I wrote a post yesterday about how I experience Mother’s Day as someone who has a difficult relationship with my mother. The truth is, as I scroll through social media, it is full of people who experience the same kinds of difficulties. Borderline Personality Disorder does not mean that you HAVE to have experienced trauma or grew up in that kind of environment but for many of us that is the case. Many of us grew up in homes with alcoholic parents/mothers or an enabling mother to some kind of violence from our fathers. Some of us had mothers that were the perpetrators of such abuse. Some of us were emotionally neglected by our mothers or even physically abandoned by them.
I venture to say that persons whose mothers are alive and even in their lives but struggle with having a healthy and loving relationship with them have it very hard. People tend to give grace, empathy and understanding to those whose mothers have passed but for us whose mother hasn’t they think we just need to be grateful to have a mother, we need to be grateful to the woman who hurt or harmed us 10 ways to Sunday. I dare say that it is more difficult for us, looking in your mother’s face and knowing that you will never receive the love and unconditional regard that is innate in most mother/child relationships. I’ve even been told that I should be grateful for those hardships because it made me who I am, grateful – in the least – that she brought me into this world. It’s difficult to be grateful for being brought into the world when you spend a significant amount of time dreaming about and even attempting to get out of it because of the pain you endure by the hands of the very person that gave you the gift. As a person that has been sexually assulted, telling me to be grateful to my rapist for teaching me how to be more vigilant is beyond a sucker punch. No one would dare say that (with the exception of a few Assholes). However, we think to say that about our mothers. Our mothers are just as much of a perpetrator, why tell me Happy Mother’s Day? Why expect me to celebrate that?
I urge you to take a read and see how many of us really feel about mother’s day. Keep in mind that this is not to say that we don’t appreciate our mothers, or explaining why we shouldn’t forgive them or telling anyone not to give a gift. This read is simply about seeing it from a different perspective and hopefully, helping others to learn to hold space for our pain and grief on Mother’s Day. If nothing else, I hope that reading this blog helps helps survivors to feel seen and helps others to learn to hold space.