So many women talk about their relationships with their mothersno matter how old they are. For some, their mother, from whom they have supposedly separated long ago, still occupies a central place in the psyche. Shes too close, shes too much. She has advice, is nosy, and interferes. The daughter wants time away, she wants boundaries, and fights for her separation from her mother.
For others, the mother still occupies the psyche, but with a wrenching kind of longinga mother that is biological and even sometimes present, but also a mother who is so self-involved as to be emotionally absent, or literally out of the picture. This kind of mother takes up space and energy as a nagging, missing piece, a ghost. Her image hovers, her memory, or perhaps a dream of how it could have been, should have been, but never is.
Which kind of mother do you have?
My mother was a dream. I realize now, 10 years after her death, that I was always trying to get the dream to come trueto have her be warm and huggy, to have her want to know me, to visit me in my house, to know my children. To know me. It never happened. It left a yearning that I played out with men, it left a hole...