Can't Find My Way Home

Bonnie Raitt & Lowell George & John Hammond Jr & Freebo

A few weeks ago, I was in the right head space to go sit with my mom and be badgered. She needed to be heard. When I was in the conversation I found, she needed me to see her again with the love and acceptance that for so long I mustered. Her status as my mother was my default reason to overlook her actions towards me. It was the way I so long committed to as a means of relating to her; and surviving.

I sensed that she needed me to see her with a loving open heart that comes as the result of years of connection. She craved that sense of warmth that has long been missing from our meetings but she didn't want to do the real work to address why it was no longer there. We had just tilled the landscape of a recent disagreement, and really our relationship, for the past hour and a half. We had gone in circles and down rabbit holes of other arguments and circled back to unrelated issues. She felt at peace with the conversation. She felt everything was laid to rest; at least for the moment.

I followed the flow and remained as present as possible. Once again, I accepted that she would never truly digest my words. She didn't really see me. She was old and set in her ways and wasn't the type of of person attuned to learning and change. I breathed out loving kindness for her, so she could feel at peace.

Once again, I let go a little more of a relationship that never developed the way I expected. I craved feeling whole and healthy rather than damaged. In that moment, my choice meant accepting what would never be and being someone who could let my mother delight in her reality even if it wasn't mine. I felt at peace. I knew too that the hurt will come back to me again. Followed by the choice to feel it, breathe it out and move on.