The most surprising thing that Mom experienced in her quest for a better sense of her own inner core was the distress felt by her older children, each of whom categorically opposed it.
Peter openly scoffed at her search.
Mike & Kerry were both outspoken in their criticism of her search.
Mim saw no need for it & pegged all responsibility for Mom's search on me. (Would that it were true - Mom finally sought help because of Mim & Peter, not because of anything I said or did.)
Initially, Mom felt blindsided. When she'd reached out in her letter to each of us for our support in her quest, she wasn't requesting our active participation. The work she did with the great Kevyn Malloy was about HER, not about us.
Each one of them went way past questioning Mom's drive to find out what was important to her - they flat out denounced it.
What would have seemed emotionally devastating - her older children presenting a united front of disapproval & ultimately distancing - turned out to be weirdly liberating. She felt sad that her children could not see that this was something she was doing that had virtually nothing to do with them. Who could have guessed how their responses stirred her mother's heart & soul in new ways?
It struck Mom, especially after reading a letter from Mike, that her three oldest children could not comprehend that their mother was doing something for herself, not for anyone else. And, for possibly the first time in her life, Mom processed their inflamed responses as information - then forged on with her quest, even when warned that continued counseling could push them out of her life. I would describe that as "courageous," but am pretty sure Mom would say it was just what needed to be done.
Out of the small trove of letters recently rediscovered in the Big Dig clear & clean, two stand out as worth a look. One from Mike to Mom; the other, her reply. Individually & in tandem, they illustrate so much of everything Mom was experiencing.
From Mike's March 15, 1999 letter:
I would like to say that whoever you are talking to or having consul with is driving a large wedge between the family and you. As you approach your 89 birthday, we should be getting closer, not farther apart. We should be helping all the members of the family get closer to you and each other. But it seems that it is not happening. Kerry was very upset with your short note saying that you only trust John and me in what we say, or being safe. I can't think of a statement farther from the truth when it comes to Kerry. She has only your goodwill at heart as have I. But she will also say what she thinks because she has a right to. You are losing Kerry very fast and a rethink about people's right to voice their feelings should be looked at very carefully. You have your feelings, too, I do know this.*
No one can make you do or feel what you do, Mother, only you can. Don't change that "attitude of mind" so much that no family is left to see the results.
* The last sentence is in much smaller print because that's how Mike wrote it - possibly added later rather part than of the original thought.
Am including all of Mom's reply, because every word touches my heart & memories. She put her heart into writing it, sitting in her big chair in the living room & on her bedside. In so many ways, having the opportunity to respond to Mike gave her a key to expressing what she had set out to do & to take a loving look at what was coming from it.
To put Mom's second paragraph in context, she is referring to the early summer 1997 emotional explosion, which still reverberated almost two years later.
March 30, 1999
Dear Michael
Your letter was received. Here are a few of my thoughts.
Don't let the fall out of a few heated moments taint your life. Set aside the unintended hurt and the disagreement, and focus on the intentional love. I find comfort that no one intended to be hurtful.
I have a psychological counselor, a financial counselor, and spiritual counselors. John is an influence, Elsa is an influence, and Peter is an influence, along with Taking Responsibility: Self Reliance and the Accountable Life by Nathaniel Branden, Stephen Covey, John Bradshaw and other authors. I enclose a list of Branden quotations.
The key issue in this quest for self is me, not Elsa, not Kerry.
It is important to ask "Why?" rather than lash out if people say or do disturbing things. Asking "Why?" acknowledges the possibility of a different point of view. It does not mean agreeing with the response.
A reply is not necessarily a response. Intentional silence is not a neutral response. Stripped down to basics, life is about loving people for who they are, and not who we want them to be.
Love to all -
Love, Mom
p.s. My shoulder is punishing me for writing this, but it is a necessity.
Reading over Mom's letter, can totally understand why all of my older siblings discounted the person who wrote it, the person their mother was discovering within herself.
OUR mother never went below the surface of whatever a person presented, never asked "Why?" or delved any deeper than what was in front of her. She certainly would never ever had said that silence is not a neutral response - the woman who had done that all our lives now saw it as BOGUS??
It was easier, safer to attribute the change in Mom to my influence or Kevyn's or anyone else, because it just didn't fit their image of our mother.
The very things that so many others felt & feel deserve celebration & deep respect were foreign to my brothers & sister. And yet Mom still forged ahead.
The emotional explosion that set off all that came after happened in early summer 1997. The drama between myself and Peter & Mim played out over summer 1998. Mom's group letter to her children about her hopes for the quest with Kevyn went out apparently in late winter 1999, with March & April responses from Mike & later Kerry. And in February 2000, Mom sent out her first Mindwalker1910 e-mail to what would be a growing & increasingly devoted dist list.
When Mom was 87, 88 & 89.
As someone who experienced her as massively passive-aggressive in her family dealings, as absolutely the way Kerry so often slammed as unwilling to see difficult realities right in front of her, with no idea that what she intended as benign neglect was still an action rather than a neutral response, the tender words she wrote to Mike were nothing sort of revolutionary.
Katharine Reynolds Lockhart - personal growth rock star!
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