My Mother

Alice Walker asks women in her essay, "In Search of Our Mother's Gardens" to think back through our mothers in history.  Virigina Woolf also states a similar claim that women need to search back through other women to find our true history.  Given that I am basically trapped with my mother for the next week (on "vacation"), I have taken some time today to reflect on this.

My mother came from a household that was run independently.  Her own mother did not raise her per se, as she always locked herself in her room and never really came out.  Being the eldest daughter in a family of 8, she took it upon herself to raise her younger siblings.  My mom's father was an abusive alcoholic who was never around.  They were hovering around the poverty line and my mom took the first chance she could to escape from it all.  She finished college part-time while working as a registered nurse.  Then she married my father, who is a doctor, and hasn't worked a day since my sister was adopted.

Knowing her background, I can understand where we would butt heads.  I am an independent, self-reliant young woman who enjoys privacy.  She is a group-centered, family-oriented, social and public person.  We rarely have anything in common.  She likes to talk, I am extremely quiet.  She always has to be around someone, I'd prefer to be alone.  She's extremely religious and I am atheist.

I hate to say it, but my mother had made me this way.  Every single thing she has done to change me has been met with adverse reaction.  But, I understand her need to be a controlling mother.  Her own mother didn't care about her and locked herself away.  Because I also enjoy privacy and being alone, she freaks out whenever I start acting similar to her mother.  This is why we can never get along.  I am too much like her mother and she vowed to never be her mother.  Seeing me acting private, disconnected and quiet, she sees everything that she never wanted to be.  I can probably assume that she thinks that she failed as a mother, because I am turning into hers.

There is nothing wrong with the way that I am.  This is just how I have developed.  If my mother didn't have such a difficult life, there probably wouldn't be anything wrong with her either.  But the anger, the defensiveness and the hate she feels for her upbringing falls upon us, and I am held up to expectations that given my personality I will never achieve.  She doesn't know how to communicate and as a result I didn't learn how to communicate.  She didn't know how to express her anger properly and as a result I didn't either.  Looking back at myself through my mother, I realize just what went wrong for the two of us.

It wasn't until college (and being away from my family) that I learned that I didn't have to become like my mother, and that I don't have to put up with her nonsense.  I learned how to communicate and how to express my anger in appropriate ways.  It took college to have me "un-learn" being my mother.  But, I can still learn about my history through my mother, and learn not to repeat it.

I also think my mother did listen to Walker's advice as well, even though she has never read the essay.  By seeing her mother and vowing to never become her she looked at her history through her mother.  I would completely agree with my mom that she is nothing like her mother.  In a way I am continuing the tradition in this sense, and I hope that by learning and looking through my mother that I can not repeat what has been done.

I know that not everyone has this experience with their mothers, and there is nothing wrong with my experience in comparison to another's.  This is because they don't compare.  Every single woman has a very different experience through her mother, and those experiences impact the next generation and so on.  We cannot compare our familial relationships with another's, because we all come from different backgrounds and are affected differently by it.  This might be something interesting for me to remember if I end up working with families.

Anyway, that's enough reflection on my mother for now.  This vacation is exhausting, and it hasn't even been a two days yet!  I've got a whole week to go...