Giving birth is a miraculous process, whether it's physically birthing babies or intellectually birthing ideas and creative works, or the wonderful process of "birthing" new generations through generative love. Every woman whose body has taught her what she is physically capable of, either through observation or experience, can live out "mothering" and "nurturing" in all aspects of her life.
Yet many of us experience complicated joy and complicated grief on Mother's Day. The simplest grief is the grief that overwhelms us when mothers we've truly been tenderly close to have died and our missing them is like a knife to our hearts. The most complicated grief occurs when our mother (either alive or deceased) is/was selfish and immature, is/was abusive to us in physical and/or mental ways, suffered or suffers with mental illness, or even abandoned us. We may have some good memories of our mother: she may have loved or loves us to the best of her ability. She may have "atoned" for her earlier behavior by maturing and helping us in various ways. But the pain remains: she is/was not the "perfect" mother of Mother's Day cards or a mother like our friends' mothers.
The saddest posts on Facebook today are those that state in starkest terms: "I have disowned my "'Mom.'"
Yet no individual - including us AND our mothers - can ever be fully understood unless thought of within their family relationships, including generations of family life. We all grew up in a complex web of family relationships, and so did our mothers. Did our mother grow up with squabbling parents, aunts, and uncles? Is it any wonder then that she continually fought/fights with HER siblings? Was our mother thrown out of her home or abandoned by her mother? Is it a total surprise then when she orders children out of their houses, or abandons them? Did our mother grow up in an alcoholic household? Did she follow the pattern then of becoming an alcoholic herself or instead has she some of the unhealthy traits which can afflict adult children of alcoholics?
Even if we grew up in more or less healthy homes, we can still see the influence of intergenerational experiences in our lives. Did you know, for example, that psychologists consider anxiety to be a learned trait rather than the result of our genetics, our biology? I am a very anxious person. So are many of my children and grand-children. So must have been members of MY family of origin who gave me the example of coping with life situations with over-anxious reactions.
It's not letting our mother "off the hook" of responsibility for her actions by observing and understanding that it's twice as difficult - if not almost impossible - to mother when you've never been adequately mothered yourself. Understanding the complex web of relationships our mothers grew up in can lead to our understanding of our mothers and even some measure of forgiveness. In the same way, if we've never been adequately mothered, it's not letting ourselves "off the hook" of responsibility for our actions if we can compassionately observe the ways that we've become inadequate mothers because we were inadequately mothered: we can understand ourselves, take responsibility for the ways we've been selfish, irresponsible, or abusive, forgive ourselves, and try to move forward in becoming better mothers.
Breaking - or breaking out of - the unhealthy, complex patterns of intergenerational family relationships takes mature love, courage and willingness to objectively look at ourselves. It takes developing a whole constellation of new healthy relationships: healthy and caring family and friends, and counselors who understand family systems theory. Above all, it takes the courage and willingness to believe in, accept, and build a new relationship with a God Who parents us in all the healthy ways we need.
God is both our Father and our Mother, in ways far beyond what we experience in our family relationships, or even can fully understand.
Our always merciful God loves and accepts us in the Now of the imperfect, broken persons who we are - and empowers us to break the psychological chains that bind us.
God our Parent, our strong Father, our tender Mother, promises to always be faithful and never abandon us - and gives us the courage to commit ourselves to being healthy, joyful husbands and wives, fathers and mothers.
God our Parent loves us so much that God empowers us with the inner firmness to neither allow ourselves to be abused nor to abuse others.
God, Who in the person of Jesus, true God and true man, prayed "Father, may they be one as you Father and I are one," always will empower us to help make our families more one - getting past unhealthy arguments and mending divisions.
God the Holy Spirit, the Living Flame of Love, empowers us with the enthusiasm we need to speak words of love to one another and forgive as we are forgiven. Pope Francis in fact says "I ...invoke the fire of the Holy Spirit on all the world's families."
God is a Family, a community - the community of the Holy Trinity. Pope Francis says "Marriage and the family have been redeemed by Christ (cf. Ephesians 5: 21 - 32) and restored in the image of the Holy Trinity, the mystery from which all true love flows." (in "The Joy of Love.") God, more than anyone, desires our healing, our health, our opportunity as individuals to celebrate being mothers - and fathers - our opportunity as families to mend the tangled and complex webs of relationships that can alternately make or break us.
God is unity in living love. On this day, may we recognize and celebrate the generations of mothers who have given us life and love. May we understand and begin to forgive the mothers who have given us little more than biological life. May we trust in our God, Who is Family, to lead us, guide us, and empower us to build and rebuild our own families so that they give living love to us and to our communities.