#taleofwoe

Growing up my mother would read me that famous verse:

Monday’s Child is Fair of Face Tuesday”s Child is Full of Grace Wednesday’s Child has a tale of Woe Thursday’s Child has far to Go Friday’s Child is Loving & Giving Saturday’s Child must Work for a Living But the Child who was born on the Sabbath Day is Bonnie, Blythe, Good and Gay.

I was born on Wednesday as you have surmised from the title of the this journal.  As I grew up I heard a variation that reads “full of Woe.”  Either way I heard it enough to worry about it as well!  I was born overwhelmed and overburdened by an overwhelmed and overburdened mother. Most of my childhood was spent with my father away.  

By that time in my parent’s marriage, I did not experience anything close to what the American Happy family was about. I loved the show The Brady Bunch growing up but ours was nothing like it.  I loved the show My Three Sons, another family variation, ours was nothing like it either.  I had parents who were in heated debate most of the time as I recall.  They were both attorneys....the need to be right was overpowering.  The need to argue was as well.  As an adult, I suppose it was something that bonded them...as I am sure the whole making up part was rather lusty when they were younger.  But being in the presence of people always enraged was unpleasant to say the least.  

My father's method of coping with my mother at that late stage in their marriage was to escape.  He had numerous ways to do so....he took a job as Attorney General of the young, new American state, Alaska and jumped ship. As I grew up, for years I wondered why we did not move with him to Juneau. He brought back amazing handicrafts from the Inuit and glorious pictures, along with our Alaskan Husky, Mush.  My mother told me she was not about to move all her children from all the various schools and disrupt their lives. I often speculated that, that choice was a truly an unfortunate one for all of us.  My elder siblings were adolescent, but I was just a little over one year old.  I have no true memories of him as a smaller child save one, when he came home from Reserves in his uniform and upon walking into the house, picked me up and put me on his shoulders. Other than that, I do not recall his presence until I was in kindergarten and first grade. 

All of what I knew when I was small fed into my tendency to be anxious. I was often passed off onto siblings for basic childhood and toddler care.  My mother was at that time, in essence, a single mother living on a restricted budget, who was resentful and angry every day. My clearest memories are of my mother’s angst.  Two things were told to me daily, from which I formed very powerful images in my head, 1) my mother was angry and unhappy most of the time and my father was to blame for all of it, and 2) she hated her body as she had a weight problem, which also was, somehow, my father’s fault as well.  Sad that I had those mantras as my strongest impressions of my mother, but it is true.  I did get a lot of nurturing, cuddling, and cooing from my eldest sister. She took on the role of my foster mother in many ways.

At some point, much later in life, when working through so much of this, I saw clearly, for the first time, when looking into that window the road both my parents had traveled, and how they had arrived at that place by the time I was born.  I did come to understand and forgive them both, eventually, while working through it all, but at the time, and for years, I was given a legacy of misplaced emotional supporter to a woman who could not be soothed.  It was too great a challenge for an small child. I was never able to bring her the soothing she needed, but then again, no one on the earth ever truly could.  

How I tried so hard to NOT add burden to mother.  I would play quietly by myself a lot.  My mother would praise me to others that I was such a good child who did not need so much attention as she could leave me to play by myself, unlike my brother. How sad is that!  In retrospect, I do not think my mother ever understood my sensitivity as a need, but rather a flaw that needed to be corrected.  She believed that when I was an infant, and she would reiterate it a lot to me as I was growing up, “you were such a pill when you were tiny as you did not want anyone else to hold you.”  I felt guilty and worried about that as well! I wanted my mother as an infant, and it was bad thing.  I do understand where she was coming from as an adult, but those facts imprinted terrible thoughts about myself to me, and all because I was a normal baby with heightened sensitivity. As a psychologist today, I do know that sensitivity is trait that is, what I feel, innate and not something that can be corrected.  I also learned projection of emotion is something my mother truly did her whole life as she was patterned NOT to own her emotions but rather to assign blame.  It is what it is, but knowing my own story does help me to educate others in relationship about myself, so I do not project and assign blame too!  I am, as always, as work in progress, so sometimes this doesn’t always work out. 

Inside my mother a need was never met, or, as much I came to understand and believe, ever truly could be. Of course all of her challenges, emotionally and psychologically, were a pattern; my mother was inappropriately cast as her mother’s supporter and best friend for very different reasons and needs on my grandmother’s part; however, it was a pattern that formed an expectation system in my mother’s consciousness.  We had a discussion decades later sitting in my car one night as I could not understand why she was so, so insistent about something.  This is when she revealed to me that she had this expectation as the mother, her daughters should cater to her.  Not simply be there and be present in her life as well as share parts of their own, but to be self-sacrificing for her.  She viewed my eldest sister’s marriage as somewhat of a betrayal to her as it took my sister away from this possibility; of course, she would never actually voice such sentiments, instead she merely berated my brother-in-law as the cause of my sister’s betrayal. 

My mother was very Catholic in many ways, the notion of self-sacrifice is big in Catholicism.  She would frequently repeat these adages that supported her viewpoint, as if they were The LAW: A mother has a son until he takes a wife, but she has a daughter for life!  This also explained why my mother had amazing expectations about me. Not so surprising when the movie Like Water for Chocolate came out, my mother adored it.  To her, it gave her system of belief credence.  Meanwhile in CT, where I lived, I saw in with a girlfriend and nearly threw up.  I had a literal visceral reaction to it.  I hated it!  

My mother would also regale this horrible story for years to me, another one for which when small I was guilty about, when I was born, my mother almost died.  She had a lot of scar tissue from giving birth and each pregnancy was very difficult for her; she was stubborn about insisting on vaginal childbirth. She had my eldest system via C-Section, and truly in her heart believed it was a mistake on the part of the doctor. After my sister she insisted on having the next vaginally.  At the time my father was in the service and the Army doctors would not cater to her wishes, so she found a specialist who would and had my father pay for it.  But when I was born that scar tissue had become quite weak, and my foot ruptured it.  She was rushed to George Washington Hospital where I was born C-Section, and she had a complete hysterectomy during my birth, one month prematurely. We were in the hospital for 21 days before release.  

When I was small my mother would show me the scar and tell me the story.  As an adult, she would track me down no matter where I was on my birthday to retell me the story. She would also add that I had ended her possibility for ever having another child.  She would add that when she was in a funk about her circumstances in the hospital a nurse when bringing me to her to be nursed told her, “well she is your last, so she will be your comfort in your old age.”  I was held accountable to that order and it was repeated a lot.  So the movie Like Water for Chocolate was far to close to home for me to enjoy.

Ah!  The bell of enlightenment rang. While sitting in that car having this discussion of role expectations, I told her that was HER own expectation system for which we did not agree; further I told her there were many mothers who did not share that expectation system at all. She was astounded because she truly believed ALL mothers felt that way.  It was an awareness for me, did our discussion of this change her? No. My goodness Meg, there it was in a Novel and a Movie so it must be true!

So forgive my Tale of Woe.....but it is a proclivity, perhaps ordained!  I do not know from where this rhyme originated or if it was simply verse or something more to it, but as a child in my literal world, I feared being Eeyore! I thought he was so funny, but I did not want that label. 

Yet, I am a person who does worry, and NEEDS to use my voice to heal and soothe. After all, I was left alone a lot as a child and that inner mantra got me to not just survive, but thrive. So I suppose I do have a Tale of Woe.  But I do not have a life sentence of woe.  I have achieved a great deal in life and experienced a great deal, and have plans for oh so much more.  I enjoyed so much of what I have chosen to do...it is the times when I feel I am overburdened by external influences that I experience those woeful times.  And that burden can truly deteriorate not just my spirit, but my health.

I learned long ago not to OWN what is out of my control and purview.  I was the Neurotic the first time I had years of stress and turmoil, taking on too much accountability and responsibility for what I had no part of...it was patterned into me almost from in utero. It can be devastating to self-image and so difficult to learn how to listen, distance, perception check, and be aware of boundaries. But once learned, you can quickly ascertain when you DO NOT own the responsibility.  

I am good at coping, generally.  I can do amazing self-care.  I can also take on a lot, but at some point the tide has to turn because the waves can’t keep rolling into shore and rest on my shoulders!!!!