Comments on: Motherless Child, 2.0

By: Nadine

Nadine — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:48:47 +0000

I just came across your blog. I’ve been searching for a long time now and have come across many resources. However, I have yet to fully heal. And this is my question – can you ever totally heal motherlessness?

I resonate with what anj said. I too had a mother and still do but she was never able to be there for me. She had to take care of my abusive father’s feelings and rage first and we never got to have a connection. She was too young when she had me, around 20. And I had to be given to my grandma who was my first real mother only to be taken away at age 2. It was so traumatic because from then on, all I knew were anger and abandonment. And I never really had a mother in the real sense. Does this kind of wound ever heal?

By: anj

anj — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 18:12:18 +0000

Yes, motherlessness. Seven years ago, in a story I read on an airplane by Nora Roberts, one of the characters spoke to another – the words about a mother — “some of us have to grow our own.” I sat on the plane and tried to hide my tears, as this bombshell of truth exploded from my soul – I was trying to grow my own mother….not because my mother was dead, but because she had never been able to be there for me. Then I read some of Christiane Northrup’s writing on motherless daughters, and more truth exploded. The lack of feminine nurture……So yes, I can relate, and yes, I have a mother and yet, no I don’t. And the hole that is left is just another form of crazy making. So, I am still involved in the process of growing my own, even as I try to give to my sons what I never received.

By: sopiespress

sopiespress — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:00:49 +0000

Today is the 1st anniversary of my friend Natalie’s death. She left behind 2 beautiful children, Angela, 9 and Matteo, 3.

I’ve missed her so much this past year and can’t imagine what it’s like for her two precious “motherless” children. Natalie and I shared a birthday and she would have been 46 this April 2.

Like you, I am feeling so tender and tentative these days. Although, I am not experiencing the best menopause (is there a good way to experience this?)…I also feel that my need to lie down and weep goes beyond my joblessness, my chronic headaches and arthritis, and this damn never-ending hormonal state. I think there’s more stuff stirring beneath my 300 lb, 50 year old frame….spiritual stuff.

I’m so exhausted and fearful of trying to follow the “quickenings” I’ve been noticing the past month.

One step at a time…so I wrote my first blog response. And it took more will power than you can imagine.

By: slanderwoman

slanderwoman — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:07:17 +0000

Thank you, Shalet, for speaking for so many of us. I always worry when I say “talk to me” that everyone will clam up. I love hearing your heart, lost and afraid as it is. Welcome to motherlessness.

By: Shalet

Shalet — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 04:23:36 +0000

I have two parents who are still alive. They love me very much and were (are) certainly “good enough” and then some. They are still married and I had a very stable childhood. Yet, I’ve always carried a “what if” that slanted towards the darker side of life. What if my grandmother died? (She did and after a few bumps life went on). What if my parents died? What if I grew up and divorced? To compensate for these “what if’s” I became the primary provider; I earn most of the money, I pay the bills, I do the taxes, I take the kids to the doctor, I read to them at night. I am a fully functional unit and quite capable all on my own. Only I’m not. All I want is to be mothered, to be taken care of. I want someone to cook for me, clean up after me, do the worrying for me. And that’s it really, the worrying. We all desire that cushion, someone to absorb our fears, to whisk them away with a simple hug and a kind word. Only I am an adult. My mother’s job is done. I am the mother, I have a mother and yet I am a motherless child. I am lost and afraid. The burden is mine to bear. And, as Karen said, “There is your empty. There is your full.”