In this text I talk to you about relationships, addictions, mothers and motherhood, dedicated to everyone even those who are not mothers … because we have all been children and because there is no separation
NEED NURNS DEPENDENCE: Does this sound familiar?
If you depend on me I EXIST
If I depend on you, I GUARANTEE ME THE SATISFACTION OF PRIMARY NEEDS (food, money as subsistence, love…), I guarantee myself to EXIST
This is true in all relationships, love, emotional, friendship, work, and parenting
Bringing this into focus in couple relationships is perhaps more immediate : we can realize that we choose people who by putting their hearts and happiness back into our hands make us feel important, entrust us with the ROLE OF CUSTODIANS of someone’s life
This may initially feed our egos and make us feel special, loved, unique to that person – in the long run, however, we may realize how burdensome and “unaffordable” it can be to fill this role
We often need to have a role, and a partner who recognizes that role reassures us-but when we begin to realize that the role is nothing more than a label that carries with it a long series of consequences … including a lack of freedom the matter becomes complicated
Are we faced with the choice freedom or role/right to exist?
If the role represents our right to exist for us, it is clear that we cannot let it go – it would affect our lives
But how does it come to that? Why do we come to identify with a role? Why does our system drive us toward conditions of emotional dependence?
To understand this I take you with me into the amazing world of motherhood-no matter whether you are a mother or a father …-all of us have been children and all of us have in some way needed (as mammals who are not yet self-sufficient at birth) someone to ensure our survival.
Parenthood and motherhood in particular allows us to acquire a ROLE that perhaps we have never had so clearly defined in our lives
As mothers (and fathers) we are irreplaceable
Only I am the mother of that creature, and that ennobles me, legitimizes my existence
I EXIST AS A FUNCTION OF ANOTHER INDIVIDUAL
I EXIST AND AM ESSENTIAL TO MEET MY CHILD’S NEEDS
In doing so I confirm my role and thus my existence every day.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE CHILD IS NO LONGER IN NEED?
From the child’s point of view, it may happen that this acquires the dynamic “if I need mom is there; if I do not need “mom suffers” because I feel that by losing power over me, she loses it in her life
A son may therefore wish to continue to confirm his mother’s pivotal role out of fear of hurting her or even “seeing her disappear”-it is possible that he will create situations in his life of dependence or “pretending” autonomy and then cyclically fall into need-so that mother can return to action To meet the needs of the child …. often in OWN WAY (and not as the child would need)
And so it is that feelings of FRUSTRATION, HUMILIATION, RESENTMENT
which can result in discomfort or disease such as asthma, bronchitis, cystitis, weight gain, etc.
A child in this state would want to say “MOM LEAVE ME (free) – BUT DON’T LEAVE ME (continue to love me even though I don’t need you anymore)
I have often found myself reasoning about the possibility that it might be healthy to raise children with the idea of having many mothers-this is to free mother and child from the exclusivity relationship that risks creating (even if animated by the best of intentions) dependence between the two
This would, of course, require a resounding step backward from the mother who, although she has truly given her whole self in the service of this creature by making her body available for an entire gestation, delivery, and all the fundamental care in the postpartum and early years of the child’s life, must at some point abdicate for the benefit of a thousand other possible maternal figures of reference by nullifying the DEBT OF EXISTENCE of the son to him
I believe that a truly healthy relationship with one’s mother goes through the cancellation of debts and credits
Every mother is a means through which life is realized, and every child is a means through which every woman (and every man) can evolve
If a woman decides to say yes to life, life can create and manifest itself through her to continue to flow and manifest itself through the creature she carried and brought into the world
If a woman says no to life, she can choose not to let it grow inside her
Neither in one case nor the other should there be “attachment” understood as possession with the consequent “sense of merit” or “sense of guilt”
This is possible the moment we realize that we are souls called to give transitions to other souls coming into this dimension
What does it feel like to think this? How does it make you feel?
Does it lighten you up? Does it make you nervous?
But how? With all the effort I put in! With all the suffering I went through in childbirth? With all the sleepless nights? I lent my body, my being integrally to a radical transformation and then what?
And then … the son goes … but the transformation remains
This is probably the real gift that motherhood (parenthood) brings: the knowledge that transformation is possible, the ability to discover parts of us that we had not even imagined belonged to us, the discovery that we are able to conceive and realize, that life sustains us,
What would happen if you tried to see
- Each sleepless night as a chance to stay awake in your darkness
- each feeding as an opportunity to learn about your power as a nurturer and the importance of nurturing yourself to nourish new parts of you
- every pain, fear, difficulty in childbirth as an opportunity to understand your dynamics, your fears, your lifelong conflicts, your limiting beliefs
- every piece of unsolicited advice, every intrusion, every doubt of doing right as an opportunity to get deeply in touch with your inner wisdom that “knows” what is good for you and what is not, that pushes you to take your place, to affirm what is important to you
- every hour spent on the playground thinking you wish you were elsewhere doing something else as an opportunity to observe from a whole new point of view reality by learning from the dynamics of the children, observing how a gesture or a word of a parent conditions the feeling and acting of these creatures (as once probably happened to you when I was a child)
If all this was “the reward” for saying yes to life – how would you feel?
Mothers and children: no debt, no credit
“Only” a common project of transformation in LOVE.
