Mother’s Legacy

November 26, 2012 at 12:56 am | Posted in family of origin, grief/loss | 3 Comments

~ Retracing footsteps ~

“You will in time understand the complexity of my time here on earth…” were my mother’s words.

Just this morning I had an epiphany in regards to my mother’s choices in life. I was contemplating her ways in which she said things that she wanted us to do differently, her stoic responses and her sometimes very stubborn decisions and opinions. We as a family struggled many times with this situation.

Now I see it all with a bit more perspective. My mother was probably brought up with little room to have her own wishes and desires fully met. She must have learnt that having her own and sometimes out-of-the-box ideas was termed as ‘being difficult’ and so swallowed them for a long time. I guess that in relationship with my father she was putting her own needs behind every thing else that the family needed. For a long time… until the phoenix rose out of the ashes.

I sometimes couldn’t understand why she would do things in a complicated way and didn’t want to change, when it all seemed to make so much more sense another way. She was artistic and different in every way, even when it comes to the way she had her kitchen organized.

In her later life I have experienced my mother’s resentment from all the years where she stood back, allowed others to come first, had her own needs met last.

Now I see what damage her soul took from conforming to society but not following her own path.

Today I choose that from what I see, everyone has the right to have their own wild ideas, needs, wants, dreams… which don’t need to be justified or explained. As I now live among the same walls my mother did, sleep in the very room my mother slept, eat on the table she dined, and am surrounded by the plants she chose to have in her garden, I am here to discover the complexity of her time on earth. Step by step.