So, so beautiful. Devastating + hopeful. The way you weave the stories together, moving back and forth through time, dropping breadcrumbs as you go...well, this mastery is why so many of us are choosing to learn from you.
I just want the weight of the quilt squares of word snippets you’ve fostered in this space to hold you heavy and warm. And the crystal decanters to melt like the frost on that window. In the ache of this, I feel so much joy in your making a house fit the child your child is parenting. Maybe spirals don’t come full circle, but those touch points deepen in resolve with each iteration.
Jeannine, your story is so beautiful and moving. I'm adopted, and my mother always loved me, but somehow it never felt like I was enough for her. She taught me the meaning of "There but for the grace of God go I," an adonishment that was intended to remind me to shut up and be grateful for the mom and dad who raised me. As if I would be asking too much by wanting to learn my true origins. I feared no one, not even God, would love me if I ever found out who I was. It also made the premise of unconditional love implausible. Being loved was, instead, a matter of luck, or lack thereof. In so many ways, I was a child of privilege, so I learned to please my parents, hoping we could continue to pretend we belonged together.
My Grandma, my father's mother, loved me like crazy, and followed me when I was sad and crying in a corner of the guest room with offers of homemade chocolate fudge, whoopie pies, and freshly baked cherry pie, and invitations to sit on her lap and read a story with her. She would read tirelessly from The Pokey Little Puppy, and I never once doubted that she loved me, nor that I belonged to her, and she to me, as she rocked me in her warm embrace. So when she was stricken with Alzheimers, I sat beside her on the porch glider without complaining, as she read the newspaper, front to back, then back to front again. Because, no matter the grace of God, she was always my special Grandma. And I loved her exactly as God made her.
Thank you. Nice of you to say. Someday I hope to write the way your essay made me feel and with all the amazing universal truths you so poignantly express.
Really good compelling truth telling. I wish I did not have so much in common with you even as I have no intention to write of such things at this point.
I believe your mother is still incapable of true love of herself. Rejecting you is rejecting that part of her that is too vulnerable and nice (likely viewed as weakness). Also shame and guilt vibrate very low (as does selfishness) so while she vibrates low and you vibrate high, surrounded by love, there really is no way for genuine connection, for skipping levels. Interestingly, it is your low vibrating mother who “seems” better at letting go of what makes her feel bad about herself ( being a lousy unprotecting parent) while you continue to try to figure out how someone you think you love so deeply, in spite of their huge flaws and sin to you, could reject you. She is rejecting all the good you imbibe. Can you imagine being such a poor mother as she is? You really can’t at this point as you would not act like that. You would and do make choices that don’t make one feel really shitty as a human being. Yet it’s not your job to save her from herself. She dumped her unworthiness tapes on you in big ways by creating even more nuanced dregs of dreadful music for you to play as memories and feelings that are not pleasing. I know this is beautiful fodder for your poignant writing. I hope you let that relationship go in your mind, the only real place it has any meaning or ability to feel better or worse than reality. I hope you never vibrate low enough to be in her wave length. And better yet, I hope someday she vibrates high enough to love you as you deserve so she too can be loved as she deserves.
So, so beautiful. Devastating + hopeful. The way you weave the stories together, moving back and forth through time, dropping breadcrumbs as you go...well, this mastery is why so many of us are choosing to learn from you.
Thank you so much, Alana. That means a lot.
I just want the weight of the quilt squares of word snippets you’ve fostered in this space to hold you heavy and warm. And the crystal decanters to melt like the frost on that window. In the ache of this, I feel so much joy in your making a house fit the child your child is parenting. Maybe spirals don’t come full circle, but those touch points deepen in resolve with each iteration.
So much live for this, and you and yours.
And love— the typo works better, maybe?
Live is good, too, though!
Reading this made me feel more alive, and want my words to do that. So grateful to learn from you in the writing, living, and loving.
Jeannine, your story is so beautiful and moving. I'm adopted, and my mother always loved me, but somehow it never felt like I was enough for her. She taught me the meaning of "There but for the grace of God go I," an adonishment that was intended to remind me to shut up and be grateful for the mom and dad who raised me. As if I would be asking too much by wanting to learn my true origins. I feared no one, not even God, would love me if I ever found out who I was. It also made the premise of unconditional love implausible. Being loved was, instead, a matter of luck, or lack thereof. In so many ways, I was a child of privilege, so I learned to please my parents, hoping we could continue to pretend we belonged together.
My Grandma, my father's mother, loved me like crazy, and followed me when I was sad and crying in a corner of the guest room with offers of homemade chocolate fudge, whoopie pies, and freshly baked cherry pie, and invitations to sit on her lap and read a story with her. She would read tirelessly from The Pokey Little Puppy, and I never once doubted that she loved me, nor that I belonged to her, and she to me, as she rocked me in her warm embrace. So when she was stricken with Alzheimers, I sat beside her on the porch glider without complaining, as she read the newspaper, front to back, then back to front again. Because, no matter the grace of God, she was always my special Grandma. And I loved her exactly as God made her.
This is beautiful, Priscilla!
Thank you. Nice of you to say. Someday I hope to write the way your essay made me feel and with all the amazing universal truths you so poignantly express.
Really good compelling truth telling. I wish I did not have so much in common with you even as I have no intention to write of such things at this point.
I believe your mother is still incapable of true love of herself. Rejecting you is rejecting that part of her that is too vulnerable and nice (likely viewed as weakness). Also shame and guilt vibrate very low (as does selfishness) so while she vibrates low and you vibrate high, surrounded by love, there really is no way for genuine connection, for skipping levels. Interestingly, it is your low vibrating mother who “seems” better at letting go of what makes her feel bad about herself ( being a lousy unprotecting parent) while you continue to try to figure out how someone you think you love so deeply, in spite of their huge flaws and sin to you, could reject you. She is rejecting all the good you imbibe. Can you imagine being such a poor mother as she is? You really can’t at this point as you would not act like that. You would and do make choices that don’t make one feel really shitty as a human being. Yet it’s not your job to save her from herself. She dumped her unworthiness tapes on you in big ways by creating even more nuanced dregs of dreadful music for you to play as memories and feelings that are not pleasing. I know this is beautiful fodder for your poignant writing. I hope you let that relationship go in your mind, the only real place it has any meaning or ability to feel better or worse than reality. I hope you never vibrate low enough to be in her wave length. And better yet, I hope someday she vibrates high enough to love you as you deserve so she too can be loved as she deserves.
Thanks, Penni. I hope the same.
No words for the beauty of this essay carrying hope and liberty for all of us, Jeannine.
Thank you for curating it. So grateful to you.
Riveting, heart breaking and beautiful ❤️
Thank you so much, Virginia ❤️
Beautiful ❤️