Continued:

It’s a shift from the mindset of having had a bad mother to having had no mother. The first mindset has been about complaining about the bad mother, being stuck in a war with her, war for her love; the second does not consist of complaining, of fighting, of resisting reality.

It’s about redefining a mother, from that of a person to that of a quality of connection. This is a way, way more accurate definition of a mother.

Can’t really move on from the first mindset, can move on from the second. Let it sink into me. It’s not that I had a bad mother (I had a bad person to whom I was born), it’s that I had no mother.

And I never will have a mother. This means I can let go of the bad person, the one I was born to.

The absence of a mother, that is, of a connection, has led to a disconnected, disassociated life. Without knowing it, I have longed for that person for decades of adulthood, waiting for her to become a mother, somehow. Trying to earn her approval, even by the way I think, as if she can read my thinking, loyal to her still in how I think, in how I feel.

Goodbye, the person to whom I was born.

anita