Meeting Persephone

I've just recently added another number to my age. I'm still alive and that's a good thing. But another birthday always leads me to think about where I am at this stage in my life. I've seldom achieved (set a goal and completed it) what I wanted to, but often I am progressing in some way so I give myself points for that anyway.

This year I decided to take on a big one. I've been estranged from my mother for a long time - many years. I won't go into the history of it because I'm trying to move beyond that, but suffice it to say that it has been ugly and communication has been at a minimum for many many years. This year I worked very hard to figure some things out and that is what I'm going to write about now.

As I've stated (ad nauseum) in previous entries, I've studied religions of many shapes in sizes searching for a fit for myself. I was brought to Paganism by a wind at my back gently propelling me toward a home I needed. In this home I found mother images in abundance - not just the father image of the numerous patriarchal paths in the world. I found mothers that defended their children, challenged them, nurtured and taught them. I found a large number of Goddesses who did not resemble my own mother at all. A plethora of revered women who did what was right and the right result came about because of it. In some ways, finding the Goddesses of Paganism drove me farther from reconciling with my mother because I found too many female representatives doing better than she had and knew that if she'd bothered to try just half as hard with me, I'd have had a much different life. But on the other side of things, I was left with a seed of thought that nagged me for quite some time....

I wondered how I could turn so open heartedly toward this representation of women and the feminine within Paganism but still found it easy to ignore my mother and demonize her own behaviors so unforgivably. These symbols of the Goddesses and women with their myths and legends are not readily received nor appreciated in larger society. They are rugged and strong, not insipid and servile. I regarded my own position toward my mother with growing disdain and really began to search for the answers.

Some of those answers came unexpectedly and unwittingly from my daughter. I have truly (and in some ways, stupidly) devoted my life to being the very best mother I could be. I did everything for her that my own mother did not do and did for her those things I wished my mother would have done. And then, at the age of 14, my own daughter became someone I recognized too well - she became more like me than she'd been in all those years before. Despite my best efforts, all of the honesty and laborious consideration of consequences for every detail of everything in her life, she still managed to become who she was going to be. For an instant I felt that it was all a horrible waste of my efforts, but I'm a mother and we tend not to give up, fortunately.

That glimpse of the convergence of past, present, and future, though, was a blast between my eyes. It took that defiance by my own daughter (not that there hadn't been some before) for me to wake up to a reality that I'd denied for her entire life. There is no such thing as a perfect parent and there is no perfect way to raise a child. We do not get a handbook at their birth and our responses are not always correct even if we thought we had a fool-proof script and formula for defeating those flaws of our own parents.

That doesn't mean that there weren't serious flaws in the way I was raised and the environment I was raised in. There were. But what I did have to accept once my own child began down a path I thought I'd safe-guarded against, was that she is who she is - sometimes because of me but just as often despite me. She is who she is and she makes me proud and frustrated and most importantly, she made me forgiving.

I learned to forgive my mother because whether she tried to be a perfect parent or not, I was who I was. There were circumstances beyond her control that formed me and while she may not have responded to them as I think she should have, they were not her doing. I learned to give her the benefit of the doubt that she had done the best she could do just like I'd done the best I could do. Even if I think I might have tried harder than she did as a parent, I have certainly had my shortcomings and have come nowhere near to perfection. How can I hold someone else to some unachievable ideal when I have not managed that myself and never would?

I'd heard the cliche` "would you rather be right or happy?" more times than I can remember. For a very long time I thought I was happy in my rightness regarding my relationship (or lack thereof) with my mother. I was just fine having no relationship with her though I did fear my daughter emulating my position later on in life thinking it was okay to shed family members.

Fortunately my epiphany has assisted a great deal in how I'm handling things now. While "honor thy mother and thy father" didn't inspire me to resolve the tumultuous nature of my relationship with my mother, finding the Goddesses and pride in being female, made it a prerequisite in going forward on my path.

And so, on my birthday, my mother called. She doesn't always call because she never knows which personality of mine she'll encounter - whether I'll be receptive to conversation or confrontational and defensive. I'd decided beforehand that if she called, I would be quiet and pleasant. That call turned into a 4 hour conversation that resulted in me apolgizing to her for cutting her off and out of my life off and on for the past 14 years. I didn't expect to apologize to her and for years thought that I needed an apology from her to go forward. It turned out that I somehow resolved in the short time between the beginning of the conversation and my apology that I did not have some pre-determined idea of how she needed to respond and that I was doing what I needed to do with no preconceived idea of how it would go.

It was a difficult day. I was left completely zapped of all energy but oddly at peace. I don't know what will happen now and whether or not we'll be able to have a relationship moving forward, but if nothing else I have honored the Goddess and legendary women of the past by honoring the woman who had so much influence in my life by giving me life.