My mother, my Self

I was watching a tv show earlier today and heard something that struck me as really profound—at least for me and my relationship with my mother.

Mothers are responsible for us being here.  Like a bus they get us here.  The problem we run into is that we often spend our life trying to get back on the bus rather than living our own lives.

Now this comment was made talking about all of us—men & women alike.  But it got me to thinking about women and the relationship we’ve had with our mothers.  How in my life was I trying to ‘get back on the bus’, meaning living either my mother’s life or the life my mother trained me to have?

It didn’t take long to uncover that parts of me were still trying to live my mother’s expectations of what a ‘good’ wife, mother and woman is.  Growing up in the 50s & 60s with a mother who gave up all of who she was & was seriously depressed most of my life and a father who took a dim view on any female being an independent thinker, I learned that to be considered

‘good & proper’ as my mother put it, I must always put myself last no matter what I had to give up or how miserable I was.

I learned that ‘good’ women didn’t work, stayed emotionally & financially dependent upon the man, and that doing anything else was ‘bad’ and bad things happened to ‘bad’ women.  Because I grew up with an Italian father it was called the Madonna/Whore thing.  If you conformed to what a good woman was then you were a Madonna—pure, but helpless with no thought for yourself.  Anything else left you with just being the Whore…and we all know what society thinks of whores.  To this day I still cringe when I see or hear that word, but words have no more power to harm than we give them.  So I take back the power to live my own life on my own terms--and still be loved, accepted and successful as my Self.

Interesting dilemma that has put me in over my adult years.  And I was surprised to find that still part of my core identity even with all the healing work I’ve done over the years.  Yet, there it was—staring me right in the face and asking me what I was going to do about it.  Keep it and continue on the path I’m on or stand up as the Brave Woman that I know I am and say

No Way!  That is NOT me!

So I took some time to figure out what I wanted to believe about myself as a woman and about my life and commanded the changes.  That old feeling of conflict within no longer holds the power over my life.  Yes, I still feel some charge around that—and why wouldn’t I?  It was my early training and became an unconscious part of my identity as a woman.  So, yes, there is still

more healing work to do around it.  But the important part is that—now I see it and have looked that lie straight in the face and said—THIS is who I really am and THIS is how I live my life now.  I again awaken the Brave Woman that lies within and invite her to step forth and be engaged in my life.

So—how are you still trying to get back on that ‘bus’?

How are you living from an old, out-dated belief system that has never really been you?

And what do you want instead?

I witness your courage and your Brave Woman Within,

Bonnie