I have a lot of resentment toward my mom. It's probably not healthy, but I do. It will probably take a lot of years or a lot of psychotherapy to get over it. :) I do not understand my mother, and she does not understand me. Sometimes I feel bad for her because I think my sisters feel the same way and deep down inside I bet she probably wishes things were different, but she'd do anything rather that let on as if she cares.
I thought this was interesting (Stasi's thoughts about her mother):
She wanted me to like her, know her, and enjoy her just as much as I wanted her
to feel that way about me. And I had withheld my acceptance from her. I realized
for the first time how deeply I had wounded her. Page 174.
I'm not sure what to do with that right now, but I think it's interesting.
She says that as women, we have the need to "mother" deep within us and we mother various people who enter our lives by nurturing them in different ways. I don't understand. I had a conversation with my mother just a month or two ago in which she described in detail how horrible it is to be expected to nurture someone. She talked about how she'd rather pull her hair out than to have sat down and played a game with us or read to us or spend time being patient with us. There was disgust in her voice when she talked about it. Every time she gripes about having to do something for my cousin, it's just like I'm a kid again and she's talking about me and it makes me furious and incredibly sad.
When I said, "Yeah I noticed." when she told how she hated "mothering" she got defensive and said, "I made sure you had someone to play with. That's why I sent you to your Aunt Nina." And she's right. My aunt was every bit of the mother that my real mother wasn't...and then some, but when she died the nurturing stopped.
I guess I just want to know why, if women naturally are nurturers, my mom didn't nurture me. I hope that if I have kids, I'll nurture them. Surely I will.
The book also talks about women friends and how they can nurture one another. This is wholly true. If you're my friend and you're reading this and I haven't told you lately--I really love you. You probably have no idea what you mean to me and I can't begin to express it here. If you're one of my friends who I hardly ever see, I don't just miss you, I grieve for you. God has really blessed me with some special friends and it pains me that most of them are scattered all over the place.
Did I tell you this was a rough chapter or what? This is the most depressing blog entry ever!
Moving on...I loved the C.S. Lewis quote from The Four Loves on page 182. I won't type it all out, but Lewis is great, isn't he?
2 comments:
Aww...I love you and miss you incredibly too. I know life has to move on, but I frequently think about the times we had living together at school. Not just all the goofying around, but really how we were always there for each other through all things. I do believe that the best friendships I've made so far were in Perrin 3. Your friendship has meant so much to me through these...what 7 yrs? This was a rough chapter for me as well. I've got many issues with my own mother as well. It's helped me some to realize that the reason why my mom is the way she is is because she's also hurting. What kind of relationship did your mom have with her own mom? My mom didn't and still doesn't have a good relationship with her own mother, which explains a lot.
I'm not sure about my mom's relationship with her mom. I do know her mom said some hurtful stuff to her when she was young. My grandma was the kind that just said whatever came to mind--whether it was hurtful or not. She didn't have an internal filter. :) However, she did go out of her way to spend time with her grandkids. She used to come pick me up and take me to the movies every Saturday and my sisters said that when my Grandma used to work in retail, she would buy them things and put them in this box hidden under the guest bed (so my Grandpa wouldn't know she was spending the money), so every time they visited they knew to go look under the bed for new clothes and stuff.
I don't know if she did stuff like that for my mom or if she only did it for her grandkids though.
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