Mother. Say the word, and it will conjure for the multitudes, a multitude of associations. Mothers, Stepmothers, Godmothers, Adoptive mothers, Foster mothers, Grandmothers, Dorm mothers and Den mothers and not to forget Mother Teresa. Some will associate Mother with abundance, others deprivation. Attraction. Repulsion. A mixed bag of contradictions.

Maybe she was there when I needed her. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was there too much. Motherhood, the good and/or the bad, somewhere along the spectrum of total darkness to white light, satanic to angelic, a curse or a blessing or neither or both.
Who mother is for anyone is an individual matter. Who or what she is to me depends on the stories I tell myself about this human, the woman who bears an archetypal stamp, this being who has marked my life so indelibly. The stories I tell myself I have knitted together from past experience, from interpretations of those experiences, from ignorance, from memory, from stories she has told me herself or stories others have told about her.

I find irritating, offensive even, the collective representation of this thing called mother. The collective prefabricated image perpetuates the belief that Mother is the epitome of good naturedness, generosity, gentleness, kindness, warmth, affirmation, affection, protection, strength, and nurturance forever and ever amen. Mother is thought of as an unlimited “YES.” She is soft. She is always smiling. She never tires out. She can always be depended upon to give, give, give. She is always there. And she is loved for being always there, available, sweet and rosy.

This image reflects only half of the reality of the mothering situations I observe both in my counselling practice and on the main streets and back alleys of civic life. We are horrified to learn that a woman has abandoned a newborn in a garbage bin, or has let her child drop from the bridge or balcony, has murdered her child in secret. Criminal! When a woman chooses to abort her foetus, some call this criminal as well. In these decisions, we see the other side, the negative side that says, like Mother Nature herself, “NO” to the very life created in her. There is in motherhood, not only an impulse saying “YES” to creation, but a counter force in the interest of a larger expanded truth (which society denies) saying “NO.” Creation and destruction, both living side by side simultaneously as equal and opposite forces. If we observe the natural world, we know nature sometimes devours itself, and thus maintains a necessary balance. To deny this powerful reality is like saying evil doesn’t exist when it is hitting you in the face. Nature exists and it hits us in the face! Am I saying this is OK? No, it is shocking to my conscious orientation—but undeniable. At another level, if I admit that I am witnessing nature at her most destructive, it is not so surprising; it simply is.

We must never forget that a woman is a human being, not a Great Mother goddess in possession of the horn of plenty. Women differ. Some take motherhood willingly. Some find themselves helplessly cast into the role for which they are completely unsuited and unwilling. Some are disinterested. For some the fabric of their being is strong and durable. Other women are in tatters, spiritually and physically decomposing inside their own skins. The business of motherhood for these women is the business of survival. Life at the level of survival is not elegant. It is not ideal or idealistic. It gives. It takes. And the degree of consciousness a woman can exercise will influence her choices and decisions with respect to her position and her relatedness as a mother. Woman? Some of the best contemporary mothers I see about town are men, fathers who are not doing badly at all tending their young children, taking over from women who are so stressed out, empty, self-alienated, that they cannot bring themselves to be with their children in ways that are fundamentally necessary.

The woman who is also my mother is still alive and will soon celebrate her 90th birthday. It was not easy for her to take on the role of mother 70 years ago, but she was our mother nonetheless and gave of herself responsibly all her life. Did she indulge the conventional expressions around being a nice, warm, cozy mother? No. Did she enjoy us as little children? No. Being a contemplative person, she brought to her role as mother a unique perspective and the necessity to balance her parenting responsibilities with her personal growth. This was vitally necessary for her. In doing so, she provided an unsentimental model for being real and whole-some in her self-expression and her individuation. She demonstrated what it means to nurture and develop her physical, psychic, intellectual, emotional, and symbolic life—to become fully and authentically herself without neglecting her relationships with her children. What greater blessing can a daughter receive from her mother? The benefit of this to me is too large for words.

On Mother’s Day, we may phone one another, mother to mother, woman to woman. We will laugh at ourselves, our foibles, the sheer goofiness of our mistaken
beliefs about mothering. We will celebrate our successes and forgive ourselves our errors and omissions. We will declare the satisfactions we feel in seeing our children become vital human beings. We will affirm our love and admiration for one another. And at the end of the day, I will thank God for this particular gifted and complex woman assigned to me at my birth.

Lynette Walker M.A.
Registered Clinical Counsellor