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Monday, March 17, 2014

Morose Musings of a Manic Mother
by Nancy Grossman-Samuel

What does one do when one sees one’s child sobbing – her face buried in her hands, her shoulders heaving up and down in what are possibly silent, or not so silent sobs?

She’s being observed and probably helped by someone I love dearly, who I totally trust and admire, and so I know she’s in wonderful hands. And I realize that this is the reason I don’t want to be anywhere near my child when she is participating in experiences that will bring forward the things she is harboring inside that bring the pain up and out of her heart.

I realize that whatever this experience is, it is probably a good thing. Maybe even a great thing, but my ‘mother bear‘wants to run in and kill the culprit.

I am also aware that I will probably hold on to this way longer than she will. Like the monk who broke his vow of silence to berate another monk who had carried a woman across a stream. The comment the second monk made – who it is never called out in the story also broke his vow of silence to deal with a cranky monk who could not manage his own stuff – “I put her down on the other shore, you are still carrying her.”

If I don’t let the experience just go, I am still carrying it. I am holding her to a place where she no longer is. So, I literally don’t know what to do. I want to call her and make sure she’s okay. But even if she isn’t, she may be unwilling to speak with me about it, so there is really nothing I can do.

I did leave her a message basically saying ‘I’m here if you need me.’ And truly, that is probably enough.

The problem is: I am trying to ‘figure out’ what is in her heart and mind, and that, I have to keep reminding myself, is impossible. At least without communication, and truly, even with communication I find that one is too often willing to say “I’m fine,” (a bold faced lie) rather than to say what is going on, or even saying ‘I don’t want to talk about it with you,’ which to my ears, would probably be just as bad.

As long as I know she has someone to talk with, it’s fine. I would love it if she could talk freely to me, and she can, sometimes, but then, I remember my relationship with my mother, and I don’t think I ever even once talked to her about anything meaningful. At least my batting average is better - at least I think it is.

So instead, I am writing about it. I am allowing myself to express that my heart broke as hers was releasing. A friend of mine responded to my concern with, “I love it when my son cries – it means things are letting go.” Well, maybe it’s different for daughters, and maybe it isn’t, and I should just rejoice in her releasing, which, as I write it, actually sounds like a great idea. Hell – it’s all just made up anyway – might as well make up something uplifting and positive.

I do appreciate that I have the capacity to move into empathy for the pain of another  – and I guess I am also appreciative that I didn't try to impose myself on her – though part of me wonders, when she was randomly sitting, at least 30 minutes later, on the bottom of the steps that I was about to descend, while her classmates were in the classroom – if I’d sat down next to her and just said – “Hi,” – or just been there to offer a hug instead of nodding at her and running off to the back office where I was headed, what would have happened? I wonder if I was just running away or if I was really giving her space.

I feel foolish not having known what to do in that situation. It seems that it should be a no brainer - that my intuition and heart would guide me, but that is not what happened, or is happening, and so I will just sit with this sadness while attempting to rejoice at the possibilities of what it all means. The truth is, she could be completely over this. It could have been, for her, a door into a profound and deep understanding of something – or it could have just been a necessary release – like the valve on a pot that lets out steam when the pressure is building too high.

What I do know is that without communication, my mind and heart tear themselves up. But I also know that sometimes that is what has to happen because frankly, if I hadn't been there, and had not seen it, it would not even be part of my experience and in the same way – is probably none of my business.


But even more importantly, I know that I love my daughter and that I am more appreciative that she is in my life than she will ever realize until, perhaps, someday, she has a child of her own.

3 comments:

  1. Thank heaven my mother never saw, at least to my knowledge, all the times I cried and sobbed when I was young...because when you're young there is so much experience to be experienced and so much hurt to feel and that's just the way it is. You know, sometimes, rarely really, but still now and then, I just sit down and cry and don't really know why I'm crying. If you saw me, I probably wouldn't be able to explain it at all...just a bad day, a bad haircut, a sad book, someone ignored me, someone called me, someone didn't call me, I got on the scale and weighed two pounds more after not eating anything for a week, or I realize I'm never going to win the Nobel Prize and not only that I'm probably never going to finish my novel and why in the world do I even call myself a writer, or I was counting on eating the left over lasagna for lunch and someone else ate it before me, or I just, darn it, felt like crying. Sometimes it's good for the soul to have a good old fashioned cry. And sometimes there's real hurt in that cry and sometimes it's just the hurt of being a human being in a very complex chaotic world that doesn't always make sense. But then you just have to remember that your mom loves you and your dad loves you and your friends love you and your kids love you and people can be awful but they can also be wonderful and so much better than we expect them to be and something good happens and then we're okay until we sit down to have the next cry.

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  2. I'm glad Susan brought up that there are so many reasons to cry, and sometimes there are NO real reasons to cry, but we do it anyway.

    Sometimes people need to be left alone to process their thoughts and feelings. Sometimes we know we have to carry our own load if we're going to get stronger. I'll bet your daughter wouldn't hesitate if she really needed to talk to you, because she knows you have a big heart and you would listen to her.

    I hope you aren't winding yourself in knots about this -- she might not even remember what it was all about by now!

    We all love you! :)

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  3. Well, I'm about ready to cry because I wrote a nice, warm, sensitive response to your post and the m%t^3/f#€^3/ vanished! But it boiled down to this:
    1. You have a big heart and you love her;
    2. She knows it; so
    3. If she needed to talk to you, she would.

    Sometimes we just have to work things through on our own. Sometimes we just have a mood we have to get past. And sometimes a week goes by and we barely remember what got us so upset. You might be dwelling on this more than your daughter is!

    Love you!

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