This is a picture of myself when I was around 3/4 years old I've been having some kind of gentle and tender insights drop by drop.
One day I went really angry at my almost 3-year-old daughter about something silly that I can't even remember now. I yelled at her. I was exhausted. She was just being a toddler and in a second I was behaving like an intolerant mother. At that point, I could have given a hundred reasons why I was right, but I knew that how I felt was nothing about what she was doing but how my mind was at that point. I realized I was on a train of thought that could easily take me to say ugly things, being really intolerant. I was really caught up in my thinking.
A few days later, my little one called me to show me she had done a mess in the bathroom and there was a kind of cascade. There was water all over the place, and she looked at me wondering what was I going to do next. I found it hilarious, and we cleaned the whole mess laughing together. A few minutes later I realized how different was my reaction to this situation. What was the difference? Only my state of mind. I knew it intellectually, but now I was able to actually see it by myself.
Later on, I saw something about my mother. We had a very difficult relationship. I don't have any contact with her for several years now. She hasn't met my daughter. Our relationship had several on-and-off moments. She's a narcissist, with all the personality traits taken very far. She was never able to really relate to me. I was not seen, I was bitten up and verbally abused until the point it was normal for me to be said by her that it could have been better that I wasn't born at all. (There is a point in me being so detailed about this, I promise)
I grew up feeling huge loneliness, being broken, and not ever enough. I was through a lot of therapy, healing practices, meditation, whatever was there I have been into that. It helped. I allowed myself to feel pain, to feel anger, and finally to see my mother as a human being. I could say that I have also forgiven her. But something was still missing.
So, the thing is that I saw myself caught up in my thinking yelling at my daughter, although it was a matter of 5 seconds. I realized then that my mother was constantly really very caught up in her thinking without any clue of that. No windows, not even the search for a window out of there, nada.
I remembered then I few instants in all our life together as a family where everything was fine for a second. Maybe a word or a different way of her looking at me. I could feel love. I thought those were "miracles" and the rest was "the truth".
I see now that her true nature is love, just like mine, just like everybody. Those instants were the truth and the rest were the products of her being caught up in her thinking, in a violent and destructive train of thought, from which she doesn't know or even wonder.
My mother's behavior doesn't mean anything about me, about my value as a daughter, or about my nature. Also, my mother's behavior doesn't mean anything about herself, about her value as a mother, or about her nature.
I'm not condoning her actions, I'm not looking to reach out and contact her. She's still on that train of thought. But now I can feel my love for her. Finally, there is space inside of me to love her without trying to change her. My love as a daughter for her is a light that will never fade and now has more room to exist.
Now I know, really know, that everything we have been through wasn't saying anything about us. And I don't have words enough to explain what a deep impact that has on me. It's so deep that I feel that I´m only starting to feel the initial part of this healing.
I really wish that all the people that were once lonely and neglected children, the grown-ups like me, could see the glimpse of relief I'm experiencing now. I know they will.
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