It took me many, many, many years (and therapy) to understand that
whatever my failings, the flaw was not in me, but ‘simply’ in a mother who
didn’t have a mother’s love to give. Not having a present mother is a
loss, but in some cases it is the loss of someone who just has nothing to give
us. Their tanks are empty, and their heart.
Because you were unloved by your mother does not mean that you are
Unlovable—-there’s a big difference between the two. What crime could I have
committed by the age of 6 to make her not love me? None at all.
Interesting things happen too when you don’t have a mother. Throughout
my life, much older women have appeared in my life who were wise, loving and
compassionate, and took me under their wing for a time, and gave me a kind of
love and approval that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Much kinder and more
intelligent and wiser women than my mother.
I was able to see [my mother] before she died, and I hoped for a minute that she
would suddenly say everything I had hoped to hear for all of my life, but she
didn’t. She was who she was, true to herself and true to form until her last
breath. Quite amazingly, about a week before she died, she said in passing “You
were the best thing that ever happened to me.” I was stunned, had never heard
anything like it from her in my entire life, and jokingly said to a friend “she
must be dying to say something like that”. It was a final gift, and the best
she could do.
There is nothing wrong with you if you feel that your mother didn’t love you—if so, it was her burden to carry, and her failing, not yours. Our best mothers are not always the women we were born to. Don’t forget that YOU ARE LOVABLE, whether your mother loved you or not.
