What My Heart Needed To Hear
Currently, we are living off grid and boondocking in the desert of Quartzsite, Arizona. I was recently talking with one of my friends about birthdays and how their mom used to call them every year for theirs. Sadly their mom passed away in 2020 and the voicemails from her are what she has left.
She shared the voicemails with me and we all listened together. Her Mom’s voice was so joyful, so happy, and immensely grateful for her daughter. I sat in this warm energy of genuine love and it felt so so good. Like fresh baked apple pie good or similar to your nose pressed on an old screen door taking in the fresh smell of rain good. It was in that moment, my heart smiled.
My daughter Molly and I left them with the birthday cake she had baked for them and headed back home.
In my pajamas, I was sitting in my bunk gazing out the large bedside window, up at the rising bright full moon. All of a sudden, tears came pouring down my face, my partner was startled and asked what was going on.
I had this immense amount of sadness come over me in that moment.
My mother hasn’t wished me a happy birthday since I was 19 years old and that isn’t because she’s passed away. Her and my dad disowned me shortly after that birthday and haven’t been in my life since.
My mom was always a narcissist, but became an alcoholic not long after my brother was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
I allowed my self to sit in the sadness for a moment because my sadness needs to feel valid that the Mother experience I got was very traumatic to me. It was then I realized this sad feeling just wanted to feel seen, valid, and heard to be released.
My parents were doing the best they could with what was shown to them growing up through life AND their abusive parenting gave me a lot of trauma I’ve had to heal on my own.
That’s the duality of life. Both realities exist and both deserve to be seen, valid, and heard; even my parents. Each of our realities aren’t good or bad, right or wrong, or one better than the other. They just are, until we make our next choice.
In that moment of reflection, I wanted my next choice to be full of gratitude.
When I read the famous quote from Maya Angelou “do the best you can until you know better. When you know better, you do better”, it resonated with my soul and stuck with me. I truly find it amazing what I learn from the wisdoms others share and where it leads my life to grow.
In choosing to be grateful, I thought back to earlier in the evening where I was listening to those very special words from my friend’s mother.
No, I haven’t been able to feel that from my own mother, but tonight I got to feel it from a very special mother and that put a smile in my soul.
I then became grateful my friend has these very special moments from their mom. I bet they feel just so full of joy each year when they get to listen to them. That thought of the little moment my friend receives such big happiness each year, gave me an immense amount of happiness for them too.
While, it is sad that I don’t have my mother in my life by choice, I am surrounded by so many people on earth and beyond, that love me so very much; some I’ll never get to physically meet. My mom doesn’t have to love me in order for me to receive the love of a Mom. A mother’s love is everywhere if we simply open our hearts to seeing it.
I began to think of my own daughter Molly and what it feels like to be a daughter of a mom who didn’t have a good example of what a mother was. A Question began to swirl in my conscious mind… “how much of my trauma have I projected onto her?”
Truth be told? Probably quite a bit.
Five years ago when I moved into a bus and started individual therapy, I began to consciously walk my healing journey.
The first thing I felt I needed to choose better on? Yelling.
My mother was a yeller and if she got triggered, it always presented as anger. She would get so enraged and yell at me for hours on end, while I sat sobbing at the kitchen table. I swore I’d never do that to my children and guess what?
I did.
The yelling was much more mild and I never berated them for hours, but I did get triggered and the trigger presented in anger. It was a quick flare up in the form of “Are you kidding me?!” Or “I can’t believe you did this!!” over a glass of spilled milk that I now had to clean.
It was late 2016 when an animated movie from Disney called “Moana” came out. At this point, I had lost Ethan, our first son in a car accident in 2011. Our son Ben had turned six in August, Molly was nearly 4, and little Eli was coming up on two. The kids and I loved this movie so much, which meant it stayed on repeat.
The character I was drawn to the most was Moana’s Grandmother. She was gentle, she was very kind, yet also spunky. She had a wisdom about her that was sturdy while still being playful. Grandmother was everything I wanted to embody as part of my feminine side.
That question I asked in the present, had been answered.
Molly is the daughter of a Mom who got the opportunity to learn from the examples of many other feminine figures that helped shape the mother that she becomes.
Do we pass trauma onto our children from our own experiences? Absolutely we do. we can also heal that very same trauma through the relationships we curate with our children. By seeing, hearing, and validating our own children and the children around us, we are not only breaking generational trauma; we are healing our own inner child too.
People give us the seeds of love to help heal our own inner trauma. They help us raise ourselves and raise each other if we are open and allow our emotions to be our guide through our shadow, to heal our hurt and break free of the pain we have carried for far too long.
🫶jenn
P.S. healing is an inside job.
P.P.S. You already have everything you need inside of you to do it 💛