"You're not a mother's asshole"
-my grandmother.
These are the words from my grandmother’s mouth.
Displeased with my mother’s parenting. These are the words she chose.
This abhorrent vulgarism directed from a mother to a daughter.
‘You are not a mother’s asshole’.
Meaning ‘no part of you is motherly’. ‘No part of you is good at mothering’.
Ironic, isn’t it? My grandmother was clearly demonstrating her own inability to ‘mother’. To mother in ways which are nurturing, warm and ultimately supportive.
I imagine the sharpest sting of shame. Receiving such a deeply disrespectful remark from a figure who is
supposed to hold you with gentle hands and words. The pain immense.
The phrase tells a bigger story about how the family operated. How shame and pain were used as tools to change behaviour. But this is ineffective and even harmful. It creates a withering of the relationship and damage to the adult-child’s self-esteem and self-acceptance.
My mother wasn’t ‘inspired’ to be a better parent via this vulgar remark. She felt even less capable and less supported. Instead, she retreated deeply into a place where she felt the most capable, rewarded and accomplished.
Her career.
Here she was 'successful'. However, this 'drive to succeed' was also fuelled by an intense fear of failure.
As her daughter, I faded further and further into her background. I resorted to passively finding
connection, affection and nurturing in anyone who’d have me.
I felt desperately alone.
My mother couldn't connect with me, because her mother had never connected with her.
She had no example of a nourishing mother-daughter relationship.
She suffered.
And I suffered.
Without experiencing that warm, adoring acceptance of maternal love.
When the relationship between myself and my mother inevitably unravelled as this pattern steamrolled through our lives – I chose to change the pattern. Like my grandmother, my mother chose to remain the same. Unable or unwilling to see the harms she caused.
The pattern started to shift when I began to listen internally to what I truly needed and wanted (gentleness, respect & care) from the people I chose to surround myself with.
Bravely beginning to express how I really felt. I began saying ‘no’ to the people who refused to meet me with the basics.
If this dynamic feels familiar. Know you are not alone, and you deserve so much better.
Nicole.