Mother-Guilt Archetype & Family Obligations

Most of us are familiar with the Mother Archetypes in our society--one of which is the passive-aggressive mother who tries to make you feel guilty for living your own life because it doesn't coincide with what she wants or needs. As exemplified by messages like "I had to go to the doctor yesterday...in case you care..."

A friend of mine is dealing with this sort of mother, who has a long track record of showing little or no concern for her daughter's happiness, nor at all appreciative of her daughter's wonderful qualities. Her only contribution to the mother-daughter relationship is criticizing, dismissing, minimizing her daughter's feelings, wishes or challenges. 

Recently my friend was victimized by her mother's guilt trips about not "coming home" enough (out of state), and that it was somehow a mistake to move so far away from family. The point that seems to be missed by overbearing, passive aggressive, self-absorbed mothers like this, is that if your daughter feels like she has to move to ANOTHER STATE to get away from you and be happy, there's an issue that isn't about your daughter's poor choices.

This friend of mine is currently worried about her grandmother's health, and that she might not be around much longer. And she's anticipating the issue of her grandmother dying, and then knowing she simply cannot afford the trip back to her family's state. She had just made one recently to deal with other dramas in the family and can't do it again anytime soon. She'd probably have to take a week off from work again, like she did when her grandfather died, and she can't ask for more time off for awhile without endangering her job and her financial status. She was already making up the time she missed to go home recently, by working late almost every day. So she anticipates the guilt-trips and emotional blackmail that will certainly follow, should her grandmother pass away anytime soon. 

I could see that the situation could use some reframing.

So I told my friend that we now live in a different world than the generation of her mother. People are moving around more and the economy is in the toilet and everyone is struggling. The point is, you can only do what you can do, and the guilt trips from her mother are about her mother's issues, not anything my friend is doing wrong.

I said that people nowadays miss things like funerals and weddings and hospital visits, because life is hard, finances are strained, and we're all generally scattered and not living near our parents and other relatives.

And the deeper issue here is that whether or not you believe in souls, it's about that person who died, and your relationship with them--not your relationship with everyone else. If they do have a soul and there is some higher existence after the death of the body, then they would not have petty human emotions anyway, would know you love them and wanted to be with them to say goodbye or honor them at a memorial or funeral if you could. And they would feel your love for them no matter where you were geographically. So the guilt-trip aspect puts limits on the limitless nature of something like that.

Contrarily, if you don't believe in the soul and any form of life after death, then it's that the person has died and is completely unaware of anything anyone does and so it's a moot point.

So the feelings of the other people about what you are and are not doing to honor a loved one who has died, is THEIR ISSUE and has little to do with who you are, or what you're responsible for. All in all her mother's arguments against my friend's decisions and her choice of where she calls home is about what her mother wants and needs and has nothing to do with what her daughter wants and needs, so ultimately, it's all about being selfish and not about being loving or supportive. Thus, it's her mother's issue and my friend doesn't have to get sucked into that void.

Mother-Guilt Archetype & Family Obligations

Father, no--Brother

I had been asleep only four hours when I woke up crying. A dream. I was at some kind of family gathering, a reunion, perhaps. I was stocking some refreshments, but I was being paid to work at this place.  (I haven't done that kind of work in 20 years). From my peripheral vision, i saw a man walk in, and something compelled me to take a good look at him. It was my father.  My dead father. No, it was my brother, who looked just like him, now. I hadn't seen my brother in something like 13 years. He had changed. He now looked like my father. I turned away swiftly, not wanting him to see me. Not wanting the emotional confrontation that would be inevitable. What was he doing here?  Tears began to stream down my face, and I continued to hide from my brother, hoping he wouldn't recognize me. Even though i wanted to pretend he was my father, and I would have the chance to say goodbye.

My family took that away from me when he died last January, and i found out 13 days after the fact, from (of all places) friends of friends on Facebook. To add insult to injury, they left me out of the obit too. I wrote about this in Surviving Family Member.  

Whatever it was that made my family hate me, is still a mystery. I spent half my adult life trying to win their approval and love, until I finally had to just give that up and get on with my life. Perhaps that's why I spent the last ten years trying to become the most quality person I could be. I needed to know for sure that there was no reason for them to have made me the pariah, the outcast, the black sheep. No reason other than their own selfishness and ignorance. And I'm sure it's why the thought of growing old without enough friends and a partner is so sad and frightening to me. If I don't have many friends and a partner who loves me sincerely, and chooses to be with me, it becomes pejorative commentary on my value as a human being.


So again, I take a deep breath, tell myself I matter, wipe the tears away, and make coffee.

Father, no--Brother

Face Down in the Low Road

(originally published 13January 2011, taken down out of respect for my partner, but now that things tanked, and she was arrested for domestic violence against me, and i have since moved, all bets are off).

I always try to take the high road. But when people mush your face into the mud of the low road, you have to work with what you've got.

What am i talking about? I'm talking about relationships with people. History is replete with jokes about them. But we often joke about the things that are the most painful. It's how human beings reframe and share that commonality of the human condition.

But i have been unable to find anything funny about a group of people that decided to hate me from the start. And why do they hate me? Obviously, some misplaced threat that i represent. I am taking something away from them. I am "forcing" them to do things they don’t want to do, simply because what they’re doing is not acceptable to me. 

I am "forcing" the mother (her belief) to move out of her daughter's house and get her own place. Just like they decided a long time ago before i came on the scene; just as she should do, unless she expects her daughter to keep her life on hold after having 15 years of a rotten relationship before, and unless she expects that D. doesn't deserve to be happy; and unless she expects to live with her daughter for the rest of her life for fear that she might have to take care of herself and spend time alone...perhaps she's afraid she won't like the company. I don't.

And there's even one "friend" in the bunch who has betrayed my partner--also apparently because of me. (If I were only a tiny bit more insecure, i would think that i was some kind of unwitting monster. But i know better). Now, while i find this threat-stance absurd, since a partner never can take the place of a mother or a friend or a sister, absurdity cannot make way for reason in their minds. The irony is that people do all kinds of things to avoid the things they fear most, and those things can often lead them head-on into the very results they seek to avoid.

All i know is, i find it reprehensible that a group of people who profess to love D. are doing everything in their power to destroy her life. The stress this has caused us both has resulted in fighting, sleepless nights,and sleeping nights filled with nightmares; it has caused D. to leave the only job she felt she was perfect for; it has caused trips to the doctor for medication she's never had to take in her life; it's triggered every fear, every insecurity, every pain, and every ounce of anger I have ever possessed, and it's done it all at once and in spades.

And all because being petty and selfish and shallow is more important than having integrity, character and love.

For a while, there was not even a tiny part of me that was open to reconciliation. It would take a great deal of sincerity and heartfelt apologies, the sort that come from personal epiphany and evolution. Now, there is a tiny part, but i think only because I find it so sad for D. that she has been dragged behind this horse for so long, and for no reason that makes any sense. I know what it's like to have a family betray you, and that kind of pain never completely goes away. The larger part of me, however, hopes that they have this sort of pain visited on them, and they learn, viscerally, what it's like to have that kind of injury inflicted on them. Only then will they appreciate what they have done. The damage they have caused. And only then, can they ever hope to make it right again. I hope, for my partner's sake, they do make it right. But until then, we must behave as though they don't exist. Acknowledging that  this kind of selfish cruelty exists--and in your family--is just too painful to consider for longer than a nano-second.

Face Down in the Low Road

Surviving Family Member

My father is dead.
He's been dead for 13 days.
I got to hear about it from a friend who got a call from another friend who saw it in the paper, and I was not mentioned in the obit as a surviving family member. This is ironic because surviving my family is exactly what i had to do.

I'm pissed off that I'm crying. Why would I have tears for someone who threw me away like used coffee grounds, and with as little consideration?

I know I'm not crying for the loss of him. Or the loss of them. I'm crying for just the loss. The utterly selfish and heartless nature of their rejection. Where did this come from? Not from the chore of raising me, I don't imagine. I had never been a bad kid. I never drank, had sex, never got pregnant. Never did drugs. Never got arrested. What was my transgression worthy of their blatant disgust and dismissal? I suspect it was because I was gay. I might never know for sure. OF course, that wouldn't explain the way they treated me before even *I* knew i was gay. Maybe they just used that as a convenient excuse.

But when i had finally grown weary of trying to win their love i decided i would just stop contacting them and see what happened. I never heard from them again. Their silence was my answer.

So as far as I'm concerned, on January 7th, 2010, my entire family died.

Surviving Family Member

Fur-Family Christmas

The Cast of characters:

Giz
(AKA Gizmo, Gizzard the Lizard, Gizzy-Giz, and of course, his Russian name, Gizimov Runninov). Adopted from shelter in 1998. Half spaniel, half chihuahua, and all the way sweet and nerdy. If he was a human he'd be in therapy and wear pocket protectors.He eats anything i give him and steals the rest.

Nanny
(AKA the Nanster, Snooder, Smacker, Nanner-Bananner). Poodle adopted from the shelter. Stone deaf, incontinent, toothless. Eats only soft food, wears a diaper and makes "hoo hoo" noises.

Stormy
(AKA the Stormster, the Storminator, Stormy-storm). Matriarch of the LS branch of my extended family. Rescued from a thunderstorm on the Gulf Coast outside a casino, and only later in life learning to share her Mommy with other fur-children and humans. Stormy is a vegetarian and prefers fresh water from the tap.

Poe
(AKA Poe Ditty Super Kitty, Poe-Poe Headed Cat-Cat) Purchased by us at a flea market (they were fresh out of fleas) and embraced by stormy only after much resistance a little over a year ago. Poe was once the cute kitty, and now has grown and is more intense, allowing Stormy to return to her kitten-behavior. Poe has fallen in love with her human, LS, since LS and I obtained separate living quarters. Poe gazes at her lovingly, hugs her head. She is carnivorous.

Poe and Stormy take shifts getting attention from Mommy. Stormy gets her during the day, and Poe gets her at night. Any deviation from this daytime ownership incites a barrage of hissing and chasing behavior on Stormy's part.

ENTER stage left, Shoes. (AKA: Shoes, Shooooooooees).
The new kitten in the extended family.

It is Christmas day at her Godmommy's house. Shoes has lost patience with the hissing occupants of this condo, and is now alternately chasing them, running up and tagging them and running away. Intermittently, she becomes an Olympic hockey player with a wad of paper, and periodically visits my thick house socks to wrestle with my feet, run up the length of my body and grab my head. She is a space invader of the finest breed, and Stormy and Poe do not appreciate it one little bit.

I even brought Giz over too, and he is a little put off. It's not his house, and when I gave him his bowl of food, he set about guarding it like the family jewels--standing over it, a canine vulture, staring at it like it might move. He looks a little mental when he does that. Shoes also makes pit-stops at his bowl to sniff his kibble and thrust her furry arms into it and run away. He then goes over and counts his kibbles to make sure she has not taken one of them.

The two of them have bonded ever since I left them alone together for 24 hours. When I returned to my apartment, Shoes was brashly leaping from the bed, landing on top of Giz, and riding him, while she bit the fleshy folds of his neck. He would shake her off, and she would wrap her little kitty arms around his neck, bat at his face and ears, and try to chew on his feet. He has been admirably tolerant to this behavior, and even seems to be enjoying it.

Nanny is doing the usual: waddling around in her diaper, smacking her toothless mouth, making hoo-hoo noises, or sleeping in a wad of blankets near the fainting couch.

So, here, on this, her second visit to Godmommy's house to mix and mingle with her pseudo-siblings, she is still not met with a welcome mat. But this visit has none of the cowering under the futon. This visit seems to be without restraint. She continues to chase the two older cats, moving blithely into their space, ignoring the parameters. There is a repetitive hissing followed by the pitter-pat of a running cat. She is actually chasing them, and they are so mad.

Fur-Family Christmas