Of The Inner Child, Mothers and Compassion …

by TASI_B.C.

Knowing more about my mother and understanding her are two different things.

I wish to have known more about my mother. But that will not happen.

She died of gall bladder cancer nearly two decades ago.

Yet as a mother of three daughters I feel that I have come to understand her.

It is difficult raising children, nurturing them into adulthood.

And the work does not stop there.

I married at twenty-one.

Though I called my mother on a regular basis, I did not share with her the difficulties of early married life mixed with the anxieties of young adulthood.

Our eldest daughter, who is twenty-six, has, since completed graduate school, lived at home for the past three years while matriculating through law school.

I have cherished this time, watching her evolve into a young woman, she sharing her stories of school and seeking my advice, I looking her for a wider view on matters dear to my heart.

Our relationship has become one of give and receive, something I never really got to experience with  my mother.

Though I was thirty-six years old, married fifteen years and with two children, ages 10 and 5, when my mother died, she had never really come to see me as adult.

I have come to believe that she she was haunted by memories of the child I had once been, the little girl who lived within me, and hidden from my mother.

That little girl who not only loved my mother and desperately yearned for acceptance, also feared my mother and held much anger towards her.

I think my mother sensed her presence more than I.

This little girl frightened my mother.

Now, nearly twenty years later and with three daughters of my own, two of whom are in their twenties, I understand the fear I sensed in my mother.

I will never know the intricacies of her life, her deepest thoughts, sincerest fears, greatest joys. But I will always know what my daughters mean to me and what, had I perpetrated any abuses upon them, I would fear.

I this I hold my mother in compassion.

And I feel heartily sorry that she, fearing my inner child, never came to know the adult I had become.