I have been listening to Wayne Dyers, "The Shift" on CD.He made me laugh when he spoke about how many times we blame our mothers for the problems in our lives.
He explained that in a session with a client he got so tired hearing her go on about how she couldn't do this or that, as result of how her mother had been when she was growing up, that exasperated he said, "Okay, get up and go home!"
"Why? What do you mean?!" questioned the confused client.
"Go home and get your mother! I'll work with her and once she's fixed you'll be fixed!"
By passing the buck and continually using, "the mum excuse" we avoid taking responsibility for our own happiness, which in turn means we are only depriving ourselves from achieving the life we want.
I too have been guilty of buying into that theory. I listen to a story from a client and think, "No wonder they lack confidence with a mother who criticised so effectively!" At some point, for our own benefit, we have to throw that belief away; shed it like a beautiful butterfly leaving the cocoon.
Mothers parent to the best of their ability. Sometimes it will have felt wrong, and often they were right, but what use does it serve us now to trawl through the memories of how they parented?
You are an adult now and can make choices for yourself. There is no time like the present to make a conscious decision to get on with achieving what you want from this life. Your time here is precious. Enjoy it!
"One of the blessings of becoming an adult is finally seeing Mom and Dad as people, not just parents." - Sara Shandler
" I think being an adult is learning not to be ashamed of what you want. And I think for a lot of us, it's hard to admit even to ourselves what it is we want. Much less to have other people see it." - Ira Glass, in a conversation with poetry editor Zoe Francesca.
This makes perfect sense. It assumes, though, that you've thought about some of the things that were present in your upbringing (which includes how your mother interacted with you) and made sense of the generation of some of the darker corners of your impulses and behaviour. Some of us gave up on this at a fairly early stage of adulthood, finding the corners too dark, and attempted to just get on in the way you recommend. What I found, for myself, was that until I was able to actually see and feel the possible orgins of those corners, my life was driven by their influence in ways that I had no knowledge of whatsoever. That would have been fine if I'd been able to find my own peaceful life as a result, but actually the dark bits kept sabotaging my attempts.
ReplyDeleteIt's not so much 'blame your mother' for who you are now, but I guess I would argue that you do need to see, and sometimes feel, how you responded to how you were treated, in order to really take hold of your own life?