Remember that in the meditative tradition, we are taught to have the kind of compassion for all beings that a mother has for her only child. We are also taught to regard all beings as mother.Becoming a mother makes you the mother of all children. From now on each wounded, abandoned, frightened child is yours. You live in the suffering mothers of every race and creed and weep with them. You long to comfort all who are desolate.
Let us ponder these things today.
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Oh Ellie...I wish this were the case for all people, but some of us have been pretty deeply wounded by our mothers and some of the decisions our mothers have made that have directly affected our lives. So for some, mother does not necessarily stand for comfort (as Kate Bush put it in one of her songs). So just as some churches, etc, have healing liturgies just prior to Christmas because they know that for many, the holidays are very difficult to get through, I wish the same could be said for Mother's Day or Father's Day, because some of us might need it. We need to be heard and healed too. :)
ReplyDeleteI completely get it, Tracie. My relationship with my own mother (who died in 2002) was deeply troubled and she went for years at a time refusing to speak to me. (Her choice - not mine.) I spent years and untold thousands of dollars in therapy learning to process it all and heal.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm saying with this post is that all of us can learn to offer this kind of mothering ourselves - whether we had good relationships with our own mothers or not and that the meditative tradition helps.
I've learned a lot about mothering from my animals. (I'll say more about this later. I have a client arriving right now!)