Motherhood: Impossible? Maybe

by Anne O'Connor

It’s Mother’s Day.

Mothering: What a life-giving, complex, difficult, challenging, rewarding, heartbreaking, expanding, and creative role being a mother is. Sometimes, at night, I secretly resign…just until the next morning.

Being the child of a mother is no easier.

Often more than any other relationship, we play off each other, hopefully learn from each other, and grow in new ways.

For the child, at least for a time, they look to their mother—unconsciously, blindly—as the model of what life is. For the mother, this is the first time she is responsible for this set of demands. She draws on her own childhood learning and whatever growth and development work she's done since then.

This has been the cycle of life—with many variations—for as long as we’ve been humans. How can so much go so painfully? And alongside the pain, how can we remember and recognize how much goes well and how to savor it?

Amidst the cuddles and laughter and play and feeding and care and tenderness, we hit each other hard. Hopefully figuratively, but there is no escaping the emotional hits between mother and child. It’s not a matter of if, it's a matter of degree. Navigating the hits well takes time and learning. Takes awareness. Takes practice and becoming better. This is, for many years, the primary job of the mother. We inevitably fall down.

Over time, becoming better becomes both of our jobs. Becoming better takes repair and forgiveness and recognition that this pain from the mother to the child is real and true. And if that is real and true, then almost certainly that child will cause the mother pain as well. This cycle of hurt that we cause each other is part of the picture of this relationship. And eventually we understand: of all relationships.

Again: it is a matter of degree how much this is true of a particular relationship. Maybe just the tiniest bit…things go mostly well and lovingly. Maybe the whole relationship is clouded by pain. Or maybe the relationship is blotted out by the pain.

As mothers at our best, we uphold, we uplift, we teach, we encourage, we cajole, we plead, we insist, we say, “Stand up--yes, you can” and we say, “oh, hell, no.” We nudge along, with a combination of love and encouragement, boundaries and raised eyebrows.

We do our best and often, that is good enough. But sometimes, our best isn’t good enough. One hard thing about being a mother early on is that you ought to be the grown-up in every moment and every challenge. This, when perhaps no one taught you how to be an effective grown-up. Maybe you didn't have good role models for being a loving, caring, boundary-setting, clear, firm but warm, calm, and not-reactive grown up. The on-the-job learning can have painful consequences. And ultimately for your relationship.

As children age, they ideally take on more of the responsibility in the relationship until it becomes a dual responsibility.  Who will we be together? But, their learning, at its core, came from you. They have to recognize and grapple with this reality. Some parts of what they learned they may be grateful for. They (we) go into the world and see what they received that works to their advantage. They also see parts they missed or other parts that they may want to get rid of completely. They want something better. But first they must learn how to change. They have to work through the inclination, the temptation to blame their mother. If they keep after this work, they will realize that the best of all healing includes repair and reconciliation. But ultimately, any healing and progress is theirs alone to make. The need for healing is ultimately a personal choice: will you do the work to become responsible to yourself and your own growth and your own development?

It would be wonderful if our mothers were always there to support us and to grow and develop along with us. If they were able to say with genuine clarity: I am so sorry I’ve hurt you.

But that will not always be the case. When a mother cannot or will not progress with the child, the child must make some choices.

Can they let things be as they are and accept their mother anyway—to love her for all that she is? Or will they cut the strings of the connection to their mother and move along without her? This is one of the most difficult choices that a child will ever face. Yet parent/child estrangement is part of our cultural story more now than ever before in our history.

There are those who choose to stay and fight the same fight with their mother, changing little.

And then there are those who will choose to take up their own responsibility to their becoming. They will ask themselves questions like: how do they change deeply-held patterns? Who are they becoming—is that what they want? How can they find their own peace—whatever their mother does and is? When they have their own children, if they choose to do so, they will likely need to revisit these questions to meet their new challenge in a loving way.

The mother may face similar choices as her child ages, although mother-initiated estrangement is more uncommon.

There’s a lot to navigate as a mother or a child of a mother.

To truly heal our lives and our families, we can’t keep wishing that motherhood is all love and bouquets and chocolates. The evidence is clear: It is so much more of everything. We need to learn how to face and navigate our injuries while our children are young, and we can learn how to repair the hurt together. It is to our detriment to pretend that this most complex of all human relationships is easy or exclusively about admiration and gratitude. Hopefully those things exist. Hopefully they exist in good measure. But they are not the whole picture.

In the worst-case scenarios, the continued harm outweighs any reason for a relationship.

In any case, whatever our relationships with our mothers, we will do well for ourselves to explore them and keep aiming for the kind of genuine acceptance and compassion of her that allows us to be genuinely accepting and compassionate of ourselves, too.

In both my coaching and my psychotherapy practice client, I see the various ways that the mother-child relationship plays out in every aspect of life. Again and again, we seek clarity and healing from the ideas, the habits of mind and heart and body that are rooted in this primary relationship.

Here’s the kicker: Even if we choose not to or can’t ever talk to or see our mothers again, that relationship lives within us. We must address this primary wound if we are to create the most-true essence of our lives,

and our love,

and our relationships,

and our creativity,

and our full being.

Personally, I have had to navigate many rounds of recognition and repair with my own mother to have the kind of loving, open, and connected relationship that I have with her now. I am grateful that she has been willing to do all the work we’ve needed to meet me in this way. I don’t take her willingness and capacity for learning and growing for granted. Occasionally, I still get mad at her. But we figure it out together.

As my mother’s—and my father’s—child, I had to seek out the layers of trauma and secrets and pain and suffering that was never talked about and yet still played out in my relationships.

I took a lot of that dysfunction into mothering my own children. I recognized right away that I needed to get some help to try to remedy my ways if I wanted to not further hurt my children. I wouldn't say that the yuck is all healed out of me now—more so that I recognize it well and don’t let it be in charge. Today, I can tell you I am a practiced, loving, clear, and boundaried mother. I was incapable of being this way 30-plus years ago when my stepson was four and first sat on my lap. His smile was winning, and his trust was that I would love him and care for him well. I did my best, and often, it wasn’t good enough. I took on a responsibility that I was woefully unprepared for.

I don't know that I was more woefully unprepared than everyone else. If we're honest, most of us are dangerously unprepared for being a parent. The learning curve is steep.

Then I had three of my own children. It has been a privilege, a delight, sometimes a horror show, and always an expansive honor to be mother to these four humans.

I got a lot wrong; I hurt my favorite people. All of that is true and yet…I’ve been a pretty-good mom. A good-enough mom. In some moments I’ve been an extraordinary mom. There are times when I’ve done damn well by all of us.

Mothers can’t realistically claim either credit or fault for all their children’s ways. We do our best, and they do their best, and life is a continuous series of becoming. It’s complex.

Still, I have kids who strive to be good humans. They are heart-centered, they are growing their awareness of themselves and who they want to be. They stand in the world for justice and are clear about their role to uphold what advances humanity and speak against what injures us. They are, or they are learning to become, prosocial. To be aware of other people and the ways that they either help or hurt the world. Either help or hurt themselves. They know and are growing their knowing of how worthy they are: of love, of care, of respect. They choose people to love them who will honor them and uphold their dignity. They know that they can do hard things skillfully. They are growing their core knowing of their truest selves. I am proud of them for all that they have navigated. It hasn’t been easy.

And mostly, after many trials and tribulations and work-in-progress and setbacks, I'm proud of myself too. It's not untarnished pride. It's not an outsized pride. It's more like a recognition of what is. “Well, look, we're doing this thing. You know I love you and I know you love me. All the rest of it is logistics. Thanks for being willing to figure those out with me. Isn’t life beautiful? Aren’t you beautiful? Aren’t we beautiful together? Yes. Yes, we are.”

I know that Mother’s Day is a difficult day for many people. And that it's a mixed-feelings day for many people. And also, that many people have an unabashed, absolute admiration and love for their mothers. May it all be okay. And may you have what you need within each and all of these feelings.

So Happy Mother’s Day. Or good-enough Mother's Day. Or I'm-still-working-on-it Mother's Day. Or eff Mother’s Day.

Or maybe all of the above.