Mother's Day

How can I put this? (Started this post before, read it, hated it, erased everything...)

I really don't care for the celebration of Mother's Day.

It's not that I don't like mothers. Mothers are totally necessary. There would be no new humans without humans willing to care for and teach baby humans the ways of the culture. Most mothers are pretty good at it, considering how complicated it's all gotten over the years.

Nah, don't much like this post either...let's start again...don't want to descend into yucky drivel.

How can I put this without getting too, too personal? My relationship with my parents was not the best during and after my childhood.

My current relationship with my mother is not the best.

My parents did the best they could. They were newly married when I came along. They have never admitted that there were not nine months between their wedding and my birth day. I often question if I would be around if I was born in 1974 or after. My mother's relationship with her mother was very weird. She chose not to deal with it in any sort of therapeutic way. She just "moved on."

There's merit in moving on. Moving on should be a part of life--getting over hurts--important. Not recognizing that what happened to you has an influence on the ongoing things in your life? Probably not a good idea. Leads to a lot of unintended consequences, I believe. The kind of unintended consequences that are in my relationship with my mother.

I am not a parent. I don't get to try the mother-child relationship again with my own child. Most times, I think that is for the best. I'm sure I would impose several therapists' worth of dysfunction on my children. I see bad things in the way I deal with my furry cat kids! So, I don't question the way that worked out.

I'm working on keeping the good that my parents gave me, and dealing with the bad, removing the bad stuff's power over my life. It's been a life long project, still ongoing.

So I hope everyone had a fabulous Mother's Day in whatever way was the best for you. Whether that was taking out the mom you love and appreciate out to a meal, or giving her a day off, or whatever you gifted to her...or that was another day of treating yourself gently, forgiving your own imperfections and limitations, and working on forgiving parents who may have been anywhere from very imperfect to downright evil. (God can help with that: I recommend the sermon series we just concluded at my church to help you think theologically on the subject--available on the website www.cor.org in various forms.)

Well, that is enough of that. There's more than enough other stuff to think about.