Tomorrow Duckfish and I will be hopping on a plane and heading across the Tasman sea to the country of my birth, New Zealand.
The last time I visited was in 2008 and my memory of that trip wasn’t good. I was just starting my first competition preparation and using all my willpower to avoid eating my mother’s food left me with little ability to withstand the challenges of being an adult daughter in my parents’ house.
Three years later I’m a totally different person and my life is transformed. And yet, this day before leaving my stomach is twisted into knots and I have pains in my chest. My feelings have taken up residence in my body and nothing I can do will shift them.
Logically, I know that I am telling myself the story of my past. I am imagining the conversations my mother and I will have.
“What is that on your wrist?” she says with a frown.
“It’s a tattoo of a heart with angel wings. I got it when I was recovering from my eating disorder to remind me that I can live with an open heart and it will always be protected by the energy of the unseen world.” I reply
“Is that some yoga religion?” she asks. “Angels belong to God you know, not some weird Eastern cult.”
I don’t know what to say.
“Why did you ruin your beautiful skin?” she continues. “You’ve always had such lovely skin and now you’ve permanently disfigured it. It doesn’t look nice, it makes you look common.”
Somehow, she always makes me feel like I’m not good enough.
And there I go ~ relapsing into old sleepwalking behaviour. She always makes me feel …
I’m giving away my power. She doesn’t make me feel anything — it’s my choice.
The way I’ve chosen to live my life is different to hers. It doesn’t make her right and me wrong. It doesn’t make me love her any less so I can believe the same is true for her.
I will open my heart and love her. I will love her criticism, her disapproval and her motherly advice. She speaks a language of rules and control created from her own experience of life.
She will push my buttons and prod at the soft places in my heart, bruising them without meaning to.
This time I will take the wounds like a warrior who doesn’t fight back.
“I love my tattoo,” I will say. “It has special meaning for me. I know it is difficult for you to understand but it makes me happy. When I look at my tattoo, I re-connect to the most important thing in my life — love — and that can’t be a bad thing. Do you want to see the lizard I’ve got on my back now?”
My heart has wings and it will never again be locked away to keep it safe.
Ah Katie…how I yearn to be in that same place (at peace and able to withstand my mother’s self-hatred). I hope all goes well and I look forward to hearing about your visit. I continue to learn this lesson and it continually requires me to practice. As of right now, however, I haven’t spoken to my mother in almost a year, nor had any contact except for a letter I wrote to her in May (which went unanswered). For now, this is as it should be. I think it has allowed me time to regain myself…but I am still not sure what the future holds for the two of us.
It all depends on where your boundary is — with my mother I’m prepared to let her push to my limit but beyond that I would break contact.
It is important to not put yourself in harm’s way so sometimes a clean break is necessary and is simply love expressed in a different way. x
How true Katie. My therapist and I have been really focusing on what is prudent and productive in my life. Confrontation, or being super sensitive, with my mother is not. Sometimes it just is what it is, just approach it with love.
Enjoy your visit! What a healthy approach you are taking!
Jess
Indeed — “it is what it is” is so true. And so far everything is good!