Thoughts on Loss + Motherhood
- Lynne Pike
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Losing mom has affected my perspective on being a mother ...
My Person
We all have one of those people, if we're lucky.
That person you end up spending hours with at the kitchen table.
That person for me, was my mother.
We would talk for hours about our views, our ideas, and our dreams.
Mom was very intentional about creating space for me to find my own voice at her table.
"What do you think?" she'd often ask me...
Mom was my person.
Parenting
I could tell my Mom anything and instantly knew it was private —because she was a vault.
She wasn't one to judge me.
She never rushed me to get married or have children.
I remember Mom saying regularly, "If you every choose to get married—it's your choice..."
Often she would add, "If you choose to have children—you don't have to—it's your choice..."
Yet, of course once I did choose to get married I could tell she became eager to meet any future grandbabies.
Even though she would continue to tell me... "it's your choice."
And she did, of course, meet them.
She held her grandbabies and she loved them, the same way that she loved me.
And I watched as my children grew so incredibly close to her—because of how she listened to them, played with them, talked with them, and treated them.
I watched as they too chose Nana to be their special person.
Mothering
I used to wonder (and greatly worry) about the eventual loss of losing my Mom.
What would I do the day I can't talk to my mother?!!
Who will I talk to!
Who will I share my inner self with—and sit at the kitchen table with?
When my children were still quite young, I began to realize that we sit at our kitchen table together, everyday... and talk.
Sometimes for hours.
That we share our lives over our kitchen table.
It's different of course.
The roles are now reversed.
I am the listener.
I am the vault.
I am the one they trust and lean on.
"What do you think?" I hear myself ask them...
And as I listen—they tell me what they think about life, the universe, geopolitics, the divine, nature, and all the wonderful things that they think about.
What I've come to realized is, when they share, I get that same feeling that I had—how I would feel—when I would talk with my Mom.
You see—my children are my continued conversation with my mother.
Losing
So in a way, there is no true losing, is there?
Only changing.
Even though change can involve deep pain and loss, it is not the same as losing.
I gained so much from my mother and I gain so much every day from the conversations that I continue to have with my children.
This crazy web (aka: The Great Cycle of Connection) actually continues.
Conversations don't necessarily end...
They have the ability to pass on and to continue on—through subsequent generations.
Biologically (and spiritually) I am forever connected to my mother... and so are my beautiful children.
My children are literally tiny pieces of my mother.
And I am the conduit in between.
We are forever connected.
My Mom continues to be and will always be my person.
May the energy of past conversations — the ones that she and I shared so deeply — become a steadfast thread at my kitchen table ... in the sweet voices of my children.
May you all continue to be surrounded by the peace of solace, joy, comfort, and love.
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