A Pre-emptive Mother's Day Confession

Until this year if I could have or would have admitted to having issue with Mother’s Day I would have said it was because the father’s of my sons have not taught their sons to pay obeisance on Mother’s Day. I would have said that it hurt to spend Mother’s Day alone as the mother of three young men. At the same time I have been of the opinion that there is no celebration, with the exception of Christmas, more firmly ensconced as cause in the dysfunction of our lives. The veneer of duty that surrounds Mother’s/Father’s Days sullies those celebrations at best; the celebrations are a lump in the throat and a festering source of resentment to those who have suffered abuse instead of nurturance at the hands of these caregivers.

This year is different because of the story of a new friend, Tom Pinetree.
We met through an online forum. Actually I read Tom’s posts to the NDW blog support centre for months before responding. Tom’s writing spoke with a depth and in a prose that captured my attention. At the same time his writing was about sexual abuse committed against him in childhood unto young adulthood by his mother and grandmother and was abhorrent material to read. I didn’t need or try to deny the similarity between his mother and mine. I knew that my mother had acted with evil intent and I was as comfortable as one can be with that information…I had forgiven her.

While Tom’s story was remarkable in and of itself, the courage it took for this man, any man, any person to open up and share such a story was more remarkable again. My first post to Tom came out of my need to honor that courage and to declare unequivocally that I saw him as a brother, and that WEAREONE. The mirror that was Tom sounded a chord that resonated deep within me. The mirror I held up for him to see himself in was full with love and respect best expressed by sharing my story. For months after that first post our conversations progressed from the forum to private emails until we were finally talking on the telephone so great was our mutual need to support and learn from each other.

Almost a year has passed since we met and I’m more surprised than I can express that I am marking Mother’s Day this year with much gratitude to Tom Pinetree. It has been a pleasure to meet the challenge of getting more real, more authentic about owning my own story as a result of Tom’s example. I am grateful to have had such a stalwart guide and companion as Tom to walk through the corridors in my heart and mind as he has allowed me entrance to his.

This year I am grateful to have penetrated to the core of an anger I have felt toward women since I was six years of age. That anger has since festered in the deeps of my being revenging itself as I stood mute witness to the displays of self loathing. I have raged against the women in my culture who didn’t speak when they could have, who manipulate for power and who will finally violate instead of nurture. I have raged even as I knew and felt that we were one.

This Mother’s Day I honor the sons and daughters in law who accepted the risk of me as their mother. I honor my companions in this life journey one and all with particular note to those whom I share an everyday sense of spiritual community, the childrens, Court, Jenny, Tom, John R. and Tim, my brother John. I am blessed a thousand thousand fold by your presence in my life.



(In this picture we're looking up Okeover Inlet, facing north to Desolation Sound, taken through the trees from a height of land on the Sunshine Coast trail not far from home.)