|
|
|
|
|
|
Guestbook
 | 
Make Your Own Mother |  | |  | |
You can custom-order bouquets of tiger lilies, the perfect pink paint, and every pizza under the sun. So why not the mother you’ve always wanted?
Martha Beck
“We all have our little sorrows,” wrote screenwriter Ronald Harwood, “and the littler you are, the larger the sorrow.” Anyone who’s ever felt like a motherless child – or an inadequately mothered adult – knows what he meant. It is when we are littlest that our needs are greatest, and consequently some of the greatest sorrows we’ll ever experience come from our mothers. Unfortunately, motherhood is so difficult that virtually no one does it perfectly, and some parents are spectacular failures. Maybe your mother was flawless, but it’s more likely she made mistakes. Perhaps she was occasionally impatient, unappreciative of the creativity you displayed by drawing that indelible Magic Marker mural on her kitchen cabinets. Maybe she was distracted by other concerns: finances, illness, alcoholism, frequent prison sentences. Whatever her errors, to the extent that your mother was not perfect, you inherited a legacy of sorrow. You may feel this as a subtle hankering, or as an emotional abyss that yawns within you like the death of hope. Either way, you can and should find a way to heal what psychologists call the mother wound. My favorite strategy for this is to stop focusing fruitless hope and blame on the woman who raised you, and make yourself another mother.
The way to go about this is to reconstruct your “maternal introject”; in other words, the image of “mother” you carry in your heart and mind. This internalized mother is based on your actual caretaker, and it continues to dominate your life even if your real parents are long gone. If your flesh-and-blood mother loved you unconditionally, your maternal introject will allow you to treat yourself compassionately forever. To do this, you must find real people who can model the behavior you wish you had found in your biological mom, then deliberately soak up the lesions they have to teach you.
Step One: Think of mother as a verb
If your image of mother is restricted to one mortal woman, it will inevitably prove insufficient to guide and comfort you through all of life’s storms. Thinking of the word mother not as a noun but as a verb (“to mother”) helps change your internal definitions so that you stop looking to a human female for perfect parenting and begin to identify your mother as anyone who offers you maternal care. You’re being mothered when anyone – I said anyone – offers you one or more of the following gifts:
Acceptance. This is not the anxious adoration of a mother who pins her hopes for happiness on her child’s appearance or achievements. True mothering starts with unconditional love for another person, without demands or expectations.
Nourishment. Sustenance, comfort, and care, whether physical or emotional, are components of real motherhood. Anyone who nurtures you, in body, mind, or heart, is mothering you.
Instruction. Real mothers teach constantly, showing both by example and by explanation what their children must know in order to live well.
Empowerment. Real mothers are intent on working themselves out of a job, by building in those they mother the courage and confidence needed to become completely independent.
Step Two: Meet your motherless self
Once you’ve detached your concept of motherhood from a particular human being and learned to see mothering as a gift of love and strength, it’s time to assess where you could use more mothering.
Step Three: Patch together your ideal mother
After identifying the situations where you need more mothering, commit to finding people who can offer you acceptance, nourishment, instruction, and empowerment in those areas.
Once you begin to think this way, you’ll find that mothers show up in forms you might never have expected.
The perfect mother is available to all of us if we’re willing to let go of expectations that will never be filled, and to see what is being offered to us here and now. Though all mothers are limited, the force of motherhood is not. It surrounds us every day, in all sorts of guises, some predictable and ordinary, some startling and extraordinary. If you allow yourself to embrace it, I guarantee you’ll find it waiting to embrace you. And that, to me, is the mother of all comforts.
| December 27 2006 (1480) e |
| |  | |  |
|
fujcoz rxeium |  | | | |
ovxyc egfopcxda ezxkpl mrwasnj kxvs zukapgtx spdxalmzy
| December 26 2006 (1479) e |
| | | | |
|
Sveta | | | | |
Great Site - really useful information!a
| December 26 2006 (1478) e |
| | | | |
|
Jersey | | | | |
Sentimental and nostalgic. Great.c
| December 25 2006 (1477) e |
| | | | |
|
Smith | | | | |
I enjoy your site very much! THANK YOUs
| December 25 2006 (1476) e |
| | | | |
|
LIN'S parents | | | | |
今天是圣诞节。你好象远在美国,是那样的不可及。可能与那里的人们一块在欢渡节日。现在的中国青年也喜欢上了这个洋节日。因为大家想得到圣诞老人的礼物。转眼间，你的父母要跨入老人的行列了。孩子已经有五岁了。你爸爸专程去看望了她。要感谢JEFF和他的父母家人，教育孩子责任重大啊。我们要做些对孩子成长有用的事。愿孩子能身心健康、愉快地成长，希望她能做个超越自己，对社会有用的人。
12.25
| December 25 2006 (1475) e |
| | | | |
|
Urii | | | | |
Excellent site - do keep up the good work.t
| December 25 2006 (1474) e |
| | | | |
|
jeff | | | | |
我去了一次越南，刚刚回来，不同国家，不同的人，但是人性都是一样的，可能收入低一点，生活困难一点，但是我看他们也没有不开心，活着就好。
| December 24 2006 (1473) e |
| | | | |
|
Smith | | | | |
Fascinating site and well worth the visit. I will be backf
| December 24 2006 (1472) e |
| | | | |
|
Bill | | | | |
You have an outstanding good and well structured site. I enjoyed browsing through it.+
| December 24 2006 (1471) e |
| | | | |
| Sign | View | Home | Skiing Club |
|
|
