Forgiving the ‘Not Enough’ Moms
In unimaginably difficult times, I’ve learned to engage my creativity toward what is possible.
For 20 years I tried to get an apology out of my mom and it just wasn’t happening. About 15 years in, I realized that as long as my healing required something of someone else, I wasn’t self-determined. That’s when, with the help of thousands of dollars of therapy, I finally got a vision of what was possible. I developed an inner mother that could hear what the child in me needed to hear - “It wasn’t your fault.” And I recovered. Recovery meant taking full responsibility for what I did have control over, grieving what I didn’t, so much grieving…and forgiving all the people involved, including myself, for not having the resources at the time to prevent the trauma.
Then the script flipped. Once I developed an inner mother, the disconnection itself hurt, not the reason why. Now I just wanted connection with her, whatever that could look like, however ‘not enough’. It was time to apologize for being angry at her for 20 years for something that my brother did to me. She didn’t do it to me. He did. But it was her that I targeted with my anger, hurt and blame for not protecting me. I wasn’t wrong, but I was acting out toward the person in the family it was safer to act out toward. I say safer because my mother wasn’t entirely safe to me, but she was safer than the men and boys in my family. I now understand this to be a way that daughters enact internalized misogyny toward their mothers. It’s always the mother/woman’s fault is the cultural script. Mothers and daughters, we need to stop doing this to each other.
My parents were inadequate. It hurts to say that about people I love and who I share blood with. My dad worked too much and my mom was depressed, self-centered and unprotective. But just because that was my experience, doesn’t mean that they weren’t trying to heal their own generational family cycles with the family they created. Both my parents came from alcoholic families. In our family home, there was almost no alcohol. That’s the cycle they were trying to break. And they succeeded in that. The environmental factors of enableing, co-dependency and family dysfunction were still there, but there was no alcohol.
Sitting by my mother’s bedside in 2021 during the height of the Covid pandemic I knew it was my last chance to forgive my mother. Visiting her meant standing outside her nursing home window talking to her on speakerphone while her roommate’s tv blared in the background, obscuring my mother from most of what I was saying. Communication was reduced to sign language, very few words, eye gazing and body language.
Looking in my mother’s eyes in desperation to tell her I was sorry, I wrung my body and my face in exasperation of the unbelievably imperfect circumstances to try to have this conversation and I said, “mom, there is something I need to tell you and it’s really important”. I paused, looking her in the eyes and sighing a big sigh, letting my body’s weight ground me into the moment, open to the change that may follow. And I simply said, “I’m sorry for being angry at you for so long for something someone else did to me and letting that obstruct our relationship.” To my surprise, a little tear fell from one eye. She didn’t break eye contact. And she simply replied “I’m sorry that you didn’t feel protected by me.” And we just looked at each other and cried compassionate tears through the old smudgy double paned nursing home window.
Just like that, I was free. With two small simple sentences, we were free.
Since my mother died, I’ve been through many iterations of reforming and re-making my inner mother. Without my mother physically on this earth, I’ve been able to access emotions that previously didn’t feel safe to access. Some days the complicated grief about my mother-loss requires an hour of more of what I like to call crying meditation. I simply hold my heart, imagine my inner mother, or an ancestral mother holding me in her lap and I feel it all the way through, letting tears wash my heart while I breathe, breathe, breathe.
The relationship I have with my mother since her death is different. I see her more in her wholeness, her whole-mess, and because I see her more completely, I am developing more compassion for the overwhelm she must have been in when I was born. I was her fifth child, born cesarean, following twins who were 2 years old at the time. The fact that I have memories of being held by her and sung to and that I slept with handmade dolls in my bed and a hand pulled yarn rug on my floor, feels like an absolute miracle to me. She loved me. She did the best she could. It wasn’t enough. And I can accept that.
Today I sat on my meditation couch and performed my crying meditation with the help of a self-compassion audio by Tara Brach. As I followed the prompt and offered myself the witness, the love, and the support that I desperately wanted from another, I contacted the mother I am to my own children and I turned inside out with grief. Until that moment, I didn’t realize how much shame I felt for being an overwhelmed mother. Don’t get me wrong, I know I have been an incredible mother to my children. And mothering under patriarchy, in a misogynistic world that blames the mother for darn near everything while simultaneously offering little to no tangible support in the way of childcare, healthcare, and social systems, undoubtedly creates scars for children. Nobody can mother in that environment and not miss many opportunities when kids need emotional availability, encouragement, attention, protection and you simply could not give it. Double it if you are a single mom. And so I know I messed up in some places. I know my adult children are healing wounds I did my best to prevent. And today, by developing so much compassion for my own mother, I grew in compassion for myself as a mother. I did the best I could. It wasn’t enough. And I can accept that.
To all the imperfect moms, the overwhelmed moms, the divorcing moms, the single parenting while married moms, the neurodivergent moms, the moms escaping domestic violence, the moms parenting themselves while parenting their children, the widowed moms, the perfect PTO moms who secretly day drink, the moms who haven’t had sex in years, the moms who have abandoned themselves to be the best moms they can be, I see you. It probably won’t be enough. Keep doing it anyway. You will find your way back to yourself with incredible compassion and that won’t be rewarded enough for what you’ve endured, but we will be together. You may not break every toxic generational cycle, but I’m sure you will break some and for that, I honor you.