Mommy issues
She didn’t experience a light, carefree mom.
“She’s dead.”
So said my client (we’ll call her Sandita) to start our session. Her mother had been suffering from dementia for about five years and had been on the decline, but the ending still seemed to come relatively quickly.
I asked her, “So, how are you feeling right this minute?”
She closed her eyes and took a moment (progress right there not to have a knee-jerk reaction) and said, “I feel mostly peaceful and also a little confused. It’s been interesting hearing others describe my mom. Lots of different points of view.”
Sandita’s mom (we’ll call her Rosalie) was 89 when she died and had been married to her dad (we’ll call him Santiago) for almost 70 years. At 90, Santiago was heavily grieving the death of his beloved but apparently holding it together remarkably well.
Sandita had a long and mostly difficult relationship with her mom (which we discussed often in therapy). She always described her dad as a light-hearted soul who was funny, warm, and easy to be around.
Her mom, however, was different. She didn’t experience a light, carefree mom. In fact, Rosalie’s main mode of dealing with the world was fear. To Sandita, she was often negative, worrying and, if not cold, not the warmest mom in the world either. In hindsight, it’s clear that Rosalie suffered from severe anxiety but was never diagnosed. That anxiety showed up as fear, agitation, negativity, worrying, and always trying to predict when the other shoe would drop.
The problem, of course, is that when someone is this anxious it’s difficult to bond with them or to feel unconditionally accepted. So, Sandita had some struggles finding vulnerability and closeness with her mom throughout her life. She wanted a mom who would comfort her when she was sad or encourage her when times were tough, but that’s not the mom she got.
In the days after her death, many of Rosalie and Santiago’s friends and neighbors came to the house to pay their respects. One of those friends came up to Sandita and was telling her how much she had loved her mom. She went on and on about how wonderful, warm, generous, and intelligent she was. “She was just so special,” she remarked. Another friend of theirs shared with Sandita how her own husband just loved Rosalie. “They would laugh and laugh when we all got together. No one could make him laugh like your mom.”
In session, Sandita told me about these conversations and said, “It’s so sad that I literally wondered if these women were thinking of the right person! I can’t even picture my mom hanging out and cracking up with her friends. It makes me feel kind of terrible. I guess she is all of those things, but other people didn’t get all that anxiety layered in.”
My response was this, “Your mom is all those things because all those adjectives - warm, generous, intelligent, funny, caring, and special - they all describe you!” Sandita had always assumed that she only took after her sweet father, but it’s now clear she took after her mom in some beautiful ways too.
I said to Sandita, “Yes, your mom’s anxiety was out of control at home, but she clearly kept it together in the outside world because she didn’t love others as fiercely as she loved you, so she didn’t have as much anxiety about them as she did for you. For her, worrying was love…”
Humans are complicated creatures. I would argue that all of us are like Rosalie. We have sides that we show certain people at certain times. It doesn’t mean those sides of us are fake. It means we have trouble with being vulnerable in different situations. So, as counterintuitive as it may seem, we’re often more open and easier with people we care less about, where the stakes aren’t as high. However, when we care deeply, thus feel more vulnerable, it can be too easy to lead with fear and be controlling, anxious, narrow thinkers.
I asked my client permission to tell this story, and we talked about how it might be able to help other people for me to share it here on this platform (there are many thousands of you who read this every week). Although she’s not Jewish, I explained to her that in Jewish tradition, "Neshama" refers to the soul, and "elevating someone's soul after they die" means performing good deeds or acts of goodness in their memory. It’s believed that these good deeds help elevate the soul to a higher spiritual realm in the afterlife. I’m hoping this week’s Love Letter does just that. Rosalie richly deserves it.
My dad used to say in Yiddish, “Gutte Neshama,” when he was describing a good soul, someone who had a kind heart and good character. I’d forgotten this phrase until Sandita and I started talking about all this and I’ve decided I want to start using it again when I think of others, but also as a filter of sorts for myself. Am I acting daily in alignment with being Gutte Neshama? Am I remembering to put my values, love and vulnerability first in my relationships and in all my interactions in the world?
Here’s to a week of stepping back from judgment and stepping into love because a lot of things can be true at once.