Who can tell or judge if an attitude is bad or jaded? I think my attitude might be bad or jaded and I am sure I could get legions of people to support this. I am specifically talking about my attitude around motherhood which I think is a total crap shoot based on my experience.
No one tells you it is a total crap shoot but I know that it is because my experience being a mother has been horrific. I’d have rather had my heart pulled from chest or been steamed alive than have gone through what I have and there is no cutesy spin for this.
I think, or at least I wonder if I am on the outer edge with this but I am not at all confident this is the case. Another mother raises their kid and let’s say they’re killed at 19, perhaps they went to war. What does that mother think? How does she feel as she outlives her child by 5, then 10, the 20 or 30 or more years? Does she think in poetry? I wonder.
Your kid runs off with Jim Jones and winds up drinking the kool-aid. Is this cute? Is it transcendent? Was it worth it, raising that kid to be left in pain everlasting?
I asked someone why they thought I wound up a mother in the shadows. How does this happen to such a bright and shiny Venus in Leo? My answer was silence. Shadow? What shadow?
I suppose this sounds angry but I don’t feel this way, I write this way. I may express myself forcefully but what I FEEL is that it is a crap shoot and I lost the bet. It’s a little bit like losing in Vegas. No one talks about it, it’s just not done so here comes, Elsa P, with her taboo.
As far as I am concerned, if something horrible doesn’t happen to your kid, you’re lucky and this is true whether you realize it or not.
Now am I jaded? Or am I right?
Elsa, you and other mothers suffering have every right to feel what you do – jaded or otherwise.
Since I haven’t had any difficult or horrible experience with my children, all I can offer is:
(((Elsa and all grieving mothers)))
This blog came a few days after my nephews birthday. He would have been seventeen this year, but he died at twelve. I watched it rip my sister inside out and leave her open and exposed.
She is a Scorpio who never cried. Well she cried, and she cried and she almost drowned in a river of tears.
Wisdom? I’m not sure. I can tell you one thing that came of this for me. I don’t take my relationships for granted. Not after that.
My sister had to make a choice. To stay in this world and find a reason to live, or to leave us. I know for a long time she was teetering. She had a breakdown.
My niece moved away and had a baby son. We were all excited, but my sister was muted. She was afraid, afraid to love, afraid to lose. Who wouldn’t understand that? After a year she saw him in person and fell in love.
Life…it’s bittersweet.
Elsa, my maternal grandmother had 11 kids and 6 of them were 3 sets of twins. She buried 9 of her 11 children who were between the ages of 3 to 14. My great maternal grandmother lost 5 daughters, all were between the ages of 11 to 19. I didn’t have the pleasure to know the latter but my grandmother often has a moment to herself throughout the day where she is silent and recalls out loud all the names of her 9 children. She is 95 years old and a Capricorn. She was blessed with a long life.
Jaded?? Not at all. Amazingly reflective and insightful is what I would say.
It is a total crapshoot and I agree with Dixie about the way people want to find the one thing or cracks that made this happen to this person, to reassure themselves that they are immune. I love logic but no, it doesn’t work out like a math equation.
If my son had a problem or issue or something horrible I would be there forever for him. But if he died there is no way I could live with that. There is nothing so wonderful about this world that would allow me to ignore that pain. I wonder if I wouldn’t just kill myself to stop the suffering. I think having another child to care for might be the one thing that stops a mother from doing that.
Some people seem to sail through motherhood but some don’t–it’s good to talk about how hard it is, because sometimes it really, really is.
You know my brother had these friends who were all very affluent and accomplished. They were all doctors or lawyers kids and they all went to Harvard and West Point and Big 10 universities — they just had these extremely privileged circumstances and knew they were going to inherit more than they even earned in their lifetimes — that neither I nor my brother had.
He did a lot better with hanging out with them than I did. I couldn’t stand the way they acted but more than that I couldn’t *understand* the way they acted, so naive with this massive sense of entitlement and inability to see that it wasn’t an indication that you were subhuman if you didn’t get into an Ivy League School. Lots of people, you might find yourself explaining, do not have Yale on the table when they’re kids, see..
But then later stuff started to happen. This one kid had trouble getting a job with his fancy degree and had to change out of his cute shoes and work construction. And I wasn’t…happy about it but I thought, you know, see…you weren’t born better than other people — this is life, how you handle it is what makes you a person. Then later, this couple from that group — very wealthy with family money – had a baby who was born with severe, insurmountable congenital disabilities. They had the money to send him to a place where he would get cared for, but they did not do that, they spent the money on special cars and chairs and…whatever he needed, because they said that this was their kid and *they had the money* to take care of him, so they were going to spend as much time with him in his life as they could.
So. You know, to me these people are suddenly way of the league of their self-absorbed idiot friends according to the way I see things. Stone cold respect. My opinion changed in nine tenths of a second.
Now a lot of these other women spent their lives being professionally blessed and started to get little nips and tucks everywhere and then a couple years ago they all started streaming into Russia and Asia looking for babies to buy, because their lives “just weren’t complete.”
I know they all looked down on me so I looked right back down on them. I have the Neptune thing and groups of chicks tend to make me the outsider they talk about; not that I was an insider, I was born without much natural luck or beauty. But…you know, they’re all 40 years old still thinking the thing the whole world was arranging itself for was for their lives to be “complete.”
Anyway now they’re all losing their jobs and getting downsized, and I’ve wondered often if these women look at their Asian babies and think something got messed up somewhere. I don’t exactly wish anybody ill…not exactly, but if you spend a lifetime in the vicinity of these people you start to look at it as a tiny personal victory for your battered worldview when they realize they might be entitled to less than they thought, and suffering is not some contagious disease they might escape if they keep the riffraff out and stick close together.
@Stellium in Taurus – sorry, I didn’t catch your comment. You made me tear up, thank you for acknowledging my Aunt. She passed in 2004, so my hope is she and David are together again, Mother and Son.
I forgot to add that I’m so glad your daughter is with you and hope you both are doing well in your relationship together.
jinjan, no, my daughter does not live here.
I am sorry but I am done discussing this, probably forever.
Good night.
Elsa – I am so very sorry for not clarifying, I meant that comment for Stellium in Taurus and her daughter, but forgot to add her name. 🙁
I always try to be very respectful of your boundaries and know that’s definitely one of them. My apologies for the confusion.
jinjan, thanks for clarifying. I know you are very respectful and I appreciate that about you very much.
You betcha. I appreciate you, your blog, and the kindred spirits who visit. 🙂
I lost my son Danny on July 1, 2008 to an overdose. He was 22. In dedication to him I formed The Prayer Registry for parents who have lost children.
Please see my website and read about The Prayer Registry. This free website service is dedicated to all of the families who have lost children, whatever age that child was when they passed. This site registers the anniversary day of our children’s crossing. The members of this online community,the Prayer Team, have the opportunity to honor their child’s legacy, connect with other bereaved parents, and participate in world-wide group prayer for every registered loved one on the anniversary day of their passing.
There is no charge for this service; it is my sincere hope that every bereaved parent who registers a child will join the Prayer Team and be a source of prayer for all of the children on the other side. Each time another child is registered, the Prayer Team grows larger and stronger.
Please email Sheri at theprayerregistry@gmail.com to register your loved one on The Prayer Registry. I need only your child’s full name along with the date that he or she passed to insure that your child receives prayer every year going forward on the anniversary day of his or her passing. Your child’s name will be published on The Prayer Registry calendar and I will upload comments, biographies, or any other information you want to share about your child with our community of bereaved parents. Once registered, you will be a member of the Prayer Team and will receive Prayer Registry reminders one week and one day before the anniversary day of one of our kids.
Please feel free to email any questions, concerns or feelings that you would like to share. My door is always open. I hope that this site provides some small measure of balm for the wounds of loss. From one bereaved parent to another, I welcome you to my site and offer my support.
This is one club that none of us would join by choice, but since we find ourselves in this unthinkable place, we stand stronger when we stand side by side.
Going through this now with my oldest. It has ripped my heart out. ?