The wellspring of a mother's love……
I want to begin this with something that I thought long and hard about revealing. It is selfish of me, an attempt to head off anyone who would comment: "This is a beautiful piece; you must have had a wonderful mother." Well, I hope that you still feel that it is a beautiful piece, but the fact is my mother was not a mother like I will be describing below. Neither was her mother. In our lives we both bore the literal and figurative scars to prove it. My mother is gone now, and has been for many years. I hope that she is in a better place. She knew that I loved her. I told her so while growing up and I talked to her for the first time in ten years on her deathbed and told her so for the last time. It was on the telephone, it wasn't a good conversation, and it left me feeling stunned and empty, but I'm glad that we had it.
I fled the company of my birth family when my child was two, to keep her from the influences I grew up with. She recently thanked me for that. My daughter has extended family from her father's side and I'm grateful for that. Although I no longer have extended family, I have friends who love me, and I'm grateful for that. The way I grew up was lonely, hard, brutal and painful. Partly because the mother that I drew had no access to the wellspring of love that is available to most mothers. She did the best she could with the ability she had and I understand now some of the things that shaped her parenting, and that has made it easier to let go of old hurts.
The final conversation with my mother lasted about two minutes and wouldn't have happened if it had not been for the heartfelt urging of my then mother in law, who has also since passed. My mother in law was a mother to me. I am grateful for the love I had from her for 20 plus years and miss her and think of her often. With a lot of work I have since completely forgiven my own mother and moved on.
So I thank my mother for bringing me into the world, and for the things that she gave me that make me who I am today. But she didn't teach me to be a mother. I thank everyone who has ever loved me and who still loves me. But they didn't teach me to be a mother either.
I learned to be a mother by tapping into the wellspring of love that has no bounds. The one that overwhelms you the first time you feel that first kick, or see that little face with those big alien eyes on the ultrasound. When she rolls over onto her side on the tiny tv screen and pops her thumb into her mouth, you're a goner.
That wellspring overflowed in me and washed away all of the pain that the still lonely and bewildered child buried deep inside of me felt and allowed me to love my child in the way she deserved to be loved.
With all of my heart.
My child taught me to be a mother.
I never knew that love like that could exist. That the connection of a tiny hand holding a finger, a hungry mouth nursing at your breast, a trusting gaze looking up at you could fill your soul so full that it sings and hums with the energy of the love being shared between mother and child.
I still feel this way every time I put my arms around her.
All children need this kind of love. All mothers have access to this wellspring. It's built in.
I am awed by the coping capacity of mothers who display extraordinary strength and courage in the face of what some might see as adversity. In my circle of friends I am fortunate to know a woman who is a Mother with a capital M, although her initial is G. She currently has three beautiful children. She has been pregnant more than that, and she was also blessed with a fourth beautiful child who was not expected to live to his birth. He did. Then he was not expected to live more than days. He did. He was a beautiful gift to her and her family for some time. You can ask her if she loved him more because he was clearly only going to be with her for a short time and I'm sure that she would look at you with puzzlement and say "More? What do you mean?" Because a mother's love doesn't have a gauge, it doesn't go to more.
It is boundless and endless and fills you up until it bursts out of your heart and shoots out of your fingertips and surrounds those around you with safety and the knowledge that whatever they need, you will provide it. This same mother's most recent child is a Downs Syndrome baby. He is so very beautiful and if you ask her about him it will get you the same answer as above. Will she love him more? No she'll love him the same.
With all of her heart.
Now that my child is launched into to the world, I have begun to take time for myself. To use the wellspring in other ways for myself and for those around me. I have learned in the last two years to mother myself in ways that I had never imagined before. To mother my inner child. I have opened myself to being mothered by other women, some older, some younger, some actual mothers, some possessing the maternal instinct in boundless quantity without ever having been in a delivery room.
Late in my fourth decade I have discovered what it is like to have a kind, sober, gentle mother's love for myself. And that I can give it to myself.
I am awed at the healing power of a mother's love.
We are given children to shape and to mold and to nurture and to make into responsible human beings who eventually launch out into the world and have families of their own. We give them our love, our time, our undivided attention. We are blessed to love them for however long we have them and to give them whatever they need.
The funny thing is that they give us back what we need as well. Every mother has the capacity to tap into her boundless wellspring of love. No matter how old she is.
And she can even use it for herself. And if we're lucky we learn to take the time to love both the mother and child within us with all of our heart.
Every minute of every day.
This piece appeared previously in June 2009 as one of the first Soul Searching postings at Miscellaneous Yammering. Since that time I have been blessed with so many more nurturing women in my life. I thank each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart for your love and support.
