Self-love and Self-Hatred

Hi @SkyView7

I wrote a long reply about your post and your thought about your mother waiting for you after death - I had some interesting thoughts about that and wrote about them - unfortunately I deleted it accidently

I wasn't triggered in anyway but we have had a crisis in the family this weekend and I am not at my best and I will respond when I feel more capable and my head stops aching

Thanks for your response - there is a lot there I identify with

Dec

Hi @Owlunar is everything ok? How is your SIL? Xx

Thanks @BlueBay and @SkyView7

My son-in-law had major cardiac surgery yesterday Skyview - and for both of you and anyone else he is doing well - he is in ICU at the moment and my daughter has spent time with him and he is able to talk now and says he's bored - I think that's a good sign and he wanted bacon and eggs for breakfast - it might be a little while before he gets a real meal but it will come in time now he has had this emergency surgery

I was okay yesterday - I kept busy and yet the day lasted forever - he was in the theatre for a long time - and my daughter has had constant texts and phonecalls as they have a large circle and the story is spreading wider - I am glad they have so much support

Today I have a headache and feel exhausted - really whacked out. I have done my chores - could have done more but I think the best thing is to back to work

I think this discussion in important - I always feel rather maternal about a thread I start and I will get back to this asap but I really believe I need to try and get some more sleep or at least cuddle up with a book and give myself time

I am including these comments on this thread because I believe that self-care has a great deal to do with the way we feel about ourselves - it has a run-on effect - if we can nurture ourselves we can nurture others and with my family right now I might be needed to help as my son-in-law recovers. Not only that - it can improve our self-esteem if we care for ourselves - we can be more useful

More about this later - I have been thinking of new ideas for the thread and really impressed about how people have responded and the different attitudes and stories people have

Dec

@SkyView7 My ex hubby was into the paranormal and I got a lot if opportunity to think about telepathy. My interest mostly was thourgh adolescent sci-fi reading, I had done enough science to have an instinct for the difference between data collection and pure imagination.

Also having to deal with a lot of premature death, I have a long and varied understanding of grief.

@Razzle I can feel for your sense of respect around place when living with complicated and close grief.

I do wonder a lot about mother-child relationships generally and how they become idealised and/or devalued and damaged..... and what to do about it.

I am not so sure about the "reason-excuse" difference as others may be .... thats me. I find the "no excuse" language polarising, othering and judgmental, but understand it can have a role for good in reducing bad behaviours.... its ..... just .... complicated.

There is so much pressure on women in their roles as mothers, I am mother of 2 or three. It seem the HUGE social pressure can be part of the problem around respectability and deceptiveness or pretention ....

SO I try and maintain an attitude moving towards understanding .... its so much bigger than anything I personally have experienced ... everyone has mother and father issues .... even if they seem not to have issues .... what is having "issues" anyway ... ??

So I would like to raise the concept of mother-love and mother-hatred, as an important aspect of this thread/discussion. I use the colour red ... in symbolic ways ... re blood. sexy. love, anger ...and wonder what others think ...

@Appleblossom, @Owlunar

even though I had kinda good uncles , but was never close to them and they never treated me like their own , that is sad

I bet you were focussing on the good in your uncles @Shaz51 We know the full reality of life without a loving father is pretty tough in this world on earth.

Hi @Appleblossom and thanks for your insightful comments

I agree that probably everyone has some mother and/or father issues - after all - were our parents not so much younger than us when they got into the baby-issues without thinking about it - short on income and long on desire for getting started into adult life - perhaps the babies turned up without thought about it all - certainly without much experience. So that's a good point

Perhaps I should explain the reason and excuse thing

In my case I can see my mother was young and inexperienced when during a war she and Dad got married and then had two children a year apart during a global conflict. She had tragedies in her childhood and left school very young - she did not have the choices I had when she got married and had children so fast - and Dad was working a 13 day fortnight and 12 hour shifts and her mother worked too so she was alone with two babies and this would make it hard for her - so this I see as reasons

But I don't see it as an excuse either - but even as I sit here thinking about it the picture gets blurred - so maybe it's not as straight forward as it seems - but not all parents assault their children in various ways - our father didn't and when she was around our gran was fantastic - and so were our other grandparents. Yes - thinking about it makes it fuzzy but I find it really wrong that she was such a volatile person. mm - I might get back to that

I think we can discuss mother-love and mother-hatred and use colours if we chose. Mother-love can manifest itself in dramatic and dynamic ways - a mother can find herself standing between life and death for her child - or in less obvious ways but obviously deeply caring - facing sleepless nights with a sick baby - cleaning and clearing up whatever we can imagine or have experienced being mothers - dishing out tough love when needed. Yet we can hate the woman who did this for us. It's an interesting thought - yes - I will be interested in what other people say about these two ideas - stretch them out far more than I have here

Thanks Apple

Dec

Hi @SkyView7

I am very interested in your comments about telepathy because I have experienced the same thing - my grandmother, my mother and I was all able to sense what the others were thinking and Gran lived with us until she died and it was a strange thing to know we often read each others thoughts but I thought it was normal - and my mother died a few years ago and I have never had the same experience. As you say science supports for and against - if it happens it happens

But I never thought of my mother waiting for me after my death - I think I am a lot more sure of my views in life now and tough enough to tell her the truth about issues I felt the need to keep to myself - ah - my mother was the only one with the correct views on life (at least she thought so) and there was a lot of conflict between us and then - when she was aging my Gran got the short end of the stick too and this was a major worry

Our mother's voice is the loudest one we have in our head - it can give us a hard time. It can be hard to overcome too. It sounds as if she was a very controlling person - and where your mother was dragging you back into the family mine was in the process of driving me away - actually I left because I had no need to be treated badly and also I had the strength to make my own choices without my family's permission and my life was really hard for some years and I can't really explain why things were the way they were but I have come out of it with a positve look on life

I am glad you have the same positive outlook - or something similar - and seriously - I doubt that people are waiting to catch us after death - it's an interesting idea though and I do love the paranormal ideas people present at times

I am glad you have joined the discussion

Dec

Thanks for your welcome to this thread @Owlunar. I'm sure my fear of my mother waiting for me in the afterlife is irrational, but I often wonder about what to expect from that time of our lives. I have fond memories of very early in my childhood and I've always felt that death is quite simply the reverse of birth.

An image I sometimes use to assure myself of my love for my mother has my brother and I and my mother fishing on the rocks beside a threatening sea. A wave washes over us and my brother and I are safe but my mother is washed away not far from us so that I'm left with the choice of whether or not to go in after her. I always feel like going in without even thinking about it because I sense that not going in would hurt more than risking my life trying to help her.

So perhaps my hate of her is not as strong as my love for her. It's only when she intrudes on my private space, my personal inner sanctum, and so incessantly, as was the case before my present medication, that I feel a passionate contempt for her.

I liken the relationship between parents and children to normal biological cell division. As the cell begins to divide there is a great tension between the two halves, and a great oppositional conflict erupts before the two halves split and become self functioning cells. I like the recursive continuity of this which suggests that conflicts between parents and children are natural and to be expected.

It seems the love endures beyond the painful hardships.