For Mother's Day

My mother was an alcoholic. Legend has it that she didn’t start drinking until after I was born. But all joking aside, she had four children under the age of three by the time she was twenty-three. After I, the last one, was born, I guess she felt it was okay to consume alcohol. Being a child of the German post WWII generation, life was never easy for her. I know she had a cruel childhood without knowing many details of it. There are fragmented stories in my memory she would tell when I was very young.

Her marriage to my father was one of co-dependency, dysfunction and addiction. By the time I was eleven, my mother had to “step up” to the role of head of household because my father had become mentally incapacitated to make any further decisions. Or lay out his will with physical reenforcement. She never learned how to be an independent adult, she never matured, really. And by that time she was already dependent on alcohol. Physically and otherwise. It was up to my older brother and sister to assist her when important decisions had to be made and everything it took to follow through on it. She was very much child-like. The impact it left on me was that I grew up motherless. Yes, I did have a mother. Physically she was present. But she was absent in so many other ways. Never having grown into her own, she was unable to model to her children any sort of behavior that did not include dysfunction.

I left the house at eighteen, then I left the country at twenty-one. A mother myself at that time already, I had nothing to guide me in mothering besides everything I did not want to be. And not just only that, any child of an addicted parent will tell you that it impacted them psychologically on a survival mode level that seems to be unshakeable. So for the last couple of decades I had that scent of abandoned kitten on me. I can’t describe it any other way. But there was just a slew of people who had the tendency to mother me. They picked up on my motherless vibe that I was giving off subconsciously, drawn in to care for me like a stray kitten. I am deeply grateful to these souls coming across my path, who showered affection and worry on me, even when their well-intended presence at times was not what I needed.

Until I became aware of how growing up the way I did impacted me on every level in my life, I had these people come across my path. I had to learn to mother myself. As a grown woman, with children of her own, with a profession that is all about caring for others, I had to finally learn how to care for myself first and foremost. Once I started with making choices that included my well-being, encountering these people fell to the wayside. I no longer was a stray kitten left out in the cold and wet. I was finally able to hold space for myself and tend to my own heart.

“Remothering is an ongoing practice, (tremendously helped by a mentor), of learning to care for your body’s needs, validating and expressing your feelings, speaking healthy boundaries, supporting your life choices, and most of all – growing loving towards all that is unsolved in your heart.”~Toko-pa

https://www.facebook.com/DreamworkWithTokopa/?fref=ts

http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=39f924e2dd26ee471cb9e4596&id=99d7f83a36

http://www.searidgealcoholrehab.com/article-adult-children-of-alcoholics.php