was just wondering if many of you imagine that your child is
calling, "Mama." How do you get your mind off of the pain of it all?
I imagine that, Mechdonna. Whether it is real or not, I do what I can in that instant. I open to it. I have read that when we are frightened, we call for our mothers. As surely as we understand our mothers are not going to magically appear and save us, we take comfort in that imagery of her, and of the safety she represents.
So, I try to be that, try to send that.
It makes me sad, worried, so regretful.
But it is something I can do.
So, I do it.
Our daughter was beat in a domestic assault over the course of many hours just after Thanksgiving. She was left for dead, and dragged, bloody and naked, into an unheated back room. When she regained consciousness, the abuser came back.
Somehow, she convinced him to bring her to the hospital.
Though so much of the damage has resolved, she has some brain damage that seems not to be resolving, yet. She is living in a shelter with my 14 year old granddaughter. It is likely that she will be relocated to another part of the country for her safety.
She did call out to me, Mechdonna.
I never felt a thing during the beating, other than a sense of disorientation, that feeling that something bad is coming.
Pretty immediately, I say the Serenity Prayer when those feelings happen. I cannot change any of this. If there is something bad happening, I am going to need my strength to deal with it. I cannot be frittering it away worrying about something that may not happen.
I just think we are all in dire straits, here on the site. We share our stories and tell one another how fortunate we are to have that option...but in reality, we live every minute of our days and of our nights bracing ourselves to learn of the death, or the permanent ruination, of one of our children.
We suffer; night and day, we suffer. We learn to be strong in the face of that, in the undeniable fact of that.
We have to.
It is what it is.
I am sorry you are in this kind of pain, Mechdonna. I know how much you love him, how much you wanted everything to be different.
I have no idea where the strength it takes to walk through our days comes from. I don't know how we do what we do, how we keep loving them, how we never forget them, not for an instant.
This may help, Mechdonna. During the times when the pain of what is happening becomes overwhelming, this imagery can sometimes comfort me:
"Sybil remembered the crucifixions of her past, and by each of them, where she herself hung and screamed and writhed, she saw the golden halo and the hands of the Fool holding and easing her, and heard his voice, whispering peace."
Charles Williams
The Greater Trumps
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Here is another, for when I am feeling more defiant in my relationship to my pain:
"Seboulissa
mother goddess with one breast
eaten away by worms of sorrow
and loss
See me, now....
Your severed daughter
laughing our name into echo
all the world shall remember.
Audre Lourde
The Politics of Women's Spirituality
Charlene Spretnak
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And here is one for the pure beauty of it. The beautiful things can heal us, can make us stronger.
"A bird cried jubilation. In that moment they lived long. All minor motions were stilled and only the great ones were perceived. Beneath them the Earth turned, singing."
Sheri S. Tepper
The Revenants
