I don’t know if you’ve ever tried holding space for someone to just be, regardless of the discomfort or pain it may bring. It’s hard, really fucking hard.
My son has talked to me about feeling abandoned as a child and recalled the time I went over the line as a parent. I forced a bar of soap into his mouth for swearing. The feeling of abandonment comes from a time when I asked their (his and my daughter’s) father to come get them. I was having a difficult time with the mastectomy and reconstruction, and my boyfriend at the time beat me up in front of my toddler children. It’s a long story, the short end of it is that their father was supposed to give the kids back once I was better and more settled, he never did. But I digress…
My relationship with my son has been strained for a long time, since he was sixteen. He stopped visiting and didn’t really stay in touch. He moved around some and communication has been sparse at best. It’s just been in this last year or so that he has been calling slightly more frequently or staying in touch via Messenger. It’s not always good.
He blew up at me just before New Year’s Eve because I refused to do something for him. I didn’t want to get involved in a squabble between him and someone else. He really went on the attack. His message was clearly full of anger but there was a lot pain too.
Instead of retaliating or even acknowledging that hurtful message, I let it be. I reached out to him New Year’s Day to say happy New Year and that I love him. A few days later he called me and asked how I could still say I love him after the mean and hurtful things he said. I told him that I love him unconditionally, and that I could see his pain and anger in his message. I recognized I wasn’t the mother he needed when he was younger and apologized for that. It was hard holding space for him and his feelings, they don’t shed the greatest of light on me as a mother, but they are valid.
Our conversation shifted and he was able to hear that I have some trauma of my own that I’m healing from, and that I brought my own trauma into how I parented him as a child. From there we were able to move on to other topics. I feel hopeful he will be in touch more frequently and we can build a better, healthier mother-son relationship as adults.
My Phoenix Rising 