Not Too Much on My Mama

My generation is arriving at the age of independence and reflection backed by therapists, the knowledge bank of the internet and AI, and the digital support group that is social media. Many (myself included) are discovering a need for healing. I know it’s a writing faux pas to tell you what Merriam-Webster is chattin’ about, but a little clarity on our understanding of healing is necessary for you to hear my heart. When you hear the word healing, you may accept Merriam-Webster’s definitions: “alleviating a person’s distress or anguish” or “correcting or putting right an undesirable situation.” Call me sensitive, but there’s a focus on the negative in those definitions that adds to my mind’s habitual bent toward harping on the past. The mindset I’m working so hard to establish is more aligned with “the process of making or becoming sound or healthy again.” This Google find resonates with me because it focuses on the process and the health I’m making my new home. Another big part of why the nuances in the definitions of healing matter so much to me, and to what is happening as my generation steps into this unprecedented era of therapeutic enlightenment, is my desire to love and honor God, love and accept myself, and love and respect those I’m connected and committed to in life and with each post. This go-round, the person I’m talking about is my mama. 

I regularly ask my mom, who did her best and in many ways went above and beyond raising me, what she thinks of my blog posts. She is honest about how weird it is to hear about, witness, and actively participate in my “healing” journey. Knowing her perfectionistic nature, I’d bet my bottom dollar that her definition of healing is aligned more to Merriam-Webster’s than Google’s. Though incredibly supportive, she’s confused about what her little princess is healing from. Despite not entirely understanding, my mother has done her best to rise to the occasion of making space for my healing journey no matter how challenging, tense, frustrating, and chaotic it can be. She has done so while battling life threatening illness, healing herself, being a wife, a mom, a daughter, and a CEO. 

Her question makes sense seeing that in my childhood, all my physical needs were met. I’m not even gonna hold y’all; your girl grew up pretty spoiled. My single mom provided me with every material need and most of my tangible wants. She picked up after me and pretty much gave me anything I asked for. Acts of service is one of her love languages so she did, did, did. I knew in childhood, and still know to this day, that my mom would move mountains for my happiness and wellness. She openly refers to me as her favorite human and she calls me her pride and joy. To be fair, she also says that my brother is her pride and joy, but see the previous statement to verify that I am in fact the reigning princess of her heart. 💅🏾 The feeling was more than mutual. She was the queen of my world. You couldn’t (and largely still can’t) tell me nothin’ ’bout my mama. 

She was also human and alone trying to do the two person job of raising a child. In ignorance and I imagine exhaustion there were small but impactful actions that we’re now learning created an unintentional contradiction of her love and acceptance in my little girl heart. Squeezing my lips when I said anything out of line or that she didn’t like was intended to make me polite and appropriate, but it also taught me that honesty leads to trouble and made me a people pleaser to a fault. Withdrawing and implementing the silent treatment when she was upset, probably with the intention to spare me hurtful words, left me without guidance on how to express my own difficult emotions and determined to prevent those of others. I always knew I was deeply loved through her words and care, but my love languages were quality time and physical touch. She was warm and affectionate but there came an hour of every day when she just couldn’t be touched or talked to. Literally. Sometimes, this only child needed her mother during those times, too. 

I could sense the tension in my fellow millennials as you read about my mom’s confusion. Let’s all relax our shoulders, y’all. The past and present experiences a lot of us are grappling with due to our parents’ emotional short comings and the repercussions of them in our adult relationships are real. It’s painful. It’s unfair. I also think it reasonably escapes their understanding sometimes. I’m at a place where I can pause and try to see things from her perspective. But I admit, at first I was just angry. 

Thanks to time, space, therapy and prayer, I’m now rational enough to be grateful for my mom’s bewilderment around my need for healing from childhood wounds because I’ve grappled with it too. How can I be struggling with so many symptoms of dysfunction after what I also thought was a wonderful childhood? I’ve volleyed the gamut between ownership and blame. Others looked at my life and told me how blessed I was because I grew up in a two parent home (my mom married when I was 11) without being able to see my repressed pain and shame about not having both my own biological parents. Not sure I even saw it then, I joined them in labeling me ungrateful. My life was better than good on the outside looking in. I could see friends wrestling with abject poverty and homelessness, literally raising their younger siblings, and struggling through the rupture of divorce. In comparison, my life didn’t appear so bad. So I kind of feel where my mom is coming from. And yet, at 31, I am aching from things unseen and unspoken. I struggle to unearth the source as I grapple with the symptoms. Symptoms like cripplingly low self-esteem, chronic people pleasing, and an unfounded fear of failure that were somehow cultivated in my childhood. 

I told y’all from the jump that I wouldn’t be tying things into pretty bows. I don’t have all the answers, but what I do have is a resolve to go against what feels like the consensus to condemn parents who were trying their very best on their first time at this whirlwind that is child rearing. I had a season of blame and finger pointing and it got me nowhere. So now, I’m focusing my energy on taking actions in the present that I can control and untangling myself from the weeds of the past that are trying to choke out the blooms of this season.

TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read) version: I LOVE LOVE my mama. I’m grateful for her and to her. I know she made mistakes. She was and is just a girl and I’m learning to give her grace the same way I’m learning to give it to myself. When you read hard things about my childhood, keep your thoughts polite because not too much on my mama. I hope for those whose hearts are hardened (understandably so) by their childhood experience that God would lead you to a place that is peaceful and progressive for you.