About mother love & the desire for it

[msagara]

No child sees their mother as a person. They see their mother as a role. We’re not women, not people with significant (or insignificant) aspirations to our children: we’re their mothers.

Comments

[msagara]

The thing is, I have some sympathy for the pain - but it‘s mitigated because people who are in that kind of pain lash out like toddlers can. When toddlers explode, they really don’t have a sense of consequence or a sense of proportion. They are hurt. They frequently feel that the world has ended. They blame their parents because clearly their parents are at the heart of that world. But - we’re parents. We’re used to being the death of fun when its necessary, and we know it will pass.

But when an ostensible adult has these reactions, it doesn’t pass, and there’s no one who stands as a gate between them and the rest of the world until they calm down.

And I don’t honestly understand when or where the transition between the toddler state and the adult state - which we all struggle with - occurs. If I could see the mechanism clearly, I could write about how it does change. But even my oldest, who thinks a lot about things like this, can’t clearly see the demarcation between the earlier state and the current one.

And I’m over fifty, and I don’t clearly, viscerally, remember how, either. I don’t remember feeling entitled to be loved in this fashion - and I know that I, like anyone alive, must have felt it, because it really does seem to be a natural part of the human condition.

[browngirl]

*nod* I'm sorry my comments are such brief uncritical agreement, but well, I agree with your thoughts and emotions, your confusions and conclusions, and the whole situation has me so heartsick I can barely string words together anyway.