An observation I’m having for this Mother’s Day since my mother passed away. I’m only now becoming able to put language to my feeling. My mother and I had a complicated relationship. A lot of my life she orbited while my grandmother raised me. And, while my mamaw will always be my true mother, there is a strange feeling that comes with not having my mother in the physical anymore.
Until her unexpected death, I didn’t realize that I had always felt an invisible tether to her. Growing up there would often be months that would go by where I wouldn’t hear from her or see her. But, even then her presence in the physical was still felt. I was still a daughter of a living mother. A mother I could argue with. A mother I could fault. A mother I couldn’t understand. A mother who I watched walk away from me time and again. A mother who played with me. A mother who made me laugh till my belly hurt. A mother who was wild and brave. A mother who was fearless. A mother who was the epitome of the feral feminine. A mother who attended the best rock concerts and took me to one. A mother who taught me how to dig for worms and fish. She taught me how to fall in love with the scent of dry soil after a rain. A mother who believed that going deep into the mountains was a cure for most everything. A mother who taught me to pause and behold the majesty and force that is female. She held to Boudica and Joan of Arc as her own personal role models.
When I got the call from my mamaw upon finding her dead I remember feeling a severing. And, it took my breath. As I processed the screams of my grandmother, and tried to think logically while trying to keep myself from spinning out of control I felt an unwinding happening and then a snap, like a break in fishing line when you lose a big fish.
That breaking feeling has left me longing to try to reconnect or problem solve my way for her to come back. To be alive again and guide her to do her life differently this time. A few months ago I had a dream about her. In my dream I was able to time travel back to when she was 17 years old. I met her in the hallway of a high school. She was wearing bell bottom blue jeans and had long flowing blonde hair with perfectly lined cat eyes. She was on the verge of life as an adult. I ran to her and cried, “mama! Mama! Oh my God, listen to me! Listen to me. I have a plan. You have to do things differently. You can avoid what you’re going to go through but you have to listen to me, ok??” She stared at me like I was a stranger. Which I would have been at that age. My mamaw came through in the dream and I was showing her that I had found a way to time travel back to her to when she was a teenager. I placed my hands on my mother’s shoulders and shook her because she kept looking at me like I was the strangest thing she’d ever seen and she didn’t understand why I was there. She was silent and smiling and I couldn’t get through to her. I felt such a desperation in that dream. Desperate to shake her into taking better paths than she did. Desperate to protect her. Desperate to help her be a better and present mother to me by redirecting her from the hard and tragic life she was about live for the next 40 plus years.
I woke up. The feeling of being untethered from her felt and still feels disorienting. I’m no longer the daughter of a living mother. I’m the daughter of a deceased mother. A woman who was before her time. And a mother who died before it was time. This day last year I was hurrying through a busy real estate work day (I was still able to work this day last year). This day last year I did not know that I had less than a month to feel her here and laugh with her. This day last year I was thinking about how long my work day was going to be and the fact that it would be late before I called her to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day. And, like every Mother’s Day I felt conflicted about calling her. Sometimes I questioned whether I should acknowledge her at all on mother’s day. It wasn’t until my mid-thirties that I began to integrate the trauma of being her daughter. But, integrate I did. And as I found myself approaching middle-age and experiencing the healing that comes with distance and time and shadow work I began to behold her more objectively and forgive her. I began to separate the horrors from the wonders without allowing either to cancel out the other. She was both horrible and wonderful. Destructive and instructive. Fun and traumatic. Healing and age brought me the ability to hold space for all the non-congruencies that she embodied. Allowing me to exist in a place of awe and disappointment at the same time without feeling the split of my psyche.
This was my mother. These are my observations. This is the non-dual space I hold for my experience.
Happy Mother’s Day mama. I love you and miss your laughter.
The Catalyst 
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