"The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there." ~George Bernard Shaw, The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God
My mom was a gardener - an avid one - and I've chosen to share the quote above as a step in my own healing and in repairing my relationship with her. Today and moving forward, I am choosing to see my mother at her best and happiest, which of course would be in the garden. Hence the quote. I hope she likes it.
It's no secret that my mother and I had issues. I've talked about them some here and may even write a book about them at some point. More often though, I tend to keep my thoughts and memories to myself. They've seemed less painful that way.
This year, I've really noticed that my anger with her has crept back up. She's been dead since the summer I was twenty - a suicide - and I've had a long time to deal with my feelings. Thus I thought I had gotten over her death and all the loss that came before it.
But no...hiding down in the dark caverns of my psyche I've found drips and drabs of venom and sadness. They'd collected and formed puddles and pools of a depth I was shocked to find myself wading in again.
There are so many levels and layers to my anger and sadness - so much yearning for what could and should have been as well as hurt and resentment for what was there instead. I'm sad for her too because her life could have been so much more rewarding for her as well.
Since she left my life the first time and the last time, I've been struggling to peel away and understand all the stratified debris and crap that was piled on during our life/time together. It's gotten heavier with time and has been anything but a life preserver.
Over these last months, years really, I've paddled and pushed against the heavy currents and undertow that have made me feel drowning was almost a foregone conclusion instead of an avoidable accident. I've tried harder to understand her perspective, her history, her limitations, and her illnesses.
I've pretended I was fine, ignored the rising waves, and gone out of my way to be sure I was nothing like her. I've literally and figuratively learned how to swim beyond just keeping my head above water; sent out SOS calls for help; and yet I've still been stuck and sinking.
Recently I've called her out and told her she had to let me go, that I was tired of doing things her way, and that she had to heal herself and let me move on. I've had numerous healing energy-work sessions that have helped me let go of pieces of parts of our story, but still, I've held tight to the idea that she was and is not well enough to allow me to go.
But today I had an epiphany. For the first time, I see that my feelings about her still being sick and damaged are holding HER back. That I am the one who is perpetuating the cycle. Where she is - with God - there is nothing but love. She is still learning, but her spirit and soul have evolved well beyond the limitations of the Earth and what I have placed on her.
By realizing this, I no longer need to have any guilt about achieving or being or having more than she did - or more than she would deem proper - when she was alive. I no longer need to work myself into a frenzy trying to earn her love because all she feels for me now is love. And if I do choose to work myself into a frenzy, it is perfectly OK for me to be paid for my efforts with money instead of wanting or expecting an ethereal nod of approval from her. From her perspective, it's all energy and what is energy if not LOVE?
Admittedly, writing this, I still have some doubts about my unfolding views. But by sharing them with you, by crystallizing my thoughts on paper, I am able to make them a more solid part of me and to show her that I am finally getting it.
Namaste, Beth, and thank you for helping me to see the truth.