Day 147: Relationship formats, part 2: Mother

15022013

This post is a continuation to:

Days 127-128: Relationship formats, part 1

Day 145: Death and rebirth of the Mother in me

Part 2: Mother

The one who gave birth to me and raised me in her home. I am to respect her as to show my gratitude for her parenting and take care of her as she grows old. She is to show interest towards my life and offer me support and assistance throughout my life.

This format not only applies to my biological mother but all those who I have defined as “mother figures”.

Status: slightly lower

Intimacy: plenty, platonic

Bargain: affection for respect

Gain: support and assistance

Loss: time, work, effort and focus

Risk: disrespecting the other – loss of a stable source of support

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to fear that my mother will lose interest in me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to fear that my mother will no longer support me financially and/or emotionally.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to create a dependency on my parents as a safety net that will be able to catch me if I fall, i.e. support me financially if I “fail” at supporting myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to react with fear when and as I realized that my parents do not have the ability to support me if I'm not able to support myself financially, as they too have very low income, and as defense think that “this is unacceptable, it is their job as parents to support me”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to not see and realize that my parents struggled to even raise me into adulthood and that now that I am a fully functioning member of this society I am in fact able and responsible to support myself – me myself, not my parents, as I am fully able to carry responsibility for myself.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to glorify the ability to support myself, not realizing it is just the lack of helplessness and not a special ability of any kind.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to not realize that even though my parents may support me if they so choose, they are not obligated to do so under some moral law or social code as the “parent characters” with me as the justified beggar excusing my weakness with the “child character”.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to believe I can play the “child character” with my parents as justified abdication of responsibility for the rest of my life, because I have defined our relationship based on these specific statuses of demand and supply.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to not realize this character is based on a social agreement of having parents support a child as he/she grows up, and that because the situation has changed and I am not a child anymore this character/status is in no way valid.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to not see myself as a being able to stand on its own but to see myself as small, weak and fearful and in need of a “back door” I can always rely on instead of fully relying on myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to expect my mother to support me financially when I am at a tight spot.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to not realize this actually works both ways – I am able to support my mother when she is in need – and not because we have a “special” relationship of close family ties but because we are both human beings and beings of Life and thus equally deserving of survival and resources.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to be angry at my mother for spending money on new clothes I perceive her to not need because I see her excuse to not support me to be the fact that she does not have any money and her actions work against that reasoning.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to “give permission” for my mother to not support me financially because she has low income, not realizing I have been skating around the actual issue as I have believed myself to be entitled to her support and then “permitted” her an excuse when she couldn't live up to my expectation for understandable reasons.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to not realize I am not entitled to anyone's money – or anything at all for that matter.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to not realize that I have been afraid to stand fully on my own because I have perceived the world to be a fearsome place where one has to struggle and compete to survive, and that because of this fear of the world as a hostile place where one's survival is uncertain I have clung onto my mother (and father) as a source of security.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to fear my mother will no longer show interest towards me, my life, my experiences and my actions.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to create an expectation that my mother will always show interest towards me because she gave birth to me and raised me and throughout my developing years showed a great interest towards me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to not realize my mother, too, is a human being that changes all the time and grows to be a different being at different points in time, and that she may have changed to a being that is interested in other things than she was in the past – and that this is OK because that is the nature of life – everything is in constant flux – every breath is a birth and a death.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to not realize that a person may want to focus on herself after raising four children and 30+ years of motherhood, the “mother character” not being the lightest of them all.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to define myself according to the interest my mother shows me as her acceptance was a stability point to me when growing up.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself as a child to learn to always reflect my actions through my parents and decide whether something was OK or not based on their acceptance instead of becoming a self-supported being who is able to assess and evaluate without an external stability point.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself as a child to create a co-dependency on my parents where I demand all of my needs to be fulfilled and reward them with “unconditional love and respect” by making them feel like they are “good parents”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to believe I need to “respect” my parents (be of support in their old days and not question their ways of living) as it is the “price I pay” for the life they have provided me, living as debt of gratitude.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to believe I am obligated to show my gratitude to my parents by supporting them in their old days, not realizing that if I provide them support from the starting point of obligation (fear of punishment if not followed) I will think of it as a burden and create resistance towards it, when instead I could offer them support simply because I am able to and because it is needed.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to not realize that instead of wishing for my mother to show interest towards my life I could show interest in my life by focusing on my process and living my life to be the best it can be, thus eradicating the need to have someone validate me all the time as I live for myself and not for others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to want to share my experiences with my mother but refrain from doing this because I perceive her to be “not interested”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to interpret my mother rather watching TV than talking with me when I am visiting to be “disinterest”, not realizing a more plausible reason is the fact that she has a habit of always watching TV and needs some support to break that habit. [This is a point I recently faced in practice and it worked out awesomely.]

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to interpret my mother's body language to mean she is not interested in what I am talking about, not realizing the reason might also be in concentration difficulties, resistances she might be facing and/or her not being used to discussing with the kind of vocabulary I use.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to interpret lack of eye contact, lack of response, slowness of replies, reservation and tension to mean “disinterest” when in fact there are countless of internal processes that may cause these symptoms in the physical of a human being.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to not hear what my mother says and instead hold on to my interpretation of her body language, not realizing she might be pushing through the points she is facing in her physical with the words she is speaking out loud and that this is why there is a contrast between the words and the physical – not because she is dishonest in her speech.

I forgive myself that I have accepted an allowed myself to hope and wait for my mother to show interest in me when I could instead show interest in her and thus live according to the principle “do onto others as you would have done onto you” - “give as you would like to receive” - not from the starting point of wanting something in return for my “good deeds” but in wanting to actually see the other person and their reasons to act the way they do.

I commit myself to support my mother unconditionally to the best of my abilities, not because that would validate my worth of her worth but because she is in need of support and I am able to support her.

I commit myself to teach myself to stand on my own and to show myself this is in fact no superpower but simply the lack of helplessness.