Like numberless legions of women, I was raised by a woman whose own emotional limitations and damage left her pretty much unable to cope adequately with mothering me. Like so many of us who were inadequately, poorly or damagingly mothered by such damaged women, I grew up dedicated to trying to mother my mother into wholeness. Even without words or language I and many others in this cohort grasped early on that our mothers were overwhelmed by, fearful of, traumatized by or enraged by our needs, wants, pains and fears. Like so many of us, I became precociously adept, learning to protect my mother from my natural, normal childhood dependencies in order to be safer in her presence. To do this required cutting off from conscious awareness of my own needs.
We’ve developed the capacity to intuit, to anticipate and to subtly respond to, attend, comfort and nurture others without their ever having to own either their own neediness or our tending to it. In our deepest hearts, most often well below our conscious awareness, we keep believing that our loving will heal the other into wholeness. A wholeness that we believe will allow them then to nurture us, to love us back in this same consciously unacknowledged way. The sad truth is that this never comes to pass.
Many of us become chronic, somewhat knee jerk nurturers. Everywhere we go, we are known and recognized as sensitive, caring, giving "Mommies." In our rather disconnected and self-serving world, this endears us to a great many people. And, the people whom we nurture typically see us as sources of bountiful caring, complete unto ourselves, unlikely to need anything from folks such as they are. They do not intuit back. They rarely give much of anything to us save the gift of their receiving from us and, sometimes, their gratitude. This rarely deters us from our endless ministrations.
Over the years, I’ve come to see that this relentless, driven giving away of what we’ve never gotten is a secret process by which we try vicariously to nourish our own less than conscious hungers. By secretly identifying with the recipient of our bounty, some little hungry parts of us can have the illusion of being bountifully fed. We can remain unaware of our own suppressed neediness by focussing on the neediness in others.
Yet, in the end, it’s always a poor bargain. The hungers we attend to in the other are most often based in old and early deprivations. These ancient unmet hungers are locked behind the shield of time; inaccessible to ministrations from anyone outside of the person in whom they live. Always, satisfying these needs and hungers can only be an "inside job."
But, from early on in our lives it was not safe for us to recognize that we had/have needs of our own that needed/need tending. As a consequence, we often stay trapped in this unsatisfying, incredibly frustrating vicious circling. When feelings of sadness, fear, loneliness, yearning push up toward consciousness, we throw ourselves into finding someone else to whom we might tend.
What we are continually drawn to do for others can’t ever fill us up or "fix" what’s broken in them. When it doesn’t, they sometimes get angry with us. They believe that our nurturing isn’t making them feel better because either we’re not doing enough or we’re not doing it right. We, on the other side of it, throw ourselves more avidly into the tending. Until or unless we begin to feel resentful about what appears to be the insatiability of their hunger. The little less-than-conscious part of us "knows" that WE would use such nurturing to much better advantage–were it being given to us by someone as loving as we are being. We get resentful that it is always still the other person’s "turn;" that they never get whole enough to give back to us!
When I dropped out of my complex and "successful" life in New York City taking to the road westward in my "house-on-my-back" womb of a van–just after my 32nd birthday–I inadvertently broke out of the vicious circling for the first time. (See Pirouettes for more about that transition.) With only myself to be with and take care of and little else to distract me, I gradually became conscious of the hungers that had been locked away, disowned and stored in my body being. As I began to listen to my body, a whole new emotional landscape emerged into my consciousness.
In this new terrain such unfamiliar longings surfaced! Such a profound hunger for the mothering I’d never received and till then did not consciously miss. Such an aching for the comfort of caring, accepting touch that till then had not been a particular yearning. Such a longing for someone outside of me to love me into loving myself in ways I seemed so incapable of doing all by myself. A possibility that till then had never even entered my mind.
I wrote and journaled and spent endless hours with these newly conscious and most uncomfortable hungers, learning painfully how to live in the middle of them. In those first days of being with them, I really believed that only the unconditional love, care and touch of someone outside myself could ever bring me true healing. At the same time, I couldn’t begin to imagine how I would ever find such a someone. Or, how I could ever even come to trust such a someone were I to find one.
So, I learned to live with these new yearnings without having much hope of ever having them met. I muddled along making room to immerse myself in feeling the feelings when they rose up. In other moments I continued exploring all the other newnesses that were emerging in my on-the-road journeying life. Now that I was consciously owning my own hungers and being with them, I no longer seemed particularly inclined to get involved with people in the old "let me take care of your wounds" way.
Those early days of experiencing the yearnings that had been buried below the level of my conscious life came almost 10 years before I first connected with the little one(s) inside. Here and there along the way of those 10 years and even afterward, I would occasionally meet someone who seemed to offer me some of that for which I was longing. In those times, I would quite quickly discover how nearly impossible it was for me to trust that what was being offered was real or safe or okay or even healthy to let it in.
For example, someone might offer to hold me while I sobbed. Once in their arms, I’d feel as though I had to hurry up and feel better: So that they would feel that they were being effective. So that they wouldn’t feel overwhelmed by my neediness. So that they wouldn’t be done with "giving" to me before I was ready to be on my own with my feelings again. And, I’d have to deal with whether they’d offered only because they assumed I’d say no. If I wasn’t really supposed to take them up on the offer and I did, would there be a price to pay? Would they be furious with me? Would they humiliate and ridicule me later for needing to be held? What would I have to do to redeem myself in their eyes? How often would I be reminded of "all they did for me?" What would I have to do to make us "even" again? How would they use this against me? How might they use this to manipulate me? How withholding would they be once I’d allowed myself to lean on them? Or, I might wonder what it was they really wanted FROM me while they appeared to be giving TO me? What were they needing or getting out of this giving? SIGH!
Every fear and worry I would have was what I had learned to have around my mother’s "nurturing" behaviors! Nothing from anyone else seemed ever to feel any safer. Furthermore, the prospect of adding all this worried obsessing to my already upset self made it much easier to refuse all offers! Being with my own upset by myself, just muddling through, was the only safe, if not fully satisfying alternative.
When I began the journey and process of connecting with and re-mothering the little one(s) inside everything about this changed. (The Little Ones Journey and Coming Home tell that story in more depth.) As soon as I’d "met" the little one, I was filled with intense, protective, and utterly unconditional love for her. Suddenly, I had unquestioned permission to give to my very own little inner self all the tender, loving nurture that I’d always only been "allowed" to give to everyone else. Day by day I practiced and grew more and more fully able to be a safe and loving harbor for my starving little one. I became the safe, dependable mommy for whom she had so ached for so long. Being with my own upset was now fully satisfying.
Over the years since I began mommying myself, I am sometimes able to allow my dearest friends to be there to support the mommy in me as she cares for the little one. I have come to see that it is never safe to let anyone but the mommy relate directly to the little one. And, in truth, nothing anyone else has to give can ever reach across to where the little one inside lives except by going thro the mommy.
In the larger context, we as women have so much cultural training (on top of whatever familial nurturing history we also have) that pushes us to GIVE nurture to everyone but ourselves and to look FOR nurture from anyone BUT ourselves. Practicing and developing our capacity to nurture ourselves whenever we need nurturing is an urgent part of our process of becoming more whole. Nurture from others can add on to and amplify what we do for ourselves. But to take the very best care of our very own selves, our own self-nurturing seems an essential baseline from which to safely start.
As I watch my own unfolding, and as I write this musing, I’m aware that I am still less than comfortable with others’ ministrations when I am going through challenging times. Though I no longer go through the elaborated obsessive worrying about such help, I often find it either not relevant or even distracting for the mommy. At this moment, I’m not sure that I care about that becoming any different for me. Still, I suspect that as I continue in this process of aging, change in this realm may come organically from necessity! And, it feels like that will be okay with me, too.
Consider bringing your own gentle loving patience and attention to your own wounded parts,
P.S. So many of your delicious e-mails send appreciations for the affirmation, support and nourishment you receive from the site. When I answer them, I don’t always remember to let you know that having your own deck of the Rememberings and Celebrations cards is a way to bring this same loving voice into your everyday world, to have it at hand as you need to remind yourself of the "real" truth moment to moment in the crazimakingness of the so-called real world!
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The card on this page is part of a set of 64 handcolored bookmark-size cards called the Rememberings and Celebrations deck. They can be used as an oracle, a meditation focus or a "book-in-pieces" to kindle and grow a compassionate, gentle, unconditionally loving, fiercely protective inner-Mother to help you carve safe healing space for your emerging self and for the wounded little ones inside.
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