How life might have been
I have often contemplated how my life would have turned out had I had a different relationship with my mother. One part of me knows that we get exactly what we need on a soul level for our journey through life, that we choose our parents with the characteristics to match those our soul needs for its healing and growth. However, despite knowing this, I often think how different my life could have been had I had a loving mother.
I lay there, like last night, and try and envision how wonderful it would have been to have felt loved by this woman. So many of the issues I have had to work through as an adult stemmed from my childhood and the way I was treated at that time.
The thing I was thinking of last night was the lack of acknowledgement for who I was. There was no celebration of my uniqueness. I wasn’t the daughter my mother wanted. I read something interesting a few days ago and I was thinking of that too, last night, and that was that generally if one person is dissatisfied or not getting their needs met in a relationship, then the chances are the other one is feeling the same way.
So, while my mother was not giving me what I wanted, I was not giving her what she wanted either. I was trying to see things from her perspective and have some compassion for her, though I have always believed that as the adult, it was up to her to make things right.
A few years ago, I was talking to a friend who had two sons. One was studious, loved books and reading, while the other was sociable, outgoing and had lots of friends. The mother was telling me how the older one needed to be like the younger one and more outgoing. I stopped her immediately. “Honour that child for being exactly who he is,” I said. “That is his essence. He is unique. Celebrate the fact he likes books and is introverted. He doesn’t need changing, he is perfect just as he is.’’ I hoped my words would have some impact but I felt he might always be compared to the younger sibling, and made to feel somewhat inferior.
I guess, at the time, it was my own heart pleading for recognition of my uniqueness. Several memories came to me last night as I was lying in bed. I think these had been spurred on the day before when I had done a big childhood-healing and opened some of those memories up.
Dipping the sheep was a yearly task. I loved working on the farm with my father and helping him. We didn’t have our own dip so the sheep had to be first mustered and then taken down the road, about a couple of kilometres, to the neighbour’s dip. Perhaps we did all that the day before because the actual dipping was a huge task. Every single sheep had to be shooed into the small dipping area and pushed into the dip. Then these animals had to be all dunked, by someone using a long pole with a hook at the end, so that every part of them was emerged under water, before the sheep swam out the other side and up the ramp. Even as an adult, and by this time using a spray dip, this task was hard work, especially as the sheep had a real aversion to enter the dipping area. My job at such times was to push the sheep into the dip, basically a large round concrete swimming pool, that we had poured packets of powdered arsenic into, to kill the lice and ticks. I would hold onto the rails with my right hand (I am left-handed), and with the left, pull the sheep’s head, then with my legs and body push the sheep into the dip. The arsenic water splashed over me all day until I was as wet as the sheep were. I was only a child, the time I am remembering, perhaps 10 or 11. I worked so hard, as hard as my brother who was five years older than me and my elderly father.
My mother never helped on the farm (my dad’s instructions) but always provided good food. This particular day she had driven down in the car with our afternoon smoko and watched us for a while. Her friend and neighbour had also come down to the dip. My mother’s friend turned to my mother and commented about how hard I was working. My mother refused to say anything, just remaining silent. It is like she couldn’t bare anyone saying anything positive about me. In her eyes, it was all about my older brother. That memory stuck in my head. How hard would it have been for my mother to agree or to even say something positive to me or even to her friend, about how hard I was working.
Another time I remember, I was older, maybe 14. Some archeologists, perhaps friends of my older brother, had come for a visit. He wasn’t there at the time, but we showed them various artifacts my father had found in his years developing the farm and exploring the numerous caves. Plus, the collection of moa bones and two moa eggs that I had been piecing together from the shards collected while excavating a site on the farm. My mother was rattling off about my older brother and how wonderful he was. These people stopped her and said something along the lines of, never mind him, this girl here has so much potential. Again, my mother could not bring herself to say anything or offer any kind of acknowledgement my way.
And that’s how it was, right through my childhood. In my inner child healing that I do, I become the mother and offer my younger child lots of encouragement and positivity, telling her she is perfect just as she is.
When I was about 40, out of the blue, my mother told me I had been a horrible child. I asked for clarification, but she was unable to answer that. The mere thought that any mother could think their child was horrible, is horrible in itself. But I guess, that sums up our relationship and her actions towards me.
I have done so much healing from traumas created from my mother’s indifference towards me but sometimes, I think, how wonderful would it have been if she had loved me for me, if for example, she had bought me a crystal for a Christmas present, instead of some item of clothing I loathed. If she had only acknowledged, that yes, she liked fine china, but I liked crystals, she liked make-up and being girly, I liked outdoors and being tomboyish. I wasn’t the girl my mother wanted. On some levels, it seems such a shame.