Unstitch My Heart Slowly

This blog post was inspired because of a pair of tweezers. I saw them this morning when taking a shower and it made me have a little flash back of Eva a few days ago. As I was settling onto the porcelain throne in my bathroom to tweeze my eyebrows my fabulous and straight forward little girl came into the bathroom with me and said.

“What are you doing Mama” Eva asked

“Im about to pull some hair out of my face” I replied to her, the exact same answer my Mom would always given me when I was small.

My mom would always be sitting in front of a mirror picking at her face or her skin, always wanting to become a little less flawed, she constantly worried about her fingernails looking bad, or having bad skin, or too bushy of eyebrows… I eventually got used to her always needing to be picking. My Eva isnt used to that at all so when I told her I was going to pull hair out of my face she instantly looked aghast and concerned and a little intrigued all at once.

I quickly amended

“Well, I was just going to clean them up a little bit, but what do you think, do my eyebrows look good?”

She assesses me for a moment or two and then resolutely said “They look great Mama”

Why wouldn’t they look great? They were after all the eyebrows the Good Lord gave me, don’t I want to teach her about loving herself and that God made her just right? I suppose I should practice what I preach and in that instant I decided to change the story from what my mom taught me (Anxiety around body care, striving to looking presentable, always worrying that she was doing something wrong) I chose to put the tweezers down and say

“Ok, since you think that- I do too” and stood up and held her hand and we left the tweezers unused.

I’ve been listening to “Motherless Daughters” recently and only in small doses because the content hits me so hard I have to have some time away or I believe I might unstitch my whole heart at once.

I dont feel ready for that. So, I’m choosing to be still and rest and take it slow. NOT a strong suit of mine. If you know me well you know I like to make a decision and get to work, eyes on the prize and come out on top- don’t sit down until it’s mastered.

But

You cant emotionally muscle your way through grief, grief silently drowns the mightiest of warriors.

If only could truly muscle through grief….

Motherless Daughters…

This truth about my life was one of my main personality drivers all through my young formation and identity building as a teen.

“Who Are You? People would ask and inside my head it was always “Not My Mom” Yikes! (Hello Trauma)

Then my Mom died… She was only 47 and I got extremely angry when this happened. HOW could God do this!? She was getting better! 4 years was longer than she had ever made it in a sobriety journey before…

Looking at my children helps. My Dad made a good point the other day saying “It can sometimes be easier to make good choices when you have children looking up to you, if you’re the person they are relying on. That doesn’t always mean people will make good choices, but it can be a motivator” or something along those lines it’s not a direct quote but it impacted me.

I can’t spend another 30 years building my life around grief . That’s essentially what happened -becoming a grieving child all while mourning a person who was still alive to hurt you. I am not the only abandoned child in the world by far but I am hoping that sharing these things might make others feel a bit more connected. These hurts cause such an impact that it can cause us to spend years of our life holding onto it like a life raft.

The Motherless Daughters book is part of what inspires many of these analogies so if you resonate with having anchored a large part of you’re personality to loss and made an armor to keep yourself safe… you might want to check out that book.

When I look at my beautifully and wonderfully made children I pray and rejoice over the people I know God is already building them to be. So as I look up to him to build my life now, I pray that I am able to be someone worthy of looking up to by them. It grieves my heart on the deepest levels that I looked at my mother through a such a constantly critical and judgmental lens. I didn’t respect my mother, I pitied her.

Realizing this, unlaces the dark shady corners of my violin heart and I pray,

Lord, Unstitch My Heart Slowly, please.