Another Year of Reflecting on Mother's Day

                    This year I am teary as usual about Mother’s Day, but it’s different now.

I am focused not on the pain inflicted by my mother, but on the gift of healing

that was given to me through raising and loving another human being.

I remember vividly having a migraine when Jayne was around nine months old. 

She was colicky and wouldn’t stop crying, there was no comfort to be found that day.

 

I was losing it. 

 

I felt such rage at the pain the loud noise emanating from my child was causing my head.

I felt frustrated at not being able to make it stop. I wanted to lash out at my nine-month-old; 

my instinct was to shake her in anger. 

 

Instead, I placed her, screaming, tears flowing down her chubby cheeks, into her crib and walked away. I locked myself in the bathroom. I sat on our tiny bathroom floor and screamed into a towel, I gasped to catch my breath, I cried uncontrollably, 

I was horrified at the violent instincts I felt that day.

 

I loved my baby, what the fuck was wrong with me?

 

Years later my therapist (I’ve had three invaluable therapists over the years)

tells me that there was nothing “wrong” with me.

 I was parenting as I had been parented. 

When I went into the bathroom that day,

 I began to break the cycle of abuse. 

 

The gratitude I feel to Jayne for coming into my life and, unwittingly, helping

me to break this cycle, to heal my own inner child, is boundless.

Raising Jayne has helped to heal my mother wounds. 

Now that Jayne is an adult, I have learned to accept her for who she is, 

not who I expect/want her to be.

 

If you had a mother that was more fit for wire monkeys than 

human babies, know that you are not alone. 

Send that momma love for the hard situation she was put in,

 because I know now my momma did the best she could. 

I’m just glad I figured out how to do better.