will find a temporary substitute. As for presence I will befriend the sea it’s where I can find her present for real or I can just go to Dahshour and contemplate the beauty of the women I was gifted with.
I bow to these women with respect and utmost gratitude, especially my dear friend and host Marianne Khoury.