This month is "thankful" month on FB. And so each day people (other people, I don't do this shit, although maybe I should) post what they are thankful for. One friend said tonight, "I am thankful for my mom."
My first thought was, I'm not. I'm not thankful for my mother. I got a raw deal, I think before I can stop myself. And then I felt guilty. Stomach ache guilty. Who isn't thankful for their mom? Lots of people had it worse. At least your mom tried some of the time. Once in a while. She didn't beat you.
I comfort myself with the thought that's a normal though when you've been hurt and torn and pushed and left by your mother to not be "thankful" for that. But still....
Do these people. those who are thankful for their parents, know something I don't? A way to make peace and find the good? I know a friend who's father beat him. Beat him so badly, I've been told, that my friend's (a teenager at the time) friends tried to beat the father up to defend him. And this friend professed he was thankful for his father's help with plumbing issues. And how he always was there. Am I missing something? Am I cold and heartless and unforgiving?
My stomach hurt.
And then I thought of a few more thoughts.
I don't like my mom. I've actually been feeling this for quite some time now. I find her phony, and ignorant, and small minded. I find her jealous and childish. I find her boring. We have never had an conversation that I can recall that was mentally stimulating to me. She's not dumb. She just doesn't engage in a conversation at all. And it's boring. She brings nothing but phony lines, and parroted lines, repeated b.s. or gossip to a conversation. She can not engage. I also find her a bit mean, gossipy, and jealous. And petty. If she wasn't my mom, I wouldn't enjoy her company. I wonder if my struggles with her come solely from just not liking her.
But that's not to say I've never had a good time with my mom. Lately, I've had actual good memories of my childhood leak in. I've held them at bay for so long. I felt that, if I admitted on any level, that their was good, I was admitting the bad didn't happen or wasn't bad. It took me a long time to reconcile that admitting to a good memory of my mother didn't discount, minimize, or deny the truth of the bad. That it didn't even out. That the "good" account of mothering doesn't "balance" out the "bad" account. They don't cancel each other out. And that being said, I can remember good in my mother.
I also feel sorry for my mother. I'm sorry for the misery she grew up in that made her the emotional cripple she is today. I do feel for her. I have empathy for her. I do feel the deck was stacked against her.
She wasn't a horrible mother ALL the time. She did some good things. She did try. At times. She didn't do these things to manipulate me. All the time. Sometimes she really wanted to be a good mom. And she succeeding. Sometimes.
But she was a shitty mom and continues to be a shitty mom a lot of the time.
Another friend, a woman exactly my age, lost her mother this week, announcing it (briefly) on FB. My heart ached for her. But I couldn't think how that would feel for me. If I lost my mom. It didn't make me feel, even for a moment, that I should treat my mom "better". That I somehow will "miss her when she's gone". I'm sure I will be sad. I'm sure it will be upsetting. But I can't say I won't somehow feel relief. And that's a horrible thing to think, let alone write down.
And then I feel guilty again.
Two things: This "thankfulness" meme on Facebook is brought to you by the people who spend eleven months out of the year complaining on Facebook about every damn thing, and then the month of November being "thankful." How's that for perspective? ;)
ReplyDeleteYou're not a monster for not feeling thankful for your mom. I'm certainly not thankful for mine. I love her and I wish her well, but at a distance. She's proven time and again that having a relationship costs me too much of my own emotional well-being, and I'm not interested in providing her N supply anymore. She's your mother, but she's not your mom, if that distinction makes sense. You're a mom to your kids--you're there for them, you support them, you sacrifice for them. She wasn't a mom. She's your birth mother. I think that distinction is important because we ACoNs really wrestle with the guilt we feel over not feeling thankful, not feeling gratitude for the kind of parenting we got. If you don't feel thankful for her, I think that's perfectly reasonable. Give yourself permission to not feel a stomachache.
Drea
I thoroughly agree with Drea :)
DeleteI think people like your friend who was beaten up by his father "hang on" to the little thankfulness they can find so they don't go back and beat the father to death. The truth is just too brutal for some people. Interestingly, I have a friend who's father was abusive and beat the mother too. Even though my friend was 4 when the mother left her father, she still remembers the fear they had to live with. In a conversation when we were talking about difficult families she said that she would have been quite happy to shoot him with a rifle. Her daughter berated her for this, and but she remained calm and was not affected by her being scolded. Maybe it made a difference that she had a mother that was not going to put up with abuse. Whereas I feel that our mothers put up with their mothers, but resented every step of the way, and now we're expected to put up with them because "they put up with them".
True friends wouldn't expect you to be thankful when you feel otherwise. You can only feel what you feel, and more than not there are always serious reasons behind the way we feel about something.
Thanks Kara. I do know that my mother feels like she "deserves" better treatment from me because she has been "a good daughter" to her abusive parents. But while she has been good to them, she has also put up with a lot that I wouldn't have. She also expects MORE out of me than she has ever given them. And I don't believe that her behavior towards HER parents earns her credit with me.
DeleteThanks Drea for sharing your thoughts.
DeleteAnd that FB thing, while I do think it is good to look for ways to be thankful, it can be a little much ;).
And sometimes, I think it makes me sad. I WISH I could be thankful for my mother. I WISH I had warmer feelings towards her and that she was my friend. I WISH I could say she had been the best mother (and mean it). But that's not the way it is.
I hear you on wishing you could be thankful for her. There are so many things that I wish could be the case with my own NM. Alice Miller says that (I'm paraphrasing) one of the last things that dies in a child with abusive/neglectful/N parents is that sense of hope; that wish that maybe, just maybe, if we're perfect children, they'll love us in the way we really deserve. And it's so hard to let go of that because who doesn't want to have a loving parent? And yet, as we see over and over again, our NMs can't be this. It's like wishing their eyes were a different color. They are who they are. It's one of those things that I've had to work to accept and it still sneaks up on me sometimes. But I completely hear your wish. It's something I think we've all said at one time or another. Hugs.
DeleteDrea
Your friend who's thankful for his dad may have come to terms with the past and chosen to be grateful for the good things. He could also be lying to himself, but that's for him to decide. I think it's true of a lot of family relationships; it depends on what people want to focus on and how much they're willing to lie. I also know people who truly do have amazing family relationships.
ReplyDeleteAs to your feelings about your mom, you'll have to work those out, and you will as you become healthier. For a different perspective: I don't like my mom. She isn't a nice person. I would not chooser her as a friend. I would not choose to allow her into my life at all if given a choice. I don't feel guilty. It's taken a long time to reach this point. Sometimes I hate her. Then I feel guilty, not because I'm thinking badly of her but because it isn't who I want to be. I've reached the point, I think, where it isn't about her anymore it's about me. It's about me being who I want to be. How much do I allow her to continue to influence me? For the record: I will not be sorry when she dies. I will be incredibly relieved. I'm not sure I want to attend the funeral. The only promise I've made is to not dance on her grave when someone might see me. I don't want to freak them out. To some people, this will sound callous. When they've survived the same hell I did for as long as I did, then they can talk to me about it. Until then, I doing my best to learn to do better every day. I have to walk this journey. No one can do it for me. All things considered, I'm doing pretty good. So are you. You chose not to follow in her footsteps. Well done!
Judy, you are doing pretty good!
DeleteAnd I think I'm in the same place as you are, I do not want my life to be a "reaction" to my mother. I'm trying very hard to make choices on what I feel and believe, not in "opposition" to her, or based on what others think I "should" do . And I agree, I don't like to "hate" or be bitter because that's not what I want in my soul. But that is not to say that discounts anything that she has done (or does).
I wonder if, with people like my friend, they think they have to "take the good with the bad" or that it was all in the past. But I think that is just as much a lie (to completely minimize the bad) as it is to ignore the good.
Hi Jessie,
ReplyDeleteThe November thanks have been coming through and actually reading your post helped me figure out how I felt about them because some of my great friends who treat me healthily are doing this while some of my N friends are also.
Your post helped me clear up some confusion I had around thankfulness. To be thankful for what a person brings to your life is, imo, based on the majority of it. There are moments of thankfulness but not the feeling of thankful for the relationship and the person.
With my mother, I find I'm thankful in moments and things, not in the overall thankfulness of our relationship. I'm thankful for the house over my head growing up, the food and the education all of which are objects. Having these 'things' isn't a reason to be thankful for our relationship. They are moments of thankfulness. Like you, I think we can experience a positive feeling with Ns - a laugh, etc. It is the overall feeling and the consistence of it that adds up from which the feeling of thankfulness towards a person comes. Thank you for that, it cleared this up for me (no pun intended ;).
I think the problem is in how people communicate their thankfulness. They confuse the emotion (which happens quickly) with an overall feeling and experience with the person. If one is thankful for a gift for a person one must also be thankful for the relationship. I don't think it is done consciously, I don't think some realise there is a difference. And so there is a mistaken correlation that happens between the two.
I can relate when you say you don't like your mother; I have always felt that if I met my mother (but she wasn't my mother) like at my book club, I wouldn't like her, we would not become friends.
When my mother passes I too feel guilty because I think I will feel mostly relief. It will be sad in that someone's life has passed and her life, I'm sure, affected others. There was a quote from a TV show once about grief that stuck in my head (paraphrasing), 'don't judge someone's grief, something I've learned on this job, grief looks different on everyone'. I believe that is true.
Hugs, TR
Thanks for your thoughts TR. (No pun intended) :)
DeleteI had the variation on the theme..."you have to love your mother." I was conditioned to accept her behavior and if I complained I was given, "That is just the way your mother is, you got to love her." I did my best but I was sinking into an abyss of depression. My counselor heard me repeat this long time conditioning line and said, "No you don't." He said it quietly but the crashing in my head nearly deafened me. I do not need to love, be thankful for, or associate with my mother. My counselor actually recommended going no contact. Against his suggestion I am still in touch...my sister lives there and she is very important to me. Took me a long time to wrap my mind around not having to love my mother or be thankful for her treatment. I am finally to the point that I pity her. I am sadden that she repeatedly chose not to get counseling when her doctors recommend it. She chose denial and living in her fantasy world over a real relationship with her children. I can be thankful for some of the things she did because I feel grateful. The gratitude is about me and I would feel the same about a stranger doing the same thing for me. I mourned a long time the fact that my mother can never be my mom because she chose not to. It hurt. I cried. But you can't bury a live person. When she dies, her shell of her body will finally be buried. Not sure how I will feel but I do believe grief and sorrow over parting has already happened. I happen to like gratitude, the feeling enriches my life and helps me see the world in a different light. I watched my mother say thank you then complain about the gift or throw it away. She makes a big deal about thank you notes. But the feeling of gratitude is missing in her words. Not feeling emotions for a long time and now able to feel gratitude it is a rich luscious feeling like a lovely smooth chocolate. Yup, I love gratitude but no one gets to dictate to me when I should feel it. Jessie you are doing awesome.
ReplyDeleteThanks Ruth for the compliment.
DeleteThis -> "She chose denial and living in her fantasy world over a real relationship with her children" This is what makes me saddest of all. I could have a relationship with her. She could have a real relationship with her grandkids. But she chooses not to. She chooses pettiness and bitterness and vindictiveness and pure stubbornness in staying unwell over her kids. To admit she needs to change would make her wrong, and she would rather be "right" than be loved. So sad.
And regarding having to love your mother, my mother sees any sign of dissention or disagreement as not loving her. I either have to love EVERYTHING she is and does, or I'm not "loving" her at all (as I said in my last post). That makes it so hard.
And I agree that gratitude is important. I think it keeps us grounded in a way. But I've seen too many narcs take gratitude for granted. The distort the true meaning by either demanding it or offering it up in a phony way in order to look good (my MIL is a good example of the latter. She also does thank you cards but only because she thinks it impresses me, not out of any real gratitude). Gratitude is not something you can extract out of anyone, any more than you can extract love or respect.
Thanks for commenting Ruth.