I WILL LIVE FOR YOU (Dedicated To All Mothers Who Live For Their Children)

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

If a mother wants to wait for her grandchildren, she must get out of the way of her child.

Margaret Barth

I understand that I am writing an article on an ungrateful topic, that I will call upon myself a lot of indignation, anger and even rage of those women who have chosen motherhood as the meaning of their lives. And yet I am writing. I got sick.

Mothers often call me and ask permission to bring their son for a consultation. After explaining that I do not work with children, it suddenly turns out that the child is 25, 28, 30 years old … After the “child” himself proposes to call and make an appointment, there are usually a lot of reasons why he cannot do it: busy, his phone is broken, he is afraid … In all my practice there has never been a case when a “child” calls back. And I think that the mothers themselves prevented this: how can they lose control over him and the situation? You never know what he himself will tell the therapist? Mothers want to come to therapy with the “children”, see, hear, observe, advise everything. Mom knows best what her child needs. I do not support this format of psychotherapy and as an indispensable condition I put forward the client's independent appeal and his independent coming to me. But even in this case, there are "surprises" - sometimes it turns out that the mother came with the client and then there is nothing left but to "expose" such a mother from the office. Sophisticated readers of mine have long understood that the article is about codependencies disguised in this case as a strong maternal love. The best thing that can be done in the described situation is to invite the mother herself to go to therapy and investigate her contribution to this state of affairs. But here too - a complete puncture! Such a proposal, as a rule, receives a reaction from a polite “thank you, I don’t need it” to complete indignation and indignation “I have no problems!”.

And they just are. Behind the superficially demonstrated very strong maternal love, such a woman hides problems with her identity. Such mothers in their lives put everything to please their "motherhood". And this, as a rule, is their unconscious choice, or rather, there is no choice as such. The child plugs a huge hole in the mother's identity, he becomes a meaning-forming motive in her life. Thanks to sacrificial love for such a woman, the meaning of life appears, but not some kind of “cheap” and “unpretentious”, but the most noble, socially approved and supported one: “Everything for children!”. Take it away from such a mom and what is she left with? Professional, female, partner identities require temporary, personal efforts. All this is not easy. And not so honorable, even if successful.

But what about love then? And where is the measure of this very love? When does it cease to be love and becomes addicted?

Here for me the central word-measure of parental love is its co-dimension. Proportionate to age, situation.

Undoubtedly, the smaller the child, the more he needs attention. And in this regard, the sacrifice of the mother of the child-infant is not just justified, it is natural. The baby needs the fullest possible presence of the mother for life and development. And in this situation, at this time, such love-sacrifice will be proportional, that is, natural.

And even in such a situation, a mother should not forget about herself if she really loves her child.

What can a mother give to a child who cannot take care of herself? (do what you love … but just relax?). I foresee the indignant reactions of mothers of babies: "When ??", "What can you, man, know about motherhood ??". Here, the mother should think about trust in the close people around (her husband, grandparents, etc.), about the opportunity to transfer to them part of her childcare functions, because of everything that a baby needs at this stage of development, mother is indispensable only at the moment breastfeeding. You should not rely only on your own strength.

What can a tired, irritated, tortured mother give to a child? Only a sense of guilt that she sacrificed herself to him.

Paradoxically, a mother who does not take care of herself, giving all of herself to the child, on in fact, he thinks only of himself, or rather, of his image (Am I a perfect enough mom?), And not about the child.

But as the child grows, the presence of a mother in his life becomes less and less necessary. In my opinion, the essence of growing up is the gradual separation of the child from their parents. And in this process of growing up children, the role of parents is to release their children into independent life. It is clear that the process of letting go of a child is not pleasant, it is accompanied by a number of feelings - longing, sadness, sadness, resentment … But if a parent really loves his child, he will go through these feelings and be able to rejoice in the fact that his child is growing up.

I remember a case from my personal experience. I had a pre-divorce relationship with my ex-wife. We rested on the sea, and I spent almost all my time with my three-year-old daughter. I love my daughter and I am strongly attached to her, and besides, I understand now that during this period of my life I transferred all the unspent energy of partnership to my daughter. Once I was a little distracted and noticed that my daughter was playing on the shore with a boy of her age, they enthusiastically built figures out of sand, not paying attention to me. I remember my feelings of jealousy and even abandonment, which I experienced while watching this scene. And then I thought, what am I doing? Because my feelings are selfish. My daughter will grow up, go into adulthood and there she will need to build relationships with these boys, and not stay with me. What kind of love is it then, if I think of myself?

Breaking up with children is not easy. I know this firsthand and not from clever books. A child does not leave when he physically grows up, becomes an adult. He leaves every hour, every minute, every second of his life.

It is very important to remember this not in order to keep the child, but to live these moments of presence with him as fully as possible. Recently, I felt and experienced the above with all the acuteness, communicating with my already 9-year-old daughter. A number of touching moments from her childhood surfaced in her mind. I looked at her and with pain and longing realized that she was growing up, that she would never be the same again, a wave of feelings covered me and tears came to my eyes. I cried that she was growing up and going further and further into her adult life, where I would have less and less space. But at the same time I realized that I had no right to restrain her, to interfere with her path.

There is a separate category of mothers - these are wives-mothers. These women have picked up and separated or intercepted their child husbands (through competition and fighting with their mothers) and continue to babysit them like their mothers used to do. They are not aware of their mother's position and their contribution to such a relationship. As a rule, when they call a psychologist, they want him to do something with their husband so that he quit drinking, playing, walking … Often requests sound ridiculous “We (husband's wife and mother) want you to come to our home and persuaded him to be like therapy. And in this case, mothers-wives need first of all for therapy.

What is the future for mother and child with such a sacrificial attitude?

By not letting go of the child, you are not giving him a chance to grow up. He, of course, will grow up physically, but psychologically he will remain a small child - infantile, dependent, unable to choose and be responsible for his choices, irresponsible.

One of the most unfavorable variants of such a scenario is the variant of symbiosis that I quite often observed - a retired mother and an adult alcoholic son - a social and psychological disabled person who lives and drinks at her expense.

Those who choose for themselves only the identity of the mother-victim, he closes in himself all other paths of development, sacrifices his own life. In fact, this is a path without a choice, in this case the sacrifice is needed not by the Other (in this case, the child), but by the person himself. The words spoken by Margaret Barthes at one of the seminars on systemic family constellations, which I placed as an epigraph: "If a mother wants to wait for her grandchildren, she must get out of the way of her child," sunk into my consciousness.

A mother who devoted herself to motherhood and abandoned other identities, convulsively clinging to her already grown children, is actually trying to preserve this only meaning of her life, the loss of which is tantamount to her physical death. Having made a child a social disabled person, such a mother acquires the meaning of life.

As for children living in a relationship with the mother-victim, then as they grow up, their sense of guilt towards their mother only increases, they live with an eye to her, to the past. A mother standing in their way of life prevents them from building partnerships, going their own way (professional, personal, social), they always feel the presence of the mother-victim (sometimes only “virtual” when she is no longer alive), and this feeling prevents them from living full life, enjoy it, enjoy every day.

Recommendations for mothers:

• honestly admit to yourself that what you considered a great love is in fact an addiction; this awareness is not easy and is associated with strong feelings of disappointment, sadness, emptiness, longing;
• look for other abilities, talents, interests, hobbies in oneself. Remember yourself in childhood, adolescence. What then carried away, what dreamed of, what did you want?
• develop other variants of identity - I-Woman,

I am a professional, I am a partner, I am a wife … The most positive one here is the I-Woman identity.