MIRROR, MIRROR (MOTHERING THROUGH A WATERY LENS)

 

All photos in this post are from in or near Acadia National Park, Summer 2025

Everyone has a mother

although not everyone has been mothered

or has had the opportunity to know their mother.

Mother is both a noun and a verb,

a theme and a meme,

a cultural norm,

weaponized aspiration,

and part one of a classic swear.

Everyone,

and I mean EVERYONE

has opinions about mothering that 

they base around their own experience

with one or more people who

mothered (or attempted to mother) them.

Mother.  Momma.  Mom.

It's more than teacher or parent.

Mother is the giver of life, the foundation for

how we learn to be loved and give love,

and for female folks, the first mirror

we hold for what it looks like to be a person.

*****

Last week I was putting on mascara

and

(as one does)

 I stabbed myself accidentally in the eye.

As I reached for a tissue, I happened to glance in the mirror.

For just one brief millisecond

my whole being thought the 

person staring back at me

was my mother,

laughing sarcastically at my clumsiness.

I could almost hear her-

Good one, Grace!

or maybe I said it out loud.

Even all these years later, it can

be difficult to distinguish her echo 

from my own voice in unguarded moments.

For almost two decades, there

was no space between my mother and I-

no (allowable) difference between

what she wanted and what I needed.

My cells were hers and her cells were mine.

It of course began that way in utero

but our interwoven co-dependence

persisted right through early adulthood.

I was at her service, 

laying all my offerings at the altar 

of her care, her pride, her protection.

I could have stayed committed,

to that idol for my entire life if I abided by the tenants 

of my family faith.

But I'm a sinner and so I rebelled.

Somewhere in the shift from girl to woman,

I drew a line between myself

and my mother that meant we each

had to choose how to move forward

as individuals-not as one.

I have learned since that this is a natural part

of growing up-this separation.

But my rebellion was not a partial tear

followed by repair and recriminations, hugs and new understanding.

It was a refusal to bow at an altar of abuse

and dysfunction in service of her title.  

It was an insistence that I was allowed

to exist, separate from her, not a mirror.

I shifted the lens and said

You can have some of me but you cannot have all of me.

I am my own and I get to choose what to give you.

Some of anyone was never going to be 

even close to enough.

She has always demanded all or nothing.

I don't remember the last time my skin touched

my mother's skin.

I expect to never share space or time

with her in this iteration of life.

The last time I shared physical space with my mother

was several years past the original line in the sand.

We had been apart but not completely severed,

I was exiled but not fully shunned.

In just the right light, we could pretend

for brief moments that I was still

primarily a reflection of her.

It was easier on both of us for a while.

Until she asked for a favor that turned into 

another, much deeper crack.

Couldn't my youngest brother go to live with someone else?

Just for a little while until she got out of trouble?

He wasn't safe in the house with her lover.

Nevermind that he'd never been safe with her.

Safety for others only mattered when she could no longer

receive the offering of respectability that mother's a due.

We had always done things in the dark

traded shame like cards.

This time, we did it in the cold afternoon light

of an Alamance County courtroom.

I wrote a letter of support

to explain why I recommended the transfer of custody.

It was barely a page, a clear outline that spared

a lot of detail that even now, no one can bear to claim.

It was filled with lines I

knew I should never cross as her reflection.

I sat in that courtroom while she was led to the front.

The judge asked if she wanted to dispute any of the content.

She declined with hushed honey tones

and then he agreed....that the lines I drew should stand

for more than just me.

We had one brief interaction that day,

intense eye contact that was broken when one of us

(I don't remember which)

looked away.

The last conversation I shared with my mother

was when my son was five and my daughter was an infant.

She had been sending gifts to my children through Andy

and when I found out, 

I popped off at the mouth.

If our mother wanted to talk to me

she should call me herself I said.

What I meant was that she was using him.

What I wanted her to hear was that she should leave me alone

and find someone easier to prey on.

I did not actually mean she should call me but of 

course that is what she did.

She scolded me when I asked who 

was on the other end of the line.

It's your mother for Christ's sake.  Who else would it be?

As if we had seen each other just last week

instead of the better part of a decade.

I guess when a god calls you direct, she expects caller ID to be unnecessary.

There was no visual impact but the shape

of her arguments, the cadence of her heartbeat,

and the insistence of her need was loud.

During the next sixty minutes

she tried again to shape me into a something flat and reflective.

The lines I drew had been reinforced though-

by my own blood bound up in other little souls,

by my own rhythm, no longer drowned out by hers,

and by space in which to build that memory.

I am mine (but I am also theirs)

so I cannot ever be only hers again.

In fractured stops and starts

it became clear that 

she wanted something, maybe several somethings.

I wouldn't pretend that we had 

nothing between us that needed repair.

I wouldn't play along with the frame she kept 

trying to wrap around me.

When I put up a clear line of inquiry

What do you want?

She picked up my cadence, direct and clear for once.

Fix this mess-but do it my way.

I declined.

She crescendoed according to all the rules

I remembered from my home training.

Deny, deflect, distract.

And when that fails, threaten.

I said go ahead, bring it.

You only see my surface but

I am water, deep and strong.  

She looked away.

It's been decades

since we've interacted directly.

I know she's still alive because

my siblings occassionally give me reports. 

Sometimes at her direction

(I can still feel the cadence)

and sometimes while they process their own lines

of demarcation or

deconstruct their own altars.

Knowing the tide still pulls is comforting,

catching glimpses of her in the mirror is

reassuring, hearing the timbre of her

voice in my own is a touchstone.

I am so grateful for her.

I love my mother.

I always will.

*******************

Loving her has taught me more about compassion

and grace and redemption than most

of my easier relationships.

Learning to love her as a separate entity,

to forgive her the damage done to her reflection in me

 has given me a deep well

of self-love, regulation and generosity.

My own daughter is a force of living water

sometimes serene on the surface

but also vibrant, alive, and changing.

She's like me but not.

She began in me but she has already

become something unique and beautifully distinct.

One day she'll hear my voice from her own mouth,

see my face in a piece of glass

and I hope feel as much joy

from knowing her mother still lives 

in her as I do when that happens to me.

My mother gave me the experience that I needed to have.

She was a catalyst to get help so that I could create a new story.

I am so grateful for this wisdom.

I love my mother.

I always will.

If you listen to our shared culture,

what I did in breaking that connection was 

terrible, unthinkable-a desecration.

No one asks what made that separation 

the only possible choice.

Most project their own experience with the

deep well of love they tapped into

with their mother

and assume that the child is 

being petty, willful or spiteful.

In cases like mine,

the only way I could continue to love my mother

was to separate, to choose myself.

I had tried (and watched many many other beloved people)

to find a middle ground and failed.

I was almost never a child so I learned at an early age

that I needed to do the work of mothering for her 

and my siblings.

Once I turned those skills on myself, I realized that 

the girl I was needed a mother too.

One who would do the hard thing the child needs

even if the mother will be heartbroken forever because of it.

I thank her every day for teaching me how to be selfish

because it saved my life.

I love my mother.

I always will.

I can't tell you the number of times

someone has said:  Your mom must be so proud of you.

Many people who love me and met me after

dissolution of this core relationship

think that my mother is either deceased

or that she must live

in some remote, exotic location.

It is unthinkable to them that I would be 

so disobedient as to fail to honor my mother

in the way they understand that directive.

I rarely get into this with people

anymore unless we are going to

spend significant time together.  

It's so discordant with what they want to believe

-about mothers, about me, about her.

I don't like to ruin people's world view

or expose them to how fragile their deeply held beliefs are.

There's plenty of overly simplistic examples on 

the 24-hour news cycle of how we continue to 

fail to see each other, love each other,

support each other.

I save the deeper dives for those who reach out

for real connection, not grounded in pride

or fairytales that elevate heroes and burn

villains at the stake.

I've come to learn that there are many of us

that have had to make that decision to separate

and many of us bear the shame of disconnection

from peers, family or community.

If you are one of these children-I mostly want

you to know that you aren't alone.

There are even more of us as the tide of MAGA

and MAHA and white supremacy and Christian Nationalism

infect even beautiful souls with something

that is anathema to connection.

And if you're feeling alone, 

I would like to share that there is healing and wholeness

that exists when we remember the living water

that our mothers (even the imperfect or missing or lost ones)

give us as we are born into this iteration.

Our hearts are made to swell, break and then swell again.

It's our super-power and we can find the way back.

Thank goodness for mothers.

I love my mother.

I always will.

WORTH MY SALT (MY FAMILY'S PRIDE AND JOY)

 

The River Basins of North Carolina surrounded by a prayer by Adrienne Maree Brown doodled by me.

Before the car even stops,

they burst out of the back door

arms wide, teeth sparkling.

Love demands we mimic their movements

mirror their joy.

We must transform our anxiety into hospitality,

our lack into abundance,

our vulnerability into armor.

We must welcome the grace dumped on our heads

unless we want to be ungrateful,

cast out, or ugly.

It's a dance we've always done

since birth or maybe before

so with a few cues, we join in.

The crescendo of nicknames pour forth, 

lighting our hearts up,  

pumping our limbs until

we find the familiar rhythm.

There's no room for ambivalence

 in the urgency of right now, 

we are all together,

 once again,

hallelujah.

The jubilation at laying eyes on slight bodies,

wrinkled hands on smooth cheeks,

grips on necks and arms wrapped tight-

it's so much.

Too much too look in the face.

Too much to wrap your lips around.

Your pride and your joy have come home again.

Did anyone ask the prodigal child 

where the hell he'd been 

or what he'd been thinking?

How he could abandon them

to silence and withdrawal?

How he could take all that they loved 

away into the chaos of his whims?

No.

They feasted.

The Bible tells us so.

So we do the Lord's bidding.

With biscuits and black-eyes,

new potatoes and first tomatoes,

some ham, sliced thick and fried.

Fair trade for the gifts she's toted with her.

Whispy blonde heads and swaggering smiles

 cover for lavender shaded eyes and skinny spines.

The questions are begging but there is pound cake

and cool-whip and sugar-laced wild berries, 

steeping in their own blood.

If there are answers to be given, 

I can surely keep them until we're full up.

I am the smartest of us all-

they made sure I know it-

so that I know it is my job to learn and learn well.

I did (I do).

What did I want them to ask her?

The coffee is dripped and the cigarettes are lit.

The ring around the table invites confession.

Now is the time-to see what is real.

To notice what is missing.

To show them who she is when we are apart.

If only I wasn't so heavy.

Weighed down by dust and lard and sour-smelling shame.

If I could take a breath, I might steer them

towards the sickness.

If I could clear my head, I might know how to

explain to them her riddle.

I am almost able to live up to my birth.

Almost worth my salt.

I look at my brother, long eyelashes brushing

freckles as he struggles to lift his lids on Grandma's lap.

Her arm patting his back begs him to rest with her

where the shape of love is a seat at the table.

He will hurt himself to get even one more second.

Me too.

Belonging is the payment for our pain,

gluttony the balance of our sparseness,

rest the cost of mania.

I force myself to forget my queries,

stun my brain until it gives way,

close the door on the scales I just can't

make balance.

No questions tonight.

No righteous judges or hung jury.

Just three generations holding the knife's edge-

shared bread to tide us over.

The breaker masquerading as my mother

will decide to exile us all again.

This tide always turns.

Hissing sands still allow the withdrawal.

I am the smartest of us all-

they made sure I know it-

so that I know it is my job to learn and learn well.

I did (I do).

On reunion nights like these,

I learned to forget the questions

that would lead us dangerously close to the truth.

I learned to forget the bad decisions

and misplaced concern,

forget that it takes (at least) two to tango

but that a whole mob can get away with murder.

Forget the hunger, focus on the weight.

Forget the chill, eyes on the prize.

The big hello, the belonging and smiles.

The pride clutched tightly as if it is an honest reward

 for a job well done.

Those big greetings, bombastic starts, and outsized

moments always felt like the promise of a lifeline.

Until my grandparents were planted in

darkness.

Until my brother met them there.

Until the breakers stopped coming back to shore.

Until I was smooth as glass on the surface,

all my waves buffered in my depths

all my salt heavy on the floor.

I am the smartest of us all-

they made sure I know it-

so that I know it is my job to learn and learn well.

I did (I do).

It turns out, we mostly just live up

to the expectations of our origin stories.

Mine had expectations so high

that it destroyed their pride and doused their joy.

I tried several iterations of a life

lived the way I was told it had to be.

Then...almost on accident...but mostly because

I became who they wanted me to be....

 I decided to remember the questions.

To pull it up from the deeps

the things that were heavy and twisted.

I pulled a lot of muck into the light,

spread it around and bleached it in the sun.

I have a lot more answers to some of those questions

and I have been at sea ever since.

Unmoored but not adrift.

Saltier some days than others.

The questions I wanted to ask them then

are the ones I want to ask all of us now.

Are you proud of yourself?

Sorry.  Sorry.

Don't answer that.

 I know you aren't.  

That's not the real question.

I sometimes can't help my home-training.

I'll try again, less directly, more softly.

It's not your fault, it's the ocean we swim in.

We all learn to drown even while 

they say they're teaching us to swim.

Let me come alongside a minute

and say this without even accidental sharpness.

What I really want to know

is whether your pride was worth the price?

Does the reprieve last long enough

to hold the anxiety at bay?

Will you hurt yourself to get one more second

of that beautiful lie?

Or have you found a different way to be free?

This is a message in a bottle.

Some water is living and some water is dead

and the only way to know for sure 

is to taste it.

Well seasoned is well fed.

 

I DON'T WANT TO START OVER (NEWSFLASH: I'M NOT)

If you're just now checking in, I feel that I should remind 

you that my word for 2022 is #quitting.

I get that word doesn't resonate with everyone

but I tend to place a high value on the subversive.

I am endlessly amused by things that challenge norms.

Especially if I've found something within me that is ingrained

in a way that isn't productive.

If I used a nicer word like 'evolve' or 'sustainable'

my brain would think this needed to be a gentle

tweak of the status quo.

What I need in 2022 is to rattle my bones a bit

and since I (like many of you)

have defined myself as 'not a quitter' for so long

this feels like the best way to confront myself.

I recently quit a job for a company that I'd

been employed by for 22 years.

I was employee number 10 or 11

at a small startup that was going to transform 

the way the agriculture industry

moved goods and services around the US.

We were going to use this new fangled thing called the internet

and we were going to be very disruptive.

Working for a startup was one of those experiences 

I didn't know I was looking for

until I was in the middle of it.  

I was hired to do one thing but since that thing wasn't very defined, 

it morphed into something

different within days.  

And then again.  

And again.

If something needed doing, I did it.

If I needed to learn something new, even better.

Finance, negotiating, sql queries, software testing, 

process management, mentoring, coaching-

over the years, 

the list of things that I never intended to learn

grew exponentially.

Cleaning out my office

I've had a host of people reach out to me in support.

I really appreciate knowing that you care about me

and it's not just because I follow the rules

and get good marks in the public assignment.

Some of your messages are so tender and affirming

I will carry with them forever

and probably still leak Holy Spirit from my eyeballs

thinking of them when I'm 80.

THANK YOU SO MUCH.

There's been a interesting theme that's come up a time or two

that I think is worth unpacking here

because there seems to be some confusion.

I am not starting over.

This is not a telenovella so I did not develop a rare

kind of amnesia and forget who I am.

I still have access to all of my experiences

and learnings from my past.

I am no longer a bright young thing

whose skills only consist of a college degree

some charisma and a lot of energy.

I still have those things-they didn't disappear.

They are now augmented by a lot of other things

that I learned on the job or in the river of life.

I also have certifications in many of those disciplines

and a proven track record.

I've had some messes and mistakes-

that I learned from and then 

applied that learning.

Most importantly, I know myself and have data to support

the ideas that I think about my abilities.

I am highly adapatable and curious.

I am a leader but I am also a good teammate.

I have watched myself do hard things in the face of pressure

and still have integrity with my own values.

I also know what I am NOT good at-

the kinds of assignments or organizations

that will not bring out the best of my abilities.

I'm mature enough to understand what isn't

mine to do and feel excited when someone

who is talented in that arena shows off their abilities.

Goldfish art by my daughter.  Have you watched Ted Lasso yet?

I do not know what I will do professionally as I move forward

but all the skills I acquired over the years are still with me.

I didn't wake up like this-

I worked for every bit of this experience, 

I moved towards the professional I am now, and

the beginning of this journey was a loooong time ago now.

No one can take it from me without my consent.

I am not starting over.

I'm becoming more of who I already am

and I will build on the foundation

that already exists.

So for those of you who are telling yourself

some version of this:

I wish I could do what she did but 

I really don't want to start over.

I want to challenge that thinking a bit.

It's a lie.

Whether it's a job or a relationship

or a community-you're not a brand new baby

who isn't bringing something to bear for your next challenge.

It will certainly feel hard and you'll feel vulnerable.

That isn't the same as being brand new to the rodeo.

You aren't starting over-

you have everything to be successful

within you.

Already.

And what you don't have right now

you'll learn or experience in that next opportunity.

If something is calling to you

there are a lot of methods to evaluate the opportunity.

Thinking that you're starting over is a chain around your ankle,

a limiting belief, and it will almost never serve your best self.

Feel free to throw that idea in the trash.

Finally, I'd love to talk about this with you.

Whenever.

Forever.

In real life or the internet.

Transformation is holy work

and it benefits from a specific kind of community.

Reach out if you're struggling with this lie.

I can help.

NOTHING IS WASTED (NOTES FROM THE EDITORAL FLOOR)

The world is a lot right now.

I mean-the world has always been a lot-

maybe I'm just more aware of the profound fecundity

present in simple things right now.

In a time and place that seems to be insistent on scarcity

I keep being hit over the head with abundance.

Except with words.

I don't have a lot of words lately-

at least not the kind that hold my attention long enough

to be strung together into sentences.

There is so much to witness and process,

that I rarely feel that I've got something to add to the cacophony.

Or maybe it's all I can do to hang on myself.

Most days it's difficult to pull the tangle apart

well enough to understand my own perspective.

It feels nearly impossible to share any kind of insight.

Also, I am on the computer errr damn day from 7am until 7pm.

It's a zoom life right now and in spite of my blue-blockers

and my melatonin, I'm feeling more and more like a frantic monkey

stuck inside a space ship.

It's no secret that I'm often offended by the lies we tell ourselves-

so you won't be surprised that someone using words to hurt

themselves was the push that motivated me to come back to

the screen after hours.

Just so we're clear...I've used this same lie in the not to distant past.

I bet you have too.

I hope we all find the keys to freedom by connecting.

If I ever say something that causes you to shackle yourself

tighter with shame or heaviness-please reach out to me

so I can make amends and adjust my words.

I have a friend who is going through something hard

and she was talking about all the time she wasted

by bending and twisting herself into a situation that doesn't work.

She was full of self-judgement and shame.

She should have known (she said) that it wasn't a fit.

She should have called time earlier instead of doubling down.

She was in full blown crisis over all this wasted time

and she could not get past that to see anything else.

What a waste was said over and over.

While is is true that she spent a lot of time in a certain posture-

it is not true that the time was wasted.

Friends...NOTHING is wasted.

There are layers in this lie-

and that's part of why it's so powerful.

Sneaky lies are sometimes hardest to see.

I'm going to try and break down the layers

but it'll take a minute.

First of all-time is a human concept.

We made it up and we get to decide what it means.

We generally agree as modern humans on the hands

of the clock and how that time passes.

We've created international boundaries that

help orient the collective group so that we can 

efficiently do things together.

But a second is not a real thing.

It can't be held, tasted, or felt.

Some seconds seem to drag forever,

others fall like water through a sieve.

How can you waste something that doesn't exist?

Do you know how much time you have left on this plane?

How many minutes, seconds or hours are in your account?

What does it look like to fritter away time?

Are you throwing seconds in the trash by not experiencing them?

Who qualifies the proper use of time?  Do they wear a uniform?

Have a badge or an official second keeper?

Are there categories or gradients of time?  

Useful through wasteful?

Where does sleeping fall?  Reading fiction?  Laughing?

Snuggling a baby?  singing?

Does time increase in value that can be traded on some 

international exchange system?

The person who decides the value of your time is you.

You're choosing how to look at that concept every single time you think of it.

Here are some questions to consider:

What if you have exactly the right amount of time?

What if the time you have is more than enough?

What if all time you have is equal in value and that value is infinite?

Next, let's talk about experiences

and how those things get processed by your personal narrator.

I think we all have our share of choices we wish we didn't make

or roads we would have preferred to have avoided.

Or those things that happened to us that weren't 

a result of our own decision or active choice.

We start from an early age deciding that some 

things are positive and some are negative

and this is our first step into a fundamental human 

behavior:  story telling.

We live and breathe in story-using it 

to do incredible (and sometimes terrible) feats of magic.

Often our only novel is the story we tell

ourselves about our own life and our only audience is ourselves.

When something doesn't fit into a nice neat chapter

in that biography, we want to throw it out as part of a rough draft.

Here's the main problem with kicking out certain experiences:

you're in the middle of the story.

You can't actually see where this is going yet.

And that will forever be the answer as long as you're alive.

Trying to edit your story in real time means you're not living

the actual life in front of you.

This is why we go to therapy-because we get stuck

trying to take out chapters that hurt us or don't fit

so that we can actually move forward to new experiences.

A lot of what you learn in therapy is that you 

need to accept that chapter and stop trying to

sugar coat it into something that fits better or pretending

that it didn't exist at all.

What you tell yourself about the story is often

more important than the actual events that took place.

For those of us dealing with traumatic chapters, here are a few more thoughts:

Acceptance does not mean approval.

You are the author of your story-but you are not

the omniscient controller of events.  

When something terrible happens, you couldn't have changed it.

You can only change how you understand the event

and if you're trying to cut it out, you

are not allowing yourself to have the power that is actually yours.

Find a good therapist and work on yourself for as long as it takes.

That is not wasted time.

Rob Bell's new book is excellent

Finally, let's talk about how we assign value to experiences.

We each have an internal evaluation system

that starts assigning labels to experiences from the second

we are born.

And our brain builds from early, simplistic things

to more complicated or nuanced things.

'Food is good' grows into a preference

for certain vegetables over others.

But our overall life is not actually a linear experience.

What the baby version of you thought was

amazing will bore the adult version of you.

We are not all lamenting the wasted time

we spent pushing a walker as a toddler.

That's because we understand it was something

we needed during that time period.

We don't look at elementary children with disdain

when they become obsessed with power rangers

or Pokémon or certain book series.

We understand that's what is lighting up their brains

in this moment and we don't try to somehow make 

those preferences make sense in the life we project for them 

twenty years from now.

We allow them to find themselves and discard

items or ideas that don't serve them anymore.

Unfortunately, we call this childhood and stop allowing

it in ourselves at some point and that is a great mistake.

Play is as important in adults as it is in children-

it just may look a little different.

I want to be very explicit.

I'm not trying to subtly tell you that the things you experience

are all lessons that can be used.

I will tell you directly that there are LOTS of experiences

that turn out to be lessons that can be used or built on.

But not everything is a lesson sent here to teach you something

in an existential way.

Even if you manage to use it later, 

not everything will be understood by you in real time.

Most things are best viewed without the lens of judgement.

Somethings just are...or were.  But they were not wasted.

Nothing is wasted.

Everything is (or can be) holy.

Everything is (or can be) profane.

You get to decide.

Here are some other things that aren't wasted:

that long term relationship that didn't culminate in marriage or children

the years of marriage where neither of you honored or cherished

 that terrible fight you had with your brother just before he died

the years you spent hiding in alcohol or drugs

 that time binge watching Peaky Blinders with your half grown kids

 the carrots whose tops got eaten by bunnies 4 times in a row

the classes you took twenty years ago that don't apply to your career

the friendship that grew distant over time

the time spent trying to decide how you want to make money

the money you spent buying love or affirmation

the award you chased that didn't result in acceptance

the energy you spent hiding abuse from those that love you

the rage you feel inside when your father starts talking politics

the time spent worshipping at a church who doesn't think you're a whole person

the love you gave that wasn't returned

the love you that still fills your heart after the person has moved on

Nothing is wasted.

What would be on your list of wasted things?

Feel free to share the chapters you're trying to rewrite

so that the power they hold over the story can be reclaimed.