Rebecca-LeeI (like many other woman I know), have had a very long and hard journey with my mother. There is so much about our relationship that I used to wish was different. I’ve never felt that close to my mother, or felt that I could get close to her. I I have always kept myself and my heart very closely guarded in this relationship over the course of my life. I’ve seen other woman with their mum’s and honestly there have been times when I have envied that.
Like many other woman her age, my mother also had a very challenging relationship with her mother also.. My nana found herself widowed early on in her life with four young children to look after. My grandfather died after coming back from the war. The worst is, by all accounts, he was a kind hearted and loving man. My nana never re-married. I think the love of her life had already been and gone. I can’t imagine the pain my nana must have endured during those years and how hard it must have been for her. Needless to say, survival and putting food on the table would have been her priority, not having access to pensions and government help back in those days. In doing so though, I believe that she would have had to close herself off to feelings and emotions largely to be able to deal with what was in front of her. Something she would have seen her mother do also.
My great-grandmother experienced the same fate. Having lost her husband early on to illness, leaving her to raise very young children (including my nana who was 2 when my great grandfather passed over). She never re-married. My mum, never lost a husband to death, but she did to divorce – twice. And me, well I am happily married, but it has not come easily; loads of hard work, consciously working through these karmic patterns.
These events, often repeat themselves when you look back through your ancestry – similar patterns or fates that seem to continue for various reasons. For me, on my maternal side, it is the early death of the men, and women left alone to raise children and fend for themselves. In saying this, the women in my family are strong, they are resourceful; they are independent; they are the survivors; and some even the warriors. However, it has often come at a cost.
It has cost the love, and the empathy and the affection, and the time a mother might normally have for her children. It has come with bitterness, and often envy and jealousy for the next generation, further closing off their hearts to offer love.
Further, there is a strong lack of empathy for any kind of problem or challenge, as it seems hardly relevant or comparable to the extremities to what the women in the previous generation had to endure and live through. This has caused a lot of heartache and pain between mother and daughter, as I see it does in many other families too. I struggled with female friendships, and trusting females all together. I also was very masculine myself and had no idea about my own femininity. I simply didn’t trust the feminine full stop.
Up until I did a lot of Healing with the Ancestors work, I too found it difficult to think and feel and see beyond my own hurt and anger, however, I was looking at my mother, not my daughter. I was unable to feel I could forgive her, and I certainly wasn’t interested in knowing or understanding why she was how she was. I didn’t care. I have had many years with my mother in and out of my life whilst I have wrestled with this healing.
We often need to have that time and space away from those who hurt us to heal. Sometimes, if we do the deep work and feel we are strong enough, it is possible to have minimal contact and some kind of relationship. It is important to realise, in any type of healing, that we cannot expect the other person to change.
However, we can journey into the depths of our heart, and into the realm of the ancestors and the grandmothers and find exactly what it is and why it is that we came into this relationship and what it is we can create from it.
For me, I might not have had the greatest relationship with my mum, however, over decades I have realised that the biggest thing for me to partake in from this journey is the healing of the feminine. I have learnt the power and the importance of sisterhood, for myself and my daughter. We do not have to do it (life) on our own, and we can be there to support each other.
We might not have the connection we needed with our mums, but we can create something different with our daughters in honour of our mothers and our grandmothers.
We must not let our blueprint with our mums, determine the type of woman and friendships we have in our life. With deep understanding and forgiveness, you can repair the feminine part of yourself and in your lineage, and open to experience beautiful female energies, friendships, and mentors in to your life.
Suzanne Bolton
HBliss
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