Need for Mothering

As a baby and child, I needed tenderness, welcome and acceptance – deep, open-hearted acceptance – and love. Instead, what I received was harsh, will-based mothering – scripted; not responsive to me.

Your mother was not safe to be around. She was angry at your dad and her powerlessness. You were the one who took the flack. Dear Child, you did not deserve this outpouring of anger and abuse. This was about your mother’s inability to live in love, to be true to herself and her own needs. You did without the softness you needed, the warmth, the caring and you did suffer in her presence. You were not recognized and honoured in your Self. You were treated as an object who affected your mother negatively. You felt demeaned by this treatment.

Your inner need for love and nourishment on an emotional, heart-felt level was denied. Your pain in this denial was deep and penetrating. You did lose what true mothering gives – a deep sense of value and connection, a welcome and belonging that you have not known. This was true for you then, and still, your mother is anxious and fearful, attacking and forceful rather than embracing and receiving.

Your need for the experience of true mothering from her exists but it is not to be filled, for she cannot give what is needed. Let go of your persistent desire for this fulfilment – through her, and through your husband, “Jay”. It is not coming. It is not theirs to give. It was not fostered in them, either. Mourn the loss of your mother for she is dead to you in this area of capacity.

What has been given as love is worry and anxiety. This is separative, not unifying. You do not need to accept this as love in your desire for connection. Worry and anxiety do not give connection and unity. They give pain and separation from your own knowing of what love truly is. You will never know the comfort of a mother who loves you, simply because you are and simply because you are you. You hit ‘the wall’ every time and this is because her heart does not know how to love truly.

Let in the loss of this comfort, this support and caring. Let in the loss of safety and the loss of ability to know what is true with respect to love. Actions, feelings and words are not together. You need to register ALL, not deny one because you need love so desperately.

You are no longer desperate. Register that you have many who love you and this is sincere and responsive to you. To narrow yourself for love is not the answer. Wake up and grow up. You can heal and will.

Love is your Being and it is awakened by your release of the search for love in your mother, in your partner and in your son. Mourn the loss.

As the little child, you were alone in many ways. Open yourself to feel this pain of loss. You were not guided; you were told. You were not supported; you were emotionally abandoned and attacked. Let this in. This is true and real. You cannot pretend that you felt loved. You were not loved properly.

Your mother’s self-absorption denied you and your needs. She did what she thought was right, not necessarily that which was right for you. She was unsettled, criticized and unloved by your dad, much like you were with Jay. Jay wasn’t with you. He projected onto you his map, which had no room for your reality, conditioning and needs. He became unstable, just like your dad was. His heart has been closed to you. He entered fear and sought to look after himself, just as he had done after his mother and father left him. He left you and denied you in his choice.

Oh Child, your Mommy thought she loved you but her heart was closed to feeling what love is. Love is the ability to know softness, vulnerability and compassion. Love is an openness that MEETS you and your needs, accepting and lifting the immaturity into its learning and growing process ease-ily. Love shares, exchanges, knows without working at it – it simply IS. It is safe because it is connected and inclusive, supportive and nurturing. It feeds. It does not deny. You did NOT have this. Let it be so because it was. Let go of the desire, the determination to have what is not there and never will be. Let this sink in, dear Child. You have lived through this loss. You have learned to feel yourself and you can feel and heal this wound.

Your mother says that she loves you. Become aware of how she says this – the edge in her voice; the resentment in her tones, the will for the fantasy of love to be true. Feel the harshness of her touch. Light and gentle she is not. Her hands force and do not sense that which she touches. They respond only to her desire to fix what she is uncomfortable with. Hear her footsteps – strong, stomping – intolerant of what is happening for others; responsive only to HER need, HER thought, HER intention. She has no reference to outside factors, just hers.

This is not accusing. It is true. Your Mom has not received what you want and need from her, so how can she give it? She can’t. This is an unfortunate state that hurts both of you. It is not intentional; it is unconscious.

Forgive her, sweet Child. She has done her best based upon what she validates as real and what she perceives. There are deletions, blind spots, separations within her that she has no intention of changing because she does not go beyond her own ideas and is not open to reality checks.

Stop looking to others for what you never had and they can’t give you. Be open to yourself and your healing. It comes. You have called it into experience.

Love IS and can only be known inside. It emerges. It opens. It receives and it is the healing that comes from within. Allow it to unfold in you and for you to unfold in it.

I am,

Love