A Letter to My Mother

I am willing to forgive.

Author’s Note: This letter was written from the prompt: “Imagine a conversation with your mother’s younger self, offering her the compassion and understanding she might not have received. Then visualize freeing yourself from the lessons she passed down.”

I am so sorry that you were born into that family. I am sorry that you had no choice to become who you became. You were a little girl forced to be the golden child, to keep the family together, to keep the family secrets. You had no choice other than to protect yourself in the way that you best knew how. You were given an impossible choice- to protect me or to protect your other children. You didn’t know me yet but you knew them and you had to make a choice so you gave me up. You had to protect yourself from loving me to protect your heart from being broken. I can see that now.

I have been so blinded by my anger at what you did that I had no space for compassion for who you are. I couldn’t see the sad little girl who was trying her best to make everything ok for her family. That was the role you passed down to me as well.

I miss my mom. I miss the mom I should have had. I grieve for the mother’s love that I didn’t get. You weren’t the shoulder to cry on or the supportive voice. There are a few times I felt supported, during my divorce mainly, after I moved to California. Other than that, I still don’t know what was real.

I have written you off as totally wrong, as completely “bad” because you did not love me the way I needed to be loved. But I can see you as a human now, you did the best you could with what you had. You had to become separated from yourself in order to survive. You did what you could to get by.

I can see now that it wasn’t personal to me. You didn’t even know me at the beginning. You had to make a choice before I was even born.

I cried now thinking about what a bad cook you were. Not terrible, just not good. There were things you made that tasted good, but it was hard for you to learn new things, and a lot of your recipes were leftover from the 70’s. You had your signature dishes but you mainly had old standbys that I thought were good but as an adult I realized were dry or overcooked. I’ve inherited your trait of forgetting things on the stove and burning the pot and leaving tea in the microwave.

I pictured you in your condo, alone without my dad now, making your sad little meals and humming to yourself, the way you did to calm your busy mind. You would go to another place when you were humming and it was a way to make everything ok. I was staring out my window at my incredible view in Barcelona and thinking about this big, wonderful life I have created for myself and I felt bad that you never were able to. You told me once how you admired my ability to travel and navigate my way around new cities because you would never be able to do that. I believe that you did admire a lot of things about me that you were never able to do. You always told me I was a very kind person.

I didn’t think I’d be able to ever talk to you again, but now I’m not so sure. I just wanted the nightmares to stop, and lately I’ve been working on forgiveness. My anger was my shield, protecting me from the sadness, but I don’t need those defenses anymore. I can put down my sword and react from love now. I can see you as a little girl, scared and hurt and alone and trying to survive in a violent world. Your mother was a cruel person and your father was a drunk rageaholic. That had to have been extremely difficult to live with. No wonder you wanted to get married so young.

I wish I could go back in time and give you love. I wish I could speak to the child within you and tell her she is a perfect soul and she is loved. She doesn’t have to answer hate with hate. She has already been forgiven.

I don’t want to carry this anger with me anymore. I want to tell you that I forgive you and I love you. I don’t know if I can see you again because I need to not have those nightmares anymore. But I am now releasing my hate and my blame with love. A few days ago I prayed to have the willingness to forgive. And now I have.

I woke up this morning feeling exhausted. It took me three hours to even feel like leaving the house. I felt so much pent-up energy and I couldn’t concentrate during my meditation. Before I started writing, I burst into tears, and I have been crying throughout this. But as I cry, I am feeling my energy be cleansed. I am crying through the grief. And as my tears fall, I am feeling lighter. I am seeing a time, maybe even today, when these things won’t feel so heavy. I can visualize a time when my burdens feel lighter, almost like they are no longer burdens. I can feel the sky growing lighter and my spirit soaring higher.

I release a big exhale to the heavens, and I let go.