Meditations on Mom

Alison Rose Levy - May 08, 2008

A bouquet of roses, a box of candy, a long distance phone call? What will you give your Mom this Mother’s Day? And more importantly, what will you really feel as you make your ritual obeisance? Will your heart overflow with love and gratitude? Or will you be gritting your teeth, plastering a smile on, bracing yourself for Mom’s next number?

Some people have great Moms, supportive, sympathetic, adept bakers of warm apple pie with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. But others feel like onlookers, their faces pressed against icy window panes, looking into a scene that they’ve never experienced.

It isn’t so easy to feel warm and cuddly if you had a Mom who wasn’t cut out for motherhood. Neglectful, abusive, withdrawn, intrusive, critical, self-absorbed, or just plain weird—bad Mommies come in all ethnicities and flavors. And our responses? Low self-esteem. Experiencing all too many “life lessons.” Repeating non-optimal life patterns—anything from relationship failures to bad bosses, from mood swings to excess facial surgery to trouble with our kids. Whatever may be wrong with our lives, a lot of it seems to originate with Mom and our relationship to her.

go to >>> http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2008/05/meditations_on.html

“I know I should forgive her, but..”

“I want to forgive her for my sake, not hers..”

With clenched fists, “I’ve forgiven her, really I have…”

Yeah, right.

With all the proponents of do-right spiritual forgiveness out there, I’m sorry to have to debunk this one. Forgiveness may be appropriate for your spouse, partner, or friend—in other words, an equal, but not for Mom (or Dad).

Here’s why: the notion of forgiveness comes from the confessional, where you confess your sins and receive absolution.

But who is the forgiven? The one confiding their wrongdoing.

And who does the forgiving? The confessor, the spiritual authority behind the screen. Even if you’re an enlightened Kuan Yin and Mom is a spiritual pygmy, who would kill another woman to get a pair of on-sale shoes, by forgiving, you are placing yourself in the role of spiritual authority over Mom—the person who gave you life. Think about it. Does that forgiveness taste like the benign humility of true spirituality or arrogance?

Make peace with Mom, to come to terms with their relationship with Mom as it is and for who she is—and that’s why I made Meditations on Mom, a Mother’s Day poem/film in honor of my highly imperfect, deeply flawed, beautiful, wonderful one of a kind mother—and of yours’.
To see the film, click here: http://www.collectiverealm.com/mom/

Comments:

This will be nice,some of us do not have mothers living.

comment by fredo on May 9, 2008 2:16 PM ()

Mine has past away, many years ago. I wish she could have met my son. I'm sure she "sees" him, dad too.

reply by anacoana on May 9, 2008 3:36 PM ()