Forgiveness

August 31, 2008 by mamabop

I hadn’t even finished the first paragraph of Kim Spencer’s “Hanging in My Closet” before I knew this was the essay I was going to be blogging about. My entire preteen-to-teen existence, one long therapy session that it was, flashed before my eyes, and I finally had the breakthrough that my therapists had been working toward all those years.

For me it began at the ripe young age of 12. All of my childhood anger towards my mother came to a boiling point when she confessed her affair to my dad and promptly divorced him. Being the independent oldest child that I was, I packed my bags and moved out with him. And that’s how it all began. Four years of Thursdays wasted in my opinion, with one counseling session after another.

The divorce I got over within the first year. Then there was my new stepdad, my developing drug problem, and the fact that I was a 15-year-old high school dropout living in my own studio apartment and basically doing whatever I pleased. I was the case study all seven of my therapists had always dreamed of.

I generally glared out the window during those sessions and refused to speak as the therapist stared helplessly at me and my mom sobbed. I hated her. She was so weak. All she wanted was pity; for someone to tell her it wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t going to get that from me.

And so it went. Finally, after I didn’t show up for Christmas one year, she gave up on counseling, and we didn’t speak for a full year. Basically parentless, I continued down my path, doing whatever I felt like and still blaming my mom for the way my crappy life had turned out.

It wasn’t until I reached adulthood that I started to straighten out my life, sobering up and enrolling in the local community college. I slowly began talking to my mom again, and by pushing all the pain out of our minds, although not our hearts, we patched things up.

Now I am a young mom myself. I have a wonderful husband and little girl who means everything to me and my mom is a loving and enthusiastic grandma. Although I haven’t yet been through many struggles of parenthood with my 10-month old, I know they are coming. My mom still cries sometimes, not because of what I’ve done or said, but because she is a woman, she has emotions, and because she lives and breathes. And now I love her for it. Because I cry too, for my daughter who I love so much and who will one day, I’m sure of it, break my heart, and for my mom, because once I broke hers.

There have been times when I’ve sat wondering what it was that kept my mom insisting on those counseling sessions all those years, getting nowhere. Why she never gave up on me and why she took me back without even a lecture when I finally picked up the phone and brought her back into my life. Now I know. She, too, had a Wonder Woman suit. All of us moms do. We wear it because we love our children, because they are part of us and no matter how badly they crush our hearts, we will always be here for them when they come back home.

Once I thought my mother was weak, but I was wrong. Every decision we make as moms takes strength. Sometimes the hardest one of all is the decision to let our children choose their own paths, and trust that we have instilled them with the wisdom to choose the right one.