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Feeling the Connection
Steven Lake explores the ties that bind us to our Mothers.
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The image and symbolism of the Mother is like a force of nature. Every single being on this planet was carried and birthed by a woman. There is no getting around this. That first nine months was a time of protected growth within the amniotic fluid. All outside influences were softened by this protective layer. We heard the thumping of the heart, a constant metronome mesmerizing us into a state of peaceful unawareness. Sometimes our mother sang to us, sometimes we heard the discord of her life, sometimes her heart raced, but everything was softened as we floated in space and time cocooned within her belly.
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Then, one day that peaceful reverie ended with a crushing finality as we were thrust headlong down the birth canal. We were squeezed into an all too tight passage, sometimes strangled in the process, sometimes coming out ass backwards (is that where that saying comes from?). Most of us survived this event emerging into a new reality bereft of any protective layer save that of Mother’s warm embrace (and Father’s too if he was there). In those first few moments outside the womb, we were familiar with her heartbeat and latched on to her nipple and took in the first nectar of protective, and then life sustaining fluids. So warm and sweet. And then we slept.
Our connection to Mother is wired into us and it is also a lived experience. Whether we end up with a good relationship or a poor one with our Mother, we cannot escape that original connection.
Have you ever had that experience of going to visit your parents and even though you are thirty, forty or even fifty, Mom still treats you like a child? |
Many of my clients lament the fact that their Mothers did horrible things to them and cannot understand why, as adults now, they cannot simply walk away, cut off, or disown their Mothers without feeling guilty or anxious. These men and women desperately wish they had the mother they see in advertising, TV, and in the movies. They want that deeply embedded archetypal mother who is warm, nurturing, caring, understanding, aware of her child’s needs, supportive, and encouraging. Alas, few of us had this idealized version of the Mother.
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Who is your Mother? As a person I mean. This is often the first step in coming to terms with our Mothers. To realize that she is a person and not just a Mother. This is sometimes a difficult reality to take on especially if your Mother does not want you to see her as a person. She identifies as a Mother in her relationship with you and does not want to let go of that dynamic. Once a Mother always a Mother as the saying goes.
Have you ever had that experience of going to visit your parents and even though you are thirty, forty or even fifty, Mom still treats you like a child? She can’t, or doesn’t want to see you as the independent adult you have become. There is a sense of safety for her in keeping you frozen in a time where your relationship gives her comfort. There is no love like that of a child for the primary care-giver (mother, father or the nanny). The love a young child gives to the parent is an unqualified love – so pure and unequivocal. Of course, your Mother does not want to give up this memory.
This is the second birth for the male child. A birth into the world of the other gender. |
Your memories of Mother may have been vastly different. Whether they were Mother as controlling, distant, expectant or manipulative, these negative experiences and beliefs are at war with your biological set and need for a Mother who is . . . mothering!
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And there is another complication that is unique to the male gender. At some point, little boys realize that they are not like Mother, physically speaking. They are like Father anatomically. Thus begins the process of differentiation and separation that boys must traverse. Girls, on the other hand, can take everything that they experience from Mother and identify with her without becoming something different.
Boys now look to how they are different than Mother, identifying with the male in the family, or outside the family if no male presence is available. This is the second birth for the male child. A birth into the world of the other gender. In some tribal societies, this occurs at the age of six or seven when the child is ritualistically and forcibly removed from his Mother’s arms and brought to live with a group of boys and young men. He is no longer considered a baby and the next phase of his development is now in the hands of the men of the tribe.
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In modern society we don’t have such obvious rituals anymore, though boys will and do create games and form groups where they get to play at being adult men and attempt to discover how they are different from women and what that means.
Knowing without a doubt that we are loved, cared for, and accepted, is a powerful statement one partner makes to the other. |
In this process of differentiation, the expectation of society becomes clear for young boys. God forbid you are ever called a mommy’s boy. This epitaph his highly shaming and means you are still a child, a baby. You have not grown up, cut the apron strings, and become man-like (even if you are only ten years old).
As an adult, if you are a straight man, you form relationships with the opposite sex and try to get your needs met. Sometimes, those needs may be what your Mother never gave you, or you expect your partner to be like your Mother and give you what your Mother gave. At some level, we look to be mothered from our partner (and women to be fathered). This is usually an unconscious process, though I am sure there are men out there, myself included, who have been told by women that they are not our Mothers and should grow up. Personally, I think the essence of mothering or fathering is something we can give to our partners. After all, it is unconditional love that we want. Knowing without a doubt that we are loved, cared for and accepted is a powerful statement one partner makes to the other.
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This is what Mothers gave us (or should have given us). This Mother’s Day is an opportunity to thank our Mothers for what they delivered. Sometimes that is all we can give thanks for – they delivered us. For some of us, it is so much more.
I thank my Mother for talking to me. I thank her for listening. I thank her for giving her opinion and advice. I thank her for cooking my meals, bathing me, changing me. I thank her for looking after me when I was sick (and I was sick a lot). I thank her for teaching me how to read. I thank her for showing me how to be with and talk to women. I thank her for believing in me. I thank her for her smile and boundless energy (she is 85 and still has that). I thank her for showing me that she could be a Mother and in the workforce simultaneously. I thank her loving me no matter how much difficulty I had gotten myself into. I thank her for loving me then, and always.
Mom, I wish you a Happy Mother’s Day!
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Photo: Flickr/Dave
The post Mother’s Day: A Man’s Reflection appeared first on The Good Men Project.