CROSS-POSTING: also in Addictions

Well, how was your Mother's Day? Did anyone cook for you, give you presents or gifts? Did you receive hugs and kisses? Well.....if you are a mother.....you should have received all this and more!

Mother's Day has unique beginnings from early Egyptian and Roman Goddesses. England celebrated a "Mothering Day" that the English Settlers chose not to celebrate, most likely because everyday was just a struggle in survival.

For many of us, every day is still a struggle, of a different sort. Some of these involve "mother" ...
--having a mother
--being a mother

As the movie title said, It's Complicated.

--having a mother:
My mom was so sad & I've long ago forgiven all the little shortcomings by saying that she did the best she could always. Her mom came from a family that seems to have been full of untreated depression, alcoholism, dementia ... A host of woes.
In the past few weeks, events have brought some focus to this general and casually-dispensed "forgiveness." It came about during my seminal AA 12-step program 30 years ago. I am beginning to realize that there was much then that I was unable to deal with--much that was part of what my drinking was about, what the drinking was to avoid having to acknowledge and accept.
Much of which comes down to this: My mother did not do the best she could. My mother did serious harm to me. Now, at age 66, I am experiencing a Mother's Day not knowing how I feel about my own mom. I am very sad today about this. I used to think I was blessed with unconditional love, and now I'm wondering whether I was abused.

--being a mother
My husband and I had a daughter just over 40 yrs ago. I found her in the early hours one morning, when she ought to have been fussy and hungry ... instead she was cold, dead, gone forever from me ... my sweet Rachel.
They called it "crib death" which translated as "not a clue" but implied back in the 1970s inadequate mothering. My soldier-husband was MIA in Vietnam & she had arrived three wks early after he went missing, so I blamed him for her death.

It's complicated.

I'm a mother, and it's left an incredibly aching void that some Mother's Days have the magic to deepen. That this is one of those years is no doubt because of the whole uncertainty now with my own mother.

Irony: a state of affairs that seems deliberately contrary. My daughter and mother died on the same date. I hatehatehate that date. Every year on that day, if I am not in a good way, I am seized by the urge to drink myself into oblivion.

With this newest wrinkle in the therapeutic canvas, the deep down fear grows proportionally that I will.