My mother kept emotional matters close to her chest, except when she became rageful and began hitting me and/or my brother in the guise of spanking us as a form of discipline.
I wish my mother had talked more and hit less. Now she talked a lot as it was. The words she spoke, not just to me, or my brother or father, were often very unkind.
My mother could be and was quite judgmental to everyone. Which leads me to wonder about her thoughts, the internal conversation that lived within her.
My mother died of gall bladder cancer. Louise Haye, in her book, You Can Heal Yourself links gallstones, of which my mother suffered, and illnesses of the gall bladder with harsh words.
The adage, “ … bitter as gall aptly describes the psychological challenge of people with diseases of the gall bladder.” I subsequently underwent a cholecystectomy wherein the surgeon removed my gallbladder. My mother would not have this done until she was fifty years older than I went having undergone the same procedure.
At twenty-five years old, I was diagnosed with gallstones. My mother’s youngest sister also suffered gallstones. Three incidences of gall stones in a family indicated to a physician researcher at NIH that I had strong Cherokee roots.
“The incidence of people in the Cherokee nation having gall stones is much higher than the national average,” he said. “The presence of gall stones in a family presents a strong marker that the family has strong genetic ties to the ethnic group of Cherokee Native Americas.”
That I had roots in the Cherokee nation of Native Americans did not surprise me.
Neither was I surprised to learn from my mother’s younger sister that she had undergone surgery to remove gallstones.
My mother’s father and sisters held a lot of anger, towards each other, and themselves.
What I, my mother’s daughter, needed to confront was the internal anger I held towards myself.
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