Mothers And Belly Buttons: Small Healing

[City Slicker]

A quick bit of history: I grew up with a very talented and profoundly damaged mother. As a result, there were years and years of hurt and damage she inflicted on her children - she loved the 'having' of the kids, she didn't seem to understand the 'taking care of' part.

She would actively take steps to destroy whatever connection we all tried to feel with her. I spent many years putting distance between us and making sure there was never any way she would ever be close enough to hurt me.

Decades later: The other day I was finishing a workout and I stretched out on my mat to start my ab work. My hands braced on either side of my obliques but as I moved my hand to the top of my abs I contracted them so that I could feel them move.

I casually felt my belly button - this place on the human body - the only place left that for the rest of our lives we carry the evidence that we were once physically connected, completely dependent on this other creature.

There on the floor in the middle of this workout class, I am poking my belly button and feeling where my mother and I were once were connected, before it all went wrong. And for the first time I could feel her, and feel her uncomplicated connectedness to me and my simple connectedness to her.

I spent close to the entire ab workout time with my hand on my belly button thinking about her and feeling a connection to her that was beautiful in its simplicity - this other being that gave me life, separate from what she tried to do to us... I could separate finally the person she was from the person who gave me life.

She died many years ago because she gave up on living. I was still angry about it and especially because of the circumstances. This was the first time I felt her presence in me in the most uncomplicated way.

Yeah, belly buttons and ab work. A success and achievement for me. Sometimes they come the most when you aren't looking.

 

[garden]

What a beautiful story. My mother was emotionally unavailable, and self absorbed. I have trouble feeling connected to her, yet I can sometimes remember what it was like before she met my step dad, because there is such a distinct change in our lives once he came along.

Thanks for sharing this, it was nice to read something so uplifting.

 

[WhisperingUnicorn]

@City Slicker .. That is an extraordinary and beautiful moment. Thank you for sharing! :hug:

~S2B

 

[Nam]

This profound for me. Makes me cry. My birthmom seems so far away and not connected to me in any way. But reading your post...I once was connected.

 

[City Slicker]

Thank you all for your kind comments.

Yes, once we were connected. Before the hurt, before the pain, before the trauma, there just was. Us; Physically joined together, surviving growing.

If you had asked me for a goal for healing I wouldn't have ever said it included making a connection with my mother. Yet there it was that day on my mat on the floor in the middle of my workout - only now a connection that was fully under my own control wanting nothing, demanding nothing, only recognition that once we were connected.

It showed me that even when you think the doors are shut for good, when it seems 'too late' to get what you needed, while those things may be true in reality, we can't bring people back, we can't force them to give us what we desperately needed, yet our healing is not ever dependent on those people or those circumstances.

It is never too late to find peace and healing.


(thanks mods for taking care to put this thread in the right place)