Imperfection - The Stories of Mothers
I was acutely aware growing up that I was born to a mother who had lost HER mother. You see, my maternal grandmother passed when my mom was 3 months pregnant with me. They had, like most mother/daughter pairs, a tumultuous relationship, but the fact was that my mother lost her mother on the edge of becoming one.
When I became pregnant, the stark reality of that truth became so much more apparent. I would often think, how did she feel during her pregnancy? Did I, as a living part of my mother at that time, absorb all those thoughts and feelings? Was the baby I was growing pick up on that legacy too?
I began to think about the stories of mothers. Everyone has a narrative to this word. The term mother can mean so many different things to so many different people. Is this history static? Any one person, particularly woman, can have their definition of motherhood expand and even divide, as they themselves follow their own journey.
I wrote this as a preamble to build a space for these stories. My original call to action was: "My goal here is to collect these stories. To act an impartial observer, the ..." and that is where I left it. I wanted to share it here without that call to action. To see what the words evoke. Do motherless mothers do a different job than mothers with living mothers? Do people without a traditional mother lack in some way? (I don't believe so.) Can everything appear normal, and yet inside still hurt? Sometimes, the stories that we think are ours may actually be owned by someone else. How does that change how we look at them?
Or does {should?} none of it matter as long as we surround ourselves with love and acceptance, and try to lead away from fear, since we are all connected in some way.
I am grateful for my imperfect motherless mother, and her motherless mother before her. And I'm grateful that I got to keep mine when I became a mother, and we could grieve, together, that her experience was different. And I could tell her how thankful I was that she was there, holding my hand (or my leg, as the case may be) to usher me into that next phase of life.
