Adapted from Transformational Inquiry: Working on Mothers and Others
(Today I am reminded of my mother, Pearl Skolnick, who passed away ten years ago on April 14, 1998. This post is dedicated to her with love.)
How can you heal a relationship after someone has died? While attending The School for The Work for the second time, I found myself working on my mother issues for most of the week. I was more than a little frustrated; some people I knew were cleaning up their relationships with their mothers, sharing their turnarounds with them, asking their mothers to tell them their truth, and really listening to them without defense. I realized how one-sided my work was; since my mother had died several years before, there was no way for me to do the equivalent. Or was there?
If everyone is our projection, they continue to live where they always lived: between our ears, in our minds and memories. Therefore, it is perfectly appropriate and possible do do The Work on thoughts about someone who has passed away. It is even possible to make amends to that person after their death. Amends are, after all, for us; forgiveness most benefits the one doing the forgiving. It's never comfortable to resent another; in making amends we are letting ourselves off the hatred hook.
Here's an exercise based on one from The School for The Work: once you've done some work on someone who has died--in other words, once you can do this with sincerity--try writing a letter of amends to them, in which you own your part in any misunderstanding between you.
In this letter--which, naturally, you're not going to be able to send--you
can enumerate the things you are sorry for (if you are truly sorry), the things you admired about this person, what you learned from him or her, and what you are grateful to them for. Sign off with love, if that feels genuine.
Once you have written the letter, cross out the person's name and the word "you" and insert your name and "I." Notice how much of your letter remarkably still
applies in this turnaround exercise. Gently take in what you have written and heal your relationship with yourself.
Eight years after my mother's death, I wrote a letter of amends to her
while attending a weekend workshop with Byron Katie. I had done this exercise several times before, but this was the letter I felt most deeply, the one that changed my life, past and present, and gave me back my mother.
Dear Mommy,
Looking back on our relationship, I wish I had been more understanding of you; kinder and more patient. I know you were doing the best you could and I was selfish to expect you to be different.
I am so sorry I tried to force you into parting with your belongings when you were sick and defenseless...to have yelled at you and disrespected you in public. I am sorry for having been so ashamed of you, and I am most sorry for that hesitation I had when the doctor asked if I wanted to put you on life support. I blamed you for not telling me beforehand what you wanted. I realize now that you were not able to discuss these things with me.
Throughout my life, I blamed you for my unhappiness. If you were here today I would make it up to you in whatever way you wanted. Since you are not here now, how can I live my life in a way that honors you for who you truly were?
I see now that you were a courageous woman to raise a child when you were grappling with so many demons. You saw to it that I had what I needed. You let me know I was smart and capable and able to take care of myself...and you gave me that opportunity at an early age. It's a gift that I could not appreciate until now.
Thank you for giving me a life, a home and a strong foundation. You continue to support me even now.
I love you very much, Mommy. You acted as if you didn't like to hear that, and it must be said: I love you.
Your Sputnik
As you might imagine, turning this letter around as if written by me, to me, was most powerful.
©2008 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.
SOUL SURGERY: exercises in inquiry with Carol L. Skolnick, Coach/Facilitator ClearLifeSolutions.com
Showing posts with label mothers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mothers. Show all posts
April 14, 2008
January 25, 2008
Up with Mothers! (And Others)
"I got from Working on Mothers and Others that forgiveness and amends are for me and I can tell my mother about it or not. That allowed me to be open to the possibility of doing it. And now I really want to."
—J.K., Yoga Instructor, Waco, TX
It's time. I'm going to raise the price of my popular eBook, Transformational Inquiry: Working on Mothers and Others (Second Edition) to $19.95 on February 1. But if you order it now before the end of the month, you can still pay $14.95.
Don't wait for Easter, Passover, Mother's Day, or your next visit home to question your beliefs about Mother; let this practical guide help you to heal your past as you unravel your most stressful thoughts about the parent you think you know so well.
(Note: this eBook is a PDF download; a link that says "Return to Merchant" will appear on the Paypal page once your payment has been approved, and that's where the eBook will be available.)
June 21, 2007
Happy Daughter's Day, Part II
June is the month of the parents for me, and this past week, it arrived in concentrated form, even though both my mother and father passed away many years ago. Father's Day came out on June 17th this year; and my mother was born on June 18. Since his passing, it's been easy enough to reminisce fondly about my dad, warts and all. He was a character to be sure, but I largely made peace with him even before his death.
However, until recent years, remembering my mother was likely to put me to bed for a few days. She was—to quote the King of Siam in the old Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. referring to the headstrong British schoolteacher of the royal children—"a very difficult woman, and much more difficult than generality." I could get lots of agreement on that statement and could even provide compelling evidence, but I think I'll save that for a worksheet and tell you what I've realized about my mother instead.
As I said, it has been a simpler matter to resolve my issues about my father in spite of our disagreements and my judgments. This isn't because I'm highly evolved and have done tons of work on my "daddy stuff," but rather because I never doubted his love for me. Pearl Skolnick was another story...and a story it is!
My mother was sick and confused, and I was sick and confused in her presence. I lived in fear and resentment of her; Alternately I tried to win her love and approval, and tried to blow her off. Ours was a crazy tango between two frightened people (depression is fear; anger is fear; resentment is fear) who wanted to love each other, who ultimately did love each other, and did not know how to live sanely out of that love.
When my mother's surgeon called to tell me that she had stopped breathing, and asked if I wanted to put her on a vent, I said I didn't know. That was partially true; because she wouldn't fill out the DNR statement at the hospital, I had no idea if she wanted life support or not. (After she died, in her bedroom, I found her signed and dated Living Will, which she had never shared with me. How very like her; this was the ultimate in passive aggression, I believed at the time.)
My real answer, the answer of my heart, was "no." I didn't want her life supported, only mine. I couldn't wait for my mother to die so that I might live; I'd been praying for this moment for years.
The doctor said I had a minute to decide. I called my friend, the physician, who had been slated to go with me that day to the hospital and decipher her charts. She advised, "Put her on the vent; she's going to die anyway." I was about to call back when I got the second phone call: too late. Decision made without me. My vote didn't count.
I killed my mother: is that true? No, I can't know that with any certainty. Can I know she would have survived on life support, or that her living longer would have been for her highest good? Absolutely not.
Can I know that she didn't consciously check out?
I tried to kill myself for years, believing what I thought about my mother. I was an inept serial killer, attempting to snuff myself out and make myself wrong for living at all. But I didn't kill my mother; I am not that powerful, to end someone's life with a wish.
Today, for the first time, it occurs to me that my mother both lived for me, and died for me. Without her, I would not be this, now. Without her death just as it happened, I would not be this, now.
This, now, is good...very good.
Thank you, Mommy. Thank you for this, and for all of it.
Happy birthday...to us.
P.S. Got Mom? Transformational Inquiry: Working on Mothers and Others is a handbook for navigating your relationship with your mother, with 73 pages of exercises and insights. Let this practical guide help you to heal your past as you unravel your most stressful thoughts about the parent you think you know so well.
To purchase this eBook and for information about other titles in the Transformational Inquiry series, visit
http://www.clearlifesolutions.com/clearlifestore.htm
©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.
However, until recent years, remembering my mother was likely to put me to bed for a few days. She was—to quote the King of Siam in the old Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. referring to the headstrong British schoolteacher of the royal children—"a very difficult woman, and much more difficult than generality." I could get lots of agreement on that statement and could even provide compelling evidence, but I think I'll save that for a worksheet and tell you what I've realized about my mother instead.
As I said, it has been a simpler matter to resolve my issues about my father in spite of our disagreements and my judgments. This isn't because I'm highly evolved and have done tons of work on my "daddy stuff," but rather because I never doubted his love for me. Pearl Skolnick was another story...and a story it is!
My mother was sick and confused, and I was sick and confused in her presence. I lived in fear and resentment of her; Alternately I tried to win her love and approval, and tried to blow her off. Ours was a crazy tango between two frightened people (depression is fear; anger is fear; resentment is fear) who wanted to love each other, who ultimately did love each other, and did not know how to live sanely out of that love.
When my mother's surgeon called to tell me that she had stopped breathing, and asked if I wanted to put her on a vent, I said I didn't know. That was partially true; because she wouldn't fill out the DNR statement at the hospital, I had no idea if she wanted life support or not. (After she died, in her bedroom, I found her signed and dated Living Will, which she had never shared with me. How very like her; this was the ultimate in passive aggression, I believed at the time.)
My real answer, the answer of my heart, was "no." I didn't want her life supported, only mine. I couldn't wait for my mother to die so that I might live; I'd been praying for this moment for years.
The doctor said I had a minute to decide. I called my friend, the physician, who had been slated to go with me that day to the hospital and decipher her charts. She advised, "Put her on the vent; she's going to die anyway." I was about to call back when I got the second phone call: too late. Decision made without me. My vote didn't count.
I killed my mother: is that true? No, I can't know that with any certainty. Can I know she would have survived on life support, or that her living longer would have been for her highest good? Absolutely not.
Can I know that she didn't consciously check out?
I tried to kill myself for years, believing what I thought about my mother. I was an inept serial killer, attempting to snuff myself out and make myself wrong for living at all. But I didn't kill my mother; I am not that powerful, to end someone's life with a wish.
Today, for the first time, it occurs to me that my mother both lived for me, and died for me. Without her, I would not be this, now. Without her death just as it happened, I would not be this, now.
This, now, is good...very good.
Thank you, Mommy. Thank you for this, and for all of it.
Happy birthday...to us.
P.S. Got Mom? Transformational Inquiry: Working on Mothers and Others is a handbook for navigating your relationship with your mother, with 73 pages of exercises and insights. Let this practical guide help you to heal your past as you unravel your most stressful thoughts about the parent you think you know so well.
To purchase this eBook and for information about other titles in the Transformational Inquiry series, visit
http://www.clearlifesolutions.com/clearlifestore.htm
©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.
May 11, 2007
Turn Your Mother Around
Katie: So, sweetheart, let's turn this whole thing around: "I"...
Woman: I am angry at myself because I am selfish, controlling, and manipulative.
Katie: Especially towards your mother....
©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.
Woman: I am angry at myself because I am selfish, controlling, and manipulative.
Katie: Especially towards your mother....
If you believe your mother is controlling, you may want to watch this one before Mother's Day...and do a "Judge-Your-Mother" worksheet.
©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.
May 8, 2007
Why Is Mother's Day Stressful?
Got a mother? Wish you were a mom...or, sometimes, that you weren't? Wish yours were alive...or dead?
As the anonymous Middle English lyricist might have written, if he'd had mother-issues and the holiday had already been invented,
If you are feeling a bit nuts in anticipation of this holiday, you are not alone. Many of us dread Mother's Day either because we want our mothers to love us, we want our children or partners to appreciate us, we hate family gatherings, we have no family, or we think it's a silly holiday. It's a great time for inquiry.
Here is a sample from Chapter 6 of my eBook, Transformational Inquiry: Working on Mothers and Others:
Your Mother is Your Projection
I became interested in The Work when I heard about Byron Katie’s life story; before her “moment of clarity,” she was remarkably like my own mother: overweight, enraged, paranoid, addicted to pain-killers, bedridden for years. Depressed for most of my life and still despairing after having done all sorts of therapies and spiritual modalities, I was certain that one day I would follow in my mother’s footsteps…except it would be much worse because, unlike my mother, I had no husband or kids as enablers.
I’d been scaring myself half to death with that “my mother, myself” story for many years. So when I heard that there was someone who had been in that same kind of sickbed and had gotten out, I knew that whatever she was selling, I was going to buy it, however weird it seemed. (And it sure seemed weird to me at the time.)
Years later, when I met Roxann, Katie’s daughter, I introduced myself and said, “I’ve always wanted to meet you because we had the same mother.” She replied, “Hopefully we have the same mother now.”
I’m not quite there. However, my mother is no longer who I thought she was…and that frees me up to love her.
“Sweetheart, when you take the medicine, we get better. It’s a law.”
—Byron Katie
In Mothers and Others, you will find exercises and insights that can help you with your "mother story." What better gift can you give your mother, or your children, than getting clarity around the stressful concepts of Mother that we have held dearer than the person herself?
You may purchase Transformational Inquiry: Working on Mothers and Others at my website, http://clearlifesolutions.com/clearlifestore.htm
Do The Work for Sunday brunch this week, and have a Happy Mother's Day!
©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.
As the anonymous Middle English lyricist might have written, if he'd had mother-issues and the holiday had already been invented,
"Mother's Day's icumin in
Lhude sing Cuckoo!"
If you are feeling a bit nuts in anticipation of this holiday, you are not alone. Many of us dread Mother's Day either because we want our mothers to love us, we want our children or partners to appreciate us, we hate family gatherings, we have no family, or we think it's a silly holiday. It's a great time for inquiry.
Here is a sample from Chapter 6 of my eBook, Transformational Inquiry: Working on Mothers and Others:
Your Mother is Your Projection
I became interested in The Work when I heard about Byron Katie’s life story; before her “moment of clarity,” she was remarkably like my own mother: overweight, enraged, paranoid, addicted to pain-killers, bedridden for years. Depressed for most of my life and still despairing after having done all sorts of therapies and spiritual modalities, I was certain that one day I would follow in my mother’s footsteps…except it would be much worse because, unlike my mother, I had no husband or kids as enablers.
I’d been scaring myself half to death with that “my mother, myself” story for many years. So when I heard that there was someone who had been in that same kind of sickbed and had gotten out, I knew that whatever she was selling, I was going to buy it, however weird it seemed. (And it sure seemed weird to me at the time.)
Years later, when I met Roxann, Katie’s daughter, I introduced myself and said, “I’ve always wanted to meet you because we had the same mother.” She replied, “Hopefully we have the same mother now.”
I’m not quite there. However, my mother is no longer who I thought she was…and that frees me up to love her.
“Sweetheart, when you take the medicine, we get better. It’s a law.”
—Byron Katie
In Mothers and Others, you will find exercises and insights that can help you with your "mother story." What better gift can you give your mother, or your children, than getting clarity around the stressful concepts of Mother that we have held dearer than the person herself?
You may purchase Transformational Inquiry: Working on Mothers and Others at my website, http://clearlifesolutions.com/clearlifestore.htm
Do The Work for Sunday brunch this week, and have a Happy Mother's Day!
©2007 by Carol L. Skolnick; all rights reserved.
November 13, 2006
Mothers, Lovers and Sunsets
"Mommy, did you love sunsets?" I asked aloud. As I asked her that question, I wept as I saw that I had never really known my mother.
I have chased after sunsets wherever I am in the world; from the Thansa Valley in Maharastra, India to Cali, Colombia...from Santa Fe to Santa Cruz...from Cancun, Mexico to the bridge connecting Maine to New Hampshire. Some of my favorite sunsets have been those rosy, striated beauties I'd been privileged to witness as often as I liked at a riverside park near my former home in New York City's Greenwich Village, where the light descended on New Jersey across the Hudson every evening. In the year before I left the east coast and moved to California, I'd been depriving myself of our waterfront. My "ex" and I regularly did the "sunset thing" together and I thought that meant it would be painful to do it alone. What did I get for holding this belief that sunsets are romantic and best viewed with a partner? No sunsets. So a year after he and I parted, I headed down to the water to catch a late summer view. It was spectacular.
Midway through the viewing, my late mother came up for me. Maybe it's because I was contemplating leaving New York, where I was raised and where I've lived for most of my life; maybe, in midlife, I was feeling closer to my own mortality. Whatever the reason, I'd been talking to her lately, although she had been dead for seven years. When she was alive, I spoke to her only when necessary; we'd had a difficult relationship from the time I was five years old and our conversations usually culminated in arguments.
Why the sudden need for communication? I was very confused when she was alive. I had a picture of my mother as cruel, undercutting, a bad parent, unloving, withholding and insane. I didn't have the tools of self-inquiry then. In recent years, I have made amends to her, in my mind and on paper, many times. I have no idea if she hears me. It doesn't matter; I do.
"Mommy, did you love sunsets?" I asked aloud. It was not a premeditated act; it did not arise out of loneliness. She was just there. As I asked her that question, I wept as I saw that I had never really known my mother. I don't even know if she loved one of the things I love most; she never shared that with me and it never came to me to ask. The "I know" mind was convinced of who she was and I rarely acknowledged the other side of her, the part that was brilliant, creative, humorous, the part that sounded like criticism but that may have been her way of expressing concern...the part that housed and fed and clothed me and did the very best she could to raise me while she lived in an apparent mental hell.
The mind's job is to be right. It will spend a lifetime proving itself to be the authority on things like nagging mothers, deadbeat dads, lying partners, intractable kids, officious shop clerks, murderous dictators. It misses out on sunsets, on intimacy, on real life.
Do I love sunsets enough to view them without a story of how I should have done it all summer, how I should be watching it with a partner, how my mother and I should have shared sunsets instead of shouting matches? Yes. I wouldn't want to miss the beauty of life as it is showing up, right now.
Deepening Transformational Inquiry: Mothers and Others
©2006 by Carol L. Skolnick. All rights reserved.
Order your copy of my new eBook, Transformational Inquiry: Working on Mothers and Others. First in a series, it is filled with information and exercises to help you work with your stickiest stressful beliefs about "the first love affair." For more information, visit the Clear Life Store.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)