Mama may forgive...but she never forgets

I was reading an article today about the latest trend of adult children "disentangling" from their families or choosing to go "no contact." Some propose that it is a result of our "therapy culture" encouraging adult children to go no contact due to painful interactions with family members. Some say it reflects an increasingly secular society that has forgotten the commandment "honor thy father and mother." The article had the interesting perspective of a change in our society when adult children no longer need the safety net of family to survive, and through distance can easily disengage from family members (parents in most cases) who create stress or anxiety.

I find the option fascinating. Not that I didn't have examples of this behavior in my childhood. Aunt Violet was an excellent example. Many years before I was born, one of my aunts warned my mother, "Violet is really crabby; she is pregnant again." This was at the usual Sunday dinner with the Baumgart family.

Mom, being Mom, said loudly to all (including Violet) to hear, "Well, I didn't knock her up, so she doesn't need to be crabby to me!"

Let's be honest, Mom likely said, "Bitchy", but I wasn't there, so all I have is Mom's version. That day, in the late 1950s, Aunt Violet willingly went "no contact" with Mom. About six or seven years later, I was born. I was thirty-three and one month old at my father's funeral. Aunt Violet sat in the "baby room" of the church for the funeral, refusing to be near my mother. From her attention-giving position, Aunt Violet complained about every aspect of the funeral to any unsuspecting victims who came past.

My grandmother, Mom's mother, was a woman who was "not too tightly nailed together". Grandma was mentally ill, and her children were never her priority. Yet, time after time, my mother forgave her. After Grandma's death, my mother mourned her as though she were a decent parent. If my mother was unbothered by being "no contact" with her sister-in-law, why did she cave in to her own mother?

I doubt the Bible's commandments drove Mom's forgiveness. Mom was a believer, but she generally treated most biblical dictates as suggestions, so no little commandment would influence her. Even if it was in the top ten.

Mom didn't need to depend on her mother for housing, money, or security. Minnesota had no filial piety law requiring her to care for her parent. (Some states still have that, resulting in huge financial burdens for nursing home care bills)

I think it was hope. The hope that someday her mother would acknowledge her, love her, or become the mother that she had always needed. In today's society, family estrangement appears to be a tool used when the parent cannot or will not provide what the adult child emotionally needs to hear. My mother never gave up hope that her mother would miraculously become a better person. Generations of trauma and abuse, hidden and tucked away, never discussed, never examined, kept that hope alive.

I like to use the line that my counseling mentor, Dr. Judy Horn, once told me:

"If you needed a million dollars, and I didn't have a million dollars, I wouldn't have it to give to you. It doesn't mean I don't love you, it just means I don't have it to give. Its the same way with family."

Parents learn to be parents from their parents, and their parents from their parents, and so on and so on. If generational trauma has taken away the ability to nurture, love, support, encourage, any or all of those, is it the parent's fault?

Maybe, and this is only my own thought, the world might be a better place if we forgave and accepted each person in our lives as they are, not what they can or cannot provide. My mother lived with hope that died with her mother, leaving Mom to mourn what could have/should have been. Judy taught me that each person is uniquely imperfect, and demanding something they cannot and do not have the capacity to give only makes you angry and hurt. Anger, resentment, and hurt don't change the situation or the person; it only hurts you as long as you allow them to take up space in your mind.

Remember, we get to choose how we interpret every situation!