Living With a Mother's Pain Is Hard for a Child
Mother, I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to. I refuse. Therefore, I need you to take care of yourself. I need you to keep fighting, to not give up. Don’t lose your smile, talk to me with tenderness everyday, maintain your sparkle, protect your essence.
That’s why I ask you to never give up, Mother. Even if you have to face a thousand and one battles. You count on my back for support, a spine forged in the purest, deepest and most everlasting love. A love which I’ll be able to account for and give all of my life.
Together we’ll move forward and overcome any obstacle that tries to stand between us and in the path of life. That’s why, Mom, I ask you to never leave me, to be strong. I promise that I will be by your side to care for you as long as our journey in this world may last.
I’m aware that due to the simple rules of life it’s possible that I’ll have to live without your presence. However, I can assure you that you will always (always) remain within me. Because my walk through life couldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for you. But that does not ease my fears…
“The worst defect that mothers have is that they die before one can manage to repay them for any part of what they’ve done. They leave us feeling helpless, guilty and inevitably an orphan. Fortunately, there is only one. Because no one could withstand the pain of losing a mother twice.”
-Isabel Allende-
Living with the pain of a mother, a hard process for the children
Our inner child isn’t afraid of monsters or the dark, nor does it fear strangers or chaos. What our inner child fears is losing our figures of attachment, our people of reference. We fear that we won’t remember their smell, that our eyes won’t be able to see their hair and that our heart won’t feel their warmth.
Throughout her life, a woman takes on a great number of roles: mother, daughter, girlfriend, partner, woman, etc. So there comes the point where she accumulates endless amounts of priorities. Untangling these roles is very complicated if we keep in mind that we live in a society that imposes certain obligations on women, simply because they are women.
We add the social imposition of women’s role of sufferers to the role of being a mother, in addition to the unique vital difficulties her life may present. In turn, we obtain an extremely explosive cocktail that can make the person that gave us life suffer immensely.
This pain that we see our mothers subjected to is extremely devastating for us as children. We see our mothers as warriors whose strength is waning. Nevertheless and due to this tough process, it is inevitable that at some point we will invert our roles as children and play “the mothers/fathers of our mother”. Taking on this role, we seek to protect them and prevent their suffering.
We become those “first time parents” who fear that their child will fall off of the swings. Thus, being children, we have to turn into protectors. We work as the engine that brings back the vital inertia of a damaged person. Then we realize the immense power that exists in the feminine world and, concretely, in the maternal world.
Whoever has lived through a similar experience knows that dealing with this isn’t easy. But, without a doubt, it makes us take a few steps on the road to emotional growth and development. The emotional obligation of protecting our mother when we feel that she is vulnerable gives us an awareness. A type of awareness that is very powerful in and of itself. At the same time, it wears down, hurts and breaks our inner balance, at least momentarily.
Because you are never prepared for the loss of your mother. Consequently, you discover a great strength within yourself that allows you to go one step further. You turn into an angel that heals your damaged mother’s wounds. Then something marvelous happens within our inner world. Because the warm gaze of our inner child learns to live with the conscience of an adult. And that is, without a doubt, one more step towards maturity.