I don’t need her : april 21 2023

(this letter is heavy. this is your warning)

I’ve never said this before. I’ve never even felt what it feels like to NOT need her.

I don’t need her protection.

I don’t need her approval.

I don’t need her love.

I don’t need an apology.

I don’t need her to take responsibility or to see the damage she did.

I don’t need anything material from her.

I always believed that part of being human meant needing all the things you receive from a mother. I knew I wasn’t whole because the lack of love and presence I received. I believed there would never truly be healing or letting go until she saw what she did and didn’t do. Or until I finally got the love I never knew.

…

I've been working with a Shaman and the first journey I asked her to work on with me was around my eyesight. I mentioned I had a lot of trauma when I was younger but I didn’t ask for anything specifically around my birth mother. When she was relaying the vision of the journey to me she said that at the end one of the spirit guides said “tell her she doesn’t need her”. When the Shaman told me that, she said “I don’t know who they’re referring to but they said you would know.

I do know. The only she I’ve ever needed something from outside of myself is my birth mother.

I gently took in the information and kinda tucked it away. It was such a small piece to the whole journey that I didn’t put much weight into it. (don’t worry.. I’ll share the journey as well with you soon).

In October my birth mom was placed into a memory care home and diagnosed with dementia. She had been living in Washington State, sold her house to buy an RV and then drove it to Arizona. Once she landed in Arizona she was so confused that my brother took action and travelled there. He then realized she wasn’t okay and brought her to Northern California to be placed in a home where he lives.

I haven’t talked to my mom in years. That story is for another day but it’s better this way.

Hearing of this news was shocking. She’s probably 68 and had just retired. I spent my life resenting her and feeling angry at her while also heavily diving into therapy to heal that wound.

I immediately felt a grief I didn’t know was there: the ending of something I thought I would get closure from. I realized I had been holding my breath waiting for the day she would apologize and finally take ownership of her life because she chose the route of victim. I was awaiting the day that maybe we would finally have a relationship that didn’t involve her kicking me out of her life yet again.

My brother tells me she can’t remember. She asks how I’m doing but has no recollection of us not having a relationship. This blew my mind over and over because the sad reality is that we never had one to begin with. She thinks we don’t have one because she told me no at some point. This pill has definitely been lodged in my throat. But now I realize that she isn’t capable of that truth even before dementia began to steal her brain and this, makes sense to me.

I had a tarot reading about a month after finding out all of this news. It was one of the most emotional readings I’ve ever had. Without knowing anything about me, the tarot reader said “You need to finalize the healing from your mother. Someway, somehow. It might mean going and seeing her 3 days in a row or it might mean something else but this is blocking your life.”

This wasn’t news for me. I’ve allowed my mom to stunt areas of my life for a long time. I’ve blamed her and then later realized that blaming her is also me stepping into her shoes as the victim of life. I am not a victim. I have power over how I live my life.

For the next few months I threw around the idea of visiting my mom. I had a trip planned to see my brother and thought I would do both in one swoop but that fell through and allotted me more thinking time. I talked to my therapist about it and some close friends. No one had answers for me but had wisdom nuggets and I kept coming back to this deep fear of seeing her again and leaving with less than I went in with. That was the loop, the pattern…

The thought of seeing her didn’t sit well with me and the thought of never interacting with her again was an indescribable feeling. I felt I was at an impasse and I wanted nothing more than to heal from these wounds. I felt ready for closure. I needed closure and to open the next chapter of wholeness. Moving from a place of abundance; the feeling of worth, love, gratitude and giving. It hadn’t been there and I have spent years existing from an empty cup unable to find where to fill it and trust me, I’ve tested out a lot of fillers.

Then, with time and the mysteries of the universe, the intention I set into motion began to work in the background. And here’s where we loop back to the Shaman…

“You don’t need her”

This was said to me a little over 2 weeks ago. I don’t know how healing works or time or really anything except maybe a pencil if I’m being honest. I can say that over the course of the past 2 weeks my soul has shifted. Unseen things have been given to me that I never knew I was able to hold in my body or soul all because I really DON’T NEED HER.

I thought I would feel guilt for not needing her. I casually would think about what this all meant and I felt guilt. But again, with the mysteries of how things flow and change and heal… I don’t need her and I don’t feel guilty at all. Rather than tighten around the feeling of guilt I observed it and let it flow through me. I learned it had a cycle and it left. I feel grief; sure; because not having a mother that cares and loves you the way you deserve and need is really sad.

For the first time in my life I feel love I never knew and it’s not from an outside source. I feel a wholeness that I deeply lacked. My worth has shifted, my confidence feels like it’s shiny and new. I can’t really put a description on the shift that happened when “you don’t need her” sunk into my cells but I can say it’s the most freeing and in a way, my life has begun.

I’ve decided my part of this journey won’t include her. I’m doing a second journey with this Shaman this week and cutting the cord to my mom. It’s time to say goodbye to her and things happen when we’re ready for them. One day I’ll write everything down. All the moments that happened, the danger she put herself and me in, the grief she experienced to get to the place she was…

My work isn’t done and I’ve learned that these big shifts of healing don’t always need to be hard work. When I’m ready they happen and not a minute sooner or later.

I look forward to closing out a lot of old stories that stem from her. These old stories can almost always be summed up to lack and scarcity whether it’s not being fed, not having money, not having time, or not having whatever else one can’t have. I’m ready to put that to sleep and invite my cup to overflow with abundance. And I’m not referring so much to the material space with this abundance.

I do want to silently and energetically thank her for helping me become resilient, for the automatic strengthening of my intuition, hearing and feeling because of her choices, for being absolutely messy and out of control while also being clean and tidy giving everything a place. I thank her for being creative and having an art room and letting me explore and make a mess that I can come back to. I thank her for being so strict about how I look because it doesn’t really fucking matter but I at least know how to make an appearance if I need to and now it’s an art form and expression. I thank her for being more concerned about punctuality for the wrong reasons because I’m now present to mine and someone else’s time. I thank her for her love of animals because she didn’t know how to love people the same way and I then knew she was capable of love in at least one way.

And I thank her for being the portal for me to enter into this wild physical ride in a body, on a planet that’s so tiny in such a big universe.

Thanks mom. And good bye. I hope you find what you missed in this life. I finally found it for myself.