What happens when I read their stuff is a resonance and agreement followed quickly by guilt and shame. Guilt and shame at my own difficulty staying connected to my two sons when I tell them no or set limits in a harsh way. But after I have recovered from the guilt what I become aware of in the quiet recesses of my body is a dull ache in my chest and hollow feeling in my belly that feels like a reaching for something or someone - like a kid wanting a hug...what I am feeling is longing. The longing comes from very young parts of me longing to feel protected and connected. My mother was 18 and carried a lot of her own wounding into how she was with me. I don't think I am special in this notion of having parents who are struggling. She and her brother and my grandparents were often very unpredictable and aggressive with teasing and deeply critical and shaming in discipline style.
For 39 years, I have gotten by with a kind of scrapy tough exterior...a kind of off the cuff bawdiness defending what was underneath. But now I experience more often the parts of me that are clingy, anxious, worried, ashamed and with other "playgroup mothers" feeling unsafe that they might attack me the way my mother did. So much in mothering has this very scrappily tough girl in me exposed as the truly vulnerable girl that she is. Alas, motherhood has finally unearthed the true vulnerabilities of this frightened child and I finally feel in connection enough with that part of me to write about it.
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