My story, of my mom

Mother’s Day.  The history of Mother’s Day is rather interesting. A daughter named Anna M. Jarvis campaigned for the creation of an official Mother’s Day in remembrance of her mother and in honor of peace in 1908. I have never given birth to a child, yet I act motherly and maternal to many animals and even a few humans. I feel like that should count a little. I also really like peace so I think all of us can celebrate this day. I spent  a good part of the day getting many mothers & daughters to hula hoop in the park (with success I might add!)

I also have a mom out there somewhere but she has not spoken to me in a long time. The last correspondence I have from her is on June 6, 2007 which states it is her last correspondence, emailed to me the day before I turned 33.

I feel like mom always loved me but she never knew how to be a mom. She was raised in a home filled with physical, emotional, mental and sexual abuse. I used to hide this and it bothered me very much that my mom wasn’t like my friend’s moms. I loved her for who she was anyway, not for who she wasn’t. She was wild and crazy, a really fun sometimes, then other times she would grow dark when she was battling her internal “demons”. As a child I rarely saw those dark times but they became more frequent as she got older.  Then after my parents divorce in high school she grew darker still, until it finally consumed her.

I am not sure what mom “has”. Unless she were to get professional help and the proper diagnosis, the label isn’t really helpful to me.  Illusions of grandeur, possibly bi-polar and/or multiple personalities is where I might start and I am almost certain of Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia sounds like a bad word but all it is this:  a mental disorder that makes it difficult to tell the difference between real and unreal experiences, to think logically, to have normal emotional responses, and to behave normally in social situations.

This is my mom.  It is so hard for me to understand what her life is like from her viewpoint. She has experience like talking to her brother (who has passed on) through the fax machine, traveling through time, talking with imaginary doctors to solve complex drug formulas to cure cancer, giving herself a lock down in her house because she was concerned about the government snipers outside, planning to go to France because imaginary doctors there were so interested in her special unique abilities to time travel. The stories go on and on.

One time long after the divorce, I was in college and at my dad’s where I grew up. I heard a car in the driveway and see that it’s mom.  She lived 3.5 hours away and would never visit the farm anymore because it was now dad’s place.  When I went down to see her I found her babbling something incoherent and she was very disoriented.  She didn’t know where she was and she thought I had actually come to visit her in WI. I could only wonder how she made it that far on the road without an accident?

Once I moved away from MN she would rarely visit me so we did not see each other that often.  We never got along that well so it was harder now that I was older and we saw each other even less. She came to visit me once in CO and I was thrilled. Within moments of her arrival there it was clear that her goal of her visit was to convince me the government was after her.  She showed me a picture of a fuse in her attic and she was telling me the gov planted this to interfering with her brain waves. This is Beautiful Mind type of stuff. I worked for the gov at the time so you could see how this put me in a strange place.  She wanted to see where I worked so I took her to our new building that had just opened. We walked into one room on our tour and she became someone I did not recognize.  She created a whole story of how she had been there years before and the lab did tests on her…on and on she went while turning white as a ghost with an expression I can only describe as sheer terror.  I stopped the tour there,  took my mom by the hand and we left the building.

Then things got weirder within a year.

She told me she was pregnant which was really confusing to me because besides being single and in her 50’s, it was my understanding that she had a hysterectomy immediately after my birth. She was also never supposed to be able to have kids in the first place so I was nothing short of a miracle.  She let me believe for almost 2 months that she was pregnant. I told all my friends and family before she told me on the phone in tears that she made it up. Months later she actually sent me a doll because she said the doll became real her, as in she thought she had an actual baby. Some part of her knew that wasn’t right, so she gave it to me. But she still had hopes that it would also become real to me and then I would just have a baby for her. She thought that she had these special time travel skills but she said they always skip a generation.  She wanted me to have a baby because she felt it would be very gifted and useful to her (this all shocked me).

Another time when I came to visit her she greeted me in a wheelchair at the airport with her leg and arm in a brace.  She lead me to believe that she had been in a car accident a few days prior and her friend actually posed as a nurse who was hired to help her.  We went out to breakfast like this.  She seemed very much in pain and I was doing what I could to make her comfortable.  We got back to the house and she said she needed to go nap so she wheeled herself down to her room. Within moments, she came back down the hall laughing hysterically, dancing around in circles while ripping the braces off,  I of course was in shock and did not think this was very funny. I remember my face getting very red and feeling very silly for feeling badly for her and falling into her charade.  She of course told me that I was no fun at all.  This is the best example of what mom is like, funny in a crazy way, and then finds a way to spin it back on you so it is your problem. Who does this to their kids? If you do, please stop now.

I did get a great counselor to help me sort through this.  Her advice in a nutshell was to have more compassion for her given her own childhood and to understand her lack of connection to reality or a community. Also key was to stop enabling her.  I tried that. As it turns out if I am not buying into my mom’s stories then I am with the enemy in her mind.  I was and still am concerned about her quality of life.  I would love for her to go get help or an evaluation at least to see where she is on a spectrum. As soon as I stopped enabling her, she made up stories about my father, then about me, then stopped communicating all together.  She had already done this with every one of her family members, so I guess it was only a matter of time.  I still send her a Birthday wish, a Happy Mothers Day correspondence and a Christmas wish every year since 2007.  I have yet to hear a single response.

As a result I didn’t even invite her to my own wedding.  I am her only child. Yet my dog was there. It says a lot. When I think about if she had actually been there, my mind reels with what she might have done or said.  It could be anything real or imagined and only limited by her awesome creative imagination.

I used to keep my mother’s illness a secret  but I learned that does no one any good. I used to be embarrassed or ashamed, but I’m not anymore.  I am who I am because of who my parents are. They gave me strength and love so without that I would be nothing. Mom did her best with what she was dealt. She didn’t know how to be a mom, nor do I. The mental illness and safety issues in the immediate family is enough reason to not have my own kids, but also I really don’t have any mom skills. Mom taught me a lesson in compassion, in knowing she was being the best mom that she knew how to be.  For that I am so thankful.

I tell my story because I have learned that it helps so many other people.  Many women are dealing with mom issues.  I can say that either things actually aren’t that bad, or maybe they are, but it doesn’t mean you have to be stuck in it.  Sometimes you have to look out for yourself. I didn’t choose this separation from my mom, she did.  Yet, it has given me so much strength and confidence to stand on my own two feet in this world. I am turning out rather well in spite of this childhood of mine, or maybe because of this childhood of mine. The 80+foster kids growing up, the larger than life mom, the grounded Irish humor dad, the older siblings watching out for me in the periphery, the escape on horseback…all of it. For this I am so thankful. You can choose to be anything you want, whoever you want, no matter who your parents are. Be your own light and pull from other sources if needed.

And to my mother: know that I love you. Despite it being very hard on you in many ways to have me, know that I am so thankful to be on this planet doing the work that I am doing. Know that I send healing energy and bright thoughts your way.

I hope you all send love to your mothers today, whether they are in the next room, live far away or are no longer with us. Happy Mother’s Day all and may you all find peace today.