the freedom and wholeness in loving me

A couple of weeks ago I was really sick with a terrible virus which lasted for 8 days.  Just before I came down with it, I had dental surgery and it took me 3 days to recover from that and it felt like I had been sick “forever”.  Have you seen the commercial for cough medicine when the guy is sick in bed and starts calling his wife?  He moans “Pam….. Pam….. can you call my mom?”  In response, she throws a bottle of NyQuil at him.  In the next shot he is shown sleeping like a 200 pound baby. It’s really quite comical and it got me thinking about that expression “I want my Mommy”… That expression (often used in jest) is a popular one for adults who are sick or in pain.  Mommy’s are “supposed to be” or typically believed to be a source of comfort.  That was not the case for me. Sometimes I don’t have the words to express my frustration with being sick.  I wonder if it because I can’t say “I want my Mommy” and even the thought of that sentence just bothers me.

For many years now that phrase “I want my mommy” has been on the tip of my tongue many times, but I never could say it because it was so false.  Even thinking “I want my mommy” just because of the popularity of the expression, feels like a lie to me. Wanting “my mommy” was not going to help me any; I already knew that!  I want “a mommy” or “I wish I HAD a mommy” may have been closer to the truth, but I didn’t know how to express those thoughts.

Sometimes I feel like I got totally ripped off in

I was 13 years old the first time I woke up hearing my mother having sex. My parents had been split up for a few months; I had never heard my parents having sex. By the sounds of it, I thought that the man my mother had in her bedroom with her was trying to kill her. And he could have been! How would anyone know? None of us knew him.

I felt frozen in my bed, terrified about what I was hearing and not knowing what to do about it.  Should I get a large object and go in there and club him over the head? Should I call the police? My frozen immobility and indecisiveness was making me feel guilty and then suddenly, those horrifying sounds stopped.  I heard normal murmuring sounds of conversation.  I must have gone back to sleep then.  Eventually, I figured out that what was going on in her bedroom was not murder or physical violence.

My toxic mother didn’t want to be a single mother. That was her answer to everything. It was even her justification for having very loud sex with men while three children slept in rooms very close by.

One of my brothers made comments about her night-time noise making sessions; she would respond “I never asked to be a single mother”.  I was left to assume the translation for that statement.  And I translated it according to my belief system.  My mother deserves to be happy. Men make her happy. I have no right to interfere with her happiness. I have no right to feel uncomfortable about

the wrong gift

The Ghost of Dysfunctional Christmas Past ~ Part 2

How come I could NEVER find the right gift for my Mother? I never seemed to be able to make her happy. My Christmas gifts  as well as any other gifts I found for her never had the desired effect one wants when giving a gift to someone.

There was always this disappointment she showed when she opened a gift from me. Her face would fall. She would look uncomfortable. She wouldn’t say much about whatever I had chosen for her. I agonized over what I would get her, and then I worried about it until the day I gave it to her. I dreaded her reaction. I guess I was hoping that her face would light up. I was hoping for approval.

I got so that I HATED thinking about what she might like for a gift and what I should get her. There was so much anxiety around gift giving that I couldn’t actually concentrate on the celebration itself. There was so much “obligation” around all these events that I didn’t understand back then.

My mother never made it easy for me by pointing out or mentioning a specific gift she wanted. It was as if my “guessing what the right gift would be to get for her” was part of what would make her happy. It was a though if she “told” me what she wanted, that would ruin it. In order for the gift to be “special”, I had to

I dreamt that my mother threw an elegant cocktail party. It was attended by her well to do friends and it was very formal. The house was decorated beautifully; all dressed in sparkly Christmas decoration, Christmas flower arrangements and the type of decorating perfection that my mother has always been known for.  There were handsome waiters in beautiful black tuxedos quietly bringing around trays of fancy treats and beautifully presented drinks. 

My mother looked stunning in her black full length evening gown; She was happier than I had seen her for years.   

I felt as though I was not actually “at” the party but that I was observing it. I felt awkward in my professional style dress and wished I had thought to buy a new evening gown myself. I felt more like I was part of the “staff” instead of a guest. (In real life I always felt like part of her staff too ~ just a servant, her cook, her whipping post) I noticed that what had started off to be a slight tension headache was quickly becoming a migraine headache and I decided that I better take some Advil and get somewhere quiet to let the pain killer work before it was too late.

I quietly slipped upstairs to the guest room to lay down while the Advil took effect.  A few moments later my mother quietly slipped into the room.  She whisper/yelled “what do you think you are doing?”  I felt that same shock and bewilderment that I always felt when she asked me something in that accusatory tone of voice as though I was purposely doing something “wrong” and that I should not PRETEND that I didn’t know what she was talking about.  I was already backing away from her as

Seeing through New Eyes

This article is based on a page from the unauthorized biography “Oprah a biography by Kitty Kelley”

When I grabbed this book of the shelf at Costco, I didn’t realize that it was an unauthorized biography about Oprah Winfrey. I thought that it was the real story. I thought that Oprah had agreed to the publication. I quickly realized that I had picked up something that might be full of lies and conclusions that had no right to be drawn; but since I bought it, I decided to read it anyway. 

One of the most popular subjects here on Emerging from Broken is the subject of dysfunctional and toxic relationships between mothers and daughters.  I think that as humans we are born craving love, community and acceptance from our mothers and when it appears that our mothers hate us, disapprove of us, judge us or generally never seem to love and accept us… it is a mystery that we are attracted to solving.  I want my mother to LOVE me.  I want a relationship with my mother. But I got tired of how the entire burden of that desire was left up to me with zero accountability on the part of my mother.

I came across a part in Kitty Kelley’s book about Oprah Winfrey that bugged me a great deal. I realize that this is an unauthorized biography, but the example that I found about dysfunctional and toxic mother daughter relationship was so good, that I just could not resist writing about it for Emerging from Broken. It shows the way that society

When I finally drew my boundaries and make it clear to my mother that I was no longer going to accept her devaluing treatment of me, she walked away. She never called again. Oh she played her usual manipulative tricks including telling me that I could contact her “when I have thought about it” but I quickly told her that I it wasn’t up to me anymore. It was now up to her to decide if she was going to have a real relationship with me based on love, mutual respect and equal value, OR if she was going to continue to abuse me. (An option  I would no longer tolerate)

She wanted to just put the whole thing behind us and “start over” I said no and that this time I wanted to deal with it. This time I wanted my say.

She said “Oh Darlene, we have always had our differences but we have always worked them out in the past” and I responded “No Mom, in the past I have always backed down and let you have your way”. 

Always her way. Always a one sided relationship. Always her side.

That was the last time I spoke to her. I left it with her and she refused to bend. She refused to meet me half way.  She turned me down. My mother abandoned our relationship.

When I realized that she wasn’t going to contact me again, it cut me to the core.  I was rejected all over again.  By walking away from me she was saying “you are not worth it Darlene. I can’t be bothered

stormy mother daughter relationship

I used to live waiting to be good enough. I thought ~ “as soon as YOU say that I am important, then I will be important.  When you say that I am lovable, then I will be lovable. When YOU say that I am worthy then I will BE worthy”.  Deep down I believed that someone else would determine my value. I had to learn to stop operating under those beliefs. I had to stop seeing myself through the unloving eyes of others.

When I was 14 years old, I vowed that I would never be like my selfish, unloving, self centered mother. That was a serious vow and that memory is one of the clearest memories that I have. I don’t remember what happened the day that I made that vow but I remember it was one of the only promises that I ever made to myself.  I knew somehow that our mother daughter relationship was dysfunctional and that my mother was on the toxic side, I just didn’t know what I could do about it, or how long lasting and deep the effects of her way of relating to me would be.

When I went through my process of recovery from dysfunctional relationships, I took a closer look at the vow I made to never be like my toxic mother.  I asked myself what that meant to me and what specifically I had been referring to back then. I saw my mother as someone who didn’t care about others and cared about herself too much. She didn’t care about me. She discounted my feelings and she discounted my needs. She was disloyal and

But that is not what I am talking about in my blog when I talk about dysfunctional family relationships and mother daughter relationship difficulties.

I am not blogging about how life was unfair because my mother took advantage of me, didn’t let me stay for after school events because she needed me to cook and didn’t give me an allowance. That was a very minor part of my difficulties.  Although those were the resentments that I could recall easily, those were not the real roots of the problem.

The real roots of the problem were much bigger than that. The real roots of the parent child dysfunction were about

My mother didn’t want a child. My mother wanted a dolly that would “give back”. She wanted some “thing” to fuss over and to cuddle with for a short time, and then it was as if she expected me to fulfill her needs because she filled mine for a while. To fill her needs ~ as though I could fill the empty space where she was lacking self value and love.  My mother placed a great deal of expectations on me right from the start, and I didn’t live up to even one of them.

It was as though I owed her something because I was born. Right from the start, this is the definition of dysfunctional mother daughter relationship and the false definition of love.  Right out of the womb, my mother acted as though she believed that I was going to make her life better and that I owed her for mine.  This was proven over and over again as I went through life and she continually expressed her

When my second child was born, my mother said that she wanted to “be there for me”. She said that she wanted to really do something FOR ME and she offered to make the seven hour drive over the mountains to our home to help me in the final days before labor, and help me to take care of my 21 month old son.

I was thrilled. Finally my mother wanted to BE MY MOTHER! I felt closer to her in those phone calls planning her visit then I had ever felt before that time.

My excitment was short lived.

I started to have some complication with my hips. My legs were giving out from under me and I needed more bed rest. I was confident that my mother would agree to come a bit earlier then we had planned and I called her up with the news and my request.  She hesitated. Her familiar voice, the one that I had come to hate as it was laced with disappointment, responded