Tucking a large mason jar underneath my arm as I carry four things over to the sink, eyeing my cat, Rumi, because I know that he pounces on any open-necked flask waiting for a chance to knock it over. Liquid pouring everywhere leads to much excitement in the world of a kitten. A memory jumps into my psyche of the silhouette of my mother when she was young and beautiful. Standing in the doorway checking in on me when I was sick. Holding a towel-covered mason jar of hot water under her forearm, smiling gently. A fond memory of a deep core feeling of safety and care. The feeling of my mother. The loving ways that only she could make me feel in dark hours. To be a mother and to love a mother. Our most difficult task. And we never feel that we conquer the role to a win, as mothers and as daughters we fail each other time and time again. Especially in our own bonds of trauma. The need for control has left soft guidance and direction behind. Resistance leaves our capability to appreciate that each, in our own roles, do the best that we possibly can. This feeling invokes something inside of me. Two most beautiful experiences I have ever had are when my mother laughs or when my mother cries. Parallel and in opposition, these are the times my mother is in her highest essence.
Four of us sit around a table one Sunday afternoon. I looked forward to some lady time this week. The stress of the week directed the conversation to some of my personal issues concerning my family relationships. The brokenness of my relationships with the people that I love the most. We all soon realized that we all share common ground in family dynamics. Similar feelings concerning how we have failed as mothers and daughters and the difficulty of getting things right. As mothers, we stay in our desires to protect and control way longer than we are supposed to. As daughters we don’t seem to make the time a priority to create closeness. Conversations with close friends can expose our deepest psyches and sometimes the things we want are the same things we drive away in our misdirected patterns.
Sometimes we must step away to reenter from a different perspective. The only work to understanding ourselves is to look at our own actions. This is where the cultivation of compassion can begin and we are able to see the destructive patterns that we create in our closest relationships. We must come to a higher awareness on the road to understanding. Empathy can be cultivated from here in the ways we speak to our loved ones, especially in the relationships concerning our maternal spirit. These relationships leave our wounds and mistakes fully exposed. When someone knows us on the deepest levels, sensitivity and vulnerability is highest. Trauma dynamics keep us in these loops. Reprogramming our brains are a must, in finding our way to love.
My mother has always been a mystery to me. I could never properly ask for things from her. As I’ve gotten older I see that in her survival, my mother had to build a trauma shield around her heart. I can only imagine the pain she has experienced in her life. Years ago, I was in a room of 25 women in a Mother wound workshop. Katie Silcox took us through an African Mantra and practice that invoked the sound of Ma , invoking the feeling of our precious mothers. We ended this mantra with a deep meditation to take us deep into seeing the truest soul of our mother. As tears rolled down my cheeks, I also began to hear the soft cries of the women around me. Most of us aren’t aware of our own mommy issues. I called my mom on the way home to tell her how much I loved her, something I do not do enough.
I had this witchy connection to my grandmother, as if we had slayed our own dragons together throughout many lifetimes. I felt that she planted little seeds inside of me to rise above myself. In all her childlike characteristics she was a woman who kept the sunshine in a little box throughout her lifetime. Her life had been filled with violence and pain, but she always had an understanding of others. She had also given me her addict genes. Pharmaceuticals were her poison of choice as mine has been alcohol. Addiction tames something inside of us that is too delicate and harsh to expose. Raw truths about a world of facades, traumas and manipulations that are just below the surface of our consciousness. Seeing addiction in those we love is difficult, and the practice of taking that back to the mirror to see it inside of ourselves becomes hard work. I have had to look at my own addict time and time again, and learn to love that part of me. Thinking I have cured myself at times has not only been arrogant, but dangerous.
Sometimes fully unthreading to come back together again is essential. Experiences that we unconsciously invoke to softly raise ourselves to higher knowing. I have wished for easier lessons. But I know they would not be the ones that gave me the exploration of myself that I needed. In the end chapter of our lives, the guideposts are pointing only to one thing. Letting go. Surrender is a sudden shift in awareness to the preciousness of the now. Time and time again we return to impossible patterns that drive our actions and judgements away from our wholeness. I have felt an exhaustion of myself and my harsh rhythms. Letting go is the most difficult for me. I have felt tired in my own war. What inside of me prevents myself from surrendering totally to the war, holding up the white flag, and stepping out of it. This must be the practice everyday until the pattern is fully dissolved.
My past addiction to alcohol was a strong program. From a young age, I remember feeling a fire deep inside my clenched chest. In adolescence, I found that holding on is all that I had to allow me to not only feel safe, but to have some sort of say in the world. I remember the first time I got drunk, and the hot sensation of liquor burning its way down my throat, whispering the tension away. I remember a time that my own addiction was so strong I could not imagine a life without my booze. My entire world was wrapped around the times I could breathe deeply into a glass of beer. Refilling the glass nightly until I found myself into a place of not giving a damn about anything other than the feeling of drunkenness. Alcohol is an enticing elixir to many of us that poison ourselves to feel numbness.
My daughter’s feral deliberation to self destruction has been hell for me. Her addiction has also been the catalyst into my own soul. Sparking lights to every single fault that I have, and how much more I am able to relinquish of myself, on this quest. I have a deep connection to a phenomenal therapist, who recently asked me, “Can you love the addict in Molli?” The question in itself made me deeply uncomfortable. Love the addict in Molli? Perhaps this has been my dilemma all along. An impossibility to love because I compartmentalize love. Love in itself is wholeness, without duality. I have learned to find my way to love in the only way I know is honest. True acceptance and allowing her to have her journey is love. Holding the faith that all will be well and end well, no matter what. Whoosh. This is the real work.
In the heart of the Mother, we experience self worth and abundance in its wholeness. Placing every piece of ourselves together, while dissolving anything that gets in the way of our inner light. This is the beginning of manifestation into the field. This is where we clear every program that was created in error.
In the great classroom of Earth school, the universe and her lessons clearly do not please or fix us, but only give us the oppurtunity for growth. This is the bold intention of the universe. Spirit is drawn toward higher destiny. Letting go of our precious Mothers, and allowing the journey of our beloved Daughters may just be the ultimate clearing.
As always, continue to unfold yourselves…….
A PRAYER
Refuse to fall down
If you cannot refuse to fall down,
refuse to stay down.
If you cannot refuse to stay down,
Lift your head like a hungry beggar,
ask that it be filled.
You may be pushed down.
You may be kept from rising.
But no one can keep you from lifting your heart
toward heaven
only you.
It is in the middle of misery
that so much becomes clear.
the one who says nothing good
came of this,
is not yet listening.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Tina Chabot
Tina Chabot School of Yoga
e-RYT 500
Ayurvedic Health Counselor
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