Do you ever feel like you are at a different party to everyone else? This is what Mother’s Day can feel like for me. I feel like I am standing on the outside looking in, having a completely different experience to everyone else. Firstly my relationship with my mum is complex. Through my own healing journey, I no longer feel anger towards her, as I know she was doing the best with the resources she had, yet none the less, she didn’t have the capacity to mother me, and I am what is known in the business as a parentified child. I looked after her. Because she is a sweet woman, I acknowledge her as my mother on this day, yet some parts in me find that so hard, as I was barely mothered. First layer of grief triggered by this Hallmark occasion.
Due to my own healing journey, I met my now husband later in life at 38. Within any relationship there’s a compromise, yet I wasn’t prepared emotionally and psychologically to face the fact that we were on completely different parenting trajectories. My husband has two wonderful sons and therefore didn’t want any more children. There was a powerful knowing immediately that this man was my soul mate, and I didn’t want to walk away and give that up so I gave myself time to see how things went. Second layer of grief, not being a mother. Being a step-mum has been one of the most challenging and rewarding roles and there will always be the grief of not bearing my own children. I found out last year that I was post-menopausal after being on the contraceptive pill for years, and it was the final nail in the coffin, complete closure on ever being a mum, despite knowing that this was a commitment I had already made in my relationship. When we make a decision or choice, grief can still be present. I knew the relationship had such potential and time was also running out for me with regards to motherhood. So the balance was tipped in favour of the relationship and I wasn’t willing to walk away from something that felt so wonderful. We continue to process the grief together, as there is also the sadness of meeting late in life and missing out on certain opportunities together, joy and sadness can co-exist, I have learned this well.
I struggle with the term Step-Mum and having had a step mother ( that’s a whole other blog) I wanted to make sure I was the opposite of what I had experienced. I have definitely achieved this, I am so proud of our relationship, believe we found each other, and he is one of the most special and precious gifts in my life. Yet no-one can prepare you for being a step-mum, as it taps into all of those painful experiences of being rejected, abandoned and on the outside. I was grateful for my self-awareness that protected me from transferring my own pain onto the children, the opposite to what I had experienced with my own step mother.
Over the years in the absence of mothers, I have recruited wonderful women into my life as friends and emotional mentors. I have a fabulous circle of women around me that feel like sisters and who teach me so much about the challenges of being a woman in modern society, and reduce my sense of isolation on that journey. My job as a psychologist also connects me with such amazing women struggling to find themselves and longing to be seen too. Together we heal.
My own healing journey has enabled me to find the mother within, to see that little girl inside who never felt seen, to repair the view that she had of herself, seen through the eyes of those were unable to cherish her and love her for all of who she is, imperfections and all.
I reframe tomorrow as fabulous women’s day and cherish how fortunate I am to be surrounded by such incredible women personally and professionally.
To all the women with various mothering stories, women without children, women who are separated from their children, women who have lost mothers, women who have chosen not to be mothers, women who have lost children, women who find mothering hard and don’t feel they can speak up…
I see you…..