{"id":3010,"date":"2012-08-05T12:26:18","date_gmt":"2012-08-05T16:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=3010"},"modified":"2012-08-05T12:27:27","modified_gmt":"2012-08-05T16:27:27","slug":"mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=3010","title":{"rendered":"Mother"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Written in May 2004)
\nI\u2019ve been reading The Secret Life of Bees<\/a>, recommended to me by Alyssa.\u00a0 The ache in the heart of motherlessness, and the full juicyness of big loving women who can hold you with tenderness, and all the confusion of the feelings.\u00a0 Anger and love and yearning.\u00a0 Who was my real mother anyway?\u00a0 Was she beautiful and creative and adored me?\u00a0 Was she superficial and social and abandoned me?\u00a0 Do I hate her because she damaged my life so badly that I can\u2019t really live it?\u00a0 Do I hate her because I see nothing in her that I can feel proud of, or honored by, or glad to transmit in my own life?\u00a0 I hate her because I\u2019m ashamed to be the child of such a narrow-minded, stingy, egotistical, immature bitch.\u00a0 Nasty.\u00a0 (A lot like Clare really.\u00a0 Painfully co dependent, sure that everyone is leaving her out or taking advantage of her.\u00a0 Whining about how she is victimized, trying to get sympathy, then pretending that she\u2019s on top of everything.)
\nForgive my mom for being so mediocre?<\/p>\n

Went to see Dave.\u00a0 Talked about Mother and being repelled by the thought of being in her body.\u00a0 \u201cI hate her \u2014 I don\u2019t have a single memory of warmth or tenderness \u2014 just the few times when she didn\u2019t drink and we were able to have fun.\u201d No words of wisdom, no sayings or actions that I learned from her except all the negative stuff \u201cDon\u2019t think you\u2019re so great\u201d that I internalized and continue to struggle with.\u00a0 Compassion, yes, I feel compassion for her \u2014 she wasn\u2019t mothered either \u2014 her isolating pride, her bondage to alcohol, her shame about not being a better parent or person that she would not let herself feel, so she just turned it into toxic criticism of her children.\u00a0 It\u2019s OK to not love your mother, it\u2019s OK to be ashamed of her, it\u2019s OK to feel sad that she wasted her life.\u00a0 But I was off center for the weekend (Beltane) which was a disappointment.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t really enjoy the good celebration I had made possible.\u00a0 Then difficulty with a friend and coming to the place of seeing that it\u2019s legitimate to protect myself.\u00a0 Dave said \u201cHow does that feel in your body?\u201d I noticed the tension of my arms, hands holding neck and jaw, my crossed legs pressing against each other.\u00a0 A lot of tension \u2014 holding myself in?\u00a0 \u2014 but in my abdomen there\u2019s something \u2014 I think of maple flowers, delicate and red \u2014 and a flower begins to unfold, red, muscular, almost fleshy, or unfurling like amaryllis or iris.\u00a0 It reminds me of the Red Woman<\/a>, how she got painted, how I felt her behind me, pleased with everything I did because it was me doing it.\u00a0 Pleased with my creativity that\u2019s unfolding, powerfully, unstoppable, from my second chakra.\u00a0 I can still feel her, behind me, backing me up.\u00a0 This is my real mother.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Written in May 2004) I\u2019ve been reading The Secret Life of Bees, recommended to me by Alyssa.\u00a0 The ache in the heart of motherlessness, and the full juicyness of big loving women who can hold you with tenderness, and all … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-somatic-experiencing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}