The Sting Of Mothers Day 2024

Yesterday was Mothers Day, one of my favourite days of the year. Not because I’m a Mummy, but because it was always an opportunity for me to show my Mum just how much I loved her. I am my happiest when I am in service to others, so organising and prepping for a day to celebrate the most important person in my life was a deep and humbling pleasure. And you know I’m a pleasure seeker, so any celebration, I’m all in!

However this year was the very first year that I didn’t get to celebrate my Mum the way I enjoyed, and what really hurt is that I knew this would not be the last.

Just before my 47th birthday last year December, my Mum chose to disown me, and funnily enough I didn’t feel that this was going to feel like such a big deal, but it’s amazing how much you feel that you need your Mum’s love, even at this age. This was a choice she felt she didn’t really have any other option to do. You see, she believes I am a Witch and through her beliefs to associate with anyone like me, is a sin. She didn’t discuss it with me, she didn’t ask whether this was the case, she just cut me off. The day before we were sharing jokes, the next day, I was blocked. And my goodness, it hurt like nothing else.

My Mum and I were always the best of friends. She was always an incredibly logical person, I could depend on her to always speak her truth to me even if I didn’t want to hear it. We used to go clubbing together for years, when she was finally brave enough to leave my father and started to reclaim the life she wasn’t allowed to live. We supported each-other through everything. But now here she was cutting me off because of her fear that God will not accept her in the Kingdom of Heaven if she has anything to do with me and that unfortunately is a price she is not prepared to pay.

If you don’t know much about me, I’ll let you in on a little something. I was brought up in a cult. As I grew up, I knew no different and even now I struggle to see it as a cult because I spent so many years brainwashed, I’m now working on un-conditioning my brain to what is a “normal” way of life. I’ve had to do a lot of unlearning from what I was taught, was how life should be, how it should be lived, how I should think and behave as a young girl to a woman. The unlearned behaviours I now embrace, are totally against what my mother believes. So, God spoke to her and told her to cut me and my family off, yes, her grandkids too!

I’m not going to justify my “Witch” status because it needs no justification. This is an assumed label my Mum has placed on me, and to be fair, I’ve been called worse 🤣 However it has changed everything.

It’s amazing how so much love, honour, respect, connection and history had been painted black because of a perception.

So, this Mothers Day, because I was deeply dreading my favourite day, I wanted to gift myself a special present. I felt it would be a kindness to myself to forgive my Mum for the pain that I was feeling as I’m aware that I may never experience resolution with her due to her beliefs, and I understand that as she has been so indoctrinated into her faith and brainwashed by her beliefs for over 60 years that it would take a true miracle for her to see past it. It seemed so apparent to me when I meditated on it that this was the path to follow. However, as I sat and meditated more over the preceding days, I realised that it wasn’t something I could do as yet.

There was still too much to process, so much to feel and experience before I could fully let go of the pain. I noticed that I was trying to rush the process so that I could stop feeling the hurt, but some things just have to take the time that they take. We all know that when you rush things, they rarely get completed to a decent standard.

Instead, I chose to just sit in it, sit in the pain, sit in the sadness, have a cry until I couldn’t cry anymore. I felt all the feels, all the feels and they felt overwhelming and then all of a sudden, it was over. I got up out of my bed, had a shake a full body shake like a dog after a bath, just releasing any left over stuck emotions and now i know I’m ready for the next stage.

Before this, I was unable to separate the wonderful mother she had always been to me from the woman that she has become now. I realise that all that’s changed with my mum, is her beliefs have been over processed and she is now living from a place of fear over faith, which must feel really scary. I am the only person she has chosen to walk away from in our family and I think that’s why it hurt so much, but she also  no longer belongs to a church community because her views are so extreme she’s been excommunicated from so many congregations. So, her life is very isolated and she’s become used to that. Right now, in her mind, I am the only one standing in the way of her salvation, and she’s not going to give that up for me.

But I enjoyed 46 years of being brought up by the most loving wonderful mother, she was my friend, my confidant, my advisor. She was everything to me, but nothing lasts forever, and I am finally able to accept that.

I thought forgiveness was the golden gate back to my comfort, but there were a few doors I had to go through first, I had to experience the sadness, the pain, the disappointment, the rejection, the grief and loss, I also had to fully accept and embrace every part of me that she doesn’t agree with. Which all enabled me to see that this was not a reflection on me, but a projection onto me. Now I find myself enveloped in gratitude for everything she represented, the lessons imparted, and the love shared. Forgiveness appears to be the concluding phase, not just for myself, my children (who'm i'm sure will have their own process to complete) and the lingering sadness of loss, but for my Mum’s choices that have shaped my existence. However, without fully immersing in each stage of this process, any act of forgiveness wouldn’t be authentic.